Blogging - A marketing tool?

[RieOrg]

How is blogging used as a marketing tool? I have been set the task as part of my post and I cant see how it will benefit SEO?

 

[RayB]

I cant see how it will benefit SEO?

• It is a good medium for adding quality on topic content to you site
• In SEO "Content is King"
• Blogs are handy for picking up "long tail search" traffic
• Quality blogs tend to attract inbound links organically

On the non-seo side - a good way to communicate and interact with your customers

 

[Sally@CC]

Does your blog have to be an integrated part of your site to get this benefit? If so is there a way of integrating your WP blog into your site?

(the idiots guide please )

 

[RieOrg]

How about an individual blog that is not within your site. Say one on Blogger.com for instance. Can you use this for online marketing, and if so how?

Again an idiots guide please!!

 

[RayB]

To get the SEO benefit of a business blog, always put it on your domain - never an external one

So it looks like this:

www. mydomain.com/blog/

How?

Create a new folder in your root called "blog" and bung wordpress in it,

or get your designer to do it for you (which is what I do)

 

[Sally@CC]

Oh thanks Ray, mine already is in there but more by accident than design

 

[Roytheartist]

Well. I am not an expert but I have a free site that teaches people Blender 3d (a free animation program) its a hobby thing . http://www.learnblender3d.com it has taught me a little of how effective blogging is. On the site checkout the site meter button (anybody can access it) traffic is only low as this is a 'niche' market. Referrals part shows where the traffic comes from Eg google 'learn blender 3d' my modest site comes 2nd out of over a million! This is just because every blog is trawled, every comment on a blog is trawled, every comment on a forum that links back gets trawled... If you search google video for blender 3d 3 of my videos (which have links to the site) are on the first page of results. This has happened almost by accident, purely as a result of blogging. Of course it should also work for a commercial site! I am working on something else at the mo...

 

[Herg]

Blogging is THE marketing tool!! Well obviously there are others but it is a very efrective one at the moment. Blogging is great because you can talk about your company, direct people to certain parts of your website with hyperlinks. You can generate conversations and make your brand very interactive. Its great for generating word of mouth. Have e a really good blog and people will start pricking up their ears and listening to you! Also I have heard that Yell are setting up a good appliaction, they will compile a report of all the blogging that goes on around the internet on your company so you know exactly what people are saying about you, what your doing right and what you are doing wrong! Think that will probably be out next year some time.

 

[DanMartin]

We've just published this article on BusinessZone which you may find useful.

 

[Sally@CC]

Confusion :|

Ray said to put your blog on the same domain as your site (if I understood correctly) but Dan's article says to put it on a different server.

Some clarification please.

 

[RieOrg]

Confusion :|

Ray said to put your blog on the same domain as your site (if I understood correctly) but Dan's article says to put it on a different server.

Some clarification please.

Yes Im confused too!

 

[RayB]

Ray said to put your blog on the same domain as your site (if I understood correctly) but Dan's article says to put it on a different server

Hosting your blog on a different domain (the article says server, but means to say domain) is a Very Bad Idea if you are using it to mostly link back to and promote your main site.

It looks, and is, spammy - and if overdone could get you penalised.

The best way to improve the overall SEO and customer experience is to put your business blog on your own domain - really it is

 

[MacAddict]

Hosting your blog on a different domain (the article says server, but means to say domain) is a Very Bad Idea if you are using it to mostly link back to and promote your main site.

It looks, and is, spammy - and if overdone could get you penalised.

The best way to improve the overall SEO and customer experience is to put your business blog on your own domain - really it is

Thats my understanding too

 

[Gillie]

I don't agree with you Ray! Blogs are picked up by the search engines quicker than sites and you can use them to drive traffic to a new site, which we all know takes a while to get in the listings.

I would say have a blog such as wordpress on your site, and have another blog on one of the main blogging platforms. But most importantly, have good content, and links back to articles on your site. I have a personal blog, a company blog and also several others all of which drive constant traffic to my site, and once there, I tend to get sign ups to my list every day.

Also its important to get yourself links to the more regular and better known blogs in your field by entering good comments on sites that are relevant to your industry. By doing this you are also driving traffic to your site.

 

[Sally@CC]

Hi Gill

Thanks for your input. Wouldn't the 2 blogs have to have completely different content? I run out of hours in the day as it is, let alone so many different ideas for running 2 blogs on the same subject.

Sally

 

[ken_uk]

Doing things like hosting sites on a different domain, or even a different server (to get a different IP address, not that you even need to use a differerent server usually to do that) is not a good move.

Like Ray said, it looks spammy, and can get you into trouble if overdone.

It also looks cheap, and can give the impression that the company does is only prepared to either use a free blog host, or does not know how to incorporate their own blog on their main site. Plus its splitting your branding over two domains, as you would have to make it clear that the blog is owned by the company, unless you want to mislead both the users as well as the search engines....

Besides, people will quite probably end up linking to your blog (if it takes off and becomes popular), and its best to get those links back to your blog on your main domain, not someone elses......

 

[Sally@CC]

Excellent thanks Ken, that's 2 votes to one so my blog is staying put.

 

[RayB]

I would say have a blog such as wordpress on your site, and have another blog on one of the main blogging platforms. But most importantly, have good content, and links back to articles on your site. I have a personal blog, a company blog and also several others all of which drive constant traffic to my site, and once there, I tend to get sign ups to my list every day.

Gillie,

You are obviously a serial blogger Most will only want one business blog - and my advice is aimed at those - as it was the subject of the thread.

But if you are running multiple blogs, you run the risk of creating a link farm if the majority of the links are pointing out to your own sites, without a very good balance of linking out to other relevant sites on the topic that are not your own sites (but I am sure you know this, just pointing it out for the benefit of the thread)

In fact, Google are slapping down such practices big time at this very moment - many blogs are having their PR set to zero and being de-indexed as we speak

Frankly - it is a blood bath for those who have been found out............

 

[Simon-M]

Google is responsible for increasing the amount of spam on the net. Lets face it. They preach that blogging is the new Gray as far as links go. The spammers drive on mass to blogging. Goggle preaches that social bookmarking is the new gray as far as links are concerned. Bosh..the spammers ruin social bookmarking.

Google is a pain in the but and is not a friend of the internet. They want to own it not be part of it or be a good citizen of it.

What will google ruin next by driving the spammers to it?

Sorry..little skewed of the topic but seeing as we are mentioning what google likes and does not like I thought it was relevant.

 

[RayB]

If you play by the rules and make a great site - Google delivers tons of free traffic as a reward. Yes free. And did I mention - it's FREE

Sorry to be harsh - but it sickens me to the core when I read a "lets bash Google" post like this

PS - which Google official announcement "preached" anything that you suggest??

Show me the link

Google is responsible for increasing the amount of spam on the net. Lets face it. They preach that blogging is the new Gray as far as links go. The spammers drive on mass to blogging. Goggle preaches that social bookmarking is the new gray as far as links are concerned. Bosh..the spammers ruin social bookmarking.

Google is a pain in the but and is not a friend of the internet. They want to own it not be part of it or be a good citizen of it.

What will google ruin next by driving the spammers to it?

Sorry..little skewed of the topic but seeing as we are mentioning what google likes and does not like I thought it was relevant.

 

[Gillie]

Gillie,

You are obviously a serial blogger Most will only want one business blog - and my advice is aimed at those - as it was the subject of the thread.

But if you are running multiple blogs, you run the risk of creating a link farm if the majority of the links are pointing out to your own sites, without a very good balance of linking out to other relevant sites on the topic that are not your own sites (but I am sure you know this, just pointing it out for the benefit of the thread)

In fact, Google are slapping down such practices big time at this very moment - many blogs are having their PR set to zero and being de-indexed as we speak

Frankly - it is a blood bath for those who have been found out............

My blogs dont contain the same content, and the ones on the blog platforms contain a mixture of links to other blogs who are well known, as well as a couple to my own site.

The idea is if you use blogs, to gain reputation on them by good interesting content, and also commenting on other well known blogs thus giving you credence as well.

But this is then getting into using blogs and social platforms with the diggs, stumble, reddit and delicious etc as well as facebook and the others being used to drive traffic to you, all of which are exceptionally useful but totally moving away from the original subject of blogs, so I will save that for another day and go find some excellent links from the likes of Ed Dale etc who explain it so much better than me.

 

[An Oasis]

Hosting your blog on a different domain (the article says server, but means to say domain) is a Very Bad Idea if you are using it to mostly link back to and promote your main site.

It looks, and is, spammy - and if overdone could get you penalised.

The best way to improve the overall SEO and customer experience is to put your business blog on your own domain - really it is

Umm interesting observation that. We had a spare domain name so put our blog on that.

So far the results...

Early days

Good decision SERP's ranked the main site + the blog for various phrases knocking down the competition, excellent result.

Mid term

The blog has tailed off, still ranks for some things... mainly pages...

Long term

Who knows only time will tell. However, I would say that for a small company RayB's suggestion is probably the way forward.

 

[matt smith]

Hi

I'm learning so much. Thanks for all the contributions in this thread. I want to set up a blog not only to help optimisation but also as I have a few things to say. I am currently using Dreamweaver for my website - can I simply download wordpress and open a new page for my blog? If it is that simple that sounds great, but I have a feeling it isn't! Any advice would be great.

Thanks

Matt Smith
www.ethicalpartybags.com

 

[directmarketingadvice]

How is blogging used as a marketing tool? I have been set the task as part of my post and I cant see how it will benefit SEO?

Your company rents out office space?

If so, I don't understand why they're diverting resources towards blogging.

Are your customers likely to find this blog?

Or, if they find other pages on your site, is the blog content going to increase your enquiry rate?

While I can't give a definite answer to those questions, I'm very sceptical about the whole thing.

And I'd guess that, whatever money they're paying for someone to sit and write a blog could probably be better applied to hiring a telemarketer or, if you've got a market online, paying for PPC ads.

Just a thought,

Steve

 

[Sally@CC]

Hi Matt

I did it myself and I am officially a dumbass when it comes to computers. Someone technical will be along to give you the technical version but here is what I did.

Set up a Wordpress account
Download & unzip
Use ftp to upload to host for my domain

Then I went one further (when I was feeling brave and a friend was on standby via email)

downloaded a theme I liked
unzipped
changed header
uploaded theme file to domain

Easy peezy lemon squeezy. It really is that simple. Of course then you press things and everything goes blank or wonky but that is why you have a friend on standby

If I can do it, a 4 year old can

Sally

 

[kellytoys]

hi

well I thought I better blog!!


so tonight my very first blog!


user name plus blogspot.com if anybody would like to view
be kind please

 

[RieOrg]

Your company rents out office space?

If so, I don't understand why they're diverting resources towards blogging.

Im a bit confused by it too! I wont give them that information above though as I may be out of a job!!! My guess is that they want to add links from the blog to our site but im a little puzzled how that could happen without repeating myself and it becoming boring to read!!