Why Your Company Needs a Blog

Yes, we have decided that we are going to 'blog' about 'blogging' today.  If you constantly find yourself putting off starting up a blog for your company, you should get started as soon as possible.  There are about a million good reasons why a company should have a blog and as a Chicago SEO company, we cannot stress a blog's importance enough.  If you have been putting it off, here's why you should get started today:

1- A blog is essential to boost your SEO: As a Chicago SEO company, we constantly tell our customers how effective a blog is for boosting their website's SEO rankings.  Search engine crawlers love, love, love fresh, brand new content being added to a website on a constant basis.  Sticking a blog right on your website will give you the ability to add that fresh content every time you post something new.  Postings give you a chance to utilize keywords and show search engines that you are actively using and updating your website.  When we do web design for a client we typically create a built in blog right on the client's website.  We suggest having multiple blogs if you can keep up with it.  The more blogs your company has that link back to your company's website, the better off you are in the world of search engine optimization. A blog, whether your blog is through blogger or you are using a blog on your website, gives you a great place to add links back to your website, which is also a great way (if not the best way) to boost SEO rankings.

2- A blog is a great place to show that you are the expert in your industry: Refine your list of potential blog topics and stick to talking about topics related to your company's industry.  Say you own a coffee shop, then topics that you should blog about should all surround the industry you belong to.  Keeping it relevant will help search engine's crawlers identify who your business is and what you do and will give you a chance to become the expert in your industry.  Your blog gives you a special place to show what you know and impress potential customers.  

3- A blog is a great way to interact with potential and current customers: A blog is a great place to spearhead conversations with your potential and current customers.  Your blog will keep your customers informed and has the ability to help you reel in potential customers.  Just like your social media profiles, blogging is another great way to bring the social aspect to your business.

4- Your blog will help you build your brand: Blogging is a simple way of helping you establish your brand.  Blogging gives you the ability to make your brand more personal and drive more traffic to your company's website, which in turn helps you build your brand.  Perhaps lots of people begin reading your company blog, then great!  Put on your sales hat and lead those blog readers back to your company's website.  That gives your company all the more potential to get that brand exposure you have been craving.

5- Blogging will help keep yourself and your customers in the loop:  Since your company blog should take on topics related to your industry, it can serve as a learning tool not only for your readers and customers, but also for yourself.  A great way to stay current with the latest industry trends is to blog about it.  Your blog could also serve as a vehicle for communicating the latest company news almost like a company newsletter.

Looking for tips on creating a company blog?  We'd be happy to discuss blogging with you.  Feel free to comment below or contact us.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

Here at Integraphix we love to spread the word about how vital SEO can be to your website and in turn, how vital it can be to your business.  SEO can turn your website into a usable sales tool, working for you around the clock.  Aside from optimizing your website, consider writing a blog based around the industry your business is in for further optimization.  Why you ask?  Here are 5 reasons why your business needs a blog today:

Blogs will boost your web presence:  Looking to get your brand or business more recognition?  Blogs help boost your business's presence on the web.  Social media sites make it easier than ever to "tweet a link" to your posts or add the link to Facebook, which helps expose your blog posts to a wide audience, a majority of which you may not have had access to without the help of social media sites.    

Blogs can create brand advocates: Do you find yourself visiting a blogger's blog site frequently just to see the latest postings?  Do you feel compelled by someone else's blog content and enough so that you are purchasing their products?  Yes, that is the power of a blog.  If your content is constantly new, fresh, and appealing, it can create brand advocates.

Linking abilities to products/services: A blog is a wonderful place to link to products or services that you may find yourself mentioning in a post.  Internal links to outside content are a great way to help blog and product popularity as well.  If your business has a product or two that you'd like to sell, try writing something compelling about it and internally linking your blog post to it.  

Makes information available to everyone: Blogs help keep people updated on what's going on with you and your company.  Maybe people aren't reading your company newsletter, but perhaps they are indeed reading your blog, then use your blog to keep them in the loop.  Even if they don't read the newsletter, they can still get a rundown of what's happening with your company through your blog posts.  

SEO capabilities and blogs: One of the top reasons we love blogs here at Integraphix is the capabilities it gives for SEO.  Google, Yahoo!, and Bing love, love, love fresh content!  Blogs are a continuous stream of new content, which will easily catch the content-scanning eyes of the search engines.  The more you write and provide updates, the better your search engine rankings will be.  Utilizing powerful keywords and internal linking back to relevant pages (like your website) can help boost your rankings.

Want to talk to us about blogging?  Feel free to leave a comment below or contact us.  

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? 

Affordable SEO Services for Chicago and beyond!

Chicago SEO :: Chicago Internet Marketing

The internet is a normal, every-day thing in our lives, and because of that, SEO is one of the most important parts of a business's marketing strategy. There are thousands of websites on the web, and we dare you to find someone who knows of, or has been to all of them. You won't find anyone. This is why search engines exist, so people can type in keywords and find products, services, funny things, cats, friends, dates, and many other things. This is why Keyword Optimization via SEO is so very important. If you want to get found first for the keywords people are using, you need to optimize your website for it.

As a general rule, the user will only look at the top 10 sites in a results page, leaving the other 1.2 million websites that came up for that search unseen. Therein lies the competition. You need to be in the top 10 as a minimum! We are an SEO company that excels in getting our clients into this 1-10 range, and provide services based in Chicago. We operate all over the United States, with virtual locations in New York, Charlotte, NC, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Arizona. We also offer affordable SEO services to the masses.

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8. Internal Link Structure
9. Navigation Structure
10.Statcounter & Google Analytics Details
11. Google Webmaster Tools
12. Robots.txt Optimization
13. HTML Sitemap creation
14. Google XML Sitemap Creation & regular updation
15. Footer Content & Other SEO Techniques


External (Off-Page) Optimization:

1.Regional Directory Submissions: 50
2.Regional Social Bookmarking : 25
3. One Way Linking
4. Article Writing : 4
5.Article Submission : 100
6.Regional Comment Posting :5

Social Media Marketing:
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2. Social Networking Profiles creations
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