Enter the Blogging Evangelist. This is Why You Should Blog.

“I Don’t Need to Blog. It Won’t Help My Business.”

People tend to look at blogging and marketing as trying to attract new customers. But that’s not really quite right.

Dan Kennedy, the master marketer tells a story about a marketing-savvy plumber that illustrates the point. Now, Dan would probably sue me back into the womb if I recounted the whole thing here, but the salient point is as follows...

The plumber doesn’t advertise in order to get you to choose him now, he builds awareness (leaving little stickers on all your pipes following a free checkup) so that when you need a plumber you call him, and not someone else.

Now, the reason I’m not worried that Mr. Kennedy will sue me for sharing that tip is that this step is the culmination of a whole series of steps, without which the punchline won’t work. It’s a useful point, but to implement it properly, you need the rest of the story.

(The story is included on the CD that comes with his “No BS Marketing to the Affluent” book. Yes that’s an affiliate link, so if you buy it I will get paid, but we all have to eat.)

As far as blogging goes, the relevant bit is the fact that the plumber splashes himself all over your house pipes so that you know who to call when you need a plumber. The people who installed our nice shiny solar boiler did the same. As did the people I bought my car from.

And the lawnmower.

So, don’t blog because doing it will get you a new customer now, blog because you have something interesting to say that will make a whole load of potential customers remember you.

If you didn’t get that, read it again. It’s important.

This is what blogging ought to be about. It’s not some underhand SEO gaming tactic trying to con Google into putting your page at the top of some arbitrary list of web sites; it’s about delivering value to readers in the hope that they’ll trust you more.

Then, one day, when they need what you’re offering, maybe they’ll remember you, and come running with their credit card. Until then, provide them with solutions, entertain them if you must, and get them on a mailing list if you can, but above all - stay on their radar.

Be everywhere. Tweet them your blog articles. Pinterest pictures of your stuff. Facebook message everyone who might be interested in where your products come from. Tell a story on your blog, and give them a million reasons to pass on your content to their friends.

Make your blog good. No, make it awesome, and if your readers love you enough they’ll eventually become your customers. And that transition from reader to customer will make it all worthwhile.

Keyword Research is Dead. Long Live Keyword Research.

So, the number of (not provided) and (not set) keywords in my Google Analytics reports has now eclipsed the actual keywords reported.


The reason? People being logged into Google (and therefore using https) when they do queries, and therefore not giving away their keyword information.


Does it matter? To me, yes. If only because I like to know them in some special cases, such as if the Bounce Rate is consistently 100% for a keyword, it indicates that the keyword phrase is mis-matched with the content.


Does it matter for keyword research in general? That's a question that it might be a bit early to ask. However, it will skew the results that some suggestion services provide, as there is the possibility that Google users use different keyword types to other people, and are therefore removed from the database.


Arguably, if we assume that logged-in Google users are (a) more internet savvy, and (b) more technical, then if they are removed from the keyword database, a lot of technical traffic goes with them.


Whether that's a good or bad thing, is anyone's guess right now, but I suspect that, in the long term, these things will even out.


I've long suspected that keyword research is a dying beast - to be overtaken by tagging, social media, and various other traffic acquisition strategies that have little to do with search engines in the traditional sense.


However, keywords will remain important for evaluating on-page performance, and for tools such as the AdWords traffic and value estimators built into tools like Market Samurai.


Long live Keyword Research!

Using Blog Posts for Keyword Research

Blogs are great for many things; from getting quick feedback on an idea (if you've allowed comments) through to testing out new ideas and marketing formulae (if you're testing and tracking the keywords properly).

However, many people forget that they are also great for keyword research. In particular, they work well for researching long tail keywords, as well as keyword phrase variants. 


A word of warning – they're not much good for one or two word primary keyword phrases; use traditional methods, as well as commercial products such as Market Samurai or WordTracker for these.

Easy Keyword Research with Blogger.com

Perhaps the largest of all blog sites is Google's Blogger. You're reading a blog hosted by Blogger, and one of the principal advantages from many users perspective is the relatively tight integration with Google's tools, such as Google Documents.

One other aspect that's attractive, and which prompted this article, are the statistics that can be tracked.

For example, Blogger tracks the location of people visiting your blog. There are also the usual page view statistics, as well as one very interesting piece of data – the keyword phrases people used to find your blog.

Here's how it works: 

• someone types a keyword phrase into Google;
• Google fetches the pages from its database and displays the result list (SERPs);
• the user clicks a URL;
• Google redirects the user's browser to the target page.

Now, once this redirection has taken place, the session variable known as the HTTP Referrer contains the original Google search URL (the one you can see in the browser status area, if you hover over the link text.)

Blogger can then access this data, and extract the exact keyword phrase that the user originally typed in before choosing your page from the SERPs.

How does this help?

Well, if even if your page appeared well down in the list for one or two keywords, there's at least half a chance that other keywords in the query are related to content that you could provide. 

So, at worst they'll be good prompts for future blog entries.

The place to look for these gems is in the Traffic Sources menu item, accessible from the Overview page of the blog in question (Overview->Stats->Traffic Sources).
At best, these keyword phrases can offer useful insights into what people are looking for, and what you should be targeting in order to make the most of the traffic on offer. And that's the key – traffic. 

But what happens if you've got a blog that doesn't get enough traffic for this analysis to be helpful?

The answer is simple - blog, promote and wait. Or, boost your profile by simultaneously publishing on other places like Squidoo and HubPages. Once Google notices your blog, and you've got a few posts under your belt, you'll be able to reap the keyword research rewards!

Rumours and Hyphens (Capital Letters in Keywords & Using Hyphens in Squidoo)

I was wondering why I was getting less visitors than I thought I would to my Squidoo Lenses.

Turns out there are two answers. At least, I think there are. I may be wrong, but part of my theory was vindicated when I noted that a few people out there in Twitter/SEO land have spotted the same thing.

Google now treats Keywords With Capitals differently than keywords without. This means that Keyword is different to keyword. Which doesn't seem to affect results in the search engine itself to any great degree, but it does change some of the lower order SERPs somewhat.

Glitch or feature? Only time will tell - if you have any research :: let us at it!

Where there does seem to be a difference is when it's combined with hyphens. Now, I never really read documentation about new Web 2.0 tools. I jumped into Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Hubpages, SlideShare, and now Squidoo without reading their guidelines beyond the basic FAQ.

So, of course, I missed something vital that was only pointed out to me the other day.

Consider the following Lens URL:

• http://www.squidoo.com/howtostartagiftbasketbusiness

Now, you and I both read that as How To Start A Gift Basket Business, right? Google doesn't. Google sees "howtostartagiftbasketbusiness". Not very helpful if you're searching for a keyphrase like "how to start a gift basket business".

This lens has a 5 star rating, and I think it's great. However, Google doesn't even see it. Why? Hyphens!

I should have called the lens "how-to-start-a-gift-basket-business". With hyphens. That way, Google can separate out the key words. Amateurish mistake, that, and I'm embarrassed.

Ah well, live and learn, eh?

Till next time,
Guy

PS For those who want the technical insight into capital vs lowercase search keywords, the original blog post is here. It's not one of mine though, so be sure to click *back* when you're done reviewing it ;)