If you live in the world of search engine optimization and online marketing you probably know the importance of a blog and can’t imagine why someone would choose not to have a blog about their business or industry.The concept of a blog may be less obvious and much different however for a website owner.

There is a very common misconception about blogging.It is that blogging is for personal rants and complaining about your neighbor or the underwear you recently purchased that isn’t as soft as advertised.It is this preconceived notion of a blog that causes many business owners to steer away from the blogosphere in dread that they will have to divulge some personal revelations about themselves or their undergarments.

So many times, clients will ask, “Why do I need a blog?”, “Well, what would I write about?”, and “Would a blog really ‘go well’ with my business?” And the confusion generally lies in that earlier misconception; that blogs are strictly for personal venting, personal sharing and personal ranting.This is only true of the personal blog.Which many people maintain.A business blog however, the kind of blog you would have online for your business, has a different goal and that is to inform about your industry, products or services.This does not mean that a business blog can’t get personal, but generally, business is business and your blog should be useful to visitors and should only get personal to the level of making your blog posts conversational and relatable.Your personality should shine; your personal life should not.

Another big turn-off for business bloggers is the idea of having to maintain their own blog.Coming up with content is no easy challenge for some.There are natural born talkers out there, that have no trouble making the transition to the world of blogging and blog marketing, but for another very large group of business owners, the idea of writing and maintaining a good blog needs to be balanced by a promise that business will follow their authoring efforts.For the later, studies have been conducted and have shown that online guests stay 60% longer on websites that host their own blog.This extended stay means you are getting more face time with a potential client or customer and maybe a returning visitor for your great source of information.

Beyond being a vessel of information for your online visitors and returning customers, search engines love a quality blog.The more relevant content you link back to your site and the better you get at integrating your keywords into your blog posts, the more relevant and better score you are going to get from the search engines.Not to mention that most blog posts will start to arrive in the search results beside your website, allowing you to control even more of the top organic search result positions.The reasons you should have a blog are many and maintaining a blog is far from rocket science making blog marketing a great investment for any business.