ContentRobot

Blogs are great in attracting search engine indexing because they, by their very nature, are updated often with fresh, relevant content. Beyond implementing the excellent All in One SEO plugin, what else can you do to optimize your blog? Tag your posts.

What is a Tag?

Tagging allows you to add keywords to your posts. They can assist your readers to understand what the post is all about in a fine, diced up way. It also allows you to link your post to to other tag-driven sites, such as Delicious, Technorati, and Flickr.

As you can see, tags on your site can have two functions:

1. Tags can link to external sites (like Technorati) to display a collection of posts from around the web, all related to the tag. It’s similar to a “Yellow Pages” of information.
2. Tags can link to an internal page that lists all of the posts on your site related to that specific tag.

Tags can be linked in a bunch of places, such as:

• Within your text
• Within a list at the bottom of your post
• In your sidebar (in a Tag Cloud)
• On its own page

What About Categories?

Categories, which are often located in blog sidebars, are used illustrate topics. They should be used primarily for navigation and as a way to group content on your blog.

Tags vs Categories

• Categories can have long wordy names, but tags should be short (one, two, or at the most, three words).
• Categories generate a page of posts on your site, tags can generate a page of off-site posts on an off-site website.
• Categories don’t help search engines find information, but tags help search engines and tag directories catalog your site.
• Posts are usually in found in one to four categories, but a single post can list as many tags as you want.
• Categories help visitors find related information on your site, but tags help visitors find related information on your site (and on other sites).
• Categories provide broad grouping of posts describing your blog’s focus, but tags allow  micro-grouping of posts, which helps to narrow down the reader’s interest.
• Finally, an analogy might help. If you have a blog that discusses tools, you might create categories such as “bolts,” “nails,” and “screws.” And when you are writing about screws, you might tag the post with as “flathead,” “Philips,” “galvanized,” “half-inch,” etc. to describe features.

ContentRobot Recommends

Since WordPress 2.5.1, bloggers have had the ability to tag posts (and display them, too). We recommend that you don’t throw one technique for another, yet use tags and categories in conjunction with each other. Simply, use categories to help with your blog’s structure and use tags to provide meta-data for your content.

Thanks, Lorelle, for some great background information for this post.

Today, Jason Calcanis mused that Corporate Vlogs are the future of PR .. Why? He cites his experience with adding Mahalo Daily videos.

Since they started, the videos have gotten four million views. Of those four million, say two million people, have come in contact with the Mahalo brand. And don’t discount the archival value of the shows, where you can add another 2-4m views over their lifetime of the video.

He expects that the videos can pay for itself easily after one year. Consider if you were to pay for four million 15 second spots on the web, the cost would be $25 for each 1,000 views–or $100,000. Their initial $250,000 investment in the Mahalo Daily a year will bring in–if the growth continues–somewhere between 15-30M viewers a year.

Why did they add a video component? The Mahalo team wants to:

1. Entertain people
2. Inform people
3. Represent and build the brand
4. Be a creative outlet for the team

Finally, Calcanis projected that in another three years, every company will have not only a corporate blog but a corporate vlog. The New York Times, JetBlue, American Express, and Apple will communicate with their leading customers with regular videos.

Do you agree with Jason? Will you develop a video-based strategy?

Chris Garrett wrote in his story the ways How Could Bad Blogging Hurt Your Company today.

He made these five great points:

1. Saying Something Damaging
   Because internet news travels at light speed, provides its own evidence, and is hard to erase, it can be devastating to your reputation. Be sure to be aware of potential legalities, accuracy, and intellectual property issues when blogging.
2. Not Responding to an Issue
   By not posting, you can come off as being evasive, exactly the opposite of the transparency that a blog can help you to attain.
3. Over-Prioritizing the Blog
   Remember the blog is only part of your bag of tricks, not your only strategy. While the benefits are great, there are other ways to promote your company.
4. Using the Blog as Distraction From Work
   Blogging can take people away from their “real jobs” - don’t lose focus of your core activities because you are having too much fun.

5. Starting Then Abandoning Your Blog
   You worked hard to build your readership, you have to work just as hard to keep it. Go into it realizing you have to keep at it for the long term, or risk disappointing a lot of fans.

Also, he reminded us that:

• Blogs may not be “magic bullet” solution because blogging is not for everyone.
• Blogs are not the only way to market, build an audience, and attract search engine visibility.
• Blogs are not free, as there are several costs to consider from initial setup through staff maintenance.
• Blog writing can be time consuming, particularly for good, consistent, plentiful ideas and posts.

We agree with Chris’ excellent post, blogging isn’t something to tread into lightly. But take the time to determine why you want to blog and then plan to keep at it.

ContentRobot has been attending the virtual tradeshow eComXpo this week. Today, we sat in on a discussion about business blogging, led by Ted Demopoulos, an early blog pioneer.

Below we share some of the interesting comments he had on various topics surrounding blogging (noted some have been edited for clarity, grammar, and/or typos).

What is the future of business blogging?

In three years, this is where I see biz blogging: The distinction between blog and website will fade quite a bit. Also, the day of the “formal corporate” website are limited. Sure, websites will still exist, but they are becoming less formal in general. Most of my readers do not care what they are reading, they just want great content.

Read the Entire Post >

Business 2.0 recently asked 50 of the brightest business minds how they do what they do offered advice for the year ahead. ContentRobot offers some ideas that we especially liked and show how they nicely apply to business blogging.

Sergey Brin | Co-founder, Google | Succeed With Simplicity
One of the beautiful things about blogs is that their overall looks tend to be simple, some even downright sparse. While some web designers might miss all the flash and blinking, we find that the ability to focus on content makes a great design work even better.

Rachael Ray | Chef, Author, and Entrepreneur | Turn Your Passion Into an Empire
We can’t think of a better way to shout out your passion, expertise, and joy by sharing it on a blog. Get personal, use real life examples, give a bit of yourself and your blog comes to life.

Kevin Rose | Founder, Digg | Let the Users Run the Show
If you haven’t opened up your blog to comments, now is the time to do it. Brace for and be ready to respond to criticism, revel in someone’s success, and get everyone talking. When you realize you don’t have all the answers and can actually get help from your user community, you never know what can develop.

Craig Newmark | Founder and Chairman, Craigslist | Trust Your Customers and They’ll Love You in Return
By opening up and becoming transparent on your blog, you show your customers that you trust them and value their opinion and input. When that happens, loyalty emerges – and what can be better than that?

Fred Wilson | Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures | Build a Blog That Builds Your Business
Give people a reason to visit and stay. This means writing well, perhaps creating a snappy headlines, and keeping it real, informative and entertaining. As your blog’s readership grows, so will your business.

Mike Eskew | Chairman and CEO, UPS | Practice “Constructive Dissatisfaction”
Take the time to review your blog at various intervals to determine what is working and what is not working. Tweak where you can, overhaul where you must, and keep the rest.

Jeff Hicks | President and CEO, Crispin Porter & Bogusky | Make Your Brand Part of the Conversation
Start the conversation on your own blog and keep it going on other blogs. User-generated content makes it possible for consumers to own your brand. If you are lucky, your brand will get adopted, be blogged about, and even parodied online and off.

Who is Reading Your Blog?
The answer, unfortunately, is not everyone. However, you should think about exactly who you’d like to read your blog and how you might appeal to them.

To build a targeted readship that makes sense for your blog, answer any and all of these types of questions:

• How old are they? Are they male or female? Where do they live? (Do these demographics matter?)
• What level of expertise do they have? (Are they beginners, intermediates and/or experts?)
• Where do they currently get their information - websites, forums, blogs - about your topic? (Note: Look for resources that are both directly or indirectly related.)
• What do the readers do on those other sources? Do they interact or do they tend to be lurkers?)
• How do they communicate (Do they use techical jargon or slang or are they more informal?)
• What content do they respond to? (Are they straightshooters or do they enjoy being controversial or even snarky behavior?)
• What do they think is cool? (Would it be great design, geeky stuff, girly-girl, etc?)
• Can you add something that’s missing from these sources? (Remember to add your special expertise without copying or stealing content.)
• Besides your own blog, will you be willing to communicate on these other resources? (To build your own community, get out there yourself!)

Why Target Readers?

• You can write posts that they’ll likely respond to. (Nothing creates readership like great content.)
• You can develop a better relationships with some potential readers. (Think partnerships and about who can help you to promote your blog.)
• You’ll know who the players are in your niche. (And know how you can help to benefit their readers as well as your own.)

Get ready to build your readership!

Need more search engine food? Here are some other things you can do to get those search engine robots to index your blog.

Part 4 of 4: Miscellaneous Strategies

Domain Names
Choose your domain name wisely and try to include your keyword in it if possible. Have fun at register.com or your favorite domain registration site to research and find appropriate domains you can use.

Google says it looks at at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. That’s because many spam sites have short registrations. By registering your domain for a longer period, it can indicate that you’re building a site of substance and are in it for the long haul.

Ping Services
Ping services will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. At the very least insure that your blog is pointing to pingomatic, but there are many others, too.

Site Design
Search engines appreciate well laid out, well-coded and easily to navigate sites. Is your blog viewable on all major browsers? Do your pages validate with proper code?

This often means keeping it simple, so that search engine robots can index your site a lot faster and more accurately. That means go easy on the Flash or JavaScript (and no frames!).

Offsite Techniques
Try to send out a press release and write articles for a relevant publications just might indirectly help your SEO efforts.

What’s Next?
ContentRobot hopes this series takes the fear out of search engine optimization. Sorry to say, but an “if you build it, they will come” hope just doesn’t work online anymore. Good luck!

See the previous entries in this series: Part 1: Quality Content, Part 2: Linking Strategy, and /or Part 3: Submit Your Blog to Search Engines and Blog Directories.

Thanks to Problogger for inspiration on this series.

Submitting your blog to search engine and blog directories is a good way to attract visitors to your blog. Here we discuss where to list your blogs.

Part 3 of 4: Submit Your Blog to Search Engines and Blog Directories

Submit to Search Engines
Have the search engines found you yet? While a bit time consuming, you may want to take the time to sumbit to various search engines.

Each search engine has its submission procedure, but often you just submit the main URL that you want included in the index.

Try Google, Yahoo!, and/or dmoz.org

Submit to Blog Directories
Submit your key pages with appropriate keywords in the links to blog directories. There are a bunch of free directories out there.

Try Blogarama, Blogdigger, Blog Search Engine, and/or
Technorati

Bonus Tips
By submit your RSS to MyYahoo or Google’s personalized pages, it can help to get indexed on Yahoo! and Google.

Be wary of the services that offer to submit your sites for you. You often have to pay for the priviledge and your results may be better than theirs.

Bottom Line
In sum, if your onsite SEO techniques haven’t gotten you listed in the search engines and blog directories yet, take the time to submit them yourself.

Next up, we’ll wrap up with Part 4: Miscellaneous Methods. And don’t forget to see Part 1: Quality Content and/or Part 2: Linking Strategy.

Thanks to Problogger for inspiration on this series.

The way Search Engines index your blog is by sending “robot” crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Here we discuss how linking both inside and outside your blogs can help you with search engine optimization.

Part 2 of 4: Linking Strategy

Get Inbound Links
Every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site. The best inbound links? These are from higher ranked sites than your own, that are relevant to the topic you are writing about, and who link to you using relevant keywords. Find them and try to get them to link to you.

Use Outbound Links
Linking out to quality relevant sites that your readers might find useful can also help search engines index your site. While this can be an effective strategy, remember to weigh this against the fact that this may end up sending some traffic away from your blog.

Also keep in mind, too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Above all, don’t forget to link to only reputable and relevant sites.

Interlink Your Site
Make it easier for those robots to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. You can do this simply by providing some sort of a site map or listing your blog’s categories in your sidebar.

Further, make sure every page or post links back to your main page and/or any other important pages on your site with an intuitive navigation scheme. Note by highlighting them this way, they can become some of the most highly ranked pages simply because they are linked on every page of your blog.

Finally, consider linking to older posts (or use the ‘other relevant posts’ feature) to point readers to a topic you’ve previously written about before.

Buy Links
Some professional webmasters purchase links from other highly ranked and relevant sites. If you have the budget, you may want to consider this as part of your linking strategy.

Bottom Line
In sum, think about your links as part of your search engine optimization strategy.

Next up, we’ll have Part 3: Site Submission Techniques. And don’t forget to see Part 1: Quality Content.

Thanks to Problogger for inspiration on this series.

Because blogs naturally offer new content to search engines, you might think you can skip optimizing your blog. In our latest series, here are some ideas you can use to attract search engines to your blog.

Part 1 of 4: Start with Quality Content on a Specific Topic

Quality Content
The best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. This is still the cheapest and probably safest approach toward to build inbound links in a natural organic way because others want to link to quality content.

Keyword Rich Content
Consider: “How will I want people to find this post in Search Engines?” What will readers type into Google to find the information on the topic you’re writing? Use your answers to identify a few keywords (go for 3-5) for the article you hope to get highly-indexed. Then pepper those keywords throughout your post, as well as in titles, heading tags, image alt tags, and meta tags.

Try for One Topic per Post
The more tightly you focus the theme of a post, the better for Search Engine ranking. If you find you are writing a long post that covers a number of loosely-related or different topics, contemplate breaking it up into smaller, more-concentrated pieces. Note that research shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article.

Write Optimal Length Posts
Now that you don’t want to write posts that are too long; don’t make them too short either. Search Engines just might pass them over. A good rule of thumb: 250 words per post will give it some length, meatiness, and keyword density.

Bigger is Better
It’s true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites because Search Engines see your site as more comprehensive. Also, the more pages you have, the better your odds of being found in Search Engines. However don’t just to put up random junk content be or be spammy and duplicate your content everywhere either. Work at building a large site over time.

Update Regularly
The more you update your blog, the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging – make the most of it!

Next up? Part 2: Linking Strategy

Thanks to Problogger for inspiration on this series.