search engines Archives - Fairy Blog Mother

Content marketing is about communicating, not keywords

Posted on Tuesday 23 April 2013 by Alice • 2 Comments

Back in 2012 there was SEO. Now in 2013 there is content marketing. Are these the same? Think again.

There is a move away from the importance of keyword use to a preference for promoting and respecting original writing. Repetition and duplication are given short shrift, only to be replaced by original content with relevant subjects, links and references to other authoritative sources.

Another difference is readability. An unrelentingly SEO-ed post would be stuffed to the gills with keywords, there would be no need for copywriting skills except how to incorporate the desired keywords in as many places as possible to stimulate the search engines. Now content marketing is rewarded with excellent writing, reader appreciation, reciprocal sharing via social media and plenty of comments and feedback. This can only happen if posts are written properly, have appropriate prose, grammar and syntax, and be suitably entertaining, informative and useful for the reader.

Content marketing communicates to the reader, not the search engine. Writers should address their audience in a way that shows they are understood, known and appreciated. Conversation is key: posts should be written as if directed solely to that one person reading the content, using familiar, personal and human language. Stories should take over from facts, case studies replace selling statements and the overall message should reflect ‘What’s in it for them?’.

The concept of conversation came from social media. The search engines noticed that a lot more interaction was taking place from to-ings and fro-ings from friends and contacts, however trivial, because the language used was easily understood, appreciated and simplified. There was no need for meaningless keyword use: repetition was natural, the vocabulary was appropriate and the pace fast. Short communications were vital to cope with a limited attention span, and messages were usually scanned first before a decision to read them properly was reached.

Another move was away from the written word. Images had been taking over since 2012 with the rise of Pinterest and other related social platforms. Video was making a comeback as creation facilities increased in mobile and tablet applications. Instant gratification of visual communication was made possible at a click of a button to express an idea, thought or observation on different media available to the audience.

Many things have happened since the beginning of the year, and we’re only about a third of the way through. Therefore it’s important to be aware of developments so you can keep up and adapt accordingly. All those agencies that specialised in SEO may now have their noses out of joint, but unless they can adapt to the world of good writing, excellent prose, meaning communication and exciting conversations that can relate to the reader, all good attributes towards blogging, they may find themselves falling behind.

Filed Under: blogging encouragement, blogs and blogging, social networking, use of words

Why you should start your business with a blog

Posted on Thursday 1 November 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

One of the most important elements of a website is to get indexed regularly by the search engines. There is nothing more demoralizing than spending hours on creating a wonderful website, only to have it sitting there unnoticed, lonely and neglected.

The trouble is, there are so many websites now in the internet, it takes time for the search engines to crawl through them all. Even if thousands of more algorithms were created to accomplish this feat, the logistics would still value visiting the sites that were more likely to be updated with new material. It may be demoralizing for you not to have your website visited, but it can also be demoralizing (if possible) for a spider to visit a website where there is nothing for him to index.

However, blogs are a different matter. They are designed to provide regular new content. It is their function to publish posts whenever needed, and thrive with a prolific writer. But even if they didn’t have a flourishing author at their helm, the fact that these websites are built using a blogging platform, their general make-up are inviting to the search engine spiders who recognise that they should be providing lots of new material to index.

Therefore blogs are crawled far more frequently than websites. It stands to reason: would you prefer to visit a party that is always lively, has brilliant music and has lots of interesting new people to meet? Or would you prefer your auntie’s tea party on Sunday afternoon, with the same macaroons and over-stewed tea, peppered with the same stories you’ve heard countless times?

If you are a budding new start-up business, it’s important to get noticed. By using a blogging platform to create your website, you are taking advantage of the in-built spider invitations located within it. Putting aside the convenience of the CMS (content management system) to make the pages, whenever you update your site, whether in page or post form, it sends out that important signal to the search engines to come and visit. And if you give these busy algorithms the information they are looking for (matching it up to what humans are searching for) then that puts your business in an even higher pedestal.

Successful businesses who began small several years ago probably started with a blog. It is through this medium they gained the recognition and publicity they deserved, by producing lots of new, exciting and relevant material their audiences wanted to read. Because they used a blog to provide this, the search engines caught it up and displayed it in a higher plane than corresponding static websites, and thus their exposure was increased.

You don’t have to start with a fancy, all-singing-and-dancing blogsite from the very beginning. Learn the ropes with the simplest blogging package, and once you’ve got the system under your belt, then transfer everything over to the higher model. It is a very simple process, and provides an excellent grounding to give you the best advantage from the very beginning.

Filed Under: blogging success, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, successful blogging

Why a home based business should start with a blog

Posted on Wednesday 24 October 2012 by Alice • 1 Comment

When you first start up as an entrepreneur, it is usually as a home based business before you can expand appropriately. This means your budget is limited and you probably have bigger outgoings than what is coming in. And you probably will have been bombarded with marketing messages which include getting yourself a website.

Certainly having a presence on the internet is a vital part of setting up your home based business. But a website isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. In fact, there are plenty of alternatives to websites that could in the beginning help you establish yourself online before making any such large financial investments.

The other day I spoke to a businessman who confessed he hadn’t got a website because he had been holding fire to find out what was the best process. I thoroughly commended him for this, because I have met plenty of home based businesses who have charged down the route of getting a website before investigating into it properly.

He had done his research and had learned about content management systems, and he had also found out that a website would need plenty of updating and new content if it was to register appropriately with the search engines. But what he hadn’t realised is that these requirements are all found within a blog.

Of course, as the Fairy Blog Mother, I soon put him to rights. I told him a lot of websites that are successful are probably blogs in disguise. Consider the BBC website for example, a blog surrounded by lots of different sub-blogs, constantly updated each minute by thousands of contributors to keep it current and up to date. This couldn’t have been achieved quite so easily through a conventional website structure.

As I said in my previous posts, a blog can easily be adapted into a website (or blogsite, if the blog feature is retained). For a completely newbie home based business, starting your web presence should be on the simplest, yet most effective, method or system. After all, as you need to start from somewhere, so why not cut your blogging teeth on WordPress?

The Fairy Blog Mother recommends WordPress because it is, in my mind, the most effective, simplest and easily transferable blogging platform. Once the basics have been learned, the same processes can be carried forward as your business expands. By creating a blog as your first website, you will be immediately found by the search engines, your posts will have better credibility than webpages, and you will be able to share your content more effectively elsewhere, such as social networking sites.

Using a content management system allows any changes to be incorporated with ease throughout the whole site, without worrying about broken links and making sure every relevant page is covered. Archival pages are automatically created, it’s very easy to make new pages, and even how your blog looks is simple to achieve and maintain.

I just wish that any new home based business that are starting out in the big, bad, business world had the chance to find out about blogs first, rather than being captured and groomed by website providers, they would have saved themselves a lot of hassle and money. Even if their blog is superseded later by a fancy website, by then they would be in a better position to make the necessary decisions and financial implications to ensure their future success.

On Thursday 8 November 2012 I’m giving another teleseminar about why blogs are better than websites. Check out the link to find out more.

Filed Under: blogging success, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility

Magic Moment: Where does your blog traffic come from?

Posted on Monday 23 July 2012 by Alice • 1 Comment

Click above to ask me a question

It’s always a good idea to know where your blog traffic is coming from, whether your last flurry of social media activity resulted in lots of clicks, or whether that link you placed on a particular website has brought in a few new visitors.

This Magic Moment begins the investigation of this section in Google Analytics that shows how your visitors have accessed your blog. If you click on Traffic Sources > Overview in the left sidebar, you will see this page:

But it is this pie-chart that shows the most interesting information:

Over 70% found my blog through the search engines. This means they had asked a question or used particular keywords that were directed to my blog.

Now I could get quite excited about this, as it does lend the idea as to which search keywords they used, and perhaps I could write some more posts using those keywords to get more traffic. We shall see what the real story is later in another Magic Moment, and how I could encourage these visitors to use my blog further.

Over 11% of traffic comes from referrals. I would like this to become a lot more in the future, so I will investigate which referral sites have been used and how or whether I can explore more effective use of them to increase more focused traffic back to my blog.

17% direct traffic shows that people know my blog’s URL or at least its name, and by typing it in have successfully gained access to my blog.

And finally campaigns – this is interesting, as I have yet to set up any proper campaigns, so those five visits are very intriguing!

So now I will quickly glance at the first 10 referral sites that sent traffic to my blog (click on Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals to access this page):

I will go into more detail in another Magic Moment, as there is a lot to explore here, but I want to show you the top 10 referral sites I am currently getting:

The top one, t.co, is Twitter. I am presuming this amount of traffic has resulted from the use of the plugin ‘Tweet Old Post’ that automatically sends out past posts at irregular intervals throughout the day, which helps to keep my blog alive for those who are on Twitter at that moment. Ideally I should be investigating into more activity on Twitter, both automated and spontaneous, to generate some more traffic back to my blog.

LinkedIn and Facebook are also doing quite well, and there is certainly much more I could do on these social media platforms to increase traffic (part of my marketing plan that begins in the autumn).

The others trickle in, and unless you want to do a concerted effort in a particular referral site, or through a special tinyurl associated with a social media platform such as bit.ly or su.pr, it’s probably just worth noting which ones provide how many each month, and raise an eyebrow if necessary at any unusual ones that pop up, especially when viewing the extended list.

More demystifying in the next set of Magic Moments to come…

Filed Under: Blogging education, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Magic Moment: Variable comment logins

Posted on Friday 26 August 2011 by Alice • 2 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

Back in the old days when you commented on a blog post you wrote what you wanted to say and then filled in the details below about yourself before publishing it. Why did you bother to do this? Well, this information accompanied the comment and allowed any interested parties to click on your name (which was usually a link back to your website, if you had filled that part in) to find out more about you.

There is another good reason for this – it’s not just humans who clicked on those links. Spiders like comments as they see them as new material that can be indexed, so a busy blog that has lots of comments is usually placed much higher in the search engines than unpopular blogs. And of course these spiders are then happily crawling over the commentor’s website too…

Anyway, this Magic Moment is about the four ways you can register yourself before you publish your comment in a WordPress.com blog. Clever apps have been incorporated that allows you to choose whatever identity you would like to comment under.

The first one is as a guest. This is where you are allowed to put in your personal data how you want it to be:

You don’t need to enter in your website or blog details, but if you have one I recommend that you do, for the reasons stated at the beginning of this post.

The second option is for those who have a WordPress account. This one is the usual preference that I comment under. This account is recognised throughout the WordPress blogging world, and your gravatar automatically comes up to accompany your comment as an extra visual presence.

Once you’ve entered your WordPress username and password, your comment will be acknowledged as a WordPress user:

The third option is via your Twitter account. A lot of people might prefer this as they are usually always logged into Twitter so registering is easy.

Once you’ve filled in your details, you’ll be logged in as a Twitterer, and your name will be linked back to your Twitter profile:

The final option is via Facebook, and the same thing applies:

And once your Facebook details have been entered in and accepted, you’ll be commenting under your Facebook profile:

For each profile you comment under, the picture icon you use for that account will show as your gravatar. As I use the same one for all my accounts so there are no differences for me to demonstrate, but be aware that if you have a silly Facebook icon, do you really want that showing up next to your comment?

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media

Ever considered an internal blog?

Posted on Monday 15 August 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

Here’s a thought for you: what about an internal blog within your organisation?

In the marketing course I finished this summer, one of my colleagues said her boss wrote daily in his personal blog purely to communicate with his staff. In it he discussed what had happened recently, his reactions to it, his ideas for the future, things he wanted done that day/week/month, any news his employees should know, celebrated successes and analysed mistakes, and published advice and top tips that was relevant.

He used his blog as not only a method of communication, but also as an archive. Employees could refer back to past posts (using the category or archive systems) to check on decisions, requests or commands made. Instructions were written down that could not be lost, and could be referred to later.

The blog was made private to selected readers or contributors, so the search engines could not access it. It was a perfect medium for communication and the staff could also use it to comment and leave feedback. OK, it may seem to be a little impersonal, but don’t forget the blog could be accessed by any computer in the world, as long as the correct usernames and passwords were used, so ideal for employees on the move.

WordPress have so many features that can be adapted to suit your business in a myriad of ways. What else would you use your blog for?

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

WordPress and Blogger – which one to choose?

Posted on Thursday 14 July 2011 by Alice • 2 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

One of my new guinea pigs asked me this question soon after she signed up to my Blogging Guinea Pig Group, because she was already writing a blog using Blogger and I was concentrating my book on WordPress. So I decided to do some research to find out the differences.

Blogger.com and WordPress.com are both free hosting blogging platforms. Blogger is owned by Google, so the URLs are http://username.blogspot.com, whereas WordPress is independently owned and a WordPress.com blog’s URL would be http://username.wordpress.com.

The general consensus is that Blogger is easier to set up, so is best used for blogging as a hobby, whereas WordPress appears to be more complicated and can be adapted more for business use. (The reason for my book is to show that WordPress isn’t as hard to use as everyone makes out, and to create a WordPress.com blog is just as easy as Blogger.) However, this may be overshadowed by WordPress.org, the more sophisticated version, which is complicated to set up if you don’t have any web-developer experience, so it is best to hire someone to do that for you. But once you’ve learned the basics of blogging with WordPress.com, doing the same in the .org version is just as easy.

Each platform have their pluses and minuses, as you would expect. It all depends what you want from your blog. The availability of templates (Blogger) or themes (WordPress) vary considerably. Blogger may not have as large a selection of templates, but they do offer the ability to customise them for free, whereas this facility is only available as a paid upgrade in WordPress; however, they do provide over 100 themes to choose from, and some can change their banners, colours and other features.

Blogger can only import posts from other Blogger blogs, whereas WordPress accepts the importation of posts from a large selection of alternative blogging platforms. Blogger only allows the creation of 10 pages per blog, whereas WordPress has no page limitations. Blogger allows 1 GB for image storage, and will only accept images, whereas WordPress provides 3 GB of space and can upload many forms of documents, not just images.

WordPress allows a selection of users: Administrators, Editors, Authors and Contributors, for a shared blogging experience, whereas Blogger only has Administrators and non-Administrators. WordPress can moderate and edit comments to its posts, and provides Akismet for protection against spam, whereas Blogger can moderate but not edit comments, and appears to have little spam protection.

Blogger allows Adsense to advertise on its blogs so they can become monetized, whereas WordPress.com only allows Google-related advertising in certain circumstances. Blogger allows the process of changing to a customised URL for free, whereas this facility is only available as a paid upgrade in WordPress. Blogger allows blog privacy to unlimited Blogger users, whereas WordPress limits it to a maximum of 35 WordPress account holders; however it does provide facilities for password protected and private posts and pages, which could be used as a rudimentary membership site.

There, that is plenty of comparisons. Some of this is quite technical, and may be not of importance to a beginner or hobby blogger, but it does show why I am biased towards WordPress. There is also the added benefit that your .com blog can very easily be transformed into the .org version, with all the extra functions it contains and the supremacy it has on search engines, which is something to consider if you want to develop your blogging experience further in the world of business.

If there is anything I’ve missed out, misunderstood or got wrong, please feel free to correct me by commenting below. It can only benefit all of us!

Update (19/7/11): I’ve just noticed that Blogger have announced a spam filter and improved comment moderation facilities, details available from http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?&answer=187141.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs

How to make pictures look better

Posted on Tuesday 3 May 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

In my last post you learned how to put a picture into a post. But there’s a lot more to pictures than you think, how they are positioned, creating padding around them, making them readable for the search engines – even understanding how to prepare your pictures beforehand.

When I started working for my boss and her newsletter provider, I was astounded how her staff struggled to prepare the pictures so they were suitable to be inserted. Her newsletter system was very particular, and could only cope with jpegs that were below 30MB, and the software available to use was Paint, which didn’t even work on my computer!

It took me a while to persuade my boss to buy Photoshop Elements, but once purchased, transforming pictures became a doddle. I taught my colleagues about dots per square inch, and that 72dpi is the most suitable for the web. I showed them how to crop a picture to show the best subject matter, how to reduce it in size without distortion, and how to to save it within the required size-frame. I even showed them how to collect images from different sources and convert them into jpegs so they could be used appropriately.

Suddenly the newsletters started to brighten up, look more interesting and attract more attention. And the same can be for your blog.

Click on your newly inserted picture, and you’ll get these icons:

It’s obvious that the red circle on the right means delete, but if you want to edit your picture, click on the left icon and you’ll get this menu:

Here you can change the alignment of your picture, whether it is placed left, right or centre within the page (from where you place your cursor) and the text will be automatically wrapped around it. (If this doesn’t work, which might be the case in some WordPress.org blogs, then you’ll need to add in a caption because then the image will be placed in a caption box which the text can wrap around.) If you don’t need to worry about your picture’s alignment, leave it as ‘None’.

I explained about alternative text in my previous email: alt tags describe the pictures for the benefit of the search engines who can’t read images, so use appropriate and relevant keywords, and for blind people whose computers read the alt tags.

Below that you can see the picture’s special URL, which will link to the picture’s allocated page within your blog. But you can edit that field to any other URL destination, internal or external to your blog, or to your email by typing ‘mailto:’ immediately before your email address.

If you’re happy with these changes, click on ‘Update’.

However, there is an ‘Advanced Settings’ tab at the top:

Here you can change the size of your picture to whatever you want. A tip: change either the width or the height, and then leave or make the other field blank, WordPress will adjust the picture accordingly without distorting it.

I use the image properties for creating ‘padding’ around my pictures. (This isn’t necessary if you have a caption, as padding is automatically created for your caption box.) Padding is the white space in between the picture and the text, preventing them from jutting against each other, and using this can make a big difference when presenting your pictures. I generally put anything from 5 to 10 in the boxes (vertical and horizontal), but you can experiment to what suits you.

The border box obviously provides a border for your picture, but be lenient – use between 1 to 3 unless you want to make a statement!

Again, once you’ve finished editing your picture, click on the ‘Update’ button.

So to sum up, make sure your picture is the correct size, is 72 dots per square inch, is aligned within your text, has alt text added to it, has a link added behind it, and has appropriate padding for ‘breathing space’ within the text. Then you’ll see a difference between professional picture placing and those that don’t know…

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, revised e-courses, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

How many people are reading your posts?

Posted on Wednesday 27 April 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

The good thing about WordPress.com is that there are a lot of applications already added which you don’t need to worry about – one of which is statistics of how many people have looked at your blog posts.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you can add all sorts of fancy plugins to monitor your visitors’ statistics, such as Google Analytics, but as this is not possible for a WordPress.com blog there is a perfectly adequate statistics alternative provided – which I find easier to understand, and much more accessible.

And another thing to note, these stats are updated progressively, so you can track your performance throughout the day, whereas with Google Analytics only the results from the previous day are viewable. For WordPress.org users, there is a plugin that copies these kinds of stats, but I am unable to use it on this blog as for some reason it fails to work for me.

You can find it in the left sidebar in Dashboard and by clicking on ‘Site Stats’:

And when you click on it you’ll visit the Stats page:

This is such an exciting page, even if you aren’t familiar with statistics. Every time you get a higher block, there is such an overwhelming sense of achievement, and comparing them with past days to see the overall trend can result in a kind of competitiveness.

Timeline

The stats are spread over a month if viewed via days, and you can alter how you look at these stats by changing them to weeks and months with the tabs in the top left corner of the graph.

This shows a spread-out version of how your posts are performing, and hopefully they will show a steady increase in traffic as your blog get older and you become more adept at writing posts.

Another thing to note are how the peaks and troughs conform to the times when you are posting. For example, if you don’t post at the weekends, there is more likely to be a dip at that point, and if you have written a post that appeals to a large number of people, or has triggered a response from the search engines, there will be a peak.

Below this are more details of your statistics:

And this is where you can have a field-day if you are into this sort of thing. On the right just below the graph you can see which top posts and pages have been viewed:

And by clicking on ‘Yesterday’ you can compare the previous day’s stats as well. Each one of these headlines is a link (you can tell because it is blue), which will take you to the post in question, so you can read the content and see why it has been so successful.

To the left of these are the referrers, places elsewhere on the web which have a link to your blog, and this shows the where the visitor came from. Some of them may seem incomprehensible, as that is due to search engine criteria, but you will recognise many of them, such as your website or social networking sites like Twitter.

Below this are stats which show which key-phrases were typed into the search engines, which were matched up with posts from your blog. This can be quite interesting, as it is good to compare whether they match your post’s headlines, or whether other words were used to find your blog. It is also a good way of finding out what’s popular in search criteria at the time, which you could monopolise by writing another post with that subject matter to see if you can capture the next search wave.

This is just a quick summary of how to use these free statistics provide by WordPress.com. If you are mathematically-minded you could happily spend time interpreting the different figures and forming strategies and campaigns to monitor your progress and improvement. Alternatively you could just watch the peaks and troughs go up and down, and aim to maintain a constant level or a steady rise.

And whatever you do, don’t forget it should be fun!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon

What’s stopping you from blogging?

Posted on Wednesday 20 April 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I was recently asked: “What are the barriers towards blogging?” – so here is my answer:

When I first heard about blogs (all those years ago) my initial reaction was “How do I do it?” rather than “OMG, it’s technical, I can’t do technical!” In other words, it’s the state of your mind that creates the barriers to blogging, not the actual process of blogging itself.

The ‘technical’ part might be a big barrier, but compared to when I first stated blogging, this is less of an issue now. WordPress has done a massive amount towards making it as easy as possible – if you can use Word, you can use WordPress.

It is very easy to create a basic blog in minutes, and my e-courses here can show you how. You can start writing your blog posts immediately, even before you’ve added in all those fancy extras in the sidebars, and since WordPress does all the hard stuff for you anyway, your compositions will start being seen by the search engines as soon as you hit that publish button!

What to write may be seen as a barrier, and certainly for blogging newbies this could be a bit daunting, especially when your told you need to keep posting on a regular basis to make your blog a success. Instead read this post about finding suitable content for your blog, and if you are consistent with your contributions without leaving very long fallow periods, and write good quality, relevant and entertaining posts that people want to read, your blog will do very nicely.

Another barrier might be worrying about what your readers should see, and how much you should reveal about you and your business. This unfounded misconception bothers many small businesses who have yet to obtain the mind-set that publicising their business to the world is a good thing. Certainly reputation is very much worth-while preserving, and etiquette for blogging practices will help to found a good position in the blogosphere, but why not follow the patterns of other great bloggers by reading and observing what they do, to form your own style from them.

And the final barrier would be misunderstanding what a blog is for, or how it can help your business. You need to understand that a blog is a part of social networking, which is all about communicating with your friends, associates and contacts, whether past, present or prospective, so that they get to know more about you (and your business). It is a superb medium that allows you to express yourself in writing, to explain things in another way so that people will understand it better, to gradually build up a relationship with the outside world (as blogging will reach a lot more people than who could do business with you), so you can interact with them through their comments or even by reading and commenting on their blogs.

There will always be some barriers I haven’t managed to cover in this post, so it’s up to you to tell me what they are through the comment box below.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Tag Archives: search engines