I am often asked by entrepreneurs: "Do we need a blog?". People also often ask me: "Do I need a blog?". My answer is almost always: "Of course!" - I am happy to explain why I think so at this point. But first there is the banal question: What is a blog anyway and what functions does it perform? To a large extent, this question already contains the answer to the first question. This is because a blog usually performs several functions and is much more than just a platform on which articles can be written. From the perspective of an SEO (search engine optimizer), a blog is a valuable tool for making content available and bundling it from several channels. So what does a blog have to do with search engine optimization? I would like to explain this in more detail in this article.
A blog provides content relevant to the topic
Even if a company usually already has a website, it still makes sense in almost all cases to also operate a blog for the company. There are basically two different approaches here. The blog can either be operated as part of the existing website and possibly even fully integrated visually, or a new domain name can be registered for the blog, under which it will be accessible in future. Both of these strategies have advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of an integrated blog is that the domain of the existing website is strengthened and it receives more visitors. If a blog is set up and maintained under a new domain, ideally also on a new server or web space, it will be an interesting source of links for the existing website in the future. Which of the two strategies is better depends on the individual and should be tailored to the respective company.
For both strategies, however, a blog generates new topic-relevant content, which is of great importance for generating new free visitors from search engines. One of the biggest factors for a good ranking in search engines are the so-called "backlinks", i.e. links from other sites to your Internet presence. The better your content is, the higher the chance that other website operators will voluntarily link to you - for this reason, the rule "Content Is King" always applies in the area of search engine optimization. And this is exactly why I consider a blog, especially in the corporate environment, to be an extremely important and effective measure for more visitors, which is easy and quick to implement and requires very little capital investment.
Google loves up-to-date content. Love your blog!
First the good news: your blog consists not only of the articles you have written on it, but also of other content such as your messages on Twitter or Facebook and individual linking through the system itself. A modern blog system such as WordPress provides thousands of so-called "plugins" with which you can add functions to your blog. For example, you can automatically display the most frequently read or topic-relevant articles. All these functions ensure automatic and extensive internal and external linking of all blog pages, which in turn quickly ensures good positioning in search engines. But keep the motto "Content Is King" in mind - your blog is only as interesting for human visitors as it is for search engines as the content you have written. But don't worry - if you spend 1-3 hours writing one article a week, your blog will already have 52 articles after a year!
A blog for private individuals? Yes of course!
It can also make sense for private individuals to run a blog under many circumstances - this does not necessarily have to be of a business nature. Running a blog is also worthwhile for hobbies from the private sphere because it leads to good and fast networking with other interested parties. The previous paragraph applies to entrepreneurs and freelancers, but a blog is also a very interesting way for private individuals with business interests to improve their reputation and reach more visitors. With a blog, you can show your target group directly that you know your subject and how knowledgeable you are in your field. The whole thing requires relatively little time and little or no capital investment.
The simple operating concept of WordPress makes instructions largely superfluous. New articles can be created quickly and easily with a convenient editor that is similar to the operation of word processing programs such as Microsoft Word. The complete design of the blog can be changed and adapted directly during operation. The installation of plug-ins to extend the functionality is also done online with a simple mouse click.
Guide: Quick start with WordPress
With over 350,000 installations, WordPress is the world's most widely used blog system, which is also based on an open source license and can therefore be used free of charge. WordPress can be used in two different ways: Either free of charge under the domain name "yourname.wordpress.com" or as a free installation on your own web server or web storage space. If you would like to get a taste of the material first, it is best to set up a blog on WordPress.com register. To do this, simply click on the highly visible "Register now!" button on the WordPress website and fill in the following five fields. WordPress offers you the option of setting up a free "free blog" on a subdomain of w0rdpress.com or using your own domain for 99 US dollars per year. However, the latter is faster and cheaper with local internet providers such as Hosteurope realizable.
Professional blog with your own domain name
If you are convinced by the simple operating concept of WordPress, you may now want to create a new WordPress blog on your own domain. This task can also be solved in just a few steps:
- Download the latest German WordPress version.
- Adapt the file "wp-config-sample.php" to the data of your mySQL database and then rename the file to "wp-config.php".
- Upload all files to the root directory of your Internet domain using an FTP program.
- Open the address "www.IhreDomain.de/wp-admin/install.php" in your browser and follow the instructions.
With these four simple steps, you can installieren a WordPress blog on your own domain in no time at all. As soon as the blog has been installiert, you can immediately start customizing the look and content of the blog to suit your own needs.
I hope that this article has also appealed to "non-professionals" and I look forward to receiving feedback. If you are interested, I will be happy to publish another article in the future that explains the creation of a new WordPress blog in a practical way and contains further tips and ideas for interesting themes and plugins.
Good contribution. What is also important when setting up several blogs is that the domains are on different servers, ideally different providers. This way google does not immediately recognize the relationship between the blogs and the advertised website.
This is correct, which is why I also briefly pointed out in the article that a non-integrated blog should be realized on a new server or web space if possible. Of course, this applies all the more to multiple blogs. Depending on the infrastructure, it may therefore make sense to rent several smaller web space packages or virtual servers rather than one large and powerful server.
In the case of blogs, should you also make sure that the domains cannot be associated with each other?
Does link building via a blog then work in the same way as via other websites? I find the article really interesting and inspiring as an introduction, but the question is of course, as always, what happens next...
Yes, in principle the blogs should be self-sufficient, although it certainly depends on how many blogs you run. With 1-2 blogs, I don't necessarily consider this factor to be the most important. Of course, link building works with blogs just like with any other website. Ultimately, the most important factor is and remains interesting content, because then the content will also be recommended.
This post reminds me that I should write something regularly again. I've been suffering a bit with that. I think you should integrate it into your schedule like any other task. I only actually do it when there's nothing to do.
Hello,
Thank you very much for this article! I am also going to introduce a blog on my hotel website and this article helps me enormously!
Thank you and best regards