Blogs
November 21, 2008 | 
Author 
Australian Website Design Professionals
Blogs are or should be considered a strategic business communication and marketing tool. Why do we believe that ? Good Question ... Here is a brief list of why we believe that.
1. Blogs are becoming a standard for savvy Internet users. The number of users, feeds and blogs are growing everyday and businesses recognise the fact that they can engage their potential customers on a more personal level.
2. Keyword / keyword Phrases. This wold have to be the one single reason why they rank so high. You are talking about a particular product or service and with that comes relevant high quality keywords. Simple as that and yet we still have customers that can not understand, accept or acknowledge that concept. Read the rest of this entry »
Australian Website Design Professionals
If Content is king, then, original relevant content is the Ruler of the land. We regularly receive emails or phone calls from customers who complain that they have written a Blog or an article and they still don't have any sales. This is all our fault, because we told them to get a blog. That's true...We did say that, however, we also re-inforced to them that there is absolutely no point in installing a Blog if you do not use it correctly. By correctly, we mean, adding to it on a regular basis, promoting it and using it as a marketing tool for your Business, Product or Service. There are more than enough dead blogs out there, that do nothing more than.....nothing.
If you are passionate about a subject, Your Business, a hobby, then a Blog is by far the best means available in getting your message out there. You will find that the most popular Blogs in internet land are the ones that are updated regularly, are passionate and are relevant about whatever subject they are writing about.
One of the biggest problems associated with blogging has nothing to do with the lack of traffic coming to their site. It is something more insidious than that and that is Bad content. To take it one step further, it is badly written content that is not original at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs | 
Tags: australian seo specialists, Blogs, content, dead blogs, original relevant content, plr articles | 
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Australian Website Design Professionals
The following Tips are just that, Tips or ideas. They are certainly not definitive, nor are they exhaustive, but purely given as a guide, nothing more, nothing less.
Please feel free to add to them as and when you see fit:
1. Create original relevant content.
2. Add fresh relevant content on a regular basis.
3. Create content where it's principles remain valid, if possible, for years to come.
4. Write as if you are talking with friends or family, not the search engines.
5. One (1) Subject, One (1) Post. Keyword relevant rich content. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs | Tags: Australian Search Engine Optimisation Specialists, blog, google, internal links, msn, optimisation, optimization, relevant content, search engines, yahoo | Comments
Thanks to the internet, people from different parts of the world are now able to communicate and interact with each other more now that at any other time in history. The interent has provided a medium in which to express and convey your feelings, thoughts, products or services. One of many mediums available to us are Blogs. In some cases, Bloggers have earned fame and fortune and then of course their are bloggers that don't. Where you fit into the grand scheme of things is totally up to you, your subject and of course, what and how you write.
Basically, blogging was originally created as an online journal or diary where people were able to express their thougths and let their website visitors read about it. Today, blogging is now considered to be one of the more popular and effective ways to interact and share their point of view. I admit, when Blogs came into being, I thought, nah, We have emails and websites, thats enough, it has to stop somewhere, I just don't get it. How wrong was I, i freely admit it. I have been wrong about heaps of things in the past and I have absolute confidence in my ability to be totally wrong about things in the future.
What can you blog about. Your Life experiences, good, bad and ugly. A particular product or service either from a customers point of view or from the business itself. Business Blogs are growing in popularity. Blogging can definitely make you famous or infamous. So, how can you become famous through blogging and how can you take advantage of your blogging website that it can generate you some extra cash? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs | Tags: australian seo specialists, australian web design, blog, blogging, business blogs, hosting impact | Comments
Australian Website Design Professionals
1. Give your website visitors a free subscription to your e-zine or newsletter. Please remember to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift, download or advertising when they subscribe. It's the extra bonus that your website visitors will appreciate.
2. Provide your visitors with free relevant content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it's up-to-date and original and talks about your companies latest product and or service. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their e-zine or web site.
3. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of information, e-zines, web sites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will return often. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs | Tags: blogging for business, business blog, free content, free ebook, free software, hosting impact blog, live information, online classes, online directory, seo services | Comments
Australian Website Design Professionals
Video blogging or VLOGS has a lot of distinct advantages over text-based blogging, and it is little wonder that this new technology is catching on all over the internet. Video blogs or VLOGS very effectively grab the attention of your website visitors, and people are much more likely to become excited about the dynamic content of a video blog than they are likely to find a written posting very thrilling. The more enthusiastic viewers are about a site, the quicker the word of mouth spreads, and in a perfect world, this then equates to more traffic. Additionally, with Video Blogs or VLOGS, you are personalising your brand as well and if your website visitor can relate to you and your image, you have then created trust with your potential customer. They then have a perception of you, your company and your product, based purely on your VLOG.
In our situation, we were unable to secure Brad Pitt for the role, so you are stuck with me and my droning voice, but that is not the point. The point is that the information that we are presenting is for the benefit of our website visitors and we trust that they find the information of assistance. Please follow this link.
http://www.hostingimpact.com/blog/2008/10/on-the-couch-with-hosting-impact/
Each week we will be presenting "On The Couch" with Hosting Impact in an endeavour to raise the awareness of our website visitors and also to answer viewer questions. Please feel free to email us with questions you would like answered. Anything ranging from, SEO Techniques, Web Design to Hosting. Send all requests to live@hostingimpact.com
Hosting Impact - Support Desk
Of course, on the other side of the coin, there are plenty of disadvantages to video blogging as well. Hosting a v-blog can require quite a bit of server space, which can make it difficult to get started. It takes more time to process and upload a video file than it does to dash off a quick bit of text, which means that running and updating a video blog may take some work. In addition, web surfers sometimes grow frustrated with the slow loading times of the files on many video blogs. Whether you opt for a video blog or not depends on what kind of subject matter you want to cover, and how much time you can devote to video blogging. Before you decide to pursue a video blog, consider if there is an easier way for you to get your message across.
We trust you have found this information of benefit and we look forward to answering your questions.
Until Next Time ...
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Search Engine Optimisation Specialists
A Business Blog is considered a must have tool for online marketing, that can not only save you thousands of dollars but also can provide great business opportunities. Blogs are user-friendly, easy to customise and have numerous plugins available, all designed to get your marketing message out to your potential customers.
Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over their competitors, who are not blogging.
1. Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are approximately 14 million blogs with 80,000 new blogs being added each day. It is believed that about 30 percent of the 50 million internet users are blog readers. The Internet is able to spread information quickly and effectively and 1 person passes your blog to 2 people and they in turn pass it to 2 people each, well it doesn't take long for your blog or post to have been seen and read by literally 1000's of potential new customers. This can then create ...
2. Awareness and loyalty. Communication, especially open and honest communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. If you can offer true customer support and service and respond quickly and promptly to their questions and comments, this will then allow them to give you positive ...
3. Feedback. With positive feedback, this also helps to build trust with potential customers. Blogs are also good for product reviews and research. Imagine having at your fingertips, valuable information, feedback and ideas from your customers, that would allow you to make improvements or correct some minor flaw or policy, to make their shopping experience with you easier.
A Blog could be viewed as a booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. You need to positively promote, update, maintain and market it everyday. Gone are the days of if you build it they will come, it just doesn't happen.
The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs in receiving the best benefits. Use effective keyword relevant phrases, in an endeavour to attempt to generate high ranking status within the search engines.
RSS for news update feeds which can be read via RSS reader applications are a very handy tool for business and internet marketers and should be used and promoted accordingly.
We trust that you have found the above information useful and please feel free to contact Hosting Imapct for additional assistance.
Until Net Time
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Search Engine Optimisation Specialists
Creating Your Website Presence
There is no doubt whatsoever that a WordPress blog, hosted on your own domain and web hosting account should be the way that you go when you create your business blog, in our humble opinion.
As you will read throughout this blog, the interactive element of Web 2.0 does present a massive range of new and exciting opportunities for promoting your site or blog.
But, that being so, you must have a blog site that can take full advantage of those opportunities.
In other words, if you are generating traffic from what we might call Web 2.0 activities, then you must send that traffic to a site that the visitors will feel comfortable with, and will hopefully like enough to add to their bookmarks folder.
If website visitors find your content through a Web 2.0 related resource, and then end up on a dull and somewhat lifeless hosted blog then your credibility and their stay on your website or blog are both going to be extremely short lived!
You must appreciate that you do not only want people to visit your blog or site but you also want them to visit, stay and return often, You need them to interact with your site in some way, with the aim of them returning time after time.
Eventually, of course, you want them to become your customer as well, but they will not do any of these things if they land on a boring, lifeless blog or website the very first time that they visit.
We believe that using WordPress on your own hosted domain is the simplest and quickest way of getting a superbly interactive blog set up that is fully in-tune with the requirements of all the traffic (both Webs 2.0 and 1.0 ‘styles’) that this blog will teach you to generate.
The WordPress that you have just installed on your domain name is a superbly flexible system, but it is far from perfect.
There are a 1001 things that Wordprss cannot or does not do ‘straight out of the box’, but what WordPress does have is immense flexibility and malleability.
So, WordPress users all over the world have created hundreds of plug-ins and widgets for WordPress that you can install into the admin area of your blog (usually free) to add a huge amount of additional usability to your blog.
WordPress has plugged itself into the open source communities’ ability to create any number of widgets or plug-ins that can massively enhance all of your marketing and conversion efforts, and there is simply no other system around with this level of increased functionality.
In other words, everything that you could ever want to change, alter or enhance about your blog site can be done by installing the correct plug-in or widget.
That is not to say that that you would ever use or utilise all of them, because you wouldnt, however, you can certainly use the ones that would benefit your goals or objectives.
In the event that you would like to install WordPress on your Domain and require assistance, please contact Hosting Impact Blog Installation.
Long Live Open Source.
We trust you have enjoyed this update and please feel free to contact us for additional information.
Until Next Time...
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Search Engine Optimization Specialists
Search Engine Optimisation Specialists
So, let’s extend the idea of creating a blog, to creating one about your business.
It really does not matter what your business, the same ‘rules’ apply – you create your blog, and begin to make ‘postings’, which is a very grandiose way of describing the ability that a blog gives you to basically write whatever you want to.
Let’s imagine a couple of different scenarios.
Situation one is that you own a ‘real world’ business that sells widgets. You have a customer list of people who have bought your widgets before, so you can use your blog as a regular newsletter to which you publish all of your latest special offers, discount deals, news and so on.
It is a fantastic way of keeping in touch with your existing customers and, by publishing regular news bulletins through the company blog site, it offers a way to invite potential new customers to have a look inside your organization too, before they decide whether or not they want to work with you.
Of course, the limitation of using a blog for a real world business selling tangible physical products is that no blog or website can actually deliver the product for you.
However, in situation two, where you are using a blog to promote an online or Internet marketing business, even that can be achieved through your blog site to a certain extent.
Let’s imagine that your business is selling a website traffic generation service to other businesses on the net who want to increase the people that see their own sites.
You can write about all of the latest traffic ideas that you have and promote your services through the blog. You would also most probably have a ‘buy now’ button featured somewhere very prominently on the front page. You might also review traffic generation products from other companies, and carry links on your blog that would take the reader directly to the sales page for the product in question, if they have an interest in finding out more.
Although (as Wikipedia points out) blogging was initially a text based publishing medium, it is now increasingly becoming linked to other media, such as video, as well. So, not only can you write reviews but you can even create short movies to do the same as well, and publish them to your blog (and other places, as we shall see later).
You can create video presentations about your business, your products or basically whatever else you want, and have it out there in front of a potential audience of over 1 billion people in a matter of minutes.
It has been said that there are ‘three cornerstones’ to online success and that they are visitor traffic, visibility and perceived credibility. This is a critical concept to grasp, and one to which we will return time and again.
A blog site is such a powerful marketing tool because it allows you to address all three of these requirements through the one simple site, as you are about to discover. To take it one step further, a Blog site that is updated consistently and regularly with relevant content is such a powerful marketing tool.
We trust you have found the information useful and please feel free to contact Hosting Impact for assistance in creating your Blog.
Until Next Time
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Search Engine Optimisation Specialists
Creating Your Website Presence
Why Is Blogging So Effective?
If there is one single phenomena that could best be said to represent the idea behind Web 2.0, it is blogging.
A blog is simply a website that will usually ‘provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.’ according to Wikipedia.
Whilst blogs first came into being as online personal diaries, the ones that we are going to concentrate on are those that are used for business.
Blogs have many attractions, the main one being their simplicity. Anyone who has the basic ability to use two fingers on a keyboard can begin to create their own blog,
They can also be updated as often as you like, and many people do update their blogs two or three times a day.
This means that there is a constant stream of fresh new content available on blog sites, which is probaly the main reason that blogs are fast becoming the favorite sites of the major search engines, especially Google, itself the #1 search engine.
There is no need to know anything whatsoever about website creation or scripting language to create a blog.
No matter which blogging ‘platform’ (system) you use, it is always a simple question of following a very small handful of simple instructions, and you are good to go.
And, as the Wikipedia definitions suggest, a core function of blog sites is that they invite reader input and feedback in the form of comments.
What a good blog site therefore does is start a ‘conversation’ between the blog site owner and their readership.
It has an inherent ability to begin building a relationship centered around a common area of interest, as expressed in the subject matter of the blog itself.
So, in simple terms, if for example you are an avid mountain climber, and start a blog about your hobby, then the chances are very good that most of the people who visit your pages will be interested in climbing mountains too.
So, all you need to do is create articles that are interesting or controversial enough to prompt your readers to comment and you have generated a discussion or debate about a subject that is close to your heart.
And, the point is that you can create your own blog about any topic under the sun, and publish it for the whole world to read literally within minutes of sitting down in front of your computer.
Our next post will discuss Business Blogs.
We trust you have found this information of assistance and please feel free to contact Hosting Impact for further assistance.
Until Next Time...
Happy Blogging
SEO Steve
Hosting Impact - Australian Search Engine Optimization Specialists
Posted in Blogs | Tags: blogging, business blog, google, internet marketing business, Small Business Hosting, video logs, vlogs, web 2.0, Website Traffic, wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia | Comments