Content Marketing
Consistent Blogging: How a Small Company Can Rank #1 on a Low Budget

Consistent Blogging: How a Small Company Can Rank #1 on a Low Budget

March 16, 2020
9 min read

Consistent blog publishing is the heart of successful content marketing. With the right strategy in place, even companies with a limited marketing budget can produce high-value content that not only ranks #1 in search results but also converts visitors into leads. According to HubSpot, marketers that blog consistently are 13 times more likely to see a positive ROI.

Marketing Insider Group, for example, takes the top spot for in-demand keywords like ‘what is marketing,’ ‘what is employee activation,’ ‘thought leadership,’ ‘brand storytelling,’ ‘marketing speaker,’ and more. There’s no big secret, algorithm hack, or complex formula that helps the site achieve these results. It’s all about publishing content on these targeted topics regularly – and that means committing to blogging long-term.

Every single month, WordPress users across the globe upload 70 million posts. Indeed, blogging is going nowhere fast. It’s time to formulate a low-cost content strategy that your business can use to build your brand’s authority, reach your target audience, and improve your search engine ranking.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Blogging is central to a successful content marketing strategy. It’s the best way to bring in qualified web traffic.
  • The more you blog, the more visible your content becomes in organic search and social media.
  • Create a content calendar that helps you stick to your blogging plan.
  • Know when to outsource your blog content.

Is Blogging Still Important?

Brands are increasingly pivoting their marketing strategy toward video and social media – in this landscape, is blogging still important? The answer: absolutely yes. Blogging is an integral part of successful content marketing that comes with a low barrier to entry and delivers a significant payoff. Even for more established brands with higher budgets, a blog is a perfect anchor for their dynamic, multi-faceted strategy.

Consistent blog publishing remains an unparalleled way to drive traffic to your website and grow brand recognition. When a blog is continually updated, it boosts inbound leads in a big way. What’s more, Google loves a high-value, frequently updated blog, and will typically reward excellent content with higher search engine rankings.

Blogging also provides a fantastic opportunity for brands to establish a voice, a personality that customers can recognize, relate to, and trust. Informative content demonstrates a brand’s authority. If you have tons of interesting, relevant knowledge to share, web users will stick around to read it.

That’s only scratching the surface. Here are a few more tangible examples of the importance of blogging for small business:

Blogging Complements Your Overall Marketing Strategy

Blogging is adaptable, giving you a platform to publish both timely, sharable content and informative evergreen (always relevant) content that complements your overall marketing strategy. For example, if you have just published an e-book, you can create a series of hype-building blog posts investigating the core takeaways. These can then link to your e-book landing page.

Or, perhaps a significant event or change took place in your industry. Publishing an opinion piece on your blog (which you can then share far and wide across your social channels) shows current and potential customers that your brand is engaged and on the ball.

And, if you decide to start targeting local keywords (i.e., keywords that include a location that your company services), you can produce blog posts that do exactly that.

Blogs Foster Trust

In today’s digital world, marketplaces are saturated. Customers looking to purchase a product or service are on the hunt for differentiation – that magic ingredient that sets one brand apart from all of its competitors. And for many, it’s trust.

Prospects want to know that a brand will deliver on its promises, that their shiny façade isn’t just smoke and mirrors. Blogs are an ideal place to foster trust and build meaningful relationships with existing and potential customers.

Blog Posts Encourage Users to Stick Around

Internal links are critical as they encourage visitors to spend more time on your site. The most intuitive, effective way to work those links in? You guessed it – your blog.

Internal links in blog posts can lead readers to related articles or the products or services mentioned. As long as you are linking to pages that are relevant and use anchor text that makes sense to both your readers and search engines, blogging is an extremely effective way to ensure users stick around and explore your website.

Blogging Boosts Your Google Rankings

Ninety-three percent of online journeys start with a Google search. Unless you’re prepared to ignore nine out of 10 web users, improving your company’s search visibility should be a top priority. And consistent blogging is one of the best ways to boost your ranking.

Having a static, set-and-forget website isn’t enough. Google wants to see new content published on a regular basis – even better, content that provides real-life value to real-life users. Blogging continues to be the best way to tick these boxes.

For some, that might mean publishing a 500-word article once a month. For others, that might mean putting in the time and energy to produce one polished long-form article a week. It’s worth keeping in mind that the average length of a first-page result on Google is 1,890 words.

Consistency Is Key to Blogging Success

How can a small company with little budget rank #1 in search? Consistent blogging. If you want to reap the rewards listed above, you must be consistent in your publishing schedule. No ifs, ands, or buts.

It can be tempting to take your sweet time when crafting a post. Of course, errors and poor grammar don’t reflect positively on your brand or business. But for most company owners, spending hours upon hours polishing a blog post into some kind of hybrid literary masterpiece just isn’t sustainable long-term.

And what happens next? You can probably guess. The blog posts stop.

The bottom line is this: You must balance the relationship between quality and frequency. Quality matters, but how often you update your blog matters, too.

Here are a couple of convincing reasons you should make a conscientious effort to maintain a consisting publishing schedule:

Improve Your Page Rankings

Get this. The more frequently you update your website with fresh content, the more opportunities you have to boost your SEO and improve your page rankings. Here’s how it works:

  • Search engines like Google use web crawlers based on algorithms to index existing websites.
  • Crawlers rank the websites based on a whole host of factors: inbound links, mobile-friendliness, user time on site, and more.
  • Search engines regularly crawl your site. If you post new, quality content, you improve your chances of ranking better the next time your site is crawled.

Other features influencing your page rank include building a network of both inbound and external links. Blog posts are the ideal candidate for link building.

Another critical factor: getting other reputable sites to link to yours. Again, the more engaging timely content and relevant evergreen content you publish, the more opportunity you have to be seen and linked to by a trusted website.

Enhance Your Social Media Content

Your website is probably not the only digital avenue you use to promote your products or services. Chances are, you have a few social media accounts that you use to share content and updates, promote events, and engage with your audience.

Like Google organic search, the number of users that your content reaches on Facebook is governed by a machine learning system that rewards stand-out engagement levels. In other words, the more users interact with your blog post or social media update (whether that be by spending more time on your site or tagging their friends in a comment), the more new users will see it.

Coming up with high-quality content day in and day out is no easy task – and that’s where your blog posts come in. You can repurpose blog content (create short videos or graphics, highlight the core message, share a tip from the article, etc.) that already has a proven track record of ranking high in search results. The results are two-fold:

  • You can quickly and easily create quality content for your social channels that is more likely to drive engagement.
  • You convert your social media audience into website visitors – and ultimately, into customers.

Curate Your Keywords

The SEO benefits of consistent blogging for business reach far beyond indexing and crawling. Regular blogging gives you an opportunity to increase the number, variety, and range of keywords that your website ranks for.

Let’s say you are a dentist looking to attract locals to your website. Your potential clients aren’t all going to search for ‘dentist’ or ‘dentist in location.’ Some will Google ‘braces for adults.’ Others will search for ‘teeth whitening’ or ‘kid-friendly dentist.’ You want all of these search terms to lead to your website.

If you blog frequently, you can devote posts to a whole range of keywords and their related topics: Braces for Adults: What You Need to KnowThe Most Effective Teeth Whitening Method RevealedWhat to Look for in a Kid-Friendly Dentist, and so on.

Regular updates also allow you to target specialized audiences – like a location-specific audience – while maintaining the breadth of keywords for which you’d like your site to rank. This ensures your website is found by a diverse variety of people searching for a whole range of products, services, or solutions.

How to Blog Consistently and Frequently

Like most things in life, blogging consistently and frequently is easier said than done.

First, how often should you blog? There is no hard and fast answer to this question. As a general rule, aim to publish as frequently as you can without compromising on quality. Be sure that you set yourself a schedule that is sustainable in the longer term. There’s not much point publishing one post a week for three weeks and then stopping completely. Similarly, your site isn’t going to benefit from a new post every two weeks if the content is littered with errors and overstuffed with keywords.

Think of blogging like any other positive habit – it’ll seem tricky at first, but it’ll soon become an integral part of your weekly routine.

Here are a couple of tips you can use to set yourself up for blogging success – even with little budget and very little time:

Create an Editorial Calendar – and Stick to it

The first step to blogging consistently is to create an editorial calendar – and then stick to it. By planning your topics ahead of time, you can build out your bigger-picture content marketing strategy in an actionable, low-stress way.

Aim to schedule about three months’ worth of blog posts at a time, whatever that means for you. You might like to set calendar notifications or use project management software to ensure you and your team stay accountable.

Here are a couple of ways you can come up with topics for your editorial calendar:

  • Check out your competitors. What topics are they covering on their blog?
  • What is your target market searching for? Conducting keyword research is imperative to a successful blog.
  • What sets your company apart? How can you showcase this in a blog post?
  • How can your team members contribute? Authentic, employee-sourced content often performs exceptionally well.
  • What kinds of topics have performed well in the past? Can you tackle these in a different way?
  • Keep up with industry news and updates. Share this information with your audience – and don’t forget to add your two cents.
  • What are your customers’ pain points? What problems do they need to be solved?
  • What are your followers saying on social media? What questions are they asking? What content do they engage with the most?

Once it’s all set up, your calendar will do a lot of the logistical work for you. Plus, it’s a great place for your employees to brainstorm topics and highlight top-priority keywords.

Know When to Outsource

If you are spending hours and hours every week at your computer just hoping that the blank screen in front of you will somehow transform itself into a compelling blog post, it could be time to outsource. Even if it’s not time that’s the issue, writing might not be your greatest talent.

Business owners know better than anyone how dangerous it can be to try to do everything yourself. You risk becoming burned out, the quality of your work drops, and you become your own company’s bottleneck. You might even find yourself wondering why you became your own boss in the first place.

The good news is, blogging is one of the best tasks to outsource to the experts; it’s on par with things like accounting and bookkeeping. There are plenty of talented writers out there that can help you develop your ideas and turn scattered brain dumps into engaging, polished, optimized blog posts.

Track the Results

Even if you really enjoy writing blog posts, it can be tricky to keep up your enthusiasm if you don’t see a cold, hard return on investment.

Make sure that you check how your blog posts perform, both in terms of organic search and social media engagement. Take note of which articles are driving the most traffic to your website – and ask yourself why. Make sure you look at the following metrics pre- and post-blogging:

  • Customer engagement
  • Keyword ranking
  • Time spent on site
  • Number of pages per user

Use these insights to tweak your blogging strategy. By continually evolving and optimizing your approach, you increase your chances of successfully reaching your goals – and taking out the #1 search ranking.

Don’t Wait – Start Your Blog Today!

Despite what some might think, blogging is not antiquated. Instead, it is a critical element to any company’s marketing strategy, one that can enable those with relatively small budgets to nab the sought-after #1 search engine ranking. It’s dynamic and adaptable, allowing businesses to knock several marketing goals across a distributed network of digital touchpoints simultaneously.

Beyond driving traffic, blog posts give your brand a voice, a personality. They empower you to share your passion and showcase your industry expertise, all while giving website visitors yet another reason to choose your company over a competitor.

Don’t feel like you are the only person responsible for producing content, either. Get the whole team involved in the process – give your employees a chance to think creatively. Or, outsource your blogging entirely.

In short, if you are not blogging, you are missing out. It’s time to take the leap, commit, and put pen to paper. With a little hard work and patience, your website will slowly but surely work its way up in the search results. And who knows? With a consistent publishing schedule, you might just find yourself at the very top.

What impact would that have on your company?

Get Help with Consistent Blogging

Are you ready to get more traffic to your website with high-quality content published consistently? That is excellent news. Set up a consultation with us today and learn more about how we can help you scale your content and execute a content marketing strategy that drives business growth – now, and for years to come.

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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