Category Archives: Writing tips

How SEO uses the human factor

Posted on Thursday 23 May 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

TransparencyGoing further into my SEO research for my Lunchtime Learning video this month, I am fascinated by how complicated it is. So I will need to be mindful of how I’m going to explain my findings in a way that isn’t too heavy for you!

The old way keywords were used was to make sure they were relevant, had a high readership with low competition, and their strategic positioning in the headline, post’s URL and the post itself. This was all well and good, and worked with the old style of search criteria and algorithms. There is no reason why this won’t work today too, except there are now some extras that need to be taken into consideration.

Search used to work a bit haphazardly, taking the 10 most probable answers to satisfy a search request. Now it uses an additional 200 metrics to arrive at its results so it can provide more direct answers than before. This is why it can work in favour of a site that is not heavily SEO-ed, stuffed full of keywords and therefore rendered unreadable.

Search engines are now favouring people rather than websites. They are placing themselves on the side of the searcher, the business content marketing provider, and how people use speech connected to human thought processes. There may be a downside to this, as by adapting the algorithms to respond to the true meanings of words, would the variances between UK English to American make a difference? We have yet to find out.

This has come about from the rise in popularity from social media. It is here where people react on the internet in a human way, responding in a conversational mode, flitting back and forth in a reciprocal manner, stimulated by real-time reactions. Things can change and adapt at breath-taking speeds, stuff can go viral at a drop of a hat, and information spreads like wild-fire to a potentially huge audience. This is all responding to the basic gossipy element of communication that is sometimes faster than which with the news media can cope and keep up.

Therefore search needs to transform from being unstructured to become structured. It needs to work on the concept of trust, authority, reputation, longevity and the user’s digital profile. In other words, the more active you are on the net, particularly with original and worthwhile content, the better the results will be, and not just because you’ve stuffed your content up to the gills with keywords.

The old keyword usage combined with link building and content duplication now take on a secondary role. SEO now needs to work on the basis of trustworthy content that generates valid and relevant comments, receives copious sharing on a variety of social media sites (bookmarking as well as networking) and reciprocal referral and recommendations by authoritative contributors.

Search engines also now need to assess the importance of content in relation to its relevance to the activity it represents, eg any links or call to actions to reputable and relevant destination sites. In other words, relevance plays a much larger part in confirming SEO in content marketing than before.

In other words, SEO is becoming more real, honest, transparent and, well, human!

 

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Writing tips

OMG, I’ve been doing SEO all wrong!

Posted on Wednesday 22 May 2013 by Alice • 4 Comments

Talking about bloggingI’ve been very busy lately doing lots of research for my next Lunchtime Learning video all about search engine optimisation (SEO) so I can give you top-notch information on that subject. Such a fascinating subject, especially since it has changed so drastically since last year.

But lo and behold, I’ve just found out I’ve been doing it all wrong over these past years! Why – what have I done?

I’ve always been a good girl and have been adding lots of my tags to my posts, carefully selecting them from the content so that they are relevant. I thought I was doing a good thing regarding SEO as surely the search engines would pick on on at least some of these tags to index my post.

But – overstuffing yourself with good things (like chocolate cake) will only make you sick. The old adage “Too many cooks spoil the broth” comes to mind, as putting all the herbs and spices from your kitchen into your soup will probably make it taste revolting and nobody will want to eat it.

Just like the over-saturation of keywords in blog posts pre-2013, which made them totally unreadable and frankly ridiculous, over-saturation of tags will do the same thing. The poor old spiders, when confronted with all these tags, get totally confused and their response would be to not index anything at all because they don’t know which one is the most important.

Would you like to know how many tags I have collected in this blog since I started it? 1,467! Yes, that many! No wonder the poor spiders were running away as fast as their virtual legs would take them.

This requires some serious measures to rectify the situation. There is a lot of tags to go through, but I need to sort out which ones are the most relevant to what I write about, and then use them more frequently. The more I use them, the more they become attractive to search engines to ultimately optimise my blog posts.

So, the answer is, once you’ve worked out the best keyword for your post, select up to four sub-keywords which will become the post’s tags. If they have been already used in previous posts, so much the better. They will need to be added to your post in the tag menu purely to supplement and lend weight to the primary keyword, and also in whatever SEO plugin you have chosen.

You don’t need to choose the same five for every post, but a healthy select few that are totally relevant will be helpful. That’s why it’s worth pre-planning your posts beforehand, or at least being clear on the subject matter or the readership you’re aiming at.

 

Filed Under: blogging success, use of words, Writing tips

How to find post fodder every day

Posted on Monday 18 February 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

writing tipsIt is quite a tall order to find material to regularly post in my blogathon.

I have set myself an experiment to write a short post every day for a year in my nature blog. It is not a chore or a burden, but a new lease of life. I may be completely mad to do this, but I am finding it invigourating to search for something to write about, mainly stimulated by taking photographs wherever I go.

Blogging requires a change in mindset. I call it “going into blogging mode”, when I switch my brain over to start looking for something to write about. In fact I don’t have to put much effort in, as suitable subject matter starts springing out of the woodwork at me. It seems that everything has the potential for a blog, in some shape or form, and it is only up to the author to find the time and energy to make it so.

Nature is a great subject to blog about. The seasons are changing all the time. Even on grey, cold days when nothing seems to happen, I can find something that wasn’t there the day before: an unfurled leaf, a new flower, an exciting shoot, promising new growth – and even the old stuff has a fascination that should not be ignored. People walk about blinkered to the world as it manifests itself around them, it is up to them to open their eyes and see the possibilities, and then manipulate it into something worth writing about.

Blogging is another subject I unfailingly find fodder for. But unlike my blogathon, I don’t post here every day. The difference is that these posts take more time to do, and require a bit more brain power, and there is so much more responsibilities on my time that prevents me regularly writing. A poor excuse, I know, and something I hope to redress in the future.

If you are fully passionate about the subject you have chosen, you will never be short of material. In fact I forget much of it if I don’t write it down. Fabulous facts I could blog about come to me at inappropriate times, only to disappear into the ether before I can find a suitable method of capturing them. If I did nothing else all day, this blog would be jam packed, so it is perhaps to preserve your sanity and mine that I have plenty of other things within my business to do.

Filed Under: blogging encouragement, Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

Strange how little effort brings in big returns

Posted on Wednesday 23 January 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

Talking about bloggingDuring my blogathon (to post every day for a year in my nature blog) I have noticed a strange phenomenon.

Some posts I really put some effort in, thinking about what I write and sourcing some suitable evidence to back up my theories or justify my reasons, and some just pour out without much thought, flowing through my fingers via the keyboard into the content fields.

What is demoralizing is the ones I really try hard with don’t do as well as those that just ‘happen’. You’d think that taking more care in what I say, strategically edited, reworked to sound good and strive to be entertaining, they would command a better response.

But no, it’s the ones I rush off in a hurry, usually very short and limited in content, that do better. Why is this?

One train of thought is maybe overworking a contribution will make it stilted, constrained and dull. All the spontaneous spark has been drained out, the elements that made it interesting have evaporated through too much handling, the goodness has been blended into oblivion.

Or perhaps because the post is short and succinct, the message is easily absorbed, understood and appreciated. We live in a busy world where not everybody has time to waste reading long posts, so a snippet could be a nice change.

Or maybe I just excel at quick points of view, combined with a picture that fills in the words I haven’t written. After all, writing short posts hasn’t done Seth Godin any harm.

Filed Under: blogging encouragement, blogging success, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

It wasn’t that difficult, was it?

Posted on Tuesday 22 January 2013 by Alice • 2 Comments

writing tipsIt’s always gratifying to hear when other bloggers have come out of being underground and started blogging again.

One example was a writer who knew she really ought to start up again, but had lost the desire along with the verve and excitement she once had. She had a blog ready and waiting, just that it was bare (like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard) and unloved and desperately needed something to fill it.

But it was my blogathon that started her off again (or so she says) – the fact that I’m forcing myself to post every day for a year inspired her to try to write just one. And so she did…

And it wasn’t as bad as she thought it was going to be. I’ve just received an excited and exhilarated email exploding onto my screen with her elation, so I had to go in and take a look.

It was an excellent post. She had taken on board my advice about just letting her fingers do the talking, pouring out her conversation through the keyboard, allowing herself to express what she wanted in a natural and free-flowing form. The result was easy and quick to read, I immediately understood the topic and really wanted to finish it to find out what happened at the end. It certainly deserved a ‘like’ and a comment to help boost its ratings.

And of course it was accompanied by a first class photograph suitable enough to be the topping on the cake!

Now any other disgruntled or reluctant bloggers teetering on the edge of starting up again, why not give it a go. It certainly will create a release of endorphins that beats anything else – apart from going for a jolly good run in the snow.

Filed Under: blogging encouragement, blogging success, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

Magic Motivation: What would a gatemaker say?

Posted on Friday 18 January 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

At networking meetings a common question I’m asked is ‘What on earth do I say on my blog?’. This is a common complaint by those who have yet to learn how to go into ‘blogging mode’ as I call it, or don a suitable blogging hat to accelerate their marketing methods.

So I have decided to create a series of posts that provide posting suggestions for various business ideas. And today starts with a business that provides bespoke gates and fences for the higher end of the housing market.

In this case there is a lot of scope for pictures, since that will certainly help sell this product. Obviously a load of gate images could be seen as being a bit dull, so these need to be jazzed up a bit with some scintillating words.

The subject of gates can be expanded in various ways: descriptions and information on the materials sourced and used; materials used for protection and beauty; properties of such materials that make the gate bespoke or solve a particular problem; most popular materials used and why; the different opening methods available for these dates, and which ones are the most popular; examples and case studies of gates fitted (with customers’ permission) to show prospective customers what is possible and in which environment.

Another idea is to search all the questions asked about gates and write FAQ posts about them. This could act as an extension to your customer relationship marketing strategy. Any repetitive questioners could be kindly redirected to the blog for further information or as a back up (with pictures) to the answer just given. It also shows that these queries have been satisfactorily dealt with in the past, and increases the credibility and knowledge base of the business.

For more variety, integrate the posts with videos of the gates in action, workmen installing the gates, and satisfied customers providing testimonials of their wonderful new gates, how proud it makes them feel and how easy it was to get them put in, not to mention that they would happily recommend these gatemakers to their friends. These videos needn’t be expensively made, even off-the-cuff videos made via an iPhone will have a better impact on prospective customers than professionally produced ones, and these certainly could go towards creating case studies for each new product or service provided.

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, Writing tips

Brad Praise Indeed

Posted on Thursday 20 December 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

I may have been quiet on this blog (thereby not practising what I preach, slap wrists) but I have in fact been very busy creating and writing blogs elsewhere.

Publishing posts outside your business’s boundaries is a great way of extending your exposure of what you can do or provide. And it is equally fabulous when you capture the attention of someone prominent in the business world:

I’m not normally a person who likes to brag, but just occasionally something warrants a bit of publicity when I think it is due. Click on the link in Brad’s first tweet to find out more…

Filed Under: blogging success, increasing business visibility, Writing tips

Use your blog for conversation outreach

Posted on Monday 15 October 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog MotherUltimately, I think a blog should be used for conversation outreach. What I mean by that is: posts are a way of communicating with your readers and visitors. They should be set up as conversations acting as a medium for self-expression, explanation and exploration of an idea or concept.

Social media thrives on conversations. After all, it is termed as ‘social’, whether it’s for networking or bookmarking. This is not a platform for selling, a point that is misused by sales people and misinformed marketers from the old school. It is a method of creating, continuing with and working on conversations with all sorts of people, whether they are past, present or prospective customers.

The concept of conversation outreach is paramount when it comes to blogging. When I write my posts I tend to compose them as conversations in my head with another person. It’s like sitting down to coffee with a friend and instead of the words coming out of my mouth, they’re spilling out of my fingers through the keyboard. Sometimes it can get quite frustrating when I can’t type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts!

I believe this makes them not only more conversational, but more interesting to read. Back in the old days when I was just starting out in the world of blogging, it took me hours to write a post, carefully choosing my words and constructing my sentences. The result was dull, staid and far too academic. What you don’t want to post is a carefully calculated article-like thesis, because they usually bore the pants off your readers. Keep those aside for article websites or your college tutor.

Look for conversations within social networking sites. They are (or should be) happening all the time, easily and obviously spotted by being interesting to read, capturing your attention or talking about fashionable or trendy topics, usually readily shared around the internet. But interspersed in between these are status updates about what your dog had for breakfast, tweets that are stuffed full of jargon or hashtags, or dumped post links from disinterested bloggers in the discussion section of Facebook or LinkedIn groups. These examples are not creating conversations, in fact their conversation outreach is virtually nil.

Social bookmarking performs better through interaction, which is a geeky way of having conversations. It’s important to be interested in other bloggers and what they write, in order for them to show an interest in you. This social interaction should spark off blog comments, reviews and recommendations, which in turn raises the popularity of each blog and thus more attention from the search engines (as well as other visitors). In fact, commenting on blogs per se, whether through social bookmarking or not, is a very good way of creating conversations within blogs, and I particularly remember one 14-long comment relay I had with a blogger on one of my posts as being very enjoyable.

So think carefully about creating some form of conversation outreach when you update your blog. Is what you’re saying interesting to your readers? How will it maintain their attention, give them something for nothing and make their lives better for reading it? Is your post suitably optimised with appropriate keywords to increase its attractiveness to the search engines? Remember your powers of communication should not be compromised by over-use of keywords, spoiled by bad spelling and grammar, and undermined by poor research or an inability to tell a good story. It’s important to satisfy your readers as well as the internet spiders in your attempt to complete a satisfactory conversation outreach.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, social networking, Writing tips

Magic Moment: How to quickly edit the headline’s permalink

Posted on Tuesday 2 October 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Content, CopywritingThis is a small time-saving device I picked up that I use all the time. Really in the scheme of things it’s miniscule, but I love it when I come across a wacky bit of doing something new!

Writing headlines is quite an art. This is the part of the post you really should spend time concentrating on (and it’s obvious that I don’t), but during your brainstorming sessions you may try out a number of headlines to see how they scan, where you can place that all important keyword, whether it would grab the attention of your readers, does it reflect adequately the subject matter of the post.

Often I put a headline in and then start writing, and I realise half way through my post I’ve gone off on a totally different track. Rather than edit what I’ve written to fit the headline, and upset my creative juices, I put my first concept aside and adapt my headline to suit the post.

But then that means I have to change the permalink. Each post is allocated its own page, which therefore needs to have a URL, called a permalink. These are automatically created as soon as you’ve finished writing your headline in its editing field, or if you are dallying for too long will create it half finished anyway.

Therefore if you edit your headline (or are too slow in writing it), and you want your permalink to match your post’s title, it needs to be edited. It is a very simple process (especially since I’ve found out this quicker way) and can be done in a trice.

Take my first attempt at this post’s headline:

First headline attempt

But I realised that adding in the word ‘headline’ might be a good idea. And after editing it, so does the permalink needs to be edited.

In the past I would have copied my new headline and the opened up the permalink editing field (in yellow) via the ‘Edit’ button, pasted it in, added in all the hyphens and then pressed ‘OK’. But you don’t need to copy the headline any more. Just access the editing field via the ‘Edit’ button:

Opening permalink editing field

and clear it by highlighting and deleting:

Deleting old permalink

And then just press the ‘OK’ button:

Pressing OK button in Permalink edit

And if it’s not immediately obvious the new headline has been incorporated into the permalink, click on the ‘Edit’ button again to make sure:

Checking edited permalink

And this can take about a second to do. Trivial, yes, but a nice little touch I enjoy doing every time!

But you know what? I think I’ll change the headline to something else now… Oh, how I enjoy changing that permalink!

Filed Under: Blogging education, Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Writing tips

Magic Moment: View keyword statistics in Google Analytics

Posted on Thursday 13 September 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Optimise your blogSEO gurus go on and on about using appropriate keywords. Yes, we all know we should, but which ones are working? And are they the right ones? And are they doing any good?

You can see keyword results in Google Analytics, and my blog shows a typical result that screams at me: ‘Get your keyword act together!’

When you’re in your Google Analytics, on the left sidebar go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Search to open up the menu fully. This is where you would keep a close eye on any Google Adwords or PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns you have set up to generate more traffic to your website, either to get more visitors, more leads joining up to your newsletter, or more customers going to special landing pages in order to sell products.

I don’t have any campaigns running at the moment, so we shall be concentrating solely on the organic (or natural selection) side of things, which is where SEO is focused. Once you’ve clicked on the Organic link, look below the graph showing visitor rates for a list of keywords; the first 10 shown by default can be extended to show them all (411 in my case):

Keyword List shown in Google Analytics

I’m being brave showing you this, because the first 10 keyword selection reveals very little SEO evidence (Fairy Blog Mother exposed!). As well as those that are not available, it’s no good having your top keywords using the name of your blog, as that is not what the most optimised visitors to be searching for. The more exciting keyphrases are the others, and the numbers of these are despicably low!

What I need to do is to undertake some vigorous keyword research activities to find out what people are searching for in the world of blogging, in particular how to learn WordPress and create blogs. This should be done regularly, as Google’s algorithms constantly change, as do people’s search criteria. Then I need to immediately write some power-blasting blogs that react favourably with these search results, to capture the attention of visitors and search engine spiders.

If I have positioned my SEO correctly, this list will start to improve, reveal some more interesting statistics, and generate more poignant and relevant traffic. And then I’ve got to do it all over again the following week with another set of keywords and posts, to maintain a consistent level. Life is never easy in the world of digital marketing…

Showing Secondary DimensionAt the top is says the keywords are not provided, so it’s necessary to go in a little further to find out more.

Click on the Secondary Dimension button and explore the additional links in green. You can have a lot of fun here learning all sorts of stuff!

But for this post I have focused on the landing pages for the undisclosed keywords, as that will show which post titles attracted visitors or stimulated the search mechanisms:

Showing Keyword Landing Pages

Here is lots of information about which posts are interesting to visitors and how many viewed them in the past month. Now this doesn’t look so bad, but you have to ask yourself whether these are the right posts you want your visitors to read? Or can you capitalise on their popularity to generate some more traffic? If these are the subjects people want to read, offer them some more in the same vein, or slighted adapted to capture a larger audience.

Or you could explore the primary dimensions further (tiny links at the top of the keyword list) and click on Landing Page to find out the most popular posts for that month:

Showing Popular Landing Pages

to get a flavour of what subject matter is interesting to your visitors. Subjects lend a clue to which keywords were attractive, especially extended into the form of keyphrases within a headline, which successfully marry up with a search request. The more apt the headline is to what the visitor typed into the search engine, the more likely it will show up higher in the selection provided, and ultimately will be clicked on and read.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Writing tips