Website Words that Work!

Integration begins with content.

What you say in your permission marketing (e-newsletters) links back to your Website landing pages, which link to your online optimized press releases and paid advertising, which link one to the other in consistent messaging, which link to your hardcopy branding, signage, and even in-store or in-office merchandising. And if you have a company blog, this is part of the mix, too.

The power is in your message, your words, your content.

And that’s the thought for the day.

Yours with Website Words that Work! – Judith

Tags: Online Content, SEO by Judith
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I respect it when someone tells me they are afraid to respond on the blogs they read. What sane business-person isn’t? Blogs are public forums. You say it; it’s written on the wall forever. It’s so much safer to just lurk.

This morning I responded to one of the blogs I admire and learn from, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and as soon as I pushed that “submit” button, I wanted to edit my words. Suddenly, those words sounded pompous, maybe amateurish, or somewhere, some dark no-man’s land, in between. I’m a writer who loves to edit, and I’m a relentless rewriter. Blogs work against that never-ending urge to rewrite, pushing us to share our thoughts, not necessarily our polished prose.

So, it’s safer to lurk. But the blog conversation demands interaction. It’s not a conversation if it’s all one-way. So, fear or not – jump in on the next interesting conversation and blog through the fear. I’ll look for you there.

yours, Judith

Tags: Business blogs, SEO by Judith
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A big part of blogging for small businesses is linking up with the blogging community, plugging into that viral marketing that all of us Website managers love to bend your ear about. Everyone I talk to these days is tuned into the fact that blogging boosts your SEO (search engine optimization).

But in their all-out quest for SEO, some are forgetting the real audience for a Website — the customer, your reader, us (the people).

So, today I just want to plant this one tiny seed: small business blogging is only one piece of a larger Website content puzzle. And the entire puzzle must be pleasing to the eye and ear not just of spiders and robots, but of real people, too. Your readers. Us.

Then when you go viral and we visit your blog and your Website, we’re all yours.

Judith

Tags: Blogging, SEO, Small business blogging by Judith
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As the world of marketing changes, so does a writer’s life. And mine has changed in some exciting ways over the last six months as I’ve embarked on my blogging journey.

At first, I thought, but wait! Magazines are my life, always have been. And my goal: blogging for magazines. Imagine my surprise when I began to have SUCH FUN working on clients’ Websites, creating their flow, their content, the sites themselves.

Content Optimization

And then: the real fun, the puzzle of optimizing content!

I’ve launched my professional writing services into SEO over the last couple of months. What I love about content optimization: the collaboration.

It’s all in the teamwork and the sum is greater than the parts.

If anyone tells you that Website writing is loner work, give them the big raspberry.

It’s all about teamwork.

Yours in SEO, Judith

Tags: SEO by Judith
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Here’s a topic that does not go away. How much should I —  must I –  blog? Last month, in response to a blog by Debbie Weil, corporate blogger, I said, maybe not so much.

Maybe that’s not the full answer, though. Nick Stamoulis, blogger, author, at Brick Marketing, weighs in this week with his thoughts. A must-read! So, surf over there and check it out. My blog  on the topic is still live, and you’ll want to see the comments there, too. Chris McElroy picked up on the resurfacing of the conversation and his 2 cents is for more, not less, blogging, as he says in the comments to my blog.

So, do I have the definitive answer for you on how often to do your small business blogging? We need to keep exploring the topic. And maybe, just maybe, the answer is individual as well as SEO-related: as in, what’s YOUR goal for your blog?

Tags: Blogging, Business blogs, Marketing Blogs, SEO, Small business blogging by Judith
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I was at a local meeting of the American Marketing Association (AMA) at lunch and was reminded of all of the links that bloggers create. The speaker, from LeverageSoftware.com, a company that sells online community software, talked about all of her Facebook, MyPlace, and blog connections.

I haven’t personally done a lot of Facebook or MyPlace, but I do have a LinkedIn account, and I was reminded that I had not visited it for some time. Been neglecting it. So I dropped in and I invited a few friends and colleagues to link to me (and me to them). That linking is a valuable part of this whole new Live Web. It plays into the blogging we’re doing. It’s the exciting part where I plug into your thoughts and you plug into mine. It’s that virtual clink, that LinkLinkLink we hear in the blogosphere.

Linking and connecting is the heartbeat of blogging for business.

Ultimately, the idea is to get way way beyond just shooting SEO keywords back and forth to optimize sites; ultimately, Live Web is about connecting and listening to each other’s comments.

Is that listening happening a lot? That’s something I’d like to know, something that will either make blogging a big part of my life and business, or not. IMHO, the jury’s still out on that one, but I’m rooting for success.

Tags: Blogging, Business blogs, SEO, Small Business by Judith
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Just when I’m convinced that the gurus are right — you’ve gotta blog every day if you want your voice to be heard in the blogosphere — one of the top business bloggers breaks the rules.

Debbie Weil, who wrote the book on corporate blogging (The Corporate Blogging Book), is blogging less. Why, you may ask, would a leading blogger and marketing expert cut back on blogging?

Life and its hometown joys interrupted, it seems.

One comment to her blog interested me especially –From David Koopman questioning if we need to blog everyday. Search engines reward you if you do, but just between us, maybe that indiscriminate blogging is what got bloggers their rep amongst non-bloggers as narcissistic diarists blogging about what they had for breakfast.

It’s something to think about as you set up your business blog calendar.

Tags: Blogging, Business blogs, SEO, Small business blogging by Judith
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Though the power of positioning may be in search engine optimization, the value resides in content. 

I haven’t optimized the Harlan blog yet. (That’s on purpose: I want to tackle the aspects of the blog one-by-one so we can all learn together.) But as I look further into small business blogs, I’m picking up more and more on search engine optimization. SEO has become a specialization in the field of Web development. It takes someone who has made a study of search engine algorithms and is hooked into info on any changes to them. It’s a detail-driven specialization.

Average SEO will get your name coming up on searches. Great SEO will get your name coming up high on the first page of a search. In my mind, great SEO is akin to buying the inside cover of a magazine versus letting the ad fall wherever it may. It’s worth the extra money and effort.

That said, I know I need to step away from the technical side of blog marketing for a bit. It’s easy for me, because I like a puzzle, to get drawn into the tech pieces, to add tag clouds and play with RSS feeds.

But it’s time to get back to what makes a blog valuable and popular. And that’s content.

Content is queen of Web 2.0. If you want clients and customers to come back to your site,

give them great content.

Free advice: Valuable content doesn’t just tell folks everything there is to know about your product. It gives them info, statistics, insight and links to the world around your product. For instance, if you sell organic shampoo, valuable content might include info about what goes into the major brands of non-organic shampoo and what those unpronounceable chemicals are. You might link to environmental sites with info on chemicals in the water system. In other words, follow the concerns of the organic shampoo customer, and provide rich content that they care about.

Tags: Business blogs, Free Advice, SEO by Judith
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If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not likely to happen. 

One of the biggest challenges to a blog is blogging. Yes, you read that right: the toughest part of a blog is taking time out to blog. As a small business, you’ve probably got a hundred tasks awaiting your personal touch at any minute of any business day. (I know I do.) And blogging adds another to that stack of to-do’s.

And that’s my challenge today, as I sit here on a Friday afternoon. It’s been a terrific week work-wise, which means that I’ve been working hard and steady, and I am ready to close up shop and kick back in my garden. Yet, I promised myself two blogs per week. That didn’t sound like a lot when I created my blog plan.

But it feels like a lot today.

Free advice and lessons learned: Before beginning a small business blog, write some blog times into your calendar. Actually put them in as appointments. And guard them against intrusion. It’s important, for Search Engine Optimization as well as for your conversation with your clients, to upload new, fresh blogs regularly.

Without a blog appointment, I can assure you that your blogging will keep being shunted aside for other, deadline-driven tasks. And you’ll find yourself staying late in your office on a fine, sunny, Friday afternoon and wondering, am I really whining about being too successful?

Tags: Free Advice, SEO, Small business blogging by Judith
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Here’s a quick way to sign in to Technorati, making sure that I claim my blog on Technorati begins to establish it there.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/b2rhhdzru8” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a><a

A quick way to sign in suggested by Technorati is to post a comment on your site, include the link above, and then delete it.

I decided to leave it in, so you can see it; it’s a great sample of blog search sign-ups.

Tags: SEO by Judith
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