Great Marketing Tips for Your Blog!

How Backlinks Help You Get More Traffic

So you’ve started blogging and now want to take it to the next level, the next level being bringing in more traffic to your blog and ultimately more customers. Blogging by its very nature is national and international since the Internet usually does not have borders. Therefore with blog marketing it is a task of both thinking local and going for global appeal as well.

Why would you want to go global with your blog? Because Google looks for bloggers with credibility to promote in Internet search results. You may be able to build that credibility locally if you live in a large city and have many local people visiting your site, but if that is not the case then connecting with other experts in your area from around the world builds credit for your own blog. Google looks favorably upon backlinks (a backlink is a web link from another site back to your site) that your blog has earned with other blogs that are similar in nature. To Google being linked to another respected blog means your blog has some merit. Think of it this way, if everyone in your town is talking favorably about the hottest restaurant with its 5 star chef, how popular do you think that restaurant is? It is probably very popular since that restaurant is being talked about by everyone. Google extends this idea of popularity onto the World Wide Web. If a lot of people are talking about your website (or in terms of Internet speak linking to your website because of popularity) then Google places a higher value on that fact for search results.

So how do you increase backlinks for your own content to help you rank better in Google search result? Just like you do in real life when you want to be more known, you network with others in your field. Find interesting articles from  bloggers who write on similar topics as you and cite to or refer to their articles in your own content. Then shout out the fact to the world (aka spread the word on Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn etc.) that you wrote some great content and also have included some links to other great content. Make sure those authors of the other blogs know you linked to their work so they in turn also promote your great content on their social media channels.  If you share other people’s content enough and on the right channels they in turn will begin sharing your content thus boosting your Internet visibility.  While Google is coy about using social media as a basis for impacting search results other search engines like Bing openly state that social influence can have an impact of how you rank in its search engine.

Write enough content and properly link to other content/authors and Google should begin to take notice of your website more. How does this help you, you ask? It helps you by ranking your content in internet search higher based on relevancy related to the topic a person is searching for. Still unsure of how it helps you? Think of it this way, when you need help for anything you may ask a friend to refer you to someone. How high of a value does that referral from your friend go in your mind? Pretty high for most people since your friend referred you to them and maybe even praised the work they did. Now turn it around and think of Google as the friend you just asked for a referral. Google just told you, that you Mr. or Ms. Plumber or Insurance Agent are the local expert in your market since they have these well thought out and informative blog articles, podcasts, videos and more on their website. Now you go to website of the person who was referred to you and look around kind their virtual shop. You read their great blog articles and listen to their podcasts and realize this person knows what they are talking about.   How likely are you to go to someone else who does not have great blog content?  Probably not very likely, especially since your friend “Google” referred you to them. So there in essence is the value of having a highly visible well-read blog on the Internet.  More visitors to your site means more potential customers for you to work with.

Side note here, anyone offering to sell you backlinks to your website is not doing you a favor. In the past Google did not pay much attention to the quality of backlinks so many sites would simply go and buy backlinks to their website and thus gain very fast in Google search results. Due to many Google users being annoyed by finding junk search results ranking high simply because of purchased backlinks Google changed their behind the scenes search methods. What this means is that if you buy backlinks in hopes to rank high in search you instead may be shut out of Google’s search engine completely by being sent very very far down the search results. Not something you want to risk if you are running a legitimate long term business. So don’t pay for backlinks, earn them by connecting with other bloggers.

Using Social Media To Boost Your Blog And Your Business

We talked about linking to other blogs in your own blogs in order to enhance your content.  Along with that was a brief mention of using social media to promote your blog articles.  Social media is everywhere these days.  You generally can’t go to any in person social gathering and not hear about something someone heard or posted on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram and more.  When everyone else is talking about social media and what is going on there it makes sense for you and your business to be promoting on social media as well since there are plenty of potential customers there who may be interested in your product or service.

Social media coupled with the data collection present in some of the platforms also means you can target with a high level of specificity than you can with other advertising platforms.  Want to promote a special offer to only people in a certain zip code?  You can do that.  Want to even further narrow it down and promote to not only people in a certain zip code but also people who own a home or have a certain like or income level?  You can also do that.

The possibilities become endless in terms of who you can promote your message to with social media.  Lets say you own a restaurant and want to bring in local foodies to boost business?  You can write a blog article about the training your head chef has and the different parts of the world they have cooked in.  Then you can use that article as the basis for attracting local foodies to your restaurant.  Promoting the article widely on social media to get the message out there can be done for little to no cost.  If you want to spend some money to boost your social media reach you will likely even get more positive return on investment as a result.

By being active with your social media fans and followers you stay in their newsfeeds and they keep awareness of your brand in mind.  Being active does not mean bombarding your fans and followers with non-stop promotions and information about your business though.  If all you do is promote your business your followers will have little desire to keep up with a repetitive message and instead may tune you out or worse shut your messages off.  Instead try a 85/15 approach.  85% of your posts should be about things not related to your business and 15% specific promotions or blog posts about your business.  For the 85% share things about the local community, local events, new discoveries you may have made.  With the 15% mention some special you may be having at your place of business, some new dish you have to offer or promote your recent blog post.  That type of communicating is more likely to be noticed and appreciated by your followers who then in turn will keep an eye out for what you are sharing and will be more likely to see something about your business.

Last Thoughts

Blogging and social media are great ways to interact with your customer and get out your brand awareness message without being overly in your customers face and without huge advertising expenses associated with TV or radio.  By blogging about aspects of your business and using social media properly you have direct reach to current and new customers.

Need help or guidance to further improve your blog or social media marketing push to attract more customers?  Get in touch with me!