A lot of people consider blogging a waste of time and money. However, most SEO companies recommend blogs for their customers’ websites, claiming that they bring a lot of benefits.

To bring some light into the matter, lets remember what search engine optimization gurus claim that Google loves the most in ranking websites: backlinks and original content published on regular basis. As far as the content is concerned, blogging is certainly the best way to lure the spiders and to make them index your website.

However, if you build your blog posts around relevant keywords for you niche and you link those keywords to your homepage, you get contextual backlinks, and, indeed, the conclusion that blogging can be considered a contextual link building technique is correct.

In terms of backlinks, things seem a little more complicated due to the fact that there are several types of backlinks and it is hard to tell which type is more appreciated according to the Google algorithms. However, every backlink represents a step forward and blogging can bring you hundreds or thousands of inbound links.

How is that possible? You must post valuable content that your site’s visitors will love reading and will want to share with their social network friends and not only. Each share will represent a deep link that not only points to your website, but helps you to distribute the link juice and to have several pages of your site indexed.

Another reason why you should enrich your site with a blog is that posting on it can help you to build new relationships and to get to know your visitors. Knowing more about them can help you reach out to them more effective and boost your sales.

You also have the chance to evaluate the impact that your products or services have on the customers, what is appreciated and what should be improved. Every relationship you build with a visitor has every chance to turn him or her into a loyal customer, depending on how well you play your cards.

Another reason why you should enrich your website with an active blog would be the possibility to generate leads. Research has it that the sites with active blogs see four times more leads compared to the sites which have no blog, on the condition that posting be made at least 20 times a month.

All of the above benefits put together will bring your website a boost of credibility and a great reputation among your target customers. By providing your visitors with useful information and advice through your blog posts, you win their confidence, and, when they want to buy products or services that you sell, your website will remain implanted in their subconscious, determining them to buy from you.

As you can see, blogging is one of the basic principles of internet marketing, a recipe for success that every website owner should try, as the result is a delicious mix of high traffic, better ranking and greater sales, all of them leading to the one thing we all love – money!