A few days back I wrote one post on how to develop the online branding and authority of your website. In that post I mentioned that blogs are the best ways to achieve the same. That is true, but the concern which comes in our mind is how? I mean how to use your blog properly so that it can become as a branding tool for yourself.
Many of my friends always ask me that you waste so much time on blogging, so is there any point in wasting so much time on blogging. Frankly speaking a few of them always ask me that do you earn something from your blogs. Well, truly speaking, I never thought about monetizing my blogs, other than the Google Adsense program, and a few other ad slots. That too I am using just because I wanted to recover the costs which I am putting on running these websites.
Frankly speaking, from last few years blogs has evolved as a much powerful tool to brand your business. Not only from the point of view of doing business, but blogs are also helpful in developing personal branding too. You can also earn from your blogs.
Truly speaking branding is a never ending process, and you are always required to do something to achieve the targets. With the help of your blog you can easily create a database of some great loyal fans, which can always subscribe to your blog, and follow your ideas. If you can establish the fact that you are an expert in a particular field, which you can easily do with the help of your blog, then you can easily get customers for your services.
Also developing a brand is really difficult while it can be destroyed within a few seconds only. It will take around years to build a brand name, but with the help of a few words in your blog post you can easily hurt the same too. Frankly speaking with the help of the blog posts written by you, the readers always form an image of you and your business. Thus if you can be able to create a great image in his/her mind then he/she will surely follow your suggestions.
You must ask me that any one can be able to write great blogs, but then how my blog will be different from others? Here are a few tips which can help you to create a brand with the help of your blog:
Unique Design:
You always need to pay attention to how your blog looks like. Always remember that first impression is the last impression. A user will always decide about you, once he/she will land to your website or blog, on the basis of design only. There are a few things which you always need to remember about the design of your blog. The most importance aspect among them is color combination of your website. Prior attention is required to choose the color combination of the website, as in our real life our dressing sense reflects the personality of ours, similarly the color combination of our website will reflect the personality of our website or blog.
Try to choose simple looking designs, as the user should not face any problem while navigating the site. No matter how well you have written your blog posts, user will always consider it of low quality of the design of your blog is not of good quality.
Content is King:
As we always say that content is king. Once after having the Panda update, Google is again emphasizing on the quality of the content and its uniqueness. No matter how well you designed your blog, if your blog posts are not good or useful to the user, it will always harm your brand value, plus you won’t be able to get the love of the search engine too. Many people claim that do the SEO of your blog post, but as I am an SEO from last seven years, I will recommend not thinking about search engine while creating your blog post. Always try to create the blog post from the perspective of the users, which is actually also the basis concept of the search engine optimization too.
Consistency:
Consistency is the most important factor while establishing brand value. When you are using your blog as the branding tool then you must need to be consistent, so that you can increase your followers. Many people will consider consistency as writing blog post on a daily basis. It is not like that you write daily blog means that you are consistent enough, rather the consistency means you should always follow the same guidelines. Fix a goal for your blog and then always create posts considering the same goal in your mind.
Consider this question in your mind, why will we read your blog? Okay that your blog is ranking at first position on the first page of the Google search, but you take it in this manner. You consider yourself as an user and search for the same keyword on which your site is ranking, then visit your blog and ask yourself if your blog post has provided enough information to you as far as the searched term was concerned.
If yes then it is really good, else you should need to check your blog.
Be Unique:
One of the finest tips which I can give to anyone who is thinking about using blog as a branding tool is to be unique. Always try to write unique contents as search engine will also like the same, plus the user will also remember your blog once reading it. Always try to do something which can spread the name of your blog as a virus. We always know that mouth publicity is the best, so always try to create blogs in the manner that people will start discussing about the same and your blog will spread like anything.
Provide Much Information:
Provide much information simply does not mean to provide all the information which your blog is about, rather to provide all the information about yourself, or about your business. Once a user reached to your blog, then he/she should not think about how to opt for your business, rather he/she should have all the privileges through which he can always either look for your business or contact you or to purchase the services provided by you. Many a time blogger who do business blogging forget about providing more information about their business on the blog. I would tell you all not to do the same mistake. As I was working for one immigration company in past, I created a blog for them, and provided some banners mentioning their services in the blog design. The trick worked as the blog started attracting targeted people and the design converted them into the customer too. So never forget to provide all the information about your services on your blog.
This is all which I can provide you at the moment as far as using your blog as branding tool are concerned. The best which I can ask you all is to share whatever you have the information about the same, so that I too can be able to learn something new and the readers will also have some more information about the same. So I would request you all to share your comment if you re having some tips related to the same.
Four Steps to Increase the Google Ranking of your Older Blog Post!
Blogging is not something which you publish and forget about it. You need to give regular updates if you are really looking for people to follow you. You publish a post then you need to answer the comments, build up links, all this is done just in hope of getting a high ranking on the search engines. This allows you to get organic traffic automatically on autopilot.
Then you publish a new post and what happens to the older post? Who has got the time for them? You might probably think of deleting your outdated content which has the potential of ranking you down, according to Google. But this is not what we are going to talk about it here, it is something different and more interesting which you can do with your older posts. With a little help your old content can prove very useful and especially when it comes to Google rankings.
Step 1 – Use Google Analytics and identify the post
Discovery is the first step of the ladder. Google Analytics is a completely free tool and helps you in finding your position. Google Analytics discovery process is a three step process. Firstly you need to click on the ‘content’ and then ‘top content’ on the side bar from your dashboard. This will allow you to see your pages lined up on the basis of most visited one to the least visited ones. Then you start clicking on the top pages and move down and then click on the phrase “entrance keywords”. After that, you will get a list of keywords through which people are finding your posts on the search engine.
SEMRush is another tool to find your ranking but the only issue with this tool is that it is paid. So, if you are ready to spend some cash then this is what you should go for.
Step 2 – Weigh Your Competition
If your page landed up on the first page without much effort it automatically means that the competition was not very hard but it is always advisable to check into it. Market samurai is one of the amazing tools for market as well as keyword research. The module named “SEO competition” on the website of market samurai will let you spy on your competition for specific keywords. This can save a lot of your time and energy.
Step 3 – On-page Optimization Should be improved
You already about the targeted keywords used in the title, header tag, description and URL by you and your competition. However you can still tilt the rankings in your favour by reworking the Meta tags. You can even add few internal deep links along with targeted keywords; it is quite easy yet effective method.
Step 4 – Get the links
Now, you have complete information about what all you need, it is time to get your one way link build up to the post. It will take hardly 10 minutes from step 2 to finally complete your post optimization.
Follow these 4 simple steps and you will see your ranking go up high on the Google.