To kill a blog
Grow your business, SEO tips, social media |
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Blogs are one of the most prevalent information dissemination engines online, next only to the ubiquitous social networking sites and services. So ginormous is its hold on the Web that it has become a full-scale industry-from your multitude of casual personal journals to the barrage of corporate and brand-headlined blogs. This is why developing one for your brand is definitely a great SEO strategy for pulling in and keeping readers and search engines within your site.
Keeping a blog is fun, as it lets you bust out of your usual formal writing trails and show some personality while relating with your demographic. But like everything else in life, it takes time and work to get noticed and succeed in this field. To prevent your SEO and online marketing efforts from going down the drain, here are some SEO-related mistakes bloggers need to avoid.
It’s Not In Your Own Domain
In the realm of online reputation, it’s crucial that you own your brand name. So when mapping out a blogging plan, it’s best to host it under your own domain and leave all the free blogging platforms to the newbies who simply want a personal journal for their rants and raves. To be fair, using these services has benefits like quick blog setup, free hosting, free limited image storage and a heap of addons at the ready. On the other hand, signing up to these entails having little or no control over your blog’s design (most are exclusively template-based) and internal banner and/or pop-up advertising, among many others.
Having a .com (or whatever top-level domain name you prefer) of your own gives your brand an air of professionalism, some gravitas if you will, and illustrates to your target readers and potential clients that you’re investing on developing your online presence and you mean business. What’s more, without the .blogspots or the .livejournals of the world appended, it’ll be easier to remember and less strenuous to type for readers using virtual keyboards on touchscreen mobile phones.
You Put Off Blogging
Sure you have your army of writers ready and willing to weave words to deliver your brand’s message, and sure, your blog posts are brimming with useful information and entraining enough for them to keep coming back for more. But all those small doses of success would be wasted if you don’t regularly post updates.
Failing to post regularly is easily one of the best ways to kill a blog. And it’s especially painful when you’ve already managed to string in a few readers and a handful of blog comments into your fold.
Without new content, your readers would have no reason to visit your blog and there would be nothing for search engines to crawl. The solution, however, is plainly simple: keep a blogging schedule and stick to it. If you find it hard to find for a topic to write about, find time to list possible topics in advance and follow it up with hefty research. Should you encounter writer’s block or you find yourself stuck with some unavoidable circumstance that will keep you from writing, you can opt to get guest bloggers.
You Regurgitate Posts
To initially be within the crosshairs of your demographic, you have to stand out. Unfortunately, you have to compete for attention against a lot of noise from countless other blogs and sites online. One of the best ways to optimize your blog for your audience and ripen it for search engine primetime is by bringing something new to the table.
If you’re writing about a particular topic, there’s a distinct possibility that it’s already been covered by other blogs. Make sure that you’re not merely rehashing their opinions for you own writeup or you might as well just copy and paste their’s (a big no no) and kill both your blog and your online reputation while you’re at it. It’s okay to include someone else’s opinion in your post provided that you add your own take on the subject and you credit them. Using direct quotes is the best and easiest way to do this. Remember: the objective here is to get your unique voice heard and not settle down and get bundled in with the cattle chewing cud in the background.
You Blatantly Advertise
While blogging may also be marketing and promotions-driven, but don’t bombard readers with constant mentions of your products and services, obtrusive pop-up ads and a huge plethora of graphic/animated button ads competing for clicks. Instead, focus on delivering both quality and value in every post you publish with useful information your readers can actually benefit from.
The truth is that nobody wants to be sold to and readers simply avoid ads. Consider this: successful marketing campaigns that have gotten hugely popular like Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like and BlendTech’s Will it Blend? are highly entertaining for their targeted markets and they get their message across without blatantly pushing their products to the limelight.
Also, these pop-up ads usually degrade site usability which slows down your readers from getting to the meat of your blog, potentially reducing your chances of getting heard.
You’re Allergic to Social Media
Social media has become a huge industry and it has a generally close-knit relationship with SEO with its ability to push people into your site (or any link for that matter). Blogging in itself is an information broadcasting channel built on a social infrastructure. With these in mind, it’s crucial that your brand’s official site and blog are not the only carriers of your online identity.
Most forward-thinking brands are indeed leveraging on social media, setting up their own “headquarters” within sites like Facebook and Twitter which have considerably huge chunks out of the social mindshare. Your online reputation revolves around mentions and conversations taking place on the social platform and these can raise both brand/Web site awareness and inspire loyalty in your circles which, when handled properly, can spell success for both your brand and its campaigns.
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RSpears @ August 19, 2010
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