12 Best Practice Blogging Principles for Better Search & Social ResultsA step-by-step guide for optimizing & promoting your posts for more

website traffic, better rankings, higher readership, & more time spent on site.

Before You Blog: Get your Own Domain

•Own content verses renting

•Builds authority for your domain not Blogger or Wordpress.org

•Has trickle down, and/or up effect when tied into your main company site

•Perceived as more professional

•Avoid deletion (Geocities, Yahoo! 360, AOL Homepage)

•Sellable ( you can’t sell another’s network)

•More traffic & tracking opportunities

•Flexible designs & functionality (Free WordPress themes, plugins, Drupal designs & modules)

•Where? Godaddy.com, Networksolutions.com

What a Blog is Not Good for:

• Press releases

>>Put in Company News Section

• Discount offerings & pure advertorial pitches

>>Put in Newsletter (only 10% of the content)

• Company-only Success stories >>Put in Case Studies Section

What a Blog IS Good for: •Exhibiting expert status

>Think of yourself as a publisher for a trade magazine in YOUR industry.

Getting PR – Interviews, quotes

•Attracting backlinks

>Offering highly valuable resources, and compelling information for customers, industry people, and “Linkerati.”

•New blog posts are a reason reach out to those on your social networks: Twitter, •Facebook and filter back to website.

Using these Methods

1) Benchmark Where You Start

On Day One

•Set up Traffic & Keyword Tracking: Install Google Analyticshttp://www.google.com/analytics.com

•Set up RSS Feed Subscription Tracking: Sign up for Feedburnerhttp://www.feedburner.com

On Day 30 after ten posts

•Using rank measuring software http://www.sheerseo.com

•Twitter & Facebook badges

2) Have a Goal with Every Post

•Initial Social Media Traffic

•Social Media pass-along number

•Backlinks

•Long term search traffic

•Rankings

•Set up your post for success

•Don’t accept status quo

3) Blog About What’s In Demand

•Find what’ s “hot” all the time – Evergreen Topics Example: eHow.com

•Use keyword research tools

•Wordtracker

•Google AdWords keyword tool “Exact match” ONLY

•Be very specific

•Popular, but not too popular

•Blog about timely events only AFTER you have a large following

4) Do Your Keyword Research Right

•Pick a relevant subject within your theme

•Pick five-to-seven word goal phrase

•Keyword stemming

•Keywords with intent

5) Go Long, Deep & Narrow with Topics

•Longtail traffic

•Be an expert in one niche not jack of all trades (search engines like that)

•Pick five-to-seven word goal phrase

•Keyword stemming

•Keywords with intent

6) Location, Location, Location- Keyword Placement

•The headline or title is the “center” of your on-page SEO efforts

•Sub-heads are the offensive tackles reinforcing your efforts

•The body content is the rest of the team

•Your also have categories (only pick one, max two)

• Free tagging, tag clouds

•Unique meta title from headline

7) Write with Authority

• BE the authority by providing more info than any other listing

•750 – 2000 words

•Always cite credible sources, according to…

•Start with a lead for stories – 5 Ws

•State your points clearly & w/confidence

•No waffling or emotional affect ranting

•Make your post deserve top 10 placement

8) Plan Your Posts Ahead of Time

•Keep an entire playbook of well-researched headlines/blog topics

•Think of holiday, event-based, and seasonal topics which happen every year, you can pre-write now.

•Post –date entries for automate posting.