Ghostwriting Blogs for Clients for Link Building and Social Media

I have been writing blogs for quite some time. Blogs are a great link building tool, and they are also great for customer relationship building, reputation management, and a good survey tool to get a feel for what people think about new products and services. In order for a blog to be a good search engine optimization (SEO) link building tool, however, one must use linking strategies that are acceptable and effective with the engines like Google and Yahoo. Right now, one of my blogs is for our client Entertainment Career Connection.

Blogs are great for customer relations if done properly. And remember that anything you post on the Internet can come back and bite you later on. It will stay up for a long time. So be very careful what you say. Authenticity is very important, and starting conversations with your readers is what works today, and in fact, it is the shift in marketing all together.

I have a blog for one of our clients and as part of his campaign for reputation management we do an educational blog that talks about his activities on the Boards of two charities, and also serves as a research and information tool for trends in education, and enables link backs to his website. I use every single blog topic that I write to also revise it into a longer article for submission to article websites. But you cannot submit duplicate copy or the search engines will not count it.

There's one aspect of blog writing that people often do not understand - and that is the search engine optimization and PR value. Take for instance, Rocco's blog above. I post one to two times per week in his blog. Basically you can type in Rocco Basile on Google, and note that many of the items in the ranking list are now positive posts, and include both his official website as well as blog posts, some PR Web listings, and articles. Inside his blog posts I always provide links back to his website. And the linking strategy can be to specific pages in his website that are related about my topic - not just to the home page. There are times when we have seen blog posts get picked up by other bloggers, who link to the blog.

Blogging requires a goal, and they are a lot of work. But the beauty of blogging is that it provides a marketing vehicle that does NOT rely on a third party, such as an editor writing an article about you. Corporate blogs provide you with an opportunity to tell your company's story. Various executives in your company, large or small, can post to a corporate blog, so you can create a strategy ahead of time, then assign folks to write.

Blogs are a great "Crisis Management" tool. Just look at how popular Martha Stuart's blog was during her court battle. And blogs are a great way to build a database of interested people, users, etc. Just shoot folks over to a sign up form from your blog, and you are certain to get some opt ins.

And as for the return on investment for blog writing, it costs very little - you can set up a blog at blogger.com, for free. So it costs you in time - your time, the time of your employees, or the writing fees to hire someone like MarCom to ghostwrite your blogs. You can check to see if your blog is building website traffic, because of course, the better your blog's linking strategies are, the more folks will visit your website. Once a visitor comes in to your website from your blog, what path do they go down? do they ultimately get funneled to a sale? These things must be tracked on your website by programs like Google Analytics, which is free, or HitsLink, which is the one we like. And of course, you need the experience to be able to read and analyze the reports once they are generated on HitsLink, to track successes over a period of time.


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Website Search Engine Optimization Tips

We have been meeting with many new clients lately, and in doing so, realize that most of their websites are NOT properly optimized. This is in part because today's website designers and web master's have not yet caught up with SEO tactics, knowledge and practices.

MarCom's Mike Keesling, who has been doing SEO since the beginning, says the most important element of website optimization is NO SPLASH SCREENS AND NO FLASH! Next is if you are going to opt for an open source solution for a database driven site (such as Big media USA) make sure you can do individual title tags.

It is unfortunate because most companies would be realizing much improved traffic to their sites if they were optimized. These skills have taken our MarCom SEO experts years to develop and hone, so it's not likely that a company can do it alone - or if they do it will take longer than if they hire SEO specialist teams like MarCom.

The first tip is that you can never use Flash on your home page. It may look nice, but Flash blocks the search engines from reading a web page. Embedded Flash is OK. Remember the more content that has been optimized in your pages the better. Most designers hate this, because white space in design has long been preferred. But when it comes to website optimization, make the pages above the fold or middle pretty, then add more optimized content below the fold.

By optimized content we mean that it has your key words and phrases embedded in the copy. Take for example MarCom. Our key words are website optimization, search engine optimization, social media marketing, online marketing, SEO, social media marketing strategy and so forth. NOTE how I linked the main key word pertaining to this article to our website? I would typically link it to a page on our site with focus to website optimization. Once our new MarCom New Media website is up I will do that.

Social Media and Blog Marketing Strategies and Measurement

We recently had an inquiry from a new business client about doing blogger relations, and or blog marketing. As MarCom has been doing search engine marketing and blogs since the beginning, we have some sweet case histories, or success stories, if you will, but what came up is that it is often hard to write a case history when you don't even know how many bloggers have picked up your story without tracking them on Google. This era of new media marketing is still processing some of the measurement techniques - and the reality is - these results can take more than just a few months to track.

So as an exercise to do a "Client Successes" document for blogger relations, we used our client The Wiley Protocol, and believe it or not, even just in this year of 2008, I tracked back on Google - at least ten pages - and found that we have logged about 50 plus blog mentions since January. Some of these hits were picked up from our SEO press releases and articles. That said, blogger marketing actually goes hand in hand with SEO. And, that said, it should be part of, not separate from, your SEO and Social Media Marketing strategy. Figure out your objectives first - such as reaching brand advocates, or reaching consumers versus young medical doctors online. Or it could be getting more media, or promoting a special offer for a specific product or service.

As for how we can measure our successes? My associate Mike Keesling suggested that some measurement can be quantitative (such as the number of mentions on blogs below) and also qualitative. For example, you can measure traffic stats on your website and track (using HitsLink or Google Analytics tracking) how many people come to your website because of a blog post. Did traffic increase? You can also measure key words used on the blogs, and the SEO results. Again a strategy is required. And the results must be reviewed over a couple of months. It all takes time.

Another one of our clients - Peternity.com - has been optimizing mostly for the key word pet urns, or pet urn, dog urn, cat urn. Of course we also optimize for the words "pet memorials." It is working. She is finally getting customers buying more urns when their pets die. She writers her own blog, but if she didn't, MarCom would ghostwrite it for her, and the bottom line is that we are all on the same page with the SEO and social media marketing strategy. I write optimized press releases and SEO articles as well for this client. Check it out. Also note how I am linking in this blog (see links) for MarCom as well as our clients.

Our excellent results are below for The Wiley Protocol (www.thewileyprotocol.com). We started working with her on SEO about a year and a half ago. Now, our key word strategy has paid off, because she is in the top pages of Google for most of her most important key words. This client now has tens of thousands of consumer customers. The list of close to 50 blog mentions is below – mostly since Jan 08. And this may be only part of them.
http://www.bobyoungmd.com/wiley.htm
http://www.womensvoicesforchange.org/2007/01/ask_dr_pat_bioi.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/94472.php
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Wiley_T._522431849.aspx
http://www.therealcougarwoman.com/2006/11/wiley_protocol_.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fashion/15suzanne.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=health&pagewanted=all
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Wiley_T._522431849.aspx
http://health.propeller.com/story/2008/06/01/ts-wiley-showcases-the-wiley-protocol-bio-mimedic-bio-identical-hormone-restoration-thera
http://www.riverwalkma.com/womenhealth.htm
http://www.topix.com/health/womens-health/2008/01/t-s-wiley-showcases-the-wiley-protocol-bio-mimedic
http://www.thespiritedwoman.com/newsletter/2005/10/august_2004.html
http://www.blogtoplist.com/rss/wiley.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0049567.html
http://www.onlypunjab.com/fitness/fullstory-insight-fitness+healthcare-newsID-247310.html
http://www.exploringcollege.com/article.cfm/id/179879
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/bioidentical_hormones_-_the_wiley_protocol
http://www.nature.com/ijir/journal/v20/n1/full/3901622a.html
http://online-pharm-review.blogspot.com/2008/01/ts-wiley-showcases-wiley-protocol-bio_18.html
http://www.griffinmedical.com/thewileyprotocol.htm
http://www.health78.com/health-news/TS-Wiley-Showcases-The-Wiley-Protocol-Bio-Mimedic-Bio-Identical-Hormone-Restoration-Therapy-BHRT-At-The-Integrative-Healthcare-Symposium-IHS/83796/
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/bioidentical_hormones_-_the_wiley_protocol?printable=1
http://www.westmoreland-pharmacy.com/retailer/store_templates/ret_custom_page2.asp?storeID=EE488B11DB25472285D10D6CC02CA42A
http://spa-namaste.com/article.cfm/id/252071
http://www.tummytucksurgery.co.uk/news/article_t_s_wiley_offers_physicians_039_two_days_back_on.php
http://www.myhormonereplacement.info/article.cfm/id/207103
http://www.myhormonereplacement.info/article.cfm/id/181820
http://menopause.gaia.com/blog/tags/bioidentical+hormones
http://www.escapecollege.com/article.cfm/id/179879
http://www.bobyoungmd.com/documents/OHN10-FemaleHormoneReplacementTherapy.htm
http://www.bio2000.com/article.cfm/id/252870
http://www.searchdisease.com/article.cfm/id/252870
http://personallifemedia.com/guests/740-ts-wiley
http://digg.com/podcasts/Beauty_Now_The_Intersection_of_Cosmetic_Surgery_Longevity_Bio_Medical_Innovation/318151
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/2006/11/weird_and_wiley_science.php
http://www.mjmls.com/viewtopic.php?t=86004
http://www.blogcatalog.com/posts/replacement%20protocol
http://www.heartlandhealing.com/pages/News/flier_OHE.pdf
http://www.bionity.com/lexikon/e/?ps=T.+S.+Wiley&didsearch=1&defop=and&wild=yes&d=none&dienst=lexikon

Oh and just FYI there are also blog posting services for $20 to $75 per blog where you are guaranteed blog posts. So just like anything else in life, you can buy your way onto a blog, and it would be a legitimate link (back to your site) which is great for your SEO results. But that requires a strategy and money. You can get a couple of hundred blogs with a good budget, or you can hire MarCom for blogger relations for much less per month.

The Best Link Building Practices

One of, if not the most important element in getting high search engine rankings for your Website is what is called link building. The search engines analyze and count links to your website - and they take a look at patterns for linking, linking profiles, deep-linking, and if you have used one-way versus the now old school reciprocal link building strategies.

As we have said many times before, content is king on your site. But right up there in importance is the quality of each link. That is more important than how many links you have.

Here are ten tips from our MarCom SEO expert, Mike Keesling's tips for link building.

1) Make your links inbound one-way links with anchor text that is related to your site.
2) Links should be from a site that’s related to the theme and content of your Website.
3) You need to vary the anchor text of your keywords and keyphrases when getting links from other sites.
4) Find your competition’s links at Yahoo.com -- type linkdomain:competition.com.
5) Do NOT do reciprocol links, but IF you do, create a special link swapping page on your site.
6) Don't use link farms, which are sites that host a large array of spam links.
7) There are some good directories for link building but most are worthless.
8) Links from social media websites like DIGG are fantastic. Getting an article on the front page might even cause your server to crash!
9)Electronic press releases are good links. Use PRweb.com.
10) Do NOT purchase links.

Basically, anyone can do these link building SEO strategies, however, those of us who have been doing SEO and social media for as long as we have, use other special tricks, and we know how to get the best links because we also link using your key words and phrases.

Website Optimization and other Search Engine Tactics

The last year has been particularly interesting. Having been in this space now being called social media marketing, since before it even started, means that we have been able to test many of the practices that PR professionals are just now learning to use as mainstream. In fact, my associate Mike Keesling was doing Search Engine Optimization in Los Angeles for Pacific Island Reservations, a Hawaii Vacation Rentals site, back in 1996, when they only had one website. Today they have 12 websites, and for more than a decade he has helped them maintain a top ten ranking in Google, MSN and Yahoo. In fact - check it out if you are looking for a place to stay in Hawaii for vacation this summer! It'll save you money.

Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) defines your website and targets your visitors. Whether you are a small business or a corporation you need an Internet marketing strategy that includes a website with interactive content that to attract your customers who are online using the search engines to find what they want. Then when your potential customers type in the keywords associated with your products and services, your website will come up within the first page of the search engines.

We call this Website Optimization – and just FYI, most web designers (no offense) do not install Meta, Title or Alt tags properly, and in fact they can cause more damage than good. For example, Flash websites cannot be SEOd, and this is critical to the search engines and your customers finding your website.

Another tip - with the right keywords we will make sure every page on your website is optimized properly with those words. More subject-specific content means better qualified traffic. This text is optimized if the search engines can find it via keyword-density. And your site should also be a good read.

Sitemaps are another thing you should consider. There are two types of sitemaps: 1) An HTML page listing the pages on your site by section so users can find the information they seek. 2) XML sitemaps, a way for Google to find all the pages on your site, and that includes URLs that may not be discoverable by their standard Web crawling processes.

Website Analytics –This tells us the behavior of your website visitors, allowing us to use data collected to determine which aspects of the website are working, such as which landing pages encourage people to take an action. We can use it to track visitors, sales or measure month-to-month SEO results and tweak online strategies.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) content syndication feeds are also a social media and Internet marketing must these days for better search engine visibility and better qualified traffic to your site.

And my favorite, being a PR professional, electronic press rooms and optimized releases are a must. Our eco-friendly electronic press kits are also optimized for the search engines making it easier for the media and your customers to find you. Here is another one of our client's online press kits that has been getting alot of attention lately. A company with a Los Angeles recording school, plus film schools and a radio DJ school known as the Entertainment Career Connection.

The Social Media Marketing Press Release and Wire Services

MarCom has been using various forms of the new social media marketing press release for our clients for the last few years. In fact a press release just went out yesterday for our client Acutrack, Inc. regarding their new eco-friendly consultation services to help other businesses learn how they can leave behind a smaller carbon footprint while remaining profitable. Acutrack has been helping ease the burdens their clients are placing on the world a number of ways, including environmentally friendly CD and DVD manufacturing. We distributed this release via PR Web, for several reasons. It was a longer than normal release because we added some of the customer testimonials, and PR Web's costs for distribution can often be more modest than MarketWire. Although we use both company's wire services. Each has various methods and distribution cost rates -- PR Web's premium one is $360. The release cannot be more than 800 words basically.

Acutrack's release was already picked up by a couple of newswires -- Acutrack, Inc. Announces Eco-Friendly CD and DVD Manufacturing and Packaging Solutions. There is also PR Newswire, which I have used for years for traditional press release dissemination to the media. Most all of the wires today are doing search engine optimization -- so, right now, I believe it is a matter of client budgets and experimentation for preference as to who gets you the best results.

Oh and BTW I just noticed this MarketWire press release regarding the fact that the inventor of the new social media press release format (now on version 1.5) PR agency Shift Communications, just won the Holmes Report "New Media Agency of the Year." Well done.

SEO RAP -- No Nos from Los Angeles SEO Firm

We are all used to the tips for how to do search engine optimization (SEO) but what about the no nos that you never knew about? We'd like to offer some help by offering you ten steps for what not do do on your website if you want to attract customers.

1. Throw Flash and Splash screens in the trash. Do not use Flash and expect to get good SEO results. You know the websites were you see a pretty picture or animation on the home page and have to click enter her to go beyond? No text on your home page means the search engines won't read it. Good SEO is all about content... content... content.
2. Don't forget to add Title and Description tags on pages. You may have seen some websites where it says "new page" in the browser? That is probably because the website designer did not put a title tag on the page. It is really important to the search engines.A site without a Description tag is meaningless. A short message with a key word that describes your site in the Description tag is essential so your customers will click through to your site when they see your site's listing.
3. Don't use repeat Title and Description tags. Your website pages should each be unique and contain a theme for key words or phrases for each page, so make your Title and Description tags match the content for one of the keywords per page of the same topic. You can't optimize one single page for many key words.
4. Don't use text as an image. Some sites have text and images combined into a jpg or gif image, so you can't select the text with your cursor. Search engines cannot find any searchable text, so you get no SEO results. Also don't make any headlines into gif images, because they should be text with a key word in it.
5. Local Business do not need national SEO. It won't do a cigar store in Pasadena any good to optimize for the national or global marketplace, because their customers can't come in and buy a cigar unless they live near Pasadena. MarCom had a client like this, so we optimized them for Pasadena Cigar stores. It worked. Now it would have been different if they had an online cigar store.
6. Redesign your site with caution. Don't lose optimized URLs. Once a website's pages have been indexed by the search engines and people are finding you, you do not want to lose the SEO traffic you have already established, and the search engines will be sending your potential customers to pages, or URLs that no longer exist. To redesign your site you need to have your web master use a similar structure of the old site had and retain the same URL addresses for the new pages.

And for those of you who need some more help with your search engine optimization feel free to check out our website at www.marcombroadband.com