But as blogging has progressed, there has been a common complaint. That being, “I am getting all this traffic to my blog, but no one is buying my product!” As someone who is very ROI and conversion focused I must say that I hear this complaint loud and clear. We will make one quick point and then talk a little about blog/social media conversion optimization. Don’t forget that blogging improves your rankings for larger keywords if it is done correctly and it pulls in referral site traffic, so you do convert and see ROI that way. OK, now that we have gotten that out of the way lets discuss what I believe is an initiative of the future for online business, blog conversion optimization.

Your Blog Wants to Convert for you, Let's Help It Get There

Many of our clients now get thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of visitors to their blog. And some actually do covert very well, but just like any web page with a purpose. There are things we can do to improve the amount of conversion. So what are some of the strategies bloggers use?

First, let’s consider what blogging is. It is really an inbound marketing strategy right? We are creating content that we are using as bait to try to attract people to our website. People are coming to our blog for information. That want to see what we have to offer. Now, the fact that the information we have created attracts them in many cases qualifies them as a potential customer. At some level, these people are interested in the information we offer, the product we sell, etc. So how can we use this to our advantage?

In blog and social media marketing conversion optimization we need to keep in mind that people are not looking for a hard sell. Think about it this way, if you were in a social situation and you invited someone over you wouldn’t put a contract in front of their face, you would let them try the product first right? Of course, you might ask them if they are interested in buying the product too… With this same train of thought, here are some of the things we can do to get a blog to convert better.

Create Softer Conversions
What is a soft conversion? Have you ever downloaded something from a website that you really wanted? Maybe a new whitepaper on Facebook or Google + or a screen saver? But when you downloaded that shiny item, you were asked to enter your email address and provide a little information about yourself. This is an example of a soft conversion, or basically a conversion that is seen as a soft lead. This type of conversion is not quite as powerful as a straight lead.

Channel Users
Experienced bloggers and especially affiliate marketers know that subtleties in writing and basic calls to action within blog posts can lead to conversions. For example, have you ever been reading about a wonder product. The content creator may have done a very good job getting you excited about it. The longer the article goes on the more you want to buy it. Then at the perfect moment that person provides a link to learn more. You end up purchasing five of the things.

Refine your Biggest Posts
Certain posts are going to attract more users that others. You can determine this through Google Analytic, Facebook Insights, Omniture, it really doesn’t matter. But find out which posts are really brining in the numbers for you. Consider that those posts are on a specific topic that relates to you business. Then, take the time to make sure the correct service offering is aligned with that post in a subtle yet convincing way. Do I hear special offer?

Blog conversion optimization really takes an expert in writing, analytics, usability and just good old fashion marketing, but the pay off can be very substantial. If you can increase the conversion rate on blog post just a few percent that can mean many more leads for your company. Just as conversion optimization is critical on website, we must take the time to ensure our blog posts convert. The online space is getting more competitive everyday, which is why need to take the time to make sure our blog and social media marketing converts.

WordPress has quickly become the largest blogging platform on the Internet. Each day more and more corporations are creating corporate blogs to assist their SEO and social media marketing efforts. Watch this video to learn the first step to become a successfu WordPress blogger.

How to Post a Blog to WordPress

Blogs Add New SEO Pages

If you set up your blog correctly, then each time you do a new post you are adding a new page to your website. Each post can be optimized for longtail, unique terms in your industry. This allows you to create new pages and new ranking possibilities. Furthermore, when you become a publisher of sorts, other bloggers around the web will notice your site and link back to you, raising the amount of inbound links to your site.

Blogging and Search Engine Optimization

Blogging Brings Traffic

In the current web climate, when it is done correctly, blogging improves traffic. I can prove it and have over and over again. What if I told you that we have increase SEO Inc. traffic by 60% over the last 3 months just through blogging? It’s true. We have also delivered the same (many times better) results to our clients who deligently blog or use our inhouse social media service. By activily blogging in an SEO friendly way you can greatly increase the traffic to your site for targeted keywords.

Things to Keep In Mind with Blogging and SEO

There are some very important things to keep in mind when blogging for traffic. Some of those are:

Make sure you have a keyword strategy: If you are targeting the wrong keywords you are wasting your time. What is the point of gaining traffic if it doesn’t convert!

Create an SEO friendly blog structure: If you do not have an SEO friendly blog structure, you might as well not blog at all. Without an SEO friendly blog, the search engines will not see any of your pages.

Promote with Social Media Marketing: If you are not promoting your blog through social media marketing and other means, it will have a low visibility. Without inbound links coming to your blog it will not grow in authority.

Summary

Blogging is now a vital component to SEO and keeping social media communities up to date. There are certain structural issues that must be addressed in order to bring search visibility to your blog. If you are blogging for SEO already, make sure you are doing things correctly and have a solid keyword based editorial calendar.

Learn more about blogging, contact SEO Inc. today!

Watch the Google Blogger update video below!

Normally, there are two subscription options, other than social media promotion, that bloggers are faced with when deciding on how to share their blog content. The first way is to have new blogs sent to subscribers via an RSS reader service such as Google Reader. The second option is to have these blogs sent directly to the subscriber’s inbox via email. The email option is really cool, and many people do not know about it, and that is the purpose of this post.

Briefly, this is how the feedburner email delivery works. Once a reader subscribes to an RSS Feed by entering their email address in the subscription field in your blogs sidebar they receive an e-mail message confirming their subscription. Normally, this subscription e-mail shows up as a generic black text on white background format, however, with the use of Feedburner this subscription e-mail can be customized to the blogger’s preference. 

To go about doing this, begin by logging into your Feedburner Google account. Find and select the Blog RSS button. Next, locate the Publicize tab at the top of the page and click on it. On the left sidebar click on Email Subscription and then choose Communication Preferences. You are now able to change the format of your e-mail messages.

To insert your company logo, select the Email Branding option under Communication Preferences and paste your logo’s URL link in the space given.

In addition to giving your e-mails a more professional look by using this tool, you are also branding your messages. And this is vital when promoting any company. It is to your benefit that your subscribers become familiar with your company’s logo and color schemes. Even if your most recent blog does not deliver, which we are sure it will , you will still walk away with more of their mindshare. And in the realm of marketing and advertising, isn’t that half the battle?

Have questions about adding a Feedburner email subscription box to your WordPress blog? Ask below!

The button closely resembles the share buttons created by Twitter and Facebook early this year. You can get your own LinkedIn share button here.

This new share button is long overdue. Sharing content on LinkedIn is perhaps one of the best ways to get traffic to your website. What is great about LinkedIn traffic is that the demographic is often more refined. You know that your colleges will be seeing the content you worked so hard on and you can also post to specialty groups.

Liz Reaves Walker of LinkedIn makes the following comment on the release:

“We know there are a lot of options for sharing content today, whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook. And, now with our new LinkedIn’s share button, we’d like to offer readers an effective way to share relevant professional content – news, thought pieces, white papers, or presentations on slideshare – with their business network on LinkedIn.”

“As a professional, we know the importance of staying up-to-speed on industry trends and business news and now we have made it easier for you to share that news and research with your team, clients, and peers from your favorite business news sites. Or, use LinkedIn share to get a conversation started with clients and colleagues you haven’t reached out to in a while.”

The new share button allows you to post to groups, your profile or send articles to individuals, so what are you waiting for?! Get sharing!

Have questions about the new button? Ask below!

1. Use Specific SEO Blog Meta Data

Each individual blog posts should have specific meta data attributed to it. Make sure that meta data is not redundant with other meta data on the rest of the site. To have well optimized blog posts you need to get specific and niche with that code. Make sure you are really targeted in the keywords you shoot for. Try not to incorporate keywords that are loosely associate with the post, it will only confuse the spider.

2. Determine Specific Pages for Cross Linking

By determining the right pages to cross link to you will have a better SEO blog. For instance, if you want a page on your site to rank for the term SEO blog, you want to link to that page with the term, “SEO blog.” By doing this you will tell the search engines to index that page for that term. Make sure you have a good keyword strategy and structure prior to engaging in cross linking; otherwise you may waste efforts.

3. SEO Blog Widgets

Having certain widgets in the sidebar can play a large role in how successful your SEO blog performs. If you really want your blog to be well search engine optimized, you’re going to want to incorporate widgets that allow you to categorize your content and populate fresh content on your SEO blog home pag. You’ll also want to be able to easily share content to improve your social media marketing. Overall your blogs widgets are vital to your blog’s success; without even knowing it your widgets could be hurting your blogs search engine optimization. For instance, it you have competing widgets that result in URL directory structures creating duplicate content that could hurt your indexing for those blog posts.

Ultimately, the widgets you use in your blog can have a massive impact on your SEO blog. Make sure you read reviews and do your research before implementing them.

4. SEO Blog Semantic Markup

By utilizing semantic markup in your SEO blog your posts will better target keywords. For instance, if you want your SEO blog to rank for “SEO blog” you are going to want to highlight the actual term SEO blog. Now you want to be careful about the way that you do this, as it can look spammy if it is not approached correctly.

5. Keyword Density Improves SEO

Keyword density can optimize your blog posts better for search. Make sure you are adding keywords on a frequent basis. While this is true, make sure not to go overboard, otherwise it will kill the readability of your SEO blog.

These are just a few things to keep in mind when optimizing your blog for search. Have questions about how to SEO a blog? Ask below!

While this is true, you still have to start your online marketing somewhere and not everyone is ready for the full package – a blog is a great place to being you efforts. This video on how blogging works with social media is really just an introductory posts on the subject. It has been created to relay the concept and to start generating ideas for the video viewer. Ultimately, SEO Inc. helps clients take this a step further by creating a larger distribution, great content, sound SEO methodology and viral marketing campaigns.

One thing I would like to comment on is that in this video I say you should blog about your new web page. The reason we often do this is to increase the amount of supporting content on that subject and to further internal linking. While that is the case, you can blog about much more, and if you only blog on your new web pages your blog will surely have a very poor following.

Watch the video on how blogging works with social media below. If you have any questions, please add a comment!

Notes on How Blogging Works with Social Media

Whenever you are engaged in online marketing it is advised to seek expert advice. The content you create and distribute online can have a large effect on your business. It is vital that the content be tailored to the correct audience and distributed properly. In addition, without a sound SEO strategy surrounding your content distribution there is a very good chance your efforts will not succeed to their full capabilities. That being said, good luck and thanks for stopping by!

Will Twitter be Held Back by Their Character Count?

One of the draws of Twitter is its appeal from a micro blogging perspective, i.e., in order to create a post you don’t have to write too much, just 140 characters. But could it be that this short term advantage could be a long term failure?

What other successful sites online have a word count this short? Not many…

While this is true, there are other character limited communication mediums on the market which are successful. Text Messaging only allows a limited amount of characters on many phones for instance. Additionally, some Instant Messaging software limits character count. But overall, it seems that the best software, platforms, social media sites, etc. are unlimited in their capabilities, not constrained by tight word counts.

So why not create an expandable box? Or an option to create an extended blogging area on Twitter? Any way to add more information to Twitter will bring value to the site in the long run. Also, along these same lines it seems that Twitter just plain has a lack of features. I know this is opening up another subject entirely but I’m going to do it anyway…

So I ask you this, is Twitters success limited by its character count? Is Twitter limited by its hesitance to add new features and increase its offerings? What are they waiting for? Or is this the best it will get? And if this is the best it’s ever going to get, is this enough for long term success?

Tells us your thoughts below.

What are Tags?

Tags are simply an extended category structure often used in WordPress. When you create a tag, you create a new category which stores content under that label.

Why use Tags?

Many people feel that tags are beneficial because they improve internal linking and create many new content streams. For instance, say I write a post on search engine optimization and then I add three tags to the post, those being, SEO, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

What will happen is that that piece of content will not only have the dedicated URL:

http://www.example.com/search-engine-optimization/

it will also fall under the following URLS:

http://www.example.com/tag/search-engine-optimization/

http://www.example.com/tag/search-engine-marketing

http://www.example.com/tag/seo/

So what does this do, well, it creates new databases of content. The issue is, however, that if there is only one post associate with 4 URLs then we have something the serps hate, duplicate content and canonical URLS.

Now keep in mind; this is only duplicate content until more posts are associated with the tag. If 5 different posts eventually fall under each tag, and they are all different posts, then the content should be unique enough to rank. Another important point is that when a Read More tag is added then the full article/blog is not displayed. So technically the entire piece of content is only displayed on one URL and the rest of the URLs/ tags only display text preceding the Read More link.

Why not To Use Tags

So we have long debated this around here and the general consensus is that tags are simply a short cut to improve internal linking. But the issue is that they improve internal linking to new categories. Also, after much testing it has become clear that many times the dedicated URL of the post will not rank, but instead the tagged post will rank because of this modified  internal linking. This is OK, however, the tagged post URL is not SEO friendly.

When it all comes down to it, what really are tags? They are simply categories. So if you already have categories on your blog or site then tags are simply creating duplicate categories or niche categories. So what’s the point if you already have a clean category structure?

The Final Word on Tags

If you have tags on your blog already it’s probably a good idea just to keep them around. Tags greatly expand the size of your site, improve internal linking and can be effective from a search engine optimization perspective if used the right way. However, if you are just starting a site and are thinking about using tags, it would seem that a standard a category structure many be a more clean and SEO friendly option. If you do not use tags you may need to do a little more work to improve cross linking and create dedicated aggregate pages, but ultimately, it will pay off.

Do you have insight into using tags in WordPress? Add a comment below?