Month: May 2007

I have had this asked recently and I wanted to post a blog comment about blogging to increase sales.

Most of our clients are blogging for other reasons than to specifically increase sales on their website. Below are the main reasons that our clients are blogging:

1. Create unique content for viewers
2. Allow viewers to interact with the website through comments and responses
3. Set apart their site from competitors by having a blog
4. Blog for search engine placement -keyword dense posts, regular new content, create authority
5. To become the voice of their industry

As I look at this list as a business person, won’t all of these things bring new business? You bet they will. Blogging for the above reasons creates credibility, authority, and improves search engine placement as part of an organic SEO program. But can I say that your sales will increase 5 or 10% if you blog. No, I do not have statistical data to prove that. But as a smart business person I know that get more people to your site, have them stay longer, impress them with your smarts and caring, and this does increase your business and gives you more opportunities to make sales.

So will a blog increase your sales. I believe that it is a good business strategy, but can I prove a sales increase factor? Not at this time, but hey that might be a good white paper in the future. Let me know your two cents on this by clicking comments below and let me know what you think.

Okay don’t give me grief, the link in our post title is to a PowerPoint show that gives the real site statistics showing that a blog will bring a site between 20 to 35% more traffic and I mean unique visitors not hits. I know that PowerPoint is not browser friendly, but this is a great show that I created for a conference on blogging.

In the presentation are the real world statistics of a number of website that we tracked for a several month period. You’ll see screen shots of their Urchin stats proving the traffic increase. The show contains no viruses or malware. There is no refuting the traffic increases that you can see for yourself! Of note also is a comparison of two sites on the same topic with the same content one that blogged and one that didn’t. The traffic difference between the two is striking.

You can get the free PowerPoint viewer from Microsoft here if you do not have PowerPoint installed.

So if you even thought that blogging was just about yakking and a personal diary, I’m here to tell you that its about the increased traffic results!

From some very preliminary research I am starting to believe that when you archive your posts at Blogspot versus using FTP blogging you do not appreciate the full search engine benefits that you do when you archive them back on your own domain.

I am doing a full blown two month test on this topic and so far just in the first week when comparing traffic results between my two blogs I am finding that hosting your blogs at Blogspot is second best.

One of my big concerns so far is that I can not see some of my posts on my Blog-World Watch where from the same day I can see my posts from Web-World Watch appear in the SERPs. Plus I do a weekly Google Sitemap for my Web-World Watch blog, but can not do one for Blog-World Watch as it is hosted at Blogspot and have no server access.

So my hypothesis is “You will not appreciate any significant search engine benefits from hosting your blog files at Blogspot and will when you use FTP blogging and archive posts back on your own web server.”