My sunny theory: I don’t think the blog owner got lazy, but rather, they didn’t know what to say! How many times have you thought, “I should write a blog post, it’s been a while..” yet you still don’t get it done. You worry if what you write will be what people want to read… will they care? will they share it? will they comment, or not?

I say, forget the noise and just write. People WILL care. You WILL help others. And the more you write, the more people will share your content and comment on it.

Backing up, there are a few tricks you can use to develop blog post content people will want to read:

1. Yahoo Answers – You can go to http://answers.yahoo.com then click the top button “Browse Categories.” You will see pages of questions (and the public’s answers). You can click on “Most Popular” or “Most Viewed” to organize the search results. What is SO awesome about this is that these are the questions your audience has!! For example, if I have a blog about dog training, I can go to the category “Pets > Dogs” and see a list of questions or of people wanting advice about a particular topic. Then all you need to do is take the general concept, and write your heart out about it. You know people will search for it since obviously people are asking the questions. Poof, content!

 

2. Google’s Keyword Tool – You can go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and at the very top add in a general topic such as “Dog Training”. This awesome tool will churn out tons of search phrases people are searching for every month! For example, you could write about “Puppy Training” and you would know that 450,000 searches occur every month of people looking for information about that topic. The way to use this tool is two-fold. One, you can use it to brainstorm writing topics. The second is that this is a killer Search Engine Optimization tool which allows you to target certain keyword phrases to boost your exposure online!

 

3. Other Industry Leaders – When is the last time you spent 30-60 minutes on Google typing in search phrases related to your topic and seeing what other go-to experts are doing? This tip is far beyond just finding some things to write about as you can get tons of ideas to grow your business too. I think it’s essential to do market research – often! – and peruse their website, blog and social networks. You’re not looking to steal anything, you’re just taking note and brainstorming to get ideas and inspiration. No need to reinvent the wheel, but to take the wheel and put your spin on it (no pun intended).

 

4. Freebie! – An extra bonus idea is to scope out your social networks looking for things people write about. For example, if you write about marriage.. I just saw a lovely post on my Facebook wall about a woman celebrating her 15 yr anniversary, and 19 yrs together total. That could inspire you to write about how to celebrate your anniversary, or how t keep your marriage alive, or how to make a spark. Who knows that inspiration will come when you are searching for ideas. The great thing about social networks is people are constantly spilling the beans about how they feel and what they are doing. I’m not saying this is bad, but it is good market research!

My CHALLENGE for you today is:
Create a list of at least a dozen possible writing topics AND go write your next blog post, TODAY! Procrastination doesn’t make dollars or sense! This is your time to share your expertise and your message with the world. It won’t wait for you, so it’s time to fully engage in your passion and Get It Done!

If you found this post to be inspirational or useful, please help me share it with the world. Let’s get the ball rolling and help as many people as we can! Thank you in advance for your thoughtfulness.

This post isn’t about Google+ Pages, but I do intend to write one once there’s a little more to share about it. For now you can add your description, photo, same ‘ole — but I still of course suggest you set one up for yourself!

What’s fun (and sometimes frustrating) about playing with online tools is that I feel like I’m living in a pin ball machine. My attention pings from one place to another and shortly my brain hurts and I feel a little overwhelmed – information overload (yes it happens to all of us, even those that do this for a living!)

However, on this delightful cruise of the net I checked in to Google Webmasters (the best free tool ever!). Google Webmasters is amazing for all sorts of reasons, all of which are related to Search Engine Optimization. One section of this site shows me a list of all the websites out in the web world who have been super cool enough to link to my site (pages or posts).

Enter point.

Last night I scanned the list of websites that have linked to me – a few including:  Slate.com, Wikipedia, Ask.com, Answers.com and hundreds upon hundreds more.

Then I clicked over to the list of keyword phrases where I’m ranked on the 1st page of Google. That was a fun list.

Each time I review all these stats (and I do it often – ahem, you should too), I remembered back when I first started this site. I was new, I was a “no one”, I just wanted to share everything I knew with anyone that would listen.

My next thought is of all my clients who trust me and venture off into the blogging world, half fearless, half fearful. I say, “Just trust me. Get to 100 blog posts and you’ll see why blogging is so important. You’ll see how many people are sharing your content, you’ll get more sales and clients – that’s what happens when you put people first.”

If you just hang in there, and KEEP BLOGGING, you will have a day like I had last spring… I had written a tiny little post that took me maybe 10-15 minutes about Google Personalization. One day I login to my blog and see I got 1,000 new visitors to my site within 24 hours. The editor in chief of Slate had linked to my post. Sweet!

If you just hang in there, and KEEP BLOGGING, you will find people sharing your content (most of which you don’t even know about!). You will get more visitors. You will make more sales. You WILL see the BENEFIT.

I just wanted to send those words of encouragement to all you bloggers out there. Providing good content is important. It does matter. We just need you to log on and share what you think we could benefit from! 

When you publish a new page or post, Google “spiders” (automated software) scan the page for “keywords”. These spiders are analyzing everything about that page to determine where to index that page within the billions of pages in the Google search engine. Once you’re in the habit of optimizing your blog posts (and pages), you will see major benefits and a dramatic increase in website traffic.

If you go to www.Google.com and search under the keyword phrase “personal development”, you will notice 100,000,000+ pages are indexed in Google. Google will rank a page based on over 200 sets of criteria which can include design elements, programming style, etc.

Since Google is scanning your content, you can see the value of trying to give Google as much “help” as possible. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about suggesting to Google where to index your content in their search engine. If you try to get indexed on the 1st page of search results for the phrase “personal development”, consider that you are competing with entire websites that have dozens (or hundreds) of pages which collectively try and rank (get indexed highly) for that phrase. It would be nearly impossible for one article to compete with those websites.

It will be much easier to rank well for a “long-tailed keyword phrase”. Instead of personal development (a broad  phrase), a long-tailed version would be “personal development techniques for young children”. The more specific your keyword phrase, the more likely you will rank highly on Google’s search engine for that phrase. The higher you rank (the best spot is page 1 in the top 5 results), the more people will click on your page/post. The more people that click on your article, the more exposure you get, etc. This will be really fun for you once you’ve optimized a few articles and have seen results!

Every time you write a blog post (4-8+ per month – the more you do it the more traffic and sales you’ll get), I’d like to suggest you implement this SEO Optimization Checklist I’ve developed: (print this off and keep by computer)

• Pick 1 primary keyword phrase and base your article around it (use your findings from Google’s Keyword Tool which I will discuss on my next post)
• Pick a few secondary keyword phrases to support your primary keyword phrase. Write your blog post naturally around these keywords.
• Add your primary keyword within the title of your post
• Add your primary keyword within the first 150 words AND last 150 words (ideally once or twice in the middle if it flows)
• Bold your primary keyword and secondary keywords at least once
• Create a link once in your content, using the text of your primary keyword (to other pages or posts within your website ideally)
• Add 3-5 Tags in the right sidebar (these are your main keywords in the post)
• Fill in the “All In One SEO” plugin title, description and keyword fields at the bottom of the post

With the “All In One SEO” section, you’re suggesting to Google what your title and description should be, which will show up in their search engine results – plus keywords (which don’t show up anywhere – just tells Google which keywords your article should be indexed under). Look at this example:

• The title to enter into the All In One SEO section, tells Google the title of your article (It CAN be the same as your article title, or it can be altered and packed with more keywords – this is up to you).
• The description is for you to summarize your article in one sentence (ideally under 160 characters).
• The keywords field is where you can add up to 20 keywords that must be included in your article. This will have your primary keyword phrase, secondary phrases and some variations of each that you’ve used. Your tags can be entered into this section. You will separate keywords with a comma. Again, no one will see this except for Google.

You have now learned one of the most important pieces to optimizing a page or post (even outside of WordPress!). Programmers and developers all over know about this technique. The “meta” title, “meta” description and keywords should be filled out on every page and post of your website if you want a chance of showing up in search engine results.

Using this technique will give your posts (and pages) much more power than it ever had before. You are welcome to go back into your previous pages/posts to optimize them. I would suggest you write your blog post or page content first as you normally would, then go back and implement some of these tactics. It is not required to do all every time, but each additional step you take does make a difference.

 Resources:

• Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide:  http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

So be honest, was this post helpful? or painfully technical? 

One Great SEO Tip:

I came across an oldie but a goodie, blog post from ProBlogger called, “Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO“.

The first SEO point of 4 was to find out which of your posts are ranked in Google’s 1st page (2nd-10th position) and then go back and optimize those posts to become #1 on Google. That is a simple but obvious idea that I hadn’t thought of directly before.

In your Google Analytics account (shame on you if you don’t have Analytics by now!), you can view your top ranked pages. For example, a blog post of mine is currently #6 for “Building Rapport with Clients” on Google. My SEO goal is to get that blog post #1 for the same keyword phrase. So, I’ll go back to that blog post from months and months ago and find out what I can do to optimize it even more.

Can I add more links? Can I adjust my Meta Title, Description and Keywords to match that keyword phrase even more? Can I add “Building Rapport with Clients” into a pattern of showing up in every 160 words of the content, naturally?

Bet your bottom dollar I’ll be using my nifty Scribe tool explained below! It’s worth taking a look at the top 10 pages you can re-optimize to get better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). How many keyword phrases can you be #1 for?

Second Great SEO Tip:

Previously, designer Ray Grau told me about a free tool for SEO called WooRank. It’s a very simple site to look at on their home page, but not simple in the way it attacks SEO analysis for sure! This Beta version is free, but I wouldn’t expect for long.

You can go to www.WooRank.com and type in your URL into the field, which kinda mirrors the Google.com page. Your report will generate within a minute or two max – which is very impressive because it’s analyzing everything SEO about your site based on over 45 sets of criteria. WooRank generates a 15 page PDF report on your website (with explanations!) so you can take action right away. This is one impressive site since I know what had to go into creating it. Phew!

Third Great SEO Tip:

Last year I wrote a post titled, “New WordPress Plugin, Scribe, Takes Bloggers to New SEO Level“. I’m going to highly encourage you all to go back and read that post if you haven’t yet. I have taken the opportunity to review this plugin and use it a lot. One word: Impressive.

For all of you out there who know a little about SEO tactics, but not the whole enchilada, this Scribe tool is a great trainer and coach which shows up on your time and all starting at only $17 a month. For those of you who know an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge about SEO, this will just make your writing go much faster. I will type away and make the effort to apply a handful of SEO tactics. But to take the time to nail all tactics…each post would take me 2 hours! Who has the time? Instead, I’ll do the obvious, rank my post, instantly get a report of what i can do to enhance my Search Engine Optimization, then “get ‘er done” like Larry the Cable Guy tells us to do.

Those are your “2 Great SEO Tips You Need to Know, Plus 1 More” for this Thursday. If you have any cool tools you heard about, please share them by making a comment below.

But, it’s kind of fun right? When you get blog comments, or review your Google Analytics account and see 75 visitors or more in one day. Well, today I’m going to teach you a couple goodies that should get you even more excited!

1. I will share an SEO guide straight from Google so you are learning from the source on how to increase search engine placement.

2. Email Marketing Guide: I have a guide on “bad email keywords” that if you follow, will decrease the chances of your emails landing in SPAM boxes.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide:

There are SO MANY Internet marketers out there that say they have the keys to the castle – they have all the secrets – they have the breakthrough formula on SEO!!!

Caution yourself on who you pay attention to. I know a lot of these guys and have studied their sales and marketing process – this allows me to know which of these “experts” are legit and which ones will disappear after they make their one-time hit of cash. This is precisely why I started InsightfulDevelopment.com – I wanted a place where I could share everything I’ve learned (and most importantly experienced via trial-and-error, studying the top experts and figuring out what works) without making you uncomfortable or making you buy from me.

I personally really enjoy SEO – meaning the ways I can tweak my content to get better Search Engine rankings. Google works on a formula of ranking each webpage based on over 200 sets of criteria. SEO tactics can account for a good chunk.

I invite you to read Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide to learn from the source on how you can increase the placement of your pages.

You will learn how to…

• Create unique page titles

• Make good use of your description meta tag
• Improve the structure of your page URL
• Create more efficient site navigation for visitors
• Good practices for content and more!

Email Marketing “Bad Keywords” Guide:

With Email Marketing, most online programs will have a 30-40% deliverability rate. Meaning if you send 100 emails, 30-40 will actually show up in your subscribers Inbox. That’s why I always recommended Constant Contact – they get a 97% deliverability rate!

One of the reasons you get poor deliverability rates is because of spam keywords. I’ll let you read this very short guide to learn the rest!

“The Seven Dirty Words you can’t say in subject lines; plus 100 others you probably shouldn’t use either”

Need I say more?