Your travel company website can be a powerful resource for generating leads and boosting sales and profits for your small business. There are no magical methods that instantly bring hordes of readers with fistfuls of cash to your site, but by committing to a consistent blogging strategy, you can definitely expect to see measurable increases in targeted website traffic that leads to more sales over time.
But creating high-quality blog content on a regular basis is not feasible for many small biz owners like yourself. You’ve got a business to run, and expertise in your field does not always translate into skill with the written word. In other words, you’re probably a little too busy for all this blogging stuff, and you’d instead just hire a writer to do it for you anyway.
That’s where reputable blogging services for small businesses can make your life a whole lot easier. Below are some content marketing tips to help you develop a high-quality blog that brings in targeted traffic to your website and helps you grow your business on autopilot. Or, if you prefer to hire an agency for help, find one that will incorporate these strategies in building your blog.
1. Focus On Quality Over Quantity
There are billions of new web pages going up on the Internet every week. Isn’t that crazy? Now, most of them have nothing to do with your products and services or are related in any way to your industry, but still – that’s a lot of content. And of course, some of it will be competing with your own blog for the attention of your target audience.
For this reason, you need to put out content that is more valuable than anything your competition is publishing. Quality trumps quantity every time. It wasn’t always the case, but in today’s world of massive content distribution, the cream will rise to the top.
That means you cannot cheap out with junk content that any hack writer can produce in minutes. To get the results you want, you need high-quality content. That means you need to avoid those content mills overseas that churn out cheap, low-quality dribble. Your audience can tell when a writer has no idea what he’s talking about and has difficulty expressing technical ideas because of language barriers. Get the good stuff – unique, well-researched articles – written by native English speakers.
2. Follow A Consistent Publishing Schedule
After quality, consistency is the next key to blogging success. It is far better to post once a week on your blog consistently than to blast content out sporadically, posting several posts one week and nothing the next. Readers like to know what to expect and when to expect it, but if you’re not using a publishing calendar, you’re going to keep them guessing, and that could quickly cause you to lose them.
Case studies have found that blogs that publish daily tend to get more traffic per post than blogs who post less frequently. However, it’s also been seen that posting two or three times per week consistently brings in more traffic per post than publishing in bursts with long time gaps in between.
You’re better off consistently posting one high-quality post per week than you are posting daily articles of lower quality on a sporadic basis.
3. Emphasize Local SEO For Geo-Targeted Traffic
If you operate your business from a physical location or offer in specific service areas, then you want your blog to attract visitors who are not only interested in your products and services but who are also located in your area. It’s not much use to attract readers who can never become your customers because they live 1,000 miles away from your store.
So your blog posts will not only need to use keywords related to your products, but they’ll also need to include location keywords as well.
Your blog posts may also incorporate other local SEO factors such as your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). You’ll also need to make use of local business directories and services like Google My Business (GMB), the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and smartphone apps like Yelp.
4. Use Social Media And Guest Posts To Promote Your Content
Once you have all this great new content showing up on your blog, you’ll still need to get it out there in front of potential customers. Solid keyword research will help you get traffic from the search engines, but you’ll ever need to do a little promotion to give your content a little push.
You don’t need to use every social media platform known to man, but you should make use of at least one or two that make sense for your industry and your brand. But your social media marketing plan should mirror your blog in that you post regularly and offer content of value and not just ads all the time.
5. Be Patient
Unlike more expensive forms of advertising, content marketing takes time to build up momentum and produce results. But the positive impact on your business will be well worth the time, effort, and cost of implementing a solid blogging strategy.
Think of your blog as an old-time locomotive. In the old days, those trains would haul unbelievable amounts of goods for thousands of miles. But the conductor couldn’t just step on a gas pedal and get that train moving at full speed quickly. Instead, they had to keep feeding fuel into the engine to gradually build up enough power just to get the wheels turning. It took a while before that thing would get moving. But once it built up speed and momentum, it would plow right through anything that got in its way.
Your blog will operate similarly. It might take some time to build up momentum, but over time all of that content will begin to pull in traffic 24/7. With optimized lead-capture pages, you’ll then be generating new business that can take your company to the next level.
But you need to keep publishing great content and keep promoting it as you build your brand and your online reputation.
So what do you think? Have you already tested the waters with blogging? Have you purchased blogging services for small businesses in the past? What kind of results have you experienced?
If you aren’t satisfied with your previous blogging efforts, or if you find it all confusing and just need someone to walk you through it – or do it all for you – don’t hesitate to give us a call or send a quick email. We’ll be happy to help you build a blog that brings in targeted traffic for months and years to come.
