Well, for any online business questioning just how powerful a blog is to helping a business stand out from the competition, here are six ways a blog can make your business shine online: 
1. Become visible to search engines
Blogging helps increase the search visibility of a website due to the proper use of keywords throughout blog posts. In fact, companies that blog actually receive 55% more web traffic than companies that don’t – and that’s a fairly significant amount of traffic.

2. Lure in audiences with fresh, valuable content
Search engines crave fresh content, which a frequently updated blog provides. Fresh content helps a site get recognized by search engines and influences web audiences to come back to a blog. Also, by maintaining a consistent blog, businesses can keep web audiences informed of the latest product or service, or news related to the business or industry. Of course, blogging is more than just dishing out the latest information; it’s about turning readers into customers by providing valuable information. In fact, 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. 

3. Direct traffic to your site through internal linking
Linking back to pages on your website helps direct web audiences and search engine crawlers to your site. Of course, the pages you link back to should be relevant to the blog post in order to avoid throwing off readers. This is a great way to encourage web audiences to check out your site.

4. Tag posts for web audiences and search engines
An important part in blogging that some may overlook is the correct categorization and tagging of a blog post. The category determines the URL of the post, helping web audiences and search engines learn what the blog is about. The tags essentially serve as keywords since these are the words that are frequently used in the post and help determine what the post is about.

5. Build business credibility
A blog helps a business build credibility. Customers can get to know a company through a blog, helping to build a climate of trust and establish a relationship. Although Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn stand as the top three sites where marketers are active, research shows that they plan to rely more on blogs to connect with customers.

6. Take advantage of the simplicity in blogging 
Maintaining a blog is extremely simple and it can be updated at any time and from virtually anywhere. Businesses have the ability to not only post content, but links, videos and pictures, as well, all of which capture the interest of web audiences and can be enhanced for SEO purposes.

So, if your business doesn’t already have a blog, now’s the time to get started and blog your way to SEO traffic.

Citations:

• Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic; 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
• Although Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn stand as the top three sites where marketers are active, research shows that they plan to rely more on blogs to connect with customers.

Jillian Johnson is a professional writer at WebiMax, writing various blogs and articles. Johnson often writes topics concerning social media, SEO-related news, and company developments.

First of All – What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is basically a set of techniques that will help you create web content that search engine bots will love – simple as that! If you do this properly, your website or blog will rise up in the search engine results, and fly up to that often-illusive first-page ranking everybody is talking about. So, the first thing you need to do is make yourself knowledgeable about SEO techniques in general, and make sure you understand what those three important letters stand for.

When an Internet user types in something in their search bar, the search engine will display a number of relevant results that match the user’s query. One of the most important factors are the results in which the keywords are displayed. It is best to use logic here, as well as to do some research, and come up with a list of keywords that you should use in your web content. After this, make sure you use these keywords, but never overuse them – as this will result in creating spammy content. So, make sure your web content sounds natural and reads well, bearing in mind to use your keywords whenever you get a chance.

Use Keywords with Images

Even though many people omit this step, you should always make sure to use keywords with all of the graphics found on your website. This is usually called Alt Text, Alt Tag, or something similar, and you should use this option to insert your keywords. Again, make sure you use an image that has to do with your keywords, so that you do not end up looking like a big-time spammer. For example, if a keyword you are using is money, you shouldn’t put an image of a tablecloth and put the word ‘money’ as the tag.

Beware of Your Anchor Texts

When creating hyperlinks, make sure you are using descriptive anchor texts. This will not only help with search engine bots, but it will also help your readers determine whether the link is something that they are interested in or not. Many people make the mistake of doing things like this: To find out how to make money from home, click here. Instead of this, you should do something along the lines of the following: Find out more about how to make money from home!

Abhishek Khandelwal is a SEO consultant. He offers SEO services to clients across the world. His clients also include many SEO company and companies spread across different sectors like IT, telecom, real estate and so on.

Before taking a plunge into the backlinking arena, here are some vital points which you must consider.

1. Your backlink building strategies are totally worthless if you don’t have the right set of keywords to promote. That is why it is very essential to take the time researching the best keywords for your site.

2. Submitting your links to link directories, link farms, and any other search engines is totally a waste of time. These have all been devalued by Google recently, so don’t bother wasting effort.

3. You have to identify the main reason why would you want massive traffic for your website. There is no point driving lots of untargeted traffic to your site which will never convert.

Why Are Backlinks Essential For Your Site?

Backlinks are much more like the votes towards your site. Needless to say, the more backlinks your site have, the higher its ranking will be. However, you have to take note that these backlinks should be of high quality and are relevant to your site as Google and other major search engines give greater weight towards such links. But the question here is how could you be able to gain such quality backlinks towards your site and eventually increase its overall rankings?

To give you the answer to that question, here are the essential factors which you must consider when planning to perform backlink building strategies.

Dofollow Links Are Truly Essential
A link which is attributed with the “nofollow” tag indicates that the search engine bots are instructed not to crawl that specific link. This only means that no link juice is passed onto that link and provide no search engine link value at all. Due to this, you have to consider looking for sites which are dofollow as these pages tend to pass on link juices to the links within.

However, this doesn’t mean that you have to totally do away with nofollow links as they are still essential to preventing your site from being tagged as spam. And in spite of that, nofollow links still have the potential to bring in a small amount of traffic even though it has no SEO value at all.

It also helps build a more natural looking backlink profile, with a diversification of dofollow and nofollow links.

You Don’t Have to Worry About Your PageRank
Google PageRank is only one of over 200 indicators which could affect your site’s rankings. It is only a metric which shows your authority within the search engines and does not primarily impact your rankings in the SERPs.

There are in fact a lot of SEO metrics which you have to consider rather that focusing on your site’s PageRank and these include your conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), quality of traffic and a whole lot more.

Google Analytics* is One Essential Means of Tracking Your Results
Google Analytics is one essential tool which you should utilize in tracking your results. You can find several metrics such as landing keywords, landing pages, number of visits and a whole lot more. This will enable you to identify which keywords work out for your site and which don’t. Usually, the best trick for maximizing your traffic through Google Analytics is to consider those keywords having the most traffic and focus on doing backlinking strategies for them.

*other analytics packages are also available.

Various URL Structures Offer Different Values
By this, we are talking about canonical URLs. As an example, http://www.mysite.com differs from http://mysite.com. Even though it refers to the same website, the link juices passed onto them are way different from the other. This only means that you have to focus only on one URL structure for your backlinking strategy as this will give you more edge towards gaining a better site ranking. It also will help avoid ‘Duplicate Content’ penalties from the search engines.

Use Blog Commenting To Your Advantage
Blog commenting not only helps you a lot in building backlinks towards your site, it also helps you interact with other webmasters and build your reputation at the same time. Leaving quality and insightful comments on any active blog page entitles your site to almost instant traffic thus encouraging other commenters to visit your site as well. Looking for blogs which are dofollow and have CommentLuv and KeywordLuv features really are essential for building quality backlinks for your site.

You have to take note that not all backlinking strategies will work for your website. There are some which do help in increasing your rankings while there are those which may get it penalized. But as long as you know which factors to consider for your backlink building strategy, gaining better rankings won’t be that hard.

Do you have any other tips that we have missed in this article? If so then you should add them to the comments section below; We would love to hear from you on this very interesting topic!

This guest article has been contributed by Steve Rendell, who amongst other things finds time to run online invoice software company Paper Free Billing. He also likes sushi and fast cars.

Here are 6 tools for Twitter that users of all walks should be using to promote themselves and any business interests that they may have:

1. HootSuite
   The wildly popular Twitter client allows management of multiple accounts and social networks, scheduled posting and brand monitoring. HootSuite is much more powerful than the default Twitter account and has features any user would love.
2. FollowerWonk
   FollowerWonk helps segment Twitter users and has a wonderful set of data available for marketers. If you wanted to promote a home design product, for example, you can use FollowerWonk to see who is influential about motorized shades or interior decorating. The list allows you to personally reach out to those influencers and build your audience.
3. Buffer
   Ever stumble upon a person who tweets a little bit too much? Recommend that they use Buffer, a tool designed to help people tweet at the optimal times to best reach their target market without annoying their users. Buffer also offers in-depth analytics and reports on each and every tweet that gets sent out.
4. Storify
   Storify is a beautiful application that creates “stories” based on Twitter discussions. You can view a pretty flowchart of all tweets relating to a trending topic or hashtag, for example. You can also post up a conversation between two people. This is a great way to bring Twitter content onto a blog.
5. Twemes
   Twemes helps the less-informed or hip Twitter users figure out why certain topics are trending or what exactly they are. Lots of memes can be difficult to figure out because they are based off of obscure culture references. Thankfully, Twemes saves the day!
6. Klout
   Klout has become the standard for measuring influence on Twitter. It scores and classifies users based on their network, influence and topics. Learn what your account is influential about, who you influence and who influences you. Klout will also spell out your Twitter style so you can see if your strategy is reaching the right types of users.

Guest post written by Michelle, a lover of all things social media.

Andrew Handley is an SEO and social media specialist doing campaigns for elevator and escalator companies on Long Island. Currently testing out Pinterest and the possibilities it offers for businesses.

Blogs and Search Engines

Search engine spiders crawl millions of sites on the internet. They look for a few key things: quality content with well thought-out keywords, user interaction, and frequency of updates to sites. These along with a multitude of other mystifying factors determine what pages will show up in the top spots of search engines like Google and Bing.

Bloggers have some of the best content online because they understand the only reason why they do well is to give the people what they want: relevant, unique, quality, interesting copy that’s frequently updated. By posting blogs that include the aforementioned content elements, people will take notice, comment, and follow. This keeps the search engine optimization cycle going.

Speak Directly to your Target Audience and Build your Credibility

So say you have a company that offers potable water and you want to stand out from other water purification companies. To have a blog or to be a guest blogger is one way to stand out from the competitors in your market.

When others read a blog that gives them a piece of information that they did not know, it’s like having an “aha moment”. So just think about how you can write a blog post to make your readers say “hmm… I never thought about that before.” The result is you being seen as an expert in your field. You increase your credibility in your market share.

Your blog connects your business with customers who are interested in the services you have to offer. This is the information age and the company that offers different channels for their customers to receive the information they want, when they want it, will stand strong.

Making it Work

To make the most of your blog posts, think of what would be useful and interesting to your target audience. Industry news, tips and tricks, etc. are always welcomed by the information-hungry masses.

Also be sure to get involved in the conversation. If someone leaves a comment, you should respond, especially if that comment is actually a question or complaint. Transparency in your customer service gives you the chance to establish your business as customer-focused. Another plus for a business blog.

This guest post was written by Shane who likes to write about marketing online. All businesses like ones that offer potable water through a water purification machine can use this information to educate their audience on the benefits their business has to offer.

1. Do Not Underestimate the Survey
Surveys are an incredibly powerful tool. Tools like Neolane make make it simple to produce and distribute surveys among your existing customers. There are two great reasons to encourage surveys:
- Interaction – This is best for public surveys, especially if they are about interesting or controversial subjects. These kinds of surveys have a way of spreading through social networks like wildfire. They keep people interested and spark debates. When you are the platform for your discussion, you become an important part of your consumer’s world. People love to share their opinion, especially the same type of people who love to share what they think of brands and other pieces of content on the web.
- Feedback – A campaign that is customized for your audience is incredibly powerful. Surveys allow you to segment your customers and target them in the way that appeals the most to them. By tailoring your message to each of your customers, you can dramatically improve engagement and keep your customers interested.

2. Social Media Engagement
A surprising number of brands and bloggers fail to make this work properly. This happens for an understandable reason. For nearly a century, brands have relied less and less on word of mouth and more on broadcasting. Social media has managed to reverse this trend in less than a decade.
- How Old Spice Dropped the Ball – This deodorant company made waves by transforming a brand that had the name “old” in it into an exciting company that consumers wanted to be a part of. They did almost everything right: connecting the character from the commercials directly to their social media outlets and communicating directly with their customers. They responded to comments with videos and boosted sales. Then, nothing. Their commercial campaign ended, and they stopped communicating with their fan base.
- Marry Your Customers – As Gary Vaynerchuk has said, brands need to stop trying to pull a one night stand on their customers and marry them instead. The game going forward is going to be all about keeping customers satisfied so that they don’t stray. Loyalty is the name of the game, and this means you need to start offering genuine value and foster an actual emotional attachment with your customers.

3. YouTube: The Right approach
Users are becoming increasingly difficult to capture. They spend more time online and yet feel much more obligated to spend it wisely. They will not waste time on a piece of content if they think they have better things to do with their time. Video has a way of pulling people in and keeping them interested through the entire piece of content, especially when it is done right. People are also much more likely to share videos with their friends.
As with everything else, don’t neglect the SEO. Use your keywords in the title and file name of the video. Link from the description back to your site. Organize your videos into a playlist so that they’re easier to find and so that users will watch more than one of your videos and become more interested.

Be sure to keep posting on a regular basis so that people have a reason to subscribe. The more frequently you post, the more likely they will rank your videos higher. Make sure to include calls to action in your videos, and let them know how often you’ll be updating.

4. Emotional engagement: Psychology in the service of marketing
Combine these three emotions to get the most out of your efforts.
- Freshness – The more novel you are, the more interesting you become.
- Trustworthiness – The safer users feel, they more likely they are to stick around and promote you.
- Joy – The happier you make your visitors, the more they will remember you and think good things when they come across your brand again.

Andrew is a search engine specialist examining the visitor flow for http://www.anexcelsiorelevator.com/.

I have been blogging here at TycoonBlogger.com for 18 months now and I have gone through many stages and I have learned a lot along the way.  When I first started blogging here, I was compelled to write new content every day.  I was living the “Content is King” mantra.  I would put a lot of pressure on myself to produce fresh content on a daily basis.  It did not take me long to start to show signs of blogging stress.  I then switched over to the thinking that content was important but Blog Promotion is the true king.  After all, if no one knows about your stellar content, what good is it?  My two –three hours a night of blogging time was spent mostly submitting my posts to social networking sites, forums, blog directories, etc…

I guess you can say I have evolved into the third stage of thinking.  I realize the importance of content and promotion but I think the real King is ENGAGEMENT.  The ability to engage with your readers and build a community around your blog is what ultimately separates average bloggers from great bloggers.  I will be the first to admit that when I first started blogging, I would keep pushing out content and I did not focus as much on engaging my readers.  I left many comments unanswered and I could have visited many more of the blogs of my visitors and engaged with them on their blog.  I will be making a conscious effort to make Engagement my top priority.  I feel that sometimes I spread myself way to thin, I will pull back a little and really focus in on:

4 major components of my Engagement First strategy.

• Respond to all most comments.  I crossed out most because I do not want to have to say “Thanks for comment” if I have nothing else to say.

• Visit and Engage everyone that comments and engages with me here on this blog.  I will be putting this as a top priority as sometimes this falls off due to a lack of time.

• Be Better on Twitter – A couple of months ago, I cleaned up my Twitter account and I am now only following 90 or so people that I am truly interested in .  I will selectively add to list and more importantly, I will strive to engage more on Twitter.  An extra 15 minutes a day could go a long way.

• Engage more on select social sites – Instead of spreading myself out, I will make an effort to dedicate more time to a select few social sites.  At this point, I have decided to spend more time engaging and adding to the community at Blog Engage .

[stextbox id="info"]I know the whole: Content vs. Promotion topic is a hot topic, so I am eager to hear all of your comments on the topic.  Do you think my new strategy makes sense or do you think I should churn out the content and keep the marketing engine revved up?[/stextbox]

I have actually been thinking a lot about changing up my site and switching up my header and actually getting a more professional looking logo.  I actually really like the lettering of my logo but not sure that I am crazy about the “character” anymore.  I have been thinking about a new theme as well, I just can’t decide between Thesis and Headway.

Due to the fact that web design and logos were on my mind, it was ironic that I was approached today to write a review for a leading logo design company called LogoBee.  Chances are good that you are familiar with this company as they are one of the most visible around the web.  One thing that struck me when I visited their site (besides their killer logo designs) was the fact that they have been in business for 10 years and have worked with over 10,000 clients.  To me that says a lot.  You know they will be around to provide support and have the credibility to stand behind their work.

I must admit that I have not used LogoBee (yet) but I am very impressed with their work.  Check out some of these logos:

The Tech Deals logo is my favorite, if you want to see more logo design samples visit their gallery.

Since many people that come through and read my blog are looking for additional ways to make money online, I also wanted to bring up the fact that LogoBee has a great affiliate program that pays out at $20 per transaction.  They also provide $20 coupons as well to make it easier to get those affiliate sales.  For more info on the affiliate program follow this link —-> LogoBee Affiliate Program

Be sure to subscribe to my feed for more blog promotion tips and general blogging tips as I have dozens of ideas for posts in the month of March.