For over ten years now, blogging has been a huge term in the online marketing world. Its definition branched out to many areas, and no longer is blogging simply an online journal, diary, or record of events. What once existed as a personal writings keepsake with one author has turned into a very strong marketing tool used by major corporations and maintained by dozens of authors. And here are two reasons why blogging has become what it is today and why your business should be using a blog.

Blogging for the search engines (SEO)

While blogging is an ideal tool to reach out to your business’ visitors, one of its primary uses is to strengthen your presence on the search engines. As we’ve mentioned before, a key component that makes strong SEO is content. Not only that, but frequently updated content. Search engines like websites with fresh content that hasn’t been sitting there for awhile. A blog achieves this purpose through regular — either multi-weekly, once weekly, even twice-monthly — posts. A blog is not an article such as a press release or marketing material. It’s usually a post of anywhere between 200 and 600 words, reaching out to its visitors.

With these frequent and relevant posts, search engines see that you take your site important. They also see that you’re likely to provide the information users are searching for online. Ultimately, that’s why search engines list a page at the top. They have built trust in a site and its content and believe that website to be a worthy suggested resource for information.

Blogging for the people

On the opposite end of the robots and search engines, blogging plays an important role for visitors as well. With RSS feeds, comment threads, and other subscription tools, visitors of your website can directly link themselves to what’s going on. If you have a frequently updated blog, and if that content is entertaining, informative, and engaging, visitors will want to return more often to read additional blog entries.

For a company this is huge! No longer are you just marketing your products or services, you’re reaching out and talking with the visitor directly. I’m not implying that you can’t market in a blog post – I’m saying a blog is a perfect place to let people know about your latest new services or promotions. Connect with the visitor, give them something helpful (helpful tips, advice, information), and then let them know what else you provide (products, services, promotions).

Marketing through blogging is ideal because it provides a method to market your services without sounding overly-market-y.

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