This week Rand discusses some oft overlooked factors one should consider when preparing (or revisiting) a corporate blogging strategy. We all know a blog can be a huge asset to improving a company's web presence and rankings, but if approached carelessly it can cost you.
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Corporate Blogging Tips from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
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By: Scott Willoughby
Whiteboard Friday - Corporate Blogging Tips
Whiteboard Friday
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Hey Rand...
Thanks for the info! I can't believe how many times I have overlooked some of your advice. Defintely something to put on whiteboard for life. By the way, it's seems we are tunned cause the last three WBF had given me excellent ideas to solve some problems.
Congrats on your weeding! Being an SEO Celebrity, I bet a lot of folks are waiting to see your weeding pictures. You can sell them and donate to charity like Angelina & Brad, it will defintely increase the RAND awareness!
Regards from the Eternal City!
You're so good I could pinch you!
The being commercial vs. delivering good content is such an important issue. Our blog kuttisme.no (it's in norwegian so don't bother) is, I find, too non-commercial.
There are a few benefits:
But on the other hand it is extremely frustrating to write about a problem or a gap in most people's knowledge, knowing that you provide training in this - and not linking to the commercial site. It makes no sense to my marketing heart.
In my case I am new to the company and new to the blog -and persuading the old dogs that it makes sense linking... not easy.
So please help !
(Or tell me to shut up if what we're doing is brilliant and I just don't get it.)
Congratulations Rand on your marriage....
Corporate blogs can target all the long tail searches on the keywords their site is optimized for, later link back to the site on those phrases. That will help the site ranking well for the keywords they are targeting on and blog for related long tails from that industry.
Dear SEOmoz (voiced through Rand), thank you for making my corporate in-house job much easier. I am going to leave this video on repeat with a cardboard dummy of me waving a nondescript piece of yellow paper to attract attention circa a 1920s newspaper boy, perhaps looping a ring master-esque banter saying, "Here ye, here ye the wise ways of yon corporate blog!"
Whilst all this is taking place I am going to be sleeping on the beach, doing my best to avoid getting ran over by Danny Sulivan's Mini Clubman. Getting a little close to the sand there, Danny.
Oh, my boss says the website relaunch is due in six days... Ok, so I'm actually sleeping under my desk. And so the dream crumbles. Well, thanks anyways, SEOmoz. You probably saved me from a non-voluntary ab workout under the unwatchful eye of a Michelin.
Great video, I am a little unsure about your blog vs. website traffic issue. You point out the real problem with keyword cannibilsm (sp) as one of conversion ( that the site outconverts the blogs)
But most bloggers don't think of CTA's on their Corporate Blogs. As you have mentioned many times, blogs are great for SEO...business should embrace this right?
It's really about how do you get the searchers who visit your blog through keyword search to take the next step in the relationship. You talk about this when you say that the blog is the introduction to your brand or business...it's your credibility builder...in many ways it's better if the first visit from someone is to a blog vs. a Corporate site.
I say don't fight it, embrace it....we like to think of Corporate Blogs as Organic Landing pages. Win the search, win the engagement and use a good CTA to win the conversion.
Thank you Rand. I noticed keyword cannibalism as well. My blog was ranking better than my main site.
Then I stopped linking to the blog from my main site. Only the link from the blog to my main site stayed.
A view days later my main site jumped very high in the search results under the given keyword.
Michael Janik - Hamburg, Germany
Good points, Rand, and welcome back. You look refreshed :)
I was trying to explain point four to a new client recently who needed help with his blog. He had only 5 links according to Technorati. So I set up a networking strategy connecting his blog to other leading bloggers in his field. But no, no. No links out allowed. He knew link exchange was yesterdays methods. I tried to explain this was different, it was networking and building personal relationships with other bloggers and very important for link building. They just didn't get it, so bye bye client. Can't help you then.
Great tips you've got there. I may be new to this community but I hope that we can share good ideas and post them on.
Happy posting
Thanks for good tips. There is really thin line between un-formality of blogging and formality os common corporate communication.
Jaak https://seoapplied.blogspot.com/
once again, really good tips about blogging for corporations, i like the point about keyword cannibalisation ! I have already experienced such a phenomenon a few times
I really like the idea of corporate blogs, not only for SEO reasons but also because they are a fantastic way for businesses to interact with the community they're approaching.
However, my view is that if you're going to write a blog you need to do it properly and spend time on it. A lot of companies don't have the time to dedicate to a blog, so how do you address this dilemma? Is it satisfactory for a business to update a blog once every quarter? Is there a desired time frame that they should be working to, to get the most out of the blog?
Thanks for the tips - as always, clear, concise and very useful!
Once again great job Scott.
Congratulations Rand and welcome to the real world. ;-)
I think the content in this video is very good. The only caveat I have is using the actual site navigation bar. I agree there should be some basic links back to the main company site. I just don't agree that it should be the whole list of navigation choices offered on the regular site. They are on your blog I would prefer to offer them a few choice links back into the main site rather than bombarding them with a myriad of choices.
great video!
I never thought about the 5th point. thanks for your simple and excellent video.
Thanks Rand. Now it's clear to me as to how to handle keywords for Main site and for a Blog. I was using same keywords for both!
Thanks for this, excellent information and incredibly timely. Companies can save themselves alot of heartache with this info.
Great video. And what you say about corporate blogging applies to blogging in general, specially when you have a site + a blog on the same subject. You should create the 5 golden rules of blogging or something like that :-)
Ps: I love the teaser graphics for the new "carhole" tool, but shoudln't you have a better landing page for it?
We do have a better landing page for it...once it's released. We're just being coy for now :)
Thanks rand. As usual the right topic at the right time ... you must be reading my mind somehow :-)
I got some nice insights and now I look at some decisions a made in a different way... especially the keyword cannibalism thing ...
I just de-canabalized some keywords on my blog, let's see if my mainpage can outrank them now!
Great stuff in the PRO Video Tip Rand. Looking forward to more of these!
for some reason the pro video links don't work. I'm on Safari and it's reading as Run scrip "void(0);/*1222388989700*/"
Gah, Firefox III error. I'll get Scott to fix them (as there's no easy way for me to tell what they're meant to be either!)
Edit: seems like they've been fixed :)
Along with helping you to avoid cannibalization, analytics can be a great source of subject matter for the corporate blog - especially if you see that searchers are asking a question that you aren't already answering.
I went to showmemyebooks.com in the seo section and downloaded some blog info, etc. Anyone know how to submit ebooks or familiar with them? I get other info (non website related) too- just curious on any experience anyone has had with ebooks?
Would you consider optimizing the blog for the brand name to be keyword cannibalization?
In terms of brand searches- which are by far and away our most profitable- I view our blog as a tool to push an affiliate or similarly branded site off of page 1 (result now is Homepage #1, About page #2, yahoo shopping #3, blog #4). We've got good links to the site from the blog and are showing some ability to convert traffic from there. Is this wrong headed?
In terms of optimizing for keywords, we've found that our most popluar posts rank really well for some niche keywords- better than our sell pages, and better than competitors whose sell pages rank higher than ours. Again, I'm willing to take the short term win of having a seasonally topical blog post with good links beat our sell page, which wasn't on page 1 anyway. Anyone have any thoughts?
keyword cannibalism (sp?) -- good to know to look out for that on my blog. i might have created this problem. great tips...i look forward to more whiteboard friday tips.
thanks!
Thanks Rand, that last tip was by far the most valuable I think. Sometimes SEOs can get blinders on about keywords and they miss the point with blogs. It's about the conversation first, the selling is for the website. You have to utilize all of your assets in the right way for them to work together well.
Great WBF.
Excellent. Thanks so much for the info. It can be very frustrating trying to figure this stuff out on your own!
Excellent post Rand, and great timing too. We are about to lauch our Blog soon.
Thanks for the tips.