But there is a problem with the concept of “relevance”.

1. Pick an interesting topic for your blog
2. Write interesting posts with catchy titles
3. Optimize your blog posts for the Search Engines
4. Sit back and wait for the traffic.

If you do these things, the forumula says, you will get the attention of the Search Engines (especially Google), and they will send you a “stampede of targeted traffic”.

In case you havent noticed, this formula relies almost exclusively on what is known in the biz as SEO - Search Engine Optimization - and because of this it is seriously misleading. I can state with no hesitation at all that if you rely exclusively on this formula to get traffic to your blog you will almost certainly be disappointed by the results.

Yes, there are bloggers who get tons of traffic, and much of that traffic is driven by the Search Engines. But what youre not told is that these bloggers have built up their list of followers over quite a long period of time, usually using a variety of different strategies to drive traffic. They do not simply rely on SEO.

This is especially relevant to local business owners. If you are a local business owner a real estate agent, accountant, lawyer, chiropractor, restaurant, landscaping company, etc., etc. you are addressing a narrowly targeted local niche where only local followers matter to you. You will soon find that to rely on the search engines to deliver a lot of traffic from such a relatively small target market will be extremely disappointing.

Don't get me wrong. SEO is important, and it is the beginning of a solid web marketing strategy. But it is only the beginning.

For example, you might assume if you are an agent in Toledo that your primary search term should be Toledo real estate or Toledo homes. This may be correct as far as it goes. But if you do any kind of analysis of the traffic coming to your site you will quickly find that your traffic comes from many diverse directions. In many cases people are coming to your site as a result of search terms you hadn't even thought of targeting.

To focus your online efforts what you should be looking for is a range of 10 or 20 search terms that you can target in various ways. This will include 3 or 4 that will get special emphasis - your Primary Search Terms or Most Important Search Terms. But it will also include beteween 10 and 20 that you can target in a less intensive way. These make up what you might call your Target Search Term List.

Developing your Target Search Term List

Even if you have been around search engine marketing for a while it will be difficult to choose a comprehensive list of search terms without doing some keyword research. Fortunately there are lots of keyword analyzing tools available to you.

One of the best known is Wordtracker - a popular tool that has been around for years. Unfortunately it will cost you $59/mo. so it is probably not the best option unless you are doing a lot of search engine analysis on a regular basis.

Perhaps the two most popular free keyword analysis tools are the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Wordstream Niche Finder. These tools are capable of giving you some very detailed information about search trends.

But for your purposes all you really need is some basic information, namely, Which search terms are my target market using when they search for my type of service? This basically boils down to finding out how often certain search terms are being used.

Niche Finder from Wordstream lets you type in a specific keyword like "Punkydoodles Corners real estate" or "Punkydoodles Corners homes" and it will give you a list of related terms (ones containing these words) and an idea of the search volume for each of them.

Making good use of these tools will help you develop a more sophisticated Target Search Term List and will make it much easier to develop an effective strategy for boosting your search engine rankings.

I regularly talk to a real estate agents who publish their own blogs. Sometimes I will hear someone say: “Why should I pay for content when I can just copy stories from online news sources or other newsletters that people send me? Why should I pay for something thats free?”

When I point out that this is actually stealing content I usually get no response. People who do this either dont realize they are stealing other peoples writing, or they prefer not to think about it.

But lets think about it for a minute.

If you copy a news story from an online source like, say, Report on Business, the Washington Post or the Punkiedoodle Corners Express, you are taking the work prepared and paid for by someone else and claiming it as your own.

This is like walking down the street and walking off with the neighbours bicycle because it is sitting on the sidewalk.

And just giving them “credit” by citing the source is not enough. You are still stealing their content. How would you like it if someone from Hustler or the Terrorist Daily picked up one of your original articles and republished it under your byline? That would be suggesting you identify with their publication, wouldn't it?

The reason bloggers steal content is either because they dont have the resources to report and write stuff of their own, or they are not prepared to pay for others to write it for them.

This is why BlogEasy is so unique. BlogEasy provides you with content that you can republish, as long as you are registered with the BlogEasy system. It is original content written by BlogEasy writers.

For BlogEasy members it is simple. There is no need to steal content from legitimate writers and news sources. One inexpensive membership gives you publishing rights to hundreds of original articles and news reports with new material added on a daily basis.

That means you have to clearly spell out what each page is about. Thinking like a search engine means you should not make your visitors read between the lines to figure out what your content is about.

For instance, if a particular web page is about Punkydoodles Corners homes, then the search engines should be able to clearly see that and then put that in their database: “This page is about Punkydoodles Corners homes.” In other words, decide on what keywords you want to focus on, and make sure to include them in all the most important places.

Winning at the search game

That makes it important to anticipate what keywords and keyword phrases people will use when searching for your product or service and then use those exact terms in the text of your pages.

There are important ways to focus your content so the search engines recognize the theme of each page. But to keep it simple, the more you say about your specific target search term, the more likely you are to score well for it.

Common sense, right? Optimizing a page means focusing on a specific term and going out of your way to emphasize that search term in the text of your page.

It isnt magic. It is common sense. If a page has lots of content focused on a specific keyword it will score well for that term.

For local business owners one of the biggest drawbacks with online advertising has been the crude (or non-existent) ways in which you can target the reach of your ads. Placing an ad on a high traffic sight virtually guarantees getting hits from people you have no interest in reaching. And this alone can make online advertising inefficient and overly expensive.

Pay Per Click (like Google Adwords) solved this problem by allowing advertisers to target by keyword. But many local businesses cannot take advantage of keyword targeting because of the relatively small size of their target market. There simply are not enough searches done on keywords such as "Toledo sump pumps" or "Richmond Hill Indian food" to get enough clicks to justify the effort.

Of course this is not always the case, but you get the drift. Pay Per Click tends to be efficient when you can accurately target a fairly broad target market. You need to get enough clicks to make it worth your time, without getting a lot of irrelevant clicks. Those clicks can quickly make the campaign prohibitively expensive. Finding just the right mix can often be impossible for local businesses.

Facebook advertising changes all this, at least in theory, and at least as long as Facebook continues to be a regular destination for its millions of members. Why? Because Facebook lets you target your ads to narrow segments based on the information in member profiles.

For local businesses the most important targeting factor is location. Combined with other relevant factors (interests, hobbies, leisure activities, etc.) this allows you to get significant exposure to the narrow market segment you are trying to reach.

For example if you sell sports goods in your city you can target people who have indicated "sports" as an interest. Or "hockey" or "soccer" or "baseball". Or if you want to target people interested in "ferrari" in Toronto, it's no problem. Currently there are 2920 of them.

As Dennis Yu points out in a recent post about Facebook advertising you can even use the information in Facebook profiles to target customers of competitors.

The other nice thing about Facebook advertising is that it is cheap - at least compared to the alternatives. You can set up a campaign for a few dollars a day, let it run for a few days, and then fine tune it or replace it with something else.

You can also include a simple, non-provocative image in your ad. This not only helps you get clicks, but choosing the right image can enhance your image and grow your presence even if nobody clicks on your ad.

Mor information on Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages.

The Blackberry is good for business because it is a great little messaging device. In fact Apple's unwillingness to include a physical keyboard with the iPhone will continue to make it difficult to win over hard core business users. Sending emails and text messages is still a big part of business and is faster on the Blackberry.

But RIM can't ignore the broader consumer market where web browsing, video watching and application using are the chief attractions. On all three of these fronts the Blackberry suffers by comparison. The new Blackberry Torch released in the summer is a pretty good start. But that only buys them some time. Their next effort will have to be better if they hope stop the flow to Apple and start winning customers back.

See this post for more on the SmartPhone Wars.

Your USP should add value a perceived advantage in the eyes of your prospective customers. It should give your customers and prospects a reason to deal with your business rather than one of your competitors.

For example, if you primarily service a specific area, subdivision or community you could be the “Holly Hills expert” or “We know Holly Hills inside out.”

It is even possible to do this with more than one area or community. There is nothing inconsistent about being the “Holly Hills expert” and the “Pleasant Valley expert” and the “Sleepy Hollow expert” all at the same time.

The point is to set yourself apart from other agents who service those areas or communities. If you call yourself an expert and set your sites on becoming one, not only will people think you are an expert, but you will actually become an expert.