Posts Tagged ‘
better blogging ’
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Creating a blog can be one of the best ways to distribute information in today’s society. It is fast, easy, and can reach millions. The decision to begin blogging can be easily made, but a good plan must be implemented if you want your blog to benefit your website. A San Diego Search engine marketing professional can help you create a good plan.
A well written blog that captivates the audience is great but will not benefit you if it cannot be found. In order to resolve this issue, it is recommended that a business owner who owns or plans on owning a blog, make a serious effort to optimize their website to take advantage of the great opportunities a blog has to offer. In order to better understand how you can benefit from a good blog strategy, let us look at the benefits of having an optimized blog.
1. Constant Content building
Blogs will allow you to create a lot of great keyword rich content that will be read by search engines. Search engines love content and favor websites that stay fresh and up to date. Make sure your pay per click Adwords strategy stays up to date and current in order to gain maximum exposure.
2. Promotion
Blogs can be utilized as one of your top forms of marketing. A well targeted blog can reach your audience by providing useful information. It also provides flexibility in your marketing efforts, allowing you to target specific groups without having to make significant changes to your website and with little to no out of pocket cost.
3. Link Building
Search engines love links and place a great amount of emphasis on them in order to know what a website is all about. A blog, will allow you to target specific pages of your website by creating keyword rich links. By examining your website analytics, you can find out which pages of your site may need a boost and you can begin targeting these pages for your blog linking effort.
4. Reputation Building
Lastly, a blog will allow you to gain the advantage over larger competitors who may have not yet caught on to the benefits of blogging. In this online world you can extend your company brand to reach new heights, by posting relevant and valuable information, you can begin to earn a following as a leader in the industry, innovator, critic, or promoter. Blogging alone can open up many opportunities and can make a person’s career (i.e. B-list celebrity, Perez Hilton).
Although a great blog can benefit your website, it is best to consult a San Diego Social Media Marketing or San Diego Internet Marketing professional to make sure your marketing plan is sustainable and that you are getting the most out of your efforts with an optimized blog. A professional will advise you on specific factors that search engines favor. If you are thinking about the benefits a blog can have on your site, call Saba SEO today toll free at 1-866-937-1717 for your free website analysis.
Tags: better blogging, Blogging, business website design, free website analysis, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, search engine optimization san diego, seo blog, seo blogging, seo website design, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego
Posted in
Blogging, Search Engine Marketing |
2 Comments »
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
It is very common today to run across a site or blog made specifically to create backlinks to a company website or a client’s site. In order to filter through the clutter to find well versed and reputable sites which to comment on and post links, it is very important for you to be able to tell the difference between good blogs and bad ones. Posting links to your site through bad blogs can be detrimental to your SEO efforts and can cause your site to loose ground to some of your competitors who have created good quality links.
What to look for:
1. Spelling
By looking at the spelling and grammar of the content, you can get an idea whether the blog you are reading is generated by a professional with attention to detail. Although some misspellings are excusable, too many of then can be a red flag that the blog you are reading will not benefit your own SEO. Remember that other readers just like you will notice it too and will likely not take the post author as a serious authority. In order to maximize the quality of your links, make sure they are posted in sites which provide valuable information and make an effort to be professional.
2. Grammar
If you find yourself having to read the same paragraph a few time trying to make sense of what is written, chances are that other readers will also find it confusing and will leave the site without reading the blog, and most importantly without reading your comments. Although elementary grade language is encouraged to help all visitors have an easy reading experience, avoid posting links on blogs that were written by elementary educated authors.
4. Check the Host
If the blog has links back to a domain, check the domain out to make sure it is a reputable site, and that it has related content. Avoid posting links to sites which you may fear to be spam sites, or link farms. You can take it a step further by checking out the neighborhood in which the site is hosted to make sure it is part of a good neighborhood of sites. Look at our recent blog post: Hosting Your Domain With Bad Neighbors for more details and a free tool to help you determin good and bad neighborhoods.
5. Read Existing Comments
If you see that the blog post has very few comments, it is okay because the blog may still be new and developing a following. If you are the first to comment, dont be shy to do so, but only if the content is related to your industry and if you found the information useful as others may also find it useful and will stick around long enough to read your comments. If comments exist, look at the comments and see if they are worth your while. Often, you will come across a link that will lead you back to a site which you would also want to comment on. Utilize this in order to build your network of industry professionals as they will likely also follow your links back to your site. If you see too many links that give high praise to a badly written blog, chances are that these comments have been generated by the auther himself or by a software built to create spam links. If spam links are obvious, you may have stumbled upon a blog that lacks moderation, and the author is allowing all sorts of links to their site without checking them. This is a red flag that the blog is maintained by software and not by a human who would otherwise check each comment for spam before allowing it to post.
Posting comments and links on a site are a valuable form of SEO that can lead relevant visitors to your site. It is a common form of link building that is still growing in popularity. Although there are many blogs in which you can comment, be sure you are only doing so on relevant blogs that are authored and maintained by reputable and authority figures in the industry. This will ensure you get the most out of each visitor, and will keep you from associating your site with spam sites or link farms that can otherwise hurt your search engine standings. Search engines will be able to tell the difference of a high quality blog and a low quality ones. By associating with bad ones you are in turn, showing support for bad behavior and your site may be penalized for your show of support.
Be sure to protect your site by getting expert advice before creating your SEO strategy. Call Saba SEO for a free consultation toll free at 1.866.937.1717. Also follow us on Twitter for valuable tips and tricks on helping you grow your website.
Tags: avoiding bad seo, better blogging, blog backlinks, blog commenting, business website design, Domain Hosting, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, search engine optimization san diego, seo blogs, seo website design, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego
Posted in
Uncategorized |
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Although it is common to come across a blog posting that may resemble in the spirit of a good Term Paper, it is best to avoid lengthy blog posts that may not keep the reader’s attention. The following is a short blog with some common best practices for creating successful blog postings of your own, without giving the reader incentive to leave.
Leave the big words out. Unless your blog is directly focused towards service providers such as doctors and lawyers who have languages of their own, avoid long and difficult words. People who are online will have a short attention span and if your site is too difficult to read, your blog will never be read. If you are online, you must expect that anyone will be able to access your blog and a large portion of the time, it will by found by an average Joe. Search engines will also suggest using elementary level language to increase searchability as it will help you get a larger part of the online traffic.
Leave the lengthiness behind. A blog post, no matter how interesting or informative will cause the eyes to tire if the post is too long. Give your audience a break by tackling the subject early in the post and provide reinforcing details to finish it off. If your have a lot of information, try to give your reader’s eyes a break by providing relevant images in between paragraphs to allow the eye time to rest before proceeding.
 give your visitors an eye break Giving your visitors an occasional break will help your readers find the energy to finish lengthy blog posts. Making the images relative to the subject matter and adding alt tags to the image help keep your blog postings search engine friendly.
Consider typographical hierarchy. Just like reading in a magazine, our eyes are attracted to certain parts of the page in the designer’s predetermined order, all in an effort to make the page easy to read with a good flow. The designer controls this with fonts, size, weights, color, etc. the only difference is that blogs use a vertical reading order rather than a horizontal one. In a blog’s vertical scroll arrangement, our flow is already predetermined, we are only assigned the task of making the words easy to read. This includes the use of a serif font for lengthy posts as they help lead the eye from word to word. If you are using a san serif consider a font designed specifically for online view such as Verdana. Avoid using more than 3 different fonts per post to promote a unified style. Use bold words sparingly. This is often a challenge as <strong> tags help search engines find keywords. We suggest only bolding 3 keywords per post, or leaving the keywords for titles or paragraph headings that would be bolded anyways.
Don’t be afraid. Posting blogs may be intimidating. This is specially true for controversial subjects, but your reader’s reaction may surprise you. Negative reaction is not always a bad thing, and may bring more attention to your site than positive feedback. If you fail, just post another blog tomorrow, no harm done. Putting the fear aside will keep your blog posts personable and will appear more as dialog to your readers. The only rule to always consider is that you represent the company, so keep it professional.
Be Transparent. If you post with a hidden agenda, or if you wait until the very last paragraph of a lengthy post get to your point, the reader will catch on an have a mistrust about you and your company. Be clear about your goals, your success and failures; and be concise. If your company is facing an embarrassing moment and a potentially bad PR crisis, it is best for the company to begin the dialog about it first because chances are that someone else will begin talking about it if you don’t. Beat critics to the punch by acknowledging your mistakes and how you plan to grow from it.
Creating a good post should not be hard. If it is, it’s probably because you are trying too hard. When you finish you may have a very well written term paper, but a bad blog. Our best advice is to put the fear aside, don’t think about it too much, and avoid sounding like a machine. If possible, talk from the heart. This will encourage comments and interaction from your readers.
If you have found this helpful, please leave a comment. If you need further assistance putting together an online marketing strategy, call Saba SEO, a San Diego SEO Company today toll free at 866-937-1717.
Tags: better blogging, blog best practice, blogging 101, blogging best practices, good blogging
Posted in
Search Engine Marketing |
2 Comments »
|
Avoiding Bad SEO Blogs
It is very common today to run across a site or blog made specifically to create backlinks to a company website or a client’s site. In order to filter through the clutter to find well versed and reputable sites which to comment on and post links, it is very important for you to be able to tell the difference between good blogs and bad ones. Posting links to your site through bad blogs can be detrimental to your SEO efforts and can cause your site to loose ground to some of your competitors who have created good quality links.
What to look for:
1. Spelling
By looking at the spelling and grammar of the content, you can get an idea whether the blog you are reading is generated by a professional with attention to detail. Although some misspellings are excusable, too many of then can be a red flag that the blog you are reading will not benefit your own SEO. Remember that other readers just like you will notice it too and will likely not take the post author as a serious authority. In order to maximize the quality of your links, make sure they are posted in sites which provide valuable information and make an effort to be professional.
2. Grammar
If you find yourself having to read the same paragraph a few time trying to make sense of what is written, chances are that other readers will also find it confusing and will leave the site without reading the blog, and most importantly without reading your comments. Although elementary grade language is encouraged to help all visitors have an easy reading experience, avoid posting links on blogs that were written by elementary educated authors.
4. Check the Host
If the blog has links back to a domain, check the domain out to make sure it is a reputable site, and that it has related content. Avoid posting links to sites which you may fear to be spam sites, or link farms. You can take it a step further by checking out the neighborhood in which the site is hosted to make sure it is part of a good neighborhood of sites. Look at our recent blog post: Hosting Your Domain With Bad Neighbors for more details and a free tool to help you determin good and bad neighborhoods.
5. Read Existing Comments
If you see that the blog post has very few comments, it is okay because the blog may still be new and developing a following. If you are the first to comment, dont be shy to do so, but only if the content is related to your industry and if you found the information useful as others may also find it useful and will stick around long enough to read your comments. If comments exist, look at the comments and see if they are worth your while. Often, you will come across a link that will lead you back to a site which you would also want to comment on. Utilize this in order to build your network of industry professionals as they will likely also follow your links back to your site. If you see too many links that give high praise to a badly written blog, chances are that these comments have been generated by the auther himself or by a software built to create spam links. If spam links are obvious, you may have stumbled upon a blog that lacks moderation, and the author is allowing all sorts of links to their site without checking them. This is a red flag that the blog is maintained by software and not by a human who would otherwise check each comment for spam before allowing it to post.
Posting comments and links on a site are a valuable form of SEO that can lead relevant visitors to your site. It is a common form of link building that is still growing in popularity. Although there are many blogs in which you can comment, be sure you are only doing so on relevant blogs that are authored and maintained by reputable and authority figures in the industry. This will ensure you get the most out of each visitor, and will keep you from associating your site with spam sites or link farms that can otherwise hurt your search engine standings. Search engines will be able to tell the difference of a high quality blog and a low quality ones. By associating with bad ones you are in turn, showing support for bad behavior and your site may be penalized for your show of support.
Be sure to protect your site by getting expert advice before creating your SEO strategy. Call Saba SEO for a free consultation toll free at 1.866.937.1717. Also follow us on Twitter for valuable tips and tricks on helping you grow your website.
Tags: avoiding bad seo, better blogging, blog backlinks, blog commenting, business website design, Domain Hosting, professional website design, san diego ecommerce, San Diego internet marketing, san diego internet marketing company, san diego online marketing, san diego search engine marketing, San Diego SEO, san diego seo company, san diego web design companies, search engine optimization san diego, seo blogs, seo website design, web design in san diego, web designer in san diego, web designer san diego, web designers san diego, web site design san diego, website designer san diego
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »