Business Blog Advice

I would like to preface this tutorial by stating you should never “blog for the search engines.” In other words, always remember your true audience while engaging in acts of search engine optimization.

Now with that said, it only makes sense to increase the visibility of your business blog. Previously, we talked about the 5 P’s of starting a business blog. One of the P’s was purpose. And no matter how you define your blogging purpose, there is one necessary ingredient you’ll need for success — blog traffic.

Search engine visibility is one of many ways to increase traffic to your business blog, so it will be the topic of this discussion.

Key Phrase Research

Before you can improve your blog’s search engine visibility, you have to identify the key phrases under which your blog should be found. As we have defined, key search phrases are those phrases your target audience would enter into a search engine when researching services like yours.

For instance, if you’re a pool builder in Austin, Texas, your key phrases might include:

• austin pool builders
• pool companies in austin
• austin texas pool builders
• build a pool in austin texas
• and so on…

Key phrases are critical to your search engine success. The only way to connect with your key prospects through search engines is to know what phrases your key prospects are searching.

The trouble is, a lot of people waste time, effort and opportunity by incorporating the wrong phrases. This limits the number of people who find your business blog, and it prevents you from tapping into the best audience of all — people searching for exactly you what provide!

Don’t Guess at Your Key Phrases

Here’s the good news. You don’t have to guess which phrases people are searching and which ones they’re not. You can find out by using a search tracking service such as WordTracker.com or KeywordDiscovery.com. With either of these services, you can enter a particular search phrase, and they will tell you how many people searched for that phrase in the past month.

Both of the services mentioned above are paid services. But WordTracker does have a free version of their service that should be more than sufficient for your purposes:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Keyword vs. Key Phrase
Don’t be misled by the term “keyword.” It’s rarely a good idea to focus on a single word when optimizing your website. That’s why I use the term “key phrase.” Few people enter a single word into a search engine these days. Most people enter two, three and four-word combinations (or more).

How Many Phrases?
How many key phrases do you need to focus on? Well, that depends on the key phrase research you do, what services you offer, etc. In my experience, most companies can limit their SEO efforts to 12 - 20 key phrases (or even fewer). You can probably guess most of these phrases off the top of your head, and that’s fine for starters. Just be sure to validate them through one of the services mentioned above.

Think of your key phrases as the seeds from which your business blog content will grow. When you find a phrase related to your business that a lot of people are searching, you need to plant that seed and grow content. Quality, keyword-rich content is the basic starting point for search engine optimization (which is the starting point for business blog visibility).

Just remember the disclaimer with which I began this article. In your attempts to increase your blog visibility you must never forget your real audience. Search engines will never buy your products or sign up for your services … some people tend to forget that.

A business blog is only as good as the content it offers, which means the blog is only as good as its author.

If you really want your business blog to be a success, you have to work hard to captivate your readers with quality content. This will keep them on the blog longer, make the more likely to come back, and encourage them to tell others about your blog.

But it all starts with captivating your readers. Here are three quick tips on how to do that.

1. Use Relevant Images - Your blog posts will be more eye-grabbing if you insert a supporting image / graphic into applicable posts. It won’t always make sense to do this (this post has no image, for example), so use your best judgment. In this previous post, I used images to reinforce the lesson I was offering. In this post on pay-per-click marketing, I used an image to clarify the difference between SEO and PPC.

2. Write a Great Title - You should put some thought into the titles of your blog posts, and for a number of reasons. For one thing, the title has some bearing on search engine visibility (learn more about optimizing blog titles). But more importantly, the title is going to largely determine whether or not people even read your individual blog posts, or your blog in general.

3. Offer a Solution or a Revelation - The Internet is over-saturated with what I like to call “fluff” articles and content. This is thoughtless content that’s only written to fill up a website or fuel a search engine optimization program. I hate this kind of content, and I know you probably do as well. So don’t add to it! Use your business blog to solve readers’ problems, or to educate them on something they hold valuable. Do this, and you will have their attention.

Everyone with a business blog can benefit from an increase in blog traffic. This is especially true when your business blog is directly tied to profits in some way.

But how does one increase blog traffic for greater online success? What steps are involved in driving more visitors to your blog? In truth, you could write a book on the many ways to increase traffic to a business blog. So I’ll just offer three of my favorite techniques for increasing blog traffic.

Traffic Tip #1 - The Online Press Release

Many bloggers don’t realize how easy it is to distribute a press online. This can give you an instant boost in blog traffic, and can also increase your search engine visibility as well. The key to this, of course, is to have something newsworthy to talk about — writing and distributing the press release is the easy part. For this blog traffic strategy, I often use such services as PRweb.com, PRleap.com, OpenPR.com and others.

Traffic Tip #2 - Search Engine Visibility

I’ve written an entire training manual to show you have to increase your blog traffic through search engine visibility. So I won’t repeat myself here. Just know that search engine visibility is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to a business blog. On this subject, you might like my article on the relationship between search engines and blogs.

Traffic Tip #3 - Word of Mouth

In my mind, this is one of the best ways to generate blog traffic. Here’s why. When you create the kind of blog that is so useful or interesting that people can’t help but talk about it, you have created an online marketing machine with no limits. Imagine having a business blog that other people promoted for you, by linking to it, talking about it, and referring it to others. That’s what can happen if you dedicate yourself to creating something of value and uniqueness.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my mini-article on ways to increase blog traffic, and I wish you well in your business blogging endeavors.

by Brandon Cornett

What do you need when launching a business blog? Well, lots of things really. The necessary “ingredients” will vary from one business blogger to the next. In fact, entire books have been written on the subject of launching a blog.

So instead of rehashing what’s been written before, I’ll offer what I feel are the five most important considerations when starting a business blog.

The 5 P’s of Starting a Business Blog

• Program
• Purpose
• Person
• Passion
• Persistence

Program
Before you can start growing your blog, you obviously need to choose a blogging program. These are the all-inclusive systems that will power your business blog. The three most popular programs are Blogger, WordPress and TypePad.

Some companies with big IT departments actually create their own blogging programs, but in my opinion this is often a waste of time and money. WordPress, for one, can be customized and configured to support any business blogging objective. So why reinvent the wheel?

All three of the programs mentioned above can support a business blog, but they do have their advantages and disadvantages. My advice is to experiment with each one before making a decision. It’s also wise to talk to an experienced blogger who has used more than one program. He or she can help you understand the pros and cons of popular blogging programs.

Purpose
What are your blogging goals? What do you hope to get out of your business blogging efforts? How will your blog support your company’s marketing and communications goals?

You should answer these questions before you start blogging. It’s much easier to give a blog shape when you know the blog’s mission. Clearly define the purpose of your business blog, and then put that purpose in writing. You might even have a multi-purpose blog that supports several objectives. That’s fine too, as long as you define that purpose.

You can see that my blog’s purpose is clearly defined and specific. This makes my blogging duties much easier, and it will do the same for you.

Person
Who will publish your blog? Will you have one author or several authors? Will you write the blog’s content yourself or delegate it to someone else in your organization? These questions all fall under the “Person” factor — the third of our five P’s.

The author(s) of a business blog will solely determine the blog’s success or failure. The author is the blog, so it’s critical to choose the right person for the job. If you run a one-man or one-woman operation, you will obviously be the blog’s author. If you run a larger organization, you may have the opportunity to delegate blogging duties to the best candidate.

Whoever does the actual blog writing, it’s crucial that they possess the final two P’s of our list — passion and persistence.

Passion
If you are going to maintain a business blog, you will get much further and enjoy greater benefits if you blog with passion and enthusiasm. There are two primary reasons for this:

1. If you blog about something you are enthusiastic about (a particular niche, industry, product, etc.), you will be more likely to blog often. As a result, your business blog will grow rapidly and thus provide more search engine visibility.

2. If you blog with enthusiasm and energy, people will find your blog more interesting (than if you were half-hearted about your blogging). This will in turn help you grow your readership and foster interaction with your audience through the form of reader comments. So instead of having passive readers, you could enjoy the lead-producing benefits of active participation.

Half-hearted commentary stands out like a purple elephant in the corporate blogosphere. This kind of commentary does more harm than good, whether it comes from the CEO, the communications chief, or Joe Employee. Enthusiasm comes across in blog posts — and it’s contagious.

Persistence
With any business blog, success comes over time. This is true regardless of how you define success. Whether you’re blogging to increase sales, establish authority, generate leads or reinforce your brand, you will need to be persistent in your efforts.

This is especially true for smaller businesses, since a small business blog will not have the “built-in” audience of a larger corporation. In the early days, you will likely be blogging to an audience of one — yourself. But in time, persistence can change all of that!

Many times in the past, I’ve written about the search engine visibility benefits of using a business blog. Because of this, blog SEO (search engine optimization) is a popular topic among business bloggers. So here we go with another lesson on the SEO aspect of blogging.

In this post, we will learn how to create a content plan that helps us blog about topics important to our ideal audience. We will identify the topics, we will integrate them into our blog content plan, and then we will write about them.

From a technical standpoint, blogging is easy. Because of this simplicity, you can grow your business blog steadily over time. Consistent growth and content volume are two of the top-five ranking factors with most major search engines.

But many bloggers find this notion intimidating. “What do I write about? Where do I come up with ideas? How can I possibly create a blog post two or three times per week?”

Here’s the good news. For most business blogs, the content and ideas already exist — you just have to round them up and put them on paper. Here’s how to use a keyword research tool to determine which topics are most important to your key audience.

Step 1. Identify Blog Theme
Start by identifying the main topic of your business blog. Usually, this will be related to your products or services. Write this main topic down on a piece of paper.

Step 2. Choose Keyword Tool
Now you will need to select a keyword / key phrase research tool. I use and recommend both WordTracker.com and KeywordDiscovery.com. There is a free version of WordTracker’s tool available at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Step 3. Begin Key Phrase Research
Enter your main topic into the search tool and hit “Enter” — or whatever button runs the report. In the example image below, I’ve used the topic / phrase “working capital.” This topic is relevant to one of my client’s business.

Step 4. Create Spreadsheet
Once you generate a list of key phrases based on your main topic, copy the results into an Excel spreadsheet (the best program to use for this task). Then go through and delete any phrases / topics that are irrelevant to your business. Do the same with redundant phrases. The image below shows my cleaned up spreadsheet, with redundant and irrelevant phrases removed.

Step 5. Add Spreadsheet Columns
Now you can simply add a “completion” column to your spreadsheet, and mark each topic complete when you have written about it.

Step 6. Start Blogging
Look at each phrase and ask yourself, “How can I blog about this topic in order to (A) educate my target audience and (B) demonstrate the knowledge capital of my company?” The spreadsheet represents the topics your audience wants to learn about, as indicated by their online search behavior. So give them what they want!

Step 7. Expand, Repeat and Vary
Now that you have blogged about topics important to your audience, what do you do next? You keep going, of course. You can continue the process by revisiting topics from a different angle, or by expanding your list of topics / phrases.

What’s the Point?
This may seem like a lot of effort, but once you get going it’s fairly simple and straightforward. But even if it were difficult, it would be worth the effort. Think about what you’re doing here. You are creating a library of information that directly corresponds to the topics your audience wants to know about. You are laying the groundwork for future search engine visibility for a broad range of relevant phrases. And you are demonstrating your expertise on topics that are important to your audience.

Now that’s a smart way to use a business blog!

If you need some helping getting started, check out our Internet copywriter service for quality content. We can create pages and pages of keyword-rich blog content to save you time and energy. We offer custom plans for long-term writing projects as well.