Jun
21
Social Media vs. Search Engine Optimization
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 11 Comments
Social media sites are rapidly altering the web marketing landscape. Now you can use social media to drive targeted traffic to your websites.
You may be trying to determine whether social media is a viable alternative to search engine optimization.
After all, search engine optimization requires extensive keyword research and ongoing content development to achieve top search engine rankings. Is it possible that social media sites might provide a more expedient web marketing solution?
I’ve found in my experience that social networking sites and other social media can generate a modest level of response much more quickly than search engine optimization initiatives. So why not focus exclusively on social marketing?
Social Media AND Search Engine Optimization
Please read The Long Tail and Social Media, and you’ll start to appreciate the extent to which search engine optimization can enhance social media.
Not only does search engine optimization help you promote your website, it also helps you promote your social media content. Your website and your social media together constitute your web presence, and search engine optimization helps you to market your overall web presence.
Interestingly, the converse is also true.
Social media helps your search engine optimization efforts. It adds to the links back to your website generating both referral traffic and credibility with the various search engines.
They key is to coordinate your social media and search engine optimization, creating the maximum synergy between the two through an integrated approach.
The New Online Marketing Professional
It’s no longer enough for online marketing pros to be fluent in search engine optimization technique. They must also fully understand social media sites and their role in building both your online presence and the desired backlinks to your website.
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Jun
11
Why Doesn’t My Website Generate Sales?
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 8 Comments
Could it be that your website looks nice but fails to help you meet your web marketing objectives? Too often that is the case.
Lots of effort and expense went into building your site, but your return on investment is marginal or non-existent.
Here are possible reasons why your website isn’t generating leads or sales and some ideas that might help you correct the problems.
Too Little Traffic
Perhaps you lack an effective strategy for driving visitors to your site.
You set up your storefront but didn’t tell potential customers that you were in business, a mistake I often see both online and off.
Lack of traffic leads to lack of exposure for you and your offer or message.
Don’t assume that traffic will somehow find its way to you through word-of-mouth, search engines or otherwise. It rarely happens that way.
Generate exposure for your website offline via print advertising, direct mail, radio, etc. and online using social media, search engine marketing, search engine optimization and so forth.
Think big. You can dominate your niche, so don’t settle for less.
The Wrong Traffic
You have traffic, but either your traffic is not targeted or it’s poorly targeted, the result of using bad copy, selecting the wrong media, or choosing the wrong keywords.
For greater and more targeted traffic, employ a good mix of research, analysis and experimentation.
Direct marketers have been using this approach offline since before you and I were born, and it works like a charm online as well.
Insufficient Stickiness
You have plenty of visitors, but they leave your website too soon.
Consider these questions:
- Are you targeting the right traffic?
- Are your branding and message clear?
- Are your pages too cluttered, or do you give your visitor too many choices?
- Is your font hard to read? Try to avoid white on black in all your media, since it slows down your reader.
- Is important content “above the fold?” Can visitors see your most important content without scrolling down?
- Is your content up-to-date, relevant and interesting?
- Do you use social techniques on your website to engage your visitors?
Poor Conversion
You have plenty of visitors who stick around but nothing happens.
Here are more questions to ponder:
- Do you have a conversion strategy?
- Does each of your pages have a call to action?
- If not ready to buy, can your visitor join, opt-in to or subscribe to your site?
If you don’t have a lead capture mechanism and follow-up strategy, you’re leaving lots of money on the table.
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May
13
The Long Tail and Social Media
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Analytics | 10 Comments
The long tail has recently become a major buzzword both in business and online.
The long tail concept is rather abstract, so it can help to look at concrete examples. Let’s look at examples from my blogging experience.
The Long Tail of the Search
I started publishing Online Social Networking in November 2007, and I installed Google Analytics to monitor, analyze and track traffic to my website.
My blog, as you can probably guess, has been search optimized for the keyword online social networking.
Out of 25,515 visits that were due to search engines, only 1,469 were searches for online social networking. The remaining 24,056 visits were based on 10,769 other search terms. 3,658 of those 10,769 were variants of online networking.
Fewer than 500 of the 3,658 search terms were used to find my site more than one time. These search terms each occurred very infrequently, yet in aggregate they accounted for a great proportion of my visits.
The long tail of the search refers precisely to this phenomenon.
Most searches are based on all sorts of low frequency keywords. See the diagram to the left in which the yellow region under the curve corresponds to the long tail.
The Long Tail of ROI
I spend several hours writing each post on my blog and another hour or so bookmarking and promoting it. My hope is that people will come read the article and subscribe. Just to keep things simple, consider subscribing to be my return-on-investment.
A couple of hundred people, more or less, will visit within a couple of days to read my piece. Some will comment, and some will subscribe.
As I mentioned above, my blog is search engine optimized. I receive more than 100 visitors daily just from search engines. Over time each individual article on the blog will be read by a handful of search visitors per day. That’s not a large number, but it eventually adds up.
That’s the long tail of ROI: The small number of residual daily visits and subscriptions eventually match or surpass the initial surge of visits and subscriptions when the article is first written and posted.
The Allure of Social Media for Marketing
There are many aspects of social media that are appealing. It’s free. It’s social. It’s far reaching. However, the long tail aspect of social media I’ve described makes it especially attractive to savvy marketers.
Well written and keyword researched content remains online indefinitely and attracts an enormous number of search engine visits over time, a benefit not enjoyed using other media.
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Mar
22
Web Developers Don’t Know Social Media
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines | 13 Comments
A web developer knows how to build a website and how to create a web page that interacts effectively with visitors. Web developers can often organize information and design web sites with great visual appeal.
Generally speaking however, web developers are neither experienced Internet marketers nor skilled copywriters. They specialize in following, tweaking and implementing the specifications provided to them by small business owners and corporate marketing departments. A web developer is a technician skilled at converting a set of instructions into an interactive web site.
Launching and promoting a web site and building an Internet presence require more than a development effort. Here are eight other elements that will likely figure into your online presence:
- Your niche and perhaps micro-niche - What specific need or needs will your products or services fill?
- Positioning and branding - What distinguishes you from your competition? How can you position your brand so that it’s at the top of it’s own category?
- Targeting - Who will use your brand and how can you connect with them online and offline?
- Your keywords - What terms are people searching for that are relevant to your brand and which are the best ones to compete for?
- Content - What do you say on your site? How do you communicate your ideas, and how do you weave in the keywords indicated by your keyword research?
- Contextual linking - Creating meaningful hyperlinks within your site content that help the reader and the search engines.
- Link building - Getting the best sites to link back to you and other SEO strategies to attract search visitors and drive referrals to your website. Listing your site in appropriate directories. Submitting your site and content to social bookmarking sites, and writing press releases and articles that will also link back to you.
- Web promotion and list building - Leveraging social networking sites, video sites, e-zines and PPC ads to drive even more people to visit and register at your website or your blog.
To build a successful web presence requires a team of marketing, design and development professionals to tend to each aspect of your online campaign. In many organizations, some people will assume several roles.
If you’re a small business owner, I recommend that you let a marketing consultant bring together and manage the expertise and skill sets that will be required.
If you have more time to invest than money, Site Build It! is an inexpensive option. You learn each phase as you go and are guided step-by-step through your project.
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Oct
26
Google Bounce Rate Misleads Bloggers
Filed Under Best of 2008, Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Search Engines, Web Analytics | 20 Comments
Defining Bounce Rate
Web metrics help bloggers and other website owners to analyze and track their site visitors. One of the most popular web metrics is bounce rate.
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors viewing only a single page before leaving your site or closing their browser window.
Bounce is thought to be bad and to indicate low interest on the part of your visitors.
According to Google, “a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”
Using Bounce Rate
Bounce rate can measure a site’s relevance, the desire of your visitors to place an order or to obtain additional information.
If you buy Pay Per Click advertising, your bounce rate may be one of the factors that determines the position of your ad relative to other ads.
Bloggers Baffled
Common wisdom dictates that bounce rate should be no more than 40 to 60 percent. Most blogs miss this range.
70 to 85 percent is typical, and bloggers are baffled.
Experts would probably agree that either the blog or the traffic was too unfocused. You will probably not be surprised to learn that I do not concur with the experts.
Blogs Are Different
Blog posts aren’t merely landing pages. Each and every one is a main attraction.
The following examples demonstrate that bounce rate cannot effectively measure your blog’s relevance to visitors.
Consider first your blog’s most loyal subscribers. They come and read your every post.
Let’s suppose that:
- 10% leave a comment
- A different 10% click through to a related post
This appears quite healthy to me, yet your bounce rate is 80%.
Now consider your blog’s best search engine visitors. They land on your post and read it with interest.
Let’s suppose that:
- 5% leave a comment
- A different 5% subscribe
- A completely different 10% visit a related post
This seems quite good to me, yet your bounce rate is again 80%.
Visiting a single page, i.e. your post, reading it and moving on is reasonable behavior for a blog visitor. How can we expect the bounce rate to be much lower?
Bounce rate is clearly not as useful a metric for blogs as it is for landing pages.
Gauging Blog Readership
If we cannot adequately assess our readership using bounce rate, what are alternative metrics?
We might instead look at our trend in:
- Quantity of good comments
- Size of our subscriber base
- Amount of direct traffic
- Number of quality backlinks
- Google PageRank
- Yes, even our bounce rate (smile)
Incidentally, the Google Analytics metric “Avg. Time on Site” is equally problematic, since it doesn’t factor into the average visitors who view only a single page.
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Oct
7
Google Reverses Recent PageRank Update
Filed Under News, Search Engines | 31 Comments
To the surprise of many, a Google PageRank update occurred late September, a month earlier than expected. I saw the page rank of many of my blog posts move up, and I also saw the page rank of a friend’s site move down.
A Google PageRank update hadn’t been expected until October. The previous re-evaluation took place in July according to an apparent every three months pattern. Needless to say Google’s action raised many eyebrows.
On Saturday night the 4th of October I installed the Google XML Sitemap Plugin on a client’s Wordpress blog. While in the installing mood, I also installed the Google Toolbar on my Firefox browser. That’s when I noticed that something was up.
I looked at the page rank of a bunch of my blog posts and at the ranking of my friend’s site. It appeared that Google had rolled back pagerank to July’s numbers, an action would raise even more eyebrows.
Detailed investigation revealed that Google substantially revised but did not completely reverse their September page rank update.
What is Google PageRank?
In case you’re unfamiliar with page rank and wondering why so many people are obsessed with it, I’ll try to explain.
Website owners want their web pages listed at the top of the major search engines. They want lots of targeted visitors landing on their sites, and search engines are a great way to attract them.
Keyword research and optimization are important, but the use of keywords isn’t the only determining success factor. A web page’s authority is just as important, especially with Google.
Authority is determined by the quantity and quality of backlinks, links from other pages on your site or other sites. Backlink quality depends on the authority and the relevance of the linking web page.
Google’s rating of authority is called PageRank after Larry Page, Google’s founder. Google PageRank, or PR for short, is a number between 0 and 10. A PageRank of 10 is the best, but even a PR 5 isn’t easy to obtain.
Since Google PageRank is a key component of search engine optimization, and since page rank depends on receiving favorable outside attention, website owners and SEO professionals put enormous effort into cultivating relationships with relevant and authoritative sites that can link to them.
Back on the Link Farm
A note of caution: Buying links and link exchange strategies can backfire. Search engines are on the lookout for sneaky SEO strategies.
As with keyword stuffing discussed in Keywords Demystified, link farms and other linking schemes can also incur harsh penalties including search engine delisting.
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Oct
5
Keywords Demystified
Filed Under Search Engines | 13 Comments
Needle in a Haystack?
There are millions of websites and billions of words of information on the Internet. You would think that finding anything would be like looking for a needle in a proverbial haystack.
Fortunately some of the savviest entrepreneurs have hired some of the smartest geeks to write some of the coolest computer programs ever written that allow us to find just about anything out there on the World Wide Web. These programs I refer to are what you and I call search engines.
The most popular search engines today are Google, MSN Live, Yahoo! and AOL. While Google is the most popular, each of the others has plenty of loyal users too.
The search engines travel throughout the Web reading web pages and saving information about these pages for future reference, a process called indexing. When a page has been visited and stored away, we say that the web page has been indexed.
What are Keywords?
When we want to find something online, we bring up our favorite search engine and type some words into its search box. These words which closely relate to the information we want are called search terms or keywords.
We enter keywords, and the search engine responds with pages of results called search engine result pages – SERPs for short – that it retrieves from its index files.
If we are happy with the results, fine. Otherwise we try entering a different keyword combination, or we change the order of the search terms and try again.
Every Search Engine Must Do This
A good search engine is one that consistently finds us the web pages that are the most relevant to our search based on our chosen keywords.
The top priority of a search engine must be to retrieve and return to us the most relevant and helpful web pages. If it doesn’t, then we’ll look to a competitor’s search engine instead.
Search engines always focus on satisfying users, not website owners and not even paying advertisers.
Crime and Punishment
Website owners sometimes try to deceive search engines by stuffing keywords into their web pages completely out of context. They hope thereby to drive their pages up to the top of the search results.
This tactic, a form of spam called spamdexing because it spams the indexing process, once fooled search engines, but that is no longer the case.
Spamdexing can be spotted by sophisticated search engine algorithms and punished appropriately. A site might even be delisted altogether.
Once this happens it could be a long time before the site re-establishes its credibility and regains its standing.
Golden Rule of Web Design
Create your web site content with your visitors in mind. Your visitors and search engines will react favorably, and everybody will win in the long run.
With keyword research you can find the optimal keywords to use in your web pages, words or phrases that many people are searching for, but not so many that the competition for those keywords will be too fierce.
There are keywords that people use when they are doing research and there are ones that they use when they’re ready to buy.
Keyword selection is both an art and a science. There’s much room for creativity.
However, whatever keywords you select to use in your web page, keep this in mind:
Somebody will read what you write, so always be sure that what you write is worth reading.
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Aug
7
Top 10 Blogging Success Factors
Filed Under Best of 2008, Blogging, Outside the Box, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 12 Comments
Nearly every day I hear from people who want to know how to start a blog or how to have a more successful blog.
I admit that I’m still learning myself, but I’ve made great progress in the nine months since I started blogging.
This past month alone my Online Social Networking blog received 5,202 visits including 1,993 visits from search engines.
My Google PageRank is up to 3, and my Alexa traffic rank is 181,032. These stats put my blog in the top 1% of all websites.
What are the critical success factors contributing to my rapid progress?
My Personal Blog Philosophy
There are ten success strategies that shape my blog philosophy.
- Blogging Mindset - Writing and publishing a successful blog is a major project that requires very big commitment. Blogging requires that you move forward at all times. So often people start blogging and give up. They didn’t have the blogging mindset, and they weren’t willing to do what successful bloggers do.
- Research and Planning - Before I wrote one word on my blog, before I decided what to call my blog, before I purchased a domain name for my blog, I did plenty of research. Where should my blog be hosted? What platform should it run on? What will I write about, and which keywords will I optimize for? These questions and more were addressed up front and their answers formed my initial plan of action.
- Bias for Action - Getting started and keeping your momentum going is essential if you want to have a successful blog. While adequate preparation is important, a time comes when you must “draw a line in the sand”, stop preparing and begin writing. Your ongoing research and writing need to become routine. Don’t worry if your articles aren’t perfect. You can edit your posts after publishing them, and it could even help with the search engines to do so.
- Experimentation and Tracking - Every blogging enterprise is different, and you’ll need to find the mix of strategies and tactics that are right for your blog. If you install Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track your blog’s traffic. You’ll know what is working and what’s not. Materminding with friends and mentors is another way to gain valuable insights.
- Correction as Needed - When you discover something that’s not working, you’ll look to refine it or replace it. Ongoing tracking will provide you with the feedback you need to make the necessary correction in your direction to stay on course.
- High Quality Content - Quality content to me means writing with both the reader and the search engines in mind. It means writing well, revising the text many times, proofreading, etc. It also means choosing topics that will make readers want to return to your blog. Please don’t write long run-on paragraphs. Make it easy for your reader to go through your article on the screen without having to print it out… Because they won’t. And one more thing, until you have tons of visitors reading your blog every day, don’t even consider cluttering it up with cheesy ads.
- Online Social Networking - The best way to find readers and subscribers for your blog is at social networking sites. For this purpose you can use most business networking sites or networking sites that cater to bloggers such as Entrecard and MyBlogLog. I happen to prefer Twitter and the Ning family of social networking sites. Carefully inviting site members to visit your blog is a nice way to reach out to them — not at all spammy. Make it easy for your readers to subscribe. My readers have two ways to opt in RSS Feed and autoresponder.
- Search Engine Optimization - Treat every blog post as a website that will one day stand on its own, because it will. It will eventually works it’s way down and off your blog’s cover page. Use keyword research to find the best words and phrases to use in your articles. Make sure that your main search terms are neither too general nor too competitive to earn you good placement in the search engines. Don’t limit yourself to using only your primary keywords in your text. Using all relevant search terms, even the ones that are hard to compete for, will turn you article into a search engine magnet.
- Social Bookmarking - Using social media sites such as Digg and del.icio.us to anchor and promote your blog posts is very important. Social Marker will help you find more bookmarking sites and facilitate the bookmarking process. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the terms of service of each of the social media sites you use, so that you don’t get banned. Bookmark articles using their individual URL, not your blog’s URL, since each article is its own website, not just a part of the blog.
- Patience and Time - Over time your traffic will increase, so will your credibility, and you’ll gain subscribers. Don’t expect much before three months, and give yourself a full year to become a blogging superstar.
For more articles on blogging, blog marketing and SEO see Blog Marketing and SEO Training.
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Aug
3
Social Media Learning Curve
Filed Under Blogging, Communication, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 13 Comments
The Case for Social Media Marketing
It is becoming increasingly more difficult and more expensive to reach potential customers using mass media. That’s one reason why so many marketers are turning to Web 2.0 social media marketing.
Not only do marketers want to reduce their advertising expense, they also want to connect more directly with people and learn how to better serve their target market.
Social media marketing is especially attractive to small business owners operating on modest budgets, since most social networking sites and other social media sites are generally free to use.
Steep Learning Curve
They read a story such as Beyond Blogs in the June 2nd issue of Business Week, and they rush off to embrace Web 2.0 social media unprepared for the steep learning curve that lies ahead.
The social media landscape is uncharted and sprawling. Social media sites are vying for your attention, and searching the Internet for advice turns up sharply conflicting recommendations.
Need for Mentor
Clearly you need a mentor, somebody smart and knowledgeable with especially strong communication skills. You should find somebody with whom you feel comfortable, because you’ll definitely be getting to know each other. Picking a mentor is difficult.
Effective Communication #1 Challenge
Once you find your mentor mastering essential social media marketing skills will be difficult. To get fully up to speed might take a year or even longer.
That is the bad news.
In my opinion, the hardest part of social media marketing training is learning effective communication, i.e., to write, speak, listen and persuade well and in a professional manner.
There are certainly plenty of technical challenges to overcome, but by far communication is the chief obstacle new social media marketers face. If you happen to have the right mix of communication skills, you’re way ahead of most newcomers.
Your mentor can teach you personal and business branding, online social networking, blogging, video marketing, social bookmarking, SEO and other important skills. He or she can also critique your communication style, but it will be you who will connect directly with your target market and build vital business relationships.
Get Started Now and Learn as You Go
Now the good news.
You don’t have to master every skill, dot every “i” and cross every “t” before getting started.
Find a good mentor to guide you, jump in and get your feet wet. Learn by doing.
As Mike Litman always says: “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.”
Your results will serve as feedback to help you to make the necessary corrections along the way… and that is good news.
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Jun
27
New Information Product
Filed Under News, Search Engines | Leave a Comment
Marketing and Keyword Research
I met Marcus Hochstadt several months ago through our participation at one of my favorite social networking sites for bloggers called Entrecard.
I recently previewed and gave a thumbs up to Marcus’ new keyword research home study course which will help you identify niches in both US and international markets.
The training is geared to both newbies and advanced Internet marketers. I got some great ideas from watching the videos.
Marcus shows in great detail how to use a number of free but powerful research tools.
Here’s what I wrote in my review:
I enjoyed your course very much.
I liked your in-depth look at free tools that people can leverage and assess online market potential as well as select relevant keywords.
Your introduction made a case for research, and I was lead to believe that the course would be for beginners. Once I got into the body of the course, I realized that it is also valuable for professionals.
I have experience, so I found your course very valuable, because it took me to places where I hadn’t gone before.
Read the course details and place your order at Marcus’ blog.
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Jun
8
Website or Online Presence?
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines | 9 Comments
I’m taking a couple of days off from work, and I’m leaving you with the following thought:
A website is not necessarily an Internet presence.
Some websites are no more than online business cards. They display the owner’s contact information along with some eye catching graphics, but provide little or no information about the business or organization.
I admit that such a site is not very common, but they do exist.
Here’s one that actually belongs to a web designer who is selling “Engine Optimized Web Solutions”:
Pretty amazing isn’t it?
Seeing is believing!
If there is information, but it’s contained in a flash presentation, then from a search engine’s point of view the site is devoid of content. Search engines are unable to decipher flash or pictures.
When pictures are part of a website, it’s important to tell the search engine what the picture is by using an “alt” description atrribute in the HTML “img” tag. Then the picture adds search value to the site. Also, if for some reason the picture doesn’t load, the description will appear instead.
If there is a lot of good information on the site, but there’s no way to capture a visitor’s contact details, or there isn’t an effective search engine optimization strategy, then the website is merely an Internet-based brochure.
Mosts websites are online brochures and no more. They lack an effective lead capture mechanism, or they lack an effective keyword strategy, or all too often they lack both.
Blogs are naturally full of rich content. Add to the mix a choice of subscription methods for lead capture and good keyword research, and you have the makings of a blog marketing strategy.
In my Blog Marketing and SEO Training series, I hope to provide you with lots of creative input as you develop your online presence.
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Jun
5
To Blog, or not to Blog, that is the Question
Filed Under Best of 2008, Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines | 4 Comments
Or is it?
Your plate is very full. Don’t get me wrong. I understand. I really do.
You wonder how you could possibly fit blogging into your hectic schedule. You also wonder whether you have the wherewithal to adequately research and write articles week after week, something that you believe good bloggers ought to do.
Before addressing these issues, let’s take a step back and discuss a scenario that you’re familiar with if you engage in business networking at your local small business association, chamber of commerce or business networking group.
Business Networking Model
At a business networking meeting, you meet several people you feel you’d like to get to know.
You exchange business cards, and being a sharp networker, you resolve to get in touch with these new contacts as quickly as possible once you return to your office. You know very well that if you want to get something going, you’ll have to be the one to take the first step.
Unfortunately most people simply won’t follow up. They’ll hope that you’ll be sufficiently impressed with them and their business card, brochure or website to pick up the phone and call them to get the ball rolling.
You’re not as impressed as they would like, but you do understand business networking and human nature, so you take the initiative and give them a ring.
Your phone converation goes well. You ask enough questions to build rapport and to identify at least one business problem they have for which you should be able to provide a solution.
You sense that it’s too early in the relationship to try and sell them your idea. Instead you’ll maintain contact with them to build mutual trust and respect in accordance with the First Law of building relationships: Nobody cares what you say until they know that you care.
At this point what do the textbooks tell you to do?
They say that you should call periodically and look for newspaper and magazine clippings to send — along with a personal note of course.
Suppose that you have a hundred good contacts, and suppose also that you want to mail and speak to each one about every two months. That’s about eleven calls and the same number of news clippings per week or about two of each per day.
Even if you’re a sociable person, that’s going to be a hard schedule to stick with over a long period of time. You would have to be a master networker to make such a scheme work for you.
Blog Marketing to the Rescue
Fortunately blog marketing comes to your aid.
You invite your contacts to visit your blog, and ask permission to register them as a subscriber.
If they accept, you’ll be able to keep them in the loop with a reasonable amount of effort. Even if you write only one blog post per week, they’ll still hear from you every week. They have the option to comment on your articles and start a conversation within your blog’s community.
They can get to know you really well, and this will help as much or more than sending them clippings every couple of months. They may even give you cues to let you know when they’re ready to do business. You’ll be able to pick up the phone and tell them your idea, and they’ll be favorably pre-disposed to accept it.
All this is wonderful, but there’s even more.
Put Your SEO Training to Work
Many people will find you through the search engines if you’ve done good keyword research, and if you’ve paid enough attention to ongoing search engine optimization.
Make it easy for your visitors to subscribe, and those who like you will.
The search engines will be working on your behalf even when you’re sleeping or on vacation. They work 365/7 and never complain.
Save Time and Effort
If you are very busy, or you’re not sure how to research and write articles, you can rely on the tried and true clipping method. However, you’ll clip online articles instead of newspapaper or magazine stories.
You’ll frame these online articles for your readers in your post, just as you would have done using a short personal note accompanying newspaper clip. You’ll also provide a link to the site where they can read the entire story.
This approach saves you time and effort, and you can still write original content for your blog as frequently as you wish.
In Conclusion
Add to this rationale the Top Reasons Why I Blog, an earlier post, and your decision “to blog, or not to blog” will most likely be affirmative.
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