In the world of instant information and search engine rankings, blogging has become an invaluable way to boost your online visibility. Google rewards those who blog vital information with higher rankings. In other words, blogging drives more organic traffic to your website, through search engine optimization.

You simply cannot afford to ignore blogging. And your business will directly benefit from such a commitment of time and energy—here are just a few of the statistics to prove it.

Blogs are the 5th-most trustworthy source of information on the internet, according to a Technorati Digital Influencer report. And more than 80% of online consumers in the United States trust the advice and information they receive from blogs, according to BlogHer.

In this era of ubiquitous digital interaction, blogs actually provide a human face for your business or organization. Clients and potential customers can learn about your culture and your business—which increases their trust in you and helps you build a relationship with them.

Blogging about topics that provide useful information for your current and prospective clients positions you as a subject matter expert, which helps you stand out among your competitors. It also gives you the opportunity to front-load value to future customers—by providing them with your expertise and helping them gain confidence in you before they begin purchasing your services or products. This front-loading technique has been wildly successful for us at Blakely + Company, a full-service advertising agency in Colorado Springs.

Blogging generates 67% more leads for B2B marketers than for those who don’t blog, according to InsideView. And a small biz that blogs receives 126% more lead growth than a small biz that doesn’t blog, according to ThinkCreative.

Of course, leads can be turned into purchases. Once you have someone in the funnel, then you’ll use your expertise to land the sale. And in terms of shaping customer opinion, blogs are the 3rd-most influential online service (Pamorama).

What’s your Tipping Point?

Now, if you’re wondering how much writing it will take to start seeing ROI, here’s the tipping point: Traffic generation increases by up to 30%, once you write 21-54 blog posts, according to TrafficGenerationCafe. That’s certainly worth the effort of several hours of research and writing per week.

Companies that blog receive 434% more indexed pages on average, according to HubSpot.

Indexed pages are the lifeblood of your online traffic. When a Googlebot crawls pages and processes that information, it will add those pages to a searchable index if it determines them to be quality content.

To increase your search rankings, remember, “Information such as title tags and ALT attributes (alternate text for images) are also analyzed during indexing,” according to Kissmetrics.

So, as you prepare your business for this launch and put a weekly or biweekly reminder in your calendar, remember that your marketing return on investment for blogging is highly cost-effective—and once you gain momentum, you may enjoy it more than you want to admit. (Not to worry, we won’t give away your secret.)

It’s time to put on your creative hat and start blogging—unless, of course, you already have more business and more clients than you know what to do with.