Write Your Blog Post In 20 Minutes
You know you need to write to your blog every day. But how do you make the time? You’re too busy.
You can fix that. Discipline and a little bit of time organization is all it takes. You can write a blog post every day in 20 minutes or less. Here are the steps to take to ensure that you can have a blog post every day and have it written in less than 20 minutes.
- Keep a running idea list – Every time you get an idea for a blog post, write it down. Keep a running list. This is easier if you create a keyword list before you set up your blog. Come up with 10-20 blog post ideas for each keyword on your list, and your keyword list should have 50-100 good keywords.
- Let good ideas sit – Instead of trying to write about something the day you come up with the idea, let it sit a few days. You’ll think of other ideas that can go with it. Write them down. Start with your running idea list and go from there.
- Cut unsupporting ideas before you write – If you keep a running list of ideas and related ideas, you’ll start to see that some of the ideas you thought initially supported each other are actually not related enough. They could be their own blog posts. Cut them out and separate them. Remember, the goal is to write fast. A nonsupporting idea doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
- Use lists – You can say a lot with ordered and unordered lists.
- Keep your posts short - Remember, you’re trying to write fast. So keep your blog posts to under 500 words.
- Write in bursts – If you get stuck on a blog post and can’t think of how to finish it, save it as a draft and come back to it later, when you can think of something fresh.
- Write about your best ideas now - Why save your best ideas for later? Save time now. Just knock it out.
This blog post took 15 minutes to write. It’s less than 500 words and more than 250, so it should pass Google’s search engine optimization guidelines. Yours will too!
5 Types Of Social Networks
Social networking has become so important today that you’ll hardly find an Internet marketer not doing it. If you do, they probably aren’t very effective. But you can get a leg up on your competition by spending some time doing a little social networking. To do it correctly, it’s important to identify the right type of social network for your need.
Here are 5 types of social networks you might consider for your online marketing needs:
- Plain Old Vanilla – If you haven’t heard of Facebook, then you probably live under a rock. It’s not the only plain old vanilla social network online, but it is the most popular.
- Social Bookmarking – These sites, like Delicious.com and countless others, allow you to save a link with a summary of your favorite web pages.
- Question & Answer – Getting more and more popular every day, sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers allow users to log on, ask a question, and get an answer from the crowd. Sometimes you’ll get several answers that you can choose from. And the community can often vote on the best answers.
- Video Sharing – These sites – sites like YouTube and Vimeo – allow users to upload videos that others can view online. And you can use them to drive traffic back to your website.
- Blogging Communities – Blogging has become the trend of the decade. So why not join a blogging community. There’s one for women called BlogHer and then there are more generalized communities like LiveJournal. They are places for bloggers to meet, share their ideas, and network over conversations.
There are plenty other types of social networks as well. Pick the type that best suits your needs and jump right in.
Why You Need A Gravatar
A gravatar can be a very useful tool for online content providers. It does several things for your online identity including:
- Notifying bloggers that you are not a spammer
- Making your name and website more brandable
- Easily identifies you as authentic everywhere you go
- Unifies your blogging, commenting, and social media presence across all channels
Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. It’s easy to set up. You just head over to Gravatar.com and upload your photograph or image – the one you want to be associated with a particular e-mail address. It’s important to note that if you own several websites and have different e-mail addresses for managing those websites and often comment on blogs, forums and social media sites under your various names, then you can have more than one gravatar. You can have one for each e-mail address you own because the gravatar is associated with a single e-mail address.
Every time you enter your e-mail address into a comment form, your gravatar will appear beside your name. This makes you recognizable to other commenters while branding you online and shows that you are a legitimate poster, not a spammer.
I highly recommend that you set up your own gravatar – especially if you blog regularly and comment on other blogs regularly.
Blog Posts: Categories And Tags
A customer asked, “Shouldn’t I put my blog posts in multiple categories for better search engine optimization?”
Our answer: No.
The search engines won’t rank your content higher because you’ve placed it in multiple categories. In fact, they might gig you for duplicate content if you allow them to crawl your categories at all. And that’s why many SEOs put a nofollow, deindex command in their robots.txt files for the category and tag pages of their blogs.
Your categories and tags are for reader benefit. Fewer categories on a blog make for a cleaner, easier-to-follow blog. Limit your reader’s choices in categories and you’ll encourage more reading. Therefore, your categories should be broad catch-all organizational tools like the chapters in a book.
Tags, on the other hand, are narrower in scope and therefore it’s OK to have more of them. It’s also OK to give individual blog posts with multiple tags.
Tags are more like the index at the back of your book. You might have only 10 chapters (blog categories) in a book, but you’ll have hundreds of tags. And specific words or phrases may appear in several chapters of your book. Those words or phrases (tags) in your index will show which specific pages of your book those words or phrases appear in even if they are in different chapters.
The reason this happens is because you’ll give a full treatment of a topic in a book chapter, or a blog category, but you and your reader both recognize that all of your concepts are interrelated. Sometimes, due to that interrelatedness, you’ll mention a topic in a chapter that covers another topic with a fuller treatment. It’s only mentioned as it relates to the other topic. That’s where your tags come in.
Keep in mind that tags and categories are organization tools, not necessarily SEO tools.
7 Ways A Blog Can Boost Your Business
You’ve likely heard of blogs. There’s nothing really magical about them, but you can use a blog for your business to increase your market and talk to your customers. Here are 7 ways you can use a blog to boost your business and your brand online.
- Search engine optimization – Well optimized blog posts can increase your standing in the search engines.
- Social media optimization – Promote your blog through the popular social networks to increase your traffic and brand exposure.
- Field questions about your business – A blog allows your customers and potential customers to communicate with you. You can answer their questions and build your brand.
- Network with others in your industry – A blog is a conversation. Your market is a conversation. Why not join the two?
- Increased search engine rankings - Not only can each individual blog post be optimized, but the more blog posts you have the more chances you have of being ranked in the search engines.
- Close more sales – You can use your blog to close sales simply by putting links to your landing pages in high profile locations on the blog.
- Customer service – Handle customer service issues on your blog in less time and with fewer expenses.
You no longer have to sit on the sidelines and watch while your competitors steal the market. You can use a blog to drive more business to your website and increase your search engine and social media exposure.
Blogger Bloggers Can Now Use The Service With Google+
Since the inception of Google+, Google has been saying that it plans to integrate all of the Google services with the new social networking service Google+. That’s a lot of services.
Google+ started out with Picasa integration. YouTube integration was minimal, but the service has had video support. Slowly, Google is integrating its other services. Recently, they’ve announced that Blogger integration is happening right now.
This is good news for bloggers who use Google’s own blogging platform.
While we’re big components of WordPress uploaded to your own domain name, there’s a pretty good chance that if you’re stuck on Blogger, then this integration will only boost your small business blog’s presence online. Historically, Blogger has not ranked well despite being owned by Google. But this integration could change that.
If it doesn’t, then there are still other reasons to continue using Blogger.
One reason is because it will be easy to share your blog posts through Google+. I also believe that using Blogger will increase your Google profile’s presence in the search engines making Blogger a great reputation management tool. Already, Google+ is causing that to happen. By using your Google+ profile for your Blogger account, that will make your reputation management efforts even better.
Is Blogging, E-mail, Or Social Media Better?
Which is the best kind of online marketing for small businesses? Blogs? E-mail marketing? Social media?
The answer is as proverbial as the question. It depends. All three have their place and each is very effective when accompanied by the other two. That’s why we typically recommend a mixed bag of tricks.
Blog Marketing – Blogging is good for SEO, branding, and social media injection. If you use your blog effectively, you’ll gain search engine traffic, drive new traffic to your important landing pages, and develop a conversation around your brand.
E-mail Marketing – E-mail marketing is the perfect tool for keeping your audience in the loop. It can drive steady traffic to your landing pages and prepare your audience for closing the sale. Dollar for dollar, it’s the most effective marketing for most businesses.
Social Media Marketing – With social media, you can drive traffic to your website, build relationships, grow your brand, and keep your audience engaged.
Rarely is it a question of either/or. For most businesses, a combination of the above tactics is best. You can make your blog, e-mail blasts, and social media work together for the good of your business and your customers. Build your strategy around your business goals, then take action through the various tactics at your disposal.
5 Ways A Blog Improves Your Website’s SEO
Successful Internet marketers know that a blog is a great way to improve your search engine optimization efforts. Here are 5 specific ways that a blog can improve your SEO.
- Fresh, original content – A blog adds fresh, original content to your website every day. Search engine spiders thrive on fresh content. Every time you write a blog post, you will invite the search bots to your website again to crawl it and look for new content.
- Improve your internal link structure – A blog on your website with the right links pointing to the right pages can improve your internal link structure. This in turn improves your overall search engine rankings.
- Attracts inbound links – A good blog will attract inbound links from all over the Web. Those inbound links will help improve your website’s SEO.
- Increases you chances at achieving high rankings – Every single web page you post is another chance to rank in the search engines. Each blog post is seen by the search engines as a separate web page. So the more blog posts you have, the more chances you have to rank for your important keywords.
- High powered niche marketing – Over time, as you write more and more blog posts targeting specific keywords, those blog posts are more likely to rank for the keywords you are targeting – and your blog as well. An aged blog with highly targeted content with an awesome inbound link portfolio is better suited to rank high in the search engines.
Now that you know 5 ways your blog can improve your search engine rankings, why not start a blog today?
Need Blog Ideas? Try These
Every blogger at some point runs out of ideas and has to look for ways to spice up the blog machine. So how do you go about finding things to blog about? Matt McGee knows. He suggests:
- Delicious.com
- Question-based keyword research
- Look at your analytics (what are people reading most, and how are they finding your site?)
- Q&A websites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers
- Ask your readers
To be sure, there are more than five ways to find new blog ideas. In fact, there are hundreds of ways to generate ideas for content. Here are ten more ways to find new ideas for your blog content.
- Read other blogs in your niche and write about the same topics (be sure you don’t plagiarize or steal the content, and don’t take ideas from the same competitor every time
- Find an old post that was popular and write about the same topic from a different angle
- Visit a niche article directory; what are the most popular articles about?
- Use Google’s Wonder Wheel
- Where are your pay-per-click clicks coming from?
- Watch a few YouTube videos in your niche
- Current events – Is there something going on around the world that you can play off of?
- Your Twitter stream
- Use your RSS reader; scan the headlines till something pops out
As Matt says, there is always something to blog about. Just do it.
How Often Should You Blog?
So you’ve decided to start a blog to promote your business. That’s a good move. But how often should you update your blog?
That’s a good question. The answer is, It depends.
How much traffic would you like your blog to receive? How serious are you about search engine marketing? Do you want the search engines to crawl your blog often and update their search engine listings accordingly? Are you doing it for fun or for profit?
Blog marketing is not a hit-and-miss proposition. It is a commitment. The more often you do it, the more likely you are to see positive results. That’s how it is with just about anything. Right?
The search engines view each of your blog posts as a single web page. But they also pay attention to your entire website. Every time yo update your site, they send their spiders back to crawl it. Update it every day and you’ll get crawled every day. That means each blog post you write has the potential to achieve high search engine rankings in addition to your site as a whole achieving those rankings.
Every blog post is a new opportunity. The more opportunities you have, the better your marketing. So how often do you think you should be blogging?
3 SEO Benefits To A Company Blog
Adding a blog to your small business website can increase your SEO benefits tremendously. There are a number of benefits you can receive from a company blog, but these three SEO benefits are very distinct benefits you receive if you blog often and blog using the right strategy.
- Increased search engine rankings – Every blog post is treated like its own web page. That means every blog post has the potential to rank for your keywords on its own merit.
- More opportunities to rank – Every blog post you write invites the search engines back to your website to recrawl it. They will not come back to your site again until it is updated. Because your static site gets updated less often, you should have a blog that you update on a regular basis so that you can have your website crawled often.
- More navigational links – Because you can link from your blog to your main website, you can build more links. Those links will serve as important navigational tools for your visitors, but the search engines like links too. The anchor text you use for those links can push your web pages up further in the search engines in addition to the SEO benefits you get from the content.
A blog is one of the best SEO tools available for your website. If you don’t have one yet, now is the time to consider one.
7 Online Marketing Strategies You Can’t Ignore
Ask anyone who has been around for 40 years or longer and you’ll find that the ways of marketing a business have changed. What worked in 1960 was different than what worked in 1980 and what worked in 1980 isn’t what worked in 2000. Even the marketing strategies used today aren’t the same as what worked in 2000.
Here are 7 online marketing strategies that work today and that will likely work ten years from now.
- Search engine optimization – Build a website and make sure each web page is optimized for search engine traffic.
- Pay per click marketing – Spend your money on clicks for a speedy response to your message and watch your income rise.
- Social media marketing – Use social bookmarking and social networking to connect off of your website, then drive that traffic to your web pages.
- Video marketing – Online video marketing has arrived in full force. Engage with your audience on YouTube and other video marketing websites.
- Start a blog – Write to your blog every day. The search engines love the fresh daily content.
- Article marketing – Write articles and distribute them online to websites within your niche. You’ll build your reputation and build links to your website.
- Claim your local business listing – Each major search engine has a local business listing associated with their Maps feature. Claim your listing if you are a local business.
There is no substitute for these 7 online marketing strategies. You can do more, but I wouldn’t dare do less.
Beef Your Online Presence With A Blog
Can the addition of a blog help your online presence? There are lots of arguments both for and against a blog and the answer to that question very much depends on who you talk to. From our perspective, the positives that blogs deliver far outweigh the negatives, especially if you publish your blog in the most appropriate manner.
Blogs are especially beneficial to those who try to market a business on a small budget. In fact, apart from your time, blogs can be published and used as a marketing tool, virtually for free. However, don’t make the mistake of adding a blog and then publishing anything and everything. Like all business processes, a little planning can go a long way. Here are a few tips to help you get started.
Consider your audience:
Your blog should be targeting your audience, and that starts with simple things like your theme and the language used. If your audience is young, then a bright, cheerful, and fun theme may be appropriate. If your target audience is more mature, then a more mature blog may be more appropriate.
When it comes to language, if your target is a youth audience, then using the language of youth could be appropriate – you could even consider hiring a young person to write your blog. Likewise, if you are targeting mothers, getting a mother to write your blog could pay dividends.
Focused content:
Plan your content. One of the biggest mistakes that many business blogs make is to oversell. Use your blog as a social communication tool rather than as a formal business tool. This is where niche related writers often bring better results than marketing people. Your content should be focused on your business, be entertaining, and should take a ‘helping hand’ approach – even when introducing new products.
One of the benefits that blogs bring to any online presence is the steady stream of content. Search engines will visit a website more often if it is regularly publishing content. Naturally, your blog should be optimized for organic search to deliver best results.
Ultimately, your blog is a great communication tool. It draws interest from search engines, from social media communities, and from general readers. Make your content interesting and people will come back on a regular basis.
The real
SEO Is Only One Link In The Internet Marketing Chain
SEO is not Internet marketing. In fact, SEO is just one link in what is an ever growing chain of Internet marketing options. There are some online businesses that are quite profitable, yet they have not done any ounce of search engine optimization, they have the other links to be profitable. So what are those other ‘links’ in the chain? Here are a handful of marketing options that should keep you occupied for a while.
Pay-per-click advertising. There are many businesses that prefer the targeted traffic that comes from PPC advertising. It can be easy to measure your ROI, and you have complete control of your spending.
Social Media Marketing. There are some niches that are more suited to social media marketing than others. Some businesses can survive by attracting customers through social media rather than search.
Email Marketing. Newsletters have long been a popular channel for marketers. Email marketing has proven to be highly successful for some online businesses, particularly those that are catalog-based.
Offline Marketing. Large corporations still use traditional offline marketing strategies. Online businesses are now finding that some of these channels are well suited for promoting their online businesses.
Blogs. Blogs are certainly not dead. In fact, blogs are becoming a favorite place for many that are researching products and brands before making decisions on where to spend their money. Blogs are also an excellent way for your online business to connect with the social side of the web.
Businesses, both online and offline, that can harness all of those links in the Internet marketing chain are going from strength to strength. That doesn’t mean you need to utilize all of them, but if you can determine which of those options are best suited to your niche, you can focus your attention on building your presence and building your business – to success.
Blogging And Social Media Go Hand In Hand
If you thought blogging was important before, think about how important it has become since social media has taken over. Some people have considered that blogging is on its way out because social media is on its way up. But that would be a mistake to think like that.
Think about what it is that most people promote on social media sites. What do you promote?
While its certainly reasonable to think that static websites are shared on social media sites, it’s not a stretch to think that blog content is shared more often. In fact, I would say the three most shared items on social media are:
- Photos
- Videos
- And blog posts
But not necessarily in that order.
Social media makes blogging more important today than it ever has been. If you can shuffle your content through the noise and come out on the other side smelling rosy then you can rise to one of the most respected sites within your niche. Many blogs have done it and a good number of them did it because of the push that social media gave them. How many times have you found a new blog to read because someone shared it with you on a social media site?
Keep this in mind: Blogging and social media go hand in hand. Promote them that way.
5 Social Media Marketing Strategies You Can’t Ignore
Social media marketing has come of age and today it is nearly impossible to market yourself online without doing some social media marketing. The following 5 social media strategies are specific strategies that you would be foolhardy to ignore.
- Facebook – We might as well start with the largest social media site on the Web. Facebook is a tough animal because spamming is strongly discouraged and Facebook has internal controls to get rid of spammers. However, it can be very effective if done the right way and it is the most trafficked website online so you can’t ignore it.
- Twitter – Twitter is a great adjunct to Facebook. Some people think it’s an either/or equation. It’s not; it’s both/and. Your audiences on Facebook and Twitter will be different audiences. Chase them both; be effective and you will love the results.
- Video Marketing – I’m broadening this one to include online video marketing in various forms even though you know we’re talking about YouTube. But don’t limit yourself to YouTube. With Twitter and Facebook you can design special strategies that fit those websites on their own, but with video marketing you can design a strategy that works for YouTube and other online video sharing sites too.
- LinkedIn – There is hardly a business that can’t benefit from LinkedIn. It’s a special social media site designed for business interactions. Ignore it at your own peril.
- Blogging – No discussion of social media is complete with a discussion on blogging. If you don’t have your own blog then you need to get one. You especially need one if you plan to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Blogging is the beginning of social media marketing.
How To Properly Plan Your Internet Marketing Strategy
Internet marketing is too important a task to leave to chance. It is important that you do a few things to set up your campaigns and measure your results along the way. Without measuring your results you cannot know what is working and what you need to change.
The first step to planning an effective Internet marketing campaign is to take inventory of your business. What are your strengths? What are you good at? How do you differ from your competitors?
You should write down your core values and mission statement. These are your guiding principles – offline and online.
After you have written down your core values and mission statement and discovered how you fit into your industry and how you differ from your competitors, you can begin to set your budget and line out how you will market yourself online. Your Internet marketing plan should contain, at a minimum, the following details:
- Your website – The hub of your Internet marketing plan. How many pages will you need? What keywords will you target? Figure out your approach to search engine optimization and build from there. Make sure your website design represents your core values and mission statement.
- Pay Per Click Marketing – Will you incorporate a pay per click campaign into your Internet marketing strategy? If not then state so in your plan. If so then you need to set a budget and plan your keywords.
- Social Media Marketing – Will you use social media? If so, which sites will you benefit from the most? What percentage of your overall marketing budget will be devoted to social media? Be specific in detailing your social media marketing plan.
- Blogging – Will you benefit from a blog? Include the details of your blogging strategy into your plan as well.
- Video Marketing – Will video be a significant part of your Internet marketing strategy? Will you embed video on your website or simply use it as a traffic generation tool? Outline your video marketing plan in as much detail as possible.
- Other Marketing Initiatives – What else is important to your Internet marketing strategy? Include it in your plan. Whether you plan to use article marketing or mobile marketing, put it into your plan. If there is anything you plan to incorporate into your online marketing plan then it needs to be written down.
Don’t worry about whether you’ll stick to your plan completely. At this stage you are simply making a plan. You can change it later. You can modify it as needed. But failing to plan is planning to fail and no one wants to engage in Internet marketing only to fall on their face. Least off, you.
Two Forms Of Viral Marketing Right Under Your Nose
OK, this might come as a shock to you, but two of the best methods of viral marketing are right under your nose and the chances are you’re already using them.
Ready? Brace yourself. The two forms of viral marketing right under your nose (and that you are probably already doing) are:
- Blogging
OK, now tell me you didn’t see that coming.
First, blogging. There are a lot of reasons why blogging can be viewed as one of the best methods of viral marketing. But, truth be told, it’s even better when matched up with other social media marketing methods like Facebook and Twitter. And … real time search has made it even more important because your blog posts can be indexed and set aside as a part of the real time search results giving them even greater exposure than ever before. The only thing you need to do is create great content that others will be happy to share.
Then, there’s Facebook. Facebook is like a party. That means there is more than just one way to get in. Not only can you make friends and share your blog posts and other interests with those friends, but you can also build a fan page with all sorts of great features that will attract followers and you can also build apps that get passed around and used. Both of those Facebook marketing tools can easily make your website an instant viral sensation.
Viral marketing is nothing new. It’s been around awhile in various forms. And blogging and Facebook are not the only methods of viral marketing online. But they are right under your nose and there’s a real good chance you’re already doing them. Need help making them viral?
Internet Marketing In Silo
Marketing Pilgrim writes that even though small business owners are talking about social media marketing, they’re not really running campaigns that are integrated with their other marketing programs. In fact, these marketing campaigns, along with blogs and microblogs, are “in the silo”.
The silo is a term used to describe a marketing tactic that is not a part of one’s overall marketing program. It is in fact standing out on its own.
The obvious question here is, Why are marketers not integrating their blogs, microblogs and social media campaigns into their traditional marketing efforts? Are these programs seen as separate, or different, than traditional marketing? Is it because the small business owners don’t really see the connection?
Whatever the case might be, it is important to consider that your marketing efforts will be much more effective if you integrate your online and your off line marketing rather than put your Internet marketing into a silo. You want your company to speak with one voice. It can’t do that if it’s living in the silo.
Would SMO Be Better If Facebook Offered Blogging?
Chris Crum at WebProNews suggested that Facebook replace it Notes tab with a Blog tab. It’s not a bad idea.
Facebook users would gain an immediate benefit if Facebook offered blogging. No. 1, the built in Facebook user base would be incredible. This is now the second most visited site online, right behind Google. Facebook could compete head on with Google’s Blogger and actually do well.
Not only would users of Facebook benefit with that feature, but Facebook itself would benefit as it would see an immediate increase in user-generated content, improve its search engine friendliness and more people would stay on the website longer. But would a Facebook blog improve social media optimization (SMO)?
I believe it would improve search engine optimization for anyone who had a Facebook blog. I also believe it would improve SMO in a number of ways.
- First and foremost, Facebook users would likely connect more through a blog
- A blog could be brandable just like a Facebook page
- With thousands of Facebook blogs pumping out content on a regular basis, Facebook would likely see more Twitter traffic
- Widgetized blogs would likely lead to more video sharing on Facebook
I don’t really see any negatives in the prospect of adding a Facebook blog. Do you?
Self Hosted Blog or Website?
In case you’ve been dying to know the answer to this question, the answer is both.
A personalized, custom built Website gives a business many freedoms concerning structure, content, and additional applications, such as shopping carts, forms, dynamic flash interfaces, and more, plus a very fresh, from-scratch, start. While many of these things may be available on a self hosted Blog, there is a difference between having a recognizable format and having one that may very well cause a user to bounce from your page. Self hosted Blogs, while capable of hosting many things that a website can, have an expected format, and should be used primarily for content. Content refers to onsite, html readable text, and links. This includes headers, footers, side bars, body text, posts, etc.
Now, what is the meaning behind this question, and more importantly, why the need for both?
The simple answer:
Blogs are becoming increasingly popular, to the point of absurdity. Every other person who is active on the internet these days has at least one blog to which they contribute, and many have two or three. Still, some have more even than that! So why join the crowd?
First of all, all the well tuned on and off site optimization in the world will not turn leads into conversions. For your sites ROI (return on investment) goals, more than likely there is a thank you page, order confirmation page, or some similar page which contains a tracking code. This is how you tally conversions, and when pitted against clicks, impressions, or monthly budget (depending on your campaign), you can measure ROI. There is a key factor between the initial lead and the conversion: Your Website
I’ve discussed how your optimized keywords and on site content need to relate to eachother, but these things should also be related to the design and structure of your website. If a lead comes to your site expecting to find a list of available products, easy to use shopping cart and easy checkout, more than likely, they will not find this on a Blog.
Another example, on the flip side, is content. While your site’s page content is crucial to optimization, suppose there is a good deal more information pertaining to your business that you wish to share with your potential clients or customers. Having all this information on a website that is also being used for checkout and browsing may bog things down for the user because, as I mentioned earlier, the quicker and easier it is for them to order and pay, the better the chance they will do just that. Adding a link on your site to a Blog about your company and it’s products, as well as news about upcoming products or services, is the best way to share large amounts of information without interfering with their shopping or browsing experience.
Additionally, having “sister sites” which link to eachother, one of which being a Blog containing feeds, news, links from Social Media Blog profiles, and lots of key content, is a good way to increase relevance and page rank, as well as targeted traffic. You can link relevant posts in the Blog to product pages on your site (and to other relevant posts within the Blog itself), give the user more opportunities to contact you with questions, and provide more than enough information that may already answer their inqueries.
There is a good deal of optimization that goes into a successful Blog (be it Sponsored Ads or Natural Search), but the beauty is, traffic coming to one site will lead to the other, and there is a clean, concise, well designed format which makes it easier for your leads to convert to sales.