Jul
30
This is my second post in a series on how to do a good, and effective blog. Much of this series will be focusing on the SEO aspects of blogging. Obviously there are many other reasons than SEO to blog. Rather that reiterate them in each step in the series, please feel free to take a look at:
How to do a Good blog Step 1
which touches on several reasons to blog, and also focuses on choice of the domain name for your blog.
In this post I want to focus on what is perhaps the most common problem that I see companies make on their blogs, and even on their websites in general: URL structure.
Let me make the point on URL structure in this way: Have a look at the URL below, and tell me what this article is likely about:
http://mycompany.com/?p=123
Have no idea? Neither does anyone else. Neither does Google.
How about this one:
http://www.myblog.com/recipes/?p=123
Well, it’s probably some sort of recipe. But I seldom Google for “recipe.” I would be much more likely to Google “Desert recipes”, or even more likely “Pecan pie recipe.”
So why do so many people keep this level of information from one of the most powerful SEO drivers on their site: the URL? If you’re running a blog this is pretty easy to fix. On wordpress specifically click on “Settings”, then “Permalinks.” This will open up a screen that allows you to change you URL structure.
Here’s a hint for you: The “Default” setting is the worst one. I would choose one of the settings that have “sample-post” in them. This alone should help your “Google Juice” a ton.
This step makes it so that the subject of your post is now par of the URL. But that’s just one step. Now you must be sure to use phrases that people use to search for your product or services in your subjects. Don’t have a subject like “Recipe of the day for Thursday”, when it is so much better to say “Amazing pecan pie recipe.”
All of this also holds true in your website. If you have URLs that remain the same as the site is navigated, or show meaningless variables and numbers, then you are holding yourself back.
One thing I have commonly seen is companies who work with an agency, using that agency’s CMS, and are told that URL structure is meaningless. I am stunned at how much I encounter this. I cannot say this strongly enough: If your agency is telling you that URL structure is not important, they are knowingly lying to you. That may seem very harsh to say, but it is shocking how common of a problem this still is.
So that’s it for now. Step 2 of how to do a good blog. Step 3 hopefully sometime next week.
Posted in Events
Jul
13
There are a lot of reasons to have a blog.
A blog can make your large business, or individuals in your business seem more personal… more “real”, and people like to do business wit people they feel they know.
A blog can drive communication and feedback (though this happens less often that a lot of bloggers might have you believe.)
A blog can be a really easy way to get your small business on the web. It can make you seem bigger.
It can be a spot to speak your mind on your hobbies, interests or gripes.
More often than not however, people tend to use a blog to drive more traffic. This might happen due to a combination of the reasons stated above. But it also likely includes a plan for SEO.
Blogs are very powerful for SEO for a couple of key reasons. They first reason is that blog content is very conversational in tone. It uses a lot of words you may never use in your marketing web site. This provides for a “Long Tail.”
Here’s the concept of the Long Tail:
Imagine you sell a diet pills that increases energy.
You make a web site that ways “More energy” “Lose weight”, and thins like that. You start to get traffic for these phrases (but a LOT of people are competing for them.)
Then you start to blog about successful customers. You write about “Susan”, who was heavy, and highly depressed. You write about how the product changed her life. Guess what happens… A few months later you are shocked to find that 7% of the traffic to your site is people coming in because they were looking for ways to deal with “depression.”
The Long tail means that if you can get enough of these types of people for phrases like “depression”, or other similar topics, that that traffic can actually combine, and begin to eclipse the traffic for “weight loss.”
But the Long Tail is only one aspect of SEO. Blogs are great for SEO for lots of other reasons. Over the next several days I am going to be writing several of these reasons, and steps to do them right. But today we start with step 1: Your Domain Name.
Domain names:
Unless you are a huge brand like Nike or Starbucks, people are probably not searching for your comapny name. They are likely searcing for the product or service you provide (sports shoes, or coffee.)
One of the most important pieces of good SEO is your domain name. You need to ask yourself when you start our blog, “Will people search for my company, or my product or service?” Also, what will the customer really be searching for? Sometimes we choose very generic phrases like “Fitness Gym”, when a customer will never find what they want if the look for that… they will need to look for “Utah Fitness Gym”, or “Orem Fitness Gym.”
Once you decide what people will likely look for, seriously consider having your blog use that domain name, rather than your company name. UtahFitnessGymBlog.com will rank much better than blog.Fitnesscorp.com for a search for “Utah Fitness Gym.”
Also, think about how you and others search when deciding what you want to rank well for. Most people type a search in to google and get too many results. So they refine the search by adding a word or two. Then a bit more, and a bit more. It’s on that 3-5th search that ou have narrowed things enough to be useful. So who is your target customer, and what do they look for on that third, fourth, or fifth search?
Get a domain name that fits with that.
Posted in Events
