Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
blogging
The posts here look at various aspects of blogging; for business, for fun… as well as blog promotion
Blogging for Business
35 months ago
Blogs make up a large portion of content on the internet. Their presence is large enough that it cannot and should not be ignored. A good SEO specialist will know how to incorporate blogs into good web 2.0 optimization strategies.
Blogging
History of Blogs
In December of 1996, Jorn Barger started a daily log of what he thought would be interesting Web links. He called it, “Robot Wisdom Weblog.” It didn’t take long for other online publishers to start creating pages with these types of frequent, but short posts which end up being in reverse chronological order. In 1998 the first online tool which allowed users to keep online journals was developed and made public. That is when the online journaling world pretty much took off. In 1999, one online journaling author, Peter Merholz, took Jorn Barger’s word, “weblog” and split it out to make the phrase, “We Blog.” It did not take too long for users to begin using blog as a shortened form of weblog.
Types of Blogs
There are literally blogs on virtually everything imaginable; and some on things that aren’t! But if you could reduce it all down to two categories you would find that there are basically two types of blogs: personal and business. Many personal blogs are like personal diaries that are used to journal day to day happenings of one sort or another. Some may be simply opinion posts including those of a political nature.
Business Blogs
And then there are business blogs. These can provide a multitude of benefits for the business world. They can actually be an intricate part of the business’ online presence; and can even be incorporated into a business website’s SEO strategies. For the business, they can mean an essential tool in today’s web 2.0 world.
A business blog can be a very efficient way to use this social media platform. Because of new technology, a blog can allow a business to interact with clients in real time. It’s also much faster to enter a blog post on a regular basis than to update the website every few days. They are a very effective way of sharing your expertise with a much larger audience.
A business blog impacts how web users evaluate, recommend, promote and share information about products and services. Blogs also have a large impact on how companies listen to clients and engage with them to help ensure success. Blogs have many benefits such as helping to establish credibility, provide a resource for clientele, develop new business relationships and provide a communication source. But there are also some benefits in terms of SEO.
SEO Benefits of Business Blogs
Blog posts are updated much more frequently than websites as a general rule. This fresh content is one thing that search engines love to look for and blogs provide plenty of it. The blog is viewed as a great resource and many people may link to your blog or website for a reference. By integrating your business blog with your main business website blogs can help build links back to the site. These backlinks are beneficial as search engines use them in determining a site’s value.
Hiring an SEO Company for Blog Optimization
Optimizing a business blog is imperative to its success. The blog can be incorporated into the web design of the main website. While keyword rich content is a large portion of blogging, it is not the only SEO technique available. For the business blogger it is important to consider hiring a New Jersey SEO company to optimize the business blog.
SEO Tips for Blogging
228 months ago
Blogging
In our last blog post we discussed some quick SEO tips for blogs. In today’s post, we’ll refresh your memory about some more useful search engine optimization tips that can easily be incorporated into your blog.
Let’s begin with the title. Search engines give more weight to the first few words in your title, so if you can, include your top SEO keywords in the beginning of your title and your blog post.
Next, you’ll want to use the keyword several times throughout your post, and you’ll want to link back to relevant pages from your website. However, make sure it the writing sounds natural. What a human thinks of your site’s content is much more meaningful than what a robot (i.e. search engine) thinks of your content. The best SEO practitioners are aware of this delicate balance, and thanks to Google’s Panda update, companies are discovering that old shortcut attempts to SEO (via the use of link farms/spam) are becoming virtually impossible.
All web marketing agencies will tell you this basic SEO truth: the more inbound links you have, the more likely search engines will view your web content as being able to provide something valuable to users. Of course, there are several things that influence this. An inbound link from a popular/credible site is seen as having more weight than an inbound link from a fresh-faced mommy blog. In addition, the number of other sites the external site links to makes a difference. If you have an inbound link from a site that also links to 10 other sites, then search engines are not going to place much weight on it. If you share a bag of popcorn with one person at the movie theater, you both feel pretty content. But if you share a bag of popcorn with ten other people at the theater, then you will not have satisfied the hunger of a single person.
SEO Tips for Blogs
238 months ago
Image via Wikipedia
You may not realize this, but each new blog post you write sings the song of search engine marketing. That’s because every time you write a new blog post, you are creating a fresh opportunity to rank well for another search term. The reason for this is that every blog post is a new web page, and web pages (and NOT websites) are exactly what search engines dish up to users when they type in key terms.
First, you will want to select the right blogging platform. There are many blogging sites to choose from, but we personally recommend WordPress for its intuitive interface and vast assortment of SEO plugins. After you select your blogging platform, you should take the extra step needed to own your domain. Say, for example, that you are running a non-profit called Annie’s Helpers, and you want to create a blog to help drive traffic to your non-profit’s website. The difference between blogging from annieshelpers.wordpress.com and annieshelpers.com/blog is that with the former, you are creating inbound links to someone else’s property, which is problematic because should you ever decide to switch platforms, you will unfortunately lose all the inbound links you worked so hard to build up over the years.
There are two factors that affect your blog’s search engine ranking: 1) on-page optimization, and 2) off-page optimization.
As mentioned in one of our earlier posts, the first step in on-page optimization is identifying your internet marketing keywords. What terms are your potential clients typing into search engines? Are your keywords geo targeting such as: SEO firm in NYC? These are the keywords that you will want to optimize your web page for. Again, keep in mind during your research process that you want to pick the keywords that have high search volume but low competition.
To learn about off-page optimization, be sure to check out our next post.
SEO Tip # 18 Blogging to Improve SEO
21 year ago
I would like to welcome you to my eighteenth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the importance of blogging to improve your SEO. I know that I’ve already talked about this in an earlier tip, but I am very passionate about blogging for SEO and for this of you who may not have read my earlier tip I wanted to repeat myself.
Blogging is in all likelihood the most worthwhile and cost effective thing that you can do in order to improve your SEO. Although they were not started with this intention today blogs have become the leading way that businesses can communicate with their customers/clients. When blogging there are a few important things of which you should be aware (see my article on blog optimization), in addition to being well optimized it is important for you to blog often, (at least once every other day) and it is important that each blog post relate to your core business in some way, for example, if you are a doctor you can blog about types of hormone replacement therapy, or if you are a business services consultant you can blog about offshore business formation jurisdictions… To have a successful blog it is also important for you to promote each post that you write, you can do this by utilizing the RSS feed to sync your blog with Twitter, Facebook and other social media that you use. Again, the most important thing about a successful blog is that you blog often and that your posts are well written and interesting to read.
Related Articles
- SEO Tip # 17 Using Squidoo for SEO (netlz1.wordpress.com)
- SEO Tip # 13 Using Twitter for SEO (netlz1.wordpress.com)
- SEO Tip # 8 Blog Optimization (netlz1.wordpress.com)
- SEO Tip # 7 Benefits of Blogging for SEO (netlz1.wordpress.com)
SEO Tip # 14 Blog Directories
41 year ago
Image via Wikipedia
I would like to welcome you to my fourteenth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the benefits of using blog directories to promote your blog.
There are a ton of blog directories on the web and these can be an excellent way to promote your new blog (blog directories are sites that list blogs in categories; to be included you usually must submit your blog manually and wait for it to get approved by the directory administrators). Most of the directories around are free, (the only cost being the time that it takes to submit your site to each directory) and will provide you links going back to your blog, a few will even allow you to post your RSS feed and syndicate each new post. Some of the directories do require you to provide a reciprocal link, the backlink that you will get from such directories is not as valuable b/c Google now frowns on two way link trading.
There are a few tricks that you can use to increase your success with directories: if they allow you to post a profile I’d recommend you to do this, also it is important to choose the best category for your blog, add your RSS feed if this is permitted; if the directory has a social component, such as Blog Catalog, or Blogger I highly advise you to participate in this and build your network. When it comes to choosing in which directories to participate I recommend that you find directories that have a higher Page Rank and greater traffic, such directories will increase the chances that your blog will be seen.
A quick word of warning regarding directories, Google views many directories as link farm and may punish your blog if you have your link on too many such directories and nowhere else. I therefore recommend that you stick to more popular directories that have a social aspect to them, such as those mentioned above and that you participate in the discussion on these directories so that you get the greatest benefit.
If you have any thoughts on using directories you are welcome to post your comment here.
SEO Tip # 10 Promote your Blog with Blog Catalog
61 year ago
Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr
I would like to welcome you to my tenth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the use of Blog Catalog to promote your blog.
There are currently many social networks which you can join, each of these has a purpose, Facebook is to connect with friends, and Linked In is for you to connect with people in your fields… Blog Catalog is a social network for bloggers, and if you have a blog and are an active blogger you should use Blog Catalog and build your network. There are a few cool features to Blog Catalog, the system allows you to create a profile and add as many blogs as you like to your profile (although proof of ownership of each blog is required) you can add a description of each blog as well as the blogs’ title/RSS feed, and once your blog gets approved the last 3 posts of your blog will be listed on your profile. Blog Catalog allows you to build your network by friending other bloggers and sending them messages… You can also comment and vote on your favorite blog, this rating helps to improve the rankings of your Blog in the Blog Catalog directory.
The most useful thing aboutBlog Catalog is that every post is RSS’d and the backlinks you get are good quality.
SEO Tip # 8 Blog Optimization
61 year ago
Image via Wikipedia
I would like to welcome you to my eighth SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the importance of optimizing your blog.
Blogging is a fantastic tool which can help to greatly improve your sites’ SEO and with which you can get your site to rank for many more keywords, but as with everything else in life proper optimization of your blog can increase the benefits of blogging.
When optimizing a blog there are a few things that you should look at, the first of these is the title of your blog, your blogs’ title should describe the main purpose of your blog (what will you be blogging about), it should also be something that people might Google and if possible be catchy, for example, a good blog title for a kids blog might be “Kids Birthday Parties NJ”. The second thing you need to optimize your blog is to add the proper widgets (I like to use, tag cloud, category cloud, blog roll, recent posts…) These widgets help by generating numerous internal links between blog posts and create automated links for every new post you write. The third thing that you need to optimize your blog is for you to optimize the title of each blog post; a blog post’s title should be descriptive, clear and preferable something that people may Google, since the title will be the primary way that search engines list blog posts. (If you wish for your title to sound cute you should make sure that it still describes the topic of the post).
SEO Tip # 7 Benefits of Blogging for SEO
51 year ago
I would like to welcome you to my seventh SEO tip of the day; here I will discuss the benefits of blogging for SEO.
There are many things that one can do in order to improve their SEO; out of these I would consider blogging as one of the most important. Having an actively run blog can improve your SEO in a number of ways, first, this is a great source for quality links to your core site, high quality internal links, with the correct anchor text if your blog is hosted on your site, and high quality backlinks with the right anchor text if the blog is hosted on a free blogging platform such as WordPress. Having a blog allows you to control your message and to communicate directly with your customers/clients, providing them with up to date information about your services/products as well as other things that they may find interesting, if you are a doctor you can blog about weight loss advice, if you are a provider of business services you can set up a blog talking about the benefits of offshore company formation… no matter what your interests, products or services a blog can be a forum where you can discuss anything. In addition, a blog can be very beneficial for you b/c blogs are dynamic and give you a platform where you can update content regularly and Google tends to like such platforms. Utilizing a well run blog can enable you to rank for tons of new long tail keywords.
Content Quality- Using Your Space Effectively
31 year ago
Web content is king, according to the market experts. It’s the basis of engagement with users, and it’s supposed to be worth looking at. That’s not always the case. Space is often wasted, and a range of information can get marginalized or not used at all by wasteful content practices. This can get messy. If you’re doing content on business mobile phones, for example, useful information can go missing in action, reducing content value.
Content myths
Perhaps the best way to explain the importance of content and space is to describe recent history. There was a time when marketing wisdom decided that people didn’t read content. The idea was that everything should be no more than 100 words, because people didn’t have the attention span to read more. There were even theories that you should be able to find everything you need on a website in 20 seconds, etc.
These myths turned out to be the exact opposite of the facts. People didn’t read what they didn’t want to read. They would however spend hours on the content they did want, but the obvious rapid rejection of unwanted materials produced the wrong interpretation.
Content quality basics
The whole point of content is to provide useful information in a meaningful way. Articles are required to deal with subjects efficiently. Site content has to be organized, because “ saturation scattergun” content tends to turn users off. If you’ve ever seen a site which looks like a mass of classified ads, that’s exactly the effect you need to avoid for your content to connect with your audience.
Content requirements are unambiguous:
• Content materials must cover all major information issues
• Layout of materials must be clear and structured for best effects
• Information content needs to be well managed
• Less isn’t better- Content must create real interest, not be abbreviated
Space and content
Space is the other factor in content management. Web space is precious, particularly on landing pages. Best practice is now to prioritize and locate content to maximize value to users. Yes, users, not site operators.
The reasons for this are all practical. The “rapid rejection” observations still hold good, in terms of the way users engage with sites. Most people reject a lot of visual information simply because they consider it irrelevant, or because they think it’s trying to sell them something.
Web content placement is now much more like advertising copy management, placing materials in conspicuous positions. That does sometimes mean some space-juggling for site managers, but the values are clear. Content does a lot better with the best possible placement and visibility. You’ll notice that the “feature articles” approach is common. This content is positioned to engage the maximum number of users.
Space and content management
Generally speaking, content management defines content positively in terms of size and layout. Many websites use smaller fonts to keep content values high. Several 500 word pieces can be fitted on to a page at 10 point font sizes, and features will be 12 point, for example. A business mobile phone plan ad, for instance, can include a lot of information and not use up a lot of space on a page.
What is a Guest Blog Post?
41 year ago
Lately we have been doing a lot of work with guest blog posting. Not only have we been writing guest blog posts for other blogs, but we have also allowed our friends, both new and old to post their guest content on the blogs that we manage.
Guest blogging serves a dual role when it comes to the world of SEO, (both for the writer of the content and for the recipient blog where the content will be posted). On the side of the writer, writing guest posts is a great way to increase your name recognition, and to build your personal brand, guest posts typically require you to post your bio with your name, which greatly increases the # of people who will see your name as well as increasing how often your name will appear in Google. Guest posts also allow you to add link/s to your site/blog/social media profiles, and this further helps to increase the value of those sites.
On the part of the recipient good guest posts serve a multiple purpose as well, guest posts are a great source of quality, free content, and since the writer of the posts is getting something out of the deal, it is a win; win for both parties. Additionally, guest posts allow bloggers to expand their expertise and readership, since posts may be on topics that the blog owner is either unfamiliar with or may not have considered covering.
If you would like to learn more about guest posts please take a look at, Write a guest post. If you would like to guest post on this blog please either leave a comment below, or send an email to Eugene, at Eugene@netlz.com.
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