1. Blogging is a great way to build and strengthen relationships and brand loyalty with your customers.  Using a blog can help your customers interact with you personally – and even if they don’t actually comment, just reading your posts will help them feel like they know you, your business, and what you can do for them.

2. Using a blog helps you to keep your finger on the pulse of your business. The feedback you get through comments and emails (or the lack of feedback!) helps you know what your customers are relating to and when you are on (or off) target. It also makes it super easy for them to respond to suggestions you make or products you are sharing.

3. A blog is an ideal place to showcase the talent and expertise within your business.  Many business owners tell me that the posts that get the most, and most immediate, response are the ones that share something personal about the person or people behind the business.

4. Blogs can increase your search engine ranking.  Search engine marketing has a very low cost per lead and a high return on investment.  Take a look at some of the other articles on search engine optimization and how to use keywords.

p.s. People find short blog postings easy to read, and if they find them useful and informative they are more likely to trust you and buy other products.

Related posts:

1. 9 common blogging mistakes and how to avoid them.
2. What is Search Engine Optimization?
3. Keywords & Blogging, Part 3

This is a great time to review your SEO strategies – and perhaps more importantly, your implementation of said strategies. Sometimes we have great plans, but neglect to get them into action. If that’s the case for you, now would be the ideal time to make a change!

My guess is that if you’ve been following me at all, you have started integrating keywords into your blog posts and pages. If not, that would be a great first step.
But, you don’t have to do it all yourself! This is the perfect task to outsource. You can give the keywords to your assistant and ask them to make sure they are represented in your pages and posts. I recommend having them start with one or two pages, then have them email you the urls for the pages they have edited. This way you can take a quick look to see if they are using the keywords appropriately and to the degree you want, and if the language flows naturally. If so, let them loose on the rest of the posts and whichever pages you want. If they haven’t quite gotten it, a 10 minute conversation, or a quick example, may be all it takes to train them.

Think about how much time you’ll save – and how great it will feel to have your keyword and seo strategies being implemented – maybe even while you sleep!

There are, of course, many other places you’ll want to make updates – including your “about me” page, your signup box, and cleaning up any of that sidebar clutter you’ve been gathering. You want the information to be crisp, fresh, and easy to access. Visual clutter and outdated information is an immediate turnoff to your blog visitors.

There is an excellent report that provides a checklist for getting your blog ready for the new year, published by Lynn Terry, owner of ClickNewz.com. Lynn is one of my favorites in the world of blogging – and this report is one of the reasons why. Not only is it chock full of information, it is also free – you don’t even have to give her your contact info. Download it here: Blog Boost 2010.

What are you going to do first to prepare your blog for the new year?

There are a lot of things you can focus on. Start with revisiting your blog and your vision for it. From there, you’ll come up with a great to do list, combined with the checklist in the report mentioned above.

Here’s what I’m starting with:

• changing the theme on my self-help book summary site, Personal Growth Princess. This may be a lengthy project, but fortunately I’ve scheduled a 2 day business retreat over the New Year holiday, so I should be able to get it done.
• queuing up blog posts for the next 3 months – these will supplemented by other blog posts that address timely issues.
• having my assistant update all my SEO fields – not just the main one for the site, but also for each post. I try to keep up with these as I go along, but honestly, I sometimes forget.

So what’s first on your list for updating your blog for 2010?
Leave a comment below and let me know!

Related posts:

1. SEO and the Blog Advantage
2. Top 4 Reasons Businesses Should Be Blogging
3. 9 common blogging mistakes and how to avoid them.

If you want your website to stand out, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the types of articles you write. Readers want to be on the cutting edge of topics – often with very basic instructions – so that is where youwant to be to increase your traffic and get them to stick around on your site.

Content usually takes the form of articles, blog posts, audio and video too.

The first requirement of your content is that it be oriented for your potential customer or client. You always want to start with the “human” element first. Many people will tell you to focus first on all the techniques and technology, but that is like shooting yourself in the foot. Sure, you might get to the top of a search engine ranking, and someone might visit your site, but if what you provide is worded to attract search engine traffic vs. be of genuine help to the reader, well, you’re right back where you started. Traffic that doesn’t do you any good.

Obviously your content needs to be relevant to the topic of your website. If your website is about selling crafts, then the articles that you supply to your readers are going to need to revolve around that subject. In other words, don’t be talking plumbing if you cater to crafty moms. (I know this sounds obvious, but you would be stunned to see how many people miss the boat entirely on this one.)

Be Creative

There is a lot of content out there these days so it may seem challenging to come up with something new. One thing to remember is that even if someone has heard about it before, they haven’t heard about it from you in the way you would describe or teach it, so start with the basic information and add your special touch. Personal experiences go a long way to connecting with your readers and also providing them with information that would be hard to get anywhere else.

Consider using your own failures as fresh content. Did you try to combine a couple of marketing techniques that absolutely didn’t work? Create an article that highlights what readers “shouldn’t” do. What did you learn from it? Create an article that gives tips for success using that technique.

Earlier today I talked with a client about an upcoming networking event she is hosting. She was concerned because registrations were lower than anticipated. In the course of our discussion she “admitted” that she had skipped another networking event last week, and was now regretting it. It was the PERFECT subject for a new blog post…and her marketing newsletter.

Remember, your content can be spun off into other types of website media as well. You can create videos and audio files based on your content.  It is a way to reach a wider audience who are more attracted to other ways to present relevant information.

(If I set your blog up for you, I already included the easy-peasy plugins to make this a no-brainer for you.)

Don’t Forget the SEO

Now that you have written ideas for your content, decide which keywords would work best in those articles. These are what will make the search engines stand up and take notice. But, remember you are addressing the human factor first. Your articles will read better (hence, be more valuable to the reader) if the keywords appear naturally. Don’t try to force them in spots where it sounds like you are just adding words to appease the search engine gods. Your readers will be turned off by such contrived content.

(Notice how I have worked in the keyword terms  “keywords”, “search engine optimization” and “SEO”. I’ve used them a bunch in this post, but they make sense without sounding overdone.)

Special Features (techniques) to consider

Your content really serves three purposes: keep current readers happy, satisfy SEO requirements and draw new traffic. To meet the latter, try using these options in your content:

• Bulleted points
• Optimized article titles
• Numbers in your titles

Readers usually scan articles first to see if they are relevant. When numbers appear in the title, they know that they will find a certain number of things that can help them. Bulleted points make for easier reading as do subheadings. Optimized catchy titles make them want to click on your link instead of others in the search results.

Is your content doing all it can for your readers and the search engines? If not, read this article again and then refit your articles to do the best job they can.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next article on using site stats to measure (and improve) your results.

Related posts:

1. What is Search Engine Optimization?
2. Keywords & Blogging, Part 4
3. Keywords & Blogging, Part 5

And to be a successful blogger, you need to get noticed. No one will read or buy from you if they can’t find you. True?  The question is…how do you get yourself out there – in a way that is easy, natural, and fun for you – so people  CAN find you? That is where search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, comes into play.

This post is about what SEO is, and how you are going to use it.  If you want to know more about why blogging gives you such a search engine advantage, you can read this post.

SEO What?

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a series of tools, or thought processes and tasks completed on your web pages, that help your website or blog to get noticed by the search engines. Notice that both your “thought processes” and your “tasks” are part of your toolbox. Having a good “system” for how you think about and implement your SEO strategy is as important as the actual work itself.

Search engines use clever things called bots and spiders to crawl sites for anything that makes them relevant to search parameters entered by Internet visitors.

Most people either don’t know what they are looking for or they don’t know where to find it on the Internet. They rely on the search engines to do the work for them. (Think: Google)

The words that visitors use in the search boxes are termed “keywords” by Internet marketers. (Read this article for more detailed information about what keywords are.) When you use the same words in various places on your site, search engines will rank your web pages in relation to others using the same keywords. The websites that use research and optimization techniques the best, will end up on top of the list.

Why does being at the top of search engines matter?

Research has found that 60% of all web searchers will click on one of the top 3 sites they are presented with. The majority of those will choose the number 1 ranked spot.

That means if your site doesn’t appear in the top 3 sites, your chances of having someone visit your site have just dropped dramatically. Having one of the top three positions can result in a much greater amount of traffic. It’s not just the amount of traffic that’s important to note, though. You also want to have the right traffic. After the 3rd spot, the response from search engine users diminishes greatly. This means that the visitors that you get from position 4 and below are less likely to become paying customers.

How to Use It

So, how exactly do you get to the top spots in the search engines? There are several tools and resources that can help with creating top notch SEO for your websites. They revolve around keywords and keyword phrases but the problem is what words to use for your particular business niche.

Think like a customer. After all, you own a business but at times you are also a customer. If it were you, looking for what you have to offer, what words would you enter to find the information on your site? Chances are that you also represent your ideal customer, so your habits and intuition will tell you about those of your potential customers. This will be a short list but one that you can start with.

From there, use some online keyword software to get more ideas. There are programs like Overture that can take one keyword and return a hundred more for you to look at using in your content and elsewhere on your website. Many marketers also use WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool to help them determine which keywords are hot. www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com These keyword programs get their results from various search engines so you can be assured that your keywords represent current parameters.

You can read about additional keyword tools here.

Search engine optimization is useful for content you create, but that is not the only place. Use keywords to get ranked through other places on your site and other sites, too. Here are just a few of the other places you’ll want to consider using keywords:

• Headlines (for each web page and article)
• Anchor text (for links within articles and elsewhere on the page)
• Picture tags
• Tabs (pulldown menus)

Search engine optimization helps you to create a relevant website for the search engines. After you take the time to set up your website with all the information customers will want to see when they visit, use your keywords. This gives the search engines what they need to rank you well so that those customers can find your products or services when it’s most important – when it’s time to buy!

Related posts:

1. Keywords & Blogging, Part 5
2. Creating Content that is Relevant for Readers and Search Engines
3. Keywords & Blogging, Part 4

No doubt you have already been playing the keyword game. (If not, you can check out this series of articles on keyword strategies.)

Search Engine Optimization is definitely a moving target, so if you don’t keep up…well, you won’t keep up.

My friends Dan Thies and Leslie Rohde are known as the best brains in the SEO business. People describe them as the seo brain trust. Last time they offered their coaching program, I missed the boat. They are about to open the doors again – this Thursday, in fact – and in the meantime are sharing some of their best tips and strategies in a series of videos.

The first one you’ll see, called “Rapid Ranking System”, is very powerful. Not just because it explains an often ignored, yet simple, SEO strategy, but because they go into detail about how to implement the strategy. That usually isn’t included in a free video like this. Usually you just get told what you should be doing and why, but not the how.

There are actually 3 videos:

• “The Rapid Ranking System”
• “Better Rankings in a Day”
• “Endless Links”

Each is excellent, but if you can only watch one, do the first one.

If you like what you see, you can sign up for their coaching program – but whether you do that or not, you can watch the videos and gain a great deal.

By the way, I plan on joining their coaching program. I’ve seen their work before, and want to make sure I don’t miss out this time around.

Yes, the links to the video are affiliate links. Dan and Leslie are very picky about who they let into their programs – they prefer to get referrals from people who know their work…that way they know they are sharing information with people who are most likely to use it (and, of course, most likely to sign up for their paid programs. )

Related posts:

1. What is Search Engine Optimization?
2. Creating Content that is Relevant for Readers and Search Engines
3. Keywords & Blogging, Part 3