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Archive for the ‘Blogging for Small Business’ Category
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
Small business owners will often ask the question, “How often should I blog?” The correct answer is you should blog as often as you can without sacrificing the nuts and bolts of your business. If you can blog every day, that’s great. Twice a day, even better. But there’s a limit to how much one person can blog and still provide value to their readers.
If two days a week is all you can handle and still provide value to your readers, then blog just two days per week.
But here’s what you need to know about blogging:
- Every time you post to your blog, you are inviting the search engines back to crawl your website. Blog more often, you’ll get crawled more often. Blog less often, you’ll get crawled less often.
- The more you blog, the more traffic you can expect to your blog.
- The more blog posts you have, the more blog posts you can have indexed in the search engines.
The main ingredient for successful blogging is that you provide value to your readers. You want your blog posts to communicate with customers and potential customers. If you can do that, then you’re ahead of the game.
You can blog yourself or you can hire a ghostwriter to write your blog for you. One costs more money, but you’re more likely to get quality blog posts if you’re not a writer. The important thing is that you connect with your readers.
Tags: blog writing, blogging, search engines, SEO
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
I’ve been a big proponent of guest blogging and still am. However, there is a danger in doing too much. Of course, you could also have the wrong motives.
Every few years Google updates its algorithms to get rid of bad practices that are causing harm. Google Panda and Google Penguin were two such updates. One killed content farms and the other killed low-quality links from low-quality sites. Some bloggers haven’t learned their lesson.
As happens after all Google updates, Internet marketers scramble to change their tactics. In this case, more than a decade of link building tactics were turned on their head, so what did online marketers do to gain an upper hand? They turned to guest blogging – under their real names.
The reason they did this was to catch the wave of Google Authorship. It is now being reported that Google is moving toward an Authorship recognition posture where your reputation as an author is a huge link building ranking factor. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But I’m betting that if it is true, then it won’t negate the old-fashioned link building ranking factors that Google still relies on.
So what’s the bottom line? If you are building bad links from bad sites, then your good reputation won’t matter. Make sure you diversify your authorship efforts.
Tags: google, Google Authorship, guest blogging, link building, online reputation
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
If you read the news about a recent WordPress hacker who targeted a massive number of WordPress blogs, relax. Chances are, yours wasn’t one of them.
What you should know is that there are two WordPresses.
There’s WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The former hosts blogs much like Blogger.com. The latter is a software that you download and install on your own server. If you installed WordPress on a server at your hosting company (Hostgator, BlueHost, SBM, etc.), then you weren’t targeted by this hacker. You have no worries.
However, that doesn’t mean your WordPress blog can’t be hacked. There are precautions you can take to prevent it from happening.
Matt Mullenweg, founder of both WordPress sites and chief developer of the software, said:
“Here’s what I would recommend: If you still use ‘admin’ as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password,” wrote WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on his blog.
That’s a great suggestion even if you downloaded WordPress and uploaded it to your server. The ‘admin’ account is a vulnerable account that hackers search for when trying to wreak their havoc. You should always delete it and create your own account with a unique username and password.
WordPress also has a few heightened security plug-ins you can try. There are too many to recommend here now, but know that you can increase your WordPress blog’s security in a number of ways.
If you’re worried that your WordPress blog might be vulnerable to attack, don’t panic. Contact a WordPress expert to help you increase your blog’s security. It doesn’t take long and it’s worth it for the peace of mind.
Tags: blog, blog security, website security, wordpress, WordPress plug-ins
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, April 15th, 2013
Your first three months blogging for your business blog are critical. Chance are, if you give up, it will be in those first three months. If you can make it through those months and establish a solid blogging routine with good work habits, then you can keep your blog active in the long term.
Here’s the question: How do you get through those first three blogging months?
I recommend establishing a posting calendar for your blog.
Start slow. Build into a steady posting schedule from your slow start, establishing good work habits along the way.
Before you post anything to your blog, start a calendar and plan when your posts will appear. On the 15th of the month prior to your first publishing month, plan what days your first posts will appear. Plan on two per week for the first month. Choose one keyword per blog post and write the posts. Then pre-schedule them to appear on the appropriate calendar day.
Plan your second month of blogging before the 15th of the first publishing month. This time, plan on posting three days per week. Pick your keywords and write the posts, then pre-schedule them.
Before the 15th of the second month, plan your third month. On the third month you’ll post five days per week. Pick your keywords and write the posts, scheduling them to publish on the appropriate day.
If you publish a monthly blog calendar, you will find it easier to stay motivated. It’s easy to do. Pick a keyword and write about that topic each day. Stay ahead of the game.
Tags: blog calendar, blog marketing, blogging
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Thursday, April 11th, 2013
There are two ways to get involved in the guest blogging craze. You can be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog or you can accept guest bloggers for your blog. Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of that last option.
Two of the best benefits for accepting guest blog posts for your blog are:
- You can take a short break from blogging and still offer quality blog posts for your readers;
- And you can get residual traffic from the fans and followers of your guest blogger, which is new traffic for you
Of course, there are some downsides to accepting guest bloggers too.
One downside is you have to go through a lot of low quality content and spam in order to find a few nuggets of good content to publish. There is a workaround to this downside, however.
I recommend establishing a guest blogger set of guidelines. Publish them on your blog so that potential guest bloggers know what your guidelines are and can follow them easily. Be sure that you stick to your guidelines without fail as you don’t want word to get out that you make exceptions for specific individuals. Your reputation is important.
Guest blogging on your blog can be a benefit to you and the blogger. It’s worth considering, but there’s no pressure.
Tags: blogging, guest bloggers, guest blogging
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, April 1st, 2013
Are you looking for ways to improve your small business blog? Are you tired of writing sales content that no one is responding to? Would you like to expand the scope of your content marketing beyond the obvious posts that no one wants to talk about? Here are 5 ways you can improve your blog content easily without destroying your credibility.
- Content curation – Content curation involves scouring the web for useful content that your blog readers would enjoy and find helpful. You add that content to your blog. There are different ways of curating content. You can write useful resource posts with links to content on other parts of the web. Another way is to use a blog post to summarize other resources and link to them – either one at a time or in bulk.
- Incorporate multimedia content – Add videos, slideshows, and infographics to your blog regularly but not every day. Don’t overdo it, but you’d be surprised at how interactive this content can often be.
- Include guest bloggers – Establish a guest blogging policy and take in guest bloggers. Guests can often engage with your blog readers in ways that you haven’t thought about.
- Become a guest blogger – If you guest blog on other blogs within your niche, you can often establish a connection with readers elsewhere and drive them to your own blog where you can deepen, and strengthen, the conversation.
- Ask questions – Get your blog readers talking by asking them questions. Surveys are real good for this. You can also end your blog posts with open ended questions designed to get people talking.
What ways do you use to get your blog readers into the discussion? Tell us how you have improved your own blog with content marketing?
Tags: blog content, blogging, content, content marketing, guest blogging
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, March 18th, 2013
If you’re concerned that the demise of Google Reader will kill your blog, rest your eyes. I doubt that’s going to happen. In fact, I’m confident that it won’t – especially if you do these three things to increase your blog readership right now.
Don’t wait. If you’re not already doing these three things, then you should start doing them right now.
- Set up e-mail subscription – Few people within the general public ever figured out RSS enough to use an RSS reader, but everyone understands e-mail. You should set up an e-mail subscription link for your blog today and promote it wherever and whenever possible.
- Promote your blog through social media – I’d be willing to bet that almost everyone you know has a Facebook account. You should be promoting your blog posts through social media, and that includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. It may also mean YouTube, Tumblr, Foursquare, and other social media sites.
- Publish a blog promotion newsletter – While everyone understands e-mail, not everyone will subscribe to your blog posts by e-mail. However, many people will subscribe to your newsletter because they already understand that concept of a newsletter. You can use your newsletter to promote your blog while keeping your traffic returning again and again.
These are not the only means you have of promoting your blog, but they are a good start. You can start today. Google Reader may be dying, but it’s not the end of the world.
Tags: blogging, e-mail, e-mail newsletter, google reader, RSS
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2013
If you are writing a blog for your business, there are a set of best practices designed to keep it running smoothly and keep visitors coming back for more. There are also some ways to kill your blog completely. Today I’m going to talk about 5 of those.
- Plagiarizing other bloggers – I’ll start with the obvious one. Your blog should produce original content. If you have to plagiarize, or steal, other bloggers’ content, then you shouldn’t blog at all. Keep it original.
- Posting infrequently – Ideally, you would post to your blog every day, but you should blog at least once a week at a minimum. If you are blogging less than once a week, then your blog is practically invisible.
- No outlinking – By outlinking, I am referring to linking outside of the blog post. You don’t have to link to other sources in every blog post, but if you don’t outlink at all, then you won’t build any community into your blog. Outlinking refers to linking to other bloggers, third party sources, and even your own older blog posts, which can drive traffic back to those posts and keep visitors on your blog longer.
- Non-search-friendly URLs – You’ve seen them. They include long strings of crazy characters and indecipherable letters and words. The search engines can’t index them and users won’t remember them. They’re practically useless.
- No social media promotion – Your blog should be SEO-friendly and sharable on social media. In fact, you should share your own posts on your social media accounts. If you aren’t on social media, you should be.
Do yourself a favor and stay away from these 5 practices that are guarantees to send your blog into obscurity.
Tags: blog, blogging, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | No Comments »
Monday, December 10th, 2012
Duplicate content has become a bigger problem for many small business owners and webmasters in the last couple of years. The main reason why is because the Google Panda and Penguin updates targeted specific website issues that in effect penalize duplicate content. And one of the biggest culprits of this duplicate content issue is that webmasters set their WordPress or other CMS settings to allow Google to crawl and index tag and category pages. Don’t do that.
What happens is you write a blog post, categorize it in one or two categories, then give it five to ten tags. Google crawls the blog post, each category, and each tag. Then it starts indexing them.
If you have your settings set so that category and tag pages display a summary only, then it can initially appear like different content. Google crawls and indexes the pages. Then, on a later recrawl, they discover the duplicate content and your entire site is de-listed.
All of this can be avoided by simply not allowing Google to crawl or index your tag and category pages at all. What you want is for your blog posts and pages to be indexed. The tag and category pages are there for the benefit of your human readers, to allow them an easy way to find information they may be looking for.
Nip your duplicate content issues in the bud by getting your CMS settings right in the first place.
Tags: categories, CMS, duplicate content, google, tags, wordpress
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2012
When is the best time to publish your content? Publishers and online marketers have debated this for years. It’s a hold over from the old days when it was deemed that Thursday was the best day for your newsletters and sales specials to land in consumers’ mail boxes on Thursday. We don’t live in that world any more.
Today, people read their e-mail, RSS feeds, and social media posts when it’s convenient for them. You can write it today, tomorrow or over the weekend – even publish it in the middle of the night – but because people have wired their world so that they get the news they want where they want it and when, then they will read your published content when it’s convenient for them. When you publish it is not an issue. Just publish.
That goes for blogging, e-mail content, social media content, and everything else. Even videos.
You can publish your content on Sunday and Monday morning all the people who’ve been looking forward to your next post will be there to read it. If they can’t read it on Monday, they’ll read it on Tuesday. And they’ll share it too. Just publish.
I think an editorial calendar is a good thing. Plan your posts, but don’t fret over the best day and time to publish it. Just publish.
Tags: blogging, content, content marketing, publishing, Social Media
Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 7 Comments »
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