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In a world where there are trillions of blog posts being published by the minute, and zillions of bloggers working in the field, one often wonders what’s the need for so much content.
However, more eyes are in favor of blogging as a great way to help your audience with their specific needs and add color and variety to your website. After the initial success of Write Right, when I first started another domain under the umbrella of a content writing agency, I didn’t publish many blogs. But time after time, it became evident that it was one of the biggest mistakes I made.
At the advent, blogging was merely a personal journey where people shared experiences and a bit of their lives with those who are willing to read. But now the purpose of blogging is much beyond that. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there are more professional goals to be achieved by blogging than personal ones. Blog posts now often promote personal brands or businesses. They are being lapped up despite the thousands of posts being made every day.
Here are the top five benefits of blogging.
1. Increase your followers
In an attempt to educate your audience, one ends up reading and researching so much more than one would have done otherwise. The more you write, the better you become. You connect to new people through your blogs and understand the language of your audience. The exposure that comes through blogs is unprecedented. By using specific keywords, you attract the target audience to your website through your blogs. Among all the other content formats it is often the blog posts that are shared with family, friends and colleagues.
Related: 8 Ways to Monetize Your Blog and Make Money Online
2. Drive traffic to your website
Two major ways you drive traffic to your website are through social media and search engines. As the saying goes, public memory is short and so is social media memory. Search engine rankings are more long-lasting. If you manage to get a top berth, there are chances that you stay there for a while. Slightly longer blog posts with evergreen content will ensure visibility a bit longer than short descriptions. You can’t expect to drive continuous traffic by writing a blog post once in a blue moon, hence the need to remain afloat at least once a week.
3. Get to the top of Google rankings
The amazing algorithm used by search engines to bring what you are seeking is based on sorting in a fraction of a second. For this, it needs to have relevant material from your website to come up in the search index. That’s what necessitates a reasonable frequency in your postings. Although Google prefers fresh content, even an older page that’s regularly updated may pop up higher than a fresh page. So, blogging frequently adds to the repository.
Related: Why Every Brand Should Have a Blog
4. Return on investment
It is a good idea to create a schedule and stick to it. As a blogger, you need to develop goals, build an audience, provide interest, create creative content, promote the content based on analysis and statistics. Sitting on the laurels of one successful blog post might not give the best ROI in the long run. Regular blog posts help to develop a sustained interest in your readers with regards to educating them or entertaining them.
5. Help in traffic and conversions
One of the ways to get more traffic to your website is by writing more frequently. Google gives top priority to fresh content, so keep updating. The links in your blogs also help in attracting more attention. In the content world, blogs can be called the kings. They help in traffic and conversions. According to a study, blogs published weekly were 2.5 times more likely to get the desired results than those published monthly or less.
Quantity or quality?
However much you try to increase the number of posts, never compromise on the quality of content. Just do not get into the rat race of publishing for the sake of publishing. Don’t go overboard and dish out a shallow content dime a dozen. Temporary spikes in Google Ranking will be replaced by more authoritative content.
So, keep researching what topics are the most trending, or what’s forthcoming. Get to understand what the audience wants to know most about. Go through the existing research, find out what others are writing and start writing yourself.
Related: How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online
This article is from Entrepreneur.com
