Your website needs a blog. It needs one today because a) they’re free (mostly) and b) because they increase the visibility of your domain to both readers and to the search engines (read: increases revenue).
After a decade of “Web 2.0″, I find it amazing that there is still reluctance on the part of many companies to put a blog on their websites, for whatever reason. Perhaps they are reluctant to invest any additional funds into what they view as “the never ending money pit” that is a website. Perhaps they’re afraid because they’re not writers per se, or because they’re afraid of the legal implications of posting content that could come back to haunt them.
This is a mistake, and if you have a website without a blog, you are throwing away valuable revenue possibilities.
Lets address some of the issues, giving valuable insight into the value of blogs and why you need one for your site.
Blogs are free, as in Beer
If someone is offering free beer, people come running. Similarly, most of the top blogging solutions are as free as free beer. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and others are all Open Source software, which means that they are free to download, use, and modify.
There is obviously going to be some cost in integrating and/or designing the blog to match your current site, but with the large amount of free custom themes out there for each of the different blogging platforms, you should be able to get close enough to your current design that minor modifications might be all you need. Of course, another option is that you could have us build it for you, for a nominal fee 
Good Content is King
If you want to have a successful website, this must be your mantra: Content is King. The search engines place heavy emphasis on content to determine the relevancy of your site to someone’s search query. If you sell widgets, having a blog that talks about widgets is a Good Thing™.
That does not require that you have Pulitzer-level writers on staff. Obviously, if you’re selling widgets, you must know something about widgets. You know about other peoples widgets, why yours are better, where the industry is going with regard to widgets, and you’re excited about a new development that will enable you make better widgets.
So write about it.
You don’t need to be fancy, you just need content that will be relevant and usable, that users want to read and are searching for. Good content assures the user that you are in fact an authority on the matter, increasing the possibility of them converting. Good content leads to higher conversions leads to higher revenue.
What it requires is mostly the ability to come up with good ideas, and a thorough understanding of how to collect and collate information from Mr. Google, your best friend.
As an example, you could write an article called “Top 5 Ways to Polish Your Widget.” Care to guess what it will be about? 5 ways that you’ve found, through your research on Google for the terms “polishing widgets,” how to polish widgets.
You want to know the amazing thing about doing this? The next time someone else searches for those keywords, your article will (hopefully) appear in the search rankings. And appearing in search rankings means more revenue.
Did I mention free ad revenue?
Lest I forget, a blog is a perfect spot to place advertisements on your site. Blog readers are well accustomed to the ubiquitous sidebar ad, and the potential revenues only increase as you add more pages.
The differing content on your site allows the Google advertising machine to get rolling full steam, placing highly targeted ads on specific pages due to their long-tail nature. Even if you do nothing else, put a blog on your site and slap some advertising in it to cover your hosting costs. Advertising on your blog is practically free revenue.
Conclusion
A blog is essential for any SEO project. Call it “news & information,” call it “blog,” call it whatever you want, a section with relevant fresh content is a must, and your website is no exception to that.
If you’re not comfortable with adding a blog to your site yourself, several companies exist that can help you, Adworkz included. Feel free to drop us a line if you have more questions.
