SEO Denver

SEO Consultants Denver provides free initial consultations to area businesses wishing to improve sales and revenue by utilizing the latest in internet technologies.  Contact Matt at 303.506.1158 or visit our home page today!

———————————–

Blogging for Business Traffic – a Newbies Guide to the Process

That business blogs attract viewers and customers is a well known fact.  Setting up the blog is not a hugely time-consuming or even expensive endeavor.   Still, blogging takes time and can require a significant on-going investment.  Composing and creating valuable content is not an easy task and to run through the exercise day after day can leave the author worn out and out of ideas.   Still, the concept of ‘valuable content’ is central to attracting and re-attracting viewers to the business site.    So when things get difficult and ideas are hard to come by, companies frequently ask “how much blogging is necessary?” 

Posting at least once every day is a difficulty that most successful business bloggers overcome.  Generating enough fresh new ideas is a challenge, but if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.  So… overcoming the challenges of creating new content each day or multiple times each day is a very important part of a successful blog traffic strategy.  New and valuable content must be posted regularly – preferably daily – if you want to compete at the top of your niche for readers.

A quick note about types of readers – there appear to be two main types:

• Initial visitors, and
• Repeat visitors

Initial visitors may be attracted by a blog post you made on another site, or because your site showed up as a result on a search engine.  Once there, they must receive value and be at least entertained by the content you present.  Otherwise, they will be much less likely to become repeat visitors.  Repeat visitors are ones that have some assurance that the time taken to revisit your site will not be wasted.  Repeat visitors may also be members of the niche community that may be searching for new ideas themselves.

So how do you use a blog to attract both types of visitors?   There really are only two elements to improve traffic and search engine placement with a business blog.

• Creating value
• Telling people about it

Yup… that is about it… just two areas upon which to focus.  (These are big task areas though!)

Creating Value – Provide something useful or a guideline that will be helpful to your readers.  Thinking of your reader as a customer, he or she won’t invest time with you unless there is something they can get out of the relationship.  And… understanding that creating value is a time-consuming effort, the author must schedule in time to prepare good material. 

Telling People – Once your content is created and posted, what then?  Well….don’t just stand there, tell someone!  This is why it is important that you reach out via a blog or social network to let people know they can receive some value by visiting your page.    Social marketing such as Facebook and Twitter can help attract readers if you let viewers know there is new and valuable material posted on your site.

There are numerous tactics one can while visiting other blogs within the niche, but suffice it to say that you need to be a part of your community and share your knowledge and expertise.  A comment on another’s blog that shows insight and wit will attract readers over to your site.  And once they are there, they should receive a unique bit of content or value.  There is no substitute for visiting other blog pages in your niche. 

This brings us back to how much new information and blog activity is necessary to attract readers.  There is of course no short answer to this.  A good rule of thumb is though, to post every day and comment every day.  Your level of success will be somewhat dependent on the competition you have in your niche and the size of your potential audience.  In short, you must be active in terms of posting and commenting.  This just takes time.

Blogging allows you to actively put your message out for the community, but the community must be invited to read it.   If the message isn’t valuable or if the community doesn’t know the value is there, you are missing huge opportunities to attract readers and ultimately, buyers.