Whether you’re thriving in the Silicon Bayou or hustling for Hollywood South, if you’re an entrepreneur in New Orleans, you’re not alone. According to the Brookings Institute, New Orleans exceeds the national average for startup creations by 56%. While that’s good news for the economy of southern Louisiana, it means that businesses at every stage of development have serious competition.

With all of those other businesses out there vying for the attention of consumers, how can your business increase its online klout and stay at the forefront of online marketing?

Corporate blogging provides one affordable and effective answer to that question.

Benefits

Blogs build inbound links

SEO strategists push inbound links for the same reason your mother told you to hang out with that nice Honor Roll student in high school: your site’s reputation improves with each inbound link from another reputable website.

Companies that blog have an average of 97% more inbound links than company websites without blogs. Investing in blogging, then, is investing in your company’s online reputation, and search engines, like your mom, tend to prefer shining reputations. They also tend to refer those websites more often.

Blogs increase indexing

Websites with more indexed pages receive more search traffic, and it stands to reason that a site with a blog will have more indexed pages than a website without a blog. In fact, companies that blog typically have 434% more indexed pages than those that don’t.

Blogs enrich keyword usage

The use of keywords and keyword phrases is a standard SEO tactic, and no content supplies as much opportunity for natural, robust use of keywords than blogs. Rather than cramming the same keyword into three paragraphs fifteen times – creating text that is both unintelligible and unintelligent – blog posts allow content creators to not only use select keywords more often and more gracefully, but they allow SEO strategists to gently shift the focus from one keyword to another when it’s necessary.

Blogs engage your market

Whether your target market is here in New Orleans or includes a broader swath of the online community, creating a consistent stream of fresh, engaging content for your company website gives others a reason to evangelize on your behalf. Whether it’s advice, entertainment, or valuable information, blogs offer lagniappe to your audience, a little something extra, at very little cost to you.