I preach blogging to my clients, and blogging a lot… three to five times a week to make it really effective .. and then here I’ve not posted on my blog for ages. This is because I write content, and essentially I “spend” all my talent on other people’s websites and blogs and then when it’s time to do my own I’m just SPENT.  My brain is mush, and I just can’t think of anything good to say that I didn’t already say for someone else on their blog or website.

But regardless, don’t do what I do, do what I say to do.   You know like your parents told you!  If you want more traffic to your website, and more traffic in your store, and more clicks, you have to have dynamic, relevant content. There is a theory that if you have about 300 to 350 pages of content on your site then you can slow down a bit,and move to once a week blogs, but it’s likely you don’t have 300 pages yet, so work on getting there. Blog!!!!!

photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker

I bet you’ve not been told that before have you? Well maybe you have, but if you haven’t someone should tell you. It’s one thing to include keywords in your blog posts, but it’s another to write posts that are engaging, entertaining, informative and actually encourage some sort of action on the part of the reader. I mean, you blog for more reasons than your love of writing. Even writers, write for more than their love of writing! They write, or blog, because they are hoping to make a sale.

I hope, when you read this, that you’ll hire me for some of my services either view this website, or via one of my other sites. I also hope that even if you don’t hire me, that you take my advice and start blogging to promote your local business website and ultimately your local business. Why? Well, it works! If you want to see measurable results and more visitors to your website there is a very simple thing that you can do.

BLOG

BLOG

BLOG

Seriously, blog about your business, blog about the products you sell, blog about the benefits these products provide, and blog some more. If you can’t find the time to blog, then hire someone to do it for you. The point is, there is no real point in having a website to promote your business unless you’re going to blog and promote your website.

Make a commitment to post a blog of at least 300 words, twice a week for the next 3 months, check your stats today, and then check them again in three months. I guarantee that you’ll see a rise in traffic. Even if the rest of your search engine optimization (SEO) is awful, you’ll still get visitors to your website via blogging and as long as you’re considering your audience when you blog, you’ll get targeted visitors that want to see what you have to offer.

Post down below a link to your most recent blog post and tell me why you blogged about that particular topic and how it relates to your business.

Just like designing a logo, brochures, and websites, designing a blog requires one to look at several factors regarding design elements. Before you even start building your blog look at the following factors and make some choices so that you will know what you’re looking for. Over all, your blog should match your website and in fact, your blog should be on your website. Additionally, if you already have marketing collateral make sure that your blog matches what you already have. It is important to carry your brand through to all your marketing channels.

Color

The color of your blog matters tremendously. Color conveys emotions and an over all feeling when someone looks at your blog. If the colors do not match, or worse, burn the retinas — when a visitor looks at your blog, they will not stick around even if you manage to attract them. Choose your colors wisely. Take a look at a color chart of some kind to give you ideas of what goes together. Consider making sure it matches with your existing logo.

Fonts

On the web fonts look differently. People typically read websites and blogs on a browser and now more than ever on a mobile device. Make sure your fonts work on the web. Good fonts for web viewing are: Verdana, Helvetica, Georgia and the often used Times New Roman.  Make sure that you can comfortably read your font colors combined with your chosen background. People will leave quickly if your blog is not easily readable. Check out this funny website. (Put on your sunglasses)

Content

Your content is the most important aspect of your blog. Even if you fail on some of the other aspects, if your blog has information that people want and need they might throw on their sunglasses and read it anyway. So make sure that your content (your copy and your words) is targeted toward your ideal client or ideal visitor. Make sure that you are offering useful information that people really want to read.

Layout

The ideal layout changes from year to year so make sure that your layout is an updated, contemporary layout. For the most part the old fashioned “static” looking website is out of date and looks that way too. Take a look around at all the different types of layouts that are popular today and try to pick something that is easy to navigate and use as well as visually pleasing. Chose from some contemporary WordPress templates and you’ll be fine on this point.

1. AddtoAny – This helps visitors to your blog share your posts with others on their social networks with just a few clicks.
2. Cross-Linker — This plugin allows you to automatically hyperlink to certain words with specific URLS, this is great if you often talk about the same word or phrase that you wish to link to the same place.
3. Simple Twitter Status Updates – This plugin allows you to update all of your new posts to your Twitter followers. When you post a new post, it automatically posts a status update!
4. SEO Friendly Images — This plugin makes it easier to optimize all the images that you put in your blog with proper tags.
5. WP-DB-Backup – This plugin is backs up your WordPress database and emails it to you. This is really wonderful and if you keep an email in the cloud, you won’t need to pay for storage off site.
6. Aweber — With Aweber which is not a plug in, you can automate the process of emailing your newsletter subscribers your most recent posts
7. RSS — This is another way to automate the process of getting your content in front of people. Make sure you have an active RSS feed.
8. Catch all blog — If you have several blogs, you can set up one more with RSS feeds that feeds in all your blog posts from all your other blogs, then you can use the WordPress app on LinkedIn to automatically feed that “catch all” blog to LinkedIn.
9. PING.FM — This sends a notice to over 30 social network sites that you’ve updated your blog. You can get a plugin for that!
10. Facebook — There are several plugins that you can use to automate your blogs and integrate the with Facebook.

If you are going to have a blog that gets and keeps readers then you have to update it regularly. In addition to updating it regularly the content must be what your target market wants to read. If your target market wants to read about widgets but you write about winks you’ll lose your market. So to keep readers engaged:

• Keep posts targeted
• Post regularly

These two actions alone will make all the difference in your readership. It also helps if you are consistent on the days in which you post new material, or install a plugin that automates the process of informing readers of new content. But, if readers like what you are talking about, and then know what day you will post material they will come to your blog at those times, much like people read the Sunday paper. They come to count on it for the information they need. People like consistency.

Another reason regularly updated content is important is because search engines will index you more often if you keep the content updated with new unique content for the search engines to discover.  Use content that has “keywords” which are words that users and potential readers will look for on Google Search. Don’t try to be clever with the terms, instead use common terms that would be used to find your content in your titles, and within the content.

You can use Google’s free Webmaster Tools to help you with finding appropriate keywords for your target market. You can also experiment with just writing material you believe your target market would like to read. You want your posts to be as natural as possible without forcing the issues of keywords but using keywords that people are looking for will increase your readership exponentially as will updating your content on a regular basis.

photo credit: mrdarkroom