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Diapers and Groceries? No! Rankings, Leads and Sales!

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

In my recent SEO seminar, most of the attendees were surprised to hear me tell them that starting a blog is a great way to connect with their customers. Since blogging is becoming more and more popular every day, getting mentions on nationally syndicated shows, being quoted in the news, etc, more and more people are getting familiar with the word ‘blog’.

Problem is, once people hear it enough, they go online or ask a friend what exactly a blog is. Most definitions fall in line with something like “an online diary or journal. people post thoughts about news or events that affect their lives”.

That’s a good definition, but we’re missing something there. When people hear that definition, the words that hit home are ‘journal’ and ‘diary’. They immediately pigeonhole the concept into nothing more than an online version of what they did that day.

When I mentioned blogging as a great way for your website to start ranking better, particularly for long tail searches, they were pretty surprised. Why? Well, they were thinking along the lines of “I changed the baby’s diaper today. Went to the store. Got some turnips” instead of “Saw a great opportunity for one of our widgets to help an elderly lady today at the store” or “ten great ways to use blue widgets when cutting the grass“.

There are plenty of reasons to start a blog for your business, no matter what the industry. Blogging about industry trends will help get you noticed as an industry leader. Blogging about some of the bigger competitors will get you ranking for their name. Blogging about upcoming events and products (in a non-salesy way) will lead you to more customers. Blogging about local happenings, concerts, trade shows, whatever, will get you noticed in your community.

Think beyond the diary mentality. There is an endless amount of material right there on your desk. Keep it fresh, don’t give up, and you’ll see positive results.

Posted in beginner sem, business blogging, content, site ranking, small business | No Responses »

Use Girl Power to Promote Your Biz

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

The New York Times has an interesting article on girls and the Internet. The article states that a recent Pew study found that more girls ages 13-22 are creating online content than boys.

If you’ve got a product that targets the female demo from 13-22, you’ve got an audience just waiting to tell the world about your product.

Being the father of a 13 year old girl with a blog, let me tell you something. There is nothing she would like more than to receive a free girl related widget in the mail. She’d tell all her friends, and of course blog about it on her site. The small cost and time it’d take for the widget manufacturer to search these girls out could hugely compensate for the reviews they’d get in return.

Heck, a smart company could even go a step further and give the girls an affiliate ID of sorts. Tell them when they show their friends that they should use this ‘special URL’ which will pay them $x per sale. Now there are probably some legal issues there, but I’m still betting a smart company could figure something out. ‘Pay’ them in iTunes coupons or something…

So what ideas can you come up with to get these active girls on your side?

Posted in content, demographics | No Responses »

Use FeedBurner’s FeedFlare to Get Your Visitors to Promote Your Content

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

This is a guest post by Jason Bartholme

FeedBurner is vastly popular with bloggers and content providers. Sure it tracks subscribers to feeds. But, are you using it make it easy for your visitors to promote and share your site’s content?

What is FeedFlare?

FeedFlare is an often overlooked feature that is included with all FeedBurner accounts. It is a service which gives additional functionality to your existing feed. Choose from basic features like emailing your item. showing the number of comments, as well as the number of saves or links on a number of social bookmarking sites. FeedBurner allows you to create your own “flare” if you would like. FeedFlare is also a good alternative to having graphical widgets in your content area taking up real estate. Also, if you are using a blogging platform, your flare will show up on the psot summaries on the home page, in the full post, and the feed.

Configuring FeedFlare

FeedFlare is fairly easy to implement. Once you log into your FeedBurner account, click on “Optimize” then you will see it listed under “Services”.

You have the option to inlclude features in either/or your site or your feed. I prefer to include more of the features on my site than the feed. My reasoning is that more people are going to see the site than the feed. Once you have choosen the flare for your site and feed, you can use a click-and-drag function to rearrange the flare so they will appear in the presidence that you prefer.

Click to continue »

Posted in content, feedburner, Marketing, RSS | 1 Response »

A Few .htaccess Modifications You Should Use

Thursday, July 26th, 2007

When putting up a website, there are a few modifications to the .htaccess file that you should consider.

1. Your site usually has two defaults that work:

http://yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com

Now, that’s cool that you can get to it two ways. Problem is, the search engines see this as two separate websites, both with the exact same content. Problem. You definitely want to avoid the duplicate content penalty. So, to fix that, we need to add a few lines of test to your .htaccess file.