Soap Warehouse Blog

Improve your web site with informational or educational links, pages, blog posts and or white papers available for down load for readers. The more content and the more often you update this content will increase your sites SEO, increase the number of visitors, get loyal readers and over time new customers. 

Here is a list of suggested topics for various types of cleaning contractors: 

Roof washers 

What is that dark stuff on my roof? (This is all most a must have to explain Gloeocapsa Magma algae) 

Wash don't replace your roof. 

How a cleaning a roof increases the life of your roof and your home.

House washers 

How a wash will increase the value and life span of your home.

A mold free home is a healthy home.

Exterior home safety.

Fleet washers 

Spending on maintenance saves money.

Clean vehicles saves fuel costs.

Clean vehicles improves company image.

Window cleaners 

All windows are not the same and what makes them different to clean?

Why double or triple pane windows fail?

How window coverings keep your house cooler? or warmer? (which ever you need in your area)

The list could go on and on but idea is the same. Search the web for info to use and see what your competitors are doing but Please create your own educational pieces and don't just copy, plagiarize, someone else's work from their site. Give readers information and education on your site and in your blogs to keep them coming back and eventually buying your service.

Now I do not use Word Press since our Blog is part of a soft ware platform that is integrated with our CRM, Hubspot and Salesforce. But our business as a B2B, is totally different than yours, as a B2C service business. And Word Press is the #1 blogging platform out there for a very good reason; easy and inexpensive for the individual and small business person. So I am going to show you the steps you need to take to get your business started with blogging. 

1) Open your WordPress account. This is very easy and doesn't have to cost you a thing. Go to  http://www.wordpress.com and click on “Get Started”.  Next fill in an email address, choose a username and password. If you are like us we have a main e-mail we just use when setting up on line accounts which is totally different than the ones we put out to the general public that is linked to our web site. One reason is it would be less likely for hackers to find and try to use this e-mail than the public ones. So you might think about doing this first and use it for all future new accounts for your business. Your username will never be seen or shared with your blog but I still would choose a general one dedicated to the business and not to a person. And choose a password that is not the same as others you use and can be easily changed every 30-90 days with out having to think too much about it. 012014Blog is an idea that you can change the first of each month. So if you know what month it is you know your password.

2) Choose your blog domain address. WordPress will let you know if the one you picked has already been taken and will show you options for similar ones that are available. Make sure the name is relevant to what you want to blog about not just because it is available.

If you choose to go the free blog route your blog address will look like this http://www.yourblogname.wordpress.com. You can also pay WordPress to host your blog then your address would be just be the name of your blogs website: www.yourblogname.com. I won't post pricing here because it can easily change and they have specials at different times with third party affiliates so check what the going rate is now and look around the web for offers.

3) Choose your Blogs Title, the tagline, which is a brief description of your blog, and if possible the goal of what you plan to bring to your readers. This can be very important because you want to catch and hook new readers to want to first read at least one post and hopefully then click to follow all your future postings. And this is where blogging starts making you new and loyal customers.

4) Choose and customize a theme for your blog. Your blog will follow a template depending on what content you will mainly be presenting. There are free ones and ones you can pay for, but all can be changed so if you start with one you can switch later. Also just because you choose a theme that is heavily photos and videos does not mean you can not write some blogs which are mainly text or visa versa. 

5) Now you are ready to start the real work by posting to your blog.

Each post starts with a format tool to choose the content for that post. If you don't know what you want yours to look like use the "Inspire Me" link or do a search in WordPress for other blogs that have a similar theme. Don't try to copy one, just see what you like and what you think your readers will like.

Make sure you fill out the public profile that generates the "About the Author" section that will be listed with each post. Here be sure to list your main web site your business name number and other important info that will draw you prospects.

Each post can be tagged and placed in a category of your choosing and is a great way to keep your posts organized and makes your contents searchable to others looking for the type of things you are sharing. 

6) Your Home Page. This is the place you check your latest blog posts and the blogs you have chosen to follow. Here you also can view stats, how many visitors you have had and see any comments readers have left you about a post. It helps to know when you readers are viewing so you learn the best time to post to be the most engaged with your readers.

7) The Dashboard. This contains a lot of information but once you know what each section is for it is easier to understand. You can choose what you want to see on your dashboard with screen options, to make it more effective for you to see what you want to know in a glance.

• Home: Shows you everything from the home page, blogs, posts, comments and stats. You can use omnisearch to find a page, comment or image.

• Store: If you want to add a store for $99 a year you can create and mange not just a product but a service or package or special. I believe you can even switch items off and on to be seen for imited time and not have to delete and recreate them.

• Posts: This area is where you see all posts viewed by tag or category.

• Media; Where all your images and videos are stored and are linked from to the different posts. A single image can be used in multiple posts.

• Links: This section show all of the links that you blog posts link back to.

• Pages: Lists pages you have created like the About Me or ones you have made for each type of service you provide.

• Comments: Allows you to search, filter or delete comments left. Some times it is better to comment your self to a negative comment rather then delete it entirely.

• Feedback: Is a section where info you have asked from your readers shows up, you can create and view polls, see your blog rating and reader feedback.

• Appearance: This is where you can customize the look of your blog such as colors, fonts, header, background color or image, etc.

• Users: Is where you can add new users that you want to have access to adding and changing your blog, your profile and settings.

• Tools: Is where you can create buttons and share content from the web on to your blog and link to verify your blog with Google, Bing, Pinterest, Twitter etc.

• Settings: The last section where you can ask to me emailed when someone comments, your email preferences and all the options for writing your blog. 

While it will take a little time to first set up a blog in WordPress, once it is running it is super easy to manage and will gain you a lot of free SEO and hopefully new and engaged customers. So think about staring a blog soon.

When I say "long tail" I am talking about the key word phrases that you place in your web site pages body copy, photo meta tags and in your blog posts that allows search engines to chose to show your web site page over another.

You first need to weekly or at least monthly research with your available anylitics to find out what current visitors have used for their search words to find you.

Gone are the days of just a few key words working. You need to create complex long tail phrases to help pin point customers directly to you instead of the competition.

And don't be suprised by the phrases you find. Some may be very difficult to figure out how to incorperate into your page copy.

I will go through some of ours to show you what I mean. I knew right away that Soap Warehouse was going to have a hard time with certain key words, especially with product  names. One - because most of the names where too common ie: "Hood Cleaner" for our hood cleaning product or because the name was senominous with something else ie: "Brown Derby" like the restaurant of old in LA or currently at Disney World. Or "Top Gun" our aircraft cleaner with the same name as the movie.

Because of this right away we had to use multi key word phrases "Top Gun aircraft cleaner" "Brown Derby truck wash" "Hood Cleaner kitchen exhaust cleaner". But these will not help if people are not actually using them to search with. More often we would see that our top search results where things like: "brown soap", "truck soap", "aircraft soap", "sodium hydroxide cleaner" but even these would bring in very low numbers because too many sites had simular key word phrases.

So we constantly are adding long tails we knew people had used to find us like: "acid cleaners for aluminum", "best degreaser for chinese kitchen grease", "algea cleaner for gloeocapsa magma". You have to take these phrases and go into your page content and match the phrase word for word to gain the maxium effect.

For instance the part of the discription we had for "Hood Cleaner" read "This product has a good performance history in Chinese restaurants." That phrase now reads "This is our best degreaser for chinese kitchen grease." See how we incorporated the long tail search phrase into the body copy. Now the next time someone searches that same phrase we have a much better chance of being the first page to show up for that.

For the phrase "algea cleaner for gloeocapsa magma" we wrote a blog post on the topic and included that phrase in the text.

Even using long tail phrases in free on line directory sites can bring you targeted searches especially for your local area. This is not something we do since we do not try to get just local business but for contrators limited to a specific geographic location it can be key to new business. For example if you would like to have more clients in an affluent area, like Brookhaven here in Atlanta, you might list or showcase some before and after photos with the photo named and meta tagged as "Spectacular house wash in Brookhaven". Then when someone in Brookhaven searches for "house washing Brookhaven" you will be at or near the top of the list.