Real Web Marketing Blog

How a Blog Creates Traffic to Your Site

by John Eberhard

Every web site owner would like to increase the amount of traffic to his or her site. I have been pushing the idea for a year or so that creating a blog, and then posting content to it on a regular basis, drives traffic to your web site. But I find that even people for whom I have created and set up blogs don’t get how or why this happens. So I am devoting this entire article to explaining how this works.

First of all, a blog is a special type of web site that makes it easy for you to add new content on a regular basis. New content gets added at the top, and you scroll down to see the older content. It also allows visitors to leave comments, and older content gets automatically archived.

Wordpress is one of the most common blogging systems, allowing you to put up a blog within your web site, as a subfolder (http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog). Typepad is another common blogging system, allowing you to either having it set up under Typepad’s URL (http://yourblogname.typepad.com) or you can set up a separate web address for the blog (http://www.yourblogname.com). Typepad charges a monthly fee.

There are also several free blogging sites, where you can set up a blog, such as Blogger.com and Tumblr.com, and then your blog URL is something like http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or http://yourblogname.tumblr.com. But these sites are much more limited in the features and design templates you can use. In other words, it’s much harder to customize the blog to your needs than with Wordpress or Typepad.

Blog design: When setting up a blog it is wise to design it with one or two sidebars, then add your contact information, and several links to features on your main web site. For example you could link to your home page, your “about us” page, your services page, and so on. If you sell any items such as books you can put an ad for the book in one of the sidebars. You want to set up the blog in such a way that as many people as possible who come to the blog also go over to your web site.

OK, now your blog is set up, with contact info and links to your main web site and all that. Now what?

Now, you put new content up on your blog regularly. By regularly, ideally I mean once a week or more often. Content can be anything from a long article (700-1,000 words), to a press release, to a shorter post or comment about something related to the topic of your blog (100-200 words). You can also post a link to some other content on some other web site or blog that you found that you want to tell your readers about. You can also post a video right in your blog, by taking the code that appears to the right of a video on YouTube.

OK, now there’s new content on the blog. So how is that going to drive traffic? Just putting up new content is going to drive people to the blog, right?

Well normally that would be true, but in the case of blogs that are about 20 search engines that are geared just to blogs. If you notify them, with what is called a “ping,” those search engines will all stop by your blog immediately and include your new article, shorter post, or whatever you put up there, in their search engine listings. There is a site called www.pingomatic.com that allows you to easily send a ping to 22 of these search engines.

This means that if your article was about how to lower your golf score, and someone went to one of these blog search engines and typed in “how to lower your golf score,” and your article contained that phrase, your listing would come up, allowing that person to click through and come to your blog.

So you can see that it is important to include high traffic keywords in your blog posts, and it is important to do some research and find out what the high traffic keywords are for your topic or industry.

So this is all nice theory, but does it really work?

Well I have two blogs for my marketing business, one for articles and a separate one for press releases. I post something to one of the two blogs a minimum of once a week or more. And I always send a ping to all of the blog search engines after every single post.

I checked my Google Analytics statistics for the entire year of 2009 up to today, and my two blogs have generated more traffic to my main web site, than any other source. In fact, if you add them up, it is three times the traffic that I got from Google.

So yes it does work, it is very powerful, and you can do it. But if you do set up a blog, remember, you have to post to it once a week, to get regular benefit and build up momentum. Good luck.

Posted via web from Realwebmarketing's posterous

Blogs: Use Them or Lose Them

by John Eberhard

I have written a number of articles about the benefits of blogs:

1. You write something and post to your blog regularly.
2. You have your blog set up so there are numerous links back to your main site in the sidebars. Plus you write your blog posts so that you link back to your main site within each post.
3. Every time you post something new on the blog, you go to a site called www.pingomatic.com, and use it to send out a notification (called a “ping”) to all the blog search engines like Technorati.com. This causes them to include your new blog post in their search engines right away.
4. The combination of posting regularly, i.e. once a week, plus pinging the blog search engines, drives significant traffic to your blog, which in turn drives traffic to your web site. I have two blogs for my marketing business and month to month the blogs routinely are the #1 or #2 driver of traffic to my web site, running neck and neck with Google.

So this is all nice and wonderful. But a major breakdown occurs here if you do not post something to the blog regularly. Ideally this is once a week or more. If you post something to the blog once a week or more, you will start to really drive traffic and you will develop fans who follow what you write.

Unfortunately I have set up blogs for some clients who have then posted one or two things on it and then forgotten the blog for months (you know who you are). This defeats the purpose of a blog and is really a waste of a valuable resource for driving traffic to a web site.

So here are some tips on generating content for that blog on a regular basis:

1. I find that in my work with clients, something that happens with a client over the course of each week will often be a good topic for a blog and newsletter article.
2. A blog post can be anything from a long article (300-700 words), to a short comment on something (100-200 words).
3. If you find a video on YouTube or somewhere else that would be of interest to readers of your blog, then post the video on your blog. On YouTube, to the right of the video you can find the HTML code. When you go to post to your blog, select HTML editing, then paste that code there, and the video player will appear right in your blog. If you want to post a comment about the video, type your comment in using the text editor, then switch over to the HTML editor and paste in the code from YouTube.
4. You can post links to interesting articles elsewhere on the web, that relate to your blog topic. However, I will say that I see some other people doing this, especially on Facebook and Twitter, but that’s all they ever do. My reaction is “Don’t you ever write any content yourself?” So this is good to do, but don’t make that the only thing you do.
5. You can do a Google search related to your topic and see what other items come up, or go to other web sites related to your topic, and get ideas for articles or shorter posts. You can also go to article directories like www.goarticles.com and search for articles related to your topic. But don’t steal an article or plagiarize it. Just use these for ideas.

Use these tips to write some new content for your blog regularly, at least once or twice a month, preferable once a week or more. The more often you post things to your (pinging each time), the more traffic you will drive to your blog and site.

Posted via web from Realwebmarketing's posterous

Blog: Under a Separate Domain or Under Your Main Website Domain?

I was recently having a discussion with fellow Internet marketer Andromeda Edison of Internet Image Management, on the subject of whether it is better to have a blog set up as a separate domain, or as a subdirectory within the domain of your main web site. Here's what she has to say:

"This depends and each situation I evaluate it newly.

"Some basic rules that I use to decide:

"1) If the keywords we are trying to get listed for are high competition then put the blog on the same domain as any link you an get to a blog post will help the overall site
"2) If you are working on a less competitive keyword you might want to do it separate (but if the competition is likely to increase with the popularity of the product or subject, you still want it on the same site)
"3) If you are working on reputation management for a name or brand then it should be on a separate domain.
"4) If you are going to use the blog only for "other" keywords than the one on the main website it can be separate though sometimes any PR you have on the main website will hep the other keywords - so this one can be a toss up.
"5) If you are working on a separate O/L or branding campaign for an individual in the organization it can be separate.

"I usually discuss this with the client and work out the long-term and short-term goals to help decide."

Making Money with a Blog

by John Eberhard

I recently had a friend send out an email asking specifically how to make money blogging. I think this is a relatively simple issue, although doing it is not necessarily easy. Here's my take on it and what I told him to do.

1. Start a blog that is specifically about some topic related to a product or service that you deliver.

2. Set up the blog with sidebars and with links to the website offering the product or service. If you sell products put pictures of the products in the sidebars. Also put a picture of yourself. Also ensure you have contact info on the blog.

3. Write articles that are about the topic of the product or service, but that give helpful information, not a full product pitch. If anything, at the end of the article give a very short product pitch.

4. After every article you write and post on the blog, go to www.pingomatic.com that sends out a notification to 25 blog search engines so that your post is immediately indexed in the blog search engines such as technorati.com.

5. As you write articles, check your visitor stats on the blog, so you can see which topics really connect with readers.

6. Put up a mechanism on the blog whereby people can subscribe and automatically be sent the new blog post.

7. Write something new and post to the blog regularly, minimally once a week, the more often the better.

8. Write compelling, interesting articles that will develop a following.

Getting the Most Out of Your Blog

by John Eberhard

I’ve been designing and setting up blogs for quite a few clients lately, and thought I would list out the things you need to do to get the most benefit from blogging.

First of all the benefits of a blog are that because of the way search engines give greater weight or importance to blogs, it is relatively easy to drive traffic to a blog, and the blog overall and each blog post potentially counts as links back to your main web site.

Here’s what you need to do with the blog:

1. Links back to your main site: Make sure when setting up the blog that it contains multiple links, in the sidebars, back to your main site. You can link to your home page, your services page, to pages offering things for sale, to pages offering free things. Also make sure to put your contact information prominently on the blog. See my blog http://www.realwebmarketingblog.com/ for examples of how to do this.

2. Post to it regularly: Once set up, THE most important thing to do to get the most benefit from the blog is to post things to it regularly. When I say regularly, I mean minimally twice a month, more ideally once a week or even more frequently. Since we are trying to build traffic and build links, posting regularly does those things regularly and starts to really build. Plus you’ll get fans that will follow your posts regularly. But if you only post something every two months, you’re not going to build up very much of anything. And don’t forget, you can post anything on a blog from articles 700-1,500 words long, to shorter posts 100-150 words long. You can post something short, just commenting on something on another web site or blog. You can take a video on YouTube that relates to your business, take the embed code and put it up on your blog, so the video screen appears right in the blog.

3. Ping every time you post: It is VITAL, every single time you post something to your blog, to send out a notification, called a “ping,” to all the blog search engines. I use a web site called www.pingomatic.com for this. You enter the name and URL of your blog and select the search engines you want to send it to. There’s a list of 25 or so. Then send the ping. It takes about a minute. Then once you come back to it, it will remember the name of your blog and address and search engines you chose, so it is even faster. This is the action that drives traffic to your blog so never omit this step. Some blogs allow you to set up things automatically so some of the blog search engines are pinged, but I believe Pingomatic’s list is more comprehensive.

4. Link to your site inside your posts: In addition to linking to your main web site in the sidebars when you first set up your blog, you should also link to your site within each post. You should include keywords in your blog post that you’re trying to rank well for, and then link those words to various pages of your web site. Your blog interface, whether through Typepad or Wordpress or some other, will give you the option to create a link from any words in your post. Having text link to your main site creates what is called “anchor text,” which is very valuable. You can use your blog interface to do this, or I create my blog posts in Dreamweaver, which makes it easy for me to format them, add links, photos, videos, etc., then I paste the HTML code in.

5. Feedburner: I just started using a service called Feedburner, which allows you to put up a form on your blog in one of the sidebars, and then when people enter their email address there, it automatically sends them your full blog posts in an email. So whenever you post something, it is automatically sent out via email to everyone who signs up there. Sort of like an automatic newsletter.

6. Track your stats: Your blog interface will allow you to see the number of visitors you are getting every day. Check this occasionally to get an idea of how many visitors you’re getting. You will see that certain posts really connected with the public and drove lots of visitors, which can give you an idea of which topics are popular.

7. Pictures: I think it’s really important to put your picture up there (in a sidebar), as it allows readers to connect with you. I’ve read that it’s really important to put pictures in your blog posts too.

Blogs are a great way to build traffic and links to your web site. I think every business that has a web site should have one, and above tells how to get the most out of one.

Why You Should Start a Blog

by John Eberhard

For several months I have been pushing the idea that people should start blogging. Some have taken my advice and put up blogs, but I think blogging is something that many, many people could benefit from. Here are some of the ways you could use a blog.

1. Promoting your business: This is the most common reason to start a blog. You can post articles (300-1,200 words), shorter posts of 100-150 words, link to other articles or items of interest in your industry or topic, or embed videos related to your business or topic. Or you can do all of these things.

When you have a blog for the purpose of promoting a business or blogging for money, it should include sidebars with items that link to your main web site. For instance, on my blogs I have a sidebar item that says “Our Web Sites” that includes links to my main web site and my other blogs. I have a “Services” item that has links to all my main services. I also have a picture of and link to my book for sale, and a picture of and link to a free eBook I am offering.

Your blog posts should also include keywords that you want to rank for, and you should link that keyword to an appropriate page on your site. This creates what is called “anchor text” links and is very valuable. You can include 2-3 text links in each article.

If you see a video on YouTube that you want to share with your blog audience, to the right of the video you will see code to use to embed it into your blog or web site.

Once you post something to your blog, you need to send a notification, or “ping,” to the blog search engines. Some blog services can be set up to do this automatically, but I use a web site called www.pingomatic.com, which is free and pings up to 27 blog search engines. It only takes a minute. This is important because this is what drives traffic to your blog.

2. Promote some cause: If there is some cause that you believe in or want to promote, whether it is human rights or conservation or pro-life, a blog is a perfect way to do that. Write your articles on a regular basis, put them up, and ping the blog search engines. I have two political commentary blogs that I run, one with just my articles, and another with myself and two other authors.

3. Write about a hobby: If you have some hobby that you are passionate about, whether it is writing short stories or amateur archeology, you can write about it and share your thoughts with people around the world.

Typepad and Wordpress are the top blog services. I use Typepad, and for a pro account that allows an unlimited number of blogs, it costs $15 per month. From this account I run five blogs.

The key with a blog is to write stuff for it on a regular basis. I recommend at least once a week. Then you have to ping the blog search engines. And if you write articles or posts that are appealing and connect with an audience, people will come Ray.

Using a Blog to Increase Search Engine Rankings

By John Eberhard

I think everyone who is serious about website marketing, increasing search engine rankings and driving traffic to their web site today should put up a blog. But there is a bit to know about how to use a blog properly to do these things.

1. Put up your blog on a separate URL from your main web site.

2. Set up your blog with one or two sidebars, and include links there to your main site. You can link to things you are selling, such as books or other merchandise. Also include a phone number prominently on the blog so people can reach you easily.

3. Include a photo of the person who will be writing all the articles. This personalizes it. Part of the character of blogs is that they are more of a personal communication than a regular web site, and they should develop a personality, the personality of the writer. (This isn’t to say that you can’t have a ghost writer for a blog).

4. Post something to your blog once a week or more. Each post can be anywhere from 150 words to 1,000 words. See other blogs in your industry to see what types of things they write about. The writing may be hard at first for you, depending on whether you are an experienced writer or not, but it will get easier the more you do it.

5. You need to have a good idea of what keywords to use in your blog. This is done by doing keyword research to find out how many people are searching for the keyword, and how much competition there is for that keyword. You should pick 10-20 keywords to emphasize in your blog posts, that have a decent amount of people searching for them, but not too much competition.

6. Utilize 2-3 of your selected keywords in each post. Make them different every week – not the same ones week to week. Now make those keywords into links back to your main site. You can do this in your blog interface, or I do it in Dreamweaver, then paste it in. Doing it in Dreamweaver makes it easy to add pictures to the post too. Link to a page on your site that is appropriate to each keyword. Don’t always link to the home page.

7. A common thing on blogs is commenting on other things that are written on other web sites or blogs. You can also add a video to your blog post, pulling in code from YouTube or Google Video, and the video will display on the blog. I think adding a video to the blog adds a lot of interest.

8. Once you add a new post, send a notification (called a “ping”) to all the blog search engines. This gets the content of your post into the blog search engines and the regular search engines, and drives traffic to the blog.

If you do the above, each one of your blog posts will count as 2-3 links coming back to your main site. That increases search engine rankings. And each post should drive traffic to the blog and via the blog, to your main site. If you follow your blog and web site stats, you will see that certain posts really seem to connect with the public and that gives you an idea of what to write about in the future.

Blogs an Integral Part of Website Marketing

By John Eberhard

Today I believe that the successful combination of actions for website marketing is:

1. Blog: Post an article or shorter post once per week, then notify (called “pinging”) the blog search engines.
2. Optimized Press Release: Writing a press release once a week that contains the top keywords you are targeting, posting this on a separate blog that is just for your releases, then ping the blog search engines. Then submit it to several online PR sites.
3. Social Media: Post your articles on a Facebook corporate page, Squidoo, and HubPages, then bookmark those pages on Delicious, Digg, and Stumbleupon.
4. Article Directories: Write a new article at least twice a month (once a week is better) and submit it to article directories such as www.goarticles.com. Recently we have found a number of directories that allow you to create links within the article body, to your web site, called “anchor text.”
5. Email Newsletter: Send an HTML newsletter to your in-house email list of clients, prospects and subscribers, 2-4 times per month.
6. Pay Per Click Advertising: Advertising on Google AdWords and other pay per click providers gives you immediate response.

I have been finding that this combination of actions is very powerful. But you have to keep all these actions in.

Content

First of all, this combination of actions requires a continuous stream of content, which of course takes work to create.

But if you follow the above recipe, you can see that you can write one article per week, 500-700 words, and use this article for your article blog (#1 above), social media sites (#3), article directories (#4), and the email newsletter (#5). So you write one article per week but you put it to use in a variety of media.

Then you write a press release and put it up on a blog, then submit it to online PR sites. Most of these sites require that the release be at least 300 words.

Blogs

You’ll notice that the first two items on the list above are blogs. I am recommending a blog for your articles, and then another one that is geared to press releases. The advantages of using blogs are numerous.

1. There are a group of search engines specifically geared to blogs, and it is easy to notify these search engines about your latest blog post, by pinging them using one of the sites that pings them. Also some blog services such as Typepad and Wordpress can be configured to ping these search engines automatically when you save your post.
2. Blog posts seem to find their way into the regular search engines very fast when you ping the blog search engines.
3. When you enter your post, you can create a link from some of the words, to your web site. A link from a word or phrase is called “anchor text.” Some sources say that anchor text pointing to your site is the most valuable thing you can get on the web, in terms of improving your search engine rankings. You make sure you include some of the top keywords that you are trying to rank for, and link those to an appropriate page on your main site.
4. Particularly if you use one of your target keywords in the headline, you will often notice you rank very well shortly thereafter for that keyword on Google News or in Google.
5. Blog services usually create an RSS feed automatically when you post something. Without a blog, in order to create an RSS feed you have to create an XML file by hand, and it’s a bit of a pain.
6. It is easy to add photos or videos to a blog post.

You can add various elements to a blog, such as thin columns on the right and/or left side of the main column where you posts go. You can add pictures of and links to books or other items you’re selling. You can link to various pages on your web site. You can link to your MySpace and Facebook corporate pages. You can put a newsletter subscription box. You can put a customized masthead at the top. You can also buy a new web address and then set that up as your blog address. 

I think it’s important to add features like this to a blog and it makes it look a lot more professional. My preference for a blog service is Typepad, but Wordpress is very good too. My Typepad service is $15 per month which allows me to create an unlimited number of blogs. I have four running now, including an article blog, a press release blog, a political blog, and one for my son for his writing.

Currently, aside from Google AdWords, my blogs are referring more traffic to my site than any other source.

 

Why You Should Start a Blog

By John Eberhard

One of my clients, Stan Dubin, has been blogging for several years, and has recently been telling me about how blogging has gotten him good search engine rankings. So I interviewed Stan about his blogging experiences, to share with you. My conclusion is that just about any business can benefit from starting a blog.

1. Tell me a little about your blogging experience and the blogs that you run?

I have been blogging for about three years. I’ve created six blogs so far. My main blogs are:

http://MarriageSuccess.com and http://ThisCouldWork.com and http://AFreshOpinion.com

I also created a blog to help members of my church start their own blog and I am in progress on a new blog http://TheOnlineResourcePage.com. This is designed to put into excruciatingly plain English the methods of marketing online.

2. You’ve told me that you’ve gotten good search engine rankings from putting posts on your blog. Can you tell me about that and give examples?

Almost immediately after getting my blog going, Google was noticing different items I had placed there. I have of course posts, but I’ve also included free articles, a selection of great marriage quotes, press releases about our book, etc. I would find people coming to my blog through keywords that existed in these various new items.

“Improve marriage” comes up number 9 on Google out of 397,000 pages
“marriage success” comes up number 2 on Google out of 520,000

but some interesting ones come up:

I wrote a post entitled “How Did My Child Get So Disrespectful” and it seemed almost with 24 hours people came to my blog when searching for “disrespectful child” which now shows up #15 of Google out of almost 2 million pages.

Other examples:

“is your marriage doomed” - #3 on Yahoo out of 21, 800,000 pages

3. Does putting a new article up on a blog have more search engine impact than putting the same article on a web site? Explain?

My understanding is that the search engines really go for “fresh content.” So I find as I put more new items on my blog, this helps reach new people. I’m not sure how that would be for a relatively static site.

4. Is there some sort of promotion that occurs after a new post is put on the blog? How does that work?

The blog service I use (Typepad) takes care of this now. They send a “message” out to a number of other web sites (they call it a “ping”) and this lets people know that my blog has just created new content.

5. What do you think is the best blogging software or service?

If you’re really knowledgeable in web design, I’d recommend getting started with Wordpress. They’re the top of the line and the most flexible, from what I can see. If you’re like me, I recommend starting with Typepad. They can help new people get started and as you go along, there are ways to make your blog more sophisticated.

6. What types of topics are appropriate for a blog post?

Any topic is appropriate. If you have a passion to communicate about something, getting a blog going is an excellent communication channel. You can blog about your product, your company, politics, religion, your hobby, even your family. All are fair game.

I forgot about a blog that I started a few months ago: http://asportingview.com/ -- I’m a bit of a sports buff and sometimes I’ll get irritated about something happening in the sports world or I’ll just want to communicate a viewpoint of mine, I’ll head to this blog and let loose. I’m not sure how many people see this blog; it doesn’t really matter to me. I just wanted a place to “vent” and this blog serves that purpose.

7. How is a blog post different from an article that one might put in a newsletter? Are they different or do they have to be different?

An article in a newsletter is usually a bit more “formal” than a blog post. I say usually, because there are some blogs that are pretty formally presented, but most blogs tend to be very conversational and informal.

8. What is the appropriate number of words for a blog post (or range)?

From the many blog posts I’ve read, they tend to be fairly short, maybe in the 1-300 word range.

9. What types of companies do you think would benefit from putting up a blog and writing regular posts?

I honestly believe EVERY company would benefit from starting a blog. Even a small mom and pop would benefit. You would just need to come up with interesting things to communicate to your public.

10. How often do you have to put up new posts on a blog?

The think is that the more you post, the better, but I try to at least get something done once a week. Some blogs have several posts a day; some do just fine with something new every week or so.

11. How can a blog be used to promote products or services?

By steadily communicating interesting information to people that want the information. The more you do this, the more trust you establish with customers and prospects. The more trust you establish, the more likely people will do business with you these days.