Building a website by itself won’t automatically get you clients and customers. You will need to find a way on how to reach out to your target market and make them aware that your products and services are available for purchasing through your website.
One way of effectively promoting your website to your audience is by blogging. There are lots of benefits that come with creating and publishing the right kind of posts on your blog, as long as you have clear idea on why you should blog. But for the purpose of getting more clients and raise your sales, you will need to employ a business blog with the purpose of attracting more readers, subscribers, leads, and customers.
Is writing on a blog enough?
Blogging is no longer about writing. While the main purpose of having a blog is to share ideas and connect with your readers, you will achieve neither if you don’t know how to design your blog in the best way possible.
The blog design not only serves as eyecandy for your target audience, but it should also boast a user interface that suits well to readers. To strike the balance between both factors, observe the following tips below.
Do: observe best SEO practices
On-page optimization strategies aim for improve your loading speed and provide readers with a seamless experience as they browse through your content. Here are some that you should follow by heart.
Don’t: use Javascript
As much as possible, take out unnecessary Javascript elements from your blog. These will slow down your blog’s loading speed and will cause some of your visitors to leave especially if your business blog is loaded with these elements. Here are other elements that can slow down your blog.
Do: add call to actions button
Part of a blog’s design is to lead readers to commit to your desired actions. By placing a clear and visible call to action in each of your pages and posts, whether it’s building an email list or getting them to download your free resources, you will be able to achieve your goals faster.
Don’t: places ads without reason
While online ads help you generate extra income to your blog, you won’t be able to earn the income you’re targeting for if you don’t know how you use and where to place them on your blog. You need to understand the rationale on how ads operate and the best ways of using each type for your blog.
Also, placing lots of ads above the fold (the portion of the page that visitors see first) may annoy your readers and will force them to leave your blog without browsing through your content. According to Google policy, you are strongly advised to use three ad types on the pages of your blog. If your blog exceeds the prescribed number of ads, your blog will not only become less usable for your visitors, but will also be penalized by search engines.
Do: compress your images
Using uncompressed images will make your site load slower. By using image compression tools, as well as adding alt text to each of them (a standard SEO practice), you can maximize your blog’s performance for the benefits of your readers.
Don’t: make visitors search for important pages on your blog
Make sure that your landing pages, as well as pages that reveal your business or company information (About, Contact, etc) can be seen on the menu bar on the header or on the sidebar. You can even use different widgets and plugins such as a scroll-triggered box or opt-in box to ensure that certain pages in your blog will be seen and clicked on by your visitors.
Final thoughts: Making the most out of your business also means making the most out of your business blog other than just writing content on it. The tips featured above should help you establish a blog that appeases your target readers from a design perspective.