Search engine marketing (SEM) is the art and science of driving qualified traffic to a Web site. All SEM programs should operate on two fronts--paid search and organic search.
Paid search encompasses a wide range of advertising options, the most familiar being pay per click advertising. Properly executed, paid search is one of the most efficient and measurable forms of advertising a company can engage in.
Organic search involves engineering the company Web site to be search engine-friendly. When properly constructed and maintained, a Web site achieves high search engine rankings on relevant searches and therefore attracts highly qualified traffic.
A corporate blog enhances organic search--big time. Here's how.
1. Blogs continually add fresh content, a site characteristic stongly favored by search engines.
2. Blogs can (and should) contain relevant, keyword-rich content, providing multiple opportunities for online searchers to find the company site.
3. Blogs contain numerous outbound links and incoming links, or backlinks. Both types are rewarded by search engines, especially incoming links from high traffic sites.
4. A blog establishes a company's presence on the widely expanding array of blog-specific search engines and directories. More and more, customers, suppliers, and journalists first search blogs when looking for information about a company, its products, and its performance.
5. By engineering the blog with a variety of search-engine friendly features, such as using bold and/or large fonts in key areas, the blog will steadily improve in search engine performance. (This, by the way, is an area where Whoast can greatly assist in separating a company's blog from the pack.)
Is organic SEM a reason to launch a corporate blog? Perhaps. Since the overwhelming majority of Americans use search engines to find products and services, it would be dangerous for any company to underestimate its need for a strong Web presence. But even when a company has more compelling reasons to blog, such as opening up a new communication medium for its customers, improved SEM is a superb side benefit that will only grow in value.
