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Guidelines to improve your search engine rankings

The advent of Web 2.0 and new media is witness to a plethora of corporate organisations today out there blogging, trying to give a personal touch to an impersonal business organisation. However, keeping in mind the premise of the Web 2.0 platform as a forum for building relationships, I’m not sure everyone is doing it right. I have noticed several companies using blogs to wax eloquent about their products and services, doing the very same thing they are doing on their websites.

At the very outset of creating your corporate blog, you must realise that a blog is not a sales tool. Rather, look at it as a customer experience enhancement device to understand your customers and prospects better, which can serve as a catalyst to future sales. Your organisation’s financial success will be guaranteed if you focus on bonding with your customers and prospects through shared experiences, building a community of individuals who value your domain expertise and appreciate your resolve to solving their problems.  Taking that into consideration let us focus on how a corporate can avoid blogging blunders and the measures it should incorporate to improve search engine rankings.

Define your blog raison d’être

Most organisations join the blog bandwagon simply because their competitors are on it. While blogs have transformed into a me-too phenomenon at most companies, there are others who use blogs as a disguise to market their products and services. Just as you set goals for your business, your blog too must be driven by specific business goals. Carefully think through your raison d’être, the goal you need to attain through your blog. It could be a platform to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, function as an online resource help or generate leads.

Set basis blog rules

Ones credibility takes prime focus within the blogosphere. Fool around with it and you stand to face ostracism from social media communities, something you won’t be able to undo for a very long time. As a corporate, is it even more pertinent for you to set some basic rules of conduct like acceptable topics, tonality, dos and don’ts, etc. Set accountability parameters and benchmarks to ensure that your blog attracts the right audience and functions as a productive resource. Circulate the blog rules in advance to employees who will double up as bloggers so that they can abide by them.

Create frequent posts

Blogs must be updated regularly and frequent posts are the norm. However blog update frequencies must again be set from within the company. A standard recommendation for blog updates is a commitment of at least two per week. Irregular posts can result in a vital loss of readership as people will stop visiting the blog if new posts are unavailable.

Get interactive and social

You don’t want your blog to function as a boring extension of your website. Based on the goals set for your blog you can invite participation from users through various means. Liven up your blog with sound and video bytes. Research indicates that blogs with interactive media, especially video and podcasts attract repeat visitors because of the ‘sticky’ user experience they deliver.

Make the most of social media channels; add social bookmarking buttons like digg, del.i.cio.us, Facebook, LinkedIn and others to your blog. Empower your readers to bookmark your content and share it through their networks. Enabling these influencers to spread your content across the web is a proven and effective method to gain prominence across online networks and rank high on search engines.

Focus on the right metrics

You must monitor your blog using web analytics to gain further insight into the credibility of your blog – to understand what content is popular with readers and what is not. However, while analytics are important, you must be careful not to focus on the wrong metrics. Most bloggers end up obsessing upon how many people are linking in, who’s mentioning their name and what their Technorati rankings are. While it’s ok to get excited about these things, it would be prudent to sideline metrics that are not in sync with your blog’s business goals.

For instance, a focus on lead generation should attract different metrics as against a blog focused on gaining advertising revenues.  Thus to increase your search engine rankings, your blog needs to attract the right metrics viz.:

• Domain expert blogs – media feeds, links from prominent bloggers, subscribers, inclusion in ‘lists’
• Advertising revenue blogs – unique visitors, page views and subscribers
• Lead generation blogs – inquires, duration on site, repeat visitors
• Blogs aimed at SEO – keyword rankings, links, referring traffic

While common metrics like RSS subscribers, unique visitors and page views are relevant to any blog type, focussing on metrics according to your blog goals will ensure significant improvements in your content creation and promotion effectiveness.

Turn influencer for maximum online visibility

It’s all about inclusion in the online community. Thus, while you follow all the rules and do a pretty good job of handling your corporate blog, you must maximise your online visibility and reach by simultaneously researching what other popular bloggers within your industry are saying on their blogs. Post comments on their posts and engage them in conversation. There’s a possibility that they could link up to your blog even as your extend your online community reach.

Remember, your blog will always be work in progress; you need to continually figure out ways to add value through it to your users. As you blog, ensure that your posts utilize search-engine friendly titles, keywords and links. These small SEO additions will surely ensure your blog gains top rankings, lending further credibility to your organisation.

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