Posts Tagged ‘Content management’

Are You the Authority In Your Niche?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Unless you already have several years of marketing in a particular niche and have loads of articles, blogs, books and seminar appearances, you probably have not “arrived” as the authority within your niche.

For that distinction, you need to do several things:

1. Make sure that your niche is small enough that you have some hope of making a dent in natural search rankings.  You will have a much easier time moving your blogs and other content sites into the first page of search results for a keyword in a micro-niche.  For example, you are more likely to dominate your market with a keyword like “foreclosures in Cedar Rapids, Iowa”, than trying to compete in the “Foreclosure” market with general keywords nationwide.  You’ll do better in a sub-niche such as “Dog Kennels” than you will with a keyword like “Dogs.”

2. Do keyword research that will narrow in on keywords that are in a “sweet spot” of bringing in at least 80 searches per day, and having no more than 30,000 competing pages.  You can broaden those parameters somewhat, especially if there are several vulnerable websites in the top 10, and the search term shows that there is some activity of people buying PPC ads for that keyword.  If there is no PPC activity, then the keyword is probably not a “money” keyword and will probably only be good for building a hobby, not a business.

3.  Examine competing websites.  Look at their traffic patterns, the keywords they use, the strength of search engine optimization that has been done for their main site.  If they have done a poor job at SEO, then there is a good chance you can put together a group of web 2.0 content that can, over a period of three or four months, knock them out of the box.

4.  Build a cluster of blogs and other websites and articles around the keywords that are most competitive and position your products best within your niche.  You want to be seen as quickly as possible as a leading authority within your niche.  With that recognition will come great search engine placement (if your niche is competitive at least) and sales.

5.  These Web 2.0 properties must be maintained.  Unless more content is added on a regular basis (at least once per week), you will not maintain your search engine placement for your keywords. This is another of the areas where busy marketers tend to fall down on the job.

6.  Backlinks, commenting on other related sites, and syndication (or republication) of your article or references to your article in sites such as Digg and Delicious, will enhance your search engine ranking.  It is time-consuming to build authority on sites by attending to the “buzz” about your content, but it is important to building a permanent, enthusiastic following.

Now, most people do not have time, and many do not have the writing talent, to build a content empire around a main hub site.  This is a job that can be outsourced successfully, and most major marketers do outsource this function.

This is exactly what MyBlogBuilders was meant to do for clients.  Because clients are at different stages and need variations on the services we have available, we will put together quotations on a case by case basis.

We do charge pretty standardly $197 to do a keyword analysis for one niche, website or product.  This includes a report and consultation to give clients direction.  We will soon have an order page developed for this service.

We also will develop a cluster of 3 Web 2.0 sites, post 2-3 times per week on these sites, build connections to your “money” or “hub” site, contact forms, write longer articles and do syndication, backlinking and commenting for one hub/money site at $497 per month.  Clients who commit up front to a three month trial will receive free keyword analysis, as will those who sign on for content managment of multiple sites.  Again, we will have an order form very shortly for these standard packages soon.

In the meantime, please call or request contact if you are interested in exploring our services.  We can work up a special quote, or set you up with one of our standard packages.

Liz Nichols

MyBlogBuilders.com

lizdnichols At gmail.com

 

 

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Introducing New Blog Creation and Content Management Service: Why Blog?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Why Blog?

Blogging has become one of the primary ways of communicating ideas and interacting on the internet. There are literally millions of blogs online today on every conceivable subject. Blogs have several purposes:

  • Provide fresh content on a topic.
  • Give a forum for interaction on a subject.
  • Get feedback on an idea, product or other subject.
  • Link back to a main website to help boost search ranking for the main site
  • All the above help to boost natural search engine ranking and increase your credibility as an authority within your niche or industry.
  • Credibility and authority build trust.
  • Trust builds customers and traffic to your online and bricks and mortar store or service center.

In other words, if you’re in business or just passionate about a given subject, you need to blog to be recognized online. Even big companies will enormously improve traffic to a website when they also maintain an authoritative, helpful blog. Customers will keep coming back because of the fresh content and the interaction they are invited to have with you through the blog comments capability.

Role of Social Media

There are a number of other social networking tools that are also critical to drawing attention to your product, service, organization or interest. There are a growing number of social interaction sites that let you create special content about your niche and, in a subtle and professional way, advertise your business. Some of the best of these are www.squidoo.com, www.hubpages.com, and www.ning.com. They have templated tools to allow you to build content quickly on a subject area and to link back to your main site or sites. Some of these tools share advertising revenue with you. They also improve your ranking the more you post.

Video sites are growing in importance. Of course, everyone knows about YouTube and its importance in telling the story visually of your products and services. An new all-video based social networking site is at Videngage. There is a marketplace included in Videngage where products and services can be sold using video as the medium.

There are new social network sites popping up daily. It would be counter-productive to be highly active at a lot of them, but by joining and then bookmarking your blog content, Squidoo lenses, and Ezine articles you can build links back to your sites and increase your search engine and human credibility without providing a lot of new content for each site.

One of the best explanations of the importance of blogging and social media to building online traffic for your business was produced recently by search engine optimization specialist, Charles Heflin. This short video should convince you, if you need to be convinced, that you need to add a family of interlinked sites in order to maximize exposure to your product:

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=8TLpp&m=1flNCcaz4wufiv&b=9v77XnFvabjxd6CKfGTvsQ

Hope you enjoy his video.

Liz Nichols

www.myblogbuilders.com

319-356-6550

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