Are Blogs Effective SEM? For Who?
Are blogs effective Search Marketing options? For who?
Most companies can and we believe should make blogs an integral part of their search-engine marketing, or SEM, strategy. Those that do will gain a competitive advantage in search-engine visibility they may never have to relinquish.
It is no secret blogs are search-engine friendly. They generate an enormous amount of fresh content - some adding multiple posts every day. Blogs are loaded with internal and contextual outbound links. Archived blog pages often contain inbound links. Not to mention, every blog post has a title, one of the first things a search-engine spider looks for. Using keyword phrases in titles creates myriad opportunities to attract search matches.
Some companies begin blogging almost by accident or for reasons unrelated to SEM. With this in mind, SEM providers should make sure the clients blog is properly optimized.
To achieve this:
make sure the blog is part of the companys Web domain;
submit to blog directories;
make posts 250 words or more;
use relevant, keyword-rich hyperlink text on outbound links, instead of phrases such as click here;
create internal links to the blogs own archived pages in new posts; and
on title tags, consider putting the post title ahead of the blog name, or dropping the blog name entirely. This raises the relevance of keywords in the titles.
Not only does optimizing the company blog improve search rankings for the entire company Web site, it establishes a strong presence on the growing number of blog-specific search engines such as Technorati, Icerocket.com and Bloglines. Since customers perceive blogs as being more genuine than corporate Web sites, it is likely they will use these new search tools more often to learn about companies and their products.
Given the SEM benefits, why might a company elect not to blog? Some corporate cultures are simply uncomfortable allowing employees to write openly and/or publicizing negative comments. Certain fields, such as finance and law, demand a level of confidentiality that does not lend itself to blogging. Or, companies may lack the time and personnel to develop a blogging strategy and write posts. In some cases, however, these tasks can be outsourced in part or in whole to the firms SEM partner.
Unless special circumstances apply, companies should blog now. Besides driving new qualified traffic to the companys door, a blog offers a host of benefits beyond SEM. Some of the most important are solidifying customer relationships, establishing the companys reputation for thought leadership and building powerful brands. Blogging may be an unfamiliar technique, but every SEM client will understand a list of benefits like that!
Aaron Wittersheim is president of Whoast Inc., a suburban Chicago search-marketing firm. For more information, visit http://www.whoast.com.
Blogs Using Blogs and Social Media to Your Advantage
With the increased use of internet the online marketers have to come up with newer ideas to promote websites today. It is not at all simple and easy. It is a complicated work as there is a lot of competition amongst millions of websites. Many thousan...
Marketing With Blog Articles: The Two Most Effective Techniques
Many folks are only just beginning to appreciate the power of blogs as marketing weapons and the key to unlocking it all has to be with articles rather than banners.Why are blogs so powerful? Actually there are several reasons, the key one has to be ...
Why Do People Blog?
You may have heard of a blog. You have seen several blogs on the internet or you may even have a blog yourself. Blogs are very popular these days. A blog is just a particular type of website. The entries are arranged usually in chronological orde...
Things You Need To Know About Automated blogging
Automated blogging is not something that just writes a blog for you. You write all the content and do all the work that is needed. What automated blogging does do is posts the blogs at intervals, allowing you to write up to many days worth of blogs a...
Blog Marketing Articles: Why They Are So Effective
There is no doubt that blogs, and with them blog marketing articles have within a very short taken the World Wide Web by storm.Generally speaking blog marketing articles tend to receive a much higher audience than marketing articles posted at web sit...
Real Estate Marketing and Blogs
Internet has lead to revolution in communication technology. With the fast expansion of internet, blogs have become the order of the day. By a click of a mouse, you will find hordes of information dispersed in blogs on variety of subjects from histor...
Website Promotion By Participating Effectively In Blogs
Promoting your website in blogs is an extremely effective way of getting traffic to your website. Many people have great visitor counts just from participating in blogs, and yet the majority of internet webmasters are still failing to use this metho...
Why Use Blog Advertising As An Internet Marketing Tool?
Blog advertising is a hot topic within the internet marketing industry. Many people have become avidly interested in learning more about blog advertising.A blog is a web site that is actually a system of connected pages (or rather posts) that are org...
Discover 4 Surefire Ways To Come Up With Winning Blog Topics
A blog can live or die by its topic/s. A good topic can really make the difference between a loyal and sizeable readership, or a ghost town. This article will offer tips on coming up winning blog topics time and time again, so you create an empire of...
Home Business Success With Blogs
Many have found home business success in affiliate programs on the World Wide Web. However the problem has always been in setting up and maintaining personal web sites to help drive traffic to their affiliate sites.Web sites have always been critical...
