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3 Big Reasons Why Google Loves Blogs

We’ve talked about some best practices for beginner bloggers and hopefully you found some good takeaways from that post. In that post a little SEO tip was shared saying that Google loves blogs. With that being said, it’s probably beneficial to know WHY blogs stand out with Google.

The top three reasons Google loves blogs:

1.  Consistency. Google loves consistency, therefore any blog that content is regularly being curated for is going to be rewarded.  Consistency happens to build trust with people, and with that some trust with Google too.  Blogs offer up to date information for clients and readers. These readers and potential clients are likely to come back should the blog be updated regularly with new information.

2.  Comments.  Comments are valued by Google because they offer a sense of community. In the Best Practices post previously mentioned, we state that negative comments are just as valuable as positive comments as they allow for the owner of the blog to solve a problem.  The ability to problem solve is a crucial skill in any job, even in blogging! Open discussions around your dinner table may be frightful, but in your online community they can help boost Google ranks.

3.  Indexing.  According to studies from Google, more than one trillion unique world wide URLS were indexed alone in 2010 and it just so happens that blogs are among the easier URLS to index.  Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Also keep in mind that people search online for information that is relative to themselves, and blogs offer this specific/niche information.  So when you tie all these facts in together, blogs have a boosted favor with Google than a static website that may never be updated or only semi-regularly.

Tags: blogging, google, search results, SEO

3 Best Blogging Practices for Beginners.

Thinking of starting a blog? Feeling anxious or overwhelmed with the blog you have already started? While that’s certainly understandable for any first time venture, you just need to take a deep breath and clear any misconceptions you may have about blogging.  While it certainly can be time consuming you should have fun while you do it!

So without further adieu, here are the three best blogging practices for beginners:

1. Stay active. You always want to be publishing new content.  New content means new links going in and new links going out.  Blogs give your website the opportunity to be more active. And just a little SEO tip - Google loves blogs because they are active!

2. Leverage Side Bars. In your blog sidebars you can put a twitter feed, poll, blog subscription, or even video. This adds to the dynamic of your blog and further connects potential customers and your readers to your other platforms.

3. Don’t ignore comments! And don’t just let the comments pile up. Just as your readers are giving feedback, you should be responsive as well! When you give readers a say and respond back, you’re helping to give interest to the blog. When someone leaves a comment, comment back on a first name basis. This makes the reader feel more welcomed. Worried about negative comments? Don’t be! Negative comments are a great problem solving tool.

Just like anything else, the more you do it, the more comfortable you become.  This will certainly be true of your blogging efforts. Don’t give up if you don’t immediately see the results you’re looking for.  Just stay active and respond to any feedback and you’ll be a pro in no time!

Tags: blogging, Quick Tips, Social Media

Why Your Site Should be Mobile Friendly

Why is going mobile important? Let’s start with this statistic: 85% of mobile devices will be web enabled by next year.  This means as more people, customers specifically, become mobile, you as marketers need to be too.

To do this, you need to understand mobile users. Be aware of the different types of mobile users and how they spend time on their phones.  The majority of smartphone usage takes place at home, however just under that, people use their smartphones most often on the go.  Smartphone usage has become an extension of the desktop experience and if your site continues to lack mobile capabilities, you will surely fall behind.

This graph illustrates the internet usage between smartphone and desktop users. As you can see, daily online sessions on smartphones isn’t very far behind that of desktops.

Studies show:

• 81% of smartphone users access the internet on their mobile devices
• 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent
  • Furthermore smartphone users in particular are the local information seekers who take action after looking up local content.
• In Japan, 45% of smartphone users have made a purchase on their phone versus the 29% of US smartphone users.
  • This illustrates that in Japan, they are very active smartphone users and they also represent a window in to the future of smartphone use in other countries.

And yet with these numbers, of which are continually on the rise, upwards of 80% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile optimized website.  Therein lies the reason that YOUR site should be mobile friendly.  You will stand out in the market and be ahead of the competition.

Studies also show the breakdown of the top reasons for building mobile ready sites:

• Get New customers (33%)
• Increase Branding Presence (17%)
• Increase Traffic to mobile Website (12%)
• Stimulate users during the pre-purchase and research phase (37%)
• Increase traffic on stationary website. (43%)

As customers regularly use their phones to find and act on information, you want to be found via mobile search. Being mobile will allow you to take advantage of mobile specific characteristics such as location awareness other functionalities such as touch screen usage. Think about how mobile can change your business and build campaigns around reaching new customers.

Tags: Design, Marketing, smartphones

Busted! How Shopping from Work Created a Huge Retail Holiday.

In our last post we credited the internet for popularizing an easier way of shopping on Black Friday.  With that being said, Black Friday itself can be credited for spinning off another retail holiday known as Cyber Monday.

Cyber Monday is a relatively new concept and may be unknown to the average consumer and those outside of the marketing world. The term “Cyber Monday” was invented by Shop.org and was first used during the 2005 holiday season.   The term was coined after seeing a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004.  This increase in sales is believed to be the result of the millions of Americans who returned to work that Monday to faster internet connections, being able to make their online purchases.

Seeing this huge spike in ecommerce, marketers took advantage of what happened in 2004 and created a buzz for online shopping and what would become Cyber Monday in 2005. Since then, online retailers have been offering all kinds of special deals, many of which are available only for the Monday following Black Friday.

The term “Cyber Monday” and what happens on this day, has become so popular that even online retailers in countries such as Canada, the UK, Portugal and Germany use this marketing term and participate in special deals.

So if you missed out on that big screen TV on Black Friday, there’s always Monday!

Why Black Friday (and Retailers) should Give Thanks to the Web.

It can be agreed that many of us have much to be thankful for this upcoming Holiday season.  Thanksgiving, in particular, is the holiday where we call upon the aspects of our lives that deserve a little extra appreciation.  Some of us take the time to note new additions to our families, some people have new careers to be thankful for and others will give thanks for their health and happiness. Now you may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with Black Friday and the web?

First let’s start with a little Black Friday background history:
•    As early as the 19th century Thanksgiving has been marked as the start of the Holiday Shopping season. Department stores used this notion to market themselves with the first waves of Christmas advertisements, starting with the most notable; The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which has been running since 1924. The parade enticed people to shop once it was over.
•    In the late 1960’s, Newspapers officially appropriated the phrase “Black Friday” using it to describe the rush of crowds at stores and the ink by pens used to track sales.
•    Since then, many people see Black Friday as the day retailers show a profit for the first time in a given year and by 1990 Black Friday became a nationwide unofficial retail holiday

While these points are true, it wasn’t until 2002 that Black Friday was statistically shown to be the one of the biggest shopping day of the year.  Up until that point it would rarely reach the top 5. So how does that add up?

With more and more people exploring the possibilities of the internet, online retailers began to capitalize on the people who would rather stay at home the day after Thanksgiving by giving them ways to still get at deals and bargains.Fast forward to almost a decade later and Black Friday, and more specifically, retailers, should give thanks to the web and what it has allowed them to do. Thanks should be given not for the additional profits it has allowed retailers to gain, but rather for giving the consumer the ability to shop in the comfort of their home, leaving out the competition with large crowds, possible product shortages, and still enjoy in achieving that great sale.

That is the best customer service anyone could ask for.

We hope everyone has a happy and joyful Holiday Season!

- From the Team at Brunello Creative.