If you are going to use a blog in your search engine marketing campaign, you need to make sure it will draw people to it. Blogs are powerful marketing tools when used correctly, and you can get a lot out of a dynamic page. If you want a blog that will be powerful and keep the readers coming back for more, be sure to implement the five tips for starting a blog.

Tip 1: Get to the Point

Lots of people that visit blogs only have a few minutes to spend surfing the internet. If they have to read a book to get to the main point, they will drop off and find someone that can say the same thing in a more concise manner. You have to find a way to get the point across as quickly as possible so your search engine marketing campaign will take off.

Tip 2: Update Often

You need to commit yourself to posting on your blog every day. When a blog does not get updated often, people lost interest. Find something relevant to say and then update often. Since you don’t need long posts, it is not difficult to do daily updates.

Tip 3: Use Pictures and Videos

Take a look at the blogs that really do well. They use pictures, videos and text. Don’t be afraid to do the same. YouTube is a great place to get videos to use on your blog, and you can really go far with a great video or picture. This will make your page more visually appealing, and it will also make it more exciting. The internet is supposed to be a fun place, and you want your blog to be fun and interesting as well.

Tip 4: Cite Your Sources

Remember, the same copyright rules apply online as offline. If you use a source, cite it. You want to give credit where credit is due. No one likes a blog thief, and your search engine marketing campaign will go up in smoke if someone finds out you are borrowing information without citing your sources.

Tip 5: Proofread

This should go without saying, but sadly, it does not. Make sure you proofread your blogs. Errors will turn readers away. Look as professional as possible.

Your search engine marketing campaign can take off with a well run blog. Incorporate these tips into your blog and you can do very well. cultivate your blog and watch as your readership grows.

5 Tips for Starting a Blog is a post from: SEO Blog | SEO Marketing World

As a blogger, you have to use the best search engine marketing practices. With the right SEO services, your blog can stand out from the crowd.

In order to get the most out of your blogging campaign, you need to understand the importance of:

Keywords

Did you know that you really only need one key phrase per blog post? If you put any more than the one, your blog can lose direction. Use Adwords Keyword tool or Wordtracker to get free help with your keyword selection. Pick a solid keyword that will help your search engine optimization campaign.

You also need to make sure you place the key phrase in the right place. You want to have the phrase at the beginning of your post. Also, make sure you put the phrase one time in every paragraph. You can even put the keywords in subheadings throughout the post.

However, you need to make sure it sounds natural. If it sounds spammy, no one is going to take you seriously.

Linking

Be sure to link the keyword to your website. You don’t want to do this with every single keyword but you do want to do it with the first one. It’s great advertisement. You can link it to a relevant page and gain traction with your search engine marketing campaign.

Social Media

You also want to make sure that your search engine optimization plan uses the social media. You want to submit to Digg so you can help your posts go viral. That way, people will be able to look on Digg and spread the word about your blog.

Don’t stop with Digg. You actually need to take the posts you have submitted to Digg and turn around and submit them to Google via the Add URL feature. This will amp up the amount of traffic your post gets.

Press Releases

While this is not part of your blog post, it goes hand in hand with what you are doing with your blog. You want to also create a press release that will compliment your blog. Your press release should have the same keyword you chose for your blog. Circulate the PR and watch as people start coming to your blog. This is one of the best SEO services you will find as it can generate a great deal of excitement.

Be sure to use the proper search engine optimization practices in your blog campaign. Blogging can be a very powerful way to gain traffic and business and if you do it correctly, you will be able to reap the benefits.

SEO for Bloggers is a post from: SEO Blog | SEO Marketing World

The other day I was looking at some tracking data for the movers and shakers in the blogosphere over at Blogscope when I came across a rapidly rising subdomain I’d never heard of – blog.indecisionforever.com. Curious as to what this was, and why so many people would be linking to it in their blogs, I started to dig deeper into the data. What I ended up finding was a lesson in link campaigns and how even the big companies can be guilty of link baiting.

First, I found out that the links were all coming from people who had seen a recent episode of the Daily Show with John Stewart where he was interviewing Jim Cramer. They all seem to be coming from people who posted in their blogs and such video clips of the interview itself. Yet the funny part was when I actually went to the blogs these links were supposedly coming from I couldn’t find them! I looked at several of the top blogs (quality blogs too, no link spam or junk blogs) that supposedly had this link and it was the same thing – zilch, nada, nothing!

Determined to find out what was going on I went back to one of the top ranked pages and started going over every line, every ad and every picture until I found it – right below the linked video in dark grey text on a light grey background!

It turned out it was some old-fashioned link campaigning going on, but with a twist. It wasn’t the blog owners doing it – it was the hosted video from Comedy Central! Sneaky move on their part (that actually worked!) to get rankings and views on the search term of “Jim Cramer” through anchor text and links.

Blogosphere Hidden Link Campaigns is a post from: SEO Blog | SEO Marketing World

There was a time when most communications between a business and its customers was one-way. The business sent out the message and the customer could either accept or reject it. Think of television advertising and adverts in the newspaper as examples of this. Today, however, we are entering what marketing professionals are calling the 3rd generation of marketing – the social media sphere. In this environment communication is bi-directional and may be kicked off as much by the customer as the business itself. Therefore it’s important to keep your ear to the wall to find out what your customers are saying about you and to actively participate in the discussions with them. Luckily, there are a number of tools that can help you do this at low cost and with relative ease.

The first tool you should have under your belt is Google Alerts which tracks search results, Google Groups, Google News, Google Video and the blogosphere. This extremely easy to use tool will send you an e-mail summary every time your search term appears – the e-mail can be sent as it happens (in Google time), once a day or once a week. At the very least I recommend that every company be searching for mentions of the company name to keep track of what’s being said about them and by whom.

Next we’re going to talk about Twitter and tweets – no, this isn’t a new species of birds, but rather it’s the hottest tool out there for micro-blogging. Twitter lets people send short (140 character or less ) messages out from their computer, cell phone or other mobile device. Twitter is by far one of the products marketers far and wise have their eye on now for expanding their media presence. Searching is not as automated as Google but a new interface launched recently at search.twitter.com lets you search for topics and get updates as they happen. There are also a number of third party apps that tie into Twitter to provide this functionality as well – my favorite happens to be TwitterDeck.

What about the video and photos sites such as YouTube and Flickr? You may think you don’t need to monitor these, but remember the world is much more than static text nowadays. Many people are posting videos of their praise (or anger) of companies on Youtube, as well as participating in viral marketing. Some people even make their own commercials for their favorite companies and post them for all to see. Not only can you find people talking about your company through photo or video, but you can also find a wide array of video that might spark ideas within your company as well.

We talked already about searching blogs through Google Alerts, but I’d also like to encourage you to use Google Reader to keep track of bloggers that you enjoy and other topics of interest. Anything with an RSS feed can be put into Google Reader and organized for you. One of the best features of Google Reader is its ability to keep track of statistics of who is reading what and how many subscribers a blog has – valuable marketing insight for free!

Finally, I’d like to talk about the social networking sites – Facebook, Myspace and the like. It’s important to get your business online and setup on these sites to interact with your customers and to find out what people are thinking about your company. Many companies from Sears to Kellogs have Facebook pages that let their customers interact with them and also provides a rich media channel for you to push material out to them and get feedback. Its part of that third generation of marketing we were talking about above!

So now that you know that your customers are talking about you and where, it’s time to get busy monitoring and participating in the conversation – you might be surprised at what you learn just by listening!

Keeping Tabs on Your Customers is a post from: SEO Blog | SEO Marketing World

It’s the question on everyone’s mind: how can I attract advertisers and other media buys to my blog in order to make money off it? The answer, as it turns out, is not exactly as simple as many would hope.

First, let’s make one thing clear. Blogs in the business of doing nothing but making money will fail. If you have lousy content then nobody is going to visit your blog and hence no matter how many ads you have you aren’t going to make a dime. As with almost everything to do with the Internet, content is king.

Advertisers are looking for places to spend their money where they will not only get views, but also will find a receptive audience. A footwear retailer is probably not going to find a lot of interested buyers on a blog that talks about politics. You not only have to make sure you have the quality content to attract readers in the first place, but you also have to identify the market segment that your blog falls into – good SEO practices for blogs and websites alike.

As more print journalism dies off (newspapers are falling off the radar at an alarming rate right now) many of the journalists and media outlets that owned those newspapers are turning to the web. We are entering a new era of competition for eyes and dollars. How are you going to attract advertisers to your blog with a growing field of competition that may have far more resources than you have available to you to upkeep your site?

Start out by doing a tradition SEO evaluation of your blog. How is your blog ranking on the search engines for the topic you are writing about? What types of web analytics are you gathering from your visitors? Are you using effective linking techniques both internally and externally? What type of metrics do you have for people who read your blog through alternative means, such as RSS feeds?

Now that you have your answers (or at least know what questions to ask) look at how you can use the various types of advertising to fit in with your blog. There are two types in general: affiliate and display. Most successful blogs evolve to use a combination of the two. For example, a blog that focuses on performance automobiles might have display ads from aftermarket suppliers, but also have an affiliate program setup with automobile financers.

If you write your blog as a hobby you need to ask yourself are you willing to devote the time and energy into trying to monetize it? Some bloggers find that when they are looking at dollars instead of their passion that their writing tends to go downhill. You no longer are writing about what you feel passionate about, but also are writing to attract eyes and rank. It’s a delicate balance that can be frustrating at times.

In the end remember that the blogosphere is filled with millions of people writing about millions of subjects. There is no doubt that marketing dollars are moving online at a tremendous pace nowadays and those that are willing to dedicate the resources and effort may find that they can cash in on something they love to do.

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Blogging for Dollars: Making Your Blog Advertiser Friendly is a post from: SEO Blog | SEO Marketing World