4 Signs You’re Killing Your Company Blog
Business blogging is one of the most valuable marketing tactics a company can employ online. And in light of Google’s recent “freshness update”, having a business blog to drive your SEO is more important than ever. However, running a successful business blog is not as simple as many site owners think. It is a huge time commitment (with no end date) and the potential for taking a wrong turn is very real. Here are 4 things that could end up killing your company blog You can’t get at least one post published each week. Blogs need fresh content in order to survive and help build your online brand. I’d rather one of my SEO clients not even bother with a blog if they can’t commit CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
4 Ways to Repackage Your Content
The number one complaint/concern I hear from my SEO clients when it comes to content marketing is that they don’t know what to write about. The number two complaint/concern is, even if they do have a list of topics ready to go, no one on their staff has the time to commit to a heavy content marketing campaign. To both of those I say, “Oh yes you do!” Content marketing isn’t nearly as hard as most site owners think it is, even if looking at a 6 month editorial calendar can be a little intimidating. An easy to solution to your content marketing woes is content recycling. Content recycling (or repackaging) is when you take a piece of content, say CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Your Content is Only as Boring as You Let It Be
Every month my company attends the Boston SEO Meetup, a Meetup event for local SEO and internet marketing professionals, business owners and anyone else interested in learning more about SEO. At November’s event, founder Dave Matson spent a few minutes talking to the group about some of the challenges he has writing content for his clients, criminal defense attorneys. He explained that it’s hard to get people excited and wanting to share a blog post about DUIs, but that doesn’t mean he can’t find creative ways to incorporate trending topics into his content marketing and still have it accurately reflect your brand.] He recently wrote a blog post that talked about what Occupy protestors should do in case they were arrested CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Build Rapport with Your Blog Readers
It’s not enough to get someone to read one of your blog posts once. If you really want your blog to succeed in the long term you want them to keep coming back! Aside from creating great content on a consistent basis (which is a must of any business blog) here are 4 tips for building a stronger rapport with your blog readers. 1. Share the comment love. Even if they were just doing it for the link (although we all hope it’s really just because they love our blog), everyone who leaves a comment on your blog posts took a few minutes of their day to do so. Repay the favor and leave a comment or two on some of their blog posts. I can’t CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Content Mistakes That Hurt SEO
Your website is the lynchpin of all your online marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter how great your off-site link building campaign, social media marketing or content marketing campaigns are—without a great website based on great content to hold it all together your visitors are going to leave as quickly as they arrive. Your website has a matter of milliseconds to catch and hold someone’s attention, which means you better live up to their expectations and give them the information they want quickly! A few poorly designed content components and your site will struggle to keep visitors engaged. Is your website making these content mistakes that can hurt your SEO? 1. No call-to-actions Is no one filling out your contact form or signing up for your company newsletter? CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Michael Bay Style of Content Development
I came across this great post the other day on searchengineguide.com. Written by Stoney deGeyter, it’s 30+ SEO analogies that struck me as funny and yet so very true at the same time. I believe in having a sense of humor about your work and this post was right up my alley. One of my favorite analogies was this, SEO is like a Michael Bay movie. It can look pretty, but if you're just throwing a bunch of crap at your audience, they'll just shrug and walk away. I think Stoney hit the nail on the end with that one, especially when it comes to content marketing, a critical component of SEO. Michael Bay isn’t a director known for his poignant and gut-wrenching CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Much Should Content Writing Cost?
Many businesses don’t have the internal resources to fully commit to content marketing, so they look to hire a freelance copywriter to shoulder most of the work. If you don’t have the writing skills or time to devote to content marketing, this is a great idea! A good professional copywriter has the skills and know-how to craft great content for your website or blog and capture the attention of your target audience to get your brand noticed. But hiring a freelance SEO copywriter to handle your content writing begs the question, “How much should I be paying for my outsourced content?” There really is no “right” answer for how much it costs to outsource your content. Factors like the length of the post, amount of research CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Using Your Competition to Find Topic Ideas
It’s probably the single most common problem with content marketing; site owners don’t know what to write about. Every blogger, site owner and marketers is going to have writer’s block sooner or later, but don’t let that stop you for long! A successful content marketing campaign relies on the consistent creation and promotion of useful content. A small snag can easily derail your editorial calendar. If you find yourself scrambling to come up with new topics for your next blog post or article, why not take a look at the competition? Why would you want to use the competition as a source of inspiration? First off, your competition has the same online audience as you. If they are doing their content marketing right, they should CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Building a Site FAQ? Add More Content
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled “Should Your Site Include a FAQ? that discussed whether or not it was worth developing an SEO FAQ for potential clients. I wasn’t sure how much information was too much, in terms of the Brick Marketing SEO strategy. There is no “magic solution” or “secret” to SEO, so it’s not like I’d be giving away trade secrets. However, I was worried that having FAQ pages about keyword research would mean I’d have to sift though more leads from people that ONLY wanted keyword research, which is not the kind of client I’m looking for. The topic of site FAQs came up again recently while I was optimizing a client’s site. On the surface it CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why Article Spinning Doesn’t Work
Article spinning is one of those black hat SEO tactics that gives the rest of the industry a bad reputation. The basic premise of article spinning is that your write one article and submit it to hundreds of article submission sites. You might change up some of the content by replacing certain keyword with synonyms, but about 90% of the article remains the same. Some article spinners use automation software that can get around a site’s CAPTCHA so you don’t even have to bother with the submission process. You load an article full of links and send it on its merry way. Sounds like a great way to get links, right? Article spinning is the easy way out! I think a lot of small business owners turn CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Content First, Keyword Research Second
Quick, which is more important to your SEO—keyword research or site content? It’s actually a bit of trick question. Keyword research and site content actually work together to create a well-optimized site. Conducting keyword research won’t do much good if your site is full of low quality content. Meanwhile, great content needs some help appealing to the search spiders, which is where having the right keywords comes in handy. One without the other means your SEO if off-balance, like a table with one short leg. But when it comes to writing content and conducting keyword research, which tactic deserves priority seating? On-site optimization starts with having great content. The main reason you need to make sure your content is in good shape BEFORE you start conducting your CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
More Content Doesn’t Equal Better Content
In the world of SEO, it is very easy to lose the forest for the trees. Sometimes it seems like the entire industry is only focusing on one thing and its importance for a site’s SEO. That one ranking factor gets analyzed, over-analyzed and blogged to death by the industry. One such ranking factor is content. “Content is King” is replayed over and over online, and while that is true, some sites are cutting corners because they think it’s just a numbers game; the more content they pump out, the better. That isn’t true. Contrary to SEO myth, there is no “right” amount of content the search engines are looking for to make a site rank well. It doesn’t matter how many words you have CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Risks of Writing a Company Blog
In my 12+ years as an SEO professional, I’ve found that just about every business can benefit from publishing a company blog. It doesn’t matter if it’s B2B or B2C, or what industry your business operates in—a good business blog can be invaluable for your SEO and Internet marketing in general. There are probably hundreds of blog posts out there full of great reasons why you should start a company blog. (I have even written a few such posts myself). But are there any good reasons to NOT launch a company blog? If you think launching a blog is enough. “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work with business blogging. You can’t throw up a blog and hope that readers CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Don’t Outsource Your Content Overseas!
There are plenty of good reasons to outsource your content writing and marketing to an SEO firm. For instance, you may not have the time or writing skills to fully invest in a managing a content marketing campaign. Since content marketing is one of the fundamental elements of inbound marketing , outsourcing it to a reputable SEO company makes sense. But when looking to outsource your content marketing, or any other part of your SEO, keep it in the U.S! The great thing about working with an SEO firm is that they don’t have to be local. The Internet is everywhere, and nothing in SEO is so time sensitive that working with an SEO company in a different time zone could become a serious issue. If CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
7 Reasons Why a Business Blog is Valuable
I am a huge fan of blogging (obviously so, seeing as how I have been writing for this one for the last four years) for numerous reasons. Content marketing is one of the most critical components of any web marketing campaign because it can be leveraged across all mediums. A blog post isn’t limited to existing solely on that blog. It can be shared on social networking sites, submitted to social bookmarking sites, used to develop your company newsletter and more. Still not convinced? Here are 7 reasons a company blog can be valuable: 1. Establish yourself as an industry authority Customers want to purchase from/work with the best in the business. Routinely updating a company blog can help you build brand’s reputation as an industry CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Nick Stamoulis:
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