Is Blogging Dead? (No) 10 Benefits of Blogging for Businesses

Is blogging dead? In short, the answer is no. While blogging may sound like an old-school tactic, it’s absolutely necessary as part of your digital marketing strategy. In fact, it is one of the most popular content marketing services we offer here at Semterical. Whether it’s B2B or B2C, blogging has consistently driven results for our clients (and ourselves) over the years. Think about it: if you want answers to a question, you’ll Google it. And the result you get? More often than not, a blog article.

According to SEMrush, blog posts are the most popular content format, leveraged by 90% of marketers! And does blogging drive results? Well, 59% of marketers find value in blogging and sites that have a blog produce 67% more monthly leads, get 55% more website visitors, have 434% more indexed pages, and attract 97% more inbound links than those without a blog.

Have we caught your attention?

• What is a blog?
• What is blog marketing?
• 10 Benefits of blogging
• A real example of how a blog can generate traffic
• 5 Elements of a successful blog
• Final thoughts

What is a blog?

A blog, short for ‘weblog’, is a type of online platform where you can regularly publish articles called blog posts. In a business context, a blog is a section of a company’s website where it regularly publishes informative and engaging content related to its industry, products, services, or areas of expertise. These blog posts serve various purposes, including educating customers, providing valuable insights, sharing company news and updates, showcasing thought leadership, and attracting potential customers or clients.

What is blog marketing?

Blog marketing refers to the strategic use of blogs as a platform for promoting products, services, brands, or ideas to a targeted audience. It involves creating and publishing valuable, engaging content on a blog with the goal of attracting and retaining readers, increasing website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately driving conversions. 

This marketing approach often incorporates techniques such as content creation, search engine optimisation (SEO), social media promotion, influencer partnerships, and email marketing to maximise the reach and impact of the blog content. By leveraging the interactive nature of blogs, marketers can foster relationships with their audience, establish authority in their industry, and ultimately achieve their marketing objectives.

10 Benefits of blogging for businesses

Here are 10 reasons why your website needs a blog:

1. Improve your SEO
2. Increase website traffic
3. Establishing authority and stay competitive
4. Building relationships
5. Educate customers and provide customer service
6. Showcasing products or services
7. Driving leads and sales
8. Social media content and shareability
9. Long-term value
10. Build brand personality and tell your story

Benefit #1 Improve your SEO

A blog provides a steady stream of fresh, relevant content that can improve search engine rankings. Regularly updated content helps brands rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), driving more organic traffic to the website. In our experience, it is the blog that generates the highest proportion of organic traffic to a website, in comparison to more evergreen content, such as product pages. Just make sure you’ve got the right calls to action (CTAs) to direct traffic to converting pages where necessary!

Benefit #2 Increase website traffic

A blog serves as a magnet for visitors, drawing them to the website to explore informative and engaging content. This influx of traffic can lead to increased brand visibility and awareness, especially when optimised for search engines and appearing at the top of the search results for long and short tail queries,

Benefit #3 Establishing authority and stay competitive

By sharing valuable insights, expertise, and industry knowledge through blog posts, a brand can establish itself as a thought leader in its niche. This builds trust and credibility among the audience, making the brand a go-to resource for information. A customer is much more likely to choose an established brand that knows its stuff over a competitor with no thought leadership or credibility.

Benefit #4 Building relationships

A blog serves as a powerful tool for fostering relationships between a brand and its audience. Through authentic and engaging content, it creates a platform for meaningful interaction and dialogue. By addressing audience questions, concerns, and interests, a blog demonstrates that the brand values their input and seeks to provide value. Over time, consistent engagement helps to strengthen trust, loyalty, and affinity, transforming casual readers into devoted followers and advocates of the brand’s mission and values. This can also strengthen brand loyalty post-purchase and create a community.

Benefit #5 Educate customers and provide customer service

A blog allows brands to educate their customers about industry trends, best practices, and relevant topics. By providing valuable information, brands empower their audience to make informed decisions, leading to greater satisfaction and loyalty.

Similarly, blogs can serve as a platform for addressing common customer inquiries, concerns, and problems. By publishing troubleshooting guides, FAQs, and how-to articles, brands can provide valuable support resources, reducing the burden on customer service teams.

Benefit #6 Showcasing products or services

Publishing blogs to your website offers an opportunity to showcase products or services in a more personalised and informative manner. Through product reviews, demonstrations, or case studies, brands can highlight their offerings and address customer needs and pain points. For example, if a potential buyer is carrying out a commercial investigation, essentially when someone plans to buy something and wants to conduct research beforehand, your blog could help with this by comparing products. Here’s more information identifying search intent and creating the right content accordingly. 

Benefit #7 Driving leads and sales

Blog content can be optimised to capture leads through email subscriptions, gated content, or lead magnets. By offering valuable resources in exchange for contact information, brands can grow their email list and nurture leads through targeted email marketing campaigns.

In a similar way, blog content can subtly guide readers through the sales funnel by addressing their concerns, providing solutions, and showcasing how the brand’s products or services can meet their needs. Well-crafted blog posts can influence purchasing decisions and drive sales.

Benefit #8 Social media content and shareability

The value of blog extends past your website. Blog posts serve as valuable content for social media channels. By sharing blog articles on platforms like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn, brands can extend their reach, attract new followers, and encourage engagement. Not to mention, repurposing content across channels is a great way to get maximum exposure for your content with less time and money investment.

Benefit #9 Long-term value

Unlike traditional advertising that has a limited lifespan, blog posts continue to provide value over time. Evergreen content, in particular, remains relevant and continues to attract traffic long after it’s published, providing a lasting ROI. Learn more about the ROI of content marketing here.

Benefit #10 Build brand personality and tell your story

Through blog content, brands can showcase their personality, values, and culture. By infusing their writing style with authenticity and creativity, brands can humanise their image, making them more relatable and memorable to their audience. Through tone, style, and content choices, a brand can infuse its blog with its distinct character, values, and vision. By sharing behind-the-scenes anecdotes and success stories, a blog offers readers an intimate glimpse into the brand’s journey, fostering a deeper connection and emotional resonance.

A real example of how a blog can generate traffic

Now, let’s take a look at a real-life example of how effective a blog for your business can truly be.

The graph below shows the year-on-year growth of page views on the Semetrical blog. At the time of writing, we are only half way through March. So, let’s take February as a benchmark. Between February 2023 and 2024 alone, the Semetrical blog experienced an 88% increase in page views.

And if we take a look at the wider picture, site-wide, you can see that a large majority of organic sessions are on the blog (the light orange). Not to mention, sessions have increased by 221% between August 2022 and February 2024, an 18-month period.

How was this possible?

5 Elements of a successful blog

A successful blog is made up of many different elements, however, the bread and butter of it boils down to…

1. High-quality content

Successful business blogs prioritise the creation of valuable, informative, and engaging content that resonates with their target audience. Content should be well-researched, well-written, and relevant to the industry or niche, addressing common pain points, questions, and interests of readers. Not only is this beneficial for readers but it also ticks the boxes for search engines, increasing the likelihood of your blogs ranking in search engines.

We also use a variety of content formats, including listicles, how-to guides, and longer thought leadership pieces – each of these formats have their place as long as you always prioritise quality over quantity.

2. SEO

Similarly, it is imperative that you follow SEO best practices. A blog is no good to your business if your target audience can’t find it. Likewise, you must ensure that your blog content is keyword optimised, satisfies user intent, and the page is technically sound for a good user experience. Think fast loading speeds and excellent mobile experience, for instance! And don’t forget about building valuable links to your blog content to improve authority and support your SEO strategy. 

Google has released many algorithm updates over the years to improve the search experience for users, which means you need to prioritise keeping up with these changes and updating your content accordingly. For example, Google’s March Core Update and Helpful Content Update forces bloggers to focus on human-first, quality content that is helpful to the reader. 

3. Clear niche or target audience

You should have a clear picture in your mind of who you are writing for. A successful business blog focuses on a specific niche or target audience to attract and retain readers effectively. Understanding the demographics, interests, and needs of the target audience allows the blog to tailor its content to address their specific concerns and preferences. We leveraged our marketing experts at Semetrical to provide valuable insights and genuinely useful information for our target audiences, which includes digital-first brands and marketing managers. 

If you want to learn more about creating buyer personas for your business, check out our handy buyer persona guide.

4. Consistent posting schedule

Consistency is key to maintaining audience engagement and building trust. A blog that adheres to a regular posting schedule, whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly, ensures that readers know when to expect new content and helps establish the blog as a reliable source of information. At Semetrical, we aim for once a week, if not more.

Additionally, consistency in posting schedules is beneficial for search engines since search engines value fresh and up-to-date content, as it often provides more relevant and timely information to users. Also, search engines tend to favour websites that demonstrate authority and expertise in their respective fields. By consistently publishing high-quality content on a specific topic or niche, a blog can establish itself as an authoritative source of information in the eyes of both users and search engines.

We recommend using an editorial calendar to keep on top of your blog posting schedule to avoid delays, keep team members accountable, avoid bottlenecks and delays, and achieve optimum results.

5. Effective Promotion

Creating great content is only half the battle; successful business blogs also employ effective promotion strategies to ensure that their content reaches a wider audience . This may include sharing blog posts on social media or repurposing them into infographics, videos, or other multimedia formats, engaging with industry influencers, or outreaching content to journalists to be hosted on other sites, Repurposing blog content with carousels and infographics for our LinkedIn platform has proven extremely successful at improving social impressions and engagement, and growing our follower base.

Final thoughts

The importance of having a blog on your business website cannot be overstated, even if you commit to posting just once a week. A blog serves as a dynamic platform for showcasing your expertise, connecting with your audience, and driving valuable traffic to your site. By consistently providing informative and engaging content, you enhance your brand’s credibility, establish authority in your industry, and improve your search engine visibility.

You may already have a team of writers or even a trusted freelancer, which is a great start. However, as you can see, writing is just part of the process. Upskilling or supplementing your teams with SEO and content promotion expertise is vital to the success of your blog strategy.

Think you might need some support? Whether it’s a SEO-friendly content plan or blog writing resource, get in touch today to find out how Semetrical can help you achieve fantastic results through your blog.