Does blogging really work?
Blogging. Everyone says it's the hero of online marketing. The saviour of organic traffic. But does it actually work?
I've been blogging for just over two months now and I've noticed some serious traffic to my website. I don't spend any money marketing my blog; it's all completely organic traffic.
As a prime example; you're reading this article right now either because you found it through a search engine, a social bookmarking site (such as digg.com, stumbleupon, twitter etc), or from someone else's website. I didn't pay any money for you to land on this page. It's organic marketing. But why did you come to this website? How did you come to this website?
I've just been looking through my traffic statistics and analysing the traffic to this blog. It's interesting to see the posts which get the highest amount of traffic and the tweaks I implement that boost SERPs.
When I first started blogging in January the title of my daily blogs were just the date e.g. Day 32 - Friday 6 March 2009.
In January my highest performing keyword was... quite predictably... "January".
But the keyword "January" actually had nothing to do with my niche and my target audience. The organic traffic I was getting from search engines was irrelevant.
So I now write titles that will attract the right audience with the right keywords and that make people want to read my blogs.
For example today's title: "Does blogging really work?"
Most people have heard of blogging and how it's meant to be the latest way of making money. But is it just media hype? I presume the reason you're reading this blog is because you want to know if blogging really works right?
Well I'll tell you now; it most certainly does. But there's a lot more to it that just writing.
You need to establish your target market. What does your audience want to read, and what don't they want to read?
If you want to increase traffic to an e-commerce website adding a blog within the website will boost your organic traffic. Why?
Google see's blog websites as completely different types of websites. Blogs get priority in the search engines results.
So by implementing a blog into your pre-existing website you'll get much higher search engine positions. Once visitors land on your blog, providing your blog's embedded into your website, they're likely to click around your website and probably place an order.
But back to my earlier point. You can't just write about anything. Even when you know what to write about you must plan before you start.
When I first starting blogging I wrote about AIDA and how the AIDA technique will improve articles you write. You can checkout my AIDA article here.
Installing a blog is much easier that it sounds. There are many "off-the-shelf" solutions that will work out the box; WordPress and Joomla are popular solutions for blogging if you already have a website.
If you don't have your own website Blogger allows you to create a blog for free.
So in answer to my question; yes blogging does work as long as you research your audience and plan your articles.
Have a good weekend. See you Monday Morning at 09:00
Simon
