SEO vs. Blogging
As my entrepreneurship professor recently said, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be the major focus of a website developer, as long as the year is 2005. SEO is the process of optimizing your website through keyword research, competitive research, keyword strategy, and then deploying this strategy through Meta tags and website content. It also consists of obtaining links to your site from people who recognize your worth.
In 2005, SEO was important. It still is, and being #1 on Google for a particular word or phrase is guaranteed website traffic. But SEO is no longer enough. Thousands of pages of websites are added to the Internet every day. It is becoming more and more difficult to get high placement on Google just using SEO techniques.
The major pitfall of SEO is that even if you get high ranking for a certain product, and people come to your website because you are #1 on Google, why should they trust you in making a purchase on your site?
This is where online marketing and social media tools come into play. When I speak of online marketing, I am not just referring to the bland Google Ads or flashy banner ads, I am more referring to the utilization of social networking tools and blogging tools.
SEO may get you high placement in the search engines, but it does not build trust.
Social networking tools and blogs have the ability to build trust. Blogs in particular have the ability to portray an expertise in a given field. For my website clients, if I feel their particular business will not rank high in Google due to competition or low search for that niche, I recommend another approach. I will still optimize their site to the best of my ability, but the approach I recommend is for my clients to show that they are experts.
Many of my clients are experts in what they are doing. They have traveled the world and have done business in areas you don’t read about in the papers. Their stories would be more entertaining and educational than any graduate school text book. If they began sharing these stories through blog postings, people would begin to find these blogs and come to think of that person as the go-to person for questions or consulting in that field.
If my clients are not experts in their field, I still recommend blogging. But their blogs should not be an attempt to portray expertise, but as a story-telling method of where they are in their business. If they are entrepreneurs, I suggest writing about the process of getting their business up and running. Of writing about successes and failures. A photo of you on your website will let people in a little bit. Opening up and writing about your business struggles will have people connect with you and will build trust that is the foundation of any business interaction.
It is then the role of the social media outlets, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc to point people to these blog postings. Also, by writing these blogs, content will be continually updated on a website for topics that relate to your business. You will be fulfilling SEO strategies by continually adding keywords to your site that reflect your business.
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