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Just a Spoonful of Keyword Phrases Makes SEO Go Up

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White sugar

“To maximize the traffic that comes to your blog via search engines, focus on optimizating each of your blog posts for just one or two keyword phrases.  Too many keyword phrases dilutes the content of your post for readers and can look like spam to both readers and search engines,” Susan Gunelius cautions in abouttech.com.

What, exactly, are keyword phrases? “These are words that you enter into your meta tags that describe your page so that when someone goes to a search engine and types in one or more of those words your page will be added to the list of pages they are given,” Linda Roeder explains. How long are keyword phrases? Statistics show that nearly 60% of keyword searches include phrases consisting of 2-3 words, according to Gunelius..

Gunelius’ tips for effective keyword use include:

  • Choose just one or two keyword phrases for each blog post
  • Use them in the title (however, don’t sacrifice the title’s ability to motivate people to click through)
  • Use keywords multiple times in the post, first within the first 200 characters, several times throughout, and near the end.
  • Use keywords in and around links
  • Use keywords in image alt-tags

While using keywords in links is a great way to boost search engine optimization, Gunelius warns, too many links can be viewed as a spam technique. The accepted link-to-text ratio is one link per 125 words. (For this very Say It For You post, for example, the two to three links I’ve used are just about right.

So how do you know which keywords deserve your focus? One of the easiest ways to get a basic idea of what people are looking for online, Gunelius says, is to check the popularity of keyword searches on websites that deal with keyword popularity, such as:

  • Wordtracker   (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
  • GoogleAdWords (http://www.google.com/adwords/)
  • Google Trends  (http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends)
  • Yahoo! Buzz Index  (https://www.yahoo.com/)

Like Mary Poppins’ recipe for making the medicine go down, incorporating keywords into blog posts – but only by the single spoonful – can be the secret for getting found on search engines.

 

 

 

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When to Slice Your Blog Content in Two – or Three….

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hands slicing cucumber

“There’s a trend in web design you need to know about, writes Peter of roundpeg.biz. The typical simple web design pattern with one main message followed by 3-4 blurbs works great when you sell one thing to one type of customer, he explains.   But you might have two or more groups you’re equally interested in talking to. And in that case, Roundpeg recommends, create a distinct landing page for each type of customer, immersing each in what they care about.

The same basic concept of targeting more than one type of reader applies to blog content creation, I believe. Matt Bailey, author of Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day. Bailey has a theory about longtail keyword phrases and how the choice of words a searcher uses relate to buying decisions. General search terms are used in Stage One, at the point of need, the very beginning of the buying cycle, but whenever customers use highly specific search phrases, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to buy, he says.

Just as you can “slice” your web design, you can “slice” blog content by inserting different calls to action that take ready-to-buy customers directly to the detailed information they need, while readers at the “weighing-the-evidence” stage are directed to a page with   a demo video, a question/answer page, to a list of testimonials or of case studies.

Not only are blog readers likely to be at varying stages of their decision-making process, readers are of different personality types. To make sure you’re offering “slices” that will appeal to each of those types, consider offering different types of content:

  • For “Drivers”, who are most concerned with results,  blog about how your products and services helped solve problems, how long that took, and how much it costs to get there.
  • For “Expressives”, who care most about how they’re perceived and about feelings,., emphasize the prestige that comes with using your products or services, and how customers can use those to express their own creativity.
  • For “Analyticals”, who tend to be preoccupied with details, offer lots of statistics, measurement, steps in a process, and lists of product ingredients.
  • For “Amiables”, who are interested in relationships and in pleasing others, blog about how your product helps others and helps build and strengthen personal relationships.

Slicing is indeed a trend you need to know about and use in blog marketing!

 

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Taking a Tip from the Texas Anti-Littering Campaign

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Mental Floss March April 2016

“Slogans are powerful marketing tools that can motivate customers to support your brand,” says Dustin Betonio of Tripwire Magazine, citing examples of highly successful word combinations:

  • Harley-Davidson – “American by birth. Rebel by choice.
  • Walmart – “Save Money, Live Better”
  • McDonalds – “I’m lovin it.”
  • Hallmark – “When you care enough to send the very best.”
  • Nike – “Just Do It”
  • Kentucky Fried Chickin – “Finger lickin good”

Like slogans, blog titles can serve as powerful marketing tools. In fact, as blog content writers, one big challenge we face is selecting the best title for each of our blog posts. One very good example is the billboard the Texas Department of Transportation used as the centerpiece of their highly successful anti-littering campaign:

Don’t Mess With Texas – Up to $1000 fine for littering!

 

What are some of the elements in this billboard that blog content writers can use in titles?

Alliteration and assonance
Those are literary devices that help make sentences more memorable because of repeated sounds. “mess” and “Texas” are not a perfect sound match, but the “ess” and “tex” sounds are close enough.

Numbers
Having the billboard read “Up to one thousand dollar fine” wouldn’t have packed nearly the punch of the $1,000 in digits.

Strong language
Strong phrases (and quite frankly, negative ones) have more of an effect in titles.

Definitive
In composing business blogs, we need to keep several goals in mind.  We want to write engaging titles,  we want to include keyword phrases to help with search, we want to be short and to the point, and  we want to use power words.  The overriding goal, though, in composing a title has to be making promises  we are going to be able to keep in the body of the blog post itself.

Don’t mess with business blog post titles – make them strong and definitive!

 

 

 

 

 

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Blogging From a Top-Floor Hotel Room

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People often assume he shoots his beautiful images with a drone or that he creates them on a computer, but that’s not it at all, says Virtuoso travel photog Gray Malin. What you see in the magazine is the result of him going up in a helicopter and leaning out the side to find timeless imagery. The idea of shooting from above came to Malin, he says, when he was somewhere in a hotel with a birdseye view of a giant swimming pool filled with people and realized he could create tableaus of beachgoers and beaches from a new and different perspective.

Perspective is everything when it comes to business blog content. Whether a business owner is composing his/her own blog posts or collaborating with a professional content writer, it’s simply not enough to provide even very potentially valuable information to online searchers.  Think of the facts – about the business, the services, and the products offered  – as raw ingredients which must be “translated”. For every fact about the company or about one of its products or services, a blog post addresses unspoken questions such as “So, is that different?”, “So, is that good for me?”  

Many business owners and practitioners make use of statistics in their blog posts, and that’s a good thing for a couple of reasons:

  • Numbers help debunk myths and dispel false impressions relating to your field or product.
  • Numbers help demonstrate the extent of the problem your business or practice helps solve.

But statistics, too, need to be put into perspective for readers. Before a reader even has time to ask “So what?” we need to be ready with an answer that makes sense in terms with which readers are familiar. I call it blogging new knowledge on things readers already know.

Photographer Gray Malin understood that content (in his case pictorial) offered to readers must “own” a unique perspective. There’s certainly no lack of content in either print or online media, and no lack of experts (at least purported experts) in the travel field or any other. Malin understood that he needed to go beyond presenting photos and offer a unique perspective.

In fact, what Gray Malin says of his top-floor style of travelogues is a great example for business blog content writing: “It all goes into creating something that’s unique to that location, but still universally appealing.”

 

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Your Blog Has Three Jobs: Solve. Excite. Speak

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Frong Prince lipstick

“Things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince!” Those rather unoriginal observations are attributed to Poppy King, founder of Lipstick Queen, the company that gets heads turning with Frog Prince, “a remarkable lilypad green lipstick that transforms lips into a pretty rosebud pink”.

I’m not exactly into the green lipstick thing, but I do absolutely love the statement I heard Poppy make during an Evine TV promotion:

“Every company,“ Poppy said, “has three jobs to do:

  • Solve the problem.
  • Excite the imagination.
  • Speak the truth.”

As profound a statement as I believe I’ve ever heard in a sales pitch, Poppy’s words certainly apply to the work we do as business blog content writers.

Solve the problem.
People are online searching for answers to their problems and solutions for dilemmas they’re facing.  If your business consistently posts content offering valuable information and advice, those people are going to find you and  at least some will want to become your customers..

Excite the imagination.
Readers came online searching for information, products, or services, and they are not going to take the time to read the full text of your blog post without assurance that they’ve come to the right place and that this will be a short, fast, exciting read. Use the title to establish a “hook” to excite visitors’ imagination.

Speak the truth.
Myth debunking is a great use for corporate blog content. That’s because in the natural course of doing business, misunderstandings about a product or service often surface in the form of customer questions and comments.

Your blog has three jobs:  Solve. Excite. Speak.

 

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