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How to Use Both Content Marketing and SEO to Amplify Your Blog

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SEO and Content MarketingOver the last few years, it has been drilled into the brains of digital marketers everywhere: content is king and an important part of any search engine optimization strategy.

Consumers are looking for unique information that teaches them something new. The right piece of content marketing can drive sales. However, if your content is hard to find online then, naturally, your prospects can’t convert.

Dominating Content Marketing in 2020

This year, expect content marketing to dominate SEO.

Content marketing and SEO go together like peanut butter and jelly… if you are trying to grow your qualified search traffic, you have to combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts

The best way to combine the two effectively is to use the new generation of tools that go beyond keyword matching and assist you in topic and context research. Text Optimizer is one such tool that applies semantic analysis against Google’s search snippets to break any search query into the cluster of related and underlying concepts:

textoptimizer

Use Text Optimizer to create both well-researched and well-optimized content to boost your SEO and content marketing efforts.

Since content marketing is taking over, let’s examine how to get ahead in the space this year.

Blog or Bust

If you don’t already have a blog, you need to have one created and tie it back to your website before you can begin integrating content marketing into your SEO strategy. Here’s a solid guide on choosing the best blogging platform.

You can improve your conversion ratio and SERPs with images and a blog. A business blog is typically the best place to publish your primary marketing content. Put a content marketing plan of action in place, which needs to include developing informational material.

Strategic Content Development

As noted in Pay Anywhere’s article “The New SEO”, a blog is not a place for you to be super promotional. Save the sales promotions for email marketing. Instead, show

how your business is going the extra mile to help the community, or focus on a new product that is unique to your business or area

Search Engine Land suggests, “You’ll sell more by not selling.” Behind every good piece of content marketing is a good brainstorming session. Break out your notebook and some colored pens and consider these suggestions:

  • Feel your customers’ pain.
  • Tune into your customers’ passions and emotions.
  • Take a direct and indirect approach to crowdsourcing.
  • Feed off popular news stories.
  • Eavesdrop on your customers’ and competitors social media channels.

All About Videos

At one point, adding an image to a piece of content marketing was good enough. With the recent explosion of video marketing, images alone are not going to cut it.

While videos deployed on YouTube or Facebook can be considered a form of content marketing alone, kick things up a notch by embedding videos right into your blog posts. Did you know?

  • 78 percent of people watch videos online every week
  • 55 percent of people watch videos online every day
  • By 2017, experts believe that video will take up 69 percent of consumer Internet traffic
  • 52 percent of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI

Source: HubSpot

Quality Beats Quantity

Last year Google released its Quality Update. The update rewards websites that have quality content and punishes those that do not. Google update or not, it’s always best to focus on delivering quality content. In assessing whether or not your content is up to par, consider what Forbes Contributor Jayson DeMers suggests:

  • Use an appropriate length.
  • Supplement with videos, images, infographics, and other media.
  • Be sure to use proper grammar and spelling.
  • Format pages and text accordingly.
  • Achieve an appropriate readability score.
  • Tie back to a qualified professional in the space — expertise matters.
  • Integrate content marketing with social media.
  • Utilize good internal and external links.
  • Provide value.

Marketing for Your SEO and Content Marketing

Your job as a content creator does not end after you create a piece of content. Content marketing is one part content creation and two parts content distribution and promotion.

You already know you should be sharing your content on social media, but what are some other places to promote it? Try using these locations:

  • Email communications
  • Email signatures
  • Search engine advertising

If you want to dominate in 2020, you need both SEO and Content Marketing.

Filed Under: SEO

How to Build Income with Your Blog

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passion into bloggingAre you passionate in one topic and want to spread your passion to others? Do you want to make money from your passion?

You can do it simply by starting a blog.

Yes, blogging can help you to turn your passion into cash. Follow these tips carefully:

1.Take care of the basics

Setting up your blog for success is the first place. It needs to have professional design, look good on mobile devices, load fast, etc. – everything to represent your brand properly.

There are many steps to accomplishing this task, including finding a good theme, figuring out how to customize it (or finding a partner through joining one of these design communities), investing in a dedicated hosting package (or going with cloud hosting which is a better option), creating a brand identity, etc.

It takes time but this investment will definitely pay off going forward.

2. Share what you know

Sharing information is what blogging is all about. If you have something to share with the world, blogging is one of the best platforms for you to simply share what you know.

Remember that everyone is an expert at something. Some people may not know about what you’re sharing, and they may need that information. When you are blogging, simply tell people about your passion. You will be able to naturally attract readers with similar passion as you.

Content marketing only works as long as you love what you are writing about.

3. Write only what you’re deeply interested in

You should write about what you know, not about what you don’t know. Writing about something that you enjoy will add more power to your writing. If you write about something that you know, what you write will naturally become persuasive.

When you’re able to persuade people with your writing, you can easily make some cash from your writing. Remember that the key to cash in with your blog is persuasive writing. It can be obtained only if you write about what you’re deeply interested in.

4. Help your readers wholeheartedly

Aside from sharing information about your passion, blogging can become your channel to solve their problem. You can only make money with blogging if you’re able to help your readers to solve their problem.

After all, most products that are sold on the market are products that can help their buyers in some way. Help your readers wholeheartedly with your blog writing. Recommend products that you think can help your readers to solve their problem.

5. Install advertisements only if you’ve made your blog popular

Although you can change your passion into cash with blogging, most people are quickly switching their gears once they start to make some money with their blog. They will start cluttering their blogs with advertisements and lots of pop-ups. You should avoid doing this. You can monetize your blog through advertisements, but you can’t install those ads right away.

The best timing to start monetizing your blog through advertisements is when you’ve made your blog popular. What’s the measurement of popular blog? You can assume that your blog is popular enough when you see regular daily traffic of 1000 visitors or more.

Many bloggers choose not to use ads to monetize their sites and depend on donations. You can invite your readers to send you gift cards or cash gifts (through PayPal, for example) or encourage them to become your recurring sponsors. This method makes you independent of any third-party platforms which is pretty cool but you need to build a strong community of followers in order for it to work.

6. Make yourself an expert

The last thing to make sure that you can cash in your passion with your blog is to make people notice that you’re an expert in your field. Through your passionate writing, you can make it.

People will regard you as an expert in blogging if you can solve their problem and share valuable information to them. Once you’ve build good reputation as an expert, it will become easier for you to make money with your blog. People will just start to call you and offer some gigs to you.

7. And finally, get consistent!

Consistency is key in making your blog a success. When preparing for a trip, or planning a vacation, always include your blog editorial as your high-priority. What’s going to happen with your blog while you are away? Think this through!

Also be sure to grab yourself a copy of Social Media Promotion Guide to find some tools and scheduling tips to keep your channels active while you are away.

If you have a passion in any field, don’t suppress it. Start by creating a blog about the topic that you’re passionate about and follow the tips above. Within short amount of time, you will be able to turn your passion into cash with blogging.

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How to Relieve Stress and Learn to Enjoy Life

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The modern world is a lot of hard work. Money troubles, family issues, work problems are just some of the issues people have to face all of the time.

No matter if you’re a stay at home parent or a complete workaholic, the common pitfalls of everyday life can leave you feeling angry, worn down and frustrated. And don’t get me started on the feeling of guilt that never leaves a mom’s brain.

Long term stress can be seriously detrimental to personal well-being. It can be the cause of regular migraines, muscle tension, heart disease, insomnia, ulcers as well as major contributor to a host of psychological illnesses.

Dealing with anxiety and stress doesn’t have to be difficult. Some of my favorite ways of combating stress are:

Pick up a Pen

It’s been said that writing in a journal can help free your mind from the tangle of constant thoughts, as well as helping to naturally organize them. If analog pen and paper aren’t your style, there are a few great journaling applications out there. Day 1 has a seamless interface but is only available for IOS. Journey is a great alternative for Android.

You can also set up a blog to keep your journal there. It gives you a great feeling of accomplishment. Here are best blogging platforms for you to choose from.

Whatever your method, the act of putting your thoughts on paper will leave you feeling freer and lighter as the days wear on. And if the thought of journaling is too much to bear, for even a few minutes a day, try an adult coloring book.

Get in Your Cardio

Or really, any exercise, as long as it gets you moving. Your body functions in such a way that exercise helps to release dopamine into your system, stabilizing mood and increasing focus.

You don’t need a gym membership to get this going, a quick turn around the neighborhood for a half hour is enough to help boost. This has more long-term effects than immediate benefits, but the longer you persevere, the greater the effects.

Find Some Hobbies

Everybody needs to have interests outside of the work and family. Making sure some parts of your life are totally separate from other parts will help in those times when you need a refuge from the outside world. If your time is only spent thinking about the things which (can) cause you stress, then you are far more likely to remain stressed all of the time.

I like to read a lot of fantasy novels and then argue about them online. Hobbies don’t have to be physical activities, they should just be something you are really passionate about.

Try Meditation

Meditation for stress relief is available in many different forms. Guided meditations, hypnotherapy, mantra meditations, silent meditations and whole host of things that come somewhere in between. With all of them the main point is to find thirty minutes to an hour each day, where you can just sit back, let go of all your worries and just relax.

Daily meditation rituals help your body and mind remember what it is like to be content and relax. In time you will be able to use that feeling to help overcome stressful situations as they occur throughout the day, just by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and remembering what it is like to be calm and relaxed.

Setting aside time to relax is very important, as if you don’t you’ll run the risk of getting physically, mentally and emotionally burnt out, which will only result in misery and failure. So allow yourself personal time, but make sure you plan out when that time will be, so that for the rest of the day you’re focused on your  work.

Remember you can remain productive even when you are bored and tired. It’s not about doing work all the time: Being productive is all about spending every minute of your life with purpose, even if that purpose is to relax and de-stress.

Those are the ways I like to relieve stress and anxiety on a daily basis, if you’ve got any good tips I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say.

Image source: Pixabay

Four Essential SEO Plugins for Bloggers

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Search engine traffic is the most reliable and in many cases top-converting traffic for many websites. That’s the reason most people ask for tips and plugins that can help them boost SEO of their WordPress websites.

If you are looking to increase your search engine rankings, you will need to use some of the best WordPress SEO plugins. Fortunately, there are a plethora of SEO plugins to help you get that higher search traffic that you are dying to achieve. In this guide, we shall share with you some of the best SEO plugins that will improve SEO of your WordPress website.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Yoast SEO is the most popular and holistic SEO plugin on WordPress. To date, it has more than 4.5 million downloads with an average rating of 4.7-star over five from 1,418 users. Developed by SEO specialist Joost de Valk, this plugin has features that ensure optimal success for your site when it comes to SEO. The plugin is used by some of the most famous online magazines and websites such as the next web, Mashable, and others.

WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin can assign keywords to a blog post so that the user can focus on using it in the entire content. It also has a snippet view where users can see how their post will look like in search results.

Another important feature of this plugin is the Page Analysis. Powered by Linkdex, this feature allows users to check whether all the keywords, meta description, images and post title or subheadings are in place. The list of features for Yoast SEO is extremely long, check out others here. This is a great productivity-boosting plugin for writers.

2. Text Optimizer

Text Optimizer

Text Optimizer is one of the most advanced SEO plugins built for online business, eCommerce, bloggers, and magazines. This plugin offers you an easy way to use Text Optimizer to get your content rank higher in Google.

It is perfect for everyone with little knowledge of SEO or rarely cares to perform on-page optimization. It uses semantic analysis to generate related concepts and terms and helps you include those in your content in the most meaningful way.

The best thing about Text Optimizer plugin is that it lets you optimize your site for search engine while improving your content quality. In other words, the default installation is good enough to serve. But as you interact more with the plugin, you can play with the settings as per your requirements.

3. Broken Link Checker

A broken link is a horrible nightmare for bloggers or SEO enthusiasts. Having broken links will earn your site a bad reputation with Google. Eventually, that reputation will degrade your search engine rankings to the point that you may no longer be regarded an authority in your industry. Google is trying so hard to better web experience for everyone. So they will not direct users to websites with broken pages.

This is where tools, such as the Broken Link Checker come in. The name speaks for itself; this plugin allows you to check for any broken links and missing images. If there is any, it will alert you and give you the option to customize the link(s) either by deleting it completely or by placing the correct one.

Here is a summary of its features:

  • Ability to detect links that don’t work
  • Option to deter search engines from following broken links
  • Monitors links in pages, comments, posts and even custom fields
  • Option to change broken links

4. SEOPressor

SEOPressor

SEOPressor covers every possible aspect of SEO and puts the same attention to all of it. It offers you a number of useful features which help you optimize your images, blog posts and your site for social media.

It also allows you to use its drag and drop function allowing you to easily use your chosen keywords in your content. With this feature, you won’t have to spend so much time conducting keyword research on other tools or services.

After posting your content, this plugin goes ahead to analyze your post and give you a score based on the analysis. In the analysis, it checks your subheadings. SEOPressor also comes with a reliable internal linking feature. This feature makes your work easier since each time you re-publish content the phrases you linked on the first content will be hyper-linked automatically.

Wrapping up

These are some of the top WordPress SEO plugins. Tell us which one is your favorite among the ones discussed here. If there is any plugin that you feel we should include in this guide, please let us know in the comments section.

Outside of SEO, there are more useful SEO plugins for you to try… Let me know your pick!

Filed Under: SEO

How I Achieved a Tenfold Increase in Organic Traffic with Text Optimizer

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I have been in the blogging / marketing / freelancing business long enough to lose trust in any “get rich quick” or “triple your traffic in a week” headlines. I would never even click those unless I see them on a trusted resource.

Therefore when I came across this article, I was skeptical but being an avid reader of the blog, I decided to give it a read. I admit it all sounded a bit overwhelming: “semantic search”, “related concepts”, etc. But I still went ahead and gave the featured tool a try.

Text Optimizer does what it says: Helps you optimize your text. In essence, it shows all kinds of words and phrases that somehow relate to your main keyword, i.e. the one that you’d want rank for in Google search.

The idea is, if you cover more concepts that constitute your topic, you have more chances to meet your readers’ expectations, and thus will achieve both better engagement and higher rankings. You can get a better idea of this by playing with the tools’ demo here.

The tool is based on semantic analysis which is what I decided to start researching.

What is Semantic Search?

According to Wikipedia:

Semantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results. Semantic search systems consider various points including context of search, location, intent, variation of words, synonyms, generalized and specialized queries, concept matching and natural language queries to provide relevant search results

What I could understand from this definition is the following:

  • Semantic search tries to understand the context (versus an isolated query)
  • Semantic search tries to understand intent (i.e. what searchers expect to find when performing a search)

Both sounded very good to me, so I decided to give the tool a try.

How to Use Text Optimizer

The first step is registering for free trial. Once you are there, simply provide your target query, choose Google, and then copy-paste your URL you want to rank for that query. The tool will grab Google’s search snippets for that query, applies semantic analysis to them to better understand context and then identify which terms are missing from your text:

Your job is to pick 15-20 of listed concepts and naturally include into your content to optimize it better. Don’t overdo: You don’t your article to sound weird or artificial. If you need to write more content to cover those concepts, go ahead and do that. After all, this makes your content better, which is a beauty of using this tool.

Text Optimizer also helps you build sentences:

As well as target your audience to certain territory:

Text Optimizer and My Process

I started going through my old content, article by article and optimizing them to achieve minimum score of 70

Luckily, I ddidn’t have to much client work, so I was able to delve into the tool almost full time. I actually enjoyed using it because I liked what it did to my content: I felt like my blog was becoming much better.

This took me about two works of work.

Now, looking back at my organic traffic, I was excited to see my time wasn’t wasted. I went from ~100 users a day to ~1000 users a day and growing! Whether it’s semantic SEO or simply making my content better (longer, more in-depth, etc.) but Text Optimizer definitely worked:

Now, it’s not a magic button! Optimizing content using Text Optimizer takes lots of time: You need to run the tool, write content and then re-run the tool, then rinse and repeat. But if you can dedicate at least an hour a day to this, you may have great results over time!

Good luck!

How to Improve Your Freelancing Productivity

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I do a lot of my work from home. While this is great in many ways, there is one where I have a lot of trouble: productivity. It is just so easy to lose track of time, or to begin procrastinating. There are some days where you just can’t get started, and before you know it you realize it is one in the afternoon and you are still in your bathrobe, without a single bit of work done.

One of the reasons it is so hard to be productive at home is that it isn’t easy to feel stressed or like there is a time constraint when you aren’t in an office. Some days it is absolutely impossible – which is why making your home a place for relaxed productivity is a great way to fix the problem.

Here are some tips:

Get Quirky With Your Seating Arrangements

Sitting in an office chair all day can be such a pain, whether you are at home or elsewhere. But they are also a necessity, so if you want to mix it up it is better to add another couple of options around you so you can move around, get comfortable, and even improve the look of your work space.

Have a sofa in your office against one wall for breaks. Or get really quirky and throw in a couple of bean bag chairs.

Have a Dedicated Work Space

Have you ever heard people say that if you want to sleep better you should make the bedroom a place only for night activities? That same principle can be applied to your office. Treat your freelancing business as a real business.

Have a place where you always work, whether it is a full room or just a small segment of the house. Only use it for productive things (no playing games or browsing Facebook), and let that association boost your work output. It is a nifty little trick of the mind.

Using a hosted contact center is a good idea if you want to improve your productivity and take your business to the next level.

Surround Yourself With Serenity

A burbling waterfall art piece, a stereo playing gentle music, a couple of house plants, relaxing lighting….all of these can give your workspace a feeling of serenity that improves mood and keeps you loose and happy through the day.

You can even section off a portion of your office for stretching, yoga or workouts to help you de-stress and free your mind of unwanted thoughts.

Decorate With Bright Colors

Bright colors will trigger a reaction in the brain that makes you feel more energized and focused. Red, oranges, yellows and golds are great. So are brighter versions of usually cooler colors, like an electric blue or green.

You don’t necessarily want it to be so busy that it is distracting, but a splash of color can do wonders.

Have Everything You Need Within Reach

A coffee pot, some healthy snacks, your work phone, hand wipes or lotions, chapstick, a sweater or blanket; fantastic items to have on hand just in case you find yourself needing something and don’t want to leave the room.

Having the little things that improve your mood will keep you from getting too tense, of having to go out for something. Try a weekly checklist to make sure before the workweek starts that everything is fully stocked and ready for you.

Create a Schedule

A schedule is your best friend for keeping calm and on track through the day. Set a times for work in blocks through the day, working in any meetings, conference calls or emails you have to do. Add in plenty of breaks, a decent lunch time, and maybe a time for something active like a quick walk or workout. Here are a few cool calendar plugins for WordPress to always keep your schedule handy.

This will keep you at your best. Make sure you also have an end time for the day, and don’t work beyond it. Working from home, it can be really tempting to push things to the end of the day and overshoot our schedule, or just get a few more emails in.

Do you have a tip for making your home a place of relaxed productivity? Let’s discuss!