SEO Content Solutions

A year ago, none of my writing assignments were for blogs. But in the first quarter of this year, lots of my clients started asking me to do blog writing. I’m currently writing for 7 different blogs. One blog, my favorite to write for, allows me to be me and give my expert opinion. On the others, I just provide generalized content.

Right away, I noticed that there was a big problem with blogging for other people’s businesses.

That problem is that most business blogs simply don’t have a focus or a personality. Without these things, a blog is virtually just more internet noise. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand writing just to create more noise that no one will ever read.

Businesses are blogging because they hear that it’s good for search engines and will drive traffic to their website, but they on’t really know why or how. If you’re a writer or SEO, this is where you must at least try to consult businesses on how to make their blog effective.

How to help your clients make their blogs more effective:

Create a mission statement

A blog is a lot like a magazine. It must have a specialization or else it will appeal to no one. Throughout this post, I’ve included some questions that I send out to my clients to help them to nail down a focus for their blog:

• Who is the target audience for your blog?

• What common element will each blog post contain that will provide value to your target audience? In other words, what is their ‘reward’ for reading your blog?

Establish a Blog personality

One of the biggest problems when writing for someone else’s blog when you’re not asked to be yourself is developing a writing style. Who are you supposed to be? A blog is a lot like the op-ed section of the newspaper, not written in the stuffy way that most articles are written.

In talking with other freelance blog writers, I’ve found that this is their biggest source of frustration also. The writing really should come from “someone” not some elusive voice. Help company’s understand the value of allow personality to shine through.

If you’re not an expert on the subject, that’s ok. You can do interviews with others who are, get feedback on the staff’s opinions on various topics in the news, or come at the topic from a consumer angle. You can also seek out guest bloggers to occasionally write posts as well.

Question to ask your client:

• What do you envision as being the overall tone of your blog – Light-hearted? Humorous? Scholarly? Ultra-professional? Sarcastic? Straight to the point? Something else? What type of communication do you feel your audience responds to best and tends to trust most?

Explain the value of social networking with blogs

Many people have an “if you build it, they will come” attitude about blogging and that’s just not the case. Businesses need to know that creating a successful blog requires a lot more work than just writing posts. For all of the things required to create a successful blog, check out this post at Pro Blogger.

In order to create buzz, some of your focus should be on getting other, influential blogs to first become aware of the blog, and then perhaps giving a mention to the blog in a post. This can be done though:

• Outbound links to other blogs
• Promoting posts to relevant bloggers

Questions to ask your clients:

• Which influential blogs would you like to link to your blog?

• What type of content would it take to get the top 3 blogs you listed above to find so much value in your blog, that they mention your blog and add you to their blogroll?

Instead of charging per post, consider putting together a blog-building “package” that includes:

• Writing
• Research
• Post promotion
• Finding guest bloggers
• Driving subscriptions
• Reporting

Since one of the main goals for many blogs is to gain a solid readership, set goals for number of subscribers and even build in a monetary bonus system for achieving certain subscriber goals.

Happy blogging!

I write and distributed scores of press releases for clients every week without problem. But one that I recently wrote for my own company SEO Content Solutions was rejected by almost half of my regular distribution points.

It appears that the press release titled SEO Copywriting Expert Reveals Secrets to First Page Results hit too close to the truth and didn’t sit well with many PR distributors.

Some made it to the news, but nearly as many as usual.

SEO’s are a group that people love to hate. PR distributors are just another group that can’t stand us – with good reason though.

When advertisers flood the submissions with keyword-spammy ads disguised as press releases, it devalues the integrity of news.

Further, these press release distributors have the privilege of their content appearing on Google News because they have been approved as newsworthy content providers. Start letting lots of advertising through, and they could lose that privilege.

This press release wasn’t spammy or full of advertising lingo. Instead, it was a little too true. In the hands of advertisers that care more about optimizing for search engines as opposed to optimizing for humans, this type of information could cause a nightmare for PR distributors.

As someone who values information more than advertising, I understand this. When writing press releases for SEO, follow the advice in my rejected PR:

“For a press release to truly be successful, it’s critical that it be focused around providing useful information for human readers. Distributing press releases that don’t offer a real value to your target audience is a waste money and effort.”

The people that get them absolutely love them. Even I was surprised at first at their impact on the SERP’s.

Press Releases

When optimized for search engines (and of course for humans as is my motto) press releases have a bold presence in the search results. Not only that, but they are a great way to build valuable backlinks.

I’ve spent the last 6 months analyzing scores of press release distribution points to find those with the most value. There are quite a few free press release distribution points that may not give you the wide exposure of a resource like PR Web with its extensive contact list, but that do offer live links, anchor text, images, first page visibility on Google News and sometimes first page exposure on the organic results.

One of my favorite free press release resources is Open PR. The use of images really makes the release stand out in the SERPs.

Here’s a press release that I wrote that took 5 of the top 10 slots on Google’s main search page.

So if you’ve been procrastinating on sending out press releases – stop! Most of the companies I work with publish anywhere from 1-4 press releases a month like clockwork and love the effect.