Most MSPs struggle with their blog. By “struggle” I mean that they do blog but their efforts result in no increase in traffic (let alone leads) whatsoever.
So why do these blogs fail so miserably? What happened to the promise of inbound?
The short answer is bad execution. Conversely, when blogging is done well, it increases quality traffic and leads. However, if your content is second-hand and you did no competitive research up front, well, what do you expect, man?
Below I’ve unpacked two of the most common mistakes I’ve seen on MSP blogs.
I’ve seen lots of MSP websites and, if I had to guess, about 70-80% rely predominantly syndicated content. And, to be clear on what this means, here is the definition of content syndication.
So why is syndicated content crappy? Because it doesn’t help you rank better on Google. Period. And, last I checked, the point of blogging was to increase quality traffic! Syndicated content neither increases traffic, nor does it attract local prospects.
You don’t need to be an SEO expert to understand why it’s broken. Let’s look at a real example.
The article “Say goodbye to Office 365 — and hello to Microsoft 365” is a syndicated article published originally by TechAdvisory, and then copied on hundreds of MSP websites.
What is a search engine supposed to make of hundreds of websites that publish the same exact article?
Answer: ranking indifference.
This is what you see on Google’s search results if you so happen to search for the exact title of the article:
It’s one MSP website after another! You know, this reminds me of those souvenir shops we find near major tourist attractions, like the Eiffel tower or Times Square, you name it. These tourist traps sell the same cheap t-shirts, mugs and posters. As a tourist, my perception is that these shops sell nothing unique and I should just hunt for a bargain. That’s it.
If an average highschool football team plays against a division one college team, the bigger boys will absolutely crush the younglings every single time. This is what’s happening to MSP blogs. They are overpowered by websites with bigger domain authority, better pagerank and better quality content overall, and this results in the MSP’s blog failing miserably.
For example, if I Google “cybersecurity stack for small businesses,” here’s what Google spits out on page 1
No MSPs, instead it's the large sites, like the SBA.gov and ZDnet.com, who dominate. There we have it. Most people will visit one of those top websites instead of exploring page 2 or 3 of search results.
