How Often Should You Write in Your Blog?

When a person or company begins writing a business blog, it can be difficult to know how often you should share information with your readers. While it may seem that you are well served to update your blog as often as possible, you may find that this is not only incredibly taxing, but posts can become repetitive and uninteresting. Conversely, if your blog is not updated often enough, readers will cease to regularly visit your site and search engines will not rank your blog highly.

Unless your blog covers up-to-the-minute news, and you have a dedicated staff to keep the blog updated, it is unnecessary to post to your blog more than once each day. Preferably, the blog should be updated at the same time each day, which will give loyal readers something look forward to and will give your blog a sense of continuity and professionalism. The best way to achieve this is to generate a number of blog posts in advance, having them ready to publish when they are needed.

If you do not think you have enough information to share with readers each day, think not only of readers but also of the search engines that index the keywords in your blog in order to determine rankings. High rankings in search engine results are one of the best ways to attract new visitors, and by creating content that caters to these search engines, you are much more likely to see results. When creating these keyword driven pieces, however, do not forget about content. Though the pieces you build are primarily made for search engines, they should be readable to blog visitors and should share real information.

Keep in mind that creating a blog that is only built for keyword searches is unlikely to achieve the results you desire. While SEO driven content may generate visits to your blog, if readers are not satisfied with the substance of the site, they will not return. Depending on the type of blog you host, you simply may not have enough content to realistically expect to update each day. In this case, it is better to have fewer posts with meaningful content than to have redundant pieces that will drive visitors away. Even in this situation, you should update your blog no less that once each week, remembering that with fewer posts each one must be meaningful and give the reader a good reason to return. You should also make it very apparent on the front page of your blog the exact day each week that the new posts will appear. This will keep visitors from becoming frustrated when they visit your blog each day and see no new activity.

Ideally, before you even begin a blog you will have several posts written, which will give you some idea of the amount of content you can realistically create and the amount of time it takes to write these posts. Knowing this information in advance, you can easily determine the frequency with which you can update your blog.

 

All I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned From SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

This is a tribute to a contract position I had as a consultant with an SEO firm 🙂 We had some great times!

Content – Make sure you fill your life with meaning. 

• Having a purpose is important.
• Make sure you know what that is and state it very clearly.

Relevance – Everything you say and do should have focused importance.

• Don’t just go through life wantonly, keep it real.
• Life is short; don’t loose sight of the big picture.

Link Building – Connect with others, build relationships and MAINTAIN them.

• Just like in SEO linking, networking, and relationship building is a key factor to a successful life.

Cost per Click – Everything in life has an Opportunity Cost associated with it.

• Make sure you know what your campaigns are going to cost you before you embark on the endeavor.

Ranking – Measure everything you do as a Father, Wife, Employee, etc.

• Know where you stand.
• Strive to be the best and work at it organically, no short cuts.

Navigation – Where am I going and why.

• Make sure you have direction in life.
• If all else fails carry a Sitemap with you.

Keywords – Have goals and optimize your life for them.

• Choose goals relevant to your life, dreams, and aspirations.
• Make sure the content of your life has enough goals scattered throughout it so your dreams can find you.

Back-linking – Find out who is saying what about you and why… both positive and negative.

• Feedback and support are important.
• If people aren’t confident in you find out what it is that makes them feel that way.
• If someone is supporting you tell them they are appreciates and support them as well (AKA reciprocated linking).

Images vs. Text – Too much Flash can be a bad thing 😉

• Don’t let the exterior beauty get in the way of what you are about.
• Remember, content is important too.

Conversion Rate – Make sure you follow through with what you start.

• If you start something, see it through to the end.

Trust – Make sure you are a person people will want to come back and see again.

• If you do things the right way, people will trust you.
• If people trust you they will begin to like you.
• If people like you, they will visit you and everyone likes to make new friends.

The Importance of Layout to the Success of an Online Business

Experienced online marketing companies and web design companies know how much a well designed layout is important to the success of an online business. Let us assume that your website is like a virtual office or a virtual showroom and the home page is your reception desk. Isn’t it important to have a well maintained and tastefully done reception with pleasant and courteous reception staff to greet your customers?

First impression is the best impression and this is very true in the case of online business too. I have come across many onsite business owners complaining that their website is not delivering the expected results in spite of employing good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods. They complain that even though the traffic generated is satisfactory, the visitors to their websites don’t hang on, they just vanish. This is like so near and yet so far because on the internet you are only a click away from your competition.

I wanted to find out why customers don’t enter these sites even after the search engines brought them to the websites. The answer was staring right at my face when I clicked on the websites. The home page layout was boring, dull, colorless and confusing. The links were cluttered and the whole structure of the home page was in one word, uninteresting. This was the reason why most of the customers didn’t want to enter the site. Subconsciously they got repulsed at the way the site looked and went searching for more attractive sites. I solved the problem by entirely restructuring the layouts of their websites by adding colors, and graphics to emphasize the areas we wanted the visitor to notice. I also placed the links in such a way that it was easy for the visitors to navigate and enter. The results were amazing. These online businesses made dramatic turnarounds and their conversion rates increased significantly.

My years of experience in the online marketing industry have made me understand one important aspect of website designing and that is; no matter how good a website is in luring visitors, without a good inviting homepage layout all the potential customers are going to simply walk away. A home page is the critical point where a potential customer can get an instant idea of what he or she can expect to get from the website. This is precisely why I always make it a point to spend some quality time just on the layout alone. Adding and mixing the right colors, graphics and easy navigational links are a top priority for me.

There are plenty of statistics that prove beyond a doubt that a proper layout contributes immensely to the success of an online business. Anyone with a thorough knowledge of how an online business works and has helped online businesses taste success by providing good web designs will endorse my views. My formula for developing layouts for websites is to keep the design simple yet attractive. My practice is not to provide everything on the home page itself but to place easily identifiable navigational links that are easy to use for the customer. The trick is in helping the customer find his way into the site and the more time he or she spends on the site, the more chances of the prospect converting to a sale. I select graphics that have a role to play and a message to convey rather than cluttering up the site with graphics that are added for effect and nothing else. Color schemes are chosen with a purpose. The purpose is to get the attention of the target customers and retain it.

Given the fact that visual appeal increases the chances of success and we humans process visuals around 60,000 times faster than other forms of communication and also the fact that most of what we learn is through our eyes, don’t you think it is necessary to have images, color and graphics on the website layout that are pleasing to the human eye?

Your website is far too important to leave to inexperienced designers, hiring a competent online marketing company can not only bring the right visitors to your website, but they can re-design the site to appeal to those visitors in ways that will vastly improve the performance of converting visitors to customers.