Marketing: Blog Your Way Up the Google Ladder

Boost Your Search Engine Rankings With a Blog

With over 72 percent of people finding what they need online, you must get found. A blog offers the following benefits.

Share your expertise. A business blog gives you a platform to promote what you know and establish yourself as an expert in the marketplace.

Describe and build your brand. Your brand represents what people know about you or think of when they hear of you. Focusing your blog on your expertise will help promote your brand.

Boost search engine rankings. As you continue to offer tips, insight, and advice to people who need what you have, you’ll give the search engines what they crave – fresh, quality content.

Reach the masses with less effort and money. Search engines, links from other sites, integration with social media tools, and Google Alerts are just a few of the ways a blog can help you reach people you never would have otherwise. You could start to attract potential customers, clients, journalists, and industry giants seeking fresh ideas.

“I have a newsletter that I email regularly.
Why do I need a blog?”
It’s a good idea to collect email addresses and send your subscribers valuable information regularly. But if that’s all you’re doing, how will Google and other search engines know? The only people seeing your newsletter are your subscribers. When you add your expertise to a blog, it’ll get picked up by the search engines and exposed to the world! So do both.

“But I’ve heard blogs are free and
easy to set up. Why do I need training?”
Yes, it’s true. You can easily create a simple blog at sites such as Blogger from Google. But if you want to become a serious blogger and take advantage of customized designs and plug-ins that will boost your search engine rankings and virability, you’ll want our advice and training. You’ll want a self-hosted WordPress blog with powerful functionality that makes it easy to share and get others to promote.

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1 Comment October 27, 2009

Event: Blogging Bootcamp with DIY SEO and PR

Create a self-hosted WordPress blog, implement search engine optimization techniques, and start getting free publicity that attracts the media and new business to you like a magnet!

Description
SCORE Atlanta presents a full-day workshop that’s hands-on with your laptop. Learn from experts how to build a professionally-designed, self-hosted WordPress blog from scratch and optimize it (and your Web site) for search engines. You’ll also learn how to use other no- to low-cost tips and strategies for getting found online, including social media.

Dates & Time

Thursday, June 18, 2009
Again On
Friday, July 17, 2009

More Dates Will Be Added

9:30 AM – 4:00 PM
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Help Desk

Location
AGL Resources, Inc.
Ten Peachtree Place, 2nd Floor Training Room
Atlanta GA 30309 (Midtown Atlanta)

Prerequisites
Easy pre-work (e.g., register a domain) is required for this training and full details are on the official Website, www.DigitalBreakThroughs.com.

Who Should Attend?
The workshop is designed for small business owners, non-profits, virtual assistants, and anyone else who needs to build an online presence and get found. You must be computer savvy.

Your Trainers
Part I. Peggy Duncan will teach you how she started her blog from scratch, maintains it with fresh content, and what she does to keep her top position in Google’s organic search results. She is a personal productivity expert and author of six books on organization, time management, and technology tips, tricks, and strategies. Peggy travels internationally helping busy people spend less time working but get more done. She is an award-winning blogger, and her technology blog was recently selected the Top Business Blog by Fast Pitch!

Part II. JB Brathwaite will teach you how to build a professional WordPress blog from scratch and enhance it with some of the most popular plug-ins that will increase its functionality. He is an Internet strategist, WordPress blogging expert, and Peggy’s teacher. He’ll work with you to build your self-hosted blog from scratch or will take what you already have to another level with more functionality.

Get Details and Register Here TODAY!
www.DigitalBreakThroughs.com
Space is Limited

SPONSORED BY

Peggy Duncan, SCORE Atlanta
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3 Comments May 26, 2009

Event: Drawing Web Traffic – Increase Your Audience, Grow Your Business

At a recent American Express OPEN event, the number one topic on small business owners’ minds was how to get found online. SCORE Chicago is bringing together three experts for a half-day event titled, Drawing Web Traffic: Increase Your Audience, Grow Your Business.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009
8:45AM-12:30PM CST
Citicorp Center
500 West Madison Street, Suite 1250
Downtown Chicago IL

Topics and Speakers

Peggy Duncan, Personal Productivity Expert – Learn how she is on the coveted first page of search engines for her expertise without implementing pay-per-click campaigns. She’ll share online and offline tactics that are free to very low-cost and will explain how they’ve helped her garner international publicity in national media outlets.

Iain Lopata, Dynamic Business/IT Executive – Gain a better understanding of how to decipher Web analytics and why you should study them. He’ll also show you how to not go broke trying pay-per-click.

Steve Robinson, Regional Development Director-Illinois for Constant Contact – Learn the ins and outs of email marketing as a way to stay connected with your customers.

Details and registration for this half-day event are online at https://www.123signup.com/event?id=ztybv

If you’re in the Chicago area or know people who are, please help us spread the word. This event will sell out so click the link above and register today!

Peggy Duncan, SCORE Atlanta
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6 Comments March 9, 2009

Marketing: Shameless Self-Promotion: Do-It-Yourself PR

Have you seen your competition mentioned in magazines, leading newspapers, or as guest on TV shows? Why not you? Have you tried? Do you know how to make this happen for you?

On getting publicity, here are some things to consider.

• When you have a third-party endorsement from the media, you gain credibility in the marketplace and will be perceived as an expert in your industry.
• Most of the company news you see is planted by that company. You can do this for yourself or hire a public relations (PR) agency to handle for you.
• Firms specializing in PR who actually know what they’re doing are not cheap.
• PR agencies cannot guarantee coverage (with reputable media), regardless of the money you spend.
• You need to be relevant and have a different take on a story in order to get noticed by the media.
• In order to get quoted in the media, it needs to be obvious that you are an expert in your field.
• Journalists are super busy and will not return phone calls, reply to emails, or respond to faxes.

So knowing all this, what can you do?

SCORE Atlanta had a conference earlier this month where we focused on building sales and marketing skills of people already in business. I conducted a seminar titled “Shameless Self-Promotion: Do-It-Yourself PR.” The slides from that presentation are available online at www.slideshare.net/scoreatlanta.

This presentation will give you a lot of ideas…ones that have worked for me in landing mentions in/on O-The Oprah Magazine, Fortune Small Business, The TODAY show, and more. The key is not to try contacting the media but to position yourself so they call you.

All of my ideas take you down the road to more publicity by improving how you show up in organic searches on the Internet (usually referred to as SEO or search engine optimization).

Check it out and add to my ideas with your comments. (Since doing this presentation, I’ve added several more ideas to my list.) Let’s see if you have more.

-Peggy Duncan, SCORE Atlanta
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2 Comments October 23, 2008