We’re currently in the midst of re-designing our website. So setting up our company blog for success is super top of mind right now. There’s a lot that goes into launching and maintaining a successful blog — strategic content, SEO, CMS systems, social media, image selection, article promotion, and more.
In this article, I want to show you how to design your company blog for success.
Why? Because websites with blogs have 434% more search-engine indexed pages and 6x more revenue:
Websites with blogs are the driving force behind a great content marketing strategy, and research has found that content marketing is more effective than any other tactic.
Your company needs a blog, and we’ve created a step-by-step guide for making it succeed. Let’s dive in.
Quick Takeaways:
Business owners who create a blog and commit to posting regularly will see an increase in traffic, leads, and sales.
Execute a smart blogging strategy to compete with big, high-authority sites in your niche.
Consistency is key: publishing frequently and at optimal times will drive better blog performance.
Your blog should always aim to drive customers toward the next logical action step like starting a free trial or scheduling a consultation.
We have looked at hundreds of the best content marketing examples, large company blogs, startup websites, we’ve also covered how to create an amazing company blog before. Here, we’re getting a little deeper and more specific with tips, tools, and actual plug-in you can use and settings you can configure!
Why Do You Need a Company Blog?
Businesses that blog have an easier time meeting revenue targets, get more leads, and build brand trust. It’s also what customers prefer – studies have found that about 70% of people would rather learn about a company through its articles rather than advertisements.
When you look at the value a company blog generates, not having one is one of the biggest mistakes a business can make in the digital age.
Blog-based businesses receive 97% more links to their websites. B2B marketers who blog get 67 percent more leads than those who don’t. I’ve seen it happen with our clients time and again, as well as with our company blog.
My own business depends on creating blog content that outranks my competitors. While cultivating a winning business blog requires commitment and planning, it’s not as hard as most business owners think. With a well-executed strategy, it’s possible to get your blog at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and compete with high-authority sites.
Set Up and Configure the Content Management System (CMS)
First things first — taking care of setup. One mistake companies make is diving straight into publishing content without spending time on the technical details. These details may not be thrilling, but they play an essential role in optimizing your blog for search, driving traffic, and growing your audience.
You don’t need any technical skills to get your business blog up and running in a few days or less. To get started, you’ll need a blogging or website builder platform. I always recommend WordPress.
It’s free to download yet full of functionality.
You can easily customize your blog with plug-ins and themes.
With WordPress, you can grant access to anyone if you want someone to maintain your blog for you. Because it’s so universal, everyone in website maintenance and content marketing knows how to use it.
Add the Blog to Main Navigation
Visitors (and search engines!) use your website’s main menu as a map. use to explore your content and ultimately decide if it can help them accomplish the goals you claim it can. Without intuitive navigation, even your best content can get lost in the mix. When that happens, your organic search traffic will suffer the consequences.
The takeaway: be sure your blog appears on your main navigation menu.
But what if you have an optimized landing page designed to send users on a path straight to conversion?
Won’t adding your blog potentially send them in the wrong direction?
It’s a valid question, but the truth is that on average, web visitors only spend 15 seconds or less on a landing page. Research estimates that up to 95% of visitors will never return after their first visit. That perfect path toward conversion? Most people never take it.
Your blog may indeed divert visitors from the most direct conversion path, but it will also give them a reason to stay on your site and increase the time they spend there. Blog content builds trust with consumers and, when done right, provides more opportunities for you to put them back on that road to conversion.
Add Recent Articles to Homepage
Add more links to your blog on your homepage? Yes! Here’s why:
Blog posts that appear on your homepage establish brand authority even before your web visitors click through to read them. How? Because your blogs have killer headlines (duh) that tell people you’re an expert whether they read the whole article or not. They show that your brand is covering timely, relevant content that matters to your customers.
And if someone does click away from your landing page to read one? Even better. You’ve got awesome content and more strategies in place on your blog to help convert them into leads.
Create the Blog Page
Now that we know why your blogs page should be linked on your landing page, let’s talk about what it should look like.
There are many different ways you can approach your blog layout. It should look like the rest of your website and follow the same design and theme, but you can be creative with how you position and highlight content to show what’s most important to your brand. Your optimal layout will depend on your industry and what exactly you want your blog to help you accomplish. A B2B consulting company would likely want case studies displayed prominently on their blog page, while design firms would be more focused on including feature images to highlight past work.
Here are some blog layout best practices and examples to get you inspired.
Create the Article Page Template
Customize your blog theme to use a standard article page wireframe to make your blog more engaging and encourage higher conversions.
To make your blog more engaging and to encourage conversions, use a standard article page wireframe by customizing your blog theme. The wireframe design should include a featured image and invite readers to take the next logical step when they read your blog. The next step could be:
Subscribing to your newsletter
Starting a free trial
Sharing your content on social media
Downloading an ebook or white paper
Visiting another page on your website, such as your products or services page
Scheduling a consultation
Reading another blog article
Here’s an example of the article wireframe we use for Marketing Insider Group:
Create Keyword-Rich Categories
Your blog categories or themes are key to strategic content organization. They’re important to help you stay on track and they provide a guide for search engine algorithms looking to figure out what value your content offers to its target audience. They organize your content and make it easier for visitors to navigate your website.
Think of these as your topic area sections, similar to the “Local News,” “Business,” and “Sports” sections in a traditional newspaper. These newspaper sections tell people where to go to get the kinds of articles they want to read, and your blog categories will do the same for your readers. Ideally, you should create 4-6 blog categories to organize your content and always assign an article to one category only.
Don’t make your categories obscure or unique. They should clearly indicate what topics your blog covers. For SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, use keywords within the categories as much as possible.
We’ll talk more about what makes for great blog categories later, but for now let’s just note that you should create them when you’re setting up your blog. Think of categories like you would the sections of a traditional newspaper — news, sports, business, classifieds, etc.
Expand Your Content Strategy But Narrow Your Targeting
To reach even more of your target audience with more in-depth content, expand your content marketing strategy to offer what content marketers call “gated content.” You could start with a newsletter that includes short, useful articles that your customers can use in their own lives or businesses, as well as inside information about new products that can help them solve their most pressing issues. As you get more comfortable with producing content, you can create detailed, highly technical white papers to provide your business customers with actionable information. Or, you can write an e-book that teaches your customers new skills or new information that they can put to use in their own lives.
Make sure that you require at least an email address to those that sign up for gated content. This step allows you to communicate with these people and build a relationship through valuable content.
Use a call to action at the end of your blog posts and social media posts that allow them to sign up for this more in-depth content. When you do move to offer gated content in addition to your blog, make sure that it’s top-quality and offers real value.
Use a Clear URL Structure
This step is simple, but it ensures your blog will rank better on Google. You are creating permanent URLs for particular blog posts here. The permalinks will contain custom data to identify each post, rather than the date or a generic tag.
