Category: Blogging

Learn the art of blogging the easy way.

Categories
Blogging

3 Essential Elements of a Successful Blog Post

A successful blog post is one that achieves the task it was created for.

It could be to attract the attention and change the mind of just one person or it could be to excite millions of people to come together and perform one act of kindness.

Whatever the goal, I have identified three elements for success every blog post has.

  • One tree in a forest of trees
  • Social glue within the tribe
  • Delights the brain of a minimum, viable amount of readers

One tree in a forest of trees

First blog post in a brand new blog of a non-famous person will fail.

It is the first tree in what will be a forest of trees. Your tree will not be judged alone, it will be judged within the context of other trees. A person with a horde of fans and followers already has the forest built. When that first tree is planted, it is not alone.

This means a blogger must be willing to put the hours into growing her blog before that one blog post will become a blog post.

A blogger does not have a successful blog post in isolation, it is supported by the body of work which has gone before.

Each tree you plant, nurture and grow makes your forest bigger.

Social glue within the tribe

Human beings desire to connect, communicate and cooperate.

We are many tribes belonging to the one tribe of humanity. We go forward together. A blog must belong to a tribe of many. It cannot be successful if it is a tribe of one.

A blog is a communication tool, it communicates and to others in the tribe and hopefully persuades.

It is a transportation device for taking a thought from the blogger to the reader. The tribe the blog wants to be a part of is the recipient of these thoughts.

A blog post gives ideas, creativity, inspiration, and guidance to the tribe. It becomes the glue that helps hold the tribe together, to enable the tribe to achieve its goals.

A successful blog post adds to the library of the tribe, it is another notch on the communal totem.

Delights the brain of a minimum viable amount of readers

A change in the state of mind must occur in the reader, to allow the reader to know the blog post was worthy of her time.

The number of readers a successful blog post needs could be 1 or it could be 1,000,000. It depends on the specific objective of that blog post.

If you need to persuade one person to change their mind and perform a specific task for you and your blog post only existed for that purpose, then if that occurs the blog post is a success.

If your intention is to get 10,000 people to download an app that will change the world, and you do that, then your blog post is a success.

When you are starting out fresh, you have no readers. But you will. You write for those who seek to know you and desire to dig in deep.

It may be a future post attracts but the past blog posts change them from a reader to a fan.

Your forest of blog posts will enable you to create fans, not the one successful post.

Learn what delights, understand the number of people you need to attract. Focus on those who the blog post is for.

Are there other things which make a blog post successful?

Possibly.

But, I can’t think of any that belong to all successful blog posts.

it helps to be mindful of these three elements when creating your blog posts. We do tend to over complicate things, forgetting that simple truths are often what makes something work.

You could argue that “being useful”, is an essential element. But I would say it belongs to the element of “Social glue within the tribe”. Being useful helps the tribe, it improves your standing with the tribe.

There is much detail within these three elements worth exploring.

It is worth remembering though.

You grow your forest one tree at a time.

Categories
Blogging Content Marketing

What is content marketing? An old school look at the technique

Stream of consciousness

They say you shouldn’t write blog posts as a stream of consciousness, that they should be planned, crafted, pounded into a listicle, or a two thousand word bit of evergreen content that Neil Patel and his army of munchkin content writers crank out.

I do actually say the say thing, but sometimes you have to go old school, clear out the old noggin and do a brain dump. Forget for a minute your tribe and do one for you, which is what this post is. I snap awake at 5.59 with a head crammed full of thoughts and just need to get them out.


This of course is what blogging used to be like, and it was fun.


You got to really know the blogger as you would get warts and all, sure it’s indulgent, but it was a clunky depiction of the human condition and as there wasn’t any Twitter, Insagram, Linkedin, Facebook… Ect, in those days you had little place to go, time to gather your thoughts, play a little with the language.


Thinking along these lines I realise there is way too much content being produced right now, most of it will never even be read or consumed. I am reading a lot about content shock lately, but the problem I see is for those businesses online who are trying to reach people, to turn them into paying customers.


I hate jargon.


Or maybe not, because I do use it. But what I hate is those who use jargon to mask their like of knowledge or talk about an old, ancient thing with a new phrase which comes over like they just invented it. “Influencer marketing”, is one that seems to be replicating itself, Ebola virus like across the blogosphere (is that term even used anymore, grandad?). As if “influence” is a new thing that bloggers just came across.


Socrates I am sure would disagree.


But this is the nature of online publishing, you can complain like a cynical old git, or you can join in.


But I think there is a third way.


You see, people constantly over complicate things.


Content marketing is only about two things, communcation and persuasion.
Your content must do both to acheive its objective.


All you are doing is taking a thought that is in your brain, and allowing a piece of content to carry it to another human being’s brain.


Thus content is merely a mechanical device used to transport thoughts.


This is taking things down to the fundamentals.


Which is useful because that’s where the good stuff can happen.


Not following made up jargon like “inbound marketing”, “influencer marketing”, content marketing”, and all the others. That is what my friend, Andrew Burnett calls, bollocks. We had a good chat yesterday on the nature of marketing and the judicious use of the term “bollocks” in a presentation. I was for sparing use, if at all, as things are special, magical words only to be used to highlight the most intense of things.


But then Andrew is a tad intense, which is a good thing.


As this bit of writing is a stream of consciousness, it wont be edited. No, that’s against the rules. Plus it wont have a crafted ending with a call to action that invites you to sign me up as a creative content consultant, to help out your agency team that seems to be drying up for ideas, or if you;re a small business to get you to sign up to my social media management service.


No, blog posts like this just seem to drift away.


The deep blue sky of dawn is turning to a grey sky of daylight.
Seagulls are given a last cry before the sounds of the Megacity that is Truro drowns them out.
And children are getting up to read Bin Weavils comics before school.
Time to finish this blog post and get the porridge on.
I hope you enjoyed this one
Have a fantastic day.
Categories
Blogging SEO Creativity SEO Discussion

How big should blog posts be to rank on Google?

 

The time when it was all about targeted keyword rich, short form content,  crank out a few hundred words, has long gone. Creating long form, well researched content is expensive, time consuming and hard work.

But what is the evidence that we should create long form content? How do we answer the question, “What size of content will help me rank in Google?”

Brian Dean

Evidence that Longform content is best

Backlinko.com recently did a massive study of 1 million Google search results, published on January 21st, 2016

It’s findings regarding size of content were:

” Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.”

Backlinko
MOZ

Steve Rayson over at Moz.com bloggged, “Content, Share and Links: Insights from analyzing 1 million articles”, you can download his 31 page pdf here

Steve Rayson
The analysis was the result of teaming up with Buzzumo.com

Deep research and opinions matter :

“There are, however, specific content types that do have a strong positive correlation of shares and links. This includes research backed content and opinion forming journalism. We found these content formats achieve both higher shares and significantly more links.”

On the length of content with regards to social sharing:

“…long form content of over 1,000 words consistently receives more shares and links than shorter form content.”

On the type of content shared

 “List posts and videos achieve much higher shares on average than other content formats. However, in terms of achieving links, list posts and why posts achieve a higher number of referring domain links than other content formats on average. While we may love to hate them, list posts remain a powerful content format.”

It seems the much hated listicle is not only getting the shares, but the links too. Gathering anecdotal evidence for this article, people would role their eyes at the idea that listicles get the most attention. This may be due to that fact that people who are in the web publishing business see more of them and are not in “reader mode”, but are in publishing mode. It may also be pure snobbery, the fact that we want people to think we are more sophisticated than we actually are.

The article goes on to say that most content receives few social shares and even fewer links. This would indicate that content is being dumped on a massive scale into a vase and empty space with no one reading, sharing or linking to it.

The research indicates that longer form content in excess of 2k is more likely to be successful. Thus time spent creating 3 x blog posts 1,000 words long could be wasted, whilst time spent creating 1 blog post 3,000 words long returns rewards.

The study goes on to look at the type of content that is being shared and linked to, analysing around 70k webpages with articles from , The Atlantic, New Republic, Nytimes.com the guardian.com and indicates that it is well researched opinion pieces that are most popular.

SERPIQ

How Important is Content Length? Why Data-Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions
Analysis was performed of the top 10 results in Google in 2012, using 20,000 keywords and discovered a direct correlation of long content to higher results in Google.

Serpiq

“As you can see, there is a drop in content length as we move from first to tenth position. On average, 10th position pages have 400 less words on the page than first position pages. This does point to the trend that higher ranked sites have more content, but keep in mind that this graph is not segmented in any way – this is just a graph of all of the SERPs we’ve analyzed.”

More evidence from Moz.com

In another study from Moz, by John Doherty, it “found a direct correlation between the number of back links…and the overall length of the content itself.”

Below is a chart of 500 posts on the x-axis and the number of words on the y-axis

Moz graphic

If we take the chart above and overlay with the number of links each post acquired has been recorded, we can clearly see a correlation between length of post and number of links the post gets.
John Doherty states, ” if we visualize the links that these posts have gained, there seems to be a correlation between longer content and links:”

moz graphic 2

OKSUMO and Buzzsumo research
Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us

“We’ve analyzed the social share counts of over 100 million articles in the past 8 months.”

“If you look at the chart below, the longer the content, the more shares it gets, with 3000-10000 word pieces getting the most average shares (8859 total average shares). Not surprisingly, there was a lot more short-form content being written. How much more? There were 16 times more content with less than 1000 words than there were content with 2000+ words.”

OKdork

It is quite clear from this graph that you are more likely to have your content shared on Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google+ if you content is over 3,000 words, rather than 1,000 words or less.

This flies in the face of common thought that we are only motivated to share, short, snacksized bits of content. It is not what the data is telling us.

“As you can see in the graph, 3000+ word articles get more social shares on Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter and Google+.”

Smartpassiveincome.com
The Backlinking Strategy That Works
Patt Flynn has also noticed a relationship between shares and content length.

smartpassive

Coschedule

5 Things That Will Change Your Mind About Long Form Content Marketing

In Garrett Moon’s research for Coschedule.com he found that content with a higher number of words ranked higher in Google.

coschedule

“Yes, it’s true. Long-form content ranks higher on average than shorter pages. In my results, the pages in the top five (1-5) averaged more than 2,000 words per page. In the bottom half (6-10), the posts only averaged 1,400 words. Long-form content was absolutely weighted to the top of the list.”

 

Neil Patel
Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg likes to get data driven answers in this blog post investigating the merits of long form content, Why you need to create evergreen, long form content

Neil Patel

“I took the 327 blog posts I have written on Quick Sprout and broke them down into two buckets. The first bucket contained blog posts that were fewer than 1,500 words, and the second contained posts that were greater than 1,500 words. I then analyzed how many tweets and Facebook likes each post got.

Posts that were under 1,500 words, on average received 174.6 tweets and 59.3 Facebook likes. Posts that were over 1,500 words, on average received 293.5 tweets and 72.7 Facebook likes.”

quicksprout

 

A word about causation. We are not stating that long content causes more links and higher ranking, but we are suggesting that there is a correlation between the two, it has been my belief that this has been for case for a number of years.

However, we have a number of factors at work here, the main one is the person who actually reads the content and then reacts. Something is happening to cause them to be more likely to socially share the content or link, size of the content may be a factor, but the content must be coherent and resonate with the reader. It must engage.

Semantic footprint vs the keyword

Spock and Bones

Google introduced a new algorithm called, Hummingbird in 2013. Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com said,

“Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.”

That Google is using the “meaning” of the whole article rather than a specific searched for keyword means that more semantically relevant content is going to help Google determine the relevance of that search term for your content.

It’s not as simple as “more is better”. It’s that more relevant, useful content is better.

If we look at it simplistically, what does a 500 word post have that a 3,000 word post does not? The answer is ease of consumption, it’s quick for the reader. But speed of reading is not the objective of the publisher, we want to produce a reaction. If a reader’s objective is to read and consume a blog post quickly, then they are quickly on to the next thing.

The problem is, most publishers see their content in isolation rather than a sequence of content from numerous other publishers.

Each piece of content consumed by the reader is battling for time in the consciousness, ready for downloading into the subconscious.

Which brand do you think is going to stick more, the brand of the content that took 2 mins to read or the brand which had the content that took two 15 minute sessions to get through?

The thing is, it’s hard to create long content. We get distracted, Netflix, Facebook, Linkedin upates, yada yada yada. And when you create something great at 1,000 words that PUBLISH button starts pulsing. Right now I’m at 809 words and I think I have something interesting for people.

But there are a few other points I want to cover on this issue, and hopefully it takes this particular piece of content from good to great, but that is your call not mine.

We now know content has to be big and thus requires more investment

Categories
Blogging

A blog post is not a forest

tree

You write a number of articles which have a common thread, a linear pattern which leads to a conclusion, builds a thesis. You put the articles together and you have a book.

A book is a product, it is not content.

You create a blog post, it exists on a linear time line with other blog posts. But the other blog posts are not read, just the one.

This is not a product, this is content.

Can a single blog post connect? Or is its purpose simply to draw you towards the other pieces of content, like hooks in velcro. A single one has the weight of morning dew, but together they become a powerful tidal wave.

But that blog post does not exist on its own. It is a tree that resides in the forest with trees that are exactly like it.

Much better noticed, if the tree stands alone in a meadow.

Categories
Blogging

Don’t Build your House on the Land of the Social Media Barons

Social media gate

Social media gate

Own as much of your digital real estate as you can, as talked about at startbloggingonline.com. Don’t build a Facebook page, get your own domain and build your own blog or website. It’s both easier and cheaper than you think. Create your own email list, rather than having your listen controlled by these social media, corporate entities.

Social media billionaire barons don’t do what they do because they like you. They do it because they can make money out of you. Don’t trade away the sweat of your labour for a few magic beans.

Don’t muck about on someone else’s platform, get your own and make that your base. Sure, join all the other platforms, but work them, don’t let them work you.

The message, your message should be under your control as much as possible.

Image source

Categories
Blogging

BBC Recycling Own Blog Posts

welsh-road-sign

This was the most read shared on the BBC today, note the date of publication. Since this was first published I have read this twice before. I wonder how much of the content on the BBC is reused.

It does make sense to reblog when you have great stuff in the archives as demonstrated by this becoming the most read. Content should be seen as an asset and squeezed for every last job of juice.

Categories
Blogging

SEO is Dead Headline Inspiration

coffin2

To help people write their “seo is dead” blog post I offer headline help to inspire you.

Seo is dead
Why seo is dead
Seo is dead again
Seo stubbed my toe
Seo is walking dead
Seo is breaking bad dead
Did Rand Fishkin kill seo
How social media killed seo
Has content marketing killed seo
Seo is dead, but no one noticed
Seo is finally dead, long live seo
Seo has been dead so long it smells
Why Frankenstein Seo is the new new thing
Seo ressurection, behold it walks again
Seo is dead, only the death twitch is left
How to make money from the dead corpse of seo
Why seo blog posts are Immortal but seo is not
Now seo is dead can we stop writing seo is dead posts
Seo is dead, but only if you are a journalist sssshhhhhh
Why I buried Seo in the garden hoping it would grow into a linking tree
I thought seo was dead but then I woke from a nightmare after a weekend binge of watching Hannibal

Picture source

Categories
Blogging

Audio Test with Evernote on the iPhone

I’m going to go multi-media (about time) and so am going to post tests here as it’s always useful to know what kit others are using and the results.

I had posted the audio direct from my iPhone to Facebook, but I don’t like the results as it hosts the file on Evernote and it’s always better to have fewer points.

I will be testing other multimedia systems and posting the results here.

I’ve now uploaded the audio file to this post, let me know what you think of the quality.

evernote-test

Categories
Blogging

How to make money out of blogging and why I failed at Linklove London

The first thing you need to do to make money out of blogging is to stop.

The second thing is to cancel all your subscriptions to the “Making money whilst blogging in your underpants” type membership sites. Then take all your ebooks and delete them, filling the hole left in your hard drive with Harlem Shake videos.

The third thing is to start doing something that is ancient, but online.

Why should you do something ancient, surely this is the new age where new, new, new is god. Where anything new is better than old.

That’s what they want you to think, because it’s easier to sell a book if what your selling is called something new.

But we know how to play that game don’t we?

Because we are all players, at least I hope to the High God of the Digerati you are.

I talked about this at my latest presentation in London at the online marketing conference called Linklove to about 300 SEO people. I tried to convince them that it was something ancient that they need to focus on instead of fannying around with Excel spreadsheets and setting up 200 domain networks on different IP numbers, filled with drecky articles.

And I think I failed at Link Love.

Because I think only a few got it.

Which is interesting.

It means that most of the seo community are on the same path, they are using the same techniques that worked 3 years ago. Which is great if you are a lumberjack. Lumberjacking has not changed in the last 3 years.

But are you that stupid to think seo has not changed?

Blogging is not dead. It’s just that it no longer gives a return on investment. And we are talking about blogging in the way that an SEO would describe it. as a means of ranking and implementing a mechanical solution.

The way to make money out of blogging is to stop blogging.

I know, it sounds nuts, but stay with me here.

Stop blogging, and start publishing.

Publisher is the new, new thing.

“Oh c’mon man, you mean I read all the way down to here and that’s it”, I hear you wail.

But that’s the thing, it really is that simple.

What do you think is happening in your brain if you tell yourself you are a publisher and not a blogger?

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of ideas, thoughts, concepts and information it is the activity of making such things available to the World. Sometimes you are the originator, sometimes others.

It sounds a lot like blogging doesn’t it.

But it’s not and in your mind there is the big difference between how you perceive a blogger and how you perceive a publisher.

You may say that you know lots of successful bloggers, what about Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Garret etc? Are not they successful bloggers?

No.

They are publishers in every definition of the word. They hire writers, produce courses, print books etc. Yes they started out as bloggers, but quickly morphed into something else. More akin to building a publishing empire.

But hardly the image of most of us have of the blogger which is someone sitting in their underpants eating a large back of chili Doritos. OK, we’ve all been there, we have all sucked the crack pipe of blogging. It worked great for a while, but that model is dead.

But if you are to make money out of blogging you need to stop thinking like a blogger and start thinking like a publisher.

And it’s the same for the seo crowd I spoke to at Link Love. Stop thinking like a content marketer and start thinking like a publisher.

Stop thinking like a link builder and start thinking like a publisher.

And I have to say this, even though it pains me. Stop thinking like a linkbaiter and start thinking like a publisher.

Very few people are teaching this right now.

I have been banging on about it for a while.

I tell clients, get a podcast out, get an iPad mag out, publish a Kindle book. They just look at me as if I am insane. “But they are not teaching that at the seo conferences I go to. And they are really expensive so they have to be good”.

Clients are frustrating.

I tell them, don’t just publish an infographic, turn it into a poster and give it away on a Facebook contest, turn it into a slide show, make it into a Youtube clip, have it printed out as a mini book.

Think like a publisher.

If you want to know how to do this, I have a coaching program you may be interested in. Linkbait Coaching is going into a new phase, the “Publishing” version. We still teach linkbait, but there is so much more you need to be doing and if you want to win. Sign up to the email notification on the page and get to know when it launches. I have not yet decided how many people to limit this one to, but if you sign up to the email list I can give you a shot at getting in early.

Categories
Blogging

Guest Post Linkbait

Typewriter

Typewriter

If I include “guest post” in a title, will I get lots of emails asking if they could get a guest post hosted and could they include a link back to their client who has a mobile toe clipping service?

I made my first guest post in 1999, it was image based and was a unique image grab of Julia Roberts. The movie Notting Hill was being made in my street and I had fun using a camcorder (remember those) to record the action. I sent the image to a Julia Roberts fansite for a link back. It’s always easy when you have unique content for a hungry crowd,

But, the landscape has changed. As agencies can no longer call up Guido to rustle up some mucus stained content that nobody will ever read and hawk it on article marketing sites, they have switched to guest posting. Blasting bloggers with barely interesting content for a link back. Some bloggers have now got savvy and started asking for money to place the posts and stupidly some agencies pay for it.

I say stupid because when that blog gets banned by Google for selling links, all the work gone into that relationship will be lost.

Some will use it to get competitors links knocked out, if a blog is linking to your competitor, buy a guest post link from them, link to a neutral party and then dob them in. Will it work? Who knows, but I am sure some will try.

If a site asks for money for a guest post I put them in a file “forget about it”. As their stability is questionable, and I only want to build links for clients that will stick around.

The truth is guest posting is one of those fads that come and go. It will work better when the sheep move on to the next easy win.

Any website should be doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Spread the tactics around, nothing is a ranking killer, but creating useful experiences is always going to be on top.

So if you want that guest post, absolutely. Bring it on, and no I am not going to tell you what the rules for getting accepted are. But donuts are involved.

Image source

Categories
Blogging

Updating the List of UK SEO Companies

I started a list back in 2007 of UK SEO Companies, I’ve been neglecting the list lately and quite a few new, vibrant, kick ass seo agencies have sprouted up and deserve to be on the list.

I originally tried to keep the list focussed on business that offered only SEO, but as things developed, agencies are more likely to offer a range of services covering all aspects of online marketing.

Also, I’m going to open up more geographical specific lists, after all this is the month of sharing the link love.

Click through to the page and add your seo agency in the comments. If there is a desire, I may also start a list for web designers, although as they are always at the hairdressers they may not have time to send details.

Categories
Blogging

Sometimes it's Worth Doing That Which Makes No Sense

I cranked up Tweetdeck early on Friday night to do my weekly check in. Unless I have a plan to implement I only check the feed about once a week.

I’m not really a user of Twitter, more a pusher. I mostly work with a bunch of other accounts than my main one.

But, when I heard that Pampers have a “follow me” request on every packet of nappies something clicked.

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter was great when it first started, noise to signal ratio was very low and the exclusivity factor was attractive.

But the Pampers thing seemed to whiff a little.

I would still advise clients to cut traditional advertising and put it into new media, Twitter being one of those. Although you really need to know the landscape to truly use it to increase your ROI

Which is the point, right.

And you can use it effectively to promote your brand and develop a following.

Although I don’t take on many clients these days I still have a healthy bunch to whom I can share cutting edge techniques with and the point about cutting edge techniques is that few people are actually doing them.

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”

There are incredibly profitable techniques out there right now. And no I’m not going to give them away on a blog, even when I do tell people the process they don’t quite get it. Some of it is extremely counter intuitive.

The point is if you are feeding where the rest of the herd are, you are going to be drinking muddy water, with the odd floater sailing by.

Twitter is one big, muddy trough. Most people don’t mind that, and to be honest it’s all they need.

Some need to be where the herd hangs out, nothing wrong with that. If you have thousands of followers and you can sell to them, it makes perfect sense.

Observing the social media scene as someone who uses it as a business tool, rather than the social aspect I see there are certain reasons that some platforms succeed and some fail, making gentle hissing noise as they go.

Most don’t realise you can actually break most rules of social media and benefit from it. Too many “How to Tweet” books out there, which I find very useful when I need to nod off.

So, I thought I would break a few rules and throw something out there, just to see. Something that was a bit of nonsense.

I had the germ of an idea and probably in about 1 hour had bought a domain name, set up the web page, created a mailing list. I hadn’t done this for years, I usually get someone else to do it and the speed surprised me.

I called it Slagster.com I will invent a juicy tale of how I came up with the domain later.

After a few jokes about Angel investors and a failed IPO and a lot of nonsense Tweeting from me – I’m sure some people thought that Charlie Sheen had hacked into my account – I noticed someone else had already signed up a Twitter account for Splagster (good luck with that) and a bunch of people signed up to the email, without knowing what the hell what it was about.

Until now.

I do have the germ of an idea, something simple, something tasty, something counter intuitive. Not something for the IM crowd, but something designed to make a lot of noise and be disruptive.

It’s a challenge, and it’s exciting.

And it probably wont happen.

But that’s not the point. The point is to do something that sometimes does not make sense, even at the expense of attracting a few WTFs. It refills the reservoir and girds your loins. Not sure I want my loins girded, but anyway.

Splagster.com, it definitely will not be what you think, but sign up anyway.

Categories
Blogging SEO Discussion

Is Blog Commenting Useless for SEO

The difference between an SEO who has tested commenting on blogs and one who hasn’t is that the one who hasn’t says it doesn’t work and the one who has keeps quiets about it and keeps commenting.

As an SEO it also marks you out as to whether they are in the Premier League or still slugging it out for the pub team.

Some SEO “experts” will see say, “nofollow”, doesn’t pass juice. End of.

This is a mistake.

A blog comment is an advert, it is a branding tool, it will add to the sum of how people perceive you. How people perceive you has a direct impact on whether they will link to you.

For example, when SEO “experts” say blog commenting is useless, my perception of their skill as an SEO is further informed.

It’s well known that blogs and their comments get scraped and nofollow removed.

A visible link means that a human can visit the site and drop a dofollow if they like what they see.

Blog owners tend to check out the links left in the blog comments, which means you can get very important bloggers to come to your site.

A blog comment can demonstrate your skill in an area and make people go, “ooohhhhhh, she’s good.”

If blog spamming did not work, do you really think it would still be happening? What’s interesting about the nofollow that was introduced to blogs to stop spamming is that it hasn’t done anything to stop it.

Also, even when the link was dofollow and SEO’s would look at a blog and say, “but it’s not a real website”

Does this mean that you should go out and leave “Great post”, in the comments of as many blogs as you can find. No, because there is a way to blog comment and there is a way to not.

Blog commenting is a tool in the tool box, brought out for specific tasks and for specific reasons. I’m not not going to give you a step by step guide of how to do it as you probably have a massive brain (you’re reading this blog) and have worked it out on your own by now.

However, I am always willing to listen to the other side of the argument and so if you have data on to show that blog commenting is useless I would love to hear it.

One of the problems of course is that it can be really boring if you hae no opinion and that outsourcing it can lower the quality.

It’s tricky, which means if you hit the sweet spot there are few others creaming it.

Categories
Blogging

Everytime I think of Quora I think of….

Quora, I’ll be your dog.

And now so will you

Categories
Blogging SEO Discussion

Ultimate Guide to using Quora for SEO Ranking on Google

I don’t like Quora.

I didn’t get to invest in it or create it.

Quora is going to succeed.

But, I am not going to be adding to its database, unless it’s to do a bit of reputation management for clients.

Also, if lots of places start scraping it, it may be worth dropping a link, even if it is nofollow.

There are going to be specific advantages to using Quora, however it’s not going to be what the site owners originally intended. If you are in the business of getting people to go to your website to buy stuff or you have clients who need people to go to their website to buy stuff, I would take a very close interest in Quora.

Why?

Because it’s going to get eyeballs, and it looks like it is going to crush Yahoo answers and those SEO mercenary, Ninja assassins are already knee deep in Yahoo answers gore, getting websites to rank.

So, expect an e-book to pop up entitled, The Ultimate Guide to Using Quora to rank in Google. Expect to pay $47. But, not from me, I would never give away such great info. Only my paying clients get the good stuff 😉

My advice, open an account at Quora, have a little play. Do a few tests. See if you can rank for a keyword.

But don’t use it to throw up tons of original, interesting content. Have you any idea how much you are worth an hour?

Note: Apologies for the use of “Ultimate”. I should be ashamed.

Note 2: This did start as a comment at Quora when I thought, “Don’t be a Numpty!”

Note 3: If you secretly share your SEO Quora tip with me, I will secretly share that I have back at you.