New Trend in web design

Small businesses are using blogs more than they are websites.

Hi this Virgil and I have been building websites for small businesses for the last seven years. Initially I started by building a website to promote my handyman service business. I have always been into marketing and computers so I it was only natural for me to gravitate to building websites I'm just a “do it yourself” kind of person!

First, I began building my website working with a company that provided a “drag and drop” style site builder. After spending several weeks and many nights, I had created my website! But, by the time it was completed, I did not feel that it provided a fair representation of the brand I was building.

The type of site I wanted would require a lot more features and more flexibility than was currently available to me. So by the time I competed the handyman site I was ready for something more.  So I set out on a journey to really educate myself and learn about web development, online marketing and branding.

So after much studying and building several sites there were a couple things I found out. First, it is very important that a website be visually appealing and properly coded to reflect that. Secondly, it is equally important to have a website optimized for search engines to locate and rank it. This is a hard balance to
accomplish but necessary if you really expect to drive traffic to your website from search results.

The situation has become that more and more business are now using blogs. Blogs are basically websites- but on steroids. The beautiful part is that they are easy for an average person to maintain. Blogs can also be customized to resemble traditional web sites, and the best part about blogs is that they are great for generating web traffic!

There are several reasons that they generate more traffic than traditionally built websites. First of all, there are things known as “plugins” that do a lot of the search engine optimization and submission for you. Plugins are usually free and easy to setup.

Another major reason company’s use blogs is because of the ease of adding new content. With traditional websites, a web designer needs to update your content. Updates are an additional expense that will be ongoing. But with a well designed blog, if you can write a word document and “copy/paste” you can maintain your blog yourself.

Now there are a few very important reasons why you would want to update your website regularly. The most obvious reason is that your visitors want and need fresh content. Think about it -if your content is dated or never changes what reason will a visitor have to come back? However, with a blog rather than a website, you can post whatever information whenever you want; announce an upcoming event, weekly specials, issue coupons, offer tips and on and on.

The thing I like best about blogs is their capacity for lead generation. Often I explain to my customers that having a traditional web site is a bit like fishing with one hook, but when you blog, it's like fishing with
hundreds of hooks.

Hundreds of hooks- how does that work you ask? Well, every time you post new content to your blog it is “pinged” to the search engines. “Pinging” is notifying the search engines that you have added new content. Search engines love new original content and rank those sites higher that provide fresh quality content. And the more you post quality articles and information about your business, other sites will link to your articles and blog. This works to increase your search engine ranking.

So in summary, blogs are inexpensive, they can be customized to match your brand, are great for search engines, easy to maintain, and are easy to update. So think how much these features can benefit your company as so many other companies already have. Consider it, maybe a blog is the way to go.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss how a customized blog designed to resemble a traditional web site can promote your business and brand, feel free to send me your questions.

Virgil E Griffin
All About Small Business, editor
GBN Web Development Inc, CEO

GBN Web Development Inc
708.359.0701. http://www.gbnwebdevelopment.com/