In today’s advertising environment, publishing information accumulated in every day practical experience has proven… over and over again… to build trust with empowered consumers. When managed strategically and with discipline, the long lasting effects [from broad key phrase search indexing, other site back links, direct email & RSS subscriptions, bookmarks and feed connections to other sites & social networks] of a good blogsite can be a  never ending pipeline of potential leads and sales for your business!

To assist we have released the new and improved BUSINESS BLOGGER’S BIBLE. Ultimately this document is meant to give beginners a very practical window into how their blog platform and content will drive traffic, leads & new business! For those who don’t consider themselves ‘a beginner’, we only hope the bible serves as a great refresher. Maybe, even, it’s a grounded look versus so much hype & confusion thrown around out there these days.

The Business Blogger’s Bible, version 1.1, is broken down into 9 straight forward sections including:

1. Ideas For Getting Started
2. Have A Good Blog Platform
3. Careful With The Shortcuts
4. Business Blogging Discipline
5. Determine Your Target Market
6. Use Of Best Blogging Practices
7. Blog Networking Strategy
8. Direct Subscription Strategy
9. Tracking Return On Investment

So please, grab a copy of the Business Blogger’s Bible here. And please understand we’d like something simple for the effort. In exchange, we simply ask you share accurate information and that you register for our periodic news, tips and instruction.

Apparently malware and spam are becoming a bigger and bigger threat on social networks such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.

According to Sophos, security software leader, survey of over 500 firms 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites, an increase of 70.6% compared to last year. 36% of users claim they’ve been sent malware via social networking sites, which is an increase of 69.8% from last year.
I’ll add I have been personally spammed, by what appeared to be links from friends, in FB no less than three times in the last couple months. You can read more at Graham Cluley’s blog

Recently someone complained they had only reached 23 new blogsite visitors per day. We’re not speaking of page views, but new & possibly ‘ready to buy [because they have qualified you somehow or somewhere]‘ visitors. We looked at how long this particular business had been online [6 months], how much effort they were putting into blogging [7- 8 posts per month], their blog writing techniques [good] and also at their target market [i.e. home buyers & sellers, one specific farm area.] We then looked at what was bringing visitors and found a combination of highly specific searches and Twitter. And by the way, Twitter was strictly being auto- populated by their blogsite’s feed, so folks were finding them in Twitter and coming back to their blogsite for a depth that 140 characters doesn’t provide. Sure improvements could be made, but ultimately we concluded that above all… they had to get over ‘how much’ and start thinking about the traffic metric more strategically!

Traffic growth takes time & effort. Shear traffic volume may offer some conversions, but this is the web where most visitors come because they’re already looking for something you’ve written. The media and so many online marketing coaches often confuse business people with talk of quantity, rather than quality traffic. Unless you sell advertising [at a rate per thousand page views], your business doesn’t necessarily depend on huge amounts of traffic. What makes people visit and then buy? These days most transactions relate to a buyer who identifies your content somewhere, likes it enough to visit and then decides to trust you.

Looking At Traffic Metrics Strategically

Are you looking at your traffic strategically enough to understand what’s happening and how to leverage that information for improvement in subscriptions, lead capture and sales? An average of 23 new visitors a day from highly qualified searchers & subscribers may actually be good, depending on market potential & realistic sales goals.

That’s 690 qualified unique new visitors per month versus traditional advertising methods, which are often wasted on uninterested individuals. In this day and age empowered visitors mostly visit you via a 1) specific search, 2) an interesting back link from another site, a 3) bookmark they’ve kept, a 4) direct RSS or email subscription or a 5) site they visit that has picked up and/or runs your RSS feed. All things, by the way, your blogsite will develop more and more offor you… so long as you’re blogging useful content.

Traffic Data Points We Watch Month Over Month:

• Bounce rate – what percentage looked at one page and left
• Total unique new visitors – the key metric/ do we have new user growth
• Avg unique new visitors per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or have growth
• Return visitors – do our visitors come back/ are subscriptions working
• Avg return visitors per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or growing returns
• Total page views – are we improving engagement with our brand
• Avg page views per day – mostly to see if we are sustaining or have growth
• Avg page views per visitor – to think about architecture & content presentation
• Referral websites – who brings traffic to us [Twitter, Facebook or other sites]?
• Most popular pages – can we expand on those popular subjects?
• Searches that bring us traffic – can we target similar phrases?

For us blogsite bounce rate was, at one time, near 80%, which meant virtually everyone that visited was leaving. In the below video Google suggests bounce is common for blogs… and they are wrong!! We looked at that carefully and I understand their assumption’s basis, but we decided to redesign to a blogsite that wasn’t completely consumed by it’s most recent posts and we successfully reduced bounce to between 7 and 9%. Simultaneously, our page views per visitor increased by a multiple of 3, which we believe is also due to a better content architecture and presentation. That engagement with our brand drives more leads! We also noticed we weren’t getting referral traffic from other sites, which was disappointing considering so many business development deals, so we began looking at auto- feeding our content to various social networks and outside blogs. While not nearly enough, we also do some commenting on other sites, etc. but we now see traffic coming from Twitter and Facebook to the tune of near 15% total traffic.

Folks, get over how much and start thinking about the traffic metric much more strategically! And remember the crucial pipeline for future qualified leads and sales is content! Good consistent blogsites are a primary business asset because they will help you accumulate key phrase search indexing, back links, RSS subscriptions, email subscriptions, bookmarks, feed connections to other sites and more and more visibility – the currency of the web!

What Are The Best Practices for Maximizing Return on Business Blogging?

We’ve done this one before, but based upon questions we’re getting no time is better than right now. Let’s review the very best practices for your business blog posts.

There are never search engine optimization guarantees. Not when more and more competitors are emerging with their own strategies and not when the proprietary Google ranking algorithm is ever changing; however, we have clients all over North America that achieve search engine visibility success with their business blogs everyday! Best practices, when used with discipline, maximize the short and long term value of your blogging effort! And by the way, we’ll look to talk here about balance and being equally, if not more, appealing to humans!

The Best Business Blogging Practices!

Here are the primary points we’d strongly suggest with regards to raising your chance for optimal topic key word and phrase indexing, as well as for human appeal:

1. Have your 20- 25 target key phrase list ready! Ultimately you want to impress humans, but in order to capture them in the search engines you’ve got to be visible for the phrases you believe they will search in the engines and in social networks.

2.  Create strategic post titles! Search engines and humans typically want different things out of a title; to be successful you must strive to please them both. In technical terms, your blog post title is a header tag. This means it’s the first thing a search spider will encounter on a new post. Be specific, so that spiders identify the purpose of the new page, but impactful so that you attract human attention.

3.  Leverage your content! Search spiders tend to look for phrase consistencies in titles and then high in a page. Random spider crawls also digest more content toward the top of a page or post. Without this, at least during random crawls, they may skip your page leaving you with less potential key word & phrase indexing. Create compelling first paragraphs that include your target key words & phrases, but demonstrate a value proposition for humans too. Be human so that you appeal to humans. On the flip side, don’t overuse keywords or use them out of context either. The search engines have filters to flag this behavior. And then too much keyword duplication is also just boring for humans.

4.  Gather and add good links! When competing for search rank links remain an important metric, including those you create to other content of your own. Links matter most when relevant to the purpose of a post and also when they come from a trusted source. The best way to generate links organically from others is to create content others will appreciate enough to link back too. Consider notifying news sources that might be interested in your coverage because they just may link to you. Creating links to relevant articles you’ve already written, essentially voting for those pages yourself, is a proven strategy too. Whether creating or receiving links, it’s always best to have them laid into descriptive anchor text. Search engines prefer anchor text based links! If your page is about widgets and the link comes from text such as ‘the top widgets’ – search engines will recognize and value that more than they would ‘go here’ or go to tomswidgetshop.com.

5. Use Proper Formatting! Most readers give you a few seconds to qualify whether or not they will read deeper into your post. It’s imperative that you make it simple for them to do so. Use simple formatting and a clean layout for every blog post you create. Bold section titles, bullets and numbers are a great way to call attention to your main points. Fonts should be uniform throughout, with photos and links well placed. If it’s a train wreck for the eye, people will typically not give it a chance.

6.  Add Images & Video when possible! Search engines place emphasis on alternative image and video content, so they are actually separate competitive visibility opportunities to text based content. Use proper tagging, as well as descriptive text, techniques so that your images and video are easily understood and working to generate that indexing for you.

7.  Categorize & Tag! Add posts into broader categorization (i.e. a blog post titled, ‘Olive Oil Prevents Alzheimer’s Disease’ should go into the ‘Olive Oil Health’ category) and tags, strictly based upon key phrase emphasis from the blog post content (they are summarizing bullet points from your blog article only – not overall descriptors of your site). Summarized, 2- 4 specific tag phrases will typically do and generally one category per post.

8. Add ‘Call to Action’ & Contact Information! A call to action like, ‘Please, Use Our Complimentary Santa Barbara Online Property Search’, linked to that actual resource drives greater engagement. And in case they’re ready, be sure to have your personal contact information easily accessible! Remember, most consumers will NOT comment.  Most do not want to be a part of the conversation; if they’re interested, most will call or email you!

9. If at all possible, maximize the number of places your blog posts and thereby your brand appear! Social Networks typically offer blogs and while they aren’t going to present your brand exclusively, they certainly offer you an opportunity to be visible to people who may want your product or service. Most of these will allow for your [branded] blog posts to automatically appear via feed, eliminating the need to duplicate your effort. Focus on as much visibility in as many places as possible, but do it with the intention of bringing prospects back to where you sell best. For instance, Twitter is not your brand… but you can use it to get people there

Looking for affordable help with good blogs, content, education and managed Wordpress? Kinetic Knowledge is a leading WordPress Management Service for business in North America.

I got an email from a Top Ann Arbor MI Real Estate Agent client of ours the other day that served as a heads’ up to write this post. If you haven’t noticed, for the last several months, we’ve been pushing bigger, yet at the same time more efficient, thinking about business blogging. Think about maximizing visibility for where you live, sell and present yourself best online! The point: there are simple ways to maximize your advertising visibility on the web with a minimal amount of effort – this is the power of your blogsite!The establishment & accumulation of key phrase search engine indexing, back links, RSS subscriptions, email subscriptions, bookmarks, RSS feed connections [your RSS feed direct to other sites and social networs] and overall content activity is the evolving currency of the web. Being visible in as many places as is possible is crucial pipeline for your future leads and sales!

BLOGGING CONTENT VISIBILITY

Here is what happens when we post here on Kinetic Knowledge:

* post appears on our site’s home page
* post appears in a category channel or two on our site
* our Twitter accounts automatically pick post up, notifying followers of the new content
* our Facebook fan page automatically picks it up, notifying any followers
* our profile pages in LinkedIn automatically pick it up
* our profile pages in Realtown automatically pick it up
* the post is picked up by any sites that have an RSS feed connection to us
* a Feedblitz supported email blast goes out to thousands of direct email subscribers
* all RSS feedreaders [i.e. MyYahoo accounts] with a Kinetic RSS feed connection receive the post
* Google and all the search engines are pinged to come crawl and index the new content for keywords andkey phrases
* and there are many other places [i.e. FriendFeed] I haven’t gotten around to registering us for that could push us even further…

And each one of of these connections can occur with each and every post you generate. It should all stem from one heavily branded home base location, with the strategic intention of bringing folks back to where you are truly represented. To where you live and where you sell!

Getting visible with more and more people and bringing them to where your actual brand lies and to where you sell – this is advertising power of your blogsite!

Kinetic Knowledge is a leading Business WordPress Management Service

Websites, Blogsites And Visibility In The Search Engines

Virtually every day someone asks us, “How do I get more visible in the search engines?” It’s the million dollar question and an ever more and more complicated pursuit. Ultimately there are a few ways to approach better visibility. We hear so much misinformation we thought maybe we could demystify some of it by taking a look at PPC, Websites, Website SEO, Blogsites and how they have been able to support business people.

Pay Per Click

Ultimately, there is only one visibility guarantee in the search engines and that’s pay per click [PPC] advertising. You pay to advertise, but only when target key words or phrases you have chosen are searched. The upside is you’re only seen by qualified eyeballs. You also don’t pay unless someone actually clicks and you’re guaranteed to be visible! The downside is it has become an incredibly competitive & expensive form of advertising and it only generates [approximately] 10% of the click choices that occur on a search engine results page [SERP]. 90% go to the organic search results!

There are also a series of PPC services out there that manage aggregated PPC campaigns. They set up PPC ads, collect leads and re- distribute those to paying customers. In this scenario you may benefit from some economies such a service can harness, but you may also suffer being a step removed from the message and the leads themselves. It may or may not discourage those leads by the time they get to you.

And then, visibility can be guaranteed, but clicks cannot!: like any advertising, clicks depend on your advertising message! So, let’s focus on the 90% PPC is missing.

Sites And Organic Visibility

Ultimately, search engines are trying to index every word and phrase on every page from every site [websites or blogsites] on the web. Once they’ve identified and crawled your site’s page content it is all compared to similar pages and ranked for future organic searches. They also want to be as timely for searches as is possible, which says a lot for why you want to be so current with your web presence. The search engines work hard to satisfy all searchers because they know loyalty is limited and they need it badly in order to generate more and more of the search [10% click] revenue described above.

There are over two hundred signals used by the Google algorithm [i.e. date stamp, domain name, keyword usage, tags, site architecture, relevant back links, bookmarks, choice from search result pages, time on site, time on page, etc., etc. etc.] to compare you to your competitors, so it’s all very complicated. And that’s by design – so no one can manipulate their results! New signals are constantly added and existing signals are constantly changed and/ or re- weighted. And it’s not only the search algorithms that are fluid: your competition is always looking into better ways to compete! Those who weren’t there yesterday, may be finding ways to be there today.

Let’s be clear, blogs are websites! They offer pages just like websites, but they also offer features uniquely advantageous to your visibility that we’ll discuss. Ultimately, you need a site that is easily crawled by search spiders. You should be looking to have sites agile enough to evolve with an evolving web. You need a mastery of new content techniques and there needs to be a measurable reaction to your content [i.e. back links, subscriptions, bookmarks feed connections, chosen from SERPS, time on site, etc.] And above all things for organic search visibility, you need to be current!!

Visibility: Websites Versus Blogsites

Generally speaking websites are terrific; however, unless continuously search optimized, not necessarily terrific for visibility! Unless you’re prepared to constantly code new content, websites were never really designed to make you completely current online. Not unless you have a lot of time and/ or money! To make matters worse, most websites aren’t ideal for syndication of content either, which by the way is a signal search engines can easily use to identify active & current sites.

Blogsites are designed to allow laypeople to publish at will and for syndication of that content to wherever it is needed or wanted. It makes the creation & distribution of content, ‘being current’ and appealing to search engines relatively simple and cost-effective. Short some design capabilities, blogsites can offer most all features websites can, so blog platforms are becoming more and more important to business people.

Many website owners began to realize that advertising wasn’t being served in a search engine world so they looked for solutions. PPC services are a guarantee, but as discussed up top they have became more and more expensive. What’s more, organic search results get approximately 90% of the search clicks so naturally it has become a strategy to improve content visibility. SEO services mostly offer new content creation & coding and also various back link strategies; however and very much like PPC, they can get expensive quick compared to the proper use of blogsites. It’s kind of like fighting a battle with a less than battle-friendly tool.

As a result, many website providers have moved to throw in free blog solutions. To some degree, the argument that a blog should be a part of [or a file of] a website has surfaced. An argument that may or may not be true depending on how much you feel you need to rely on a website now and also in the future – see Your Blog’s Domain: Independent, Folder or Subdomain? 

Sustainability & Growth Strategy Online

If accumulating more and more key phrase indexing, links, RSS subscriptions, email subscriptions, bookmarks, feed connections to other sites, SERP choice and overall activity is the evolving currency of the web and a crucial pipeline for future leads and sales, then one might argue blogsites are the important tool! Wordpress, for instance, is designed to be agile – it scales!! It enables virtually any feature plugin and it evolves so that one is never working with a site that will eventually be obsolete. So it leaves one to wonder, ‘is it possible that by folding a blog into a website is limiting in the long run?’ Is it possible that the blog and any currency it has generated could be compromised? Hard to say, but [thinking strategically] it certainly makes the weapon you choose and how you deploy it now and in the future an important long term consideration.

Considering that it was PPC Services, then SEO Services and now blogs as a folder of the website, we’d suggest considering that all and we’d recommend keeping them separate.

Blog Vs. Website? – Trish Jones Marketing Mix
Question Of The Day: Why Do I Need To Be Current?
Question Of The Day: Can [Real Estate] Blogsites Replace Websites?

Something came up with a client on keyword repetition recently and I thought to run it here as a big reminder and heads’ up!

Obviously, we urge focus on targeted key word & phrase usage in blog posts; however, this post reiterates guidance on using balance for humans who may not appreciate seeing the same words over and over again.

Search engines definitely have filters for key word & phrase stuffing; however, I’ll bet they’re not nearly as strict as those we humans have. Note: when there is too much keyword repetition it tends to be content people will not be interested in reading or linking at!

Simple Guidance Points on Keyword Targeting or Density

1. Best to use target phrases strategically [i.e. Malibu CA Celebrity Real Estate] in post titles, once again in the first sentence or two for emphasis and then maybe one more time at the end of a post. 
2. If needed, mix in similar key phrases
3. Use logic – what would you find annoying or less appealing?
4. Go to quintura.com , wonder wheel or the keyword suggestions tool of your choosing and enter your key word or phrase for actual similarities on what else is being used online

No one ever said blogging was easy, but those paying attention and using a little logic will set themselves a part! There are never search optimization guarantees. Not when competitors are emerging with their own efforts & strategies and not when algorithms are proprietary and ever changing; however, here are some points we’d strongly suggest with regards to good optimization of your blog posts.

Guidance For Optimal Blog Posts … and also that will convert!

• Have your top 20- 25 target key phrases handy!
• Focus titles by using key words or phrases [i.e. Olive Oil Health or Wasilla AK Real Estate Blog]!
• Focus content carefully on targeted key words or phrases – see above bullet no. 1!
• Add links to, in anchor text [in key phrases] descriptive of, other relevant content URLs you’d like Google to see you as relevant for!
• Add useful outbound links to other relevant sources!
• Add images with descriptive Alt Tags  whenever possible!
• Add posts into broader categorization
• Add tags, 2 -3 phrases *strictly* from that page’s content
• Add ‘Call to Action’ [i.e. Search Indianapolis IN MLS]
• Add signature, with contact information

As business people, are we visible online as a valued source of trade media for our target marketplaces?

This video by XPlane strikes me as a reminder to leverage knowledge and every day practical experience online as marketing. We have the ability to create & distribute content; we can stand out and connect with marketplaces by simply having the discipline to share what questions we answered today. If one person asked, it’s likely a multiple of 10 to 100 times more are searching for that same answer online. What did we see? What have we heard? What do we know!

The fact is that in most business verticals there is competition for consumer attention. Unless we are demonstrating our value through content, we can’t expect them to choose us. If consumers have any uncertainty it undermines our ability to capture them. Your public facing business blog can prove your value, raising your profile while lowering any perceived risk of buying from you.

Are You A Valued Source Of Trade Media?

Related Posts:
Business Bloggers, You need to consider yourselves a source of [modern day] Trade Media!

 I’ve seen a lot written lately by folks who have favorite WordPress plugins. We certainly have lots of them ourselves, but it concerned me some for people managing, or counting on others to manage, their WordPress business blogs. That concern was confirmed some this weekend at WordCamp Orlando when Jane Wells talked a little about abandoned WordPress plugins and when a programmer in the audience shared concern for the service responsibilities involved. So, I wanted to throw some caution out there: namely, there are lots of WordPress plugins… and some get abandoned!

For instance, did you know that the most popular WordPress plugin of all ‘All In One SEO Pack’ *was abandoned* by it’s creator in mid-June? Management has since been picked up by able programmers, but as a business [or even as someone speaking to business people] it’s important to understand what WordPress open source software is.

WordPress is managed by a core development team and it’s supported by an international ‘open source community’ of independent programmers & designers. The core development team manages software updates, while the ‘open source community’ mostly builds template themes [designs] and plugin features. In theory, it’s their responsibility to keep up to date with WordPress updates… and they don’t always do it. This is understandable as no one can work for free indefinitely and the definition of free does not include accountable. What it means is, unmanaged or abandoned plugins can undermine your blog so manage updates for it and all the plugins you’ve added carefully.

If you’re a business, your blog is ultimately a core asset that accumulates subscribers, feed connections, bookmarks, links, brand recognition and competitive search engine indexing. That’s all potential new business pipeline so you’ve really got to be careful.  

Kinetic Knowledge is a WordPress Management Service that, amongst many other things, offers ongoing technology management & advancement.

Kinetic Knowledge wishes you a happy Thanksgiving holiday!

Holiday Reading:

• Understanding The New Advertising Environment [i.e. Social Networks, Blogs, SEO]
• Confused By Search Engine Optimization? Try This ‘Laypersons Guide To Understanding SEO’
• Online, Only Blogs Establish Brand!
• Bounce Rate: Are Site Visitors Translating to Leads?
• Understanding WordPress