It is as simple as that. Let’s say your business sells automobile parts. You should have “automobile parts” in the blog content of your posts. You should have pictures of auto parts somewhere in your blog with an “alt tag,” a description of what kind of auto parts they are. Your blog should have outbound links to auto related websites.

You should also have keywords of your physical location tied to the auto parts you carry. For example, if you have an auto parts store located in Atlanta Georgia, you should have “Atlanta Georgia auto parts” as a keyword phrase within your blog content.

If you can find pictures of Atlanta Georgia, insert them in the blog and/or blog post. The more you emphasize your location along with your business terms and descriptions, your blog will start to attract readers that are interested in your blog because of the niche topic and location.

Blogs, as mentioned before are very well suited to make the search engines “happy” because of the way it automatically alerts these search engines via “pinging.” For a great definition of what a ping is, click here.

Every time you make a change, whether it is adding a picture or a new blog post, the blog software automatically pings the search engines.

Always remember that keywords and keyword phrases are the life blood of getting visitor traffic to your site. Always write blog posts with this in mind and you will find that every blog post and every piece of content you add to our blog will contribute to getting higher search engine rankings.

With higher search engine rankings your site will be found more than not and you will gain new customers sooner than later!

Quite often the higher number of comments on a blog attracts more people to make even more comments on that same post because now it is then perceived as a popular blog. You are helping the other blog become more popular and in turn, the blog owner may go to your blog and make comments back to your blog.

Don’t forget, when making a comment to another blog, you gain a one way backlink to your blog, which helps your blog go higher in search engine rankings, and you help make the blog you made comments on more popular. It is definitely a “win-win” for both of you.

1. Not updating
2. Blogging only for money
3. Rushing a post
4. Not being personal
5. Not giving RSS feed
6. Not reaching out to other bloggers
7. Writing for Google instead of people
8. Not replying to comments
9. Being a copycat

For more details of this blog post go to:

http://www.johnchow.com/10-blogging-mistakes-to-avoid/

John Chow makes great sense here in many of the items listed. I especially like the item of “writing for Google and not people.” I get disturbed on how many people try to “game” Google by writing SEO based articles by planting their keywords and keyword phrases all over the blog post with no regards to the post making sense to the person reading it. Sometimes the blog post will have a meaningless title as well, because it is written to “please” the search engines when they index a website. The blog post should be written with the reader in mind. Never mind that it won’t make sense to what the search engines want in terms of cryptic phrases and sentence structure. In the end, it is the reader who really should get the value of the blog article.

When the blog reader gets the value in the blog post, then everything will fall into place and the search engine rankings will rise anyway!

How is this done? First, you upload your finished video to youtube and create your own “channel” or your own space within any other video site, if possible. You simply tag the video with the appropriate keywords or keyword phrases that match your business topic or niche that you want to attract traffic from.

Because of the large influx of views from Youtube alone, literally 92 billion page views per month, you simply cannot miss on getting a good share of page views to your video and therefore traffic coming to your site. You see, in addition to tagging your video with your keywords, you also have an area where you insert the domain name of your site so that viewers can, in turn, click on the link and arrive at your site for more viewing.

Many businesses are now focusing on this very effective method for attracting free traffic to their sites. Of course this method should be used in conjunction with other ways of attracting traffic to your site.

In our next blog post, we will go over the method of article marketing to get free traffic to to your website.

Here are some of the things you will need to focus on in order to maximize your blog.

1. daily posting of content
2. announcement of special discounts
3. monthly contests
4. new videos
5. new audio/podcasts
6. insertion of digital pictures
7. linking to other related websites
8. social media tie in (Facebook/Twitter)

Of course there are many more things to do with your blog but these are the most common items you should be concentrating on.

I highly recommend that you list out all the items you implement on your blog and think about how you can delegate some or all of these tasks to an assistant or staff member or even hire someone. You will find that even if you can outsource or delegate just a small amount of these tasks, you will get your blog to work for you by higher page rank with the search engines and result in higher visitor count, and therefore more sales from customers.

Blogs are definitely here to stay. They will outlast the latest social media sites and even bookmarking sites. Blogs have already replaced most conventional HTML and flash sites.

Blogs are very important going into the future because along with the attraction of new customers it gives you, but it also strengthens your brand. We don’t have to tell you how important it is to brand your business out in the “brick and mortar” world. You definitely know it is necessary for getting customers to purchase from you again and again.

To manage a blog can be information overload because of the many things that is capable of doing, but only with your hard work into it. If you haven’t already, start planning how you manage your time with your blog.

To avoid being overwhelmed, we suggest you put up a large whiteboard in your office and split up the tasks needed to maintain your blog. Assign the necessary people to do each task. Give a timeline of the items to be done and who is responsible to complete them. Always get feedback from your staff if there are “roadblocks” that prevent them from getting done. And lastly, get rid of tasks that are not productive. There are things such as checking your email 8 times a day, which is counter productive. If you check your email once in the morning and once in the afternoon would better serve your valuable time!

Now this is not to say this the end all be all of sports competition. It is just the most popular sport that gets our attention on this day, Superbowl Sunday, February 6.

But something you should be aware of regarding all the attention to this sport. Since I will safely assume that the word Superbowl will be on the top 10 of search engine searches on this day, you can capitlize on this by sending a heck of a lot of traffic to your blog site just with the mention of the search keyword, Superbowl.

If you can somehow tie in a promotion at your business with Superbowl, such as a Superbowl raffle, a contest, or a discount, you will be guaranteed a lot of views to your site.

This is key to marketing all year ’round. Plan out all the holidays, the national and worldwide events for the year, and plan out promotions attached to these events. You will be guaranteed of a high spike of traffic to your blog if you start up promotions around these events. It is not rocket science that you should tie in promotions and marketing efforts with these events, but it is helps to be reminded about them!

Here are several resources for keeping track of holidays and events.

The link below lists the national holidays in the USA

http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/

The link below lists “unconventional” events that we recongnize

http://www.onlineorganizing.com/CalendarYear.asp

The link beow lists holidays around the world

http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/

Wherever your are located in the world, promoting your business and your blog is the same. Make sure you plan ahead and tie in key holidays and events with your business. It makes for more connection with your local communites too.

The more popular blog directories are:

1. Best of the Web
2. Bloggeries
3. Eaton Web Directory
4. On Top List
5. Blogged
6. Blog Search Engine
7. Blog Catalog
8. Globe of Blogs
9. Blog Universe
10. Bloggapedia
11. Spillbean
12. Blogging Fusion
13. Blogflux
14. Blog Explosion
15. Super Blog Directory
16. Technorati
17. Blog Directory
18. BlogAdr
19. Dmegs
20. Blog Hub

There are literally hundreds of blogs to submit to. Just remember that if you add your blog to one new blog directory a day, you will be building a ton of backlinks within a short amount of time. Now you know that with a large number of backlinks to your website or blog, you will only rise higher in the search engine rankings!

Let’s say you have a food blog and you search the internet for other food related blogs and there are some that you like and it has high visibility and has a large readership. You simply register on that blog to make a blog comment and while registering, you insert your name, your email address, and most importantly, the URL of the website/blog that you want people to visit when they click on your name.

Check out the video below for more details of this process.

Here is a video that explains the process in simple to understand terms.

1. huffington post
2. TMZ
3. engadget
4. perezhilton
5. gizmodo
6. mashable
7. techcrunch
8. gawker
9. lifehacker
10. fanhouse
11. smashingmagazine
12. failblog
13. kotaku
14. businessinsider
15. boingboing

Huffington Post gets a remarkable 28 million views per month! Number 15, Boingboing gets over 2 million views per month. Not too shabby.

What makes these blog sites rock? It is the content within and the loyal following they have developed. Now, top ranked Huffington Post gets their audience who are news and political junkies. There is 3 blog sites that are high techie themed, two that is Hollywood gossip, and the rest, either business or lifestyle type blogs.

From this top 15 list, you get an idea of what is consistently popular online. This is a big clue as to how to tap in your blog with the growing trends in what is popular in blogs today.

This is a great opportunity for you to grab a topic that is popular with one of these blogs and start talking about it in your business blog. Think like a newspaper reporter. There are always creative ways to tie in something that is a late breaking news on some popular blog and restate it in your blog with a twist relating to your business.

We found a video that more or less sums it up in why blog content is important to get your blog found online for people trying to search for you.

Business blogging is great to strengthen a customer base. Now that we know most customers have a computer and surf the internet for goods and services, what better way to tap into where they already hang out?

Blogs are a great way to get your message out there. Do you excel at customer service? Do you have a product or service that no other business has? If you have lots of competition in your industry, are you using your blog to help educate your customers by differentiating your product from other businesses in your industry?

Are you using your blog to attract new customers by offerring discounts for first time buyers of your product?

Are you keeping your blog updated and current with new promotions and new information that is interesting to your customers?

A business blog can do so much for your business. You just have to consider all the possibilities that you have in controlling the output of all your valuable content you provide in your blog.

The blog medium is part of the social media movement and will probably continue for many years to come. If your business is not blogging, you should start now.

By having backlinks or other websites link back to yours, it shows the search engines that you are recognized as an “authority” site in your industry, therefore will put a higher ranking to your site.

They are;

1. Write valuable content that your target marketing is hungry for
2. Submit articles to article directories with linkbacks to your blog
3. Make comments to other blogs and websites that contain backlinks to your blog

If you consistently make good quality blog posts at least twice a week, you will always keep attracting the search engines to come to your site. Make sure you research what targeted keywords and keyword phrases you are going for to attract your traffic and sprinkle them within the content of your blog post.

At least once a week, write a new article and submit them to an article directory that has a linkback to your blog site. These are valuable in the long term because article directories hold all articles forever! So you have a perpetual source of targeted traffic.

Look for at least 20 other blogs either in your industry or several high traffic sites that get over one hundred thousand views a month. You want to connect to a high traffic site to “siphon” their viewership.

The key is not just doing the three things listed above, but rather repeat and continue to add to these three sources on a weekly basis. Yes, it sounds like work, but what you will realize is that, over time, this will build a tidal wave of traffic that you will not be able to stop unless you shut your blog site off.

There are many ebooks that are sold online that recycle the information I just posted for you here. These are the basic steps for getting traffic short of “buying” it through pay per click. In my next blog post, I will go over how to purchase traffic to boost your readership.