November 25, 2014

Back in 2011, when I decided to create a website to showcase my work, one of the first things I jotted down on my sitemap was a Blog. At the time I had recently become somewhat obsessed with the idea of Inbound Marketing thanks to sites like Hubspot and SEOMoz (now called Moz). I knew that by having a blog on my site that I updated regularly, I could reach an entire new segment of potential clients just by them searching topics and articles that I would write about.

Once I had my design laid out and my CMS (content management system) picked (I went with WordPress), I got to work. I did my best to post at least two blogs a month and slowly but surely my traffic started to increase. By the time 2012 came around, my site was not only in the top 3 results in Google for terms like “Windsor Web Design” I was also receiving a ton of new traffic, mostly to my blog.

Ever since that point, I don’t go into a meeting with a client without mentioning that they should at least consider adding a blog to their site. When they ask me why, I usually cite one, two or all three of these stats:

1. “Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get 5x more traffic than companies that don’t blog.” – Hubspot
   
   That is a huge number! If your website currently receives 100 unique visitors per month, imaging that number skyrocketing to 500 just by adding a blog to your site and updating it on a regular basis. I know you’re probably thinking, “there’s no way I can update my blog 15x a month”. I hear ya, but I can tell you from experience that by updating life insurance agency Windsor Benefit Plans blog 3x a month, we increased the traffic by 25%.

2. “Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links.” – ContentPlus
   
   Why does this matter? Because indexed pages and indexed links lead to more of your links appearing in search results. Google, Yahoo and Bing are using blog content as a factor when deciding where your website appears in search results. The more links you have indexed, the more likely you are to show up somewhere near the top.

3. “B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t.” – Social Media B2B
   
   And here we have probably the most important stat of all. If your B2B company is built on gathering leads and having a sales team follow up on those leads, there may be no better way to do so than online. Imagine being able to give your sales team an additional 67% more leads per month. Even if your company closed 25% of those you’d still be increasing your sales by 16% just by having a blog and keeping it updated!