20 top blogging tips to make a big marketing hit

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Blogging continues to top the on-site SEO charts. 

In the wake of Google's ongoing Panda updates, which are still rolling out like marketing Tsunami across the magical interweb, everyone's talking about quality. 

There have been freshness-related search engine algorithm updates too, namely the 'Caffeine' algo update and its offspring. So the fresher you can keep your site, the better

Blogging remains a popular and effective online marketing medium because it is one of the easiest ways to steadily grow your site, adding good quality, fresh content without having to tinker with your your architecture. 

Here's twenty handy tips to help you write great posts and build a popular blog your business can be proud of. A blog that drives visitors to buy from your site because they think you're great, trust you, like you and appreciate your expertise:

1. make sure your blog sits in your main website directory so you get the benefit of backlinks from people who like your site. If your blog is on a different url your website doesn't get any benefit. This one sits at www.lucidsynergy/blog, which is perfect 
2. instead of selling, inform and excite
3. make people think, be contentious, be bold
4. let your personality show through 
5. lose the jargon
6. never use caveats or small print - turn them into positives and include them up front instead
7. only say something when you've genuinely got something interesting to say
8. be aware of your business's key words and phrases, focusing on them so search engines 'understand' what your posts are about. But don't overdo it! 
9. get inspiration from your trade press, breaking news stories, your sector's history, new product development, New Scientist magazine (an excellent source of amazing news for every sector)
10. try to state both sides of an argument and leave conclusions to the reader rather than lecturing
11. use images in your blog posts - they make a huge difference! But use small file sizes. Search engines don't like sites that take ages to load because they're difficult for people with slow connections - that's most of the world - to use
12. split your posts into paragraphs and use headers throughout to pick out different sections and ideas. It makes posts easier to read and search engines appreciate it too. The same goes for bullets and lists
13. be honest. People can smell BS a mile off
14. focus your posts on the reader's needs. Don't just blow your own trumpet. Think about the kind of stuff you'd like to read on a blog like yours, and give it to your visitors
15. think up a title that'll make people want to read your post
16. include a key word or phrase in your title if it's appropriate, to attract search engines' and readers' attention 
17. link back from your blog to your website somewhere obvious so people can get there in one click if they decide to buy something or contact you
18. vary the length of your posts. Some short with links to interesting places. Some medium. Some long. Variety is the spice of blogging life and it keeps people coming back for more
19. think about opening your blog to comments. If you don't, you still get the SEO benefit. But if you do, make sure you configure your blog so you have to authorise comments before publishing them. Otherwise you'll suffer a huge deluge of spam comments. One of my sites gets 7000 a week. Thank goodness for the spam catcher! Interaction with your audience is good stuff. But it isn't essential for blog success
20. blog as often as you can. Daily is fantastic. Weekly is cool too. Any less frequent than that and you're not really taking full advantage of your blog. And you might as well - it's such a simple and effective on-site marketing option