Tag: Blogs

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Blogging Your Way to Better Organic Placement

Although it is hard to quantify if blogging will help your website place better organically, I have to say that from reviewing four different clients in the same industry, blogging can definitely make a difference.

Here is one concrete example, we have four clients in the same state, three of which are located in the same general service area. Three blog, one does not. Monthly I review site placement and prepare placement reports for several of these clients.

One site we have been blogging for since 2006 has garnered top Google placement on many keywords, another site that we designed but just started blogging for is moving up in placement. One site we did not design, but blog for is now placing organically on terms it had not placed on before., and the other fourth site we designed, but is not blogging, placed well initially but now after three month is starting to drop in the search results. Of specific interest is the site for which we did not do the design for is now placing organically, but on the blog posts not the website pages.

From this I can unequivocally say that blogging does help your organic placement. When blogging is teamed with great SEO web design, you can definitely move up in the organic results. Additionally, we have found that when we blog heavily on specific phrases for over 30 days at a time, we can additionally garner placement on these terms. This is particularly important on location or geographic specific terms.

One big note however is to remember that the results you can receive are all based on on-domain blogging versus off-domain blogging. Blogging can be an excellent way to position your website organically, just do it the smart way.

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Professional Bloggers Love WordPress

As professional blog writers, my team writes over 100 blog posts each week. We’ve used all the blogging platforms and even custom applications. Hands down my team prefers to use WordPress.

Our team members don’t like these platforms:

Movable Type
When we get a blog project that is using Movable Type, we all groan. This platform does not allow for pending and draft posts, has a very quirky publishing interface, and has a very strange HTML mutant link and writing interface. Typically blog writers are writers first and not usually HTML savvy so to add link or tag syntax can be highly confusing.

Blogspot
This used to be the platform that most of our blogs were done on back in 2002 and 2003 but as of 2010 not a single one of our clients is on Blogger or Blogspot. They have all moved to WordPress. Although you can add tags, you cannot sort posts into categories. Additionally the template selections are archaic and do not even allow three column blogs.

HubSpot
This is another platform when we get a client using this we groan. Although it is not as bad as Movable Type, the inability to see blog posts in a list by date and quick editing features for tags and categories make this a cumbersome choice to use.

The Best is WordPress!
Here’s why we love WordPress:

  • Wonderful easy to install plug-ins that build SEO benefits into each blog post.
  • Ability to choose tags PLUS categories to sort your blog posts into for easy navigation.
  • Integrated search engine.
  • Once click software upgrade and plug-in update.
  • Excellent and rock solid publishing on future dates.
  • Ability to set a post as pending or draft – they are different in our minds.
  • Running word count that resides at the bottom left of the blog entry field screen.
  • Outstanding template selections with many that are free downloads.

If you are trying to decide which blog platform to use for your blog. Use the one that professional bloggers like us love – WordPress!

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Want to Build Blog Readership? Consistency is Key!

If you want to build readership of your blog, consistency is key, but that doesn’t just mean posting on the same days, but at the same time, with the same quality, and on your core topics.

I have learned this from personal experience. There is absolutely nothing worse than building up a reader base and then due to your own inconsistency losing it. I had this happen in 2008. I had a number of writer related personnel issues. I had to step in and write consistently at the last moment for a number of client blogs. When you blog for other people, you can get tapped out and simply not want to or have time to write for your own blog.

I saw on my own blog, over a several month period, my traffic go from 40% of all visitors reading my blog to under 10%. It took me over one full year to rebuild my readership with consistent blogging three days a week. It was really tough to keep the momentum up to rebuild what I had lost. I have learned that to not blog is not an option for my own business.

For me, I blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My posts are published at 5:30 am and are consistently on-topic for what my readers are interested in knowing more about. The payoff has been huge. My RSS subscriber base is now over 220 readers and my website traffic has nearly doubled this year alone.

Blogging can be hard work to always be at the top of your game, but when you stop or get sporadic you can lose it all! If you need help staying consistent with your blog consider our blog writing services. You don’t want to have to rebuild your readership, as I did, if you can simply get someone to step in and help out when you need it.