Do Outside Blogs Help Your Websites Search Engine Rankings?

One of the questions we get quite often around here is "Does having a blog for my company help my search engine rankings?"

My answer is Yes- a blog can absolutely help your search engine rankings. With that said let me be clear- Manipulation of search rankings is not the reason to start a blog. I know what your thinking, "Jon, you just totally contradicted yourself". Let me explain: 

If your going to do a blog it needs to be a good blog with valuable content that is related to your core business.

By design blogs do a lot of things very well and when used regularly and correctly can help you earn better search engine rankings. In fact setting up a blog on a different domain like .blogger.com or .wordpress.com can often achieve rankings faster than a brand new websites. Here is why- AGE - Most search engine experts agree that the longer your domain has been registered the better it will rank. When you set up a blog using a subdomain like .wordpress.com or .blogger.com (Two sites that have been in existence for a long time) and age of your blog's domain makes Google Happy!

Here are a few more reasons to start a blog for your business:

• Blogs invite user comment which essentially keeps content fresh and fresh content makes Google Happy.
  
• Blogs are often easier to publish to than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often and fresh content makes Google Happy.
  
• A blog is a great place to post content that is related to your business but just doesn't quite fit into the professional nature of your website and this type of related content that links to your website makes Google Happy.
  
  Note- When creating a new blog post, be sure that the content in the post offers valuable content. If your blog post is realted to a service or product your company provides link to that product or service from your blog post. This is one of the biggest benefits of a blog. You can generate good related content and link it to your site. The other obivous benifit is that your blog can send your website visitors. Remember, people will be more likley to click on the links in your blog if your blog offers value. 

The bottom line is a good blog with links to your site can and will improve your link popularity, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings and that makes your bosses happy!

Here a great resources on increasing blog traffic:

• 21 Tactics To Increase Blog Traffic

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SEO for Local Businesses

Foremost Media Local SEO for Businesses

Every day more and more people are putting away that big yellow phonebook and turning to local internet searches in their hometown. According to a recent article published on EntireWeb.com, research has shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of households do some kind of search for a local product or serviceEVERY SINGLE DAY! What does this mean for your local business? It means you need to be in the right places when people are searching for your business.

"It's a GOOD THING that you're a small business, because that means we can position you to compete against only those businesses within your area, not any national businesses or coporations" 

3 Steps to Local Business Success

Site Optimization Just as any SEO program, local or not, you need to make sure that your website is doing everything it can to be detected by seach engines when someone in your local area is looking for a business with the services you offer. We make sure your site has the location and service area of your business in all the places the Google, Bing and Yahoo look for. We're talking page titles, footers, meta tags and much more that is imperative that you include your address and service area. We help you find the keywords that people are searching for already within your industry and transform your pages and site structure to conform to the things that search engines look for when ranking these terms. Doing this is your way of telling the search engine "I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!" "I'm right here! Now let's work together to find locals looking for my services and goods!" -Keyword Research & Analysis -Page Titles -Header and Footer Adjustments -Link Building

Social Media It doesn’t matter where you go, Facebook and Twitter are EVERYWHERE! Most local companies we talk to think this is stuff for the big wigs at giant corporations and thehigh money rollers on Wall Street…WRONG! If social media is built for anyone, it’s built perfectly for local businesses like yours. Running a local business is all about building and maintaining a good relationship with your customers and what better a place then being able to let them know about specials, sales and anything new then in their own home or on their smart phone.  Facebook is making it possible to offer discounts and coupons for those who frequent your store, sent directly to their computer or phone. Being able to reach out and interact with your customers when they aren’t even in your store or at your shop is extremely powerful. So let us help you build your Facebook and Twitter pages and we’ll show you the power of maintaining relationships with customers outside the walls of your business, and how easy it can be.

Google Places Getting Found Online by People in Your Community -Help customers find your business on Google -Show photos, respond to reviews, offer coupons and more -Get insights to make better business decisions When you search Google or Yahoo for a product or service with location phrases in your keywords (Janesville web design, Rock County heating & cooling, etc.), you will see the search engines display a map at the top of the search results with up to 10 “Local” search results. Below is an example of a local search on Google for “Janesville Wisconsin Web design.” The first ten listings are local Janesville Web Design companies, followed by natural listings. New Features of Google Local Search Google Tags: Want to help your business stand out from the competition? Add Google Tags, a new advertising feature, to your Google Places Local Search account: Tags are yellow markers that allow you the business owner to promote important aspects of their businesses. Scroll over tags on Google or click the sponsored link to view coupons, photos, or other select features. Get more customers  Save time advertising  Control your budget  Service Area: Let potential customers see your service area to show the reach of your company’s services and products Some companies operate from a home address, but offer services and products far beyond the reach of the business’ front door. Now you are no longer are you limited to only list your business location and address. You can now show customers searching for your services your service area customizable specifically for your business by location or distance from your business address. We offer all of this for a one time fee of $425! Sign up for our Local SEO package today and start attracting more local customers! (608) 758-4841 and ask for our SEO Expert Aaron Manogue!   For more information on getting started with Google Local and to start getting your business found online locally, contact Foremost Media at (608)758‐4841 or to speak with our Social Media & Search Engine Marketing expert Aaron Manogue, email him at amanogue@foremostmedia.com to see what Foremost Media can do for your local business TODAY!

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The Best Link Building Letter Ever

Let me preface this post by saying that building good quality links to your website is one the most effective things you can do to get better search engine rankings.  Apart from the actual content on your site much of where your positioned in the search engine rankings depends on the number of good quality related links to your site.

Here at Foremost Media we manage a lot of websites for a lot of different companies and there is hardly a day that goes by when I don't get an email from someone working on a link building campaign.  Typically those folks look at the "Whois" information (Domain Registration Records) for one of our clients sites and some how end up in my email box (Technical Contact).  Most link campaign letters sound something like this:

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
Reciprocal link request

BAD LINK BUILDING EMAIL BODY: 
I'm the webmaster of a MyWebsiteHere website at www.mywebsitehere.com

We are interested in putting a link to your site and we ask in return that you put a link to our website with the following information: (Info Deleted for blog post) 

Please give us a title, a description and an address to link to. We will put a link to your website, in the relevant region, as soon as you agree to the exchange 

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us and please identify the website you are representing if you are a third party representative.

Today I received a really well written link request from a company claiming to be from a "Cancer Center Advocacy Website" (A specific type of cancer that has a lot of advertising around it):

GOOD EMAIL LINK BUILDING SUBJECT LINE (Almost):
Fire Sfaety Resource (They Spelled Fire Safety Wrong but other then that the letter was really pretty good)

GREAT EMAIL LINK BUILDING BODY:
Hi,
I was browsing through state fire associations online and I like that you have a section dedicated to fire safety/ health resources at myclientswebsiteaddress.com  (One of our fire department clients).

My name is Real Persons Name (I deleted it for the purpose of this post but a real name is a nice touch) and I'm the Public Awareness Coordinator for the "Cancer Center" (Name Changed Here). We understand that local fire departments are tasked with keeping the community safe. Thus, as a public service, we are teaming up with fire departments across the country to help educate the nation about the dangers of asbestos and how to avoid it. This can include how to spot asbestos (pictures), common locations, how to test the air, and even asbestos information specific to your community. 

I noticed you currently have some mesothelioma information on your site. I would be honored if you would explore our site, provide us with feedback, and consider using our site as a resource on your links page as an additional resource.

Anything you can do to help us spread awareness would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for the information you provide to your community. I look forward to hearing from you and have a great afternoon! 

Best Regards,
Real Persons Name (Once again I deleted the real name)    
Public Awareness Director

I can't confirm or deny this next statement but my guess is that the "Cancer Center" is not a real place but rather a website built with the sole intention of generating leads for lawyers.  While the site does contains a ton of great info on Mesothelioma it also contains some not so subtle links to receive a free informational packet on Mesothelioma.  Anyway, that's not the point of this post so let's get back to the good link building email.  Here are the key things I think this email does right:

1.  It's not a hard sell- They appear to be offering me some help.
2.  It's from a real person with a real title.
3.  It's actually targeted at a page on my clients site that is relevant.
4.  The email is actually tailored to my clients industry (Fire Departments).

I hope you find this post interesting.  I would guess that the odds of successful link building would be much higher for the "Cancer Center" then the firsts email example I gave.  For the record I'm not a big fan of spam emails to webmasters requesting links but as I said before incoming links are very important to search engine marketing.  My best advice to you is "If you really want to build good links build GREAT CONTENT and folks will link to it naturally!"

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