I setup A LOT of blogs (5 so far this week) and many times it’s difficult for customers to get or understand is that one of the key components in a successful blog search marketing campaign is shaping a blog so that it attracts links automatically from other on-topic blogs and sites.
If you fill your blog with promotional articles or mix too much commercial content with your more objective articles and personal anecdotes, you greatly reduce your ability to gain natural links.
This is why I often recommend companies co-brand their blog and separate it from the regular commercial content of their site; it’ll be easier to attract links. I’ve had a ton of success with this. If they can get some good links / traffic from social media, it’s always a great way to jump start a new website.
It’s a lot harder to get people to link to a “Buy This NOW” company blog than it is to create a catchy, co-branded blog who’s content and name are more targeted for attracting links and less stuffed with commercial content.
For ranking purposes, what keywords people use link to you are extremely important. If you co-brand your blog you can control (or more accurately encourage) what keywords other blogs and websites should use when linking to you. The more links to your blog and to the individual posts that use the exact keywords you are targeting, the more successful you’ll be. If you co-brand your blog you can actually use your target search in the name of your site, meaning instead of getting links to Company X’s Blog, you’ll get links to “Niche Industry Keyword Blog” and this will greatly propel your organic rankings.
When your blog structure encourages links with the right keywords, add some detailed objective posts and you could really gain links quickly. In less competitive industries adding an extra 100 quality links gained from a few good blog posts can make all the difference in being invisible or found on page 1.
