When it comes to content development and marketing, it is easy to get caught up in producing a great piece of content, placing it online, and then going out to tell the world about it. Between the placing it online and the going out to tell the world about it, there are a few additional things you need to do, depending on the type of content you have developed and where you are placing it.

The following are some content optimization tips to help your content get found. (more…)

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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The first thing a lot of people probably think, thanks to the Google Farmer / Panda update is that article marketing has lost its value. Some of it has, if you solely depend on search traffic to bring visitors to your articles in hopes that they will continue to click through to your website.

But one thing that a lot of article marketers have missed is the community factor on some of these sites. Not all article directories are simply a repository of articles and nothing more. Some article networks have their own social community where members can interact through comments, forums, and question & answer areas. Members can also follow other members whose articles they like, and will be notified when that member has published a new article.
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Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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While there are tons of SEO optimization methods that can be implemented for websites, here are the ones that are a must have for your business blog if you want it to rank well for keywords and be visited by those who come across it in search results.

1. Blog Post Title Tag

Be sure to include an up to 60 character title tag (<TITLE>Your Page Title</TITLE>) for not only your blog’s homepage, but for each and every post that includes your post’s main keywords.

This is important not just for SEO, but also for social media sharing of your post, as the post’s title is generally what gets tweeted, shared on Facebook walls, bookmarked, etc.

So make those 60 characters count, as that will be the first impression of your post in search results and on social networks.

2. Blog Post Meta Description

Though it is often debated about in terms of whether it is still important, I still always suggest that the blog’s homepage as well as individual posts have a great 160 character meta description (<meta name=”description” content=”Your page’s awesome description that makes people want to click on it to read more.” />).

This is usually the description that will show up in search results as well as the description for your post when shared via Facebook and social bookmarking networks. It should, like the title tag, include your post’s main keywords and should be written as a sentence – the description should not be just a 170 character stuffing of keywords.

3. Blog Post URL

Along with the TITLE tag, the blog post URL should be optimized with your post’s main keywords to help boost them in search results.

As you can see from the below results for our link building expert interview series, the keywords that were searched for are bolded in both the title and blog URL which means the URL is noticed by Google. It also makes the listings stand out even more.

4. Blog Post Images and Attributes

Images can be an important part of your blog post, as many people will be attracted to a post simply because of the image. It can also help you demonstrate your topic more thoroughly as well as break up the text in a post to make it easier to read.

When you add images to your post (<IMG SRC=”your-keyword-image.jpg” ALT=”Your Keyword Image Description” TITLE=”Your Keyword Image Description” />), there are three ways you can boost your SEO optimization including:

• Image File Name – Be sure to have a descriptve, keyword rich file name for your image.
• Descriptive ALT Attribute – The ALT tag, which should also have your post’s keywords if possible, needs to be a concise description of the image. This is also the text that comes up if the image doesn’t load correctly on your blog post or is heard when a visually impaired reader using a screen visits your post.
• Descriptive TITLE Attribute – this one may not have much weight in SEO value, but allows you to inlcude your keywords (either the same as the ALT text or different ones) and shows as a tooltip when someone hovers over your image in certain browsers.

The combination of the above elements will help your post images rank in Google Image Results…

As well as additional areas of Google search, such as the news results, which will also help the result stand out from the others no matter where it ends up in the top 10 listings…

5. Blog Post Header Tags

How important are your header tags (<H2>Keyword Rich Heading</H2> and <H3>Keyword Rich Heading</H3>)? First of all, they make your article easier to read by breaking the content up into easily scannable sections.

They also can help your post rank for specific keyword phrases and terms within search results.

As you can see from the above search result based on the header in this post, you also need to make sure the first bit of text after the header supports the keywords mentioned to get readers to want to click on the post to learn more.

Your Best Blog Post SEO Tips

These are some of the top optimization elements that I have seen lead to better search engine results positioning. What are some elements you include in your blog posts to ensure better rankings?

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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When it comes to business blogging, some companies tend to stick to content development solely for their own sites. But if you are looking to develop authority within your niche and industry, you should go beyond blogging for your own corporate blog. And you should go one step further than one-off guest blogging all over the place.

Instead, consider guest blogging consistently for one site (or more) on a regular basis.

But What About SEO?

Now before I go there, I’m sure the first thing the SEO-focused audience is thinking is that it’s better to get links all over the place through guest posting all over the place, right? Of course, but that is if you are just thinking about the link building aspect. Guest blogging to build authority is more for traffic and leads than search optimization. So if that’s what you are looking for, then please continue.

Benefits of Becoming a Regular Contributor

So what are the benefits of becoming a regular contributor? If you start writing for a blog regularly (say once a month) on a multi-author authoritative site in your industry, then you essentially become a recognized part of a group of experts. If you get one guest post published on the site, someone who subscribes to it may see your name that one time, like your post, and that would be that. But if you are regularly featured on the blog, then your name is likely to stick in the minds of the subscribers.

How might this work to your advantage? Imagine if this subscriber has enjoyed your regular posts and, thus, has your name in mind. Now let’s assume they don’t go directly to your website from one of your posts. Instead, they search for a company who does what you do and has the standard ten results to choose from. Chances are, your company’s name will stand out and be the one they choose since you have demonstrated your expertise through regularly blogging on one of their favorite sites, even if it isn’t #1 in SERPs.

Strength of Multi-Author Blogs

Continuing to focus on multi-author blogs, another benefit is the overall strength of blogs with several authors. Generally, a blog with several authors is going to have the support of not just the blog owner, but everyone that writes for the blog and their audience. This means that if there are 10 experts writing for a site, you stand a shot at being exposed to each of their audiences regularly, as opposed to just the audience of one blogger, one time.

Social Connections and Sharing

Speaking of blog with several experts, another bonus of becoming a regular author is the potential for networking with other industry experts and leaders. Bloggers are typically community-friendly people and love to connect with fellow bloggers. If you’ve been having a hard time getting guest blogging gigs on other sites, then getting on a blog with several other writers in your industry may help.

Take a little time to create a Twitter list of the other authors and follow them closely – share their posts on their own site as well as the ones they do for the collaborative blog. They will eventually take notice and start doing the same for you. Then you can request to guest on their site as well as get recommendations from them for other sites you should try approaching.

How to Find and Secure Great Guest Blogging Opportunities

So how do you find these great guest blogging opportunities? My first suggestion for anyone looking to guest blog is to check out the community at My Blog Guest. They have a forum dedicated to blogs seeking bloggers, and bloggers seeking blogs. There is also a lot of valuable information in their blog, including a post on getting guest posts published on top blogs.

My second tip is to check out PostRank. PostRank has a great directory of blogs, as well as listings by topic of blogs with the most powerful social engagement. Generally, these are blogs that have multiple authors and contributors. For example, if you look at the most popular SEO blogs at least seven out of ten of them are ones that have multiple contributors and produce new content daily.

Great Content

Lastly, and this one is THE most important recommendation when seeking to join a collaborative blog with a group of experts.

You must have amazing content.

This means you need to write the best content you have ever written to use as your “audition” post when requesting a spot on the blog. Generally, your chance of going from a one-time guest to becoming a resident expert yourself is going to be dependent on how well your first blog post does on their site.

This means that you will want to really break out your best of everything for this first post between awesome content and superior blog post promotion. Focus on the networks whose social sharing widgets with counters the blog uses on their single post pages, which are typically Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or StumbleUpon. Also, be sure to drum up discussion by ending your guest post with a call to action, inviting readers to comment. Traffic, comments, and social shares for your post will be the “votes” you need to join the community!

Your Thoughts on Becoming a Regular Blog Contributor

Are you a contributor on a multi-author blogging site? Tell us your experience, from the benefits, drawbacks, and other tips you have for finding great opportunities in particular niches or industries.

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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This year’s Blog World Expo was jam packed with tons of information covering all aspects of the blogging and social media industry. One session that I attended which had a lot of great advice for business owners was The Now R(evolution): 7 Blueprints for Business at the Speed of Now with Jay Baer and Amber Naslund.

Now I must admit, being a complete book nerd, I was lured into this session by the promise of an advance copy of their book, The Now Revolution which isn’t being released until February 2011. But aside from that, the session was definitely an eye opener in terms of the looking into ways businesses need to adapt to the real-time demands of social media.

Real Time Challenges

So what are the challenges businesses have to face? One of the major ones is with review sites. In the past, if people had a complaint, they would voice it through calling a 1-800 number, filling out a comment card, or mailing letters to the manager or corporate branch of an establishment. Any of these options were usually done in private, and the company could usually deal directly with the complaint. Chances are, unless the person was a journalist, they weren’t spreading the word about their complaint much further than their family and circle of friends.

Now, you have sites where people can voice their complaints for all of the world to see. Take Trip Advisor, for example. When you go to their site, you are greeted with Rants and Raves section on their homepage which leads to the latest best and worst reviews. Take the following hotel reviews.

Many review sites do not have any verification process to find out if the reviewer actually has been a patron of the business they are bashing. It’s simple enough to use a throwaway email address and false information to sign up for a site and then leave a bad review. Motivation could be anything from an aggravated employee to a another neighborhood business trying to put a black mark on the competition.

Another consequence of not verifying the identity of the reviewer is that the business may never be able to reach the reviewer to try to resolve whatever issue needed to be dealt with if said reviewer did not use their real information. Also, as people are becoming used to the concept of businesses using social media platforms to respond to customer service issues, businesses that do not respond to complaints like these in the public forum are being viewed as not listening to their customers, which also leaves a bad taste in a potential customer’s mouth.

Seven Ways to Adapt

So how does a business become a part of the now, responding in with speed, meeting expectations of interactive social media, and becoming familiar with the different systems and platforms that are available?

1. Engineer a New Bedrock – Be sure that the culture of your company goes beyond just discussion in the boardroom. Spread your company’s meaning and message to every employee that represents your brand. Trust your employees to solve problems as they arrive and give them the tools to do so. Reward those that
do things the right way.

2. Acquire Talent You Can Trust – In the keynote before this session by Scott Stratten, it was mentioned that “If you have a moron running your social media, it’s not a social media issue but a HR issue.” Everyone in your company should be into what you do, and if not, you should find out why.

3. Organize Your Armies – Make sure that people know who owns social media. For example, if you are launching a product, your marketing team should own it. If you are dealing with reputation issues, your PR team should own it. If you are dealing with customer problems, customer service should own it.

4. Online Listening is the New Answering the Telephone – Going back to earlier, when customers have a problem, they used to call your 1-800 number. Now they are tweeting about it. You should be monitoring conversations about your brand like you would listen for the phone to ring and be sure to answer, as well as remember that listening is not an 8 – 5 job. Also, keep in mind that the voice of the few may be the voice of many – if one person vocalizes that they do not like something, that could a widely felt sentiment that should be addressed.

5. Emphasize Response-Ability – Job function is irrelevant in your company – harvest the social media passion of your employees to give your brand more cars to go down the humanization highway.

Image from The Now Revolution Photostream on Flickr

6. Build a Fire Extinguisher – Information on how to manage a crisis is usually the least important until it becomes the most important. In order to effectively deal with a crisis in social media, you must:

• Acknowledge the crisis publicly.
• Arm your people on how to respond and work through the crisis.
• Fight with social media “water” by responding on the platform that people are freaking out on – if on Twitter, then don’t respond with a press release – start with Twitter.
• Make one FAQ page about the crisis that you can direct everyone to for more information.
• Give people a pressure release valve, such as an active discussion area for people to discuss the problem upon.
• After the crisis has been dealt with, document what has happened and learn from it so you will have a better gameplan (if necessary) for the future.

7. Make a Calculator – Isn’t it funny how no one questions the ROI on the IT department, but challenges the social media marketers at every turn? The issue with ROI isn’t that it can’t be calculated, but more so about the fact that it takes time to analyze all of the data coming from multiple sources and avenues. Your business must have defined goals for being on social media such as to increase awareness about your brand, drive traffic for sales, and / or to build loyalty. Also, you have to look at ways your company saves money with social media, such as being able to deal with many more customer service issues in a 140 character tweet than you can in a 15 minute phone call.

Your Real Time Thoughts

What other issues and challenges do you see when it comes to businesses and real time media, ROI, and ways to deal with those challenges to meet the needs of your customers?

Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a Web Strategist and author of the Vertical Measure’s Guide Blogging for Business.

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