You’ve been hearing for quite some time that your business needs to have a blog. After all,companies that blog earn 67 percent more leads each month than those that don’t. And 6 out of 10 online consumers have made a purchase after reading a recommendation in a blog post. However, maintaining a business blog can be incredibly time consuming.

The typical blog post takes an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes to write. Your time is precious when you’re running a small business, and most entrepreneurs don’t have the extra time to allocate to maintaining an active business blog.

With so much hype surrounding social media and paid advertising, is it really necessary for your business to have a blog in 2018? The answer: yes, business blogging will be more important than ever in the new year.

Business blogging must continue to be a paramount part of your SEO strategy in the coming year. Today’s savvy consumers are turning to the internet to research products and services, and maintaining a blog allows your business to earn fresh indexed pages that include keywords that your audience is typing into search engines. Voice search is one of the fastest growing consumer trends, and blogging provides marketers with an opportunity to rank for the long tail keyword phrases that consumers are asking their voice technology assistants.

While blogging needs to be a part of your SEO strategy in 2018, here are a few ways that we’re seeing business blogging evolve in the new year:

1. Longer blog posts.
With search engines placing emphasis on the quality and value that content provides, it’s no wonder that SMB owners are putting more time and effort into writing blog posts.

Currently, the average blog post length is 1,050 words; however, the word count “sweet spot” for the top ranked content on Google is between 1.140 and 1285 words.

Writing longer, more in-depth blog posts will help your business to earn a prime position in Google’s search rankings in 2018.

2. More blog posts.
Understanding the value that blogging brings to their SEO strategy, more businesses are planning to increase their blogging frequency in the new year. Research shows that companies that publish more than 16 blog posts each month generate 4.5 times more leads than those that publish 4 or fewer posts each month.

Every time you publish a new blog post, you create a new page on your website for search engines to index. Maintaining an active blog will tell your audience and search engines to keep checking your website for new content.

3. Compounding blog posts.
Compounding blog posts continue to earn traffic over time and add value to your SEO strategy. Evergreen content is a perfect example of a compounding blog post as it continues to benefit your business long after you publish it. Typically, one out of every ten posts that you publish will be compounding blog posts. However, on average, this type of content is responsible for generating 38 percent of your blog’s traffic.

Publishing compounding blog posts will help your business to establish authority with your audience and with search engines. Establishing yourself as an authority in your industry will help to boost SEO and drive more traffic to your blog.

4. Mobile-friendly format.
Consumers now prefer to browse the web using mobile devices than traditional desktop computers. This is particularly true when it comes to reading blog content. Therefore, your blogging platform and choice of theme need to respond well to the smaller mobile screens. If your blog is not mobile-friendly, you’ll lose traffic in 2018.

In addition, search engines like Google give preference to mobile-friendly websites in search rankings. Ensuring that your business blog is mobile-friendly will benefit your overall search strategy in the new year.

In summary, business blogging still needs to be a critical component of your SEO strategy in 2018 and will be vital to achieving a successful online presence. Take these four pieces of advice into account to maximize the ROI from your blogging efforts in the new year.