As you are surely well aware, having a great web design on a website that no one can find won't bring you any new clients. To get more customers, you must make sure people can find your business site through the search engines, like Google or Bing. This is equally important for any type of website - eCommerce websites, content websites, or small businesses websites that offer services and products.

It might sound strange for a locksmith website to have a blog. The chances are that people will not often look for topics that you can write about - they just need locksmith services. However, if you regularly publish quality content with proper keywords, it certainly will have very positive impact on your search engine rankings.

With good inbound linking to other pages and posts on your website, over time your small business site will climb up the ranks in search engine results. That includes your home or lead capture page. You also might earn some natural quality backlinks if your blog content interests people.

If you are a newbie to SEO, you can some valuable answers in our What is SEO article.

Position yourself and your business as an expert in the field

As usual, I will stick to the locksmith website example. What can you write about that might interest your potential and existing clients? People will just call you when they need locksmith services, right? Wrong!

For example, if you Google "rekeying vs changing locks" you will see that it has about 80.000 results. What you most likely won't see is that on the average there are 110 searches for this particular phrase per month. Combined with searches that Google suggests, like "how much rekey costs" or "what is rekey" we are talking about more than a thousand searches each month. And that is just for rekeying.

Some of those searches will come from your location for sure. If you have an article about rekeying, people will find useful info about it on your website's blog.  So, even if you do not make a direct sale, you will get noticed. They might start following you on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. You can also invite them to join your mailing list if you have one. For little effort or money, you can raise your brand awareness.

That leads us to the third reason why blogging is important.

Communicate with your customers

Through the blog, you can connect to your potential and existing clients. People might comment, share on social media, or contact you directly. They even might request your services if they see they are over their head with something, like I did while trying to figure out how to replace bearings on my washing machine.

A blog is also a great place for promotional materials, discounted offers, and similar stuff. Moreover, don't forget that you will get new followers on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media where you can share your posts and extended the reach. Blog can be your free, or very affordable, marketing channel and an excellent way to stay in contact or find new clients.

By having a blog on your business website you can put a human face on your business. Potential clients and existing customers put more trust into business if they know they are managed by real life people. This is especially important for local businesses.    

Things we talk about here will not happen overnight, but neither it will take years to see positive change. Depending on your niche, how you serious you take it, and on your blogging skills, you can start seeing results from your blog in six months to a year.

How much a blog for small business costs?

The exact price cannot be determined easily. It will depend on things like whether you are starting a blog mainly because of SEO efforts or to reach and stay in contact with your customers.

Blog can cost you nothing if you write it and publish it yourself. Though, keep in mind that you must know SEO basics and how to write SEO optimized content.

Alternatively, you can hire someone with understanding of importance of blogging to take care of your blog and social media, write articles and post on your behalf. Price for this service varies from little as $50 per month to a few hundred or even thousand. It all depends on what you need and whom you hire. Really Tested provides affordable Digital Marketing and SEO services, for more info please contact us.

We hope this gave you the insight into the importance of blogging and what will a blog do for a company. We would love to hear back from you! Please comment and share!