BLOGGING AS A WAY TO DISSEMINATE NEWS AND INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS OR SERVICE

Your customers are looking for news about your business and/or your products on the web. Are you providing them with the information they want, or are your competitors?

To continue my Blogging Basics series, I wanted to share this video that gives a graphical and simplified view and explanation of how a blog can help your business.

If you don’t have a blog, your competitors are probably feeding your clients and customers and drawing them away from your business. That’s why it is critical that you understand this concept.

As the video states, there have been over 70 million blog sites created since 2003. Blogging has become the standard way to share information “news-style” for businesses, organizations, clubs, and groups.

But let me remind you, the greatest benefit for creating and maintaining a blog is the search engine optimization (SEO) power. You’re not just going to benefit by keeping news and information about your business on the web, but you will increase your chances of landing on the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when potential clients are searching for info about your products or services.

When a local client is searching for your product, the chances that person picks your business are far greater if you are on the first page of the results that pop up on the screen. It is rare that searchers ever go past page 2 or 3 when drilling down through the results, unless there are no direct matches for what they are looking for.

Google’s search engine loves blogs, because they constantly feed in new information, unlike static web pages. That’s why it is time for you to take serious consideration on starting your business blog in the near future.

Stay tuned for the next post which will showcase my favorite free blog services. Meanwhile, if you have a question on business blogging, feel free to ask your questions in the comments section and I’ll do my best to help you see the light!

Carlton Flowers
Business Blogging Consultant

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WHAT IS A BLOG, AND WHY IS IT CRITICAL TO THE GROWTH OF MY BUSINESS?

That, my friends, is a question that I am frequently asked by entrepreneurs and business owners. Therefore, I’ve decided to start teaching about blogging on, well, my blog site!

I am excited to announce the start of a long series on the topic of business blogging. People these days want to know if blogging is something they should consider for their business, their profession, or other special line of work. And the answer to the question is a resounding yes. Blogging is critical to the growth and future success of your business.

A little history on this strange word, a “blog” is actually short for the word “web log”. It was coined by Jorn Barger in December of 1997 to describe a website that acts like an “online journal” of sorts. Just as you would enter daily updates into a journal with pen and paper, you can create “blog posts” on a blog site to update readers who are interested in what you are writing about within your area of expertise.

Blogging can be a great way to build an audience and gain credibility in your field. It is a relatively low cost (and even no cost) marketing strategy that has the possibility of getting you instant exposure. Blogging can be significantly cheaper than traditional means of advertisement like billboards, newspaper ads, radio spots, and television commercials.

The Transformation From Websites To Blogs

When the Internet first started, the common practice was to build “static” web pages. I use the word “static” to mean that they basically sit there and do nothing. The main purpose of a static website is to give basic information about the business and how to reach them.

As time went on and the Internet progressed, people learned how to transact business on their websites, and e-commerce was invented. Not only could you get basic information about a business, but you could also make purchases and have the items shipped to you.

But the next big transformation that the Internet went through was the social media revolution, and the expansion of the “blogosphere“. This phase brought us real interaction among people on the net like never before. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter hit the scene with great fanfare. At at the same time, blogs started comprising a great percentage of the sites on the Internet that were also getting significant traffic.

Instead of just presenting basic contact information like most boring static websites, the blog site allowed businesses to publish cutting edge information on a regular basis just like a newspaper service. They also afforded people the ability to make comments and interact with the people reading their articles.

The biggest advantage for business bloggers? Their customers will find them first before finding non blog-using competitors. That brings me to the next topic for your learning pleasure, “search engine optimization”.

Search Engine Optimization

In this day and age, people go straight to Google to find businesses versus the old days of thumbing through the phone book. You, as a business owner, want your website coming up on the top of the search engine results pages (or “SERPS“) for maximum exposure.

That’s where “search engine optimization” (or “SEO“) comes into play. SEO means designing and tweaking your site to give you the best chances of landing at the top of the SERPs for the search terms that relate to your product or service.

For example, if you own a local plumbing business, you want people seeing your website on the first page of the SERPs when they type in “fix broken pipe” on Google. If they have a leaky pipe spraying water all over the house, they aren’t going to sift through page 10 of the search results, they are going to pick a plumber from the first page!

If you are looking to harvest all of the Google searchers within your local community, you don’t really have any other choice. The blog is the king of the hill for SEO and its ability to magnetically attract Internet traffic.

Because a blog site is comprised of articles written on a regular basis, be it daily, weekly, or monthly, the search engines always detect that there is something fresh and relevant being added to the site. Google and the search engines love new and updated information. Current info gets lots of credit when it comes to website ranking.

Once you have a blog up and running, it is highly advisable to stay up on the latest SEO techniques to keep your high ranking on the SERPs within your niche. It will pay you great dividends in the long run.

So I Need A Blog… What Is My Next Step?

If you are a business owner, professional, or expert in your area of knowledge, you have gotten this far in the article, and you don’t own a blog site, it’s time for you to take action. If you seriously want to harvest the high number of your potential customers using Google each day, make an action plan and get started.

There are three different ways that you can take the blogging for business strategy to the next step. They are as follows:

• start a blog site on your own using a free blogging platform
• purchase a “canned” blog site from a professional service provider and manage it yourself
• hire an SEO expert and blog designer to set up your site provide regular content

On the next edition of Blogging Basics, I will give you several choices of free blog services that you can use right away. I’ll also talk about some of the paid blog services, and why you might prefer to use them over the free services. We’ll also talk about real results that local business owners are getting from using the blogging strategy.

Until then, make sure to bookmark my site, and also subscribe to my RSS Feed by clicking the link below so you don’t miss a single post!

Carlton Flowers
Your Business Blogging Coach

Hit this link to subscribe to my RSS feed right now —> http://feeds.feedburner.com/carltonzone/yZXF

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QR CODES WILL REVOLUTIONIZE YOUR BUSINESS MARKETING

The future of local business marketing is here. There’s a small black and white box with a strange pattern in it that will change everything. They’re called “QR Codes“, and you need to know why they will impact your business for the better if you utilize them.

If you are a small business owner, your local advertising and marketing will be revolutionized by incorporating QR codes in your flyers, print ads, billboards, and every single place that you display your business identity.

The days of traditional advertising are over. I will even boldly say that marketing your business on the Internet or on Facebook without QR codes are going to quickly be useless. Why? Because there’s a new mega trend about to hit. And it’s mobile marketing.

Smartphones are everywhere. More of your customers are packing iPhones and Android devices than ever before. When they want to check out for options eating out or shopping, they’re not sitting at home on their home computer to search. They’re reaching for their smartphones.

Within one year, there will be more searches conducted using a smartphone than the home computer. Studies say that 240 million searchers will use their cell phone, while 200 million will use a PC. The gap will widen as more and more people utilize their smartphones as their primary Internet device.

In fact, mobile marketing will give you your biggest bang for your advertising buck. It is a wise investment. You can forget about wasting time and money designing fancy web pages that aren’t optimized for viewing on a cell phone.

The new formula for reaching your potential clients and bringing customers back on a consistent basis will be combining a mobile optimized landing page with traditional advertising and QR codes (plus a little bit of stealthy marketing).

More and more smartphone carriers have free QR code-reading apps, and they are using them. The newness scanning QR codes piques interest and curiosity, and it is quickly becoming popular. Just imagine the rush of new business that could generated by using this new technology right now, while it’s hot.

Just when we thought Twitter, Facebook, and social media marketing was the big new thing, technological advance brings us another paradigm shift in the way we will interact and do business on a local level.

Are you a small business owner or leader of a community group or association that depends on driving new customers and clients to keep your business thriving and growing? Then you better get on this now, and strike while the iron is hot.

You have two choices: figure all of this out on your own, or keep your mind and focus on the daily aspects of your business and let an expert handle it for you.

For the busy folks in the latter category, I suggest you contact me immediately and find out how you can be up and running within days with QR Turbo. I’ll even give you a free 30 minute consultation and live demonstration.

But if you hesitate, I’ll be swamped, and you’ll be left paying a consultant 5x the price for what I can provide for you.

Just pop an email to carlton.flowers@gmail.com with “QR Turbo Fee Demo” in the subject line, and I’ll contact you and schedule a visit.

I’ll also throw in a super free insider tip on how you can use Google Local to set up a free listing that will land you on page 1 of the Google search engine results for your locality.

You will want to get this info before your competitors crowd you out, leaving you on page 2 or 3. And believe me, that could mean the difference in massive traffic to your business (or your competitor). It is mission-critical.

If you want to keep your status as “top-of-mind” for your niche, or kick your competitors off the roost while they are sleeping, I’ll expect to hear from you soon.

All the best,

Carlton Flowers
Your High-Tech Marketing Strategist

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REVEALED: THE SECRET TO MY EXTREME SEO SUCCESS

Go outside and throw a rock and you’ll probably hit an SEO expert. They’re everywhere. And they’re a dime a dozen.

Sadly, they charge hundreds if not thousands of dollars to perform their search engine witchcraft. And people pay it without question.

Then you have all of the experts that like to lend free advice. They know it all. If you want to get on page 1 of the Google search engine results for competitive keywords, and do it fast, they know it all.

Some say you need hundreds of backlinks. Some say thousands. And if you don’t have the time to post comments on unsuspecting respectable blog sites, then they will sell them to you for a monthly fee.

Some will say that you have to get a domain name stuffed with keywords directly related to the niche you are trying to conquer. Or even that you’ve got to get a new keyword rich domain for every different website project that you have.

I love the ones who say that you’ve got to build this big complex “link wheel” network of websites. You make a few dozen websites that all point to each other, and then they all spit out a link to the big site you are trying to push your product on.

Here’s the crazy thing…

I do absolutely none of these things. But I am consistently able to conquer page 1 results with relative ease. Sometimes it happens within hours, or even minutes. Using one method, it even happens within seconds. But what is the secret to my SEO success? How am I able to do this? Buckle your seat belt, because I’m about to drop the bomb and give up my secret. What is my method, you ask?

It’s called HONESTY

Yep. Honesty. Plain and simple. Instead of registering domain names stuffed with keywords, making crazy link wheels, or generating hundreds of useless backlinks, I spend my time focusing on writing top-notch information about the topics that I love.

You can have all those tricks. They might work. but it’s temporary. Truth is, when website reviewers that work for Google catch you doing all those things, and when they see that your content is 1/10th of the quality of those keywords you stuffed in that new fancy domain name for your website, you’re gonna get whacked.

When you focus on making good quality content, and not all those tricks, your web pages will be Google Slap-Proof. Reviewers will downgrade your site when they see you using dubious black hat or gray hat tricks. But when your content is generated using the honesty approach, there is no reproach. Your site will stand the test of time.

People in this day and age want instant results, and they will stop an nothing to get that accomplished. But if you want your site to end up on page 1 of the results and stay on page 1, drop the stunts and make a quality page and be honest about what it is that you are doing.

If you are writing an informative article to attract traffic to earn money on Adwords ads, that’s fine. We all know that you’ve got to monetize your blog, or your article site. Just keep it within reason. If you are selling a product, be proud and tell people why you think that your product will enhance their life or make their problem go away. Be upfront. If you want to become a respected writer and sell advertisement opportunities, focus on being the best writer you can instead of going after the shortcuts to riches.

Follow my advice and it will pay you dividends for a long, long time. Follow the short-cut SEO scam artists, and you will eventually waste your time. Think about it. I dare you to tell me that I am wrong about this. Go ahead, just try.

Carlton Flowers
Keepin’ it “SEO Real”
www.carltonzone.com
www.microbusinessplans.com
www.twitter.com/carltonf

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ARE THE MOTIVATIONS BEHIND POSTING DUPLICATE CONTENT PURE AND HONEST?

If you don’t know what duplicate content is, it’s seeing articles posted on the web word-for-word in different places. It’s people re-purposing the same information for whatever reason, which rarely is to promote the original message of the article. There’s usually an ulterior motive. And what is the end result? The Internet gets mucked up with loads of duplicate crap.

The most common reason people copy and paste articles on their own sites is to generate traffic. Why? To get people’s eyeballs in front of the stuff they want to sell. Sometimes it is a physical product, other times it’s a report of some type, or a scam business opportunity. All in all, I will boldly state the the overwhelming majority of people who do this are con artists, and they are not making the Internet a better place.

So where do they get their duplicate content? There are several different ways that people can obtain and copy content for their own benefit. Here are a few common tactics and sources:

• blatant copying and pasting of news articles
• blatant copying of pertinent information from authoritative websites
• copying information from Wikipedia
• purchasing “PLR” or “private label rights” articles to re-purpose on your website
• using software to re-write articles and fool the search engines from catching the duplicate content

Your next question is probably, “who are the people doing this the most?” The common duplicate content abusers usually fall into one of these categories:

• Internet marketers and “gurus” (con artists)
• bloggers who make money from Adsense articles
• email marketers with big lists who promote tons of products
• affiliate product pushers (selling other people’s stuff for a commission)
• short-cut artists trying to rise to a respectable level without doing any work

Okay… so maybe that offends some honest people who use duplicate content for whatever reason. But what I have to say to you is, write your own crap and you will have more success than slinging duplicate garbage across the Internet. None of these shortcuts will get you to the top, nor will they sustain your sales. The most successful bloggers and marketers are the ones who use their own honest unique content!

One of my biggest annoyances comes when I am searching for something legitimate, and I run across the same article on different sites jammed with Adsense ads. For example, I was searching for information on tension headaches, and I found multiple sites using the same article copied from webmd.com but for the selfish reason of selling things and making money. People like me don’t appreciate that. It’s a time wasting annoyance!

I’d like to know if you have noticed as much duplicate content floating around the web as I have. I’d also like to know if anyone can post a good response exposing the positive side of the story on using duplicate content. Take the poll below, or sound off in the comments section!

Carlton Flowers
Guardian of the Web
www.carltonzone.com
www.microbusinessplans.com
www.twitter.com/carltonf

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MY JOURNEY TO UNDERSTANDING BACKLINK SEO STRATEGY

I’ve been studying search engine optimization (or “SEO” for short) for about 3 years now. SEO is important for people who want to drive natural traffic to their websites from people searching the Internet via a search engine. Most commonly, they are in pursuit of potential customers for their e-commerce site. Up until recently, I never did spend much time focusing on one of the best strategies around, which is creating backlnks that point to your website.

A backlink is simply a link on one website that points back to another website. People will post links to useful or informative sites, or places where they can get good deals. The world’s top search engine Google figures sites that have the most backlinks must be important, so they give them greater weight on the search engine results pages (or “SERPs“, for short). When people search for a certain key term, the web sites with the highest Page Rank (or “PR“) are the ones that come up first. This is of utmost importance to a business for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand… I am learning about writing backlinks as a service, and I am studying several businesses and consultants that provide this for varying amounts of money. Here is what I discovered…

Many people offer to post backlinks on your behalf to high PR websites (the rankings go from 0 to 10) but the high rating is usually only on the main domain or root directory. The places on the site where comments can be posted are usually sub pages that have either no PR or a few notches less than the main page. I’ve seen people promising backlinks on a PR8 website, but the pages within are PR3. Maybe this is acceptable, and maybe it is not. I’m not sure. I’d love to have a definitive answer to this.

I’ve found several people offering bulk backlinks to your site, in numbers ranging from 500 to 5,000 or more at a time. These are generated using automated processes. Individualized comments to blog sites or news stories are not being made. Many are generic randomly generated comments or listings to Internet directories. People tend to believe that it takes around 1,000 backlinks to get your site ranked on page 1 of Google for competitive keywords. I have less than 200 backlinks on my blog site, yet I have been able to attain page 1 status for some seriously competitive terms. My worry about the bulk backlinking is the fact that Google could penalize sites for cheating. This is often called “Google Slap“. I have heard reports of people having their sites completely banished from the SERPs for using “black hat” or “gray hat” methods that try to scam the system.

Sometimes backlink consultants will make it clear that they will research and find sites to make comments and links that match your keywords or niche. I suspect that most novice backlink “expert consultants” don’t do this. They are merely posting to any general site that allows backlinks and “dofollow” status (we’ll explain that on another post). This doesn’t bring the same result. If you have a backlink from a high PR site that is an authority on your niche, you will stand to benefit greatly. But how much work would it take to match a person’s site up with dofollow blogs that are only within their niche? Is it worth the trouble? Or do you stand to equally benefit from high PR backlinks from general or unrelated sites?

As far as posting to dofollow blogs and news sites, some people promise to include anchor text keywords within the posts made. This evidently strengthens the the overall effect. But it can be difficult finding a popular blog site that carries a high PR value that will allow you to embed HTML code within comments. The main reason is that people abuse the privilege and drop dangerous links within their post. Overall, posting to popular blogs that are within your niche is well worth the effort. This also holds true for discussion forums, especially the ones that allow you to include a tag line or “signature” at the bottom of each post that contains a backlink to your site or page.

One thing I have learned is that writing articles to Ezine Articles, Hub Pages, and Squidoo does in fact carry a lot of weight when it comes to SEO efforts. I’m not sure about the comparable weight carried from writing short blog posts on free blog sites like Blogger, Typepad, or WikiSpaces, but they do seem to work well. I have had excellent results and high Google placement from using these methods.

I am studying the whole idea of using social bookmarking sites for SEO, but have not fully learned everything I want to know. Using dofollow microblogging services is something that has always gotten my interest, and I have become quite well versed in this area. Lastly, I’m looking at Internet directories. That has captured the least of my interest, and I wonder if it is even worthwhile.

Overall, I would say that you cannot ignore implementing a backlink strategy when doing SEO work. If you want to seriously compete on Google, it’s something you’ve got to learn. Do you have a hot tip or valuable insight to share on these topics? Join the discussion and post below!

Carlton Flowers
Up & Coming SEO Genius
www.carltonzone.com
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SEO – THE REAL STORY

It seems that everyone is avoiding the most obvious truth about search engine optimization. Either I am not paying attention, or I’m the first one to state the obvious. I recorded this 8-minute message while on a long road trip for work earlier this week.  Listen to the audio by clicking the link below, and post your comments!

Carlton Flowers

Social Media Strategist

http://carltonzone.com/blog/uploaded/audio/SEO-discussion.mp3

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Blogging for SERP Results & SEO

If you are blogging or writing articles to gain SERP rankings (that stands for “search engine page” ranking), there are some great sites that I have been using that will get you maximum results. I would recommend using a combination of 2 or 3 of these sites at a time for each new article that you post to your blog. You will notice a jump in your page rankings if you use these sites, and you will also gain exposure. It’s an all-around good idea to start posting your relevant articles
on sites like these.

Here are my three favorite sites to post articles on, and a brief description and web address to get you started on your way:

1. Hubpages (www.hubpages.com)

This site is made up of articles submitted by participants which are called “hubs”. When you post an article on your area of expertise, Hubpages will actually score your submission based on how unique and relevant it is. It will later adjust the score based on how much traffic you pull on that particular hub.

You can add things to your article to increase the effectiveness like pictures, keywords, and links. You are allowed to link to your blog site or professional web page for further information.

I have been testing Hubpages for about 2 months now. About 5 articles that I have written have an average number of “hits” or page views of about 10 to 15. However, one article that I wrote has nearly 500 hits within the shortest period of time. Since then, I have updated the article with additional information, and this has increase both the traffic and the overall Hub score.

Hubpages will generate humongous traffic on Google if you dig up the right hot topic. Try to find topics of general relevant information that relates to your business or service that you provide. If you keep the articles interesting and chock-full of good content, you will drive more traffic to your site and build trust among your readers. Be careful not to post pure affiliate offers as your hub will be removed.

2. Squidoo (www.squidoo.com)

Squidoo is very similar to Hubpages. But instead of a “hub”, you post a “lens”. The same rules basically apply. Like Hubpages, Squidoo is apparently hot when it comes to Google ranking. Articles get indexed rapidly, and will generate traffic just about overnight. Squidoo has more advertisements and distracting stuff than most of the article submission sites, but due to the power of their Google ranking, it is worth using.

3. Utterli (www.utterli.com)

Utterli is a social network. It is similar to Twitter, but far more robust. You have no limit on the number of characters you write on a post. Also, you can upload a picture, a graphic, or a video with each post. Something else that is quite unique is the ability to either call in to the Utterli phone number and record an utter, or use a microphone to record an utter and upload to the site. I haven’t found a site with an easier ability to add multimedia. Lastly, you can tag your posts with good keywords.

I use Utterli just to test out the strength of certain keywords, and the effectiveness of certain graphics. Utterli includes a page counter for all posts. I think it is based on page views and not unique visitors, but it is still useful (this means that each time you refresh the page, you will increase the page counter one time on all of your posts). I generally will divide the number by ten to get a more realistic number of hits to that post. Plus, you can compare how many hits one post gets over another when you change up the keywords. It is very useful for that reason alone.

Many people don’t realize this, but Utterli is one of the hottest Google-ranking social media sites on the web. They don’t “no-follow” their links. That basically means that whatever you type in your posts and the keywords that you add to each post can be found by search engines outside of the site. I have had the most rapid results from using certain keywords with Utterli than any other site. One night, I was able to hit page 1 on Google for two keywords and the name of my local city within 2 hours flat. That is fast!

Give these three sites a try and let me know what kind of results you get. I think you will be as amazed as I have been when you use them correctly.  Next week, I will write another article on three more hot social media article submission sites that are smashing up the search engines!

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Today I discovered the strangest thing. I was having a conversation with my good friend and co-worker Tim Largent (timlargent.com, twitter.com/timlargent), explaining to him what “no-follow” status meant and how Twitter is a no-follow site. For those that don’t know, I believe this means that the search engine spiders do not “crawl” through Twitter posts and connect relevant links to search terms, thus giving an instant SEO effect.

He didn’t understand right away, so I told him to open up Google and just do a search for something that we know he has Twittered about, and we will not see any results. What we saw made my jaw drop to the floor. He typed in his name, “Tim Largent”, and ONE keyword from a subject that we were Twittering about the previous night. Well guess what… it ended up in the #1 position of page 1 on Google!

I was dumbfounded. There were other posts littered throughout the results in varous positions too. So we tried a different keyword along with his name, and still got results on page 1 even though they were not in position #1. What happened next truly confused me. We typed in my name, “Carlton Flowers”, and the same keywords that I was posting at the same time, in the same conversation, and we got absolutely no results on Google.

We were able to get one result using my name, but the majority of searches we used with my name drew blanks. However, most of  the searches using “Tim Largent” and a keyword or 2 got amazing results. But strangely, certain posts with hot keywords, even with Tim’s name, did not get any results.

Would someone like to respond to this article and post a reply below and explain to us what we are experiencing, and what exactly the affect is of the “no-follow” status that Twitter administrates on its site?

Thanks SEO experts, let’s see your responses!

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