How Blogs Can Break or Make Your SEO Strategy
By Jon Rognerud
Blogs are a great way to get started authoring content and sharing your knowledge and insights with other people. Plus, mix work and play - and you can get rich doing this.
You don't have to be an MBA-accredited author by any means. However, there are some rules to play by, and I'll break those out below. We will talk about the top blogs, practicalities around blogs and creative ways to get started, including how you could possibly ruin your good-standing ranking and having to change your Search Engine Optimization strategy.
Blogs - Structure and Layout
I work in the field of Search Engine Optimization. It has a wide range of options, from the technical to the more strategic. Tons of discussions are found on off-page and on-page factors, latent semantic analysis, content scope, quality, HTML/CSS development, site navigational structure, spamdexing, 301 redirects, plagiarism, link strategies, directories, blogs, search engine news, email marketing tips & online (internet) marketing. Most all of the top 10 SEO firms out there agree that blogs are a "must" for driving traffíc and to get established in the Internet community.
There is a right way, and a wrong way. We'll discuss these below.
Be warned - too many folks out there are thinking about "how to outbeat the search engines" and use the latest-and-greatest (blogs) to elevate their rankings, essentially via content and blog sp@m. Blogs are a powerful way to get seen by the search bots. Blogger (Google's own) is an important key to the puzzle, but there are many.
The Un-Official Top 7 Blogging Best Practices For SEO
1. Start here, begin a quick review of the world's top blogs:
http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs - updated daily
http://www.problogger.net - he makes #16,000/month
http://microsaw.stikipad.com - web 2.0 blogs
2. Get an account - it's frëe. Log in - and - don't start! What? No, you must first continue by scanning the list above and get a sense for what people are writing about. This could be more generic at first, but start looking to yourself. What do you know? What do people come to you for? Anything that you specialize in? (Hint: don't think "how can I sell this" - but "how can I share this?") You'll also learn how to use trackback functions to allow other people to be notified. Permalinks are great for SEO and should be used where appropriate. So, now you learned something big: be yourself!
3. Think about an interesting headline. You don't need to be a copywriter, but you should think about your headline and the topic at hand. More importantly, is it something that you are passionate about, or can contribute something to? It's ok to spend some time here, writer's block can come up. Think about other sites, can you re-write their UVP (unique value proposition)? How would you write yours (thinking theme here). What I've found to work is simply sit back and start talking as if you were discussing a (hot) topic with a friend, and then break it out into sub-groups from there.
4. Writing tips: casual, friendly and interesting (meaning you have something to write and you don't copy others) works well in blogs. Make sure you stay on topic and that you are truthful. Would you lie to your mother? Of course not - then think about this when you are writing online (and she will not come after you). Yahoo's blogging policy is a good one: "Be respectful of your colleagues, get your facts straight, provide context to your argument, and engage in private feedback." Also, make sure to include images (flickr) and video (youtube, google video) where you can. Make the images rich and colorful, don't worry about sizing too much.
5. Committment, persistence and discipline. Sound like an extract from Jim Rohn or Anthony Robbins? Well, they probably are - but it applies to most of the things you do in life. So be it with blogging. Carve out 1/2-1 hour every day to nurture your blog business. Think of it as your morning ritual - right after you have attended to your family and other duties. Plus, often you are not going to be in writing mode - but rather, maintenance mode - reviewing and responding to other blogger's input.
6. Search engines start picking up your blog, and traffíc increases. Be prepared and if it gets out of hand, be able to manage that too. I'm not simply talking about traffíc, but as others join and comment, you may need to defend your stance, including admitting mistakes if / when you make them. Folks appreciate other folks who are big enough to admit mistakes if it gets there. For example, you may have folks who don't like you - even if you're Bill Gates. This guy created a Corporate Weblog Manifesto that I found interesting.
7. Run and host your own blog service. More expensive, but this could have a large impact on your ability to control not only the content, but custom HTML layouts, code and information architecture that are important to search engines. You can offer this as a service to others in your niche market. BusinessLogs.com is a great resource to use for starting this process, and more hands-on development companies like LevelTenDesign.com can be an option for you. Keep in mind that the market has developed niche-companies, from real-estate to healthcare, and you should research those specifically.
Content is important for Search Engine Optimization - be on top of it, keep a schedule.
Voila - that's it, there you have it. Watch how the search engines will start picking up your content. You can run tools to see how you are ranking, how often you are showing up in the search engines. We like UrlTrends.com as a simple beginner starting point. However, it's not 100% accurate, other SEO tools can provide more detail.
Keep your content fresh, updates daily is preferred - and definitely once a week and your search engine marketing (which includes search engine optimization) will become more visible than it was just last week. Then, use Pingomatic.com to alert search engines that you have made updates. It's a frëe service, and will help your visibility.
About The Author
Jon Rognerud is a recognized authority on the subject of search marketing, and has spent over 10 years developing websites and marketing solutions at companies like Overture and Yahoo. His website, http://www.microsaw.com, provides a wealth of informative articles, resources and frëe email courses, including complimentary site ranking reports at http://www.microsaw.com/emailpage.asp.
Publish testimonials.
Testimonials are great to use on your site to generate more credibility for you and your product.
You can also use testimonials from your subscribers to get more people to join your ezine/newsletter.
Capture the power of RSS
Why not find an RSS feed to add to your website.
Take a few moments and think about what type of news or information you would like to include on your website that will be updated automatically for you on a regular basis.
If you need some more advice or information on RSS read this article (this is one of many that are available to read):
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2006/sep/22.html
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In this issue we will highlight our SEO packages.
We currently have 2 main packages that dedicate a number of hours each month to improving and optimising your website for Search Engines.
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At the end of each month you will get a report highlighting progress on ranking for keywords, number of pages indexed, link popularity and monthly statistics such as hits, visits and more.
We also offer a few add-ons, one to monitor your website's performance and up time, there Silver, Gold and Platinum packages available, and the other is to get vital information on your visitors, track and test advertising campaigns and improve your conversion rate.
