Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

SEO your individual blog posts

Feb 19, 2008 1 Comment »

Optimizing individual blog posts for your human readers as well as the search engines is as important as optimizing your entire blog. In fact it is much more beneficial, and easier to search engine optimize individual blog posts rather than focusing on the entire blog, and this reasserts the importance of sticking to the quintessential theme of your blog.

Many blogs become famous not for their overall content but for the amount of attention some of their posts get from all over the Internet. That’s why more emphasis is given to the quality of individual posts because any post can turn you into a blogging superstar. I am not an SEO expert but my experience tells me that if you stick to the following guidelines you can search engine optimize your individual blog posts. Please keep in mind that you rankings depend on lots of other factors.

Make your title straightforward, compelling, and use your primary keywords in the title

Some SEO and blogging experts insist that your blog post title is the most important component of your blog post but I slightly disagree because I think the most important component of your blog post is the content of your blog post. Have a great title and mediocre content and in just a few moments your title is declared bogus.

The title does two things: it gives your blog post a unique identity and it conveys to the readers and the search engines what your blog post contains. In that sense it is very important; whenever somebody links to your blog post or whenever your blog post appears in the search engines result pages it is your title that grabs the attention of the reader. This is why the search engines take your blog post title so seriously. The keywords in your blog post title tell the search engines what your blog post deals in and then they rank your blog post accordingly.

The blog post title attains greater significance in the case of social bookmarking websites like Digg and del.icio.us where it’s mostly your title that decides how many clicks you’re going to get from there. Websites like popurls.com display just your blog post title and you can only get clicks if your blog post title is enticing enough. Please don’t mix enticing with misleading.

Organize your blog post content under headings, subheadings and lists

Since there is so much stuff to be read, heard, and watched on the Internet, everybody is in a perpetual rush. So it helps your readers and the search engine crawlers if you organize your content under well-defined headings and subheadings. Using your headings and subheadings they can quickly browse through your content without having to read the individual paragraphs although your effort should involve making them read more and more.

Since it is easier to read headings and subheadings the search engines crawlers go through them to understand what you’re trying to convey. Use your main keywords and key expressions in your headings and subheadings because they are used while calculating your rankings.

Lists too are a great way of highlighting your keywords. Whenever you can, express your main ideas in the bulleted lists.

Use interlinking wherever possible

Interlinking means linking to other blog posts from within your latest blog posts. This can drive traffic — both human and search engines — to less popular blog posts. This also creates a network of links, facilitating easier crawling in the process. Make sure to use the relevant keywords as anchor text when you are interlinking because this way the search engines can make out what sort of information the page is being linked to contains. It then helps boost their ranking too.

Keep the most important part at the top

This is because the most important part contains your keywords. Since the search engine crawlers are anyway not going to read your entire blog post it is better to present to them your main point as soon as they enter the blog post. Make it as interesting as possible because your initial paragraph more often than not decides whether people are going to read further or not.

Highlight your keywords without overdoing

I don’t know how much it really works but many say it does. Highlighting means making your words and primary expressions appear in bold. Don’t highlight every occurrence.

Create great content

Although this point appears in the end it is one of the most important ways of search engine optimizing your blog posts. When the content of your blog post is superb your blog post gets linked by other bloggers and webmasters and this helps you boost your search engine rankings significantly. This is how linkbaiting has evolved; people specifically write blog posts or get them written by expert bloggers so that they are linked by the others.

Every business should have a blog and can have a blog

Feb 13, 2008 No Comments »

Andy at BlogHerald recently commented that the businesses that are not able to run blogs should not run them and to a great degree I agree (and therefore, don’t). He has listed 5 reasons why most business blogs fail to take off

1. Lack of fresh content on a regular basis
2. Not enough RSS subscribers
3. Not enough comments
4. No contribution in terms of traffic to the main business website
5. No clue about promoting products and services through the business blog

These are valid reasons for the failure of a business blog. But it doesn’t mean that the businesses that cannot manage a blog should not have a blog. Your business blog can act as an invaluable tool whenever you decide to use it. You can even promote your products and services when your blog has kicked off. All the above 5 drawbacks can be easily countered by hiring capable people. For instance you can hire an experienced writer/blogger to generate regular quality blog posts and he or she may not even cost your business much if you simply outsource this portion (generating content) of your blogging activity. There are many individuals who can take over the complete management of your blog right from providing fresh content non-stop to interacting on other blogs on your behalf. I think some people are already doing this — providing this as a total turnkey solution.

I don’t provide the complete business blog management service but I do write blog content for many business blogs on weekly or monthly basis and those blogs are doing quite well in terms of all the 5 factors mentioned above. Having a blog doesn’t always mean doing everything on your own. If you decide to use your blog as a business-promotion tool then hiring someone who can manage your business blog any given day is a smart business investment.

Do your readers remember what you write?

Feb 08, 2008 No Comments »

Some writers generate content just to fill their websites and blogs (or their clients’ websites and blogs) and some write to genuinely communicate. Why do you write? Do you want your readers to feel enriched after reading what you have written? Do they feel encouraged to think about things you have written? Do they feel enraged? Do they admire you for your writing?

All this helps your readers remember you and your website or blog. If your writing has no voice and it generates no feeling it doesn’t register with your readers and they very quickly forget about you and consequently don’t revisit your website or blog.

Your readers don’t remember you for your exceptional writing skill — although this certainly helps — they remember you by the way you write, by what you say and how you mean it. It doesn’t always need to be problem-solving or providing something overwhelmingly unique; you just need to communicate with your readers on a one-to-one basis and they remember you.

Involve your readers; make them a part of your entire writing process. In fact they ARE an integral part of your writing process: there is no meaning in writing if there are no readers. And there is no meaning in writing if you writing does not connect with your readers. Each time you write make an impact.

The significance of leaving comments on other blogs

Feb 04, 2008 3 Comments »

A big reason — it is one of the many reasons — that I fail to generate decent traffic for my  blogs is that I rarely leave comments on other blogs. I don’t know if it is some kind of a mental block or lack of time. I think it is lack of time because in order to leave a credible comment you not only have to read the post very carefully you must also know what you’re talking about. I never have enough time to read the other blog posts carefully. Today when I left a comment on Muhammad’s post at Problogger.net I had decided to write a small post on the benefits of living good comments on other blogs.

Although a majority of people leave comments on other blogs merely to generate traffic this is not a good policy even if you are leaving comments merely to generate traffic. You should mostly participate in the comments section if you have something really solid to say, if you can really push the ongoing discussion forward and have got some valuable input to give. It is not your comment that gets you traffic, it is the quality of your comment. If people are impressed by what you have written in your comment they are more prone to visiting your blog to know further about you. By “impressed” I don’t mean to imply that you go on impressing people and do nothing else and then get too obsessive about the whole idea of creating the right impression. I just mean to say be a productive participant. Even if you’re just goofing around goof around in a good manner so that it doesn’t seem that you are leaving your comment just for the sake of leaving your link there. Given below are some benefits of leaving good comments on other blogs:

You can leave your link their

OK, this sounds like a sinister reason for leaving comments but nonetheless it is a great benefit. There is a thing called “links juice”. I have no idea what it means but some bloggers let you get SEO benefits when you leave comments on the blogs and some bloggers don’t allow it for obvious reasons. Even if you don’t get any SEO benefit you can derive, gradually, great amount of traffic from these links.

You can increase your network

Personally I think this is the greatest benefit of leaving comments on other blogs. When you leave comments you begin to interact with bloggers and their readers. Many people, slowly, blog by blog, begin to know you and start frequenting your blog. when they frequent your blog there is a greater chance that they will link to you and subscribe to your RSS feeds. This builds up your traffic not only from other websites and blogs but also from the search engines.

Commenting broadens your perspective and you get more ideas to write about on your blog

Lots of interesting stuff happens in the comments section. In fact sometimes the real exchange of ideas happens in the comments section and not in the blog post. You get to read different opinions on the same topic and this way it helps you view the same thing from different angles and attain a broader perspective, consequently increasing your sphere of knowledge and wisdom.

These are a few things that I can quickly think of at this moment. Can you think of any other benefits of leaving good comments on other blogs?

An Example Of A Great Headline

Feb 03, 2008 No Comments »

Online copywriters and content writers are always stressing upon the overwhelming importance of creating great, compelling webpage titles or headlines. You need great webpage titles to draw traffic from the search engine result pages as well as from the various social bookmarking websites you’re planning to target. I remember a few months ago I had written a post on the subject of creating great blog post titles.

Yesterday morning I was sitting in the balcony enjoying the winter sun with my wife and we were both sipping tea and casually browsing through our respective newspapers. Whenever we are sitting together my wife often jokes that I’m more interested in what she is doing and less interested in my own things. This was one of those moments when my eyes were on her newspaper instead of my newspaper. She gets a Hindi newspaper; I noticed this heading on the first page and immediately thought what a great headline it was.

If you look at the image included above I have encircled the headline. It translates to: Aishwarya Rai and Angeline Jolie may have a common ancestor. The news that was associated with the title had nothing to do with the two beauties, it referred to a recent research that has shown that all the blue-eyed people in the world may have a common ancestor. The team that created the front page layout of the newspaper knows that it would be irresistible for most of the people to ignore the title and in fact my wife headed straightaway to page 12 to see how Aishwarya Rai and Angeline Jolie may be related to each other.

Had they used a simple heading, something like, all blue-eyed people have a common ancestor, it wouldn’t have interested many people.

What makes this a catchy headline? The copywriter knows how crazy people are about reading about both the ladies. Although it is a Hindi newspaper and many readers may not be familiar with Angelina Jolie, even the stray dogs in India know Aishwarya Rai. The readers would certainly like to know with which foreign beauty she shares an ancestor. The copywriter has combined the celebrity status of both the names and created a headline that cannot fail to perform even when it doesn’t talk about them.

Would the readers be pissed off after reading the news because they find out that these two beauties are not related in the real sense? I don’t think so because the headline doesn’t mislead; they both have blue eyes after all and the blue-eyed people are supposed to have a common ancestor and hence they should too have a common ancestor.

Later on I discovered that most newspapers, at least in India, used the same sort of headline referring to Aishwarya Rai and Angelina Jolie.