Posts Tagged ‘google ranking’

At the recent ‘Effective Online Marketing’ workshop that we held at the Working Women’s Network, blogging, like Twitter, was another topic that came up as something that people knew something about but weren’t sure exactly how to make full use of.

If you’re a technical kind of person (like my husband!) the history of blogs is quite interesting. Blogs, short for web logs, began in the late 90’s. There are several types of blogs such as personal blogs, corporate blogs, video blogs and more. You can learn all about it on Wikipedia if you really want to! However, from a business perspective, how you can make the most of a blog to get your message across and attract new business is far more interesting.

There are a few reasons you would start blogging to help your business. Firstly, having a blog on your website provides you with the opportunity to create fresh, frequently updated, keyword-rich content, all of which Google and the other search engines love.

Secondly, it gives you a way to communicate with your audience, however large or small, about topics that relate to your business in some way. This gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your area and raise your business profile.

Thirdly, as I do, you may blog on sites other than your own if your topic isn’t relevant to your specialist subject matter or you have an interest in a similar topic and can establish yourself as a regular contributor to a popular blogging site. This again allows you to elevate yourself as an expert and drives traffic to your own site from a well, established and popular site. Again, something that Google and his friends are particularly fond of.

All of this is great, you say. But what on earth do you write about on a blog? How often should you post a blog and how do you promote it to the wider world out there?

Working out what to write on a blog is definitely the hardest aspect of the job (believe me, here I speak from experience!). When you’re first starting out it’s a good idea to jot down several ideas and make a start by writing your first few posts before you’ve even introduced your audience to your incredible wit and charm. This means that when you do start to publish the posts you have a few up your sleeve and you feel less pressure when it comes to writing one (oh, if only I followed my own advice on that one!).

Knowing what to write about will get easier as you become more of a veteran and you are more comfortable sharing your opinions with the rest of the world. Mixing up the topics is probably a good idea. You can cover achievements in your business, new customers who have found your services to be of benefit, short case studies where you have had a situation arise with a client and it provides an excellent way to showcase how you can solve issues that people have, topics that are popular in the news that relate to your business, products and services.

You can also use your blog to raise customer service issues, either that you have experienced as a customer or as the service provider, and how the issues were resolved satisfactorily or otherwise. Basically, since blogs are a vehicle for people to express their opinion on a topic, either as the author or a reader, the subject matter you write about is limitless. Relating it to your business and keywords are the key points to remember.

Here’s a good place to point out that blogs are not only useful if you write them. Making comments on blogs that relate to your business is also good to help establish your brand, especially since you can add a link to your website when you leave the comment, again helping your Google ranking.

There are many blogs out in the blogosphere that will give you pointers and tips on how to make your blog effective. But, if you want a comprehensive guide to blogging you really should visit Darren Rowse’s Blog – ProBlogger. Darren is, by all accounts from my Melbourne Twitter friends, a great Aussie bloke from Melbourne. He is also one of the World’s leading bloggers and his site will give you countless tips. I recently started his 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series, which gives you practical excercises on how to improve the content of your blog and promote it to the world. He has created a workbook out of this series and, if you’re serious about making your blog work for you I highly recommend it. By providing a step-by-step guide to daily (or weekly if you prefer to extend it) tasks it is great value at under $20.00.

And, when it comes to promoting your blog and getting people to read it, there are several options. Again, Darren has a comprehensive list of ways to do this here.