Businesses are failing to properly utilise blogs in order to enhance their search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts, fresh research has revealed.

A study by Write My Site indicated that 62 per cent of business owners who have introduced a blog did so with the aim of increasing traffic in mind.

However, just 29 per cent have managed to update content between one and three times each month, with a lack of time cited as the main problem by those who have failed to do so.

Managing director of the firm Emily Hill highlighted the importance of business blogging, noting that search engines such as Google in particular favour original and relevant content.

Digital marketing body Econsultancy also emphasised the benefits to SEO, stating: "The general advice these days is to create subject-specific content on your website and to categorise and label that content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. Blogs are good for this."

MarketingSherpa recently conducted a survey of agencies, finding that many believe their business-to-business clients could do more to aid SEO efforts.

Just 13 per cent said their clients are performing at a high level in the area.