Social Media Blogging Does It Work?

You decide for yourself if you like social media blogging but my candid opinion is that it is bunk.

The majority of clients use blogging for search engine placement and we understand their needs. Here is a prime example:

Here is a post from Rocky Mountain Tracking before we started blogging: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/teens-and-parents/vivien/ Take a careful look at the blog post. It has absolutely nothing to do with the products the client was selling. He sells GPS tracking hardware to fleets and individuals.

Here is a post from Rocky Mountain Tracking that is written by one of our top writers: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/news/rmt-customers-unaffected-by-switch-to-digital/ The post is on topic keyword dense and would be interesting reading for website visitors therefore increasing the site's stickiness and the site's number of blog subscribers.

I don't know who it is who coined social media blogging and who the nuts are who are selling this to clients, but as a professional blogger I think that social media blogging is bunk.

Blog readers want to read posts that are on message. They want to read posts that dovetail nicely with the content on the parent site or they would be reading things on MySpace, Facebook, or Yahoo Groups.

And what about search engines? What do you think they think about the fluff that had passed for social media posts on the Rocky Mountain Tracking blog? Well the old posts certainly did not add authority to the site from my point of view. The search engine firm that is helping Rocky Mountain Tracking is delighted with our "on message" content and so is the client!

Become An Effective Blogger With Our Top Blogging Tips

We blog professionally for many clients and today I'd like to pass on the tips for effective blogging that I teach to my blog copywriters.

1. To build traffic on your site in 30 days blog religiously five days a week to see a marked increase.

2. To keep your readers subscribed and attract search engines blog a minimum of three days a week.

3. Keep your posts around 200 to 250 words and on one topic. Keep your posts keyword dense but written in proper English.

4. Craft your post title to contain your top keywords and in a phrase that may match a search engine query.

5. Look for interesting content to build readership. Never copy articles on the Web and post them on your blog create your own unique content and write with a distinctive point of view.

6. Stick with blogging and post even when you do not want to. To make it easy, I make a list of post titles and when I need help with an idea I pull a topic from my pre-prepared list.

7. If you are using WordPress blog ahead and set your blog to publish in the future. Many of my busy bloggers do their posts on the weekend and allow WordPress to auto-publish their posts.

8. Do not copy posts from Word directly into any blog control panel. Have you ever seen these characters in a blog post C$A or other characters that look like Russian text? These are apostrophes or dashes from a post that has been copied from Word directly in the blog post screen. We tell our bloggers to post in the control panel. If you feel that you MUST work in Word, copy your post into Notepad remove the curly apostrophes with find and replace and then recopy and paste your post from Notepad into the blog control panel.

9. If you want best search engine benefits consider WordPress and install the Meta Tag Plug-in and use it for every post!

10. Don't stress out over the fact that people typically will not post comments on your blog. This is not an indication that people are reading your blog. Also don't start blogging thinking that a blog is a forum. It really takes a hot topic for readers to leave a comment. Don't freak out if you don't get comments, people are reading your blog!

Hope my tips help you to be a more effective blogger! Hey, leave me a comment with your tips and break my #10 tip that people don't comment on blogs typically. :0)

Spin Off Websites Do They Work?

Nancy's post for today is found at Design-World Watch: http://www.mccordwebdesign.com/blog/?p=22.

The topic is do spin off website work for organic search placement.

Top Website SEO Real Estate

Want to find out what Nancy considers important to get the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to search engine optimization? Her post today on that topic is found at Web-World Watch.

Trouble With Blogger Labels

Blogger has problems with publishing when you have a lot of labels on your blog. In fact if you have more than 30 or so labels, get ready to pull your hair out or have over an hour to publish your posts or even have inconsistent publishing.

I have found from personal experience that it is better to use your labels for top keywords and as blog navigation. Just don't get in the habit of creating a new label for every post. Routinely we keep our bloggers set with about 10 to 20 keywords and ask them to post to these labels only for their blog posts.

One this keeps blogger from getting label bloated and keeps publishing snappy. The other thing is that by assigning labels for your bloggers you control the focus of the posts for search engine optimization.

As labels are also used for additional content navigation, we also recommend that on every blog a search engine function to be installed so that visitors can review content in an easier fashion. It seems that you could do this with Blogger labels, but once you have a bloated blog and sit for hours for publishing you will understand the wisdom of controlling the number of labels on your blog.

SEO and Blogs A Dead Issue?

I think not, however the world of blogs and SEO has definitely changed in a big way just this past several weeks.

It used to be that linking to your website by posting on other blogs in the blog comments was a great way to get quality inbound links. But not anymore! Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad now automatically with no override control blog search engines from spidering links that you place in comments by including a no follow tag. Don't confuse this with links in posts, it is just comments that are affected this way.

So what exactly does this mean, are blogs no longer great for SEO? No blogs are still great tools for SEO but the focus needs to change. Here are my top tips:

1. Don't waste time posting comments on other blogs to get links back to your site or blog. This strategy no longer works.
2. Do blog on your own site. Use keyword dense posts and informational content to build the quality of your website and blog overall.
3. Do heavily link your blog into your website and vice versa.
4. Do include a site search engine on your website and use Wordpress or Blogger custom FTP to allow your blog posts to be spidered as search result content for your website and blog.
5. If you use Wordpress make sure to add the module that allows you to have a meta description, keywords, and social bookmarking tags.
6. Use social bookmarking tools to help push your site and encourage interaction and sharing. This may very well be the push that replaces commenting on other blogs and pointing back to your site and blog.
7. Do create relationships with other bloggers in your field to do cross linking IN POSTS not comments to your site. You both will benefit as long as you are not competitors. The creation of some of these strategic partnerships will allow you to have guest authors and a network of interlinked sites for better overall performance.

So is blogging for SEO dead? Not hardly, it has just changed significantly.

Sneak Preview of Our White Paper - The Tangible Benefits of Blogging

We're letting you read it early on our blogs, we publishing our newest white paper "The Tangible Benefits of Blogging" on October 1 in our e-newsletter. Click our post title to enter your email address and first name and then go to our download location to get our free nine page PDF white paper.

This white paper has detailed case studies some of whom we have tracked for a two year period. This white paper took over four months to research and develop. Get it free and get started blogging today for better search engine benefits.

The Tangible Benefits of Blogging

Click our post title now and subscribe to our e-newsletter. I am just a few days away from publishing my new white paper "The Tangible Benefits of Blogging". This nine page PDF is a must read for any website owner. I have researched some case studies for over two years, set up this blog particularly for additional research and even evaluated the impact of blogging on organic search engine placement.

This is one great white paper! Right up there with our popular white paper evaluating Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search. In our newest white paper, you will walk away with hard documented research evaluating traffic, site stickiness, web visibility and much more.

After I publish the white paper, I will be focusing on my one blog Web-World Watch and posting less frequently here. I have personally found that it is hard to keep up with two blogs and have a thriving web business. So please allow me to point you to my main blog for more information.

I'm sure that I will test things out periodically on this blog just for blogging, but Web-World Watch is my top trafficked blog and where the thrust of my efforts are posted. I invite you to visit and book mark Web-World Watch.

Links to Online Blogging for Search Engines

You may be interesting in reviewing our PowerPoint presentation (now made into a PDF) of our speech yesterday at the Capital PC Users Group in Washington DC.

This presentation is a preview of our white paper "The Tangible Benefits of Blogging" that will be published in our e-newsletter in early October.

I think that you will find the case studies and tips on how to be an effective blogger and how to blog for search engine placement interesting and helpful.

Blogger Custom FTP or Blogspot Set Up?

Does it make a difference for search engines what your blog set up is at Blogger? No, it does not. I used to believe that only custom FTP blogging provided quality search engine results, but no longer.

I have just completed over four months of research and analysis on this topic and several others and have found that in some cases a Blogspot based blog will outperform a custom FTP blog. I have also found that if you have multiple services on your website, you may be better served if you are blogging mainly for search engines to have a Blogspot based blog on each individual topic. Great idea, but only if you have the time to blog or pay someone to blog on all of them.

It appears from our research that the topics you have much authoritative content will be able to piggyback on your domain if you are custom FTP blogging, but not by much. So if you want the new Blogger, love widgets, want a quick and easy set up, then regular Blogspot set up is perfect for you.

We are now only recommending custom FTP set up when you want a seamless template with your website, want your blog pages included in your local website search engine results or are blogging on a very narrow topic of services where you have much authoritative content back on your website.

You'll be able to read the documentation soon, when we post our white paper title "The Tangible Benefits of Blogging."

Google AdWords Landing Page Test

Sometimes a customer just simply wants to do a test to see if something will work before they go whole hog. Here is one case study for Pinnacle Executive Center you may find interesting.

This client leases virtual office space in the Bethesda and Rockville areas outside of Washington DC. Now by virtual I mean 100 to 300 square foot mini-offices. But these offices have a special twist, they are deluxe and have reception service, copy center, conference rooms, and even concierge services. That means get your errands and dry cleaning done for you while you are working.

The client did not want to invest in a full blown optimized website and had already purchased a nice online Flash brochure, plus they were testing a Google AdWords program to see if any or all of it would work to drive leases.

What we did was to do a mini site optimization for the Flash page, scroll to the bottom of the landing page linked into my blog post title and you will see what I mean. You can right click to view source and review the meta tags as well. I tried to create some keyword density for them on a Flash site that had no text as he was hoping to get some organic placement as well.

In addition we are using this same page as a Google AdWords landing page, looking for a good quality score based again on a mini-optimization. I'll let you know how it performs over the next several weeks. It should be an interesting test!

The Blush is Off The Rose Fast When It Comes To Blogging

Blogging fatigue is why many clients call us to pick up blogging for them as ghost bloggers. If you have been blogging for any length of time then you can relate to the article linked to our post title about the five phases of blogging.

My own list would be:

1. Blog fascination - early on blogging is fun and cathartic
2. Is anyone out there - later when it becomes a grind to add to your blog and you are searching for topics, you start to wonder is anyone even reading my blog?
3. Make it or break it - this is where you will either abandon your blog, hire a writer, or push through and continue blogging, but understanding that you are blogging for many reasons, traffic and search engines just being a few.

Consistent blogging is hard work. There is no getting around it, blogging can be a grind, so they why continue?

Well here's my short list:
1. Blogging helps to keep your website content growing and fresh for search engines
2. Great blog posts help to create authority for your website and for you
3. New content attracts search engine spiders on a regular basis
4. Good blogs speak to many of the aspects that will determine a website's organic search page ranking.

So if blogging is getting you down, you are just simply tired of it, now is the time to consider paying a blogger to do it for you!