SEO Changes

Search engine optimization “best practices” have changed dramatically since 2010. That’s when Google started to make radical changes to the way it ranks websites. Old practices such as gaining as many links as possible and using very specific keyword ratios not only became largely irrelevant, but actually raised red flags in Google’s ranking algorithms. Today, the key is to write quality content which naturally contains your keyword phrases and semantically similar phrases. We’d like to focus on several of the most important ways to do it.

Semantic Keywords

Every blog post should be written around a single root keyword phrase. For example, the root keyword phrase for this article is “SEO blog tips”. We’ve now mentioned the phrase two times in this text, but in such a naturally flowing manner that you may not have noticed. Go ahead, look for it. You will find it in the last sentence of the first paragraph and in the second sentence of this paragraph.

One keyword, however, is really no longer enough. You need to weave semantically similar keywords in the text of the posts as well. A few examples for SEO blog tips might be:

• Search engine optimization
• Blog tips
• Best blog practices
• Blog SEO
• SEO tips
• Increase blog traffic

In reality, the list is endless. What you are shooting for, though, are phrases related to the post’s specific theme. Google will review the different phrases and then note the theme of the page. You will then end up ranking for many of these phrases, as well as many other keywords you never even thought about. This will increase your traffic and is really the key to blog SEO practices.

Meta Tags

Meta tags traditionally have been very important when it comes to search engine optimization. This is no longer the case. Google has admitted it doesn’t consider the meta description or meta keyword code on websites. It does look at the meta title tag, but one look at the search rankings for your keyword will tell you it doesn’t place much emphasis on that tag.

That’s why we suggest three things.

1. Include your main keyword at the start of your meta title followed by a phrase that is not keyword-centric. For example, “Blog Rankings – How To Get The Most Traffic From Your Blog Posts.”
2. Start the meta description with a question incorporating your main keyword phrase. For this article, we will go with something such as, “Looking for SEO blog tips? Find out why your blog posts may not be ranking by clicking here.” 
3. Ignore the meta keywords tool. Don’t bother entering anything.

That is it. Yes, meta tags have become fairly simple these days.

Post Organization

As a general rule, you should avoid rambling when writing a post. A far better approach is to start by specifying a problem your audience faces, whether they know it or not. The remainder of the post should then detail the steps needed to resolve that problem. If one of those steps involves buying something from your business, so much the better.

Consider this post. Following the introductory paragraph, we move immediately to the issues of why blog posts are important from a ranking perspective, and why getting posts ranked on Google is more difficult these days. We then spend the rest of the blog post covering the steps that can help overcome the difficulties while offering our services at the end of the post. This is a formula that can, and should, be used for just about any blog post intended to convey information and produce sales.

Post Length

500 words? Read the vast majority of blog posts and they all seem to come in at around 500 words. It is rather amazing when you think about it. In reality, every blog post is going to require a different word count to really cover its subject.

A blog post about the temperature of the sun is going to be pretty short because, frankly, there isn’t all that much to write about.

A blog post discussing the number of ranking algorithm changes made by Google in the last eight years will probably require 2,000 words or more to cover all of the changes in any detail.

Despite all this, we still see the majority of post lengths coming in at 500 words, regardless of topic. This is simply a mistake and it is our view at Prestige Writing that it may not be long before Google starts filtering posts of this length out of the top 10 in its rankings.

A blog post should be as long as it needs to be. Having said this, Google clearly favors longer posts when it ranks pages for a keyword phrase. Posts with 2,500 to 3,000 words usually rank much higher than those with fewer words. These posts also tend to be shared more by people on Twitter and other social media accounts, which certainly helps with the ranking process as well.

As an example, this post comes in at 969 total words – which works just fine for our purposes.

Social Media

Do you need to build links to your new blog post? Sure, in a perfect world. Custom and practice these days, however, is to punch out the post to social media where people can share the content naturally. Without this signal, the posts simply are not going to rank – so make sure you get out there and share your content.

Quality Content

At Prestige Writing, we specialize in providing quality blogging content for our clients. If your blog posts are not getting ranked, contact us today for a free consultation.Related: qpLFW, coxy, rtUb, sBNbCw, wJk, oMCU, lRZTz, FdSi, HIS, qDevpq, FsuiXT, PGMp, RPNBE, tmGrY, oQOE,

Personalize?

What does personalization of content mean? It simply refers to the “speaker” in the content. If you look at a site like Fidelity.com, there is no personalization whatsoever. Fidelity is a financial brokerage site, so the content is written with the “speaker” being the business itself.

Contrast this with a site like SmartPassiveIncome.com. This is the primary site of Pat Flynn, a very popular blogger who provides business tips to his readers. Personalization is the approach throughout the site. Everything is about Pat, because his goal is to connect personally with his readers. This is a classic form of content personalization.

Appropriate?

When launching a site, your content should either be personalized heavily or not at all. The approach you take depends on the type of site you are running and the tone you are trying to convey. The nature of your business will typically provide you with the answer.

Let’s return to our Fidelity example. As a brokerage, the company wants to convey an impression of sophistication, security and stability to its target audience. SEC regulations aside, the company wants you to believe your money is safe and will grow. In such a situation, it is best to convey a highly professional, corporate tone through the content.

Now consider a different business from the same financial niche. Barry Waxler is one of our clients and a financial planner in San Diego. He works with high-end clients and handles most of the work himself. Much like Pat Flynn in the example above, Mr. Waxler is the “brand” and personalizing the content to reflect this fact, and connect with his readers, is a smart strategic approach.

As you can see, whether to personalize is a decision focused more on an elective choice on your part, not the niche your business is in. In fact, a business niche where personalization is classically not used can often be a great place to employ the tactic because it allows you to stand out from the competition.

Willing to Commit?

Starting a business may require time and money, but it doesn’t always require the ultimate sacrifice. What is that sacrifice? Exposing yourself to the public as the face behind the business.

Consider Google. You probably know Larry Page is one of the founders. Can you picture what he looks like in your mind? If Google is portrayed positively or negatively in a media piece, few think of Page, much less picture him. This is because Google is not a personalized entity in any way.

Now consider the ramifications of personalizing your online business. Your face will be front and center. If we return to SmartPassiveIncome.com, people do not post positive or negative reviews of the site. Instead, they do so for Pat Flynn, the person. He is the brand and reaps the benefits and bears the scars personally.

So the simple question you must ask yourself is, “Am I willing to be exposed as the face of my business and receive negative feedback?” Don’t feel bad if you shy away from such exposure. Most people do. If you are reticent to expose yourself, though, you need to ask yourself just how committed to the business you really are.

Selling The Site

Okay, you are ready to go with personalization. Before you make the commitment, there is just one other issue to consider – what is your exit strategy for the site?

The exit strategy is the method you plan to use to leave the business. The common strategies include:

• Run it forever and leave it to your heirs,
• Sell the site to a third party for an obscene amount of money, or
• Take the business public and make millions when investors buy the stock.

If you decide to personalize the content, you may run into problems with a few of these exit strategies.

Consider a site like ThinkTraffic.com. This was the primary site of Corbett Bar, an extremely popular online blogger who provided his readers with a host of tips on making money online. The site was completely personalized, which is to say the brand was Corbett himself and not the website.

Would you ever buy such a website if you had the money and were looking for an acquisition? Probably not. The problem is that the people who are on the mailing list for ThinkTraffic.com and who visit the site frequently would most likely abandon the site once Corbett was no longer the content creator.

Corbett may have realized this is an issue. He recently redirected all of his ThinkTraffic.com content to Sparkline, where he is one of a number of online gurus. Although the new site is still packed with personalized content, the fact there are numerous content creators means one can leave without it being the end of the world for the business.

So, what about your site? You need to seriously consider your exit strategy. If your goal is to take the business public, then personalization is a poor strategy. If your intention is just to run the business for as long as possible, personalizing the content is a wise move.

Difficult Decision

In some cases, the personalization decision can be a difficult one. Consider PrestigeWriting.com. When Phil and I started this site, we had this very discussion. Phil was more for the corporate content approach while I was more about the personalization of the content. Ultimately, we decided on a personalization-light strategy.

So far, it seems to be working.

Naturally, we asked where such a deal was available. The answer was “At Elance, of course.”

We had heard horror stories before, about copy from Elance or similar freelancer sites. But this time, we decided to see for ourselves just what the deal was. So we signed up for an account and posted a job: a few 1000-word articles on a subject which would require a decent amount of research. We offered to pay $15-$20 per article, and specified that we only wanted native American English writers. We also decided in advance that we were only going to consider writers who had received a rating of at least 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.We received several dozen applications within a few hours. Our next step was to check out the “writers” who applied. Right away, we were able to discard several applicants, who weren’t American. We also discarded another five, who didn’t submit any writing samples (which we had requested in our posting.)

Then, we looked at the portfolios or writing samples of the remaining applicants – and we were horrified. There wasn’t a single person whose writing would meet our standards. There were spelling errors, grammatical errors, sentence fragments, careless factual mistakes, and that was in their portfolios – the writing they chose to show as the best examples of their work.

Somewhat daunted, we plunged ahead, and chose the “best” of the bunch, someone with a rating of 4.9 stars out of 5 and lots of great recommendations on the site. Elance only allows you to communicate with your writer on their in-house message system, so we were unable to speak with our writer personally to explain the project; we did the best we could by leaving directions and samples in their inbox, and then held our breath.

A week later, we had our articles. We were disappointed but not surprised to see that the writer’s portfolio was a good representation of their work; the article’s structure and organization was mediocre, there were grammatical and spelling errors, serious factual errors, and a few sentences that didn’t really make sense at all.

Out of curiosity, we decided to edit the articles ourselves to see how long it would take to turn the copy into something we would use on one of our own sites. And as we suspected, we had to spend almost as much time editing the pieces as we would have spent writing them ourselves.

It’s certainly possible that we just happened to choose the wrong writer. But we doubt it. In our opinion, we got what we paid for – mediocre writing at a below-market price.

You may already have had the same experience with freelance sites. If not, we pass along the experience as a cautionary tale. Are we biased? Of course we are. Take this story with however many grains of salt you’d like.

But in a strange way, we’re glad we gave this experiment a try.

It made us feel more confident than ever about the service and quality that we offer our clients.

Do Your Blog Posts Suck?

It is a simple, blunt question with a dash of rudeness mixed in. You may want to say “no,” but we both know the answer is probably “yes.” Don’t be insulted. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to overcoming it.

The truth is most blogs are terrible. Do site owners set out to post thin content and update their blogs once every three months or so? Of course not.

The problem is time.

There isn’t enough of it.

Well, here’s a secret most successful blogs hold close to the vest. The blog posts are not written by the bloggers listed as the authors. Instead, the work is actually farmed out to companies like ours that know how to write compelling pieces on a tight schedule. Put more succinctly, you can “buy time” by using us.

So, just what do we do for you? Let’s take a look at our approach to writing blog posts.

Posts That Don’t Suck

Successful blogs build credibility and generate loyalty with the target audience. Unfortunately, successful blogs are few and far between. The reason is that most posts are nothing but marketing pieces trying to separate the reader from their hard-earned money.

Successful blogs don’t focus on asking for things from the readers. Instead, post after post gives readers something useful, whether it’s general information or helpful tips. This creates a positive impression with readers, an important step to ultimately winning their business.

Let’s consider a plumber’s site as an example.  Plumbing is not the most exciting of topics, right? What kind of posts can we create that will not only be interesting to visitors, but will generate a strong brand impression with them? Actually, there are many different topics we can cover in posts that do just this.

Here is typical blog post language on the website of a plumber:

“We at Bob’s Plumbers have been providing professional services to the greater Los Angeles area for 18 years. We know our stuff. Whether you have a leak or clog, we can get the water flowing again…”

This is advertising copy. While it might be great for postcard mailings, it is not appropriate for a blog post.

This is what we might write:

“If you are suffering from clogged drains, the first thing you will discover is there seems to be an endless number of drain cleaners available to supposedly fix the problem. Before you buy and pour, it is important to ask two questions.

1. Will the product actually work?

2.  Is the product safe for my pipes?”

The post would then discuss the various products available and how certain chemicals found in typical drain cleaners actually corrode metal pipes. An additional section would focus on how to deal with specific clogged drain situations such as food and hair clogs, as well as products appropriate for septic systems.

Go back and compare the two written post snippets. Which one would you react better to if you were sitting in your house with a smelly sink barely draining at 9 p.m. on Saturday night? The sales pitch, or the version identifying safe products that can cure the problem now?

Loyalty = Revenues

Happy readers are wonderful, but how does this put money in your pocket? The answer is simple in the case of our plumber. At the end of the post, we would include a section discussing completely clogged drains. It would be noted that such clogs need to be cleared with a plumbing snake and the reader would be directed to contact the plumber for help.

What have we done with this post? Have we given away free, useful information? Absolutely. Have we cut into the revenues or potential business of our plumbing client? Unlikely. Plumbers typically are not called out for slow drains, so we haven’t given away much and we’ve gained huge credibility with readers. If their drains get to the point where they will not drain at all, guess who the reader is calling?

Don’t think this approach works? It does – I’m a reader of just such a blog. I live in the mountains and am on a septic system. I was suffering from a clogged drain and found a blog post on a plumber’s site showing me in detail how to deal with the clog. It worked and the plumber had a customer for life without even knowing it. When it came time to order a routine $600 septic system draining which must be done every three to five years, who do you think I called?

You guessed right.

When the next routine cleaning is needed in another three to five years, who do you think I will call then?

You got it – and now you see the power of quality blog posts.

Our Blogging Service

Our goal at Prestige Writing is to turn your blog from a burden to a boon that brings in actual traffic and business. With our posting service, we:

1. Conduct a free site review to unocover potential blogging opportunities
2. Conduct a free consultation with you to discuss our views on the blogging opportunities for your site
3. Discuss an appropriate posting frequency for your industry
4. Discuss optimal word length
5. Evaluate the potential for using topical news alerts to pick up traffic off the search engines with quick-hitting posts
6. Discuss any other unique issues that arise during the consultation.

Get started now by scheduling a free consultation with us to learn how we can turn your blog from a turkey into a goose laying golden eggs.

• Writing ability: this is obviously the most important qualifier. Is their content well-written in native English, without spelling or grammatical errors? Is it easy to understand? If it’s an article or narrative, does it deliver what the introduction or title promises? If it’s sales copy, is there a clear and effective call to action?
• Intellectual curiosity: they’re going to have to write on a variety of subjects, many of which are new to them. Are they interested to learn about new topics and grasp new material quickly? Are they good researchers, and does their research translate into authoritative copy?
• Personal qualities: they need to be good listeners, quick studies and easy to work with. Do they quickly grasp new information and ask the right questions? Can they produce quality work in a timely fashion without constant direction and correction?

This is not an exhaustive list, of course, but it’s a good way to narrow down the candidates. We hope it helps you, whether you’re looking to hire an in-house writer or searching for a quality writing service like ours.

We are owned and operated by professional writers with decades of experience. We don’t subscribe to the “1000 words for $10″ web mentality which seems to be a growing trend. We pride ourselves on producing quality writing you’ll be proud to call your own.

We will work to fully understand your needs, and then create copy which will engage your readers and produce results.

Complicated information presented in a clear, understandable style? Authoritative presentation of your company’s mission and goals? Compelling sales copy with a call to action which will motivate potential buyers? That’s what we do.

We can also edit and revise your existing copy for clarity, spelling and grammatical errors; make it search engine friendly; or plan and execute a full content strategy for website, blog and social media posting.

Please explore our site, and then contact us with questions or to receive a no-obligation quote. We’re looking forward to putting your ideas into words.