• Keep your blog post titles unique & fewer than 75 characters
• How often should you blog? Basically, as often as you can. Companies that blog at least 20 times per month generate 5x more traffic than those that blog only a few times per month. That’s FIVE TIMES THE TRAFFIC!
• Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors.
• B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/month than those who don’t.
• B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/month than those who don’t.
• Where can I find out more about blogging? Why, my blog, of course!

Some people even believe that SEO is a myth and that Google has their own way of determining who ranks page one and who doesn’t. I don’t buy that and I believe that there are things you can do to improve your ranking in the search engines. One thing you need to watch for with all the promises that these companies make is to ask exactly what keywords or phrases are they saying will get you on page one. I have a lot of websites that I can pretty much guarantee a page one ranking. The problem is that with some websites, that’s only going to happen with very specific keywords or phrases that probably the average user is not going to search on to try and find your business.

But, don’t lose hope. I would start with getting a free SEO evaluation to see where things stand. Be sure you at least have the basics covered (i.e. a good URL, page titles & descriptions, etc.). Once you get these basics taken care of, you might see some ranking improvement in as little as a few days. But, a more realistic average is a few weeks and possibly even continued improvement over the next several months.

Don’t stop there. This isn’t a one-time shot and then you forget about it. Try to make small changes maybe once a month and try to add content where possible. More content is always better.

Can you do this yourself? Sure. But, where do you want to focus your time? Do you want to be constantly worrying about your website SEO or concentrate on building your business? Look around and try to find a (I prefer a local) company that can do this for you. Cost should be based on several factors of you website. How many pages do you have, how much content are you looking for, etc.

Good luck an stay tuned…

I’m also hoping for great things to come for our friends and business associates that we’ve had the pleasure to come to know throughout the years.

From our end, it looks like a lot of companies are looking to start the new year out with the look-and-feel of a new website or at least making some changes to their existing site. This is a good move because you don’t want your customers to think you’ve gotten stale and complacent that they’ll just always come back to you for more business. Also, send them a card, note or some kind of reminder that you haven’t forgotten about them and still appreciate their business.

I’m optimistic about the new year. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t do you any good to go into it with a bad attitude.

So, here’s hoping the new year is a prosperous one for all. Remember to stay in touch and don’t be afraid to ask questions on how you might do something better. You never know with our rapidly changing world what things may have come out that could help you do things in your life more easily and efficiently.

These are all great questions. First rule is that a blog is not about you, or selling your product. The purpose of a blog is to help or inform the reader to improve something in their business or life. The topics are endless. You’re writing to anyone who might come upon your blog, so your content should be broad enough to entice any reader.

If you can think of something that concerns or interests you, or a solution to a problem you’ve come across, these are all good topics. Chances are, if you feel it improved your life then others will benefit from this information as well.

The frequency that you write depends on your topic and potential audience. If you’re writing about a restaurant or other retail business that people would visit often or have weekly specials, you’d be well advised to write something at least weekly. If you’re a B2B (business to business) entity, one or two times a month would suffice.

One more thing to remember – take the short link from your blog and post it on Facebook to expand your reach. The more often people see your name, the more they’re thinking of you and your company!

This is a really cool tool to see how your site is doing from an SEO standpoint.