How Competition Actually Benefits Your Blog

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Competition

When it comes to competition, we often look at people or businesses in our respective niches as enemies, and those we must beat. No matter what you blog about, chances are there is more than a small handful of people writing about the same thing. And if you sell ebooks, courses, consulting, etc., you can be sure others are as well. Naturally, we are designed to compete because before the days of modern science and technology, if we lost, we died.

Quite frankly, looking at your competition as enemies or “the bad guys,” is an absolutely backwards line of thinking. It is perfectly normal to think that way, but you are doing yourself and your blog a total disservice by not using competition to your benefit.

Gain Valuable Insight

No matter how smart or “on top of things” you think you are, there are people out there who will prove you wrong. Sometimes, there might be areas that you have overlooked, or ways of interacting with your audience for example that you never thought about before. Also, there could be valuable tools you never heard of, and maybe even ways of crafting your content to keep readers more engaged. [Read more…]

Eight Blogging Myths Holding You Back

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Blogging myths

Blogging, like social media, has truly revolutionized how we communicate our thoughts, ideas and passions with others. Unfortunately, there are many myths associated with it that just simply aren’t true. Here are some of the most popular blogging myths that could be holding you back:

You Need To Write At Least X Words

Anyone who blogs knows this one far too well. It’s drilled into our brains that we need to write so many words because it is “good for SEO” and they’re not necessarily wrong, either. The magic number seems to be 300 words, but it can vary from site to site. We’re also told to stay away from writing longer posts because no one likes to read long posts.

However, that’s all total BS. What matters is what you have to say, not how many words you say it in (Tweet This). Sometimes, you can get great ideas across in a few paragraphs. Sometimes, it takes much more. Also, what if you create videos or put together podcasts? Unless you have it transcribed, you’re likely taking away from people diving right into consuming the content itself. [Read more…]

How to Drive Blog Readers Towards Older Posts

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Blog readers

Blog readers expect consistency, and if you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you understand the importance of keeping content fresh and interesting. However, once a new post is out in the world, most of us are already working on the next idea, topic or tips. While this is a good thing, and it can also be a bad thing. Since we are focused on moving forward with future content, we tend to neglect posts of the past.

We promote them shortly after publishing, and then they tend to lay around unless they are discovered through a variety of different means. When we truly work on improving our writing, our stories, ourselves, our best content lies ahead of us. Although that is the case, our past content likely offered up great value as well.

Failing to provide an easy way to access it is a shame after putting in so many hours to get said content out there to the world. This situation can be quickly remedied in several different ways…

Focus On Functionality

Everyone will tell you that good design is important. However, if your site is not functional, the design could really matter less. Functionality is just as, if not more important than a great design, and when you have a functional site, people will be more inclined to spend time on your site. Make it super easy for users to dive into different categories, and maybe even guide them to your more popular content. [Read more…]

How to Elevate Your Blog Posts in Three Easy Ways

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Blog posts

With so many distractions hitting you from every direction, and, let’s be realistic, thousands of other blog posts written on the same topic as yours, it can be hard to keep things fresh. Content can often go stale lacking the life, and energy it once had. While you can continue writing as your normally would, there are a few ways to fire things up so to speak, potentially bringing more value to your readers. [Read more…]

Building Links to Your Blog: Why Keyword Research + Quality Content Works

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Every great blogger should have basic SEO know-how. Without basic keyword strategy to drive traffic to your blog, a great blogger can go un-noticed. Some of the best blog posts I have ever read came from deep within the web. Most likely, rarely read before; with little to no internal and external links and a PageRank of 0. Being a good blogger simply isn’t enough. Whether you are a women’s fitness blogger or an actual SEO blogger; without basic SEO knowledge, you are like Jimi Hendrix deciding to play on the street instead of on stage. Your content will not reach an audience, and you probably will never make money doing it.

Keyword Research
This is why keyword research is so important. Google’s Keyword Tool and Keyword Spy are great ways to figure out what search terms correlate with your blog. Incorporating these keywords as links within your copy as well as your header will provide on page SEO value, reader value and (I’ll explain later) link building power.

Establishing a keyword set, doesn’t have to be a set list anymore. Targeting contextual terms should be consistent in the copy of your blog. The thought being, when somebody loves your blog post enough to share it on their site, they will include the contextual links. [Read more…]

How an Inbound Link Can Improve Search Engine Rankings

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Marketing online comes down to one thing an Inbound Link.  These types of links are ones that people can click on and be taken to your website from somewhere else, for example a directory, an article, a search engine, or email.  There are 3 ways that an inbound link can improve search engine rankings to your business.

1.    Direct clicking – When a visitor to a different site finds there is an inbound link to your site an opportunity is presented for them to click through to you.  In turn it stands to reason that the greater amount of inbound links you have out on the internet pointing to your site the greater the amount of traffic they’ll send.  Additionally the benefit is that this traffic goes directly to your site bypassing the search engines entirely. [Read more…]

Guilt-Free Business Blogging – 7 Ways A Blog Can Grow Your Business

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I strongly believe that every business should have a blog to keep the lines of communication between you and potential customers open. The target of this article is to reveal 7 effective ways a blog can help you grow your business.

1. Blogging Boosts Brand Awareness

Corporate blogs create a unique opportunity to share your thoughts, ideas and offerings with not only your readers, but their readers as well, which eventually brings in more prospects. Guest blogging is another great strategy to build up an audience. Plus, new employees and outsiders can get a better chance to know company’s product launch, innovation and strategy.

2. Blogging Personalizes Your Business

Blogging puts a human touch to your business and keeps your audience updated on new and exciting things happening in your company. Blogs are all about being personal, so let your personality flow with blogging. Write in your own name. Share your personal experiences about running your business and being part of your niche. Being personal builds trust, so write with a conversational tone so people can understand and relate. [Read more…]

8 SEO Tips Every Blog Owner Should Know

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It’s no surprise that regularly redesigning your website to update content, indexing and page structure can have a tremendous positive impact on the continued success of your business. The reason that the design and structure of your website can increase traffic is because the changes are likely to result in search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of modifying a website to enhance its chances of appearing in the top search results when relevant key words are entered into a search engine. In other words, it’s one of the most effective ways of increasing the volume of traffic and incidental visitors to your website, which at the end of the day means more new customers or clients for you.

SEO is a huge area of knowledge which can make a big difference to the online profile and real world results of your business, but it’s also a practice where it is easy to make errors. To get you started, here are eight must-know tips for any website owner… [Read more…]

Bloggers and Business Owners: Starting Your Year Right

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A new year has come again, and it’s the perfect time to start things right. Many of us may have made handfuls of mistakes last year, but this year signals an opportunity to realign things, to put them in order, and to begin anew. However, things left unfinished last year should not remain untouched; this new beginning is the best path we could take to fix or complete these things.

Some bloggers act like they’re celebrities in the blogging world. They divulge full details about their life and business. There is nothing wrong about that, since blogging is always personal and it is up to you to say and write whatever you want.

As a businessperson who blogs, it is unavoidable for me to reveal some details about what is happening inside my business. Many of my secrets are disclosed as I reply through threading comments, which I found harmless as long as the message is delivered in words that will not hurt my business strategy. However, I am not the type who announces everything about my business. I suggest leaving your serious mistakes as secrets, and having them fixed while delightfully continuing blogging.

As a blogger, I believe that you don’t have to delete your old posts or your whole blog to begin anew. Perhaps you can write a post to announce your excitement to do business. Excite your readers with your optimistic posts. Let them feel that something new is about to happen to your business. As a customer, it’s always good to hear something new about a certain store or product. [Read more…]

5 Ways That Bloggers Are Like Rappers

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This is a guest post by Gary Kohler from LifeCover.ca.

To get noticed as a blogger you need to stand out.

You need to pick a niche and be the strongest voice of that online community. To get attention you need to stir the pot every once in a while but most of all you need to keep people wanting more.

There are many ways that this is similar to the world of gangster rap and here are five reasons why.

1) “Final” Goodbyes

Bloggers and rappers both love the “final” goodbye. The brackets are there because usually the final goodbyes are not actually final.

Some rappers will retire every second album but they will inevitably come back for another record or three. Bloggers do this too. They might need a vacation or some time to focus on their family but a lot of times they’ll come crawling back to their little soapbox.

Rappers do it to sell more records and to hype their newest effort. Bloggers likely do it for comment love and to send people to their newest blog or website. Once in a while a blogger or rapper will quit for good but most of the time they’ll be back for more. [Read more…]