Enrichment Depot – Profiting on the Net

This is a guest post by Gregory Ciotti of SparringMind.com.

You have the ideas.

You have the expertise.

You have the ability to project them well on your blog, and you are quite confident in your writing ability.

Yet, unknowingly, you could be building a sinking ship, punctured by these ten writing mistakes that will doom any blog to failure.

You needn’t be disheartened, however, as any blogger can avoid them. It just takes awareness of their existence, and a keen focus on giving the reader what they want, at all costs.

Do you make any of these ten fatal writing mistakes on your blog?

1. You have nothing to say

When blogging, you have to understand that in order to succeed, you need to give your readers what they want.

So then, what is it that readers really want?

They want you to provide them a solution to what they are seeking, even if what they are seeking is nothing but entertainment.

They also want to hear what you have to say. This doesn’t mean that they are intrigued about what you had for lunch. But they do want a personality behind the words they are reading. Otherwise, there is no connection that they can make to the words, and what they are reading becomes empty.

Making sure you have something to say makes writing easier and faster. When you have nothing to say, you are forced to write sentences that sound meaningful but deliver nothing.

2. You’re not specific

Consider the following two headlines:

1. How I Got A Lot Of Facebook Fans
2. How I Grew My Facebook Fan Page To 6,683 Fans In 4 Months

Which one of those do you think is going to offer the most in-depth information? The second one, as it called to our innate desire to hear the specifics.

The reason readers love to see details and examples is because they value their time, and they are not interested in hearing another cookie cutter “how-to” that provides no examples to show whether or not it works.

In your writing, your examples can sell your whole post. If you can back up the claims of your headline with a detailed example, you will have your readers reading from top to bottom, and then anxiously awaiting your next post.

How can you lead your readers if you don’t lead by example?

3. Your word choice is too complex

Almost any time I encourage people to write simply on blogs, they always disagree by saying that simple writing is boring. But they fail to see my point.

Articulate and meticulously crafted writing very much has its place, but sometimes bloggers fail to realize their medium and their audience.

It’s not that the web is only suited for simple writing, but it definitely benefits from it.

Getting your point across can be much more effective if you cut out the fluff, and will guarantee more people will read your posts from beginning to end—a critical part of being a successful blogger that people await updates from.

Why not put this to the test yourself? In your next post, keep it simple, using longer words only when other more direct options will not do. I guarantee you will find writing on your topic more enjoyable, and you will get to the point of each post far more quickly.

4. Your paragraphs are too wordy

This point is very closely related to the one above. Again, I feel a disclaimer is needed here. I’m not saying a long, comprehensive post is not suited for the blogospohere—in fact these types of posts add a lot of value and are often a great way to show your talent.

What I’m talking about is the dreaded fluff. In the same way fluff causes you to write with unnecessary adjectives and words you had to use a dictionary to look up, it can also wreak havoc on your writing structure.

In blogging, you should keep your paragraphs short for the same reason you should keep your wording simple: they are easier for people to read and understand.

The last thing you want to create on your posts is confusion. Your writing style needs to give people what they want, and people do not want to be confused—they want information. Give it to them.

5. You keep using the passive voice

Speaking of what readers want, did you know that in English, readers prefer the Subject, Verb, Object sentence structure? This is called the “active voice.”

“Long sentences annoy readers.” English readers like that.

“Readers are annoyed by long sentences.” That..? Not so much.

Did you also notice how the second option there—the passive voice—makes simple statements use a couple of unnecessary words? This can add up over a long blog post.

Although you cannot always use the active voice, as a blogger, you should try to as often as possible.

6. Your descriptions are empty

Worse than lacking details, is trying to force descriptions onto examples that don’t need them.

In writing these are known as “qualifying words,” and they include the likes of: very, little, rather. They add nothing to the meaning of your sentences, and take away their impact by lengthening them for no reason.

For instance, you could say this style of writing “is basically a little annoying, rather, there is very little reason you should be writing like this.”

Yikes! As Mark Twain once said:

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

8. You often ramble in your writing

Let me tell you about rambling, it’s like this one time I was trying to come up with a post for problogger.net about huge writing mistakes bloggers make, and the power ended up going out before I could save my post, and I thought maybe I should write an entire post about saving your writing, because it’s really important for bloggers to make sure that there best thoughts aren’t erased by some sort of haphazard…

Okay, I’ll stop.

Notice a trend in these writing problems? You aren’t giving readers what they want. Maybe, maybe, you run a blog where readers come around just for your rants. Most likely, however, you don’t—your readers come for information, and they come for examples, as always.

Don’t ramble: give them what they want.

9. Your blog is repetitive

Bloggers with specific niches everywhere just did a double-take.

No my fellow blogger, you can keep writing about tech, food, fitness, or naked skydiving until the end of your days for all I care. The danger in repetitiveness is not the subject matter, but the presentation.

How-to posts, all day, every day, may be what you want to do, but it can become a drag for readers who come back often. As you progress and continue writing for your blog, you may find yourself sick of writing these posts as well.

Instead, mix up the type of posts you put out. Text interviews, critiques, a huge resource list—the types of post that you can write are endless. Even better, change the entire medium in which you present your writing. I’m talking about writing for podcasts and videos, specifically.

Writing a script for a podcast or a video session can be a totally unique take on your writing.Not only that, it gets your blog out on different media, allowing people to discover your site through your external videos and podcasts, and gives long time readers another way to “hear your voice,” quite literally in this instance!

So don’ be boring, mix up writing style, and mix up presentation media. Your writing, and your blog, will be better for it.

10. You don’t edit

Have I driven the point home that you need to be thoughtful of your reader? Maybe I should re-read my section on repetitiveness!

Honestly, it may feel good to simply “crank out” a successful post, but you are placing too much faith in your talents and not enough importance on your reader if you don’t go back and edit even your best “one-shot” works.

This goes beyond simple grammar and spelling edits as well. No reader of yours will ever expect for you to be the perfect writer, and it’s okay to add a touch of personality into your blog. In fact it is quite welcome.

You should, however, not be afraid to edit your own thoughts. Re-read posts and cut out anything that doesn’t add to the post in a meaningful way.

Read the post as best as you can from the perspective of a reader: “Would I care about this section?” is a question that should come into your mind often.

Write for your reader

The running theme through all of these mistakes is the lack of attention being paid to the reader.

While writing may be an expression of your†thoughts, you won’t be the only one reading them (if you aspire for your blog to be read by more than you and your cat, that is!).

Sit back after each post, after each line, and ask yourself: does this benefit my reader? Do they get something out of this line? Is it needed for the post as a whole to be a success?

You can’t make your blogging style flawless, but you can darn well try to make your reader happy!

Are you a WordPress user like Darren Rowse? Then you definitely need to check out Sparring Mind, the WordPress content marketing blog, which shows you that you don’t need to be a tech geek to create amazing content on a superb WordPress site.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

10 Writing Mistakes that Will Guarantee Your Blog’s Failure

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog’s, Failure, Guarantee, Mistakes, writing

This guest post is by Sean Madden of Mindful Living Guide.

These past few months—in my summer and early autumn creative writing classes—I’ve not focused so much on the mindfulness aspect of my teachings. Perhaps this had to do with the energetic pace of summer, which only recently faded here in the South East of England. Just last week autumn seemed finally to arrive and with it the cozy, heartwarming smells of wood and coal smoke rising from the chimneys of local cottages. The end of our unseasonably warm Indian summer ushered in that back-to-school feeling of my childhood days growing up on the South Shore of Massachusetts.

And so it was just last week that I made explicit the intended theme of the six-week course which got underway in mid-September. That theme’s perhaps best conveyed by the course title, Write Your Way into Autumn. I had everyone spend about ten minutes in class writing a list of autumnal-inspired words, phrases and snippets of language. We then read aloud the words we each gathered.

Image copyright olly – Fotolia.com

This brief exercise promoted a feeling of turning within, of slowing down, of simply witnessing the world around and within us. And this brought that sense of presence, that magical spark, back into our shared time together.

This week, in both my Monday evening and Wednesday morning classes, we read from Deng Ming-Dao’s Everyday Tao, specifically the “Source” and “Return” entries of this book, which is chockablock with wisdom.  Here’s how Deng (last name) closes the former entry:

“If you want to know Tao at its most fundamental, go back to the source. If you do go back to the source of Tao, you will also find the source of all your questions.”

To help my writing students better understand what Deng means by source, we then read the “Return” entry which closes thus:

“Our essential nature, our innocent self, is always in us. Everyone has one, and we need only return to it in order to understand it. Just as the spiral eddies toward the center, we proceed from outer to inner to find the ultimate source.”

I then asked my students to write for ten to fifteen minutes on the following question: “What is our essence, our original nature, our innocent self?”  As with last week’s autumnal word hoard, this brought mindfulness back to center stage, and, again, the results were magical.

Here’s what one of my students, writer-animator Carl Sullivan, said about yesterday’s class:

“The last session for me had the most depth. To breathe into the now and find a moment of stillness before the pen starts moving gives you a chance to bypass the person who wants to be a writer, and to just write. Much as when I draw—I really don’t have an idea of what’s going to appear. To approach writing from a no-mind ‘now’ point lets the words be as free as a doodle. To doodle words in playful creativity with just a gentle expectancy, no pressure, just wondering what’s going to be revealed is as fun and free as drawing.”

What else is there to say, really?

Well, here’s what Carl wrote in response to the aforementioned question about our essence, our original nature, our innocent self, this final piece marking the end of our six weeks together:

inner smile purity
the Adventure of the Heart in child felt wonder,
joy springs dancing inside,
still as Now
mind at rest—being at peace,
real eyes to see
releasing tears of
remembering
cleansing the wounds
to be
held whole and happy
grateful and true
home again

10 Steps writing mindfully for your blog

1. Find a still, quiet place within which to write.
2. Before you begin writing, take a few minutes to ground yourself in the present moment by bringing a simple, uncomplicated awareness to the whole of your physical body.
3. Simply observe what it feels like to inhabit your body, without mental comments or judgments.
4. If you notice your mind wanders, that’s fine. Gently return your awareness to your body.
5. When you feel centered, relaxed, and reconnected with your essence, slowly begin to move your fingers, toes, and limbs, and with a feather-light touch begin—with all your senses—to observe your surroundings while positioning yourself comfortably to begin writing.
6. As you start writing, promote a sense of doing so with the whole of your being, with the whole of your physical body, rather than purely with the intellectual, wholly rational mind.
7. Allow for writing to flow in imaginative, playful ways. Be curious, childlike.
8. Try to maintain a general, global awareness of your body throughout the time you’re writing.
9. Reawaken your mind, body and spirit by taking frequent breaks to stand, stretch and bring movement back into your body.
10. When you’ve finished writing, gently take this mindful approach into the rest of your day.

As a Creative Writing & Mindful Living Guide, Sean M. Madden offers Writing, Literature & Mindful Living courses and workshops in the UK, and one-to-one guidance & mentoring worldwide. Sean invites readers to follow him on Twitter @SeanMMadden.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

10 Steps to Writing Mindfully for Your Blog

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog, Mindfully, Steps, writing

Perhaps, one of the first things any novice gets to learn about internet marketing domain is the significance of “original, unique, and relevant content”, and quite rightly so. They do not say “Content is the King” for nothing; every bit of it is absolutely true.

The importance of “original, unique, and relevant content” magnifies multiple times when it comes to PPC marketing, in particular. Unlike other domains of online marketing, PPC (Pay-per-Click) offers you no margin of error. In case of PPC, it is almost “do or die” every single time, making it one of the toughest domains to survive.

Appropriate PPC Ad Writing can literally turn the tables in your favor, but it is much easier said than. There are quite a few aspects that need to be taken well care of, in order to see your PPC campaign yield you with some real high quality leads translating into cash for your business.

Effective PPC Ad Writing Tips

Given below are some of the most effective tips that you should keep into focus if you want to produce a PPC Ad copy that not only looks nice, but also works nice in getting relevant web traffic for your campaign.

• Develop the PPC ad copy keeping in mind the priorities and intentions of searcher (primarily) in mind. It must be able to relate prospective customer’s intentions with the most effective search terms being used in that particular niche. This is because your PPC ad is going to be displayed on a search engine (Google, preferably), which is not going to yield you higher if it undermines the importance of highly returning keywords.
• Successful PPC ad copy should aptly serve a searcher with unique and engaging business proposition. The point is that it should tactfully answer the questions like “why should you choose to do business with us”, compelling your potential customer to engage in business terms with you.
• Another specialty of great PPC ads is that they rely more on relevant precise facts and figures rather than making high claims.
• As they say, “simple is the best”; so is the case with effective PPC ads. The more you keep your ad copy simple, precise, clear, and free of any ambiguities (be them lingual or technical), the more clicks your ad is going to receive. Simplicity and clarity is the key for improved CTR of your PPC ad

Some Common Mistakes You Should Avoid In Your PPC Ad Copy

• Majority of PPC ads fail to yield the high CTR desired from them simply because too much focus is laid on features of the product/service instead of its benefits. You have to keep in mind that a searcher is always more interested in knowing the benefits rather than the features of a product or service.
• Another common mistake is not properly investigating what your immediate competitors are saying. It might seem like you have got a wonderful idea about a particular ad, but it is going to be of no utility if any of your competitors had already used it. Remember, unique ideas catch the eye of searchers more than anything else, so you better realign your thinking into a new direction if you want to get maximum out of a PPC ad.

Conclusion

There is no denying the significance of PPC campaigns for gaining the maximum benefits of a web marketing campaign, and there shall be no denying the significance of an efficient PPC ad copy for that purpose. Make sure you heed to the ups and downs of PPC ad writing described in this article to make your PPC campaign really worth it.

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Search Engine Journal

Tags: Improved, Maximize, PPC Marketing, Significance, writing

This guest post is by Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.

Do you wish you knew the secret to writing popular blog posts? You know, the posts that get over 200 comments, 20 backlinks, and hundreds of shares on social networking sites?

Over the past five years I’ve started two blogs. The first one became a Technorati top 100 site, and now I’m working on Quick Sprout.

Image copyright Yuri Arcurs – Fotolia.com

Fortunately I’ve learned a few lessons about writing popular posts while running these two blogs, and now I want to share those lessons with you.

Use simple words

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you look at popular blog posts is they’re really easy to understand. And it doesn’t matter what the content is about.

Why is that? The reason they are easy to read is because the writer chose to write with simple words.

I always write my posts using 5^th grade vocabulary, rather than writing like a highly educated person. See, I’d rather you be able to read and understand quickly what I wrote, than to appear like an educated person who uses big, complex words, and ends up confusing people.

The interesting thing is you will still look like an expert. Also, people are more likely to share a post that they think other people will understand. So use simple words, not fancy ones.

Use the word “you”

Really great blog posts sound like they were written just for you. Do you know why that is? It’s because the writer probably used the word “you” instead of “we” or “them.”

When I write like this, what I’m doing is trying to make you feel like it’s just you and me, as if we were sitting down at a café for a cup of coffee.

Yes, my blog has thousands of readers, but my posts come across much more personal when I pretend like I’m just writing for one person.

A neat trick to help you do this is to think of somebody you know and write your blog post as if you are writing it just for them. I know some writers who even keep a picture of a person above their screens to remind them that they are writing for just one person.

Write “how-to” posts

One of the things I learned about writing popular blog posts is that people want useful information.

That blog content that I wrote for the Technorati Top 100 blog wasn’t very good, even though it was ranked high, and I think it was because I wasn’t trying to offer a solution to people’s problems. I wasn’t showing them how to do stuff. In this post, I’m pretty sure you want to write posts that people like and share, so that the traffic to your blog grows. I want to help you solve that problem.

The template for writing a “how-to” post is simple. Just sit down and write out all of the steps involved in doing something in particular.

Let’s say you want to show your audience how to subscribe to your blog with an RSS reader. Your headings might be “Choose a Reader,” “Sign Up,” “Click on the RSS button,” and “Subscribe.” Under each heading you would give more information, explaining what to look for, the pros and cons, and pointing out issues that might be confusing.

Write detailed posts

When I first started writing Quick Sprout, I got frustrated with how slowly it was growing. It seemed like it was taking forever! I was writing good posts and getting some comments, but not enough to really make people want to share and link back.

At one point I decided to experiment and write a really long, detailed post. It took me some time to write and I was wondering if it was worth all the effort.

Well, you know what? It was!

People commented and shared that post a lot, and from that point on I decided I was only going to write long posts with tons of good, specific information.

If you think about it, people love long, detailed posts because so much of what is offered on other blogs is short and light on details. This is not to knock other blogs, but simply to point out that this is an opportunity for you to make yourself different than other bloggers.

Another way to make your posts detailed is to add statistics and graphs. It’s been shown that posts with images, stats and graphs will get way more links than the very same post without visual appeal!

Hook your readers

I really learned a lot about hooking your reader by reading blogs by Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Leo Babauta.

These writers use some great tricks to compell readers to stop and read every word they write, which I think is something we all want to do, right?

The first rule of hooking readers is to write a great headline. Great headlines have four qualities. They are:

• Unique: Unique headlines can only be used for your blog post, like this post I’m writing right now. It’s unique because there is only one Neil Patel!
• Useful: A headline is useful when it promises practical information. The reason “how-to” guides are popular is because it gives answers to problems.
• Ultra-specific: Adding numbers or stats to a headline makes it ultra-specific. My article, 6 Advanced Ways to Improve Your Search Rankings, is a good example of ultra-specific, since I used both a number and the word “advanced.”
• Urgent: The best way to create urgency is to put some kind of deadline into your headline. “6 Days until the Stock Market Crashes” or “Your Last Chance to Get a Free Copy of My Book” are good examples.

The best headlines have three or four of these features in them. This formula is called the Four Us.

After the headline, you hook readers by writing a great first sentence. How do you do that? Asking questions works really well. So does making a crazy statement that simply can’t be true, but then you promise to show your readers that it is. The point is to write a first sentence that people can’t resist. Quotes also make good first sentences, as do statistics.

Next, your reader will probably skim your post, especially if it is long, looking at all of your sub-headlines. This is why your sub-headlines need to also hook the reader.

Readers should be able to scan your sub-headlines and get a summary of what the post is about. I like to write my sub-headlines like normal headlines, trying to use the Four Us I showed you above. That way, you read them and say, “I got to read that!”

Create a conversation

One of the most important parts of writing popular blog posts is writing like it’s a conversation.

Have you noticed all the questions I’ve been asking? Or all of the phrases I’ve italicized? I’ve done that on purpose. People forget that blogging is social media, and being social means knowing how to carry on a good conversation.

The way to do that when you’re actually talking to someone is to listen and ask the other person questions. It shows that person that you care about what they are thinking, and that it’s not all about you—because it’s not.

The same is true about a blog.

Creating a conversation also means you exchange words with each other after the blog post is done, usually in the comments, though some people prefer to email, which is fine.

If there isn’t a dialog then you’re talking to yourself, and that’s no fun. So at the end of your post, always ask people what they think and tell them to leave their thoughts in the comments.

Prove your points

It’s really important in your post to prove any claims that you make. For example, in the section where I said that graphs and stats in a post get more backlinks, I actually linked to another blog post that backed up what I was saying.

If you don’t do this, you’re likely to lose credibility and people won’t believe what you say.

But another benefit to proving your points by linking to other posts is that you are sharing with your audience another good source of information. And the chances are that author will probably link back to your blog at some point.

Show you are an authority

Lots of bloggers can get uncomfortable with this one because they feel like they’re tooting their own horn.

See, to show you’re an authority on a subject means you have to get other people or organizations to say that you are an authority. Then you point out that they said those things.

If you do that, it’s not bragging, but just pointing out the truth. Of course, it matters how you say it, so stay humble.

One way I show that I have the authority to speak on the subject of writing popular blog posts is by mentioning that my blog was a Technorati top-100 blog. It shows that someone else with lots of credibility recognized me as an expert.

Another way I could do this is by telling you how many readers Quick Sprout has. There must be a reason so many people like the blog, right?

I also mention that I’m a successful entrepreneur, which I can back up by telling you about the two companies I own. It’s not usually seen as bragging if you don’t force it, so look for ways that feel natural.

You’ll see blogs with “As Seen In” sections displaying the logos of important companies and media sources, like the Wall Street Journal, underneath. This is an endorsement—another way of showing you have authority.

Testimonials from readers and clients are also a form of authority. If you’re interested, I wrote a post on how to effectively use testimonials that explains more on this topic.

Care about your readers

One of the biggest lessons I learned from starting two blogs, and several companies, is that you have to care about people, and show them you care.

I love reading blogs where I can feel the writer’s concern for me. I try to do that on Quick Sprout, too. One obvious way to do this is by bringing attention to the people who have helped you be successful.

I’ve discovered that if truly care about people—including your readers—you will naturally try to write a popular blog post, because you are always looking for ways to write better. In other words, you’ll constantly try to learn new ways to improve your posts so you help more people. And that’s certainly a good recipe for success!

Conclusion

There’s a lot of competition in the blogosphere, so it’s easy to get frustrated when your blog is not getting the attention it deserves.

Be patient and use the tips that I shared above. I’m certain that within time you’ll start writing popular blog posts on a frequent basis.

What advice do you have for people who want to write a popular blog post?

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogs at Quick Sprout.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Neil Patel’s Guide to Writing Popular Blog Posts

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog, Guide, Neil, Patel’s, Popular, Posts, writing

Who are you writing your blog posts for … people or search engines? Depending on your intended audience your posts can and should be radically different in tone and style. This concept is related to my my post on how to choose keywords for your blog posts. When you write a post or article on your blog you have to decide am I writing this for “today” and my short term day-to-day audience, or am I writing this as a long term evergreen content? While you are ultimately writing for people in both cases, how your intended audience will find your post matters. Your choice will result in the post taking an entirely different path, have entirely different language, and create an entirely different end product.

Up until a few years journalists and writers were taught and came in with the mindset that once a book, magazine, or newspaper article was written it was “cast in stone” so to speak. While libraries had microfilm, and archives, some even had electronic databases, the general public didn’t have easy access to “old” information. Sure you could go to the library and take out last years issue of “Gourmet Magazine“, but the consumer had to take that action. Now with the advent of google and other search engines these archives are a lot easier to access. If you as a web publisher want this traffic, you need to change your mindset. Gone are the days of writing pithy titles that are witty and clever, now you need to write your titles and posts anticipating the search engine queries of users.

There are tons of “news websites” (and I use that term loosely) who exist and do make a decent amount of money, for example look at the homepage of sites like techmeme and AOL. But these sites are chasing a different type of traffic, they are chasing “now” traffic, and by and large earn money from a CPM advertising model. This is why so many of them fall into the page view journalism trap. The only way to make more money is with more page views, it doesn’t matter if post matches the sites core topic, as long as it brings eyeballs. Put another way their traffic and income are directly related to the traffic they bring in “today”, and they need to to bring in a consistent level of traffic day after day. This is one reason why these are mostly multi-author websites. If you are a single author website, and you take a day off, spend time with your family, go on vacation, your income takes a nose dive.

On the other end of the spectrum are the evergreen content publishers. They miss the hustle and bustle, and burst traffic that comes from covering something like an apple developers conference, the release of a new iphone, or covering the latest insane lunatic ravings that Eric Schmidt makes on a regular basis at press events. However unless they target these evergreen posts around keywords with a decent Adsense payout or around affiliate programs, it’s traffic without monetary value.

While the traffic may persist, for years, and not require daily updating, that doesn’t mean it’s maintenance free. Even evergreen content needs to be evaluated regularly with a content audit (see how often should I update evergreen content). Especially now that google is getting better and more aggressive about showing dates in the SERPS. IMHO you need a strategy that keeps your posts dates less than 1 year old for evergreen content (posts that aren’t evergreen should show their true age). Additionally you need to keep some “old” posts, because nothing says reputable like a blog/website with 5 years of consistent archives.

My suggestion, use a hybrid model between news, current, present, and “today” posts, but also publish evergreen content. The exact ratio depends on your website, but I like to stay around the 80/20 model: 80 percent evergreen 20 percent current events. However I like to go on vacation a lot, and sit poolside, so I work really hard to set up low maintenance, passive income websites (see how I manage a wordpress website). For those of you truly curious, I made the shift here about 2 years ago to the hybrid model, with a lot more emphasis on evergreen posts on this website.

So what are the take aways from this post:

• Decide what type of website you want to run, and what type of posts are you going to publish
• Present day, news, and current events bring traffic but are hard to monetize with anything other than CPM advertising
• Evergreen websites are easier to run, but often lack excitement, and traffic bursts
• A hybrid model can give you the best of both worlds
• Focus your evergreen posts around keywords and topics with high advertising revenue and affiliate offers
• Categorize your evergreen posts so you can retweet/push them in social media channels (see how to tweet from your archives)
• Remember even evergreen posts need to be updated from time to time, and don’t forget to change the date when you do for maximum benefit

photo credit: Shutterstock/Gary Paul Lewis

Related posts:

1. Writing Keyword Focused Posts that are Interesting One of my constant criticisms of bloggers and the blogosphere…
2. 6 Tools & Tips to Help You Improve Your Blog Posts I was having a a few conversations on twitter last…
3. Top Posts From 2010 As 2010 draws to a close I’d like to thank…
4. The Art and Science of Writing Good Titles Crafting a good title for your pages or blog posts…
5. The 18 Most Potent Things I Learned Writing An Ebook My book on advanced SEO is finally done. The book’s…

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get $ 100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal – Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
9. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
10. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
11. Article-Writing-services.org – Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
12. Rouper.com – Buy & Sell Premium Websites

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

Who Are You Writing Blog Posts For

Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Tags: Blog, Posts, writing

Vic Drabicky, writing for Search Engine Land, knows how hard it can be. You have keywords, bids, match types, tracking, and about 50 other things to worry about, he conceded. But the biggest problem, in his eyes, is with the writing itself. In fact, to him it seems to be the one piece of the puzzle that is most obviously neglected. That ends up costing advertisers money, clicks, and customers. If you can increase the quality of writing in your PPC search ads, you stand to gain large benefits. You can increase your traffic, your quality score, lower your cost per click (CPC) and ultimately…
SEO Chat – Search Engine Optimization Tutorials

Tags: Effective, Search, writing

My book on advanced SEO is finally done. The book’s printed and the PDF is ready. Last week I entered the preorder copies into the shipping fulfillment system . But it’s been an incredibly long slog … if memory serves, I started on this project sometime around fall 2009. October? So it’s now almost 2 full years later! Learn from my experience and hopefully you’ll save time and money.

1) Writing – even with an outline – takes much longer than you expect.

Don’t specify any dates until the PDF is done and/or the print version is printed you’re ready to launch the same day! Then specify a date in the future so you can build up to it with promotional activities.

The reason it’s not enough for the PDF to be done and your book to be printed is because there still remains work to be done on the site at that point. For example, I’m currently running usability tests. I’ve also got to set up split testing before go-live.

2) Editing takes even longer than writing.

This is particularly true if you’re editing existing blog posts into book format. I never thought I could dread writing like I did when it came time to editing my posts. It’s hard to explain why, but it was dreary, tedious work. I thought I’d be done writing it in summer 2010 and that was a flop.

3) Keep all pictures and screenshots.

If you only have them within your Word doc, ppt etc, you’ll be forced to recapture them and so waste time and money. This is particularly true for those printing books, because you need a certain minimum resolution for print, which you lack typically when a pic is in your Word doc.

4) Take preorders.

Write a couple of sample chapters, get folks on an email list by offering the samples free, and see if they’ll buy. This validated my idea and also provided some funding so I wasn’t entirely out of pocket.

5) But don’t take too many preorders.

They are a distraction because people will ask if their book is ready – and it’s only fair. It’s easy to manage with about a dozen preorders like I had, but it can be a little stressful even then.

6) Figure out shipping costs before you offer free shipping.

I assumed Canada would cost the same as the US or thereabouts. Wrong!
7) If you offer free or flat rate shipping, make sure you make foreign orders pay the proper rate.

I got an Australian preorder with a free shipping bit… that shipping charge is gonna hurt my margin. [But I honoured it because of the importance of preorders and the leap of faith the preorder customer took/trust he gave me.]

Take the initiative to offer updates to your preorder customers.

It’ll save you answering the same question (where’s my book?) over and over, and they’ll appreciate it.

9) Work with a professional layout artist and pro printers.

It costs a bit more up front, but your margins are better long term, and you get your money’s worth in design. I am working with Malloy printers – a very professional outfit with great support and customer care who answered my innumerable questions with great patience and friendliness – as well as Jacinta Calcut of Image, Graphics and Design whom they referred to me. Jacinta went way above the call of duty to provide a lot of added, extra value and if the ebook looks beautiful, it’s largely thanks to her.

10) Build an email list.

This has been the single most valuable marketing channel to me. Email marketing has gotten me feedback, pre-orders, offers to review the book, usability testers etc.

11) Promote your site via guest posts on blogs.

The conversion rate on blog traffic has been as high as 2x that of Facebook traffic – 37% vs 16%, on book.seoroi.com .  (Feel free to copy the template. I got it from Tim Ash of Site Tuners at Affiliate Summit East 2009; it’s simply headline, bullets, call to action.)

Big kudos to Mike for letting me guest post here and to Ann the SEO Smarty and the SEJ team for always welcoming my posts .

12) Make sure your graphics sparkle.

I’ve used the services of Angeles Barcelina Jr for a long time now and he’s always prompt and doing good looking work .

13) Google Analytics makes mistakes – sometimes very big ones.

If you get publicity, look at Aweber’s conversion numbers, not Google’s. And Google will mix referral traffic in with direct traffic (e.g. if traffic opens a link in a new tab), so if you see a spike in one, there may be a spike in the other. I know this is true because for weeks I’d only get a couple of signups a day for the book, but then after publicity I’ve had periods of a few days where an extra hundred or so ppl subscribed .

14) Get the link to your squeeze page in early for higher CTR.

People don’t read to the end.

[Conversely, when hosting guest posts, don't be a cheapass who leaves the author bio to the end of posts so as to minimize traffic 'loss'. If you're getting a guest post, nurture the relationship and send them as much traffic as possible - they'll come back to write again. And they'll return the favour in other ways.]

15) Get an editor – you’re never objective enough about your own prose.

I worked with Richard Kershaw of Quality Nonsense, whom I’d known online for a while then finally met in the flesh at PubCon 2010 in Las Vegas. He cut out loads of fat and corrected plenty of mistakes. This also helped speed things up – recall that self-editing is SLOOOOOOW.

16) Make an outline / table of contents asap.

Otherwise your writing will wander and you’ll have to cut lots and tie it back together later. partly what i did at the start and it was tough.

17) Don’t allow your preorder title to tie you down as to the book title. It’s a mistake I made n I bet the preorder customers don’t remember the exact title they saw, nor would they mind getting the same book with a slightly different title. Be willing to test this.

18) Build your Minimum Viable Product.

Don’t waste money on mobile landing pages until you first see if you can get mobile traffic! Another expense I took on which will make it harder to achieve breakeven, and yet probably wasn’t worth it.

Have questions, comments? Tweet @GabGoldenberg and I’ll answer as much as I can. And get a free book chapter!

Related posts:

1. SEO Tips I Learned from Matt Cutts As an SEO one of the things we often have…
2. SEO – Something I Learned Today Today I learned the SEO not only stands for Search…
3. Is Your Schlock Writing Dismembering Infants? Schlock writing is bad. Schlock writing is bad because it…
4. The Art and Science of Writing Good Titles Crafting a good title for your pages or blog posts…
5. Writing Keyword Focused Posts that are Interesting One of my constant criticisms of bloggers and the blogosphere…

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads – New customers can get 0 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal – Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. Links From PR9 Sites – Get In Top 3 Google ASAP
9. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
10. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
11. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.

The 18 Most Potent Things I Learned Writing An Ebook

Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Tags: eBook, Learned, Most, Potent, Things, writing

This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

People regularly say to me, “I can’t write.” Sure you can. The process of writing – getting words down on the page – is mindlessly simple. Transcribe everything you say and/or think and eventually you’ll have something down on the screen in front of you.

Which is precisely the problem.

Any blogger who wants to can bang out a 1000-word post a day. Just write whatever’s on your mind, without filter or organization, and press “publish”. Unfortunately, that’s how far too many bloggers do it.

Greg's computer, after loading one too many uninspired blogs

Taking care while crafting your words is what distinguishes a blogger from a mere muser. Unless you’ve got an extremely captivating story to tell—about how you climbed all Seven Summits or fed starving Sudanese in Darfur—merely sharing your day-to-day experiences with the rest of us isn’t blogging. It’s narcissism.

There are too many homogenous bloggers living lives similar to yours and expressing like opinions for your blog to be noteworthy. Oh, you’re a mother who’s juggling child-rearing with holding a job? Congratulations. No one in the history of the universe ever had to sit in an office all day and come home to her kids before you did. Tell us more about how exhausted you are every evening, and what hilariously precocious thing your 4-year-old said that put a smile on your face and made it all worthwhile.

Yes, you want to find commonalities with your readers, but saying nothing bold or different is no way to build an ardent, devoted audience.

You’ve got to focus your ideas. It means bringing something unique, whatever that might be. (The harder you have to look for it, the less reason you have to blog.) On the mechanical level, it means not relying on phrases that come to mind easily. If they do come to mind easily, they’re likely either clichés (horrible) or plagiarism (worse). And if you’re a native English speaker, but can’t bother to use proper grammar and spelling, why should I spend my time deciphering your ramblings?

Have consideration for your reader. Assume he’ll take it personally if you waste even a millisecond of his time. God knows I take it personally when I’m reading an unfamiliar blog. Trim the excess foliage from your writing, and cauterize the cuts so that nothing useless or repetitive ever grows there again. The form of what you say is at least as important as the content, because no reader’s going to be exposed to your groundbreaking ideas if she has to trudge through a verbal peat bog to find them. Job #1 should always be to present something clean, sharp and interesting.

And do you know what magical thing will happen when you take the time and effort to craft something original, incisive and provocative for your audience?

People will hate you.

Yes. Hate. They want to be comforted, not challenged. They’ll be expecting the simplistic three-chord riffs of traditional blues-based rock ‘n roll that they’ve heard 1000 times before, and here you are giving them the shocking wild feedback and distortion of Jimi Hendrix. Readers are conditioned to understand the traditional way of interpreting the universe: if you dare to go full Einstein, telling them crazy stories about how matter and energy are two forms of the same thing and that space-time can stretch and warp, I guarantee the enemies you make will outnumber the friends.

My own blog illustrates the point. I started my blog with a mission that I thought any rational person would approve of. I wanted to show people how to take whatever money they’re starting with, however modest, and foster its growth by performing certain basic, straightforward activities and avoiding others. And I wanted my readers to comprehend the complex financial jargon that affects their everyday lives, by explaining it to them in an understandable way. When my partner and I began the blog, we thought we’d have millions of people patting us on the back, nodding knowingly and thanking us for telling it like it is.

Boy, were we wrong. Every strong opinion we espouse is met with various commenters telling us we’re mean, insensitive, or unrealistic. A couple of our blogging colleagues—people who run sites more popular than ours—banned us outright for challenging their positions. We were polite in our outspokenness, yet they still wanted us silenced.

But regardless of what anyone wants to hear, the fact is that you shouldn’t blame VISA because your credit card payments are high. You owe zero loyalty to your employer. If you buy a house with an adjustable-rate mortgage, you are playing with gasoline and a lit match.

Virtually none of the blogs similar to ours take the same positions. Instead, most offer the same easily digestible advice that’s resulted in a society of overextended consumers.

What keeps us going is that the readers who do like our blog, love it. They bookmark it, they subscribe to the RSS feed, and most importantly, they actually read it. Our readers know that three times a week, they can come to us for a long, detailed, carefully researched post. And that that post will challenge assumptions, inspire action, and use undeniable premises to reach conclusions that aren’t obvious. Our readers also know that every post will be written in an uncompromising and hopefully interesting style. After all, that’s what I look for when searching for a blog to read.

As I write this, my blog’s Alexa rank seems to have plateaued around 122,000. I still want that rank to improve, but I don’t obsess on it like I once did. Quality and quantity don’t always overlap. Given the choice between having x devoted and demanding readers, and having x+y readers who are just looking for reassurance and nice stories, I’ll take the former every time. If you want your ideas to resonate, you should too.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Writing is Easy; Editing is Hard

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Easy, Editing, Hard, writing

One of our most awesome columnists you are most likely to be following, Alan Bleiweiss, has written an awesome eBook I have gone through and can absolutely open-heartedly recommend to our readers. The eBook is called The Site Owner’s Guide to SEO for Content Writing and you can grab your copy here.

Many of the recommendations found in the eBook come from a combination of SEO best practices and User Experience best practices:

Where a recommendation carries less value for SEO, it carries that much more value for usability.

Describing the Process

The guide clearly outlines the whole keyword selection and content creation processes:

1. Keyword research:
   • Start by creating a seed list (be sure to consider the different segments of your audience);
   • Expand the list with help of keyword research tools;
2. Creating a clear content structure:
   • Breaking content into categories;
   • Creating consistent title tag structure
   • Creating clear meta tag structure;
   • Building the organized subheading structure, etc
3. (Internal) Content linking strategies and approaches:
   • Linking back to your own content;
   • Giving outbound links to trusted sources.
4. Enriching content with additional phrases, media content as well as re-packaging content in other formats.

Going in-Depth

Apart from outlining the step-by-step process the guide also provides some very actionable and in-depth advice on very questionable issues:

• Which are preferred title-tag separators and why;
• How to link from main navigation or footer;
• How to identify your brand through your content;
• Which keyword frequency to stick to when creating content, as well as many other interesting points content creators always need help with.

Most importantly, the guide encourages you to get creative and write content for your users because…

SEO in 2011 is an art form as much as it is a science.

The eBook costs just .95 and you can buy it here.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

eBook Review: The Site Owner’s Guide to SEO for Content Writing by Alan Bleiweiss

Search Engine Journal

Tags: Alan Bleiweiss, content, eBook, Guide, Owner’s, review, Site, writing

This is a guest post by Stefanie Flaxman of Revision Fairy® Small Business Proofreading Services

Writing mistakes happen.

Unfortunately for you and your readers, writing mistakes are like speed bumps on the blog post open highway. They slow down the reader and remove her from your world—the created reality that you share through your text.

Since you only have a few seconds to impress new readers, it’s critical to make all facets of your content flawless. If your writing confuses readers or hinders their experience because of a glaring error, you’ve failed.

Here are 21 common writing mistakes that turn off new readers. Eliminate them to demonstrate that you are an authority on your subject and get new subscribers.

1. You have no proverbial welcome mat

Display your personality on your Home, About, and Contact pages to attract and retain readers. Avoid generic descriptions.

Your content is hardly the only item on a reader’s to-do list. Immediately entice viewers and offer them something of value if they stay.

Let’s use ProBlogger as an example. Darren has a brief bio at the bottom of every page on his site, as well as a current video on the Home page. New readers quickly know the person behind ProBlogger.

Darren looks happy in his bio photograph because he makes money blogging. He also wears glasses. Perhaps a new reader wears glasses and likes that he and Darren have something in common. The bespectacled reader decides to read Darren’s blog instead of another blog advice site. (You get the point.)

Inviting tag lines and snazzy logos can also work well. What makes you different from the other bloggers in your niche?

2. Your posts look like Wikipedia articles

Content can reveal your individuality and remain professional. Don’t mindlessly spit out facts.

3. You don’t answer “W? W? W? W? W? H?”

Give your readers a complete story that they’ll want to share.

Answer “Who? What? When? Why? Where? How?” in your content.

The art of effective blogging strikes a balance between traditional journalism concepts and the casual, interactive tone that is characteristic of new media.

4. Your posts don’t include images

People like visuals. They go to the movies, watch television, and look at art in museums. Photos complement your text and improve a reader’s experience.

Think 360 degrees of SEO. Use the main keyword that you’re promoting in your post for the name of a photo file and its alt text (title tag). You may also provide a descriptive caption with the photo to offer the reader a synopsis of your post.

All effective writing isn’t necessarily in the headline and body text.

5. Your paragraphs break the four-line rule

Avoid redundancies and edit paragraphs to four lines or less. Structure your posts for short attention spans.

6. Your headlines break the goldilocks rule

If Goldilocks was on a search for the best headline (not a perfect bed to sleep in), she’d choose one that is not too short, not too long, but “just right.”

Do you want people to retweet your headlines? Keep them succinct and juicy.

7. Each post does not have a byline

Post bylines give readers information about you if they haven’t first viewed your bio or About page. They introduce you and build trust with a potential new subscriber.

Use the space at the bottom of every post to connect with readers.

Bylines are an excellent opportunity to link to products or services that you offer.

8. You use too many incomplete sentences

Incomplete sentences, abrupt tangents, and parenthetical thoughts can be disruptive. Use them sparingly.

9. Your posts include obvious factual blunders

Make sure that your links correspond to the proper, active URLs. Check the spellings of names/titles. Is “Wednesday, March 9” really a “Wednesday?”

Inaccuracies in simple elements of your posts are only a result of laziness.

10. You make “actual word” typos

Many pubic relations firms (oops, I mean, “public” relations firms) are familiar with this type of error. Spell check won’t alert you when you type an incorrect word that is spelled correctly.

There’s no prize for proofreading fast. Examine your text so that each word is the word that you intend to write.

The occasional “actual word” typo even appears on ProBlogger. (In the fourth paragraph of the ProBlogger guest post, the word “A” should be “At.”)

11. You use incorrect or excessive punctuation

You can express your voice and tone without distracting eyesores, such as “?!?!”, every time that you’re flabbergasted. Simply end sentences with periods, instead of transitioning with ellipses.

Learn the specific functions of each type of dash: hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes. If you’re not sure how to use a certain punctuation mark, look it up.

12. Your blog has inconsistencies

It’s easier to spot inconsistencies when you follow the four-line rule for paragraphs. Be careful with:

• Name references. If you mention the name “Darren Rowse,” refer to him as “Darren” or “Rowse” in the remainder of the text. Don’t alternate between the two.
• Hyphenated words. If you use the word “copy-editor,” don’t write it elsewhere in your post as “copy editor” or “copyeditor.”
• Spelling. If you write the name “Stefanie,” don’t also spell it “Stephanie” when you refer to the same individual again.
• Numbered items. If you promise “Five Tips” in your headline, list five distinct tips in your post.
• Paragraph breaks. Make sure that paragraphs don’t accidently run together after your publish.

13. You use vague words

Edit words from your first draft until they are refined and specific. Each sentence should be crisp and clear.

14. You confuse plurals and possessives

I’ve even written “letter’s” in first draft copy when I intended to write “letters.” Pay attention to apostrophes and plural words when proofreading to double-check that they are used correctly.

15. You include too many links in posts

Limit links to relevant, useful articles that supplement your writing. Set links to open in new browser tabs or windows, so that readers don’t navigate away from your post.

16. You misuse double and single quotation marks

Use single quotation marks for quotes within double quotation marks.

17. You smother direct quotes

Give direct quotes space, rather than cluttering them within a paragraph. Use block quotes to highlight important information or quotes that you analyze.

18. You make word choice errors

Do you know the difference between the words “compliment” and “complement?” “Premier” and “premiere?” “Stationary” and “stationery?”

Unlike “actual word” typos, you may be unaware that you continually make these writing mistakes. Regardless of your niche, if you don’t use the proper words, you’re going to look like an amateur writer.

19. You use too many bold, italicized, and upper-case letters

They’re unattractive, at best, and look like spam, at worst (similar to excessive punctuation).

20. Your blog’s font is too small, big, or fancy

When I get too aesthetically ambitious, I remind myself of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

I’m launching a new blog soon and recently had fun browsing Genesis Framework themes for WordPress. (No affiliate link here. Just good stuff!)

There’s a style for every taste, yet all design aspects are simple and straightforward—which ultimately enhance your writing.

21. You publish first-draft copy

A sloppy rant may have been appropriate on your LiveJournal in 2003, but first-draft copy does not always communicate your message effectively.

All blog content is an opportunity to demonstrate your superb writing ability. Perform every step of the writing process: writing, editing, proofreading, and more proofreading. Treat your blog like a professional publication, not a hobby.

How do you keep your blog and your reputation spotless? Share your techniques with me in the comments below.

Stefanie Flaxman is an online proofreader who corrects business, marketing, and educational documents in 24 hours. Check out Stefanie’s free report, Business Proofreading Tips Other Proofreaders Don’t Want You to Know, and connect with her on Twitter.

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Eliminate 21 Reputation-Crushing Writing Mistakes from Your Blog

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blog, Eliminate, from, Mistakes, ReputationCrushing, writing