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Magnetic SEO: What Electromagnets Can Teach Us About SEO

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

SEO is Child's Play, Really..

If you want to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) and attract more prospects to your web site, you’d do well to study the electromagnet.

Wait! Don’t click away! This isn’t some über-geek post meant to complicate the situation. Building your own electromagnet requires only a long nail, a thin wire and a battery. In other words, DO try this at home.

Connect the ends of the wire to the positive and negative ends of the battery and wrap the wire around the nail. The longer the nail, the stronger the magnet. The more times the wire is wrapped around the nail, the stronger the magnet.

Your SEO works just like an electromagnet.

To build a search engine optimized site you’ll want to create keyword-rich pages for each of your services or offerings. These act like the nails in the electomagnet. Just as iron nails work better than aluminum nails in this project, quality content that informs, engages and persuades will be more attractive to your audience.

Your blog posts act like the wire in the electromagnet. You should create blog posts that wrap around the content on your web pages. If you have a page on your house painting services, you should create blog posts on:

Home Painting Tips for the Do-It-Yourselfer
How to Choose the Perfect Exterior Paint
Why White is the Wrong Color to Paint Your Bathrooms
10 Questions to Ask Your Painter Before The Job Starts
and so on.

Each one of these should include keyword-rich links back to the page on your site that talks about your house painting services.

The more blog posts you have “wrapped” around your core service pages, the more electromagnetic juice you have flowing to your web site, and the more attractive your site becomes.

What’s the battery in this metaphor? Hmmm…not sure. Maybe it’s the desire of your prospects to find the solution to their problems or needs? Or maybe it’s the passion you bring with your content creation? Or maybe it’s the power of the Interwebs? Or maybe I’m just trying too hard to extend the metaphor.

I just finished writing an article that goes into more detail about creating an effective web presence for service professionals, albeit without the electromagnet metaphor.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Photo Credit: steve_lodefink

Tags: blogging, electromagnet, electromagnetic, SEM, SEO
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 4 Comments »

What’s the Best Blogging Platform? WordPress vs. Joomla vs. TypePad

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

“What’s the best platform for blogging?” is a question I hear from time to time. Judging by the search volume surrounding “best blogging platform” and related searches like “wordpress vs. joomla” and “wordpress vs. typepad” it’s a question that a lot of business bloggers struggle with.

On one hand, the best blog platform for you is the one you feel most comfortable using. That being said, our own web marketing blog and the blogs we build for our clients are all on WordPress. In fact, we’re so enamored of WordPress we’ve even installed it as the blog of choice on Joomla web sites that we’ve built.

Here’s why we choose WordPress time and again:

Ease of setup: In fact, with so many hosting companies offering WordPress specific accounts, chances are it’s already set up on a hosting company near you.
Ease of use: Whenever we’re talking about blogging, or using WordPress as a CMS, I tell people, “if you know how to use Word then you have 95% of the skills you need, and we’ll train you in the last 5%.
Wealth of plugins: Chances are if you want WordPress to do something, someone else wanted it, too, and built a plugin for it. From SEO to e-commerce to member-driven forums, there’s a plugin for that.

This isn’t to say that you can’t succeed without WordPress. There are certainly successful blogs being run on other platforms out there. But as we continue to look at other blog platforms, we keep on coming back to WordPress.

Whatever blogging platform you choose, make sure it has these required features:

Your domain name: If you’re blogging for business, it’s a deal breaker to have the URL be something like mycompany.typepad.com, mycompany.blogger.com or even mycompany.wordpress.com. You need to run the blog under your own domain name, whether it’s a standalone URL like mycompanyblog.com, or part of your regular site like mycompany.com/blog or blog.mycompany.com. This is especially important for SEO and if you ever decide to move to a different blogging platform.
Your branding: Nothing says fly-by-night like a design that looks like Yet Another WordPress Blog. Have your web designer/developer create a custom template for your blog so that it complements the rest of your corporate branding.
Plugins & support: Over time you’ll want to be able to add new features, like a search, email signup, e-commerce, calendar, etc. If your blog is on a popular platform, chances are there will be support for plugins that will allow your blog to scale with your business.

There are certainly other important features, such as support for RSS, RSS > email, categories, archives, search and more, but at this point in the history of blogging, we hope that any new blogging platforms would come with these features.

Rich Brooks
CMS Enthusiast

Photo credit: iboy_daniel

Tags: Best Blog, Best Blogging Platform, Joomla, TypePad, WordPress
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business | 15 Comments »

Web Marketing Articles – A Year in Review

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

2010 was a challenging year for a lot of businesses, but for those who “marketed through it” fared better than those who put their head in the sand and tried to wait it out.

Social media became legitimized for a lot of businesses who were attracted by the apparent low-cost…forget that it takes serious resources to write compelling blog posts, update your Facebook fan page, create videos, engage in LinkedIn Groups and tweet–just to name a few activities that successful social media marketers delved into in 2010.

We also saw more focus on mobile marketing, which will continue to grow in 2011, with mobile-friendly web sites, smart phone apps, location-based apps, and QR codes to name a few. I expect this will continue as well, as more people upgrade to smart phones…especially if there’s a Verizon iPhone released this year.

As always, I feel that the best approach is an integrated one, where your create a strong content strategy and deliver your message over multiple channels, that may include your web site, blog, online video, and social networking sites. Depending on your audience it might include podcasts, in-game advertising, traditional advertising, in-person networking events and more.

For all of you who take web marketing seriously, and get passionate about growing your business, here’s a quick roundup of the articles we published in flyte log, our email newsletter this year:

Here at flyte we’ve got some kick-ass things we’ll be rolling out this year to help you grow your business so that it works for you. We’ve been testing them on ourselves and on some clients and we feel that they will help you round out your offerings to your customers, clients and members.

Here’s hoping 2011 will be your most profitable year yet!

Rich Brooks
Entrepreneur

Tags: flyte new media, internet marketing, online marketing, Web Marketing
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Email Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Announcing the Blogging Success Summit 2011

Monday, December 27th, 2010

I’m a big believer in business blogs. (Wow. Good alliteration.) I’ve seen firsthand how this blog (and others I contribute to) have increased flyte’s online visibility, traffic to our site, and our business.

A blog is the centerpiece of any web marketing or social media campaign. There’s only so much you can get across in 140 characters, but a blog gives you as much room as you need to inform, educate or sell, all while keeping the interactivity of social media.

That’s why I’m so excited to be one of the featured instructors in the first ever Blogging Success Summit, brought to you by BlogWorld and SocialMediaExaminer.com.

This event will be delivered live online between February 1st through the 22nd, as well as recorded for your convenience. I’ve “attended” both Social Media Success Summits and the Facebook Success Summit (from Social Media Examiner) and all have been filled with an insane amount of information that can help a business grow. In fact, 95% of the attendees to these events say they’d attend again.

For the Blogging Success Summit there will be 23 of the “world’s leading blogging experts”, including Darren Rowse (ProBlogger), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Debbie Weil (The Corporate Blogging Book), Mari Smith, Chris Garrett, Mike Volpe (Hubspot), Denise Wakeman (Blog Squad), and some guy from Maine you probably never heard of.

Some other fun facts:

The event will be live. You can watch in real time on your computer screen as the instructors share their best tips and tricks.
You can interactive with the presenters. There is Q&A at the end of every session so you can get your questions answered.
Networking is included. There will be a LinkedIn Group that will be exclusive to attendees & presenters. I’ve been part of the other exclusive Summit LI groups, and there’s a lot of non-promotional networking that goes on there.

Act now, save money!

The cost of the event is $597, which is amazing for the list of experts you’ll have access to, the number of sessions, the fact you can listen to these live or download the presentations to your computer, iPad or iPhone for later watching or listening, and the fact that you don’t have to incur any travel expenses or take time off from work to attend.

But wait, there’s more!

For a limited time (seriously, I don’t know how long, they’re not sharing that information with me), there’s an early bird special of half-off the regular price! That’s a savings of almost $300! Seriously, that’s pretty sweet.

You can get the full list of presenters, topics and details at the Blogging Success Summit 2011 registration page. Hope to see you there!

Rich Brooks
That Maine Blogger

Tags: Blogging Success Summit, Blogging Success Summit 2011, Blogworld, SocialMediaExaminer.com
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, flyte news, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

The Blogging Masters Telesummit: Free Sneak Preview

Friday, October 29th, 2010

No jokes. Too obvious.

If you’ve been reading this blog, or have been subjected to my email newsletters, tweets, Facebook status updates, LinkedIn profile, or just got cornered by me at a networking event with a scotch in my hand, then you know that I can’t say enough about blogging.

While a blog won’t save your business, blogging can help you with the following:

improve your search engine visibility
attract more prospects, customers and clients to your business (or non-profit)
establish your expertise
drive more qualified leads to your site
help you sell more products, especially virtual, knowledge-based products.

In short, the blog is the keystone for your online visibility and your web marketing.

If you’re looking to learn more about how to blog successfully, I’ve got the blogging telesummit for you, and the best news is that you can experience it for free.

The Blogging Masters Telesummit is a 13-part virtual conference with 12 blogging gurus…and me. Here’s who’s involved:

Denise Wakeman – “The Viral Blogging System: 4 Simple Ways To Multiply Your Blog Content And Spread Your Message Virally Throughout The Web”
Gideon Shalwick - “The 7-Step Video Blogging Blueprint That Helps You Dominate The Search Engines, Drives Massive Traffic To Your Blogs, And Positions You As The Industry Expert”
Elisa Camahort Page – “BlogSourcing Secrets: How To Get Your Blogging Audiences’ Help In Creating The Perfect Live Event And Packing The Room With Thousands Of Raving Fans”
Jack Humphrey - “How To Become A Local Business Celebrity Through The Power Of Blogging That Attracts All The New Clients, Sales And Partners You Can Handle”
Regina Smola - “How To Secure Your Blogs From Hackers, Spammers, And Viruses That Will Save You Time, Money And Maybe Even Your Business”
Barry Chandler – “How To Use The Power Of Blogging To Quickly Go From Being An Unknown In Your Industry To The Go-To Authority That Everyone Wants to Partner With”
Chris Cree – “The Beehive Method: The New Media Marketing System That Gets New Clients And Prospects Buzzing About You And Swarming To Your Business”
Vinil Ramdev – “How To Quickly And Easily Dominate Your Niche By Creating An ‘Authority Blog’ Without Needing A Big List, A Big Name Or A Big Social Media Following”
Erik Deckers – “The Ghostblogging Method: How To Outsource Your Blogging To Others In Order To Save Time, Get More Clients, And Build Your Blogging Empire”
Kary Rogney – “The Tribe Syndication Method That Builds An Extremely Powerful Blog Following And Drives Massive Amounts Of Traffic To Your Websites”
Bill McRea – “The 5 Step Autoblogging System That Quickly Multiplies Your Blog Marketing Empire And Makes You Money On Autopilot”
Matt Trainer - “The Autoblogging Blueprint: A Proven Step-By-Step Blogging Strategy To Making $1 Million Per Month In The Next 180 Days”

Oh, and some guy named Rich Brooks who’s doing a session on “How To Quickly And Easily Turn A Boring Business Blog Into A Powerful Lead Generation Machine That Brings You A Flood Of Highly-Qualified Prospects Like Clockwork.” Ummm…I didn’t come up with that title.

There will be a paid version of the telesummit where you can pay to download all the sessions, but by following this link you can view all the sessions for free.

Enjoy!

Rich Brooks
The 13th Guy

Tags: Barry Chandler, Bill McRea, blogging, Blogging Masters Telesummit, Chris Cree, Denise Wakeman, Elisa Camahort Page, Erik Deckers, Gideon Shalwick, Jack Humphrey, Kary Rogney, Regina Smola, Vinil Ramdev
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Blog Post Ideas from WordTracker Labs’ Keyword Questions

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

One thing that all bloggers struggle with at one time or another is “blogger’s block”: the inability to create killer content for your audience.

In fact, after “I don’t have time to blog,” the biggest excuse I hear on why people don’t to blog is “I don’t know what to blog about.”

Well, if that’s your big concern, worry no more. Flyte’s own search engine marketer, Nicki Hicks, showed me this great web site from WordTracker Labs that pulls questions asked of its partner search engines around your keywords. the tool is called Keyword Questions.

For example, let’s say you have a blog about HR (human resources.) You type in “HR” to the search box and away you go. I’ve found that putting in really short keywords works better; trying to refine your keyword phrase will return too small a sample. Since this tool already brings back “long tail” results you don’t need to worry about over filtering.

WordTracker Labs then goes out and finds all the questions posed with “HR” in the search. These are questions real people asked at the partner search engines. Since the “partner search engines” are only about 1% of the total search market (according to a post I found at Digital Point that came from someone who appears to work for WordTracker) the number of people who are actually asking these questions is probably dramatically higher.

A few seconds later you’ll see the next few posts you can create. Just take the question asked, make it your post title, and then answer the question in your blog post.

Monday you write “Why Do We Need an HR Strategy?”
Tuesday you write “Why is HR Important?”
Wednesday you write “How Can HR Contribute to an Organization’s Competitive Performance?”
and so on.

I think you can skip “Who Played H.R. Pufnstuf?” although I’d keep it in my back pocket for a rainy day. Or maybe turn it into, “What Can H.R. Pufnstuf Teach Us About H.R.?”

I even created this embarrassing video called How to Create Killer Blog Content With Keyword Questions at YouTube. Enjoy.

Rich Brooks
Ready for American Idol?

Tags: Bloggers Block, Keyword Questions, WordTracker, WordTracker Labs
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, How-To Web Marketing Videos | 6 Comments »

How Much Time Should You Dedicate to Blogging?

Friday, September 10th, 2010

One of the big questions/concerns people have around business blogging is how much time does it take?

This is a legitimate question because in any economy, whether you’re failing, surviving or thriving, chances are you’re already working more than the 40 hours which was the norm when you were growing up.

Plus, when you were a kid you didn’t realize that cooking, cleaning, transporting to soccer/karate/ballet classes, travel time to and from work, mowing the lawn, fixing the lawnmower/heating/plumbing, reading bed time stories, coaching little league, laundry and fill-in-your-own activity would also count towards all your spent time on the planet. Plus sleeping 8 (hah!) hours a day.

So, how much time should you dedicate to blogging?

Well, I do the marketing, sales & communication for my company; in fact, I’d say that my primary job function is generating inbound leads for flyte. Blogging is one of the best ways to generate leads. I know this because our web marketing blog has the highest conversion rate for referrers at our web site. That means, the people who come to our web site from our blog are the most likely to fill out our contact form, which is the main way we get new business.

In my opinion, as long as you’re not just pumping out crap, you can’t blog enough. The mental shift you need to make is that blogging is marketing; blogging is increasing your online visibility; blogging is sales.

Blogging is customer acquisition, it’s customer support, it’s customer retention.

Blogging is the answer to the question your prospect just asked on Google. If you blogged the answer last week or last month or last year, Google might lead that prospect to your blog.

But, and that is a very big but:

Don’t let the fear that you can’t blog as often as I might suggest stop you from blogging at all. If you can commit to blogging just once a week–500 words or less–at the end of the year you’ll have 52 blog posts that can answer questions posted at Google or Bing, drive qualified traffic to your site/blog, and help convert those prospects into customers.

If you only commit to one blog post every other week, then you’ll still have 26 posts, 26 opportunities at landing new business that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

So what’s keeping you from starting/re-starting your business blog?

Rich Brooks
Small Business Blogging

Photo Credit: Poolie

Tags: Blog, blogging, business blogging, entrepreneur
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Marketing | 10 Comments »

Advanced Blogging at #ftw2010

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Between my responsibilities of blogging, speaking, generating business for my company, and trying to be a better husband and dad, I’m also ramping up for Social Media FTW, a conference I co-founded with Chrystie Corns and Jaica Kinsman.

As part of our ongoing online marketing campaigns, we’re running a series of interviews with our speakers. Because I was around, we interviewed me first. Watch the lovely and talented Chrystie Corns strut her interview skills below or wach the interview on YouTube.

And, if you haven’t signed up yet there’s still time! However, with over half the tickets gone, they won’t be around for ever. Remember, last year we sold out!

To learn more and register for this year’s Social Media FTW Fall Conference visit our site.

Tags: Chrystie Corns, FTW, ftw2010, Rich Brooks, socialmediaftw
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Entrepreneur & Small Business, flyte news, Web Marketing | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Business Blogs and Blog Marketing’ Category

Magnetic SEO: What Electromagnets Can Teach Us About SEO

What’s the Best Blogging Platform? WordPress vs. Joomla vs. TypePad

Announcing the Blogging Success Summit 2011

The Blogging Masters Telesummit: Free Sneak Preview

Blog Post Ideas from WordTracker Labs’ Keyword Questions

How Much Time Should You Dedicate to Blogging?

Advanced Blogging at #ftw2010

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