Blog Diagnostic Tool: Which Keywords are You Using Most on Your Blog?

Blogs can be a GREAT marketing tool for your business when used properly.

One of the key elements to blogging success is to view each post as a part of the “whole” that is your blog. Each post is a building block, a structural element of your blog and your blog’s overall structure affects its ability to act as a marketing tool.

In order for your blog to act as a powerful marketing tool, it has to focus on essential keywords that your prospective customers are using to find the information contained on your blog or website.

Liz Strauss over at Successful Blog introduced me to an incredible tool to help you analyze the keywords used on your blog. It’s Wordle. Wordle allows you to create beautiful word clouds, but more importantly, you can enter your RSS enabled site and SEE the words or building blocks of your blog. The larger a word appears, the more its used on your blog.

Now, I know that there are plug ins which will create tag clouds for your Wordpress blog. But tags aren’t the words used in your content and there’s something about the quality of the image of the Wordle image that makes it so appealing.

Over the past week, I’ve had two clients contacting me whose blogs are struggling. They are complaining that their blogs have not been acting like the powerful marketing tool they expected. So, I entered their blog feeds into Wordle to see what it showed.

CASE STUDY #1

The first client has been blogging for three months now. She’s consistently blogging so it’s not a lack of content that is hurting her blog.   If it’s not lack of content, then is has to be the keywords included in the content that is the problem.  I plugged her blog URL into Wordle and got this image:

This would be a GREAT Wordle if my client’s blog were about gardening, kitchens and writing.

However, her business is to help people achieve spiritual healing through journaling.

OUCH!

I can’t imagine anyone interested in her services to be rushing to Google and typing in the word “garden” hoping to find what she has to offer.

I’ll send her an email today about this tool and let her make her own evaluation.

CASE STUDY #2

This client is a weight loss coach. Weight loss is a great internet business. There’s a lot of competition but on the other hand, a lot of people are turning to the web to find weight loss solutions as well. This client included the essential keywords of “lose” and “weight” in her domain name because she understood how important those words were to her potential clients. However, despite FAITHFUL posting to her blog, her Wordle tells a different story.

Her most dominant keyword: YEARS!!!

ACK!!! I don’t want my weight loss efforts to take YEARS!!!! I don’t want it to take months!!! I want to go to bed fat and wake up thin!

Now, contrast these two Wordles with yet another client’s recently launched blog.

Rosemary Davies-Janes recently launched MibosoTraining.com. Her blog’s Wordle looks like this:

See the big words? Those are the ones she’s emphasizing in her content. The good news is those are exactly the words her potential clients will be using to find her.

Training, corporate training, executive training are all important keywords for her business and this tightly targeted site.

Rosemary has another blog at CarBrandsLikeMe.com where she focuses on showcasing her talents at helping companies develop a powerful and cohesive brand. The Wordle for that blog looks like this:

Since the blog is all about building a brand, Rosemary is probably pleased at the Wordle that blog produced.

If your blog is struggling, check out Wordle.  See what words you are using to build your blog.  Ask yourself, “Are these the words people would use to find what I have to offer?”