Despite the amount of visual online content people consume these days, blogging seems to thrive. What started out as a hobby has transformed into a crucial content strategy when Google rolled out the “Panda” algorithm in 2011.
This helped Google identify low-quality blogs and deem them less relevant, burying them further into Google’s results pages and ranking high-quality ones up on page one. Today, blogging is vital in driving site traffic and ranking websites on search engines.
But with millions of blogs published in a day, how do you even get started? And, why bother blogging in the first place?
You’re probably scratching your head thinking how hard blogging is and if it's really worth it. Well, the list of good reasons can get quite expansive, but let’s focus on the really good ones.
Every time you add a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website. This gives you an opportunity to show up in search engines and bring in traffic to your website in organic search.
Blogs will also prompt Google and other search engines that your website is active and that they should keep a close eye for new content on your site.
If you’re offering a product or service on top of your expertise, blogs can help you turn traffic into leads, and eventually, conversions. How? By adding call-to-action (CTA) buttons in every blog post.
CTAs can lead directly to the product or to a “lead magnet,” like a free webinar, downloadable, or product trial. A lead magnet is basically anything your visitors would be willing to exchange for their information. Give them an offer that they couldn’t resist.
Blogs are an excellent platform to showcase and share your expertise in a niche. The more valuable your content is to your target audience, the more they’ll see you as a thought leader and an authoritative figure.
But if you want to be the go-to person when it comes to a specific topic, you need to provide high-quality content to your audience as much as you can.
READ: How to Maintain the Perfect Blog for Your Target Audience
A single blog post, when done right, can drive traffic indefinitely. When you offer valuable content to your target audience and continue to update it through the years, it will continue to get clicks—and potentially earn you consistent leads!
If you practise good SEO on your blog posts, it’s easy to rank on search engines. And once a blog post gains popularity on search engine results, you can expect traffic and leads for the next days, weeks, months, and even years to come—especially if you’ve posted an evergreen piece.
So even if you’re sleeping or watching Netflix, you’re still reaping the rewards from the effort you’ve put into your blog from the start.
There are tons of blogging platforms available on the internet, both free and paid. If you don’t want to spend money on your blog, these top blogging platforms will get you started in no time:
While free blogging sites are friendly to your pockets, they’re not as friendly to your online presence. If you want to earn money from blogging by converting leads to customers, you’re not only going to need great content. You also have to make sure your content reaches your target audience.
Will you be able to reach that goal using a free blogging platform? The answer’s no. Here are other reasons why choosing a free platform isn’t a good idea.
So, if you want to establish a great online presence with an opportunity to acquire new customers and earn money from it, you can start by choosing the right blogging platform that can give you your money’s worth.
Now that you know the disadvantages of a free blogging platform, looking for a paid platform that’s worth the money is the hard part. You should look for a good content management system (CMS) like WordPress to help you easily post and manage your website content.
You might be wondering, is WordPress free or not? Yes and no. You can create your own free website under WordPress.com, but you can also use the WordPress software under a separate hosting plan.
Blogging may seem hard to do but with enough effort, blogs can drive traffic towards your website and can be a great source of qualified leads. Apart from that, it can make you an authoritative figure in your niche and give you long-lasting results.
What started out as a simple hobby for creatives is now an important strategy for small businesses for staying relevant in the competitive online world.
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