Why Every Small Business Should Have a Blog | with Marcus Dunn

Blogs can benefit your brand more than you think, including driving valuable traffic to your site over a long period.

Marcus Dunn joined me on the Got Marketing? podcast to discuss why marketers and entrepreneurs should be writing blogs and some tips on how you can use them to your advantage.

With attention spans dwindling, do people still read blogs?

Yes, and no.

We are not reading them from top to bottom.

"We're in this era of no attention span. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. We skim. Everything we read, we skim."

"What I generally do – and this is one of the core principles of on-page optimisation with SEO – is I'll skim the headings. I'll look at the title if it interests me. That's what's grabbed me. I'll look at the image. I'll read the first heading, second heading, third heading. If I like it, I'll have a little look at their summary, and then I'll read from the top and I'll start to read down the interesting sections then I'm out of there. That's probably about 15 seconds." - Marcus Dunn

We often use blogs when researching for information and advice. Marcus explains that, more often than not, we're looking to answer a question with the blog. We do a Google search, end up on a blog page, read a paragraph that covers it, and then leave the website.

It's not likely that anyone is coming to your website and clicking on 'Blog'. This is why you may only find the 'blog' link in the footer of some websites. People are generally finding your blog posts directly from Google Search.

Why write blog posts for your website?

1. Brings in web traffic

"Blogs are a fantastic source of traffic for your website – every single blog page. A lot of people don't realise this, but every single page on your website is running its own race from an SEO point of view – your home page, your blog articles, your service pages – all of them, when properly optimised – can rank independently for different search terms." - Marcus Dunn

2. Builds your website's credibility in the eyes of Google

"From a Google point of view, you're establishing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness through things like your blog. That acronym – EAT – is something that's really important from an SEO point of view." - Marcus Dunn

Google is constantly assessing whether your website is legitimate or not to determine whether to rank your website higher in search results.

There are many things Google takes into account to form its judgement, including the quality of the content on your site, the design, the presence of author profiles and physical addresses on the site.

"A really good example of this is the quality of the writing. Anywhere you read SEO advice tells you to optimise for user experience, so you want to create really good articles – genuinely informative – for the user." - Marcus Dunn

You can build website authority on a particular topic by writing blog posts relevant to your business.

Marcus explains: "If you've got a whole lot of blog posts about campaign marketing or marketing-related topics, Google is going to associating campaign marketing or marketing with your site, and you're going to have a lot easier time ranking for it." 

3. Publishing new blogs signals that you've got an active, up-to-date website.

If someone visits your blog and sees that you have recently updated your blog - this increases your legitimacy in the eyes of a potential customer. It establishes trust.

4. Blogging can become a genuine source of income.

If you can attract high web traffic, you can receive good ad revenue should you decide to place ads on your site.

You can also generate affiliate income through your blogs, earning you a small commission when people click on the links you've included in your blog.

5. Blog post content can be repurposed easily across channels.

If you write an excellent blog post, you can take chunks from it to post on your social media channels.

"It's much easier to repurpose your own content than it is to actually just craft it from scratch. If you do this, it's getting more mileage out of your content rather than actually creating a brand-new one for Instagram and a brand-new one for LinkedIn on the same topic." - Marcus Dunn

Make sure you optimise the content for each specific platform on which you intend to publish it, and always point back to your website - your owned channel.

Marcus left us with this final advice:

"Don't be scared of SEO. Don't be scared of blogging. Don't be fazed thinking no one's reading your blogging. There are lots of benefits to it – lots and lots of benefits.

Get some basic on-page optimisation on it. Put some keywords in your headings. That's another story going down the optimisation path. But keep blogging and focus on turning it around and writing good content."

Listen to the full podcast episode to hear more tips on how to get the most out of your blog posts and whether we believe small business owners should up-skill or outsource SEO.

Want more? Listen to the full episode here, or via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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