Commenting on blogs, forums and online communities is one of the best ways to generate leads for your business. You can build a lot of back links for your website by being active in these forums and communities; even though a lot of these links will be ignored by search engines, these links will give potential customers many different ways to make their way to your website.
One of the questions that I'm often asked is "Should I do both pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation, even though I'm already ranking well in the free search engines?" Well, my answer to this is normally "Yes", for a couple of reasons.
If you are using pay per click ads while you are already showing up high in search engine result pages, your site gains more valuable screen real estate on these results pages. When you have a larger presence, your site gets more traffic; meaning more conversions and more profits for you. It's a simple thing, really - while it's not free, it can and does usually more than pay for itself in terms of revenue generated by your website. The second compelling reason is that pay per click advertising lets you use many different keywords or key phrases at the same time, whereas SEO is geared towards a small number of terms. As any website owner knows, it's hard to get a good search engine ranking for several different keywords or key phrases at the same time. You can specify which search terms your ad will show for with PPC ads; giving you a lot of flexibility and giving you exposure to a broader potential audience.
Blogs, as you know, are a little bit like online journals that list all the post in reverse chronological order. One of the key benefits to having a blog on your website is to establish pre-eminence in your market or become a thought leader. A lot of blogs have become prominent in their market and many people in related areas or unrelated areas actually start linking into your blog and feeding off your information. It's like a pyramid with people underneath you, all looking to your for guidance and thought leadership in a market. It could be extremely powerful, but it does require effort, a strategy and a long term vision.
Using your blog for long tail SEO is also an effective tactic. Long Tail SEO is the use of a larger number of keywords and key phrases which are commonly used by people searching for the sort of product or service which you have to offer. A lot of website owners don't know that the keywords that they use for their business are not necessarily the ones that all of their potential customers may be using. For example, if you are a plumber in Melbourne, you probably have optimised your site for a key phrase along the lines of "plumber Melbourne". This is a good idea and I'd do so myself. However, there are an awful lot of people searching with phrases like "cheap plumber Toorak" or "fix broken tap" among others. If you have a blog, you can post entries regularly focused on different keywords and key phrases depending on the specific topic you are writing abut in your post.
What this means is that you start ranking well in search engines for dozens or potentially hundreds of these long tail search terms and that generates a tonne of additional traffic to your website, which, over time, can really add up. So, how do you generate all this content assuming you have a blog? Well, there are a few options:
1. Hire Someone To Write It For You. You can find freelance writers to produce your content in many places, including Elance.com and Guru.com. If you want to become an influential voice in your field, you might find that you have to edit the content which they produce to meet your specific criteria; or lay out very specific criteria for the writers you hire.
2. Recycle content. You can re-use content like brochure copy, articles from newsletters and the like. You'll basically be leveraging this content to get broader exposure.
Website owners should not neglect the lead generation potential offered by blogging -if you have a clear vision for where you want to go with your business and the dedication to stick with the business to build success, you can get a lot of traffic to your site this way. You can go to becomeablogger.com for more information on getting started I blogging, there is a series of instructional videos available here. Another good resource is entrepreneurs-journey.com by Yaro Starak; one of Australia's, if not the world's, most famous experts on blogging as a business tool.
One of the questions that I'm often asked is "Should I do both pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation, even though I'm already ranking well in the free search engines?" Well, my answer to this is normally "Yes", for a couple of reasons.
If you are using pay per click ads while you are already showing up high in search engine result pages, your site gains more valuable screen real estate on these results pages. When you have a larger presence, your site gets more traffic; meaning more conversions and more profits for you. It's a simple thing, really - while it's not free, it can and does usually more than pay for itself in terms of revenue generated by your website. The second compelling reason is that pay per click advertising lets you use many different keywords or key phrases at the same time, whereas SEO is geared towards a small number of terms. As any website owner knows, it's hard to get a good search engine ranking for several different keywords or key phrases at the same time. You can specify which search terms your ad will show for with PPC ads; giving you a lot of flexibility and giving you exposure to a broader potential audience.
Blogs, as you know, are a little bit like online journals that list all the post in reverse chronological order. One of the key benefits to having a blog on your website is to establish pre-eminence in your market or become a thought leader. A lot of blogs have become prominent in their market and many people in related areas or unrelated areas actually start linking into your blog and feeding off your information. It's like a pyramid with people underneath you, all looking to your for guidance and thought leadership in a market. It could be extremely powerful, but it does require effort, a strategy and a long term vision.
Using your blog for long tail SEO is also an effective tactic. Long Tail SEO is the use of a larger number of keywords and key phrases which are commonly used by people searching for the sort of product or service which you have to offer. A lot of website owners don't know that the keywords that they use for their business are not necessarily the ones that all of their potential customers may be using. For example, if you are a plumber in Melbourne, you probably have optimised your site for a key phrase along the lines of "plumber Melbourne". This is a good idea and I'd do so myself. However, there are an awful lot of people searching with phrases like "cheap plumber Toorak" or "fix broken tap" among others. If you have a blog, you can post entries regularly focused on different keywords and key phrases depending on the specific topic you are writing abut in your post.
What this means is that you start ranking well in search engines for dozens or potentially hundreds of these long tail search terms and that generates a tonne of additional traffic to your website, which, over time, can really add up. So, how do you generate all this content assuming you have a blog? Well, there are a few options:
1. Hire Someone To Write It For You. You can find freelance writers to produce your content in many places, including Elance.com and Guru.com. If you want to become an influential voice in your field, you might find that you have to edit the content which they produce to meet your specific criteria; or lay out very specific criteria for the writers you hire.
2. Recycle content. You can re-use content like brochure copy, articles from newsletters and the like. You'll basically be leveraging this content to get broader exposure.
Website owners should not neglect the lead generation potential offered by blogging -if you have a clear vision for where you want to go with your business and the dedication to stick with the business to build success, you can get a lot of traffic to your site this way. You can go to becomeablogger.com for more information on getting started I blogging, there is a series of instructional videos available here. Another good resource is entrepreneurs-journey.com by Yaro Starak; one of Australia's, if not the world's, most famous experts on blogging as a business tool.
About the Author:
Author: David B. Ascot can improve your sales lead generation numbers and you will learn the value of successful online lead generation.
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