How to blog your business
A blog is a Web log, an online journal. Blogs started out as online diaries, in which diarists shared their everyday lives with the world. From their beginnings as a weird Web fad in 1998, blogs have moved on, and are well on the way to becoming a standard business tool.
Why? Because in February 2003 Google.com bought Pyra Labs, the company which owns the Blogger weblogging tool. Blogger.com, one of the main sites providing blog software and hosting, boasted a million hosted web logs in early 2003. Google.com's interest in blogs indicates that blogs are mainstream. A blog help your business in many ways, depending on whether you create a private or a public blog. Blogs are so useful that you will want to create both.
Your business's private, internal blog
These days, no one works alone. Even if you are a solo business operator, you have colleagues --- partners, contractors, and suppliers with whom you communicate daily. A private blog makes working with a group easier, because you can streamline your interactions, saving time and energy.
A private blog can contain notes to yourself, or to colleagues. It's a place to store information and tips that might not warrant a special email message. You can post information like meeting notes, project tasks and summaries, and updated price lists. You can also post links to large files --- no need to email, fax, or mail them to and fro.
Your blog is more useful than email, because blog postings are dated, and easily searchable. You can post a message you want everyone to read, and the message stays on the blog. With email, you read and delete, or read and forget.
If you've worked on a project with someone in another state or on the other side of the world, you've blessed email, because it makes sharing information so easy. Using a blog to share information is even easier than using email.
=> Your business's public blog
A business blog is a marketing tool. A blog can add value to your Web site, or it can take the place of a Web site. Look on it as a combination "What's New" Web site page, and an online journal.
Because of a blog's freewheeling nature, it's friendly and relaxed.
If you do not have a site, your blog's a place to put your online CV, portfolio and client list. You can, and should, use your blog to express your personality and expertise.
If you have a Web site, your blog page builds loyalty, because if you provide interesting content, your visitors will return to your site. And because it is a Web page, your blog will appear on search engines, attracting new clients.
Google has been treating blogs differently from other Web pages for a couple of years. Whereas it takes a standard Web page/ site a month to be indexed by Google, blogs are indexed daily. This means that your blog is mega-cheap advertising. You can post something on your blog and have it indexed by Google within a day.
What Google Looks For in Potential Acquisitions
Today I attended the XMediaLab event in Wellington New Zealand (my hometown).
To Duterme, who is in the New Business Development group at Google in Mountain View, was here talking about innovation. Tom's job is to travel around the world looking for acquisitions for Google, so it was interesting to hear what things he looks for in startups.
Imagination is key, he advised -- see the Einstein quote at the end of this post. But also there are three things which startups should take advantage of: hammers (tools), wires (broadband), rucksacks (storage).
For the 'hammer' category, he was referring to tools. In the Internet age, things like games (e.g. flash), video (e.g. hd camcorders), music (e.g. garage band), web (e.g. blogs, vlogs). These tools are all cheap and the distribution is open and free (e.g. youtube, social networks, rss).
The next concept was 'wires'. That is, broadband. It is getting faster and Tom said that "speed is not the barrier" (or at least that is the trend). He noted that there will be a generation soon that "will never know the concept of waiting" - streaming will be instantaneous, speed will be a non-issue.
The third concept was 'rucksacks', by which he meant storage. In 1992 a Gigabyte cost $4000, in 2000 it cost $20 and in 2008 just $0.30. So, he said, storage will become a non-issue too.
He said that in 50 years time this era of the Web will be thought of as a renaissance, an age of great creativity. The Internet itself is still very early, in it's 'startup' age.
It's obvious then that Google looks for acquisitions that will take advantage of the above 3 things. But how do startups commercialize those ideas? Tom had this advice:
- Collaboration - get the right people on your team.
- Fulfilling user needs should be the focus - 70-80% of ideas that fail do so because of lack of user focus. Google places a lot of emphasis on this, said Tom.
- Iterate often ("Big will not beat small anymore. It will be fast beating slow"; quote from Rupert Murdoch).
He ended by saying that imagination is better than knowledge, referencing a quote by Einstein: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Top Google in Record Time in 2 Simple Steps!
By Michael Small
I got into search engine optimization back in 1998. It sure has changed a lot since then. Back in the day you could use invisible text, load keywords to the point of overflowing and fill META tags with anything even close to what you had on your page. And you could do well on Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista; all the biggies. Not anymore.
Today SEO is about a 75% / 25% split between links and content, with inbound links being the most important thing. Especially on Google. When all is said and done, you can get to the top of Google in just two simple steps. Seriously. I've done it hundreds of times and it's easier than you'd imagine.
Generate Leads - Close More Deals!
Step 1: Develop Great Content
Writing great SEO content is a snap if you follow this simple 5 step formula...
- Write naturally as if speaking with a friend. Record yourself actually speaking to a friend about the topic of your Web page and it will all come together automatically.
- Limit each page to 2 to 3 keywords or keyword phrases.
- Mention each keyword no more than 4 times per page and split the usage somewhat equally between paragraphs. Two mentions of your most important keyword in the first paragraph is the only real exception. And be sure you mention each toward the end of the page to show overall consistency and topic authenticity.
- Try to incorporate the first mention of each keyword into hyperlink anchor text. The link should lead to another page of your site. (Note: The keyword would then be the clickable text leading to your other page.)
- Have between 150 and 250 words of text per keyword. So if you have 3 keywords on one page, you will have about 600 words on that page, in total.
That's the quick and dirty SEO content writers course. And believe me, it works!
Step 2: Link Like the Pros (Part 1; Strategize)
Linking is a bit more involved. The main thing to remember is that you want as many high quality, topic relevant links as you can get. And you want them all using the same exact URL since Google sees URLs that begin with "http://www" differently than links that begin with just "www". In other words, even if you have 200 links to your page, if they are split between URL formats, you are not getting full credít for the links. SiteProNews: More Articles, Blog Posts & Interaction
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And forget all that stuff about links to the homepage being "a must." Sure, having inbound links go to your homepage is great but Google has smartened up. They figure your site overall is probably not that great if nobody bothers linking to your actual content pages. While it's true that Google ranks pages rather than sites, they do still base each of your page's worth on its supporting pages.
I won't bore you with a bunch of techno babble. In short, if you keep this in mind, you'll always be ahead of the game:
- Inbound links should be from pages containing relevant content of a similar nature.
- Links to your pages from outside pages with high Google PageRank (GPR) are most desirable. (Note: GPR is NOT the page's position on Google. It is a value, from 1 to 10, that Google assigns to all Webpages.)
- Links from (not to) a homepage are typically most valuable, unless they have a higher GPR page to link from. Focus on the GPR. If you use software like that mentioned below, it will do all this automatically. If you do it all manually, get the free Google Toolbar. GPR is shown for every page (that has any) on the Internet.
- Inbound links to your pages should feature your keyword as the anchor text triggering the hyperlink (keyword is the clickable part leading to your page.)
- Do NOT use generic text for your link's surrounding content. Make the sentence as relevant as possible.
- Use as many variations of your link's surrounding content as possible so the search engines don't view your inbound links as duplicate content.
Step 2: Link Like the Pros (Part 2; Do It)
As far as actually getting great links, avoid the automated script based reciprocal link services. A lot of these services link your pages to "gray barred" pages, which means your site can get kicked off Google as well. And to be honest, reciprocal links are not nearly as valuable to Google as they once were, especially the junk link pages most of these services create.
If you want the "set it and forget it" convenience of a linking service, but not the problems I just mentioned, you might want to try one like 3-WayLinks.com. Although I'm not a fan of any linking service, this one is the best I've come across so far. They set it up so your page links to another, which links to a third, which links to you. There is no direct reciprocal beeline back to your page and each link is counted as a one way inbound link by Google, which is the most valuable type of link.
Of course, natural linking is the way to go whenever possible. Google LOVES links that are part of page content (see the anchor text notes above.) And getting great links like this is easier than ever with the right software so don't sweat the time or effort. Both are minimal.
The product a lot of SEO pros use (myself included) is SEO Elite. It works great as both a full function link building tool and ranking checker for all major search engines. Even if you don't need the app, take advantage of the free videos on the site. They explain special linking considerations, like special reserved commands such as "allinanchor" and how to find Google "Authority sites." You can still benefit from the information, even without the tool.
Big Tip: When approaching other sites for links, try to get your link as anchor text in the actual page content, or a margin. Also do their link that way and explain the benefits and how much Google loves this type of natural content linking.
So there you have it; everything you need to get your pages on top of Google in record time. Best of luck. You'll do great!
About The Author
Mike Small is a ten year veteran SEO specialist with thousands of top search engine rankings to his credít. He is the author of seven SEO books and founder of SEOpartner.com .
