Link Building, or inbound links from other sites, can be important to the competitive success of your business blog. You may have a great blog solution, with all the features search engines love. You may have terrific outbound & deep internal linking, placed perfectly throughout your blog in the most relevant anchor text. You may be the most consistent and on topic blogger there is, but for the most sought after topics [i.e. New York City Real Estate] inbound link recognition is a key element

Now, we want to be on record: by no means are we saying the entire emphasis of your business blogging effort has to be links and search engine results. We have so many clients that succeed in the search engines without strong inbound links, but in these cases [for the most sought after key phrases] it’s likely that a lot of the competition hasn’t established them either. What’s more, the development of trust, a more human approach to an online presence, an authoritative online brand or multiple direct subscriptions are of immense importance. Per Valencia CA Realtor Connor MacIVOR, "The visibility in search engines is only part of the equation. People want flesh and blood." Depending on your individual goals, all of the above can bring success and they are attainable without links and competitive search engine results

The way search engines evaluate a link is proprietary, but the consensus is the best inbound links have three attributes including 1) they come from highly ranked sites, 2) the site’s focus should be related to the topic you blog about and 3) they should link to your pages from relevant keywords or anchor text. So, for example, if you are in residential Real Estate try and 1) establish links from sites that have a high Page Rank. Seek 2) important industry, social networks and/ or directory sites. And, do your best to have 3) links come from text that accurately describe your site’s page

Link building is tough! Naturally generated Links or Link Bait is always the best way. Simply put, great content attracts interest and eventually inbound links. You can also create some of your own inbound linking from various social media & directory sites, but it’s at times difficult to know where your hard work will bear fruit. For instance, some may place Robots Exclusion Standard on user created links or there could be a sudden de- emphasis by the search engines. Because the success of Google’s [Yahoo’s, MSN’s, etc.] business depends on their ability to satisfy searchers with the best user experience possible, they have to constantly change their rules. It’s only logical change affects the emphasis of various inbound links: what is a great link one day, may not be tomorrow. The Google algorithm is known to have over 200 individually weighted criteria, all levered to accurately evaluate and rank a site’s content. Says Google, "We’re constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users." In effect, Google truly wants to level the playing field for good content [on every specific subject] so they can successfully return the best, most relevant search results possible

So before you jump in, know that good content is no. 1; know what a good link is; know that pursuing them is time consuming & difficult; know that what works today, may not the next day…  but also know [the good news is!] that it is as tough for your competitors as it is for you

To become more aware of link building strategies, techniques and general search engine optimization here are some great resources:

1. SEO Book Blog
2. Search Engine Land
3. Search Engine Watch
4. Audette Media
5. SEMOZ
6. Matt Cutts

By all means, invite direct subscription to your Business Blog! We’ve said before that RSS is an important sales channel. Search Engine findability is well documented, but have you truly considered the development of voluntary direct connections [via RSS] to your clients & prospects?

All consumers are online researching their future product purchases & service providers. If you’re not familiar we define RSS here, but as a provider of relevant content on the subject of your business [in your area] there’s every reason to believe people will appreciate & subscribe to you. If they like your content they may link to you from their blogs or websites and this can generate even more direct subscription, more leads & more sales [from amongst their readers & subscribers].

Recently, our client Alfredo Cristo demonstrated recognition for the value of direct subscription. He understands it so well he sent a letter inviting his clients & prospects to subscribe, as follows:

 Dear Client,

 I would like to share my new blog site, where my team and I will be posting to the Internet for you a wide variety of information and listings about  Baja, particularly the Cities of La Paz, Loreto, Mulege and East Cape, including La Ribera and Los Barriles.

 In this new blog, you can read our posts and interact with us leaving your comments and questions about the subjects.

 On our first blog we are focusing specifically in Colina Del Sol Los Barriles, a new eco-friendly development located in Los Barriles East Cape that  offers a marvelous opportunity to purchase affordable Residential lots and Homes.

 I hope you, your friends and family join me by subscribing to our weekly journey and please do not hesitate to make comments on the blog  or email me directly with any question or inquiry you may have. Please click on http://blog.bajasurlegal.com

Alfredo, we couldn’t have set a better example ourselves. Well done

Direct subscription can happen without people ever having to search for you; however, no matter the cause RSS is a very important sales channel!! By all means, invite direct subscription to your Business Blog

Recently, while participating on a Business Blogging panel at the CO Realtor Rally, a gentleman in the audience posed a great question. He asked, "I blog to promote my business; however, I enjoy mixing in family- oriented posts. Is this a bad strategy with Search Engines?" I jumped in with the question, "Business- wise, are you satisfied with the response you’re getting?" His answer, "yes." He added he was generating solid awareness and good lead activity

Now I guess we could have broken down competitive sets, his writing & optimization skill sets, posting activity, links, blog solution, subscriber count, etc., etc. and then the cost of that ‘awareness & activity’, but this wasn’t the forum to be an SEO- obsessed arm chair quarterback. He said he was satisfied, with awareness and leads

The Internet has changed media, shifting power from traditional media to the users. As Business Bloggers, we need to set our own discipline, goals and expectations accordingly. This gentleman admitted that he hadn’t solely been blogging for the Search Engines. Some would argue that if we Blog for people optimization takes care of itself and, while I’m a firm believer in ‘Best Blogging Practices’, it’s only logical that a disciplined and family oriented Real Estate Blogger will appeal to [and be discovered by] Home Buyers with similar family values in a marketplace

I think it’s safe to assume some of that satisfaction stems from local search engine findability and even family- oriented posts can help to emphasize focus on a local marketplace, but the answer to the question ‘Do you Business Blog for Search Engines or Humans?’ is certainly both! They don’t have to be mutually exclusive: Business Blog to appeal to people, but with a healthy respect for how to satisfy the search engines… that can bring the people along

If you’re simply too busy to Business Blog, have you considered Ghost Blog- writing?

Search Marketing or the development of qualified findability in the search engine indexes is possible for any business. If you consider a search engine’s interest in identifying and then organizing all topics to satisfy their search traffic then you can understand why transferring your business knowledge- base to the web works. That’s right, a consistent & targeted flow of blogging activity can get you relevant findability & success!

Our experience has shown that many business people are too busy and that others just don’t feel comfortable. Blogging isn’t for every business person; however, online marketing is!

Now, many would strongly suggest that in order to get anything from business blogging, you have to put something of yourself into it. How could a Ghost Blog- writer know enough about the business or have the enthusiasm for it you do? We don’t disagree, but there is no reason why the careful direction of others to express yourself and your business interests won’t suffice.

As such, we offer experienced Ghost blog- writing services so that you’re always fighting the competitive online marketing & brand battle. Our writers follow client direction: they’re familiar with RSS & Alerts subscription, best blogging practices, including search engine optimization techniques, and we require client direction from a series of interview questions. In fact, we just recently set up more aggressive re- interview standards so we’re alwyas keeping it fresh & focused

After all if 80- 90% of consumers trust search long before they make direct contact with a business, it’s important to be visible, authoritative and generous with value- added knowledge when they do!

Interested, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and ask more about our Ghost Blog- writing service.

We were recently interviewed by the Real Estate CyberSpace Society on the subject of Business Blogging. Click on the logo above or here for access to the interview and a basic transcript. We cover Tips for Getting Started with a Blog, Web Sites vs. Blogs, Getting Your Blog Recognized, More on Search Engine Recognition, Interactivity, Creating Local Brand Awareness, and the general Advantages of Business Blogging.

If you have been thinking about why other folks in the Real Estate Industry are blogging or even how it can help you to generate search engine discoverability, an online presence, trust in a marketplace, direct subscribers and lots of new business you may find this useful.  

And thank you Real Estate CyberSpace Society for allowing us to participate  

Real Estate CyberSpace Society is a great organization dedicated to providing resources and programs to its’ Real Estate Industry members. They also put on a very innovative Online Convention & Expo 

Dictionary.com says ‘media is the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people.’ Let’s add Business Blogs to that mix: they can easily reach and influence people! We can probably conclude that virtually all consumers search, and thereby, they research or even interview their future purchases prior to making them. If, rather than constantly hunting for customers, businesses can simply make their practical knowledge of a specific subject [i.e. Hilton Head SC Real Estate & Community] available to those already hunting for it online than there is a very large & efficient advertorial media opportunity with a Business Blog

That’s right, a good Business Blog will evolve as media, but let’s look at how that might go.

I. Business Blog Visibility: For starters and because of a modern day [unconstrained] landscape for the distribution of practical knowledge, a business should commit to blogging enthusiastically about what it sees, it knows and it has to offer. By being on topic and consistent, this business blogger will attract attention from search engine spiders; thereby, it will penetrate search engine indexes for subject topics, keywords, key phrases. As a result, search engine visibility, discoverability, traffic and targeted consumer page views shall ensue.

II. Business Blog Brand: From here, recognition by a targeted audience as a knowledge- able, authoritative & enthusiastic provider of products and/ or service information begins to resonate. Word of mouth and/or blog may even generate recognition including from inbound linking, which can improve all of the above. Awareness, trust and an online brand with targeted consumers is established!

III. Business Blog Direct Connections: Then, via RSS and RSS converted to Email, direct connections from amongst the targeted audience emerge. And, by the way, direct to prospective buyers is the most valuable form of advertising. Again, media is a means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines and now blogs, that reaches or influences people. By using its’ Blog our business has attracted eyeballs, developed brand & trust and [now] generated direct subscription.

In effect, our business has partly established itself as a subject specific advertorial media company. As marketers I ask you, why wouldn’t a business want this? When you consider the fact the cost of content creation, content discoverability and direct content distribution has reached negligible lows… it’s simply a smart strategy for the knowledge- rich business

For our purposes here ‘practical knowledge’ means the topics, keywords, key phrases & content that make up a web presence, but because of blogs, reliable search and RSS there is nothing stopping a business from creating and then distributing any and all of its’ useful knowledge direct to those who want and need it. It’s important to have a business blog solution that not only calls to search engines each time there is new content created, but that supports crawling with good meta data presentation, internal & external linking and the presentation of topics, keywords & key phrases. In addition to relatively standard RSS Subscription capabilities, it should also offer visitors the choice to subscribe by email. And most important here, there should always be an enthusiastic effort to blog the useful business information that will ultimately attract a targeted audience… very much as media always has 

Why should YouTube be in your marketing mix? For starters, YouTube’s traffic has risen to the degree that it is one of the four most visited sites online. Plus, you don’t necessarily have to endure the headache or cost of creating & editing actual video to be there. You can use basic photo images to create video tours

Top 10 Reasons to add YouTube to your marketing mix:

1. To date, there is very little competition for your YouTube indexed content! For instance, Google has 3,310,000 indexed pages competing for the search - san diego real estate , whereas YouTube has 331 indexed videos competing for the same search - san diego real estate

2. YouTube is the 4th most popular site for total traffic online

3.  In this chart Hitwise combined the share of 56 broadcast and cable network websites — not including news, weather, sports and shopping networks — and compared it with YouTube.

4.  Online users actively search for videos. In fact, Google Trends shows that more people are looking for videos than are interested in shopping or even news.

5.  YouTube now has 62 million U.S. monthly unique users

6.  53% of YouTube users have attended college or graduate school 

7.  123 MILLION Americans view online video every month

8.  3 of 4 of all US Internet users have looked at online video

9. Once in YouTube, all content is re- indexed by Google Video

10. Google [search the whole web] indexes video! - Google recently announced that the YouTube video library will be a major part of their own search index

Kinetic Knowledge offers a low cost and very convenient Image- based Video Tour content creation service - see client video in YouTube with over 660 views. Video Tours are are a high impact approach to marketing your products, services and particularly your brand. They’re also easily optimized in Business Blogs, Websites and the free aggregators like YouTube, which now pushes its’ content to Google Video & Google [search the whole web.] We can also offer a neat voice over touch

Business website owners and Business Bloggers beware! I see the claims almost everyday and, for the record, the latest Search Engine Advantage is NOT necessarily site technology or optimization tactics so much as it is you!

Google is at the top of the technology mountain; however, they need 1) search traffic and 2) your practical knowledge in order to monetize their technology. In this sense "practical knowledge" refers to online content - the topics, keywords, and key phrases that make up your websites and blogs. Google deploys spiders [bots] to crawl the web and consume all content for their indexes. Once they have it, they prepare it for their search traffic by ranking it!

Everybody searches, so the success of Google’s [Yahoo’s, MSN’s, etc.] business depends on their ability to meet that search activity with the best user experience possible. They employ an army of engineers & PHDs whose primary intention is to perfect an ability to accurately identify, consume and rank content… NOT SITE TECHNOLOGY. The Google algorithm is known to have over 200 individually weighted criteria, cementing their ability to decide what truly is and what is not a relevant high ranking search result. Says Google, "We’re constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users."  In effect [and this is very important], Google truly wants to level the playing field for all content so that they can successfully return the best, most relevant search results possible to their users.

Yes, all the hearsay is true - a blog can offer you certain advantages in the eyes of the search engines and we provide a leading- edge solution[coming soon: we’ll be writing about the important features your blog should have.] And yes, your Blog must be designed well and its’ feature set must evolve because the web & search engines always do; however, those 200 individually weighted criteria mentioned above are used to evaluate and to compare your site or blog, its pages and especially its content! Sure links are important: some are more important than others, some are in your control, but your content is ultimately the key. 

Make no mistake, it’s your "practical knowledge" that search engines need in order to earn the loyalty of consumer search traffic! Google openly discloses site standards in order to assist in making websites and blogs more search engine friendly. Why? They want it to be easy for everyone to bring practical knowledge to the web so they can ‘…organize the world’s information.’ They don’t say they want to organize the most technical, the most intellectual or the most eloquent presentation… they say they want "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."  Why? So they can successfully connect ALL searching consumers with the fresh, relevant, unbiased & useful answers they want.

Content is your practical knowledge; your content transferred to the web is YOU transferred to the web. Good evolving blog technology is very important, but the largest advantage is your practical knowledge of a subject [i.e. Santa Barbara Pocket Listings Blog] and the consistent, on topic transfer of that knowledge to the web. Because of Google’s reliable search driven business model, the advantage is you! And it is YOU by design!

In this day and age the cost to create content is negligible. The means to distribute your content to the people who want and who need it is without constraint! Great Business blog solutions make it simple! So, get in there and blog: blog enthusiastically about what you know, what you hear, what you see and what have to offer and you will generate visibility, awareness and new business 

• Do I own my blog platform infrastructure? 
• Do I own the content on my blog? 
• Do I own the search engine indexing I generate with my blog?
• What does it mean to have a hosted blog or a free blog versus a custom blog that lives on my own server?
• Is it in your best interest to own your blog platform infrastructure?  

1. What are my content conversion options if I decide to cancel your service?
2. Do I have any storage limitations?
3. Do you host photos for me?
4. What types of service and education do you provide?
5. What is your technical support policy?
6. Will you help me learn to blog effectively?
7. What is your pricing model – what is included and what is ala carte?
8. Do you provide statistics or systems monitoring?
9. Will I get a custom design?

If you are attending the 2008 Colorado Realtor Rally please stop by booth #036  

Also look for us on the ‘Blogging for Business’ panel at 2PM