Regularly create and publish fresh, useful content – Blogging

So, we’ve established that one of the best things that you can do for your web presence is to create regular fresh, relevant content and post it onto your website and potentially in other places online too. Today we’re going to look in more detail at how to do that.

We use WordPress

We’ve already explained that we use free software called WordPress to create and manage our websites, which provides a simple way to regularly add content in the form of ‘blog posts’ or blogging (WordPress started out as ‘blogging software’ but now has so much functionality that it can be used as a content management system for a whole website).

‘Blog’ is a fairly new word that was created by merging the words web and log, which is how blogging started. Bloggers started by sharing their daily goings on and thoughts with the world at large by ‘blogging’ online. To begin with blogs were little more than diaries, but blogging has developed over the years into an art form in some cases and there are now quite a few bloggers who are actually making a living from their blog sites.

Increase traffic & improve your Search Engine Optimisation

But, we aren’t suggesting that you create a whole business out of blogging. If you are a small business owner already you’ve presumably already got a whole load of stuff to do each day without creating more! However, as you already know, if you want to increase traffic to your website and improve your search engine rankings, which most small businesses with a website want to do, you do need to set aside some time on a regular basis to do some blogging, i.e. to create and publish some fresh content on the web.

If you don’t already have a website you could start one using WordPress and get it up and running with lots of content fairly quickly as well as adding more new information moving forwards by blogging. For those of you who already have brochure sites that you are happy with, don’t despair! As we explained last week, you can add a blog to your existing site, which will enable you to easily add your content. WordPress isn’t the only blogging software available but it is the one that we use and teach our customers to use so it is the one that we talk about!

Many people that we speak to about the concept of adding regular content to the web worry that they won’t know what to write, which we covered off last week in our article and with a list of potential topics for content that you could create (you can find it again online at the Kent on Saturday archive). Basically you need to think about what your customers and prospects might be interested in reading about in relation to your niche, and create content to fulfil that need remembering to include some of the keywords that you want to optimise your site for (i.e. those words that your prospects are likely to be searching for in relation to your products and services).

Another way to get inspired to write for your own website is to read what other people in your niche are saying on their websites and blogs and then writing pieces agreeing or disagreeing with their perspective, or using the topic as a starter for your own content. In a previous article we gave you details about what RSS feeds are and how to sign up to them. I would recommend selecting a few relevant blogs in your sector and signing up to read them regularly using Google Reader or similar (you can find out more about this on our website www.counterpointmatters.com/rss-2 ).

Making the time to add fresh content to your site

The other concern that people have about regularly adding fresh content to their website is that they won’t have the time to do it, which I completely understand. It’s important to think about and decide how you are going to fit it into your work schedule. I do a lot of writing so I am now getting up early each day to do it first before the rest of my work gets in the way! Some people might find other parts of the day that are more conducive for them to write. Remember though that, unless your business is based on the internet, you won’t need to be blogging as much as I try to. You should blog as much as you can but realistically, putting up new content once a week would be a good frequency to aim for. If you can’t manage that then how about once a fortnight? If you use WordPress (or your web designer!) to publish your posts, you can pre-schedule content, which is a good way to manage your time. You could take a few hours to create four or five posts in one go and then schedule them to publish once a week over a month, which organises the task into just once a month, which doesn’t sound half as onerous, does it?!

Other places online to add fresh content

I mentioned that there are other places that you could publish content online. This obviously adds to the available content about, and showing off, your business online as well as potentially giving you a link back to your website, which can be useful for SEO (search engine optimisation). The first place to look at is sites that offer the opportunity to publish articles, blogs and events for you. These are often well optimised and indexed sites as a result of the number of pages of fresh content they hold, so they fit the above criteria really well. An example of one of these sites is www.business-scene.com, which is a UK site organised into regional sections.

Another opportunity is to publish articles on www.ezinearticles.com which again is a very well indexed site. This site can help with SEO as they have a good page rank (i.e. Google likes them!) so a link back from there can be good for your own site; your article can also be used by other people in their ezines and newsletters and that can get your content out further afield. If your article is used the person using it must leave your ‘signature box’ attached, which provides details of what you do and includes a link back to your site. You may not think that a link back from an ezine published by someone in another part of the country, or even another country entirely, is useful to you with a local business, but if the link is from a site with a good page rank that is helpful to your website.

You need to start now; update your website…start a blog…

So, if you haven’t started putting together fresh content for your website you need to start now. We are regularly publishing blog posts on our three main websites and traffic is increasing on a daily basis just as a result of doing that. If you’re not doing the same, and you want more local traffic to your website, you should be!

If you need help to set up your WordPress website / blog, check out our membership site filled with step-by-step videos showing you how to do it.

Originally published in the Kent on Saturday on Sat 25 July

Photo Credit

Related posts:

1. Regularly create and publish fresh, relevant content This is only the fourth of our series of articles...
2. Keep it Fresh: Making Search Engines Happy with Fresh, Relevant Content Search engine optimisation is a process of creating and improving...
3. 15 ways to create fresh content to add to your website 15 ideas for content that you can create and add...
4. Should you have a blog? Hubspot have recently published some interesting research and observations that...
5. Local Websites; what makes them good and how to tell Image by La Citta Vita via Flickr Do you...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tagged as: Blog, Google Reader, Search engine optimization, Weblogs, WordPress