I saw something the other day that I hadn’t seen in a while. In talking with a client, I found around 20 lines of hidden text at the bottom of his homepage. This purpose of this text is to fool search engines into believing that the clients homepage was relevant for a long list of keywords that did not appear in the visible text. It can result in a penalty from the engines as it is an obvious attempt to game the system. I thought that it had disappeared years ago along with doorway pages, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link farming and all the other tricks that were so popular back in the day.

It got me thinking about spam in the world of blog marketing. It is estimated that a fairly high percentage of blogs are “splogs” an affectionate term for using blogs to spam search engines. The splog is basically a bunch of meaningless content with hundreds of links.

The key to avoid being labelled as a splogger is to write good content. Plain and simple. If you write valuable and interesting articles, you will be seen as an authority in your industry by both the search engines and by your readers. Then you will get more business and grow your brand. Here at Retail Blog Marketing we show our clients how to blog, not splog. We also show you how to turn your blog into a vlog, but that’s for another article.

I read recently that Johnson & Johnson has begun an initiative to better brand itself in the blogosphere. This new blog directory is focused on blogging mothers, and gives mothers and consumers the opportunity to connect with each other.

While the company states that they will not use the platform as a means to bombard its users with advertising, they do reserve the right to engage in some light blog marketing within the network. The advent of blogs and the increased popularity of social networking has made self publishing inexpensive and available for all. It also provides an entirely new way of marketing products. Look for more fortune 100 companies to use the power of blogs to increase business.

“Every one of Pontiac’s marketing dollars to introduce its sporty G5 coupe is being spent online”

Do you have a car dealership? Used Cars, New Cars, Buy Here Pay, Large and Small. The Time is now to jump into blog marketing. Pontiac apparently is begginning to understand the potential for an advertising campaign online with their campaign for the G5. As a car dealer you may not have the weight (money) to throw around but you do have everything you need to let us help you with an online blog marketing campaign.

As encouraging as it is to see Pontiac embracing online advertising I don’t have a problem throwing out that for a fraction of what they are spending we could run a much more effective retail blog marketing campaign.

Think you can’t compete with the big companies? Think again.

Move over myspace, there’s a new sheriff in town and it goes by the name of MUGSHOT.  What is Mugshot? Mugshot is an open project to create a live social experience around entertainment…Mugshot makes it easy to share web pages and show off your music tastes. You can learn about Mugshot feautures as we introduce them on our Mugshot Features page.

How well will they do?   If it’s anything like Linux, they’ll do very well.  It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next 12 months.  Stay tuned….

There is a tendancy when formulating your retail marketing plan to focus on short rather than long term goals. If you use paid search you will certainly get immediate traffic. You give Google $1,000 today and you get traffic. The unfortunate thing about this form of advertising is that once you stop paying Yahoo or Google, your traffic is gone. It is just not a good recipe for long term success.

The strategy we recommend is to use paid sesarch advertising today, and build up natural search traffic for tomorrow. It’s not a new concept, but blogs help to narrow the gap. Our blog marketing campaigns work extremely quickly, enabling companies to back off their spend a lot sooner than expected. So not only does our company ensure your long term success, we also save your marketing budget for more useful and productive initiatives than pay per click.

One of the mistakes that people make when they are formulating their retail marketing plans and looking at search engines, is that they try and target the big keywords in their industry. A good example would be an online retailer who sells running shoes. The term “shoes” will get the most traffic, but that would not be a good term to target. It would take forever to get ranked and that term would not convert well into sales. “Running shoes” would be better. It will rank quicker and convert better. “New Balance Running Shoes” would be better still. Your conversion on a term like that will be high, and you are still building relevancy for the terms “running shoes” and “shoes”.
The same principals apply to blog marketing. Contact us and our team will help you with your marketing strategies and make sure that you are getting the most out of your retail blog marketing program.

Big Corporate Companies are Investing in Retail Blog Marketing.

• Paramount
• Johnson and Johnson
• Washington Post
• AOL Time Warner

I am sure there are more, these are just a few of the companies I remembered that recently invested in blog marketing. Small and Medium size businesses this is your opportunity to get a piece of the online sales pie that many larger companies are only just beginning to notice. Some larger companies are “testing” and “evaluating” … that is fine for them, they will come around to realize how effective blog marketing can be but if you are a small business more than likely you can make the decision without the red tape and hurdles that a larger company might have to go through.

That is an advantage you can use right now to start a retail blog marketing campaign. Get started early while the larger companies are “testing” and evaluating” . The Return is High and getting started early establishes your company in the blogosphere well ahead of any elephants in your industry.

One of the interesting things that we are starting to see with our retail blog clients is that their blogs are showing up on search engine results pages, many times alongside their main company website. This is the trend that is becoming more and more apparent every day. Blogs are going to be much more important than most companies’ websites in the future.
We have a real estate client in the happy position of having four rankings on a major search engine for one keyword phrase; two rankings for his site, and two for his blog. His blog marketing campaign is helping him dominate his market.

It was just a matter of time and You Tube has focus on yet another stream of Revenue by allowing advertisers to promote their brands via customized channels on the site.  The first try is with Paris Hilton and her music album.  They have created the “Paris Hilton Channel” to promote her debute album “Paris”.  This online “stuff” keeps gettig better and better every day.

Consider you have a well branded site amongst the “powerhouse” search engines, do you have a brand in the Blogosphere? Now is your chance to compete with your powerhouse rivals and grow your business online. Having a Retail Blog is extremely important because it connects you with people you never had a chance to connect with. If I’m searching for a cheap shirt online, I may visit overstock. Do you know how many people blog about “buying a shirt online” in the blogosphere? Now is your chance to get in the online game and grow your business. You must have a good Blog Marketing gameplan to succeed. It’s up to you. It’s now or never.