benefits of blogging

Blogging is a popular content marketing tactic for marketers, with over 79% of B2B marketers utilizing it. While blogging can increase qualitative measures such as thought leadership, industry influence and brand awareness, there are also quantifiable metrics that increase when consistently crafting and posting consistent blogs on your website. When measuring marketing success, both the qualitative and quantitative metrics matter and blogging contribute to both. The benefits of blogging are plenty, but when looking at what means the most for marketing, these five benefits stand out.

Search ranking algorithms can be intimidating and difficult to navigate. Google, or other search engines, often look for a variety of things in your website, content and meta information to determine where you should rank for a certain keyword or key phrase. But, consistent blogging efforts, can increase the number of inbound links to your domain, particularly those from top-tier websites. The more content you have on your website, the more opportunities others have to find and link to it. Inbound links are important as they contribute to link authority, which shows your website and content are trustworthy.

Blogging Benefit #2: Improves Search Engine Rankings with Keyword Optimization

Since blogging introduces new, fresh content to your site regularly, this signals to Google and other search engines that your website content is up-to-date and relevant. The more blogs added, the better, but this must align with your blog posting cadence. If your marketing plan and resources only allow for one post every other week, that is completely acceptable. Quantity and quality matter here.

But, posting frequently doesn’t automatically get your content to the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). You must optimize your blogs for specific keywords. Conducting keyword research to ensure your blog topic is well-searched can help you optimize the meta description, title tag and other search engine optimization (SEO) elements in your blog. The more you implement SEO and keyword best practices into your blogs, the more your team will see rankings improve.

Blogging Benefit #3: Boosts Website Traffic

When you have built a solid link authority by receiving a multitude of inbound links and focused on keyword and SEO optimization for higher search rankings, it puts you in a great position to see a boost in website traffic. Plus, creating targeted, relevant content can help you draw your target audiences to your website, which is key for lead generation efforts.

Blogging Benefit #4: Generates More Leads

Blogging can also create a positive effect in terms of lead generation. Companies tend to look to longer-form content pieces to drive leads, but blogs can serve a role in this purpose as well. A study by Demand Gen Report found that 59% of B2B buyers used a blog post to research a purchasing decision. By utilizing features such as short forms or other calls-to-action to gated assets or a contact page, you can convert these blog visitors into leads. Not only can blogging help to generate more leads, these leads generally cost less than leads derived from other marketing tactics, especially those that are paid.

Blogging Benefit #5: Provides Insight into What Content Resonates

Having a content marketing strategy that focuses on creating content around certain topics is important. Writing content, with no focus or goals, can lead to information that doesn’t resonate with audiences and deter them from returning to your website. Analyzing what blog pieces users liked most, which you can infer from the number of pageviews on that specific blog, gives you insight into what is resonating most. Focusing on the topics that resonate most can continue to bring traffic to your website.

This list of blogging benefits isn’t exhaustive, but when thinking about what matters most to B2B marketers, these tend to be the most important. Integrating tactics such as keyword and SEO optimization and content bucketing can help you improve your website metrics and generate more leads.