All Entries Tagged With: "website content"
Blog Content Drives Traffic – Plain And Simple
There are two posts that stand out today and both reinforce our message that content, regular content, is one of the surest ways of gaining a decent rank in organic search results. Blogs and blog content is one of the easiest ways of publishing that content. Hiring a blog writer makes the task even easier. So what are those two posts?
The first one almost screamed the message – The Most Amazing Sentence On The Internet. And it was. What was the sentence?
No other marketing piece can do what adding fresh content to your web site can.
Do you view content as a marketing tool? It is, in fact, almost everything you do to a website or blog has some sort of marketing effect. Adding fresh content, particularly content that users find helpful is very definitely marketing. I repeat my earlier statement – blog content is one of the fastest and easiest ways to add that content. You don’t need any special programming skills; if you can open a word-processor then you can open a blog and create content. If you don’t have the skills or talent to create content, think again. Almost everyone can. Of course, if quality is your benchmark, then by all means hire a professional content creator.
That leads me to the second post that stood out today – Do you need a website content writer? This type of post is starting to appear quite frequently across the net as more and more people realize they have writing skills and can sell their services. As a website or blog owner, the key is to weed out those who are not as skilled as they profess and to find writers who are skilled. This is where a professional blog content service comes into play. They have proven track records and experience in not only providing the content, they can also provide a range of blog services such as comment moderation and blog maintenance.
If you’re running a business, can you afford to not use the services of a professional blog management team.
How Should You Monetize Your Company Blog?
One question that often pops up is “How can I monetize my business blog?” First, you have to understand what a blog is for and how best to use it. You are not trying to create a publishing platform where you sell advertising or pop on AdSense so that you earn five cents per click. If you are then you are looking at the wrong type of blog for the company blog model. It’s not that the publishing platform type of blog isn’t a good model. It is. But you can’t mix and match the concepts.
A good company blog doesn’t necessarily need a monetization plan of its own if it is done properly. That’s not to say you can’t make money with it.
First and foremost, your company blog is a marketing tool for your business. The idea is to drive traffic to your website and increase your search engine standing through optimized quality content on a regular basis. A blog is the best way to achieve those two simultaneous goals.
To measure your blog ROI, follow the traffic patterns. Are you getting traffic to your static site from the blog. If so, is it converting? If not, why not? Perhaps you nee more in-text links. Or maybe you need fewer. Maybe those links need the proper anchor text. Or maybe the problem isn’t with the blog at all.
The most common problem with websites that don’t convert is with the content on the website itself. If you’re getting traffic to your website from your blog, but you aren’t closing sales then it’s the website, not the blog. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
We’re firm believers in first things first. Get your website to where it will convert traffic to sales. Then use a blog to promote it. You can use other methods of promotion as well. Don’t just stick with one way (ever hear of not putting your eggs in one basket?). But realize that not every visitor to your site will buy something and not every visitor to your blog will visit your website. What do you do with that traffic that leaves?
Here are a few ideas for you:
- Sign them up for your newsletter
- Hit them with an exit “pop-up” window and sell them something; like, maybe an e-book
- Get them to subscribe to your RSS feed
- Sell them an affiliate product with a link in the sidebar
- Send to them a sister site
One important concept too many business owners ignore is the value of contact information, which can lead to future sales. Get the e-mail address, at least. Use your company blog as more than a repository for your “throwaway” content.
Should You Link Out On Your Business Blog?
When it comes to outbound links, there are two ways of thinking: Do it and don’t do it. Most people are in the do it category. A few people are in the don’t do it category. I’m in the “do it if it makes sense to” category.
So what does that mean exactly?
Well, first, let’s cover the other two categories and see what the arguments are there:
Linking Out Adds User Benefit
This is Google’s official position. Read:
When linking out, am I sending visitors away forever?!
Hmmm… visitors may initially leave your site to check out relevant information. But can you recall your behavior on sites that link to good articles outside their domain? Personally, I always come back to sites I feel provide commentary and additional resources. Sometimes I stay on the original site and just open up the interesting link in a different tab. It’s likely that with relevant outbound links you’ll gain repeat visitors, and you won’t lose them forever.
This is the most common response to the outbound link question. But one thing to keep in mind is that different users respond differently. Not everyone knows you can right click on a link and open it up in a new tab. New Internet users have a learning curve.
Also, you do stand a chance of some users leaving your site and forgetting where they’ve been. Again, new users who have not learned to bookmark sites they like or haven’t learned all the ins and outs of how to write a search query effectively or type the URL in the browser window may leave your site and never go back. How many users that will be exactly depends on the nature and target audience of your website. The more local, and more rural, your site focus, the more likely you’ll have readers who are new. That isn’t a statement of prejudice. It’s a demographic fact. And if your target audience is older than 50 they likely are not as web-savvy either. You must consider these things.
All of that aside, however, the stated principle is a worthy one. Outbound links can, and often do, provide value for your visitors. That’s the most important thing to consider when thinking about outbound links.
Outbound Links Cause Visitor Leaks
On the other end of the spectrum is the idea that outbound links are exit holes and invitations to leave your site. If your content isn’t high quality, well-written content that provides value then, yes, your outbound links will serve as invitations to say “bye bye” and never return. However, if you consistently provide high quality content then your visitors will have a reason to return. And they will.
Intelligent Linking
I’m a proponent of what I call intelligent linking, not gratuitous linking. Gratuitous linking is linking out to everyone and anyone just because you read somewhere that outbound links are good. Do you really want to send your visitors to your competitors? For many niches, probably most, you don’t want to link to your competition. This is especially true if your competition is considered the front runner in your industry or they have a higher perceived value among your niche market. This is essentially the equivalent to Mom & Pop Burgers sending its customers across the street to McDonald’s because they have better fries. Not a good practice and it’s a sure way to go out of business.
Intelligent linking is the practice of linking out to sites that do provide value to your visitors but that don’t encourage them to do business with the competition. In other words, you don’t want to link directly to the competition itself, but you also don’t want to link to sites that are affiliates or partners with your competition. You run a much safer bet when you link out to third-party sites that aren’t affiliated with anyone in particular. That way, you can provide your site visitors with good quality information and resources without helping the competition and hindering your own business.
Tiger TeleServices: Content Thieves Alert!
Hey Tiger TeleServices, Some things are just so wrong they shouldn’t need repeating – or saying the first time, for that matter. Content theft is one of those. Blatant content theft is just plain nuts and you’d think that the content thieves would know that they’re going to get caught.
Who Is Tiger TeleServices?
Tiger Teleservices is a new SEO and blog ghostwriting company. You know they’re new because they have a gray bar for PR on the Google Toolbar. But another way you know they’re new is because their first blog post was made on September 13, 2008.
One of their blogging methods is to take a blog post from another company and copy it verbatim. They probably use a scraper. In this particular case they linked back to the company whose blog post they took, but they used the entire blog post and didn’t add anything of value of their own. That’s a problem for two reasons:
- No. 1, it is stealing. They are trying to make a $$ off of someone else’s content by selling the same service as they writer of the original content.
- Secondly, it doesn’t build trust in their services. If I was looking for a blog ghostwriter I would likely use the company that posted the original information, not the company that stole the content.
Finally, at the end of the post, Tiger TeleServices links from the stolen content to their own website, hoping to gain some additional business this way.
Tiger TeleServices’ Real Content Problem
But the blog is the least of the worries of Tiger TeleServices. If you go to their website then you’ll see static web page content that the company copied verbatim from Blog Content Provider and used for their own purposes. Same content. No changes. Verbatim. No attribution. Bad form.
Here’s the stolen content page at Tiger TeleServices website.
Here’s the original page posted at Blog Content Provider.
Click the links. You’ll see the similarities. And if you copy and paste the content into Google then you’ll see that Blog Content Provider ranks for the content. Tiger TeleServices does not.
We also tried contacting Tiger TeleServices to notify them of their illegal activity and to ask them to remove the content and write their own, but the phone number they have posted on their website didn’t even ring. Bogus number?
If you are the owner of Tiger TeleServices or know the owner of this company then please ask them to remove the content they took from Blog Content Provider and to write their own original content. It would be better for their business and ours if they wrote original content – and I’m sure the Tiger TeleServices’ customers would appreciate that too. We at BCP don’t like content thieves.
