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Does Blogging Help With SEO?

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Does Blogging Help SEO? Still Skeptical? Here are 6 reasons why your business needs to be blogging to help your SEO rankings right now.

When we first started trying to SEO our website, we began by picking some keywords with decent search volume and began building links to that page. That worked OK for a while, but there was really something missing in this strategy.

We know this is true for many of our web development clients, and you might even be familiar with constantly checking your keyword rankings and feeling the frustration of not being able to control their movement.

When we speak to these clients about the importance of blogging for SEO purposes the most common response is:

“Does blogging help SEO? Let’s focus on link building – we don’t really think blog posts are going to achieve what we’re after.”

This thought process is the biggest flaw in SEO strategy for your website.

You’re focusing on ranking for a few terms instead of focusing on providing what your customers want. Sometimes customers come in and know exactly what they want. But most of the time, they are going to have a bunch of questions. They know they want to buy something… but they aren’t ready, yet. We know in our business, we hear the same questions over and over.

What about YOU? Do you ever wind up answering the same customer questions again and again? We’re sure you do, and this is where blogging for SEO can really help both you and your customers.

Some examples of questions we get asked are:

  • How will I migrate my site to BigCommerce?
  • Do you offer product photography services?
  • How do I remove negative seller feedback on Amazon?
  • What type of Adwords campaign is right for me?

This got us thinking… Maybe, just maybe there’s a better way to go after clients and rank for keywords that matter to them. So, we started answering the questions our clients had in the form of blog posts. Do you know what happened? We started ranking on the first page of Google within 12-48 hours for these posts and our website traffic grew leaps and bounds! Turns out, the same questions and problems people were asking us on the phone, they were also Googling!

So, does blogging help SEO? Yes, and it can help your SEO too!

If you’re not using blog posts to help your SEO strategy – you are missing out! If you’re a small business owner who’s still wondering “does blogging help SEO?” – here are six undeniable reasons start blogging now.

1. Create Blog Posts If You Want to Attract a Following

When you initially launch a blog, it probably won’t receive much traffic – and that’s okay. As your blog grows and becomes more popular, it will generate a strong following of loyal visitors. These visitors may follow your blog and/or its RSS feed on a daily basis, checking to see when new content is published.

2. If You Want To Announce New Products or Services

A blog is the perfect platform on which to announce new products or services. If your business recently added a new product to its lineup, let the world know by writing about it in a blog post. Assuming your blog has a strong following, this can bring invaluable attention to your business’s new product.

3. Blog Posts = Lead Generation

Of course, blogging is also an effective method for generating leads. You can install a newsletter signup form, for instance, allowing users to enter their email address in exchange for email delivered by your business. Alternatively, you can set up an inquery form where visitors enter their personal information to learn more about your business or its products/services.

4. Blog Post Can Target Local Search Optimization Too

Blogging can also prove useful in local search optimization (LSO). If you are trying to rank for geo-specific keywords (e.g. your city + business niche), you can write high-quality blog posts containing those keywords. Search engines will notice these keywords when crawling your site, encouraging higher search rankings in the process.

5. Be The Authority

You’ll present your business as an authority figure in its respective industry or niche by maintaining a blog. If a prospect is forced to choose between a business with a blog and a business without a blog, they’ll probably choose the one with a blog. Why? We already talked about this a little… but by answering your potential customers’ questions, you are establishing yourself as an authority in your industry. This instills trust and confidence in your knowledge and services. The key thing to remember, however, is that you need to publish high-quality content on a regular basis.

6. It’s Easy to Create Blog Posts

Blogging is actually easier than most business owners realize. Thanks to user-friendly blogging platforms like WordPress, you can have a blog up and running in minutes. Creating new content for your blog is also easy, as WordPress and similar content management systems (CMS) use a web-based interface.

Don’t want to do it yourself?

There are plenty of blog writing services out there just like the professional blog writing services offered by TurkReno Incorporated who will:

  • Research and validate ideas for blog posts that are PROVEN to be a hit with your audience
  • Pitch ideas to you and you can approve or reject.
  • Vet, hire and train writers specifically to produce HIGH QUALITY content,
  • Format it in a way that’s easily readable on the web (What Google’s Looking for).
  • FULLY optimize your post for SEO including title tags, h1s, internal links and external links.
  • Post directly to your blog for a completely hands-off experience.

These are just a few reasons why your business needs a blog.

Try it! See first hand the positive impact blogging for SEO can have on acquiring new leads for your business.

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Amazon, Sony Falsely Advertising the PS Vita

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The PlayStation Vita

The PlayStation Vita

After watching the PlayStation UStream today and in much anticipation of the PlayStation Vita, we were very disappointed to find out that the PS Vita being sold as a console capable of playing PSOne Classics won’t play PSOne Classics on day one. We covered this as a potential leak, but now it’s much more. Now you may disagree with our position, but we’ve got plenty of proof that what the sales ad Amazon displays for the PlayStation Vita is false advertising:

Vita can play PSP titles, minis, PS one classics, video and comics from the PlayStation Store

As I understand it, and I’ve consulted legal aid about this, the Vita should be able to play PSOne Classics as advertised. And as you can correctly assume, we’ve invested quite a bit of money into purchasing Final Fantasy and other Squaresoft / Square Enix PSOne Classics to play. All of them except for Legend of Mana and Chrono Cross.

We decided that this wasn’t fair. And it isn’t fair. You should complain. We did. To the FTC. What did we say to the FTC? Glad you asked.

I purchased the PS Vita First Edition Bundle with the anticipation that the console would be able to use PlayStation One Classics as it is advertised on this link: http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-Vita-3G-Wi-Fi-Launch-Bundle/dp/B0071NH8B8/

Today Sony announced on their webcast that the PlayStation One Classics feature was “coming soon”. This, as I understand it, is false advertising. As stated on the LA County Department of Consumer Affairs, “If they say it will do it, it should do it. If the advertisement says a product can do something, it must be able to do it. For example, if a manufacturer advertises that their product can cure cancer, then it must be able to cure cancer.” I have made a significant investment into PlayStation One Classics on the PlayStation network that meets or exceeds the amount of money that I am paying for the PlayStation Vita. I feel ripped off as I have traded in my PSPGo to Amazon in the trust that the PSVita would do what it said it would do on Amazon.

Want an FTC Complaint Number to go look up our complaint? Sure. 35014256. Want to make your own FTC Complaint? Go ahead, make our day. And you should too because IT’S FALSE ADVERTISING. Need to see why? Here’s a link to the Los Angeles Department of Consumer Affairs website in which they state:

If they say it will do it, it should do it. If the advertisement says a product can do something, it must be able to do it. For example, if a manufacturer advertises that their product can cure cancer, then it must be able to cure cancer. The next time you’re at the grocery store, look in their vitamins section. Most dietary supplements won’t tell you what the product does unless they can find evidence to support it.

Sure. Get mad at us, call us “Microsoft Fanboys” (that was a really funny tweet, thanks), don’t alter the Amazon site to make our claim even more legitimate. It just sucks that we relied on a retailer and Sony to say one thing and then they promise it as a soon “eventuality”. Yeah. Eventually the Mayan calendar may be right too. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what Amazon and Sony does because they have TWO DAYS to fix this before it turns into a legitimate legal claim.

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Did Amazon Leak Unannounced PlayStation Vita Feature?

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PlayStation Vita

A lot of commotion has stirred up (see comments) lately from the differences between the PlayStation Vita First Edition bundle, which includes a 4GB Memory Card, PlayStation Vita title Little Deviants, a case and the 3G/Wifi version of the PlayStation Vita – comes out on the 15th of February if you pre-order now, and the release day version that was announced recently on the PlayStation Blog which is $50 USD cheaper and includes an 8GB card. Both versions recently got a AT&T DataConnect Pass that also includes a free PlayStation Store download. No details have been released on the specifics of the download you can get, but that’s neither here nor there. The real topic people have been begging to know is can the PlayStation Vita play PS One Classics.

A recent January PlayStation Blogcast said that their “engineers” have not yet opened up the Vita to be able to play PlayStation One games. That’s what we were told… and that’s what we know, until yesterday. Because we got word the Release Day bundle had a 8GB card, which if you’re counting 8 is more than 4, and a case is not that big of a deal to pick one up later or have it shipped out the same day, we took a look at Amazon to compare the difference.

Here’s a link to the PlayStation Vita First Edition Bundle and here’s a link to the WiFi version of the Release Day bundle. Figure it out yet? No? We’ll tell you.

“Vita can play PSP titles, minis, PS one classics, video and comics from the PlayStation Store”.

Need a screenshot? No problem.

PS Vita - can it play playstation one games

Looks like it’s time to sell or trade in your PSP’s and PSPGo’s ladies and gentlemen BEFORE they drop the price on the trade-in value at your local game store… Unless Amazon is wrong, in which case we’re not pleased and hope the feature comes as soon as possible.

Update on Trade-in prices: GameStop is offering a whopping $25 dollars for your $169 investment as a standalone trade-in. Wow. RIP OFF. eBay Instant Sale is offering at the moment $55.88 for a like new PSPGo. And the winner for trade-in is Amazon at just under $83.00 for a “like new” condition PSPGo.

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2011: A Year In Review

As I sit back and write this retrospective on 2011, I realize just how much I stopped blogging when we got really busy. That’s our resolution: blog more. Easy resolution to keep, I suppose. Onto our stories of 2011!

2011 was a year full of surprises, failures, catastrophes, losses and laughter. We first covered 2011 with Alabama Moon, a movie based on a book by Watt Key about Moon Blake. Supposedly this film took place in Alabama, but it was filmed in Canada and Louisiana. Fail. Read More about Alabama Moon.

In March an Earthquake and Tsunami struck Japan causing manufacturing and supply outages from mega-corporations like Sony and Canon. It took almost the rest of the year just to get some of the companies back on their feet again while others just shifted jobs to other parts of the world. Read More about the Earthquake and Tsunami.

Later in March, the White House called for a “New” copyright crackdown law citing that they wanted the US Congress to fix “deficiencies that could hinder enforcement” of intellectual property laws. Netflix and Hulu later gained an unprecedented momentum (thus filtering out pirate traffic vs. legitimate traffic) and later in the year SOPA took center stage where the Internet went into a rage. Read More about the Call for Copyright Crackdown.

In Late April, the Sony PlayStation Network outage occurred near simultaneously to the Amazon EC2 outage. Foursquare, Quora, Amazon, Sony, Apple, Reddit, Hootsuite, Wattpad – all went down. The only group to naturally take credit was “Anonymous” for the lawsuit Sony rightfully brought against George Hotz aka GeoHot for purportedly jailbreaking the PS3. Read More about the Sony PSN Outage Timeline.

In mid-May, the US State Department drew attention to the effect Social Media was having on the Internet landscape stating that it had become a “must-have communication tool. The Wall Street Journal put out a graph that indicated that while only a fraction of millions of people had visited websites like Coca-cola and Starbucks, almost 10 to 15 times that had visited their Facebook pages. We outline the Social Media aspect and as the question “Is It Time to Shut Down Your Website” in this retrospective.

Steve jobs 2011

On October 5th, 2011, Apple co-founder, CEO and American icon Steve Jobs passed away. Noted with the creation of innovations such as the iPod and iPhone, millions remembered Steve Jobs by e-mailing Apple how he changed their lives. To this day, that memorial can be seen here: http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/. We reposted his Stanford Commencement Address that still inspires many in our blog “Remembering Steve Jobs“.

In mid-October, we announced the upcoming 3rd Annual South Alabama Film Festival which took place in Downtown Mobile November 4th through the 6th bringing commerce and Independent entertainment to the area. Movies such as Wrestling For Jesus, Missing Pieces, Prairie Love, Man of Deeds and The Reconstruction of Asa Carter were featured. Read More about the South Alabama Film Festival.

Later in October, we reposted an article by Tomer Tagrin citing Steve Jobs at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in 1997 in which he stated “Focusing is about saying ‘No'”. The video of the original conference as well as the article by Tomer can be read here.

The iPhone 4s and iOS 5 launched in late October. As subscribers of Google Voice, we posted some handy instructions for those who wanted to manually swap over their line to a new device. Read More about Activating Google Voicemail on the AT&T iPhone 4s.

On Halloween, we got word that Google had chosen Mobile, Alabama to launch their Mobilize Mobile campaign. At first, we didn’t believe it because of the source announcing it. But it did later happen. Read More about the Rumor of Google Coming to Mobile Alabama.

Also on Halloween, we resounded our own feelings about the banking industry, specifically Regions Bank, charging from $3.00 to $7.50 for debit card usage. We also got pretty ticked off when a “friend” didn’t repay a loan and illustrate just how much Regions can doublespeak when they want to. Read More about Banking: The Importance of Not Bearing False Expectations.

November 1st, 2011 brought some joy to PS3 MMO players around the world when Sony Online Entertainment made DC Universe Online Free-To-Play. Read More about DC Universe going FTP here.

Exciting for us, and maybe not for you, but we had Hibachi On The Go open up in Daphne, Alabama opened in November. Pretty good Japanese food and at a more affordable price than a sit-down sushi restaurant. Read More about Hibachi on the Go. Love the seaweed salad.

Also in the beginning of November, after leaving the area Checkers, also known as Rally’s in other parts of the country, reopened at it’s founding location in Downtown Mobile. The first 100 people got free Checkers fries for a year. Read More about the free fry giveaway.

Amidst the earlier speculation, Google actually DID come to Mobile, Alabama. We got a chance to meet Jason Spero, @speroman on Twitter, Director of Google’s Mobile Division in the Americas, see a few of our competitors, and learn more about the Mobilize initiative. We posted an online schedule of events and a link to the Mobilize website here.

Late November, we posted an important blog about the lessons we’ve learned on Twitter. Namely we wanted to emphasize to engage your followers and those you find interesting. It’s a good read and we hope you find it helpful. Read more about Twitter Best Practices Learned With Hard Knocks.

Client Brad Sundberg, who’s list of achievements are longer than this post, of BSUN Media Systems posted a very helpful guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Black Friday Shopping. It’s still good for next year so take a look.

Final fantasy vi

At the beginning of December, the long awaited Final Fantasy VI, also known as the SNES version of Final Fantasy III, launched on the PlayStation Network. Listed on multiple blogs, websites and magazines, this game has won top 10 and above in accolades for Must-Have RPGs. Read More about Final Fantasy VI.

The Thomas Hospital Foundation on December 9th announced that artwork by Elizabeth Goree was available to support the foundation during the holiday season. They also shared information on a Family Fun Project that anyone can do. Read more about the Thomas Hospital Foundation Christmas Greeting Program.

GoDaddy Sucks. And this is just Part 1. We illustrate what SOPA is, why GoDaddy was supporting it (we still think they are), and how it’s a major crux to the Internet. PR stunt by GoDaddy? Totally. Read More about GoDaddy Sucks and Here is Why – Part 1 – The SOPA Truth.

Just before Christmas, we shared a rather interesting and concerning video about how Siri, the newest feature of the iPhone 4s, could kill people. It wasn’t true, of course, but technology may concern people like this in the future. Consider yourself warned and Read More about When Apple’s Siri Kills People.

And in the continued SOPA controversy, Anonymous decides to declare war on the Sony PlayStation Network – again. Yawn. These kids are annoying, but if you want to Read More about Anonymous Declaring War on Sony for SOPA Support, be our guest.

Ending the news in December, barring nothing important happens between now and midnight, The day after Anonymous declares war on Sony more companies including Sony Electronics, Nintendo and Electronics Arts drop their support for SOPA. We also outline our stance on SOPA. Read More about Who Dropped SOPA.

From everyone at TurkReno Incorporated, Have a Happy New Year and a Prosperous 2012!

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Is It Time To Shut Down Your Website?

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This was a very interesting article we picked up on from Twitter. Worth the read considering who it’s referring to and how Social Media continues to shape the Internet landscape.

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Just last month, the U.S. State Department announced that it was shutting down www.America.gov, the website launched to provide cultural and policy content to the world. Instead, the State Department will focus on using social media to get out its message. The aim is to communicate in a more interactive way with today’s networked audiences around the world—like those blogging Egypt’s revolution from Tahrir Square or documenting Syrian unrest on YouTube.

Shutting down your website to communicate solely through social media channels might seem like a crazy idea for any large organization. But then again, there is some logic to it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Starbucks receives over ten times as much traffic to its Facebook page (19.4 million unique visitors each month) as to its corporate website (1.8 million). For Coca-Cola, the divergence is even starker: 22.5 million visitors on Facebook vs. just 270,000 to its website—over 80 times as much traffic.

A decade ago, the corporate website had become the new “must-have” communication tool. But now, as web users spend increasing amounts of time on social media, traffic to static corporate websites appears to be on the decline.

Facebook vs Website Traffic for 2 Brands

Facebook vs Website Traffic for 2 Brands

But before you rush out to pull the plug on your own web site, it’s worth considering the benefits of each approach.

Benefits of Social Media

1. Inherently interactive. That’s where the term “social” comes from. Unlike a static HTML website, designed to read and click, social media like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are designed around sharing, responding, and interacting.
2. Where people are spending time. With over 500 million active users on Facebook, most Web audiences are spending more time there than browsing company sites. Just be sure that’s true for your own demographic (e.g. Facebook is a nonstarter in Japan) and your own industry (most users still do not use Facebook for learning about b2b topics).
3. Easy to acquire. Clicking a “like” button on Facebook or “follow” button on Twitter is a lot easier than filling in the sign up form on a web page. So it’s no surprise that many companies find it easier to build a large following on social media platforms.
4. Virality. When your audience interacts with you on social media platforms, it is instantly visible to their own friends and contacts. This digital “word-of-mouth” can be one of the most powerful tools for reaching new audiences.

Benefits of Your Own Website

1. Control the design. Have you ever tried designing a page on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube? The experience is like trying to swim with one hand tied behind your back. Having your own website allows you complete control, which may be essential if you have a lot of content or options that you need to organize for different audiences.
2. Own the data. Social media platforms are owned by the companies that run them, and, as such, they are the only ones holding all the data on your customers and your interactions with them. On your own website, you own all the data.
3. Targeting and personalization. Owning data and controlling design allow for much more targeted interaction with your customers than is possible on social media platforms. If you know which emails a customer in your database is clicking on, you can ensure her follow up emails, Web landing pages, and ecommerce experiences are much more suited to her particular interests.
4. Reach all your audience. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, or other services which might reach large segments of your customers, your own website is available to 100% of them. (That is, as long as your website has been optimized to work on a mobile phone.)

So, unless you are so small (e.g. a one-person enterprise) that you lack the resources to maintain both a Facebook page and a website, you almost certainly need both. (Even the State Department still kept its main website after shutting down America.gov.)

Fresh Approach Needed

But as you hold on to your familiar company website that’s grown a little musty over the last decade, be sure to give it a fresh look. Are you using the unique design capabilities of a stand-alone site? Are you capturing and leveraging data? Are you interacting and building a database with your most loyal customers who care enough to do more than press a “like” button for you? If not, your website needs a revamp to be worth keeping it alive for next year.

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David Rogers examines the five core strategies of successful networked businesses in his newest book, “The Network Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age.” He teaches Digital Marketing Strategy at Columbia Business School, where he is Executive Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership. Rogers has advised and developed marketing and digital strategies for numerous companies such as SAP, Eli Lilly, and Visa. Find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/david_rogers.

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Now our own thoughts on this are mixed. Not every client needs a website. Some clients need a boost in their Social Media strategy, some need a website and some need both. We’re here and happy to give you a free analysis on your online presence. In any case, we’re about to publish this article and it syndicates to Social Media. Why the U.S. State Department isn’t using this exact same strategy to balance out their numbers and create a stronger presence is a bit baffling. Please feel free to share your thoughts!

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PlayStation Network Down

Sony PlayStation Network Outage; Amazon Brings Countless Millions Offline

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Sony has released a Questions list that can be found here: http://us.playstation.com/support/answer/index.htm?a_id=2356

  • April 19th – Amazon:

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,

We’re excited to announce the launch of live HTTP streaming for Amazon CloudFront, AWS’s easy-to-use content delivery network.

Using Amazon CloudFront with Amazon EC2 running Adobe’s Flash Media Server and Amazon Route 53 (AWS’s DNS service), you can now easily and cost-effectively deliver your live video via AWS. And, we’ve made it simple to get started by creating an AWS CloudFormation template that handles all of the provisioning and sequencing for all the AWS resources you need for this live streaming stack.

Portal 2 on Steam, XB360 and PS3, SOCOM 4 Launches.

  • April 20th – GigaOm:

The first graph gives an idea of normal Amazon EC2 response times over the last 30 days, but notice the US-EAST region start to spike at April 20.

The outage that affected a hundreds of applications running in the provider’s US-EAST region is almost resolved, more than 24 hours after a “networking event” took down a number of popular services, including EC2, Elastic Block Storage and Relational Database Service.

We continue to see progress in recovering volumes, and have heard many additional customers confirm that they’re recovering. Our current estimate is that the majority of volumes will be recovered over the next 5 to 6 hours.

First 24 hours of outage (worldwide)

EC2 Outage

Foursquare, Quora, Amazon, Sony, Apple, Reddit, Hootsuite, Wattpad – All went down.

  • April 21st – Sony:

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running.

  • April 22nd – Sony:

An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services.

  • April 22nd – ZDNet:

Amazon’s Web Services outage: End of cloud innocence?

  • April 24th – 1:42 AM Amazon:

Service disruption: Database instance connectivity and latency issues

In line with the most recent Amazon EC2 update, we wanted to let you know that the team continues to be all-hands on deck working on the remaining database instances in the single affected Availability Zone. It’s taking us longer than we anticipated. When we have an updated ETA or meaningful new update, we will make sure to post it here. But, we can assure you that the team is working this hard and will do so as long as it takes to get this resolved.

At the time, Amazon’s AWS Service Health Dashboard was at red.

  • April 24 – 2:08 PM Amazon:

The number of Database Instances without access continues to reduce steadily. As the access to these remaining database instances is restored, they will become usable without additional action on your end. If your Database Instance is not yet available, you also have the option to initiate a Point-in-time-Restore operation using the steps outlined in our previous post at 10:08 AM PDT. We are in the process of contacting this small set of customers who still do not have access to their Database Instances.

  • April 25 – 8:20AM Sony:

I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.

As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly. We’ll keep you updated with information as it becomes available. We once again thank you for your patience.

  • April 25 – 7:39PM Amazon:

We are digging deeply into the root causes of this event and will post a detailed post-mortem.

Amazon and Sony appear to be taking a very similar approach. So was the attack on the PlayStation Network, on Amazon Web Services, or are they one in the same? The answer is: No, they are not.

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Others blame Anonymous who had taken credit for a separate hacking attempt earlier in the month towards SCEA. Some believe that this is also partially motivated by Geohot’s impending court rulings. First IANAL, but it would seem there’s a certain level of legality that has been crossed. Clearly he’s not getting hired right now by Sony at the moment because he’s probably being prosecuted by the US DOJ because he’s IN FEDERAL COURT. When a Corporation files a complaint of that caliber, especially one with a DMCA, Copyright Infringement and allegations of Computer Fraud and other crimes, that could be the act of a number of different things including faking the identify of Sony, misuse of the Sony logo or other things that we’ll never hear about. “Geohot” may deserve what’s coming to him just like any one who has walked across a line that fine. He alone will decide what he does with his life at that point.

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