Blogging Basics

Blogging takes a little bit of effort, but when done right you can expect the benefits and return-on-investment to be very good.

If you don’t have time to learn how to blog properly and blog regularly (i.e. create keyword-rich posts, with the appropriate links back to your website, probably two a week minimum), hire someone to do it for you. Yes, it’s that important.

Blogging will help you (a) increase your overall online visibility, it becomes a powerful way to (b) drive more traffic to your primary website (or others), and it will also (c) help with your search engine optimization – if and when you set up your blog properly, post regularly, and post correctly using keyword-rich post titles and keyword-rich text with keyword-rich links (i.e anchor-text links).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_text

One of my clients gets 30% of her website traffic directly from her blog, which is easily identified in her Google Analytics.

Surely, this doesn’t happen overnight. It probably is realistic to think that it takes three to six months to really start seeing good results. The longer you blog, the better they get.

Simply put, your blog, or blogs (yes, multiple), are like an online diary with the world. In almost all cases they are more informal in nature than your website. That’s ok, that’s what people expect.

Think of your website as your electronic brochure and your blog as your online journal.

Now maybe you’re saying, “Chris, why does my business need an online journal?”

There are many reasons, a few include: (a) people like them and use them to learn more about who you are and it helps them make a decision about doing business with you, (b) people look for them, yes… they do, (c) it’s a great way to build rapport with potential new customers, (d) it’s a great way to deliver customer service, say for example, frequently asked questions, inexpensively, quickly, and fast, and (e) it’s a great way to get more pages about your business, products and services, into search engine indexes.

There are many other reasons, but these alone should be enough to put blogging high on your list of Internet marketing priorities.

But let’s take this one in a different direction than how many people are blogging.

I am recommending to my clients that they set-up their website with one domain and their blog at another completely different domain – one that incorporates their targeted keywords.

Yes, separate hosting and a separate domain name (you can set-up the whole thing and host it at Go Daddy for about $10/month).

They become two Internet “assets.”

And then link your website to your blog and vice-versa.

Say you are a photographer. I am not, but using this as an example…

The set-up might be like this:

CHRISJAEGERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM (my website)

BOSTONWEDDINGPHOTOGRAPHERS (a blog for my wedding photography business)

FAMILYPORTRAITPHOTOGRAPHERSINBOSTON (a blog for my family portrait business)

PORTRAITPETPHOTOGRAPHERSINBOSTON (a blog for my pet portrait business)

Certainly you don’t have to have multiple blogs, but I think you get the point.

Why this approach?

First, it’s not that hard to do and not that costly. Given the long-term benefits, it’s probably some of the best marketing and advertising money you can spend.

Secondly, I believe Google, and other search engines, see these “properties” separately. That is a good thing and you can use it to your advantage. Now you have more pages out there on the Internet for people, and search engines, to find. This is a good thing that you can use to your advantage.

In the long run, this approach will increase your overall online visibility with the search engines and simultaneously gives you more flexibility when it comes to inbound link building as part of your overall search engine optimization strategy – and link building is critical to getting and maintaining top keyword ranking and positioning.

p.s. The best, low-cost, low-maintenance, easy-to-use, blogging platform… WordPress.