Why your small business needs a blog, now

Every small business needs its own blog. Blogging is instrumental in building brand awareness and visibility for your business to drive more traffic to your website and attract new customers and clients. Whether you own a flower shop, a restaurant, a veterinary clinic, a bed and breakfast, an auto repair shop, or whatever else – if you have a website that already promotes your services or products, you absolutely need to have a blog as well.

Websites and blogs work hand-in-hand. Each time you write a new blog post on your website, you are giving search engines access to find your work and you increase your chances of having your small business be more visible on search engines. If the content you are putting out in your blogs is consistent and relevant, you are ultimately making it easier for search engines to find your blog and to rank it higher on their sites for the masses to find. This is called SEO or search engine optimization. You are optimizing your blog and your business to be visible on a large-scale platform. Blogs are not difficult to set up, especially if you’re using a website building platform such as Squarespace or Wix. And, if you need help, we are more than happy to show you the ropes.

Optimizing Your Blog for Search Engines to Find

There are tons of ways to make your blog posts SEO-friendly. By no means is this very brief list exhaustive and you will need to utilize other strategies to increase your visibility further, but here are 3 fundamental, quick tips to get your started:

• Use relevant keywords – Ensure that the post you are writing reflects the keywords you have chosen. Be concise and show intent when writing your blog post. Have these keywords repeated several times throughout your post and within your title. You can use both short and long-tail keywords, but it is recommended to have both.
• Change the URL for your blog post – Your blog post URL should clearly demonstrate what your blog post is about. Search engines use URLs to determine what that page is about. Be sure to include your keywords within your blog post and keep it relevant to your title.
• Include images with alt text – Incorporating images into your blog posts is crucial. Depending on the website building platform you are using, when you upload an image into your blog there usually is a field to include a description for your image, also known as “alt text.” Use descriptive text in this field to show what your image is about. Remember, search engines can’t actually see your image, so they will rely on the text you provide to determine what the image is about.

If all of this SEO talk has got your head spinning a bit, don’t fret. We’ve all been there. SEO is actually fairly simple to learn on your own, even if you’ve never heard of it before. All you need is to dedicate a bit of time to researching and learning some of its more leading strategies and tips to get you going in the right direction. And, it’s a learning curve – you will continue to learn more and more as you keep blogging.

Small businesses need as much exposure as they can get – especially in this time of economic hardship. Giving your small business another platform to connect with your audience provides immense opportunities for attracting new clients and customers, which in turn will drive more business directly to you and help your business to flourish.

Need an expert in blogging for your small business? We’ve got a whole lineup of virtual assistants who specialize in blogging and SEO, ready to help your small business achieve more visibility and to grow your customer and client base. Contact us today to get matched with your perfect virtual assistant.

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