Comments on: Business Blogging Tips http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2008/03/07/business-blogging-tips/ Editors from FSB magazine answer your pressing small-business questions. Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:07:19 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: taxtorpedo http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2008/03/07/business-blogging-tips/#comment-494 taxtorpedo Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:49:15 +0000 http://askfsb.wordpress.com/?p=216#comment-494 Faith: Here are three resources to use to promote your blog: (1)http://CommnetSniper.com Find blogs that are thematically related to yours. Be first to make helpful and informative posts on these blogs through using the CommentSniper tool. The backlinks will create significant TARGETED TRAFFIC over time. (2)Authority Black Book by Jack Humphrey There are two versions. Do a Google search to get the latest version. This source contains very powerful informatin on blogging, and you will reach the CAN'T MISS stage if you follow its plan of action. (3)http://TrafficNymphomaniac.com This is a blog I just started designed to provide strange and unusual techniques to produce heavy blog traffic. Faith:

Here are three resources to use to promote your blog:

(1)http://CommnetSniper.com

Find blogs that are thematically related to yours. Be first to make helpful and informative posts on these blogs through using the CommentSniper tool. The backlinks will create significant TARGETED TRAFFIC over time.

(2)Authority Black Book by Jack Humphrey

There are two versions. Do a Google search to get the latest version. This source contains very powerful informatin on blogging, and you will reach the CAN'T MISS stage if you follow its plan of action.

(3)http://TrafficNymphomaniac.com

This is a blog I just started designed to provide strange and unusual techniques to produce heavy blog traffic.

]]> By: Tom Ballard, Kansas City, KS http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2008/03/07/business-blogging-tips/#comment-455 Tom Ballard, Kansas City, KS Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:52:00 +0000 http://askfsb.wordpress.com/?p=216#comment-455 My angle would be to simply find a total tea junkie and allow them to blog daily as sort of a journal. My ideal writer would be very health conscious and athletic (runner, walker, swimmer, and/ or bicyclist), but also into gardening, landscaping, home projects, down to earth and into the arts as well, as those may be some of the shared interests of your potential customers. One of my strategies in this marketing approach would be to totally optimize for search engine results to get as many hits as possible. Even if some people may actually be searching for information on fitness, landscaping, etc, I think that such a marketing approach would surely establish brand recognition in a shotgun approach. My angle would be to simply find a total tea junkie and allow them to blog daily as sort of a journal. My ideal writer would be very health conscious and athletic (runner, walker, swimmer, and/ or bicyclist), but also into gardening, landscaping, home projects, down to earth and into the arts as well, as those may be some of the shared interests of your potential customers. One of my strategies in this marketing approach would be to totally optimize for search engine results to get as many hits as possible. Even if some people may actually be searching for information on fitness, landscaping, etc, I think that such a marketing approach would surely establish brand recognition in a shotgun approach.

]]> By: Gleb Esman, Ottawa, Canada http://smallbusiness.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2008/03/07/business-blogging-tips/#comment-453 Gleb Esman, Ottawa, Canada Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:16:30 +0000 http://askfsb.wordpress.com/?p=216#comment-453 Hi Faith, Adding blog certainly helps. And you are right that this could be a way to get more customers. And you're right again about video. Adding video that demonstrates and explain benefits of the product and advantage of dealing with your company could help greatly as well. You are selling good product through your website - and there are 3 main ways to attract customers to your web portal - paid advertising (for example pay-per-click advertising on google), free organic search - if your site is listed on first page of google organic search results, and social media marketing (to where i am not going to go within the space of this article). But first - I'd suggest you to "renovate" your website a bit to make sure it will attract customers who already might be interested in your products. I am talking about ranking your website for free targeted organic traffic from search engines. As it stands right now - no one will be able to find your website on search engines unless you pay your way for clicks. You need to do a bit of renovation before adding blogs or videos. Here're few steps you can take to improve your site to attract more free visitors: - Change title of every page to include keywords you want to rank for. For example instead of "Sunshine Wholesalers" use "Ice Tea - Caffeine-Free" or "Ice Tea from Concentrate" or "Ice Tea Wholesale". And make title relevant for the given page and different from page to page. - Write keyword rich interesting description of your product in every page. One mistake I see on your main page is that you embedded good text within a picture. Search engines will never be able to read this text and hence your website will not appear in search results. Make pictures smaller and use more text. - Please note that unless you have a large established brand no one will search for "sunshine wholesalers" while looking for "ice tea". People will type "ice tea bulk" or "ice tea concentrate wholesale" or similar queries - so you may want to highlite this text closer to the top of important pages, instead of company name. - Make sure you do keyword research to learn what people are actually looking for in relation to your products. Alternatively you may hire SEO Specialist to do this work for you. - Use bold, underscore and italic font to separate important keywords from other text. - Use H1,2,3 heading tags (ask your web designer if you dont know what it is) to add headings to the pages. Search engines will rank your pages higher for words included in heading tags. - Use keyword rich anchor text in the main menu (replace "to order" with "buy ice tea" or similar wordings). - As a general rule in every page include keywords your customers are likely to search for. Move most relevant keywords closer to the top of page. - Search for linking partners - add backlinks to your site from relevant directories and other websites and blogs - this will help your site to get indexed faster and get ranked higher on google and other major search engines. I like your idea to include testimonials - this should help your prospects to become customers. Finally when you will be ready to add blog - I would recommend to use popular blogging software - Wordpress. I think even CNN uses it. It is one of the most widely used product, it is free, well supported and it tends to rank high on search engines. I personally used wordpress-based solution to create reseller store that made it's first purely "organic" sale only 2 month after domain was registered. That's speaking about ranking power of Wordpress. Adding blog and regularly updating it will definitely help your online business. And so as video. We just touched a tip of an iceberg here - but it would be a great start for you to improve your online business. Best regards, Gleb Esman, Internet Marketing Specialist, gesman@mensk.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/glebesman Hi Faith,

Adding blog certainly helps. And you are right that this could be a way to get more customers. And you're right again about video. Adding video that demonstrates and explain benefits of the product and advantage of dealing with your company could help greatly as well.

You are selling good product through your website – and there are 3 main ways to attract customers to your web portal – paid advertising (for example pay-per-click advertising on google), free organic search – if your site is listed on first page of google organic search results, and social media marketing (to where i am not going to go within the space of this article).

But first – I'd suggest you to "renovate" your website a bit to make sure it will attract customers who already might be interested in your products. I am talking about ranking your website for free targeted organic traffic from search engines. As it stands right now – no one will be able to find your website on search engines unless you pay your way for clicks. You need to do a bit of renovation before adding blogs or videos.

Here're few steps you can take to improve your site to attract more free visitors:

- Change title of every page to include keywords you want to rank for. For example instead of "Sunshine Wholesalers" use "Ice Tea – Caffeine-Free" or "Ice Tea from Concentrate" or "Ice Tea Wholesale". And make title relevant for the given page and different from page to page.

- Write keyword rich interesting description of your product in every page.
One mistake I see on your main page is that you embedded good text within a picture. Search engines will never be able to read this text and hence your website will not appear in search results. Make pictures smaller and use more text.

- Please note that unless you have a large established brand no one will search for "sunshine wholesalers" while looking for "ice tea". People will type "ice tea bulk" or "ice tea concentrate wholesale" or similar queries – so you may want to highlite this text closer to the top of important pages, instead of company name.
- Make sure you do keyword research to learn what people are actually looking for in relation to your products. Alternatively you may hire SEO Specialist to do this work for you.
- Use bold, underscore and italic font to separate important keywords from other text.

- Use H1,2,3 heading tags (ask your web designer if you dont know what it is) to add headings to the pages. Search engines will rank your pages higher for words included in heading tags.
- Use keyword rich anchor text in the main menu (replace "to order" with "buy ice tea" or similar wordings).

- As a general rule in every page include keywords your customers are likely to search for. Move most relevant keywords closer to the top of page.

- Search for linking partners – add backlinks to your site from relevant directories and other websites and blogs – this will help your site to get indexed faster and get ranked higher on google and other major search engines.

I like your idea to include testimonials – this should help your prospects to become customers.

Finally when you will be ready to add blog – I would recommend to use popular blogging software – WordPress. I think even CNN uses it. It is one of the most widely used product, it is free, well supported and it tends to rank high on search engines. I personally used wordpress-based solution to create reseller store that made it's first purely "organic" sale only 2 month after domain was registered. That's speaking about ranking power of WordPress.

Adding blog and regularly updating it will definitely help your online business. And so as video.

We just touched a tip of an iceberg here – but it would be a great start for you to improve your online business.

Best regards,

Gleb Esman, Internet Marketing Specialist, gesman@mensk.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/glebesman

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