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Over the last year we have set up quite a few Client’s Blogs for SEO reasons and we are often asked “but what do we need a Blog for?”
Apart from reintroducing people to their long-lost inner writer, there are excellent business and SEO reasons for putting time and effort into producing a really good blog. The blog will raise awareness of your company online, allow you to interact on other related blogs, comment, even lead people to your business via your competitors blogs. If done properly your blog will also likely start to rank in organic searches alongside your main site, and lead people to you that way, effectively doubling your internet presence in the SERPS.
The Vertical response team sum it up nicely HERE , Excerpts used below.
A blog is simply a website you publish in conjunction with your corporate website where you become the expert in your field and provide important information about your industry or your product/service that your readers or customers might find useful.
It also provides a “voice” of the company as well as a way for your readers to comment back on what you provide. It works in conjunction with your company website
Blog providers: TypePad, WordPress, Blogger
Why Blog?
Search Engine Rankings
Backlinking - The more you link back to your corporate domain you could get ranked higher in the search engines. Search engines like “backlinks” (for now anyway). Make sure you link from keywords that are meaningful in your posts. For instance if one of your keywords is “red lipstick” then link back to a page on your site from that keyword.
Categories - Flag each post or “tag” them with a popular keyword(s) or categories for the search engines to key on as well. Notice the (s) above? Put your posts in multiple categories so they can have multiple tags. The more the merrier.
Customer Feedback
Polling - If you need a quick answer to questions, throw up a poll on your blog. Through polling we not only found that our users would attend events we throw, but Vizu, the polling provider we use actually tells us where in the world (on a Google map) these people actually are. Great for event planning.
Comments - Moderating comments in general is a good idea because of spam commentors who just want to get their link on a well-trafficked blog. You will get many great comments either supporting or disagreeing with your POV. It’s wonderful to get customer opinions on certain topics, but better yet, have them comment on each other’s comments. It facilitates a really great dialog, plus you’re on the pulse of how they feel about you.
Content
Selling vs. Not Selling - Avoid too much “shameless self-promotion” if you can, unless that’s what you want your blog to be. People are less likely to link to your blog if it’s more about you and less informational. So although a blog should be used as a marketing tool, it should be more information than marketing.
Search Engines - The more content you have on your blog about your specific topics, the more the search engines will pick up keywords on your blog. It’s both a quantity/quality game.
PR
Establish Yourself as an Expert - Whenever our PR folks gets a request from a publication about a topic to write about, they consult the blog first to see if there’s anything already there. This proves to be a great time saver. If they do find something, they forward the blog post to the publication writer. In some cases that’s all the publication needs for a reference, in others it’s used as an example of the types of topics we can be interviewed, quoted and published on.
Reusable Content - From time to time our PR folks will use our content as the idea for a story that a publisher might find interesting.
RSS
Use RSS to publish feeds of your last few blog posts strategically on your site. It can support what you sell if your readers think you’re the industry expert. This can also drive traffic back to the blog so that your readers can get more information.
Try using email marketing to drive traffic directly to the blog giving your users helpful information. Then use Google Analytics on the blog to find out which posts most readers are interested in.
For what we consider good examples of SEO blogs, check our SEO Ibiza Links & Blogs page. Then get onto Google, Technorati, Yahoo etc and find the best blog in your marketplace. Read it, study it, absorb it, and see what makes it as good as it is. Then find 4 more you like, and repeat.
Now attempt to make your Blog as good as theirs in all their winning ways, but this is the most important part, add in your own unique personality and add your own spin or humour to it, to make it even better.
SEO Content for Small Businesses who want to raise their internet profile by blogging but don’t know how to write effective SEO Content for Small Business Blogs can always contact a professional for some content if they need help getting started.
As time passes and you get more adept at blogging start looking for more interesting or new things to blog about, anything you may have thought about in your industry, but havent seen written about yet, and you may well have a very good start to your next linkbait campaign.
All you need is one quality original piece of work or thought to catch the notice of the bloggosphere and you can be front page news with thousands of new Inbound links in a day, and many thousands in a week. Static Websites do not offer this unique “web 2.0″ marketing opportunity, Blogs do.
Thats why you need one.
