Why Starting a Blog Will Help Your Local Business Succeed
Have you recently set up a new small business or set yourself up in a trade? As most people know, when you set up a new business you need to go through a certain checklist and in a certain order such as;
- Deciding on a good business name
- Checking that you can register the domain of the same name
- Getting quality business Stationery printed
- Getting a website built or building your own website
Most people do carry out these task in the correct order although I’ve met some clients who have set up a new business, set up a bank account, got business stationery printed then go to register their domain name only to find out that the domain name has been taken which is why you should always check the domain name first.
Forgetting to register a domain name can cause delays and other issues such as needing re-printed stationery and changing your trading name with your bank but there is an important task that should go on the end of this list so your website will actually rank for your business keywords rather than just sitting there with no visitors and that’s setting up a blog
A blog is a powerful way to help customers discover your website and is great in helping you to build up trust with your customer base, and also makes keeping in touch with your clients much easier.
Getting found on Google should be a top priority for local businesses and tradesmen such as plumbers, electricians, locksmiths etc. In fact blogging brings lots of SEO benefits and plays an important role in search engine rankings.
Blogs get more natural back links than any other content because people like to share blog posts and that’s why you should always make it clear that your content can be shared as long as you’re credited as the original author, this type of content is much sought after by professional marketing and SEO companies.
What about Duplicate Content Penalties?
When anyone mentions sharing blog posts the amateur have a go SEO and marketing companies will always scream “Duplicate Content is bad” so let’s clear up this myth.
It is true that Google doesn’t much care for duplicate content but if your site is the first to have this content indexed then you are credited as the original author so have not copied it.
If this wasn’t the case you could choose some content from your rival’s blog and share it everywhere to adversely affect their rankings, you can’t, in fact if you did this and your rival was the original author you are only helping them.
Also, if you have duplicate content on your website and credit the original author then you won’t get any Google penalties. Google bots are a lot cleverer than they where say 10 or 15 years ago and can spot whether you are simply re-posting interesting content or blatantly trying to pass the content off as your own.
Should your blog be hosted on your domain of should you set up a dedicated domain for your blog?
If you’re a small, local business trying to increase Google rankings and authority then you should always host the blog on your own domain
Content that is hosted on your own domain has a number of key SEO benefits such as fresh content for your domain, potential inbound links (should others decide to re-post your article), and a better customer experience.
A blog hosted on a dedicated domain loses most of the SEO power, in fact dedicated blog play a much different role in Marketing and SEO and we’ll take about this is a future article
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