Tuesday, 3 November 2015
Monday, 2 November 2015
Sunday, 14 December 2014
12 Month Total Online Presence Blueprint
I’ve been taking business owners through the beta of my Total Online Presence Program of late and the comprehensive nature of this mindset is certainly reinforcing the overwhelming amount of stuff there is to do online if you are to tap the full potential of building a Total Online Presence.
Total Online Presence Blueprint
photo credit: someToast via photopin cc
That was a really long sentence to say – “Dang, there’s a lot you have to do to get this right.”
But here’s the good news (or maybe it’s the horrible news), it never ends, you’re never done, it’s just part of who you have to become. What I mean is there’s no point in worrying about getting it all done this week or this month unless you only plan to be in business for a month or so.
You must come to think of building a Total Online Presence as an intention and a continuous work in progress. (I’m conducting a live online seminar the subject of this post January 22nd if you want to get into even more specifics – Enroll here)
With that in mind, I present a 12-month plan of attack or blueprint for working on your presence in the coming year. I’ve long taught this “live by the calendar” approach as I think it helps business owners, who wear many hats, get above the overwhelm by taking it topic by topic and manageable bit by bit in an attempt to forge something that looks like continuous progress.
Month 1 – Create a Listening Station
Setting yourself up to actively monitor what’s being said to you, about you, about your market, your competitors and by your customers, is step number one. Employ a combination of free and paid tools such as Google Alerts, Google Reader, HootSuite and SproutSocial to filter, aggregate, follow and monitor your online presence and establish a routine of processing, acting on and sharing this information on a daily basis.
Month 2 – Set-up Foundational Content Calendar
Using your own brainstorming combined with some smart keyword research from a tool like the Google Keyword Tool, set up a calendar of monthly themes that will make up the focus of your content for each month. This can be a mix of your own content, guest content, video, audio and related content produced by others. The content created around these foundation themes will become the backbone of your SEO efforts. (I wrote more about a Total Content System here.)
Month 3 – Get More Sharable
This month you’re going to work on several fronts. You are going to audit everything you’re putting out there and make it easier to share. That means adding social media buttons to all of your content through WordPress plugins such as Sociable, adding ways for people to share your emails and adding sharing options to your printed and offline materials. In addition, you’re going to start exploring ways to share more of other people’s content. Drawing links to your content is essentially networking and you start this process by filtering and sharing good stuff that your followers and readers want to know about. One of the best ways to do this is to scan your blog subscriptions and employ a tool like Buffer to share 10-12 great finds each day.
Month 4 – Create a Point of View eBook
This month comes with one and only one task – create an eBook that will be the backbone for your lead capture program. By creating a content tool that summarizes how your firm is different by either presenting highly valuable content or outlining your unique methodology you create the foundation for trust building while giving people a reason to start a conversation beyond Twitter. This also gives you a tool to start reaching out to potential strategic partners for list swaps and cobranding opportunities.
Month 5 – Clean Up Your Content Delivery Platform
It’s time to take a good hard look at what we used to call your web site. Content delivery now means your blog, podcast, videos, eBooks, newsletters and brand assets placed in other networks around the web such as YouTube and Slideshare. And, of course, this also means your web site, your email capture process, your contact process, your about us page, your on page SEO factors and your page load speed.
Month 6 – Become Serious About Landing Pages
Now that we are producing keyword rich content it’s time to start driving people to get that content, to download that eBook, subscribe to your content updates and to connect for specific events and presentations. This month you’re going to get serious about creating landing pages for very specific purposes such as signing up for your email newsletter, downloading your eBook or attending a free educational online seminar. You can use outside tools such as Unbounce or internal tools such as Premise to help create landing pages with lots of functionality. Once you learn the mechanics of what makes a good landing page you can replicate the process to test and personalize for a variety of environment and occasions. Here’s a great primer on landing pages.
Month 7 – Revamp your Email Communication
This month you’re going to get serious about remaking your basic email newsletter as well as employing autoresponders to help follow-up with prospects and customers. By adding your monthly content theme material mixed with other people’s content you’ll produce a far more valuable newsletter that people want to receive. In addition, you’re going to start using your ESP’s tools to segment and personalize content for different audiences.
Month 8 – Tackle Social Profiles
I know that with all the emphasis on social media these days that waiting until month eight to mention it may seem odd. My view is that without addressing many of the steps that I emphasized in the previous months, social media participation is simply a distraction. Now, I can make a case for claiming and building profiles whenever you can, but serious consideration should be focused here now. Get serious about claiming, completing and enhancing your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook profiles. Don’t stop there, branch out to industry networks, Yelp, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest profiles. Consider a service like KnowEm to create even more profiles.
Month 9 – Address Social Integration
Now that you’ve built profiles it is time to start going deeper. Choose the social network that allows you to reach the greatest number of prospects. Depending upon your business this might be LinkedIn or it might be Facebook. I believe that most businesses need to up their game in a number of networks to cover the favorite for their entire market, but it’s important to also get much deeper in at least one so you can learn how to engage in a way that attracts leads and converts fans and friends to email subscribers and customers. Then you can expand that effort.
Month 10 – Work Out Conversion
This month your entire focus should be on the conversion process. So many business focus on generating traffic when the money is in, well, the money. This begins with understanding everything you can about the usability of your web site, A/B testing your landing pages and setting up analytics goals and funnels to track every ad, call to action, headline and offer. Tools like UserTesting.com, Google Experiments and Google Analytics make up a nice low-cost toolset for these functions.
Month 11 – Start Employing Smart Advertising
Here’s another category that lots of people want to jump right into. It’s true you can run some Google AdWords and maybe generate traffic before you ever create any kind of organic presence, but I believe that your advertising gets far more effective if you can use it to create awareness for strong content offers, have a firm foothold in some social networks, are testing and tweaking your conversion tactics and are prepared to capture leads and build the kind of trust that helps you fully monetize your traffic.
Month 12 – Develop Mobile Friendliness
We end the year by looking at ways to tap the fact that almost every one of our prospects and customers have mobile devices that allow them to shop, search, research and buy products and services from local and global companies. The need to make your content mobile and tablet friendly is essential. Once that is taken care of you can branch out and explore mobile advertising, location-based offers and SMS communication knowing that the foundation built over the past year will allow you to maximize the growing mobile space.
Even at over 1400 words I realize that for some all I’ve done is whet the appetite for more specific direction. If today’s post has piqued your interest in this important subject, join me Tuesday, January 22nd for a live online seminar where I will dive into all twelve months with a list of specific actions you can take for each.
Total Online Presence Blueprint
photo credit: someToast via photopin cc
That was a really long sentence to say – “Dang, there’s a lot you have to do to get this right.”
But here’s the good news (or maybe it’s the horrible news), it never ends, you’re never done, it’s just part of who you have to become. What I mean is there’s no point in worrying about getting it all done this week or this month unless you only plan to be in business for a month or so.
You must come to think of building a Total Online Presence as an intention and a continuous work in progress. (I’m conducting a live online seminar the subject of this post January 22nd if you want to get into even more specifics – Enroll here)
With that in mind, I present a 12-month plan of attack or blueprint for working on your presence in the coming year. I’ve long taught this “live by the calendar” approach as I think it helps business owners, who wear many hats, get above the overwhelm by taking it topic by topic and manageable bit by bit in an attempt to forge something that looks like continuous progress.
Month 1 – Create a Listening Station
Setting yourself up to actively monitor what’s being said to you, about you, about your market, your competitors and by your customers, is step number one. Employ a combination of free and paid tools such as Google Alerts, Google Reader, HootSuite and SproutSocial to filter, aggregate, follow and monitor your online presence and establish a routine of processing, acting on and sharing this information on a daily basis.
Month 2 – Set-up Foundational Content Calendar
Using your own brainstorming combined with some smart keyword research from a tool like the Google Keyword Tool, set up a calendar of monthly themes that will make up the focus of your content for each month. This can be a mix of your own content, guest content, video, audio and related content produced by others. The content created around these foundation themes will become the backbone of your SEO efforts. (I wrote more about a Total Content System here.)
Month 3 – Get More Sharable
This month you’re going to work on several fronts. You are going to audit everything you’re putting out there and make it easier to share. That means adding social media buttons to all of your content through WordPress plugins such as Sociable, adding ways for people to share your emails and adding sharing options to your printed and offline materials. In addition, you’re going to start exploring ways to share more of other people’s content. Drawing links to your content is essentially networking and you start this process by filtering and sharing good stuff that your followers and readers want to know about. One of the best ways to do this is to scan your blog subscriptions and employ a tool like Buffer to share 10-12 great finds each day.
Month 4 – Create a Point of View eBook
This month comes with one and only one task – create an eBook that will be the backbone for your lead capture program. By creating a content tool that summarizes how your firm is different by either presenting highly valuable content or outlining your unique methodology you create the foundation for trust building while giving people a reason to start a conversation beyond Twitter. This also gives you a tool to start reaching out to potential strategic partners for list swaps and cobranding opportunities.
Month 5 – Clean Up Your Content Delivery Platform
It’s time to take a good hard look at what we used to call your web site. Content delivery now means your blog, podcast, videos, eBooks, newsletters and brand assets placed in other networks around the web such as YouTube and Slideshare. And, of course, this also means your web site, your email capture process, your contact process, your about us page, your on page SEO factors and your page load speed.
Month 6 – Become Serious About Landing Pages
Now that we are producing keyword rich content it’s time to start driving people to get that content, to download that eBook, subscribe to your content updates and to connect for specific events and presentations. This month you’re going to get serious about creating landing pages for very specific purposes such as signing up for your email newsletter, downloading your eBook or attending a free educational online seminar. You can use outside tools such as Unbounce or internal tools such as Premise to help create landing pages with lots of functionality. Once you learn the mechanics of what makes a good landing page you can replicate the process to test and personalize for a variety of environment and occasions. Here’s a great primer on landing pages.
Month 7 – Revamp your Email Communication
This month you’re going to get serious about remaking your basic email newsletter as well as employing autoresponders to help follow-up with prospects and customers. By adding your monthly content theme material mixed with other people’s content you’ll produce a far more valuable newsletter that people want to receive. In addition, you’re going to start using your ESP’s tools to segment and personalize content for different audiences.
Month 8 – Tackle Social Profiles
I know that with all the emphasis on social media these days that waiting until month eight to mention it may seem odd. My view is that without addressing many of the steps that I emphasized in the previous months, social media participation is simply a distraction. Now, I can make a case for claiming and building profiles whenever you can, but serious consideration should be focused here now. Get serious about claiming, completing and enhancing your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook profiles. Don’t stop there, branch out to industry networks, Yelp, Foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest profiles. Consider a service like KnowEm to create even more profiles.
Month 9 – Address Social Integration
Now that you’ve built profiles it is time to start going deeper. Choose the social network that allows you to reach the greatest number of prospects. Depending upon your business this might be LinkedIn or it might be Facebook. I believe that most businesses need to up their game in a number of networks to cover the favorite for their entire market, but it’s important to also get much deeper in at least one so you can learn how to engage in a way that attracts leads and converts fans and friends to email subscribers and customers. Then you can expand that effort.
Month 10 – Work Out Conversion
This month your entire focus should be on the conversion process. So many business focus on generating traffic when the money is in, well, the money. This begins with understanding everything you can about the usability of your web site, A/B testing your landing pages and setting up analytics goals and funnels to track every ad, call to action, headline and offer. Tools like UserTesting.com, Google Experiments and Google Analytics make up a nice low-cost toolset for these functions.
Month 11 – Start Employing Smart Advertising
Here’s another category that lots of people want to jump right into. It’s true you can run some Google AdWords and maybe generate traffic before you ever create any kind of organic presence, but I believe that your advertising gets far more effective if you can use it to create awareness for strong content offers, have a firm foothold in some social networks, are testing and tweaking your conversion tactics and are prepared to capture leads and build the kind of trust that helps you fully monetize your traffic.
Month 12 – Develop Mobile Friendliness
We end the year by looking at ways to tap the fact that almost every one of our prospects and customers have mobile devices that allow them to shop, search, research and buy products and services from local and global companies. The need to make your content mobile and tablet friendly is essential. Once that is taken care of you can branch out and explore mobile advertising, location-based offers and SMS communication knowing that the foundation built over the past year will allow you to maximize the growing mobile space.
Even at over 1400 words I realize that for some all I’ve done is whet the appetite for more specific direction. If today’s post has piqued your interest in this important subject, join me Tuesday, January 22nd for a live online seminar where I will dive into all twelve months with a list of specific actions you can take for each.
How to Be Quiet and Why You Must
A few weeks ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy.
You can catch the entire Recover You series here.
quiet
photo credit: emdot via photopin cc
Business is noisy. A typical day might involve dozens of conversations, meetings, decisions, tasks and insights.
Every thought, conscious or otherwise, roars through our heads like the intersection of trains headed into the station.
We get pretty good at muffling the noise, become almost use to it, but it takes its toll no matter what we think.
In fact, in response to dealing with the noise we often lose our ability to actually think, to consider the vision for the business, to make conscious decisions about the impact of every act.
One of the best ways to return our focus to things like purpose and vision is to practice being quiet long enough to turn down the noise.
This isn’t as easy at it might sound. Try this right now. Close your eyes and just sit for five minutes and see how noisy your brain is. Most people can’t do this for more than 30 seconds without beginning to fidget.
We’ve trained our brain to be on and that leads to constantly talking, considering what to do next and reaching for our phones whenever we have a down minute to fill.
I believe we need to retrain ourselves to be still or run the risk of losing touch with why we do what we do.
Here are some of the ways I’ve found to turn down the noise in my head.
Go analog
Set up an area in your office with crayons and paper and other crafty kind of materials and every now and then unplug and go draw, cut and paste while taking your mind off your to do list.
Journal
Get a big notebook or use any text editor and get in the habit of free flow journaling. When I first started doing this is was so goofy what spilled out of me, but I didn’t edit a word or judge what I wrote in any way and eventually it became an outlet for releasing thoughts that were somewhere rolling round blocking my intentions.
Meditate
I’ve written about this before and certainly many now agree on the benefits of a meditation practice. It’s hard for people to do I think because they believe it is supposed to be this path to enlightenment. If you put that kind of pressure on anything it won’t be enjoyable. Think about it as five or ten minutes a day to simply witness your thoughts and experience first-hand how noisy it is up there. Then you can take little steps.
Get outside
I am amazed at the healing power of nature. Every single one of us should get outside and lay on our backs in the grass and watch the white puffy clouds go by for about ten or fifteen minutes a day minimum. If you really want to experience the power of nature take a daylong hike or pitch a tent in a forest near a stream. The bigness of it all is one of the most quieting tonics available.
Sit and listen
Try this one for a little different perspective. Close your eyes and sit and listen to all the sounds near by. Don’t think anything just notice. Then slowly move your perception out farther and farther picking up sounds just outside, traffic maybe, and then a train off in the distance. See how far you can tune in. I don’t know why but this little exercise seems to open up pathways in my thinking and quite the noise that’s right around me.
Retreat
Of course the biggest, scariest and most awesome things you can do is lock yourself away for a weekend retreat with no computer, phone, TV or need to make any conversation at all. I realize this is pretty impractical for most, but what if you tried it for even half a day? I would write and read inspiring passages but mostly I would slow down and think about the things that really matter, the things I know I’m meant to do, the things I’m grateful for, the intentions I have for my business and my life.
It’s a shame in some ways that being quiet is so hard. Part of this is just the world we live in and part is self-inflicted. The good news is we still have the ability to dial it up and down as a choice in the infinite number of choices we get to make.
You can catch the entire Recover You series here.
quiet
photo credit: emdot via photopin cc
Business is noisy. A typical day might involve dozens of conversations, meetings, decisions, tasks and insights.
Every thought, conscious or otherwise, roars through our heads like the intersection of trains headed into the station.
We get pretty good at muffling the noise, become almost use to it, but it takes its toll no matter what we think.
In fact, in response to dealing with the noise we often lose our ability to actually think, to consider the vision for the business, to make conscious decisions about the impact of every act.
One of the best ways to return our focus to things like purpose and vision is to practice being quiet long enough to turn down the noise.
This isn’t as easy at it might sound. Try this right now. Close your eyes and just sit for five minutes and see how noisy your brain is. Most people can’t do this for more than 30 seconds without beginning to fidget.
We’ve trained our brain to be on and that leads to constantly talking, considering what to do next and reaching for our phones whenever we have a down minute to fill.
I believe we need to retrain ourselves to be still or run the risk of losing touch with why we do what we do.
Here are some of the ways I’ve found to turn down the noise in my head.
Go analog
Set up an area in your office with crayons and paper and other crafty kind of materials and every now and then unplug and go draw, cut and paste while taking your mind off your to do list.
Journal
Get a big notebook or use any text editor and get in the habit of free flow journaling. When I first started doing this is was so goofy what spilled out of me, but I didn’t edit a word or judge what I wrote in any way and eventually it became an outlet for releasing thoughts that were somewhere rolling round blocking my intentions.
Meditate
I’ve written about this before and certainly many now agree on the benefits of a meditation practice. It’s hard for people to do I think because they believe it is supposed to be this path to enlightenment. If you put that kind of pressure on anything it won’t be enjoyable. Think about it as five or ten minutes a day to simply witness your thoughts and experience first-hand how noisy it is up there. Then you can take little steps.
Get outside
I am amazed at the healing power of nature. Every single one of us should get outside and lay on our backs in the grass and watch the white puffy clouds go by for about ten or fifteen minutes a day minimum. If you really want to experience the power of nature take a daylong hike or pitch a tent in a forest near a stream. The bigness of it all is one of the most quieting tonics available.
Sit and listen
Try this one for a little different perspective. Close your eyes and sit and listen to all the sounds near by. Don’t think anything just notice. Then slowly move your perception out farther and farther picking up sounds just outside, traffic maybe, and then a train off in the distance. See how far you can tune in. I don’t know why but this little exercise seems to open up pathways in my thinking and quite the noise that’s right around me.
Retreat
Of course the biggest, scariest and most awesome things you can do is lock yourself away for a weekend retreat with no computer, phone, TV or need to make any conversation at all. I realize this is pretty impractical for most, but what if you tried it for even half a day? I would write and read inspiring passages but mostly I would slow down and think about the things that really matter, the things I know I’m meant to do, the things I’m grateful for, the intentions I have for my business and my life.
It’s a shame in some ways that being quiet is so hard. Part of this is just the world we live in and part is self-inflicted. The good news is we still have the ability to dial it up and down as a choice in the infinite number of choices we get to make.
How to Create a Total Content System
As content becomes increasingly important in the marketing mix, it must take on an elevated place in your strategy and planning. The use of high quality, education based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, serving customers and generating referrals.
I’ve said this many times over the last few years, but marketers these days have a lot in common with publishers and it’s time to embrace this reality fully.
Today I want to outline a complete systematic approach to creating and executing a content plan that borrows heavily from the editorial outlook of a publisher while acknowledging the marketing objectives facing most businesses.
Content creation and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing marketers today and you must take a very planned and practical approach to getting it all done. Waking up every morning and deciding what you are going to write on your blog does not scale.
A Total Content SystemTM approach allows you to plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and generally get far more out of every piece of content you produce. Once your system is in place it will build momentum with each passing month and begin to multiply in value to your organization.
The Total Content System goes like this:
Create a list of monthly Foundational Content Themes
Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
(You can also listen to a 13 minute audio overview of this topic above)
Foundational Content Themes
Either through your own knowledge or by using a keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, develop a list of core content topics and assign one to each month for the next 12 months.
Each theme should be a substantial topic related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term. It might be helpful to think about it like a book. Each month might represent a chapter in what will ultimately make up an important body of work by the end of this year.
You can also designate terms that you know you would like to rank higher for, but currently have little or no content that leads people online or off to you.
I’ll use my organization as an example to help illustrate this point. My business and model may be significantly different than yours, but examples always seem to help fill in the blanks for people.
My editorial themes for 2013:
January – Referral Marketing
February – Coaching and Consulting
March – Sales and Lead Conversion
April – Online Integration
May – Writing
June – Strategic Partners
July – Customer Experience
Aug – Content Marketing
Sept – High Tech, High Touch
Oct – Growth Strategies
Nov – Analytics and Conversion
Dec – Personal Growth
These are all topics that I believe my community is interested in learning more about and that I personally have an interest in developing more content around. (I’m working on a sales book and will be heavy into daily writing on that project in March – all content has a purpose!)
Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Now that I have my list of foundational themes I can organize my Content Delivery Platform components accordingly. Again, this is my model, but many of these elements work for any kind of business and should be considered in your business.
Newsletter – I put out a weekly email newsletter. I will add themed content to each issue either through some of my own writing or by finding other people’s content related to the theme and highlighting it.
Blog posts – I write a daily blog post and may schedule a post related to the theme on a weekly basis. This still gives me lots of room on topics but helps me focus both from a content and SEO standpoint.
Guest posts – We currently run one guest post a week and use our monthly theme to suggest topics to potential guests. (If you would like to submit a guest post see the themes above for guidance and submit your idea here.)
Podcast guests – I produce a weekly audio podcast and the monthly theme really gives me guidance in lining up topic experts well in advance.
PR Pitches – We use our themes to promote stories and pitches to the media.
Sponsored pitches – We receive invitations to write sponsored content and conduct sponsored webinars and use our theme to guide these pitches. We also reach out to organizations that might have a special interest in a particular month’s theme with sponsor opportunities.
Webinars – Since we are creating all this rich, topic specific content we host monthly online seminars to deliver the content in a new form.
eBook – People really seem to love eBooks and they are an essential element in our list building efforts. Most themes lend themselves nicely to an eBook compilation.
Curate a Scoop.it topic – As we are doing the research and preparing all of the ideas for our own content, we bookmark tons of other people’s content, books, experts, tools and the like related to our theme and save the entire collection as a curated topic on Scoop.it. This allows us to attract even more readers and creates a nice library to draw from.
Create a content package – The final step is to take all of this content from each month and create a membership or community offering that would allow people interested in the monthly topic to access the entire package in one tidy resource. One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that while so much content is free and available, people will pay for content that is packaged and delivered in the way they want it. Figure that piece out and you’ll really make your content efforts pay directly.
Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
Okay, so now you’ve got your themes plotted out and you’ve got a plan for creating, filtering and aggregating all manner and form of content into your delivery system. It’s time map your content plan to your core business objectives.
This step allows you to better understand how to get return on your content investment and how much you should actually invest in creating a certain form or package of content.
For example, if one of your stated annual objectives is to dramatically increase the sale of information products, you would produce content with product creation in mind. Or, if one of your stated objectives for the year is to significantly increase your subscriber list, you would focus on producing, delivering and sharing content that attracts email capture, links and strategic partnering.
One of the most important aspects of a Total Content System plan is that it changes the lens you use to view all the information that comes at you all day long. When you know what your theme is this month and next month all of a sudden books, tools, articles and conversations take on new meaning and seem to somehow organize themselves for the benefit of your ongoing, long-term approach.
I’ve said this many times over the last few years, but marketers these days have a lot in common with publishers and it’s time to embrace this reality fully.
Today I want to outline a complete systematic approach to creating and executing a content plan that borrows heavily from the editorial outlook of a publisher while acknowledging the marketing objectives facing most businesses.
Content creation and production is perhaps the biggest challenge facing marketers today and you must take a very planned and practical approach to getting it all done. Waking up every morning and deciding what you are going to write on your blog does not scale.
A Total Content SystemTM approach allows you to plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and generally get far more out of every piece of content you produce. Once your system is in place it will build momentum with each passing month and begin to multiply in value to your organization.
The Total Content System goes like this:
Create a list of monthly Foundational Content Themes
Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
(You can also listen to a 13 minute audio overview of this topic above)
Foundational Content Themes
Either through your own knowledge or by using a keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, develop a list of core content topics and assign one to each month for the next 12 months.
Each theme should be a substantial topic related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term. It might be helpful to think about it like a book. Each month might represent a chapter in what will ultimately make up an important body of work by the end of this year.
You can also designate terms that you know you would like to rank higher for, but currently have little or no content that leads people online or off to you.
I’ll use my organization as an example to help illustrate this point. My business and model may be significantly different than yours, but examples always seem to help fill in the blanks for people.
My editorial themes for 2013:
January – Referral Marketing
February – Coaching and Consulting
March – Sales and Lead Conversion
April – Online Integration
May – Writing
June – Strategic Partners
July – Customer Experience
Aug – Content Marketing
Sept – High Tech, High Touch
Oct – Growth Strategies
Nov – Analytics and Conversion
Dec – Personal Growth
These are all topics that I believe my community is interested in learning more about and that I personally have an interest in developing more content around. (I’m working on a sales book and will be heavy into daily writing on that project in March – all content has a purpose!)
Develop your Content Delivery Platform
Now that I have my list of foundational themes I can organize my Content Delivery Platform components accordingly. Again, this is my model, but many of these elements work for any kind of business and should be considered in your business.
Newsletter – I put out a weekly email newsletter. I will add themed content to each issue either through some of my own writing or by finding other people’s content related to the theme and highlighting it.
Blog posts – I write a daily blog post and may schedule a post related to the theme on a weekly basis. This still gives me lots of room on topics but helps me focus both from a content and SEO standpoint.
Guest posts – We currently run one guest post a week and use our monthly theme to suggest topics to potential guests. (If you would like to submit a guest post see the themes above for guidance and submit your idea here.)
Podcast guests – I produce a weekly audio podcast and the monthly theme really gives me guidance in lining up topic experts well in advance.
PR Pitches – We use our themes to promote stories and pitches to the media.
Sponsored pitches – We receive invitations to write sponsored content and conduct sponsored webinars and use our theme to guide these pitches. We also reach out to organizations that might have a special interest in a particular month’s theme with sponsor opportunities.
Webinars – Since we are creating all this rich, topic specific content we host monthly online seminars to deliver the content in a new form.
eBook – People really seem to love eBooks and they are an essential element in our list building efforts. Most themes lend themselves nicely to an eBook compilation.
Curate a Scoop.it topic – As we are doing the research and preparing all of the ideas for our own content, we bookmark tons of other people’s content, books, experts, tools and the like related to our theme and save the entire collection as a curated topic on Scoop.it. This allows us to attract even more readers and creates a nice library to draw from.
Create a content package – The final step is to take all of this content from each month and create a membership or community offering that would allow people interested in the monthly topic to access the entire package in one tidy resource. One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is that while so much content is free and available, people will pay for content that is packaged and delivered in the way they want it. Figure that piece out and you’ll really make your content efforts pay directly.
Integrate your content with Core Business Objectives
Okay, so now you’ve got your themes plotted out and you’ve got a plan for creating, filtering and aggregating all manner and form of content into your delivery system. It’s time map your content plan to your core business objectives.
This step allows you to better understand how to get return on your content investment and how much you should actually invest in creating a certain form or package of content.
For example, if one of your stated annual objectives is to dramatically increase the sale of information products, you would produce content with product creation in mind. Or, if one of your stated objectives for the year is to significantly increase your subscriber list, you would focus on producing, delivering and sharing content that attracts email capture, links and strategic partnering.
One of the most important aspects of a Total Content System plan is that it changes the lens you use to view all the information that comes at you all day long. When you know what your theme is this month and next month all of a sudden books, tools, articles and conversations take on new meaning and seem to somehow organize themselves for the benefit of your ongoing, long-term approach.
31 Days to Building a Better Blog Headquarters
31 Days to Building a Better Blog Headquarters
UPDATE: This page is for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project that I ran in 2005. You can get a much more updated version of this challenge which I ran in 2009 here.
In an attempt to keep all of the posts in the 31 Days to a Building a Better Blog Project together in a succinct and easy to use place I’ve decided to start this page that lists all of the blog tips. I’ve divided them into two sections – firstly those I’ve written and secondly those submitted by readers.
ProBlogger Posts
Miscellaneous Posts
Introduction to the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project
Blog Case Study – Is it Time to Quit?
SEO Tip 1 – Put Keywords in Titles
Domain Name Suggestion Tool – DomainBot
On Posting Schedules
Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed
Converting One off Visitors to Your Blog into Regular Readers
Writing Blog Content – Make it Scannable
When is it Time to Go Pro as a Blogger?
Overnight Blogging Success
Adsense Optimization Case Study – BuzzMachine
The Secret to Interactive Blogging – Expertise blended with Invitation
Getting Inside Your Blog Readers Mind
There’s a Hole in my Blog – Holistic Blogging
Strategic Blogging Series
Introduction
Mission
Values
Vision and Goals
Issues, Present Reality and Future Direction
Strategy
Action Plan
Complete Series in one Post
Declaring War on Blogger Apathy Series
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Complete Article
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs Series
Introduction
Off Site Techniques
Keywords
Internal Links and Frequent Posting
Site Themes and Design
Outbound Links and Choosing a Domain
Lengthy Domain Registration, One Topic Posts, Optimal Length Posts
Duplicate Content, Pinging and MyYahoo
Quantities of Content and Submit to Search Engines
SEO Articles and Resources
The Complete SEO for bloggers Series
How Email Newsletters can Improve your Blog
Part I – Benefits of Email Newsletters
Email Newsletter Tips for Bloggers
Affiliate Programs for Blogs
Affiliate Programs for Blogs – Introduction
Amazon Associates Program
Clickbank
Commission Junction
LinkShare
10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog
Reader Submitted Links
Day 1′s Submitted Links
5 Blog Traffic Tips
Only 2 Good Reasons to Blog for Profit
Dominic Foster documents his 31 Days
Day 2′s Submitted Links
Blog Tips for August
The Top 10 Things You Should Know Before You Blog
Blog to Learn
Keyword Reseach
Day 3′s Submitted Links
Developing Community
Secrets of Google Sitemap
Top 10 Blog tips
Full Feeds or Extracts in feeds
Keeping organized when you post on more than one topic
Day 4′s Submitted Links
Business Blogging – What do I say?
The Writers Buzz
Blog Tips for Writers – Part 1
Productivity Tips for Avid Blog Readers
Day 5′s Submitted Links
Blog Tips for Writers 2
Script for Firefox which prevents publishers clicking on their own Adsense ads
Day 6′s Submitted Links
Blogversation – How to Build blogosphere easily
How NOT to Build a Successful Online Business
Day 7′s Submitted Links
Tips for a Successful Blog
Make sure you have enough to say
Exit Adsense
are there three blogospheres
Day 8′s Submitted Links
Writing for the Web
How should a blogger respond when they get a comment?
Better Blogging
Day 9′s Submitted Links
Building a Better Blog – Six Do NOTs
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners
Blog Search Engine Optimization
Publish at the right time
Anything That Can be Measured, Can be Improved
Design Theory for New Bloggers
You’re going to spend a lot of time talking to yourself in the beginning
Short conversations, long conversations
Day 10′s Submitted Links
Anyone for Comments?
Not everyone knows what a blog is
Day 11′s Submitted Links
Interlinking and Date Stamps
Give Your Blog Site A Health Check
Technorati Tags: What? Why? How?
Day 12′s Submitted Links
6 Ways To Get Out Of The Deserted Blog Island
10 Useful SEO tips
4 Steps To Get Your Website In Googles ‘Back Door’
Keep Searching Blogs
Day 13′s Submitted Links
Building Traffic for Bloggers
Site search, calendars and search term hilite
Blog Better By Learning from the Rapper
Blogging for its own sake
Help for the Business end of a Business Blog
Day 14′s Submitted Links
The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging
Day 15′s Submitted Links
7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging
How to start a new Blog
Setting up a Blog
Make Feedburner Work for You
Vary your content!
Thick and Thin Clients
Which one pay more
Copy Paste: Why and Why Not?
Non-SEO Marketing for Instant Massive Traffic
Day 16′s Submitted Links
Improve Your Blog’s Content in 5 Steps
Build a Better Blog: Build a Blogging Team
CMS and the Web
WordPress as a CMS
Donate Buttons
Giving Your Business a Personality
Content is King
Blogosphere Networking
Blogstars :: The Price of Success
A Word to All Bloggers
Reasons to Read my Blog
Tips on Starting a New Blog – Part 1
Turn a negative situation into a positive one
Day 17′s Submitted Links
Tuning Your Entry Titles
Improving Blog Headlines: Lessons Learned offline
Fighting Link Rot
What do I care what Strangers Blog?
Develop a “Constant Reader”
Day 18′s Submitted Links
Emails, Newsletters and the Law
Stay out of the Copyright Jail
Day 19′s Submitted Links
The Power of the Mission Statement
Observational Blogging
Technorati, tagging and all that
Starting a Blog Using WordPress and Dreamhost
Using blogs as a learning Tool
Guest Blogging and Other ways to create content
Adwords First Experience
Track your Visitor
Introversion and How to Win Friends
Winamp playlist
Cross Browser Compatibility
Day 20′s Submitted Links
Blogging Blues
Pro-blogger barter
Journey to Become Pro Blogger
Why Keeping Several Blogs Can be a Good Idea
The Tools of the Trade
Let online tools help you begin
To All WordPress Users: Back up Matters
Responding to Blog Criticism
Building Traffic on this Blog
What to Write About in Blogs
Turn Your Life Experiences into Blogs
Blogging the Write Way
Mice Life
Day 21′s Submitted Links
Should My Home Business Have a Blog?
Is your Blog Placement hurting Conversion
How to Benefit from Google Sitemaps
Day 22′s Submitted Links
Content Mangement System Review
Keep your Blogging Software Up to Date
Remove your own Duplicate Content
Find Their Need and Fill It
Google Adsense for Search
Is your Site Pleasing to the Eye
How to Prevent Blog Bloat
Blogging Tip: Permalink
Free Essential Tools for Blogger
Web Site Promotion and Popularity
Amazon Associates Program
Track Visitors Using Google Maps
PHP Bloggers Magazine
Proper Use of Your Blog Links
Why would you want to Blog Professionally
Best Practices for Driving Traffic with Blog Carnivals
Day 23′s Submitted Links
Target Your Audience
Blog Rating – Increase your Blogging Confidence
Blogging while on the clock
Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google
Day 24′s Submitted Links
Bill Gates for President?
Day 25′s Submitted Links
Is there value in SEO Firms?
How to find inspiration for your blog posts
Advertising Strategies for Bloggers
Driving Traffic through PSAs
Adwords your way to Traffic
Server Logs
Google Sitemaps
Day 26′s Submitted Links
Trackbacks Unveiled
Content Management Systems – not for me
The Medium vs. the Message
Day 27′s Submitted Links
Networking and Blogging – Blogging and Networking
Helping Bloggers get to the top
Copywriting Tips from the Donald
How to become the ‘Go To’ in your niche
Online libel: How to avoid
Do you see Ads on this Page?
Day 28′s Submissions
Technorati Tag Generator
How to Restore Lost Blogger Template Code
How to convert visitors into regular readers – part 1
Day 29′s Submissions
Boost Earnings from Adsense for Search
Why the Elite Blogs are the Elites?
More links, more traffic, more…
Website Infrastructure – Building your web site
Could you be sued because of others’ comments? Create a comment policy now!
Backup Your Blog
The Sin of Noodle Posting
Just Two Posts a Day
Ping your Blog
Read your Readers’ Minds
Syndicate Headlines Using BuzzBoost
Day 30′s Submissions
Overcoming Blogger’s Block
Use your blog as a personal wayback machine
Improving Your Writing Skills: Lessons Learned Online
Blogging Personality
Increase your PR with Yahoo
RSS for Dummies
Helping Bloggers get to the top
Expand the Blogstream
Those Special Dad Moments
Will Windows Vista be good for Probloggers?
Day 31′s Submissions
How many Visitors: Quality over Quantity
Blogging Security
A workable Blogging Schedule
Context is Everything
Blogging on a Mac
Thoughts on Articles Websites
How to Convert Visitors into regular readers – Part 2
Bloggers Write Articles for traffic
Moving Beyond the Blogroll: Looking for New Ways to Link-Share
Blogging and procrastinating
Theming: How it Isn’t Just About the Looks
Get Your Visitors to Subscribe to your RSS Feed via Email
UPDATE: This page is for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project that I ran in 2005. You can get a much more updated version of this challenge which I ran in 2009 here.
In an attempt to keep all of the posts in the 31 Days to a Building a Better Blog Project together in a succinct and easy to use place I’ve decided to start this page that lists all of the blog tips. I’ve divided them into two sections – firstly those I’ve written and secondly those submitted by readers.
ProBlogger Posts
Miscellaneous Posts
Introduction to the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project
Blog Case Study – Is it Time to Quit?
SEO Tip 1 – Put Keywords in Titles
Domain Name Suggestion Tool – DomainBot
On Posting Schedules
Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed
Converting One off Visitors to Your Blog into Regular Readers
Writing Blog Content – Make it Scannable
When is it Time to Go Pro as a Blogger?
Overnight Blogging Success
Adsense Optimization Case Study – BuzzMachine
The Secret to Interactive Blogging – Expertise blended with Invitation
Getting Inside Your Blog Readers Mind
There’s a Hole in my Blog – Holistic Blogging
Strategic Blogging Series
Introduction
Mission
Values
Vision and Goals
Issues, Present Reality and Future Direction
Strategy
Action Plan
Complete Series in one Post
Declaring War on Blogger Apathy Series
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Complete Article
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs Series
Introduction
Off Site Techniques
Keywords
Internal Links and Frequent Posting
Site Themes and Design
Outbound Links and Choosing a Domain
Lengthy Domain Registration, One Topic Posts, Optimal Length Posts
Duplicate Content, Pinging and MyYahoo
Quantities of Content and Submit to Search Engines
SEO Articles and Resources
The Complete SEO for bloggers Series
How Email Newsletters can Improve your Blog
Part I – Benefits of Email Newsletters
Email Newsletter Tips for Bloggers
Affiliate Programs for Blogs
Affiliate Programs for Blogs – Introduction
Amazon Associates Program
Clickbank
Commission Junction
LinkShare
10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog
Reader Submitted Links
Day 1′s Submitted Links
5 Blog Traffic Tips
Only 2 Good Reasons to Blog for Profit
Dominic Foster documents his 31 Days
Day 2′s Submitted Links
Blog Tips for August
The Top 10 Things You Should Know Before You Blog
Blog to Learn
Keyword Reseach
Day 3′s Submitted Links
Developing Community
Secrets of Google Sitemap
Top 10 Blog tips
Full Feeds or Extracts in feeds
Keeping organized when you post on more than one topic
Day 4′s Submitted Links
Business Blogging – What do I say?
The Writers Buzz
Blog Tips for Writers – Part 1
Productivity Tips for Avid Blog Readers
Day 5′s Submitted Links
Blog Tips for Writers 2
Script for Firefox which prevents publishers clicking on their own Adsense ads
Day 6′s Submitted Links
Blogversation – How to Build blogosphere easily
How NOT to Build a Successful Online Business
Day 7′s Submitted Links
Tips for a Successful Blog
Make sure you have enough to say
Exit Adsense
are there three blogospheres
Day 8′s Submitted Links
Writing for the Web
How should a blogger respond when they get a comment?
Better Blogging
Day 9′s Submitted Links
Building a Better Blog – Six Do NOTs
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Beginners
Blog Search Engine Optimization
Publish at the right time
Anything That Can be Measured, Can be Improved
Design Theory for New Bloggers
You’re going to spend a lot of time talking to yourself in the beginning
Short conversations, long conversations
Day 10′s Submitted Links
Anyone for Comments?
Not everyone knows what a blog is
Day 11′s Submitted Links
Interlinking and Date Stamps
Give Your Blog Site A Health Check
Technorati Tags: What? Why? How?
Day 12′s Submitted Links
6 Ways To Get Out Of The Deserted Blog Island
10 Useful SEO tips
4 Steps To Get Your Website In Googles ‘Back Door’
Keep Searching Blogs
Day 13′s Submitted Links
Building Traffic for Bloggers
Site search, calendars and search term hilite
Blog Better By Learning from the Rapper
Blogging for its own sake
Help for the Business end of a Business Blog
Day 14′s Submitted Links
The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging
Day 15′s Submitted Links
7 Mistakes for your First Week Blogging
How to start a new Blog
Setting up a Blog
Make Feedburner Work for You
Vary your content!
Thick and Thin Clients
Which one pay more
Copy Paste: Why and Why Not?
Non-SEO Marketing for Instant Massive Traffic
Day 16′s Submitted Links
Improve Your Blog’s Content in 5 Steps
Build a Better Blog: Build a Blogging Team
CMS and the Web
WordPress as a CMS
Donate Buttons
Giving Your Business a Personality
Content is King
Blogosphere Networking
Blogstars :: The Price of Success
A Word to All Bloggers
Reasons to Read my Blog
Tips on Starting a New Blog – Part 1
Turn a negative situation into a positive one
Day 17′s Submitted Links
Tuning Your Entry Titles
Improving Blog Headlines: Lessons Learned offline
Fighting Link Rot
What do I care what Strangers Blog?
Develop a “Constant Reader”
Day 18′s Submitted Links
Emails, Newsletters and the Law
Stay out of the Copyright Jail
Day 19′s Submitted Links
The Power of the Mission Statement
Observational Blogging
Technorati, tagging and all that
Starting a Blog Using WordPress and Dreamhost
Using blogs as a learning Tool
Guest Blogging and Other ways to create content
Adwords First Experience
Track your Visitor
Introversion and How to Win Friends
Winamp playlist
Cross Browser Compatibility
Day 20′s Submitted Links
Blogging Blues
Pro-blogger barter
Journey to Become Pro Blogger
Why Keeping Several Blogs Can be a Good Idea
The Tools of the Trade
Let online tools help you begin
To All WordPress Users: Back up Matters
Responding to Blog Criticism
Building Traffic on this Blog
What to Write About in Blogs
Turn Your Life Experiences into Blogs
Blogging the Write Way
Mice Life
Day 21′s Submitted Links
Should My Home Business Have a Blog?
Is your Blog Placement hurting Conversion
How to Benefit from Google Sitemaps
Day 22′s Submitted Links
Content Mangement System Review
Keep your Blogging Software Up to Date
Remove your own Duplicate Content
Find Their Need and Fill It
Google Adsense for Search
Is your Site Pleasing to the Eye
How to Prevent Blog Bloat
Blogging Tip: Permalink
Free Essential Tools for Blogger
Web Site Promotion and Popularity
Amazon Associates Program
Track Visitors Using Google Maps
PHP Bloggers Magazine
Proper Use of Your Blog Links
Why would you want to Blog Professionally
Best Practices for Driving Traffic with Blog Carnivals
Day 23′s Submitted Links
Target Your Audience
Blog Rating – Increase your Blogging Confidence
Blogging while on the clock
Display relevant Ads in Blogs: Just suggest Google
Day 24′s Submitted Links
Bill Gates for President?
Day 25′s Submitted Links
Is there value in SEO Firms?
How to find inspiration for your blog posts
Advertising Strategies for Bloggers
Driving Traffic through PSAs
Adwords your way to Traffic
Server Logs
Google Sitemaps
Day 26′s Submitted Links
Trackbacks Unveiled
Content Management Systems – not for me
The Medium vs. the Message
Day 27′s Submitted Links
Networking and Blogging – Blogging and Networking
Helping Bloggers get to the top
Copywriting Tips from the Donald
How to become the ‘Go To’ in your niche
Online libel: How to avoid
Do you see Ads on this Page?
Day 28′s Submissions
Technorati Tag Generator
How to Restore Lost Blogger Template Code
How to convert visitors into regular readers – part 1
Day 29′s Submissions
Boost Earnings from Adsense for Search
Why the Elite Blogs are the Elites?
More links, more traffic, more…
Website Infrastructure – Building your web site
Could you be sued because of others’ comments? Create a comment policy now!
Backup Your Blog
The Sin of Noodle Posting
Just Two Posts a Day
Ping your Blog
Read your Readers’ Minds
Syndicate Headlines Using BuzzBoost
Day 30′s Submissions
Overcoming Blogger’s Block
Use your blog as a personal wayback machine
Improving Your Writing Skills: Lessons Learned Online
Blogging Personality
Increase your PR with Yahoo
RSS for Dummies
Helping Bloggers get to the top
Expand the Blogstream
Those Special Dad Moments
Will Windows Vista be good for Probloggers?
Day 31′s Submissions
How many Visitors: Quality over Quantity
Blogging Security
A workable Blogging Schedule
Context is Everything
Blogging on a Mac
Thoughts on Articles Websites
How to Convert Visitors into regular readers – Part 2
Bloggers Write Articles for traffic
Moving Beyond the Blogroll: Looking for New Ways to Link-Share
Blogging and procrastinating
Theming: How it Isn’t Just About the Looks
Get Your Visitors to Subscribe to your RSS Feed via Email
Strategic Blogging
logging as a business rather than just a job. One of the things that has become evident to me is that good sustainable businesses don’t usually just happen by accident.
Instead they take planning, strategy and intentionality.
So as part of our 31 days to building a better blog series I thought it would be wise to start by talking about some big picture issues. Whilst these first few posts may not be as practical as some that will follow in the coming weeks – I believe that thinking through the issues that they contain could be the difference between a good and a great blog.
I know that for some this type of talk will be frustrating – words like mission, vision, values and strategy are not where you’re at – but humor me please. You see I believe that if you get these things right you’ll find many of the other tips that I share later in this series to be much more powerful as you’ll be able to use them in much more focused and effective ways.
Over the next few posts I’m going to lead you through a strategic plan process that a friend of mine gave me to think through another (non blogging) project that I’m working on – I think it’s highly relevant for ProBlogging and hope you find it helpful.
In each post I’m going to give us a little homework, a few questions to ask that hopefully will help you to think through the issues at hand. Feel free to answer them in private or to even think out loud in comments after each post.
As I post each post in this mini series within the larger 31 days to a better blog I’ll post links to them here as a central place to see the whole process.
I hope you enjoy.
Instead they take planning, strategy and intentionality.
So as part of our 31 days to building a better blog series I thought it would be wise to start by talking about some big picture issues. Whilst these first few posts may not be as practical as some that will follow in the coming weeks – I believe that thinking through the issues that they contain could be the difference between a good and a great blog.
I know that for some this type of talk will be frustrating – words like mission, vision, values and strategy are not where you’re at – but humor me please. You see I believe that if you get these things right you’ll find many of the other tips that I share later in this series to be much more powerful as you’ll be able to use them in much more focused and effective ways.
Over the next few posts I’m going to lead you through a strategic plan process that a friend of mine gave me to think through another (non blogging) project that I’m working on – I think it’s highly relevant for ProBlogging and hope you find it helpful.
In each post I’m going to give us a little homework, a few questions to ask that hopefully will help you to think through the issues at hand. Feel free to answer them in private or to even think out loud in comments after each post.
As I post each post in this mini series within the larger 31 days to a better blog I’ll post links to them here as a central place to see the whole process.
I hope you enjoy.
8 Alternatives to Google Keyword Tool
Keyword research is vital. It’s an essential tactic for developing a powerful content strategy, targeting pay per click advertising campaigns and improving search engine optimization.
keyword research
photo credit: shawncalhoun via photopin cc
For many years Google offered what was undoubtedly the most used free tool for conducting research on popular and not so popular keyword phrases with useful information regarding popularity, competition and suggested variations of phrases.
The tool was actually an AdWords offering that effectively helped people do better AdWords planning, but it certainly worked for all manner of research.
Recently Google decided to more tightly integrate the tool with AdWords and rebranded it as AdWords Planner. In addition to requiring users to log in to an AdWords account to access the tool a great deal of useful research functionality has been stripped away.
While I found that it was sufficient for most basic research it no longer serves that need very well.
Below are four free alternatives and four paid alternatives that I suggest business owners and marketers consider adding to their resource and research routines.
Free keyword tools
Wordtracker - https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Ubersuggest – http://ubersuggest.org/
SEO Book – http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
WordPot – http://www.wordpot.com
My favorite paid options
MOZ – http://moz.com/tools/keyword-difficulty
Raven Tools – http://raventools.com/tools/research-central/
KeywordSpy – http://www.keywordspy.com/
SEMRush – http://www.semrush.com/
keyword research
photo credit: shawncalhoun via photopin cc
For many years Google offered what was undoubtedly the most used free tool for conducting research on popular and not so popular keyword phrases with useful information regarding popularity, competition and suggested variations of phrases.
The tool was actually an AdWords offering that effectively helped people do better AdWords planning, but it certainly worked for all manner of research.
Recently Google decided to more tightly integrate the tool with AdWords and rebranded it as AdWords Planner. In addition to requiring users to log in to an AdWords account to access the tool a great deal of useful research functionality has been stripped away.
While I found that it was sufficient for most basic research it no longer serves that need very well.
Below are four free alternatives and four paid alternatives that I suggest business owners and marketers consider adding to their resource and research routines.
Free keyword tools
Wordtracker - https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
Ubersuggest – http://ubersuggest.org/
SEO Book – http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
WordPot – http://www.wordpot.com
My favorite paid options
MOZ – http://moz.com/tools/keyword-difficulty
Raven Tools – http://raventools.com/tools/research-central/
KeywordSpy – http://www.keywordspy.com/
SEMRush – http://www.semrush.com/
5 New Realities of SEO
Back in the day, SEO was more technical and less, well, semantic. Now I realize that for most a term like semantic query relevancy might as well be the name of computer programming language, but the fact is Google’s customers, the searcher and the advertiser, are no longer content with results based on related page keyword content. This Wall Street Journal article explains Google’s take
google search
To improve accuracy Google and Bing both are attempting to understand what is actually meant by a search and refine results based on things like recency, location, context and of course relevance.
For example if you search “best place to buy a MacBook Pro” there was a time when search engines would return results of blog posts about good places to buy a MacBook Pro or maybe even computer reviews. From that you might have been able to find what you were looking for, but with semantic knowledge graph built in Google is more likely to think – oh, you want to buy a MacBook Pro and I know where you are and I know the inventory levels of the nearest stores with sale prices, so here are your results.
What this means for website owners is they can no longer count on writing content about a subject, optimizing it and going to work on links to the page. Sure, that stuff will always play a role, but there are other significant factors at play today.
Google officially rolled out a new search algorithm recently that employs a great deal of their progress in semantic search. The update is called “Hummingbird” and while traces of it have been coming in previous updates, this one is significant and lasting.
Search has been heading this way for some time now. So, no SEO is not dead once again, unless you mean quick SEO – SEO that doesn’t contain relationship and authority building. Bottom-line though – quality, frequency, depth and authority matter more than ever.
Below are five realities that site owners and SEO professionals must address in order to remain relevant.
Social signals matter a lot
One of the biggest factors baked into search results are signals that search engines can receive about content quality based on social interactions. How many +1s a page has matters greatly as do shares, likes and retweets. My guess is that it’s nearly impossible to get most content to rank without it.
In depth is the new snack sized
One of the things blogs ushered in was the ability to create small little bits of content frequently. While readers seem to enjoy this, often the content lacked much depth and certainly did not engender many retweets and shares (unless you are Seth Godin and you’re followed by 113,000 people on Google+ even though you’ve never shared anything on Google+)
Many people still throw out thinly disquised lists as link bait, but nothing gets shared and strongly indexed today like long, in depth narrowly cast articles. Google has even created markup standards for in depth articles as long as 2000-5000 words.
Who writes it matters too
Authority based on authorship has grown to be a major ranking factor. Claiming your own Google+ Authorship for your content is vital. This includes telling Google other places where your content appears.
While there is no “kloutlike” scoring system as of yet, understanding whose content is thought of authoritative because that’s your relationship building hit list!
Link building is networking
Past Google updates with names like Panda and Penguin were different than Hummingbird as they we updates to fix stuff, mostly artificial link building. Like it or not the more sophisticated algorithms become the harder it is to fake link relationships. Link building in the old school SEO fashion is going the way of the compact disc so you better get good at writing high quality content, sharing high quality content and building authoritative relationships with people that Google thinks matter when it comes to content.
In case that sounds like good old fashion networking that’s because it is.
Keyword not provided is the new deal
Site owners long ago made a deal with Google – let us crawl your site and we’ll tell you who is visiting your site and why – just kidding – take a look at your Google Analyitcs these days and see if your “keyword not provide” or what terms someone searched on that brought them to your site is hovering in the 100% range like mine is.
There are some clever ways to hack together this data (future post on that) and word on the street is Google may find a way to sell it back to you through some sort of premium analytics, but look for some 3rd party tools to fill this gap and get used to a world without the ease of knowing why someone came to your site. (I suppose this is actually a step back into the more technical SEO need.)
Tomorrow I’m going to give you a look into my top 5 recommended action steps for addressing the new realities of SEO today.
google search
To improve accuracy Google and Bing both are attempting to understand what is actually meant by a search and refine results based on things like recency, location, context and of course relevance.
For example if you search “best place to buy a MacBook Pro” there was a time when search engines would return results of blog posts about good places to buy a MacBook Pro or maybe even computer reviews. From that you might have been able to find what you were looking for, but with semantic knowledge graph built in Google is more likely to think – oh, you want to buy a MacBook Pro and I know where you are and I know the inventory levels of the nearest stores with sale prices, so here are your results.
What this means for website owners is they can no longer count on writing content about a subject, optimizing it and going to work on links to the page. Sure, that stuff will always play a role, but there are other significant factors at play today.
Google officially rolled out a new search algorithm recently that employs a great deal of their progress in semantic search. The update is called “Hummingbird” and while traces of it have been coming in previous updates, this one is significant and lasting.
Search has been heading this way for some time now. So, no SEO is not dead once again, unless you mean quick SEO – SEO that doesn’t contain relationship and authority building. Bottom-line though – quality, frequency, depth and authority matter more than ever.
Below are five realities that site owners and SEO professionals must address in order to remain relevant.
Social signals matter a lot
One of the biggest factors baked into search results are signals that search engines can receive about content quality based on social interactions. How many +1s a page has matters greatly as do shares, likes and retweets. My guess is that it’s nearly impossible to get most content to rank without it.
In depth is the new snack sized
One of the things blogs ushered in was the ability to create small little bits of content frequently. While readers seem to enjoy this, often the content lacked much depth and certainly did not engender many retweets and shares (unless you are Seth Godin and you’re followed by 113,000 people on Google+ even though you’ve never shared anything on Google+)
Many people still throw out thinly disquised lists as link bait, but nothing gets shared and strongly indexed today like long, in depth narrowly cast articles. Google has even created markup standards for in depth articles as long as 2000-5000 words.
Who writes it matters too
Authority based on authorship has grown to be a major ranking factor. Claiming your own Google+ Authorship for your content is vital. This includes telling Google other places where your content appears.
While there is no “kloutlike” scoring system as of yet, understanding whose content is thought of authoritative because that’s your relationship building hit list!
Link building is networking
Past Google updates with names like Panda and Penguin were different than Hummingbird as they we updates to fix stuff, mostly artificial link building. Like it or not the more sophisticated algorithms become the harder it is to fake link relationships. Link building in the old school SEO fashion is going the way of the compact disc so you better get good at writing high quality content, sharing high quality content and building authoritative relationships with people that Google thinks matter when it comes to content.
In case that sounds like good old fashion networking that’s because it is.
Keyword not provided is the new deal
Site owners long ago made a deal with Google – let us crawl your site and we’ll tell you who is visiting your site and why – just kidding – take a look at your Google Analyitcs these days and see if your “keyword not provide” or what terms someone searched on that brought them to your site is hovering in the 100% range like mine is.
There are some clever ways to hack together this data (future post on that) and word on the street is Google may find a way to sell it back to you through some sort of premium analytics, but look for some 3rd party tools to fill this gap and get used to a world without the ease of knowing why someone came to your site. (I suppose this is actually a step back into the more technical SEO need.)
Tomorrow I’m going to give you a look into my top 5 recommended action steps for addressing the new realities of SEO today.
Monday, 15 September 2014
There’s a Hole in my Blog – Holistic Blogging
“Your blog will only ever be as good as it’s weakest component.”
Warning: Tangent Ahead
Imagine you’ve been given a task of hauling water from one place to another (over a long distance) – but that all you’ve been given to do the job is a rusty old bucket which has multiple holes in it. There are holes both low and high on the bucket which make transporting water a real challenge.
You’re given materials to patch some but not all of the holes in the bucket. Which one’s would you fix?
There are a number of ways of approaching this problem – you could attempt to patch the biggest holes first, you could patch those which are most prominent on the bucket etc…
But perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to make the priority of your repair work those holes which are lowest on the bucket.
The reasoning for this approach is that over time your bucket will only be able to hold as much water as the lowest hole on the bucket. Common sense really and a principle I want to suggest bloggers think about on their blogs.
Your blog will only ever be as good as its weakest component allows it to be.
I’ve been thinking about how to say this all week after what must have been around 50 conversations with new bloggers via email, IM and in person. In conversation after conversation it seems that many of the bloggers I’ve talked to seem to be quite obsessive about one element of their ProBlogging efforts. Whether it be Adsense, finding readers, Search Engine Optimization – in most of these conversations the bloggers have seen all of the answers to their blog’s success as laying in the one area.
What I’ve found myself suggesting this week to many of these bloggers is that to concentrate on one area of your blogging is ok for a short period of time – but for your blog to grow to its fullest potential you need to be willing to work at it on a variety of fronts. If you don’t it’s like patching holes high on the sides of a bucket and ignoring others lower down.
One of the common holes that I’ve noticed recently on new blogs is a severe lack of content.
I spoke to one blogger this week on around 20 occasions – each time they asked questions about design and ad placement issues. They spent hours and hours chopping and changing things on their blog but in that week wrote no new content on a blog that only has a handful of pages. At the end of the week they asked me why they didn’t seem to have any readers and why the ones who had stopped by didn’t come back? The fact that the page’s content hadn’t changed all week didn’t cross their mind.
Another problem on some blogs is to focus upon content TOO heavily at the detriment of other factors.
I had contact with another budding entrepreneurial blogger this week who writes brilliant content for his blog (and has done so for months) but who has virtually no readers because he has never worked on blog promotion, SEO or networking with other bloggers. As a result in the months that he’d been blogging he’d not had more than 10 visitors to his blog per day. He’d never left a comment on another blog, he’d never even submitted his blog to a search engine or to his knowledge been linked to by anyone else (and subsequently he’s still not been indexed by any search engine). Writing content is a great start – but if its all you do it won’t take your blog to its fullest potential.
I could go on with example after example of bloggers who either ignore or become obsessed with different factors of their blogs. I’m getting to the stage with some where I’m going to start saying that if they don’t work on the areas that I suggest that I’ll stop helping them because while their intention is to improve their blogging – some are getting to a stage where they are just wasting their own time (and mine) with their efforts.
So what should a blogger work on?
This is a difficult question to answer with a sweeping statement because each blog is different and needs different levels of attention put to different areas of it depending upon many factors. Having said that – there are a number of areas that I’d suggest bloggers consider devoting serious time to.
• Writing Content - without content your blog is nothing.
• Sourcing Content - this will depend upon the type and style of blog you’re running – but if your blog is not solely about original content (for example here at ProBlogger I mix original content and link/quote posts to other blogs) you need to work on developing good sources of content via RSS, other sites, alert lists etc.
• Design – while not essential to be successful I believe that thinking about how your blog is designed and laid out can improve it on many levels.
• Income streams – not all bloggers are into making money from blogs but I’m assuming most readers of a blog on the topic are. This doesn’t just happen – put time aside to learn about different income streams, ad positioning, affiliate programs etc
• Networking – I’m a massive believer in NOT blogging in a vacuum. Build relationships with other bloggers and site owners – work on common projects, share ideas, learn from one another.
• Promotion and PR - You don’t have to hire a PR company or have a complicated publicity plan – but ask yourself how potential readers will find your blog and work on some ways to get your name out there.
• SEO – Most web users start with search engines when looking for information online – if you’re not working on being on the end of their searches you could be ignoring potential readers.
• Trend Watching – I recommend that bloggers keep an eye on the big picture as well as their blogging niche. Is your niche growing or shrinking? What opportunities might exist to expand your blog or even start another one? Are their areas within your niche that can be developed?
• Tracking Performance – I devote time each day to analyzing the performance of my blogs on many fronts including traffic levels, earnings, mentions on other blogs, search engine rankings etc. Keeping an eye on these internal trends help to determine future strategy.
I’m sure there are other aspects of blogging that we could (and should) add to this list. I’m really interested to know what you think? What do you spend most time doing on your blogs? Where are the holes in your blog? What factors would you add to or subtract to this list?
Warning: Tangent Ahead
Imagine you’ve been given a task of hauling water from one place to another (over a long distance) – but that all you’ve been given to do the job is a rusty old bucket which has multiple holes in it. There are holes both low and high on the bucket which make transporting water a real challenge.
You’re given materials to patch some but not all of the holes in the bucket. Which one’s would you fix?
There are a number of ways of approaching this problem – you could attempt to patch the biggest holes first, you could patch those which are most prominent on the bucket etc…
But perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to make the priority of your repair work those holes which are lowest on the bucket.
The reasoning for this approach is that over time your bucket will only be able to hold as much water as the lowest hole on the bucket. Common sense really and a principle I want to suggest bloggers think about on their blogs.
Your blog will only ever be as good as its weakest component allows it to be.
I’ve been thinking about how to say this all week after what must have been around 50 conversations with new bloggers via email, IM and in person. In conversation after conversation it seems that many of the bloggers I’ve talked to seem to be quite obsessive about one element of their ProBlogging efforts. Whether it be Adsense, finding readers, Search Engine Optimization – in most of these conversations the bloggers have seen all of the answers to their blog’s success as laying in the one area.
What I’ve found myself suggesting this week to many of these bloggers is that to concentrate on one area of your blogging is ok for a short period of time – but for your blog to grow to its fullest potential you need to be willing to work at it on a variety of fronts. If you don’t it’s like patching holes high on the sides of a bucket and ignoring others lower down.
One of the common holes that I’ve noticed recently on new blogs is a severe lack of content.
I spoke to one blogger this week on around 20 occasions – each time they asked questions about design and ad placement issues. They spent hours and hours chopping and changing things on their blog but in that week wrote no new content on a blog that only has a handful of pages. At the end of the week they asked me why they didn’t seem to have any readers and why the ones who had stopped by didn’t come back? The fact that the page’s content hadn’t changed all week didn’t cross their mind.
Another problem on some blogs is to focus upon content TOO heavily at the detriment of other factors.
I had contact with another budding entrepreneurial blogger this week who writes brilliant content for his blog (and has done so for months) but who has virtually no readers because he has never worked on blog promotion, SEO or networking with other bloggers. As a result in the months that he’d been blogging he’d not had more than 10 visitors to his blog per day. He’d never left a comment on another blog, he’d never even submitted his blog to a search engine or to his knowledge been linked to by anyone else (and subsequently he’s still not been indexed by any search engine). Writing content is a great start – but if its all you do it won’t take your blog to its fullest potential.
I could go on with example after example of bloggers who either ignore or become obsessed with different factors of their blogs. I’m getting to the stage with some where I’m going to start saying that if they don’t work on the areas that I suggest that I’ll stop helping them because while their intention is to improve their blogging – some are getting to a stage where they are just wasting their own time (and mine) with their efforts.
So what should a blogger work on?
This is a difficult question to answer with a sweeping statement because each blog is different and needs different levels of attention put to different areas of it depending upon many factors. Having said that – there are a number of areas that I’d suggest bloggers consider devoting serious time to.
• Writing Content - without content your blog is nothing.
• Sourcing Content - this will depend upon the type and style of blog you’re running – but if your blog is not solely about original content (for example here at ProBlogger I mix original content and link/quote posts to other blogs) you need to work on developing good sources of content via RSS, other sites, alert lists etc.
• Design – while not essential to be successful I believe that thinking about how your blog is designed and laid out can improve it on many levels.
• Income streams – not all bloggers are into making money from blogs but I’m assuming most readers of a blog on the topic are. This doesn’t just happen – put time aside to learn about different income streams, ad positioning, affiliate programs etc
• Networking – I’m a massive believer in NOT blogging in a vacuum. Build relationships with other bloggers and site owners – work on common projects, share ideas, learn from one another.
• Promotion and PR - You don’t have to hire a PR company or have a complicated publicity plan – but ask yourself how potential readers will find your blog and work on some ways to get your name out there.
• SEO – Most web users start with search engines when looking for information online – if you’re not working on being on the end of their searches you could be ignoring potential readers.
• Trend Watching – I recommend that bloggers keep an eye on the big picture as well as their blogging niche. Is your niche growing or shrinking? What opportunities might exist to expand your blog or even start another one? Are their areas within your niche that can be developed?
• Tracking Performance – I devote time each day to analyzing the performance of my blogs on many fronts including traffic levels, earnings, mentions on other blogs, search engine rankings etc. Keeping an eye on these internal trends help to determine future strategy.
I’m sure there are other aspects of blogging that we could (and should) add to this list. I’m really interested to know what you think? What do you spend most time doing on your blogs? Where are the holes in your blog? What factors would you add to or subtract to this list?
Getting Inside Your Blog Readers Mind
Ali has another worthwhile post at Ads On Blog on the topic of Optimum Placement of Google Ads where he suggests that bloggers consider five questions when they decide how to place ads on their blog. Here are the first three which I think are key:
’1. What is a user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
2. What do they do when viewing a specific page?
3. Where is the focus of their attention likely to be?’
One of the traps that many bloggers fall into when placing Adsense ads is to just put them where everyone else does – but I think these sorts of questions are a better starting place. Understanding the thought processes and habits of your readers is actually a very helpful thing.
How do you do this? I have done a number of things to try to get inside the minds of some of my readers. Here’s a few suggestions:
1. Watch someone surf your blog – ask someone who hasn’t been to your blog before to have a look around your blog while you watch on. Don’t tell them where to go – but watch what they do. After a few minutes ask them a few questions about what they saw, what they read, what stood out etc. Of course you could pay for a professional eye tracking type service – but even just what you can glean from just observing one person very unscientifically can be very useful.
2. Email your regular readers – On occasion I pick a random regular reader from one of my newsletter lists or comments lists and will ask that reader for feedback on my blog. I seek their opinion on design, ad placement etc and ask them for their impressions of my blog.
3. Do a survey or poll – this can be as big or as small as you like but give all of your readers the opportunity to feedback to you who they are and what they think of your blog. Collect data on who they (demographics), why they come to your blog and what they think of it. Also give them an opportunity to make suggestions. I’m always amazed at how my readers see things that I’ve never noticed before about my blog because they look at it as an objective outsider.
’1. What is a user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
2. What do they do when viewing a specific page?
3. Where is the focus of their attention likely to be?’
One of the traps that many bloggers fall into when placing Adsense ads is to just put them where everyone else does – but I think these sorts of questions are a better starting place. Understanding the thought processes and habits of your readers is actually a very helpful thing.
How do you do this? I have done a number of things to try to get inside the minds of some of my readers. Here’s a few suggestions:
1. Watch someone surf your blog – ask someone who hasn’t been to your blog before to have a look around your blog while you watch on. Don’t tell them where to go – but watch what they do. After a few minutes ask them a few questions about what they saw, what they read, what stood out etc. Of course you could pay for a professional eye tracking type service – but even just what you can glean from just observing one person very unscientifically can be very useful.
2. Email your regular readers – On occasion I pick a random regular reader from one of my newsletter lists or comments lists and will ask that reader for feedback on my blog. I seek their opinion on design, ad placement etc and ask them for their impressions of my blog.
3. Do a survey or poll – this can be as big or as small as you like but give all of your readers the opportunity to feedback to you who they are and what they think of your blog. Collect data on who they (demographics), why they come to your blog and what they think of it. Also give them an opportunity to make suggestions. I’m always amazed at how my readers see things that I’ve never noticed before about my blog because they look at it as an objective outsider.
The Secret to Interactive Blogging – Expertise blended with Invitation
Rob Hof over at Business Week has stumbled upon one of the secrets of growing interactivity on a blog -
it’s about not knowing all the answers. He notices that the posts with most comments on his blog are where he asks for help.
‘The tough thing for journalists, I think, is that we’re supposed to provide answers, not just pose questions. So what makes a really good story–insight into an issue or person or company, wrapped up in a tidy, complete package–is precisely what doesn’t work on a blog. People are more interested in responding to questions. Provide just answers, and, well, there’s nothing more to say….’
This is so true yet I’d not write off posts that provide answers altogether.
What I’ve discovered over the last couple of years is that people want a mixture of expertise but also room to speak from their own experience. I’ve tried in the past few months to create this type of space in the way I blog here at Problogger – blending posts that are are quite ‘How To’ in nature (with lots of tips and answers) with plenty of opportunities for readers to share their own expertise.
In a sense this was my motivation behind the 31 Day Project and my invitation for readers to submit their blog tip posts.
The result is quite spectacular with around 160 reader submissions already in addition to my own 45 or so ‘expert’ pieces.
it’s about not knowing all the answers. He notices that the posts with most comments on his blog are where he asks for help.
‘The tough thing for journalists, I think, is that we’re supposed to provide answers, not just pose questions. So what makes a really good story–insight into an issue or person or company, wrapped up in a tidy, complete package–is precisely what doesn’t work on a blog. People are more interested in responding to questions. Provide just answers, and, well, there’s nothing more to say….’
This is so true yet I’d not write off posts that provide answers altogether.
What I’ve discovered over the last couple of years is that people want a mixture of expertise but also room to speak from their own experience. I’ve tried in the past few months to create this type of space in the way I blog here at Problogger – blending posts that are are quite ‘How To’ in nature (with lots of tips and answers) with plenty of opportunities for readers to share their own expertise.
In a sense this was my motivation behind the 31 Day Project and my invitation for readers to submit their blog tip posts.
The result is quite spectacular with around 160 reader submissions already in addition to my own 45 or so ‘expert’ pieces.
Adsense Optimization Case Study – BuzzMachine
Yesterday I mentioned that Jeff Jarvis has made the decision to add Ads to his Blog (BuzzMachine). After posting this I emailed Jeff to let him know that I’d be happy to give a few free tips on how to get the most out of his Adsense ads. I’m yet to hear back from him (I know he’s a busy guy – so I’m not offended) but as I thought about what I’d suggest to him I thought it might make an interesting case study post here at ProBlogger as part of the 31 Days Project.
So consider this an open letter of advice for Jeff – but also for the many other bloggers who have similar blogs. Jeff uses a fairly standard WordPress template so what I share here might be useful for others too. Feel free to add your suggestions and tips to the comments section below.
The first thing I would recommend that Jeff does is go and have a look at the advice the Adsense team give publishers at their optimization page. Of particular usefulness is the heat map that they give that shows hot zones for the best positioning of ads (see diagram below).
Adsense-Placement-2
Possible Problems/Issues
If you compare this heat map (above) and Jeff’s page (left) you’ll notice immediately a couple of things.
1. Jeff’s BlogAds position is in a completely cold zone. White patches on the heat map are dead/cold patches. I was actually going to buy an ad space from his blog ads but when i saw the position I decided against it.
2. Jeff’s Adsense ads are in a pretty cool zone also (right hand sidebar). This is the position of them on every page in the blog. probably the only worse place for them would be below his footer and on the same sidebar but below the fold.
Buzzmachine-1
Another issue that I’d suggest Jeff take a look at is the visual barrier that he’s created by putting the ads column on a different color background to the rest of the blog. There is a line between his site proper and the ad section. While this might help to identify what is an ad and what isn’t an ad – it is a pretty basic no no if you want to get good results form your ads
.
Not only is there a line between his content and ads, there is also a menu column on his main page which further separates his readers main attention and the ads.
Another observation that i make is that when you look at the source code on Jeff’s site – the Adsense code is the very very last piece of code that you see on the page. This means that the adsense code and the content (which adsense looks at when determining which ads to place on the site) are not in proximity to one another. This is one problem that many bloggers have and it can be one of the reasons that many bloggers get quite irrelevant advertisements served.
Suggested Solutions
I would highly recommend that Jeff do one or all of the following things:
Move his ad column to the left hand side of the blog – This is probably the simplest tweak he could make. It would solve a couple of the problems mentioned above including putting the ads into hot zones and putting the Adsense code higher in the source code (and hopefully increasing ad relevancy).
New Positions – While just moving the ad to the left of screen would definitely help click through rates I’d suggest that other positions are worth experimenting with ads also. For starters could try the positioning on his son’s blog (see below) – a small banner at the top of content. This is a good position for a front page. These ads would do well if they were blended in (ie black text and blue title/links) in a similar way to how they are at Jake’s Blog (note – Jake is not only Jeff’s son but he’s Jeff’s blog designer – and does pretty nice work I have to say).
Jakes-Blog
Another useful position on a front page is to position a rectangle ad two or three posts down the page (say between post 2 and 3) – as I do on my main page.
On individual pages I’d recommend jeff consider either placing an ad inside content like I do on many of my blogs (example). This is the hottest zone on the above heat map. In addition to this another option is to add a second ad at the bottom of his posts but before comments. Jeff gets a lot of comments on his blogs and as a result readers often get to the bottom of his posts and will see these ads (illustrated below). As with my other suggestions I’d encourage a blended ad approach here – black text, blue titles/links.
New-Ad
Add more ad units – at present Jeff has only one ad unit – I’d recommend that if income generation were a high priority that he consider adding at least one more unit, if not two. Of course he probably doesn’t want to dominate his page with ads (I’ve no problem with this) but I suspect adding a second unit on individual pages above the comments section would not clutter the page with ads too much.
LinkunitsAdd Link Units - the beauty of Adsense’s link units is that they are small and pretty adaptable. Again Jeff’s son Jake has these on his blog – in one format that might work (at the top of a sidebar). Another option would be to place them along the top of Jeff’s blog or underneath his header (as I do here at Problogger at present). Adlinks work very well on some blogs and not on others – but it’s worth a try as they are pretty small and unobtrusive ads.
I’ll leave it at that for the moment – there is a lot more that can be said but these are the basics that I’d recommend to someone wanting my opinion.
I should say that I’ve written these tips not knowing what Jeff’s overall blog goals are. I suspect that while he’s interested in advertising revenue that it’s not the main motivation for his blog and that he will not want ads to dominate his pages. This is great and fits his blog well – however I believe that he could make a few of these tweaks, still keep a clean and classy design for his blog and not interrupt the flow while still earning a few dollars on the side.
As I’ve written above – I’d love to hear what suggestions you’d make to Jeff in comments below.
So consider this an open letter of advice for Jeff – but also for the many other bloggers who have similar blogs. Jeff uses a fairly standard WordPress template so what I share here might be useful for others too. Feel free to add your suggestions and tips to the comments section below.
The first thing I would recommend that Jeff does is go and have a look at the advice the Adsense team give publishers at their optimization page. Of particular usefulness is the heat map that they give that shows hot zones for the best positioning of ads (see diagram below).
Adsense-Placement-2
Possible Problems/Issues
If you compare this heat map (above) and Jeff’s page (left) you’ll notice immediately a couple of things.
1. Jeff’s BlogAds position is in a completely cold zone. White patches on the heat map are dead/cold patches. I was actually going to buy an ad space from his blog ads but when i saw the position I decided against it.
2. Jeff’s Adsense ads are in a pretty cool zone also (right hand sidebar). This is the position of them on every page in the blog. probably the only worse place for them would be below his footer and on the same sidebar but below the fold.
Buzzmachine-1
Another issue that I’d suggest Jeff take a look at is the visual barrier that he’s created by putting the ads column on a different color background to the rest of the blog. There is a line between his site proper and the ad section. While this might help to identify what is an ad and what isn’t an ad – it is a pretty basic no no if you want to get good results form your ads
.
Not only is there a line between his content and ads, there is also a menu column on his main page which further separates his readers main attention and the ads.
Another observation that i make is that when you look at the source code on Jeff’s site – the Adsense code is the very very last piece of code that you see on the page. This means that the adsense code and the content (which adsense looks at when determining which ads to place on the site) are not in proximity to one another. This is one problem that many bloggers have and it can be one of the reasons that many bloggers get quite irrelevant advertisements served.
Suggested Solutions
I would highly recommend that Jeff do one or all of the following things:
Move his ad column to the left hand side of the blog – This is probably the simplest tweak he could make. It would solve a couple of the problems mentioned above including putting the ads into hot zones and putting the Adsense code higher in the source code (and hopefully increasing ad relevancy).
New Positions – While just moving the ad to the left of screen would definitely help click through rates I’d suggest that other positions are worth experimenting with ads also. For starters could try the positioning on his son’s blog (see below) – a small banner at the top of content. This is a good position for a front page. These ads would do well if they were blended in (ie black text and blue title/links) in a similar way to how they are at Jake’s Blog (note – Jake is not only Jeff’s son but he’s Jeff’s blog designer – and does pretty nice work I have to say).
Jakes-Blog
Another useful position on a front page is to position a rectangle ad two or three posts down the page (say between post 2 and 3) – as I do on my main page.
On individual pages I’d recommend jeff consider either placing an ad inside content like I do on many of my blogs (example). This is the hottest zone on the above heat map. In addition to this another option is to add a second ad at the bottom of his posts but before comments. Jeff gets a lot of comments on his blogs and as a result readers often get to the bottom of his posts and will see these ads (illustrated below). As with my other suggestions I’d encourage a blended ad approach here – black text, blue titles/links.
New-Ad
Add more ad units – at present Jeff has only one ad unit – I’d recommend that if income generation were a high priority that he consider adding at least one more unit, if not two. Of course he probably doesn’t want to dominate his page with ads (I’ve no problem with this) but I suspect adding a second unit on individual pages above the comments section would not clutter the page with ads too much.
LinkunitsAdd Link Units - the beauty of Adsense’s link units is that they are small and pretty adaptable. Again Jeff’s son Jake has these on his blog – in one format that might work (at the top of a sidebar). Another option would be to place them along the top of Jeff’s blog or underneath his header (as I do here at Problogger at present). Adlinks work very well on some blogs and not on others – but it’s worth a try as they are pretty small and unobtrusive ads.
I’ll leave it at that for the moment – there is a lot more that can be said but these are the basics that I’d recommend to someone wanting my opinion.
I should say that I’ve written these tips not knowing what Jeff’s overall blog goals are. I suspect that while he’s interested in advertising revenue that it’s not the main motivation for his blog and that he will not want ads to dominate his pages. This is great and fits his blog well – however I believe that he could make a few of these tweaks, still keep a clean and classy design for his blog and not interrupt the flow while still earning a few dollars on the side.
As I’ve written above – I’d love to hear what suggestions you’d make to Jeff in comments below.
Overnight Blogging Success
Here is a quote from Ali that I should be tattooed to the foreheads of all bloggers hoping to make it rich via their blogging efforts:
‘My brother Curt, founder of Folio Corp, former CEO of MyFamily.com, and current CEO of Agilix, a venture-backed company, is fond of saying telling how his company was going to be an overnight success…after 10 years of hard work.
I believe that the single most important key to success in an online venture is doing the little things day after day for years and years until you magically reach the tipping point and everyone seems to have heard of you. In other words, persistence is required for most successful ventures.’
Last night I had just finished posting on 15 new digital cameras and printers that had been announced by Canon – it was 2am – and I was just about to close my laptop when my instant messenger beeped – signaling someone wanted a chat. 2am is not my favorite time of the day to start IM conversations but my curiosity got the better of me and I opened the window to find out who it was. It turned out to be a journalist from a pretty major online publication wanting an interview (glad I checked).
I am a little fearful of the article that will be the result of the interview because at 2.00am to 2.30am in I don’t generally have much that is worthwhile to say – however the one thing that I found myself saying to every second question is ‘it takes time’. The questions were varied – but the answer remained.
• How do you build up a readership?
• How do you get ranked in Search Engines?
• How do you start so many blogs?
• How did you learn your craft?
• How did you get credibility in the area you blog in?
• How quickly can you build a successful blog?
It takes time. As a result essential qualities of successful entrepreneurial bloggers are patience and persistence. If you have these you just might find yourself becoming an overnight success – eventually.
Read Ali post – How to have Overnight Internet Success
While you read it I’m going back to bed – I’ve got a blogging hangover.
‘My brother Curt, founder of Folio Corp, former CEO of MyFamily.com, and current CEO of Agilix, a venture-backed company, is fond of saying telling how his company was going to be an overnight success…after 10 years of hard work.
I believe that the single most important key to success in an online venture is doing the little things day after day for years and years until you magically reach the tipping point and everyone seems to have heard of you. In other words, persistence is required for most successful ventures.’
Last night I had just finished posting on 15 new digital cameras and printers that had been announced by Canon – it was 2am – and I was just about to close my laptop when my instant messenger beeped – signaling someone wanted a chat. 2am is not my favorite time of the day to start IM conversations but my curiosity got the better of me and I opened the window to find out who it was. It turned out to be a journalist from a pretty major online publication wanting an interview (glad I checked).
I am a little fearful of the article that will be the result of the interview because at 2.00am to 2.30am in I don’t generally have much that is worthwhile to say – however the one thing that I found myself saying to every second question is ‘it takes time’. The questions were varied – but the answer remained.
• How do you build up a readership?
• How do you get ranked in Search Engines?
• How do you start so many blogs?
• How did you learn your craft?
• How did you get credibility in the area you blog in?
• How quickly can you build a successful blog?
It takes time. As a result essential qualities of successful entrepreneurial bloggers are patience and persistence. If you have these you just might find yourself becoming an overnight success – eventually.
Read Ali post – How to have Overnight Internet Success
While you read it I’m going back to bed – I’ve got a blogging hangover.
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