Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

SEO

10 Things Every Blog Post Needs To Have Other Than Quality Content

by 16 Comments

Do you know the criteria for writing a good blog post? If you are like most people, you probably think that all you need in a blog post is quality content. It seems as if the phrase “quality content” is on too many blogs to count. However, there are certain parts of a blog that most people forget about. While creating quality content is important, it is also important to create an optimized blog post that gets more attention and keeps people on your site longer. These are the 10 things that every blog post needs to have:

  1. A clear purpose. You can write about social media tips, how cavemen used fire 10,000 years ago, or the daffodils on your lawn. No matter what you write about, you need to have a clear purpose right from the start. Have a headline that tells your readers exactly what your blog post will be about and have content that supports the headline. If you find yourself going astray from the headline, then you either need to change the headline or break the content into two separate blog posts.
  2. Something to lower your blog’s bounce rate. Bounce rate represents how likely someone is to leave your blog without clicking on any of your blog’s internal links (ex: links to articles, a link to a page on the blog, etc). If you can keep someone on your blog for a longer period of time, that person will be more likely to subscribe to your blog. Having a lower bounce rate increases the chances of having someone subscribe to your blog.
  3. A final paragraph that encourages interaction. The best way to get more people to comment on your blog is by encouraging those people to comment on your blog. I include a final paragraph on all of my blog posts that asks for the reader’s thoughts and/or tips. Adding this final paragraph allows me to interact with more of my readers.
  4. An easy way for people to share that blog post on social networks. Placing social sharing buttons on your blog takes no more than 5 minutes. However, those 5 minutes can make a big difference between how many shares your blog posts get. In addition, if your blog posts get shared often, your blog will be (but more importantly, look) more popular. A blog that looks more popular becomes even more popular. Your readers will enjoy reading your blog post that got shared 1,000 times more than your blog post that only got shared 10 times. Even if the two blog posts were identical, the reader would enjoy reading the one that got shared 1,000 times more than the one that got shared 10 times. Popularity makes the entire experience more enjoyable for the reader.
  5. Bold sentences. Using bold sentences allows you to highlight the important information. Some of your readers will not have enough time to read your entire blog post. If you use bold sentences, these types of readers can learn the important stuff even when they skim your blog posts. Since they got some value from one of your blog posts, these readers will come back for more information when they have more time on their hands.
  6. A stunning picture. Pictures grab our attention, and it is a proven fact that social media posts with pictures get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. All of your blog posts need to have pictures. Pictures give your readers a better idea of what your blog post is about. Pictures act as an emphasis of the headline. A big advantage of having a picture is that you allow people to share your blog posts with Pinterest. If enough people pin your blog post, it could go viral and be seen by thousands of people on Pinterest.
  7. A call to action. You can include a call to action in almost any blog post. If your blog post contains tips, then your call to action is to have your readers implement the tips that you shared. A call to action makes the reader do something after they read your blog post, and by making that happen, the reader will come back for more things to do. If your calls to action work, then your readers will subscribe to your blog and eventually buy your products.
  8. Include keywords in your blog posts. Including keywords in your blog posts helps your SEO and ultimately allows you to get more blog traffic. While it is important to use keywords, it is also important to avoid stuffing keywords into your content. If you see yourself using a particular keyword in every sentence of your blog post, then you have used that keyword too often.
  9. Your personality. You need to display your personality in your blog posts. Writing blog posts and uploading videos gives you a unique voice on the web. However, every voice on the web is unique. You need your voice on the web to allow people to get an idea for who you are. Andy Nathan wrote a guest post on Jeff Bullas’ blog where he explained how he learned everything he needed to know about social media because of Star Trek. He could have called the blog post “7 Social Media Tips,” but by directly referencing Star Trek, Andy shares an aspect of his personal life with us.
  10. The right structure. One of the simplest ways to get people to stay on your blog is to write blog posts that are easy to read. You cannot have one giant wall of content. Instead, your content needs to be broken down into several paragraphs. Even if one of your paragraphs is only one sentence, it is better to break down the giant wall of content into bite-size pieces that are easier for people to read.

Those are the 10 things that all of your blog posts need to contain. Adding these 10 things to your blog does not take a lot of time, and as you become a better blogger, some of these methods will become automatic.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on what needs to be in a blog post? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

10 Ways To Get More People To See Your Facebook Posts

by 5 Comments

facebook icon

There are some Facebook Pages that get thousands of likes every day, and over 100,000 people see all of the posts that get published. However, a majority of Facebook Pages are struggling to get noticed. Some of these Facebook Pages only get seen by 10 people every day while others get seen by only 10 people every week. If those numbers were able to grow consistently, then a previously unknown Facebook Page would end up becoming a very successful Facebook Page with over 100,000 likes.

Imagine what your Facebook Page would look like with 100,000 likes. Imagine not just having expert status but being an elite expert in your niche. That would be really cool. No matter what your Facebook Page is about, it is possible for anyone to get 100,000 likes without buying them. You don’t need to contact someone who sells 100,000 Facebook likes for $29 to have the big number. Instead, you need to learn how to get more people to see your Facebook Page. By implementing these tactics, you will get more people to see your Facebook Page, and for the long-term, allow your Facebook Page to eventually surpass 100,000 likes.

  1. Post content that people would want to like and share. This content needs to be related to your niche and be something valuable at the same time. All of your posts need to have a combination of those two components.
  2. Post at least 4 times every day throughout the day. Schedule your Facebook posts to appear at certain times of the day so most of your audience sees the posts. The best times to send out posts vary for everyone. If you are using a Facebook Page, you will be able to gain access to Facebook’s analytics which tell you when a majority of the people who liked your page are logged in.
  3. Post meaningful content. In addition to posting about something worth sharing, the content in your posts needs to encourage people to share your content. Including a link to your blog post with that blog post’s title may be good enough for Twitter, but it is not good enough for Facebook.
  4. Track your results. You need to send out posts that are similar to your most popular posts. By tracking your results, you will be able to identify the ideal times to send out your posts and what color the pictures in your post need to be.
  5. Promote your Facebook Page on your blog. Your biggest source of organic fans is the visitors that you already get on your blog. Your blog is your own home on the web. People who visit your blog and like what they see will be more likely to like your Facebook Page.
  6. Use your social networks to promote your Facebook Page the right way. Instead of begging people to like your Facebook Page or do a like exchange, send out tweets and pins containing your Facebook posts every day. Sharing the posts on your Facebook Page will generate more awareness for that page and also result in more likes.
  7. Use Facebook Advertising to spread the word about your Facebook Page. Most of the successful Facebook Pages either currently use Facebook Advertising to market themselves or used Facebook Advertising at a certain point in time. Facebook Advertising allows you to find very targeted people based on state, city, country, age, interests, and more.
  8. Offer a free prize in exchange for a like. More people will like your Facebook Page if they get a reward (the free prize) for doing so. It’s only logical. In addition, you can also offer a bonus free prize if people like specific posts on your Facebook Page. That will boost the number of likes, shares, and engagement as well.
  9. Have a giveaway that requires people to share the post. If one of your posts goes viral on Facebook, then your entire Facebook Page goes viral. Having a giveaway is a great way to encourage sharing. The more compelling the giveaway prize is, the more people are going to share the post. Have a $25 Amazon Gift Card giveaway and watch how quickly it spreads all across Facebook. More people will see your post for sure.
  10. Promote your Facebook Page in your YouTube videos. Videos have become very important over the years, and YouTube is a great way to promote your Facebook Page. YouTube gets over 1 billion visitors every month, and some videos end up going viral. If your video goes viral, then your Facebook Page will go viral too.

As more people see your Facebook posts, the number of people who see your posts will grow exponentially. If 1,000 people share your Facebook post, that means at least 10,000 people saw the post. When someone shares a post, some of their friends get to see the post that they shared. The immediate result of this is that more people get to see your post and hear your message.

What are your thoughts of using a Facebook Page and getting more people to see your Facebook posts? Do you have any additional tips about getting more exposure on Facebook? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Does The Length Of A Blog Post Matter For Search Engines

by 4 Comments

blog post length

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about whether the length of a blog post mattered or not. When I wrote that blog post, I looked at it from the perspective of how long it takes to relay the message. While there are some long blog posts out there, some blog posts can relay the same message in a few sentences. Seth Godin’s Polishing Junk post is a perfect example of how you can relay the same message in a few sentences.

However, the length of a blog post does have an impact on the search engines. Most of the top blog posts on search engines are over 1,000 words long. You are not getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 500 words. You’re not even getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 900 words. Although there is no golden number, the data suggests that you should write 1,000 words or more for all of your blog posts.

According to serpIQ, the Top 10 blog posts that appeared on search engines for certain keywords (serpIQ tested over 20,000 keywords) had over 2,000 words. Coincidentally, some of the most successful blogs have posts that are over 2,000 words. One of the first blog posts that appears when you search “blogging tips” is Buffer’s 16 Top Tips From Blogging Experts From Beginners. The blog post was over 2,000 words long, and most of Buffer’s blog posts tend to be that long. Although the Buffer App helps out with this, the site has an Alexa Rank under 2,000. In addition, that blog post was shared over  4,000 times on different social networks (over 2,000 times on Twitter alone).

You may be wondering at this point how you can add more meat to your blog posts. Chances are you want to write 1,000 word blog posts so your traffic numbers go up.

Writing longer blog posts has another advantage. If you write longer blog posts, your visitors will stay on your blog for a longer period of time. According to Alexa, the average visitor stays on Quick Sprout for 3 minutes and 29 seconds, and the average visitor stays on Buffer for 4 minutes and 6 seconds. These two blogs have numerous blog posts that are all 2,000 or more words long. It takes more than two minutes for most people to read a blog post with 2,000 or more words. As more people stay on your blog, your sidebar will get more attention. If you have an effective sidebar with the right widgets, people will stay on your blog longer. When people stay on your blog longer, they will also be more likely to subscribe to your blog and buy one of your products.

One of the easiest ways to add more meat to your blog posts is by submitting queries on HARO related to your blog posts. Instead of writing down 10 tips, have 10 different people each explain 1 tip in great detail. Then, add all of those people’s explanations in your blog post. It saves you time because most of the content is already provided for you, and you are able to publish a blog post with 1,000 or more words.

As you write more content, it will be easier for you to write 1,000 words in your blog posts. I got comfortable with writing two blog posts every day which made it easier for me to write one 1,000 word blog post every day. The best way to get better at anything, especially writing, is with practice.

Another option you have to write longer blog posts is by doing your own research. For this blog post, I did research to identify how writing longer blog posts has an impact on the search engines. Adding research allowed me to go more in depth with statistics instead of me just saying, “Longer blog posts do better in search engines.” Doing the research allows you to further clarify why what you are saying is true and why your visitors need to implement these tactics now.

Although you may want to write blog posts that are 1,000 words each, avoid rambling at all costs. It is possible to write a 1,000 word blog post in just 500 words, and it is possible to write a blog post shorter than 500 words that gets the same point across. When you write long blog posts that are over 1,000 words, those blog posts need to contain quality, non-repetitive content. A big mistake many people make to get over 1,000 words in a blog post (or over 2,000) is writing the same sentence with different words over and over again until the blog post exceeds 1,000 words. Writing repetitive sentences does not help you in the search engines. Although writing longer blog posts does help, the rules of quality content still apply. Once you get someone to visit your blog and read your blog post, you want someone to stick around long enough to read the entire blog post. That means your blog post, from start to finish, needs to be really good.

Many bloggers are quick to get discouraged by looking at their current blog posts. To go from writing 250 words every day for your blog to writing 1,000 words every day for your blog is a big transition to make. However, there is a very easy way for any blogger to write 1,000 word blog posts. One of the biggest lies in blogging is that once you publish a blog post, no more new content can be added to that blog post. In reality, all you need to do to add more content to one of your blog posts is to go to your blog’s dashboard, go to the blog post, click edit, add more content, and then update the blog post. Just because the blog post you recently published has only 500 words does not mean you can’t bring that blog post up to 1,000 words by the end of the day. Not only is this an easy way to have more blog posts that are over 1,000 words long, but this will also give you the confidence you need to write more 1,000 word blog posts in the future.

Writing 1,000 word blog posts every day is a challenging task worth accomplishing. As you get better at writing more quality content faster, you may want to bump it up to 2,000 words per blog post. Writing an extra 500 words for your blog posts every day and adding 100 extra words to your existing blog posts every day can be the difference between getting 100 daily visitors from search engines versus getting thousands of daily visitors from search engines in the long-term.

What are your thoughts on writing longer blog posts to rank higher on the search engines?

 

7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging

by Leave a Comment

In any niche, you will learn things that you wish you knew earlier. Although you can implement new methods in your niche right now, it can take several months or even a year for you to learn first hand which methods work and which ones don’t. As a new blogger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. SEO seemed impossible, I was stuck at 1,667 followers, and I had no idea how to grow my traffic. Throughout my journey, I learned several things about blogging that I wish I knew about earlier. Out of all of those things, these were the seven that I wish I knew before I even started blogging.

  1. The power of categories. Categories allow you to organize your content so readers can find what they are looking for faster. Categories also allow you to organize your content for your convenience. If you want to write a book about one of the topics you write blog posts about, you can go back to your categories and use your blog posts as inspiration. I found out about categories late in the game and had written over 800 uncategorized blog posts. I ended up categorizing all of those blog posts within 1 week, but categorizing that many blog posts in a short amount of time was not an enjoyable activity.
  2. The way you use your social networks is important. Many articles emphasize the importance of having social networks. However, it is also important to utilize those social networks properly. You do not get found simply by joining Twitter. If that were the case, everyone would have 1 million followers. You get found by implementing your social networks properly. Luckily for you, I created the Twitter category and have other categories dedicated to social networks as well. It was more than a year late because I did not know about the power of categories, but it’s better late than never.
  3. Quantity is just as important as quality. When I started to write two blog posts every day, I got more traffic. In addition, as this blog got older, blog posts accumulated over time. The blog with 800 blog posts has more visibility in the search engines than the blog with just 1 blog post. However, I am not telling you to write 800 blog posts in 1 day because it is very unlikely for anyone to write 800 quality blog posts in 1 day. Although it is a starting point, blogging once a week is not enough. You should be publishing 1 blog post every day.
  4. Patience is a virtue. When I realized my blog was not going to be the overnight sensation I thought it would be, I was not happy. I would spend multiple hours every day on my blog and only get 5 visitors for the week. Even though there were other things I could have done as a teenager, I decided to stick with blogging. I knew that most bloggers got their success by being patient, but at the time, the thought of being patient simply frustrated me. Understand that the process of becoming a successful blogger takes time, but if you put in the time, you will become very successful.
  5. Focus on one blog. Before I took blogging seriously, my topics were scattered all over the place. I had separate blogs for my dog, the Boston Red Sox, baseball news, Legos, Yugioh Cards, and others as well. As a result, my numbers got scattered. Some of these blogs got 10 visitors every week while others got 50 visitors every week. I believe that if these numbers were combined together into one blog, that blog would be very popular. That’s exactly what I did when I created this blog. I decided to abandon the other blogs so I could focus on this one. If you want to create multiple blogs, have people write guest posts on all of your blogs except one.
  6. SEO is overrated. I spent countless hours learning about SEO expecting to get thousands of extra monthly visitors just 30 days after implementing the SEO tactics. While SEO is not a dud, it is more important to utilize your social networks. How you use your social networks also happens to have a big impact on SEO.
  7. Email lists are super important. For multiple years, I thought that the most important thing to do was get more traffic. However, once you get that traffic, you need to keep those visitors on your site. In addition, you need to get first time visitor to visit your blog numerous times in the future. If you have a big email list, that means more people are getting notified about your new blog posts through email, and it seems as if everyone is checking their email these days.

Those are the seven things I wish I knew before I started blogging. What are your thoughts on the list? Is there anything else that you wish you knew before you started blogging? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

And if you are considering starting your first blog now, then you’ll find this guide to be very helpful.

 

Why It Is Important To Focus On SEO Even When Small Results Come In

by 1 Comment

 

Focus On SEO

SEO is overrated, and there’s no question about it. Many people think of SEO as a way of getting a very noticeable increase of traffic in a very short amount of time. When quick results don’t come in, many people give up on SEO. Little do these people know that SEO is a critical part towards having a successful blog in the long-term.

There are many examples of how blogs went from under 50 visitors every month to getting well over 50 visitors every day. The statistics above are from this blog. Although Twitter has played a big role in those statistics, search engines started to become more significant as soon as traffic from Twitter went up. When I first created this blog (and several months after it was created), this blog got little to no visitors from SEO. I remember jumping up and down with joy if my blog got 5 visitors from search engines.

I am sure there are people who are still not sure about SEO. Some people need the traffic now, and SEO is not a great way to get immediate traffic. Although you may not see your efforts pay off in the first few weeks, rest assured that you will start to see your efforts pay off 6-12 months later. If you plan to turn blogging into your full-time job, then you need to have SEO as a part of your strategy. One of the reasons my WordPress statistics spiked upward is because of SEO. Although it took a very long time to get the spike, the spike did come, and now this blog gets over 100,000 visitors every year.

 

 

5 Easy Ways To Boost Your SEO

by Leave a Comment

No matter how much you are boosting your SEO, it takes a long time to see the results. In addition, some methods of boosting SEO are more challenging than others. Even if your blog is not getting the full benefits of SEO, it is still important to optimize on it so you see the results come in later on. If you are not getting the best results from SEO, chances are you will want to improve your SEO in a few minutes. These are 5 easy ways to boost your SEO, and they all take about 1 minute each to implement.

  1. Add tags to your blog posts. Tags are what people search on Google to find your blog post. If you want people to search for “How to get more blog traffic” to find your blog on Google, that entire phrase needs to be one of your tags. The ideal tag is 2-6 words long. You want the tag to be long enough to break away from some of the competition but not too long to the point where no one will search for that particular tag. People aren’t entering “How do I get more blog traffic super fast at one of the fastest rates in history” into Google’s search engine.
  2. Include links to your older blog posts in your new ones. Just look at some of your older blog posts and see which ones you can incorporate into your new blog posts. This reduces your blog’s bounce rate.
  3. Add social sharing buttons at the bottom of your blog posts. When people share your blog posts on their social networks, that also increases your SEO. This is one of the simplest ways to get search engines to notice about your blog. All you have to do after that is create content worth sharing.
  4. Write about Google. That’s an easy way to get more traffic which boosts your SEO and gives you more visibility. You will be amazed with what happens when you write about Google.
  5. Use your social networks often. This last one takes more than a minute to implement, but chances are you were already using social networks before reading this blog post. If you use HootSuite Pro to schedule your posts on your social networks, it will save you a lot of time.

Those are five easy ways to boost your SEO. These tactics are easy to implement and will have a powerful effect on your SEO. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional advice? Please share your thoughts below.