Blog Marketing Tips

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 by Mistlee

Can't see any images? - !




Click to Play

WebProNews Bloopers
Unfortunately we, here at WebProNews, aren’t perfect. Video production takes time, and as you can see from the video, a lot of re-takes and patience. We have fun...

Recent Articles

SEO Titles For High Rankings
As we all spend more time in social media, such as Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon or Sphinn, the ability to write catchy headlines becomes as important as it ever was. If someone skimming through a list of...

Blogging Tips And Strategy
The Online Marketing Blog recently ran a poll asking readers which SEO tactic they plan on using most in 2008 and the winner with 25% of the vote was Blogging. This doesn't surprise me because blogging is an...

19 Steps For A 20 Minute Usability Review
Performing a complete website review is rarely easy. I've found that you can start a site analysis intending to spend just a few minutes looking over it only to find that it quickly spirals into a multi-hour marathon of research. Complete website reviews can be time consuming...

Increasing Your Site's Popularity Isn't Easy, But...
For whatever reason, I seem to be running into people lately who are unhappy with their Internet marketing results. Increasing line graphThey've been trying a lot of things, but they are getting tired. They tell me that...

Sitemaps Or No Sitemaps
I've been using Google's sitemaps tool for a few months now and built XML sitemaps for the websites I've launched (or relaunched) since summer. Today my SEO partner sent me an email and I got an education about why it might not be a good idea to do that...

Looking To HTML 5
A List Apart has a nice article on a Preview of HTML 5 that should be a good informative read for anybody who is in the web business. The article takes us inside on how HTML 5 will liberate us from the pseudo...

SES Chicago: Usability & SEO
At the SES session Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price of One the speakers focused on building both user friendly sites and search engine friendly sites sites. SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to...


04.02.08

Blog Marketing Tips

By Andy Beal

How many times have you visited one of the many "professional" blog advice sites, and left with little more advice than the ubiquitous (and unhelpful) "build great content?"

If building a great blog was as simple as writing quality posts, we'd all be tied for number one on the Technorati Top 100 blog list. I'm not about to start my own ProBloggingPilgrim.com web site, but I did want to start sharing tips that I've personally found valuable when building the traffic to Marketing Pilgrim.

It's possible that these tips have been shared before-perhaps they were lost among all of the "great content" on the web-but I'm pretty sure these will be fresh ideas. I initially thought I could fit half a dozen tips in a single blog post, but as I started writing, I realized that each tip easily fills a single post. So instead, I'll start with Tip #1 and see what you think. Leave a comment if you'd like to see more tips in the future.

Tip 1: Your Blog Post Titles Have Two Audiences

You've no doubt read that you need to make your blog post titles "search engine friendly," but doing so often kills the creativity and initial appeal of your writing. Instead of trying to appeal to your loyal readers and Google at the outset, approach the two difference audiences in separate stages.

Stage One - Your initial blog readers

Your initial audience is likely going to be those that have already subscribed to your blog's RSS feed-or happen to check your blog every day. They want to be thrilled, excited, and given a reason to not only read your post, but also share and link to it.

When you first publish your blog post, follow this advice:

Make your post title interesting - it could be that you ask a question, share a scoop, or offer a cryptic title that peeks your reader's curiosity. I'll often use a blog title that sounds like a scandal/scoop, but is really just a question. For example, "Microsoft Buying Yahoo?" I ran that headline last year-before Microsoft made its bid. It generated a lot of traffic then and even more so now.

Call Today For a Free Domain Consult

Keep it short and sweet - if you make your initial post title too long, you run the risk that you'll either confuse a reader or give them so much information, tthere's no need to read the post itself. Back to my example, "Microsoft Buying Yahoo?" leaves a lot of unanswered questions that just beg the reader to click through to view the entire post. If I had used "Rumors that Microsoft May Buy Yahoo, but No Confirmation Yet," how many of you would have clicked through to read the entire post? Not many.

Appeal to keyword scanners - When you read posts in your RSS reader, do you sometimes scan the titles looking for keywords that you know will interest you? Apple, Google, Wii, and Blue-Ray are all examples of keywords that might appeal to your specific audience. This is not the same as keywords for SEO-that comes later-at this stage, you're simply looking to include words that will make your post stand out to your readers. Use popular keywords in your post titles and your post will have a greater chance of standing out among all of the other posts in your reader's RSS aggregator.

In stage one, your goal is to appeal to the initial readers that will likely view the post on the day that you publish it. But what happens after your post is relegated to the archives? It's unlikely someone will spend hours just wondering through your archived posts. Instead, they'll likely discover your "great content" via one of the search engines. OK, only one search engine: Google.

Continue reading this article.


About the Author:
Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world's most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.
WebSiteNotes is brought to you by:

WebProNews.com Jayde.com
MarketingNewz.com SalesNewz.com
CareerNewz.com InvestNewz.com
eCommNewz.com ManagerNewz.com
AdvertisingDay.com ManagerNewz.com
SoHoDay.com CRMNewz.com


About WebSiteNotes
WebSiteNotes is written by successful website entrepreneurs for their peers. Learn from the success of others and figure out the nuts and bolts of web business success. WebSiteNotes delivers Hands-On Advice For Webmasters.



-- WebSiteNotes is an iEntry, Inc. publication --
iEntry, Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
2008 iEntry, Inc.  All Rights Reserved   Privacy Policy   Legal

archives | advertising info | news headlines | free newsletters | comments/feedback| submit article


Unsubscribe from WebSiteNotes.
To unsubscribe from WebSiteNotes or any other iEntry publication, simply send an email request to: support@ientry.com
Hands-On Advice For Webmasters WebSiteNotes News Archives About Us Feedback WebSiteNotes Home Page About Article Archive News Downloads WebProWorld Forums Jayde iEntry Advertise Contact

0 comments: