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WHAT IS A BLOG?

Originally called a “web log” a blog is a regularly updated set of news, opinions, tips and information.

**Common misconception: Blogs are stand alone websites.

Blogs can be stand alone websites depending on the specific needs of the business or user, however blogs are best used when they are an extension of your own website. (Example: http://www.ethicalseoconsulting.com/seo-blog/ )

This is an easy way to provide customer updates, your own expertise and build your brand reputation.

WHAT BLOG SHOULD I USE?

There are many upon many alternative for Blogs out there today, with all the options it might be hard to make a decision as to which one to use.

A few examples of Blog CMS are:

• http://wordpress.com (Highly Recommended)

• http://www.blogger.com

• http://www.tumblr.com/

• http://www.joomla.org/

At Ethical we highly recommend Wordpress because it’s so easy to work with and has many advantages to SEO.

TECHNICAL SEO BLOG CAUTIONS

1) Duplicate Content is probably the biggest caution with having a blog, in many cases you might not know you have duplicate content but often it helps to make sure you “tags” and “archives” are not followed by search engines.

**What is Duplicate Content ?

This is having the same content on multiple pages, this can easily result by content being listed in multiple places that might have URL adjustments like Tags or Archives.

2) Making sure your website is crawl-able is the other major caution, if your site isn’t crawled no one will be finding your awesome content.

BUSINESS BLOGS – BUILDING BLOGS

The most important thing to remember when building your blogs are to

WRITE FOR HUMANS!!!!!!

Though there are some awesome benefits to marketing and gaining increase traffic at the very core you need to have good content. Writing for your human audience is most important to help engage the user.

Does your Content meet these requirements:

• Is it actionable?

• Does it provide the reader value?

• Is your content well structured?

• Does you Title reflect what you have written?

• Make sure to use proper grammar to make it easy to read.

OPTIMIZE FOR ROBOTS OVERVIEW

• Proper Heading Structure

• Page Titles

• Meta Description(summary of post)

• Author Rich Snippet Mark-up

• Good internal Linking

• Good external Linking(use your resources, don’t be greedy)

PROPER HEADING STRUCTURE

Keeping a proper heading structure will make it easier for Google to read and place it’s relevance in the search engines. Think of your heading structure of an outline starting with the title and getting into more specific topics.

Example:I. <h1>Food Pyramid</h1>(only 1 of these)

I. <h2>Dairy</h2>I. <h3>Yogurt</h3>II. <h3>Cheese</h3>

II. <h2> Vegetables</h2>I. <h3>Potatoes</h3>

I. <h4>Mashed</h4>II. <h4>Baked</h4>

PAGE TITLES AND META DESCRIPTIONS

A page title and meta description is a ranking factor and an engagement tool for being clicked in the SERP( Search Engine Results Page) Having an accurate and well written( NOT KEYWORD DRIVEN) page title and description goes a long way.

There are a number of tools used for accomplishing this a favorite is Yoast’s Wordpress SEO (http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ )

AUTHOR RICH SNIPPETS

Doing this will on increase your click through rate up to 35%. Also will likely play into author rank(http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/author-rank)

To do this you will need the following:

• Google + Profile

• Blogs you contribute to set on your profile

• A link(normally anchored in your name) on your blog posts with rel=author markup (ex. https://plus.google.com/116515756972835046248/about?rel=author)

Finished Product-

LINKING: INTERNAL AND OUTBOUND

Internal Linking is linking to other content within your website can be very valuable to users find out more information about specific topics. If you don’t have content on your own blog to link to on specific topic, you can use other outbound links to expand on those topic.

Outbound links are great for giving credit for adding valuable resources to your blog. DON’T BE GREEDY with your link juice as these outbound links can help to give greater insight to your topic and also be a great way to involve other companies and experts . I also suggest using social mentions and giving credit through communities that could follow your resources.

SOCIAL SHARING

What channels do I circulate my content to?

The most important ones are Facebook, Google +, Twitter and any industry specific community. Any example of industry specific for SEO is (inbound.org) it is a place to post good content and news.

Effective sharing of your content can lead to re-shares and quality links that also use your content as a resource. The traffic is easily track through a bit.ly or your Google Analytics.

OTHER CONTENT IDEAS FOR YOU BLOG

Other ways to use your blog for content is to produce videos, share company events, infographic and even memes. These can be viral or valuable content but either way the focus is on your brand and having quality.

• Infographics

• Memes or embeddable pictures

• Videos

• Events

QUALITY OVER QUANTITYBuilding more content isn’t always the best if you are

sacrificing the quality of the content. Your readers need to find value in your posts and this will build your reputation and brand as an expert. Not just to your customers or potential clients but also to your industry peers.

Posting to your blog with quality content at least once a week if not a little more is really productive for adding fresh content updates and creating value to the landers of any long tail keyword searches.

*** Just remember to use your Quality over quantity produce something worth seeing over something without value.