Deborah Petersen
Life in the Fast Lane
There are people who start out to blog for one reason, but once they are involved, they find completely different motivations. It was like that for Deborah Petersen. When she got into blogging, Petersen was already a Web veteran, having set up a professional site for Fast Lane Transport, a family-owned business. Fast Lane is a large freight company that serves Canada’s four western provinces, as well as providing in-city industrial courier service in the Edmonton, Alberta area. Her husband, Layne Petersen, founded the company in 2000, and Deborah serves as business manager and dispatcher.
Petersen is a search engine optimization (SEO) enthusiast. In fact, it was SEO that got her into blogging. According to Petersen, the Fast Lane website was doing fairly well with search engines in 2006. But the idea that a blog could help get even better results was attractive. She decided to add a blog in support of the business.
In less than a year, Deborah Petersen has moved from running a medium-sized
business website to running one of Technorati’s 100 Most Favorited blogs. She
credits her success to specific elements of her approach to blogging. Here’s a
summary of those elements:
• Blog from your heart.
• Learn more than the basics of SEO.
• It is important to post on a regular basis, to keep readers coming back.
• Avoid duplicate content. It can cause your site to be pushed down in search rankings.
• When it’s appropriate, link to other sites to attract links back to your blog.
• Social search engines and social sites such as MyBlogLog and spicypage provide opportunities to meet other bloggers as well as opportunities for networking to promote links.
• Only a fraction of a blog’s visitors leave comments.
• If you don’t have RSS available, you will lose readers.
• Research the formats and platforms used by other bloggers before you start blogging. This will help you avoid mistakes.
“I eat, sleep, and breathe my blog.”
There are people who start out to blog for one reason, but once they are involved, they find completely different motivations. It was like that for Deborah Petersen. When she got into blogging, Petersen was already a Web veteran, having set up a professional site for Fast Lane Transport, a family-owned business. Fast Lane is a large freight company that serves Canada’s four western provinces, as well as providing in-city industrial courier service in the Edmonton, Alberta area. Her husband, Layne Petersen, founded the company in 2000, and Deborah serves as business manager and dispatcher.
Petersen is a search engine optimization (SEO) enthusiast. In fact, it was SEO that got her into blogging. According to Petersen, the Fast Lane website was doing fairly well with search engines in 2006. But the idea that a blog could help get even better results was attractive. She decided to add a blog in support of the business.
In less than a year, Deborah Petersen has moved from running a medium-sized
business website to running one of Technorati’s 100 Most Favorited blogs. She
credits her success to specific elements of her approach to blogging. Here’s a
summary of those elements:
• Blog from your heart.
• Learn more than the basics of SEO.
• It is important to post on a regular basis, to keep readers coming back.
• Avoid duplicate content. It can cause your site to be pushed down in search rankings.
• When it’s appropriate, link to other sites to attract links back to your blog.
• Social search engines and social sites such as MyBlogLog and spicypage provide opportunities to meet other bloggers as well as opportunities for networking to promote links.
• Only a fraction of a blog’s visitors leave comments.
• If you don’t have RSS available, you will lose readers.
• Research the formats and platforms used by other bloggers before you start blogging. This will help you avoid mistakes.