Happy holidays!

On this Christmas day, I’ve been thinking about the similarities between business blogging and the holiday spirit.

Now when I say “holiday spirit”, I’m not talking about the crazy consumerism where people get overly materialistic and spend too much at the mall. Nor am I talking about the stress that often accompanies this season because of excessive demands and tense relationships.

No, I’m talking about the “peace, love, joy, and goodwill toward man” spirit – where people give back to their community, spend quality time with loved ones, and give gifts to each other.

One of the reasons I think online businesses should blog is because good business blogging embodies the holiday spirit.

Think about it. Bloggers give back to their niche’s community with useful information. They spend a lot of time creating content. And they do all this for free. Each post is like a gift.

There have been many amateur bloggers that just blogged because they loved their industry. They did not even think about making money. Yet over time, they built an audience and were able to monetize that audience.

As a small business owner, you’re probably like those amateur bloggers. You have the passion and expertise that they do. You probably started your business because you enjoyed your industry.

I say all this because getting traffic and sales through blogging doesn’t usually happen overnight. It’s only when you build a great reputation that the traffic and sales really explode. However, just like in real life, it usually takes time to build that reputation.

Therefore, I think focusing too much on the monetary rewards can cause you to be disappointed and even quit. But if your motivation is to give back and serve your industry, then you’ll blog for the long haul instead of doing it as a passing fad.

Also, this change in mindset will help you enjoy blogging more. Your joy will show in your posts and you’ll attract many people who also enjoy your industry. Then, just give it some time and soon the sales will come. People will notice you and support your business when they are ready to buy.

As you get into blogging and start getting traffic, you’ll probably start receive link exchange requests. These are email messages from other bloggers asking you to link to them in exchange for them linking to you. Usually they will link to you on their blogroll, which are links to other blogs on their sidebar.

Is it worth doing these link exchanges? Here are some things to consider if you ever receive these emails.

Small SEO Benefit

There is a small SEO benefit for participating in link exchanges. I used to have a blog that did moderately well with search traffic on Google. Most of my search marketing for that blog was doing link exchanges with other bloggers.

Only Link to High Quality, Related Blogs

However, you don’t want to link to bad quality or unrelated blogs. Google can penalize you for linking to low quality blogs. Also, you don’t want to send your readers to those blogs. When I say low quality, I mean anything that looks spammy, has a lot of intrusive ads, or is just has hard to read. Basically, ask yourself if you would want to be associated with the blogs you link to.

There seems to be a Google penalty for linking to unrelated blogs. Also, you probably don’t want to send your readers to a fashion blog if you have a car blog.

Put Your Links on a Separate Page

In most link exchanges, your link will go on their blogroll. However, you should put all your link exchange links on a separate page. My former boss, Ryan Caldwell from Sea Waves Technology, has a lot of SEO experience. He says your internal links (links on your site pointing to other pages on your site) will have more weight with Google if you lower the external links (links on your site pointing to other sites) on each page.

If you have a blogroll, you will have a bunch of external links on each of your blog posts. By putting those links on a separate page, you lower the external links on each page of your blog.

Over to You

Do you get a lot of link exchange requests? How do you handle them?

You may have heard of the the 5 Ws and the 1 H. This is a set of six questions that journalists over the years have answered to make sure their news stories have the complete information. Each of the six questions is a just one word.

1. Who?
2. What?
3. Where?
4. Why?
5. When?
6. How?

As a blogger I’ve found that these six words are used very often by internet searchers. Many of my posts that have a lot of search traffic include these keywords in the title.

Also, these words don’t seem to pull up in keyword research tools so the competition for them is not very strong.

These words are used often because many people are searching the internet for answers. If you want to receive more search traffic, try writing posts with these words in the title and answer common questions in your industry.

For example, if you have an online golf store, you can publish posts like:

• Who is Tiger Woods?
• What to Do to Cure the Slice in Your Golf Swing
• Where to Go to Find Cheap Golf Tickets
• Why Golf is a Great Sport for Retirees
• When is the Best Time to Play Golf?
• How to Prepare Yourself Physically to Play Golf

I finally created an about page for one of my blogs. It’s a task that I always seem to forget. I was creating a post introducing myself on a forum when I realized that I had not done the same on my blog.

Since blogs are personal in nature, you can be more personal on your blog’s about page than your main site’s about page. Your main site’s about page might be more about your products/services whereas your blog’s about page should be about you.

Here are some things to consider including in your blog’s about page:

• How you got into your industry
• What topics you write about on your blog
• Interesting stories about yourself
• What inspires you
• What you like and dislike about your industry
• A photo of yourself
• Links to your favorite blog posts (including your own posts)

Don’t Play It Safe

About pages are not the place to “play it safe”. Don’t use formal corporate speech. Instead, be informal and write like you talk. Don’t be afraid to talk about your biases since everybody has them and you’ll come across more personal. You can’t please everyone but talking about your biases will get you a loyal audience that believes like you do.

Also, don’t worry about the making your about page too long. Actually, in my experience, great about pages can be pretty long – like over 1000 words. If you write something that long, separate your page in sections and headings. This will make your page easier to read. Also, summarize the whole about page in the first couple paragraphs so your readers can have the condensed version too.

Every couple months, update your about page if needed.

Finally, here is a good example of an about page.

The EzineArticles blog has a great post about a method of “writing” multiple blog posts in a short amount of time. I put “writing” in quotes because you don’t actually write anything.

Instead, you use your voice. Basically, you record yourself and pretend that you’re giving a seminar to a live audience. Next, you take your recording and send it to a transcription service. After they send you the transcription, you separate and edit the text into multiple blog posts and publish it online.

The reason this method works so well is because most of us speak faster than we can write. Also, it forces us to split up the writing and editing process. Too often bloggers get bogged down with editing while writing the first draft. It’s much more time efficient to write a crappy first draft and then edit it.

The post states that you can expect to pay the transcription services about $60-$100 USD/per hour of audio. However, I’ve had good results using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for less than $20/hour.

Voice recognition software is also an option. I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking software and use it to create my longer posts (500+ words). I would use it for my shorter posts but I think I’ve gained enough blogging experience to create a short post quickly without having to use audio.