For businesses that have an online presence, the blog is an integral component. It helps boost SEO value, can involve link building, and it can provide valuable content for readers and customers, helping to aid sales. Business tips that emphasize the importance of the blog are on the right track.
However, there are some notable mistakes that can severely undermine your time. Seven of the worst business blogging mistakes are outlined by Bill Faeth:
- Not Blogging On Your Domain: Some businesses don’t host their blog on the website, which can eliminate the SEO value of the blog. It can also look unprofessional.
- Frequency: Faeth argues that blogging regularly is an important element of business bogging. Even once or twice a week isn’t bad. Just be consistent.
- Not Optimizing for Search: Take your keywords into account when writing posts and titles. After all, this is a big advantage of having a blog.
- Over-Optimizing for Search: New changes to Google are changing previously-held practices. Keyword stuffing can bring heavy penalties.
- Not Leveraging Social Media: Make sure your Twitter and Facebook followers are aware of your blog. These networks can be valuable for promoting blog content and creating viral word-of-mouth, as well.
- Call-to-Action Buttons: Including these can help convert readers into buyers – or subscribers. Add an artistic button to capitalize on great content.
- Ignoring Analytics: Track inbound sources and traffic numbers, says Faeth, to help you gain insight into how you can improve your ROI.
These tips can certainly help you transform your blog into a better overall tool for your business. Contact us to learn more about leveraging your blog and capitalizing on marketing opportunities.
PS – FlowerChat PRO members can benefit from our extensive guides on using your Blog As Your Social Media Home Base, and the Florist Blogging Strategy Guide, available from the PRO Downloads section of FlowerChat.com. New members enjoy one month of free PRO access.
It’s good that you emphasize the frequency of blogging. I have observed that a lot of business blogs are just good when they are starting up. When you have new posts, you are making your readers look forward to reading new articles again. Your blog will end up forgotten and disregarded if readers will always find the same latest blog. Keep a consistent or regular schedule on when you will be posting your new articles.
I totally have to agree with you Vida_Ilevares. It’s really easy to begin a blog and suddenly begin to get burnt out on keeping it consistently going. I really think that you have to plan out a strategy to keep your posts up as frequently as you can from the very beginning.
“4: Over-Optimizing for Search: New changes to Google are changing previously-held practices. Keyword stuffing can bring heavy penalties.”
This one REALLY concerns me – I would like to know your insights on this? I commented another post, and I’m not a florist or know much about being a florist, but I do blog, and your content is still very relevant to me so-far. I think it’s awesome that you are doing a site for florists specifically, but I think the info will apply to me as well, and wanted to know, if you could do an entry that outlines the bigger differences in Google since Penguin? I haven’t really looked yet, but have heard about it – I’m worried that I will have to change a lot about my sites!
Keyword stuffing is something that’s had little value, but great popularity, for far too many years. Now when Google talks about (or hints at) over optimization that can mean too many links with optimized anchor text, artificial internal linking, or any form of over emphasis on a specific phrase.
For years we’ve taught that you need to write naturally, included stemmed and semantic variations (florist, florists, flower shops, floral designers, and so on) since that’s how you would write for people AND Google is smart enough to build a more complete topical picture based on the use of different words.
This is something we really need to emphasize. Content should not be compromised for the sake of keyword density. Keyword density should be there only to lead our website on top of search engines.
Oh this is very true. I unfortunately am a part of a article marketing directory that had a few customers actually request to do keyword stuffing in their orders. It’s insane. Some people would do anything for traffic. It’s also not fair to site visitors, who are genuinely interested in the content.
I’d like to add this one: Content is King.
Sometimes in the hunt for higher SERP’s, bloggers get caught up in all of the mechanics of blogging (keyword density, tags, etc.) and forget about the very people they’re hoping to attract — their readers. Catering to Google may bring readers to your blog, but it’s your entertaining and informative content that will make them return and hopefully become customers.
I totally agree with this. I am learning about this concept even more now than I have in the past with my website. I find that if you can appropriately bring constant value to an audience, they will continue to come back to your website, because they are now hooked.
You’re absolutely right. Content is king and I think it’s best to keep your readers in mind and focus on them. Of course you can take the search engines into account too. You have to, but in the end, search engines also want to offer users quality content. I think you can’t do anything wrong if you focus on writing quality content for real human beings. In the long run, that will always get rewarded.
You know I just thought about something based on what you said KennyK. There is true motivation in knowing that both Google and your human visitors both want to make sure that you’re content is relevant at the end of the day.
Another thing thing to avoid is Recent Posts widgets on your index. It’s great for posts and pages, but can hurt you on the index. I use a widget myself called “dynamic widgets”, it allows me to hide that widget on my home page, highly recommended!
Frequency of the posts is the main mistake that I have seen in business blogs. Some of them post less than twice a month and it certainly looks unprofessional for me. Some of the posts more than once each day, and though it may not look unprofessional, we certainly are not looking to read that much each day. Just a couple of times each week shall be good.
Yes. I agree. Once a month postings will make your target audience forget about you. Everyday postings will also make your audience be annoyed. Strike a balance. Hit the ‘in-between’ zone so you’re safe.
That is so important to have a balance, which is something I am learning right now. People definitely appreciate when they haven’t heard from you in a while, but not so long that they forget you.
I really don’t agree with keyword stuffing at all. A blog is supposed to be something of great value to your audience, and when one chooses to keyword stuff, they bring down the value of the blog. I really like this post, because it reminds people of how important it is to give great value when blogging and to be consistent with that value.
I’ve made the mistake of not blogging on my own domain, and instead used a free blogging site. I could have added a blog but was too lazy which isn’t a good excuse, but that’s what happened. I now see a big difference in blogging on my site.
When trying to come up with a very catchy blog post title, it can be tempting to not optimize this title for Google.
I also agree with you on the fact that a blog that is being updated frequently with interesting content may be more attractive than another one that is not being updated all that often.
Finally, It can be easy to update social media accounts with a new blog post. Thus, not using social media when a person is frequently blogging may not be as effective.
When people come to visit your blog they are looking for your level of expertise in an area. As well as some type of hook that will keep them coming back for more. These two places are where people should practice their consistent “king content”.
There’s nothing more jarring than coming back to a blog that doesn’t really line up with what the person said the day or week before, or the worst case scenario…they decided not to keep up with their posts. By being consistent, you can definitely hook an audience that will remain loyal!
This is the internet that we are all doing business on. Sometimes a traditional mindset will settle in and we will do limited marketing, but it’s important on this platform to spread our net wide. Look for possibilities that you have not thought about that will help you increase sales. Maybe writing articles on a blog related to your niche or video marketing. Who knows?
I agree that your blog should be on your own domains as it helps with SEO and brand in general. However, I think its important to get away from your blog as well. Blog on other blogs as a guest blogger, use sites like Squidoo and Hubpages and submit articles on article directories. You want to expand your articles all throughout the internet to help gain new traffic and develop a reputation. Every blog and article you make should also be unique as well, never post the same article more than once. As mentioned frequency is also important. On one of my blogs, I post at least once a week but its a personal blog. On my professional blog, I post 2 blogs a day. Just don’t go overboard with posting daily because too many blogs can make others unsubscribe due to getting too many emails.
There are some great tips and suggestions here from the article as well as all the comments.
In addition to the usual evergreen topics for blog posts, I think it’s a good idea to also post on trending topics and current events from time to time for the potential traffic you can get. Some of those first-time visitors may be happy to discover your blog and keep visiting.
As with posting frequency, it’s important to strike a balance, of course. You don’t want to be running a news and/or entertainment blog or to have the reader arrive with the expectation that there will always be some discussion of a hot topic.
Not blogging on your own domain and using a free wordpress or blogger (or anything else that’s free) is a huge mistake! I’ve made it a couple of years back and I wish I hadn’t wasted all that time when I could have built up a brand, a business and trust with my readers!
Being consistent in posting will win the marathon because any business is more like a marathon than a speed race. Starting from a keyword that is searched by others is the only way any business blogging should be done. Without having a keyword to target you will be writing without a real aim.