Use Your Blog For Website Success

In previous newsletters, we've talked about how the use of social networking and microblogging sites like Facebook and Twitter as a resource to drive traffic to your organization's website is quickly becoming the most affordable marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Once they get to the site, however, many businesses lack the resources that will keep visitors there. One way to improve the amount of useful information on your site is by using a blogging component.

Many of the theories about inbound marketing are centered around the fact that the longer a person stays on a site, the more apt he or she will consider purchasing something from the site; or at the very least contacting someone within your organization for more information. Blogging is not only a great way to increase the duration that visitors spend on your website, it helps improve your search rankings. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing and organizing the content on your website for a better user experience. By doing this you are able to increase the relevancy of your content and thus make it more appealing to search engines.

You should understand how integrating a blog into your company's website can be the best way to increase traffic and provide some of the most dynamic SEO results possible. This is because you are an expert in your field, and the more you make a concerted effort to share your vast knowledge in your blog, the more resourceful visitors will consider your website. The more useful information your website has, the more respect you will garner from users and the more they will share this information with like-minded people. This buzz will get you more traffic, and ultimately more opportunities. Some blog posts can be as good as gold.

You'll need to pick the blogging interface that is best for you. There are several free blog interfaces available for content management systems such as Joomla! or Drupal, as well as web-based blog interfaces like Google's free blog service, Blogger. Do a little research and find the blog interface that will work best for your organization's needs.

Some questions you should consider after you have selected your blog component are:

• How do you know what to blog about? - A cursory internet search for the elements that make up your goods or services or for the goods or services itself will likely yield the information necessary to start blogging. You know your business better than others and sharing that expertise in your blog to drive visitors to your website though the search engine. This research is important for most business professionals that want to blog, as it's fair to assume that you aren't the first-and-only company that is attempting to follow this paradigm.

• How do you gain the credibility needed? - By careful planning. Each site's SEO takes some time to take hold, but once you are considered an authority it can mean great benefits for your organization. Understanding how the use of keywords and anchortext are measured by search engines is a good place to start. When you do your initial internet search some of the key terms and concepts that you are going to blog about will jump right out at you while others you might have to do a little research, but for effective SEO, you'll need to incorporate key terms into your blog. The best way to do this is to answer the most applicable questions that pop up in the administration of your business. Doing so should lead to plenty of readers, good SEO rankings, and increased opportunities.

• What tone should my blog take? - Many new bloggers should consider what tone their blog will have. After all, the people that will read it will undoubtedly relate the content of your blog to your organization. If you own a bar or restaurant, your blog's tone should be causal since the nature of your organization is to enjoy yourself and that tone is reminiscent of that type of company culture. If you have goods or service that you are trying to sell, have your blog take on the tone of a friendly sale pitch. You are the author, and your blog should represent not only your organization, but you.

The implementation and consistent use of a blog can be one of the best decisions that you can make for your organization. Not only will it increase the exposure of your company's website, it will increase the relevance of it. At JoomConnect we are proud to make available our Ultimate Blog Service for clients of our Ultimate MSP Website. We provide our partners marketing solutions by creating IT-relevant content for hundreds of managed services providers from all around the world.