Using Blogger Outreach To Market Your Product

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing

Tags

Advertising, Behavior, Best Practices, Blog, Blogging

The story of the “great” blogger with “great” content but no traffic is a common one. Your excuse may be that you’re blogging as a hobby, maintaining an online journal just for fun, or not in it for the money.

But who are you kidding? Be honest with yourself—if you wanted to journal and didn’t care about having an audience, it would have been easier to write in a diary or Word doc.

If you didn’t care about an audience, you would have written a diary. #blogoutreach

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So, you want traffic, right? Even if you aren’t blogging with the intention of building a million-dollar blog, it’s nice to have your ideas, words, and hard work appreciated.

The unfortunate thing is that this idea of “content is king” has got you believing that, if you writeamazing content, the traffic will somehow find you and because of this, you’ve been producing a post or two a day for the last 6 to 12 months. While you haven’t wasted your time, this strategy is incomplete.

Whether or not you run your blog like a business, you need to strategize like a business. Focusing on your “product” with no investment in marketing is like a business sourcing materials, manufacturing 100,000 widgets, storing the inventory in a warehouse, and then wondering why the customers haven’t been buying the product.

Not all is lost, however. You have tons of great blog posts already published and now you need to find the right bloggers or audience to share it with.

How Will Outreach Marketing Make Your Blog More Successful? via @StartABlog123

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Get Your Free Outreach Marketing Template Now!

Link Building Strategies: Guest Blogging And Outreach Marketing

Unless you’re already recognized as an authority or have thousands of readers a day, a passive form of content marketing isn’t going to work. Instead, your link building campaign must take two forms—guest blogging and outreach marketing.

For purposes of link building in this article, let me define guest blogging and outreach marketing:

Guest blogging is contributing a blog post to a publication.
Outreach marketing is requesting that a blogger link to your content from an existing or upcoming post.

Any effective link building campaign should, at the minimum, incorporate a combination of these two tactics.

But how do you decide where to leverage each one?

Guest blogging

Guest blogging should be reserved for highly-relevant, powerful authority sites. This is because, as an individual blogger or one part of a small team, you don’t have the resources (time, energy, money, opportunity cost, etc.) to contribute to every single guest posting opportunity. You have to pick and choose where your resources will yield the greatest results.

The obvious example is that you would make a concerted effort to contribute to the CoSchedule Blog, whereas a smaller, lesser-known blog might get a pitch to be included in next month’s roundup.

Prioritize your guest blogging opportunities. #marketingtips

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Finding guest blogging opportunities.

To evaluate a blog, you must find relevant ones. This is really the easiest task of all because whose job is it to return relevant blogs? Google’s!

However, you need to be specific. If your blog is about “personal finance”, you wouldn’t try to reach out to CNN, Yahoo Finance, Wall Street Journal, or Bloomberg, which happen to be some of the top results for that keyword search.

Instead, pick a related, niche topic such as “how to become financially independent” and open up every website in the first 300 results (maybe not all at once).

Just remember that, as you work through this guide, it will benefit you to repeat the following process multiple times with different keywords to find the greatest number of bloggers to contact.

To find the best guest blogging opportunities, search for one that is relevant and in your niche.

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Evaluating blogs.

To determine if a website is worth guest blogging, don’t bother with the standard PageRank and domain authority (DA) metrics. PageRank hasn’t been updated since December 2013 and doesn’t seem to have the weight it once did in Google’s algorithm. Furthermore, as a third-party metric developed by Moz, DA is easily manipulated.

For example, I’ve come across dozens of penalized sites with high domain authority, and I view penalized sites as essentially useless for SEO purposes. If Google penalizes a site and takes away its traffic, it is effectively stripping the strength of that domain, so why get a link from one? Beware of link sellers and SEO’s selling links on crappy high DA sites.

Forget DA and PageRank to find guesting opps. Organic traffic is better.

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Ultimately, the best indication of a blog’s strength is the amount of traffic Google sends to it via organic rankings, making SEMrush my favorite SEO tool. Just enter the blog you are interested in contributing to, choose “Positions” under the “Organic Research” tab on the left, and click on “All time” in the “Organic keywords” section.

If you find a level or upward trend, the blog is trusted by Google. Here’s a blog that ranks for nearly 10,000 keywords and is one you would likely be interested in earning a link from:

SEMrush organic traffic review for outreach marketing

Note that this blog has been around for at least 4 years and enjoyed gradual growth until recently exploding with traffic. That’s the kind of blog you should want to be featured on.

However, if this blog only had a 6-month history, now that might be a red flag indicating black hat SEO. And while you may get a temporary boost in rankings by guest posting on a site like that, it might be short-lived and thus a waste of your time because the goal is to build a strong, sustainable, long-term business model even if it takes more time and energy.

An example of a blog to avoid may have a chart like this:

SEMrush organic traffic drop review for outreach marketing

As you can see, this blog was hit by a penalty in late 2011 and has slowly been losing its keyword rankings.

Not all penalized domains will demonstrate an obvious trend like this one, but anytime you see a huge drop in traffic and no recovery, the blog is in decline. This doesn’t necessarily make it unworthy of contributing to, assuming the traffic hasn’t finally reached 0; it just means it isn’t a priority right now. Save it for a lull period when you want to tie up loose ends.

Guest blog vs. outreach: How to decide?

Once you’ve decided a blog is worth reaching out to, you must determine your approach. There aren’t strict rules for pitching a specific blog; it really depends on a number of factors, such as:

How many keywords is the domain ranking for?
How relevant is the blog to my target audience?
Is there a “Guest Post”, “Contributor Guidelines”, or “Write For Us” page? If so, how demanding are the guidelines?
Does the author link out often? If so, are the links dofollow?
How commercial does the site look?

For me, a domain needs to rank for at least 300 keywords or have a large, loyal following (subscribers or social media) to be worth investing hours writing content. The bigger the blog, the more time you should invest in making your contribution absolutely memorable because eventually, your portfolio of work will be your future credentials in email pitches.

Guest blogging guidelines: Blogs must rank for 300 keywords or have loyal following.

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On the other hand, if a blog is weak, you’re better off pitching the blogger on giving you a quick link by asking them to check out your content. Here is a template of the email pitch I use:

outreach marketing email template example

To make this feasible, the page you ask them to check out and possibly link to must be impeccable. Your content has to be extremely unique and insightful, your graphics need to be beautiful and vibrant, or you need to find some way to make a strong emotional connection with the blogger.

The page must offer exceptional value to the blogger’s readers to convince him/her to share your resource; otherwise, you are wasting your time.

Choosing the right content to promote.

I’ve never been a prolific blogger. In fact, I probably don’t build “blogs” the way traditional bloggers do because I don’t develop content on a daily or even weekly basis.

Since I create and grow so many websites, I focus on writing content where it makes strategic sense. There isn’t an exact formula for that, but I’ll use my latest project as an example.

After 5 years of being a full-time Internet marketer and SEO expert, I finally thought it was time for me to start sharing my Internet marketing and SEO knowledge. I created StartABlog123.com to teach beginners how to start a blog.

Given that the competition in the all-encompassing “blogging” niche is intense, it was important that I make my content stand out. This meant comprehensive non-commercial content, useful guides and resources, custom images, infographics, etc.

For instance, I noticed a lot of solo bloggers discussing burn out, not knowing what to write about anymore, and linking to other resources that helped blog owners come up with new ideas. Knowing there was a “market” for this type of content, so I created the “Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas”.

Find a blogging niche and create content that solves problems. #outreachmarketing

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Now lists of blog post ideas already exist, but none of them break them up into the types of content (how-tos, checklists, top 10 lists, interviews, podcasts, etc.) and then provide 5 examples of actual ideas for each. The post ended up being nearly 3,000 words.

Fortunately, after all that work, it was a hit. I even got a Tweet from Ann Smarty:

Knowing I had created something bloggers might consider special, I searched for “blog post ideas” in Google, skipped the first 30 results, and started approaching bloggers with the email pitch above. Since then, my traffic has nearly doubled!

an example of how successful outreach marketing doubled traffic

Market Your Content

There are many bloggers who pour their heart and soul into their writing and have absolutely amazing ideas, analyses, and content. You may be one of them. Sadly, your work may not be getting the appreciation it deserves, and that’s because you haven’t spent the time to let readers know you exist.

That can all change with an effective marketing strategy.

You can get to 100,000 visits a month with 100 posts or 10,000 posts. Frankly, I prefer the former. The only difference is how much time you invest in marketing your content.

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google SEO

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Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google+

This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Barry Schwartz on August 12, 2014 at 4:49 pm

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Google has updated their webmaster guidelines, specifically in the little or no original contentguideline, to add “low-quality guest blog posts” as an example of “scraped content.”

Brian Ussery first spotted this change, noting how Google has been fighting the use of guest blogging and posting around link building. Specifically when Google’s head of search spam said guest blogging is done for SEO purposes.

Since then, Google has penalized several guest blog networks and continues to set their targets on low-quality guest blogging that aims at manipulating their search results.

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page before the change:

Here is a screen shot of the guidelines page after the change:

What does Google say about keywords, should they drive your blog or should content?

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Engagement, SEO, social media tools, Trending

Form over fashion, chicken or the egg, and keywords before content are just some of the intellectual debates that have raged as humankind attempts to come to grips with the big questions that plague our times. While the relative merits of comfort over appearance are well known, the chicken versus egg chronological lineage is still up for debate when people bend their thoughts to more esoteric contemplations. What is not up for debate is the importance of quality content over keywords when it comes to writing engaging online copy that will appear high in search engine results. Indeed, the old days of stuffing a 500-word article with 122 examples of the exact same keyword are long gone thanks to changes made by Google to their search algorithms, which punish the practice of keyword stuffing and rewards content that it perceives to be relevant and helpful to the end user.

Rise of the Machines…

In the “Wild West” of early internet interaction, it was discovered that the search engine rankings could be “gamed” into recognizing, and singling out, websites that practiced the art of keyword stuffing. Simply stated, keyword stuffing is the practice of writing online copy to be read by a machine rather than copy designed to be consumed by a human user.

This old formula was predicated on the notion that search engines scan the internet looking for certain keyword density in response to search inquires. When the engines located articles displaying such keyword density, they posted the results in search rankings for the end-user to consume. Unfortunately, this practice dictates that copy be written for machines rather than humans, and the results rarely offered compelling or helpful information.

Recognition that People Are Using the Machines…

Search engine giant Google sought to change this reality by tweaking their search algorithms in early 2012. Known as a Panda Update, the changes affected nearly 12% of all search inquiries, and the results have transformed the way people write copy on the internet. Under Google’s new protocols, the sure fired methods that drove search rankings in the past, no longer guarantee the lofty heights that they once achieved. In much the same way that you cannot discount the movements of an elephant when you are sleeping together in a twin-sized bed, the shear size of Google has assured that their changes are felt throughout the online search world.

Google based their changes on observations of social media. The propensity to share valuable information on such platforms as FaceBook, Pinterest, and Twitter drove the recognition that the yardstick for high search ratings is quality content rather than the ham-fisted tactic of keyword stuffing.

The Nuts and Bolts of a Panda Attack…

If your site is negatively impacted by a Panda update, you will know almost immediately, and it will manifest itself in the form of dramatic drop in traffic. It is possible to bounce back from a panda hit, but it takes some diligent work and a little time. Google recommends reviewing your site for substandard material as that is the new yardstick in determining high search rankings. Further, it should be noted that quick fixes would not provide a solution:

Panda is not about back links and anchor texts.
Tidying up a messy back link profile will not help.
Reconsideration requests won’t help.
Recovery will be re-measured once Google rolls out another update.

Webmasters can expect a Panda roll out every four to six weeks on average, and continuously upgrade their sites in the interim to achieve better results. Specifically, they should keep an eye out for content that would draw Panda’s ire:

Remove material that would probably not be shared by readers.
Get rid of duplicate material on your site. This might apply to content that has been pilfered from elsewhere on the web, or it could mean pages have been duplicated across your site.
Scour the site for thin material with an eye towards replacing pages that only have a sentence or two with quality engaging content.

Improved Literary Frontier…

These new rubrics have resulted in a marked improvement of the quality of online copy. While the use of keywords has not been removed, their use is within the framework of a natural, in-depth discussion of the topic that leads to their use in a naturalistic way. As such, copywriters and SEO professionals are scrambling to develop superior copy that represents an improved literary frontier for those looking for quality online information and content.

Written by Danny BenDebba

CEO of http://www.daasn.com and http://www.daasnlocal.com

What is a winning blogging strategy

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google+, Marketing, Online Marketing

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Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Google Analytics, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, SEM, Social Media, social media tools

t’s pretty much common knowledge that these days, any business, particularly an online business, should have a blog. But how? And why? What is this platform going to do for your brand? Are you selling products? Are you building a community? Is it about building awareness? And most importantly, who’s it for?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself before you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards. Now let’s get onto the how… Check out our first five easy steps to a winning blogging strategy below:

Brainstorm

Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’ve already got something up and running, stop and get your team together! A brainstorm between your writers, marketing gurus and whoever else might be involved is a must for any successful blogging strategy. This brainstorm should be happening about once a month. If you’ve been blogging previously, get your analytics up in front of everyone – what posts have been successful? Which have been the most shared on social media? Take these factors into account when you’re coming up with topics for the next month.

If you haven’t started with content yet – no problem! This next tip’s for everyone: Have a close look at your competitor’s posts. Jot down any articles that have high share-rates. You should take inspiration from these, and write a related post.

Another one for the newbies: if you haven’t already decided on how many posts per week you’d like to publish, now’s the time to do it. Keep in mind you’re going to want to stay consistent, posting the same amount each week and on the same days too. Knowing these details will help you come up with a content calendar.

Schedule

Once you’ve decided on the number of posts you’ll be publishing per week, and per month, you’ll be able to create a rough plan for a content calendar. Do some research! Look into when your target audience is online the most. This is when you should be posting and promoting.

Clients

We know that we’ve talked about knowing your audience and clients before, so we’ll keep it brief. If you know your clients, you’ll know what they’re after in a blog. Whether it’s craft DIY tips, quirky ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage or informative marketing advice, you’ll know it and you’ll be able to provide it. Knowing your audience is also knowing the purpose of your blog, which is something that should be decided straight away in order to get your strategy underway. Check out these 5 Critical Tips for Identifying Your Target Audience from Technori.

Writers

If you’re just starting out, or your business is relatively small, you may have already decided that you’ll be writing the blog yourself. That’s completely understandable! Just be aware that there are a few things you should get your head around when it comes to creating great content. Firstly, you should make sure that you’re an avid reader of other blogs. This is great in terms of keeping an eye on the competition, but also knowing what’s out there in general, and knowing what’s possible within a blog platform. Reading will provide you with inspiration in terms of both structure and subject matter. Make sure you’ve got a list of go-to blog examples to devour.

The above still applies to writers that you’ve hired, but hiring the right writer is also crucial. Obviously, the right person depends on the purpose of your blog. For example, if your aim is to sell a complicated product, you’ll need a writer who is also an expert in what you’re selling. This writer will need to provide a lot of insight, and so it may be appropriate that in this instance, your product manager take on the blog themselves, or at least train the person you’ve brought on board.

Make sure your writers are great at creating catchy headlines. Obviously, these are the first things your audience are going to see – you want your headlines to inspire enthusiasm and interest, as well as be optimized for SEO (but we’ll get to that).

It’s one thing for you to know your audience, but make sure your writers know it too. Make communication with your writers a big priority – they should know not only your audience, but the goals of the business itself, what’s it all about? Check out these guidelines for creating great content.

Style Guides & Editors

The importance of the language you use on your online platforms should never be underestimated, but in this case – this isn’t all an editor and a style guide are for. Of course you don’t want spelling and grammatical errors throughout your content, but there’s something as equally important: consistent style and tone. It doesn’t matter if you have one writer or twenty – you want all your written content to be of a similar nature, it needs to represent your brand after all.

Early on in the content creating process, put together a style guide for your writers. This can list everything from preferred spellings and topics to cover to how to format headings. If your writers follow this carefully, you will be rewarded with consistency throughout your whole blog, no matter how many writers you have.

Analytics

Installing analytics is a must for every website owner. These are brilliant tools that allow you to track and measure your success, enabling you to identify successful posts, and use this information to create similar posts. The most commonly used tool is Google Analytics, which offers an extensive breakdown of your site, traffic and audience. Some of our favourite features?

Audience. This lets you view your demographic, their interests and behavior.
Acquisition. See where your traffic is coming from – is it direct or from an organic search? Is it from social media or an email marketing campaign?
‘Real Time’. See how many people are on your site at this exact moment; what they’re looking at and where they are in the world.

It’s amazing what you can learn about your audience and your own content by reviewing your analytics on a regular basis. Did we mention it’s free?

Keyword Research

If you know your audience you’ll have a rough idea of what they’re searching for when they hop onto the world wide web. Once you’ve got this in mind, you can play ball seriously. There are a number of keyword planning tools available for you to choose from. There’s Google Adwords Keyword Planner which can tell you how often a term is searched for each month, as well as suggest similar terms to use. This is one of the few free tools available, some of the paid services include Market Samurai and Raven, which also offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Packages.

Another tool we’ve just discovered is ReSearch.ly. This service filters conversations from 1000 days of social data so you have insight into your target audience’s “influence, sentiments, demographics and psychographics”, allowing you to “get inside your reader’s head”. ReSearch.ly offers newbies 10 free searches before they have to subscribe, so have a play around, and see if it’s something that could work for you.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you can get your writers on board and discuss how to integrate these terms into your written and visual content. Think outside the box here, use your keywords in your image captions and alt tags, if possible have a category title using a keyword… Be sensible though, you still want your content to be super easy to read and share-friendly.

If all of this is new to you and you’re a little confused – no problem! Check out Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO & Keyword Research here.

Link

There’s one more thing to consider before you put your blog post out into the world: Links. Your post should be an authority on whatever subject you’ve chosen, but there will always be offshoot subjects you haven’t covered, or have covered in the past… Never miss an opportunity to provide your readers with more information, whether it’s from your own site or a fellow blogger’s. Creating internal links (these connect from one of your posts to another post on your site) are great because they keep your visitor on your site, exposing them to more of your content. This also means that you and your site keep more of the ‘link juice’ (yes, that’s a real thing). Alternatively, by linking to an external source, not only are you showing your readers that you’re a good sport, but you’re also starting a relationship with like-minded bloggers and paying it forward. This encourages others in your industry to interact with you and your brand, which ultimately brings more traffic your way.

Publish

That’s right, we’re finally here. You’ve done all the grunt work; the brainstorming, the researching, the writers’ training, the style sheet and you’ve trawled through your analytics… Now’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Hit ‘Publish’ and give yourself a pat on the back, a cheeky afternoon beverage or a nap (or maybe all three). You deserve it.

Promote

Unfortunately, the work doesn’t end there. Now you’ve got to give your latest post the best shot of reaching the most people on the web. Firstly, be sure to include sharing options at the bottom (and top) of your posts. You want people to share your content quickly and easily, which means making sure there are as few steps for them as possible. Next, promote your new post across all your social media platforms – use call to actions to grab attention and prompt interest. Another detail to remember – get your writers on board with social media sharing as well. It’s equally beneficial to them, as it gets their name and work out there for readers, but creates brand awareness for you as well.

2014 new Rules for Content Marketing

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, WordPress

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Best Practices, Blogging, Engagement, Social Media

Before you start thinking about marketing your idea or brand, a good thing to do is plan your brand awareness marketing campaign. Without a specific plan, there is little you can expect to achieve in this harsh social media climate where everyone is trying to be seen. There are an unlimited number of things you could do to get attention, but when it comes to getting the word out, these 21 new content marketing rules are something you should have a look at.

We have visited the topic of content marketing many times before, but it seems there are plenty of things left to talk about in order for all of us to reach the people that we really want to reach. I was thinking the other day about how we here at Bit Rebels could reach further into the airwaves of the Internet and reach people who have yet to discover the compact news flow that we have to offer. I had a short discussion with my partner, and we agreed that we would look into several other approaches. But that’s just it, there are so many approaches that you could sometimes get lost in the noise of it all.

When I think about content marketing, I always end up at the same place, which is original and engaging content that people want to send to their friends and loved ones because they either find it interesting, funny or even shocking. Unfortunately, any blog or online newspaper runs the risk of becoming a gossip or a surprise generator website in the bad sense of the words. Is this good or bad?

21-Content-Marketing-Rules-Infographic (1)

As you can see, the questions are many and they will most likely never end. That, on the other hand, is a good thing because that means that there is always room for improvement and refinement. When it comes to the content marketing rules we can consult a fresh infographic presented by Kayak Online Marketing called 21 New Rules Of Content Marketing.

It should be said that even though many people would like there to be sure ways to succeed with brand awareness marketing, it’s the content marketing rules that determine the outcome of your social media marketing campaign. When you know how to update, interact and engage on social media, half the battle is already won. There are plenty of examples of this where ordinary people have become social media icons in the eyes of the ordinary users.

With these new content marketing rules, you definitely have a better chance of slipping through the social media noise and actually ending up on someone’s top list. It won’t be easy to adapt all of these, but the more you can incorporate into your campaign the better. As always, when I write articles concerning this topic, I say that it’s through engagement, transparency and presence that you will reach ordinary users who are the true engine behind social media.

SEO: New Rules For 2014

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing, Web Site Design

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google SEM, Google SEO

SEO rules change and if you don’t keep up with these changes you risk losing your hard earned page rank in search results. Changes made to search engines algorithms in 2013 have had a profound effect on SEO rules in 2014. These effects will extend into the foreseeable future. If you have a business or entertainment website you need to be aware of the new SEO rules and how they will affect you.

In simple terms basic, on site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a relatively easy thing to do. The search engines have a “template” if you will of what an ideal web page/site should have and how it should be put together. The closer you come to matching this ideal the higher you should rank in search results for terms that are related to your site.

In practice though SEO rules are not intuitive enough so that following them will “just happen” if you design a visually appealing website. Many web designers only do a visually appealing and functional site, they do not incorporate SEO rules into their design. If you have an existing website you should have an SEO analysis done on it.

SEO rules require you to pay attention to every little detail when you produce content. We useWordPress as a platform on which to design websites because it is versatile enough to be easily edited to make sure it matches the ideal search engine template. In addition we endorse the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress as an invaluable editing assistant when creating new content such as blog posts.

The search engines themselves have evolved over time and continue to do so. Each of them has their own mathematical algorithm. These algorithms are not all identical. Google handles 80% of search queries on the web though and consequently it is Google that establishes the SEO rules that everyone follows as “best practices”.

We created the pie charts above to illustrate the changes in SEO rules that have occurred over the last year or so and have really permanently altered the ball game in SEO. In the past it was fairly easy for Black Hat SEO companies to push undeserving sites to the first page of Google search results. They did this by creating thousands of backlinks to a site. The backlinks could be on any site, even just on pages they created themselves or on “backlink farms” that thrived on doing nothing more than hosting pages full of links to the websites of paying customers.

Another way they used to game the SEO rules was by loading a page full of otherwise irrelevant content with every keyword they could think of that was related to a search for a particular product or service. Or they might take a single blog post, load it with keywords and then “spin” the article by randomly changing every third or fourth word in it (other than the keywords) and post 50 or 100 spun copies of the same blog post. The more times it was spun the less sense anyone could make out of what it was supposed to say.

None of these techniques work anymore. Websites that used them are finding their search engine position dropping like a stone (some of them have come to us for help). A new era has come to the way search engines function, one that is intended to deliver the best, most relevant content to each query from a user.

SEO Rules For 2014

The new SEO rules are designed to focus on content. Good quality content that gives the best possible answers to people’s questions. I know that seems simple enough but computers cant make intuitive judgement choices…yet. Until they can they have to use things that they can measure, data, to make that determination.

So SEO has become much more than just having a website that conforms to SEO rules and a bunch of backlinks. It has expanded to include input from social media networks and to making judgements on the quality of your site and your content by the quality of the sites that link back to you. “You are known by the company you keep” is as good a way to say it as any.

You see, Google decided that the best place to look for reliable data on the value of a website, blog post or video is the audience. The theory is that, the more people who like and share something the more value that it must have to them. Likewise with backlinks. The more links that point to your site from other high quality sites which deal with the same topic the more value your content must have.

This is the birth of Social SEO and Contextual Search. Google has created a fun little animated illustration of how search works at this link. As a business owner or content creator it is good to check out that illustration. Once you realize how much goes into every search that happens on the web you cannot help but realize a; how much competition there really is for the top spots in search results and b; the necessity of making your site and your content as good as possible both from the perspective of viewers and the behind the scenes requirements of the SEO rules.

In the illustration above (on this page) you see how many obvious factors there are in Social SEO that can affect the search engines perception of the quality of your site and your content. You may have great content and perfect on site SEO but any number of other sites may have content of equal quality and also have perfect on site SEO. That is the easiest scenario from which to start when understanding the value of Social Networks of various types to your page rank. It is also the perfect segue into the next part of what makes up following SEO rulestoday.

If the competitors in the above scenario all have content of equal quality and perfect on site SEO how does the search engine decide on page rank? The page with the most links on other quality sites, social network likes and shares and traffic will have the number one spot in many cases. That is why it is as important or more important than ever to have a robust social networking presence in place.

We talk to a lot of business owners and even people who handle digital marketing for mid size to large businesses and it is surprising how many of them never took the time to learn enough about SEO rules to realize that the websites they are responsible for are sorely lacking in that area. We hear things like “oh there was a module that came with our website that does SEO”, or “we’re covered for SEO” when we have already looked at their site and seen that they are not.

The same thing goes for Social Networking and the creation of content. Social Networking is now a crucial part of SEO but too many people who manage social networks don’t see it that way so they miss opportunities. The same goes for content creation. Most people who upload videos to YouTube expect the quality of the video to get them views. But search engines don’t watch videos they depend on the content on your channel page and individual video pages to determine what your video is about and who to show it to in search results or as a suggested video. Once again SEO rules need to be followed when creating a channel page and every time you upload a video.

Some other factors that can come to bear on page rank in the above example are things like proximity (how close are you to the person doing the search). Here is where having an SEO optimized local directory listing is crucial as a component in page rank and your overall digital marketing plan. Why SEO optimized? Because if your competitors have a better local listing then theirs will appear higher than yours in that set of results and may push you off of page one.

Let’s refer back to the Google depiction of the search process that I linked to above. It is important to think about the different parts of the search process and which ones can be influenced by what you do on your site(s). Our intent is to show that relatively simple SEO ruleshave expanded to include pretty much everything you do on the web and how to show how important it is to realize that.

SEO Rules And The Search Process

Crawling: This is the initial phase of the search process. The Google Web Spider goes out into the 60 trillion (and growing daily) pages on the web and tries to index them. This is the first place where on site SEO is important. By following the SEO rules for best practices on site you show the spider that your site is of good quality and allow it to easily determine what each page is about. This is also where many people think SEO stops. This is far from being the case. Both Google and Bing have Webmaster Tools to assist in managing your site and they too can be employed at this stage.

Programs And Formulas: This is the second stage of search and the one where the search algorithms you hear so much about come into play. The tools that Google uses as examples for this stage of search are; spelling, autocomplete, synonyms, Google Instant, query understanding and search methods.

You have control over some of these factors as well. You can make sure the content on your page is correct grammatically and everyone has a spell checker so there is no real excuse for bad spelling. You can establish a unique keyword or keyword phrase for each page to be built around. This does not mean meta keywords. We don’t use meta keywords at all anymore with the exception of on YouTube. It means you know what keyword or phrase best expresses what the page is about and then you put that keyword (ideally) in the page URL, the title, the meta title, the meta description and in the body of the page. You use it at a rate of around 2% of the total words on the page and include some synonyms as well.

If you look at this page you will see that we have followed all of the above SEO rules when writing this story. In addition, you have to be sure that your site is readily accessible on multiple platforms (PC, Mobile, Tablet). The more ephemeral aspect at this stage is query understanding. The search engines are trying to understand the context of the query in better ways and you have to keep in mind how a person would ask questions related to your content and design it to answer the question the way it would be asked most often.

Ranking The Results: Google says that they consider over two hundred factors when deciding how each page given in answer to a query ranks in search results. Two hundred factors. That is quite a daunting number when you are trying to create content that will rank highly isn’t it? But it validates our earlier statement that everything you do matters when it comes to followingSEO rules.

The ranking factors that Google lists are; page and site quality, safe search, freshness, user context, translation and universal search. Obviously you have control over whether or not your site is family safe (or not). Page site and quality are influenced by following on site SEO rulesand here is also where back links and social likes and shares come into play as well as the traffic to your site. Freshness is important because it illustrates the importance of creating content on an ongoing basis. User context adds in factors like the physical location of the person making the query in relation to your location if relevant. This is where Local Directory Listings come into play, especially for local businesses and can definitely have a big influence on your ranking in search results for local users and why they are so important.

Universal Search means that the most relevant results to a query from multiple sources are displayed on the search results page. Some of these sources include; images, website, social networks, local directory listings and video. If you have material relevant to the query available in all of these sources then you could conceivably dominate the entire first page of google results for that query.

The image at the left shows the results of the simple query: “Katy Perry”. As you can see Universal Search has considered material from various sources and is displaying the most relevant results from each on the page. The result is that the performer Katy Perry dominates the entire first page of google results from the web, images, video, social networks and even news. The advantage of this is obvious if you have competitors.

How does this work for a business. The most frequent queries will probably not contain your business name but rather the name of the product or service that you offer. If you utilize all available types of media and some 3rd party services like local directories there is a chanceyou can achieve at least several first page placements on page one of Google and perhaps even dominate the entire page. But you have to follow SEO rules throughout to maximize the potential of this happening.

The image to the right is the result of searching the term “Camp Hill PA, order pizza”. That is a pretty general search about a product in a specific location. One of the businesses that we have done some SEO work for, Nikoli’s Pizza comes up as the first Google Product listing at the top of the page (with image) and the first result on page one of this search.

There are a lot of pizza places in the Camp Hill/Mechanicsburg/Harrisburg Pa area. Big chains like Dominos, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Little Ceasers are all over the market area as are a host of other independent pizza places and Italian restaurants. In spite of this a small, family run operation like Nikoli’s comes up as number one (and in three different listing types) in their area on a Google search done by someone who wants to order pizza! I think that is awesome.

Google Specific: In the last year Google has done a lot of things to integrate many of their products with each other. To do this they used Google+ as the glue that holds it all together. Now, local business listings in Google Places are by default done as Google+ business pages. You can also get a vanity URL for your Google+ business page (Example: plus.google.com/+streetpunkproductions). This helps with your efforts to bring your social network pages into line with SEO rules.

Another exciting feature is Google Authorship which is also tied to the content author’s Google+ profile. In addition, the comments on YouTube are also now powered by Google+. The advantages are that, as long as you have a Google+ profile, your content will be more likely to appear on the first page of Google results to those people in your Google+ circles. The incentive to have your customers/fans as part of your Google+ circles is obvious.

Everything discussed above is part of the new SEO rules for 2014 and beyond. To truly optimize the potential of your web assets you have to be aware of all of it every time you create a blog post or upload a video. You have to think about the URL, title, description and text content of the post. In addition you have to consider adding images and making sure to alt tag the images with your focus keyword or keyword phrase for the page. You should also research the topic on your page and try to incorporate the most popular keywords that are related to the topic. You can also add a video to the post and create a video for the purpose. Then optimize the video’s page on YouTube in the same way as you do the blog post itself.

Once you create your content according to SEO rules and publish the video and the post (with Google+ and Authorship enabled) it is time to further promote it via your SEO rules optimized social networks. The next step is to go to the webmasters tools sites and have Google and Bing spider your site and add your new page to their index. This can really speed up the process of being available to search engines.You would post links to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. to reach your established fans/clients. Then also post to some news distribution services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. This will create backlinks as well as putting your content in front of people who can further your SEO efforts by liking, sharing and linking to your content.

This article is shared courtesy of Street punk productions Posted on January 16, 2014 by Michael Johnston

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Google SEO, WordPress

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Blog, Blogging, SEO Blog Posts

Search engine optimization is so important for marketers, but it can be a pretty tricky tactic to master with Google’s copious algorithm updates. What matters, and what doesn’t? What’s best practice, and what’s old-school? How can I remember it all, anyway?

We understand this is a common issue facing inbound marketers — and we want to help.

Today, HubSpot has launched an SEO Panel that will help take you through how to optimize your blog posts as you’re writing them. The SEO Panel lets you know in real-time what you need to do to optimize your posts for the keywords you care about, and what you’ve already succeeded in doing for your in-post SEO.

Below, we’ll cover some of the suggestions from the SEO Panel, along with a few other optimization tactics you should keep in mind. Note that this list does not cover every single SEO tactic. Rather, these tips are meant to get you started with improving SEO for your blog.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you’ll receive these reminders right in your post dashboard — just select the SEO View.

seo_panel

If you’re not a customer, you can use this checklist as a reminder as you blog.

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

When writing for your blog, it’s important not to stuff a ton of your keywords into a single post. Instead, focus on 1-2 keywords for each post. It’s best to limit keywords to this total because 1) search engines will actually penalize your post if it looks like you’re using keywords too many times, and 2) it helps keep you focused on a goal for your post. Yes, more than one keyword may appear in a post; but the goal of the post should be narrow enough to allow you to spend time optimizing for just one or two keywords.

Long-tail keywords may be more efficient to use since website visitors searching long-tail terms will often be more qualified. In other words, you’ll bring in the right type of traffic — visitors who convert — by using long-tail keywords.

Where are the best parts of your posts to include these terms so you rank high in search? Well, there are four essential places where you should try to include your keywords:

a) Title

The title of your blog post should include your keyword, but just be sure to keep your long-tail keyword under 70 characters. The title of your post will be a search engine and reader’s first step in determining the relevancy of your content, so including a keyword here is vital.

b) Body

You should mention your keyword at a normal pace throughout your post — that means you should include your keywords, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Search engines penalize any post they believe is using keyword mentions as a way to rank for a particular keyword, so this requires close attention in the writing process.

c) URL

Search engines also look to your URL to figure out what your post is about. Your URL should reflect your title, so ensure the keyword you use is relevant to the article. If you have to trim your blog post URL down, make sure you keep the keyword in it. We’ll elaborate on the importance of URL structures in more detail below.

d) Meta Description

Later in this post, we’ll also dive into explaining meta descriptions. Your meta description is meant to give search engines and your readers information about your blog post’s content. So be certain to use your long-tail term clearly here so Google and your audience are well aware of the post’s content, but also keep in mind that how engaging the copy is matters a great deal for conversion rates.

2) Use responsive design.

Blogs that are responsive will conform to the screen of any device. That means whether you’re reading a blog on a desktop, smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device, the site format and layout will be the same, making for a unified user experience. Responsive design is becoming more and more important for more than just UX, though. It’s also important for SEO.

A recent Google study revealed 61% of mobile visitors will return to Google to find a site that is more easily readable if they can’t find information on mobile sites right away. This makes having a uniform, responsive site imperative.

Another reason it’s important to have responsive design set up is that it creates one URL. This helps your SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won’t be scattered across different domains. Any SEO power you gain from these links will be centralized, helping Google as well as your SEO ranking.

All content created on HubSpot’s platform is automatically responsive, so HubSpot customers can breathe easy.

3) Include meta optimizations.

Meta optimization is actually not limited to meta descriptions. To review, your meta description is the additional text that appears on your search results that lets you know what the link is about.

The meta description is also important because it give readers information they need to decide whether or not your content is what they’re looking for.

Your meta description should include the long-tail keyword you are trying to rank for, because if we’re doing blogging right, it’s representative of the contents of your post. In the example above, I searched for “writing a blog post.” The words “write” and “blog post” are both bolded because they were the search terms I was hoping to find. Thus, including keywords here can go a long way in helping your audience identify you as a good option in search.

HubSpot customers: In the SEO Panel, you’ll notice SEO Impact is measured for different elements of meta optimization (and all of the items, actually). Optimizing your metadata only takes a moment, so ideally, you’ll hit all the elements of great meta optimization.

4) Use canonical tags.

You may have heard SEO experts say that you should never have duplicate content on your website. However, you sometimes need to display information in multiple ways to help your website visitors navigate your website. Whenever you have duplicate content on your website but need to keep both pages live, you should use canonical tags.

Canonical tags speak to search engines and tell them which page to index. Giving them this information ensures that your content is not punished for appearing somewhere else on your website. It also allows search engines to link to the appropriate or dominant resource.

To put in canonical tags:

Pick the page that you want to be indexed, and write down that URL.
Go to the duplicate pages that should not be indexed, and insert this code in the <head> section: <link rel=”canonical” href=”INSERT INDEXED PAGE URL”/>
If you have any questions, follow these instructions from Google.

5) Optimize your images.

Blog posts shouldn’t only contain text for SEO purposes — you should also have images that help explain your content. But search engines don’t just look for images. Rather, they look for images with alt text.

You can figure out an image’s alt text by placing your cursor over an image. A small box will pop up that describes your image and, therefore, helps search engines interpret the meaning of the image. As you can see below, the alt text is “related-search.” Think of alt text as an interpreter for search engines. Search engines cannot interpret what an image means without the text to explain it.

In HubSpot’s COS, the SEO Panel will recognize whether or not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important as some other optimizations, they’re still necessary (and easy to add in).

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

Topic tags can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may actually get dinged by search engines for having duplicate content.

Think of it this way: When you create a topic tag, you also create a new page where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many similar tags for the same content, it then appears to search engines as if you’re showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example, topic tags like “blogging,” “blog,” and “blog posts” are too similar to each other to be used on the same post.

If you’re worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take this opportunity to clean them up. Choose about 15-25 topic tags that you think are important to your company and that aren’t similar to each other. Then, only tag your posts with those keywords — that way, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

The URL structure of your webpages should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and what content they’re about to see. Search engines favor URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.

For instance, let’s take a look at Inbound Hub. There are a handful of blog sections and a lot of different posts in each one. But, the URL structure makes it easy for our readers to navigate what section and content they read. Let’s take a closer look at how to properly structure your URLs by using our blog as an example:

We’ll start off by coming to the HubSpot blog by typing in this URL: http://blog.hubspot.com/.
Now, let’s say we want to head to the Marketing section. The URL would change slightly to: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing. If we want to read the Sales section, all we have to do is change where it says “marketing” in the URL to “sales”: http://blog.hubspot.com/sales.
What if there’s a specific article we want to read — perhaps “How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide”? Well, its URL will show it’s an article from the Marketing section: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht. The URL simply adds on an abridged version of title to the end of the post. If we wanted to look at a different blog post, the only part of the URL that would change would be after “marketing/.”

The structure of the URL acts as a navigation for us, letting us know where we are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to look at the URL and identify exactly what information searchers will access.

To find more best practices for URL structure, you can read more about it from Moz.

8) Link internally when possible.

Inbound links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. For instance, if you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or webpage, you should link to that page. That will not only help retain visitors on your website, but also demonstrate the other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, the SEO Panel suggests linking to other internal resources on your website. As you can see below, the Panel states that your overall SEO will be improved by doing this. Think of it as solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more information from your content.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

A great resource for finding out more about SEO is Google’s SEO section in Webmaster Tools. This page can likely provide you with answers to a number of additional questions you may have about the best ways to optimize your website, so we recommend bookmarking it.

Why Social Signals Will Shape The Future

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

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Best Practices, Blogging, Marketing, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING

You don’t have to look far to find articles extolling the virtues of social signals and their growing importance. Why should you be interested and what benefits can social signals deliver for your SEO and marketing?

Dustin Stout recently defined a social signal as:

“visible activity or actions taken by other people”

Typically on the internet social signals mean the amount of shares, likes or plus ones content receives or the number of followers a person has.

Why the interest in social signals?

Growth in social networks has led to a new form of content sharing. Previously people had to share links on their website or in forums. Now people can share easily by using share buttons and through social networks such as Twitter. They can effectively share content by simply liking it or giving it a plus one.

The interest in social signals is increasing because they can deliver SEO benefits; enhance brand awareness; and build trust and credibility.

SEO benefits

Eric Enge has pointed out that with the new Hummingbird algorithm:

“Google now has the infrastructure to better process social signals.”

Eric argues that Google previously had technical issues which limited the use of social signals as a ranking factor. However, he believes that while Google may not use social signals now they do intend to use them in the future. Even if they are not ranking factors at the current time social shares create inbound links and can deliver SEO benefits.

There is a debate about how much weight or impact social sharing should carry in SEO terms. A social share such as a Facebook like doesn’t require as much commitment as say placing a link on a website and hence there is a case to say it should carry less weight. There is also an argument that a share by someone who is an acknowledged expert in a topic area should count for more than a share by someone who is not an expert or has not authority in a topic area. There is evidence that Google is interested in the quality of authors and author rank which would allow it to give weight to social signals in the future.

There does appear to be a consensus that social signals will play a more important role in SEO in the future. Jayson DeMers recently posted an article about social signals and SEO on the MOZ blog where he stated:

“I do believe that direct and indirect impacts of social signals will eventually surpass links as the most valuable ranking factor.”

Brand awareness

The social sharing of content brings brand awareness benefits regardless of any SEO benefit. The original content gets amplified by sharing and will reach a much larger audience. This extended reach will in itself be beneficial.

Trust and credibility

Social signals are a human intervention which can act as an endorsement or recommendation. A social share may be accompanied by positive comments. Even though these recommendations may be from strangers, there is evidence that people trust such recommendations more than they do search engine results or ads.

The latest Neilson survey data on trust in various sources of buyer information found that the top three most trusted sources of information (% completely or somewhat trusting) were as follows:

Thus people trust social signals even though they may be from strangers. Dustin Stout sums up the trust issue as follows:

“Higher social signals illicit a higher level of authority, trust, and shareability. People trust what other people have trusted, and are more likely to share something that other people have shared. Period.”

Check and improve your social signals

At BuzzSumo we recognise that social signals will be increasingly important in the future.

You can use the BuzzSumo app to gain insights into the social signals in your area and improve your performance. You can:

search for the most shared content in your topic area
enter your domain to see what content on your site is being shared the most
see how your social signals compare to your competitors
see which influencers amplify social sharing

Author:Steve Rayson Steve Rayson RSS Feed View full profile This article originally appeared on BuzzSumo Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with Business 2 Community.Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-data/social-signals-will-shape-future-0808378#z3fBaYpVb8tQdqDb.99

The Art of Good Blog Writting

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Google SEO

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Best Practices, Blogging, Engagement, Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, Social Media

Do you blog? Feel like you’re trying to reinvent the wheel time and again?
Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process?

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiplerefers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:

♣ Eye-catching title
♣ In-text links to landing pages
♣ Sidebar/banner calls to action
♣ Social sharing buttons
♣ Call to action at the bottom
♣ Relevancy—making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Example of more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts.

Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you’ll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.
Whether you’re working in platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous, it’s good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.
If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description (defined as a “…concise summary of your page’s content”), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.
Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you’ll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.

An example of how a post’s description appears in Google search results with and without the meta-description.

Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.
Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says “By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for.”

Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines—by Google in particular.

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:

♣ Google likes text
♣ Google likes formatting
♣ Google likes freshness
♣ Google likes accessibility
♣ Google likes outbound hyperlinks
♣ Googlebot isn’t psychic, so remember to link your pages
♣ Google likes you to tell it where you are
♣ Google likes experts

Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, “The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.”
He offers five basic principles about heading structure:
♣ The most important heading on the page should be the H1
♣ There is usually only one H1 on any page
♣ Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.
♣ Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it’s a wasted heading
♣ For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting

Headings should contain valuable keywords.

Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.
Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:

♣ Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post
♣ Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea
♣ Evoke surprise or curiosity
♣ Complement your headline
♣ Make your reader smile
Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.
#10: Journalistic Approach
Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.
Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:
♣ Get your facts straight
♣ Trust has to be earned
♣ Give credit to your sources
♣ The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)
♣ Editing and proofreading are essential

Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, “…the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions.”

Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog’s success:

♣ Search box
♣ RSS feed
♣ Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),
♣ Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content
♣ Images
♣ Keep your best content above the fold
♣ Link to your best content
♣ Don’t overdo links
♣ Watch ad space
♣ Encourage comments
♣ Add sharing buttons
♣ Test the blog for speed
♣ Check your blog in different browsers
♣ Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)
For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus’ infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.

Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.
The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.

In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.

The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.

Nate’s post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.
As Magdalena says, “Measure the performance of your business blog regularly toidentify weaknesses in the content you’re producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you.”

When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren’t performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, “What do they have in common?”

Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.

Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you’ve curated.

Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, “There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time.”

Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is toensure that your post has some kind of call to action. “Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post….”

Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you’ll see from Kristi’s approach. She has a different plan in place for “averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts.”

What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it’s included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.
Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.

Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: “One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.”

In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question “What does a community manger do?” and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity to explore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.

What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers’ questions?

Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors’. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?

I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I’m seeking.
For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there’s nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn’t have known existed if I hadn’t been standing there physically eyeballing them.

Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:
♣ StumbleUpon
♣ Infographics
♣ Twitter real-time searches
♣ Facebook events
♣ Experts who are using LinkedIn
♣ Uncovering quotes with Delicious
♣ Letting users tell you within the comments section of your blog and others
♣ Creating roundup mega-lists with Delicious and StumbleUpon
♣ Apps on Facebook
♣ Delicious and Google Marketplace
♣ YouTube and the UrbanDictionary

Stand Out

When you’ve been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.

By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!

Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.

He says, “Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can alsocommunicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.”

User-Centered Content

Possibly one of the worst mistakes a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests.

Georgy Cohen goes as far as to say that content can serve as customer service and that to be helpful, content should be user-focused (asking what our users’ problems and priorities are), communicated clearly and presented in succinct language.

Valuable Content

In the perfect blogging world, creating valuable content would be at the top of every blogger’s list for their post objectives.

While our definitions about valuable content may vary, Ahava Leibtag has created a very helpful step-by-step checklist that reminds us to ask five questions:

♣ Can the user find the content
♣ Can the user read the content
♣ Can the user understand the content
♣ Will the user want to take action
♣ Will the user share the content
She suggests:
♣ Findable content includes: an H1 tag; at least two H2 tags; metadata including title, descriptors and keywords; links to other related content; alt tags for images.
♣ Readable content includes: an inverted-pyramid writing style, chunking, bullets, numbered lists, following the style guide.
♣ Understandable content includes: an appropriate content type (text, video), indication that you considered the users’ persona, context, respect for the users’ reading level, articulating an old idea in a new way.
♣ Actionable content includes: a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, a direct summary of what to do.
♣ Shareable content includes: something to provoke an emotional response, a reason to share, a request to share, an easy way to share, personalization.
Download the checklist for future reference.

Word Count

How many words should you have in your blog post? Some blogs have set parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.

Corey Eridon has an interesting perspective on word count and suggests that focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think it is. “Some topics take 100 words to explain, some take 1,000, and that’s okay.”

Corey suggests that writers focus instead on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover may ultimately be a better use of your time and energy.

If you’re restricted to shorter posts by the parameters set up in advance for your blog, then you could also follow Corey’s advice to link to longer-form content you’ve developed around the topic.

Bottom line: Don’t let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.

(E)xcerpt

On the heels of our discussion about blog word count, a shorter blog post can also be an excerpt or summary of what readers will find in your longer-form content—e.g., eBook or white paper—but it needn’t be restricted to words.

You can also use an excerpt of the transcript or a brief description to demonstrate what information the users will learn if they watch your video or listen to your podcast.

Your Story

Readers like to get to know how writers tick and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. While business blogs shouldn’t be thought of as personal journal entries, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.

For example, I stated above that writing curated posts like the 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is one of my favorite types of posts to write. (Truth be told, curated posts are also some of my favorite types to read.)

In the description of “research” above, I also shared how research is one of my favorite parts of blogging and how I enjoy researching both online and offline by doing the footwork of visiting libraries and bookstores in search of materials.

Zone for Writing

Ideas for blog posts come at all times—when you’re driving in your car, sitting at your desk, and yes, even in the middle of the night!

Chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions, and depending on how you work, it may take place over a period of days.

What can be helpful is to create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing and allow yourself to go with it, with as few interruptions as possible.
What do you think? How do you keep your blog posts consistent and dynamic? What tips would you add? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

leonidesignoryblog

~ socially savvy design

Tag Archives: Blogging

Using Blogger Outreach To Market Your Product

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Link Building Strategies: Guest Blogging And Outreach Marketing

Guest blogging

Finding guest blogging opportunities.

Evaluating blogs.

Guest blog vs. outreach: How to decide?

Choosing the right content to promote.

Market Your Content

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update Calls “Low Quality Guest Blog Posts” Spam

This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

SEO: New Rules For 2014

SEO Rules For 2014

SEO Rules And The Search Process

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

a) Title

b) Body

c) URL

d) Meta Description

2) Use responsive design.

3) Include meta optimizations.

4) Use canonical tags.

5) Optimize your images.

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

8) Link internally when possible.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

Get Your Free Outreach Marketing Template Now!

Plan Your Outreach Marketing And Link Building For Free!

Link Building Strategies: Guest Blogging And Outreach Marketing

Guest blogging

Finding guest blogging opportunities.

Evaluating blogs.

Guest blog vs. outreach: How to decide?

Choosing the right content to promote.

Market Your Content

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This article was shared from Search Engine Land Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.

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Brainstorm

Schedule

Clients

Style Guides & Editors

Link

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SEO Rules For 2014

SEO Rules And The Search Process

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1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

a) Title

b) Body

c) URL

d) Meta Description

2) Use responsive design.

3) Include meta optimizations.

4) Use canonical tags.

5) Optimize your images.

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

8) Link internally when possible.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

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Anatomically Correct

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Blogging Platform

Categories

Description

Editorial Calendar

Fine-Tune and Revise

Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

Headings

Images

Killer SEO and Blog Design

Lists

Metrics for Blogging

Names, Titles and Bio

Original vs. Curated Content

Publish and Promote

Questions

Research

Stand Out

Title

User-Centered Content

Valuable Content

Word Count

(E)xcerpt

Your Story

Zone for Writing

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This article was shared from Search Engine Land

Low quality guest blogging is considered little or no original content by Google.