Want to drive traffic to your site, but don’t know what strategy to adopt? Blogging is a great way to build your audience, drive more traffic and sales to your website. Don’t make the mistake of seeing the blog as a waste of time … It’s the # 1 marketing asset!

Does my website need a blog? Yes you need it! If you want to gain visibility and generate traffic and sales on your website, it is necessary to create and have a blog.

Develop its visibility, improve its market position, legitimize its offer to the customer … To meet these objectives which are constantly evolving with increasingly demanding users, have a digital content strategy is more than essential. And the blog is the right solution. And yes, even more in 2021!

Are you an e-merchant, run an association or a showcase site and want to develop your business? The blog is a good solution to increase your traffic and by intervening in particular at the levels of these objectives:

• Notoriety ;
• increased traffic;
• the organic SEO;
• the acquisition of new prospects;
• the expertise approach in a specific area;
• communication with Internet users.

Discover in this article all the advantages of integrating a blog into your marketing strategy. Let’s go!

Table of Contents

• Why embed a blog on your website?
• The blog as a cornerstone of its content marketing
  • The checklist for creating quality content 
  • Relay your blog on social networks to gain visibility
  • The “less is more” movement: quality rather than quantity
• The blog as a tool for generating traffic … provided it is well referenced
  • Regularly feed your blog with content
  • The blog’s internal link: a boost for organic seo
• The blog as a sales aid 
• Many website owners still think that a blog is a luxury or worse, a waste of time.

Why embed a blog on your website?

In 2020, “blogging” continues to grow, with over 409 million people viewing over 23.6 billion pages each month in WordPress alone.

These statistics alone demonstrate the importance of integrating a blog into your digital strategy.

89% of B2B marketers use content marketing strategies including social media (83%), blogs (80%) and newsletters (77%)(Statista).

You will understand, today more than yesterday:

Content is king! 

You have to have a blog to help promote your site: To generate content, traffic a blog is necessary Is this statement true?

One of the key criteria for positioning yourself well on Google is to offer Internet users high added value content . Google’s algorithm is attracted to content that allows prospects to easily find an answer to their question. And the Internet user often has questions to ask, especially about a product.

The point is that a blog is quite different. Internet users who browse this type of site are often looking for advice, trends and inspiration. It even often happens that some readers are not really aware of their need before reading an article on a problem that they encounter.

The blog is very reassuring for a somewhat lost Internet user… And this is what happens regularly when he finds himself alone in front of his screen. 

The blog as a cornerstone of its content marketing

Today it is impossible to miss content marketing, a technique adopted by more and more companies. So what does it take to know and do to set it up?

Content Marketing, is a marketing strategy based on the creation and distribution of valuable, useful and informative content in order to communicate with its audience and develop its visibility. Content marketing is a component of inbound marketing.

Do you have after-sales service? Consumer service? Requests over the phone? Your customers talk about different topics. Bring them even more information through your blog. You have to find an editorial focus by bringing something extra to your customers. Your blog should never have a commercial tone.

Ideally, a reader should always feel that they have learned or discovered something of interest.

The checklist for creating quality content

To find out about trending topics, those that will attract readers, it is advisable to:

• Get inspiration from your competitors’ blogs: not just the topics of their blogs, but also the form of the content
• Create a list of relevant keywords and complete it as you go; (Use Google search suggestions to find new topics)
• Define an editorial line;
• Create an editorial calendar;
• Focus on relevant content related to your sector of activity: Feature article (technical topics and pillar page); Trendy and novelty article (multiply the content).

Informative content and long text are seen as relevant content and promoted by search engines.

We also invite you to read the checklist to start your e-commerce project.

Relay your blog on social networks to gain visibility

You have to spend as much time writing your content and distributing it, especially on networks. Promote your BtoB blog on social networks is a formidable vector of visibility and recommendation.

Having a strong social media presence is a great way to promote your brand and products / services as it gives direct access to the audience. It’s also a great way to build brand awareness and encourage potential customers to convert. To do this, enrich your blog posts with images and videos so that they are more interesting and engaging when shared by users.

And once your social networks are configured, be social!

• Interact with your users,
• Share your values,
• Chat,
• Observe your audience.
  

Be responsive to respond to comments, gather valuable information about their expectation and aspiration, and build your own loyal community.

The “less is more” movement: quality rather than quantity

A quality content and value can be considered very valuable and adding it to your site, you’re more likely to attract the attention of your potential customers. Also, you don’t have to think about your blog in the traditional sense. Think of it more from a content perspective. Just like you would share your business or brand details on social media, use your blog to create overviews of your business .

To put it simply: position yourself as an expert and deploy your knowledge!

Suppose you are an interior designer.

You can create a blog post on home improvements or the subject: Why hire an interior designer?

You can also create a free download resource that lists the top five 2021 trends, all with links to your products.

With this method you promote your expertise to Internet users who may become your customers later.

Also think about the content recycling which allows you to update certain data of your content, to cut an ebook into articles … It is also a way to save time in editorial creation.

The blog as a tool for generating traffic … provided it is well referenced

For your blog to be useful, your Internet users must be able to find it!

Several aspects must be taken into account. But if there is one thing to remember, it is that the quality of SEO is dependent on the quality of the content.

Above all, a blog must be Google Friendly and advocate the organic seo rules. Better to avoid paid search (AdWords).

• Relevance of keywords: the tool SEMRUSH facilitates the research process;
• Choose the titles of the articles well: a single H1 title and question titles;
• Use backlinks: creating links with other sites guarantees good seo;
• Work the layout with images: fill in the ALT tag
• Use impactful meta description and meta title; (important for the conversion rate)
• Integrate tags and categories;
• Internal links; (to your product / service pages or other blog posts)
• External links on technical thermal baths; (ex: wikipedia, tools, articles, .org site, etc.)
• Write articles longer than 1000 words. (the average is 800 words)

We also invite you to read the Ecommerce SEO: Simple Free Complete Guide 2021.

In addition, a blog must have its own domain name. So its essential that you buy domain name for your business. It is useless if it is hosted on shared blogging platforms. The principle is to transmit authority from the blog to your site so as to give a boost to its SEO. 

In short, there is more to a blog than editorial work. If you want your blog to help SEO your site, think SEO for the structure and body of the articles. Without optimization, you will have no visibility, regardless of the quality of your content.

We also invite you to read the 10 tips to improve your SEO.

Regularly feed your blog with content

There is no rule of thumb about how many times per week / month you should post new content on your blog.

However, there is evidence that websites that post evergreen content regularly tend to rank higher and get more organic traffic than sites that don’t post regularly, or at all.

The blog’s internal link: a boost for organic seo

The blog also has a more subtle SEO interest: strengthening your internal network-the set of internal links that connect the different pages of your site. It allows search engines to easily understand the content of other pages.

These links must be created as organicly as possible and bring added value to your readers, in particular to strategic pages (product sheets, category pages) and significantly improve their referencing.

Note, however, to avoid abusing it. A few links will suffice. Favor moderation and use them only when justified. Thus, your readers will visit more pages and therefore stay longer on your site, which is also a positioning factor for Google.

The blog as a sales aid

One in 4 people have bought after reading a blog.

Blog posts don’t just serve to gain customers indirectly – they can also entice visitors to make immediate purchases.

This is particularly what most business does with its guides on a selection of clothing or supplies by placing itself on the customer’s side: the site shows its knowledge of the products while helping its readers to choose. And it’s even more effective during sales.

Many website owners still think that a blog is a luxury or worse, a waste of time.

And yet you will understand, the blog is a major SEO lever and a central element in a content marketing strategy! In an e-commerce context, it can even be a sales support tool.

Is maintaining a blog a fairly time-consuming task? But you don’t have to produce the content yourself! If you are busy managing your business, the best solution is either to entrust this task to a digital marketing agency, or to hire a web editor seo agency, whose job is linked to the production of editorial content adapted to the web. This is the ideal solution, think about it!