Blogging is one of the most important tools for businesses looking to improve their search engine rankings and reach out to a larger number of online users. Having a compelling, consistently updated blog on your website gets visitors involved in your business and keeps them coming back. When starting a blog, you have the choice of either using a blog hosting site, such as Blogger, or having a self-hosted blog directly on your own website. Many businesses end up using third party services, like Blogger, as their blogging platform, but there are specific advantages to blogging on your own website that these third party blogging platforms are simply unable to accomplish. Here are some of the advantages.

It looks professional – Creating a uniquely designed and formatted blog on your own website looks more professional than having a link to your Blogger account. And as you probably know, professionalism is one of the keys to attracting visitors and potential clients.

Search engine rankings – If you have a blog hosted directly on your official website, each additional blog post will increase the number of content pages of your website, making you more visible in search engine results. Search engines love to see fresh and unique content, which will have a positive effect on your site’s rankings.

Backlinks – Hosting a blog on your own domain means that all the backlinks will benefit your main webpage more immediately than cross linking to a blog page hosted on a third party domain.

Branding – If you want to promote a collective brand and company name by having your company logo appear visibly on your blog, it is best to have your blog as a part of your main website.

You can choose your URL – Building a blog within your own domain enables you to choose the name of your blog without having to compete for it with other individuals or companies on third party blogging platforms.

It’s easy to set up – In terms of effort vs. payoff, setting up a blog on your website is the easiest thing you’ll ever do that will yield the biggest payoff. It usually requires minimal technical expertise and can often be created and maintained by the same people who already work for your company. I would recommend using the Wordpress or Drupal content management systems for this.

It’s cheap – Yes, Blogger and other third party blog hosting sites are free, but adding a blog to your own site isn’t very expensive, and the little money you will have to spend on building one is more than worth the benefits it provides as a powerful marketing tool.

Provides accessible platform for company news – A company blog gives you the perfect place for letting customers know about upcoming company changes, new products/services industry news, events, etc. If you’ve taken the time to create a compelling blog that keeps readers coming back, these announcements can translate into direct sales. Just be sure to not overly promote your products and services in your posts, but rather look to engage readers with relevant posts that are informative and interesting.

Appear Accessible – A website blog makes you appear more accessible, and customers like a company that feels accessible. Give visitors the opportunity to leave comments and feel like they are a part of the conversation. Always be sure to get involved and respond to comments that are left on your blog.

A blog lets you learn about your customers – By reading what your customers are saying about your blog posts, you can learn a lot about what they like, what they don’t like and what they think about the things your business is doing.

This guest post was written by Ryan Frank, an avid blogger and Internet marketing enthusiast living in San Diego, CA. Ryan currently works for BestRank.com, a San Diego Internet marketing firm specializing in search engine and social media marketing.