Writing blog posts with an eye toward search engine optimization, or any other content for SEO, can be challenging, which is why we have prepared the following blog writing tips to guide you through the process. 

1. Fresh Content – Do not begin writing for your blog unless you can commit to a schedule of at least one to two posts per week.  Also, do not commit to a blog if you do not have your own unique ideas.  Don’t worry; the next few tips can help you generate ideas if you are fresh out.

2. Blog Purpose – What is the purpose of your blog?  Don’t lose sight of your reason for creating it in the first place.  Brainstorm a number of words related to the topic and see if any of these words spark an idea for a post.
 
3. New New New! – What is new within your company or industry?  People love hearing about new information and then sharing time-sensitive content they discover with their networks.  Are you introducing a new product or service, revamping an older one, or actively participating in your community?  Let people know with a blog post.  If you have photographs, images, quotes, or videos to include – even better!

4. FAQs – For whatever reason, you find visitors to your website, prospective clients, or current clients, are asking the same questions over and over again.  Besides updating the pertinent parts of your website and your FAQ page, consider writing blog posts that focus on answering each of these questions in depth.  Not only are they likely to come up in searches for those looking for answers (which will then lead them to your website), but they can be used to send so the inquirer can read the answer at their own pace or have a reminder of a conversation they had earlier.

5. Events – Is your company actively participating in conferences, tradeshows, festivals, or webinars?  Whether physically present, marketing at, or digitally sharing, any events with which you are involved are timely content your readers may be interested in hearing about.  Don’t forget that events are good for at minimum two to three posts:

a. Pre-event coverage of where you will be, when, and why!
b. At-event coverage of what is happening.
c. Post-event follow-up, thanking those whom you spoke with, your hope to attend an annual event in the next year or to conduct a helpful webinar again soon, etc.

6. Ask Employees – Those employed at your company have a wealth of knowledge about the work that you do.  Ask for ideas about what to post.  Sometimes it helps if you ask a prompting question such as “What is something our company is doing right now that prospective clients would be interested in hearing about?” or “Do we have any client satisfaction stories we can pair with a quote and information about that product or service and post to our blog?”

7. Optimize! – Make sure that the titles of your blog posts are both interesting and relatively short.  Write a description to be included in the meta-tags of the blog post when it is posted online.  Consider asking your SEO agency to conduct keyword research to help you find niche or longer-tail keyword phrases you could write about.  Consult your analytics data to see which blog posts are driving traffic (and if visitors are converting) and consider writing more on the topics that are delivering good visitors. 

The above blog writing tips are a good starting point when you find yourself stuck before writing a blog post.  Good luck with your own writing and if you ever need help conducting keyword research or would like to outsource your writing, we would be happy to help.

Google announced a new algorithm update on January 19 that it will start applying to search results. Simply called, the “page layout algorithm,” it’s having only a small impact so far (less than 1% of searches, according to Google). Still, the new update is causing a bit of buzz and confusion.

The page layout algorithm looks at websites and examines their ad content. Sites that have too many ads above the fold receive a penalization in Google’s search results. The philosophy behind the update is that pages with top heavy ads obscure the content of a webpage – negatively impacting user experience.

In a few ways, the page layout algorithm is similar to the Panda update. Like Panda, the page layout algorithm is more like a ranking factor, in that once you are penalized by the page layout algorithm, you will have to wait until Google decides to run the algorithm again to have your site reconsidered – the penalty will not disappear right away.

Because the penalty applies to the entire website, not just the particular ad-heavy page, many webmasters are nervous. However, there are reasons why this new update is only affecting less than 1% of search results. For starters, pop-ups, pop-unders and overlay ads are not counted by the page layout algorithm. In addition, Google recognizes that the top of the page is valuable space for advertisers and is important for the revenue of many sites. You can still place ads above the fold without being penalized. Google is only looking to punish websites who take their ad placement to excessive levels.

As such, there is a good chance this update will not affect you. Just be sure to layout ads on your web pages in a responsible manner that keeps the user experience in mind.

Businesses should always be looking to gain new customers and keep the ones they have happy. One way of doing this is adapting to the way your customers like to shop. E-commerce companies should be aware of consumers increased spending on mobile devices, especially tablets, and changes should be made to reach them.

According to an article on Direct Marketing News, “Tablet users who visited e-commerce websites in 2011 spent 54% more per purchase than smartphone visitors and 21% more than desktop or laptop visitors, according to a Jan. 19 report by Adobe Systems.” Tablets are a viable way to reach your target audience and businesses should be willing to make website adjustments to reach returning and potential customers.  What type of adjustments? Make sure they can easily navigate and purchase on your site.

When a visitor comes to your website via a tablet, what do they see? Does your website adjust to fit their screen or will the user have to play with their display settings just to get a clear picture of the item they want? It may sound silly to ask such a question, but businesses can frequently lose out on sales due to visitor frustration.

The other night my mom went online to buy some books using a tablet. However, unlike a computer, she could only see one book per page. (The website wasn’t optimized to fit a tablet.) She spent some time attempting to find the books she wanted, but eventually ended up ordering over the phone. Instead of buying multiple books, she only bought one. This particular company lost business because their site wasn’t user friendly on a tablet. How can a company fix this? Easy, use a sniffer. A sniffer can detect what type of device a visitor is using and serve them a landing page that is configured for their device. It would behoove this bookstore to add a sniffer to their site. Who knows how many other tablet users have passed up on buying, due to the lack of a good user experience on a particular site?

When it’s all said and done businesses have to make changes to reach their consumers. If a decent amount of your target audience is using tablets to access your site, consider getting a sniffer. How can a company determine how many visitors are coming from mobile devices and tablets? Read the following article on obtaining this data through analytics.