How Exactly Blogging Increases Lead Generation by 67%
You’ve heard that blogging increases lead generation but you can’t get your head around how that page where you post your company news can do that?
Well, you’ve heard correctly.
It’s absolutely true that blogging generates more leads. However, your company news will not.
Let me clarify this before we look at blogging as a lead generation strategy.
Why do you need a content marketing strategy to generate leads through your blog?
To generate leads through the blog on your business website you definitely need a content marketing strategy first.
That’s what sets apart successful and highly converting blog pages from egocentric company updates posted sporadically (#sorry): a strong content marketing strategy that focuses on the needs of your target audience, not on blowing your own trumpet.
To increase lead generation through your blog, you must write articles that cover relevant industry-related topics that can be interesting or useful to your target audience specifically.
For example, if you sell candles, you could write blog posts about ‘The best candle scents for insomnia’ or ‘How do you decorate a room with candles?’
Now that we’re on the same page when it comes to blogging on your business website, the initial question still remains (how does blogging increase lead generation?), but we’re ready to tackle it without misunderstandings.
6 ways in which blogging increases lead generation
On average, websites with a blog generate 67% more leads than those that haven’t got one.
Crazy, right?
One of my favourite things about blogging for business is that it’s such a versatile strategy and brings you lots of different benefits.
As for lead generation, it also increases it in several ways.
1. Direct SEO: blog posts generate more traffic by targeting more keywords
Every blog post that you publish is also a new indexed page on your website. As such, it has the potential to rank on Google if you target a specific keyword and optimise the entire article for SEO.
Think about it!
There are only ten organic spots in the coveted real estate that is the first page of the SERP (search engine results page).
With all the other competitors targeting the same keywords that you’ve used to optimise the four or five pages on your website, the chances of ranking for them are fairly low, especially if your business is still quite new.
However, if you blog twice a month, you have 24 different keywords that you can try and rank for by the end of the year.
Blogging once a week? 52.
Much higher chances to reach the first page of Google, right?
And this is not only because of the number of keywords: it’s also due to how targeted and specific they are.
With blog posts, you should aim for a different long-tail keyword every time, one that consists of three or more words. Like ‘benefits of succulents’ and ‘how to grow succulents’ instead of the overused ‘succulent’.
When a user who—this is important—is already interested in your industry notices your blog post after googling a question or a query, they’ll find themselves on your website.
Remember: they weren’t directly looking for it. They wouldn’t have googled your company name. But they’re on it now.
And, after reading your article on the benefits of succulents, they’re going to realise that you actually sell succulents. Handy!
Perhaps you even have a newsletter where you offer tips on how to care for them? Sign me up!
2. A blog boosts the SEO of your entire website
Remember when I said that it’s harder to rank on the first page of Google for shorter and more popular keywords?
Good news: blogging regularly increases your chances of outranking your competitors when it comes to the rest of your website, too.
There are several ways in which blogging helps your website’s SEO:
It results in an average of 434% more indexed pages than websites that don’t blog, showing Google that you’ve got plenty of useful content for your audience
It shows search engines that you update your website regularly and that you aren’t going to give outdated information to their users
It allows you to add more internal links
It helps you attract more inbound links
Basically, as well as by ranking for more long-term keywords, blogging increases lead generation by improving the overall SEO of your website and helping it rank higher.
3. It allows you to include more contextualised calls to action
Your blog posts shouldn’t be hard sales: they should genuinely focus on providing useful information or entertaining your readers.
However, they still offer you plenty of opportunities to add internal links to your products and organic calls to actions to turn those readers into subscribers or followers.
Another great benefit of blogging on your business website is that you can target customers at every stage of the sales funnel.
If someone is still dipping their toes into the world of sustainable fashion, a ‘buy now’ CTA at the end of your article introducing the problems with fast fashion would be completely out of place. Not likely to convert at all.
It would make a lot of sense in your blog post on ‘the best sustainable dresses for winter’, though, since it targets bottom-of-the-funnel leads.
In the first one, however, you could ask them to subscribe to your newsletter to receive more weekly tips on how to start making sustainable fashion choices.
Which takes me to my next point...
4. It gives you more opportunities to generate leads by capturing email addresses
You most definitely don’t want users to find your website through a blog post and then leave empty-handed.
Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to purchase a product immediately. Still, you should encourage them to do something, like following you on social media or subscribing to your newsletter.
You can either ask them to do it at the end of your blog posts or by having a pop-up banner that targets them before they leave.
Or, you know… both.
5. You get to reach even more people through social shares
To make your blog posts rank higher and reach more people, you shouldn’t just publish them and hope for the best. Nope. You’ve gotta promote them, my friend.
One of the best tricks is to integrate them with your social media strategy and share them on your platforms.
By doing so, blogging increases lead generation by driving additional traffic to your website from social media:
With your existing audience: they might not have googled the question that you’ve answered in your article just yet, but, when they see it on your feed, it tickles their curiosity, they click on it, and they find themselves on your website
Through social shares: when someone who’s already following you shares your articles, their followers and friends get to see it, too. You do have some social share buttons on your blog page, right?
6. Blogging increases lead generation through backlinks, too
I’m going to say this as nicely as possible: nobody other than your supportive loved ones wants to link back to the blog post in which you brag about your latest award.
On the contrary, someone who’s writing about a popular topic in your industry might very well want to use you as a reference if your blog post features a juicy stat, infographic, unique angle, or interesting fact that they didn’t know about.
It’s not a coincidence that websites with blogs get up to 97% more inbound links than those without one. And backlinks help your SEO, too.
As for how blogging increases lead generation through backlinks, it’s simple: if someone has mentioned you and linked to your website on theirs, their audience is much more likely to bump into you!
So, how does blogging generate leads?
Overall, blogging generates leads by increasing your website traffic, smoothening the funnel, and giving you more chances to convert these visits into subscribers or followers.
Hey, fellow female entrepreneur: need a hand generating leads through your blog?
Now that you understand how blogging increases lead generation, I bet you can’t wait to try this rewarding strategy yourself, right?
However, if you:
don’t know where to start
haven’t got time to write all that content yourself
are not sure you can optimise it for search engines correctly and actually attract your audience
I can take care of aaaaaaaall that for you with my blog writing services.
I specialise in helping ambitious women entrepreneurs and female-founded businesses become THE go-to solution in their dream audience’s eyes.
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