When you’re setting up on your own chances are you see your website as the prime place to showcase your goods and services. You can see the relevance of telling your customers all about who you are and what you can offer them, but a blog why would you want to spend your time producing those?

In this short blog we explore why blogs are the perfect vehicle for helping to get you noticed. Take a look at our mini seo guide to writing relevant blogs.

Why Blogs?

You see them everywhere on almost all business sites but ask yourself why people are writing them and who actually reads them. The truth is people in the know, write blogs because it helps to make their website more visible. If you’re looking to get your site picked up in Google searches and not just on page five or six, then a good blog will help you achieve that goal.

It’s not the only thing you’ll need to do of course but using the powers of SEO throughout your site and in particular in your blog will certainly help.

A blog is also a great way to communicate with your customer. We’re talking good quality content that answers your customers’ queries and helps to set you up as a friendly voice of authority who can help and provide advice. Take for example a gardener, in his blog he offers weekly advice on what customers should be doing in their gardens depending on the time of year, weather conditions etc. His customers return again and again for free advice, keeping him relevant and his website more easily found thanks to the great content and traffic that he generates.

Getting Started

And this then is where you start, with some research into what your customers are looking for, their exact needs. If you type in “gardener” into Google you’re likely to be hit with pages and pages of gardeners and garden centres and yours may not feature all that highly but if you’re looking at what people are searching for in respect to their gardens, then you know what keywords and phrases are going to stand out. How about, for example “how to treat patchy grass” or “garden jobs in autumn”. Use free tools to look at search trends in your industry and try and spot a niche that you can fill that lessens the competition.

Think length too. If you’re planning on posting more than twice a week then around 500 words will be fine but for weekly content think about going a little bit longer, between 800 and 1,000 words.

Use those keywords and phrases liberally but naturally too, without them looking unnatural or forced. Always make your priority to produce relevant, top quality content over and above everything else.

Once you’re on a roll, don’t stop. Keep your posting regular and plan content well in advance so you’re not scratching around for ideas. Then you’re all set to turn your blog into a powerful marketing tool.