Does Your Business Website Still Need A Blog In 2023?

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and even Facebook are all extremely popular websites with billions of users, and all of them have found their success primarily with visual media: photos and videos. Indeed, web users are strongly attracted to easy-to-consume visual content, to the extent that plenty of business leaders are wondering whether text-based content — like website blogs — is dead.

The truth is that blogging is still very much worth it in 2023, and blogs will continue to have value for the foreseeable future, as long as the internet functions as it currently does. If a business website’s blog doesn’t seem to be having an impact, it is likely that the business’ blogging practices, not blogs in general, that are the problem. Here’s a rundown of why blogs still matter in 2023 and how to optimize a blog for better business.

Search Relies On Written Content

Google runs on text. Though Google and other search engines do have search filters dedicated to images and videos, the truth is that their algorithms only understand what is contained in visual media thanks to the text used to describe it: captions, transcripts, alt text, and the like. Unless and until Google harnesses advanced technologies that can assess visual media without text descriptions, text will continue to rule the web.

How Google understands the internet matters because almost all web traffic flows through Google. Somewhere between 68 and 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine — depending on the study — so business websites are dramatically more likely to experience high traffic if they can attract attention from web users submitting related queries. Appearing at the top of the Google search results page is imperative for businesses looking to grow, and climbing the search rankings requires harnessing the power of text as it informs Google’s algorithm.

While every webpage should include text, a business blog is an excellent place to harbor a large quantity of diverse text. Using a blog, a business can increase the breadth of relevant topics connected to its site, which means that it has more opportunities to appear in search results and draw users in. Of course, not just any blog will have this positive effect; for a blog to be valuable, a business needs to invest in it. Here’s how.

Blogs Need to Be High-Quality

It is not enough to copy and paste other web content onto a business blog. It is also not enough to publish any old text passage that includes relevant keywords. For search engines and web users alike, business blogs need to be high-quality.

A high-quality business blog offers value to web users by delivering the information they want and need, and doing so with accuracy, honesty, engaging language, and appealing visual elements. Ideally, employees at the company will produce content for the blog, as they understand better than anyone the business’s brand, its products and services, ongoing industry trends, and other issues that might interest web users. If no one in-house is equipped to contribute to the blog, businesses should at least contract professional writers, who can put together blogs in interesting and innovative ways — unlike writing robots, which recycle the same content over and over again.

For outside help creating a business blog, companies might rely on businesses like Phoenix SEO services, which have experienced SEO professionals who understand how to build blogs that drive results. This may involve embedding specific keywords into different blog posts, developing and deploying an internal linking strategy, or identifying blog topics that may be appealing to the target audience.

A high-quality business blog develops a reputation amongst web users for providing value. In turn, search engines begin to rank popular blog posts higher in search results, increasing the size of the blog’s web audience. Though the term “blog” may feel very dated, the truth is that blogs continue to be useful tools for improving business website visibility and encouraging customer engagement. By working to improve a business’ blogging practices, business leaders can harness the power of the blog now and into the future.