Category: Blogs

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Helping Your Blog Writer Do A Better Job

Blogging is a core business for my firm, McCord Web Services. I have found that website owners that take a little bit of time to help our writer get their footing, help us to do a better job delivering what they need for organic search placement and development of web authority.

Here are a few tips to help your blog writer when you start blogging.

  • Make sure to let your writer know your audience – age, gender, typical demographics.
  • Supply a short list of about ten keyword phrases that you think people will use to find you.
  • Offer a short selection of links of blog sites that you like for style and content.
  • Let them know which two or three blogs you read in your own industry.
  • Be patient, it will typically take four to eight blog posts for the writer to hit a stride in writing for you.
  • Make sure to read your own blog and help the writer to understand what you like so that they can do more of that particular topic or style of blog post.
  • As you browse the web send them links of content that you think would make a great background for a blog post. This actually helps them to know what you like.

The more initial interaction you have with your blog writer the better and more effective the blog posts will be for your personal business needs. That doesn’t mean that you need to do these steps beyond the initial break in period, but for the first week to two weeks your input will be hugely helpful and will shape the future of your blog post content.

If you are looking for quality blog writers for your own blog, I invite you to review our services.

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Scribe SEO Plugin Reviewed

I thought I would run the Scribe WordPress plug-in through its paces and let you know my thoughts and if it is worth the monthly subscription fee.

First, I bought the publisher level and paid a discounted fee of $17 a month instead of the regular price of $27 per month. The plug-in touts itself as SEO made easy. You will need to have one of several themes in use or piggyback on the All in One SEO plug-in to use Scribe. For more information you can visit the business’ website. I think that if I had paid $27 a month, I would be very unhappy, but as I only paid $17 a month I am willing to continue through this weekend to test the options.

Once installed, you will see several new fields in the left hand sidebar of your blog: a Scribe Keyword Research Tool where you enter in your potential keywords for your blog post to get suggestions, the Scribe Content Optimizer, and Scribe Link Building tool. From the website, it sounds like this is a great tool to help you do all these things to improve the content of your blog post to get better placement, but in reality is is just a reminder checklist of things to do. It will green light that yes your blog post has content. Whoops, you forgot to write a custom title tag, but get this without suggestions and without automation. Hey, the All In One SEO plug-in will write both your meta title and meta description tag for you FOR FREE!

Once you perform the analysis of your blog post, which is where your subscription fee comes into play giving you a word count, readability scan, the tool will make some recommendations of blogsites where you can go and try to get back links. It does not help you get back links, just gives you a shortlist. It will then give you some suggestions of social media sites you can try to get links from too. What the tool does not mention to you is that all WordPress applications and most forums will do not follow your links.

Do I think that this plug-in is worth the money. No, I do not. I feel like for me as a professional blogger, I can write my own post it note, did I put a title on my blog post, and did I install the All In One SEO pack for WordPress and set up automatic generation of the meta description tag without paying $17 a month. I can’t wait to install this one.

Oh, by the way it gave a 95 rating to this blog post.

 

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New Levels for Blog Writing and Specialty Blogging

With seven talented writers working for us, we’ve blogged for a wide variety of business sectors. Based on client needs, we’ve developed some new programs that cater to difficult to blog for client needs.

Here are just a few of the new blog programs in specialty areas we’ve developed:

  1. Diamond Level by Sue – $50 per post
    Diamond Level blog posts are written exclusively by our most experienced  blogger, Sue Guirl, a graduate from the University of Missouri’s School of  Journalism. As a professional journalist, Sue has a unique style of writing  that is both informative and engaging. She knows how to craft a blog post,  turn a phrase, and paint a picture with her words that provides for an exceptionally  fine level of writing. With many of our client’s asking for her by name, Sue  is our most popular writer. Due to the mastery of her craft, Sue writes exclusively  at the Diamond and Platinum Levels for blogging. She also writes website content and feature  articles for web and print publications.
  2. Platinum Level by Sue – $60 per post
    The Platinum Level is priced to provide a  longer word count than the Diamond Level blog post and is recommended for more difficult topics or those that need more research time by our writer.Platinum Level blog posts are  written exclusively by our most experienced blogger, Sue Guirl, a graduate from  the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. Sue has a very unique  client-pleasing style of writing that is both informative and engaging. She  knows how to turn a phrase and research a topic that provides for an  exceptionally fine level of writing. Sue is by far our most popular writer. As  she is in such demand, Sue writes exclusively at the Diamond and Platinum  Levels for blogging. She also writes website content and feature articles for  web and print publications. She also writes website content and feature  articles for web and print publications.
  3. Medical Practice Blogging – $40 per post
    Medical  Practice blog posts are written by only our most experienced and educated  bloggers. Catering to doctors, dentists, and plastic surgeons, our medical blog  writers write about your specific services in an engaging, informative style. With this blogging level you have one writer for the life of your blog project with us. This  allows our writer to develop strong experience in your topics, lean the style  of writing you like, and helps them to become knowledgeable on your topics  allowing for more effective writing. As writing for your specialty requires  more time to research and write, our preferred frequency and lowest pricing is for  writing three days a week. We can write less frequently but at a slightly  higher writing rate.
  4. Bed Bug & Pest Control Blogging by Rhonda – $40  per post
    Bed bug and pest control blogging is done exclusively by Rhonda Crehan, a  seasoned pest control writing expert. Rhonda has over four years of writing  experience in the pest control industry. She has strong pest control experience  writing and has over two years of specialized in writing about bed bug control,  prevention, identification, bed bug dogs, and pending bed bug legislation.  She is extremely interested and knowledgeable about the pest control industry  and this interest and passion shows in her well written blog posts for clients.

You can read samples of blogs at these new levels on our specialty blog services page.

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With Facebook and Twitter, Do You Still Need Blogging?

Many clients are now investing time and money on keeping Twitter and Facebook updated so with all of that do you still need your blog updated? Absolutely!

If your blog is installed under your own domain and resides on your website server then adding to your blog benefits the organic placement of your website as you build blog content. Twitter and Facebook are important ways to engage customers, search engines are starting to look at your activity on these networks as part of their SocialRank scale which impacts organic placement, but activity on these platforms does not build website content like blogging does.

When it comes to choosing where your money is best spent to improve organic search placement I like blogging best, then Facebook and finally Twitter. I place Facebook above Twitter as Facebook is where your prospects are spending a significant part of their time and I feel it is important to engage them where they are active.

Although SocialRank does not carry the same weight in organic placement as PageRank, both Google and Bing are actively now monitoring SocialRank. I feel that over time the activity you have on Facebook and Twitter will become more important in affecting your organic placement and where you appear in personalized search results.

In fact for national businesses involvement and engagement on Facebook and Twitter may be key to mitigating the focus of localize search results in organic placement that Google and Bing are both pushing at this time. I say that as search results are now personalized and focus heavily on showing results in your geographic area, but also include a social component where personal connections and interconnections are a factor of the results you see as well.

We invite you to find our more about our services for blog writing, Facebook updates, and Twitter writing if you have a need.