All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.
The Wonder Twins Track at SMX West: SEO and Blogging, provided the audience with information on how to best launch and promote a blog.
Here are 8 tips, from Aaron Wall of SEOBook, on how to gain traction for your blog.
Own a Niche
Make Formatting a Priority
Wordtracker now offers a free keyword research tool - hat tip to SEOBook. Remember “hat tips” all you selfish, link hoarding bloggers out there? (no, I do NOT mean Aaron)
Yahoo Site Explorer adds new features
Andy and Jeremy, back and forth, back and forth about MBL. This is a good example of a blog post that is not well thought out before posting (on the part of Jeremy Zawodny). Using the word “spamming” and Andy Beal’s name in the blog post title was flat out lame, whether there was an objection to Andy’s contest or not.
Is blog optimization part of search marketing? Absolutely! Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites.
If you can optimize a document and that document gets indexed, categorized and ranked by a search engine, it’s part of search marketing in my book. As such, marketers should be aware of how these kinds of channels can be used within the overall online marketing mix. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimization.
Later today I’ll be presenting here at DMA-06 on a panel called, Blogs, RSS and Podcasting with Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit and Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts. Basically, my presentation will cover how blogs can be used as public relations tools in the context of “Push and Pull PR”. The presentation is broken up into:
Moderated by Detlev Johnson of Position Tech, this panel included: Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts, Rick Klau of FeedBurner and Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit.
First up was Amanda with yet again, a unique presentation. There is still lots of unclaimed territory with blogs.
Less than 6% of Fortune 500 companies are blogging according to SocialText. 35% of companies plan to start a blog in the next year.
RSS distributes content and drives traffic.
Wired recently ran another “How To” with this one including sage advice from Technorati founder, Dave Sifry on how to make your blog more popular:
1) React quickly. (Nothing is more fun than calling an A lister on hype or fluff)
2) Make your posts easy to read. (Usability never goes out of style)
3) Link, link, link! (Amen - link in and link out)
4) Optimize for search engines. (Get some tasty blog optimization)
5) Post, post, post! (Yes and no - It’s just not always practical to post 5 - 10 times a day)
There are also several tips on sprucing up your MySpace site, Amazon Picks and reblogging. Check it out.
Recently I fielded an emailed question from a reader as to which is better home for a blog: as part of the company web site (www.company.com/blog/) or as a separate domain (www.companyblog.com)? I get this question often and see it mentioned in the forums as well.
There are many factors that influence whether your blog should be part of your site or it’s own domain name including:
With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:
In the past I’ve written tips about marketing business blogs with an emphasis on content, frequency and distribution. Just like with optimizing web sites for better search engine rankings, there’s an abundance of information and tips on how to use blogs for business.
As far as business blogs go, the two implementations that I see most often are blogs as a component of SEO or blogs as a public relations tool. Granted, this bias is a manifestation of the focus of my company’s blog consulting practice, but I think the insight into what’s been working can benefit any type of blog.
As blogs continue to mature as marketing tools, there are an increasing number of “blog optimization” articles and posts appearing. However, many of these resources underestimate the importance of inbound links.
To think that researching and placing keywords in the “right places” alone with improve a blog’s traffic is only part of the story. Blogs are simply web sites/content management systems with some special features. Getting web sites to rank well and to engage more traffic involves a large number of variables and the same goes for blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites. These include:
eComXpo is coming up next week April 4-6 and offers a great lineup of online marketing presentations with keynotes by Bryan Eisenberg, Author of “Call to Action”, Anne Holland Founder of MarketingSherpa and Geoff Ramsey CEO of eMarketer .
I am participating on a panel called the Big Blog 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM on Wednesday April 5th. The session is moderated by Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit and includes co-panelists: Constantin Basturea of Converseon and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.com.
There have been plenty of times I’ve commented on other blogs, only to forget where I was. Days later I think to myself ‘I wonder if anyone commented on my comment’. To bad I don’t remember where I was so I can’t go back and check.
There is also times where someone asks a question in the comments, we answer it and never know if the user actually saw that we answered their question.
Granted, every post has a comment RSS feed but you then end up with a cluttered feed reader. So there has to be an easier way to keep your comment conversation alive by notifying previous comment authors. Well there is.
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