To blog or not to blog

I am always asked by clients whether they should integrate a blog as part of their website. My answer is almost always YES but with a caveat. If you are not going to be able to keep the blog going and updated, don't start. Having a blog takes a lot of time and effort and shouldn't be something you take lightly.

Here are 4 ways having a blog helps your website

1. Drive Traffic to Your Site
   Blogging is a great way to increase traffic to your website. For most of us, the main pages of your site stay pretty static (i.e. you don't update them with new content very often). That's okay, but you need to generate content in order for the search engines to further index pages on your site.Also, with each new article, you can share a link on your social media sites and drive interested traffic that way. A user can see a Call to Action in your post and *bam* new client!
2. Build Credibility in Your Industry
   Blogging in your industry shows your readers that you are knowledgeable within the industry and that you stay up to date with the latest best practices for the field. Your readers will see you as a trusted resource about topics that are important to them. It is also a great way to start a conversation with directly with your audience.
3. Engage Your Readers
   Do not be afraid to engage your readers in your blog posts. Ask for their opinions, feedback, and include a call to action to dive deeper into your products or services. Before you know it, your blog is helping convert readers into leads and leads into clients. Exciting right?!
4. Increase Your SEO Rankings
   Fresh website content is a key to beating your competitors in the search engine results game. Using keywords in your articles, clearly defined topics, categories and tags, you can create SEO powerful pages bringing readers right to your site.

Creating a blog isn't easy but it doesn't have to be difficult either. Establish a list of topics you want to include on your site and work to create a post per week. Just remember, optimize each post with a clear call to action, keywords and common SEO best practices to make sure that post is doing it's best work for you!