The online landscape has changed over recent years. First and foremost, online consumers are content consumers. They're in constant search (and on high alert) of updates from friends, funny videos, tidbits from celebrities, news about global events, emails from co-workers, research from industry professionals - you name it. In order to attract consumer attention, many companies are quickly becoming content producers.

Blogging is one of the easiest and most common ways to produce and distribute content. WordPress, the most popular content management system online, manages 22% of all new websites and version 3.3 has been downloaded over 19 million times in less than six months. Tumblr, a microblogging platform, alone has over 55 million blogs.

If you want your company in front of more eyes, the key is to consistently produce really great content that grabs attention and captivates readers. Having a blog integrated with your website means that readers are essentially entering the sales funnel whenever they view your content. Between your logo, links and calls to action, your blog has the potential to be a high-converting customer acquisition machine.

Knowledge and reputation are important factors to consider as well. Producing informed, quality content demonstrates your expertise and positions your company as an industry leader. Showing a small glimpse of the type of value you can offer customers through great blog content just makes sense.

Last, but certainly not least, blogging sends Google and other search engines all of the right messages. Most websites are limited in terms of the content they can produce, especially when it comes to fresh, non-static content. As a result, Google indexes the average website, ranks it for a few keywords and only revisits it occasionally.

Adding a blog to a website helps solve this problem. There's a constant supply of fresh content, there's more room to target additional keywords, there will be more people linking to your domain - this is the stuff Google and search engines love to see. This all translates to being ranked better and for more keywords, which will give you a serious boost in organic search engine traffic and, hopefully, more sales!