The general idea is that all one needs is a blog, write few posts and people will follow you. It doesn’t happen this way in the real world! It is never enough to write a few blogs, share it on social networks and expect to gain loyal buyers. If you’re following this process, no wonder all those dollars spent in creating content is wasted!

In this post, I will teach you simple and actionable ways to leverage blog content and benefit your small business.

1. Go Graphical

Infographic is the best way to create graphical representation of a concept or perform statistical analysis. They are easy to understand and connect with the reader.

Delve into the small business niche. Find out any recent research paper, its history, its relevance, any recent data or anything which you can use to create an Infographic.

You can either DIY via tools like Easel.ly, Visual.ly, Tableau and others or outsource the task for $100 – $300. This is a one-time investment. Once done, publish the Infographic on your blog with an embed link. Now promote this Infographic on blogging platforms, contact bloggers to embed it with their blog posts, share on social networks and forums.

In short, you are leveraging one piece of content multiple times without spending another dime.

2. Do Live Communication

If your business is new, “on-demand” webinar will come later. Work on developing a platform for a “live” webinar. Again, a live webinar connects with the audience better than reading thousands of words. Sad, but true!

Of course, you need a subscriber list to host webinar. Therefore, place this content leveraging strategy down the line, preferably after 9 – 12 months of online presence, assuming you will have a sizable email list by that time. If not, use the B2B contact model to collaborate with other business owners and create a joint webinar.

There are various free platforms to host webinars. What you should concentrate on is creating exceptional content to talk about in the webinar. Use the business blog posts for inspiration. Read your own blog posts for a common topic, research more and connect the dots.

The one hour webinar should be worth the visitors’ time. In the end, you can promote your own business products and see leads converting into sales. Whether it’s a singular or collaborative effort, everyone benefits.

Lastly, the webinar should be conducted by the small business owner/s; don’t get the customer representative to fill in for you. It will be a major failure.

3. Draw the Power of Slides

Cleverly crafted, intelligent and highly informative presentation slides sometimes rank higher than blog posts on search engine. Slide presentations are one of the best ways to leverage blog content if you’re just starting out.

You don’t need any special software. Just go to Microsoft PowerPoint, create slides and upload them on SlideShare.com, which is by far the best of the lot in presentation sharing. You can also explore Slide Boom and Google Drive.

Let’s assume that your blog has 10 posts about WordPress plugins under multiple categories. Collect all the 10 posts, scan and skim the content, select 30 plugins, create a presentation titled “Top 30 WordPress plugins” and upload it. The presentation will link back to your site.

In fact, you could leverage the same presentation by converting it into a guest post, published on a niche relevant high authority domain.

More Content Leveraging Options

This is a live example for you to see how I leveraged point 3 and created this presentation. It is hosted with SlideShare.net and will soon show up on other slide sharing sites.

Content leveraging is not a very difficult task. True enough, it IS time consuming but isn’t it better to spend time doing things the right way than blow up all those dollars and not even getting a decent ROI?

Use content leveraging to move beyond ‘traditional blogging’ and get more exposure for your small business.

About the author:
Chitraparna Sinha is a freelancing consultant, blog content developer, blogger, published Amazon editor and social media geek.

The post How can a Small Business Leverage Blog Content to its Maximum Potential? appeared first on AddMe Blog.

The search engine algorithms are always changing and one of Google’s most recent targets are the sites that build “unnatural” links. Links that once passed value on to your site are now irrelevant and have been eclipsed by somewhat “new” ranking signals like social signals. You need to be careful when it comes to the next “hot” link building tactic, one of which at this time is guest blogging. It’s very possible that guest blogging could be viewed as a kind of link exchange (frowned upon by the search engines) if you aren’t doing it properly. There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach guest blogging. Contributing the same guest post to many different sites could raise a red flag. The perceived quality of the post also matters. If it’s only a couple hundred words- where is the value in that? It also matters where these articles are getting posted. If they are just going to any content site that has a broad reach and isn’t industry related that may also be cause for concern. If you only have one article/post on lots of different sites it appears that you are just doing it for the link and nothing more. The correct way to approach guest blogging is to contribute content to industry relevant sites regularly over time. This conveys that the posts are there to build brand awareness and that there is an obvious relationship with this website owner that has grown over time.

Approaching guest blog posting with the wrong intentions and just looking for a way to build links often backfires because the quality of the guest blog post usually suffers. The focus is on the link instead of the person that may actually be reading the content. If it’s thrown together in 20 minutes with a few links in the author bio, it’s probably not going to do much in the way of informing target audience members or establishing your business or brand as a trusted expert or source of information. A better approach to guest blogging is going to take much more work.

The best places to submit guest blog posts are on good, quality sites that have a following and are related to your niche. Once you’ve found some spots that you think are good, begin to establish a relationship with that blog owner by commenting on their blog posts, connecting with them in social media, and sharing some of their work within social media. This will get their attention and encourage them to check out your work. If they like what they see they will be more receptive to accepting a guest post from you on their site.

The post Take the Right Approach to Guest Blogging appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Earlier, keyword placement just meant putting the primary and secondary keywords anywhere and everywhere within the blog and blog posts with the ultimate goal to increase the volume of the keyword in the blog. But, this is not the scenario anymore. Doing something like this would simply make you seem like a spammer. Search engines have got smarter and are able to distinguish well between genuine content and spam. So avoid using the age old SEO tactics and read on, to find out how to, and where to put keywords in your blog, in order to optimize it for the search engines the right way.

Titles

The titles are the first things the search engines crawl. By titles, I mean the blog’s title and its pages and posts titles. So keep them straight forward yet compelling to increase your click through rate on the SERP. The titles also most probably get used as the text by people who recommend or link to your blog or blog post. That means they may serve as the anchor text which is vital in your blog’s off page SEO.

Post Body

You should keep writing your post body with your targeted keyword and while doing this you should ensure that not to stuff with keywords nor diluting it. You can use keyword density checker tools to ensure the correct keyword density to allow search crawlers access your whole content.

Images

Unlike the early days of blogging, images provide high value in terms of SEO today. Even though image search accounts to a minor share, it is not negligible. Considering the competition, every little chance is important in SEO right?

Three different ways you can implement your keywords in images are:

• Using the keyword as the file name of the image before uploading to your host.
• Placing the keyword within the alt tag of the image. Restrict the alt tag to less than 5 words.
• Ensuring that the text that wraps the image in your post has related keywords or its synonyms.

URLs

When you Google for a keyword and keen observe the results, you can make out that the search engine places the webpages that have the searched keyword in the URL that appears at the end of each result.

Taking this into consideration, many blogging CMS/platforms have come up with something called ‘Permalink’ (permanent link) which is the URL we can define for the particular page or blog post. Make use of this feature to modify your URL in such a way that they contain the keyword or its synonym. Keep the keyword short (less than 5 words) and meaningful (avoid using date of posting) not only for the search robots but also for humans.

About the author:
Tim Wilson works as content manager for HostPapa, a web hosting Canada company serving over 100,000 customers. Since launching in 2006, HostPapa has offered reliable, budget-friendly, easy-to-use Canadian web hosting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses.

The post 4 Places to Put Keywords in your Blog for Optimum Search Results appeared first on AddMe Blog.

The post SEO Forecast for 2013: Focus on Consumers – Infographic appeared first on AddMe Blog.

A blog is like a tree, it takes years to grow a tree but in order to cut one, you just need an axe and half an hour of your time. In the same way, you can achieve the apex of your blogging success in 5 years and then crash like a rocket, if you’re not careful with basic blogging principles.

If you’re a new blogger or someone who has been around for awhile, these mistakes will ensure that you kill the blog yourself. If not by readership or traffic, but surely by its nature and the genre it was once known for.

Not Being Regular – Losing your blogging Tempo

Being consistent is important if you want to be successful in anything, not just blogging. When you have a blog with a decent reader base, you should be consistent and literally “feed your readers mind” with new content on a regular basis.

By “regular”, I don’t specifically mean “daily”. You don’t have to write daily but you should decide a healthy blogging schedule and stick to it, no matter what. Some bloggers post daily, some thrice a week while some choose to blog only once or twice in two weeks. Whatever your speed is, you should stick to it and meet the expectation of your readers. If you post only twice a week and have a lot of time, do not rush to double your posting frequency.

When you increase or change the frequency of new blog posts, your readers adapt to the new habit and they expect more from your. A few months back, you come down to your previous schedule and your readers are disappointed. Lower or improve the number of posts slowly, give your readers the time to adapt themselves to your blogging tempo. Too many posts on a single day and nothing to read on other days is a surefire way to turn off your loyal reader base.

Not Being Consistent With Your Post

Every blogger has a voice of his own and every blogger is known for his style and approach of how he writes, what he writes and more importantly, “why” he writes. Seth Godin, for example, is known for small and direct pieces, it’s his style and readers love him for that. Now, there are a range of bloggers who write descriptive posts, explaining their thoughts and ideas with suitable examples but Seth Godin’s style is tied to his name and brand. If he changes his style and the tone of his blog posts, not many of his loyal readers will love the change.

This is true for your blog as well. Be yourself, your readers love you for being you, you should be consistent with your tone, style and approach. Yes, you can improve or change the tone once in a while but do not try to imitate another blogger, thinking that his style or approach is better than yours.

Remember – a blogger is an artist and two artists can never be compared. An artist’s biggest and only competitor is he himself.

Selling Out Too Early

Monetizing your blog is a good idea, every blogger has the right to earn revenue from his blog to compensate for the time and energy he has invested into it. But before you monetize your blog, you should consider some scenarios.

• What is the authority of your blog in its niche? Is it still struggling to rise above the noise or is it considered a reputed blog?
• Do you have a growing reader base?
• Can you sustain your readers, do they come back and engage in conversations?

If your site is fairly new and you have been blogging for only 6 months, it is too early to monetize it. In my opinion, one should wait at least for a year before deciding to monetize the blog or use the traffic or readership to convert to revenue. If you plaster ads all over your website, annoy your readers with newsletter subscriptions or inundate theirs inbox with promotional stuff, they are not going to come back.

You should monetize your blog only when you have some authority and trust, too early and there is a high chance that the blog might fail to take off in the first place.

Not Giving Due Credit and Acclamation to Other bloggers

This is one of the basic mistakes I see many bloggers doing in their posts and the worst thing is that they keep repeating the same mistake time and again, which kills their reputation and destroys their credibility.

Getting influenced by another blogger is easy, we all live in a world of influences. Sometimes, while going through your reading list, you may find something really interesting. You will be tempted to blog about it and since the idea or topic is fresh and new, you might churn out a really well written and informative blog post. But before your publish the blog post, you should give due credit to the source blog and clearly mention the fact that you derived the inspiration from his blog.

If you skip the credit part, you lose respect. There is a high chance that some of your readers also read that source and when they see you re-hashing or deriving an idea, news or story idea from another blogger, they will not take your word as a “credible source”. If you keep repeating this mistake every other day and never give due credit to fellow bloggers, you’re slowly destroying the reputation and credibility of your blog as a whole.

Not having a User Friendly site

When was the last time you re-designed your website? When was the last time you refreshed the color scheme, added or removed anything from your website? Just as we change clothes every day, and buy new ones every once in awhile, your blog needs a fresh coat of paint. I am not saying that you should completely change the design and feel of the site every few months, but you should make sure the blog adheres to the changing trends in web design. Some questions to ponder upon:

• Have you tested the blog in different browsers? Are you sure that your blog looks neat and clean in all major browsers and operating systems?
• Is your blog’s design mobile friendly?
• Have you optimized the design for faster loading, so that it loads faster in slow connections?
• How often do you check and fix broken links?
• When was the last time you checked your website’s contact form and comment forms?

Remember, your readers will only take interest in reading a blog post, if the design and usability is user friendly. If the design breaks, the color scheme is difficult to the eyes and the site does not look clean and professional, they will feel irritated and annoyed.

Losing the Spark

Before you write the next blog post and hit “Publish”, ask yourself – “Did I really enjoy writing this, or is it that I am writing just because I have to write something in the blog?” Are you losing interest in your niche? Do you feel the blog more as a burden – that the concept of writing is hogging down your creativity?

Probably, you’ve started to lose the spark. You are probably fed up with the topic or niche and not learning new things. It is very much possible that you have reached a level of saturation and it is becoming extremely difficult for you to write with the same zeal, with the same passion, with the same energy you had some years ago. Maybe, you are inspired by a new idea and your brain is refusing to produce ideas for the blog. Whatever it is, only you can figure out whether you have really started to “Lose the spark” and if “Yes” is the answer, you have to find a way to keep that spirit alive.

Losing focus – Writing about an array of topics

This is something which happens to us in different spheres of life, not just blogging. Regardless of how large or small your website might be, sometimes, you’ll not get the energy and drive to continue it. There will be times when you will be tempted to start a completely irrelevant section on your website. For example, if you are a sports blogger and you’re finding it difficult to blog about sports every once in awhile, you might get tempted to start a new “photography” section of the same site or domain. You’re learning photography off late, you’ve been enjoying it and now you want to share your photography experiences with readers.

This is one of the surefire ways to turn off your readers, they are not going to love something they do not expect from you. You will be much better off writing about a completely new topic on a separate site rather blogging about irrelevant topics and clogging it into something which cannot be related to a specific niche or voice.

As a blogger, the last thing you would want to do is stop caring about your readers and let arrogance or greed take over your thoughts. Your goal is to meet the demands and requirements of your readers, any action which does not complement or reinforce this goal is actually hurting the site. When your blog is not growing in terms of traffic, readership or subscriptions, when you see your blog is not attracting new eyeballs, it’s not getting comments or conversations – you can arrive at the conclusion that you’ve stopped caring about readers and now you’re more inclined towards satisfying your own goals.

That is when your blog dies a slow death.

This post was written by Lior who is a consultant to Billguard, a company that developed a Passbook application and he also works with a startup that created a shopping cart abandonment solution to ecommerce websites.

The post 7 Ways to Kill Your Blog appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Here are a few things you should consider when crafting a killer blog:

Content Quality

Content quality is the first consideration when it comes to writing a blog that won’t bore your readers. However frequent your posts, if they are jammed full of mistakes or jar in the mind of the reader, it is unlikely that they will want to return, no matter how exciting your next title sounds. Your blog content needs to be well-written and easy to read, but it also needs to be appropriate for your target audience. If the quality of your content is high and your copy is appealing to your niche, you are already on your way to crafting a blog of value.

Scannable Content

Internet users want fast, easily digestible content that tells them exactly what they want to know in short, snappy copy. A good way to break up a lengthy boring blog is to make it scannable. Include subheadings between paragraphs to enable readers to get to the juicy stuff sooner rather than later. Highlight different sections with relevant images and infographics that help your readers to visualize your content and encourage them to read more.

Bullet Point Lists

Bullet point lists are a great way to capture the attention of your readers and tell them what they need to know quickly. They are also a good way of introducing lengthy copy in the form of a contents list. Ensure you link each bullet point to the appropriate section of your page to make it easier for readers to find exactly what they are looking for.

Series Posts

Series posts are useful for teasing your audience and maintaining their interest in your blog over time. A series of informative posts can help you to break up complicated topics for your readers into less daunting snippets. Create a content calendar to help you plan out series posts for when they will be most relevant and useful to your readers.

Title Crafting

Let’s be honest, the articles you tend to click read first are the ones with the most enticing titles. As a result, it makes sense to take the time to carefully craft your blog titles, not just in terms of making them search engine friendly but also naturally make searchers want to read more. However, be careful not to overhype your article when your content does not do it justice.

Controversy

Controversy is not always a bad thing. You don’t want your blog to encourage a war between your readers but controversial issues are a great way to start healthy debate when done the right way. Don’t be afraid to state your point of view in your blog as long as it is aligned with your brand persona and target market. Give people something to talk about, ask them a question and make it clear that you are open to ideas from others as this will encourage engagement.

About the Author:
Kira works for The WebMarketing Group, an SEO company specializing in increasing traffic and conversions. If you are looking to create linkable content for your website to attract high quality links naturally, talk to The WebMarketing Group today to find out more. Alternatively, you can find them on Twitter.

The post How to Write a Killer Blog that Won’t Bore appeared first on AddMe Blog.

1. Title tags and headings will always be important.

This is because not only are they the first thing that a reader sees, but search engines also like good titles and headings. They lend credibility and validity to any piece of writing, for both readers and search engines. Titles are usually also a deciding factor as to whether they continue reading or not. That’s why the title needs to be engaging. Headings help to space the text out so that it is more readable, for both human beings and web crawlers alike.

The key is to create eye catching titles and headings that will appeal to both readers and search engines. For example, it is best to use a main keyword at the start of title or heading, so that search engines will display it in search results.

2. Fresh content is still king on the Internet.

Online marketing relies heavily upon effective content creation. Interesting topics are necessary to engage both the audience and the search engines. In addition to providing new content, it helps to edit or update existing content. These habits will enamor your content to Google, by making it appear new and improved. Also, the fresher your content happens to be, the more relevant it will be considered.

3. Embrace Social Media.

Social networking is what fuels Internet marketing. One big adjustment that Google has announced is that it will be including social media links in rankings. This will affect traditional SEO efforts so that web content writers will need to consider this in how their work is constructed.

One great way to leverage social media is to publish viral content that is naturally shared across multiple social media channels. For example, guides, lists, how-to articles and other useful content. Each time an article is created, think about writing it so that you would be inclined to share it through social media.

4. Content size does matter.

It is no secret that Google has always responded best to more detailed, longer postings. Rather than break up a piece of writing into several smaller sections, it is better to leave it in a more comprehensive state. Longer posts also have the added bonus of lateral search indexing. This assists Google in classifying content more precisely. In addition, classified content leads to a higher relevancy and authority level, while encouraging more high quality links.

5. Be aware of article marketing changes.

Article marketing will probably always be a popular way of promoting online websites. Writers should keep in mind that the Google Panda Update reduced the value of article marketing to a certain degree. This is why fresh, relevant, well-written content should be the main focus of any Internet marketing campaign.

About The Author:
John Zwissler from AddMe.com – AddMe is a resource for free search engine submission and online marketing tools. Try our free search engine submission and subscribe to our bi monthly newsletter.

The post 5 Top SEO Article Writing Tips appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Why do I use the term “SEO-manipulated?” The answer is because Google simply doesn’t like that awkward-sounding, keyword-laden copy anymore. Sure, ten years ago during the infancy of internet marketing, you could repeat a certain keyword on your page many times and then stick it in the page’s title, and voila! you were suddenly at the top of the search engine rankings!

But, that kind of copy doesn’t work anymore.

Why Doesn’t Keyword-Stuffed Copy Work Anymore?

The truth is that you don’t even have to perform tests to know this is true, although you can if you would really like. A simple analysis of various statements Google has made will show you exactly why this is true. Take a look at a few of the guidelines I’ve located below to help demonstrate this point:

1. “Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.” If this doesn’t make it clear that spammy, keyword-filled copy would be pushed lower in the rankings, I don’t know what does. You can find the statement in this article.
2. If you need direct and explicit confirmation this is true, take a look at this directive: “Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking.” You can find that phrasing on this page. If you had any questions regarding keyword-stuffed copy, they should be answered now.
3. “We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.” Matt Cutts made this statement at the Google Webmaster Central Blog, and you can find the original article here. Google doesn’t seem to be at the point where it ranks sites that don’t have any SEO well, but based on these statements, and the Penguin, Fresh, and Panda updates in the past 18 months, it is clear this is where the company is heading.

What’s the Future of Keyword Density?

As you can see in point number three, Google’s focus is on ranking valuable content well. In an ideal world, this would probably mean the targeted keyword is used once or twice, and a number of semantically related terms help Google understand how to rank the article. So, to future-proof yourself, you would be best off writing valuable content, and if you really need the numbers, a .5% keyword density maximum.

If you would like a quick keyword density check of your web page to make sure you don’t stuff too many in, check out this tool.

About the Author:
Dan Stelter: Dans SEO Copy Writing

The post Keyword Density: Like All Areas of Life, Moderation Works Best appeared first on AddMe Blog.

1. Build links naturally

The easiest way to create organic backlinks is by adding insightful comments to other blogs. Google loves blogs because they provide a continual stream of fresh, relevant content. When you comment on other blogs, be sure that your blog’s address is listed as yourdomain.com/blog. This makes it easy for Google to connect your comment back to your blog.

2. Don’t buy links

Google, as well as Bing and Yahoo, claim that buying links will actually hurt, rather than help, your blog’s ranking. Is the risk/reward ratio really against you? In short: yes. Google considers paid links to be a form of link spam. With the latest version of Google Panda, sites that are linked to link-buying farms will be flagged and penalized. That means your blog or website may be removed from search engine results. Rather than spending your time buying and selling links, focus on improving website content and generating quality, organic backlinks.

3. Quality link bait helps

Entertaining, informative or valuable content is essential to building a high-trafficked blog or website. This content will “link bait” other users and sites to link back to your site. Not only will visitors keep coming back for more, but they will also be more likely to post links to your website on their blogs or sites. Searching for a quick way to go viral? Consider posting an infographic or powerful visual on your site. Users are more likely to share infographics and visual images on Facebook and other sites, which naturally builds your site’s backlink power. When it comes to link bait, quality, original content scores higher than purchased back linking or copied website promotion material.

The post Hook, Line and Sinker: How to Use Link Bait to Improve Search Engine Optimization appeared first on AddMe Blog.

Viable mediums have arisen to advertise with thought leadership and dissemination on social media channels. Content creation and development, known formally as content marketing is even more powerful today than ever in its lead generation powers. Social media marketers are determined to use social media for generating leads, in fact, according to BtoB’s Emerging Trends in B-To-B Social Media Marketing Insights, 45% of experienced social media users said lead generation is one of their most important goals for social marketing efforts.

Social media is undoubtedly growing faster than any other marketing medium, and it is becoming a core internal part of many businesses. According to the same BtoB study, 57% of respondents said that LinkedIn was the best method of generating leads, while all other social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Blogging) were less powerful in their lead generation abilities. Familiarizing yourself with social platforms like LinkedIn and disseminating quality content both online and offline in multiple business units is the key to gaining thought leadership.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides a highly targeted platform for b2b marketers. As the platform grows from its current 100 million users, 26 percent of respondents believe LinkedIn is “particularly strong for lead generation.” Now we all know content is crucial for any lead generation company. Whether you are leveraging content creation for thought leadership, SEO, or both, LinkedIn should be able to help. LinkedIn today is a resource for sharing articles within your industry niche.

Content

As B2B marketers we should view social media as a means for distribution and promotion. Whether you are answering questions within your communities or sharing white papers, you should be working toward informing and educating your prospects. B2B marketing is sometimes seen as “less sexy,” however the motive is still the same. We want to inform the user of what we offer and how this product solves problems within their businesses

Integrating other Business Units

Sales and customer care teams can give your business a great opportunity to disseminate content. Quality white papers and buyer’s guides give your potential leads more information on their purchase and strengthen the leads. If you give your sales and customer care team the ability to send this content, it will strengthen the rapport with your customer. According to Marketing Sherpa, “The ultimate goal of lead nurturing is to turn that prospect into a sales-ready lead prepared to become a customer. If that relationship were a baton, there is a point in time where both Marketing and Sales hands are on the baton and you are making that introduction.”

If you can keep your content unique, compelling and relevant you are able leverage content across all of your business units for lead generation.

Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on topics ranging from social media to telemarketing at Resource Nation.

The post Leveraging Quality Content For B2B Thought Leadership appeared first on AddMe Blog.