March 1, 2009 by James Oliver
That is the question, though it’s not an easy one. If you were to ask fifty different site owners about the benefits of a staff or news blog you’d probably get fifty different answers. Some would call it a way of extending the brand, others would swear blind that it’s a brilliant way of driving traffic, some would denounce it as a complete waste of time.
So what’s the truth? Well, in our opinion blogs are great, though it’s important to know what to expect, and to manage your expectations accordingly.
If you’re looking to simply drive traffic then a blog can work really well. If your blog is breaking news related, which most would be at least in part, a decently SEO optimised website will quickly start showing up in search results. However, this is probably not going to be the most targeted traffic in the world and may not directly translate to sales.
For this reason, a deluge of new visitors is not always particularly useful to e-commerce sites, except in terms of brand extension. It’s much more of a benefit to content based sites or online resources which rely on visitor numbers to sell advertising.
However, it’s important that the blog is actually good – there’s no point in showing someone a ream of spammy text when they click – that’s going to help precisely no one.
Related posts:
- To Blog or not to Blog? (User Experience)
- To Blog or not to Blog? (SEO)
- Study Shows Consumers Browse Webstores on Smartphones, but Three Times More Purchase Using Tablets
- Transparency On Traffic From Search Partners
- According to Latest Study Every $1 Spent on Paid Search Generates $6 in Offline Sales
- The Recession’s effect on eCommerce Sites
