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Blogging Your Way to the Top
By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009

It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can
significantly help out your website - so why aren't you doing
it?

The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a
lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about,
but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there
can do wonders for your search rankings among other things.

An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by
Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings
considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly
updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases
literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a
well established website and blog to make this happen, but there
is big potential if you do things the right way.

While blogs work best if updated multiple times per week, even
those with a new post every week or two have advantages. Blogs
don't have to be a major undertaking, spending only an hour or
so a week on posting can have you seeing results in no time.

There are many advantages to adding a blog to your website. Here
are a few.

  Increased Rankings
  By boosting your topical content, you increase the value and
  relevance of your site. The more new stuff you add, the more
  of an authority you make your site, and this helps to improve
  your overall search rankings. It can also help you obtain
  rankings for "long tailed search phrases".

  Long tailed search phrases are those that are less commonly
  searched, and usually exceed 3 or 4 words in length - they are
  also very targeted to your product or service. Blogs are great
  for getting rankings on long tailed search phrases. If you see
  a long tailed search phrase you want to rank for, use the
  phrase as the post title (if it makes sense to do so) and
  write a good, content rich post about it and your ranking
  potential for this phrase will rise.

  By writing blog posts with your target phrases in mind, you
  can often help improve your overall rankings by increasing the
  relevance of the site to that search phrase. Consider also
  linking to other relevant pages within your site from the post.

  Increased Traffic
  Blogs are great for increasing traffic. Aside from the added
  traffic you may see from search ranking improvements, if your
  blog is interesting and topical, you will get some repeat
  visitors to your site as readers check back for new posts. If
  people really like your blog, they will spread the word,
  resulting in even more visitors. Just think, have you ever
  emailed or instant messaged a friend with a link to an article
  you have read? Don't you want your link to be the one passed
  around?

  Credibility
  By blogging regularly about your industry you will help to
  establish yourself as an expert. Many of your potential
  customers will see your blog and notice that you know what
  you're talking about and be more likely to utilize your
  services. By sharing your knowledge it can help to instill
  trust onto your visitors which can actually result in
  increased conversions. There are a lot of faceless, anonymous
  websites out there - an active blog can help people relate to
  you and trust you.

  Links
  A good, well written blog can result in free one way links to
  your site. Sometimes it is as simple as a fan adding your link
  to their blog roll, and other times it may be RSS working its
  magic. Try to squeeze in a link or two into your posts and
  direct them to other internal pages on your website. If anyone
  then republishes or syndicates your posts on their sites, you
  will also end up with a relevant back link. (If you would like
  some other ideas on link building be sure to check out Ways to
  Increase Link Density & Building Links with Directory
  Submissions [http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2008/06/
  bakers-dozen-ways-to-increase-link.php])

  A blog is not a magic bullet used to skyrocket your inbound
  link counts, but it can certainly help.

What Platform To Use
I am a firm believer in the power of WordPress and the seemingly
unlimited plug-ins available to help you. That said, just about
any blog platform will work. It is probably best to stick with
the main stream providers as they tend to have more options
available and better support forums in case you get stuck with
customization issues. In the end however, any search friendly
blog platform will ultimately do the trick.

Blog Post Ideas
If after reading this you are sitting there thinking, "What
should I write about?" here are some ideas to help you get
going:

  * New product launches
  * Press releases
  * Industry relevant news
  * How to's related to your product or service
  * Answers to reader comments
  * Posts revolving around relevant long tailed phrases
  * In depth product descriptions or tutorials
  * Company history or interesting stories
  * Reviews of related products, services or online tools

Blogs are relevant for pretty much all industries, and they
don't have to take a lot of your time. A little creativity can
help you come up with ideas for posts, just try to think outside
the proverbial box.

If you've been putting off the blogging idea for some time,
consider getting started now. There is much to gain and very
little to lose.
================================================================
Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.;
based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read
more of Scott's articles and those of the veteran StepForth team
at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com
================================================================

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