The Marketplace is filling up. In “The Commercial Real Estate Quarterly” of the Indianapolis Business Journal, Tom Dickey, Vice President of Duke Realty, explained why.  The housing slump has hurt retail shopping strip centers, and Duke’s projects have felt the pinch along with all the other developers.  But, says Dickey, “We’re getting retailers to commit and come to our projects even in this down economy, when their numbers might not work out.”  And then he went on to explain why:  “They want to save their spot.”

Although I’m certainly no expert in the field of real estate, as a professional ghost blogger I really understood the tie-in between Dickey’s observation about the retailers and how search engine indexing works for my blogging clients.  Different businesses may each provide content on the Web through blogging.  Those that post blogs more frequently rank higher on Google or other search engines than those businesses that post only occasionally.  Recent blogs rank higher than old content.  But what’s so important to understand is that the system values cumulative content.  A business that has blogged for a year will rank higher than a competitor who’s just begun to blog.

So, to continue my real estate analogy, blogging has an element to it of building “equity” in a property, saving a spot.  Remember that the whole idea behind business blogging is to move your business’ name higher in the rankings on search engines (when someone is online searching for information or product related to your business, you want your name to come up on Page One of the search engine.)

In blogging, recency counts.  Frequency counts.  But now, cumulative blogging – that’s what saves your spot!

I always enjoy the omelets at Cafe Patachou, but a week ago, someone interviewing Patachou owner Martha Hoover served me something even tastier – a wonderful word tidbit about business.  Hoover was discussing what being an entrepreneur means to her:  “We do more than serve breakfast and lunch – we provide jobs and a lifestyle for our employees.”  The interviewer, Shawn O’Donaghue of the Central Indiana Women’s Business Center, then came up with this wonderful summary:

“Successful business owners understand that the product or service they are selling is the answer to someone’s problem.”

Wow! That one sentence is so-o-o made-to-order for business blogging and s-o-o apropos to my work as a professional ghost blogger for business.  Here’s why I say that:  People are online searching for answers to their problems.  They might need answers to questions they have or solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  Or, they might need a particular kind of service and aren’t sure who offers that.  Or maybe they need a product to fill a need they have.  That’s when, if you’ve been consistently blogging, they find you, because your blog post gives them just the information they’re looking for. (Remember, they wouldn’t be there searching if they didn’t need something!) Don’t think of it as business blogging; think of it as providing solutions to someone’s problem.

So, Martha Hoover, keep serving up those fabulous Patachou omelets. Shawn Donaghue, keep serving up those valuable business tips and word tidbits!  I’ll relish them both.