11 Tips Blogging Tips for Businesses-Authority Building

Blogging Tips for Businesses: Build Authority

There are many reasons to blog. But today we’re going to focus on one objective: Become an expert in your field. You can build authority through blogging, these 11 blogging tips for business will get you started. Actually, we’ve given you more than 11 tips, but we like to under-promise and over-deliver. Â Why bother with becoming an expert in your field? One reason: sales. The more comfortable a potential customer or client is with you and your business, the more likely they are trust you. Imagine getting more leads that close faster. That’s the power of blogging.

In the world of blogging for business, there are two types of authority: online authority and people authority. We’ll cover tips for both.

First, Start with Building Authority with People.

This is the kinder, gentler form of authority building. Its essentially relationship building with your community and audience. You’ve always got to keep the audience’s needs in mind. Satisfy their needs and you’ll find that your business blog begins to satisfy your needs. Â It equates to providing value which equates to a higher affinity and higher trust. Its that simple. My blogging tip for business Â rule in building authority is to treat your website viewer the way you’d like to be treated. Remember (Almost) everything you need to knowÂ about social media you learned in Kindergarten.Â Â Authority building for people is the Jackie Kennedy of social media. Its classy. Not always the easiest.

Why start here? Well, ultimately, its people who do or don’t read your blog. Blog for people first, search engines second. You can get all the traffic in the world and if your blog isn’t written for people, its ultimately a failure.Â

Great Content Builds Authority and Trust:

When you create how-to posts, or advice posts, industry reviews, your also giving your potential customers a reason trust you.

Create a variety of content types, including video, photos, slides. Not only will this reach a broader audience, but naming these other content types with keywords helps. But the real message here is to make the content useful, helpful.
Create content that you’re comfortable creating. Some people don’t like to write, that doesn’t mean you can’t blog. Today’s blogs are filled with every kind of media. Have fun with it, and find a medium that you’ll love creating. Know that Google searches all media types.
Be honest and transparent. Give good advice about the products you sell, tell your potential clients what you tell your family. Why? It adds to your credibility. Tell your customers the pros and cons about how your different products compare, or what they should know when they buy a particular product.Â

Write Like a Person and Let Your Personality Shine:

Be yourself. Countless of people have become authorities simply by being themselves. Gary Vaynurchuck comes to mind. He started off vlogging (video blogging) with profanity-laden, butÂ passionate, videos about wine. These videos were so wildly successful for Gary’s wine business that he is now a known expert in business and social media. He is also an author. Note: his books came AFTER the blog. I doubt when he started his videos he knew what path it would be take. Â Now I’m not saying you have to use profanity in your blog, its all about knowing your audience. But you CAN be yourself. Go ahead, try it, its not as hard as you think. “Stop thinking like a marketer, sales person, ect. and start thinking like a human.”
Let other’s be themselves. Give your writers their own profiles and identities. When you give your writers their own personality, then readers begin to get to know them, which increases trust.
Write the way your audience speaks. Show the jargon and complicated language out the door!
Ease off the sales pitch. Be a valuable resource to your potential client and that will help drive sales. You can have a blog with conversion opportunities like email capture and information requests, and I think you should. Just don’t write your blog post the same way you write marketing material. No likes to “be sold.”Â

Some hints for building online authority (SEO):

Online Authority: is how much relevance the search engines give your blog, we often call that SEO (search engine optimization). Essentially if you don’t consider this aspect, you can do a lot of quality work, and its never going to be seen. Â As of the 2012 Google update of Penguin, how the biggest search engine is viewing your website has changed. The entire intent of Google’s changes are to help searches find the most relevant and authoritative sites first. I compare using these techniques as the Marilyn Monroe of social media. ItsÂ irresistible. And in the world of sex symbols and authority building: essential.

One of the most valuable blogging tips for businesses: USE WORDPRESS. Its optimized for search and some simple plug-in’s will make some of this technical stuff MUCH easier.

Post Consistently.

Google likes posts to be at least 300 words. Google also loves websites that are consistently updated.
The more pages you have, the more traffic you get, its really that simple. Hubspot recently published that companies with 51-100 web pages generate 47% more traffic than companies with 1-50 pages. That’s a big jump.

Use Keywords in Your Title and Throughout Content:

Once you identify your keywords, tag them with <H1> in the title. Don’t know how to tag a word with <H1>? If you’re using WordPress, one of the handiest ways to check this is to use the free plugin WordPress by Yoast. Don’t forget to use the <H2> tag within the content too. This reinforces the keyword and gives the search engines that the content is consistent and valuable to the reader.
Use your keyword in the first and last sentences of your blog.
Keyword density is still important. Using your keywords throughout the blog helps build authority too (see how thatÂ sentenceÂ worked?) The recommended density is 1-4%, but I’d err on the middle to the higher end of that density if possible. Don’t go overboard; write good, readable content, just keep in mind that Google likes to see your keywords used consistently throughout.
Not sure what keywords to use? Just use Google’s handy keyword finder.

Using Photos to Increase Authority:

Photos canÂ definitely impact online and search engine authority. Photos are useful for a lot of reasons. They make it more attractive to the eye and therefore the reader. But photos and videos are also a goodÂ source of online building authority. My most popular blog post ever was because I titled the photos correctly and for common searches. Its over 1.5 years old and its still attracting over 10% of my total monthly blog traffic. A single blog post. WOW. Thank you VERY much!

Use the alternative text tag <alt-tag> to include the keyword in your image. I personally feel the more the photo contextualizes the keyword the more effective it is at driving PEOPLE traffic. But from a search engine point of view, even if the photo doesn’t directly speak to the topic, use those <alt-tags>.
Reinforce the <alt-tag> by naming your file with the keyword. Use hyphens and separate the key words. Skip words like “the”, “a”. You don’t need your image name to make sense to a human, just a search engine.

Build Quality Links:Â

Natural links are the best. The kind that are most relevant to your content. Don’t just go around asking for and swapping links, Google is on to you, it isn’t (as) effective, in fact, Google is penalizing sites who exploit link building with non-relevant links. Plus, its kind of spammy. Â There is good news, linksÂ to your website via social media counts! That means that more of your content that is shared naturally through social sites the better Google views your website.

Build natural, relevant links through social media. Google watches the sharing to and from your site. Â Sharing on Google+ doesn’t hurt; some say its increasingly important. Most definitely add the +1 button to your site. If you don’t have a Google Plus account, here’s your reason to start.

Blog consistently. Google likes websites that are regularly updated. But its not just that; according to HubSpot, increasing blogging frequency can increase your leads by almost double.
Google authorship comes with having a Google account. Its good for both technical authority building as well as personal authority building. It’s easy to do this. This image shows the information that pops up when I search for my name right there on the right-hand side of search results.