Business Blog Advice

There are many ways to increase traffic to a business blog (or an educational blog, or any other kind of blog for that matter). But in my opinion, the best way to increase blog traffic is simply by posting often with quality content.

In fact, there are so many benefits of posting quality content that I’m going to dedicate this entire blog post to the subject…

Increase Blog Traffic With Quality Content

Let’s start by discussing the reasons why people visit a blog in the first place. Think of your own web habits for a moment. Specifically, think about the blogs that you visit a lot. What do they have in common? I’m willing to guess that your favorite blogs do a good job of entertaining you or educating you … or both. And they do this with quality content.

So that’s one of the ways to increase blog traffic with quality content. It turns random visitors into regular readers!

But the benefits of quality blog content don’t end there. Other bloggers and webmasters are also more likely to link to and/or cite one of your blog posts (or your blog in general) if it contains great information. And as you probably know, increasing the number of links to your blog from other websites also increases your search engine ranking. This of course means even more traffic to your blog.

So that’s another way to increase your blog’s traffic levels with quality content. It encourages other bloggers and web publishers to link to your blog, which increases your search engine visibility.

Now I’ve given you two good reasons for publishing great information on your blog. But there’s a third reason that’s closely related to the link popularity mentioned above. When all of those other bloggers and website publishers link to your blog as a resource of some kind, they will send you direct traffic as well. In other words, those links will help you improve your blog’s search engine ranking as well as sending visitors your way. So the links now have a direct and indirect way of increasing your traffic levels.

What Is Quality Content?

Now we know how to increase blog traffic with quality content. Specifically, we have outlined three ways that great content increases traffic levels. It turns visitors into fans, it helps you improve your search engine ranking, and it generates referral traffic from other websites.

But what is quality content and how do you create it?

In my opinion, quality website content has the following traits:

• It explores the subject matter in great detail, regardless of the subject being addressed.
• It is well-written with proper spelling and grammar. Thus it is easy for people to read.
• It is interesting and insightful. It doesn’t just rehash what everyone else is saying — it speaks for itself.
• It is updated often to address current events / changes within the subject matter.
• It is written with a clear purpose in mind. To entertain, to educate, to persuade, etc.

So now you know how to increase blog traffic with quality content. The only thing left for you to do is start generating that great content! Good luck.

Generating traffic is the key to success with any business blog. One of the best ways to increase your blog traffic is by increasing your blog ranking in major search engines like Google.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, sort of. The challenge with boosting your blog rankings in the major search engines is that most other business bloggers are trying to do the same thing. After all, anybody who publishes a business blog wants top ranking in the search engines.

So how do you boost your blog ranking with so much competition? This is the question I’ve tackled in a new article posted to the website today.

Read the full article here:
Boosting Blog Rankings for More Traffic

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.

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
1. Better Search Engine Ranking
Search engine visibility is a big part of online marketing. Thus, it’s also a big part of blog marketing. The goal of blog SEO (search engine optimization) is to improve your blog’s ranking in major search engines, which will also increase your blog’s traffic, readership and interaction levels. These are the first steps to blog success and profitability. But it all starts with search engine ranking and visibility.

Fortunately, business blogs have certain characteristics that make them ideal for search engine option / search engine visibility. These characteristics can improve your blog’s visibility and traffic levels – key components of blog marketing success.

For one thing, blog’s are easy to publish, so you can create a large volume of quality content fairly quickly and easily. This “breadth and depth” of content is a fundamental building blog for search engine visibility.

Most business blogs are also, by default, well structured and easy for search engines to crawl through. Blog programs automatically archive content and allow you to categorize your writing into topics and subtopics. These category and archive links give blogs an easy way to access content.

2. Lead Generation Tool
Lead generation is an important part of business blog marketing. You can generate leads from your blog in a variety of ways. When people leave comments on your blog and include their email address, you could follow up with them on the blog itself and also by email. You can also feature “white papers” or other exclusive reports on your blog, and allow people to request them online. Of course, if your business blog is about a truly exceptional product or service, then your blog marketing (and lead generation) will be even simpler – highlight your contact info someplace visible, and people will contact you.

3. Collaboration / Joint Marketing
Business blogs can easily support collaboration and joint-author activities. Having multiple authors can increase your blog’s usefulness and popularity, while also increasing the number of people promoting your blog. With blog marketing, two heads (or three, or four) can be better than one, and blog programs make it very easy to collaborate. You just invite your authors, give them posting authority on the blog, and you’re off and running. Just be sure to choose the right authors and share the benefits accordingly.

4. Online PR Tool
The business blog is also an ideal channel for news, articles and other PR pieces. This can support your blog marketing efforts in a number of ways. These days, journalists use business blogs to stay informed about companies in their coverage area. That’s because they know they’ll get much more current information from a blog than a regular website, as business blogs are often updated weekly or even daily. Blogs also produce RSS feeds, which can be easily be republished onto other websites with links back to the source website / blog. This lets you use your business blog as a syndication tool for content distribution, which can further support your blog marketing efforts.

5. Buzz Generation / Word-of-Mouth
If you go the extra mile to make your business blog unique, informative, engaging or entertaining, you will eventually develop a strong base of readers. In time, blog readers can become loyal advocates who eagerly share your blog with friends or colleagues. This buzz factor can be a powerful tool in blog marketing, because it can spread like wildfire thanks to the speed and reach of the blogosphere.

Small businesses are sometimes at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing. But there’s a “secret weapon” that small business owners can use to tip the scales back in their favor. It’s the small business blog, and you’ll learn all about in this blog post.

Like any business, the small business needs to get the word out about their services and/or products. But by their nature, these businesses often lack the marketing budget of their large counterparts. A business blog can help fill this gap between marketing needs and marketing budget, and when used properly it can also help you propel your small business to the next level.

What is a business blog? In technical terms, a blog is a content-management tool that allows you to quickly and easily publish news, articles or marketing messages onto the Internet. But in the right hands, the business blog becomes more than a simple publishing tool. It becomes a powerful tool for online marketing and communications.

Easy to Publish
Business blogs are easy to publish, even for the web novice. That’s because the blog does all of the technical work for you. You simply type your message, add links or images as needed, and click the “Publish” button. The blog will convert your text into web code for proper display on the Web. This simplicity is ideal for the small business owner, who usually does not have an extensive IT department (if one at all).

Easy to Launch
Blogs are also fairly simple to setup, especially if you get help from an experienced blogger. For instance, I recently set up a business blog for a company that provides factoring financial services to small and medium-sized businesses. I customized a WordPress blog template, designed a few buttons, and that was it. In two days, the blog was up and running.

Blog Marketing Success
As your blog grows in size and popularity, it can support several marketing objectives at once. It can help you attract readers, generate valuable leads, improve your search engine visibility, and position yourself as a trusted expert in your field. In other words, a business blog can help you compete with the “big dogs” online — because after all, nobody knows how big you are online. If you blog effectively and build an audience of loyal readers, you could even outperform your larger competitors online!

Best of all, many blog programs are free, which is an ideal price for the small business owner!

Get more advice on small business web strategy here.

Related resources: Small business online payroll

Search engines also pay a lot of attention to the title element of each web page / blog post. When you create a title for your blog post, the title also becomes the HTML title element of that page. When you are looking at a web page, you’ll notice a short title up in the blue bar at the top of your browser window. This is the title element, and search engines use this title to understand more about your page content.

The title element also appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), above the description and URL for each listing. So in this capacity, the title must be well written, descriptive and enticing. Remember, if your business blog appears on a search engine results page, there will be nine other listings on that page as well. So you have a 1-in-10 chance of getting the click-through. Your title will play a big role in that.

Fortunately, most blog programs take the title you assign to each blog post and automatically convert it into the page’s title element. So you don’t have to think about the web coding side of things. You just write a great title, and the blog program will handle the coding for you.

This all might be a bit confusing, but here’s the important thing to remember. The title you give your blog post is important for search engine visibility. So it should be descriptive, accurate, and filled with keywords and phrases.

We begin this lesson with a reminder that readers come first, and search engines second. When posting new content to your business blog, try to create something of value for the reader. Try to create blog posts that are interesting, helpful, entertaining or otherwise engaging. Do this, and half the search engine “battle” is already won.

When writing content for your business blog, limit each blog post to a single idea. Blog posts should be easy to digest in one reading. Shorter posts are more eyeball-friendly and will likely help you grow your readership, especially if those posts are engaging as well. My personal rule of thumb is to write more than 100 words (for value) but below 500 words (for brevity).

From a search engine standpoint, it’s also better to create a higher number of short posts. Most blog programs save each of your blog posts as a separate page. So if you blog once a day for a year, you’ll have 365 pages of web content. That’s a lot of keyword-rich content to educate people and search engines alike!

Also, be sure the content of each blog post is a direct extension of the blog post’s title. Search engines robots will compare the content of your blog post to the post’s title. So the key phrase in your title should be carried over into the actual blog post.

When you think about it, this should happen automatically. If, for example, you were blogging about a new software product for bankers, a good title might be “Bank Software: What to Ask Before Buying.” This title should then match the body content of the blog post. Maybe this blog post would go on to list the top-ten questions to ask before choosing a banking software program. The page’s content would be a direct extension of the title. Good for readers, and good for search engines!