If you’ve just started to view the internet as a means of promoting your business, chances are your focus has been on your website. While websites are the cornerstone of online business, however, they are not the only essential, and if you really want to boost your online business, you should also focus on a blog.

If you’re worried about a blog sounding technical or difficult, don’t! The word ‘blog’ is actually a shortened version of the term ‘web log’. Originally they were used a bit as online journals, where people could post information about their daily lives, but these days, blogging is big business!

Unlike your website, which usually remains at least partially static, with the same information all the time, your blog is something that is easy to update. Anytime you have news, reviews, product information or special offers to engage with your customers, for example, you can simply log in and post it, without having to do a complete redesign of your website!

Blogs can also stand alone, using a blogging platform, or they can be integrated into your website by adding a blog page to your site. Either way, however, they serve several important functions.

First, they keep your customers and site visitors up to date with the comings and goings of your business. If you add what’s known as an RSS feed to your blog, that news can even be delivered directly to your customers’ and visitors’ email inboxes.

Second, they make sure that the content on your site is updated regularly and that it stays fresh and relevant. This is one of the key factors that search engines use when ranking websites and as the saying goes, “content is king”. So if your website doesn’t change often, your site could be suffering in terms of page rank, and a blog could be the solution to that problem.

Third, there is the opportunity to have a more personal way of contacting the people who visit your site. While websites are often written in a very business style, blogging is often more informal and is a great way to add a bit more of your personality to your site.

Finally, they are a means of generating additional income on your site. In most cases, blogging platforms allow you to embed third-party advertising links into your blog, which will pay you every time someone clicks on them. There are other options as well, such as text ads, or even platforms that function as third-party ad networks, putting bloggers in touch with advertisers who would like their products featured in blog posts.

Essentially, blogs are a means for online and offline business owners to have much more dynamic content and information on their sites that they can quickly and easily update on a daily basis, and that will improve their search engine rankings by Increase your keyword density on your site and your unique content.

They are also a separate income mechanism for many business owners, as well as a means of injecting a bit of personality into an otherwise bland website.

The good news is that getting a blog is not difficult or time consuming. There are many free blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger that you can use to set up a free blog, and you can easily link to them from your main site. Blogging platforms are also very easy to use, and even people with a rudimentary level of Internet technical knowledge can use them to create posts, run advertisements, and set up RSS feeds.

It is interesting to note that these days; many online businesses choose a blog as their main online presence, rather than using a traditional website. This is because blogs are much easier for the average person to create and manage, and their informal style tends to appeal to a broader audience. Some well-known blogs actually earn their owners millions of millions of dollars every month!

If you don’t have time to run your own blog, there are even freelancers who, for a fee, will create, manage, and add content to your blog on a daily or weekly basis, so it’s entirely possible to automate the process entirely. .

In fact, these days having a blog is almost as important as having a website and it is well worth the effort for any business owner who is using the internet for part or all of their marketing plan to start posting. a blog sooner rather than later. It’s easy, casual, and usually free to start a blog, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t use it as part of your online marketing efforts.