Businesses that serve a small local area always want data down to their neighbors for their SEO. I don’t blame them, but unfortunately we can’t spy on our neighbors through their windows without having some legal problems. So we turn to our great internet search tools to find out what our neighbors are looking for and how they put it into words. PROBLEM! There isn’t enough data in Google for this area…

As a business that is pushing into the internet marketing world you have probably come across this problem when looking at a very specific geographical regions. I’m talking about towns, townships, small cities, and places where the town center may just be a post office!

We face this same problem with clients who sell to local cities and towns. Local search engine optimization tips are something our clients ask … Read More »

The world of business blogging exploits the full global-reach marketability of your company. Savvy blogging draws new and existing customers into a conversation that will increase site-traffic, generate exposure, and potentially increase your customer-base and  future sales.

But get it wrong, and your business blog can turn from an asset to a liability.

Mistake #1 – Irregular Blogging

Blogging compliments your business, and like any part of your business, it needs to be current and regularly maintained. Irregular blogging can lower your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content, dropping your business page rank, and effectively minimizing potential customers. Consistent, interesting and relevant posting will build your reader-base, and show commitment to your business and your customers.

Mistake #2 – Inconsistent Voice

Unless your business blog is specifically designed to individualize your bloggers, … Read More »

So you’ve got a business blog and you’re hoping for great things but you’re keenly aware that nothing comes easy. Even if you’re running a free blog tool, you are investing time… and time is money. Here are 7 ways you can be sure to pour lots of time into your business blog and get almost nothing in return.

Don’t Plan: Do not have any idea what you are trying to accomplish with your corporate blog from a content perspective. Do not align any blogs with that content strategy and whatever you do, don’t put your blogging ideas into any kind of editorial calendar. Simply write whatever comes to mind when you feel like it or have some spare time.
Use short blog titles with no keywords. After all, it’s not like your blog title is … Read More »

You may have heard that Google changed it’s algorithm. This change was commonly called the Panda update. The intent of the update was to limit the power of website scrapers and award websites that produce the original content.

I read a blog post today by Lee Odden on his Top Rank Online Marketing Blog and I felt compelled to post about it.  It’s not often that I agree with everything in a blog post but Lee really nailed it with his post called 5 Tips on Business Blogging With Minimal Resources.

One reason I got so excited when I read Lee’s post – it validates the functionality we have worked hard to put into InnoBlogs.  Lee wrote this post because blog management is NOT easy.  It takes work and strategic focus and dedication and a team – which is then hard to manage and control… With each of Lee’s points about business blogging, I immediately recognized functionality we built into InnoBlogs to assist with or relieve each challenge.  Here are the Five points Lee makes … Read More »

With your business blog, you need to be careful how you interpret the bounce rate. It’s very different than your traditional website – where you want people to go from page to page, filling up their shopping carts or browsing all the different products and services that you have to offer.

Blogs traditionally have very high bounce rates because of the nature of how a blog works. As more and more people find your business blog from keywords in posts, they will begin landing on specific blog post pages (not the blog homepage). From here, there are several scenarios. Here are a few:

1) they continue reading through your business blog and go through a lot of posts. This may be fine – i.e. it builds the brand, people like your content…etc. However, it could also … Read More »

By Kristen Carter

Have you ever clicked onto a blog , read a few sentences, and immediately clicked off thinking “Wow, that author had no idea what he or she was blogging about“? Because virtually anyone can post anything on the Internet people are typically very critical about what they read online.

Besides spending my time blogging, I also frequent classrooms at The Ohio State University where I conduct graduate work focused on search engines, SEO, and credibility. As I dive ever deeper into the literature surrounding these topics, I am amazed at the importance scholars place on the concept of Internet credibility.

What is credibility and what does it have to do with blogging? In a nutshell credibility is the perception of believability. If you could travel back in time a few hundred years and have a conversation with a man named … Read More »

I read a great article yesterday by Ben Elowitz on the rising importance of Social Media Optimization or SMO.  In this article, Ben predicts the death of SEO as SMO continues to rise to power pushed along by the partnership between Facebook and Bing.  So, is Search Engine Optimization actually dead?  Is Google shaking in their boots as reactive (vs. predictive) searching falls by the wayside?

Well, probably not quite yet.

Before you throw your SEO strategy out the window in favor of SMO I would caution you that a blended approach is probably the best bet for now.  If you’re doing neither SEO nor SMO, you may be in trouble (contact us!)  If you are doing only SEO or SMO, you are likely leaving value on the table.

The reason I think … Read More »

By Kristen Carter

A few days ago Stephen Chapman wrote a fascinating blog on what he deemed the one mistake CEOs make about search engine optimization. What is that mistake? It’s that many CEOs spend so much time focusing on getting their keywords ranked highly on search engines that they never consider if their SEO strategy is increasing leads or conversion for their business. This is a problem because having a keyword rank highly is only good if it translates to increased ROI. This is particularly an issue when CEOs become attached to specific keywords, and instead of trusting SEO experts, they insist that one word or phrase is vital to their business and MUST be ranked highly.

Chapman points out that of course there is a plethora of search engine optimization agencies who will gladly take your money … Read More »

Business Blogs Work!

One of my favorite companies in the world, Hubspot, has conducted another study on Business Blogging.  Once again, their results are staggering.  Hubspot conducted a study of 2,300 companies and put them in two groups.  Those who blog and those who don’t.  Before I go one, let me point out that the criteria was just “blogging”.  It was not Good blogging or Excellent blogging.  This group included those companies who blog…and suck at it.  Yet the numbers are still amazing!

Businesses that blog see an increase in LEAD GENERATION that is 126% HIGHER than businesses that don’t blog…all else being equal.  If you’ve been on the fence because you can’t justify the ROI of blogging or don’t see the value then it’s time to get off the fence – the results are indisputable.  I seriously doubt … Read More »