One of the biggest traffic drivers for any corporate website can be a blog. Corporate blogs are a great way to engage prospective clients and customers in the inner-workings of the company, as well as to inform the public of your products and services and stand out as a thought leader in your industry.
However, in order to increase the effectiveness of your corporate blog, you need to keep these blogging best practices in mind:
Content – Your blog posts must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree to.
Frequency – There is a direct correlation to blog popularity and the number of times it’s updated. Post 3-5 times per week at a minimum. Blogs that are updated many times a day can get included in the Google News index which is updated daily. That means getting your content into Google search results the same day it’s posted to your blog.
Distribution – A common issue from people new to blogs and RSS feeds is where to find them. Marketing a blog brings additional advantages over a traditional web site. A blog and associated RSS/Atom feed can be promoted within the blogoshpere as well as through traditional directories, search engines and web site linking. The opportunity for blog exposure is much greater than a regular web site alone. Make it easy for news feed subscribers to find your blog through both web site search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and RSS search engines (Bloglines, Feedster, Technorati).
Once you have these three biggies mastered, your blog will probably do pretty well for your business. But there are a few other blog optimization tips that can really help with the authority of you blog and your company:
Blog with keywords in mind – Your blog post titles should use keywords that are relevant to the post. Also, update your blog software template so that keywords from the post titles are in text links to archive posts, in the title tag and meta description tag.
Post on current news – Pay attention to your industry and keep up to date with trends and events so you can post about them and provide commentary.
Post your own thoughts – Show your industry expertise by creating original content in the form of short articles. You can create a teaser article with a link to the full document on your web site.
Link out – It’s important you link to thematically similar web sites/blogs. Other blogs that notice your link may often link back.
Link in – Submit your blog to all the search engines and directories that you would submit a web site to. Also submit to blog/RSS specific directories and search engines.
Trackbacks – Use a comment system that allows trackbacks to any news or blog sites you’re commenting on. This creates a link from other highly trafficked sites to your blog.
Blog elsewhere – Find or ask to be a “guest blogger” on related blogs. You can also ask other bloggers in your industry to be a guest blogger on your site.
With these tips in mind, there should be no reason why your blog wouldn’t rank highly in the search engines or not drive qualified traffic and leads to your corporate website. Setting up a blog is easy, with sites like Blogger and WordPress offering free blog software and hosting.
TopRank Online Marketing also offers blog optimization and blog marketing services for your company. For more information, contact us today!
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