Starting an external blog for your business can offer a number of benefits. Most of these benefits center on increasing both new and reoccurring traffic.

Before we dive too deep, let’s take a look at the fundamentals of what an "external business blog" really is.

What is an external blog?

An external blog is publishing source that is on a separate domain (.com, .org, .info) from the business's website. As opposed to an internal blog that is a part of the domain (whether as a blog page or a sub-domain,) external business blogs can offer greater flexibility and additional SEO value.

Typically, external business blogs are built with theme or topical relevance to that of the business. However, what makes an external blog for a business more flexible than an internal blog is the ability to brand the external blog as its own entity.

This is where it is important to really "carve your niche" with you blog and set the stage for highly focused content. For instance, if local winery is unveiling an external blog, they will want to focus their content specifically on the wine industry. Furthermore, the winery could carve its niche deeper by focusing the content of the blog unique aspect of wine and how it relates to local interests.

Developing an external blog that flows with the brand of the business is key to attract targeted, in-market traffic. Flexibility and creativity come into play when determining just how aligned the brand of the blog meets that of the business.

Brand your blog strategically

All blogs should have a primary goal. The common goal for most blogs is to attract users to the blog (with solid marketing and interesting content) and funnel that traffic to the website of the business.

To do that, you need to brand your blog in a way that relates to your target market. The type content in which you plan to publish plays a big role in positioning the brand of the blog. Also a factor in blog branding is the nature of the target audience.

Does your blog seek to advise and teach visitors? Or does your blog seek to inform and enlighten visitors? The answers to these types of questions can help you determine the ideal brand image of your blog.

Populate your blog with precision

Referring back to the concept of "carving your niche," the content in which you publish on your blog is your way to achieve just that. Expansive blogs that cover a broad range of topics typically have a number of experts and writers populating the blog (to cover each topic.) Evaluate your goals and your resources, and start determining the target theme to position your blog.

Regardless of your area of specialty, stay focused on your niche and write content that stays specific to your blog's topic. Sometimes writing about topics that are outside the realm of your blogs topic may seem tempting, but always try to stay close to your blog's main idea.

Generate SEO value from your external blog

The SEO value of your external blog comes in two ways:

1. inbound traffic from visitors who find your blog, and later make their way to your website
2. building keyword-targeted links to your website to help its search engine rankings

The first SEO advantage of inbound traffic hinges on the quality and nature of your blog's content. Again, highly focused content that speaks to a precise audience is imperative to compelling visitors to further explore your blog and find their way to the website of your business.

Link building with your blog can help you grow your rankings in the search engines on specific keyword targets. The practice is quite simple. You must first have a blog story that relates to the link (or anchor text and URL destination of that link) that you want to build. It is important to ensure that the article or blog post has some relevancy to that of the link.

In addition to content relevancy, the anchor text, or link text, should contain the keywords in which you are targeting for the page receiving the link.

For instance, let’s say a small batch winery on the Leelanau Peninsula of Michigan is supplementing the local SEO efforts of its website with an external blog. In that blog, they are writing articles about various wine-related topics in the Leelanau Peninsula region. To make their website more relevant (and better optimized for) searches like "Leelanau Peninsula wineries," they should use the anchor text "Leelanau Peninsula wineries" in the links that they build from their blog to their website.

Well that about sums up this post on external blogging for you business. If you have any additional insights, or questions, please post them in the comments section below.