All Entries Tagged With: "business"

Limit Your Keywords For Maximum SEO Effect

It is best when planning your business blog to narrow your niche to a certain extent before you begin. You don’t want your niche so narrow that you’ll find it difficult to blog about topics after covering your keyword list the first time around. But you do want a narrow keyword list and you want to be sure that each keyword allows you to blog in multiple directions. For instance, if you have a list of 10 keywords and each keyword has 10 possibilities for topics associated with them, that equates to 100 blog posts.

So how many keywords do you want for your blog? We recommend at least 10 but no more than 15. Any more than 15 keywords and you’ll water down your SEO. Any fewer than 10 keywords and you’ll find yourself writing about the same topics too often. When you run out of topic ideas then you’ll bore your readers.

Rather than hone in on 10 long tail keywords that will only allow you to write about that keyword in one or two ways, choose 10 keywords that will allow you to write about a variety of topics within the reach of those keywords. Let’s look at an example.

Suppose you serve an environmentally conscious clientele interested in eco-friendly clothing. If you sell a brand of pants that use organic wool and organic wool is one of your keywords then you can use that keyword to also talk about organic wool shirts, organic wool shorts, organic wool socks, or any article of clothing made from organic wool. But if you narrow that down too far – say, just to organic wool pants – then you are forced to write about organic wool pants every time you want to write about organic wool.

In other words, by making “organic wool” your keywords you are essentially making your keyword list longer because you can write about any product that uses organic wool. It narrows your keyword list into a focused effort for your blog while allowing you to write within your niche more broadly.

Should You Host Your Company Blog On Blogspot?

I am still amazed to see businesses setting up their company blog on Blogspot. I would not use a free host of any kind (Blogspot, WordPress.com, Typepad, etc.) for my business blog. The reasons are numerous

1. If you don’t own the domain name then you are at someone else’s mercy
2. The costs for setting up a blog are too minimal
3. You can have a well optimized business blog on your own domain name for less than the cost of a single sale in most industries
4. WordPress standalone software is free and easy to use
5. Having your own domain name is beneficial for a number of reasons, one of which is its resell value
6. Control, control, control
7. Owning your own domain name looks more professional
8. You can design your own company blog with unlimited possibilities
9. WordPress plugins allow you to expand your marketing options with a standalone blog

These are just a few of the reasons why you want to own your own domain name and put your company blog on that domain. Blogspot may be good for a personal blog, but I would not use it for a business blog.

Learn more about blog hosting here.

What Kind Of Business Should Have A Blog?

Asking what kind of business can benefit from a blog is like who can benefit from breathing clean mountain air. Well, just about anyone actually.

The list is shorter of who should not have a blog. You might not want a blog for your business if:

• You are engaged in criminal activity
• Your business depends largely on trade secrets and there isn’t much else to write about
• Blogging for your niche would attract so few readers that it wouldn’t be practical
• You’re a defense contractor and a blog would jeopardize national security
• Running a blog would cost more money than the its earning potential (not likely for most businesses)
• Starting a blog would require so much red tape that even thinking about it requires a year’s worth of committee meetings (even then, it might be worth it after that first year)

Unless you are involved in defense contracting, operates on heavily guarded trade secrets, or engages in criminal activity then a blog can benefit you. Learn more about how a blog can benefit your business today.

Blog Marketing: Conversational Marketing Has A New Face

Blog marketing is the latest in online small business strategies for getting attention and gaining traction for your website. But a lot of people are still confused about just what a blog can do for them.

Conversational marketing is an idea whose time has come. First introduced by Seth Godin, it’s a concept that means just what it says. Instead of bombarding the marketplace with information people aren’t interested in, blog marketing uses natural communication strategies to develop and build relationships with people you think might be good prospects for your business. By communicating with them directly and personally you can build relationships that lead to business.

But blog marketing has other benefits too. One such benefit is that a blog can add fresh content to your website daily. This content gets indexed in the search engines and people find your website through those blog posts – usually one at a time. This works because every individual blog post is targeted toward a different keyword. Over time, the aggregate of your targeted blog posts helps your website rank well for the right keywords. This translates into additional traffic for your blog as well.

Blog marketing is very effective and increases your chances for success online by a hundredfold at least. Don’t get lost in the crowd. Start blog marketing.