SEO

Blogs are absolutely soaring in popularity these days. It seems like everyone from our airlines to our hairdressers are publishing something online. But why? What makes blogs such an important social media tool that Marriott and Coke have decided to adopt them? And more importantly, what separates a good blog from a not-so-good one?

The first thing every social media person should know before diving into the blogosphere is what a blog is and what a blog isn’t. Technically what a blog is is a website that people update semi-regularly with news, information, commentary, or just general day-to-day details. Blogs can either be professional or personal, and both types have their own unique set of guidelines. As far a business bloggers are concerned, a proper blog is—

A Whole Slew of Pages that Search Engines can Index
Any blog platform worth its salt will give each of your posts its own unique URL, which means that every entry you post will be a page that Google can index. If you’re a chef and restaurant proprietor, odds are that you didn’t devote a main page of your site to your love affair with Wusthof knives. However, if you write a post about why you love your Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu sandwich knife for slicing cucumbers, searchers could potentially find your restaurant by way of Googling  a combination of Wusthof + knife + cucumber + sandwich (trust me, stranger search combos have been Googled).

A Place Where You Answer Frequently Asked Questions
If you hear a question a lot, why not post a thorough answer on your blog? You should answer the customer queries immediately, of course, but you could also direct them to your blog if the answer is particularly long or complicated. And chances are, if many people are asking you, many more are asking Google, and wouldn’t it be nice if a few of those Googlers happened upon your company’s blog and used your services?

A Place Where You Demonstrate Your Expertise
When potential customers visit your website, they want to know that your company is the best one for the job. If your blog is full of well-written, informative posts, customers will know immediately that the people behind your business are capable and competent.  

Updated Regularly
I’m not saying you have to update your blog every day, but if there are month-long gaps between posts, old readers will lose interest and you won’t accumulate any news one. A loved blog is an effective blog, so try to keep your update schedule consistent.

Now for what a proper blog is not—

A Billboard
Entries about why your creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip is the best and/or better than the creamed corn/seared tuna/artichoke dip down the street aren’t going to be all that useful. Sure, you can post an occasional announcement or promote a product, but by and large blogs aren’t really intended to be hubs for blatant advertising. If you want to post about the 22nd Annual Half-Price Oyster Week at your restaurant, consider doing so in an interesting way (perhaps you could post about how Oyster Week grew into the tradition that it is today or about which wines go best with fried and raw oysters).

A Will/Business Proposal/Other Official Document
A blog is a pretty informal thing, so have fun when you’re writing it! Use contractions and colloquialisms when they’re appropriate. Joke with the reader. Just remember that the voice behind your blog is the voice of your company, so keep it professional and keep it consistent with your company’s image.

Remember that above all else, good blogs are the ones that people find interesting and valuable. If people like what you’re saying, they’ll come back for more, and there’s a pretty good chance that if something you write is especially useful or fresh, it will get passed around, which could translate into more exposure for your business and potentially more money in your pocket.

One of the most beneficial activities you can do for your internet marketing initiative is come up with a good, solid list of keywords and phrases that will help customers find your site on the World Wide Web. Sounds easy enough, right? After all, no one’s more tuned in to your industry than you are, so you’re bound to know what your customers are looking for. All you have to do is think of ten or fifteen words you use every day, plug them into your website, and voila! Instant hits!

Unfortunately, generating a keyword list is a bit trickier than that, and when the task is taken too lightly, the work usually ends up being all for naught. If you really want to be found online, you need to do some research and refining.

• Start with a good brainstorming session. Browse trade publications, read customers’ emails, analyze your competition, study your products, and jot down all the words that might apply to your business. Some of these words might end up being gems; others might be duds, but what’s important is that you have some raw material to work with.

• Back when the Internet was shiny and new, searchers could use generic terms to find what they wanted. Now that the Internet is older and a heck of a lot bigger, searchers have to look for specifics if they want search engines to turn up anything worthwhile. Your customers aren’t searching for any old “suit” or any old “dress” anymore—they’re looking for a “custom suit in Dallas, TX” and a “vintage evening gown.” So if you’re selling prom dresses in Timbuktu, make sure your keywords tell that story.

• Only choose words that are relevant to you. You might think that you’ll reach a broader audience by using popular keyphrases like “global warming” and “Star Wars” on your fashion boutique’s website, but anyone who finds your site using these terms won’t stick around long enough to browse your selection of designer scarves. Also remember that search engines don’t respond well to sites that try to trick them, so using irrelevant keywords and phrases might get your site penalized.

• You might know your industry better than anyone, but your insider info could actually harm your keyword list if you’re not careful. For example, you might notice that your female customers are suddenly so ravenous for weskits that you’re having trouble keeping them on the shelves of your fashion boutique and it occurs to you that “weskit” would make a great keyword. Except all the women who are buying your weskits are calling them “vests” or “blouses,” so odds are good that introducing “weskit” as a keyword won’t do much for business. To avoid this snafu, try asking friends, family, and customers to look over your keyword list or to generate some ideas of their own. These people are some of the best representatives of the searching public and might make some excellent suggestions that hadn’t even occurred to you.
   
• Plug your keywords into a keyword research tool (we like Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool and Wordtracker) to determine how many people are actually using them in searches and how competitive they are (that is, how many other sites are linking to them). You want to use words that are searched often and that aren’t so competitive that you’ll never make it to page one. These research tools might also suggest great words and synonyms that you hadn’t thought of, so keep an eye out for them.
   
• As with any marketing initiative, you have to make some alterations time to time. Your site’s and customers’ needs will change, and your keyword list needs to keep up, so you’ll have to update as necessary.

Consider this scenario: on the fifth anniversary of the day your business earned its first dollar, sales of a new product are soaring and the mayor calls to tell you that your business has been voted Company of the Year. You’d be proud of your accomplishments and you’d want to let new and potential customers to know about them, but how would you go about getting the word out? One of the best and most efficient ways to broadcast news about your company is by publishing a press release. And while speedy information transmission certainly is an enticing reason to write a press release, this blog wouldn’t be worth its salt if we didn’t also mention another spectacular advantage: internet marketing.

If you’re not familiar with them, press releases are documents that are issued to the media to announce news related to a business or product. They’re organized much like a news article would be, with a headline, dateline, and well-developed, concise body copy arranged in paragraph form. Press releases can also contain unique little elements that pack a powerful internet marketing punch: links to both the main page and the important internal pages of your sites.

Once they’ve been distributed on the Web via an online wire service (i5 uses PR Web), the press releases will be indexed by search engines and sent to news sites like Yahoo! News, increasing the likelihood that you’ll be found in searches. Press releases are also often featured on other sites, meaning the links you’ve embedded within them will be featured on the sites as well. And since the Web is an international medium, there’s hardly a limit to the number of people your release could reach. There are, however, some guidelines that you must consider if you truly want to reach people with your press release.

Readers are more likely to consider an article to be credible (rather than simply a sales pitch) if it sounds like it has come from an independent source, so it is critical that your press release be written in a journalistic style. The biggest key to writing an attractive press release, though, is choosing a topic that is legitimately newsworthy and interesting. What qualifies? Awards that your business has won, a milestone it’s reached, an important new hire (like a company president), an expansion announcement, or the launch of a new product or service are all great press release fodder. I5 web works writes and publishes press releases for our clients quite often, so we have the experience, connections, and the knowhow to turn newsworthy into link-worthy.

I will never know as much as the folks at Planet Ocean or John and Robin at Search Engine Workshops.  John & Robin introduced me to SEO some five years ago and while I continue to learn about SEO and feel good about my trade, I am at best – in ski parlance – a black run hack, while the folks mentioned previously are Double Black Diamond, Mogul skiers.  There are many experts, the web is full of them and they all offer advice good, average and bad, and some charge serious money for the advice that is common on the web, but they charge it to the unsuspecting, those who know SEO must be done, but not real sure how to do it.

John Alexander and Robin Nobles do charge for their workshops and to participate in Search Engine Workshops as does Planet Ocean, but both have modest fees for their information and certainly give value for those charges.  I pay a small annual fee to receive monthly reports from Planet Ocean and have always valued the information as informative, relevant and easy to apply.  I encourage anyone who is interested in SEO to check either of both for current and informative information about the ever changing world of Search Engine Optimization.

Thank you all,

On June 30, Google posted detail on the their improved indexing of Adobe Flash files, specifically SWF files of all kinds, according to Rod Adler and Janis Stipins -- Google software Engineers.  They go on to say that all of the text that users can see will be indexed, as well as the URLs in that text. 

They also point out that this applies only to contextual text and that they will not recognize or index text or links within an image.  Nor will they index FLV files, such as many videos on You Tube, as those files do not contain text elements. 

The best part of this is that webmasters need take no special action to ensure their flash files are read.  The engineers created an algorithm that explores the files, just be sure that the content in those files is information you want indexed and if not, embed that detail in an image, making it invisible to Google.

They continue to have limits on their technical ability. For further details, check out the Google Webmaster Central blog.