Perhaps the most useful thing about blogging is that it can get you free advertising when done right. Considering that 53% of today’s marketers rank content as their number one priority, it is surprising that there are so many companies not jumping on the website blogging bandwagon.
Website blogging doesn’t just help SEO, but it also helps generate sales leads, build brand awareness, and even help to create tomorrow’s thought leaders. If this doesn’t have you convinced, there are a lot more reasons why website blogging and even guest blogging are so important for your SEO.
Blogs Generate Indexed Pages
Search engines use indexing to help them sort through the billions of pages on the web. To get found by search engines, you need a lot of info on your website. Every time there is a search with your keywords, the search engines seek out blog pages and index them for future use.
You need to help them recognize you as a trusted resource for whatever it is you are selling, which is where your blog can help. The more valuable your blogging ideas and the info they provide, the more trusted you become. Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than sites that don’t. Indexed pages help send you up in the ranks.
Blogs Attract External Links
When you generate an authoritative, engaging, or even downright hilarious blog, you are more likely to attract external (inbound) links. Google loves external links, as search engines tend to think that if other sources are linking to your blogs, the content must be good.
With consistent website blogging, be it your own or through guest blogging, you are more likely to get some external links. After all, no one is going to link to your sales pages. Companies that blog get 97% more external links to their website than those that don’t. Because search engines love links, you will see yourself rising in the ranks.
People Hate Paid Ads
Although you can definitely see results with a strong PPC campaign, in general, more and more people are starting to hate paid ads. Most focus on those organic top rankings, with 70% to 80% of people ignoring ads. In fact, a Solve Media study put banner ads to shame showing that people are 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash, 279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest, and 112.50 times more likely to get into Harvard than they are to click on a paid ad.
It is important to note here though, that since 2014, the number of bloggers who pay for traffic has increased by 322%, according to Orbit Media. So, there is still something to be said for paid promos. The same survey also showed that 67% of those using paid promos saw stronger results. So, someone somewhere is clicking those ads!
Blogs Are Free Advertising
Although there has been a big increase in paid promos for website blogging, when you look at Orbit Media’s stats comparing how blogs drive traffic, SEO still reigns supreme. 68% of blogs depend on SEO to drive traffic as opposed to just 19% that use paid promos.
Another telling sign of how easy it is to drive traffic without investing in paid ads is that 98% of those surveyed by Orbit Media use social media posts for their blogs. Social has proven to be an excellent driver of traffic, without the need for investing more time and money, so it’s one of the strategic blog ideas you should look into.
Quality Blogs See Stronger Results
Also from Orbit Media, almost 80% of bloggers found that they saw “some” to “strong” results through website blogging, with close to 27% seeing strong results. The survey also found:
- The more unique and detailed research that goes into your in blog ideas and posts, the stronger the results tend to be, with 58% of bloggers using original research seeing stronger results.
- 39% of those who invested more than six hours in blog creation saw strong results.
- 46% who published more than once per week saw strong results.
- 42% who wrote blogs over 2,000 words saw strong results.
Without an ongoing list of blog ideas for stronger SEO, these results would not be possible.
Blogs Bring on Sales
Fence sitters tend to feel there is little proof 
that blogs generate sales. However, businesses that blog get 67% more leads, and 52% of companies surveyed by the Content Marketing Institute said website blogging has become their most important marketing tactic. Ninety-two percent of companies who post multiple blogs per day acquired a customer from their blogs.
The importance of website blogging for SEO is undeniable. The higher the quality of your blog ideas and content, and the more blog pages indexed, the better your odds are of being found.
Let Outreach Digital Marketing help you increase your rankings and web traffic with our blog writing services.