By John Eberhard
One of my clients, Stan Dubin, has been blogging for several years, and has recently been telling me about how blogging has gotten him good search engine rankings. So I interviewed Stan about his blogging experiences, to share with you. My conclusion is that just about any business can benefit from starting a blog.
- Tell me a little about your blogging experience and the blogs that you run?
I have been blogging for about three years. I’ve created six blogs so far. My main blogs are:
https://MarriageSuccess.com and https://ThisCouldWork.com and https://AFreshOpinion.com
I also created a blog to help members of my church start their own blog and I am in progress on a new blog https://TheOnlineResourcePage.com. This is designed to put into excruciatingly plain English the methods of marketing online.
- You’ve told me that you’ve gotten good search engine rankings from putting posts on your blog. Can you tell me about that and give examples?
Almost immediately after getting my blog going, Google was noticing different items I had placed there. I have of course posts, but I’ve also included free articles, a selection of great marriage quotes, press releases about our book, etc. I would find people coming to my blog through keywords that existed in these various new items.
“Improve marriage” comes up number 9 on Google out of 397,000 pages
“marriage success” comes up number 2 on Google out of 520,000
but some interesting ones come up:
I wrote a post entitled “How Did My Child Get So Disrespectful” and it seemed almost with 24 hours people came to my blog when searching for “disrespectful child” which now shows up #15 of Google out of almost 2 million pages.
Other examples:
“is your marriage doomed” – #3 on Yahoo out of 21, 800,000 pages
- Does putting a new article up on a blog have more search engine impact than putting the same article on a web site? Explain?
My understanding is that the search engines really go for “fresh content.” So I find as I put more new items on my blog, this helps reach new people. I’m not sure how that would be for a relatively static site.
- Is there some sort of promotion that occurs after a new post is put on the blog? How does that work?
The blog service I use (Typepad) takes care of this now. They send a “message” out to a number of other web sites (they call it a “ping”) and this lets people know that my blog has just created new content.
- What do you think is the best blogging software or service?
If you’re really knowledgeable in web design, I’d recommend getting started with WordPress. They’re the top of the line and the most flexible, from what I can see. If you’re like me, I recommend starting with Typepad. They can help new people get started and as you go along, there are ways to make your blog more sophisticated.
- What types of topics are appropriate for a blog post?
Any topic is appropriate. If you have a passion to communicate about something, getting a blog going is an excellent communication channel. You can blog about your product, your company, politics, religion, your hobby, even your family. All are fair game.
I forgot about a blog that I started a few months ago: http://asportingview.com/ — I’m a bit of a sports buff and sometimes I’ll get irritated about something happening in the sports world or I’ll just want to communicate a viewpoint of mine, I’ll head to this blog and let loose. I’m not sure how many people see this blog; it doesn’t really matter to me. I just wanted a place to “vent” and this blog serves that purpose.
- How is a blog post different from an article that one might put in a newsletter? Are they different or do they have to be different?
An article in a newsletter is usually a bit more “formal” than a blog post. I say usually, because there are some blogs that are pretty formally presented, but most blogs tend to be very conversational and informal.
- What is the appropriate number of words for a blog post (or range)?
From the many blog posts I’ve read, they tend to be fairly short, maybe in the 1-300 word range.
- What types of companies do you think would benefit from putting up a blog and writing regular posts?
I honestly believe EVERY company would benefit from starting a blog. Even a small mom and pop would benefit. You would just need to come up with interesting things to communicate to your public.
- How often do you have to put up new posts on a blog?
The think is that the more you post, the better, but I try to at least get something done once a week. Some blogs have several posts a day; some do just fine with something new every week or so.
- How can a blog be used to promote products or services?
By steadily communicating interesting information to people that want the information. The more you do this, the more trust you establish with customers and prospects. The more trust you establish, the more likely people will do business with you these days.
