5 Blogging Best Practices

5 Blog Best Practices

1. Keywords, Tags and Hyperlinking

2. Post Titles

3. Social Bookmarking

4. Call-to-Action Footers

5. Reserved Release Content

5 Blog Best Practices

Keywords, Tags and HyperlinkingThe point of any blog is to be read and posts cannot be read unless they can be found. Search engines use keywords, tags and hyperlinking to find your blog so it is very important to complete this sometime forgotten task.

Keywords:

–Make sure your posts use keywords that are topic specific to the post. (example: A post on ISVs should not only use the acronym, but use value-added reseller)

Tags:

– Tags are used to identify topics within the post. They also make it easier to find similar posts internally on the company blog. Search engines sometimes use tags to index web pages as well.

–Use a maximum of 10 tags

Hyperlinking:

–Hyperlinking is very important to use on words that need definition, other topics you are referring internally/externally and profiles of post authors.

–Search engines use hyperlinks to measure post importance.

5 Blog Best Practices

Post TitlesPost titles are very important to garner readers. Titles must be written in a certain way to be search engine compliant and pose a question or answer.

Examples:

–What’s the best way to market software?

–5 best ways to market software.

–10 ways to reach critical mass for new software.

–Is Google going to pose a threat to the MS operating system?

5 Blog Best Practices

Social BookmarkingSocial bookmarking is a great way to increase relevance of new postings. Self-bookmarking can be construed as unethical through some services, but for others it could be very useful to improve SEO. Search engines use commonly bookmarked posts to measure relevance and it gives authors a chance to control the message more effectively.

Services:

–Services to use: Delicious.com, Stumbleupon.com, reddit.com, buzz.yahoo.com

–Services not to use: Digg.com, NewsVine.com

Techniques:

–Tag the post

–Include a description

5 Blog Best Practices

Call-to-Action FootersBusiness blogs require a call to action with each post. One of the best ways to do this is having a standard footer after each post describing the business offerings in 50 words or less. It is also important to have a hyperlink or email address box for readers to be added to the post mailing list.

Example of Footer:Become an Intel® Software Partner Program member today, and together we candeliver powerful solutions that help customers do more. It is easy to do. Just start withthe enrollment and create a project using the links below.

5 Blog Best Practices

Reserved Release ContentReserved Release means the company is trying to get the reader to act on a call to action. This can be offering a free white page, recent webinar slideshow, or access to hidden and useful content. It will require the reader to sign up for the program, but they will be emailed the desired content once they input all their information. This is a highly effective way to garner leads and increase membership to a community.

Example:

Blog Post Footer

5 Blog Best Practices

Bonus SoftwareFor readers to spread the information in a blog, you must make it easy. There are a wealth of free services that make this easy. These “share services” give readers a list of their favorite bookmarking services, social networks, microblogs, printing and emailing options to use. We would suggest using one of the following:

-ShareThis (http://sharethis.com/) – ShareThis puts a button at the end of all posts with javascript style listing for all sharing services.

-Tweetmeme – (http://tweetmeme.com/)Tweetmeme makes it easy for users to tweet your post and keeps a running tab of the most popular articles.

-Add to Any (http://www.addtoany.com/) – Add to Any adds a icon for subscribing to the blog posts or sharing the posts around the web.