Google AIS Custom Search

blogs (5)

Why are Instant Articles beneficial? Facebook provides a guide to Instant Article configuration so that you can use their content management system.

• Instant Articles are 10x faster than traditional mobile web articles
• They’re read 20% more often 
• Clients are 70% less likely to leave the article once they’re there.

Watch this week's Hard Facts now for more info!



Website: http://www.ppadv.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PotratzAdvert...
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Potratz
Instagram: @Potratz

Read more…

As JD and others have pointed out, the almighty Google is altering the game with Penguin 2.0.  No longer are the 'Top Tier" SEO experts going to be able to manipulate search in the way they used to.  We are now, more than ever, going to have to come up with "fresh" content.  Notice I said fresh CONTENT, not necessarily fresh TOPICS.  Let's use our sheer numbers and help each other out.  I don't know about the rest of you, but one of the challenges of unique content is not one of creativity, but consistency.  I have the greatest ideas for blog content.....for about one week.  Then, like my desire to excercise and eat right, it fades.  I know that everyone on this site has plenty of time to set around and inspire the right side of your brain to come up with new topics, right? 

No.

Here's where this site comes in.  For those who wish to participate, here's what I'm asking.

As a reply to this post, list as many content subjects as you can.

If we get some good participation, we could all have a healthy list of ideas.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. —Oliver Wendell Holmes

Just topics, please.

Ex.

5 Easy things to do to your trade in to increase it's value!

The Top 3 Reasons to use Synthetic Motor Oil!

5 Things your Company can do for your community!

Danny Benites

Read more…

Business Blog Post Ideas and Planning

Idea

In business, there is no such thing as writer’s block. It doesn’t exist. Erase the phrase from your mind. You see, in any business, there are so many potential stories to be told that one should never run out of them even if they’re blogging daily. More importantly, this isn’t like writing a novel. It’s not professional journalism. You’re not writing a column. On a business blog, you have the freedom to pull from the ultimate content resource – the internet.

What most perceive as writer’s block in the world of business blogging is actually the brain’s way of saying that you don’t want to write at this moment. Get over it.

With that all out of the way, it’s time to look at some different types of blog posts that can be categorized into a proper plan. This plan can be an editorial calendar, a series of reminders in Outlook, or a notepad on your desk where you jot down your ideas. We’ll get into planning in a moment, but first let’s look at some of the ideas themselves.

 

Blog Post Ideas

This is a difficult topic to write about because no matter how much time and effort is put into it, the end result cannot be complete. The idea potentials are infinite. These are just some blog post types that can help you to get into the proper frame of mind when deciding about which topics to blog.

We’ll use my favorite topic, automotive, to flesh out the concepts:

  • Industry News – As a business, you have the inside track to write about things that others want to know. You’re the expert. A car dealer can write about what’s happening to their brand, new vehicles that are coming out, recalls, races, or anything that is topical today. Here’s an example of an industry news post.
  • Image Posts – These are often the easiest to put together because of two sources of content: what’s happening at the store right now and the internet. A Dodge dealer should have plenty of Dodge Chargers on the lot that can be positioned in various ways. They also have hundreds of worthy images of Dodge Chargers, old and new, on the internet. Keep in mind, if you’re taking images from other sites, make sure they’re receiving attribution. Here’s an example of an image post.
  • Video Posts – As with image posts, most of the heavy lifting is done for you with video posts. You don’t have to a ton of investigating or write a 1500 word article to frame the video into a perspective. You want to write something, even if it’s only a paragraph or two describing the video and what it means to your industry, but it doesn’t have to be much. Let the video do the talking. Here’s an example of a video post.
  • Activity in the Community Posts – Your business is likely involved in the community somehow. It can be a sponsorship of the local little league team. It could be something more significant. Talk about it. There’s nothing wrong with “bragging” if the intention is to highlight the source itself. Here’s an example of a community activity post.
  • Infographic Posts – The internet is a visual experience. There are so many amazing infographics available to us that there’s really no reason not to use them. Make sure the data is accurate, of course, as you’re posting it on your website or blog, and definitely make sure to give attribution (it’s the reason that businesses make infographics in the first place) but don’t be shy about it, either. Here’s an example of an infographic post.
  • Upcoming Product Posts – You know about new things coming down the road before your customers. Expose things to them through your site or blog. This is actually a no-brainer but so few take advantage of it. Here’s an example of an upcoming product post.

Again, this barely scratches the surface.

 

Planning

There really isn’t enough to say about planning to make it deserve its own section in this blog post, but it’s so important that we’re separating it out anyway. Make a plan. There are some great editorial calendar addons to WordPress and other blogging platforms that work nicely. Unless you’re blogging all the time, multiple times per week, these may not be necessary. It could be as easy as posting your ideas as tasks or calendar events in Outlook or whatever calendar software you use.

Me? I have a notepad. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably lose my ability to write with my hands because it’s the only time I ever use pen and paper other than to sign things. It’s archaic, messy, and less organized than the digital counterparts, but for me, it works. Whatever works best for you to keep you adding content to your blog or website on a regular basis is the right way for you to make your plan.

What are you waiting for? Start coming up with ideas, organize them into a plan, and get words onto your blog.

Read more…

The Truth About Blog Post Tags

Let there be absolutely, positively no mistake here. "Tags" have completely different uses depending on the platform on which they're used. We're going to take a look at three of the most popular platforms and how tags affect them: Wordpress, Ning, and Tumblr.

 

Before we dive into each, let's get one thing out of the way. Those who say that tags are old and no longer useful are simply being lazy and encouraging the same. It takes less than 30 seconds to come up with a handful of appropriate tags to go along with any blog post and therefore it falls under the category of "why not?" Nobody outside of Mountain View, CA, knows for certain how tags benefit search engine optimization. They do, however, definitely have an opportunity to benefit the reader. It's a best practice that is getting pushed aside by many. Don't fall into the laziness trap. Tag away!

 

Tags for Wordpress

Depending on how you have your site indexing set up in the back end, tags allow search engines to find similar articles. The two major types of taxonomy, tags and categories, are intended to help people navigate a blog. As a result, Google and Bing will follow tags and categories in order to see what level of understanding a blog has on each individual topic.

 

The tag pages themselves, once visited, will give the search engines a depth-of-content picture. For example, if you have a blog for a Nissan dealership that often uses the tag "Altima", the search engines will be able to see that you have written a good amount of content on the topic. Many would argue that they know this already and that semantic indexing is designed in part to replace tagging as a method of establishing authority, but again, "why not?" It definitely doesn't hurt to tag. It probably helps on Wordpress, even if only a little. There's not reason to skip the few seconds it takes to add them.

 

Tags for Ning

On the Ning social platform, tags work in ways similar to Wordpress, but with an added bonus. Blog posts on Ning do not have categories the way that discussions do. As a result, tags become the primary taxonomy that search engines and readers use to navigate a site when they want to see similar articles.

 

Some have also speculated that there is a direct SEO value to the individual post, that the search engines look at tags very similar to how they look at highlighted content and will give a post a lift in the rankings as a result. This is unconfirmed and I've never tested it myself, but I would speculate that it is true.

 

Tags for Tumblr

This is an entirely different ballgame. On Tumblr, tags are everything. The community lives off of tags in a way that is similar to hashtags on Twitter, but there are certain ones that are eternally "trending", so to speak.

 

Tags are Tumblr users' primary method of discovery. Tumblr has devalued them a bit in recent months and focused on "Spotlight" that highlights individually influential tumblogs rather than the community-rich "Explore" page that lets people surf tags, but they're still extremely important and can help a new tumblog get found by the community. Getting found on Tumblr is the key to both social exposure and search; reblogs by other Tumblr users are extremely important and can mean the difference between having an invisible tumblog and having an extremely popular one.

 

Tags for Humans

At the end of the day, the real benefit of tags should be for the readers. Google and Bing may or may not pay attention to them, but allowing your blog visitors to latch onto a particular topic and follow it all the way through is a way to make your blog stickier.

Again, it takes second. Why not?

Read more…

Does your dealership have its own blog? If your answer is no, then, I suggest you keep reading.....

The Importance of Blogging:Generation of Leads and Traffic

If you're reading this and your dealership does NOT have its own blog, consider this:

-B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads per month than those that don't

-Overall, companies that blog have 55% more website visitors

(Source: An Introduction to Business Blogging by Hubspot)

How Often Should You Blog

As evident in those statistics above, a blog can increase your website traffic, as well as your leads. However, it's not as simple as just creating a WordPress account or logging into Blogspot. A blog, just like social media, has to be kept up, maintained. In fact, companies that blog at least twenty times or more a month, see a SUBSTANTIAL increase in website traffic and leads. This is just one of the many benefits of having a blog. It gives you another avenue of customers to explore and reach. It helps to amplify your voice online for your dealership.

For your blog to be effective and useful, you must blog at least four/five times a week, or in between 16-20 times a month. There's no point in setting up your blog if you're only touching it every few weeks. That's what they call wasted real estate! The more you blog, the more likely you'll see an increase in your dealership's visibility online, and this is where SEO comes into play.

Blogging and SEO

All right, so you're blogging full-time and you should be showing up on the first page of Google in no time, right? Not so fast. With each post you create, there should be optimization taking place. You need to be do some research when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You need to know the keywords your customers are using when they head to Google to do research. Once you begin blogging more frequently and using the appropriate and industry-relative keywords in your posts (Optimizing), your online visibility will increase. 

The benefits are obvious. You'll see a bump in website traffic. You'll receive more leads. You'll become a trust named and dealership online your customers can trust, and therefore, someone they could recommend to their friends and family.

If your dealership doesn't have a blog, why not?

Read more…

SPONSORS