Blogs That Get Your Name Out There - by Special Guest Blogger Forrest Will

SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER
FORREST WILL
Professional Blogger and Web Designer

Hi, I’m Forrest and I’ll be your blogger for the evening…

So what is a “blog”, really? We’ve all heard the word. But what does it mean for you and your company?

Well, for that we must take a quick look into the distant past, long before the dawn of Facebook, Twitter, and even Myspace! We must look to the bright beginnings of the World Wide Wide.

Back in those days, there wasn’t really any way for people to find your website. Search engines were brand new things. Google was just a dream in its founders eyes. It was a magical time, where finding something on the internet was a game of skill as well as chance.

And then, the web-log was born! Anyone could make one. You just wrote a regular log of your life or your industry and people came to see what was new. This became later known as blogging.

Blogging became a way for people to find you. Search engines (like Google or Bing.com) started using what people wrote in their blogs to help potential customers find them. And a new age was begun.

Is it important to have a blog on my website? Seems like a lot of work!

Having a great blog is VITAL! And it is a bit of work, to have it done right. But I might be able to give you a few pointers to send you in the right direction. Blogging can be confusing at first. But without it, it is unlikely that your website will gain the long-term momentum that you need to really get things going. 

Search Engines use what has been written in your blogs and on your site to determine whether or not your website is relevant, up-to-date or likely to be what the customer is trying to find. Without that, it’s hard for the 1.17 billion Google users to find you. Phew, that’s a lot of people out there searching!

How long does it need to be?

I might be about to startle a few bloggers with this one. But I’d rather you have the true scoop.

A blog should be anywhere between 300-2500 words. That’s quite a range, right?

Many bloggers recommend blogs be between 300-600 words. This is not a horrible rule of thumb but it’s not quite right either.

The proper size of a blog varies greatly depending on what your goals are.

To generate general interest in your page, encourage people to post comments and share your page, go with between 300-600 words per post.

As you increase the word count, you’ll see fewer people commenting, but more people sharing your blog on their facebook pages, etc.

If you want Google to find you, love you and recommend you to all the world by having your company be on the first pages of Google… you’ll want to aim closer to 2,500 words per blog.

Now, I know that’s a bit of a big gap. It all has to do with search engines and how they work. The highest ranking blogs on google average around 2,500 words per post.

I would encourage website owners to post a minimum of two short blogs (300 words) and one long blog (at least 1000 words) per week.

To summarize – shorter blogs are better for getting people to post comments on your site and interact, long posts are better for getting shares and increasing your standing on search engines. With all that said, it is more important for your blog to be on-topic, interesting and helpful than it is for it to be long.

What does it need to include?

Keywords, keywords… who’s got the keywords.

Keywords are those words that helps Google, Facebook and Yelp find you. They are the words you include in your blog to make sure that you pop up when people are searching for those words.

Example: If you are a hairdresser, you might want to include the words “shampoo” or “free hair wash” or “Sephora” in your blog posts.

Example: If you write children's adventure books, you would want to include the name of your publisher, a link to a bookstore with your books in it, the words “family”, “children”, and “adventure”.

The most important thing is to have your blog written by an actual thinking human being. Be interested in the topic and write content that fits with what others are searching for. Write a lot and frequently. Post a couple nice pictures in each blog and you are well on your way!

How long until I see results?

While blogs are powerful, they also take time. All too often I’ve seen someone invest in blogging for a few weeks, see little results and then give up. This is like baking a cake for 3 minutes and then tossing it out because it isn’t fully cooked.

Let’s look at some statistics.

The owner of Mashable.com (worth about $94,000,000) started out worth nearly nothing and the owner built it up over time. He would post about 2-3 blog posts PER DAY for 18 months. It generated enough income to allow him to create a larger team and they started posting nearly a dozen blogs per day. Their posts are on-topic and written in a way to encourage search engines to rank them highly.

Another website called ConversionXL reached millions of viewers within just a few years of blogging. They posted about once every 5 days, 6 blogs a month.

You can read up on some great blogging stories here.

To summarize: While blogging can generate the millions of views that you need to create a massively booming company, it can’t be done overnight. It takes between 6-12 months of steady blog posting (done right) before you see much results. You should expect your website views to go up-up-up once you reach around 600 blog posts.

How Social Media Management Creates Success

Social Media is used to create a brand, get yourself out there, and make yourself known. By using platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, you are creating a social brand that drives people into your website.

If you combine your blog with a machine that is driving in viewers, you are adding gasoline to the fire. Keep it up and you can expect a boom (in a good way).

Looking for some help writing your blogs? Need a professional website designed and built? Find me at Bizbo.net.

Forrest