Increasingly, business owners are finding the value in publishing a blog on their website. The benefits range from building the trust of your clientele by openly interacting with them, to giving your site a boost in search engine results with the maintained flow of fresh content and keywords.

Another obvious gain comes in the form of repeat visitor traffic, giving you a good base to build on, but to keep them coming back for more you need a few things:
1. Clearly, you need to provide something to pique their interest and make them actually want to come back for more. You don’t need to create some Tolkien-esque universe and saga to transfix them, but how about news regarding upcoming events? Ask for customer feedback on a new item you’re stocking, brag about a cause you’re supporting, show off/pick on your employee of the month – whatever you do, be human, engaging, and…

2. be punctual with your posts. Decide if you’re going to do this daily, weekly, monthly, just be sure that whatever schedule you go by that you stick with it. If you track your readership you’ll quickly see a decline the first time you miss an expected post. It might seem excessive, but you will see it, no matter how reliable you’ve been in the past… those ungrateful so-and-sos…

3. Don’t forget to install an RSS feed! Sure, people might bookmark your site on their browser, but there will also be plenty who say to themselves, “Hmmm, this is an interesting site, I’ll have to remember this,” only to completely forget your address within two mouse clicks and a sip of coffee. The addition of that cute little RSS button is a call to action for your readers, and with a mash of the orange box you have a subscriber who will from then on be alerted every time you cobble together another masterpiece. This simple and so often overlooked addition will help prod return traffic to your site, translating to loyal customers, repeat business and untold wealth and fame.

At the very least it gives you the opportunity to publicly humiliate your employee of the month…

PPC specialists going espial with keyword spy programs really open the gap between the do-it-yourselfer camp and themselves when it comes to the PPC marketing game. The ability to see your competitions’ keyword selection and what they’re bidding is akin to playing cards with those sweet X-Ray glasses from the 50’s… you know, if they actually worked I mean. Hmmm, of course if they worked like they were supposed to I guess you’d see right through the cards themselves anyway, wouldn’t you? Hey, let’s pretend that analogy makes sense as it is and move along, shall we?

Anyway, my point is, with ever-increasing competition along with the proliferation of these types of specialty tools it’s no wonder why the DIY ranks are slowly folding and coming to companies such as our own for PPC management. For those pockets of resistance out there still determined to hold their own line let me introduce you to a couple spy networks that might help ease your burden:

Keyword Spy
Spy Fu