Blogging Tips Blog

What’s The Most Important Aspect Of Blogging?

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.

There’s Still Room For One More Blog

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.

Why You Need A Guerrilla Blogging Plan

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.

What’s A ‘Bad Blog’ Anyway?

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.

The Primary Reason Your Business Needs A Blog

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.

Should You Use Free Article Content For Blogs?

Should you use free article content from article directories for your blog?

Before I answer, let me say that I have. I’ve gone to an article directory and used an article for my blog, but I don’t do it every day. And I’d suggest that you not do it every day either.

However, using free article content for your blog is not necessarily a bad idea. You can do it if you think the article will benefit your audience and it adds value to your blog. Don’t do it just because you want content on your blog.

Free articles are there for a reason. The article directories are there for a reason. But don’t just snag an article as filler content. That’s a sure way to ruin your reputation. Instead, only use an article if your audience can’t live without it. The article will not help you with SEO so don’t look for those kinds of benefits. It will help establish you as a person with good judgment if you do it correctly and choose articles that your audience appreciates. If you fail to do that then your audience will abandon you.

A Blog Is The Best Link Building Tool You Have

I love it when people verify what I’ve been saying for years. Michael Martinez back in February had a great post that discussed the three best link building tools. One of those is blogging.

Here’s what he says about the benefits of blogging:

Pros of Blogs
–They are usually easy to set up and low-maintenance
–They are more powerful and flexible than widgets, gadgets, gizmos, and plug-ins
–They allow you to populate multiple domains/subdomains quickly

And I’ll add this to the pro list on blogs as well – They achieve better search engine results more quickly than any other tool available. Yes, even better than articles. Better than static websites. Better than social media. More powerful than a speeding bullet. Etc.

Why are blogs so good for search engine optimization, including link building? Because they are crawled – like all updated content – every single time you update them. The more often you update your blog, the more it will get crawled. The more it gets crawled, the more opportunities you have of achieving great rankings. Each and every blog post you write is treated like a separate web page by the search engines. Therefore, every ranking factor that applies to any web page applies to every single blog post you write. If you have a blog with 500 blog posts then that’s 500 chances to rank for your keyword, 500 chances + for your links to build link juice and gain the age advantage, 500 chances to build anchor text links with high quality and relevance, etc. Blogging is guerrilla SEO on steroids!

I could write all day about the search engine benefits of blogging. But, do it wrong, and you can kill your rankings. That’s why it is important to choose an expert in blogging, ghostwriting, and SEO who can steer you in the right direction and keep you away from dangerous waters.

Want to know more? Get a free consult with a blog consultant.

Can An Off-Site Blog Build Inbound Links To Your Main Website?

One strategy that some SEOs and Internet marketers have used to build inbound links into their main website is to set up an off-site blog and link profusely to their main website. The question is, does this work? There are two parts to this discussion:

1. First, yes, it can work to a limited degree.
2. But only if approached in the right way.

The Real Purpose For Your Blog

Before you start talking about the link building aspect of your blog, you need to first understand the primary purpose for your blog, namely, to communicate with your customers and potential customers. Your blog is a marketing tool. You want it to draw in potential customers and drive them to your imporant web pages. The most effective blogs are the ones that do this using high quality, relevant content on a consistent basis.

There are three primary approaches to marketing with a blog and each of them should work in tendem to support the others. These are branding, pre-sales, and information publishing.

Let’s discuss these in backward order. Information publishing is all about delivering quality and helpful information to your readers. That doesn’t mean every blog post has to be a dynamic 1,000-word tome. Size doesn’t matter. Quality does.

Pre-sales information is not about closing. You can effectively use a blog as a sales closing tool, but it doesn’t have to be use that way. The way Blog Content Provider approaches blogging is to use each blog post as a pre-sales tool. We set up the sale by delivering useful, relevant information to your readers that interests them in more information and entices them toward your sales pages.

Branding is a term that simply means you develop a recognizable name for yourself in the marketplace. By using a blog as a branding tool you communicate an important message to your potential customers that you are professional and serous about doing business.

How To Build Inbound Links With Your Blog

Your off-site blog can be an important way to attract new business into your sales funnel. Each blog post has the potential to achieve high search engine rankings on its own with the proper search engine marketing techniques. But that alone will not be enough to drive massive traffic to your website.

Inbound links to your main website can increase your search engine positioning relative to your competition. Your off-site blog can play a part in that by adding links to your website from the body of each post as well as in your sidebar. Honestly, though, the links in each blog post – the in-text links – will be more valuable in this regard and can drive traffic to your main website as well as build links.

Another way to build links is through a signature at the bottom of each blog post.

The danger in using this method to build links is that it could be construed as a form of spam if not done properly. Mixing some outbound links into your blog posts to highly relevant, authoritative websites within your niche can assist you with your link building efforts as the search engines see this as a sign that you are using natural linking techniques. But you want to be sure of two things with regard to your outbound links:

1. You aren’t link to your competitors
2. And you are avoiding bad neighborhoods

The Limitations Of Blogging As A Linkbuilding Tool

Every search engine marketing technique has its limitations. Including blogging. While you can build relevant and authoritative links using an off-site blog, there are some concerns you should take into consideration before you start blogging.

No. 1, don’t put your blog on the same IP block as your website. Host it with a completely different hosting company. The search engines have been known to discount links from sites owned by the same owner just for being on the same IP block and in the same niche.

Secondly, don’t rely entirely on your blog for inbound links. This is one of the biggest mistakes that website owners make. Link diversity is very important. If all of your links are coming from the same source then you will likely cap out on your rankings, and there is a high degree of probability that it won’t be on page 1. You should also build links from other sources. This link diversity along with variation in your anchor text will bring you more search engine favor than your blog alone.

For more information about blogging, click here to speak to a blog consultant.

The Blog Writing One-Two Punch

I used to call a combination of blog writing and article writing for Internet marketers a powerful one-two punch. While it can still be a powerful marketing puglistic combination, I’ve discovered one that is even more powerful – the blog-Twitter punch.

Savvy Internet marketers have discovered that Twitter is one powerful traffic driving machine. But if you use Twitter for delivering the hard sell, it likely won’t do much for you. Twitterers who are successful at using Twitter to drive traffic to their blog then to their website are doing it by using Twitter as a reputation tool to draw followers to themselves then to drive those followers to their blog and website where they can close the sale. It’s powerful targeted marketing. Have you set up your Twitter account yet?

Can Spam Comments Hurt Your Blog’s Rankings?

SEO Gadget wrote a blog post about comment spam affecting his rankings. Of course, the grand conclusion is that spam comments hurt his rankings. I can understand where that conclusion came from. I also agree. It can, and does, happen.

Search Engine Optimization Journal’s conclusion is that those comments were harmful because they were porn-related content. That’s possible too, but doubtful. One of the issues regarding spam comments, as pointed out by Scotland SEO, is that they are supposed to be nofollow.

It doesn’t matter is blog comments are dofollow or nofollow, the search engines will treat them the way they want to and you can’t afford to let the bad links hurt your site’s reputation. That’s why comment moderation is so important. It’s also why you need to keep a close eye on which types of comments get through on your blog. We at BCP automatically delete the following types of comments when we spot them:

• Porn links
• Obvious keyword-spam with several links in the body of the comment
• Comments where the commenter used an obvious incorrect website URL
• Comments with dead or broken links, particularly in the website URL field of the comment form
• “Feel good” comments that add no value to the discussion

Some comments are helpful; some are not. We try to get rid of the bad ones and keep the good ones. Otherwise, your blog can suffer in the search engines. If you aren’t sure which comments have value and which ones don’t then you might be better off letting someone else manage that aspect of your blog. That’s what blog managers do.