Ensuring Company Blogs Are Fit for Purpose

A company blog provides a valuable platform for free publicity. It also has search engine optimisation value when used correctly.

But how do you ensure your blog is fit for purpose?

Little and often

It’s important to ensure business blogs are updated frequently with entertaining articles and opinion pieces, from named employees. Search engines prioritise websites with regular content additions, and channelling this through a company blog means those carefully-written product or service pages can be left untouched. Generate traffic for new posts with links from every available platform, including LinkedIn and other social media accounts.

Customers dealing with your firm for the first time will subconsciously be seeking reassurance about its integrity. A recently updated blog page indicates the firm is still trading and servicing clients. Industry-specific content that gets shared and commented on by its readers can introduce new audiences to your brand, and every inbound link increases the blog’s perceived value, so be topical or write about subjects likely to provoke debate.

Search and ye shall find

Company blogs provide an opportunity to deploy keywords and long tail phrases. Each blog should incorporate several relevant words or phrases, which can be researched using analytics platforms like Moz or KWFinder. Clever writing can subtly incorporate keywords into the text, without affecting its readability. This article has now used the phrase “company blog” four times, so it’ll perform well in Google or Bing searches for this term.

Make up and break up

Scattering keywords throughout an article doesn’t require reams of content, and audience attention spans are poor nowadays. Non-technical blogs should be around 300 to 500 words in length to ensure they keep reading. Tools like Yoast are great for inexperienced writers, with a traffic-light system of recommended article changes. Try to avoid using more than one comma per sentence, or more than four sentences per paragraph.

Copy can be made easier to read by breaking it up with the following elements:

•      Bullet points, like these
•      Numbered lists
•      Concise, arresting headlines
•      Sub-headings
•      Pull-quotes – snippets of content reprinted on the page in a different font.

Inform, involve and engage

The litmus test of any corporate blog is whether it’s interesting. You’ve obviously found this article relatively stimulating, since you’re now reading the final paragraph! Think about how to retain your target audience’s attention by telling a story or making a point. Every blog should emphasise your company’s skills and expertise, avoiding the hard sell in favour of friendly and informative content everyone can understand.