SEO Is Broken Down Into Having A Process And Following It. Sometimes you need a quick resource to finding what you can do right now and that is the intent of this post.

Main things in SEO are Keywords, Pages and Links. Just don’t overdue it, I mean how many keywords can you jam into a single webpage? Optimize pages for targeted and high value keywords.

Don’t stuff your titles, you still want people to click through so create a compelling title tag, and begin the title tag with the term your targeting.

Here’s a punchlist for you to tackle, and if you follow this be sure to keep track of your rankings with a tool like Rank Checker available for free as a Firefox plugin as well as other SEO tools SEOBook.com.

KEYWORDS

Select 1-3 primary keywords to focus on for a single page

Don’t make a single page relevant for a lot of things (and a lot of keywords)
Don’t overdue it, be strategic with your work (develop tasks you can actually complete)
Don’t put low volume keywords on homepage (you’ll rank easy but gain nothing)

Our Clients Ranking Nationally For Highly Competitive Keywords

These two images show a total monthly search volume opportunity of 275,000 queries.

What is your overall keyword strategy?

How will you measure your success – and your process is effective?
Track rankings and traffic for keywords targeted
Focus – There’s only a finite number of search terms you can pay close attention to, but
Don’t Forget about the Long Tail – these can add up to 80% of the results

What keywords are profitable enough?

Grab search volume – Is 5-10% of that traffic enough for my efforts?
based on the above example – 5% of 275,000 is 13,750 – what you might expect if you held the #1 slot
Identify low competition terms – 10% is reasonable
Monitor high competition – 5 % is reasonable
If the competition is really low, then 15% of google volume is achievable
Perhaps you’ll score a double indented listing
Identify the candidate keywords
Determine the profitability range – which convert?
Map the keywords to pages on your website – find any gaps in content.

PAGES

What pages will be specific to that keyword?
Are you lacking content then it will require even more work? You made need to develop pages of content.

TAKE ACTION

ONSITE – 1 week
How do I translate this research into the right actions?
Your Existing Keywords And Content
For every keyword – start with onsite optimization
Do you have a large or small amount of content pages
Using internal links to build on what’s already there before adding to it

OFFSITE – 3 weeks

Onsite SEO is the easy part – Most of the real work in SEO is linkbuilding
What is this all about? – Link building is about marketing and building relationships
Getting links that contain the right anchor text that get your pages ranked.

If you have 100 keywords on your list and you try to tackle this entire list, you’ll be spread too thin.
Start with a reasonable goal “2010 lexus rx350 models” may help eventually get you ranked for “lexus rx350 models”

SCHEDULE

Have A Realistic Schedule. This SEO checklist is to hit the major points, you want to make progress and hit goals so set aside a few hours a week.

Don’t create a list of 100 keywords – you will never have the time to optimize and create all the content for those terms.
Find the right landing page for no more than 3-4 keywords
Start with some easier, low volume keywords that aren’t going to be impossible to rank well for.

Weekly schedule – Devote 4-5 hours of Internal SEO Work on your site before doing anything else. This will make a huge difference.

Find the pages on your site to optimize, use Term Targeting to see how you are doing for the term you selected.
Then do the hard stuff – getting the links! Reach out to your local credit unions, newspapers, etc. If you have Google Alerts setup, everytime you get mentioned, see if the site (if credible) is willing to put a link on the page for you.

Set a Goal for Links, How many text links can you get in a week? Then send out an email, specifically to the person you want to reach and ask for it.

Use Open Site Explorer and check out your competitors, get backlink data on your competitors pages, see how they are ranked for your target keywords and where they obtained links from.
If your competitor has 20 backlinks with keyword anchor text than you need 30 or maybe 40. But also look at the quality of their backlinks using Open Site Explorer, are they from High Domain Authority sites? If not, it might only take 15 to beat them.

STICK TO THE STRATEGY

Don’t overcomplicate the task, just develop a process that fits your schedule. For one week concentrate on analyzing keywords, the next week analyze the pages you’re ranked for and grade them with the Term Targeting Tool, then finally once you’re optimized (you have good content and your page is high quality) seek out links.

Don’t just go out and publish stuff on other sites just to get a link, do your research on the sites using Open Site Explorer. If they don’t have high domain authority then it’s not work your time to obtain a link from them.

Also, diversify your work. Go after some really good high authority domains and see how you can get a link. Install the SEOmoz tool bar for Firefox so you can see which domains have authority. Below is a screenshot of the toolbar in action.

[source: Chrysler Group LLC]

August 30, 2010 , Auburn Hills, Mich. -

Chrysler Group LLC today hosted about 400 Chrysler Group dealers to outline the requirements to become a Fiat dealer in the United States.

The dealers met with the Chrysler Group team responsible for establishing a Fiat retail network by the end of this year. The company wants Fiat dealerships in about 165 locations, in metropolitan areas chosen for their high concentration of small-car registrations.

Dealers left today’s meeting armed with the information needed to submit a competitive proposal for a Fiat franchise. Dealers have been asked to submit their proposals by Sept. 22. Chrysler Group expects to name its Fiat dealers in the fourth quarter.

“The Fiat brand offers our dealers the opportunity to be part of a unique experience,” said Laura Soave, Head of Fiat Brand North America. “Our dealers will be able to interact with a group of individuals that are not part of their current customer base. These are individuals interested in Italian automotive design coupled with fuel efficient technology. Our dealers will be the key point of contact with our customers, and thereby, a crucial part of the success of the Fiat brand.”

Chrysler Group dealers located in the targeted markets were invited to attend today’s meeting where they learned about the rich history of the Fiat brand, the U.S. product plans, volume expectations, competitors, and dealership facility and training requirements.

“We have determined the areas of the country where they can succeed and grow,” said Peter Grady, Chrysler Group’s Vice President of Network Development and Fleet. “Now they must submit proposals detailing their plan for representing Fiat, from the showroom to sales, marketing and after sales.”

The new Fiat retail network will begin selling the U.S. version of the Fiat 500 late this year, and the Fiat 500 Cabrio model in 2011. The Fiat 500 will be built in Toluca, Mexico.

The North American version of the Fiat 500 will be equipped with Fiat’s 1.4-liter, in-line four-cylinder Fully Integrated Robotized Engine (FIRE) featuring the MultiAir system. The engine is manufactured in the United States.

MultiAir is a sophisticated technology that delivers an increase in power up to 10 percent and a reduction in fuel consumption and emissions up to 10 percent when compared to similar engines. The Fiat 500 also will feature advanced technology intelligently adapted for the North American market.

Which Markets To Get Fiat Dealers?

http://chryslermedia.iconicweb.com/mediasite/attachments/fiat_markets_aug2010.pdf

Chris Brogan wrote about his experience buying a new car over the Internet.

Car shopping and social media – start building relationships now!

Why is this true? Simple. People know what they want and why they want it. They’d prefer to buy from someone they know, and someone who is familiar with what they do. Chris Brogan’s example was perfect, so when is this going to happen agian….. hint: could be today if you have your ears on. So what this means is utilizing Twitter, are people in your area sharing an interest in a new car? Yes.

I am writing a few posts that will hopefully help make the process of utilizing social media for dealers a bit clearer, and I’m also planning some training sessions for my clients, one of which is about blog commenting and why it’s important to respond to every single comment.

The intent of this post is to dive deeper into some of the points Chris makes and how dealerships can take immediate action. There’s still time for dealers who are uncertain about social media to get back on track, but be prepared to work hard to get results.

Building a dealership brand and hiring social media consultants will get you on the right path.

Chris makes some great suggestions on his blog about how dealership websites can improve, and dealers must get together and share what they have learned so they understand the power it has behind it. Unfortunately most dealers don’t have the understanding on how to get these tools setup, how to monitor them, and how to properly engage in online communication. That’s what this series of posts will be about.

These are just introductions to what we’ll be discussing in depth to help create a strong dealership social media strategy, so consider this to be your table of contents so to speak.

Analyzing Your Current Website and Making Improvements on The Usability

It is important to mention that changes should be made strategically and within a reasonable timeframe. The reason I am starting with this point specifically is that too many changes can be distracting to the user. It is better to announce that you are making these changes, and the goals that your dealership intends to achieve.

Announcing Your Efforts Through a Blog

Most important change needed is the addition of a dealership blog. This is a place where you will make your announcements about the changes you are making and how they will affect the overall dealer website experience.

Utilizing Your Social Media Voice and Getting Refferals

Let’s say for example you do not have any social media accounts, or you have not used them in a long time. First thing you need to do is create a list of usernames and passwords and store them in a Excel file. Include the URL the user name and the password.

You will need to have a process for posting useful information that isn’t just about your dealership. You are in the beginning stages of building relationships, so consider the fact that it can take some time to get acclimated.

Just having the assumption that content is everything will lead you down the wrong path.

Tracking Your Efforts and Learning Which Ones Work

In another spreadsheet list all of your public facing websites, in order of importance starting with the one driving the most traffic.

In another spreadsheet list all of the tools that you use on your website whether it be chat, Google analytics, or any third-party provider. Next column over put in the URL followed by usernames and passwords.

Another spreadsheet, list all of the people at your dealership who either have access and have used any of these applications such as your social media accounts, or your website monitoring accounts, or anything that produces monthly reports based on Internet traffic and leads.

You want to find the people at your dealership who are creative and can put ideas into action.

Now That You Have the Fundamentals

After you’ve done the above you now have a sense of where you stand. Now it’s time to dive in and figure out how to set all these up and what resources you may need to manage them effectively.

Subscribe to keep up with the process as we dive into specific details on how you can create good blog posts, work on your SEO, write guest blog posts, and start tracking what actually works and how you can improve upon those things specifically.

Of course if you want to work with me on your dealer solution I’m happy to share how I can help.

What Is So Compelling About Reviews

Buying products in today’s world has drastically changed everything about how a company creates products, markets products, and advertises products – that is if they care how buyers are making decisions these days.

Let’s go through a typical scenario where someone might be in the market for a new car, the last thing they want to do is to go get bird-dogged at the dealership.

Feedback and Product Reviews

One of the most powerful influencers to what people buy is YOU!

I want to know how YOU were treated, and what you may have liked or disliked.

Of course you’re probably thinking that I don’t even know you, but actually that doesn’t matter. What I need is your feedback, and the feedback of about 50 more like you so I can see the overall feedback average and reviews of a particular dealer.

Trusting User Reviews

It seems we hardly buy anything anymore without researching and leveraging our network. We want to know firsthand what to expect. People who’ve taken the time to write about their good and bad experiences helps us make better and more informed decisions.

We want to know if the product suits our needs based on the knowledge our network knows about us.

Even more so, we want to learn about potential benefits that a product brings that we may not have realized.

We want everything that we buy to enhance our quality of life in some way.

Salespeople

You know that feeling when a salesperson comes walking up? I’m not too fond of it myself, but the fact is they’re just doing their job.

The problem with this approach is that most often they underestimate what I already know about a product they are selling.

In fact, I could know more than they do about it. If they start off with telling me something only they could know, like a story about someone who came from out of state just to get one, then that’s something I don’t know – and that’s a great way to break the ice!

The Hardware Store

Let’s try another example. Suppose I go to the local hardware store, which I’ve been going to for years and one of the salespeople in particular has tremendous knowledge about plumbing.

Anytime I have a plumbing question I go to this person.

In fact, any time anyone I know has a plumbing problem I send them to this person.

Because of this simple referral, one of my friends will walk in and not only know the name of the person they wish to speak with, but they already have the confidence that they are going to get the help that they need.

This is why social media is going to become the most powerful form of marketing that companies cannot afford to hesitate in leveraging. The quality of relationships that I have with my friends and business partners would never be put in jeopardy or risked losing for the sake of giving them a bad referral.

Referral Purchase

I recently read a great book by John Jantsch called the “The Referral Engine”. This book explains the powerful and most underutilized strategy in marketing – the referral.

If you own your own business and you are not getting referrals is something is not right. In his book he teaches you how to request referrals the right way and at the same time give out your own referrals.

People are in seek of quality. One of the most effective ways they can find it is through other people who have experienced it.

In order to get referrals you should be getting in the habit of giving them out freely.

The success that you bring will create powerful relationships and those who know you will remember you for your good will and helpful attitude.

It’s much better to give away potential business as a referral to a provider that you have confidence in even if you think you may be able to provide the service yourself.

If people know that you are giving out great referrals they will want to engage with you because you might become one of their referrals too.

Give Freely and Leverage Referrals

With information so available in abundance, there has never been a time where leveraging referrals would have been so appropriate. This is why those who specialize in niches and develop their talents around the particular subject are becoming highly sought after. This means there are many opportunities for small businesses to form and specialize, becoming the source for all things related to their niche.

Be open and honest in how you commit to helping other people get what they need and in turn you’ll build trust and long lasting relationships.

One statement that I still remember clearly from social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk was “…give, give, give, give, give, give, give, and then ask.” I think he had more gives in his tweet though.

SEOmoz Launches Awesome Tool

Managing your website and all the responsibilities of running a business can be overwhelming. As your website grows and continues to improve with new content, keeping track of your rankings and staying competitive is a significant challenge.

To understand the essence of maintaining a solid search strategy, one must understand the elements that make it strong and how to detect elements that could be weakening it without realizing the damage until it’s too late.

SEO is not rocket science. It’s not a mystery, nor is it impossible to do SEO properly, granted you are aware of the critical aspects that must be maintained.

Some will say it’s all about the content. Others will argue its the links, and quality of such links that make all the difference. Then there are the new and possibly underestimated social networking buzz where your link gets shared across Twitter or “Liked” on Facebook by “Influencers in social media” that could be a major contributor to your rankings.

SEOmoz Gets A Tuneup – Simplifies Your Most Critical SEO Activities

Check out their latest SEOmoz Pro tool that is sure to help your SEO efforts.

What really matters, above anything else individually is the ability to be aware – to have the ability to track and monitor – all of those things – automatically and on a regular basis.

SEOmoz has finally launched their latest tool, and this will really make this job easier. Its not quite “set it and forget it” but it’s getting there, and will at least let many of us who bang our heads trying to get a handle on Big Picture SEO.

I like to call it BPS or “Big Picture SEO” and this new tool is like your command center, your monitoring system, and gives you a good handle on how well you’ve been maintaining your SEO overall.

2 Minutes And You’re Dashboard Is Setup And Ready To Track

– All Of these Major Data Points, which I’ll eventually break out into individual posts about what they all mean. But here’s the main breakdown of what the new SEOmoz App will do.

Turbocharging Your SEO Initiatives – Overview Once The Tool Begins Crawling Your Site

What’s Really Under The Hood Of This Powerful New SEO Engine

Crawl Diagnostics

On Page Optimization

• Tweak Title Tag
• Rank – Grade
• Top 500 Keywords From Analytics Optimization
• Add an alt tag
• Recommendation for Each of Your Pages

Your Keyword Selections
Grabs Your Top 50 pages
Assigns and grades each of those pages.

Link Analysis

Domain Authority
Page Authority
Link Intersect Tool
Can You Get Better Anchor Text From External Links

Tracks Rankings – Essential

Top 50 – Your Pages That Rank
History Ranking – Keep Track Of Your Rank History
Import Keyword Lists – What’s your Most Valuable keywords that Convert
Track Google (Google.ca)- Bing – Yahoo

Identifies Errors and Opportunities – No Pages Are Being Missed

Crawl Diagnostics

On Page Optimization

• Tweak Title Tag
• Rank – Grade
• Top 500 Keywords From Analytics Optimization
• Add an alt tag
• Recommendation for Each of Your Pages

Your Keyword Selections
Grabs Your Top 50 pages
Assigns and grades each of those pages.

Link Analysis

Domain Authority
Page Authority
Link Intersect Tool
Can You Get Better Anchor Text From External Links

Tracks Rankings – Essential

Crawl Errors – Dumb things aren’t happening on the dev / engineering side
Crawl Warnings

Crawl Notices (rel cannonicals)

Weekly Crawls

New content isn’t generating errors
Missed Opportunities

Feedback and Suggestions For the SEOmoz Pro App

By integrating Google analytics you can take the most revenue producing, high converting keywords and track rankings and page grades weekly.

As soon as you get bumped down by a competitor, automatically log the most likely reason it occurred. Did they make a title tag change, did they acquire a really high quality link, did they publish additional related content in the same directory.

Also, did your site unintentionally make a change that hurt your rankings? Did a new website that wasn’t in the top 10 come on the scene? Are your total external links getting diluted, did the external site loose authority?

Making recommendations to sites that link to you. If you have the capability of monitoring your site as well as sites linking to your, perhaps you can keep a grade on the most critically linking sites so if one drops in grade you can alert them or find a backup of equal or greater authority.

More Suggestions

Social Media Monitoring

Google Analytics Integration
Good Website Architecture
Good Navigation
Good Keywords!
Placing The Keywords On Your Pages
Links tell the search engines this is an important page
Internal – External Links

The Ford SYNC system is handy when paired with a bluetooth device like an iPhone. Though most of the features promised are nice in theory, after driving and playing around with it I think Ford can do better. The system is on the right track, but if they really want to blow out the competition then they’d better step it up because this could seriously influence and lure people into Ford products if they do so.

I rented a Ford Fusion while on my latest trip to Detroit and I was fairly impressed that I could play music from my iPhone on the car stereo and take phone calls through the car’s audio system.

But I want more, and I think Ford will need to look to folks like Robert Scoble and design systems that guys like him need. Sure, they’re a bit ahead of the curve, but the gaps are closing fast and as people look to gain efficiency and time saving practices through technology they’re more than willing to pay a premium to do so (Apple’s iPhone is proof of that).

I’m certain that tons of applications could be built if Ford jumped at the opportunity and launched an app store. Productivity and small business apps would be extremely popular. If you think of traveling in a vehicle like you do surfing the web, Ford could build the next Google by making everything accessible at the moment one thinks of it. Lets think of a couple scenarios:

Consider each of the following are voice commands that set in motion a series of processes and inquiries made by the SYNC system.

1. I have a package to mail.
SYNC – “Do you have the item with you”
Driver – “Yes”
SYNC – “Is it packed and ready to ship”
Driver – “No”
SYNC – “Where’s it shipping to?”
Driver – “Miami, FL”
SYNC – “Is it over or under 5lbs?”
Driver – “Under”
SYNC – “USPS is your best choice, at about $7.95″ Place the item on the passenger seat to calculate the actual price, say ready when you’ve placed it there”
Driver – “Ready”
SYNC – Ok, package weighs 3lbs so Priority Mail will cost you $6.95, would you like to buy this label?”
Driver – “Yes”
SYNC – “Ok, would you like it printed?”
Driver – “Yes”
SYNC – “Printing complete, the nearest USPS location is at 578 Main Street, 3 miles away, do you want to go there?”
Driver – “Yes”
SYNC – “Ok, at the next intersection, turn right” – Then follow the rest of the directions. When you arrive take your item and label inside, grab a Priority mail box, and either get some tape from the Post office or buy some, stick the label on and your done.”

Ok, so that’s one expectation I have. Is it too complicated, or asking too much, I don’t think so. Would people use it? I believe they would.

All you’d need is a printer connected to the vehicle via USB and perhaps an iPhone docked so you can verify and purchase the label to print.

The next application will be called “What’s for dinner” and would include the ability to select a recipe, print off a grocery list and would send video recipes to your mobile device so you can watch how to make the dish.

Local businesses will be able to benefit once they integrate some sort of order receiving and fulfillment process. In other words, if I’m going to pick up the grocerys, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to submit the list electronically and go through a grocery store drive through after they send a confirmation to my vehicle that it’s ready for pickup.

Finally, one last really cool feature would be the ability to leverage a service like AskSunday through the vehicle. AskSunday is a virtual concierge that will perform simple tasks for you like call in dinner reservations, or speak on your behalf with your mobile provider about an issue you have. These virtual assistants are great, but if they cause more work then they’re simply not producing what they were meant for and that’s to simplify things for you. I would love to be able to delegate tasks to them, and perhaps have conference calls in my vehicle on the way to the office.

All in due time I suppose, but the first manufacturer to make it happen is going to be glad they did.

Domain Authority and Page Authority

One of the great things about having a blog is the ability to share ideas and speak about useful tools that exist in making our job easier. One such tool is the SEO Toolbar from SEOmoz, which includes two new metrics called Domain Authority and Page Authority. Domain Authority takes into consideration a number of things that the folks over at SEOmoz have determined to be important in the ranking algorithms at the search engines like Google and Bing.

Ranking well in the search engines is largely influenced by the links that a website has obtained over time. These links come from other sites that consider the content on your site worthy of alerting others about. These topics will either be articles published on a blog, a great video or other types of material that is aimed to help people understand or learn new things. These posts are typically identified by well written and thoughtful content that conveys a specific concept thoroughly.

This concept will likely become a heated debate simply because the only ones who really know are the search engines themselves. The good news is that if your produce high quality content that is done to help others and isn’t solely published to help the bottom line at the business. In fact, some of the best business blogs don’t even mention their products that they offer. One great example of this is the Mint Blog. Notice that the topics on their blog aren’t a direct promotion of what they sell, rather they are electing to post about issues and information their target market would find interesting or helpful.

Domain Authority Is Earned

Domain Authority

You could get 10,000 links to your site and still not have the Domain Authority that another site with 250 links has. This is because the quality of the links, the source of the linking site, is considered authoritative and a site that produces good content.

SEOmoz captured this in their toolbar and makes it really easy to see this metric at a glance. They show you Domain Authority as well as Page Authority. When you have both you can not only find great sites with lots of authority to get links from, but which specific pages on those sites would send the most link juice.

Page Authority Will Show You Which Pages To Optimize

As mentioned, Page Authority can help identify the top performing pages on your site. These pages should be reviewed so that they are able to produce the results they should in terms of ranking and linking to other relevant areas on your website. Internal linking is another topic all together but having a good idea of how you’d expect visitors to your website may want to click on after they hit your site is a very significant part of the success of your site.

The pages that have the most Page Authority will be your core pages that you should then develop additional content to supplement. Google and Bing will rank sites well if they are able to provide quality content that keeps a reading on the right track according the search queries they perform.

Conclusion

Create the content that will help build your site’s Domain Authority.  Measure the success of the individual posts or pages with Page Authority.  Optimize your site with better content that fits well with the high authority content you’ve produced and build your audience.

If your business has a blog there are some things you’ll want to check to be sure you’re covered. Doing a little SEO tuneup will be helpful in sending additional organic traffic to your blog.

Figuring out what SEO tweaking needs to happen is the first step. There’s lots of online resources regarding this process, but a nice simple process from Search Engine Land does a nice job of describing why B2B blogs aren’t achieving SEO success.

Here are some of the main points made by Galen:

Full posts on the home page
Not rewriting title tags
Lack of (optimized) alt tags on images
No control over what is indexed
Poor meta descriptions
No redirects

Below are some additional points on each one of those points.

Full posts on the home page can be easily fixed by adding a “More” tag wherever you want the break to occur. This is in the rich text editor of the wordpress add new post section.

Rewriting title tags is a matter of preference because something I don’t recommend is making the titles too optimized with keywords. It essentially can be considered spam if you’re using keywords that have no use being in a title. Titles should be written to entice the searcher to click on your result in the search engine.

Images are an important part of my SEO philosophy because I have seen tremendous results from this. A well optimized image file name, alt tag and quality image really is worth a thousand words in terms of what you’d get in traffic if you did it correctly.

Properly indexed is a matter making sure your site isn’t displaying duplicate content to the search engines. I’ve read up on the subject of Pagerank sculpting where SEO’s have suggested you structure your links to give your most desirable content the most authority. I’m not suggesting you stress out and start making big changes because you could likely make mistakes and break links along the way. Just don’t use tags like crazy because that could cause your site to index the posts twice.

Think of meta descriptions like a posting a message to Twitter, which only gives you 140 characters. Google actually gives you 160 characters but making the most of meta description tags will go a long way like SEOMoz explains:

You shouldn’t always write a meta description. Although conventional logic would hold that it’s universally wiser to write a good meta description yourself, rather than let the engines scrape your page, this isn’t the case. I use the general rule that if the page is targeting 1-3 heavily-searched terms/phrases, go with a meta description that hits those users performing that search. However, if you’re targeting longer tail traffic, for example with hundreds of articles or blog entries or even a huge product catalog, it can sometimes be wiser to let the engines themselves extract the relevant text. The reason is simple – when engines pull, they always display the keywords (and surrounding phrases) that the user searched for. If you force a meta description, you can detract from the relevance the engines make naturally. In some cases, they’ll overrule your meta description anyway, but it’s not always wise to rely on that.

This is another good point, especially if your site has duplicate meta description tags and you have difficulty modifying each one individually.
Sometimes a great description is more important than ranking in the #1 position in Google because if your message clear and easy then it’ll draw in the traffic.

No redirects when your visitor enters www or a non-www url for your site can cause issues. Select either one and be sure that you redirect to the one you’ve specified.

Conclusion

B2B Blogs are representative of your company and brand, and assuring that you’ve done a thorough job will give your readers a better experience, and also allow others to land on your site when performing searches that could lead to a new client.

One of the biggest challenges in publishing is having enough content.

What is it that we must have in order to become successful on a blog? Some say content.

Others, like David from 37 Signals says that it’s not content.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about how you should be producing “content” to attract a web following. Treating content as a category on its own is missing the point entirely. Nobody cares about content. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, hey, I should read some content today.

What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.

David has a great point. I think what he is saying is that content, when it’s considered a commodity and is being mass produced on a large scale is non-effective and will dilute the quality of a person’s message.

However, there is a need and until search engines become less greedy and content hungry we’ll all be forced to read it.

Why?

Because for every page of content there is a person who’s wallet gets fatter each time you see it.

What is Evergreen content?

Content that doesn’t expire, or have a shelf life. Its great information that took time to create, compile and add analysis to. The long term investment with the hopes that someday you’ll see the forest for the trees, or however that saying goes.

Then there’s the content vs. context debate.

I see a divide. Covering traditional media’s shift to digital media, I hear strategies for more content, strategies to optimise content and the production of content and ways to monetise content. Content. Content. Content. The content industries think that the recipe for digital success is to digitise and monetise content. It ignores the fact that more content is competing for a finite audience and a reduced advertising spend in the midst of a frail recovery. On the other side of the divide, you have digital companies that know the competition is not over content but attention. Who’s winning in the battle for attention? The average time spent reading news on local newspaper websites is 8-12 minutes a month. The average time spent on Facebook is seven hours a month.

I would agree that context (what happens after a post is made) is much more difficult to counterfeit or mass produce than content. But even when big brands master the art of producing context with clever ideas and ways to keep your attention, nobody questions it. Everyone just seems to think how cool, it’s social media and that means they care.

There are many things a blog can do, but here at TheDealerBlog we believe that a blog only serves one purpose extremely well – to differentiate you and your unique ideas to captivate your target customers.

Blogs enable thought leaders to become influencers, engaging communities and revealing unique character.

Blogs Are Where You Sell Solutions

People don’t buy products. People buy solutions. So tell me why I should be interested in your solution.

Here are a couple scenarios:

Product – Dealer Website Content

I’m interested in finding the specs on a 2010 Ford Superduty, specifically the weight distribution while pulling a 6,000lb trailer. I may also like to look through some pictures to see if I like it visually.

Solution – Dealer Blog Content

I’m looking for something that I can setup my circular saw on.  I would love a tailgate that can double as a workbench with some handy compartments because I am a general contractor.  I haven’t seen anything like this on the market, why?

This type of dialogue can come through in the comments of your blog.  By listening to the needs of your customers you might find new and interesting ways to appeal to them that your competition would never think of.  That’s how you use a blog.

Soon another contractor lands on your blog, they are searching for the same solution.

They decide to add to it because it’s an active discussion.

I was working at a jobsite the other day and left my last extension cord there, I wish Ford had an inverter built-in at the rear of the truck where I can plug in my saw without making a mess on the clients newly landscaped yard.

These are people who have problems and they need solutions.  It’s all a matter of how you engage and offer a solution that will get you word of mouth business.  By helping out your audience, without an expectation of a sale, you become an influencer.

Blogs offer introductions, they tell people who you are and what you’re about.  If you understand your customer inside and out, then blogging will be the best way to keep the lines of communication open.

Imagine the opportunity to spend hours and hours before they even step foot through your door. That’s a blog.