Will blogging help search engines find my website?

YES!  Companies who blog get better search marketing results.   Last August HubSpot.com conducted a survey of 1,531 customers, all small to medium sized businesses.  795 businesses blogged 736 did not.  Those that blog have 55% more visitors to their sites, 97% more inbound links, links from other sites to theirs and 434% more indexed pages, pages recognized and cached by search engines.  Here’s why.

1. Keyword Steroids – Blogging adds keyword rich content to your site.  Building posts, links and URLs using precious keywords. Plus, blogging usually involves words and terms grouped in a similar manner to audience searches because you’re addressing a topic for discussion not compiling marketing copy.
2. Fresh Content – Updating your site consistently makes Googlebot and other search bots into your allies. Regularly posting quality on topic content increases the number of bot visits resulting in more indexed pages.
3. Return Viewers – Blogging gives visitors a reason to return building a reputation for your website as an informational resource. Comments and trackback features in blog software encourage interaction.
4. Link Building Boost – Useful articles are well read and encourage others to link to your blog on their site, using social media or though RSS, creating more inbound links to your site.
5. Naturally Search Friendly – Most blogging software has search friendly site architecture.  Clear navigation, uncomplicated URL structure and correct linking practices make it easy for the search engines to crawl your site and index content.

This article is also published in Columbia Woman magazine!