The Internet can be such a faceless place with every website starting to look and sound the same…. how do you make your business website stand out from the crowd?

With a blog, of course!

KansasCity.com posted a great article today on how businesses are using blogs to give a personal touch to their websites. A Kansas City real estate agent uses her blog to get more clients who are interested in moving to the area, and a local bistro uses their blog, the Business Bistro, to quickly and easily introduce specials to their clients.

Several of the advantages to blogging are listed in the article and are worth repeating:

• You can keep your site updated in as little as 15-20 minutes per week.
• You need to update at least once a week with really good content that fits your audience.
• Responding to criticism through your blog comments is a great way to show responsiveness to your market.

I’d also add that you want to inject just enough of your personality that your visitors get to know you-without knowing too much!

So why do you blog? Have you seen it change your business?

Need help with your sales? Is lackluster customer service hurting your bottom line? Just want to be more productive? DrewStevensConsulting.com, one of our newest YourBlogTeam clients, can help.

Drew is a talented speaker and writer, author of six books, including Split Second Selling, Spilt Second Customer Service and Little Book of Hope.

If you are looking to improve your sales effectiveness, be sure to check out his free Sell Well Kit.

What’s exciting about working with Drew is his ability to generate so much content in a short amount of time. We moved his posts from his old blog and imported them into his new one, he has tons of free ebooks, and over 100 articles on the Internet so it’s really easy to get traffic going to his site.

He’s already on the first page of Google, and we’re shooting for the number 1 spot, mainly through articles submitted online. Then once we get the visitors to the site who are interested in his main topics (sales effectiveness, customer service, time management and productivity), the goal is for them to sign up for his Free Sales Training materials and join his newsletter so we can continue to contact them.

Congratulations to Erica Ross-Krieger of WellnessCoach.com who hit #1 on Google yesterday for the highly competitive phrase “Wellness Coach.”

So how did she do it? Erica started her blog last September (so it’s been almost 10 months) and she has been climbing in rankings since then. Here are some of her secrets to success:

• Very-well written posts that appeal to her visitors.
• Regular very frequent posting, especially at the beginning.
• Development of a community of readers who link to and comment on her blog.
• Use of our propriety search engine traffic building system.
• Regular commenting on other blogs to build lots of incoming links.
• Adding photos to her posts to appeal to readers and encourage site stickiness.
• Persistence even when the results didn’t appear immediately.
• Selection of a “juicy” target market… wellness coaching is a very popular topic.

Great job, Erica!

Welcome to our newest blogging client, NewJobNow.com, The Place for Job Hunters. The site is all about the job search process, including how to write resumes, interviewing and all things related to job hunting.

We were excited when this brand-new site was listed in Google within 48 hours. In the “old days,” I used to tell clients that it could take 4 to 6 months to get your site listed in Google, but thankfully with the new technology available to bloggers, we are able to attract the attention of the Google spiders (and the site owners keep them coming back with timely, relevant posts)!

What are the Google spiders? They are automated programs that search the Internet to find the content that goes into the Google search results. We install some special plugins into our Wordpress blogs that specifically target Google and the other search engines.

Congratulations Mike at NewJobNow.com!

Congratulations to Maria Rodgers-O’Rourke on her new site, MinutestoMoments.com. This new site includes great reflections for a mom’s busy life. Stop by and get inspired! (This is Maria’s second site with Your Blog Team… her first one is GreatChristmasBook.com).

I am so excited to introduce you to PathwaysforAging.com. Jeannie and her team have been coaching clients for a long time, and we recently decided to convert her old site to a blog-site…. In addition to the standard blog functionality, we also setup all the other functionality of a regular website, including an email newsletter, a store, and brochure-type pages to describe her services and her team.

One more exciting piece of news is related to the search engine ranking for her site. The old site didn’t appear in Google. I added the SEO functionality from the Wordpress plugins we use last night, and today Pathways for Aging is number 1 and 2 in the Google results. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Congratulations Jeannie and the entire Pathways for Aging, Inc. team. Check out the site at www.PathwaysforAging.com.

One of the biggest challenges for a new blogger learning how to blog is determining what to write about. We have a list of 15 different ways to blog that we share with our clients, and I’ll describe one of them here.

First, think about the question, “What is something my readers really need to know about?” Make a list of the 10 most common questions you get about your topic. Then do keyword research to see exactly what phrases are used most often in the search engines for that topic.

For example, one of the topics you need to know about when creating your blog is a “blogroll”. So I went to the Wordtracker keyword tool and determined that the most commonly typed phrase is What is a blogroll? So then I wrote a post with the title, Glossary: What is a Blogroll? and back when I created this post, I ranked #11 on Google for this phrase–and I got traffic from it.

The Wordtracker keyword tool will tell you the different phrases people type in and how popular each one is. The best way to start is by typing in a fairly general phrase (for example, I used “blog”) and then look at the list Wordtracker generates. Then you can pick a phrase that is used often and is easy for you to blog about.

So if you’re having trouble determining what to blog about, follow these three simple steps:

1) Go back to basics. What do your readers need to know?
2) Do keyword research with the Wordtracker keyword tool to see how they are looking for that phrase.
3) Create a post with a commonly-used keyword phrase in the title and in the post.

It doesn’t get much easier than that when you are trying to learn how to blog!

Congratuations to Maria Rodgers O’Rourke on her phenomenal new book, Prepare Your Heart for a Great Christmas! I just saw the book today and it is gorgeous. If you’re like me, and Christmas is always stress-filled and crazy, this book will help you stay organized and focused on what’s really important at Christmas. Check it out at GreatChristmasBook.com and get your copy today (the reflections start at Thanksgiving) so make sure you order before this year’s inventory runs out.

MyMangels.com promotes a new ebook by author Marjorie Wolter entitled My Mangels: The Men Who Erased the Myth. The site and ebook describes how the various men in her life became “man - angels” to her.  You can find out more at MyMangels.com.

Congratulations to WellnessCoach.com (and it’s talented author, Erica Ross-Krieger) for ranking #12 in Google for her main search phrase in just a week!  Her blog just went live last week, and I was so excited to see her on page 2 already.  Be sure to check out her suggestions for Wellness for Entrepreneurs including my favorite post so far, “52 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Thrive.”  I’ll keep you posted on her status.