As you step into the blogosphere and try to start using your
business blog for maximum marketing impact,
you may feel like Dorothy trying to reach the Emerald City in the Wizard of
Oz. The only difference is you don't have a yellow brick road to follow. Or
do you?
Thousands of business
owners are starting blogs every day. Many of them are doing it to get better
search engine rankings that bring more traffic to their site.
As they reach for that
goal, however, far too many will fall prey to the belief that having frequent
postings packed with good keywords will bring them the results they want. They
believe in the misconception that quality content doesn't matter to get
top-level rankings.
But that's not the way
to Oz, and it's certainly not the way to marketing effectively with your
business blog. Producing content that way will never get you the people you need
as readers. And without people you can turn into raving fans, you'll never get
the viral impact and valuable links you need.
Fortunately, the yellow
brick road to business blogging success--filled with people, crawlers and
spiders--isn't hard to find. And it's surprisingly easy to follow once you're on
it. If you plan your business blog properly, gaining popularity with both people
and search engine spiders will come easily.
Why? Well-focused blogs
are naturally attractive to both people and search-engine spiders alike. The way
a blog is structured and maintained gives these two key players exactly what
they want most.
Why People Are Attracted to Blogs
1. Blogs are focused on a niche.
Most
good blogs are highly topical
and are run by someone passionate about that niche. Because of that passion,
these bloggers act as a filter for the vast amount of information we're
bombarded with daily. That filtering, analysis--and yes, even opinionated
commenting--is valuable to people who share an interest in that same area. After
all, who has the time to research everything when you can rely on a few trusted
experts to do the filtering for you and get the information you need fast?
2. Blogs allow active participation.
The interaction capability
built into blogging software--through commenting, trackbacks and social
bookmarking--makes it easy for the reader to engage in the conversation. This
interaction opens a dialogue, which makes your readers feel part of the process.
They're no longer just passive consumers of information, they're active
participants who have a say.
3. Blogs provide connections to other likeminded people.
People want to be
connected with likeminded individuals, so when a woman with similar interests
finds your blog and likes what you have to say, she finds herself immediately
connected with you--and likes you. As you deliver more content, that connection
deepens and expands into credibility and trust. You win. She wins. And your business blog is the medium that makes
it all happen.
Why Search Engine Spiders Are Addicted to Blogs
Unlike normal websites, your business blog doesn't need tricks, tactics and
constant revisions to get good search engine rankings. You could say that
business blogs were born for search
engine optimization. The very construction and functioning of a
blog is naturally attractive--and addictive--to search engine spiders. The
reasons why your business blog can be prime food for search engine spiders are
remarkably similar to the top three reasons that people like blogs.
1. Spiders love topical relevance. The purpose of the search engine is to find
content highly relevant to the keywords entered. When your business blog is
tightly focused on a specific niche, your relevance is likely to be naturally
high with very little effort on your part because when you know what your
keywords are and you produce content that stays focused on your niche, peppering
your posts with your keywords becomes almost an unconscious act.
2. Spiders love frequent activity.
Search engines are designed to not only deliver
relevant content, but also the newest, freshest information available.
Well-planned business blogs, by their very nature, have both the relevance and
highly active posting frequency that search engine spiders want. So those
crawlers and spiders will return to your site more and more as your frequency
increases. You're essentially training the spiders to visit you more often. As
the spiders visit again and again and you entice them with more and more
relevant content, your search-engine rankings will climb.
3. Spiders love links and connections.
Just as people like to be
connected, so do search engine spiders, only in a different way. Most
search-engine algorithms love links,
especially Google. The more relevant links you have in your
blog, the more value search engines give you as a connection point to more
relevant content that their users are looking for. Blogs are built to connect to
each other. Since bloggers are often referencing each other, either through
trackbacks or direct links, inbound links can be generated very quickly. Better
yet, those inbound links increase your blog's value because they're often from
sites that have a natural relevance to your site's topical content.
The true basis for linking power,
though, comes from the fact that your content is valuable enough to have people
want to link to your posts.
Without good quality content that people want to link to or reference, you can
make keyword-dense posts as frequently as you want, but you'll always get
sub-par search engine results.
Although the frequency
of posting undeniably helps, it's not the Ferrari that'll zip you down the
yellow brick road to marketing success. Overall, quality of content trumps
frequency in most niche areas. Assuming, of course, that posts are made
consistently, on topic and at a frequency relative to their length, both people
and spiders will devour your content.
Much like the
scarecrow, tin man and lion who were told by the Wizard of Oz that they always
had what they sought, you'll find that most of what you're looking for in online
marketing can already be found in your business and life. You need to use your
brain to properly plan and organize your business blog with a specific target
niche. You need to have your heart in your business blog to be passionate about
what you're blogging about. And you need to be courageous enough to step out
there and simply start doing it.