What is Bounce Rate and why is ut important!
Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits but where the visitor leaves your page within a very short period, often before the page is fully loaded. The percentage exposes the number of visitors who arrived at your blog but almost immediately bounced out of your blog. There are various reasons why the visitor bounces out of your blog. Maybe they didn’t like the page or the page took long to load or the page is not really informative or it didn’t exactly what the visitor was looking for.

As a business blog owner you want your visitors to scroll over your blog and therefor reduce the bounce rate of your blog. A high bounce rate means low business conversions. In general bounce rates should be idealy lower then 30%.

Here are some tips to lower bounce rates:

Worthwhile Content
Content is the most essential part of a busienss blog and it is absolutely necessary that you have original, unique and worth reading content updated (posted) regularly on your blog. You must also make sure that the content is related to the subject of your business.

Titles
Titles must be short, relevant and appealing. If not, vistors might be bouncing out as soon they have read the title.

Optimize the targeted keywords
Targeting the right keywords for your business would help you attract the right visitors. If you target irrelevant keywords, your bounce rate would increase or you will fetch irrelevant traffic that will not help to convert into more business profits.

Interact with your visitors
Another effective way to reduce bounce rate of your site is to engage the visitors with some polls or by offering a free subscription or a newsletter. Running a survey is also a good idea but be careful where you put the survey because it turns down your visitor if you ask him to fill in the survey while entering the site. Include offers, discounts and incentives to your visitors. This will not only reduce the bounce rate but also bring traffic and returning visitors.

Good Looks and Feel
It is vital to have a clean and good looking blog. A good look and feel of the blog promotes visitors to stay and browse the blog (reducing the bounce rate). It is also important that you represent some of the content in a graphical, pictorial or visual way attracting the visitors to stay longer on the post or page.

Easy Navigation
Easy navigation encourages visitors to click through various links on your blog and approves blog content accessibility. Visitors must be able to easily access the information they are looking for within two or three clicks. Ensure having standard elements like “most popular posts”, “related posts”, “search box” on your blog available to quickly find related information.

Improve Site Speed
Bounce rate of your bolg can be high is it takes a lot of time for the first content to load. People don’t like waiting and when your blog takes time to load, they might bounce out.

Direct your traffic to the preferred Landing Pages
Visitors will move bounce out quickly if the landing page uis not appealing to them (look and/or content). Driving traffic top the home page might not always be the best way. Driving traffic to specificly designed landing pages (business or sales funnel) is often receommended.

External Links
Adding external links to blogs as references for more information also increases the bounce rate. Be careful to drive vistors to other sites for more information. External linking might be important in SEO but should be use correctly.

Adverisement
In general avoid advertisements on your blog pages, they distract the visitor and increases the bounce rate.

Compatibility
In the current era of technology, it is very important that your blog is accessible from almost any device having access to the internet. Mobile compatibility of your blog is highly recommended since most people use smart-phones to access information through internet. To stay competitive in the market and to attract more traffic, your site must be compatible for mobile, tablets and smartphones.

Implement these tips to reduce bounce rate on your blog and see the difference not only in your blog’s bounce rate but in increased time spend by visitors on your blog and that will increase your business opportunities.

Name branding is critical. If you want to be known, then you need to make your product or surface common knowledge. Someone should be able to hear the name of your business and know exactly what you offer because they’ve seen you around or heard someone else talking about you.

You need a website above all else. On that website, you need to have SEO content, which is search engine optimization. Keywords that people will search for on the internet that has anything to do with your product or service need to be on your site. This will increase the likelihood of your website showing up in the search.

In addition to a website, you need to have a blog. This is your chance to develop a following because the information that you are giving people is educational and has some real value. Whatever your product or service is, give people links or advice that shows that you know what you are talking about.

Now spread the information out via social media. Everyone is using social media networks and if you’re not using them, then you aren’t reaching most of your consumers. Facebook, Twitter – all of them are free to join. Create a user ID that has to do with your business. Create links to your blog on your website and blog on each of them and create links to the social media accounts on your website – create a circle of links so people can always find you.

Get out there and talk about yourself. When no one else is going to talk about you, then you have to do it all. Tweet on other people’s pages that have topics similar to what you are selling. Give people a reason to come to your page.

Once you do all of that, you must maintain your online identity with current information. Post in your blog weekly, tweet weekly and make Facebook comments a few times a week. If you stop, people will assume you have gone out of business.

Fred Lotgering is a professional Internet Marketing consultant working from multiple locations around the world. He is dedicated to help to grow small and medium sized businesses by offering a variaty of Internet Marketing tools! He is the owner of LotCon. (“LotCon” comes from Lotgering Consultancy). LotCon is registered in the Netherlands, soon also in Brazil). For more products suitable for “YOUR” business please go to: LotCon Biz Solutions Blog

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If you as a business owner intend on using a blog to promote your business, there are several factors that you should put into consideration. When it comes to building a business blog, it is pertinent that you understand that there is a clear-cut difference between building a business blog and building any other kind of blog. When building a business blog, the blog should have a clean, clear look and it should not look like a personal neither a pure marketing blog else your audience will not get a good impression of your business.

The theme, look, design, and layout of a business blog should carefully be chosen. When choosing a theme and template for your blog, endeavor to pick the right colors and stick with those colors that would complement your brand image and give your audience the impression that they are interacting with a brand. In terms of layout and information presentation, it is important that you should take some time to work this out because placing information in the right places does makes a great deal of difference because a blog page will look terrible if information and graphics aren’t properly arranged or placed.

Although monetizing a blog is a great idea and could be a great way of making some quick bucks, monetizing your blog by displaying ads on it is something that you should never do on a business blog. If you have to monetize a business blog and like to run some ads on it, do so in moderation, because you do not want to take your audience attention away from your products or services. People hate being sold or hate being given the notion that their privacy is being compromised. Also, if you are running a business blog and have the need to send out newsletters and feeds, please do so in moderation.

Fred Lotgering is a professional Internet Marketing consultant working from multiple locations around the world. He is dedicated to help to grow small and medium sized businesses by offering a variaty of Internet Marketing tools! He is the owner of LotCon. (“LotCon” comes from Lotgering Consultancy). LotCon is registered in the Netherlands, soon also in Brazil). For more products suitable for “YOUR” business please go to: LotCon Biz Solutions Blog

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In terms of cost, the cost of owning a business blog is far lower than the cost of owning a business website. Although owning a website might still gives you good exposure, it is pertinent to mention that owning a blog is also very important because there are some blog features that are very useful in marketing your product and services. When it comes to marketing and PR, a business blog is your best bet.

Although creating a blog is a great idea, making a blog that will be indexed by search engines is a much better idea. There are some folks out there who have blogs, but they have been unable to get the best out of their blogs simply because search engines have not indexed their blogs. If you are interested in getting your blog indexed faster, using blog and ping is your best strategy. With blog and ping, pings are used to deliver the contents of your blog to search engines for the sole purpose of indexing and increasing search engine visibility.

When it comes to using blogs utilizing ping backs, there are several services of blogs and pings out there. Despite the fact that there are a myriad of blogs and pings (ping backs) out there, all blogs and pings shares some similarities in some aspects in the sense that they all ping some special servers to draw the attention of search engine spiders to a particular blog. It is important the ping the servers most important for your kind of business.

The use of blogs and pings is quite a new fad. As an individual who is reading this article, there are chances that you lack a thorough and in-depth understanding of what pings and blogs is all about. The concept of blogs and ping is one that requires special research and validation of facts. Unless you are a web savvy, there are chances that you might be unable to appreciate and use the enormous benefits that blogs and pings have to offer.

Fred Lotgering is a professional Internet Marketing consultant working from multiple locations around the world. He is dedicated to help to grow small and medium sized businesses by offering a variaty of Internet Marketing tools! He is the owner of LotCon. (“LotCon” comes from Lotgering Consultancy). LotCon is registered in the Netherlands, soon also in Brazil). For more products suitable for “YOUR” business please go to: LotCon Biz Solutions Blog

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We live in a world where branded businesses are the most successful business. When it comes to branding your business, whatever decisions you intend to take, it is highly recommended that you should ensure that your clients and customers do approve of such decision. When it comes to making and taking decisions that would affect your business, failure to include your clients and customers could cause you to lose their loyalty and continuous patronage. As an individual who runs a business and intends keeping his clients and customer in the know concerning some of the decisions that he intends taking, having a blog is your best.

In terms of features and functionality, there is no yardstick for comparing a micro blog to traditional blog. Despite the fact that the features and services that a traditional blog provides is light years ahead that of a micro blog, blogging is still relevant and important because it has a large community of followers and support from fortune micro blogging platforms and companies such as Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and mysay.

Most social networking platforms have incorporated the concept and ideal of micro blogging into their platform. Although most folks out there are unaware and oblivious of this fact, it is pertinent to mention that almost everyone out there has tested or put to use this feature. Micro blogging is an essential platform for marketing and PR. In terms of PR, as a good business minded individual you would agreed that being able to influence the perception that the public has about your product is one of the shortest routes to success. Besides just assisting you to handle your PR, Micro blogging can also assist you in marketing your product or services.

Leveraging the many benefits of blogging could assist you in reaching out to potential clients and customers who might be in need of your product or services. With so many social marketing blogging platforms out there, it is certain that your business would witness astronomical growth if you can take advantage of some of the many benefits that a micro blogging platform has to offer.

Fred Lotgering is a professional Internet Marketing consultant working from multiple locations around the world. He is dedicated to help to grow small and medium sized businesses by offering a variaty of Internet Marketing tools! He is the owner of LotCon. (“LotCon” comes from Lotgering Consultancy). LotCon is registered in the Netherlands, soon also in Brazil). For more products suitable for “YOUR” business please go to: LotCon Biz Solutions Blog

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1. What do you expect your blog will do for your business?

2. Do you fully understand your blog’s main difference over a static web site?

3. Can your blog be properly optimized for search engines?

4. What do you need to promote – your services, your product, yourself or all?

A blog can be configured to be a website. Advantage? You have more personal control over the content because you don’t need webmaster skills and HTML programming to put content onto your blog.

But then you still don’t take advantage of the blog concept. A blog can define exactly who you are – and promote a feel that you stand out above others in your field. It can turn a prospect into a loyal customer or client.

But you can’t have a blog that makes more business unless it fills a need and attracts strong, relevant traffic (visitors) first.

To take advantage of a business blog, you will need to make sure you incorporate at least some of the following goals and tactics into your blog planning strategy:

- Continue to increase your web “presence”

- Showcase your customers – and their successes. Yes, use testimonials!

- Display throughout the blog your industry expertise and credentials

- Keep it current! Be the “go to” place for the latest industry or product news

- Share resources such as free reports, audio files or “how to” videos

- Give your potential customers what they want or need to learn or hear

- Connect social media sites to your blog. It’s an excellent match!

Think of your business blog for what it actually is: your voice, speaking directly to potential clients, when you aren’t around. It’s like having a partner who’s hard at work, while you’re asleep!

Give your business blog a chance to bring in new traffic, new subscribers, new credibility and authority – and more profit than you thought possible with a website.

Don’t underestimate the importance of your blog domain name, it should reflect the business name.

Consider whether or not you want to attract readers by branding or just through most relevant keywords or do it both! If you don’t know what branding is check some of our resources.

There are more effective ways to improve traffic to your blog then to your website: a blog integrate distribution as RSS feed. When you create a feed for your blog, a relative simple, one-time process, you might double its effectiveness and desirability.

Nowadays, your visitors (readers) wants fast, easily read content that is punchy and to the point. A blog allows that better than a website. Just look to Twitter success, punchy and to the point in 140 characters!

A business blog allows you to easily:

- run efficient and pleasing to the eye photo galleries

- create slide shows for your products or services

- to display and run videos

- add a new “famous quote” to be randomly generated every day

- increasing your search engine efficiency

- display buttons so that visitors can instantly promote your business across their favorite Social Networks

- and so much more…

It is difficult to think of any reason why you shouldn’t start with business blogging.

Cost? Initial cost is much lower than a business website. Outsourcing maintenance is also much lower.

Contact us if you need a quotation for YOUR Business

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When you design your blog use colors that are relevant to your target market. For example, if your blog deals with developing your inner spirituality and creativity, tones of violet (a color traditionally associated in New Age circles with the “crown” or spirituality chakra) may be highly appealing to your target audience. However, if your site is basically advertising your on-line food products site, and you want your reader to order bags of specialty food, you may prefer to use colors traditionally associated with food and hunger: Oranges, golds and red.

There have been many studies done on the subject of color. Here are some of the most commonly accepted “meanings” for different colors:

Red
Associated with energy, vitality, dynamic activity
Should be used for design, food, shopping websites of blogs

Pink (Soft or muted pinks)
Often associated with femininity
Great to use for mom blogs and baby sites (girls)

Magenta
Expresses Energy, creativity, playfulness, fun
Can be used for a youth based blog

Blue
Used for trustworthiness, conservative values
Clearly most used for legal, financial, corporate business blogs

Pale Blue
Expresses peacefulness and masculinity
Great to use for Baby (boy) and relaxation web sites

Green
Commonly used to express trustworthiness, abundance and nature
Use for finances and service-based, ecology-friendly products and gardening sites

Light Green
Reflects spring and life
Used often for natural beauty products

Yellow
Used for life, happiness and enjoyment
Great for travel, shopping and food sites or youth-based blog

Gold
Expresses rich and abundance
Typically used for luxury products sites

Orange
Yes used for fun, food and activity
Mainly used for “Kid” sites, but also excellent choice for creativity and food sites or blogs

Violet
Associated with spirituality
Appealing for mourning, psychic awareness and comfort websites or blogs

Brown
Gives ecological awareness
Use for nature websites

Black
Associated with “Coolness”, masculinity
Very often used for technology, cars and music

Don’t take these meanings as gospel. Combinations of colors will also affect how your visitors perceives your site. For example, black with red accents may instantly mean “counter-culture” or “heavy” music to your teenage son or daughter.

And depending on the particular tone of green, people may see this either as “old world luxury” or “a nature site”.

Also, consider the meaning of colors to other cultures. For example, the traditional wedding color – white – is actually the color of death in certain other countries.

The important thing here is not to get too hung up on the color issue – just be aware that color can strongly affect how your visitor perceives your website or blog. Don’t forget that some colors are much harder on the eyes than others!

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Many business owners just start their blogs as an experiment. They create their blog, start posting and then sit back to wait and see what happens. Unfortunately, without goals, it’s difficult to grow and profit from a blog. Let’s take a look at a few goals you should consider if you want your business blog to return a profit.

Set a schedule for regular posting.

Do you have a regular posting schedule? One of the biggest reasons blogs struggle is because they’re not posting enough content to attract returning visitors and to improve search engine rankings (which makes your blog easier to find new visitors). If you’re not posting regular content, readers may lose interest or get out of the habit of reading your blog regular. Set a goal, one post every second day for example, and stick to it. Minimum for a business blog is one post per week.

Work on incoming links.

One of the best ways to drive traffic and readers to a blog (which of course drives your business profits) is to generate incoming links. Become active in the blogging community, post comments on relevant blogs, write a guest blog post, and become also active on different social networking sites. Setting a goal of commenting on two relevant blogs a day or writing one guest blog post a week, for example, can really boost profits.

Make time to analyze the data.

Information is your most powerful tool to build a profitable blog yet many business owners don’t regularly set aside time to analyze their data and plan accordingly. For example, let’s say you notice your list posts receive the most readership, this is powerful information because you can then plan your content to include weekly list posts. Consider setting a goal to analyze your blog data once a week. Tools like Google Analytics send the data right to your email inbox making it easy to analyze and plan.

Brand Your Business

You’re undoubtedly familiar with branding. For example, if I show you a red dot with a red circle around it you’re going to recognize the logo as Target. If I say, “just do it,” you’re going to think Nike. This is branding. Branding is creating a recognizable identity. Large corporations do it, small companies do it and your blog can do it too. Why brand? Branding is about creating a personality with your audience. A rapid association that stays in the front of their mind. So how do you do it? How do you brand a blog? Branding your blog is about creating a simple and consistent message. Ask yourself the following questions:

- What is my blog about?

- What is my message?

- What consistent design elements do I deliver?

When these three questions can be answered and applied to every single blog post, guest post, and audience interaction, you’re on your way to establishing a solid brand and a profitable business blog. The key is consistency. If your blog is about using technology products then a blog post about weight loss deviates from this core vision/mission and will detract from your goal and message.

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#1 Guest blog.
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to build awareness of you and your blog and it generates incoming links to your blog, which in turn generates traffic. More traffic = more profits.

#2 Post consistently and post often.
The biggest blogs post every single day. Why is this such a great strategy? Their readers create a habit of visiting their blog every day. This is huge. Imagine your traffic if every single new person who visited your blog came back every single day? Even having them visit once a week would be a dramatic increase. Not to mention the fact that you’re climbing the search engine results with every blog post. A wealth of content means value to your readers.

#3 Give your readers what they want.
Do you receive the most comments and visits for your controversial posts? What about lists? Reviews? What posts are the most popular? Find out and give your readers what they want.

#4 Social Networking
Make it easy for readers to Digg, Tweet, StumbleUpon and post your content on Delicious.com. Social networking is huge and if you’re not taking advantage of it, you’re missing out on valuable and profitable, traffic.

#5 Establish your credibility and authority.
This is done by writing and providing valuable, benefit driven, and informative content. There is no other way. Once you become a go to expert, your blogging audience will grow both by word of mouth and by recognition.

If you already have a website to promote your business then you should add a blog to enhance your existing web presence. If you do not have a website for your business yet, then consider skipping the website and start immediately with a blog.

A blog gives you ability to provide your customers (and potential customers) with fresh content on a daily or weekly basis. Something what is difficult to achieve with a website. A blog let’s you add new material, including audio and video, completely by yourself, without the need of your webmaster or programmer involvement.

Blogging is a great way for small business owners, without need for web design knowledge, to establish a professional, attractive, web presence and publish content, while reducing web site maintenance cost. Web designers will also charge much less for a completely customized blog design compared to a complete, traditional website (and much less if you require a lot of pictures, audio and video content).

Being able as the business owner to decide when and how information needs to be posted will increase site traffic, resulting in more interest, interaction and therefor more sales. Customers will not longer see the same, stale content of a website, but catch your latest product information and promotions.

Allowing users to comment on your blog posts or page contents can increase your business reputation tremendously. Many prospective customers make their decision to buy a product (or use a service) based on testimonials and reviews left by other customers. Since comments often offer feedback on your products and services, the advertisement power is enormous and it is free.

Comments can also serve as a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section. Many blog visitors like to read the comments on posts that relate to a question or problem they also might experience. By making it possible for clients to post comments publicly, and answering comments publicly, you might keep someone else from asking the same question. It also reflects your knowledge and superior customers support. It even will cut down on the amount of your emails to answer and phone calls with questions.

Blogging has helped companies to establish more client interaction since many customers, and also random surfers, will happily utilize a blog to comment and share feedback on their experiences or ask questions. Adding a blog to an existing website can increase your website traffic and create a positive business exposure.

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