I often recommend adding a blog to my small business clients’ websites – and I do this to improve their website traffic and search engine rankings. How can adding a blog accomplish these goals?

First, a disclaimer. If a client says they hate to write, then perhaps adding a blog isn’t the best suggestion. But even for those clients who don’t write, they can sometimes hire a ghostwriter for their blogs. So it’s still something to consider if you have a website and would like to have a way to improve your traffic and rankings.

To understand how adding a blog can help, you need to understand how search engines (like Google and Bing) view the posts (or articles) in a blog. Each “post” or article is viewed as a separate page of your website. And more pages with relevant content is good.

If you have a 10 page website, and you write a post each week (which is a reasonable goal) in a year, your website (in a search engine’s eyes) will be 62 pages, and in two years, 114 pages! Content is still king (or queen).

And each of those posts, because they can be written in the form of free advice (like this post), may attract links, meaning that people who are searching for the answer to a question may find your post, and link to it, from their website, or from a forum, or their blog, etc. Blog articles attract links, and links to your website are counted by search engines and boost your site’s rankings.

Of course, the higher the rankings, the more likely people are to find your website, or a particular blog article, and the traffic increases, etc – in a nice positive feedback loop.

Another great reason to add a blog is Social Media Marketing. There are wonderful plugins available for blogs (I prefer installing WordPress blogs onto my small business websites) – and these plugins make it really simple to broadcast each blog article to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linked In. Once I finish a post, like this one, it will be posted to my Facebook page, my Twitter account, my Linked In profile, and my Google Plus page – all within a few minutes.

I am reading more and more about how search engines are paying attention to “social signals” and therefore, adding a blog to your small business website can help you with your social media marketing – each new blog post is something to send out and promote.

So consider adding a blog, especially a WordPress blog to your small business website. It’s a very affordable way to increase traffic and business – and it’s all in your hands – no expensive link building or hiring SEO companies. Just write about your business!

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill