Should I have a blog or a website?

Blogs have come a long way.  In fact a blog is a website so if you’re trying to make a distinction the battle will be hard fought.

Your blog can have static pages that can do anything from housing a photo gallery to creating a forum for your users/customers.  Frequent blog posts also offer your readers an opportunity to comment, creating  a valuable dialogue between you and your visitors.  Blogs have grown to include all of the elements we like about traditional web pages, with the added platform of the blog post itself.

Why would you want this element on your website?

The fact of the matter is this: search engines prefer content rich sites, updated frequently that don’t contain overwhelming amounts of code. That is to say that they would rather you consistently update your page often by some means (like blogging) than have a graphically advanced site.   Have lots of fresh quality content on the page in text is necessary for search rankings.

Did you know Google cannot read what is inside of images or elements like Adobe Flash?

Your website might look great but it will stand little chance of high search rankings without well written content on the page.   This is something to bear in mind when designing your site.  You want to have your website appearing on Google right?  See for yourself what they like to see in a website.

So should I have a blog or a website?

For the minor differences between the two, blogs are better.  No doubt about it!  They are inherently more interactive, generally contain the best type of content, and lack the complexities that boggle newcomers to website ownership.  Having a website should be easy. Having a blog is easy!  Once it is installed properly, adding new content is simple and doesn’t require complex coding.  Blogging has brought the ease of the mainlining a website to the masses.

So obviously you want an impressive looking blog.  We can help!  Contact us and lets us know what your needs are, and we’ll show you how we can provide the solution.

Traditionally the idea is to write a piece of content and have it published on a site with a better rank than your own.  In exchange for the article you are given a link back to your site.  A good site will pass page rank and link juice, conversely a lower ranking site publishing your content with good links does you little good.  This can be a powerful link building technique, depending on how well your piece is written as this will determine who is willing to publish it.   Developing solid relationships with high authority sites is crucial for any link building strategy.

Article directories offer you a place to publish your work, and most of them will give you a link at the end back to your website.  Contrary to what some might tell you this technique has very little SEO value.  The engines have devalued links from these sites and your article is more likely to get scraped or plagiarized than it is to be picked up and reposted by a site that can pass any value to you with a link.   Overall this is a waste of time.

A common syndication practice is posting on your site and distributing the same work to other sites, however you could run into a duplicate content issue and have yours filtered.  Be careful if you decide to do this!   If you are going to re post you content verbatim, make sure you have good links back to your original article, not just to your website.  Google also recommends that you “ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag”.  While this technique might drive some temporary traffic it will not do much in the way of long term SEO benefits.  Think like Google would.  Why is this site posting identical content all over the place?

If you’re trying to outsmart the engines you’ll have to do better.

When you are attempting to build readership, and even after you have, social syndication can be a great way to reach the maximum audience with one piece of content.  Posting links to your articles on social sites is a great way to get your content viewed and build links!  If people find your content helpful they are going to tell others (generally via linking to it).  Social networking is a great way to build readership and will invariably contribute to your rankings.

It goes without saying at this point that at the end of the day, good links are what we are after. 

The best attractor of good links is good content.  It’s said over and over because it is so true:  Write for people not for search engines!  Certainly we must consider some on page SEO factors, but good writing will always fare better overall than tricky writing.  Links are one of the most important factors in SEO and the best way to get them is to share good content, not trying to outsmart Google.

Blogging is supposed to be about writing and building an audience.  Leave the technical stuff to us, and leave yourself free to create.  Our blog packages offer many options and we also do consulting work above and beyond our standard services.  We handle these on a case by case basis so contact us directly if you having an issue you need resolved.  Design and functionality are our specialties and we are here to help.

Do you have a blog that you’re not proud of?  Need some tips on increasing traffic.  Don’t hesitate to ask.

The reality is most blogs look the same, and our semi-custom service can set you apart from the pack!

Contact us and let us know what you are thinking.  We’re happy to consult and give you all of the information you need before you get started.  We feel our service is the best, and you will too!

The truth is no one can guarantee you a ranking!

If someone says they can I would tread with caution.  They can certainly try but who is to say a competitor won’t do the same thing an best you? There are no guarantees in SEO, so don’t be told otherwise.   A good SEO will look into your competition and let you know if it is POSSIBLE.

Another fact these so called SEO experts will fail to mention is that SEO is an ongoing battle!

Optimizing your site is a continuous process. The moment you forget this is the moment your ranking slides and with it your online business. Stay ahead of the game and be proactive.  Becoming complacent after you’ve ranked and having to re optimize your site will likely cost you a lot more than maintaining  your ranking

Maintain your on page SEO is something you should be PERSONALLY managing on a daily basis anyhow!

When you are adding content, make sure it is optimized.  If it isn’t there is a good chance no one will read it anyhow.  Ranking alone is not good enough, ranking with valuable content is.

For your other SEO needs be sure to do your due diligence.  Research your SEO as you would research any other aspect of your business.  The information is out there and there are plenty of SEO’s who know what they doing and aren’t trying to take you for a ride.  Unless you know how to optimize your site off page, you’re going to need some help.

It would be prudent to learn a little bit about the process.  The more you know the less likely it will be that someone will be able to lie to you.  Learn the basics at least, it will put you in a better position to understand the services you are buying.

Read though this infographic for some great information on the perilous world of SEO.  This pretty much sums it all up.  There are lots of “experts” out there that are happy to take your money for nothing.  Be wise when choosing a company.

Marketing Infographic by SEO Book

 For some on page SEO tips read this post.

The reality is a lot of people pay huge sums of money to have companies do their on page SEO.  Heck, you can pay me to do it if you like.  That’s fine but with a couple of simple tools there is no reason you can’t do it yourself.

Step one is to do some keyword research on Google Adwords to determine what keyword or key phrase you want to rank for.  This handy tool will tell you how many people search for the keyword per month and how large the competition is.  This is where you need to get creative.  For a new blogger with a low authority site I would suggest finding a keyword that receives 3-500 monthly searches.  As your site gains authority you can go bigger but I wouldn’t start higher than that.

Now you have to create a piece of content using that keyword at least once.  Some will tell you to hit a certain keyword density but that is not the case.  It is more  important to keep the flow of the content than it is to use a lot of the same word.  It has to make sense to the people who are going to read it.  What good is ranking in the search engines if no one wants to read through your content?  You can and should use slight variations of the word as well.   Use the keyword as much as is natural.

Beyond keyword usage search engines look for certain formatting on text that includes the keyword.  You need to include heading formats, bold, italics and underlining of the keyword.   In addition they look to see where the keyword is placed throughout the content.  Internal links must be included as well as images with specific tags.

While you can spend the time doing all of this formatting yourself I recommend a plug-in called SEO Pressor as a guide for beginners.   You simply write your post or page, tell SEO Pressor what keyword you are trying to rank for and it re formats your content for you.  If you’ve missed something the plug-in will let you know.  SEO Pressor has a scoring system that tells you how well the content is optimized.  It takes all of the guess work out of the process and saves you time.  I would use it for the formatting purposes but don’t let the keyword density measure throw you off.  Write a good article and forget about how many times you use the keyword.  Readability is key!

That’s all there is to it.  To check out the SEO Pressor plug-in you can click here.