Last Update May 18, 2025 @ 2:40 am

Just putting work into content marketing is not enough. It is also important to make sure all your effort is paying off! To make this possible, we’ve put together a guide on the essential content marketing metrics you should monitor.

The average engagement time

The first of the content marketing metrics you should monitor is your audience’s average engagement time with your content and site in general. This is crucial since it reveals whether or not your content is doing its job once you get people onto your site. After all, your goal is not just to get people to click on the links to your site but to, ideally, keep them there and engaged. This lets you achieve the whole purpose of your marketing: getting them to convert into a customer. The longer your average engagement time is, the better. However, do note that you should not just gauge the effectiveness of pages by engagement time. Properly take into account the complexity and length of blog posts whose statistics you are checking before making any decisions that will impact your approach to content.

The number of unique site visitors you get

The number of unique site visitors you get should be considered one of the essential content marketing metrics you should monitor. This is because a large number of unique visitors shows that your marketing is doing what it’s supposed to: increasing your outreach and bringing in new audiences. When you notice the number of unique visitors increases, you should take the time to properly analyze what contributed to this, too. This will let you better craft a unique approach to content marketing that appeals to your own target audiences. For example, some audiences might better respond to PPC ads, some to social media marketing, and some to email marketing. Conversely, if you notice your number of unique site visitors dropping, you’ll be able to quickly reverse whatever recent changes to your marketing strategy you have made. And, hopefully, fix the damage they’d done before you lose your audience!

The number of regular readers you have

Just because we just discussed how important the number of unique site visitors is, doesn’t mean that the number of regulars you have is less important. In fact, for some businesses, it can even be more important than just racking in new visitors. As the experts from moversdev.com point out, this statistic is especially important to businesses that don’t have a lot of ways to properly build a permanent customer base. Movers, construction companies, packers, and similar businesses simply cannot count on customers needing their services often. As such, it’s easy for their customers to ‘drift away.’ They can minimize the chances of this happening by relying on content marketing. And this is why it’s important for them to know whether or not their efforts are bearing fruit! Of course, even businesses that have frequent contact with their customers find this metric useful.

The average number of comments your content is generating

Engaging with your customers has always been important. Without a proper communication channel between you, it’s very easy to miss out on a host of useful info and chances to further your brand’s image. As such, the average number of comments your content gets is an important content marketing metric for you to monitor. Comments also show just how well your ideal audience is actually taking to your content. If you get a ton of comments, that means your content is generating interest, and your marketing is a success. Even if the comments are not great at the start, they still provide valuable insight into how you can improve and eventually win over the favor of your readers. So, if possible, you should make it easy and convenient for people to comment on your blog posts.

Most popular site content

The reason why content popularity is among content marketing metrics you should monitor is simple: you can quickly learn exactly what your audience wants from you. By checking your site data for the most visited pages, you’ll quickly be able to figure out the type of content and format that your potential customers react to the best. From there, you can either try to pander to their preferences or you can try to make your other content more appealing by altering it. Both decisions have their own pros and cons since the former lets you capitalize on your current advantages, and the latter has the potential to bring in new audiences. It comes down to your preferences and what you feel your content marketing team can handle. Of course, if you are doing great, it’s typically best not to rock the boat.

Backlinks followed to and from your site

Backlinks are practically the lifeblood of your business during its early days. And even once your business takes off, maintaining quality backlinks, both to and from your site, is extremely beneficial. Especially if you are partnering with businesses that can constantly funnel new customers your way. This is why paying attention to backlinks and whether they’re actually doing their job is important. It’s relatively easy to track the number of people who visit your site through specific links. And this will give you all the insight you need to gauge whether you want to continue or break off your partnership with them. At the same time, note that the SEO of your backlinked partners affects your own. So, it’s also smart to check their web statistics from time to time. It’s better to lose some of the benefits of their backlinks than to ruin your SEO.

Your site’s bounce rates

‘Bounce rate’ is a relatively misunderstood term since it’s widely used to refer to people clicking out of your website. However, the actual meaning is that people close your website immediately after opening it. In other words, they dislike what they see enough to decline to give you a chance. For obvious reasons, this is extremely bad. Even if your content is great, it never gets to do its job, and its effectiveness plummets. If you notice that the bounce rates of your pages are high, the culprit is typically easy to narrow down. And it’s almost always your site design. Badly designed sites have compatibility issues, their menus are messy, it’s hard to read the content, etc. So, even if the goal is very specific, such as increasing user engagement on a moving company website, those movers can improve user interaction by improving their site design!

Your subscriber numbers and what content generates them

Getting people to subscribe to your mail or other notifications and promotional content is extremely important. It is one of the best sources of leads you can possibly get, and it’s in your best interest to boost your subscriber count. The tricky part is, of course, motivating them enough to click that subscribe button. This is why it’s crucial for you to track content pages that people subscribed to you from. After all, they are likely to contain the best calls to action, convincing arguments to subscribe to, or content so good that they feel compelled to do it purely for the sake of getting to see more. This will give you the knowledge you need to improve your marketing further. And, hopefully, win over a ton of new subscribers who will become true customers of your business.

The number of shares your pages get

Here’s an interesting reminder: few marketing methods are as convincing as people actively choosing to share your content. You are much less inclined to click on an ad or a blog link when it’s ‘forced’ on you by marketing. However, if your friend or family member shares and praises it on social media, you’ll probably check it out. So, it is important for a business to include share numbers among content marketing metrics you should monitor. You should also make it as convenient as possible to actually share your pages. Having an embedded ‘share’ button or something similar is better. Especially since that lets you track the number of shares you get much more conveniently.

The ‘sources’ of your site’s visitors

We have more or less alluded to this several times so far, but the ‘source’ of your page views is extremely important. You need to know exactly where most of your audience is coming from! Are they visiting your site because of your ads? Are they using links you posted on your social media? Maybe you got a high-profile share some time ago, and a lot of your recent traffic has been through it? What about the effectiveness of your organic traffic and your efforts to optimize your SEO? By knowing exactly where your views are coming from, you get info on which of your content marketing methods are working. From there, it is trivial to cut back on the funding to the ones that underperform. And, of course, redirect that funding to high achievers. Alternatively, you’ll know which marketing methods need improvement, though this can be costly.

Conversions achieved through content

It is common to embed hyperlinks into your content leading to items or services on sale. Even if you don’t do this, tracking down the ‘entry point’ of your customers to your site is relatively simple. From there, you’ll be able to gauge which content encourages people to become customers rather than just stay on your blog and read. The reason this is one of the content marketing metrics you should monitor is that this data will be immensely helpful when trying to optimize your website for conversions. By analyzing successful pages, you learn the phrases, wording, and calls to action which are most effective for your audience. This will also impact your wider marketing efforts since you can relatively easily incorporate them there.

Your content’s keyword rankings

It is only natural that keyword ranking is important when discussing content marketing. For organic traffic, keyword ranking is king. This is because high ranking also means that more people will get your site and blog pages as their first few results on Google search. Lacking keyword rankings will easily reveal that there are problems with your SEO. This, in turn, will let you know that it’s time to pay more attention to SEO when writing your content. If you are not sure you can do it on your own, consider hiring blog writers to assist your business operations! That’s a better option than over-optimizing or just leaving your SEO to suffer.

The popularity of old content

Another one of the content marketing metrics you should monitor is, interestingly enough, the popularity of your old content. The reason for this is simple: ‘bad’ content hurts your SEO, and even if your content used to be top of the line and was completely optimized for SEO, SEO guidelines change. And with them, changes the effectiveness and outreach of your old content. Even if something used to be the ‘correct’ way to do SEO, it might be completely harmful nowadays, and you’ll lose your ranking for those pages. In other words, your organic traffic to these pages will vane. And you’ll be alerted to this by paying attention to the number of views your old content gets! This will let you respond to the problem in a relatively timely manner, and old content takes relatively few tweaks to get updated, too!

Working on content marketing metrics you should monitor

Now that you are familiar with the essential content marketing metrics you should monitor remember that tracking them is not enough. It takes a lot of time and hard work to fix the problems that these metrics reveal. So, don’t become discouraged and give up too early! It is always possible to improve your website, and we are sure you will succeed.

Frequently asked questions about content marketing metrics

Q: Where can I find these metrics?

A: Most of the information you need can be found on your site’s dashboard. The specifics depend on your hosting provider, but the info will always be there. If you can’t find it on your own, simply shoot your host a quick email. For info on your competitors or other sites, you can find software such as SEMrush and Ahrefs that generates the metrics for you.

Q: Can I improve my content quickly?

A: Yes! It’s easy to read up on good SEO practices, and as long as you use a good editing program, you’ll even catch grammatical and semantic errors quickly.

Q: Is hiring blog writers and other outside experts to improve my site’s engagement, SEO, and other metrics worthwhile?

A: The answer is almost always yes. You can do some tasks on your own, and you can learn a lot from the experts you hire and by relying on your in-house teams. However, SEO and content creation tend to change quickly, and unless you have dedicated experts on your team, you’ll occasionally need help.

Q: I’ve put a lot of effort into my SEO. Why am I not seeing any improvements in my organic traffic?

A: SEO takes time to do its job. SEO progress is measured in weeks and months since Google first needs to crawl the pages, properly rank them, start recommending them, etc. Every SEO business that guarantees results within days is a scam that either uses bots, unpopular keywords, or just falsified data.

Q: Is it worth it to work on really old content?

A: This depends on the content. Suppose the topics themselves are old and completely outdated, such as instructions for programs no one uses anymore. In that case, it’s sometimes better to just delete them or remove access to the pages rather than continue to update them.

Q: Do I need to keep checking my metrics all the time?

A: No! Even if it feels like you should, metrics like SEO take time to change. You can comfortably check them just once or twice a week. Or, if you have a set release schedule for your content, as you should, you can just check a day after your newest releases.

Q: What can I do to improve my bounce rates?

A: Improve the quality of your content, such as grammar or formatting errors. Fix any problems with your web design. Consider adding exit popups to lure back leaving visitors. And finally, make sure your ads are properly targeted and appear for people actually likely to stay on your site.

The post Essential Content Marketing Metrics You Should Monitor first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:19 pm

You have been working on your blog for a while, and it happens, the thing that all writers fear and dread: writer’s block (enter scary music here). 

Even after racking your brain for inspiration, you just can’t seem to come up with anything new to write about! It’s not just you; coming up with new ideas consistently is easily one of the hardest tasks for any content creator. How do you constantly come up with appealing content that will keep your audience engaged and asking for more?

No worries, friend, because here is a list of seven simple ways to come up with creative, traffic-inducing post ideas that you can put into practice today, no matter your niche. 

7 Ways to Find Blog Topics 

1) Keyword Research Tools (Free)

Keywords are going to be, well…key, no matter what you are writing about.

Using keywords in your blog posts means you will be writing content that people are actually searching for on search engines such as Google or Pinterest. 

Using keywords makes your blog post more likely to appear higher up in the search results and, thus, more likely to be seen and clicked on by new potential audience members. 

Keyword Research Tools are an excellent resource that tells you exactly what people are searching for so you don’t just have to guess, do a little rain dance, and then cross your fingers that people find your post. In addition to getting some great ideas for your post topics, you’ll also be getting ideas that should generate traffic to your site.

For instance, you are writing a blog all about metal buildings. Using a keyword research tool and searching for “metal buildings” will yield a result like this: 

When it comes to content about metal buildings the top keywords that people are searching for are things like warehouses, barn, barndominium, and steel building homes. 

Using that information, a good post might be something like “10 Best Ways to Make Your Steel Building Homey” or “Building a New Barndominium with Instant Equity”. The list provided on these websites is much longer than just what’s pictured here, so there are plenty of great ideas to choose from!  

WordStream, Google Trends, or Ahrefs Keyword Generator are a few free options that are worth checking out, but there are many different options, so look around and find one that works for you. 

2) Keyword Research Tools (Paid)

In addition to all the free options out there, there are also several paid options. A few popular ones include Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush. 

All of these websites offer packages starting at $99 a month for the basic plan and jumping up to as much as $1,000 a month. Though, unless you are a large agency that $1,000 is going to carry a lot more meat than you are going to need.  

The paid versions of these websites come with many additional features that you don’t get with the free options that can really make the extra expense worth it. 

Things like site audits, analysis of competitors within your niche, link tracking, traffic analytics, ranking index, along with a whole host of other features.  

Tools like these will help assure you that you are not only coming up with lots of new ideas for your blog, but you’re coming up with the right ideas. 

Ideas that will actually help you show up in search engines, making your website easier to find. 

 Most of these websites offer a free trial of their product so you can try it before you buy, and see if this tool can be helpful for you and your business. 

3) Google Questions Box

Whenever you search for something on Google, after the first few links you’ll likely see a helpful little box titled “People also ask” followed by a list of questions related to your search query. 

This is another great place to find ideas for blog topics. 

Just type in a big topic or product in your niche, or even a blog idea you’ve used in the past, and see what other questions people are asking related to this same topic. 

We’ll use our “metal building” example again. After typing in “Metal Buildings” these are the questions that Google says people also ask: 

Just using these few questions I could come up with post ideas such as “How to Finance Your New Barndominium”, “Why Metal Buildings are Better than a Pole Barn”, “Metal Buildings: What Will it Cost You, and Why It’s Worth It”. 

Basically, if Google says that these are the questions that people are asking then you want to be the one to answer them!         

4) The Alphabet Soup Method

Here is Google to the rescue once again! The alphabet soup method is utilizing another function of Google that we all know and love: auto-complete.

This is piggy-backing off the same idea that Google knows what it is that people are searching for the most. 

To use this method, simply go to Google, type in your niche or product, and then the letter ‘a’, and let autocomplete fill in commonly searched for content starting with ‘a’. Like this:

Depending on your niche this might result in several locations (i.e. Atlanta and Athens), or other unusable results such as “at home depot”, but, even skipping over all of those results you could come up with several post ideas such as “Why Metal Buildings Make Great Homes” or “5 Reason Why Metal Buildings Make the Best Carports”. 

Next, you just erase the ‘a’ and type in ‘b’, then ‘c’, then ‘d’, and all the way through to ‘z’. 

Read the results and see what other topics you come up with. After going through the entire alphabet you are sure to have tons of fresh ideas for new posts. 

Take what people are searching for, turn it into a question, and then turn your blog into the answer! 

5) Hub and Spoke 

The Hub and Spoke method, also sometimes called the content hub method, is the idea of writing the main post, and then linking that post together with several other sub posts that go more in-depth about the topics covered in your main post.

There are three parts to a content hub: the hub, subpages, and hyperlinks. 

The hub is usually going to be a long, but broad, guide to whatever topic you are writing about. 

The subpages are going to take the ideas of the hub post and look at them more in-depth. You then use hyperlinks within your hub page to link to each of these sub posts, as well as hyperlinks within the sub-post that link back to the hub.

 You could, for instance, use the post you are currently reading as a hub post and then write a subpage about each of the seven methods. 

This means, in this case, you could turn this one blog idea into seven more blogs without too much extra work.  

Not only does this make it easier to come up with a whole series of related posts, but these internal links are also something that Google and other search engines look for to verify that you have a robust and trustworthy blog. 

It’s a nice little bonus that can help you get a higher ranking on Google in the midst of creating new content.

If you have more questions about this method, here is a great YouTube video from Ahrefs that goes more into detail and explains why it’s so good for your blog. 

6) Answer The Public

If you’ve never heard of Answer the Public, this website will be an excellent resource for you when coming up with blog ideas, and it’s probably the easiest method on this list. 

Simply go to the website, type in your niche or product and it will automatically come up with hundreds of questions that real people are asking about that topic. It looks a little something like this:

When looking up “metal buildings” it gave me a whole host of questions like “can metal buildings be insulated?”, “how to paint metal buildings.”, and “will metal buildings rust?”. 

Just in trying to answer these three questions you could launch into a whole series of blogs having to do with maintenance and installation. 

What’s great is that the picture above was just one of four question trees that it offered, so there are plenty more questions to inspire you.

The list is also downloadable as an Excel document. 

You could also change your search to more specific parts of your niche or use this to assist you in creating the content hubs that we discussed earlier.      

Something to keep in mind is that the free version only allows three searches per day. If you would like more than that you can pay a monthly subscription of $99. 

The paid version has a lot of great features like unlimited daily searches, unlimited users, as well as the ability to compare data over time. 

7) Blog Comments

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best ways to come up with topics for your blog is going to be discovering the questions people are actually asking and using a post to answer that question. 

Sometimes the questions that your audience is asking might come from, well…your audience. 

Go back and check the comment sections on old blogs and read through the comments and see if there are any people asking questions. 

Then decide if the answer could be expanded into a whole post. 

One thing I love about this method is that the questions are coming directly from people who are already a proven part of your audience.

If you are newer to blogging and you don’t have many old posts or any comments, then try reaching out to your audience and asking them what sort of topics they would be interested in reading. 

You can do this via Facebook, Instagram, Email, etc. (This is one of the benefits of having social media in addition to your blog. You can interact with your audience much faster and get some inspiration that way as well!)

Blog Topic Ideas to Avoid 

After utilizing this awesome list of ideas, you may now have TOO MANY blog topic ideas. 

Woe is you! Just kidding…  

Now a whole new host of issues has arisen! 

Where do you start? 

And how do you know which ideas will actually engage your audience as well as bring in a bunch of new traffic?

Well, there are a few things to consider here that could help you narrow down your suddenly huge amount of choices.  

Assess the Competition

One, what is that competition like for this topic? 

Does it have dozens of reputable sites already covered with huge 5,000-word posts? 

If that’s the case, then it’s going to be hard to stand out and show up in search engines. Maybe try for a topic with a little less rivalry.

Assess the Interest

Two, will your audience be interested in the topic you have chosen, or is it really mostly just of interest to you? 

Don’t alienate your audience with a subject that is only slightly related to the main point of your blog. 

If your blog is about metal buildings and you suddenly start talking about farming, you are likely going to lose the interest of your audience. 

Farming is a wonderful topic, but it’s not the type of content that people came to you for. Stick to your niche!   

Avoid Topics That Are Too Broad

And three, avoid topics that are too broad. 

“Why Metal Buildings are Cool” doesn’t tell the reader what they’re going to get when they go to read this blog, which likely means they aren’t even going to try and read it. 

However, a post entitled “Nine Reasons Metal Buildings Make the Best Backyard Office” is really specific and clickable. 

Anyone thinking about a backyard office has a reason to click through to that post.   

Conclusion 

There you have it, folks! I know after trying all the things on this list you will have more than enough future content to keep you busy for a good, long while. 

Coming up with new, engaging content can sometimes be the hardest part of writing a blog, but keeping these few wonderful tools and tricks in your arsenal should keep the content rolling out strong and steady for years to come.  

The post How to Find Blog Topics in Any Niche first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:20 pm

If you’ve been keeping up to date with the latest SEO threads across the Web, you’ll know what Google E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is about.

But for a refresher, here are two things about E-A-T:

• In August 2018, Google rolled out a core update of their algorithm that Barry Schwartz of SEO Roundtable named “medic update” after noticing that it mostly hit websites in the health niche, followed by e-commerce and finance
• The E-A-T acronym was first mentioned in the 2014 Google’s Guidelines for Quality Raters and then again in 2018 when Google updated them and made them publicly available around the time the “medic update” rolled out

In this post, I’m going to explain how E-A-T can affect blogs and what to do if you or your authors don’t have the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in your credentials that Google is looking for.

Google’s E-A-T is NOT A Direct Ranking Factor, But It Matters for SEO and UX

The relation between E-A-T and SEO is a somewhat complicated matter.

The basic idea is that Google wants to rank webpages that were written by people whose experience can tell users that they have the authority and proof of trust to make the content the go-to resource on the Web for a given search query.

And this is the only type of content Google wants to rank high.

But E-A-T is not a ranking factor.

First off, there is no penalty for not having E-A-T on your website.

I know that those Guidelines for Quality Raters are easy to misunderstand without some context, but E-A-T does not directly impact rankings.

There are plenty of myths about E-A-T out there, and I almost risked writing some myself when I wrote a Medic update post for Monitor Backlinks in October 2018 (it was no myth, thankfully, just a little bit naive still).

Is E-A-T a ranking factor? Not if you mean there's some technical thing like with speed that we can measure directly.

We do use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it.

In that regard, yeah, it's a ranking factor.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 11, 2019

What happens, however, is that as Google’s algorithms become smarter and smarter at implementing everything that E-A-T means, your website may not rank high for a given search term if it’s not providing that high standard of quality to users.

So What’s E-A-T Really About?

E-A-T is a group of (three) quality factors that Quality Raters can easily spot on a given webpage and assign a rating to it. The algorithm attempts to do the same via machine learning.

What does that all mean? It means that Google wants to preferably rank websites that show expertise, authority and trustworthiness in their SERPs, especially in the first pages.

That’s the ranking preference.

But it’s the way Google works, not a ranking factor. If you want your site to get listed in Google in the higher positions, it has to give searchers that standard of quality.

What Is a Blogger to Do, Then?

SEO was always about E-A-T.

Only, with the rise of fake news and an ever-growing need from people to get results that they can trust as an authority on the subject, Google is getting stricter about what it shows on the first SERPs.

Surely, guest posting and other ways of building a background of good credentials are very useful in this case, especially if there are also testimonials from people you have helped.

And it’s important to put a biography on your website and an author’s box under the article that is as complete as possible. You can look at this MOZ article for example.

But let’s get a closer look at that Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness from a blogger’s viewpoint.

Expertise

As far as Expertise is concerned, surely if you know what is going on in your article, there are already expertise and competence.

Then there are various levels of expertise, from that spoken of by your titles to on-field built expertise, and if you “wrote the book” about a topic.

You can go only so far with your credentials (i.e. a PhD, a major role at a company, etc.) — the expertise that comes through your content is what matters the most.

That’s the most important place to show expertise in: if your article deals with a specific topic in your field and ways to do it, it’s useful to talk about strategies, to articulate your points in order to demonstrate the expertise and to do it using the simplest language possible.

And as Alice Stevens, Senior Content Strategist at Best Company, says, you can always rely on other experts sharing their views and knowledge on your blog:

“Whether or not you have credentials, it’s important to deliver thoughtful, comprehensive content through your site. It’s a great idea to allow other experts in your field guest post, host interviews, or even ask for quotes for the content you add to your blog. Anchoring your blog in existing conversations with experts can help you build your own expertise, authority, and trust.”

Moreover, there’s On-Page and tech SEO to assist you with conveying expertise.

Lennart Meijer, Co-Founder of TheOtherStraw, says that “Focusing on organizing your Schema markup date to include the expertise of authors and contributors on your blog can be a great tool to signaling to Google that the authors are experts in their respective areas. Include advanced properties like ‘affiliation, hasCitation, honorific suffix’ and more.”

Authoritativeness

Displaying authority is another matter.

Not everyone is an authority in their subjects. One could be competent and trustworthy, but they may not be an authority in the field.

It’s the way you offer your content (format, language, tone, background research, expert insight) that makes it authoritative.

For example, Barry Schwartz is an authority in the SEO sector. I’m not. It doesn’t mean that I cannot talk about SEO as an authority if I bring my own case studies, thoughts on current trends, strategies, and so on.

As for links and citations, you may not be linked from a Wikipedia page or other important sites (yet) but there might still be other authoritative sources linking back to your content because they found it valid.

Dustin Christensen, Founder of Territory Supply, suggests that you use some guiding questions to decide:

• “If I was looking for this information online, would I find my own content and site trustworthy?”
• “Does it appear to come from an authoritative expert?”

And “If it doesn’t feel like it, then that’s a great opportunity to start updating your site and user experience.”

That rings even truer for multi-author blogs: make sure that the people who are writing for you are real people with real credentials.

In Accelerated Growth Marketing Founder Stacy Caprio‘s words:

“Are they real people? Are the names you made up to trick Google? If they are real people, then you probably already have a bio with social links on your site so they feel recognized and your site feels trustworthy to readers. If they are names you made up to trick Google, then you probably need to start making sure your site has all the E-A-T guidelines. All Google is looking for are real, trustworthy sites where the authors have credentials, so make sure your site is giving itself the best chance possible.”

Trustworthiness

As far as trust is concerned, even if you don’t have your own credentials when writing the article, if you interviewed experts and cited sources correctly, your article is worthy of trust, because it offers the views of industry or niche experts through interviews and good citations, so the content is all factual, all correct.

There is no reason not to trust the author because they did their job well.

Furthermore, it’s useful to have website elements that add to trustworthiness, like contact forms or at least an email, a privacy page, testimonials, etc. so that the user knows that they are safe on this site and they can trust the blogger.

Dustin Christensen’s Story is Good Inspiration

“One thing I’ve done to improve my users’ experience is build out a more complete story of my blog, its background and who contributes to the site. In the summer of 2019, I had a short, super brief and uninformative about page that didn’t tell people much about my blog, Territory Supply.

When we were affected by a Google update in late 2019, we took some time to really build out our story and history on our about us page. Today, it discusses our roots, why we started the blog, which organizations we support and expanded bios and links for each contributor.

Our traffic has turned around, not necessarily just because of this change, but because we’ve implemented a number of updates that do a better job of presenting our expertise, trustworthiness and authority. Often, it’s not about having better credentials, but simply doing a better job of highlighting your E-A-T in a way that improves the user’s experience.”

Ask Yourself: Does This Blog Post Solve Users’ Problems?

The core question is that Google not only wants to show relevant results, but results that really help the user solve the problem at hand, especially when it can hugely affect life and finances.

Ask yourself:

If I were a user reading my blog post, would I trust it?

Would I think “the author knows their stuff” (expertise)?

Would I think of it as coming from an authority in the industry or niche?

Does my blog post answer a searcher’s query / user’s problem?

Does my blog post cite trustworthy background sources (statistics, scientific papers, industry reports, etc.)?

Does my blog post include quotes from experts and other relevant people in my niche or industry?

Did I show my expertise, authority and trustworthiness in my blog post?

Does my blog post, overall, inspire a sense of trust and safety?

These questions apply at various degrees to all niches. Even if your audience is toy car hobbyist.

Google E-A-T SEO: To Sum It Up

Your own experience and expertise matter.

Debashri Dutta, Content Marketer at Blog Tyrant, makes the example of information about cancer: since a user is looking for life affecting information, Google will demand that that medical information about cancer has comes from an impeccable medical source.

But that’s different if we’re talking about pages or groups where patients and their families discuss and share tips about dealing with the emotional aspect of coping with the disease. 

So, what Dutta recommends to bloggers is “to write and talk about what they know and what they have direct experience with. They need to create good content with details, structure it well, and link it to appropriate sources and do the necessary keyword research to rank well. It should be fine so long as they write about things they have reasonable expertise over.”

And if you don’t have that expertise… at least do it like a journalist: interview experts on your blog who will give that authoritative and expert information that users are looking for.

How are you going to handle E-A-T with your content and author credentials?

Share your comments on our social channels.

By Luana Spinetti, enthusiastic B2B Copywriter and Consultant for the Marketing and Tech industry for 10+ years. Also a Cartoonist for hire since 2004.

The post Google E-A-T, SEO and Your Blog: What’s Really Changing first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Aug 24, 2022 @ 6:20 pm

Have you ever had a personal blog?

You know, the diary type, where you write life stories and interesting opinions whenever the muse hits you and tickles you into writing.

But a niche or business blog is different.

Here you are not seeking relaxation and hobby readers looking to chit-chat with a fellow Internet user.

When it comes to niche or business, you have goals and you need to bring results to the table with your blogging activity.

That planning will work to bring in organic traffic from search engines only if you include SEO considerations in the steps you’re going to take, so that search engines can serve your content to users in a timely manner.

Neil Patel is right when he says that SEO and content marketing are like “two personalities of the same person”, with content marketing being the more holistic one and SEO the more technical side.

And Andrew Dennis at Search Engine Land demonstrates how an SEO content strategy is the only way to grow organic traffic by 300% in a year — because creating content for the sake of it (like you would do in personal blogging) won’t do it.

Your content has to drive clicks and links (and conversions) to bring results!

This post aims to help you get things on the right track so that you can make the best out of the mix of content production and SEO.

Step 1: Start with Keyword Research (Use SEO Difficulty)

SEO keyword research provides the topics to write about.

However, it would be simplistic to say that that suffices to fill your editorial calendar with content that will attract the organic traffic you’re looking for.

Before you start using a keyword research tool and copy all keywords that relate to your main topic into a list, please read the two steps below:

1. Keyword research should be topical research

You start with your main topic and your audience before you proceed to brainstorm what else your audience may search online.

Let’s see an example:

Say that you write a blog for content managers.

You know content management methods and issues, maybe you’re an insider, so you can start to work with what you know.

But that is not enough. You have to go to forums where fellow professionals and other content hobbyists ask questions and discuss trending topics.

What is it that your audience is concerned about?

Because your blog will have to answer those questions with not only input from your experience but also from research and interviews with experts.

So you find topics to write about on the places where content managers hang out.

Here’s an example from WebmasterWorld’s Content Management board:

Now you can take these topics to a keyword research tool of your choice to give you suggestions that you may use to build a list of keywords for your editorial calendar.

Remember: when it comes to writing, keep the Q&A approach to tackling topics.

2. Use SEO difficulty to decide which keywords are worth pursuing

SEO difficulty, scored on a 0-100 range, tells you how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword or key phrase and search volume tells you how many searches are performed monthly, on average, for that keyword.

Ideally, it’s easier to rank if the difficulty is lower than 50.

I use a plethora of tools to evaluate keywords for SEO content planning: Mangools’ KWFinder and Small SEO Tools’ Keyword Difficulty Tool help me with SEO difficulty, while SearchVolume.io and the browser addon Keywords Everywhere are what I use to retrieve the average monthly search volume of a given keyword.

On the basis of these indicators, you can choose the keywords that you know will bring the most immediate traffic and will give you results in without having to wait too long or having to compete with a lot of other big good websites.

That doesn’t mean that you have to disregard high difficulty, high search volume keywords, but you have to incorporate these big keywords within the content that you write to respond to the smaller user queries.

Because that is the only way to rank for most terms and grab the most traffic and attract readers with your answers to their questions.

Remember: search terms are user questions.

Step 2: Combine No-Volume Keywords with Low-to-Medium Volume Keywords

If your brand wants to stand out, it needs to do it not only with content and topics everybody already talks about, but with an angle, a vision and a core message that are uniquely yours.

Some of the keywords you will generate for that “unique content” might have no search volume today – but what about tomorrow?

They might start being searched once your vision becomes widespread.

Until then, it’s a smart move to combine these unique keywords with low and medium search volume keywords that actually get searched today and that can help your content (and its unique factor) get found.

As an example, I run a sub-blog of my The Pen Thinker blog called Character Blogging for Business.

Is there anyone searching Google for “character blogging for business”?

Sounds like a big nope!

However, people are searching for “blogging for business” (210 searches/mo) and “business blogging” (110 searches/mo):

Checked with SearchVolume.io

So I can develop my editorial calendar around character blogging topics that “piggyback” on these existing keywords for more generic business blogging.

Not too hard to put into practice, right?

Step 3: Include Branded and Original Content in the Mix

Why should you include branded and original content in the mix rather than just go with the most searched queries?

I can hear the question.

But the answer is simple: It’s because — like I just did with you — you want to answer the readers’ questions, but you also want to give them something new, something unique that’s still unheard of.

And this is something you’ll want to schedule into your calendar right away, so that you have a balanced mix of topics: the ones that everyone knows about, and the unique ones you came up with.

For example, your monthly calendar could look like this:

• The whole first week of each month is devoted to answering big content marketing questions
• The second week you include branded, original content that contains your unique message
• The third week you include some guides or tutorials on the most common questions that your readers may have
• The fourth week you mix all original and search-based content

You might be surprised when you witness how well this kind of SEO- and brand-based planning works!

Step 4: Publish At Least One 2,000+ Word Post per Content Planning Cycle

This could be one post a month or every 3 months.

What matters is that you strive to serve readers awesome, cornerstone content on a regular basis.

Your other posts could be listicles or interviews, for example, but this one must be an ultimate guide or a how-to on a very important, difficult topic in your niche, for which your piece provides go-to insight that’s hard to find elsewhere.

So the goal for this big post is to lay the foundations of trust in your readers and in search engines.

That’s quite an endeavor, isn’t it?

Make sure that you give this post your absolute best and that you include feedback or quotes from experts in your industry, because unlike the regular interview or roundup post, this one has to show that you’ve done your homework, your research — and you can’t do that with a post that is based only on your experience.

Unless you are writing a case study.

But that is the only case when relying on your experience does count.

Tools for Content Planning for SEO

Asana

Website

Asana is a nicely featured project management tool that works for teams but you can also use it as a lone blogger.

However, if you can rely on a small team, Asana is definitely a good choice for content planning and management, because the calendar also comes with a task list and you can assign tasks to multiple members.

My use of Asana for blogging and guest posting in 2017

Trello

Website

Trello is another friendly and easy-to-use planning tool that you can use for yourself or with a team.

And it’s awesome even without paying! Most of the features are included and you can upgrade anytime.

Example of Trello boards from my account

I recommend Trello especially if you are on a shoestring budget, since it’s the most complete in its free version.

Mintent

Website

Mintent is designed for content marketing teams and you can also use it on your own and it’s free up to 10 projects per month.

It’s pretty, friendly and colorful to use. Probably a little too complex for solo use, but perfect for a blogging team.

Google Calendar

Website

Google’s free solution comes with every account and it’s a simple calendar with extensible over the whole Google suite.

Kanboard (Self-hosted)

Website

This is literally my favorite content planning tool: Kanboard, the free Kanban board to add your tasks and plan your calendar without having to spend a dime and that you can install and host directly on your site in a subfolder or a subdomain.

Kanboard is user-friendly, extensible with plugins, and it comes with plenty of features (productivity charts, timer, etc.) and a neat board where you can rearrange tasks.

For each task, you can add subtasks and set a time estimate for it that you can actually monitor and compare to the actual time spent if you activate the timer tool.

My Kanboard (an example)

Conclusion: Content Planning for SEO Makes Life Easier

You really can’t make a blog grow without a well-thought-out content plan coupled SEO insight.

If you don’t do this, you wouldn’t know the next step and what to track, and you won’t achieve your goals (you don’t want to leave everything in the hands of the capricious wind of the SERPs and topic trends, do you?)

So it’s important that you lay out a plan every month or every six months.

Maybe even every year if your SEO goals ask for the extra effort.

Plan good and make your content shine.

To your success!

By Luana Spinetti, 10+ years B2B Copywriter and Consultant for the Marketing and Tech industry. Also a cartoonist for hire since 2004.

The post Content Planning for SEO in 4 Steps + Helpful Tools first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Have you ever felt stuck?

Blogging should be an easy process once you have come up with your ideas and scheduled them in your editorial calendar.

Or is the process the part you got stuck at?

Sometimes it’s a good idea to hire a blogging coach when you feel you are going nowhere with your own possibilities. Hiring a coach is not a sign that you are a failure and you should give up blogging altogether — just the contrary! It means you haven’t figured out yet what works for you, and a blogging coach will work to bring out your full potential as a blogger.

In this post, let’s see 8 situations that may benefit from the help of a professional.

1. No clue where to get started

You started a blog but then… what? You have no idea how to proceed, how to come up with ideas to write about, how to setup an editorial calendar to keep your posts coming in regularly and satisfy your readers’ thirst for knowledge and hands-on advice.

A blogging coach can guide you through the whole process of story creation, writing, scheduling and how to collect feedback from readers to create even more engaging posts.

Also, a blogging coach can explain and guide you to promote your posts on social media and your communities.

2. You can’t come up with an editorial calendar that makes sense

Managing an editorial calendar is not a trivial task. It’s important to study the times your readers are more receptive and you get the most visits to schedule your posts in a way that ensure they will be read and appreciated.

If you can’t come up with an editorial calendar or your current calendar doesn’t work to your blog’s best interest, a blogging coach can help you analyze your audience and come up with posting times that will ensure the highest engagement.

3. You struggle to publish new posts (or you post too much)

When was the last time you published a new post? How do your readers react to your posting schedule? How is your traffic faring?

If you publish too sparingly (less than once a month) or too much (more than once per day), you may lose readers. In fact, readers feel overwhelmed with a crazy posting frequency, but they will also lose interest in your blog if you publish new content less than once a month.

As always, the truth is in the middle. A blogging coach can help you find the right posting frequency that best meets both your needs and those of your readers.

4. Little time to dedicate to your blog

Do you make time for your blog every week? Do you plan your blogging activities or do you prefer going with the muse?

If you don’t make time for your blog, it becomes harder to maintain a posting schedule, interact with your readers and keep your blog and its connected social media activity alive.

A blogging coach can help you with time management and productivity on the basis of your daily routine or day job.

5. Low engagement on posts

Do your get enough shares on social media and other communities? Do readers post comments?

Measuring engagement is important, because it determines the strength of your content and how much it pushes people to react to it and interact upon it. If engagement is low, your content is not leaving a footprint in your readers’ thoughts and it doesn’t contribute to the discussion around the topic.

A blogging coach can help you find out what’s wrong with your posts and why they aren’t creating traction, and provide guidance on how to boost engagement on your new and old posts.

6. Short posts (below 500 words)

How much do you research for your posts? Do you write posts that are long enough to accomodate both research and the development of your points?

If all your posts are below 500 words, something’s wrong — and it could be either your research or the way you tackle each problem or point in your post.

A blogging coach can help you find out what’s missing to write posts that really help readers find the answers they’re looking for.

7. You don’t know how to handle your guest posts (and promote them)

How do you organize the guest posts you wrote for other blogs? How do you promote them via your blog? And social media?

If you don’t follow a plan, your guest posts may not bring you big benefits (more traffic to your blog, conversions, etc.) and your guest posting efforts will remain pretty much isolated.

A blogging coach can help you setup a plan for each guest post you wrote and published to market it aggressively and get the most of your ROI — because the time you spent to research and write your guest post and any materials related to it are a big investement!

8. You don’t know how to match guests’ posts to your blog theme

Have you received guest posts from other bloggers of late? Did you accept them for publication on your blog after carefully considering your blog theme and how the pieces would be received by your readership? Do you have guidelines for guest writers?

If you don’t know how to match guests’ posts to your blog theme, your readers may feel confused and alienated by content they are not looking for, that’s not tailored for their needs and eventually leave.

A blogging coach can teach you how to edit and present posts by other bloggers in a way that meets your readership’s needs and engages them.

Does that mean you have to hire a blogging coach for every blogging problem?

The answer, of course, is no.

You will know when it’s time to hire a coach — if you want to hire one, that’s it — when you have been struggling with a given part of the blogging process and you see you have started to look around the Web for help.

That’s when some guidance will come to your rescue.

Have you ever felt the need to hire a blogging coach? Or did you sort out your blogging problems with the help of online guides or books?

The post When to Hire A Blogging Coach? 8 Situations That Demand For A Professional first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Last Update Mar 24, 2022 @ 11:16 am

To read Brian Dean’s post at Backlinko, comment backlinks sound not just outdated a technique, but even boring. In fact, he warns readers that they’re “NOT going to find anything about guest posting (blah) or blog comments (yawn)” in his post.

Yet you can still buy blog comment services from most SEO websites (run a web search and often you will post some of these services on the first page in the SERPs).

Matthias Hager at Quora said in 2011 about comment backlinks:

Efficient for SEO? Not usually. Efficient for beginning a relationship building process with bloggers? Sometimes.

He finds me in agreement. Comments are the social side of blogs, it’s where you will create a connection with the blogger and if you run into a very active community, other commenters. Big visibility booster if you play it well.

There are other more effective ways to build SEO friendly backlinks such as guest blog posting on niche relevant websites.

But sending out massive quantities of automated comments doesn’t build relationships — it builds spam, and even Matt Cutts warned against this practice a few years ago.

The Value Of Blog Comments Is In Comment Marketing, says Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin of MOZ says, in a Whiteboard Friday dated May 21st, 2012, says:

Comment marketing is this idea that I want to participate in the Web’s communities to earn the trust and respect of other people and the awareness. This is a blog post, right? Here’s some content. You can add comments down at the bottom. This happens all over the Web. There are literally tens of millions of blogs where this could be valuable, depending on your niche, and contributing here and earning the recognition of readers can earn you all sorts of returns.

Comments work because:

1. They reach the blogger and add value they can use to push the discussion further
2. They reach everybody who subscribed to the blogger’s comment feed (possibly other influencers, too)
3. They open possibilities for guest posting and collaborations

All of these opportunities make it easy to earn a backlink. A natural one, of course.

Valuable Comments Earn You Rewards

They did for me. Look at how this comment I posted on Tad Chef’s blog earned me a mention (with backlink) on Ahrefs: I did comment marketing by not thinking about marketing at all. I was myself all along, I commented on Tad Chef’s blog post because I truly cared and truly wanted to leave an helpful resource for him to use. When you pick a number of blogs to read and comment on a given day, forget about marketing — focus on the message your favorite blogger and influencer is getting across, take notes, then write a comment that speaks of humanity, not machinery. In other words, write a comment that provides value and helps without spamming. When you touch a person’s heart and not just their minds, you won.

Yes, Blog Commenting Still Works For SEO

Provided that you share value — and you do it genuinely — your comment still. If you want to do comment marketing at its best, forget about marketing altogether — at least until you have written your comment, before you hit ‘Submit’. As Rand Fishkin states in his Whiteboard Friday post, your comments “need to be build awareness, meaning people recognize you when you’re commenting, they recognize what organization you’re with. You build trust”. Traffic and backlinks are a consequence of trust.

Some more reading on blog commenting for SEO

• Blog Commenting – A Practical Guide For Bloggers by Amit Sharma
• Is Backlinking from Blog Comments a Good or Bad SEO Tactic? by Bill Walls

How do you comment on important blogs in your niche? Do you just seek backlinks or do you try to add value and create connections? Share in the comments.

The post Comment Backlinks: Do They Still Work For SEO? first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Every successful blogger started just like you— from zero.

It took them a while — and hard work — to earn their ‘hero’ status. It took them effort and sacrifices. But look where they are now!

Darren Rowse and Jon Morrow are probably the most popular bloggers in the blogging niche. Spencer Haws is a big name in the website building and affiliate marketing niche.

If you have been wondering what secret recipe every big blogger out there ever used to make it to the top ranks in the blogosphere and earn tons of loyal fans, traffic and revenue, here are 7 habits they built and rely upon every day to keep success coming.

Take inspiration, then act!

1. They don’t wait for opportunities to fall over their heads

Successful bloggers go out of their way to find their blogging opportunities. They actively and aggressively promote their content. They send out emails to other bloggers, brands, influencers and invite them to make a connection or to review something they created. They are active on social media and niche communities where they can network and connect with alike minds.

If you want opportunities, you must stay vigilant for new ways to create relationships and never lay dormant waiting for new occasions — create them!

2. They create something of value for their readers

See what Jane Sheeba, Jon Morrow and Carol Tice have created for their most loyal followers and subscribers — free guides, checklists, ebooks, courses, email newsletters.

There is a ton of value for their readers to walk away with! Carol Tice shares her 100+ Freelance Writing Questions Answered with her subscribers; Jon Morrow has a very interesting Headline Hacks booklet for those readers who decide to join his newsletter. Jane Sheeba has an entire library of free content for her subscribers.

Pro bloggers are a bottomless well of new ideas they will regularly turn into projects their readers will love.

Do this, too, and your readers will not forget you (actually, they’ll come back for more!).

3. They use words wisely

Successful bloggers don’t overwhelm their readers. They are concise and to-the-point when necessary, they are entertaining and conversational when they know they need the best of their reader’s attention and collaboration.

They craft blog posts as if their life depended on it (and sometimes that’s the real deal when they make money from home out of their blogs). Indeed, their posts are memorable.

How do you use words in your posts? If you get stuck, some copywriting tips may come to your rescue.

4. They study their audience and ask for feedback

Successful bloggers don’t write for everybody. They carefully select a niche and an audience, they study it through regular social reading (networks, communities, forums), magazines and books, they ask questions, setup polls and surveys to see what their readers want to see on their favorite blog.

The closer the relationship with the audience, the more feedback you receive, the better the outcome.

5. They never lack motivation and they are committed to their blogs

Top bloggers never let their blogs go stale. They make time for blogging in their daily or weekly schedule and they make a commitment to stick to the decision to blog on that given day or hour, regardless of their moods.

Sometimes you may not want to blog at all, but if you promised to your readers, you’ve got to stick to your promise.

6. They are humble

See how Jeff Goins talks to readers and portrays himself on his blog. He’s always humble, always a learner, always taking fellow bloggers and his readers in the highest consideration.

Successful bloggers are not arrogant or self-centered. They are confident, but humble; strong but open to others’ ideas and advice.

Listening is always a must, not an option, especially if you want others to listen to you.

7. They love learning

Pro bloggers are curious beings, they won’t stop to the most superficial layer of a topic, but they will go deep, navigating ideas, theories, facts and statistics, and they will make their readers aware of them.

The fuel that drives them to blog more and more is exactly this love of learning and to dig up details that will help both their writing and their life as human beings.

To the reader, the value provided is immense.

Share your experience with blogging in the comments below. Maybe you already have what it takes to be a successful blogger!

The post 7 Habits Of Successful Bloggers (That You Can Copy!) first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

“You don’t blog enough!”

“You should write more often.”

“You never update your blog. It’s boring.”

Blogging frequency is one of the most talked aspect of blogging on the Web. If it’s true that 46% of people read blogs more than once a day (HubSpot Science of Blogging, 2010), it’s also true that readers will feel overwhelmed by too much to read if you post every day, several posts a day. Overwhelm might push them to unsubscribe in order to relieve the pressure.

You don’t want that.

3 Myths About Blogging Frequency

1. You should blog every day

You can, but you don’t have to.

You may have the time, ideas and energies to post every day, but your readers may be unwilling to follow your hyperactive posting schedule.

2. You should write 2,000+ words posts every time

Do you have enough material to make your posts 2,000+ words every time?

Look at my posts here at Bosmol. Look at Brandon’s and Lavinia’s, too. Can you find too many huge posts?

When you made your points and expanded upon each, added research and expert quotes, some screenshots and images if necessary… you are done.

Don’t stretch your posts to make them 2,000+ words at all costs. If the topic is narrow and you have to add fluff to turn it into a long piece, don’t — a shorter, clear, to-the-point post is a thousand times better for your readers.

3. If you don’t blog frequently, you will lose readers

Blogging infrequently — once a week or every 10 days — will not lose you readers if you give them a reason to wait for you.

Are your posts always top notch in terms of content quality, research and insight? Do you go out of your way for your readers with interviews, case studies and well-crafted, helpful posts?

If you do that, you don’t have to worry about blogging “only” 3 times a month or less.

3 Tips To Blogging Success

1. Blog when it’s relevant (or you have something to say)

Write when you have something to share with your readers, be that an interview or a series of tips on how to face a recent problem that affected the entire blogosphere.

Blog when it’s relevant to you and your readers — if you have nothing relevant to share this week, or if your ideas are not fully mature yet, don’t write — instead, work on promoting your old blog posts to keep your new readers’ interest alive and to spark discussion around you topics in your community.

2. Involve others (interviews, brainstorms, Q&A, poll-based, etc.) at least once a month

Your view of things may be interesting, but your readers may want more, need more, in order to shape an opinion on certain topics.

Also, other people may add expertise and experience you simply don’t have.

Write a blog post a month based on interviews, brainstorms, Q&A sessions or polls and surveys you sent out — you can use services like HARO or MyBlogU for this purpose. What’s important is that you offer your readers something of quality they can learn from and use.

Be selective of the data and quotes you use for your articles — even if you interviewed, say, 10 people, but only 5 answers were worth quoting in your article, just quote those. Don’t add irrelevant information that distracts the reader and disorient them.

3. Welcome relevant guest posts

Guest posts lessen your blogging ‘burden’ and offer your readers different opinions and alternative views of a certain topic.

Also, you will boost your social media and search engine presence because guest posts attract not just your audience, but even the guest writer’s.

It’s a win-win situation. Just make sure you are offered quality ideas and posts before you publish them. Even better if you and your guest writer work together from pitch to final draft. You can use a blogger outreach service if necessary.

How often do you blog? How do your readers respond to your posts?

Share your experience in the comments below.

The post How Often Should You Be Blogging? 3 Myths, 3 Tips On Blogging Frequency first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

 David Goehring (cc)

Have you ever thought of yourself as a leader?

Think about it — you influence and inspire people to reflect or take action every day, whether you write for a niche or you only run a personal blog.

You leave a footprint in people’s lives, be it huge or marginal.

When I browsed Forbes posts a few days ago, I ran into one by Tanya Prive about the Top 10 qualities that make a great leader and I thought — what if the leader was a blogger? What makes a great blogger in the eyes of their readers?

Inspired by Prive’s article, here is a post on what bloggers like you can learn from good leaders — 7 winning traits and then some questions to help you become a great blogger (and leader) yourself.

1. Ethical, Honest

Good bloggers, like good leaders, base their writing activity on honest practices regarding interviews, quotes, plagiarism and SEO.

If they do something controversial it will be by principle, not by commodity. Perhaps they are trying to change the world. But whatever the reason, they will let the reader know.

Good bloggers, like good leaders, do not deceive their readers.

Also, they will disclose all relationships, especially in advertising. Not one sponsored post will go without proper disclosure.

Are you honest to your readers? Do you disclose?

2. Trust Readers and Guest Writers

Good bloggers don’t keep their blogs jealously to themselves. Like good leaders, they share generously, accept feedback from their readers and open their blog to (great) guest posts.

They are generous and, because of that, they get great benefits in return — trust builds trust.

Do you accept your readers’ feedback? Do you welcome readers’ ideas and guest posts?

3. Communicative

Good bloggers respond to readers’ inquiries and feedback and go out to comment on others’ blogs, because they are not closed in their little slice of the blogosphere — they are communicative and love to network.

They don’t just network, but they put effort into creating a network of think-alike people. The community they build around their blog is lively and productive.

They believe in building relationships much more than in building links.

Did you build a community around your blog? Do you comment on other blogs? Do you involve your readers?

4. Confident and Committed

Good bloggers are confident about their message. They write with a punch and make sure their content is clear, to-the-point, helpful.

Like good leaders are committed to their cause or organization, so good bloggers are committed to their blog and the community they built around it — they won’t let their blog go stale with lazy updates, nor they will neglect their community.

They will make time for it.

Do you believe in your blog message? Do you make time for your blog?

5. Yes To Constructive Criticism

No to trolls, of course. But constructive criticism is the driving force to grow a little bit every day.

Like good leaders, good bloggers know that and accept constructive criticism with an open mind and a positive attitude, while they reject destructive criticism with a confident smile — something that makes trolls run amok.

Do you accept constructive criticism? How do you react when you get trolls and destructive comments?

6. Creative and Open-Minded

Good bloggers try new ways to involve their readers and make an effort to include different viewpoints, as a way to bring more ideas to their niche or industry.

Do you try new ideas for your blog? Do you welcome ideas that are different from yours for the benefit of your readers?

7. Readers Love Good Bloggers

Because they’re unique and inspiring. Because they recognize their authority and guidance.

Because they become role-models.

Do you inspire your readers? Can they relate with what you offer them, be it in the form of blog posts or feedback?

For an inspirational reading and more ideas on how to become a good blogger (leader), check out the Young Entrepreneur Council’s Q&A post “How can I become more emphatetic as a leader?” at Smartbrief. Wonderful insight from numerous entrepreneurs.

The post What Can Bloggers Learn From Good Leaders? 7 Winning Traits first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Are you still wondering what domain extension to choose for your new blog or your new project?

Registrars tend to stress the benefits of a certain TLD over another in terms of SEO, but should you listen to that advice?

Actually, NO. There are plenty of myths around the role of TLDs and domain names in SEO and I wrote this post to dispel the most known and talked to help you make informed decisions and avoid damage to your branding and SEO.

TLD Doesn’t Make Ranking

It has been debated over and over in the years, but Google has always denied any benefits of a certain TLD over another in terms of SEO.

Last time it was in July 2015, when John Mueller said on Google+ to clear any doubts and misconceptions: “if you spot a domain name on a new TLD that you really like, you’re keen on using it for longer, and understand there’s no magical SEO bonus, then go for it.”

Also, on the Google blog, Mueller adds:

Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.

Your chosen TLD won’t make or miss any future Google rankings for your website. What it really takes for you to rank is to work smart on your content, marketing and networking efforts.

As Neil Patel says in his blog, “The major factor in whether TLDs have an effect on SEO is whether the domain contains keywords. Of course, you and I know that Exact Match Domain names risk getting penalized.”

What really makes the difference, indeed, is keywords in your domain name, regardless of extension. In fact, Google has been penalizing EMDs (exact match domains) since 2012, so you should by all means avoid exact keyword domain names (like cheap-payday-loans.com) and instead focus on branding (think google.com, walmart.com, etc.).

When Does A TLD Count?

The problem may arise when certain TLDs — as well as certain IPs — are blacklisted or look suspicious because of spamming (mostly email spam), but in general the domain extension of your site does not play major role in your SEO efforts. gTLDs and the new TLDs are no exception. As long as you play it white hat and don’t spam, you’re fine to go.

Ensure that your site is on an IP that is not associated with spam and thus is not blacklisted. You can use WhatIsMyIPAddress.com to find out if your site IP is blacklisted.

Beware of free TLDs, however — because these have been massively used for spam and infection (like CO.CC and CZ.CC), Google has these in blacklist so your website would never get a chance to rank. Always research news about your chosen free TLD to see if it makes a viable choice while you wait to buy standard TLD.

The post Are TLDs Really Relevant for SEO? first appeared on SEO Optimizers.

Klout is a notable social media manager analyzer. It’s free and widespread, and the Klout Score is so common among various social and blogging platforms, that use it as an indicator of quality.

However, Klout is much more than that. Klout can turn into a wonderful blog idea generator if you know how to use it for that purpose.

But first things first: before you run any kind of analysis on Klout, make sure all your interests and areas of expertise are tagged on your profile, because the range of suggested topics Klout will offer to you depend by large measure on these elements.

Once you have your profile completely filled and ready, follow this simple advice.

Topics Have A Say

Go to the Explore page in your Klout homepage and select topics of interest with the highest %. Open the most relevant (to your interests) in new tabs or windows and read through them, noting down what you can expand upon and improve to create a follow up that your reader can find engaging and walk away with a greater knowledge of that topic.

Look at the image below:

Klout considers “When Your Pro Bono Offer is Turned Down” an interesting article for 11% of my social audience on the basis of my Copywriting and other areas of expertise. (This is why the expertise and interests tags are important on Klout!)

I could write a follow up on pro bono writing experiences and interview people who got a ‘yes’ to pro bono offers. Or, if I had a good idea on how to turn that offer ‘up’, I could share that.

The core of this method is similar to the Skyscraper technique: find some good content, then use it to write and publish even better content that builds upon it.

Don’t forget to email the bloggers you took inspiration from with a link to your post, so they know what you published; in that meail, thank them, too, for inspiring you. It’s the start of a relationship.

Find Engagement

Another way to use Klout is to see what tweets or posts of yours (in your niche) got the most engagement. You can use this statistics to create more blog posts about this topic that earned the most interest among your followers.

For example, if your most retweeted piece of content is about copywriting for noprofits, you can create more posts about that topic and build upon its already consistent success.

Daily Inspiration

Keep an eye on Klout’s news, topics and statistics. Check your stats daily or at least bi-weekly to collect blog ideas.

Create a schedule for writing, publication and outreach to let others know about your new posts. Use social media managers to connect with more potentially interested users.

There are ideas you can collect every single day on Klout, just looking at the stats and the Explore section. If you don’t have time to do this every day, set a day of the week when you will go hunting for ideas and let the inspiration flow.

You know your topic, after all.

How do YOU use Klout to generate ideas for and promote blog posts?

The post How To Use Klout To Generate Blog Ideas first appeared on SEO Optimizers.