Starting an external blog for your business can offer a number of benefits. Most of these benefits center on increasing both new and reoccurring traffic.

Before we dive too deep, let’s take a look at the fundamentals of what an "external business blog" really is.

What is an external blog?

An external blog is publishing source that is on a separate domain (.com, .org, .info) from the business's website. As opposed to an internal blog that is a part of the domain (whether as a blog page or a sub-domain,) external business blogs can offer greater flexibility and additional SEO value.

Typically, external business blogs are built with theme or topical relevance to that of the business. However, what makes an external blog for a business more flexible than an internal blog is the ability to brand the external blog as its own entity.

This is where it is important to really "carve your niche" with you blog and set the stage for highly focused content. For instance, if local winery is unveiling an external blog, they will want to focus their content specifically on the wine industry. Furthermore, the winery could carve its niche deeper by focusing the content of the blog unique aspect of wine and how it relates to local interests.

Developing an external blog that flows with the brand of the business is key to attract targeted, in-market traffic. Flexibility and creativity come into play when determining just how aligned the brand of the blog meets that of the business.

Brand your blog strategically

All blogs should have a primary goal. The common goal for most blogs is to attract users to the blog (with solid marketing and interesting content) and funnel that traffic to the website of the business.

To do that, you need to brand your blog in a way that relates to your target market. The type content in which you plan to publish plays a big role in positioning the brand of the blog. Also a factor in blog branding is the nature of the target audience.

Does your blog seek to advise and teach visitors? Or does your blog seek to inform and enlighten visitors? The answers to these types of questions can help you determine the ideal brand image of your blog.

Populate your blog with precision

Referring back to the concept of "carving your niche," the content in which you publish on your blog is your way to achieve just that. Expansive blogs that cover a broad range of topics typically have a number of experts and writers populating the blog (to cover each topic.) Evaluate your goals and your resources, and start determining the target theme to position your blog.

Regardless of your area of specialty, stay focused on your niche and write content that stays specific to your blog's topic. Sometimes writing about topics that are outside the realm of your blogs topic may seem tempting, but always try to stay close to your blog's main idea.

Generate SEO value from your external blog

The SEO value of your external blog comes in two ways:

1. inbound traffic from visitors who find your blog, and later make their way to your website
2. building keyword-targeted links to your website to help its search engine rankings

The first SEO advantage of inbound traffic hinges on the quality and nature of your blog's content. Again, highly focused content that speaks to a precise audience is imperative to compelling visitors to further explore your blog and find their way to the website of your business.

Link building with your blog can help you grow your rankings in the search engines on specific keyword targets. The practice is quite simple. You must first have a blog story that relates to the link (or anchor text and URL destination of that link) that you want to build. It is important to ensure that the article or blog post has some relevancy to that of the link.

In addition to content relevancy, the anchor text, or link text, should contain the keywords in which you are targeting for the page receiving the link.

For instance, let’s say a small batch winery on the Leelanau Peninsula of Michigan is supplementing the local SEO efforts of its website with an external blog. In that blog, they are writing articles about various wine-related topics in the Leelanau Peninsula region. To make their website more relevant (and better optimized for) searches like "Leelanau Peninsula wineries," they should use the anchor text "Leelanau Peninsula wineries" in the links that they build from their blog to their website.

Well that about sums up this post on external blogging for you business. If you have any additional insights, or questions, please post them in the comments section below.

Google search has been witnessing a lot of changes recently. The search placement of a particular website is no longer a specific number in the rankings as much as it is a probability within a range.

As a result, SEO's and Internet marketers are faced with further difficulties in analyzing SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.) In addition to the blended SERPs of videos, images, news, and shopping suggestions, things are getting even more mixed. 

Now enter "Search Plus your World," which introduces a host of factors that may further sway the search results. Location, personal preferences, search history, logged in or out as a Google users, searching from mobile device - it is almost impossible to define (and predict) the search engine rankings of a website because the results may vary from user to user.

SERPs of Search Plus your World

With Google's new "Search Plus your World," its ranking algorithm has significantly changed. Here Google observes the social behaviors of users through its social network platform called Google Plus.

In essence, Google Plus users who perform a search while logged into their Google account may be delivered more personalized search results. The webpages displayed in their SERPs may be pages in which people of their Google Plus network have shared or have clicked the +1 button of the page.

Pages that have been socially endorsed by fellow Google Plus users may rank much more favorably for a searcher. In a personalized SERP, the searcher will see tiny avatars of the people in his or her network who have +1'd certain pages. Additionally, the searcher may be exposed to webpages with more local relevance.

In short, some of pages displayed in the "Search Plus your World" results have been vouched for by people within your Google Plus network.

Local Business Impact

Google’s individually-tailored search results will become very important for local businesses. As Google Plus continues to grow its membership base, typical users will have networks (or "circles") which primarily consist of family and friends, and Google+ profile pages of local businesses.

Local businesses need to avoid the schemes that offer selling hundreds of +1 votes for better rankings. Earning mass-quantity +1's from unspecified accounts will be pointless for a local business, as none of these "people" will likely be in the local network of the business. As the system was intended to be, +1 authority must be built naturally.

As a business with a local market focus, you want to encourage mainly locals vouch for your webpages with the Google +1. Exploit your creativity, and offer promotions and incentives that are tied to your Google Plus. In turn, this will enable your rankings to be favored for more by local searches. Below are three simple ways to better your local SEO performance using the elements of Google Plus.

• Create a Google Plus profile for your local business – it’s just like Facebook and the membership base is growing. Funnel content about your business to your Google+ following and represent more local awareness.
• Place +1 buttons on every page of your website – this is becoming the new form of local SEO and displaying search engine credibility. Visit this page to get the code for various +1 buttons.
• Include your Google Plus profile link everywhere – traffic to your Google Plus page can be just as effective as any traffic to your website. Google Plus popularity can have immense impact on your local search rankings, especially with "Search Plus your World."

If you have additional insights on how to encourage more +1's for a local business website, be sure to add them in the comments below.

Content is king on the Internet, hence why it is very important to use it in the right manner to market your products or services. Content writing is a very crucial aspect of Internet marketing, and if you can't get your content right, then you are likely to struggle with your online business efforts. 

Article writing is one of the most effective ways of inviting customers toward your product or service. The Internet is a repository of splendid article directories. These are quite popular among Internet marketers because this is an easy way to connect with highly relevant consumers, and in a very economical way.

Article marketing helps an Internet marketer in two ways. First, writing optimized articles can help build links to your website, and thus making it more popular and found in the search engines. Secondly, well-written articles about your product or service can further establish trust and reputation for your business. A compelling article can make you seem like an expert in your field, and thus motivate readers to learn more (by visiting your website.)

Content marketing can be performed through writing press releases too. It is said that a press release can reach the potential buyers in a telling manner. That is, instead of boasting your product or service, your tone is more neutral and simply explains "what is."

Many Internet marketers are realizing the innate marketing power of press releases to generate more leads to their products or services. That said, make genuine use of the writing press releases, and explore some of the most popular press release publication sites that can make the most of your content, such as PRWeb and PRNewswire.

Content marketing can improve the popularity of your website to a great extent. Not only can your search engine rankings get a boost from the links built in your content, but the content that you publish is promotion piece in itself for curious readers.

Search engines have a flair for well-written, unique, and highly-relevant content. So as you move forward with your content marketing efforts, write to the reader and focus on the value you can provide them with your content.

More communities are realizing the importance of local sustainability and protecting their local economies. Businesses are focusing more on building relationships at a local level, and as a result marketing and advertising efforts are also shifting toward more local markets.

SEO has earned the reputation of being a highly efficient marketing channel that can provide an incredible return on investment. However local SEO, a unique sub-specialty of search engine optimization, can offer even more marketing efficiency and bang for the buck.

So what exactly is local SEO?

The concept of local SEO, also commonly called “hyper-local SEO,” is simply the practice of search engine optimization with a geographic focus. 

Many businesses and individuals are seeking a specific product or service within their local vicinity. So instead of searching the keyword phrase “bike shop” to find a local cycling store, a geo-modified search query would include something like “Traverse City bike shop” or “bike shop in Atlanta.”

In essence, local SEO makes a website relevant on both the core keyword phrase and the geographic modifier. By focusing a website’s SEO efforts the local market, businesses can earn qualified search traffic from potential customers in their local area.

Advantages of Local SEO

Like mentioned above, local SEO is efficient. The geo-targeted search market is considered highly “in-market,” meaning the traffic that comes to locally optimized website is often highly qualified to take action, or in other words, convert.

But local SEO is more than just an efficient connection between a website and a search engine user. Local SEO is typically less competitive than non-local SEO, and thus more cost-effective.

Unlike traditional SEO that can require months off-site link building, sometimes all it takes is a simple on-site, local SEO tune-up to see top search engine placement.

As more and more companies and consumers advocate the local approach to doing business, the opportunities for local SEO will offer great advantages.

The concept of "pinging" is quite simple. In essence, you submit your blog to various websites (via a central pinging website) to notify those sites of your blog's freshly added content. In turn, your blog may be crawled and indexed more quickly, and thus better perform in the search engines.

In addition to blogging, there are also some best practices of Pinging. Whether for a personal blog or a business blog, pinging, in the long-haul, can contribute to a more popular blog.

Below, we outline a few tips to help you ping your way to a more successful blog.

Ping Sooner Than Later

The first key aspect of pinging is when you ping. It is important to ping your blog soon after you update the content of your blog. We suggest getting in the habit of pinging immediately after you hit publish.

Ping The Post

The URL you submit to a pinging website can make a huge difference in how fast your blog content gets crawled. We did some digging and research on this topic and found that submitting the actual blog post URL of new content (and not just the domain of the blog) will result in faster indexing of your fresh blog.

Ping For Power

To get the most from you pinging efforts, ping to some of the most powerful pinging websites. We recommend:

• www.pingomatic.com
• www.pingoat.com
• www.pingler.com
• www.blogbuzzer.com

Ping your blog to these pinging websites for the greatest impact. We hope these best practices of pinging will help increase the rank of your blog and establish a stronger readership.

Business blogging is the modern way of building your brand by sharing knowledge, insights, and providing commentary about the things you specialize in.

Blogging has become an effective medium for businesses to attract customers and generate leads. Many organizations rope in their key executives and technical experts to write (or provide insights to writer) for their blog in an effort to generate a positive impression and instill confidence in customers.

Advantages of Blogging

Whether for a law firm or ecommerce store, the benefits of blogging offer a number of advantages and opportunities. Below are some of the key advantages of business blogging:

Increase Inbound Traffic

Blog topics can include a wide range of relevant topics, such as the latest updates on a product or service, news on recent occurrences, or commentary on emerging technologies by the subject matter experts.

To promote more inbound traffic to a blog, and thus to your site, blog posts can be linked through ads or social network tools like Twitter and Facebook. Most organizations should considering creating a Twitter page or a Facebook business page for two reasons: to build links to their blogs and to share their blog stories with a relevant following.

Market watchers, analysts and customers are solid sources of inbound traffic if the blogs are up-to-date and the content is compelling and contains useful information. For this reason, it is not only important to market your blog well, but also generate great copy that users can appreciate.

Promote Brands

Blogs can promote your brand with ease. They are the natural choice for advertising your brand by providing valuable knowledge on your products and services to your target audience. You can build the brand image by creating more buzz around the products, services, and offerings by creative ways including videos on product demos, commentary and white board sessions.

A solid blog with popular following is a brand by itself. In addition, blogging habits are niche by itself, because they underscore the building and promoting of the brands.

Creating a Fan Following

Blogs can generate a list of followers as users subscribe to feeds (such as RSS.) Blogs which are simple, intuitive and useful for the online community, generate positive word of mouth for an organization. Thanks to advent of social bookmarking tools, a business blogs can be easily shared and bookmarked with other users.

This creates lot of readers through positive recommendations and the blog by itself becomes a great resource among Internet users. In summary, business blogging offers differentiation and a niche for organizations to create a positive brand image and provide consumer enlightenment.

In October of 2011, Google+, a 4 month old social networking platform from Google, had a reported 40 million users. Jump to January 2012 and Google+ now has over 90 million active users, with hopes to grow to 100 million by the end of February.

Although this is great news for Google, the question everyone is asking is how did the company more than double its number of users in so little time?

The only answer that analysts have for this immense growth in Google+ is of the heavy implementation of Google+ in all of Google’s activities. As Google has recently launched its "Search Plus Your World" feature, which adds personally-oriented search results based on your Google+ profile, its content, and your behaviors.

This has spawned a lot more traffic for Google+, as users (or members of one's circle) post anything from profile updates to photos and links (with the similar keyword references as your search query) will likely appear in the "personal" search engine results. This has led to a lot of mixed emotions amongst other popular social networking platforms and online business models.

More Promotional Push From Google

But the "Search Plus Your World" hasn’t been the only attempt from Google to rake in new users to its growing social networking site. Google has also made it mandatory for all new Google Gmail users to create a Google+ account to be able to complete the creation of a Gmail account. This has led to an immense amount of unhappy users who feel like they have been bullied by the search engine giant into creating a Google+ account.

In addition to online-based promotions and incentives, Google has also taken its marketing efforts to television audiences. During prime time TV, it is not uncommon to see television ads about Google that target both consumers and businesses. Such ads highlight the advantages of having "circles" in your social network, or for businesses, the opportunities to connect with consumers on a more social-friendly format.

With this much push from the search engine giant to get Google+ afloat, it makes sense how quickly Google+ gained over 90 million users. And at this rate it seems likely that Google+ will get the estimated 300-400 million users it yearns for by the end of the year.

But how many will truly be glued to Google+ like they are Facebook or Twitter? And although Google does say that 60% of Google+ users are engaged daily and 80% weekly. Google forgot to mention that it counts anyone who signs into their Google account which is tied to Gmail, Google+, YouTube and iGoogle (along with many others) as an active Google+ user.

It will be an interesting future for Google+, and here at Increase Your Rank, we'll keep you informed as Google continues on its path of extraordinary growth.

Wondering why the English Wikipedia has blacked out?

Starting at midnight January 18th, the English Wikipedia will be down for 24 hours in protest to potential legislation regarding SOPA and PIPA. 

Rather than having access to the vast online encyclopedia, users will see a message that is destined to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA. It's a powerful move that will be recognized by millions.

What Exactly are SOPA and PIPA?

The U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are considering two bills in congress called SOPA and PIPA. SOPA represents the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA stands for the "Protect IP Act," with IP standing for the common initials for "Intellectual Property."

The objective behind these bills is to stop copyright infringement, particularly targeting infringement committed by foreign websites. Although these bills are set for protection measures, both risk the open, free environment that makes the Internet so powerful.

Wikipedia's temporary revoke of its English encyclopedia will bring further awareness and support of the righteous opposition against SOPA and PIPA. These two bills will not only inflict on the freedoms of the Internet, but may also cross into areas concerning the freedoms set by the U.S. Constitution.

To learn more about the detrimental impact of SOPA and PIPA, and to take further action yourself, visit this webpage by the EFF.

There are two different forms of SEO, and each are carry a great deal of importance in their own way. These two types of SEO are known as on-site SEO and off-site SEO.

In a nutshell, on-site SEO includes all executions and optimization that occurs on website itself, whereas off-site SEO focuses mainly on link building and content marketing, which contribute to greater website popularity through external means.

Below we define both in more detail, and provide some best-practices tips in strategizing for each.

On-Site SEO

There are many techniques that go into the on-site optimization of a website. The element that carries the greatest importance to on-site SEO is the content of a website.

The content includes both on and off-page content. On-page content is the copy visible by users. This includes headers, links, body copy, and anything else that visitors can see on the page. Off-page copy includes the page title, meta description and keywords, and alt tags for images.

These elements all flow together as one. By this we mean that each page of the website must be optimized in similar manner with respect to the keyword target(s).

One of the simplest on-site SEO tips is to optimize each page for only one or two primary keywords, with perhaps a couple close variations. In doing so, include the exact phrase match of the primary keyword targets in all of the on and off-page elements.

Specifically, it is recommended to include the primary keyword target early in the page title and meta description, and at a few times on the page, with particular use of headers and strong tags (bold.)

Although there are many mixed theories regarding the optimal keyword density of a page, many high ranking websites are cohesively organized around proper keyword inclusion.

Off-Site SEO

The optimization the occurs off from the website has become increasingly influential in SEO game. In essence, the more links pointing to a website deem it more credible and popular to the search engines, and thus promotes higher rankings.

As a result of the increased importance of link building, many SEO's focus exclusively on providing only link building services. However many services have become automated and unnatural, which can risk the search engine performance of a website.

It is advised to either build links naturally on your own, or to work with only trusted link building experts who advocate only "white hat" practices. It is often apparent the type of links being build to your site simply by observing shifts in your site's ranking. Inconsistent rankings, or evidence of the "Google dance" is sign that links are weak and plentiful.

The best links come from high authority websites that typically have a high Google PageRank (PR). Even one or two links coming from a couple high PR domains can override a thousand blog comments. For this reason, it is suggested that a blend of both, high authority and low authority links, are built to ensure the most natural indexing.

We hope this betters your understanding on the different approaches to SEO. Thanks for visiting the Increase Your Rank blog!

You down with SoLoMo? Not sure what SoLoMo means?

SoLoMo Defined

SoLoMo is the new buzzword taking storm in the marketing world. It's a creative combination of marketing through Social, Local, and Mobile mediums.

It is a slight spin on the once popular "hyperlocal" SEO approach, but with a little social media blended in. SoLoMo shows great potential for businesses to promote their offers, and it's also an easy method for customers to get highly-relevant search results specifically for their local area.

SoLoMo Described

SoLoMo marketing is a novel concept of providing smartphone users access to locally-focused promotions and store offerings through mobile search based on their current location.

For example, if you are craving some Donuts while walking with your friends in town, SoLoMo-based apps on a mobile device can provide instant results and locations of Donut shops in your vicinity. In some SoLoMo apps, you can even see if your friends are available on the same location through Google Places or Foursquare's check-in system.

This is a very innovative way of connecting with customers in a more personalized and location-centric manner. It is also a great opportunity for businesses both large and small to promote offers, discounts, and coupons as customers seek the types of products and services they offer online.

FourSquare has an overall strategy of offering deals based on the geographic proximity of the customers using FourSquare apps for checking in to various location. They have multipronged approach of discovering what’s nearby based on local user's check-ins, and can offer discounts to incentives to loyal shoppers or those who are simply looking for a particular business. They implement cool incentives like free parking of the company's “Mayor.”

In summary, SoLoMo is a boon for businesses to offer deals for customers based on their social habits and local relevance - all by tapping into the intelligence of smartphones.