I had the pleasure again this year of speaking at the annual Virginia Retail Merchants Expo. To no one’s surprise, I offered my latest thinking and a few related anecdotes on the topic of web marketing for small and mid-sized businesses.

One of the ideas that I presented this year drew particular interest from the audience, and I have subsequently received enough enthusiastic communication from attendees and others that I thought it would be worthwhile to explore the subject here in more depth.

We are all aware of the power of the ever-expanding blogosphere. Thousands of new blogs are launched every day addressing every imaginable topic and reaching an audience of darn near everyone – including your potential customers.

Aside from being an interesting social phenomenon, blogs hold great potential to influence the world of marketing in both obvious and subtle ways.
I’ll dispense with the obvious first.  Blogs, like most content-centric media, tend to attract a particular audience. They are often regarded as credible, objective sources of information.  And they therefore have potential as a promotional medium. We see businesses every day using blogs for just this purpose, and clearly it can work.

There is also a hidden power to blogs that few people yet appreciate.  Search engines like blogs.

Because they are generally updated frequently (compared to most web sites) and are perceived as being objective and credible (as opposed to most commercial web sites), blogs carry special weighting among search engines.  As a result, a link to your site from a respected blog is more significant to a search engine than links from most other sites.

The value of high-quality, one-way links is sufficiently well-established that a number of web-savvy marketers now rely almost exclusively on in-bound links to drive their search engine rankings.

So what does that mean to you?  You’re not a blogger. And the few you may know don’t write about anything relevant to your business. So what difference does it make if a one-way link from a blog will help improve your site’s search engine rankings?

Now for the good news…. One of the market leaders in search engine optimization (SEO) has created a way for marketers of all shapes and sizes to harness the hidden power of blogs.

How?  Over the last year, they have built a network of hundreds of respected blogs (about one of every ten bloggers that apply to the network are approved) that have agreed to post advertising copy on their blogs in exchange for a small, one-time fee. Even better, your ad copy can contain up to three one-way text links to your site using the keyword phrases that are most important to your business. The service (BloggingAds) has only recently been launched for advertisers and agencies.

Here’s an actual ad that was recently posted on a blog called CandidQuips.com in a post titled “The Service You’ll Appreciate.” The advertiser is Conklin Cars, a Kansas car dealer. Notice the use of their most valuable keyword phrases in the text links.

There are plenty of places in Kansas for Used Cars, but only Conklin has the selection of cars that you want with the service you deserve. There’s a reason they’re the top Hutchinson, Kansas Car Dealer.

Conklin has the best selection of Cars, Trucks, and SUV’s, but they also offer the service you’ve come to expect from a Kansas Car Dealer that’s consistently ranked tops in sales and service. Why waste any more of your valuable time going from dealership to dealership when everything you’ve been looking for is in one place. I know you’ll be happy you went to Conklin for your next car.

I love this (and suggest that you try it) for at least eight reasons:

1. It provides you, the advertiser a quick and easy way to create quality links to your site that the search engines will follow.
2. Better yet, you can deep link to interior pages of your site – not just your Home page.
3. It puts information about your site, company, and/or product into the blog’s content – not a banner ad.
4. The blogs that post your ad are related to your product, service, or industry.
5. It improves your reach since blog posts from the caliber of blogs in this network are distributed across the web through RSS feeds.
6. It is an amazing value.  OK – I’ll say it.  It’s cheap… $20 (See below to take advantage of the RMA offer I gave to seminar attendees). And the investment is finite – you buy as many links as you want.
7. The ads don’t go away.  They stay in the blog’s content indefinitely, and you get a report showing the blogs where your ad is placed.
8. The experts at the company help you write your ad.

As a vocal fan and user of the service, I was permitted to offer you (my readers) 25% off of your BloggingAds ($15 per ad instead of $20).  If you want to try this for your site, just be sure to mention me or MarketingRevisited if you call them (800-462-4164) or email them (sales@bloggingads.com).

If you happen to be a blogger with an interest in adding your blog to the BloggingAds network, or if you work with an agency that may be interested in re-selling BloggingAds, visit BloggingAds.com to learn more. I think you’ll be impressed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.