SEO and Driving Traffic to your Blog

Blogs are a great format for a business website: they allow you to showcase your expertise and provide fresh valuable information to your audience. They also work quite well as a branding tool for a website. However, in order to achieve your business goals you need blog traffic. If you’re looking to increase traffic to your blog, there are a few tried and true tactics that work in regards to Blog SEO. Here are eight tips for driving more traffic to your blog through Search Engine Optimization and other tactics.

1. Strong Titles - Your post title has two purposes. It’s there to attract attention and motivate people to read your blog post. It’s also there to help drive traffic to your blog. It’s there to be indexed by the search engines. That means you want to have keywords in your post’s title as well. Consider doing a bit of keyword search to find common search phrases before you post to your blog. The more search engine friendly, the more traffic you will drive to your blog.

2. Comment – One of the best ways to get more blog traffic is to become active on other industry blogs. That means registering and commenting on blog posts. Be sure to use your blog’s URL as your website address when registering.  Keep in mind you are commenting on their posts so remain focused on the topic since you do not want your posting to be deleted or considered as spam.

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We often blog about SEO here and about how to get traffic to your website. That's often a big hurdle to jump over. But what about if there is traffic but no sales?

You might start to wonder what's going on when you look at your website statistics and wonder why you see traffic but the phone isn't ringing or you're not getting any sales on your website. There is a wide variety of things that could be going on. I'll try to cover some of them here.

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Content is definitely king, right? People are generally searching for something when they are on the web. They start at Google and want to find a result. Quality content that answers their questions will rise to the top of the search results organically (a topic for another post maybe). Well, that's Google's goal anyway. When a search engine spider makes it to your site and crawls content, it's not looking at the design. It doesn't read text embedded in images or doesn't even rate the design of the site at all. It just reads text. So what if, when people get there after Google tells them it's a great result, they find that the page is ugly or looks too hard to read? They bounce right off the site usually or the bounce rate could be very high.

It's not only the graphics part of a website that is design. Layout of text is hugely important. The text on a page must be scannable. People are looking for something, so help them find the answer.

The use of heading text, bold text, bullet points and even paragraph length all goes into making a page's text scannable or not. They might not want to read your first few points but might find that your third or fourth point on a page is what they're looking for. Make sure it's easy to find.

And, yes, if the website design is ugly or out of date, then that could very well affect the bounce rate as well. Time for a new design?
How Much Do You Give Away?

This one's interesting and a very simple point. If you say too much on your website, then why would someone have to pick up the phone to call you. This is especially important if you're selling services.

If you have good sales people or you're good at talking to people, then you don't want your website to tell the whole story. Hold some of it back so that there's a reason for them to pick up their phone and call. Phone use is on a decline, I've heard. People are texting more now. Getting on the phone is almost seen as inconvenient now in our society and that makes getting them to call you an even tougher task but you have to do it.

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Press Releases and SEO

Press Releases need to be optimized for SEO - no matter how good your writing is, it's imperitive that people FIND your press release! Additionally, in order to get your PR content to be indexed in Google and Yahoo, and to generate Google Alerts, you have to submit your press release to one of the recognized press release distribution services. That is how you can gain online coverage from mainstream media and bloggers as well as gain back-links for your search engine optimization campaign. Integraphix, a Chicago SEO company, uses press releases to inform the public of our new clients and website launches.



Where to Submit?

There are paid press release services littering the Internet and though people don't have the extra $200 per release to spare. There are free services you can use and I highly encourage it. Press releases are a company's lifeblood and we use article writing and press releases for our SEO clients all the time. While we encourage you to experiment with them, make sure you know what you are getting with them.

That One Critical Memory

Including links with relevant anchor text in your press releases is critical. Make sure you hyperlink relevant words that take you to targeted pages. This is essential for search engine optimization.

Dont Forget to Syndicate!

In addition to sending the press release to reputable distributions services, you should also publish it on your own website. Put it up on the Media page, on your blog or wherever you think is appropriate. The content of the press release doesn’t have to be much different from what you already put together for the PR services.

Have more questions bout optimizing your press releases? Contact Integraphix for a FREE Internet Marketing analysis and we can talk to you about website and search engine optimization for your business.

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7 Reasons Why Business Blogs are Valuable!

I am a huge fan of blogging (obviously so, seeing as how I have been writing for this one for the last two years) for numerous reasons. Content marketing is one of the most critical components of any web marketing campaign because it can be leveraged across all mediums. A blog post isn’t limited to existing solely on that blog. It can be shared on social networking sites, submitted to social bookmarking sites, used to develop your company newsletter and more.

Still not convinced? Here are 7 reasons a company blog can be valuable:

1. Establish yourself as an industry authority
Customers want to purchase from/work with the best in the business. Routinely updating a company blog can help you build brand’s reputation as an industry expert and valuable resource.

2. Help educate your consumers
Having an educated target audience can make it much easier for you to promote your products/services. If potential customers have a firm understanding of your industry, it is easier to position your brand as the solution to their problem. You don’t have to explain as much general information in your messaging and can focus on more important topics.

3. Build your online brand presence
Individual blog posts can rank in the search engines like any page on your website. When optimized to include the most appropriate keywords, your blog can help your increase your brand presence in the SERP for the related long-tail keywords searches.

4. Humanize your brand
People like to do business with other people, not faceless corporations. When you attach an actual name to your blog (whether it be your CEO, VP of Marketing, etc), you are giving your company an actual persona. Having content written by a person and not “Company Name” means you can afford to throw a little style and personality into your posts.

5. Promote your products/services
A business blog should mainly be used to inform and educate, but a little self-promoting post every now and again is perfectly acceptable. Your business blog is the perfect place to announce new product launches or let your readers know about an upcoming tradeshow or conference you’ll be appearing at. Someone who reads your blog has already self-identified themselves as your target audience.

6. Respond to a crisis
When bad news breaks, companies don’t have the luxury of hiding out until it blows over or holding a press conference next week. The public expects a response and they expect it now. Silence is almost never the best option. A company blog is a good place to issue public statements and updates as a situation develops. You want to keep the lines of communication open and transparent.

7. Build links
A company blog can become part of your internal linking structure. Not only should you link relevant posts to each other, but you can also link different blog posts to pages of your website and vice-versa. This kind of horizontal linking can help spread link juice and increase the trust factor of some of your internal pages.

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5 things that will kill your blog post. Guaranteed.

Blogging is a little like taking a shot in the dark. Some people hit their target, and others don't even come close. Why is that? It's not luck. Look at successful blogs and think about what they're doing. There are undeniable basics to their success! It all starts with the foundation of awesome blogging, rather than crap blogging, and there are 5 things to avoid in order to write a killer blog.

Headlines: Clever, Cute, Crafty or Confusing?
Headlines are what drive a blog. If your reader doesn't like the headline, they're probably not going to click on the rest of it. It appears several times within a blog:

1. At the top of the blog
2. On the sidebar
3. In your Facebook Feed
4. In your Twitter Feed
5. In an RSS feed
6. In Search Engine Results
7. Email subject lines.

That's a lot of territory! If you confuse your reader within the first few sentences, they're highly likely to move onto the next great blog post.

Not Internally Linking

If you noticed, I snuck a link into the first piece of this blog post. It will lead my readers to another post about great writing. I did this for a few reasons:

1. Driving traffic to an old post
2. It contains keywords I want to rank for
3. It directs Google and other Search Engine spiders through my website.

Make sure to never forget about previous posts - it's an all important factor in really making your blog worth coming back to.

Never Linking to ANYONE Else

Well firstly, it's rude! If you're talking about someone, say, The Huffington Post, and their awesomeness, link them! There are several reasons to do this instead of just flying through a post and not linking to anyone else:

1. You bring another point of view to the conversation
2. Credit. Period. If you talk about someone else's work, credit them.
3. Link Juice. Inbound links aren't the only way to attract good rankings.

Lack of Page Optimization

What's the point of blogging if nobody finds your blog. Hmm? If you're using WordPress, fill out your Page title and descriptions - there are several great plugins to help ease the process. It really is worth the 30 seconds it takes to write two sentences summarizing your blog.

Lack of Reader Interaction

Talk to your readers! Or else they will leave. Try to incorporate some sort of call to action in each of your blogs, like 'What do you guys think?' or 'Tell me your opinion' or 'I've said 5 things, give me more!' or something of that nature to spur on conversation other than - 'great post'. I know it's a great post; I wrote it!

Any thoughts? 

How To Thursday: Avoiding Over Optimization in Anchor Text

We all know that anchor text, or your keyword phrases, are extremely important for ranking for certain keywords. And we all know that it can be completely overdone if not careful. Over optimizing with Anchor Text involves building links with the same keywords over and over again so that they no longer provide value. It's an issue. For the sake of knowledge, here is a rundown of the types of anchor text a company may have:

• URL: such as www.integraphix.com - you do want to come up for your URL. It's surprising, but not unheard of to not rank for your own URL.
• Company Name: some newer companies, or those who've never even heard the word SEO typically do not rank for their own company name, even if it's unique.
• Unoptimized: the ubiquitous 'click here' applies in this section. Note: do not use 'click here' when internally linking.
• Keyword and Brand Combo: such as Integraphix Design Firm - in this instance, we're associating our brand name with a keyword string.
• Phrase: Chicago Design Firm - in this instance, there is no mention of Integraphix, only the search term a client may use to find us.

Writing a blog, or building links that are the same, over and over and over again, with no change-ups, will most certainly keep your firm from ranking for the keywords it wants to. For a more in depth conversation, talk to me in the comments section or give us a call for a FREE Marketing analysis. 

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Writing Blog Posts for your Existing and Returning Customers

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When you run a corporate blog sometimes it’s difficult to come up with interesting topics on a regular basis. There are a few options like creating a series, how to posts and evergreen content, but in this article I’d like to tackle another option: blogging to your existing customers, and turning them into return/repeat customers.

If you are selling products or services, chances are you good you probably have 10 – 20 questions your customers ask about how to use products, correctly, better or more effectively. Typically most companies create an FAQ where they answer all of these questions on one page. While this does work it’s not an optimal solution from an SEO traffic perspective.

1. Unless your questions and answers are very short, ideally you want to create a single page optimized for each question, this gives you the ability to create narrowly focussed posts around specific keyword phrases that will rank better and drive more traffic. Bear in mind this is something of a balancing act, and you may find these posts don’t get enough traffic on their own and have to be combined, so there is some experimentation, trial and error involved.
2. The next thing you need to consider is targeting and writing your posts using the same natural language, phrases,and queries that your consumers use, and not using your own internal company terminology.
3. Once you’ve got the basic questions covered, you can expand showing them how to use your products in new ways they never thought off, how to take advantage of advanced features, and use little known aspects of your products. You can even look for opportunities to tie into social media asking customers to submit pictures of their products in use.
4. One last option to consider is optimizing for some of your competitions keywords. Bear in mind SEO for your competition is not without consequences and not for the faint of heart, so think about it before you decide to start down that path.

The key lesson from these examples is don’t blog just to get new customers; blog to reach and help your existing customers. If you do it correctly they will stay repeat customers and pass along their experiences with their family and friends, and share them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• Look at your popular customer service questions and inquiries and look for ways to create optimized posts around those topics
• Use natural language and phrases your customers use, avoid internal terminology and marketing language
• Look for opportunities to show advanced or little known features
• Make your customers smarter this turns them into brand advocates
• While there is some danger optimizing for your competitions branded keywords, it can sometimes work to your advantage

Web Pages: Optimize Them All!

For those that don't truly understand SEO, optimizing the home page of a website is as far as they go. This demonstrates a lack of understanding in how Google indexes pages and how users come across content across the internet. Lesson 1: Google indexes Web-PAGES, not Web-SITES. Each pages is their own island, and each can have its own optimized content and purpose without compromising the overall optimization efforts.

For small website owners, this isn't a huge problem. For large e-commerce websites or elaborate websites, this can be a terrifying endeavor. Optimizing a website from top to bottom, all the way from the title tags to the tweaked javascript can take quite a while (keyword research, content writing, creating meta data, assigning title tags, naming images and alt tags, etc.). Those with a 5 page site (and shame on you) are in the clear. Those websites with 1000+ pages are going to have to implement changes over a longer period of time, but it IS worth the effort.

Here are a few tips to make sure your entire website and all its many pages gets optimized properly.

SEO Myth Busting 2012

10 years ago, Search Engine Optimization was spam. People who knew very little about the practice could manipulate the search engines with very little effort and huge results. Nowadays, it's much more difficult and takes more than simple trickery to get results. The following myths, however prevalent in the current SEO scene, need some busting, by yours truly, Integraphix.

Myth One: Search Engines don't "see" Images

While this is correct that the actual image itself can't be seen by search engines, applying appropriate tags to the image can benefit your image search capabilities and on-page optimization efforts. While not a huge benefit, Alt Text and Image Filenames does make a difference and should be included in your SEO strategy.

Myth Two: An SEO Can 'Fix' Your Website after it's Built

The simple fact is, if your website is not designed and built around search engine optimization the first time around, it will be more difficult and more expensive to optimize your website for search engines after it's designed. Most web designers don't know what's important for SEO unless they've researched it on their own and can seriously screw up a site's optimization. Optimizing a site that hasn't seen the hand of an SEO can need some serious changes including code changes, CSS changes, and a complete reworking of internal structure.

Myth Three: Google is the SEO God

While Google is very important, there are two other major search engines out there that have their own set of rules to abide by. If Google said it, it may not necessarily work on other search engines. Take all the rules into account, test a bit and see which one works best. Google may not be the end all be all of SEO techniques.

Myth Four: No-Follow Links Don't Count

Actually, Google, Bing and Yahoo all look upon an unbalanced Do-Follow/No-Follow links as spam. If you've got too many Do-follow links, the Search Engines may actually punish you rather than give you rankings. Try to keep a healthy balance of no-follow/do-follow links to keep your link profile healthy and natural.

Myth Five: Internal Linking Doesn't Matter

The main issue we find when optimizing a client's website is that their previous SEO Firm hasn't paid attention to internal page authority techniques. Internal linking is one of those techniques. Linking to your interior pages via the receiving page's keywords creates authority within the interior pages of your website. This can improve your interior page's PR Rank and even the search engine rankings of your interior pages. Not taking advantage of this can be severely detrimental to your website's on-page and overall website optimization.

For more SEO Tips such as How to use Tumblr for SEO and What does Do-follow mean subscribe to our RSS feed via your favorite feed reader! Have any other myths you want busted? Let us know in the comments!

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The Importance of Link Building

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When it comes to Google and other internet Search Engine giants, the more links to have, the higher rankings you'll have. It's much like a popularity contest, and the more you have. It's quite the vicious cycle and all the search engines are the same.

The way Search Engines like Bing, Yahoo and Google judge this popularity is by the number of different websites that are connecting or linking to you. They know that if a great number of websites will link to you, then you must have something important or relevant to say; this will, over time, boost your rankings.

This is why Search Engine Optimization should focus on getting you quality back-links from several different websites. You'll find several ways to do this and may places and opportunities to create a back-link, and try to use several of them. Creating backlinks from several different websites will give you a greater chance of success than buying a pack of links from one website.