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SEO Basics for Business Bloggers

SEO, or search engine optimization, is an effective online marketing strategy that increases your search traffic by improving the search rankings of your site’s pages. By know, most webmasters realize that getting multiple top 10 rankings on Google is a very good thing.

There are technical aspects to SEO that are complicated, but luckily, the fundamental SEO principles of SEO are not rocket science.

To learn SEO, you should first understand the most weighty factors that search engines use to rank pages.

These following four elements make up a big chunk of the search engine algorithm. If you can nail these elements, you’ll be ahead of most bloggers and webmasters.

1. Title tag

Search engines look at the keywords in the title tag. If you have relevant keywords in the title tag, you’ll automatically rank better for those keywords.

In html code, the title tag looks like this:

The keywords in the title tag show up at the very top right of a web browser. Here is a screenshot.

For the popular blog software WordPress, the words in your post title will be included in the title tag.

2. Quality links from other sites

Search engines also look to see if quality sites are linking to your site. If you get a lot of links from quality sites, then you’ll see an increase in search traffic.

3. Anchor text

Anchor text are the words contained in a link. For example, I can link to my home page with the anchor text business blogs to rank better for that search term. However, it’s much more effective to get anchor text on links from other sites.

4. Body text

Finally, we have body text. With people using keywords to search, it makes sense that search engines would check out the text on a page.

Now you don’t want to mindlessly repeat keywords and make your blog posts spammy and hard to read. That’s called keyword stuffing and can get you penalized or even banned by the search engines. My guideline is to insert the keyword 1-2 times for a short post and 2-3 times for a longer post (500+ words). But don’t worry too much about this. As long as your content is readable, you don’t have to worry about keyword stuffing.

The Importance of Keywords

With three of the four factors above having to do with keywords, you can see that keywords are very important to search engines.

So, one of the first steps to improving your search traffic is doing keyword research.

For many people, keyword research is the most tedious part of the SEO process. However, most of your keyword research only has to be done once. Once you’ve generated a keyword list, you probably won’t have to do it again unless, of course, you start a new site in a different niche.

Also, keywords research is made a lot easier with keyword tools. I like to use these two keyword tools: SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and Google AdWords Keyword Tool. They are free to use.

I would type in the name of your industry. The keyword tool should then give you a lot of keywords. Next, simply look through the keywords and collect the ones that are relevant to your business. Then, begin to write blog posts that target those keywords.

If you have existing search traffic, it’s a good idea to check your keyword logs to see which keywords are already generating traffic. Oftentimes, you don’t have content that directly targets those keywords.

For example, my sister runs a dating blog where she plans to sell a dating ebook. One of her most popular keywords is “questions to ask girls”. She has an article entitled “Best Questions To Ask A Potential Love Interest” gets traffic for that keyword. I told her that if she wrote an article with words “questions to ask girls” in the title, she would even get more traffic.

Well, that’s it for this intro post about SEO. For more SEO and blogging tips, subscribe to our RSS feed. Also, feel free to email me at deebarizo ATT gmail DOTT com with your questions.

Why Turning Off Blog Comments is a Bad Idea

You could turn off blog comments on your business blog but I agree with Chuck Crawford. Having blog comments is a good idea. He gives at least two reasons why.

First, comments give you free content. This is good from a search engine standpoint, because the keywords on the comments may help you rank for more search terms.

Second, comments allow your blog to turn into a community instead of just you speaking on your soapbox. Community can’t happen unless people are allowed to speak. And community is what many people are looking for on the web.

I’d like to add two more reasons.

As your blog increases in traffic, your comments will increase. This will improve the perceived value of your site and you’ll gain repeat visitors. Social proof is a powerful force. People will think, “Hm. Many people are commenting. It must be a good blog.” But you need to allow comments for this to happen.

Finally, you can get great feedback in the comment section. This feedback is valuable to improving your site, products, and services.

If you’re worried about comment spam, there are programs that can help. For example, Akismet works really well for WordPress blogs.

And if you don’t want certain types of comments (like hateful or off-topic ones), you can add a comment policy. Just make sure your readers know about the policy. I would place a link to it near the comment text box.

Video Tips and Equipment

Yesterday, I wrote about the huge benefits of adding video to your blog. Today, we’ll look at a couple video tips as well as video equipment to get you started.

Most of the information below was found on this interview that Brian Clark did with Dave Kaminski of Web Video University.

Tips

Quality is Important

Dave talks about the videos that are getting a lot of traffic online and/or making money. These videos are of higher quality than the average YouTube video.

Video quality consists of two basic things: content and production value.

Add Variety

Dave talks about changing or adding a visual element to your video every 4 seconds. Because of mainstream TV, our brain is conditioned to get bored after a couple of seconds unless we see something new. This could be a cut to a new scene or simply adding captions at the appropriate time.

Write a Script

Most of us don’t have the adlib skills to “wing” our videos. Dave talks about the importance of planning out your video and then writing a script that accomplishes your goals for the video.

Keep Videos Short

Dave gave some statistics. On average, people watching online video only check out videos for slightly over 2 minutes. This means your videos should be less than 2 minutes. Dave actually likes the 30-60 second videos because they are like the TV commercials that we’re used to watching.

Dave was talking about videos that sell. He wasn’t talking about educational videos. I think those can be longer, but it’s probably a good idea to break up longer videos shorter segments.

Equipment

Camera

Dave says that the digital video cameras you can find in Walmart are good enough for online video. The price for a digital video camera can be as low as $250.

Dave recommends getting a camera that saves on tape instead of one that saves on a hard drive using flash memory. Tape is better because you’ll lose some quality due to the compression whenever a video is saved on a hard drive.

Also, make sure to buy a video with an external mic jack. This allows you to use an external mic, which will vastly improve your audio quality.

Editing Software

If you’re a Windows user, Dave recommends Sony Vegas. If you have a Mac, Final Cut Express is the way to go.

Screencast Software

Dave didn’t talk about screencast software. Based on my research, Camtasia Studio seems to be the popular choice among screencast creators. I’ve tried it and it’s definitely a great piece of software.

Mic

Dave likes ATR-35S Lavalier Microphone, which is less than $30 over at Amazon. A lavalier mic is one that clips onto your shirt or tie.

Lightning

Dave talks about buying soft boxes, or soft box lights. These lights will run you around $300-$400. However, if you want a budget option, Dave recommends shop lights at your local hardware store. These only cost around $15-$20. However, make sure to diffuse the harsh lightning of the shop lights with a sheet or pillow case.

5 Reasons to Add Video to Your Business Blog

One of the upcoming trends that’s definitely worth looking into is video.  Video is (or has been, depending on who you talk to) taking the internet by storm.  Many of the mainstream sites now have a lot of video.  The big 3 TV networks are putting full episodes online of some of their shows.  And I’m sure you’ve heard of YouTube, one of the top 5 visited sites in the whole world.

Yet is it worth it to use video regularly on your business blog?  I think the answer is yes.   Here are 5 reasons why.

1. Video increases the perceived value of your site.

Think about the average price of a book and a DVD.  Which costs more?

2. Many people don’t like to read.

We live in an increasingly visual culture.  People today are reading less than they use to.  They would rather watch TV or check out the latest YouTube video than read a book or a website filled with text.

3. Video sharing sites get a lot of traffic.

This is important because you can get a lot of indirect traffic and branding by not only putting your video on your blog but also on the video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo.  And there are a lot of sites like these.  They get a lot of traffic because video sharing sites are popular destinations.  Also, Google often ranks videos from these sites in the top 10 of their search results.

4. Video increases conversion rates.

Studies have shown that adding video on a page can increase the percentage of people that do the call of action – whether that’s buying a product, joining an email newsletter, or subscribing to an RSS feed.

A reason of the higher conversion rates is that video allows your business to be more personable.  Visitors of your blog can hear your voice and see your face.  This personal touch builds trust, which leads to higher conversion rates.

5. Video allows you to differentiate your site.

With the commercial sector of the web getting more and more crowded with new sites, you need to figure out a way to stand out from the crowd.  While video is very popular, many small business sites are still not using it.  This provides the savvy entrepreneur with a great opportunity.

I’m willing to bet that your industry doesn’t have many sites using video.  Imagine if you started regularly producing videos and adding them to your blog.  Do you think your industry would notice?  I think so.  Anytime someone does something different from the norm, that’s usually a newsworthy event that people notice and start talking about.

How to Get Started With Video

If I’ve peaked your interest for trying out video on your blog, make sure to subscribe for free to our RSS feed.  In the next post, I’ll be looking at video equipment that will get you started in producing great videos.

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