How to Optimize Your Blog

Let’s say you’ve decided to start blogging in order to bring more traffic to your business website.

Let’s also say you’re interested in learning how you can optimize the blog itself.

That’s right, you should aim to get some SEO “juice” from your blog, all on its own.

Here are some tips on how to do so

1) Use keywords and use them naturally in your posts. Doing so helps the search engine crawlers “understand” what your blog is about. Be sure your sentences flow naturally. Stay away from stuffing in too many keywords; your readers hate too many keywords just as much — or possibly more — than spiders. After all, you want to grow your readership, don’t you? Write naturally so that your blog is readable!

2) Place your keywords in your blog posts’ titles. This does two things: Not only will your human readers know what your post is “about,” so will the search engine crawlers. The more interesting you can make the title to your human readers, the better. However, if you must choose between interesting and keywords, go with the keywords.

3) Don’t forget to make your post’s title “permanent.” That is, make your title into a permalink or URL for your blog post. This helps the search crawlers decide how to index your post and rank its content.

Some other tips to help your blog bring you great SEO juice:
 In the beginning, try to blog five times a week. If that’s impossible, blog no less than twice a week.
 After a month, if you’ve been blogging five days a week, you can decrease it to two or three times a week. If you’ve been blogging for once or twice a week, keep doing so.
 Be sure to link to other posts within blog. If at all possible, use a keyword phrase applicable to the other post. For example, let’s say you’re a plumber and a previous post talked about “DIY toilet repair.” If you’re writing about other do it yourself tasks homeowners may try with their pipes in a subsequent post, use the keyword phrase “DIY toilet repair” in that post and link it to the post titled “DIY toilet repair.” (Don’t worry about always doing this when you link to another post, though, because it can be a bit difficult to do. But referencing other posts and linking to them can help your SEO.)
 Comment on others’ blogs. Most allow a link to your site or blog at the end of your comments. Write an interesting post and you’ll find that readers of those blogs will visit yours.
 Speaking of other blogs, offer to write a guest post on one or more of your favorite blogs. You probably won’t get paid for the work, but you will get more traffic from that blog to yours.
 Don’t be afraid to post videos and pictures in your blog. Videos often are viewed more than content is read, and people tend to retain the information within them better than when they read.

Finally, let GoiMarketing.com set up a great blog for your business. We can set it up so that all you need to do is start writing, or we can put together a blogging schedule and topics and write the posts for you. Or we can put together a blogging plan for you that you write — the choice is yours. Contact us today!

Article Marketing or PPC? You Be the Judge of Which is Best

Can article marketing really work to bring traffic to your website? Isn’t it just drivel written by hacks? Doesn’t it take forever to get traffic?

The answer? It depends.

Yes, some articles used in article marketing are downright awful. Grammatically incorrect. Full of misleading or even false information. Rambling. Incoherent. Or dense and packed with too much information.

And, yes article marketing does take longer than well-run pay-per-click campaigns, purchasing online ads, and so on.

But you really shouldn’t ignore it. Done well and done consistently, article marketing can bring you traffic. Traffic that already trusts you. Traffic that is primed to buy. And it will continue doing so long after your pay-per-click or other paid advertising Internet campaign is done.

Paid ad campaigns can be quite costly. If you’re just starting or if your budget is tight (and it usually is when your just starting out), a paid campaign can be out of your budgetary reach. If you can’t spend at least $100 a day for several weeks, paying for ads online may not be in your best interest.

But wait, there’s more: the learning curve to can be steep. You’re going to need to learn:

• local geographic targeting
• keyword selection
• writing ads that get clicked on
• creating a great landing page (the page people go to when they click on your ad)

 

Can you do this successfully? Sure. But you’ll probably spend a good amount of money before you see results. And it could take a long bit of time before your skills are such that a PPC campaign brings you a good ROI.

Why not spend that same amount of time writing and distributing articles to the free article directories? Write an article a day for a month, then two or three times a week for the next couple of months. You’ll start seeing a good amount of traffic coming to your site then.

The three months you conduct a free article campaign could be just about the same time you spend learning how to do PPC correctly. Three months that you’ve been spending a minimum of $100/day. Meanwhile, your article marketing campaign has cost you nothing!

Don’t stop at distributing your articles. Place your articles on your blog (then be sure to tweet about your blog update and place a notice about it on your Facebook page). Put your articles together as a free e-book/report you offer on your website. This will help drive traffic to your site even more.

Turn to GoiMarketing.com online marketing campaign. Whether you decide to go the PPC route or start an article marketing campaign for your business, we can help. We live and breath Internet marketing for small business and we look forward to the opportunity to helping you see your sales and profits grow. Contact us today!

SEO Trends for the Last Quarter of 2010 and Beyond

As we head into to the final quarter of 2010, let’s talk about some SEO and marketing trends that will continue to be — or become — at the forefront of best business marketing practices.

More and more companies are “escaping” the “traditional” marketing approach of radio, television, newspaper advertising and jumping to the Internet. After all, when the vast majority (some experts say at least 80 percent) of all purchases are at least researched, if not purchased, on the Internet, it only makes sense to focus most of one’s marketing on the Web. Internet marketing is quite cost effective and also allows companies to scale and measure their efforts. E-mail marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and social media, for example, are quite easy to track to see which marketing efforts bring you the most business.

No longer should businesses just place ads and hope for the best. Today — and for the foreseeable future — customers want to interact with their product and service providers. This means you’re going to need to make it as easy as possible for your current, past and potential clients to talk with you. Start a blog. Open Facebook and Twitter accounts (and participate!). Respond to comments quickly. Answer customers’ concerns and problems even more so. Welcome feedback and listen to it.

This type of marketing, known collectively as social media marketing, truly is a great way for businesses and customers to communicate with each other. The ability for you to get the word out on your products/services in a way you control is priceless. You can focus on those groups who most likely are in the market for your service or product and you can discuss your offerings directly with them.

Video marketing will only get bigger in the next few months. You can tape a short video of yourself discussing your service or product and then upload it to video sharing sites such as YouTube and provide a link to it from your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts so that your target audience will see it. You don’t even need to have a “regular” video to share. Software exists that allows you to take a text document (such as an article you write) and convert it into text video, complete with audio.

More and more people use smartphones to access the Web. As a result, “mobile marketing,” in which companies advertise on Web pages that are created specifically for viewing on a mobile phone, will become huge. There’s already an association for mobile marketing (the Mobile Marketing Association), which offers a set of guidelines for mobile marketing. Google, Yahoo! and other major mobile content providers have been selling ads specifically for mobile devices for some time. You can expect this trend to grow.

Marketing today changes in an instant. Savvy companies understand they need to keep their online presence lively and engaged. Yet it’s hard to keep up with the innovations. That’s where GoiMarketing.com can help you. It’s our job to be on top of emerging marketing and SEO trends. Contact us today so that we can run your marketing efforts so that you can concentrate on running your business.

Market Your Business Using Social Media

Social media such as blogs, free article directories and e-mail autoresponders, truly have made it much easier for a small business person to market his or her company inexpensively and easily. Many social media marketing tasks, in fact, cost nothing but time.

Here’s a short primer on how to market your business using e-mail, blogging and article writing:

1) Build an e-mail list. Sending e-mails to current, past and potential customers is a great way to keep your service/product at the top of their in-basket. You can use an e-mail marketing software program such as Aweber to send e-mails to your list.

Getting the list of e-mail addresses is the “hard” part, yet really is quite simple: Add an e-mail sign-up form to your company’s website. Offer them something in return, such as a 10 percent discount on their next purchase, a free report, etc.

Building such a list and then regularly e-mailing its members with news, special offers, etc. means you’ll create great customer loyalty in new and current buyers.

2) Start a blog and distribute articles to free distribution sites. Blogging and article writing are superb — and extremely cheap — ways to get tons of exposure about your products and/or services. Blog posts and articles will help search engines find you, thereby generating more traffic — and customers — to your site.

Provide information of use to your readers and you’ll soon find you’ve built a close relationship with them, helping them come to trust you and your products/services. You’ll become the “go to” expert in their minds. 

Do some research for relevant keywords, place those keywords in your articles/blog posts, and you’ll help the search engine spiders find your posts and articles all the quicker. Your resource box (in the articles) and your links to your website (on your blog) will then help your readers arrive your site. More traffic, means more purchases.

As mentioned above, using this type of small business marketing can cost you nothing but time. However, your time probably is taken up with the tasks of running your business.

GoiMarketing.com can design and instigate an efficient and affordable e-mail marketing and writing/blogging campaign for you. Contact us today to learn more!

How to Choose Your Company’s Blogger(s)

If you’ve decided to start a business blog, you may wonder who at your company should write it. Your company’s CEO would be a great one to do so, but not always.

In fact, you should consider having several employees take turns at writing for your company’s blog. This will help your blog remain fresh.

So ask yourself this: in your company which employees do you know who enjoy writing. Look beyond the folks in your public relations department and add employees from HR, accounting, sales, operations, etc.

Employees can write about their daily work lives. Case studies. Instructive stories about solving clients’ problems (get your clients’ permission, of course) and only share positive, non-embarrassing stories.

You may want to ask employees to write sample blog posts, so that you can get an idea of their writing skills. You’ll want to be sure that your blog writers have a great grasp of grammar, spelling and style.

If not, you’ll need someone on staff who can edit the writing of others without editing out a writer’s personality and tone.

You’ll want to be sure anyone who writes for your blog can commit to regular postings. Too many business blogs are started with a burst of enthusiasm only to peter out when the novelty wears off (it becomes “another” job task) or ideas become scarce. It may be a good idea to ask your writers to put together a list of blog topics for the next three months or so. This way, they’ll know what to write about and they — and you — won’t wake up at 3 in the morning of posting day with a start because they suddenly realize They. Have. No. Ideas.

How to Start a Blog for Your Business

We talk a lot here about how a blog can be good for your business. Well, it’s about time we actually told you how to start a blog, isn’t it?

To reiterate a bit, a blog can do several things for your business. It can:

• Let customers and prospects know that you and your employees are friendly and approachable.
• To learn more about you, to feel that they “know” you and to continue  — or start — doing business with you.
• Follow your progress as your company grows, offers new products/services.
• Communicate with customers/prospects during an emergency — a product is recalled, for example. Blogging about the crisis and what you’re doing to alleviate/solve it can be the most effective way to deal with such issues when they arise.

 

You should start posting regularly. We recommend at least twice a week; three or four times is much better. Write about new products/services. Write your take on an issue in your industry.

You also — maybe 20 percent of the time — should talk about something more personal, but make it somewhat related to business, your philosophy of customer service, for example.

It’s best to set up your blog to allow comments from readers. Not doing so makes your blog a one-way megaphone. Blogs work best by building community and you want to hear from your customers and prospective customers no matter how unhappy with you they may be. You can moderate comments of course (some people use the anonymity of a blog to become quite nasty), but so long as no one uses profanity and/or makes personal attacks on your or your relatives, it’s a good idea to allow comments.

Respond to comments quickly. Address any complaints or issues that may come up. Try to understand your readers’ point of view, even if it’s something with which you don’t agree.

Never argue. Never get into an online pissing match. Your reputation will suffer greatly. If someone is becoming particularly nasty, you can block their IP address from being able to post a comment.

GoiMarketing can help you set up a blog. We can even write posts for you, either in the beginning as you get more comfortable, or all the time. You undoubtedly have something to say about your product/service. A blog can help you get the word out to an entire world of potential new business.