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Search engine optimization is a slow process, a process that can take months to see results. You can speed that process up by adding a blog to your website. You can speed the process up even further by creating a self hosted blog on a separate server to your website. The one argument we frequently hear is that time is a big issue. It needn’t be. Get someone else to do the ghostwriting and you can get on with building your business.

If you are going to build your business’s online profile then you need to invest in your future. The small cost you pay today to create a blog and have a ghostwriter create the content will pay huge dividends in the future when your main business website starts to rank highly in search results. More importantly, a blog can help you add hundreds of long tail keywords, long tails that individually only provide a small amount of traffic, but collectively account for a large amount - and it is often more targeted.

What makes a website popular? Why does one online entrepreneur make more money than another? What Makes Home-Based Medical Transcription Lucrative? They all have one thing in common. They promote what they do well. For a business, a blog is the start. Add a social bookmarking and social media marketing regime to your regular posting and your blog will rapidly climb the search rankings. I read where one blog wondered “Is Social Search Just Getting Its Diapers?” It probably is - however the future is bright for social search and if you can take advantage of it now, you will be well placed when social search does advance.

If you are wondering where to start when it comes to creating a blog, I suggest you read Why Develop Your Own Blog Platform? first. There are plenty of good blog platforms around so don’t try and reinvent the wheel - go with what works. A post that reinforces everything we have said in the past describes How writing for the web differs from writing for print. There is a big difference between the two.

Blogs are an important tool for any business if they want to build their profile and increase visitor numbers. If you need a ghostwriter to get your blog off the ground and sending traffic to your website, contact a professional blog manager. They can develop your blog while you develop your business.

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With reports that Global Search Grew By 46% In 2009 you know people are looking for something. If you are wanting to make money blogging then the trick of course is to tap into the topics that people are searching for. Easier said than done but there are ways to succeed.

First, making money through a blog requires a commitment. I won’t say it’s hard work, but it does take that daily commitment to develop your blog and to work at ways of delivering traffic. How do you find what people are searching for? If you’re a first time blogger then let me suggest you start by looking at yourself. What do you have a passion for? What do can you write about right at this very minute with very little in the way of research? That should be your starting point.

If you have a passion for clothing, and you are a plus size, then think about what you can write about that area. Clothing covers such a wide range from pants to tops to dresses and that’s just the outer layer. Do you like capris? Can you write a post such as - Plus Size Capris are Hot. More importantly, can you monetize it? You can even if it is through ads such as Adsense or similar.

Adsense is just one method of monetizing a blog. Other sources of income include affiliate earnings and selling your own products. Can you teach others how to do something? Could you teach something like - How to Excel in Medical Transcription? If you can, take the time to create a first class ebook - they are becoming popular again.

There are many different ways to monetize a blog. Start with areas that you have a passion for. Do a search for affiliate programs that match that niche or settle for straight out pay-per-click advertising. the choice is yours. Write to your blog everyday using keywords that you want to target. Use social media to promote your blog together with article marketing to gain inbound links. You can make money blogging - just read through some of the posts on this blog for more in-depth information on each area.

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If you listen to some people on the internet you would start to believe that blogs had gone past their ‘use by date”. I rather think they are missing the point when it comes to business blogs. Blogs in general are communication tools. They provide a pathway for businesses to communicate information to the public while providing a means with which the public can communicate with a business - in a very public way - comments are open to all to read. From an SEO perspective, blogs are still valuable tools when it comes to link building, particularly if the content is of value to someone. That last is the most important. You may not find this content valuable, but others may. Here are a couple of examples of where blog content is providing useful information to others.

Taker the The Plus Size Clothing Blog. Okay, so you are as skinny as a rake. But half of the western world’s population is said to be overweight and a great many of them require plus size clothing. A blog like this is in a position to provide information to these people whilst, hopefully, leading readers through to purchase plus size clothing. Since blogs are easier to rank in search results than, say, a sales site, it makes good business sense to create this blog. The latest post (at the time of writing) - Plus Size Style for the Apple Figure - looks at a particular body shape. Do you know about apple figures (not Apple Corp sales figures) and where to buy clothing to match? Probably not but a search may show this blog in the results - that is the aim.

Blogs go beyond sales. They are also valuable for distributing information. Are you parent considering sending your child to a private school? Are you in the New York area? The NYC Private Schools blog publishes information on private schools in the New York area. As a parent, you may find this blog a valuable resource when trying to determine which private school (if any) you want to send your child too. Their latest post - NYC Private School Focus on Beekman School - provides valuable information on the Beekman School, information parents will find useful before making any final decisions.

Is the business blog dead? No, it’s far from it. Providing good quality content over an extended period of time can help a business achieve their goals much faster than if they ignored the power of blogs. Add social marketing to the mix and you have a very powerful tool.

Need help establishing a powerful business blog? Ask a professional blog management team for more information.

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All you blog marketers need to come together right now and join the IM 365 Club. I’m looking for 365 joint venture partners and you could be one of them. You’ll get all the details by clicking the link. Great value and great marketing for pro Internet marketers. Check it out!

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I’m amazed at the number of real estate agents who still don’t have a blog. This is the one tool I think every business owner should have, but a real estate agent especially.

I recently found an article that promised to discuss the benefits of real estate blogging. I was sorely disappointed.

To start with, the articles has no meat in it for about five paragraphs. Then, when you do find the substance, the author recommends a third-party website for blogging, quizzes, and polling. While that in and of itself isn’t bad, the community the author recommends is a second-rate site at best. If you’re going to take his advice and start a blog on a third-party site such as the one he suggests, you’d be better off going to one of these three as a real estate agent:

• Blogger
• WordPress
• ActiveRain

Both Blogger and WordPress.com offer free blog hosting for any niche. ActiveRain is a real estate community that offers free blog hosting for real estate professionals. But, honestly, a better solution than any of these three is to own your own domain name and to set up your real estate blog there. It’s much better to own the real estate than to rent it, even if renting for free. Don’t you agree?

Learn more about setting up your own real estate blog from a blog management professional now.

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What’s most important when it comes to writing and marketing a business blog? Is it brand? Traffic? Design? Social media? SEO? Or none of the above?

Actually, it could be all of the above, but there is a deeper answer. When it comes to business blogging, there are a lot of factors to consider. But the most important aspect of your blog is your audience. Who are you writing for? Think about it for a minute and when you’ve defined your audience, write it down. Because that’s who you should write every blog post for.

Don’t write for the search engines. Yes, make sure your posts are SEOd, but don’t focus so heavily on SEO that your forget your human audience. Instead, write with your audience’s needs in mind and market your blog, write your blog, design your blog, and promote your blog with that audience in mind. It’s the most important thing about blogging.

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Technorati is tracking more than 1.5 million blog posts daily. Since 2002, Technorati has tracked 133 million blog records. That’s quite a stretch in seven years. But there’s always room for more.

According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report, half of all male bloggers are professional business bloggers and 38% of female bloggers blog about business. But we think there may be more. Not every blog is listed with Technorati. The website only tracks those blogs that are listed in its database. So there are likely millions more out there.

No matter how many business blogs there are, however, there could be more. And your business could probably benefit from having a blog. But don’t buy the hype about the “blogosphere”. Not every blog has to be connected to the social web. Yours can be, but there are different purposes for a blog. If you’d like to know more about business blogging and how your business may benefit from a blog, contact a professional blog manager today.

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While not getting into the nitty gritty details of guerrilla blogging (because if you click the link you’ll get them on the other side), I would like to discuss briefly why you need a guerrilla blogging strategy.

Guerrilla blogging is a term I use to describe a method of blogging based on technical SEO tactics without ruining your content for human readers. It’s a difficult thing to master, but essential (and becoming more essential every day).

So why do you need a guerrilla blogging plan? Because you want to beat the competition in the search results. Plain and simple. The Web is a very competitive environment and you need to start thinking of everyone online as your competition. The basis of guerrilla blogging is the assumption that anyone can target any key phrase at any time and try to rank in the top positions of the SERPs for that key phrase. Whether they are successful or not is another matter. But the fact that they are targeting that phrase makes them a competitor if you are also targeting the phrase.

In order to succeed at guerrilla blogging, you’ve got to blog in such a way that your own SEO benefits are maximized while everyone else’s are minimized. And if you do it right, you’ll see your web pages rise in the search engine rankings while everyone else’s falls. Guerrilla blogging works for those who use; it doesn’t for those who don’t.

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Spend any time at all online and you are sure to run into someone recommending that you start a blog for your business. Stick around any longer and you’ll encounter someone warning you not to start one if you are going to have a “bad one”. But what’s a bad blog? It’s almost never defined.

The implication is that if the content isn’t a pleasure to read then it’s a bad blog. But what is a pleasure for one person to read is not necessarily a pleasure for someone else. Have an interest in reading about badminton tips every day? No? Well, maybe someone else does.

But it isn’t all about the nature of the content either. You also have to consider blog design and the quality of the writing. Sure, you want your blog to be attractive. And, yes, you want the writing to be high quality writing. But understand that not every blog has to be of the same caliber as a blog on the A-list. If they all were then there’d be no A-list.

So what’s a bad blog? Let’s start by defining a good blog. A good blog is one that:

• Informs your readers about topics of interest within your niche
• Sets itself apart as unique from other blogs in the same niche
• Drives traffic to important landing pages on your website (the job of closing the sale is on those landing pages
• If your blog is a sales blog then it closes a decent percentage of sales or converts and adequate percentage of traffic to sales, or leads, or whatever your goal is
• Adds optimized content to your website often
• If an offsite blog, builds back links to your primary web property
• Gets people interested in your niche talking in the comments section
• Provides you with information about the needs of your target market

Not every good blog does every one of these, but a good blog should do many of them. It seems to reason then that a “bad blog” is one that doesn’t do any of these or that only does a few while neglecting the most important elements of a good blog. The problem is, a blog may have many different purposes or your standards for a good blog may not match what someone else’s idea of a good blog is. What every blog owner should refrain from doing is allowing your readers from defining what is “good” and what is “bad” based on whether or not they enjoy reading it. That’s not necessarily the judge of a good blog.

Assuming that readers must enjoy reading the blog presumes that the purpose of the blog is for readership, i.e. enjoyability. But simply having readers enjoying your content won’t necessarily lead to sales. You want your blog to make you money, right?

Of course, not all blogs are sales tools either. You can have a blog simply for SEO purposes. The point is this: Define the purpose of your blog and live up to that purpose. That’s really the only measure of blog quality. Don’t do that and you’ve got a bad blog.

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You’ve likely heard all the reasons your business needs a blog:

• Branding
• SEO
• Customer Service
• Being Sociable With Your Audience
• Creating Dialogue
• “Connecting” With People
• Facilitating Social Media Marketing
• Insert Reason Here

But the primary reason you need a blog is hardly ever mentioned. The best reason to start a blog today is because your competition has one.

Now I’m not suggesting that you start keeping up with the Jones’. Nor am I saying that you should be a be a follower. But the reason you should have a blog if your competition does is so that you remain competitive.

You see, a blog is one of the most dynamic SEO tools available. Any business with a blog has a distinct advantage over the competition in a number of ways. Here’s how a blog benefits any business that has one:

• Increases search engine saturation - the number of pages you have ranked in the search engines
• Boosts your link popularity - the number of inbound links to your website
• Gives you more content on your website, making your site more crawlable and more often crawled by the search engines

I could go on and on about the benefits of blogging, but what it all boils down to is a blog on your competition’s website gives them an edge in the search engines. If you don’t have one then you are at a disadvantage. If you have a blog and your competition doesn’t then you have the advantage. If you and your competition both have blogs then there is a more level playing field, except that the one who can better manage their blog could have a better advantage.

In business, it’s all about competition. A blog can give you an edge where before you didn’t have one. And that’s why you need a blog today.

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