In Blogging for your business I shared that one of the reasons a business blog is a valuable business building tool is because you can quickly and easily publish content to the web. The value of this ability is often lost upon those who don’t eat/breathe/sleep the web.
The Web Game is Just Another Numbers Game
Most “ordinary” business people think that a single web site with only three or four pages can effectively compete when it comes to the web. What they frequently overlook is that many of the results returned on the first few pages of a search query are often web pages which are part of mega sites with hundreds – in some cases – thousands of pages.
Take for example – Wikipedia. Do a search for specific information and chances are – a Wikipedia article will be listed on the first few pages of the search. According to Wikipedia – the official count for the number of articles which appear there numbers in the 750,000 range. Because these articles are very specific in scope – they often provide exactly the information a web visitor is seeking.
This is why I sometimes have been known to snarl and foam at the mouth when a blog owner who has written 5 blog posts over the past year complains to me that his or her blog is not “working” because it’s not appearing at the top of highly competitive searches.
Winning the web game is in part a numbers game. Wikipedia has over three quarters of a million “articles” in there competing for a top spot when the search engines provide a list of links containing the information the web visitor has entered to search. Most of those articles link liberally to other articles on the site. Because the articles are frequently displayed on the first page of various searches – blog owners and webmasters liberally link to the articles as well.
Compare this “winning” web strategy with the typical “set it and forget it” static web site preferred by most business owners. The business owner creates a web site and populates the three to ten pages with the content a copywriter created years ago for the company brochure. The content was stale before it was published to the web – and it continues to languish in the deepest, darkest corners of the web. It’s like buying 10 tickets for the lottery on the day you launched the website – and then not buying any more tickets yet expecting to win.
Winning the web game is a numbers game. The business blog with 300 blog posts – created over the course of three years – stands a much better chance of coming up on what is known as a “long tail search”. Long tail searches are words not searched upon frequently. Often, these “long tail search” terms are often performed by people who are actively researching a purchasing decision.
For example, 1,000,000 people used the term “lower back pain” to search the web last month. That’s a LOT of people searching for information on lower back pain. However, while there are a lot of people searching for the term “lower back pain” there are relatively few who are searching for “lower back pain relief in Boca Raton, Fl.” If you’re a chiropractor – you want to be sure your business web presence is one that is seen by the person who types those words into a search engine looking for answers.
If you’re a chiropractor with a blog though – it’s easy to create a blog post on how chiropractic can help relieve lower back pain. By the simple act of creating this informative blog post – you instantly create an “article” much like the 750,000 articles which are featured on Wikipedia. This blog post joins your other blog posts – where you’ve written about how you’ve helped patients with severe lower back pain, chronic lower back pain, and even lower left back pain. Before you know it, by simply blogging about the different conditions you see in your practice – you’ve created a robust library of helpful “articles” (a.k.a. blog posts) on various specific topics which your prospective patients might use to find information on the web.
Will you create such a robust repository overnight? Of course not – but one of the best reasons to begin blogging for your business is over the course of time – you can create a robust online resource which will continue to provide a stream of prospective patients long after you’ve written the initial post.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Start blogging today so tomorrow your blog posts have a chance of “showing up” when your prospective customers/clients go searching for answers on the web.
Hi Kathy – I love those Brian Tracy quotes – he rocks. I re-read his books over and over.
I’m glad you explained this – too many people just don’t get that size matters when it comes to the internet. And they think in terms of people finding their blog, instead of finding one of their pages.
The really useful thing about blogging is that it encourages you to add more pages, because it’s so easy to do. With a website, it’s easy to get lazy and not update it frequently.
I have 620 pages on my blog now and I often go back to rewrite, or tweak old posts. I’m way behind my goals with taking so many months of after Joshua’s accident.
As you say, some blogs have thousands of posts, so a new blogger who barely ever adds content just can’t hope to compete.
.-= Cath Lawson´s last blog ..Why You Are Letting Your Blog Readers Down =-.
Great post Kathy. Too many people don’t realise the importance of keeping their website active with fresh content. And the importance of establishing an online presence over time. A website is not just a brochure.
“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”
Love the quote 🙂
.-= Nicola Connolly´s last blog ..British Businesses and SEO =-.
It’s a good quote – isn’t it? The longer I’m in business – the more I recognize the truth in that quote.
Cath – I adore Brian Tracy. Must read for anyone who wants to succeed in business. When I was young and child free – I worked for an advertising agency and the agency owner shared her extensive collection of Brian Tracy books and tapes with me.
It’s so easy to “get lazy” – and to procrastinate. My husband’s family lives in a farming community and they have a saying, “Make hay while the sun shines”. The same is true of a website/blog. Sometimes “life” happens – and – it can throw you WAY off track. Fortunately you “made hay” and created a “foundation” of more than 500 posts. Just because you quit actively creating content – it didn’t mean the blog posts you had previously created had “evaporated”. They were still there – working hard for you so when you returned – you had an ACTIVE community waiting for you.
So glad you’re back to blogging!
Hi Kathy,
Is it better to have the blog on your own website or blog on another site that lets you post your blogs there for free?
Margo –
Great question – one which deserves a COMPLETE answer – which I’ll do in the form of a blog post.
More coming – stay tuned!
Designing a website and blog is so hard for newbies though. You could start with a free one just for pratice.
The first website is often the hardest for a new business owner. With no customers – and little experience – it’s really difficult to create a look and the content which conveys what it is your business actually does for people.
However, many business owners will start with a free website – and then decide that the web doesn’t “work” for their business… because their free website can’t be found by the search engines or consumers. If/when it is found – there’s not a compelling selling message which converts visitors into customers.
It all starts with taking a look at WHY consumers are buying….. master that and you’ll master the web quickly and easily!
Hi Kathy.
Thanks for a very helpful article, I love the paragraphs about long tail search. Great example with the chiropractor you gave there. I’ll be sure to implement these blogging techniques in my blog
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Thanks for sharing this.