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The SEO Blogging Paradox

Doug Williams @ 5:36 am

This blog entry was posted on February 27, 2010.

Something that is free can’t be worth anything… right? We have been conditioned to pay out hard money when we absolutely need results. This isn’t the case with blogging when it is used as an SEO tool. Blogging is something you can do for free. So the paradox is how can something for free be so good for attracting new visitors?

Adding a blog to your website is the best way to build up the search rankings on Google and to attract targeted visitor traffic. Add a WordPress.org blog to your website. You can do this for free or pay a developer to do the work for you.

Don’t get me wrong, blogging is hard work. You need to set aside the time and make a commitment to doing it. So in that sense, blogging isn’t free, it takes your time, especially if you want to do it right. You don’t need to pay money out for blogging.

6 Benefits of Blogging

  1. Adding a blog to your website adds new keyword rich content to your website every time you write a new posting. Each posting adds a new page to your website and search engines value that.
  2. Linking to specific relevant pages in your main site using keywords as anchor text will help the rankings of those pages.
  3. Blogs attract new visitors since they broadcast your message to the blogosphere via RSS. This brings new visitors to your website that ordinarily would never know your website existed.
  4. Original and insightful postings will attract links from other bloggers who come and read your blog. These links will not only benefit your blog, but the entire website. Rankings for the entire website will rise.
  5. By regularly blogging, you will build a following of readers who will read your every post. You will build an audience who perceives you as the expert in your niche.
  6. When you blog regularly, you are naturally more alert and read anything available in your market niche. Your understanding, knowledge and expertise build with every posting. In other words, you become an expert… even if you weren’t when you started blogging.

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Filed under: Blog Marketing



Link Popularity thru Article Marketing

Doug Williams @ 6:18 am

This blog entry was posted on February 25, 2010.

Article Marketing is an effective SEO strategy that has been around for many years. It is still one of the best ways to generate high PR one way links and to drive direct traffic to your website at the same time. Article marketing involves writing keyword focused articles and posting them onto article syndication websites. These website are frequently highly trafficked websites with high Page Rank.

Article marketing accomplishes two things. You are able to promote yourself and your company as a respected expert by providing solutions and insights for problems in your market niche. By producing articles that are highly keyword focused and providing a keyword based link back to your website, you help your website’s link popularity.

Many articles allow reposting and reuse of your articles onto other websites as long as the links in the resource box (at the end of the article) is left intact. These articles then become “link bait” as other websites hungry for content will repost your articles around the Internet.

Getting good quality articles written is the key to effective article marketing.

  1. Goals: Before writing, have definite goals for what you want accomplish. Develop a central message around your goals. Think of the image and brand you are building.
  2. Outline your article with a clear beginning, middle and ending. What do you want to leave your readers with? If you leave them hungry for more, they will follow your link back to your website.
  3. Keywords: Select a single keyword phrase to focus on. Use your phrase in the title of your article, within first paragraph one time and in the link text within your resource box.

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Filed under: Link Popularity,SEO Strategies



73 Percent of Bloggers Also Use Twitter

Doug Williams @ 5:29 am

This blog entry was posted on February 23, 2010.

Bloggers use Twitter much more than does the general population according to a 2009 study by Penn, Schoen, & Berland Associates. The study found only 14% of the general population is using Twitter while 73% of all bloggers will use Twitter. Small business bloggers (self employed) have the highest use of Twitter at 88%. The general population included interviews with over 1000 over 18 Internet users.

How small business bloggers use Twitter?

  • 85% Promote my blog
  • 73% Market my business
  • 69% To bring interesting links to light
  • 63% Interact with readers of my blog
  • 61% To understand what people are buzzing about
  • 52% Keep up with news events
  • 48% For research
  • 41% Interact with companies

Most of the small business bloggers have linked their Twitter account with their blog. 52% of all bloggers surveyed syndicate their blog posts to their Twitter Account. 61% of small business blogs are set to automatically send a Tweet to their Twitter account with each new blog posting.

26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs – though 65% say it has had no effect.

These results are similar to a 2008 study by Pew Internet that found 11 percent of adults in the US who use the Internet claim to have used Twitter. They found the adoption rate of Twitter to be highest with 25-34 year old Internet users. The median age for Twitter users was found to be 31.

18-24 : 19%
25-34 : 20%
35-44 : 10%
45-54 : 5%
55-64 : 4%
65 + : 2%

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Filed under: Blog Marketing,Social Media Marketing



Use Analytics to Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

Doug Williams @ 6:06 am

This blog entry was posted on February 21, 2010.

Suppose you are a doctor’s office or service provider and your call to action is centered on getting people to call. Your goal is to describe your capabilities and provide a great resource for visitors to learn from, but you want a phone call, not an email. It is difficult to directly tie back to visitor activity on your website.

This is where using your website analytics such as Google Analytics comes in handy. You can analyze factors that lead to conversion such as bounce rate. Bounce Rate is the percent of visitors that leave without moving deeper into your website. These people leave directly from the page they entered on. A high bounce rate usually leads to a lower conversion rate. Typical bounce rates for informational websites are 35%-55%.

You should analyze bounce rate by individual pages. Take the pages with the highest bounce rates and begin to make changes and improvements. Then watch how the bounce rates change on these pages. This takes tracking bounce rates of individual pages over time. Keep the changes that improve that page’s bounce rate and get rid of changes that hurt your bounce rate.

Ways to reduce bounce rates:

  1. Verify you are targeting the correct prospect with your ad campaign.
  2. Add a clear call to action link.
  3. Make your content more interesting by adding an introductory paragraph..
  4. Add video to a page.
  5. Reorganize content to make it less confusing.
  6. Format content into short paragraphs and bullet points.

More tips on web copy-writing.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing,Web Usability



Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Visitors

Doug Williams @ 5:30 am

This blog entry was posted on February 19, 2010.

Businesses that blog get more website traffic, more inbound links to their website and have more indexed pages on their website. All these are powerful indicators of a successful business website.

This is according to a Hubspot study of 1531 of their small and medium sized business customers. 795 businesses in the study blogged and 736 didn’t. These results were received by the companies that blogged:

  1. 55% more visitors: Blogs broadcast their message via RSS rather than passively waiting for search engines to spider and index them. Regular blogging attracts new visitor traffic. More traffic arriving to a website means more visitors that could be converted to buyers or leads.
  2. 97% more inbound links: Blog naturally attract links because their content is new and original. Other bloggers will reference other blogs and websites with a link to support what they are blogging about.
  3. 434% more indexed pages: Each blog posting produces a new page. This is why adding a blog to an existing website is a great way to grow the size of a website with keyword rich content. Larger sites are usually rewarded with higher search engine rankings.

Blog marketing gives businesses other tangible results. Blogs build your brand awareness and build you as an authority in your market. Blogs build rapport with your audience and build a relationship of trust. This makes you the natural person they seek for help.

Blogs are where people learn and research. Allowing comments on your blog creates interaction and gives you powerful insight into your customer base.

With blogging, even a one-man business is able to compete head-on with a large company on the same level playing field.

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Filed under: Blog Marketing



Deep Linking vs. Home Page Links

Doug Williams @ 5:33 am

This blog entry was posted on February 17, 2010.

Deep links are considered more important than home page links in SEO. Deep links are inbound links that point to a specific page on a site other than the home page. Deep linking is considered the more natural linking method that occurs naturally over time on a website.

A higher number of links (or high quality links) to a specific page will build up the importance of that page. Deep links help your visitors by guiding them to the exact information they are searching for.

If a website has a low percent of deep links, this is a sign to the search engines that a site has used artificial link schemes to try and build up its link popularity.

Deep Link Percentage is the percent of all inbound links that point to pages other than your home page. A normal deep link percentage is considered 30% or higher.

Measuring: You can measure your sites deep link percentage by querying the search engines that have mapped out which other sites have linked back to your website. I prefer to use Yahoo because it reports a high percent of all inbound links. Use the following in a Yahoo search (substitute in your domain into the query).

  1. # of Deep Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://YOURDOMAIN.COM
  2. # of Total Inbound Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM
  3. Calculate % Deep Links = # Deep Links / # Total Inbound Links

Most websites will have a deep link percentage of 30% to 60%. There doesn’t appear to be any downside to too high of a deep linking percentage. Too low though is clearly visible to the search engines and many of your inbound links are likely to be discounted by Google.

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Filed under: Link Popularity,SEO Strategies



Using Directory Listings as a Linking Strategy

Doug Williams @ 5:30 am

This blog entry was posted on February 15, 2010.

Submitting your site to directories is still a valid and cost effective link building method that should be part of developing your portfolio of back links. You just have to be selective on which directories you use. There are many different directories out there, some worth submitting to, others are totally worthless. Here is how to choose the good ones.

Topic: Find directories that are focused on your market niche. An easy way to locate these is to do a Google search. Google will list the directories with the ones it considers the most relevant and best quality first. Search for “www” alone and you will get a list of sites Google considers the most powerful sites on the web. “www directories” will bring up the most powerful directories. “www medical directories” will bring up medical related directories.

You can also do a wild-card search using * to improve your results. “Medical * directories” or “furniture * directories” will bring up a list of possible directories you can consider for your campaign.

Quality: Look over the site to make sure would want your site listed in their directory. Stay away from directories that include site wide links to a few external websites. Be wary of directories that focus on gambling, adult content, or other offbeat topics. Links being offered should be true hyperlinks, no javascript or other redirects. Links should not use “nofollow” tags on their links. These make their links worthless to you.

Indexing: Does Google index all the content for this directory? Check by using the “site” command. Search using “site:www.dirctoryname.com”. This will not only show how many pages have been indexed, it will rank order the pages in the order Google considers the most important.

There are many types of directories out there. Some are paid, some are free and some require a reciprocal link in order to be listed. I like to select from the paid and free directories and stay away from those requiring reciprocation. DMOZ (free) and Yahoo (paid) directory listings are still important links to get..

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Filed under: Link Popularity



How to Use a Blog for Your Online Press room

Doug Williams @ 5:39 am

This blog entry was posted on February 13, 2010.

Adding a press room to your website is an important part of any PR campaign. This becomes the resource center for reporters. Your press room offers them everything they need to know about your company including background information, executive bios and contact information for the company PR contact.

By using a blog such as WordPress, you can create a press room that is easy to update and maintain. The RSS feed that is part your blog will broadcast your press releases to the Internet so your company news will be seen by many others giving your PR campaign even more exposure. A growing number of journalists and editors are reading blogs on a daily basis.

Press rooms are natural link magnets since many other blogs will notice your stories and link back to them as a resource reference in their blogging. The key is to make your stories truly newsworthy and insightful. Combine your pressroom blog entries with submitting online press releases. Here are 20 free and low cost press release services.

When setting up your WordPress blog template for your press room, the focus is on your news releases. These can be full blog entries. If you publish many press releases. you can customize your template to only list the date and title of each release. Set-up categories such as Industry news, company news, new products, etc. and file releases by category.

In addition create pages that are full of resources for reporters to gain background information on your company. These make it easier for the media to create stories about your company. Areas to include are:

  1. Bios of key company officers
  2. Downloadable file photos
  3. Company history
  4. Listings or copies of recent news stories.
  5. Fact sheets about your products, services, etc
  6. Frequently asked press questions.
  7. Recommended sources for industry information
  8. Contact info for company PR representative.

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Filed under: Blog Marketing,Internet Marketing



Start With a Plan For Business Blogging

Doug Williams @ 5:21 am

This blog entry was posted on February 11, 2010.

Blog marketing for your business, is different than personal blogging. It is focused and has a purpose. To do this correctly, you need to develop a blogging plan to use as a guide as you write and blog.

What purpose do you have for your blogging? If you want good results, your blog should reflect your goals. Start by creating a one page plan that includes your audience, topic and keywords you want to focus on. Use your plan to keep your writing focused.

Audience: A blog allows you to converse with your target audience. With blog marketing, you have a platform to share as much information as you would like to the people you wish to purchase your product or service.

Topic: Developing your content strategy is the foundation for any web marketing campaign. Content will connect you with your readers enabling you to interact and ultimately convert them into a follower or a customer. Keep your blog focused around a central subject that interests the audience you would like to interact with.

Keywords: Effective blog marketing is focused around a topic and has at its heart a keyword plan. This focus allows the blogger to build an audience that will keep coming back. This plan must be highly flexible using long tail phrases. But at its core, the plan has a highly focused keyword plan. Choose 5 focused keyword phrases and perhaps as many as 50-100 “long tailed” phrases.

Writing Tips: Blogs are not about selling; they are for branding and interacting.

  1. Titles: Use one of your phrases within the blog title each day. The search engines give high importance to the words in a blog title. Remember that when you craft a blog title, you want to attract readers and satisfy the search engines.
  2. Prominence: Use your targeted keyword phrase at least one time in the first 25 words of your posting. The search engines place a higher value on text used near the beginning of the blog posting. Be careful not to overuse your keyword phrase.
  3. Posting length: Blog posts should be approximately 250 words. Search engines prefer longer posting, while human readers prefer shorter posting. Blog postings of 200-300 words seem to satisfy both.

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Filed under: Blog Marketing



What Type of Blog Should You Use for Your Business?

Doug Williams @ 4:06 am

This blog entry was posted on February 9, 2010.

Starting up your own business blog is a powerful way to build your brand as the industry expert in your market. Adding a blog to your website can greatly improve your organic search rankings by adding fresh regular keyword rich content. Now you have choices to make. Which blogging platform should you choose? Should your blog be part of your website or a separate?

Our recommendation is to use WordPress.org and to host it as part of your website. Let’s look at why.

Which blog to use? There seems like an infinite number of choices: Blogger, WordPress, Typepad and many more.

  1. Blogger is owned by Google and it is free. It is an excellent tool for the beginner. Hosting is done on blogspot.com. Set-up is easy and quick. It has only limited ability for customization and it is hosted on a separate location from your website.
  2. WordPress.org is the free open source blogging platform that you download and run on your own hosting account. You can completely control and customize blog functionality. This is more difficult to set-up , but it offers the best SEO results for your website.

We recommend WordPress.org because you host it as part of your website. Adding a blog to your website not only adds keyword rich content regularly to your website but attracts links from other bloggers.

Visitors will be attracted as they find your blog posts which are broadcast to the Internet via RSS. Search engines will list your blog postings within minutes of your writing a posting. Many visitors that come to your blog will explore your website to see who you are and what you do.

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Filed under: Blog Marketing



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