Many companies develop corporate blogs with the primary goal of building a large subscriber base and generating a loyal readership. From this ongoing relationship they hope to build brand awareness and promote goodwill. Maybe that’s why 77% of business bloggers are unhappy with their current blogging efforts (according to Forrester Research.)
Why Blogging is Your #1 Search Marketing Tool, an interesting and thorough whitepaper produced by Compendium, provides lots of statistics that point to the real reason why companies should blog—to drive your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Below are some of the statements I found most compelling:
- As much as 80% of all web activity begins with online search.
- Historically, 85-95% of clicks on a search engine results page (SERP) occur in the organic section of the results page—not in the Pay Per Click (PPC) section.
- Statistics indicate that a consumer’s capacity for corporate blog subscriptions rarely exceeds 2-3.
- Corporate blogging is not about establishing a following—it’s about creating keyword-rich, relevant and personal content that resonates with your target market helping them solve their problems via search.
- A common misconception among corporate bloggers is that they’re writing for regular, repeat customers when—in actuality—those who read corporate blogs tend to skew toward first-time visitors by an 80% margin.
- With valuable and relevant content, frequent updates, and subject specificity, corporate bloggers can greatly improve their search engine rankings.
I encourage you to download this 12-page document and read it from start to finish. You’ll find useful tips on how to select titles and keywords for your blog, how frequently you should blog, who should blog, how short a blog entry can be, and much more.
