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blogging blog posts SEO website
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Can Blogging Help Your Business? (Spoiler Alert: Yes, It Can!)

Blogs are often misunderstood. They require a fair bit of work, and business owners can’t help but wonder if they really make an impact.

The short answer: yes, they do.

The long answer goes something like this: blogs can help your business in more ways than you might think. We’ve rounded up some facts to help convince you that a well-written blog can do wonders for your business.

And if you still need convincing, consider the fact that you’re reading a blog post right now!

It Helps Drive Traffic to Your Website (Hubspot)

There’s lots of buzz about SEO, or search engine optimization, and guess what: blogging and SEO go hand in hand. New, original blog posts can drive more traffic to your website, and not just because visitors want to imbibe in your knowledge and wit (although that happens, too).

On the more technical side of things, a frequently updated blog signals to a search engine that your website is active, which can be an SEO booster. Your blog also adds a significant amount of content to your website, increasing the opportunities to pop up in search engines.

It Helps Establish You as an Expert (About.com)

Your blog is just one more way that you can reach out directly to your existing clients and prospects. You can choose to be silent (by posting nothing at all), or you can harness the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

By posting accurate, informative, and original content, you’re proving that you know your stuff and that you’re good at it. Your website’s visitors are often seeking additional information related to whatever it is you do, and providing them with helpful blog posts is a major plus – one that can translate to conversions.

It Gives Your Brand Personality (Bloom Tools)

Blogging and social media are excellent ways to build that coveted brand loyalty. Use your blog to let your brand’s personality shine, showing the world that you’re more than a logo on a computer screen. Develop a voice and stay true to it. The result: customers will have no trouble differentiating you from those other guys.

It Keeps You on Top of Your Game (Social Media Examiner)

Whether you post once a week or once a month, coming up with relevant, informative blog content can challenge you to become even better at what you do.

Knowing that you have a blog post to produce will encourage you to stay on top of the latest industry news, technology, and developments – everything and anything is potential material for your blog!

Even more importantly, you’ll learn how to communicate your business concepts to your clients. Writing succinct posts in a compelling matter is great practice for organizing your thoughts and sharing your knowledge in a way that’s easy for others to understand. This will help improve your broader communication skills.

 

 

Blogging isn’t always easy, and we’ve heard the common rebuttals all too often. “I’m so busy and don’t have time to blog!” “I’m useless with computers!” “I always forget to post!” Cloud9 offers customized blogging packages: we’ll work with you to develop an optimal blogging strategy, and we’ll create posts using your brand’s language to keep customers coming back for more. Contact us, and we’ll help you get set up!

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SEO website analytics on a tablet
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SEO Isn’t Dead: It’s Evolved

“Here’s the mental model you need to understand why Google does what it does in the search results: we want to return really good search results to users so that they’re happy, so that they’ll keep coming back. That’s basically it: happy users are loyal users.”

These words of wisdom come from the mouth of Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team. They tell the ‘secret’ behind Google’s attitude towards search engine optimization, or SEO.

SEO: Dead or Alive?

SEO has been a hot topic over the past few years—and more recently, the conversation has turned towards the death of SEO. There are plenty of headlines predicting the death of SEO, but these posts don’t provide very convincing evidence that SEO is, in fact, on its way out.

Our opinion? SEO isn’t dead; it’s simply evolving.

Back to Basics

SEO is a multifaceted and often multi-channel support method intended to improve a website’s online presence. For example, SEO will help your website rank higher in Google searches that use keywords relevant to your website.

Coming back to our opening quote, Google wants to please its customers: when a customer types a few words into the search engine, Google wants to provide them with the best matches possible so that the customers find what they’re looking for.

SEO works with Google to make sure that it can deliver to its customers. SEO means building strong websites that offer a great user experience. So, if a customer Googles keywords that match up with your site’s content, they’ll be happy if Google coughs up your name first.

Google is our Friend

Note that we said working WITH Google. SEO isn’t about tricking Google—after all, if someone is searching a topic that has nothing to do with your website and you “trick” them into coming to your website, they’ll probably just leave. They’ll be annoyed at you, and they’ll be annoyed at Google for not giving them what they want.

SEO is about helping companies like Google do their job—while helping the website owners improve their web pages and the user experience. Happy users like to stick around.

The Evolution of SEO

Why do people think that SEO is a dying field? Probably because SEO algorithms and techniques are constantly changing. SEO strategies that worked a year ago might be stale now, meaning Google has changed the way it decides how a site will be ranked.

Since SEO involves lots of moving pieces — including traditional methods like improved meta data, keyword and key phrase research, and proper tag usage—there’s a lot going on at once. It might be accurate to say that some parts of SEO are dying, but in their place, newer, more effective SEO methods are popping up. SEO isn’t dying; it’s regenerating.

Smart SEO

There are thousands of factors that play into SEO, with dozens of changes happening every month. That’s a lot to keep up with, which is why it’s important to ensure that your SEO guru is up to snuff. SEO is serious business—ignoring it altogether can harm you. If your website unintentionally is poorly formatted for SEO, it can actually be penalized in search engine results. Yikes.

The key to good SEO is a good SEO person who adapts to changes as SEO evolves. Psst… we can help with that!

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video facts for igital marketing
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These 8 Facts About Using Video on Your Website Will Blow Your Mind!

You’ve probably heard that incorporating video into your website will do wonders for your business. More people will visit! They’ll buy your stuff! They’ll become devoted lifelong fans who will wax poetically about your fabulous company!

But we know how it is: taking the time to write, produce, and edit a video isn’t always easy. It requires time, money, and help from other people to incorporate video into your website.

It’s kind of like eating vegetables: you know that adding video content to your website is good for you, but it’s not always the easiest thing to do. We’re here to give you some motivation to eat those proverbial vegetables. Here are 8 facts about incorporating video into your website that you simply cannot afford to ignore.

 

Fact #1: YouTube is the #2 Search Engine in the World

Yes, you read that properly. It goes without saying that people aren’t searching YouTube for text-based posts. Posting video content will allow you to reach out to one billion people who search through YouTube every month.

 

Fact #2: The Value of One Minute of Video is the Equivalent to 1.8 Million Words

Okay, a stick-person stop-motion video might not convey that much information (though in the age of the viral video, you never know). But a properly produced video filled with valuable information can have a major impact on those who view it—and the viewers will actually remember it. Plus, creating a video takes much less time than typing out 1.8 million words!

 

Fact #3: Over Half the 25-54 Year Old Demographic Share Video Online

Business 101: word of mouth is your friend. Sharing content on social media is the new word of mouth. If you can convince your fans to share your content with their friends, then you’re getting a personal introduction through a trusted source to some very valuable potential clients. Not having video means that you’re missing out on these shares.

 

Fact #4: Shorter Videos Are Shared More Often Than Longer Videos

Bonus fact: 20% of people viewing a video will click away from the video after 10 seconds of watching. Don’t be thinking that you need to produce a multi-hour blockbuster to engage your target market. On the contrary: focus on well-executed short videos that pack a punch.

 

Fact #5: Online Video Accounts for 50% Of All Mobile Traffic

See those people scanning through their phones at the bus stop? Half of them are watching a video online.  It’s simply impossible to ignore the fact that people are consuming their media in a whole new way, and that new way is through video. Ignore the importance of video, and you might be facing a future similar to the VHS player.

 

Fact #6: The Average Internet User Watches 32 Videos Per Month

Think about who uses the internet: that would be just about everyone. Now consider the fact that each person watches at least one video per day, on average. If you’re convinced that your target market isn’t into videos, think again.

 

Fact #7: On Retail Sites With Video Components, Site Visitors Stay 2 Minutes Longer—and Are 64% More Likely to Make a Purchase

The facts are starting to add up. We know that the time that people spend on our sites is incredibly valuable. We also spend a lot of time trying to convert site visitors into clients. Here it is in black and white: video does that.

 

Fact #8: Video Content Is 53 times More Likely to Show up on the First Page of a Search Engine Results than the Same Content in Text Form

Our final fact is a bit of a mouthful, but wow—talk about impactful. In the world of SEO, any leg up you can get on your competition is huge. That’s not 53%– it’s 53 times.

 

Convinced that video is the way to go for your website? We just so happen to offer video production services– click here for more details on how to get all the benefits offered by incorporating video onto your website.

Don’t believe us? Check out these websites for sources and more details:
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