On a daily basis I get asked why blogging is so important. Many SEO Specialists have written articles on this very topic all claiming the same thing expecting you to take their word for it. For example, back in Dec of 2008 I wrote a small article on "Why Blogging is so Important" in which I gave pretty good explanation as to why each website needs one. This article has gotten quite a few hits with no visible or mentionable results other than providing the viewer with a good reason to start blogging. However, telling you why you need a blog is experience and opinion based and is a tad bit different then showing you why you need a blog. So in this article on "Why do YOU need to blog" I will show you actual results that will clearly show the benefits of blogging on your website.

Blog Preparation
1) The first and most important step before you begin writing your blog article is knowing who your target audience is. In our line of work not only do we get other website owners and potential clients reviewing and studying our articles, we get alot of developers, seo gurus and other web masters reading them as well. As a Website and SEO specialist myself, all to often I write articles that lean towards teaching others web masters how to do what I am doing when in fact I am trying to teach potential future clients how to increase traffic on their site in hopes that they will contact us for services. So its very important to articulate your blog article in such away that you are attracting the viewers that you want to attract.

2) The second rule in writing blog articles is knowing what keywords you are wanting to target. Knowing how to write SEO Article/Blog Content is a whole other lesson in itself. Click the following link for these FREE SEO Article Lessons.

3) The third basic rule in blogging is adding the visual aspect that grabs your target audiences attention to make them want to continue reading. You can do this by adding pictures to your article. You want to keep it interesting by drawing in your audience. You will do this with a couple of relevant pics, bullet points, H Tags, as well as the typical bold, underline and italics formatting. If done correctly, you visually stimulate your audience into continued reading.

4) The fourth rule of blogging is a specific call to action. In our FREE SEO Lessons we teach you how to write articles that guide your viewers to some type of action. Afterall, what is the point of writing an article if you are in a product or services based business without asking your viewers to do something once they have read it?

and finally,

the last rule or suggestion to blogging is being consistent with your blogs. Its recommended to produce 2-3 blog articles a week for your target audience. This does three things; 1) keeps the flow of traffic to your site steady, 2) keeps the search engines coming back to your site looking for new content and 3) helps to establish your company as a specialist in your field which builds consumer confidence.

Benefits of Blogging
In order to understand the benefits of blogging you really need to understand what a blog is about and what its for. If you are reading this you should be able to see the importance already. In our blog we provide information that pertains to our services in the form of an article that provides "you" the viewer valuable information that will either cause you to implement our suggested strategy or to call us and have our Blog Team do it for you. You may or may not call us now, but in the future when a web related need arises the overall goal is that you remember who we are and to eventually capture your business.

Blogging is a dynamic way to provided fresh content on your website without having to create extra pages and links to those pages on your website menus. It's like a website unto itself within your current website. 

Our services are website design and development with an emphasis on the Joomla Content Management System. We also provide Search Engine Optimization Services. However, there is no way to cover on one (services page) all the services that we provide. That is where the blog comes in. We can write about an SEO tactic on our blog which will bring in more viewers all centered around one specific topic we are writing on that will grab viewers from the internet in a way we couldn't have done with our current website structure. The article is designed to engage the viewer with the goal of 1) them implementing our strategies and keeping them coming back for more or 2) for them to contact us to implement that strategy for them. 

"After all, generally speaking the sole purpose of a website or blog article is to capture future business. A blog opens doors to potential clients that your static website pages would not have."

Let me show you how this works:

As we mentioned before we offer SEO Services. Well this is a large field of services and the list of what we can do is long. So on our SEO Services page the keyword we are trying to rank for is SEO Services in Kansas City. Well if we have 100 Search Engine Optimization Services that we offer and we list every single one, then how do we rank for all 100 of those services on one page? The answer to that is we cant!

However, with our blog we can start writing articles on those individual services and start ranking and bringing in potential clients from the Blog Articles that we write.

Here is a case study of recent blog article:

One of our SEO Services is helping clients setup valuable backlinks to their website using a typical SEO Strategy that works. We picked a high ranking website (to use as a tool to drive traffic) that has lots of members and viewers that can be targeted for this article that we wrote.

The last article that we wrote is right below this blog article you are reading and its called: How to Drive Traffic with a Squidoo Lens.

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<--- This article was written Feb 22nd and within 22 hours of publishing this blog article, not only was it showing up within the top 10 results, we were at position #7 for the search term "How to Drive Traffic with a Squidoo Lens" which is exactly what we were wanting to do. 

As your create and provide more and more relevant information for your readers several things will happen.

1) Your site will obviously receive more hits.

2) Your readers will pass on your articles to others.

3) Your overall site page rank will increase, thus passing on your sites page rank to your blog articles even faster.

4) As page rank and relevance increases your articles will start to be indexed quicker by the search engines giving your articles a leg up over other similar articles that have been out longer than yours.

5) Your followers will increase. Building your blog followers is very important. Allowing them to interact with your blog by being able to leave comments will give you the interaction with your visitors in a way that not only keeps them coming back but also provides valuable feedback on more of what they are wanting and needing.

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Within a few days our position moved from #7 to the #3 position and is holding. So the whole point of this example is to show you that not only do we bring traffic to our website in from our static website page called "SEO in Kansas City" we are now bringing in visitors based on one of our non-mentioned services that we offer in a very short amount of time by using a blog. This article alone has made us $2700.00 in less than a month as well bringing more relevance to our entire website as a whole.

Summary: Blogging gives you the ability to rank individual articles that will draw traffic to your site that you would not have normally gotten from your static pages. It increases traffic, helps to raise page rank, bring more relevance to your site, provides value to your readers and open doors to new business and opportunities.

Here is a quick SEO Blog Tip: The best way to get a backlink from someone else's site to yours is not necessarily trying to convince them to link from their home page to yours (that generally doesn't happen) but to have them write a small and quick blog article/review of your site and services in their blog. These types of backlinks are more relevant in the search engines eyes and works well in driving more traffic to your site from a blog that has many viewers over just your link being on their site.

If you need help setting up your blog or creating a blogging strategy that will work for your company, please contact us and get a FREE Project Quote.

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I get asked all the time about viable back links that will drive traffic. This first thing that pops into mind is getting links pointing back to your site from websites that have 1) high traffic and 2) large page rank. Of course the next question I get asked by my clients is "can i do this myself". The answers is, Yes you can and our recommendation for today is to setup an account with Squidoo.com.

Our Squidoo accounts:
http://www.squidoo.com/joomla-website-design-development
http://www.squidoo.com/xtremeseo
http://www.squidoo.com/joomla-teaching-forum-community

These accounts took about 15 minutes apiece to setup and drive an extra 800-1200 hits a month to our site. We capture the keywords we want to rank for within our links that we setup at Squidoo. 

The awesome thing about driving traffic with Squidoo is that it allows you to create multiple landing pages for your keywords you want to rank for. Depending on your industry its not that hard within a few weeks for your Squidoo page to be showing up on the top 10 results for your keyword. They click on your Squidoo link within the results, are taken to your Squidoo page and are driven back to your website.

Another SEO tactic that you can use with Squidoo is to create a specific landing page on your website that caters to those that came to your page from Squidoo and offer them a special service or product offering. This tactic is also great if you are into list building as well as getting your clients to forward on your Squidoo Landing Page to their friends and colleagues. 

HOWEVER,

If you do not have the time to setup a Squidoo Lens, then we would be more than happy to assist you with this. Just simply contact us and let us know what you are looking for and lets see what we can do for you.

As always, we are here to help your business grow.

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Landing Page Strategies and Tactics

In this lesson we are going to learn how to create a Successful Internet Presence that ensures on-going results within the search engines by creating Quick Landing Pages that are specifically designed to drive traffic using a re-direction tactic to your core services or products pages.

How many of you sit on your custom built back-porch overlooking the ocean with wind in your hair and a margarita in your hand because your business ranks #1 on Google and you have more business then you know what to do with? 

I thought so!

Climbing to the top of the search engines can be a very tedious task and converting those who do hit your site to make a sale can be even harder. Unlike your car, house or even your dog, getting insurance for lost revenue, declining page rank, increased bounce rate and lower conversion rates on your website is NOT going to happen in this digital life time. The only way to stay ahead of the never-ending and ever changing algorithmic curve of the search engines is to stay constantly proactive in keeping with the flow of information based on the needs of the viewers, or should I say "the opinion of the search engines" of what the viewers want.

So lets take a look at creating "Quick Landing Pages" and how they can boost your traffic.

Content

We have all heard before, Content is King and that couldn't be more true. In comparison, content is your insurance policy. So we are on the same page, lets define content.

Onsite Content
Title Tags
Description Tags
Landing Page Articles
Links
Pictures
Alt Tags
Actual Page Articles
News Articles
Blog Articles
Forum Articles

Offsite Content
Blog Posts
Forum Posts
Ezine Articles
Press Releases
Videos
Social Posts and Articles
Backlinks

Now that we have established what content is, let me show you how to implement your own Landing Pages that will drive large amounts of traffic to your website.

Landing Page Strategy - How to ensure that you continually drive traffic to your site.

In this Blog Post we are going to cover the first three parts of Onsite Content which is  (Title and Description Tags in association with Landing Pages). I will cover the other topics  of content in the up coming weeks.

I am sharing a Landing Page Strategy with you that works for me time and time again.  One of the first things I tell my clients to do is to create their core set of products or services. Without your core services you can not properly drive people down the strategically planned path that leads to a sale. Note: With products, this can be a tad more difficult due to the amount of products you may have. So in this Landing Page Strategy we are going to talk more about core services even though the methodology is the same with the sales of products.

Step 1) Creating your Core Set of Services: This initial step is paramount in your overall SEO Landing Page Strategy. Its very important to get your core services pages perfect. This is where conversion takes place. As a rule of thumb, you want to keep your core services to just a handful. If you find that you have alot of core services then break them down into 3-5 categories. You do not want your customers being overwhelmed and YOU DO NOT want to come across as the end-all-be-all service provider. Less is always more!

Our Core set of Services are:

• Joomla Website Design

• Joomla Website Development

• Joomla Hosting Services

• Joomla Support Services

• Joomla SEO Services

These are what we call our meaty pages and they also just so happen to be keywords we want to rank for. However, there are approximately 200 other various keywords variations with the terms "Joomla" we want to rank for other than those listed above. Now, if we had all the time and money in the world we would create Juicy, Meaty and Keyword Rich pages with lots of content for EVERY keyword term people search for with the word Joomla in it. However, this is really not practical. So step one would be to define what your core services are, make sure they have been written correctly, have the appropriate amount of keyword density and anchor tags within the article and finally a "call to action" at the end of the page. First rule of sales in any industry has always been, "ask for the sale".

Step 2) We are going to focus on one of your main keywords. Go to the Google Keywords Tool found here http://www.google.com/sktool/ and input your main keyword string. Note: Keep your keywords to no more than a three word keyword string. This should produce anywhere from 100 to 300 different variations of your keyword. Now this may be a tad bit time consuming but jot down each variation that you would like to try to rank for and create your list. You can either write them down or select them and export them into a text file. Either way is fine. The most important part here is building a LARGE list of keywords.

Now that you have your LARGE list of keywords you want to rank for its time to build what I like to call Landing Pages. 

Step 3) Here are a few rules for each Landing Page you create. First and foremost the Title Tag of your page needs to be one of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Dont add anything more to the title tag then the keyword itself. In your Description tag of your landing page you may add a one to three word variant. For Example:

When we entered our keyword string of "Joomla Website Design" a keyword variant that came up was "Joomla Designers". So our Title Tag would look like:

Title Tag: Joomla Designers

Now we need to create a Description Tag for this page adding a small variant to it. So our description tag would look something like:

Description Tag: Need a Professional Joomla Web Designer to create your Dream Website?

Notice how we added the keywords "Professional, Web and Website"? We also added the word "Designer" thus removing the "s". That way if the end user types in something different then "Joomla Designers" such as "Joomla Web Designer" we will still be found within the search engines. Or they just as easily could have typed "Joomla Website Designers" we still would have been found. However, its important to remember that our main focus in this example is "Joomla Designers" because when searching for our keywords using the Google Tool we found that 10,000 people this month have typed that keyword in.

Step 4) Now we need to create content for this page. Since I have 200 landing pages to create I do not want to have to come up with an entire page of content. I definitely want to rank for this keyword and have lots of traffic, but I either don't have the time, money or resources to create a 700 word article for each of these Landing Pages I am creating. So here is what I do. I create a 5-6 line paragraph designed solely for the keyword "Joomla Designers". Within this one paragraph I talk about our Joomla Designers and use this keyword 3-5 times. Here is an example:

The first thing in my paragraph is the H1 Tag. This is very important. So I start the article off with a H1 page title and then I highlight the word and create an anchor tag. Then I create one paragraph about Joomla Designers such as:

Joomla Designers

"At The Turn Group, our Joomla Designers have a combined experience of 18 years. As a Joomla Designer we know what it takes to produce a Joomla Design that is not only eye engaging but also converts clients to sales. At the end of the day your Joomla Designer needs to know how to help guide your target audience to a call to action. Joomla Designers are a special breed combining not only the latest in trendy look and feel but with the functionality of the most robust content management system on the market. Our Joomla Designers don't stop there. They also know how to incorporate SEO Strategies into the Joomla Design itself leaving our clients with an instant edge over their competition every time. To see what our Joomla Designers can do for you choose one of our Core Joomla Services below".

This paragraph took me about 5 minutes to write. I have included our keyword (including the H1 tag 5 times). I have also added a couple of variant keywords a few times as well. These keyword variants are "Joomla Designer (without the "s") and "Joomla Design". Notice how I also bolded the keywords and underlined the keywords. One last thing, there are a total of three anchor tags on this page (that you can't see). I anchored tagged Joomla Designers, Joomla Designer and Joomla Design. Now, notice how the last sentenced had a call to action. The last strategy for your Landing Pages is to direct them to your core pages. I do this with graphics and links. View this landing page I just created here. 

You will see the H1 Tag, the paragraph and I even took the time to add a picture to the left of the text. Note: If you add a picture, make sure you add the alt tag to the pic using your keyword and also go as far as naming the picture using your keyword.

 At the bottom of our paragraph that we add to EVERY Landing Page is a graphical representation of our core services. So bottom line, this page took me 9 minutes to create, directed them to my core services and I will rank for this keyword in less than two weeks time. Though I really don't care for this keyword it will drive large amounts of traffic to my site and this Landing Page Strategy can do the same for you.

One last thing. You might be asking, where and how do I link to this page once I have created it? You don't want to link to this page from your main menu, you don't want to add this page under your services. I (ONLY) link to this page from my sitemap. This is just a Landing page. I probably will not be making changes to it but I do want the search Engines to index this page. So on all my Landing Pages I only link to the page from the sitemap. I have found doing this actually gets the page ranked a tad bit quicker. Now if you want to get crazy (like I tend to do) I will run over to Google real quick, create another Landing Page using their free website service and then create a link from the Landing Page on Google to the first anchor tag I created (which happens to be my H1 Page Title) on the Landing Page. But that is just me!

Strategy of a Landing Page

The strategies of a Landing Page are designed around 4 main principles. These principles, if carried out correctly produce a viral effect. However, we will get around to that in a minute. First and foremost, Landing Pages are designed around your targeted keywords. If the page is setup as demonstrated above, it will provide the long-term click through to your site that you need which brings us to principal number one. 

Principal 1) Attract Visitors - Getting the click to your Landing Page will come over time, but once they get to the page they have got to want to read more to produce an action. That is why the Landing Page Tactic that I use (small paragraph) does not overwhelm your visitors. Its straight and to the point. More often than not, users are attracted to the "Core Set of Services Graphic" that we provide underneath our paragraph. So, the first prinicipal is attracting your visitors and driving them to an action.

Principal 2) Convert Visitors to Customers - This principle is directly affected by principal one. Having your visitors follow through on an action whether that be by clicking a link, filling out an optin, signing up for a newsletter, picking up the phone and calling you or purchasing a product or service is the next step. We convert visitors to customers by providing their exact need. Converting a visitor to a customer is done by providing something of value for giving their name and email address, entering to win a contest, a reduction of price or something of value that will lead them to the next principle.

Principal 3) Retention and Growth of Customers - Retaining your clients comes from the value that they get from the product or service offering. The best customer is the one that a) comes back and b) bring others with them. Your Landing Pages are what draws them in, however, the meaty pages, core services  or products that you are driving them to is really where they care going to get the true value. Some of the Landing Page Tactics that I use to grow my customer base are: 1) setting up ppc campaigns targeting my Landing Pages, 2) create posts within my social communities driving them to my Landing Pages 3) create offsite Landing Pages using the free website networks to link to the anchor tags on my onsite Landing Pages and 4) depending on your Landing Page Setup you can use affiliate networks to drive traffic to them. All in all, for this particular strategy I don't spend time driving traffic to these types of Landing Pages. These pages are specifically used to draw in traffic based on the specific keywords. This why I create hundreds of them.

Principle 4) Measure and Optimize - There are two ways to handle this step. You can do what I do with these specific designed Landing Pages and leave them be and use them only to pull in traffic from the keywords we chose, or you can monitor the hits they are getting, the bounce rates and make adjustments to them as necessary. There are many types and ways to build Landing Pages depending on your specific use for them. I personally do not monitor them anymore than to check the hits. I do not look for problems because there are just to many to keep track of if you follow my suggestions on quantity of these type pages. 

Organic and Viral Result - Creating these type of Internal Landing Pages does two things. 1) they will give you the natural organic rankings within the search engines that you want and need and 2) depending on the type of Landing Page you create the viral effect will be your customers forwarding on either your Landing Page or your site. The more relevant pages you create on your website, the way in which they are built and the value that you offer greatly determines if your site gets forwarded to others. A good note to remember, the more value you offer, the better chance you have of others forwarding their site to people they know.

Bottom Line, if you follow this methodology for all your keywords on your list, two things will happen, 1) you are adding daily content (or weekly, depending on how often you are adding Landing Pages) to your site which the Search Engines LOVE and 2) you are insuring your online Internet Presence will produce and benefit you in the days to come by expanding your site to more end users looking for your products or services.

If at any time you have any questions about the Landing Page Strategy or if you need help to implement this Landing Page Tactic, please do not hesitate to contact us for a FREE Web Quote.

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