9 Places to Find Inspiration for Blog Posts

Every writer has experienced writer’s block. For bloggers, you have the constant pressure to come up with fresh content, often with the added stress of your audience having access to all of your writing history on one website. It’s especially difficult for business or niche bloggers to find a new topic or angle, because their choices are often limited. However, it is possible to create endless content for any industry. All you have to do is find the right inspiration.

There are a few different places I go to for inspiration, and I’m going to share them with you:

  1. Create a newsfeed with your favorite websites and blogs. Bloglovin’, Feedly, Google Currents, and RSS readers can help you keep up-to-date with relevant, newsworthy websites.
  2. Follow current events and pop culture. Take something that’s happening right now and put your industry spin on it.
  3. Browse your social media accounts – just be careful not to get off track. Keep to hashtags relevant to you. Find the best posters in your field. You can also join communities full of people in your niche, talking and answering questions that you can use in a blog post. Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, and more are all great sources of inspiration.
  4. Use a title generator as a jumping-off point. InBoundNow and HubSpot  both have helpful topic generators.
  5. Use your Google Analytics to find out what your visitors are searching for when they come to your website. Sometimes the results will be random and unhelpful, and sometimes there will be genuine questions you can answer in a blog post.
  6. Check Google Trends to find out the most popular searches each day.
  7. Look through Reddit, particularly subfeeds related to your topics. People ask and answer lots of questions – find a question that you can answer more thoroughly in a blog post. Or find a common frustration that you can address.
  8. Ask your audience what questions they have or what they want to hear more about. You can do this through social media posts.
  9. Research a question you have about your industry, or learn about something you’ve always wanted to know more about. Share your findings with your readers.

For more blog post ideas, “10 Unique Blog Post Ideas for the Holidays” and “Inspiration for Writing Posts About Your Local Area.”

How do you find inspiration when you’re stuck with writer’s block? Where do you go to look for blog post ideas? 

Spice Up Your Yawn-Inducing Blog with Some Quick Fixes

Imagine you’ve just stumbled upon your blog. In fact, do it right now. “Stumble” onto your blog and scan the page with fresh, unbiased eyes. I know it’s hard. If it’s too hard, ask someone else to do it (someone who’s never seen it before) and have them tell you off-the-cuff what they see. What are the immediate responses popping into their head?

This exercise should inform you what could be wrong with your site, at least on the surface level. And surface level issues typically require surface level fixes, which are your low-hanging fruit.

Is your blog arresting the attention of your casual visitor? Does it provoke engagement and social sharing amongst your readers? If it doesn’t, it’s failing to serve its purpose as a content marketing initiative and component of your SEO strategy.

Is your writing turning people off?

Perhaps a quarter of the battle is visual. Your test visitor might tell you what they like and don’t like visually on your blog, which will inform you on some stylistic tweaks that you can implement with relative ease. But after that initial 10 seconds, what do you think they’ll consider next? Bingo—your headlines.

It’s a given that your company blog, depending on your industry, will have a tendency toward salesy roboticness, and it will be one of your greatest struggles to write in a compelling way on potentially wooden topics. This is where your intrinsic creativity as a writer should take center stage and stretch your blog to territories that will engage and captivate your readers.

Quick tips on effective writing:

  1. Cultivate a simple, personable voice. Blog is short for weblog—a personable tone is expected.
  2. Keywords should occur naturally and sparingly.
  3. Pick your topics based on what you know, or have researched thoroughly.
  4. Pick your topics based on what your readers know (or don’t know) they need to know. You’ll be the one to convince them of that “need.”

A Few Angles to Consider

As you’re considering topics or angles to liven up your blog, think of these techniques:

  1. Interview posts are engaging and unique. Candidates could be experts within your organization or colleagues.
  2. Tell a story about a client or personal anecdote that illustrates your product or services in action and the results.
  3. Make a customer profile that hypothesizes on their likes, dislikes, fears, demographic, etc., and use it to inform your tone, topics, and style.

On a scale of 1 through 10, how would you rate the engagement level of your blog?

Sources
DeMers, Jayson. “Got a Boring Company Blog? Here’s How to Fix it.”http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2372579/Got-a-Boring-Company-Blog-Heres-How-to-Fix-It?utm_term=&utm_content=Got%20a%20Boring%20Company%20Blog%3F%20Here%E2%80%99s%20How%20to%20Fix%20It&utm_campaign=09%2F30%2F14%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Daily. (October 10, 2014).

Finding the Perfect Keywords to Optimize Your Blog

The most important part of optimizing your blog for the search engines is deciding on the right keywords. Good search engine optimization requires a set plan, and picking specific keywords for your blog as a whole and for individual blog posts will give you direction as you try to promote yourself.

So what is a “keyword”? It’s a word, phrase, or sentence that you predict people will search for using Google, social media, or some other search engine. But it’s not as simple as choosing keywords you think will attract an audience – as a blogger, you need to know the exact wording that Internet surfers are using. You need to know which keywords are stronger than others. And you need to know what your competition is.

Finding Keywords

There are lots of tools online that will help you determine the optimal keywords you need to use. Some of them are free, and some of them will cost you. If you are a beginning blogger, hold off on paying for any kind of service.

Start out with Google Trends and remember this tool forever! Google Trends will tell you the top Google searches done each day, which can be great inspiration if you want to write about current events in the future. It will also help you compare interest over time for any keywords you type into the search bar. I avoid using phrases or words that have been on the downward slope for over six months or are currently below 50 (the graph uses a scale of 1-100, with one being the lowest, to gauge interest).

Wordtracker is another tool that helps to measure the interest in a particular keyword, but it will also give you related phrases. This can help you to determine the exact phrasing you should use.

Search through hashtags and trending posts on social media to see what is popular there. Keep in mind that the results will be different on every social media outlet, but that shouldn’t deter you from using what is popular.

If you already have a blog, use your analytics to help with future posts. Analytics tell you the phrases that have directed visitors to your blog. It can also tell you what your visitors are interested in reading about.

Finally, do a simple Google search. Research the query results – these websites are your competition. Don’t underestimate what you can learn from your rivals’ success.

Choosing Perfect Keywords

The best keywords to use for posts are longer phrases. Try doing a Google search for one word, such as “rabbits.” Your search results will include news, movies, humorous websites, and thousands of other results you don’t care about. Searching for “how to buy a rabbit” gets you much more valuable information, such as “10 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Rabbit.”

The generic one-word keyword is terrible on its own, but does well when part of a question or answering phrase.

There’s a delicate balance between choosing keywords that are too popular and not popular enough. You want to ride on the coattails of a popular trend, but you also don’t want to get lost in the crowd. Whichever way you choose to go is up to you.

Where to Use Keywords

Keywords are necessary for your site as a whole, as well as individual blog posts. But be careful – too many and you will be flagged by Google as a spam site. A good rule of thumb is to only use your keywords three times in one blog entry, with one of those times being in the title.

That rule can be transferred to the rest of your blog, especially towards individual pages, but there is a little more leeway depending on how much content you have.

Good luck, and happy keyword hunting!

Sources:

Gabbert, Elisa. “How to Target Keywords with Blog Posts.”http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2010/07/21/blog-keyword-targeting#.. (1 Oct. 2013).

Wang, Andrew. “How to Perform Keyword Research for Your Blog.”http://blogsuccessjournal.com/seo-search-engine-optimization/tags-keyword-analysis/how-to-perform-keyword-research-for-your-blog-2/. (1 Oct. 2013).

Expand Your Blog Reach with Twitter

Twitter can be a great social media platform for helping bloggers expand their reach. With the use of hashtags, huge audiences from your industry or niche can be found easily. You can also grow your blog following by having your current readers share your posts through Twitter, or retweet your tweets. Here are a few instructions to help any blogger get started on Twitter.

Your Twitter profile

Before you start tweeting to broadcast your messages, take a look at your profile. Do you have a profile picture? Twitter profiles without a picture look shady and untrustworthy. So do profiles without full bios. Unfortunately, your bio has to be short, so only include the most pertinent information. Twitter allows you to put a website in your Twitter profile, so stick the URL to your blog there.

Having a cover photo and background picture makes your profile look so much more professional than the default ones provided by Twitter. You can copy a common marketing strategy many businesses use and create a background image with your blog URL, social media contact information, or a CTA.

What should you tweet?

Before you send out your first tweet, sit down and think about your goals. This should partly tie into a social media strategy you’ve already made for your blog (or are in the process of making). Each social media platform is different, so while your tone or style for Twitter might already be set out in your strategy, think about what you can accomplish with Twitter. Are you mainly trying to show your readers a social side? Are you working on gaining more traffic? Are you trying to establish yourself as an expert in your niche? Or are you networking? It’s important to pick one of those objectives and diligently stick to it in your tweeting ventures.

Once you pick your objective, it should be easier to develop a content strategy for your tweets. Many bloggers find success in sharing the title of their individual blog posts – which means you’ll have to keep Twitter in mind when you create your titles. You can also share excerpts from the text of your post, especially if it’s a pithy quote or juicy tidbit. Asking your followers questions that you would genuinely want an answer to is also a good strategy.

While you’re learning Twitter, explore hashtags that are relevant to your industry or niche. Many of them will be similar to Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram hashtags. Follow accounts that are similar to yours or interesting to you or your readers. Retweet tweets from others as well as posting your own original messages. Once you’ve learned the hashtags that you need, include them in some of your tweets, but limit it to 2-3 hashtags per tweet.

The more you use Twitter and follow accounts that are similar to yours, the more comfortable you will be with your tweeting. You’ll learn the best strategies either through example or through trial and error.

Quick tip: Use a URL shortening service if you are sharing links in your tweets. The long URLs will take up too much of your 140 characters. Websites like Bitly offer the service for free.

How often should you tweet?

Twitter is kind of like Pinterest when it comes to posting frequency. You should post multiple times a day, but it is possible to get carried away and annoy your followers. However, that would take many, many annoying tweets to get that far. Tweeting daily is the best policy, but every couple of days is adequate.

Twitter, your blog, and other social media platforms

You can use embedded posts, apps, and plugins to connect your Twitter account to your blog and other social media platforms. Use a Twitter social media button on your “About Me” page and on blog posts. You can embed a tweet to encourage users to follow you or respond to you via Twitter.

Twitter can also be connected to your Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine accounts. Use an app to show your latest tweets on your Facebook page.

Measuring your Twitter success

Just as Facebook and Pinterest have an in-house analytics program, so does Twitter. Use ads.twitter.com to access statistics on your tweets and followers. This program mainly exists to keep track of paid campaigns on Twitter, but is accessible for free. Analytics will tell you how many people clicked your link to go to your website, as well as favorites, retweets, and replies. This can help you see not only how much of your traffic comes through Twitter, but also which tweets attract the most clicks or shares.

Use Twitter analytics in conjunction with Google analytics. Twitter analytics can tell you which of your tweets were the most effective, but Google analytics can tell you if your website lived up to its Twitter promises. If traffic that comes through Twitter has a high bounce rate or doesn’t stay very long, you can use that information to work on user interface techniques.

For more information on how to use Pinterest as a blogger, check out our blog post “8 Tips to Help Bloggers Get Started on Pinterest.”

Courtship and Content Marketing: How to Measure Your Success

Marketing is simply another form of courtship. As marketers, we court our prospects with the hopes of winning them over with our charm and beginning a lasting, mutually profitable relationship. You see, in this analogy, we’re not dealing with a one-sided, dysfunctional romance, but a win-win situation for both parties.

Continuing the analogy, traditional marketers and content marketers represent two kinds of wooers: the short-game players and the long-game players. Each type of marketer must track their success in different ways, but before we get into that, let’s explore the distinction between the two.

Traditional Marketers: Masters of the Short-Game

These are the more aggressive go-getters. They put their offer on the table in a take-it-or-leave-it type approach, often with a narrowing window of opportunity. Their pickup line is to the point and leaves little room for “maybes,” usually eliciting an immediate “yes” or “no.”

Yeses in traditional marketing come from people who have been adequately prepared to take the leap and become a lead, whether by happy circumstance or deliberate prior conditioning through content marketing.

How to Measure Traditional Marketing Success

Tracking your success with traditional marketing is a simple matter of counting up the yeses, or leads. How many people filled out your contact form? How many calls did you receive off of the new landing page? How many clicks did you get off your PPC campaign?

Content Marketers: Pros of the Long-Game

Content marketers play a game of patience, opting for the trust-building technique, which takes more time but creates more payoff. Not only may your efforts end in a lead or sale, but your prospect will learn to trust you as an authority, confidante, and/or friend in the process.

The relationship a content marketer is trying to build is noncommittal, even passive. You want to build something long-term and loyal, but you’re not making demands or asking for anything right out of the gate. That’s the traditional marketing approach. Your priority is to disseminate useful information and media for their consumption and education. You also want to learn about your prospects through fruitful interactions via blog comments, webinars, surveys, and more.

Just like an attentive date, you understand that a healthy long-term relationship is built off of solid two-way communication and benefit.

How to Measure Content Marketing Success

It’s tempting to only track clicks, downloads, and views as your measurement of success in content marketing, but the real measurement of success will come outside of individual pieces of content or media.

What you really want to know is how well your content is motivating your prospects to take action. This can be accomplished by tracking prospects versus content. It will involve asking targeted questions of your prospects and sales team. You’ll need to find a way to track what your prospects are consuming and where they go after that, and what they do.

For example, if a particular prospect has downloaded a whitepaper on cloud computing for big business, and has visited your cloud computing product page a number of times, sales can be informed on how to approach that particular prospect and what content they may be interested in viewing next.

By tracking your prospects’ progress through the courtship process and learning all you can about them, you can take away actionable insights that will allow you to prove your success and recognize areas for improvement.

How do you track the success of your content marketing efforts?

Sources:

Balik, Rachel. “To Successfully Measure B2B Content Marketing, Get In the Friend Zone.”http://marketingland.com/successfully-measure-content-marketing-get-friend-zone-91908?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6TOZKXonjHpfsX97uwrXaS%2FlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JRMpqI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTbLCMbpx37gNXxU%3D. (July 29, 2014.)

SEO Isn’t Dead and Here’s Why

What follows the headline “SEO is dead!”? Usually a click, and that’s why people use that claim in their article headlines. They know they’ll get clicks by scaring people. When you see such a loaded claim, the obvious, knee-jerk response is to say, “There’s no way! Without SEO, what will I do now to make my website visible?” And then you read on to find out how to protect and ensure the success of your website.

One blogger argues that not only is this claim inaccurate, but the articles that follow it are surface level sensationalism at its most dangerous. Bad advice that eliminates good SEO strategies can lead people to make poor decisions for their websites that can hurt their ranking, and consequently, their chances for success.

The Timeless Definition of SEO

As long as there is information online, there will be a way to search for it. And as long as there is a way to search for it, there will be a reason to optimize said content for more efficient and effective searchability.

And that’s what search engine optimization is: the process of refining content for optimal visibility online. This “refining” process is where SEOs (search engine optimizers) come in. They are responsible for navigating and deploying the correct practices that will help a website appeal to a search engine’s defined yet evolving algorithms.

Kristine Schachinger of SearchEngineWatch.com gives two rule-of-thumb questions to consider every time you’re confronted with a claim that SEO is dead.

  1. “Is there still a search engine that seeks out and returns content to a user based on words they enter through text or voice input?”
  2. “Are these results based on programming, algorithms, and math?”

If the answer to these two questions is yes, there will always be a reason to continue employing SEO and you’ll be wise to keep yourself in tune with the current state your favorite search engine’s algorithms.

A False Accusation

Those that say SEO is dead also make sweeping claims against SEOs, lumping legitimate SEOs in with the spammers with unfair generalizations. It’s been called an “industry full of promises,” but Kristine clarifies that true SEOs “give Google what they want—sites that are good for users, guided by Google’s guidelines.”

A true search engine optimizer isn’t a proponent of “blackhat tricks,” because they know that the results won from those tricks won’t last. True SEOs understand that Google’s algorithms are constantly shifting in order to provide the end user a better and more accurate search experience.

If a website owner understands Google’s motive and the implications of each algorithm change, then they will be on top of making content and design strategies that will best appeal to those algorithms, and will see a boost in ranking and traffic as a result. A knowledgeable SEO acts as the consultant, or spokesperson, for Google in relaying those practices and strategies that will yield the desired results.

What content and design decisions have you made that were influenced by Google’s changing algorithms?

Sources

Schachinger, Kristine. “Is SEO dead? Nooooooo!” http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2358557/Is-SEO-Dead-NOOOOOOO?utm_term=&utm_content=Is%20SEO%20Dead%3F%20NOOOOOOO!&utm_campaign=08%2F04%2F14%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Daily (August 18, 2014.)

How to Get Started as an Online Freelance Writer

It takes certain qualities to be a freelance writer, but if you’ve determined that you have what it takes, the next step is getting started. Here are a few practical and critical things to do as you break into a competitive, oversaturated field:

  • Don’t be too proud to ask for help
  • Constantly build your portfolio
  • Finding clients is a priority
  • Determine a niche and perfect it
  • Don’t expect overnight success

Ask for Help

Think about your writing preferences and expertise. Determine your style and niche and then reach out to individuals or clubs for guidance, tips, and even hookups to potential clients and gigs. A simple Google search will point you to such resources. Don’t forget to tap into your social media connections as well. Networking is an invaluable tool in business that you certainly should leverage in freelance writing.

How is Your Portfolio Looking?

So the big question is: How do you start a portfolio if you’ve never written professionally before? When you’re competing against established writers for work, your blank portfolio isn’t going to look to enticing to prospective clients. First, take a look at a few of these sites designed especially to host writers’ portfolios: portfolio sites.

Content pieces that are suitable for inclusion in your portfolio: press releases, web copy, marketing flyers, posters, blog posts, white papers, academia, even creative work. Imagine yourself as a website owner. What would you look for in a freelance writer? You want someone who can demonstrate an understanding of your field, writing skill, comprehension of grammar, and further than that, a proven ability to convert. Include any positive praise or feedback you have received. If you’re just starting out, that may be from professors, but it will still look good to prospective clients.

Next, work your way through this list to start accumulating your best work to put up on your portfolio:

  • Seek out opportunities to write for friends or colleagues
  • Compile your best academic or personal creative work
  • Write mock copy (content you’ve imagined for your client or a made up company)
  • Write guest blogs or opinion pieces to submit to online magazines (it doesn’t have to be published to include in your portfolio. It just has to be your original work.)
  • Google search pro bono writing jobs and volunteer your writing services

Time to Find Some Clients

Determining what you’re worth is important, and don’t sell yourself short. Heavily research freelance writing rates (definitely talk to your new mentor friends about this too), and establish your rate to start charging.

Get used to asking, “Do you know anyone in need of a good writer?” Also, there’s nothing wrong with seeking out exactly what you want to do and write. Now that you have a portfolio, you can reach out to a client you would love to write for and provide them a link to your portfolio. Even if they don’t respond, it was a worth a shot, and the more direct queries you send out, the more chances you’ll have at getting a positive response.

Don’t forget the usual haunts either. They’re worthwhile venues to check out: Craigslist, Idealist, freelancewritinggigs.com, LinkedIn, and eLance.

What’s Your Niche?

Eventually, as you take on more and more gigs, you’re going to start learning about yourself as a writer. You’ll become more and more familiar with the types of gigs you like most and which you do best at. Your portfolio is going to start showing a strong inclination toward a particular vein and you can start directing your search for new gigs in that direction as well. Before you know it, you’ll be a specialist in a particular kind of copy.

Raise your rates, advertise yourself as an expert, and start honing in on the advantages of having a specialty niche.

Overnight Success is a Fluke

Freelance writing isn’t going to be your full-time job right out of the chute. You may not even want it to be, but if you do, set realistic expectations for the income you will be making as you start out. Make plans to supplement and then with hard work, allow yourself to grow. Soon enough, your results will be commensurate with your efforts and you’ll find yourself juggling gigs.

In fact, here are a few tips to stay organized, since at this point in your journey, you’ll be an established freelance writer.

What has been your greatest hang-up in your freelance writing journey? Share in the comments!

Source

Hamill, Kate. “So you want to be a freelance writer.”https://www.freelancersunion.org/blog/2014/09/10/how-to-start-freelance-writer/. (January 23, 2015.)

What All New Freelance Journalists Need to Know

In previous posts, we covered a few of the essential qualities and tips new freelance writers needs to know and possess in order to be successful. These included:

Qualities

  • Writing skills
  • Self-editing skills
  • Quick turnaround
  • Job satisfaction

Tips

  • Don’t be too proud to ask for help
  • Constantly build your portfolio
  • Make finding new clients a priority
  • Determine a niche and perfect it
  • Don’t expect overnight success

In this post, we’ll talk about a few more things that new freelance writers need to incorporate into their practices and philosophies as they embark on the journey to become established, profitable writers.

Successful blogger and freelance writer Carol Tice offered this advice:

  • Forget about qualifications
  • Find a mentor(s)
  • Write your way into a niche
  • Don’t be scared!
  • Stay focused

Qualifications

As a freelancer, any other qualifications besides experience and ability simply don’t matter. In Tice’s words, “If you can get the story and tell it so we want to read it, you’re in.” No one will hire you for a gig solely because you have a master’s degree, and a master’s degree alone isn’t going to make you feel qualified. Remember that and keep writing, because practice and experience is going to be what gives you the edge in the end.

Find a Mentor

When you make knowledgeable connections, exploit them—in the best way possible! Tap into their expertise, ask questions, and be precocious. It’s the aspiring writer that seeks out and absorbs knowledge that makes it to the finish line.

Write Your Way Into a Niche

If you’re writing what you enjoy, you’re not only expanding on your expertise in that area, but you’re building your portfolio that proves your expertise to prospective clients. Build a strong case for yourself by backing up your experience with previously published work.

Don’t Be Scared!

Tice gives some funny advice: “Think of something scarier than writing an article, and it’ll be a breeze by comparison!” For example, you could be waiting tables instead, so cozy up in front of your computer and do what you love—write! Don’t allow the scope of the assignment daunt you either; just do it and chalk up the results (whether positive or negative) to experience. All experience is positive depending on your perspective.

Stay Focused!

Maintain focus on what you love to do and time will fly. As it passes, your experience will grow. Also,stay organized! As you take on more and more gigs, you’ll need to be in order to be successful.

Any comments on what you’ve done to pave your way as a freelance writer?

Source

Tice, Carol. “The Advice I Wish I’d Had as a New Freelance Writer.”http://www.makealivingwriting.com/best-advice-for-new-freelance-writers/. (January 26, 2015.)

How to Guest Post Without Pissing Off Google

SEO, Link Trading, and Guest Blogging

We all know that SEO affects pagerank, and the purpose of having a high pagerank is to get more visitors to your website, which then results in more money – but what exactly does it mean to have a high pagerank? The real underlying message behind being at the top of a search query is that your website is an authority on a certain subject. What you are conveying to Google is that you are an expert on your keywords, and that the information contained on your website is valuable to readers. Because ultimately, Google doesn’t create SEO algorithms to help businesses or blogs earn more money. Nope – it’s all about the individual user for them, and how they can enhance the searching experience.

This is where linking comes in. When another blog or website links to you, they are passing on some of their “link juice.” So basically, they are signaling to Google to pass on a bit of their authority on to you. Google sees that another website likes you and finds your information valuable, which in turn means that your information must be valuable to the Google user. And that improves your pagerank.

And that’s why link trading was such a popular SEO strategy, until Google caught on to people using it for SEO purposes. Once an SEO method becomes well known and encouraged by SEO experts, spammers will swoop in and use it for “evil.” Then Google finds out about it and starts penalizing the spammers and giving things like link exchanging less SEO weight.

Unfortunately, guest blogging may be the next SEO method to fall under Google’s ax. The webspam team leader at Google, Matt Cutts, posted on his personal blog this week that guest blogging is dead. This spells trouble for all the bloggers out there who want to share their expertise, broaden their audience, or publish new content onto their own website. The advantages beyond exchanging link juice are many.

Of course, Matt Cutts later went on to say that guest blogging is still a viable option. His exact words were:

“There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there.”

To put it simply, Google does not want you to guest blog for the sake of SEO. They want content to be valuable to the user, and so they are doing their best to discourage inauthentic guest posting.

 

How do we save guest posting?

Google has always recommended original, valuable content. Successful bloggers who want to produce quality content are already doing this. Writers should be using their expertise to produce interesting articles that are at least 500 words long. Publishers should field guest post submissions, taking only articles that are worth staking their reputations on.

The very best way to ensure that your guest posts won’t be penalized by Google is to use no follow links. What is a “no follow” link? Basically, when you create a no follow link, none of your link juice will be transferred over to the website you are linking to. When Google spiders your website, it will not follow the link to the other website and register it as one you want to give authority to. With no follow links, you can still produce great content and give credit where credit is due without risking your pagerank. Plus, readers can still click through to the link, giving the website you are linking to a higher readership.

To make a link “no follow,” you need to edit your HTML. Find the original URL. It should be surrounded by < and >. Before the closing bracket, insert (rel=“nofollow”) without the parentheses.

For example, if you were to create a backlink to FreeGuestPost, it would look like this in your WordPress post:

 

The HTML for a nofollow link

For many website owners, simply switching their backlinks to no follow made a huge difference in their pagerank. If you find that your pagerank is suffering, try updating some of your links.

 

Sources:

Rampton, John. “Matt Cutts Clarifies Guest Blogging for SEO (with tips).”http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-clarifies-guest-blogging-for-seo/. (22 Jan. 2014).

Hambrick, Kecia. “Nofollow, Dofollow, and your Google Page Rank.”http://basics4bloggers.com/2013/10/nofollow-dofollow-and-your-google-page-rank/. (22 Jan. 2014).

Why Switch to a WordPress Website

If you’re like the majority of website owners, your greatest hang-ups emerge when it’s time to make any type of update to your site. A section of content on your home page becomes outdated, and suddenly you find yourself at the mercy of your web designer or developer for something as simple as changing a few dates in some text, or swapping out a photo for another.

Not being able to manage the content on your own site is a huge stressor, time-drain, and expense for far too many site owners. Why? Well your options are pretty sparse:

  1. Learn HTML, FTP, and any number of other complicated protocols.
    You’ve entered your line of work for a specific reason: it’s what you wanted to do! Putting up a website is a necessary evil in achieving your actual dream. You don’t have the time or interest in becoming a web designer just so you can do business online.
  2. Hire someone who has gone to school for this stuff. Pay the big bucks for quality!
    It’s all too tempting to be lured into a contract with a web design/development company who promises you the world for just a few hundred dollars, but the fact is when it comes to web design, you will get what you pay for. A high functioning and performing website will cost you upwards of $1000.
  3. Switch to a dynamic, user-friendly platform.
    The learning curve is minimal. The platform is free. Making website updates becomes a matter of a few clicks.

The Fantastic Perks of Switching to WordPress

WordPress is a free content management system that is used worldwide by millions of site owners (it supports more than 60 million websites!), more than any other CMS or similar product. Why are people making the switch to WordPress from their static HTML sites?

  1. Easy peasy updates! WordPress isn’t just for bloggers. It allows you to make updates to content on your standard website pages as well. It’s an uncomplicated way to keep your site info updated and ready for consumption by all your potential customers.
  2. Increased flexibility! With access to hundreds of free and paid plugins and themes, you can customize the look and functionality of your site with ridiculous ease.
  3. Better SEO functions. As opposed to other CMSs, WordPress is predesigned to help you with your search engine optimization strategy. It’s already well positioned to draw in Google traffic.
  4. Easy one-to-one conversions. If you have an existing static site that you need switched over the WordPress, it’s only a matter of a few days and a couple hundred dollars to do it. Often this is a one-to-one conversion, where the WordPress version copies the original in look and functionality as closely as possible.
  5. Ease of programming. If you are making a fresh site from scratch, hiring a designer who is familiar with WordPress will be simple and (depending on the scope of your site) cost-effective, because of WordPress’s popularity.
  6. Awesome integration abilities! WordPress isn’t just the most popular choice for millions of website owners; it’s the number one option for third party software as well, such as email clients that have special features that integrate with WordPress.
  7. Affordability! Your expenses with WordPress are optional. Depending on the themes and plugins you choose, you’ll only be paying for hosting services and domain registration.
  8. Support and resources. There are countless resources out there that offer WordPress support and help, including tutorials and forums, whenever the need arises. It has an excellent community that proves to be an invaluable asset as a WordPress site owner.

The Only Reason Not to Make the Switch

You are utterly and completely happy with your website’s look, functionality, and the ease with which you can make even the simplest of updates. Oh yeah? Lucky you! If that’s the case, I wouldn’t recommend switching to WordPress. However, if you’re only kidding yourself, maybe now’s the time to admit it and jump on board.

What’s your biggest pet peeve about your site?

Sources

Padovani, Stephanie. “7 Reasons You Should Switch to WordPress.”http://www.bookmorebrides.com/7-reasons-you-should-switch-to-wordpress/. (September 5, 2014.)