Wondering why your blog isn’t reaching your target readership? Fretting about your site’s non-existent comments and low social shares? You could be committing the following mistakes:
Your posts are full of typos and grammatical errors - Clean up your articles and make sure the text is free from typos and grammar mistakes. This may sound obvious and basic, but so many bloggers remain careless with their writing and publish posts that are full of glaring typographical and grammatical errors. Don’t be one of those bloggers.
Always run spell check on your articles. Type them up in a word processor first before pasting them online.
Do note that spell checkers are far from perfect though, so always read and re-read your articles prior to submission. The best spell checkers are your eyes and brain. Use them. You can also let other people check for spelling and grammar mistakes. It never hurts to get another set of eyes to read through a post.
If you...
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Thanks to the emergence of big data, page tags, and analytics tools, brands and online publishers really have a lot of things going for them in data department. It’s never been this easy to gather visitor intelligence, and website owners nowadays recognize the value of analytics so they’re more than happy to track their site metrics, test components, and generate reports.
That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that while site owners are certainly looking at their analytics, they’re not always paying attention to the right numbers. The fact is not all metrics are created equal. While it may be easier to look at the numbers on the surface (i.e. page views, total number of users, etc.), these aren't necessarily the data points that would give you the pulse of your website or company. These aren't the numbers that will tell you how your users are doing and what action steps you need to take to keep them happy.
Tracking surface metrics...
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It’s a given fact that publishing a steady stream of content is crucial to gaining links and increasing user engagement. Unfortunately, producing awesome and sharable content time and time again isn’t easy for everyone--especially if they’re not big on writing.
Fortunately though, writing articles isn’t the only way to create content. Just because your CMS gives you a big white box with a blinking cursor in it doesn’t mean you have to fill it with words every single time.
There are a number of other ways in which you can produce content. Explore these options. Use them well, experiment with them, and see what works.
Not sure where to start? The following are just some of the things that you can try:
Create presentations and upload them to Slideshare - Struggling to find the words to express what you need to say? Then put them in a PowerPoint presentation instead. It’s easier for most people to present their thoughts in...
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Everyone knows that Google is slowing getting rid of its referrer data. For years, this is how we were able to verify our keyword data from the free Keyword Tool put out by Google. With referrer data coming up "not provided" - even on the analytics dashboard, how are we to figure out how people find our site? Enter WassUp.
What Is Wassup?
WassUp is a simple Wordpress plugin that gives you analytics right from your Wordpress dashboard. It collects a lot of data about your visitors including their ip/hostname, whether they're a bot or human, search engines used to find your site, the operating system of the user, complete user agent, spam and hack attempts.
The plugin also have a really simple admin console area that allows you to filter by:
record count per page
"top ten" charts with aggregate data (i.e. top queries, requests, etc.)
records by time period
records by entry type
etc.
You can even customize how often the...
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Regardless of where you get traffic from, keywords matter - at least a little bit. Keywords are what your target market uses to describe what they're looking for. If you're not mentioning them on your page, in your ads, and as descriptors in meta descriptions and titles, you're probably not capturing the traffic you could be. Still, you could overdo it a bit when it comes to keywords - especially when it comes to keyword targeting. Do you make any of these common mistakes?
You Overemphasize Volume
Traffic volume is important, but it's not the only thing that matters. Here look at what happens when we search for the term "SEO" using Google's keyword tool:
Holy cow, that's a lot of searches per month for the term "SEO." All you have to do is get ranked for that one keyword phrase, and you're set, right? Not so fast. You see, it doesn't matter how many people search for any keyword if it's too competitive....
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There are a lot of SEO plugins out there, but few of them can really match the power of SEO by Yoast. It's powerful, deceptively simple to use, and it has just about everything you need for optimization of posts and pages. You don't have to monkey with a lot of settings, and the optimization is done right under the text editor (which is good, since you don't have to leave your post or page to optimize it). If that weren't enough, it's available for free from the Wordpress plugin directory. But it's surprising to see so few people making full use of it. Here's how to get more out of this great plugin:
Choose Your Focus Keywords
Yoast doesn't choose your keywords for you. You do have to put in the wrench time on that one to figure out what you should be targeting. However, once that's done, Yoast will keep you focused. It does this using an input box aptly named "Focus Keyword" under the "general" tab (which is...
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Email marketing is getting harder and harder. With spam filters getting better, users are finding it easier to just mark your stuff as junk - even when they signed up for it in the first place. To combat this trend, and get your emails opened, here are five tips to make your emails pop:
Use Outrageous Headlines
Sometimes, outrageous headlines are a good thing. For example, "You're going to be really pissed when you read this," and "This picture is worth 10,000 words," are great examples of email headlines that get read. Why? Because it's enticing, audacious, and a bit outrageous. People are bombarded with emails every day. You have to stand out from the noise. This is how.
Keep It Simple
400 to 500 words at most. Users will not be bored reading email. It's too easy to click the "x" and close the email. Worse, they can mark you as spam if you're sending them 2,000 word emails. Bad. Stick to short emails, keep your prospect's...
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Most Wordpress users love the platform, and it's got some great advantages over other platforms. It's also got some built-in flaws that are probably making your life harder, your blog look more cluttered, and confusing your users. Knowing what to get rid of and what to keep is not always intuitive. Here's the key to getting this right: think like your users.
Cut Down On Page Bloat
There is no end to page bloat on many Wordpress sites out there. It's actually surprising that more sites haven't picked up on this yet. Dedicated category pages, tag pages, and other miscellaneous pages make your site bigger than it needs to be, forces users to click through more pages than they need to, and it can create some nasty duplicate content issues for you.
Most everyone will beat you over the head with how important it is to have categories. There's a caveat to that "rule" though. Does it serve your user's interest? If not, ditch the...
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Google is known for a lot of things. Not only is it home to the most utilized search engine on the web, but it also provides an array of services that a lot of people heavily use. The most well-known of which include Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and Calendar. Want to watch your favorite cat videos? Check YouTube. Need to know the stats of your website? There’s Google Analytics for that. Then there’s also Android, the companies’ foray into the mobile arena, and Apple’s greatest nemesis.
Yes, Google’s tools and services have certainly made life in the digital world much more convenient. And the fact that the company keeps it all under one roof makes things even easier. All you need is one login (your Google account) and you’ll be able access its complete toolbox.
The question is though, are you taking advantage of all the tools in that box? Answer: probably not. And that’s mainly because Google is offering so many services, it’s...
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If there’s one thing that new bloggers struggle with when starting a blog, it’s gaining more readers. With millions of blogs on the web, how in the world can you get people to notice your existence? And more importantly, how do get them to actually come back?
If you’re asking yourself these same questions (and if you’re a blogger, then you probably are) take note of the pointers below. These are some tried and tested ways that have proven to increase readership and engagement in blogs. They’ll even include real website examples that you can visit and check out for yourself:
1. Provide real value – This is the most effective way to gain loyal readers that would spread the word about your site without any bribes or motivation other than the fact that you provide excellent stuff. And no, there’s really no way around this one.
Whatever your niche is, chance are there’s already a blog in the same space...
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