Blogging for business: holding the hands of search engines

By Jennifer Noxon

In The Bard Of Camp Blue Diamond an article written by Lev Grossman in the Person of The Year edition of Time Magazine, Iraq-based U.S. Army Captain Lee Kelley says “… blogs will give the best account of this war. No one knows what’s going on better than the soldiers on the front lines.”

Who’s on the front lines of a company? Call centre support people. System Engineers. Sales teams.  And, hello? Receptionists! Arguably, these business soldiers are able to provide the best account of the value of your products and services to customers. So first, form a team and equip them to engage in the battle of the blogs. Then get them blogging about what they know.

And of course, make sure their blogs are read.

How do you do that? By “holding the hands of the search engines” with blog headings, keyword tags, and text content, aka Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Wayne Hurlbert gives a thorough overview of the SEO approach to blogging, explaining how SEO blog = greater visibility, more visits and more customers.

In their excellent book Blogging for Business, Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos boil it down further:

“Keywords and phrases should appear in the title and be as descriptive as possible. Keywords and phrases should appear in the body as high up in the text as possible and preferably repeated a few times in a natural fashion.”

Blogging in a way search engines – and thus the marketplace – can take advantage of is crucial. Done right, great business blogging = great business.

(Jennifer Noxon is a Communications Strategist with market2world communications inc., Canada's Web 2.0 tech product launch and public relations agency.)