Your business blog is one of the ways to grow the online presence of your business.

By improving your blog, you’re telling your potential customers what your business does and how it can help solve their problems.

In this article I’ll share five practical ways to improve the performance of your small business blog in 2021, and stay ahead of your competitors.

Let’s dive in.

1. Focus more on problem-solving keywords

People who visit your business blog have problems they believe your content will provide solutions to. Sometimes they feel disappointed (or frustrated) if they can’t get the help they’re looking for.

If a prospect doesn’t see what they need, it reduces the chances of them engaging with your products, services and marketing funnels.

During keyword research, pay more attention to keywords that solve your customers’ problems. “How to” keywords are good examples here.

2. Update your old content

New information is published on any topic you’ve written about every day. Consider updating previous blog posts to serve your audience the latest and most accurate information on that topic.

When you update your old content, it sends a strong signal to search engine algorithms that the content has the latest information and boosts its visibility.

In addition, it makes you appear as a credible and reliable source of information.

3. Pay attention to your page speed

Users don’t have the time to wait for your web page to load. They leave quickly – maybe for your competitor’s page – if yours loads slowly. This can result in a high bounce rate.

A web page that loads in less than 3 seconds is considered fast, so if yours takes longer than that, you’ll probably want to fix it.

Google includes page speed as one of its core ranking factors. If your page loads slowly, below are some steps you can take to improve load time.

  • Deactivate and uninstall any plugin you don’t need.
  • Compress your images with plugins that don’t bloat your website like Smush, ShortPixel, Image Optimizer, EWWW Image Optimizer, etc.
  • Use Content Delivery Network like Cloudflare to serve up content closer to where a visitor is located.

4. Track and monitor key metrics using Google Analytics

There are key metrics you need to track to determine the performance of your business blog. Some of them are bounce rate, average page per session, page views, traffic source, new visitors vs. returning visitors, etc.

Luckily, Google Analytics is a free tool that you can set up in minutes and begin to track metrics and generate reports.

5. Diversify your source of traffic

When it comes to driving traffic to your business blog, you shouldn’t focus on one source. There are various sources of traffic you can use in 2021. Many blogs aim only at driving organic traffic through Google.

But Pinterest is another source of traffic that’s working for some blogs. Even Quora, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook are sources through which you can grow your traffic.

No matter the quality of the blog post you publish, if your target audience can’t see and consume it, it’s not helping your business.

The performance of your business blog is directly related to the rate at which your potential customers will buy your products and services, which is why you need to measure and improve your blog’s performance in 2021.