All Entries Tagged With: "content"

What’s A ‘Bad Blog’ Anyway?

Spend any time at all online and you are sure to run into someone recommending that you start a blog for your business. Stick around any longer and you’ll encounter someone warning you not to start one if you are going to have a “bad one”. But what’s a bad blog? It’s almost never defined.

The implication is that if the content isn’t a pleasure to read then it’s a bad blog. But what is a pleasure for one person to read is not necessarily a pleasure for someone else. Have an interest in reading about badminton tips every day? No? Well, maybe someone else does.

But it isn’t all about the nature of the content either. You also have to consider blog design and the quality of the writing. Sure, you want your blog to be attractive. And, yes, you want the writing to be high quality writing. But understand that not every blog has to be of the same caliber as a blog on the A-list. If they all were then there’d be no A-list.

So what’s a bad blog? Let’s start by defining a good blog. A good blog is one that:

• Informs your readers about topics of interest within your niche
• Sets itself apart as unique from other blogs in the same niche
• Drives traffic to important landing pages on your website (the job of closing the sale is on those landing pages
• If your blog is a sales blog then it closes a decent percentage of sales or converts and adequate percentage of traffic to sales, or leads, or whatever your goal is
• Adds optimized content to your website often
• If an offsite blog, builds back links to your primary web property
• Gets people interested in your niche talking in the comments section
• Provides you with information about the needs of your target market

Not every good blog does every one of these, but a good blog should do many of them. It seems to reason then that a “bad blog” is one that doesn’t do any of these or that only does a few while neglecting the most important elements of a good blog. The problem is, a blog may have many different purposes or your standards for a good blog may not match what someone else’s idea of a good blog is. What every blog owner should refrain from doing is allowing your readers from defining what is “good” and what is “bad” based on whether or not they enjoy reading it. That’s not necessarily the judge of a good blog.

Assuming that readers must enjoy reading the blog presumes that the purpose of the blog is for readership, i.e. enjoyability. But simply having readers enjoying your content won’t necessarily lead to sales. You want your blog to make you money, right?

Of course, not all blogs are sales tools either. You can have a blog simply for SEO purposes. The point is this: Define the purpose of your blog and live up to that purpose. That’s really the only measure of blog quality. Don’t do that and you’ve got a bad blog.

What Is An Authority Blog And How Do You Create One?

There is a concept in business blogging that has become popular and it bears some explaining. The word “authority” gets used a lot, but it’s a loaded word. What does it mean?

To become authoritative in one’s niche means something different to just about everyone. From an SEO perspective, to be authoritative means that the search engines consider your website an authoritative source. That gives you some search enging clout, but it doesn’t guarantee you any business. In a word, to become authoritative from an SEO perspective, is to be at the top of the rankings for a specific key phrase. That key phrase may or may not be one that is competitive or that receives a lot of searches each month.

If you query the phrase “Article Content Provider” without the quotes you’ll see that ArticleContentProvider.com is listed in the No. 1 position. See those three links under the Google snippet? Those links are placed there by Google and they are not paid for. They are indication that Google considers ACP an authoritative site for the key search phrase “article content provider.” But there are only about 58 searches for that specific phrase each month. That isn’t a lot is it?

No, it’s not. But those 58 searchers are buyers. They may not buy today, but if someone is searching for an article content provider then they are in the market for an article writer. All it takes is about 10% traffic-to-conversion ratio to build a modest income from a search phrase like that. Do it a few times with different search phrases and you can build a good business. There is only one problem. You can’t make yourself an authority site. That’s a classification reserved by the search engines alone. It is their editorial judgment.

However, you can do some things on the technical side of building your site to move your reputation in that direction. Success is not guaranteed.

The Human Side Of Authority

Another way authority is judged is by human value. What do your readers think? It is very subjective.

You can build an authoritative site that attracts a lot of visitors who hang on your every word, but that is hard to do. Building authority online in this manner is no different than building authority off line. It is based on your own personality and character. You essentially become a cult of personality. Real world examples include Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Oprah Winfrey. Online, you’ll find the same phenomena in personalities like Andy Beal, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clark. Each is considered an authority in their own right on a particular topic, both by the search engines and by a large number of admirers.

Do you have to have that kind of clout to succeed online? While it’s great if you do, it isn’t necessary. For every Brian Clark there are thousands of small business people churning out a living online. They may be authorities in their own small space, locally or globally, but their crowning achievement is not necessarily a label, but their influence within their small circle.

Let’s be careful how we use the word authority. It means different things to different people. The real goal – for all of us – is to connect with real people, build solid SEO strategies into our web businesses, and see an increase in the harvest.

Twitterdoodle: Add Keyword Content To Your Blog Automatically

I don’t often recommend automatic content creation tools, but TwitterDoodle is one that I’d recommend, but not for every blog.

The idea behind Twitterdoodle is to stream keyword-based Twitter messages into your blog as posts. This adds keyword-based content to your blog, increases traffic, and boosts your search engine rankings. It does this almost like magic once you set it on automatic.

Let’s say you write a blog about dental services. You can set Twitterdoodle to search Twitter for keywords related to your dental blog. You can choose keywords like “dental services” or more specific kewyords such as “veneers” and “braces” and have those Twitter messages run through your blog, putting several messages into one blog post. You’ll begin to see yourself getting more traffic to your blog and higher search engine rankings for those keywords that you target.

Twitterdoodle also allows you to input certain Twitter usernames to opt out of the Twitterstream. So if you get complaints then you can take those Twitterers out of your content stream.

Is this a fair use of content? Some people, to be honest with you, don’t like it. They’ll call you a scraper. But if you aren’t selling advertising on those pages where the Twitterstream appears or you aren’t using other people’s content in other ways that give you profits at their expense then I see nothing wrong with it. The problem with streaming other people’s content is when you use it to their detriment or your unfair gain. Since anyone can gain access to Twitterdoodle and use it in the same manner to rank for important keywords, there is no unfair advantage.

Twitterdoodle is a WordPress plugin. If you are an existing client of Blog Content Provider, we’ll be happy to install Twitterdoodle and set it up for your for $30. Call Chris or Allen.

How Long Should You Spend On A Blog Post?

Blogging is a unique content mechanism. In many ways it is an individualist enterprise, but there are some consistencies between blogging techniques. Even then, within all those consistencies, there’s really no right way and wrong way. There are multiple right ways and a variety of ineffective ways to go about blogging.

If you know your topic well – and you should – you can write a 300 word blog post in 10 or 15 minutes. It’s off-the-top-of-your-head writing. But you probably don’t want to write every blog post that way. Sometimes you want to spend a little extra time composing a great blog post that will serve as good link bait and great reading for your regular readers as well as serve as a good hook for your new readers. How long should that blog post be?

I think most successful bloggers will tell you that a blog post shouldn’t be too long. You certainly don’t want to write 5,000 word blog posts every day. Occasionally is OK, but not every day.

If you spend more than an hour writing your blog posts every day then you are probably spending too much time on your blog. But if you write 15-minute blog posts every day then you are probably not spending enough time. Most of your posts can be the shorter, 300-word, 15-minute posts and you can get away with it. But you want some variety so that you don’t get into a routine that bores you and causes you to lose interest. You also don’t want your readers to lose interest and go away. So every now and then you should probably spend a little extra time writing that longer blog post just to spice things up a bit.