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Blogging: The Critical Factor to Website Success

Blogging: The Critical Factor to Website Success

Could you imagine running your business today without a website? Back in the 90's, many companies simply didn't think a website was needed. Boy, how times have changed! A website is now a cost of doing business--and a requirement for legitimacy.

But, just a plain old website isn't cutting it anymore. In fact, if you simply have a website that talks about your company and your services, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to come back...ever! And, to make matters worse, if you have a static website that you don't add content to, you will disappear from search engines (more on this in a minute), you will not attract new visitors to your site, and you will lose out on good prospects and candidates.

So, what can--and should--you do? One word: BLOG.

To understand why blogging is so important to the success of your business, you first need a crash course in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of making changes/updates/additions to your website in order to improve search engine rankings and ultimately drive more leads to your website.

What do search engines look at?

Each search engine has developed their own proprietary algorithm for determining how they serve up search results. There are entire books dedicated to explaining this in detail (in fact, we wrote one specifically for staffing firms that you can download here: SEO for Staffing Firms). But, for the purposes of this article we'll keep it simple; they look at: your website meta data and code, inbound links to your site, and the content on your site.

Content is the most important ranking factor.

The single biggest influencer on search engine rank is the actual content you publish on your website. Google, Bing and the other search engines want to serve up "relevant" search results to their users and it takes good, fresh and relevant content to improve search rankings.

According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam Team, as long as you're working hard to offer value to visitors (adding good quality content), Google is working hard to get your content to the top of search rankings. (Here is a link to a full video in which Matt goes into more detail).

So, in theory: Better Content = Improved Google Rankings = More Leads

But, does the theory hold true for staffing and recruiting firms? Does it depend on the size of your company? Does blogging work for different industries? There are a lot of open questions. Luckily for you, we have the answers!

Over the last several years, we have tested this theory--with more than 130 staffing and recruiting firms--collecting in-depth data along the way. Here are some of the results:

Does blogging work for larger staffing and recruiting firms with multiple offices? Here are two examples:

Case Study #1
Client	Manufacturing Staffing Firm
Location	19 offices in three states
Started blogging	Q3 2011
Campaign	Posts roughly four blog posts/month
Results
Total keywords driving traffic to the website	Increased 150%
*Total visits from search engines*	*Increased 235%.*
Total website visits	Increased 180%.

Case Study #2
Client	Clerical & Light Industrial Staffing Firm
Location	Over 40 offices located throughout the U.S.
Started blogging	Q2 2012
Campaign	Posts roughly eight blog posts/month
Results
Total keywords driving traffic to the website	Increased 277%
*Total visits from search engines*	*Increased 1,662%.*
Total website visits	Increased 846%!

Does blogging work for small, local staffing and recruiting firms? Here are two examples:

Case Study #1
Client	Commercial Staffing Firm
Location	1 office in Northern California
Started blogging	Q2 2011
Campaign	Posts roughly four blog posts/month
Results
Total keywords driving traffic to the website	Increased 86%
Total visits from search engines	Increased 176%
*Total website traffic*	*Increased 244%*

Case Study #2
Client	Commercial Staffing Firm in Virginia
Location	6 offices in Virginia
Started blogging	Q1 2009
Campaign	Posts roughly four blog posts/month
Results
Total keywords driving traffic to the website	Increased 352%
Total visits from search engines	Increased 473%
*Total website traffic*	*Increased 753%*

Does blogging work for niche recruiting firms? Here are two examples:

Case Study #1
Client	Accounting & Finance Recruiting Firm
Location	1 office in New England
Started blogging	Q2 2011
Campaign	Posts roughly eight blog posts/month
Results
Total keywords driving traffic to the website	Increased 381%
*Total visits from search engines*	*Increased 538%.*
Total website visits	Increased 846%!

Case Study #2
Client	Healthcare Recruiting Firm
Location	1 office in Florida (staffs nationally). Recruits travel nurses, therapists, allied health professionals and locum tenens
Started blogging	Q1 2011
Campaign	Posts roughly eight blog posts/month
Results
*Total keywords driving traffic to the website*	*Increased 187%*
Total visits from search engines	Increased 117%.
Total website visits	Increased 74%!

The Theory Holds True Across the Board - Blogging Works!

As you can see, blogging works for companies big and small, local and national, generalists and specialists, from unskilled light industrial workers to locum tenens.

On average, our clients have seen an increase in web traffic of more than 250% from as little as one blog post a week. Our top performing clients have seen traffic increase by more than 5,000%! And, the only firms that have seen blogging not work are the ones that stopped blogging.

Interested in learning more?

If you would like to learn more about how blogging can help drive more leads and qualified candidates to your staffing or recruiting firm, please contact us today at 888-696-2900.

We also have a full one-hour webinar available that reviews the benefits of blogging for staffing firms in even more detail.



Each new blog post is optimized for specific search terms. More content provides more opportunity to rank well in search results. Google takes note and over time your website starts ranking well for hundreds of different keywords which dramatically increases search engine traffic and drives more leads.		5 days after posting a blog optimized for a new city: "We received our first sales call. The client searched 'staffing agencies in Farmers Branch' and we came up 2nd! It's only a short project but needless to say, we are excited! Please keep pushing us to the top page. Great job!" - Commercial Staffing Firm in Addison, TX