I was recently speaking with a website publisher about a site he hadn’t really touched in several months. We were discussing the logic of whether or not he should put more time and energy into the site. When I asked him what kind of traffic he was getting to the site, he told me that he was only seeing about 10 to 25 visits per month. Does that sound like it’s worth the effort? No. I didn’t think so either. But before you make your decision, you should know that back when he was updating the site with fresh content, he was seeing over 25 visits per day! (on a regionally local site, no less!)

As content becomes more and more important to a website’s overall success (specifically Google rankings), business owners are starting to understand that they must blog regularly in order to stay high in the search engine result pages. This is because when the search engines crawl a page, they’re looking for fresh content. If your site has something new and fresh on it, it can often rank higher than those that don’t.

It’s pretty simple really. If you want to rank, you need to blog. So here are some options for you.

Write the content yourself.

Clearly, this is the best option from a quality and branding point of view. No one knows your products and services better than you. No one knows your clients better than you. You’ve got the most expertise and the best chance of writing content that is the perfect fit for your site. Of course, actually sitting down and writing a minimum of one article per week can be a difficult task when you’re trying to run a business. Think you can get your staff to write for your blog? Maybe, but they’ve got work to do too, right? It might make more sense to combine this strategy with one of the following outsourced strategies.  Pro: Content is very authentic. Con: It is time-consuming.

Hire an individual writer (or SEO company with writers on staff).

If you can find and afford a good one, hiring an individual writer is also a very good option for adding content to your site. Working with an individual allows you to get exactly the kind of content you want. An individual can often capture the voice of your business in a way that other services cannot. Also, the more you work with him or her, the better he or she will get at understanding your business and the nuances that are ideal for your clients and prospects. Plus, it’s nice to have direct access to the person writing for your site. Pro: Can also be very authentic and saves you a lot of time. Con: Hiring a professional writer can be expensive.

Outsource to a content creation company.

The third option is probably the most popular for those who are trying to keep their blog up to date, keep it relevant and keep their monthly cost under $400/mo (1 article per week). When you hire a content creation company, you’re basically hiring random writers to write about your business. The content can still be relevant, but may not be as specific to your company and your clients. It’s probably more “topically” relevant than specifically relevant. From a search engine point of view, this is usually just as good as the other options because the search engines aren’t as smart as actual people. Your prospects and clients may find that the content can be a little “high level” and not incredibly compelling but if it helps get your site to page one of Google… This is the least expensive option and there are several companies that offer this service. If you go this route, make sure that English is the first language of the authors.

Let’s recap. Content marketing is the new standard of SEO. If you want to rank high, you’ve got to be producing content. Blogs are a great way to continually add fresh content to your site. In 2013, make a weekly blog article a priority. Trust me. You won’t be sorry.

Thanks for reading.

David McBee

You might also enjoy “What to Blog. Make Your Content Robust.” and “Five Ways to Blog… Wrong”