In business blogging, today is the best time for business bloggers to create great blog posts. Here’s why: Because content rocks! The more useful your blog posts, the better chances you will get links from other sites, including those that are authoritative ones.
Watch this video of Matt Cutts – THE Google Engineer (he’s like Alan Greenspan of the Fed – what he says can stir up opinions across the web) – explaining why search engine optimized page can still be beaten in Google search ranking by a less-optimized page:
To sum what he says: SEO is important, but it’s not everything. So the next time you receive offers – either solicited or unsolicited – from SEO specialists offering you SEO services to get your business blog rank first on search engine result page, you might want to reconsider your options. Why?
… Here is why: There are free ways to promote your business blog and blog posts
Unless you are a big firm that has the budget you need to hire SEO specialists, I recommend you to do what I am always trying to do – here are some business blogging tips for you:
1. Write blog posts for human first, search engine bots second
Many business bloggers are trapped into a way of thinking that they need to heavily SEO their business blogs to rank better and get more traffic. Well, according to Matt Cutts video above, SEO is not everything.
Write useful blog posts – even controversial ones – to attract interest; in the process, you might catch other sites’ attention to link to your blog posts.
2. Write what people want to know about; offer solutions
Rant about your broken vending machine on your business blog might not interest many people. However, if you offer solutions on how to fix a broken vending machine, you will get much more attention.
Remember, the web has already full of rants, whines, nags, etc. – you need to be one of the business bloggers who light up the lighthouse, guiding others to the right directions instead throwing all the negatives at them.
3. You are a blogger – write like one
Business bloggers should do what bloggers do – voice their opinions. News-like blog posts won’t really interest readers. To many, what you think about an issue is sometimes more important than the issue itself.
That being said, you need to title your blog posts right – we all know those smart titling done by news sites; try to do things differently with your blog.
4. Promote your blog posts
“Build it and they will come” won’t work for most of us. We need to get the words out. You need to tweet your own blog posts on Twitter; update your Facebook profile with a link to your blog post; you need to send your blog posts to LinkedIn, BizSugar, Digg, StumbleUpon, and some others.
Those sites won’t give you strong links, but they do help to distribute your content around the web. They are great helpers in driving targeted traffic to your business blog. So, related to No. 1 above, your blog post quality will determine the reach of your blog posts in those social media sites.
Good luck on being a better business blogger!
Ivan Widjaya
Business blogging