content planning - Express Writers

Explaining Our Content Strategy Services at Express Writers (4 Ways We Can Strategize & Save You Time)

January 5, 2021October 17, 2019 by Adam Oakley

This blog was updated in October 2019. This will hardly come as a surprise, but we love content. ❤ Our entire business is built on content, but it goes beyond that – it’s in our blood. We know that great content is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business, find new leads, and stand out among your competitors. You don’t have to take our word for it, either, the numbers speak for themselves: 71% of all B2B buyers read (multiple) blogs when making decisions. B2B companies with a smart content strategy generate 67% more leads than their competitors. Websites that blog regularly have (on average) 434% more indexed pages in Google. Great content gives your business the attention it deserves, but just publishing without a plan is hardly what we’d call a solid strategy. What you need is a sustainable, data-driven process, that can help you grow your business and keep giving you positive results over the long term. You need a content strategy, and that’s where we come in with our expert content strategy services. 4 Highly Recommended Content Strategy Services to Help You Create Winning Content 1. A custom editorial calendar 2. In-depth keyword research 3. Topic planning for your blog and website 4. Expert content strategy consultations We didn’t select any of these services at random. These are many of the same processes that we used to grow Express Writers to the point where it is today (I’ll talk more about this in a second!). Now that we know what works and why, we’re ready to share these services with you to grow your own business. [bctt tweet=”To have a working and winning content strategy, you need 4 components: a custom editorial calendar, keywords researched, topics planned, and expert guidance. Get these essentials with the help of @ExpWriters. ? ” username=”JuliaEMcCoy”] Developing the Right Content Strategy Helped Us Grow — and It Should Help You Too Here’s how I know just how effective a well-planned content strategy can be: it’s how we grew Express Writers to the point where it is today. It took years to figure out and, more importantly, perfect the entire process, and I didn’t want to settle for anything less than perfection. Within 2 years of implementing our content strategy, Express Writers boomed to 6 figures and then 7 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). We weren’t doing all that bad before, but the growth was insane, and I can boil that down to two things: 1. Our content strategy. We’re not really into creating content for content’s sake. Instead, I developed a content strategy process that focuses on high-quality, authority-level content, guided by in-depth SEO research. Once I got clear on the six areas of content strategy we needed to clarify and implement, our real content success began to happen. (My first foray into content strategy was when I built a simple team-only inner training on content strategy, as far back as 2015. Today, I’ve taken these cores and developed them into a $1,000 course with over 100 enrolled students, and a book that tops the charts on Amazon.) 2. The amazing team we have in place. FACTS: If you want to execute a winning strategy, you need expert, talented help in your corner. ? At Express Writers, we’re content experts first, a team secondly — not the other way around. We love what we do, and that has always come first. We didn’t scramble for our expert hats and then market ourselves. We earned a real status by building real skills, and THEN sold services to our clients in our agency. Read about our standards here. I’ve talked extensively about the content strategy we implemented to grow Express Writers. However, if I had to sum it up in a few words, it would be these. Stop wasting time with low-effort content. Instead, put real effort into high-quality pieces and SEO. It sounds pretty simple when you put it like that. However, the amount of research, planning, and work that goes into executing a solid content strategy is mindboggling, particularly as your website starts to grow. Remember how I mentioned it took us years to perfect the process? And that’s coming from people that do this for a living! [bctt tweet=”We have succeeded mostly because of the content strategy we’ve implemented throughout the years. The lesson: Stop wasting time with low-effort content. Instead, put real effort into high-quality and your #strategy. ? ” username=”ExpWriters”] 4 Ways We Save You Some Serious Time and Trouble with Our Expert Content Strategy Services You already understand the sheer power of content when it comes to growing an online business, so let’s talk about how we can help you. 1. We Put Together a Custom Editorial Calendar that Fits Your Goals (?It’s a Must-Have!) You want your website to rank for as many keywords as possible, which means you need content. A lot of websites focus on putting out as much content as possible at a breakneck pace, but that’s not a winning strategy. What you need is a plan and, as simple as it may sound, a calendar. That means a week-by-week plan that outlines the content you’re going to publish. That way, you have a bird’s-eye view of what topics you’re going to target and when. Here’s how it works: You tell us what your niche is, what your business is about, and what sets you apart. Our crack content strategists do their research, and here’s what you get: A two-month editorial calendar, including perfect-fit keywords and topics your audience will love. Tentative schedule dates designed to maximize the returns on your content. An easy-to-understand report using an Excel template. Those are the basics, but all our services also include plenty of extras. Our editorial calendars also include lists of influencers we recommend you engage within your niche, BuzzSumo content analysis reports, and an evergreen guide on the metrics we use. Every single editorial calendar we send is put together by our … Read more

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Content Plan For Your Content Marketing

February 7, 2024June 20, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Mr. Franklin was a smart man. In the world of content marketing, attempting to move forward without a plan is a recipe for disaster. There are tens of thousands of stories about businesses that have heard content marketing works and decided to give it a try. They create 1 or 2 500-word blog posts a week, post them to their blog and social media pages for a few months, and hope for the best. And then, after a little while, nothing happens. So they give up. They stop creating. They stop posting. Why didn’t it work? They were shooting at a forest, instead of a target. To avoid falling into this trap, you need to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. But how do you do this? By creating a bulletproof content marketing plan. And this guide is going to help you do just that. Let’s get started. [bctt tweet=”In the world of content marketing, attempting to move forward without a plan is a recipe for disaster. Learn more about building your best #contentplan yet for #contentmarketing results” username=”ExpWriters”] Why Do You Need a Content Marketing Plan? [bctt tweet=”Marketers that have a documented #contentmarketing plan have more success. @JuliaEMcCoy ” username=”ExpWriters”] Take a look at this infographic from the team at Impact: As you can see, 89% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers are using content marketing. But only 37% of B2B marketers and 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. Not surprisingly, the percentage of B2B and B2C marketers that have documented strategies is almost identical to the percentage of marketers that say their strategy is extremely or very effective. This isn’t a coincidence. Having a documented plan is crucial to content marketing success. The 6 Steps to Developing a Rock Solid Content Marketing Plan You know you need a plan. Now we’re going to show you how to develop one. 1. Know Your Goals and How to Measure Them One of the most important aspects of developing a content marketing plan is to determine the actual goals that you’re trying to achieve through your efforts. There are essentially five goals that content marketing can help you achieve: Develop Brand Awareness Drive Traffic to Your Website Generating Sales Leads Converting Leads into Customers Improving Customer Retention and Driving Upsells But knowing your goals isn’t enough. You also need to know if what you’re doing is helping you get closer to reaching them. My three-bucket goal strategy can help with that. In this strategy, I teach the usage of three main content marketing goals that lead to profits, and what types of content you can put in each bucket to get there. Learn more here. Measuring content marketing success, as one would imagine, can be difficult. In most cases, it will require a fair amount of tools to cover the measurement of all of your identified goals. For example, measuring website and blog metrics requires the use of Google Analytics. Keyword research means using tools like Mangools or SEMrush. 2. Identify Your One Reader and Where You’ll Find Them As you probably already know, marketing doesn’t work very well if you attempt to target several different audiences. Instead, you need to identify exactly who you’re targeting and then find out the best place to target them with your content. CoSchedule’s Ben Sailer said it well: there are three main reasons to define your target audience. They include: But, how? In this guide to creating a detailed target persona, we cover more on this subject. Here’s an example of a well-developed persona: Need more help? Here’s the top 9 demographic areas you should know about your persona: Once you’ve deconstructed your persona, psychographics helps give you an understanding of how to talk to your target market. Personality, attitudes, values, interests, hobbies, lifestyle, and behavior are all important things to identify here. The easiest way to do this is by taking a look at the social behavior of people that fit your basic demographics. What do they share, tweet, pin, and like? As you generate this information, you can begin to shape your content messaging in a way that resonates with the audience that you’ve identified. Once you know the demographics and psychographics of your target audience, simply find out where those people are spending their time. And then publish your content there. Avalaunch Media put together a fun infographic that identifies the personalities of users on different social media platforms that can help with this: 3. Perform a Content Audit Content audits are important for many reasons. They help determine a variety of things about your website, including: Moz says that performing a thorough content audit of your website involves quite a few steps: Crawling all indexable URLs. Screaming Frog’s free SEO Spider Tool is a great way to do this. Gathering additional metrics. In addition to URL and on-page metrics, you’ll want to gather info on things like internal and external links, traffic, content uniqueness, etc. Putting your information into an easily digestible dashboard. The optimal option for this step is Excel. Understand your dashboard. Sizemore mentions that, “a good place to start would be to look for any content-related issues that might cause an algorithmic filter or manual penalty to be applied.” Write up a report. This report should summarize the findings, provide recommendations, and examine next steps for improving the site’s search rankings. While this process may seem a bit intensive, it’s necessary to ensure that your new content marketing plan is put together in a way that it can be successful. What If You Don’t Already Have Content on Your Site? If you don’t already have content to audit, you can perform a content audit of your competitors. And while doing this is important, you don’t want to get caught up spending hours and hours mulling over every single detail of a competitor’s website and content. Use these … Read more

How to Do Your Best Content Planning This 2016

December 31, 2020January 12, 2016 by Adam Oakley

2016 is here – another year is upon us! And many people just like you are wondering what they’re going to do about their content marketing in the New Year. For many creators, the task of content creation became stressful a long time ago and, now, many view it as more of a chore than a joy, especially given the importance and stress of it all. It’s one of the key marketing principles to include if you have a website and presence at all online. Fortunately, there are ways to hack your content planning in order to ensure that you’re doing your best work in 2016 and that all the content you create is content that your readers are excited to interact with. As a busy group of expert content creators, we know just what you need to know in order to do your best content planning this 2016! Here are our best tips. First: Defining Good Content Planning The concept of content planning is pretty simple: content planning allows you to plan your content in advance in order to avoid frantic, last-minute crushes to create something as well as allowing you to ensure that your content is doing what it’s supposed to do: attract readers. Content planning has many benefits, not the least of which are planning for seasonal content, ensuring proper keyword usage, taking action on reader requests, and promoting content variation. The 5 Steps of Effective Content Planning Great content planning is a little bit like planning a road trip: you need to know where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and what you’re going to do once you have. In order to ace your content planning in 2016 and beyond, you’ll need to follow these 5 steps: 1) Define your Destination In order to plan content effectively, you’ll need to know what purpose you want your content to fulfill. Maybe 2015 saw you with large traffic numbers but low conversions or maybe you want to make more sales. In any event, you need to define the goal of your content before you begin creating it. A fantastic way to do this is to compile a list of primary and secondary goals. Once you’ve laid out your goals, you’ll want to set a time frame for achieving them. Building relationships with your audience is going to take time and it’s unfair for you to expect anything to happen overnight. So, for example, maybe you say you’d like to increase your sales through content 20% by June of 2016. This gives you 6 months to test new theories, plan your content, and make changes to your company. 2) Identify Your Target Audience Once you’ve identified your goals, it’s time to identify the people who will help them become a reality. Enter your target audience. These people are hugely important to your company and it pays to ensure that you’re doing everything you can to nurture and create content for them. Even if you’ve defined your target audience in the past, the beginning of 2016 is a great time to reevaluate it. Target audiences do change over time and it’s important to keep your marketing personas up to date and current. To begin this process, sit down and consider the following questions: What demographics (age, location, income, gender, education, occupation, marital status) comprise your target audience? What do they value (interests, morals, attitudes, values, lifestyles, hobbies)? What are they interested in? What content medium (text, videos, podcasts) are they most likely to interact with? To get a fuller feel for your target persona, take a look at your current site visitors to determine what the typical reader is and what they want. For more information about creating a buyer’s persona that helps you get a handle on who your target audience is and what they want, consider this buyer persona card from Manobyte: 3) Define your distribution channels Once you know what your goals are and who you’re speaking to, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get your message out. Content planning extends far beyond blog posts and entails social media posts, video content, and a variety of other web-based platforms. In order to determine which of these many channels will most benefit you, you’ll have to consider where your target audience likes to hang out. For example, if your audience loves Twitter and Facebook but isn’t so into Instagram, you’d be wise to begin your content distribution efforts on those platforms. If you’re new to content creation, a great benchmark to start with is Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, and Instagram. These four platforms combine to offer short- and long-form content, visual content, and interactive content, which is a fantastic foundation for new marketers to start from. So, in conclusion, you’ll want to spend some time considering where your audience is, what content types they expect to see, which channels your audience is currently interacting with and where, if any, the content gaps are. Considering these things will help you put together an effective content strategy that truly caters to your unique readers. 4) Establish your team According to Hootsuite, any content marketing strategy that’s up to snuff will follow the Rule of Thirds. The Rule of Thirds suggests that of all the content you post, 1/3 should be promotional, 1/3 should share ideas from industry thought leaders, and 1/3 should seek to build personal relationships with readers. This is one of the reasons content planning is so important: creating good content takes time and no business can expect to adhere to the rule of thirds and create quality material without extensive planning ahead of time. For this reason, you’ll need to establish a team that’s dedicated to your content creation needs. Ideally, you’ll have a writer, designer, editor, and publisher to create content and help distribute it. In some cases, however, there aren’t enough people on-staff to handle these roles or a company simply doesn’t have the time to create content in-house. In … Read more

Express Writers Re-Launches June 2015: Our Membership Program, New Products, and Quality Updates

June 19, 2024June 13, 2015 by Adam Oakley

This June, our little ol’ team at Express Writers is becoming bigger and better than ever before. We’ve spent some serious time and resources (might add, blood and sweat to that) to update our major content products and launch some brand new things. One thing you can say about us—we are not your typical content writers. We’re a firm that’s dynamic, ever updating, and developing new things internally that are ahead of the curve. Our staff is passionate and involved, and we all love what we do! Ready to hear about all our new changes? Express Writers Re-Launch This June: What Are Our Major Changes & Updates? For about three months now, our CTO Josh McCoy has led his team of developers in creating an ultra-custom Membership system that will be accessible to our ongoing clients. As our CEO, I’ve sat down and recreated our major Content Strategy training and written tests for all our Strategists, as well as wrote and launched content standard quality tests for every single one of our writers and editors. Our team is better than ever before, and we’re staffing more people almost every week to keep up with our growth. 1. Membership Platform The long-awaited Membership platform and program is finally here! Custom designed on a platform built from scratch by our development team, the Membership system replicates our Content Shop with an online ordering platform only accessible to clients who deposit and spend a minimum of $1,000 a month. When the deposit is placed, it activates the platform and clients will be able to see and order with their ongoing membership rates on every product. Besides the discounted rate access, membership clients will have easier input forms that allow them to simply upload monthly project specs: and we’ll also dedicate a project Editor to each membership client account that comes in with a style guide. Membership Benefits: Membership platform, allowing clients to access and order all the discounted products. Dedicated Staff Editors, exclusive to Membership accounts only: we train one of our staff Editors on your style guide and requirements for long-term, specific editorial attention. This is an optional add-on, starting at $85 for 20 pages. No contracts, ever. Just deposit and spend $1,000 per month. Consistently lower rates on all our products – up to 20% off! Learn more and sign up here. 2. Content Quality Standards Update We’ve completed training and testing our entire staff of writers and editors on the proper use of high quality citations, checked with the MozBar, in all our blog content. We’ve also updated our content formatting rules to include high quality headlines and sub-headers that will better attract and engage readers. These fundamental quality updates will ensure your blog content meets and exceeds Google’s content standards. See our Content Shop Blog Prices. 3. Content Blogging Plans Update We’ve done a thorough audit of how our blog plans work, and found that a word span within 1,500 words works best for the average blog. (Longer words are always favorable for Google rankings, as long as it’s quality: we recommend buying or creating single blogs over 2,000 words a few times a month for posting on your blog.) We’ve also created an additional plan for more versatility. All blogs will include high quality citations and text formatting. Lastly, we’ve introduced add-ons for blogging that include the revamped Content Planning service (a full monthly Editorial Calendar and more); as well as optional premium designed images that we can create for every blog. View our Blog Packages in the Content Shop. 4. Content Planning Replaces Content Curation Formerly called Content Curation, our Content Planning is an entirely re-vamped product in our Content Strategy lineup, available as an add-on for all of our blog plans, single website pages content planning (research and title creation), and fundamentals package for clients with new websites or blogs. Our revamped product, Content Planning, adds a new section to the Editorial Calendar we deliver monthly, as well as overview reports, called BuzzSumo Analysis. In this analysis we conduct research on your industry influencers and what is currently trending on the web (the people who are succeeding at content in your niche) and using BuzzSumo, we’ll look at what content they are writing, how many shares it gets on what platform, and prepare a topic analysis report. Finally, our Content Strategists will identify any competitor and influencers shortcomings and notate how you can do it better with a few top suggestions and takeaways. Tools we used: BuzzSumo, SEMRush, WordTracker, Hubspot/Portent title helpers, Quora, human eye of our Content Strategist. Content Planning Offerings (view the Content Planning product in our Content Shop) Content Planning Package: This is where you’ll experience the most out of our content planning products. Our ongoing Content Planning packages are for those who have our blogging plans and are looking for total content planning, organization, and creation. We’ll analyze what content is currently trending in your niche using BuzzSumo, research keywords and topics, and create an Editorial Calendar mapped out for best monthly content. Clients also get to talk to their Content Strategist in a 30-minute monthly strategizing meeting. Content Planning Fundamentals: This is a packaged plan for those who do not have an existing content plan, blog, or web content going: or are looking to re-vamp their current content. Our Content Strategists will deliver a Content Planning Overview excel report with page or blog suggestions, full keyword analysis report, and a BuzzSumo Content Analysis. Clients can (optionally) meet with their Content Strategist for a 30-minute discussion. Content Planning For Websites: Perfect for the new (or revamping) website owner who doesn’t know what pages to plan for and add to their website. We’ll conduct keyword research, deliver a BuzzSumo Content Analysis, and create an overview report that suggests categories and specific pages to add for successful web content. Clients can (optionally) hold a 30-minute meeting with their Content Strategist to share input. 5. Social Media Improvements We’re now creating custom, branded & designed images with Canva, using our stock image subscription … Read more

7 Key Factors That Make Up An Exceptional Website Content Writing Service

January 1, 2021December 16, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Your site is nothing more than a pointless parking space for your logo and brand, if you don’t have good web content on it. But there is a lot more to good content than offering up useful information. Today’s internet reader becomes bored easily, so you have to offer up something fresh, creative and engaging every time — that is, if you want the reader to come back for more. Enter the secret: Talented website writers from a website content writing service, that can create expert copy for your niche and brand. Let’s face it. Not every business owner is a good writer. Or handy with SEO. Or a conversion expert. And let’s face it: a real copywriter, an expert website content writer, actually is all that. Your investment will come back tenfold. Let’s explore the key qualities a top online writing service will have. Hire A Website Content Writing Service to Serve Up the Right Content So how do you nail awesome content each time? We’ve compiled seven key tips that exceptional website content writers will utilize in creating great content. Keep your content flowing and producing this year by hiring the right web writing service. 1. They get to the point & skip the fluff Like we said, today’s reader wants you to get to the point and keep it as concise as possible. Don’t ramble on and on or go off on an irrelevant tangent — that’s just poor content marketing altogether. Your web content should have an introduction that clearly tells the reader what he or she will gain by reading on. Then, your content must deliver on what you’ve promised. Use as many words as it takes to bring your point across and eliminate any unnecessary fluff just to reach a particular word count. A knowledgeable web creator will know this. 2. Lists are loved & put to use List formats are awesome! List-based sites, according to Grammarly.com, get tons of page views. Why? Because everything is grouped in neat little points and it’s easier for a reader to digest. The title also clearly states what the reader is gaining by reading your web content. For example, if you title your content “Top 10 Copywriting Tips” the reader knows he’s going to get ten copywriting tips if he reads further. 3. They are headline gurus Headlines can make or break your content. If you have a drab, uninteresting headline no one is going to click and read more. Think of a headline as an invitation to a web content party. The party is your content and your headline is what encourages people to join in on the fun. So how do you write a catchy headline? According to an article by Social Media Today, a good headline is one that: Is clear and tells the reader exactly what she’s gaining by reading your article; Makes a promise to the reader; Tantalizes, teases and even hits a nerve — compelling the reader to go forward; Is a one-liner that is easy to share and understand. 4. They don’t make it just about you Your web content shouldn’t be about you, ever. People don’t want to read about you, they want to know how you can help them. An expert website content writing service will know just how to tactfully do this. Don’t expect many conversions if you boast about your product, service and how it all benefits you. Instead, turn it around and make it all about the reader. Tell the reader exactly what benefits they’ll receive by reading your content or buying your products. The word “you” should be throughout your content so that the reader feels as though you’re talking directly to them. 5. They’ll break up that wall of text A wall of text turns readers away instantly. After all, if you walked up to a big wall would you want to climb it or walk around it? Reading web content online is the same thing. No one wants to sift through a wall of text — they want it broken down so they can easily climb over it, or, even better, walk through it. Shorten up your paragraphs — quit being epic. Use short, concise sentences. Put powerful statements, call-to-actions, and other important notations in their own paragraph, on their own line for maximum impact and visibility. Just like we’re doing here. 6. They’ll infuse personality into your content If you’re a dull dud, it’s time to add a spark of personality to your web content. Be personable, talk to your readers as if you’re talking to a friend, and be true to your brand. Are you a youthful brand? Think of your target customer and how they would relate to a person talking to them. If you’re targeting older individuals, you will want to keep it professional, but still friendly. If you’re targeting the 21 and younger crowd you better toss in a few slang terms, add some fun to it, and be social. The tone you use in your content, according to Search Engine Watch, should suit your brand’s personality and your target customer’s personality. Obviously, if you’re selling legal services you should sound professional and avoid slang, but you can still be friendly in the process, right? 7. They’ll offer expert insights People want web content they can trust. There’s too much content out there that doesn’t showcase authority or a company’s expertise in the industry. Make sure your website content writing service offers expert advice. Ask for a few “how-to’s” or guides that are in-depth and teach the reader something. Conclusion: Get Your Best Website Content Writing Service Yet The more effort you put into your web content, the more your content can do for you. If you want to increase your conversion rates or get more social media recognition, consider your content first. By following even a handful of these tips here you can give your content a much-needed face lift and make your content work for you. We are a high-quality, proven website … Read more

5 Tips for Maintaining Content Flow During the Holidays

January 1, 2021December 11, 2013 by Adam Oakley

You know it—these end-of-year holidays are some of the busiest times. From endless company gatherings to family events, you’re bound to be going from one spot to the next, and with very little breathing time in between. Here’s the conflicting part. As a website or blog owner, you know that content is important. Google demands website owners to take charge, publish on a predictable schedule and always keep up with quality. Content Flow and The Holidays: Maintaining Your Flow With the chaos surrounding the holidays, meeting Google’s demands and the demands of your family can easily overwhelm even the world’s best planner. 1) Holidays Aren’t Really Vacations Let’s face it holidays aren’t vacations. Even when you go out of town, you won’t find much time to yourself. You have family to visit (remember your mother-in-law who has insisted you come out this year — even though “out” means 500 miles from home?); you have kids who want the perfect gifts; and you’ve got some decorations to deal with to bring up the spirit. There’s a dizzying array of demands on your plate — shopping, parties, cleaning, entertaining, baking, just to name a few. There’s a heightened risk of anxiety during the holidays, according to the APA and while we cannot handle your shopping or baking, we can offer some insight as to how you can manage your content flow while you’re off dealing with the holidays. 2) Plan Ahead, Seriously Once the holidays hit you’ll have little time to deal with much. So, a few months before the holidays you need to sit down and plan out at least two months of preset topics. If you already have a year-long content strategy, your topics should be already set and ready-to-go for the holiday span. If you don’t have one, don’t panic. Instead, sit down (like now) and start writing out your topics for the next two months. Ideally you should have enough topics to go over Thanksgiving, Christmas and well into half of January (so you have time to recuperate and regroup). When you write out your topics, make sure to include: A quick summary or bullet points about what you’ll cover in the post Any links or photos you’ll use Any keywords you plan on incorporating Write out the title (if you can) A posting schedule — when the blog will be posted 3) Wait, I Can’t Think of That Many Topics! Yes, it can be hard to come up with a few months of topics on the fly, but the holiday season should be one of the easiest to pre-plan for. Think of the inspiration that is all around you — Thanksgiving gatherings, Christmas morning, fun treats to make with the kids, etc. Be fun, be holiday-inspired and just let the holidays guide your content. People around this time of year are craving holiday-themed posts, so feed their cravings. Need some more holiday marketing tips? Consider this article by the Small Business Association. 4) Now, Write Ahead So you have a plan that covers the next two months. The next step is to write those topics up. Sure, that might require you to sit down and spend an entire week writing blogs, but by getting them done and scheduled you have one less thing to worry about this holiday season. 5) Consider a Managed Solution Sometimes it’s just too much to plan it all out and write it up in a holiday crunch. If that sounds like your situation, a managed solution might be the optimum choice for you. A managed solution can be hosted in-house or outsourced to a content writing service. With a managed solution you can still remain in control of your blog topics or you can hand over the reins and let your content service pick the topics for you. While a managed solution might mean you’re paying someone else to manage your blog, there are some critical benefits that often outweigh the costs, including: You’ll have a team of experts who know about blogs and content. They can devise a content strategy that keeps your posts coming regularly – which helps with your search engine rankings too. You won’t have to worry about writing while you’re busy. A managed solution has a team of writers that whip up quality posts and keep up with your blog. A content service is likely to have a team of editors, which means you save time on proofreading and editing. Your content will be optimized with keywords, but also will be holiday-targeted, which means your content is more likely to be shared and go viral — double win for you! Maintaining content flow during the holidays is crucial. Google expects you to publish on a regular basis and if you stop altogether, even to break for the holiday, you might notice a drop in your rank. Instead of risking the chance, add your blogs content to your to-do list for this holiday season.

How to NOT Stuff Your Content Like this Thursday’s Turkey

January 1, 2021November 28, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Thanksgiving is upon us. (Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re reading this!) While everyone else is dreaming about a succulent turkey with all of the traditional fixings, perhaps you’re dreaming about better SEO rankings. Okay, maybe you’re thinking about the turkey a little more. No Content Stuffing, It’s Simply Not Allowed! In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we felt it was time to talk about stuffing. But we’re not talking about Grandma’s famous stuffing – we’re talking about keywords and how stuffing won’t be as satisfying as your Thanksgiving meal. Keywords Are Like Cranberry Sauce We all know cranberry sauce. It’s tart, sweet and just the right amount on the plate amplifies your Thanksgiving dinner to the maximum. Now, add too much cranberry sauce and your plate is overwhelmed and all you taste is that tart, bitterness that too many cranberries can give. It ruins your dinner. Keywords are like cranberry sauce. Stuff too much into your content and it comes off bitter not only to your readers, but search engines as well. Today’s Google looks at keywords like that red, iconic condiment of Thanksgiving: just the right amount to finish off your content is perfect. So what is keyword stuffing? If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a practice of loading blogs and web pages with keywords in high volume as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. Often, these keywords are awkward, placed randomly and really don’t improve the content — sometimes they are not even relevant to the content, according to Google Webmaster Tools. Filling pages with rapid fire keywords won’t do you much good and will certainly give your readers a reason to move on to a different site. An example of keyword stuffing: “SEO, SEO services, SEO Los Angeles.” Notice how there’s no sentence structure? Just a bundle of keywords? This is an extreme example, but hopefully you get the point. Here, read another, we dare ya! “Here at SEO Experts in Los Angeles, we sell the best SEO services in Los Angeles. So if you’re looking for SEO experts in Los Angeles, be sure to check out our SEO services. We’re the best SEO experts in Los Angeles.” It’s awful and quite painful to even read, right? Trust me, your readers will think the same, if that’s what they’re greeted with on your website. So Keyword Stuffing Doesn’t Work Then? Nope, not anymore. Google and other search engines have smartened up. Keyword stuffing no longer works because Google’s algorithms are trained to look over a site and determine if keywords are used improperly or in an unreasonable number. If you have an ultra-high density of a particular keyword, Google will drop your rank rather than increase it. If you’re a repeat offender you might notice your site is removed from the search engine index altogether. What Happens If I Keyword Stuff? Okay, so let’s say you add too many keywords to your content. Just like the cranberry sauce example, you’re likely to get: Less engagement and sharing on your site. No one’s going to rave about your turkey (content) when it’s smothered in cranberry sauce. You’ll be penalized by the search engines for keyword stuffing and recovery isn’t fun. Your conversion rate will drastically drop (or disappear altogether). No one will bother reading your content — would you? So How Do I Avoid Keyword Stuffing? It’s easier said than done. First and foremost, quit fretting about your keyword density — this isn’t as important as you think. Focus on long-tail keywords, as the Content Marketing Institute suggests. These are phrases with three or more words that offer a high volume of searches and are more relevant to your content — and also less likely to accidentally stuff. Review your keyword density before you publish. Less is always more with keywords so add a keyword or key phrase when it makes sense, but don’t focus on a density at a specific number. There is no magic number, but some say two to five percent is probably the safer goal to reach. No matter what you do, don’t load your pages with irrelevant keywords. According to a recent article by WebProNews.com, using keywords that aren’t relevant to your content or brand marketing can be detrimental to your rank. Some Tips for Success Create a 12-month content strategy that has topics, titles and keywords that you will use (naturally) within the content. Write to offer your readers value — don’t write for the search engines. Create content that is practical and helpful. Be unique and show off your expertise — that’s why people are visiting your site in the first place. Use title tags and descriptions for optimization. Make sure your content is never duplicated. Use spellcheck and grammar check — no one likes misspelled words.