Internet Marketing & SEO

Five dangerous SEO tools in the hands of the New optimizer

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 | Google, Internet Marketing, Microsoft & MSN, SEO, Yahoo | No Comments

You know the tools, the ones that the uninformed… or barely informed… take as gospel when it comes to search engine optimization. These tools in the hands of your client… or worse, a really bad SEO who is trying to steal a client… can be a deadly thing. And worse, because they used to be useful once upon a time, most of these tools are the ones that people have heard of.

Is your client measuring your success on how much the site’s Alexa ranking goes up or down? Or using an automated rank checker program, ala Web Position Gold, to check the Google positioning for his top fifty chosen keywords every hour on the hour? Here are the tools and programs that can be oh-so-dangerous in the hands of the SEO uneducated.

Alexa Ranking
Alexa ranking isn’t perfect. In fact, it is very far from it because of the way it measures a site’s traffic… by only counting those who are visiting the site with either an Alexa toolbar or an Alexa browser plugin. So numbers can be manipulated in so many ways to make the site’s Alexa rank seem better or worse than it should.

Google PageRank
What’s your PageRank? Unfortunately, while Google PR does have its uses, many people place too much importance on what number is in that little green bar, particularly when it goes up or down with those infrequent PageRank updates. And some site owners seem more obsessed with what their PR is rather than what their actual rankings are. Funny that, considering only one is usually related to ROI, unless you happen to be selling text links!

Automated Rank Checkers
A cringe worthy situation is when you are talking about the site’s rankings with your client and he says “Oh yes, I’ve been running a program to check our rankings every hour on our top list of fifty keywords so I can check how you are doing on an hourly basis.” So not only does your client feel the need to analyze how you are doing on an hourly basis, but also those automated queries are also one of the thou shalt not do commandments in the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Oops.

Site:
When companies are paying top dollar for their search engine optimization, they can become a little bit obsessed with how many pages they have indexed, even when there are obvious problems with Google’s site search at the moment using site: such as the 260 error. And of course, there are fluctuations depending on what dataserver is hit or even the physical location of the surfer.

Link:
Which brings us to checking backlinks in Google (or Yahoo). Backlinks are notoriously slow at updating in Google using the link: command, and are even more notorious for being so incomplete… which is a good thing if you have snoopy competitors wanting to mimic your backlink campaigns for their own sites. But for a client wanting to see the fruits of your linking efforts (or to see what their link budget is paying for), it can definitely seem like things just aren’t happening.

These are definitely the tools that SEOs love to hate, although granted, each of them still offers at least a grain of usefulness even today. Yes, we all check PageRank, but just because a competitor has a PR6 site doesn’t mean they are ranking better than your PR4 or PR5 site. Likewise, a site with an Alexa ranking of 1000 may have far less traffic than an Alexa 10,000 or 100,000 site or may convert much worse. So while they have their uses, they should never be viewed as a be all, end all of search engine optimization.

At the end of the day, all that really matters is what position you are in the search engines for your chosen keywords and how much traffic is being driven to your site, not if you are in the Alexa top 1000 or if Google says you have 260 pages indexed. So when someone talks about how great (or poor) their Alexa, PageRank, backlink numbers or how many pages they have indexed, remind them that it is traffic that brings in the money at the end of the day and that is where the optimization focus should be.

Competitors Can Help Us !

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 | Internet Marketing | 1 Comment

Internet marketing is as a competitive home-based business as you can find … literally thousands and thousands of people all over the world trying to make a ‘buck’ marketing their home-based businesses. You can learn alot from your competitors that just may help in making your home-based internet marketing business a success; most retail businesses hire people to do just this whether they are price checking certain items of their competitor or checking out a certain display item that may be in a competitors store.

Retail stores are doing research in hopes that they may be able to:

1) Stay competitive price/product wise.

2) Prevent their customers from doing there shopping elsewhere.

You owe it to yourself and your customers to use this same example with your home-based business.

So just how can your competitors help you with your home-based business?

Let’s take a look at a couple of items that may help you become and stay successful in internet marketing.

Website Design and Layout

Take a look at your competitors website and see how it is designed …

a) Is it easy to navigate through?
b) Can you find original content?
c) Does it capture your interest?
d) What about the colors and fonts used?

These are some of the things you should be comparing to your website. Some ‘experts’ will argue that website design has nothing to do with the success of your business … but, I beg to differ … if your website is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate through and features your main product or service, then you have increased your chances of success. But, if your potential customers arrive at your website and they like the way it’s designed, they are more likely to stay and take a look around which increases the likelihood of making a sale.

Links, Content and Page Rank

Once again take a look at your competitors website and find their google page rank (this how google ranks websites in terms of importance) to see how your competitor measures up. A high page rank of 5 and above is very good — a page rank of 4 is average, but you shouldn’t worry about pages that rank lower than 4.

Page Rank is not a highly important factor as it was once touted to be — fresh new content is “King” and new articles / information uploaded weekly will cause search engines to spider your site on a regular basis.

Now take a look at your competitors links directory - what you’re looking for is quality link partners not so much quantity … click on some of their links and start adding these to your reciprocal links directory; search engines love websites with quality reciprocal links. The higher you rank in the search engines the better off you will be when people search using your keywords.

Top Paying Legal Keywords (Adsense & YPN)

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords, MSN adCenter, Yahoo! Publisher Network | 3 Comments

Well I got a list of TOP PAYING LEGAL KEYWORDS from NP,
So Why not Share it here

I hope the information will be useful for webmasters doing keyword research.

austin dwi $66.89
austin dwi attorney $58.30
san diego dui attorney $54.56
houston criminal attorney $47.44
san diego dui $42.83
dwi texas $40.89
dui attorneys $40.19
dwi attorney $39.90
dui attorney $39.11
dui attorney $39.11
dui attorney $39.11
dui lawyer $38.49
lawyer dui $38.49
dui lawyers $37.57
federal criminal attorney $35.80
car accident lawyer $35.67
dwi attorneys $35.32
criminal lawyers $34.19
new york criminal attorney $33.95
auto accident attorney $33.19
auto accident lawyer $33.13
dwi lawyer $32.31
dwi lawyer $32.31
texas dwi law $31.02
car accident attorney $30.16
car accident attorney $30.16
california tax attorney $29.56
dwi in minnesota $29.37
motorcycle accident attorney $28.93
washington dui $28.38
lemon law attorney $28.25
lemon law $27.95
help attorney $27.92
injury lawyers $27.88
dallas dwi $27.68
wrongful death attorney $27.25
mesothelioma attorney $27.20
personal injury lawyer $26.72
san diego personal injury attorney $26.58
accident lawyer $26.55
personal injury attorney $26.32
personal injury attorney $26.32
tax attorney $25.83
tax attorney $25.83
alaska lawyer $25.77
minnesota dwi laws $25.75
federal lawyer $25.72
dallas personal injury attorney $25.58
lawyer injury $25.16
death lawyer $25.11

auto insurance quote $57.18
college loan consolidation $53.52
car insurance quote $46.89
federal loan consolidation $46.62
online car insurance $41.92
term life insurance quote $40.43
cheap car insurance $39.79
student loan consolidation $39.45
auto insurance quotes $39.24
online insurance quotes $37.63
student loan information $37.32
equity loan rates $36.53
nj auto insurance $36.31
student loan consolidation center $35.89
debt consildation $35.83
chase credit cards $35.02
student loan refinancing $34.89
discount car insurance $34.34
life insurance quote $34.26
homeowners insurance quotes $33.61
mortgage loans $33.17
mortgage loans $33.17
mortgage refinancing $33.08
equity line of credit $33.05
college loans $32.91
best mortgage rates $32.65
student loans $32.54
loan refinancing $32.44
us mortgage rates $32.38
instant insurance quote $32.37
term life insurance quotes $32.11
consolidation loan $32.03
loan refinance $31.95
car insurances $31.92
safe auto insurance $31.82
insurance auto florida $31.38
auto insurance $31.38
equity line of credit $30.71
gmac mortgages $30.46
mortgages for self employed $30.45
car insurance california $30.17
in car insurance $29.84
best mortgage $29.53
refinancing mortgages $29.43
line of credit $29.27
prequalify loan $28.98
loans com $28.75
business credit report $28.40
whole life insurance quotes $28.17
new york auto insurance $27.72
online mortgages $27.71
student loan $27.61
cheap house insurance $27.45
low cost life insurance $27.25
school loan consolidation $26.99
citi credit $26.80
manhattan mortgages $26.70
school loans $26.61
term insurance $26.58
second mortgage $26.56
credit report com $26.48
auto ins $26.21
consolidation $25.90
line of credit $25.57
landlords insurance $25.46
low mortgage $25.45
commercial vehicle insurance $25.37
credit consolidation $25.32
bad credit mortgages $25.22
bad credit mortgages $25.22
discount life insurance $25.22

Not Responsible for any price etc

Adsense’s ‘Advertise on this site’ Now Customized

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords | No Comments

Have you ever thought of your users as potential advertisers? If you think about it, advertisers are constantly trying to find sites tailored to the audience that they are trying to reach.

Now let’s assume an advertiser comes across your site and feels it would a good site to advertise on. You don’t want to lose this advertiser, right? That’s where Onsite Advertiser Sign-up comes in: Advertisers can create site-targeted campaigns directly from your site.

Although the ‘Advertise on this site’ link will no longer appear on your ad units following last week’s ad format change, you can still display a separate Onsite Advertiser Sign-up link on your site, such as within the sidebars or footers of your pages. This method offers you more flexibility as far as the placement, the font, and the color of the link, and can help you retain interested advertisers who visit your site.

If you’d like to create such a link on your site, just follow the detailed instructions in our Help Center and then add your link into the HTML source of your pages. If you use CSS on your site, you can create a nice rollover and make your link even more visible to potential advertisers:

Once you’ve created a separate link, don’t forget to customize your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page. Please keep in mind that it’s currently only possible to customize one landing page per account. In other words, advertisers can target each of your sites individually, but they’ll see the same landing page when they click an ‘Advertise on this site’ link from any of your sites.

We encourage you to give this new method a try and to experiment with various placements. Having more interested advertisers bidding on your site means increased competition — which in turn translates into higher revenue potential for you.

A fresh, new look for AdSense ads

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | Contextual Advertising, Google Adsense & Adwords | 2 Comments

You may have noticed that some of your ad units have started to look a little different lately — we’re happy to announce that, just in time for spring, we’ve given our standard ad units a fresh makeover. After extensive testing and research, we’ve found that the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers. We’re in the process of rolling out this change to all ad units, and you should see that your ad units are automatically updated over the next few days. But, before you rush to make sure all of your ad units still match your site, please be assured that the fonts and colors of your ads won’t be changed.

Although it’s not possible to opt out of the new designs, we hope that you and your site visitors will find our new ad formats clearer and more attractive. We’re always testing new ways to improve the look and feel of our advertisements, so stay tuned for more format options in the future.

Top 40 Feeds Around the web by FeedBurner

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Blogging | No Comments

As measured by FeedBurner:

1. BoingBoing

 


2. TechCrunch

 

3. Simply Recipes

 

4. Interesting
Thing of the Day

 

5. 43Folders

 

6. Mashable

 

7. DumbLittleMan

 

8. 37signals

 

9. John Battelle’s
Searchblog

 

10. CrunchGear

 

11. Read/Write Web

 

12. Coding Horror

 

13. How to Change the
World by Guy Kawasaki

 

14. MicroPersuasion

 

15. Duct Tape
Marketing

 

16. DiggNation

 

17.
GoogleOperatingSystem

 

18. LifeHack

 

19. TreeHugger

 

20. FrenchMaidTV

 

21. Small Business
Trends

 

22. Jeff Clavier’s Software
Only

 

23. A VC

 

24. Search Engine Watch

 

25. My Personal Finance Journey

 

26.
ProBlogger

 

27. Chris Pirillo

 

28. On The Media

 

29. FeedBurner

 

30. Vitamin

 

31. UberGizmo

 

32. Get Rich Slowly

 

33. Web2Explorer

 

34. ParentHacks

 

35. Particle Tree

 

36. Political Wire

 

37. Copyblogger

 

38. Writers Write

 

39. Mac Mega Site

 

40. Emily Chang

 

41. Photoshop Killer
Tips

 

42. eHub

 

43. French For
Beginners

 

44. MobileCrunch

 

45. GeekZone

 

46. TheRssBlog

 
**. FranticIndustries

by Mr. Ahmad Top 40 Feeds of Web

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Blogging, Link Building, SEO, Wordpress | No Comments

Thanks

Blogging Is About Writing

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Blogging, Wordpress | No Comments

When you visit Google, do you click a picture to begin your search? Do you face a screen full of images like in a grocery store self-checkout? Click fruits, then apples, then scroll through pictures of apples before you find the Jonagold Apples you want to buy, and select those?

Of course not.

The web is about words. No matter how visual and audible it becomes, it continues to be about the words.

Blogging is about writing. Many claim that content is king. If content is king, then the army that protects and defends the king is the written word.

Here are some things to think about next time to put your army to work on your blog.

Don’t Just Show, Show and Tell: It’s time to get back to show and tell. Blogs offer amazing ways to present multimedia information, but you still have to tell us about it. You must show and tell in order for your point to be fully understood. Words may not do it alone, but a picture is not worth a thousand words when fed through feeds and search engines. You must have the words.
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords: With the recent public release of the Google Patent for Blog PageRank, your keywords are more important than ever as the algorithm applies multiple content matching, content relevancy, search relevancy, and link-to-content relevancy tests to determine if the keywords match the content. Learn how to write keyword-rich content to increase your page ranking. More importantly, write with keywords to help your reader know exactly what you are writing about.
Write Clickable Titles: The keywords you use in your post titles tell potential visitors what your post is about. If they don’t get it, they won’t click it. If they do click, and the content doesn’t match, they won’t be back.
Make Your Point in the First 200 Words: You have less than a second to capture your reader’s attention. If the user on your site, feed, or search engine summary doesn’t “get the point” in the first two or three sentences, you’ve lost them.
Blog Writing Is About Editing: A great idea does not translate automatically into good writing. It’s the editing that clarifies your writing so the idea comes through. It’s as much about the words you add as the words you take away to increase the post’s clarity and power.
Make Your Words Timeless: Blog writing isn’t like words you throw out into the air and expect them to vanish. The words you fill your blog with tend to last. Make sure the words you use and the things you say are worth reading twenty years from now.
Don’t Waste Words: A powerfully titled article drew me from my feed reader and I was greeted with this first sentence: “I still have to take a shower, and I’m late for work, but I wanted to tell you about this because I think it’s important, so I’ll just rush this off before I jump in the shower and head to work.” Don’t waste words. Don’t tell your readers things they really don’t want to know. Get to the point and stop wasting your time and theirs.
Explain Jargon: We get so caught up in our little world of acronyms and industry jargon, we forget few outside our clubhouse know what we are talking about. Stop once in a while and explain to us what these terms and letters mean. It doesn’t have to be a paragraph, just a few words. Don’t assume we know what you are talking about.
Use Descriptions in Images and Links: Blog writing isn’t limited to just the words. If you aren’t using titles in links and alt in images, you are missing out on a very valuable use of keywords and content building. You are also not in compliance with web standards.
Use Descriptions for Flash, Podcasts, Videocasts, and Screencasts: If you are using any audio or visual multimedia on your blog, help us understand what we are going to see and hear. Convince us to click to play. A picture may speak for itself, but you have to do the writing for it.
Present a Problem, The Solution, and The Results: Don’t present a solution before the reader understands there is a problem. Present the problem, give us the solution, and then lead us through the results and the benefits of the results. When readers follow along with the process, they better understand how it works and why it works for themselves.
Just the Facts, Ma’am: Everyone has an opinion. What makes your opinion different from other opinions is that yours is based upon the facts. Wild accusations, suggestions, and analogies do not build trust and respect. Make your opinions be based upon valid facts and identifiable references and citations. Be prepared to back your word up with the truth.

If You Have 100 Top Priorities, You Have No Priorities At All: If there are 40 topics you want to cover in one blog post, all unrelated, what are you writing about? As a guide, write on three points, all related, and publish that. Want to write about 40 different unrelated topics? Don’t stuff them all into one post. Publish one for each topic.
Originality Will Always Win: Original content will always win over redundant, blockquoting, and echo chamber content. Even if you can’t write well, the attempt to say it in your words is always appreciated and welcome.
Move The Reader Through the Story: A blog post or article has something to say. It begins, has a middle, and ends. Move the reader through the content, as well as into it. Let each word lead to the next word and the next. Make each sentence lead the reader to the next sentence, and each paragraph draws them into the next. They want to “turn the page” and consume the words as they read along. Make them want to scroll down for more.
Blog Paragraphs Are Short: Blog writing lends itself to shorter sentences and paragraphs for easier reading on a web page. Web readers want information fast and in small digestible chunks. Huge bulky paragraphs make reading online very difficult, however single sentence paragraphs can make the reader uncomfortable.
Use Command Verbs to Teach: If you have something to share, a lesson to teach, advice, or guidance, use command verbs to energize your “how to” words. Words, like “make”, “do”, “write”, “take”, and “build” are active instruction verbs. When people are searching, they like to be told “what to do”. Tell them.
No Wishy-Washy Passive Voice: Avoid wishy-washy passive voice instructions like “If you would like to maybe you should think about checking the spelling of your post before you think about publishing it because…” Write with authority, like you know what you are talking about: “Check the spelling before you publish your post.”
Use Nouns and Synonyms: When you are writing about it, you can add some of this to it to help it along. Huh? What’s “it”? If you are going to name something, name “it” what it is. Call it by its name. Use nouns and synonyms to help the reader know what you are writing about and increase the keywords in your content.
Comments Are Content: Make sure comments speak well for your post, your blog, you, and your readers. Edit comments for misspelled words and obvious flubs. Your commenters will appreciate it. Clean out trash and inappropriate comments, and definitely get rid of comment spam.
Visualize Who You Are Writing To: Writing to the “air” is fine for some, but most people need to know “who” they are writing to, and for, in order to begin. Visualize a person or small group and write as if you are talking directly to them. If that’s too formal or uncomfortable, imagine you are writing to a friend.
Clean Up Old Posts: As your blog writing improves, go back over your old posts and clean them up. The fresh perspective will help you edit and improve the content. You might find new life in your old posts and direct more traffic their way.
Write Kinda Like You Talk: It’s important to write in a conversational style because your readers will relate to you, the person behind the blog. Your writing should give the illusion you are speaking directly to the reader without including all of the stutters, “ums”, and “likes” we hear in every day conversation. Don’t write like you have a dictionary or thesaurus sitting next to you. Match the writing style with the content.
Mind Reading Writing: Do you have a friend or co-worker who starts a sentence in the middle of a paragraph? Don’t leave your reader wondering why she is on this page. Make your point early. Make your point obvious. Back it up with the details.
Avoid Screaming: Writing with CAPITALIZED LETTERS INDICATES SCREAMING, so don’t do it for the length of an entire post. Learn the basic rules of capitalization. The beginning of sentences and proper names are capitalized. Just because you Like a Word doesn’t MEAN you have to capitalize Every Important Word. That went out of fashion a couple hundred years ago. and writing all in lower case may look cute for a young girl’s diary or personal blog, but it is old. out of fashion. people think you are a girl under 16. stop it. now.
Punctuate Properly: Use commas, quotes, and apostrophes in line with the grammar rules of your language. In English, there is no space at the end of a sentence before the period or question mark . Learn the difference between “its” and “it’s”, and while you are at it, learn “their”, “there”, and “they’re”, along with “your” and “you’re”. People will condemn writing for less. Don’t give them a chance with careless grammar mistakes.
Blog Writing Isn’t About Smiley Faces: Write emotions, not emoticons. Too many smileys are :\ annoying and distracting.
Teach Your Readers: Share with us your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and knowledge. Teach us, oh, great blogger, how to live and function in this crazy world.
Make Me Think: If you make your readers think, you’ve succeeded in interacting with them. If you make them write, you’ve succeeded twice over.
Write With Conviction and Passion: Even if you write badly, if you write with conviction and passion, then we will read you.
There are two ways to hold your reader’s interest. Show them something they’ve never seen before, or show them something in a way they’ve never seen it before.

Blogging that gets noticed and linked to is all about seeing things in a new light. A university advertising professor once told me there are “no new ideas, only new ways of presenting old ideas”. Present information from a unique perspective and writing with a fresh angle and you will attract attention.

Do you gone overboard with your keyword density?

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Issues, SEO, Search Industry | 2 Comments

At Seodays, we talked about keyword density and how important keyword density is when optimizing your content. However, not everyone understands how keyword density works… and how going overboard with keyword density can sink your entire page to the bottom of the search engine results, if it even ranks at all.

Keyword density is a tricky one because the percentage you should have can vary depending on the market area. In a non-competitive area, you don’t need to worry much about it too other than to make sure those keywords are on the page, preferably in the first half of the content rather than the second half. But if you are in a competitive area, you need to hit certain percentages of keyword density, and placing them at specific places within your content, without crossing that invisible line where your content becomes so keyword heavy that it becomes spammy.

So what exactly does keyword density mean? It refers to the number of times you use your keyword on the page when compared to the overall total number of words on the page. Keep in mind that it will include any text in the headers, footers and navigation. If you don’t want to figure it out yourself, there are many free keyword density checkers available on the net. Also keep in mind that it is useful to use it to check your competitor’s keyword density and the sites that are ranking at the top for your most important keywords.

After I have written carefully crafted content for SEO, the first thing I do is take a step back and look at the content. Then, I read it out loud. Don’t worry, you will only sound funny to anyone within earshot if you have gone overboard on your keyword density. When you read it out loud, does it sound natural or does it sound odd or fake? If it doesn’t sound natural, then chances are good that not only will readers think of it as spammy, but the search engines could too. So change up your keyword density a bit, or replace some keywords with similar related words instead, in order to get it sounding natural rather than spammy. Then read out loud and repeat the process.

Dave has another technique, although it might not quite catch the subtle nuances that reading out loud can bring to light. Dave prints the content, then takes a highlighter and highlights the keywords. If it looks like more highlighter than white, you need to tone those keywords down a bit too.

If you are hiring authors to create content for you on certain keywords, you will definitely need to pay attention to that density. Especially if you are picking up content for $5 an article, the keyword density will either be non-existent page or will be so high that it would trip even the most basic spam filter. It is definitely a case of getting what you pay for… content writers who can do this correctly are worth their weight in gold when it comes to writing quality content.

The most important thing to keep in mind when crafting content with appropriate keyword density is that while you need to have the bots in mind while creating it, the visitor who lands on your page is the one the content should be written to. If the content is over clocked with keywords, it is extremely easy for them to hit that back button and go to your competitor’s site instead. So pay attention to your density and use the ways listed above to check that it isn’t too spammy :).

20 Best Practices for Launching a Corporate Blog

Sunday, April 8th, 2007 | Blogging, Internet Marketing, Wordpress | 1 Comment

Having a corporate blog is a great way to connect with your customers, but unfortunately, not all companies get it right when they first launch their blog… and not knowing how the blogosphere works is a public relations disaster in the making. While a blog can enhance and build your relationship with your customers, doing it wrong can have the opposite effect. Do you really want your company’s blogging faux pas to wind up all over the blogosphere? Not really, but corporations have stumbled repeatedly when trying to find their blogging voice, not to mention blogging policies to deal with problems that will pop up along the way.

Is your company ready to take the seemingly big and scary step into the world of blogging? This advice will help you make sure you and your company get it right the first time around… and you will soon discover that starting a corporate blog really isn’t as scary as your PR department (and maybe your legal team too!) is making it out to be. Here are twenty best practices for starting your corporate blog.

Designate or hire someone whose role within the company is blogger. If no one is designated, the blog won’t get updated. If it is someone’s job, that person can be responsible for updates, monitoring comments (if necessary). And I cannot stress enough the importance of hiring someone who already has an active blog. He or she will know the ins and outs of blogging etiquette that will save you headaches later on when your brand new blogger makes a major gaffe that ends up being talked about on the blogosphere.

Does your blogger have celebrity potential? It is even better if your chosen blogger is comfortable dealing with the public, as corporate bloggers often become the celebrity’s of the company, the personality that visitors or customers recognize. So it is even better if that blogger is someone who can “meet and greet” at events and conferences.

Update regularly, at least once a week, preferably more. And if you will be away for any length of time, stockpile some entries that will go live while you are away. Your readers don’t need to know you are sipping margaritas on the beach, and when you still have blog entries being published, they will assume you are hard at work!

Don’t rah rah yourself. A blog is not a platform to tell everyone how wonderful your company is. If you are constantly talking about how great your company is or what fantastic products you have, people will stop reading because no one likes a sales pitch disguised as a blog. Look at things related to the industry, tidbits of news, or other things your readers would find of interest. Resist the temptation to talk about your company in every entry.

Find your voice. Most popular corporate blogs have an easygoing tone to them, very different from sales copies or press releases the same company sends. Entries should be written in the first person and should reflect personality and opinions. Don’t be too wishy washy on any topic.

Read other blogs in the industry intensely. Follow at least 30 blogs (more if they are updated once a week or less) and get a feel for how the other bloggers handle the topic area. Not only will this help you see what others are talking about, but it will also give you the opportunity to become much more familiar with blogging as a whole, even if you have never blogged a day in your life… yet!

Proofread! Yes, most people assume bloggers proof read, but reality is that most of us don’t before we hit publish. But when it comes to corporate blogging, you are creating an image, and you don’t want your image to be one of misspellings, typos and grammatical errors. And you don’t want the grammar police bloggers to stop by and comment on it!

Do “insider” pieces. This could include “a day in the life of” a certain employee or job within the company; some little known fact about the company or something in the company’s history; look at an employee who does something phenomenal in off-time, such as training for the Olympics; or the group of employees that knit preemie baby hats for hospitals during their lunch hours. This helps give a human face to your corporation.

Write your own perspective on stories in the news related to your company or product. Did someone use your product in a unique way that ended up saving a life? Did an astronaut take one of your products into space? Make sure it isn’t all rah rah, but more look at interesting news your customers may not have seen in the press.

Enable comments, even if they are moderated. You will need to develop a comment policy, but be forewarned that deleting negative comments can actually lead to worse publicity than if you simply allow the comments to go live. You might decide to remove “Your company sucks” but allow negative comments that have facts behind them, such as a customer explaining a poor experience with your product or company. But be sure to follow up any negative comment as quickly as possible with a company response… readers will be able to tell very quickly if it is a case of sour grapes or if the commenter had a legitimate issue.

Respond to comments to keep the flow. If you respond to many of the comments, either providing answers or more details, you can easily keep the flow of conversation going, and encourage those readers to come back to the same entry multiple times. And a lively blog with plenty of comments will attract many more readers than a slower blog with no comments.

If an entry is related to a certain area within the company, be sure to get input from that department before posting. They might have something interesting to add to the blog entry that is worthwhile adding. And with a little encouragement, they will be much more likely to keep an eye on it when it goes live and maybe even post a comment or two in response.

Post length doesn’t really matter. Not all blog entries need to be wordy with 1000 or more words. In fact, it is better to do a series of short entries that keep your corporate blog active than doing one large one every couple of weeks.

Make sure people know you have a blog. Link to it from your site navigation. Announce it in your newsletter. Tell your employees about it. Include mention of it when you send press releases. Alert analysts, industry watchers and journalists that you are now blogging.

When news hits the fan. When you start your blog, develop a policy in place of how you will handle any negative press. Did an executive get caught doing something bad and it’s being splashed all over CNN? Did share prices drop? Did a product result in a death? If the unthinkable happens, it is best to have a plan of action in place so you know what to do and time isn’t wasted deciding on how to handle it. Will you address it head on? Ignore it? Deflect it with something good about the company? These are all things you should consider so if something does happen, it is being handled in accordance to the company vision, not the knee jerk reaction as it happens.

Ask the legal team what topic areas they would like to review before you go ahead and blog it. This will save a lot of headaches in the future. Likely topics that fall into this category include lawsuits, anything related to earnings, particularly for public companies, and posts about anyone leaving the company where the situation is not so amicable.

Don’t let the PR or legal team write for you. If legal or PR writes your blog entry, it will be dry, high level and boring. And if it’s boring, the readers won’t return. So make sure you stick with your voice and avoid letting PR or legal put words into your mouth.

No smack talk allowed. If you smack talk your competition, or anyone for that matter, you are just handing out the invitation for many more bloggers to talk smack about you. And if enough bloggers are discussing the fact you publicly dissed a competitor, the media sniffing the story out won’t be far behind and the angle they will go for will make you – not your competitor – look bad. A few mottos apply here – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all and if you play with fire, expect to get burned.

Watch your referral logs. Who is talking about you? If someone blogs about you today, you will want to know no later than first thing tomorrow morning, if not today. When you know almost immediately that someone new is linking to you, it gives you the opportunity to potentially discuss it in your next blog entry.

Be link happy. Too many corporate blogs have rules than only allow them to link to their own site, or perhaps other sites or companies owned by the same parent corporation. But when you link to others, then they notice you talking about them in their own referral logs, and they might just take notice of you when they might not have noticed you or known about you before you placed that link on your blog. At the very least, get approval to link to specific sites, such as the top dogs in your industry. If you fail to link to the important players, people will notice and you could potentially lose credibility.

By following these twenty best practices for corporate blogging, you have made your journey into blogging much easier for your company.
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