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.
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.
