How Keeping a Blog Helps Boost your Small Business

Having a company blog is a great way for small businesses in the UK to build their brand and grow their audience online. While social media is an important marketing channel, adding a blog to your website provides a number of unique benefits that can take your brand to the next level. In this article, we’ll explore how consistent, high-quality blogging can boost your UK small business brand.

Keeps Visitors Engaged on Your Website

One of the top advantages of business blogging is that it keeps people engaged when they land on your website. Social media and email newsletters may drive visitors, but many will quickly click away if your site lacks fresh, valuable content. A blog gives them a reason to hang around and explore your website.

By publishing new blog posts on a regular schedule, such as weekly or bi-weekly, you create stickiness that improves time on site. The longer that potential customers spend exploring your website, the better chance they will convert into leads and sales. A blog also increases the number of pages on your site, giving people more opportunities to engage with your brand.

Provides Fresh Website Content for SEO

Search engines like Google are constantly evaluating websites for fresh, unique content. A small business blog that is frequently updated with new posts signals to Google that your site is active. This boosts your SEO rankings, as search engines reward websites that publish fresh content on an ongoing basis.

Make sure to optimize your blog posts for relevant keywords so they can be easily found by your ideal customers. Quality content will also garner natural backlinks as influencers reference your articles, further elevating your website’s authority and search visibility.

Share Company News and Thought Leadership

A regular publishing cadence provides lots of opportunities to share company news and updates with your audience. From new product launches, personnel changes, events, milestones, and more, your blog enables you to broadcast announcements on your own platform.

Blogging also allows you to establish thought leadership in your industry by sharing insights, trends, how-to’s, and best practices. When you consistently publish valuable, educational content, you build trust and credibility with readers

Builds Website Traffic from Return Visitors

One of the biggest benefits of business blogging is building an audience that comes back to your site again and again. By providing audiences with regular, fresh content, you incentivize readers to return frequently to check out new blog posts. Desktop users love to bookmark active blogs they have an interest in.

This increases website traffic from return visitors, as opposed to one-off spikes from links or social shares. The traffic boost will be incremental, but over time a loyal blog audience can drive significant, sustained growth. Send email subscribers a notification whenever you publish a new post to maximize returning visits.

Strengthens your Industry Authority and Influence

Thoughtful blog content positioned around your expertise allows you to organically establish authority within your niche. As you publish posts over months and years, your business comes to be seen as a trusted source of information on key industry topics.

This authority and influence leads to more citations, links, shares, and engagement opportunities from both peers and prospects. As your blog content library expands, it becomes a magnet for driving more visibility and interest in your small business.

Provides SEO-Friendly Content For Your Website

As we touched on above, a blog for your small business creates SEO-friendly content that search engines value when crawling and indexing your site. Make sure to do on-page SEO for each blog post, such as crafting meta descriptions and using target keywords in headers, content, URLs, alt text, etc.

Also be sure to interlink between relevant blog posts to develop internal links, which search algorithms favour. Optimized blog content provides more entry points for new visitors to discover you via search engines.

Allows you to Test Content Ideas and Topics

A blog essentially serves as a built-in focus group for testing different content formats, topics, and ideas. You can experiment with various themes and see which blog posts resonate most with your readers. Trial and error is the name of the game so observe social shares, links, comments, and traffic sources to get insights into the content your audience finds most valuable.

You can then use these learnings to refine your editorial strategy and double down on content that performs best. This agility to try new content and pivot as needed is a key benefit of small business blogging.

Provides an Owned Platform You Control

Social media algorithms are always changing, making it harder to reach followers without pay-per-click advertising. A blog gives you full control over an owned platform you can build up on your own terms. You don’t have to worry about changing algorithms or paying to reach your website visitors.

This creative freedom and control makes it much easier to establish your brand identity. You can set the tone and topics you want associated with your business by being the sole content creator.

Summary

Adding a company blog to your small business website provides a range of branding, SEO, and audience-building benefits that can significantly contribute your success. By publishing high-quality content on a consistent schedule, you keep visitors engaged, build authority, and incrementally grow your brand influence over time.

Blogging requires an investment in original content creation, but the long-term dividends it pays makes it a smart strategy for boosting your small UK business.