How to Use a Wordpress Blog for An Offline Template

Some guy was talking about seo, keywords and using a wordpress blog for setting up an offline marketing business by putting up websites for brick and mortar stores. He wanted to use static pages in a wordpress blog setup and thought that he wouldn't need the part of a wordpress blog that does the dynamic posting..... I suggested if he was just setting up static sites, he might as well use Xsitepro because it would give him the most bang for the bust! He must have been a newbie because he had some very basic questions. Nothing wrong with being a newbie, so I thought I'd post part of his question along with my comments below....maybe you might be able to glean something from it.

I really need to contact this fellow and show him my Xsitepro Offline Marketing Template. Using an Xsitepro Template for setting up brick and mortar businesses makes a lot of sense since these sites get indexed so quickly. In case you haven't seen my directory yet, I've been experimenting with The Mchenry Business Directory ...an online directory listing Mchenry businesses.

His Question

Basically, I'm going to try and create a stable offline business by providing a certain offline service, to customers which I plan to partially get through organic Google traffic. These customers would only be based locally. I have researched quite a few really nice local keywords, some with 4K+ monthly searches and I'm not really sure how to go about this.

I've decided to use WordPress for the website because of the ease of use and because it's SEO friendly. The website contains a welcome home page as well as faq, contact, terms of service, privacy policy and services page which describes the services that are being offered. The reason for not knowing how to go about this is because the whole website is static nothing really changes on it since it's meant to be a business website. The local keywords I have researched seem to have a fairly low competition although some seem hard to dominate.

My Answer and Comments

You've got a lot going on and some big questions. I'll give you my 2 cents for one small part of it. You're talking about using a wordpress blog for a buisness blog which will be composed mostly of static pages.

First based on my experience, if you're planning on creating a static site I would use Xsitepro. I use Dreamweaver or just plain ole notepad for developing sites and Xsitepro produces results that often times out do Wordpress. So, if you're serious about setting up multiple offline sites, composed of 3 or 4 pages....get a copy of Xsitepro and use it... Your pages will be indexed in some cases overnight and usually stay there with little to no updating. That's my personal experience. Just make sure you use the rss function and create a xml page, ping it and submit it to the directories

However!

Wordpress offers so much and to limit yourself to a couple of pages per site is a big mistake. Many big corporations switch to a wordpress blog...using it as a CMS. There is tremendous potential in using wordpress for your offline sites that you're really missing.

If you want to create a static front page that's fine. But don't dismiss using the blog as part of your site and its entire promotion.

I find a blog is the perfect offline business platform for developing websites and I incorporate both static and regular posts.

You mentioned you have a couple of keywords...I image it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with 50 or more keywords for your niche....especially if it's localized.

This is how a the blog portion of the site would work.

Use the blog to create or build a story about the business. You can expound on any aspect of the business, create a category and post weekly or daily blog posts using your keywords. Your story could virtually be a diary of daily business happenings. People love to read about the more personal side of a business. You could profile the employees....you could follow one employee through the entire week.

I can't think of any business that you couldn't develop some sort of story around. Heck, you could even have a cagegory that focuses on the office life of the business....isn't there a hit TV show called "The Office"!

I like to chronicle various projects, jobs, cases or patients within a business or service.

Let's say your site is for a local chiropractor. You can set up the front end of the site to make it look professional....but don't dismiss developing the blog because this is where you can effectively use your keywords or keyword phrases and start getting organic traffic.

Keeping with the chiropractor example. Find a patient to blog on. Let's say he has arm pain from a ruptured disc. Have the Chiropractor or you blog weekly on the patients treatment and progress. You'll be able to use keywords for the treatment...such as "decompression therapy in Mchenry" or "muscle stimulation therapy in Mchenry Chiropractor".....you'll have enough material for a full year. Use your imagination.

Consider a hardwood flooring company.

Do the same thing, set up your static front page as an introduction to the company...make sure you have an optin form. Then you could set up some blog categories such as "materials" where you would talk about the various hardwoods, finishes etc. Or how about a "projects" category. Pick a couple of good projects to blog about in a diary form. Once again, when you're talking about oak flooring, you would use the keyword "oak flooring in Mchenry" or "hardwood floor sanding in Mchenry".....man, you have more material for an offline blog than any blog on internet marketing or some adsense blog.

You can literally blog about any aspect of any business, talking about information that those familiar with the business would probably think is uninteresting. As the website developer you're presented with an opportunity to use this information to stick important keywords or keyword phrases.

Although you mainly blogging to get your site indexed for certain keywords, by no means, dismiss the fact that people really enjoy knowing the inner workings of a company. People are nosey...they want to know the gossip and whether people are happy with a business......you can provide that information by blogging.

I've purchased and read many offline marketing guru's and nobody talks about what I just did....use this information to beat any and all competitors!

Concerning backlinks.

This forum is full of ideas and methods to get backlinks....some as white as the driven snow and others dark like midnight on a new moon look around and do some searching there are plenty of experts here on keywords.

I can tell you that a handfull of decent backlinks for most keyword phrases for offline marketing will almost always get you on page one and at the top. That being said, why don't you set up a network of blogs for your own links. Set up some blogger and wordpress.com blogs. Then there is always the old fashion method of asking for a link to your site.

You can find a some guys here offing backlink packages.....so getting backlinks should be the least of your problems....just make sure you build it into your pricing structure.

Oh well....I wasn't going to say anything about linking or backlinks...wanted to leave that to someone else.

Hope you get the idea about how you can use a wordpress blog more effectively for your offline sites!

Scott