Blog Benefits: Traffic, Links, and Indexed Pages

Filed in Blogging by Matt McGee on August 17, 2009 9 Comments

The folks at HubSpot did a little digging into their client stats to compare how companies without a blog fare against companies that have a blog. The results, after looking at more than 1,500 companies, are pretty staggering. Companies with a blog have:

  • 55% more visitors
  • 97% more inbound links
  • 434% more indexed pages

blog.data.links.2

Blogging isn’t for everyone, but it’s quite often one of the first things I recommend to clients and prospects that want to crush their competition. Sure, Facebook and Twitter are all the rage these days, but I still say that a well-written blog is one of the most powerful weapons in any online marketing plan of attack.

Head over to the HubSpot blog post to see more charts like this, as well as the conversation happening in the comments.

Comments (9)

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  1. Will Scott says:

    Matt,

    That’s great data. And yes, it’s tough to get small businesses to blog. We’ve taken to just asking them to “outline” or “throw ideas at us” rather than to “write”.

    It makes it easier for them to get past the blank-sheet anxiety and we still get their unique, expert perspective rather than our best-guess at their business.

    Will

  2. Jacob Stoops says:

    This doesn’t surprise me. Comapanies that have blogs (even if they don’t get it) at least understand the value of potentially reaching out on a more personal level to their visitors. Blogs give the company a voice, and are often a great resource of information to current and potential customers.

  3. Paul Flood says:

    This some pretty eye-opening data Matt. I run into the same wall that Will mentions and found it’s best to just ask for topics and ideas and handle the writing.

    Once more companies realize the value blogs have in actually communicating with their market, vs. just pushing our a marketing message, the wider acceptance we’ll see.

  4. I agree that blogging is still the best form.as well even though there are so many other forms of marketing. Blogging is a good way to start.

  5. Those are great stats.

    I just started blogging about website design for businesses. I’ve already noticed I’m getting more traffic from search engines.

    And it makes me look like an expert! 🙂

  6. Very interesting to see the numbers on this. I’ve always felt this was the case but it’s great to see some real data behind it.

  7. Dave Oremland says:

    Matt: I was disappointed in the substance of the article. It lacked depth as follows:

    Bigger businesses and probably bigger content websites are more capable of generating more traffic than smaller businesses/sites. That could be the deciding factor with regard to overall traffic volume.

    Larger, more substative businesses with websites with more pages and substance could and should generate far more links than would smaller businesses websites.

    Finally larger businesses with more substance will obviously have more pages.

    Of course blogging will add pages and indexed pages.

    Having said all this, we do blog on behalf of several small business sites. It does generate traffic, attract links, and generates more indexed pages.

    I think the comparison should be made by like businesses to ascertain the differences to get a realistic feel for the impact of blogging.

    I don’t dispute the information, I just think it is a mile long and only one inch deep with little substance.

    Real comparisons with substitive differences would make for compelling information.

    (actually, Matt, when I saw this analysis, I thought about your comments about dashboard, which I acknowledged and with which I agreed. Its very incomplete in its presentation of deeply helpful facts.)

    and that is my $0.02 😉

  8. Thanks so much for the great article! Blogging is hot right and a great time to really get out there! I will for sure beef my blogging skills up! thanks have a great day!

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