One important step to getting your blog listed in the search engines is to have it submitted. Now, you could do that manually, but it’s not fun. You could also wait it out for someone to notice you somehow and link to you - thus telling the bots to go to your site and look at it.

But there are easier ways. Tris at Larix Consulting pointed me to this great site that sumbits to all the engines at once. Don’t worry if you get errors - getting most is the important thing.

Thomas Korte: Submit your Feed to multiple sites

Whenever anyone talks about the success of a blog, it’s usually measured in traffic. How many unique views do you have on your blog? What are your hits? How much traffic do you get from search engines? My take is that traffic is not the only measure of blog ’success.’

Here is why I’ve come to think this way. Our primary blog, Blogaholics, does well with traffic and also has a pretty high subscription rate. However, this blog does poorly on traffic but has a fair number more subscribers. So, I could get worried about why I don’t have outstanding incomming traffic to the site. But I’m not. Search engines are not everything. We are well rated on the search engines, but the topics we cover, often about blogging (what’s known as metablogging), are covered by so many others that we just don’t achieve the click through’s one might expect (yet). Our archives are not large enough to put us higher in the listings. But the blog is doing great - we’re talked about and we’re read. And I’m quite satisfied.

I think that traffic is an overrated mode of rating. Let’s look at how popular you are with readers in general - do they like you enough to stick around for more?

So, my advice: don’t fret if you don’t get high traffic on your site. If you have high RSS traffic, and a ton of subscribers, consider your blog on its way to success.

From Search Engine Optimization Tips is a post that highlights the most important aspect of SEO: keywords.

I really agree with this, as you’ve seen in my previous post. I simply don’t “catch” those posts that go under my radar.

The key, noted in the post, behind SEO is knowing what those keywords are. “What are you selling?”

This is probably the most important business question you will ever ask yourself. Unfortunately, it’s also often one of the most complex to analyze and the most difficult to answer. Historically, business owners have been warned that there are two different levels to the question, both of pretty obvious importance. Harley Davidson sells motorcycles, and that’s one level, what one might call the surface level. When you’re building factories or contracting with suppliers, it’s an important level to understand.

Beyond that, however, Harley doesn’t really sell vehicles. It sells prestige and status…
The Web, however, adds a third level to the question.

This third level exists where the line between the other two levels becomes blurry. It exists because, on the Internet, people have to FIND YOU before they can buy from you.[Virtual Promote]

When the Internet comes into play, you find that search terms are a combination of point one and two. Such as “fast motorcycle” or some such.

At one end of the spectrum are the keywords that are so highly competitive as to often be useless to you. Go to Google and search for “travel.” Notice all the sponsored links? There might be a few government or educational sites (.gov or .edu), but you’ll probably notice that most of the results are extremely well known, very long established web sites. Unless you have a few million dollars in the bank, I wouldn’t recommended trying to compete with Microsoft or Travelocity for this particular keyword.

This side of our bell curve is filled by the words and phrases that are the most searched on the Internet. They include travel, mp3, jobs, sex (of course), music, food and many more. Millions of people enter these words into a search engine every single day. And thousands of web sites are trying to capture that very big audience. It’s a bit like the lottery. The rewards for winning seem gargantuan, but your chances are abysmally slim. You compete for these keywords at your own risk!…

At the other end of our bell curve are keywords that are so highly targeted that John Q. Public will never think to use them when searching. The keyword “peregrination” may be a delightful synonym for travel, but it won’t bring you a lot of visitors.

In the middle of our bell curve lies the bull’s eye. These are the words and phrases people actually will USE when searching for products or services. And that brings us to another, albeit slightly different, way of looking at the same thing.
[Virtual Promote]

The middle is the best ground. Not too specific to lose out on many customers, but not too broad to have a hard time competing with other offerings. You don’t want to waste your time and money attracting visitors who in the end won’t be customers, so how do you pick the “right words”?

Well, it’s a lot of work, granted. And too much work for one post. I suggest to continue reading this article, which is quite long, and to stay tuned. We will touch this topic again in the future.

If you want your friends to get some good juice in from Google, place the link to their post on a strong keyword. Google will start to link them higher on that particular keyword/phrase.

This piece of SEO advice comes via Robert Scoble.

Now, if I had any good Google juice of my own, it would pass on to Scoble for the term “SEO advice.” But I don’t. Yet. :)

So, the question has been raised. Is Google Page Rank still relevant?

I agree with Darren, that Page Rank is relevant for some things:

Google’s Page Rank isn’t anywhere near as important as it has been previously - however I don’t completely write it off. I suspect that it still plays a part in how Google ranks sites in its results - but another important factor is that page rank can still be an important factor in working out how much to sell ads on your blog for… in terms of Search Engine Rankings I’m not sure Page Rank is as relevant as it previously has but in terms of grading the value of a blog for other purposes it remains one of the few tools people use and therefore is helpful.

I agree with all of the above, but have some thoughts to add.

First comes from my personal example: our eldest site, Blogaholics, manages to get a ton of new readers each and every day, despite being “sandboxed”. Our new readers come from other blogs, links, and come very strongly from MSN. I am sure we may grow faster if we had a stronger Google presence, but are not overly worse off for the low PageRank. In this case, I would say PageRank plays a part in the growth factor, but is not a measure to lay all your success on.

The one other thing I would add concerns where your business comes from. For some reason, certain businesses get more customers from Google than other. Perhaps has something to do with demographics and psychographics - different people using different engines. For example, though more highly rated on MSN and Yahoo for key phrases, at work we still drive nearly 80% of new customers from Google. So, in this sense, PageRank is crucial. Just some food for thought.

A great blog strategy suggested at ProBlogger is to add authors to your blog.

Why are more authors better for your blog?

1. It gives you increased content volume and allows you to take a blogging break. If you want your blog to take off, you need to consistently post a lot. It’s a hard task to take on alone. And if you want to go away for a weekend, it is also difficult indeed. Having more authors = more content and the ability to take a break without losing post frequency.
2. You can get people to blog free in some areas. If you want to really take off, paid bloggers are also a good option. We currently offer this service.
3. Greater word of mouth. Having more bloggers means having more networks to spread the news. Most bloggers of this type will post to many blogs, cross link, and spread news to their associates.

From my experience, I think more authors is also a good strategy to retain your readers. It gives them multiple perspectives on a topic, but also opens them up to different topic segments.

For example, this blog covers many how to’s for blogging. I may talk on aspects such as writing, reasons to blog, etc, but Ianiv will be providing great insight on the technical side: how to set up your blog, how to customize it, and news that would appeal to developers in the blogging world. On one hand, this gives us a better chance of reaching and appealing to more readers overall, but it also gives some insight of the overall blogging perspective to all our readers. Something we think is very valuable.

Check out the podcast by Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting - the topic is SEO and blogs. Tris always has really great insight. Worth a listen - especially if you have an mp3 player you can take on the go.

Darren over at ProBlogger has taken a look into the new Google patent to see what it is that Google really looks at. There is not enough time in my day to read through the patent myself, so I will gladly sum up some of what Darren has said and then point you over to his post for all the details.

1. “PageRank isn’t about the number of links, its about link growth.” Your popularity must grow - more people must link to you more often for your PageRank to grow.
2. “How often you update affects everything” Consistency seems key. Your rank will drop if you suddenly stop posting as often.
3. “How long you register your domain name for affects your rankings.” Good to know.
4. Cross-linking your sites is useless - Google knows its you from your registrar data.
5. Changing content is good - large content changes show you are keeping your site fresh

From Search-Science:
6. Search terms are important - what did people use to find you?
7. “history variable will include the number of times your documents appear in search results, and the number of times people choose to go there”
8. How long people stay on your site
9. Amount of comments
10. Whether you were added to bookmarks (hinted that Google looks at this via Google desktop search feature)
11. Keep all pages of your site fresh (perhaps this means posting to all your categories regularly)

Darren linked to a number of other sources, of which one is of personal interest to me (and likely others). This is the issue of the Google sandbox. There appears some validation within the patent that it may indeed exist. What is it? Well, it’s not a fun situation. Basically, Google will index your site, but then may put it in a “holding area,” so to speak. This is the Sandbox. Your PageRank will not climb while you are there, and therefore you will not really be found often on Google searches. It’s all very speculative as to whether or not it exists, and people are not completely sure how to get out of it. Currently, our other site, Blogaholics, is in the said sandbox.

Trust me, if I can figure out how to get out of the sandbox, I will most willingly share that information!

Tris from Larix Consulting has a tidy little post on how you can use your blog for your search engine optimization. I will do tons more posting in this area, but I think this post is a great little overview of how blogs achieve great results on search engines.

The world of business is intertwined with conversations - the industry is talking, your customers are talking, your competitors are talking - you need to be a part of those conversations. If you don’t, your market will pass you by. If you stay silent, people will begin to look at you as uninventive, arrogant, or secretive. I will argue for the importance of these conversations and how you can enter in a positive way.

A conversation is authentic communication with the aim to build a relationship over time. The relationship involves give and take (shared linking and comments, for example), but also much more.

You need to be a part of the conversation

Your customers are asking to be a part of your company. They are actually demanding it. Your customers are no longer satisfied with seeing your brand - they want to see the people behind your brand.

If you cannot foster dialogue with your customers, how do you expect to retain them? You need a relationship now to both sell your product/service and to retain your customers.

In gratitude for you taking a genuine interest in them, your customers are more likely to be loyal to you, to spread positive word of mouth, and to give you insight on how to improve your product.

How do you enter the conversation?

The blog is your conversation. Here are some great tips on how to make your blog your most effective communication tool.

Be authentic

You need to care about the customer enough to take down some walls. Be clear, be honest, be real. Blogs are real time - if a post takes you an hour, it’s taking too long. You are crafting far beyond your authenticity. Customers value transparency. This means that you should admit when you make mistakes, be open if there are problems, talk about your successes, and make an effort to post regularly and with some passion.

Invite interaction

Your customers are knocking on your door to talk to you. And this does not mean they want to phone you up or complain. They might just want to know what’s new, what you think, why you are the leader in what you do, and that you care.

Blogs are a very easy tool. You have your comment box. Your customers will use it. And the media will also get involved here too. If you show them you know your stuff, it will pay off. Make sure to watch your comments - interact back online so others can see. At the same time, take it to the next level by sending off an email. Say thanks for the comment - get that conversation going to the next level. You never know when it will pay off for a big sale or a great article about you.

Trackbacks are your conversations too. It’s your way to jump into a conversation - you link to others in your topic, they link to you. Suddenly you have a web of knowledge.

How can you post to invite conversation?

- post relevant information, fairly often (it’s best to start posting a lot at first to attract the spiders and your biggest readers)
- offer some insight and opinion
- ask questions
- link to people who’ve talked on the same topic - supplement their arguments or go against them, either is fine
*linking out attracts linking in
- weigh your posts as a mix of short timely posts and longer more authoritative posts
- use your strongest key phrases in the titles of your articles
- although your content may revolve around your industry, leave self promotion to less than 25% of your posts

The best tip - write with energy and a passion for what you do.

Blogging for business overview
Part 1 - Why blog?
Part 2 - How to start blogging on the right foot
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So, you know you should have a blog but you don’t quite know how to set it up or how to make it an effective communication and SEO tool. Here are some great ideas to get you started:

1. Choose your categories as logical tags

If you use a blogging software such as Blogware, your categories are your tags. What is a tag? It’s a logical name for a category, post, or picture. Think of it as a filing system. It’s the way you tell yourself and others what you are talking about.

You can add tags to any post or category and your post will then come up in Technorati for that subject. For example, if your category is “Sunset photos” and somebody searches Technorati for “sunset photos,” they will find you. Your categories should be logical and should flow from what you know about how people find you when searching.

2. Subscribe to & read other blogs

Use an aggregator such as Bloglines or NewsGator to subscribe to other blogs and news sites that have RSS feeds - make sure to organize and prioritize your content into folders or hierarchies. Choose sites that have content relevant to your business or interests. You should also subscribe to the RSS feeds of key words or phrases such as your company name, your name, tags, or industry key words. You can do this using PubSub and Technorati.

Knowing your news is the first step to having an opinion on it, writing about it, and using it to make your business decisions.

3. Create your blogroll

It may seem like a simple thing, but telling someone you like their blog is as easy as adding them to your blogroll. If they do what I’ve suggested in point 2 above, they will know you’ve done this. So, they see you like their blog. They check you out. Maybe they like what you have to say. You both comment on each others’ blogs. They add you to their blogroll. And there you have a relationship. A blogroll is your way to connect with the “important” people in your industry - but it’s also a great way to share Google juice between friends. Remember, inbound links count in SEO strategies.

4. Plan your content choices

Who are you writing for? What can you talk about that offers useful insight? What do you have an opinion on?

Play to your strengths here. If you are interested in what you’re writing, it will show. You will have done point 2 and know what there is that is hot in your industry. Comment on it. Be argumentative if you wish. Opinion is good. Don’t forget what your blog is about - your categories should connect with what you talk about. If you write something and don’t know where to put it, it’s likely not the right blog for that post.

But set some limits. Remember, what you say will be read by many, including your customers, your investors, and your competition. So set some boundaries. Know what is proprietary and what is not. What is insight and what is heated opinion. Especially when it comes to your competitors - know how far you want to take this talk - some of your opinion here, especially negative comments, can be considered flaming.

One other little tidbit is to decide on your angle. Will you be the person who writes about all the new stuff happening in your industry? Or will you be the person who chooses carefully what to write, forms an opinion, and offers out a well thought blog post? You must choose what mix of bredth and depth suits you best.

Blogging for business overview
Part 1 - Why blog?

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Of all the places to post an ad regarding SEO, we now have poster spam onVancouver street posts.

Is this really the best way to advertise for SEO?

Link thanks to Tim Bray.

Why blog? Because it’s easy. And it’s just about the easiest marketing tool out there.

1. One more tool in your toolbox

Not only is blogging one more tool you can add into your marketing mix, it also increases your efficiency overall. Think of it as one more way you have to stick out your hand and grab some customers. The more hands, the more customers.

As an online tool, I venture to say it is your strongest tool ever. Your brochure website is dead. It won’t work. If you update it daily, great. But why would you spend all that labourious time doing so? Blogging is the new content management system that offers easy access for everyone to do it. Blogging is powerful by its nature of easy, fast updates and by its interactivity - comments and trackbacks are your conversations.

Think of blogging as DIY PR - anyone can get right in there and vouch for your company! Unlike PR, blogging is not (and should never be!) flack! Blogging MUST be authentic. And perhaps the most powerful assertion for this new PR: people come TO your blogs because they want to hear what you have to say; your traditional PR is pushed out to people who most naturally block it.

2. Google Loves Blogs! SEO/SEM

SEO is guiding development so that your site comes up high in natural/organic search results. Google, for example, measures website ranks based on their PageRank system. This PageRank looks at the inbound and outbound links from a site as votes. The more votes that come in, the better your site must be. And the more votes that come in from sites that themselves have high PageRank gives you a better vote.

So, why are blogs good with Google? Because bloggers are very open with their linking - not with the usual focus of giving people good rankings, but just as a matter of course. Bloggers link to others who have talked on their topic or those who come up in the writing process. It’s a natural part of the writing. Blogs are conversations. Bloggers don’t often link to non-blogs.

I have personally seen a corporate blog take a corporate site up from page 3 on key phrases to page 1 in little more than two months. It is a powerful SEO tool.

3. Creating conversations
* With your customers
* With your competitors
* With your partners/investors
* With the media

People are talking about you and your industry. You need to be a part of the conversation before it outruns your company and you get lost in the dust and before your customers get fed up with your monologues. I will talk more about this in another post later.

4. Industry Insight

By listening to the conversations you will see new opportunities, be able to let your customers lead your development, spot the trends (the stronger the trend, the more you will see it coming up in blogs), and perspective. What you hear on the news or read in the paper is, unfortunately, quite restrictive. Blogs give you the perspective of opinion and you will notice time and again bloggers who have researched the topic historically for insight.

The process of blogging is your strongest research method.

5. Reputation capital

Being real, relevant, and authentic ups your reputation capital more than any PR spin could ever do.

Caveat: do not blog only for the sake of marketing & sales
Don.t set up a blog if all you want is another way to get customers. It acts as an effective marketing tool, but it won.t work unless your focus is on communication, relationships and authenticity.

This is Part 1 of the Blogging for Business series. The overview is available here.

Read more: Part 2 - How to start off on the right foot
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Why should you have a blog?

1. One more tool in your toolbox
* Dialogue not monologue
2. Google Loves Blogs! SEO/SEM
3. Creating conversations
* With your customers
* With your competitors
* With your partners/investors
* With the media
4. Industry Insight
5. Reputation capital

Caveat: do not blog only for the sake of marketing & sales

How to get started

1. Choose your categories . tags, Technorati
2. Subscribe to & read other blogs . RSS
3. Create your blogroll . link to your friends and colleagues
4. Plan your content choices
5. Set some guidelines
6. Monitor the blogosphere - PubSub, Feedster

Enter the conversation

1. Relationship building
2. Authenticity
3. Customer interaction
4. Trackbacks and comments
5. Posting tips
*link to sources & competitors
*title phrases
*be authentic and interactive

How to get results
1. Syndication and RSS
2. Promote your blog
3. Follow the posting tips
* authenticity * linking * shared knowledge * key phrases
4. Comment on other blogs
5. Watch your trackbacks
6. Submit your URL to directories
7. Have good features
8. Link to yourself
9. Avoid link exchanges!

What you can achieve:
1. strong SEO results
2. differentiation
3. leadership
4. more traffic
5. customer interaction and loyalty
6. new business, if done right!

Continued…
Part 1 - Why should you have a blog?
Part 2 - How to start blogging on the right foot

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I spoke tonight at the IIMA on how blogging is emerging as the new tool for online marketing, and, well, for business in general. I am a bit of a fanatic for the power that a blog can bring to businesses large or small, so it was a great experience for me to be able to share some of my opinions and ideas. I met some really great people and got to explore some good new frontiers with my fellow panelists and with the attendees as well.

I have to say that the commentary at the event was superior - I was very impressed with the caliber of responses and with how people responded to the usefulness of blogs. I am very excited by the number of people I saw leaving the series with aims to start their own blogs. Some wanted to communicate with customers, some to build their name, some to get that great Google juice.

So, here is how it goes. I am going to post up my presentation tonight. I will probably link to the presentations of Tris and Roland tomorrow with some insight on what they had to say. Every couple of days or so I will revisit the topics in my presentation one by one with more of what was said in my presentation verbally, as well as a ton of my notes that never made it quite as far as the actual presentation. I hope to be able to offer some useful solutions to individuals and businesses especially who want to start to blog and don’t quite know where to start.

If you have any special requests on topics, please feel free to email me or post a comment.

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