Oh My! People and crawlers and spiders, oh my! What’s a lost business blogger to do?

As you step into the blogosphere and try to start using your business blog for maximum marketing impact you may feel like Dorothy trying to reach the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. Only difference is you don’t have a yellow brick road to follow.

Or do you?

More and more business owners are starting blogs every day. Many of them are doing it with their focus being to get better search engine rankings that bring more traffic to their site, and with that, more exposure for their company. A worthy goal to have indeed.

As they reach for that goal however, far too many fall prey to the belief that frequent postings packed with good keywords alone will bring them the results that want. They believe in the misconception that quality content doesn’t matter to get those top-level rankings.

But that’s not the way to Oz, it’s not the way to Kansas, and it’s certainly not the way to marketing effectively with your business blog.

Producing content that way will never get you the people you need as readers. And without people that you can turn into raving fans, you’ll never get the viral impact and valuable linking that you need.

Fortunately, the yellow brick road to business blogging success (with people, crawlers, and spiders) is not that hard to find. And it’s surprisingly easy-to-follow once you’re on it. Properly plan your business blog, and gaining popularity with both people and search engine spiders really becomes an intuitive part of the process.

Why? Because well-focused blogs are naturally attractive to both humans and search engine spiders alike. The way a blog is structured and maintained gives these two key players exactly what they want most. Here’s why business blogging is such a powerful marketing tool.

Why people like blogs so much

Blogs are a technological expansion of the natural drive that people have to communicate. And they’re becoming more and more popular with people for three main reasons.

1. They’re topical which means they save time

Most good blogs are highly topical and are run by someone who’s passionate about that niche or area of focus. Because of that passion, those blog owners act as a filter for the vast amount of information that’s available both online and off-line today. That filtering, analysis, and yes — even opinionated commenting, is valuable to people who share an interest in that same area.

The filtering saves time, and the topical focus adds immediate relevant value to people of a like mind.

2. Active interaction

Blogs have the built-in capability to allow your readers to instantly communicate with you. The interaction capability built into blogging software (through commenting and trackbacks) makes it easy for the reader to engage in the conversation. They get to share their comments and thoughts immediately in reaction to what they just read.

This active interaction opens the dialogue and makes them feel part of the process. They’re no longer just passive consumers of information (like at a normal website) – now they’re active participants.

3. Connection

Blogs work best when they are tightly focused on a specific niche. People want to be connected with like-minded individuals. So when a person with similar interests finds your blog and likes what you have to say, they begin forming a connection with you.

As you deliver more and more targeted content, that connection deepens and expands into credibility and trust. You win. They win. And your business blog is the medium that makes it happen.

Why search engine spiders love blogs

Unlike normal web sites, your business blog won’t need tricks, tactics, and constant revisions to get good search engine rankings. You could say that business blogs were born for search engine optimization. The very construction and functioning of a blog is naturally attractive for search engine spiders.

The reasons why your business blog can be prime food for search engine spiders are remarkably similar to the top three reasons that people like blogs. Here they are.

1. Topical relevance

The only purpose of the search engine is to find content that is highly relevant to keywords entered. When your business blog is tightly focused in a specific niche area your relevancy is likely to be naturally high with very little effort on your part.

Why? Because when you know what your keywords are and you produce content that stays focused on your niche area, peppering your posts with your keywords becomes almost an unconscious act. You relevancy and rankings shoot up as you produce more and more content that is directly relevant to your keywords.

Knowing that the job of search engines is to provide relevant content allows you to naturally place your business blog content on a banquet table where search engine spiders are eager to feast.

2. Frequent activity

Search engines are designed to not only deliver relevant content, but also the newest, freshest information available. Search engine users want the most up-to-date information possible. Since blogging software allows for instant publishing to the Internet, those blog based web sites are frequently updated.

Well-planned business blogs by their very nature have both the relevancy and the highly active posting frequency that search engine spiders want. Hence, those crawlers and spiders will return to your site more and more as your frequency increases. As those visits take place over and over again (with your topical relevancy remaining constant,) your search engine rankings continue to climb.

Frequent additions of new information + relevant content = activity that search engine spiders can’t help but be attracted to.

3. Links and connection

Just like people like to be connected, search engine spiders like to be connected too, only in a different way. Most search engine algorithms love links, especially Google. The more relevant links you have in and to your blog, the more value search engines give you as a connection point to more relevant content that their users are looking for.

Blogs are built to connect to each other. Since bloggers are often referencing each other (either through trackbacks or direct links,) inbound links can be generated very quickly. And even better yet, those inbound links have increased value because they’re very often from sites that have a natural relevance to your sites topical content.

But the true basis for linking power comes from the fact that your content is valuable enough to have people want to link to your posts/articles. Without good quality content that people want to link to or reference, you can make key word dense posts as frequently as you want, but you’ll always gets sub par search engine results.

Although the frequency of posting undeniably helps, it’s not the Ferrari that’ll zip you down the yellow brick road to marketing success. Overall, quality of content trumps frequency in most niche areas. Assuming of course that posts are made consistently, on topic, and at a frequency rate relative to their length — both people and spiders will devour the content to create a powerful linking connection.

The answer to remarkable search engine rankings in your chosen niche AND permeating popularity with people is right in front of your face. It’s right in your blogging software, and it’s right inside you.

Much like the scarecrow, tin man, and lion that were told by the Wizard of Oz that they always had what they sought, you’ll find that most of what you’re looking for can already be found in your business and life.

• Like the scarecrow you need to use your brain to properly plan and organize your business blog with a specific target niche.
• Like the tin man, you need to have your heart in your business blog and be passionate about what you’re blogging about.
• And like the lion, you have to be courageous enough to just step out there and start doing it.

When you take your brain, your heart, and your courage and you add it to your business blog – you’ll be well on your way to optimizing your marketing with both people and search engine spiders.

John-Paul Micek
Click-and-Mortar Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

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