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Blog and Ping A Search Engine Traffic Bonanza
Copyright 2005 John Jantsch
Everyone is talking about blogs these days as the magic
money-making marketing tool. Some of the hype may actually
be true, but I suggest you cut through most of what you
read about blogs just long enough to understand why every
business needs a blog.
Right now, thats not to say this wont change, search
engines are in love with real blogs. By real blogs I mean
blogs that are set-up and run by businesses that offer
useful content on them. Like every successful marketing
method there are people out there setting up fake blogs and
dumping garbage, but keyword rich, content into them in
order to trick the search engines into ranking the content
highly. [Please resist the urge to add to this form of
search engine spam as it may actually get you banned by a
search engine.]
When you understand a little about how blog software works
you get a better understanding about why search engines
love blogs. Here are the top reasons that business blogs
and search engines go hand in hand.
Lots of Pages
Each blog entry is shown in chronological order on a blogs
homepage but, each entry is in reality its own web page,
with its own unique URL and title. So, an active blogger
can create hundreds of keyword rich web pages in a matter
of months.
Change Is Good
In order to claim your place at the blogging table you must
commit to making posts often4 or 5 times a week perhaps.
This commitment means that you are creating, updating,
changing some portion of your site several times a week.
The typical small business web site is lucky to receive an
update several times a year. Search engines like change.
Wake Up Call
Because search engines love changing content, they are ever
ready to visit a site when it is updated. One feature
unique to blog software is something called a pinging.
Basically, what you are doing is sending out a message to
various blog directories to come and visit you site because
it has been updated. Once a search engine has located your
site, this is like a personal invitation to come back and
get the new stuff. I use a site called Ping-O-Matic to send
pings to multiple services. Some blog software can be
configured to do this automatically.
RSS Directories
Blogs also have a built in distribution method known as
RSS. This allows you to push your updated content out to
people who subscribe through an RSS reader such as
Bloglines or FeedDemon as well as Yahoo and MSN. This
ability allows you to communicate directly with subscribers
but it can also help get your main site noticed and indexed
by the major search engines. Yahoo, for example, allows
people (including you) to subscribe to your blogs RSS
feed. On the day you create your blog, you can subscribe to
it via a free MyYahoo account and Yahoo will visit and
index your blog for free. It has no choice.
Linking Is Key
Part of the blogging culture is the predisposition to link
to and from quality content that relates to the subject
your are blogging about. In other words, bloggers like to
link. Links from other high quality blogs will send traffic
and get your blog and web site noticed.
So, your blog marketing strategy a little like this: Set-up
a blog and start posting. Ping each time your make a new
entry. Submit your blog to the major blog and RSS
directories. Start looking for link partners. Repeat
In the last few weeks I set-up blogs for an attorney, a
label manufacturer, and a remodeling contractor. In each
case, the blogs were indexed and spidered by the major
search engines within 48 hours. Traffic to the main web
sites for these businesses (although a bit meager to start
with) has already doubled or tripled. Traffic from each of
the major search engines is now showing up for a large
number of important search terms and phrases.
Who knows how long this blog traffic bonanza will last but
at this moment a blog has never made more sense.
If youre convinced that you need a blog but dont want to
hassle with setting it up and learning how to promote it
properly, check out my basic blog coaching package. I do
the work, youre up and blogging and promoting your blog in
a matter of days.
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John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas
City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business
marketing tactics and is the creator of Duct Tape
Marketing a turn-key small business marketing system.
Check out his blog at www.bloggingbusiness.com
More articles by John Jantsch - http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/John-Jantsch-89/
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