Blogs are becoming increasingly popular with an estimated 200 million blogs currently in use. What was once an optional extra for the biggest companies only has rapidly become a pre-requisite for anyone serious about search engine optimisation and online marketing.

The reasons for a company to have a blog on their website are growing all the time with more companies adding blogs, giving their visitors a reason to return to the site. By having a blog you can:

• Establish yourself as an expert
• Help towards generating leads based directly on searches
• Improve communication with prospects or clients
• Attain a broader reach using RSS feeds
• Give your company a human face and a tone-of-voice

Blogs can be created using a variety of package with the most popular being Blogger and Wordpress. Both systems act as cut-down content management system and are very user-friendly and easy to use:

• can be updated with no HTML Knowledge
• can be styled to look exactly the same as your website
• can be hosted separately for free on Blogger or Wordpress servers

Above and beyond all these reasons, one of the main reasons for using blogs is for targeted and immediate search engine optimisation. Blog posts are often indexed by search engines, particularly Google, very quickly and if social bookmarking and blog submission tools are also employed you can see your article appear in the search engine results pages literally within minutes.

If you'd like to learn more about how a blog could work for your business, or if you already have a blog and want to make more out of it, give us a call on +44 (0) 115 947 0011 or email us at info@metafocus.co.uk and we'd be delighted to hear from you.

To find out more about Metafocus, visit our blog: www.metafocus.co.uk/blog