Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Blogs are a great way for most businesses to attract attention to their site and keep their SEO campaign on track. Just having a blog, however, isn’t enough. You need to know how to use it to interest your site users and market your business.

At the very least, your blog should enhance your relationship with your site’s users. Blogs are a great way to slip more information onto your site on a regular basis. If the content takes SEO into consideration, so much the better, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about SEO content. With just a little more thought, though, your blog can actively further the aims of your business, leading to more conversions and ultimately more profit.

Blogging benefits revisited

The benefits of a blog have already been well discussed, but just in case you’ve missed those discussions here’s a review:

• Blogs are cheap. With the availability of free blogging software, blogs can cost nothing more than your time. If you want a quality blog and don’t have a writer on staff, the investment in constant fresh content is comparatively small compared to the cost of attracting as much traffic with advertising.
• Blogs build relationships. Blogs are great for attracting internet users back to your site, and help to establish a community around your site.
• Blogs help you compete. It seems like almost everyone is blogging these days. That’s mainly because almost everyone is. If your competitor has a great blog and you don’t you might find yourself out in the cold.

The basic requirement: quality content

Competition in the blogosphere is high. There is a social element to blogging that you can’t easily get away from, and if you want your blog to succeed you have to appeal to blogging society. This means that you can’t get away with low-quality content.

Quality content is the basic thing you need before your blog can achieve anything much for your business. If your content is only there for the sake of drawing search engine spiders, then search engine spiders are the only things that will read it. Get into the habit of posting genuinely interesting and valuable content.

The next step: include market information

The next level of blogging is using the content to market your products and services. It’s important to note that this does not mean you should turn your blog entries into advertisements. Taking your blog to the next level requires subtlety. Posting on subjects related to your products or services and casually mentioning them is enough. For example, if your site sells pet supplies, a blog post on the usefulness of a retractable leash with a mention that you sell them is a great idea. A blog post about how great your retractable leashes are is a bad idea.

Third step: link it up

Although you should avoid advertising in your blog posts, you can use them to direct users to pages that are a bit pushier. Back up your casual mentions of products and services with a handy link. This is also a great SEO move.

Blogs can be a great way to get your site’s users more involved in your business. They work well to draw visitors to your site in, and attract attention of their own. A good blog can really take your business places, but only if you work hard on it.

Keeping the excitement going

If you’ve worked hard on your blog campaign, you’re likely to attract a bit of attention with your new blog. Participation in the blogging community in the first few months of your blog can attract other bloggers, and then their followers, to your blog. This should generate comments, links, and all of the good things about blogs that your search engine optimisation consultant told you about.

After those first few months, though, it’s likely that you’ll feel a dip in the excitement. This comes both from within and without. As the first hard slog of setting up your blog fades, you’re likely to settle into a routine. As other blogs clamour for their attention, people who supported you at first will move on to other things. A this time, it’s easy to lose your way.

When the lull is user traffic

A lull is to be expected in user traffic after the initial splash of a blog. Some bloggers make the mistake of chasing after their initial success. It’s important to recognise that a drop-off in attention is natural and to keep building from what you do have.

What needs to be done after the initial period is really all about maintenance. It can be very tempting to try to get that initial attention back, or to give up completely. Maintaining a consistent quality is essential at this point in order to retain the faithful followers that you’ve won over. Keep your topics interesting, keep interlinking within your pages, and keep posting regularly to retain these users.

When the lull is your fault

Many businesses get their blogs off to a good start. It’s easier to do this when you have the momentum. The business, perhaps prompted by their search engine optimisation company, works out a structure for the blog, plots out some content ideas and gets things rolling with a few enthusiastic posts. Unfortunately, after a while the repetitive chore of sourcing an idea, composing and posting wears the business down and the quality of the blog diminishes.

It is absolutely vital to maintain the quality of your blog over time. Any lapse can have potentially disastrous consequences, putting users off your site permanently. To users, a blog is much like a publication. If you regularly buy a newspaper, and one week it’s full of half-composed stories and bad formatting, you’re likely to never buy it again.

At the same time, it’s hard to keep momentum going on a blog, particularly if you started it for business reasons rather than for pleasure. One way to cope with the lull after the initial excitement is to source content from a professional. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about acquiring content for your blog.