How to Generate Sales with your Blog

13 Jan How to Generate Sales with your Blog

Scot Chrisman knows his stuff!  In this article (found at Entrepreneur – South Africa) he explores tactics that can help you generate sales through your business blog.  We hope you find this article helpful.

3 Foolproof Tactics to Generate Consistent and Predictable Sales With Your Business Blog

“As an entrepreneur, you know the power of Google. It’s more than a brand or a search engine, it’s a verb and everyone’s new favorite dictionary, encyclopedia, and world exploration tool. It defines the way many people see and view the world merely because it’s the answer to every question. The tricky thing is that few know how to harness the power of Google to create consistent sales for their business.

If you’re looking to create an audience of engaged and curious minds to serve in your business, you’re in the right place. A lot of SEO experts will create the illusion that blogging and SEO is a complicated and overbearing subject to even comprehend. And while tactically there are many facets and moving pieces, from a high-level perspective it’s relatively simple to create content that generates consistent sales.

In this article, you’ll find 3 foolproof tactics to generate consistent and predictable sales with your business blog:

• Write great content, rich with the words and information others are seeking
• Use other blogs and publications to share information that points to your website
• Structure your content to rank for snippets

These 3 tactics will help you rank higher on Google, create sales for your business and build your email list for future sales and promotions, but first let’s demystify SEO and the things required to romance Google’s algorithm beautifully.

The premise and business model of Google are to deliver answers, Google is large enough now to also do a wide array of technological exploration… but its core principle and use has always been to generate the best answer the internet can provide to the person searching, in the shortest possible amount of time. As the internet has grown, changed, and evolved, Google has had to keep up with data storage, algorithmic manipulation, and other facets that threaten the efficacy of its original use.

To do so, it’s constantly evolving and updating it’s crawling mechanisms (the ways it understands what your website represents) to understand more and more about your website. Some websites come and go in the SERP(search engine results page), or where your content will show up, but some maintain their rankings for years…

So what’s the difference between them? The one that’s gone overnight uses Blackhat tactics, or in other words, tactics Google has deemed wrong, manipulative, and therefore violate their terms of service. Others use whitehat tactics and add value through education for their consumers.

Let’s look at these 3 foolproof ways to generate sales through your business blog…

1. Write great content, rich with the words and information others are seeking
Writing great content will always be the best way to rank your content. When an article spikes to the top but it isn’t well crafted, Google picks up on that and doesn’t give it a lot of attention after it’s users go to the page and come back looking for more. This should be a fundamental play in your business, educate your consumer…

Google’s power is in the curiosity of its users. What are the deep questions that your consumer wants to know the answer to? How can you present that information in a tactical way to create change in their life.

Many great entrepreneurs talk about the know-like-trust factor, someone has to know you like you and trust in you order for a transaction to take place. Blogs and other forms of educational content are great ways to accomplish all three, if they come to your website through a blog, find valuable information and are able to act on something to change their situation they’ll not only like you but trust that you deliver what you say you do.

They’re now primed and ready to be sold to… capture their contact information and you’ll likely have a lifetime customer after they convert from your list to a paying customer and move up your value ladder/repeat the customer cycle. Use these blogs to nurture your list with great information and use your list to garner valuable market research in order to understand which blogs to write.

2. Use other blogs and publications to share information that points to your website
Part of romancing the algorithm is about demonstrating domain authority.

What is domain authority? It’s the credibility of your website based on how many keywords you rank for, how many websites point to yours, and what quality those websites are. Search engines want to see that you’re not just informational but that others believe you’re credible… You create credibility on the internet by gaining the support of other websites. If they’re in your niche, they’re going to be especially good for your website.

Another piece of advice when it comes to demonstrating expertise and educating your audience is to find other publications that are looking for expert opinions or advice. There are websites dedicated to helping reports source information for their articles, if you get featured adding information relevant to your niche, not only are you likely to gain more traffic to your website and build your list… you’re also building your domain authority.

Use other blogs and publications to not only provide more valuable information and education for your audience, but also leverage the increase in domain authority to rank higher on the SERP(search engine results page).

3. Structure your content to rank for snippets

When you’re posting your blogs, you’ll want to make sure Google can crawl through your website and understand exactly what your blog is about. When you do this perfectly, also known as onsite SEO, you enable Google to rank you higher and quicker because you save it time and effort in crawling.

Another form of onsite SEO is to structure your blog to rank for a rich snippet… Snippets are a relatively new part of Google that takes a portion of your blog or website and shows it directly on the main SERP… a new-ish and interesting twist to the standard Google formula, but in an ever-accelerating social landscape, compartmentalizing the data and allowing for faster transmission is only par for the course.

Crafting your blogs in a way that allows Google to crawl is important for earning these coveted spots. Be clear, concise, and answer the question you’re trying to rank for in a way that others and Google will understand.”