If you have a blog I hope you see it as a strategic marketing tool for your business or organization because it is. One thing you should be doing is blogging specific keywords and phrases that describe you and your business, products, or services. If you have a Google AdWord account you have already identified the keywords you want to be recognized for, so why not use those same keywords straegically in your blog post titles and throughout the posts themselves?

The stats I continue to see pop up after doing a little research suggest that 70% of online searchers prefer natural search results compared to paid search results like AdWords. That’s why it’s important to be found on the left-hand side of the Google search page more than the right-hand side. You get more than twice the traffic.

Here’s how it can work…

Let’s say I want to be discovered as a new media marketing or social media marketing expert in the Nashville area (which would be nice but I personally don’t want to be too geographically fixed so I wouldn’t necessarily use these specific combinations of keywords). I would probably do a steady stream of posts over the course of several months where I would use the words “social media” or “new media” and “Nashville” in the post titles and through the blog posts themselves. I would also look for variations on these keywords like “social media marketing” and “middle Tennessee” or “new media marketing” and “Nashville-area.” I could even get more specific with phrases like “social media consulting” or “new media coaching” and then also tie that into the Nashville or middle Tennessee keywords.

As you can see there’s a lot that can be done here and it’s just the beginning. There are all kinds of alternative phrases I haven’t even gotten into like digital marketing, online advertising, interactive media, interactive marketing, etc. I expect if you just took 15 minutes to focus on the keywords for your business you would come up with a nice, long list too. Once you get your list, identify the top ten most important ones so you know where to put the bulk of your energy.

One more thing to do is to really focusing on tagging your posts with the same keywords as you’ll see I’ve done below with the same keywords that you use in your posts. Jeff, over at Mossy Creek Custom saw a great increase in traffic to his blog once he started tagging more specifically.

After a few weeks start searching the keywords to see if your posts are turning up. Also, check your stats and see if there are some specific keywords that seem to be sending a lot of people to your blog. You may be surprised

So, to recap, here are four things to do:

1. Identify your keywords. If you haven’t identified your keywords with a Google AdWords account, take some time to create a list of all the phrases you would hope to be found under in a Google search. After this, pick out the top 10 that are most important and start with those.
2. Post strategically and regularly. If you post four times a week, maybe one of the four posts every week will be a strategic post with your selected keywords. You should plan to do this for a few months to get good coverage because it may take that long before you see it show up on Google depending on how competitive your particluar market is.
3. Tag you posts. Tag well. Tag often. Tag like you marketing life depends on it…ok, not that much, but you get the idea.
4. Measure. Check to see what’s working and what isn’t. You may have some surprisingly high performing keywords that you didn’t expect. If so, you should consider blogging about them more often.

I admit that I’m not an SEO guy and and don’t want to be. There are lots of specialists who know the ins and outs of how to get the most Google juice out of your website or blog and it’s worth knowing where to go for that kind of help.

Eric Holter and the team at Newfangled Web Factory, located in the shadow of the University of North Carolina, (no kidding…they’re right down the road from the campus) have put together a two part series on search engine optimization. The video below is the first of two they’ve done to help people understand how to do search engine optimization better. You can read more about Newfangled’s two-part series on SEO here (part 1) and here (part 2).

How to do SEO

I know, I know…I don’t usually show video here except on Fridays but this one is worth the exception. I’m not an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guy but this rap actually has some really good tips about what you need to do when you’re building a site.

I’m not a web designer or developer so some of this didn’t mean anything to me but as a social media marketer this had some valuable information and a few good reminders. Whether you build sites or just have people around you who do, this is worth the free SEO tutorial…fo’ shizzle.

Here are the lyrics:
Your site design is the first thing people see
it should be reflective of you and the industry
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can’t index the information
display the logos of all your associations
highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
create a clean design you can use some decoration
but to try to prevent any client hesitation
every page that they click should provide and explanation
should be easy to understand like having a conversation
when you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
but make sure you use correct color combinations
do some investigation, look at other organizations
but don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
follow these instructions when you move into production
your photoshop functions then slice that design
do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
please don’t use tables even though they work fine
when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat,
tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly
some use IE, some others use Flock
some use AOL, I use Firefox
title everything including links and images
don’t use italics, use emphasis
don’t use bold, please use strong
if you use bold that’s old and wrong
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that’s the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
design and code right man I hope you get the picture
what I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
if it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
everyone will want to follow you like twitter
competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
if you trying to grow your company will get bigger
design and code right man can you get with it