Posts Tagged blogging
Guide to Corporate Blogging and Guest Bloggers
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on March 2nd, 2010
When launching a company blog, you want to get everyone on board. Even the people who are not directly contributing to the blog should know the blog’s mission statement. Your company is embarking on a journey that is different from traditional marketing and PR. This is a community effort, and your entire staff should understand the following ideas.
Your company should establish a set of guidelines, simple and clear, that outlines your goals and rules for the blog that will be read and followed by any contributor. The following list offers some general tips that will make any corporate blog easier to read, more likely to be shared, and much more relevant to your readers.
Share these tips with anyone who writes on your blog:
1) Gain Trust:
“Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them.
If you blog, your goal should be to create a blog about which people say “I like that – I don’t think of it as a company blog.” For the most part, that’s a hurdle you need to jump to gain their trust…
If you want to be a thought leader and helper for your customers, and you blog frequently about those customers’ problems and solutions, then you can generate trust. Want an example. Check out Rubbermaid’s blog.”
From Groundswell
How to Announce and Promote Your Blog – Best Practices
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on January 12th, 2010
OK. You’ve set up your blog, in a subdirectory of your primary domain, you’ve implemented a well considered “taxonomy” for categories and tags, and you’ve begun to blog. You’re very pleased with the posts you’ve created (you should have at least 4 or 5 posts published) and want to begin promoting your blog.
In promoting your blog, the most important thing you must remember is don’t overdo it!. In the community of bloggers and social media, patience is the key. Make sure your primary objective is adding value to the Web. Be sincere, relevant and informative.
Three Things You Should Know About Blogging
- Check your facts, your grammar and your spelling!
Remember, you are your brand. Your posts represent who you and your brand are to the world. Your reputation — your expertise and your attention to detail — is on the line with every post. Poor writing, erroneous facts, and spelling errors scream “Amateur!” First and foremost, take that extra bit of time to get it right before publishing. - Make Sure Your Blog is Properly SEO’d!
These SEO steps are essential in maximizing your search engine rankings for each post:- Your posts should be search-engine-friendly, and this is more than just incorporating keywords into your content. Your posts’ URLs should be natural-language, keyword-rich: “/your-blog-directory/the-title-of-this-post-keywords/”, not “/your-blog-directory/?p=123″ (in WordPress, use “Permalinks” to accomplish this).
- Your category “taxonomy” should be well organized with keyword-aware category names.
- Each post should have a unique, descriptive and keyword-rich title tag and “description” meta tag (Read my post on SEO Best Practices for your WordPress blog).
- Again … Don’t Overdo It!
Remember, you’re entering an established community. Take time to introduce yourself, get to know the conventions and etiquette of the blog space, and be patient. If you make contributions of value to the conversations, you will get value in return. Here is an excellent list of suggestions of what NOT TO DO to promote your blog!
Blog Hosting for Best SEO: External, Subdomain, Subdirectory?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, WordPress on October 25th, 2009
Where and how you host your blog is as important to your search engine rankings as what plugins you use and how you optimize your blog posts. I have previously discussed the best WordPress SEO plugins, but here I want to discuss the importance of how you set up your blog’s hosting: 1) separate domain; 2) subdomain; 3) external hosted solution (WordPress.com, Typepad, Blogger); 4) subdirectory.
I won’t go into the separate-domain issue, but you can read Mark Jackson’s Search Engine Watch post about this option. Needless to say, the benefits to your primary domain in this case would be nil, except for backlinking from the new, blog domain to your primary domain. But because this blog domain will have likely been recently activated, you will have to wait at least a year before Google assigns it any meaningful TrustRank to the new domain.
As all SEOs know, a business should almost always host their blog under their own domain, rather than the other options mentioned above. When other websites link back to your posts or other pages of your blog, you want the backlinking credit to go to your domain, not to Blogger.com or Typepad.com.
Recently, a client asked us about setting up a blog for them and we told them what we tell all our clients:
- Use WordPress as the blogging platform: We love the incredible number of plugins and themes that are developed by the very large and active WordPress community. And we really like WordPress as a blogging platform (and Dan Cederholm agrees!);
- Install WordPress in a subdirectory: Install the blog under your own domain, in a subdirectory that has a keyword-rich name, eg /widget-sales-usa/) rather than “blog” (we actually use “blog”, but there’s a reason…) or “wordpress.”
HubSpot Business Blogging?
Not long after this conversation, our client informed us that they had purchased the HubSpot “Business Blogging” package, and they asked if this would be as beneficial to their SEO as having a WordPress blog. I decided to do some research.
Read the rest of this entry »
Maximizing Wordpress Blog SEO + General Tips for Efficient Blogging
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, WordPress on May 4th, 2009
Having set up various clients with Wordpress, clients who were interested in search engine rankings and ways to optimize their blog and posts for the search engines, I thought I’d layout some basics for setting up your Wordpress blog for ultimate SEO bang.
Also included here are some other Wordpress plug-ins & tips we’ve found indispensable for setting up maximum-efficiency blogs.
Facebook Fan Page Customization