Search Engine Optimization

Blogging is an integral part of your SEO Campaign

By: Cade Lee

It seems that every time the topic of blogging comes up, customers ask us, “Why is a Blog important?” If I were to ask them if they wanted to originate business online, they would undoubtedly answer “Yes”. If I asked any prospective customer if they wanted to be on the first page of Google, I know I would get the same positive response. Everyone would like to attract attention online which is exactly why it makes it that much more difficult for anyone to draw a crowd online. There are several strategies of course to bring in the crowds; some of them are not the most ethical or considerate to say the least.

Many website owners and SEO professionals alike will try all sorts of gimmicks and tricks to obtain a page one ranking. I cannot say that we haven’t attempted everything to obtain a page one ranking as well. I think any good SEO company will need to experiment as much as possible (not with client projects), to understand the algorithms and search engine rankings better. So, with everyone vying for the 1^st page of Google or any one of the other major search engines, what can really differentiate you from the pack?

Over and over again, our blog has been one of the most important resources and reasons that we continue to be on the 1^st page of Google for relevant search terms to our site. We have had many comments on our blog, some positive and other’s negative. Overall it was comments we were looking for to begin with. We wanted to be noticed and we were able to do that most efficiently with our blog.

It was our intent to draw traffic to our site by providing quality, informative and useful content on our blog. I wished that I could say that we started publishing our blog and it brought in a flood of traffic to the site that was simply just not the case. Here were some of the best methods we used to attract attention with our blog:

1. Build useful applications or programs: I already know what you are thinking, “I am not a programmer and I would not know where to begin”. I understand this as we felt much the same way. The thing is that you have access to something in your arsenal, something that someone else would find useful. In our case it was a simple toolbar that we had created to help us keep track of SEO sites, resources and blogs. We distributed this toolbar to as many freeware or shareware sites that we could. We hosted the program on our site, so as we attracted visitors to the software, we were able to bring many new visitors to our site.
   
2. Providing Resources: By providing good and useful information online you are able to prove yourself as a trusted advisor. We have many clients that are in the “services” industry and over time we have had heard the same objection over and over again. “If I provide information for free to the public, what reason would they have to come and see me”. Granted there are a group of “do-it-yourselfers” that will take whatever information you can give them and run with it, these are usually not the customers that a “services” company would be looking for to begin with.
   
3. Create Unique and Useful Content: Following a most recent event or providing timely content can be very useful for readers of your blog. Whether you are utilizing creative content or image, even video, make certain that your blog stands out with originality. This is difficult to do. Often times, for us we will come up with an idea or theme for a new post or blog after we have read the thousands of e-mails that we get every day. Giving our opinion on a certain technique or software that we have been solicited for makes for interesting and useful content. At the end of the day you will just want to make certain that you spend time here making your presence different.
   
4. Covering an unpopular topic or controversial opinion: We had completed a blog article, “Do you need a web designer?”, you could imagine that many web developers and designers were very interested in what we had to say. The article title might have been a little misleading as we were not recommending that a company “not work” with a developer or designer, we were simply making the point that most designers do not take search engine optimization into consideration when creating a website. What could you do to make your title more alluring?
   
5. Utilize Anchor Text inside your blog. As you go through your content, make certain to link appropriate text to resources that would be useful for your audience. This is a good time to link to your site as well. So for example, throughout our blog you will notice that we utilize “Denver SEO“, Denver SEO Company“,”SEO Company” or “Denver Internet Marketing”. These obviously are some of the keywords that we would hope to appear on the 1^st page of Google for. You do not want to “keyword stuff” or spam throughout your blog, but using some keywords sparingly can definitely help and boost your rankings. Make certain that you use “alt text” when utilizing anchor text in your blogs as this can add some benefit to your SEO.
   

If your current SEO company is not doing this for you, then you might want to take a more active role in your search engine optimization. Your blog or blogs will have a lot to do with your campaign, so make certain that you invest the time necessary to differentiate your blog and make it useful.

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