Category: Blogs

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Why Blogging Still Matters for SEO Purposes

Take off your "rose-colored glasses"!
Take off your “rose-colored glasses”. Blogging does matter for site placement.

Blogging has recently seemed to fallen out of favor with small business owners and I think that it is unfortunately due to a misperception of what blogging is and does for a business website.

Here’s why I personally feel that blogging is still very important for SEO purposes:

1. For on-domain blogs, search engines will consider each new blog post as a new page to the parent website – building authority.

2. For on-domain blogs, new blog posts for search engines = fresh new content; encouraging search spiderbots back more frequently.

3. Blog content, when well written, can keep readers on your website longer which gives your site stickiness. As Google is tracking everything on your site including time on your site, stickiness is important.

4. Blog posts that have titles crafted as questions may place in the top search results and be an avenue that prospects use to initially enter your website.

5. Sharing your blog posts on social media will also drive inbound traffic to your site; where readers will follow links from blog posts into website content. Without something strong to point to in social media your posts simply become spammy background noise to others instead of something informational and of value.

What I hear from  prospects is that they believe that blogging is only about content creation and is fine when used at a frequency of only once a month if at that. However, the key to having blogging work for you as an SEO tool is to blog with a greater frequency. (I personally like the content that is created on a three time a week frequency, but understand that for budgets sometimes once or twice a week is the max that can be afforded.) I never recommend blogging less than once a week for any type of SEO results.

For those that blog once a month or twice a month, they will never realized the benefits that regular and more frequent blogging provides as  an inbound marketing strategy. They will continue to feel that blogging is not valuable while their competition is blogging more frequently and building authoritative content faster and placing better in Google.

To find out more about our blogging program, please visit our website for pricing and content samples.

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What Are You Doing to Wean Yourself Off Pay Per Click?

Puzzle pieces
We put the pieces together for you to build great, sharable content.

Have you been grumping about your pay per click bill? Do you look at the unpaid listings on Google.com and dream about appearing in the top ten results?

If you are only spending your marketing dollars on Google AdWords and not investing in building great content for your website by using an on-domain blog then you are never going to wean yourself off pay per click advertising.

You can get organic search activity, social shares, and build natural links when you regularly write blog posts on your website. Google and Bing love that you are keeping your content fresh and that you are building slow, natural links. The first page a new visitor sees may just be a blog post which then leads them into your website. You may even build your e-newsletter subscriber base from great blog content.

More site owners are moving away from blogging and moving into pay per click advertising forgetting that although pay per click has an immediate return, blogging and content building have a place in a long term marketing strategy that builds value for search engines and enhances prospect engagement as well as keeping readers on your website longer.

If you are thinking about blogging, I invite you to read samples of posts we have written to see if now may be the time for you to start posting again on your blog. Our capable blog writers and knowledgeable oversight makes the creation of sharable content easy.

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Why Blogging Still Matters

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McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

In this every changing world of the Web, it seems as if blogging has fallen out of favor with clients. But why would that be, and are customers wrong for stopping blogging.

It is important to cater to your audience in your web marketing approaches and each customer has different needs, but blogging feeds search engines. This makes blogging more than a social outreach like Facebook or Twitter, it should be an integral part of every business’ marketing push.

Here’s what blogging does for building website exposure:

1. Blogging with a WordPress blog installed on your website’s domain adds page content that Google and Bing count as if each blog post was a new page in your own website.

2. With 250 to 350 word posts you can build keyword density on one topic. Craft a title as a question and you could appear in the top ten search results for Google based on that query.

3. Blog posts will be indexed by Google and will appear separately in the search results allowing for additional ways for readers and potential prospects to self-discover your content, website, and services.

4. For people on your website already, blogging allows you to build authoritative content that keeps a reader on your site longer. If the content is helpful, well written and unique the reader may spend more time reading more than one blog post, and may even share your content back on their own blog or in social media.

I think business owners get confused thinking that blogging is social media, but it is much more than that. It is a link building tool, builds keyword density for your domain, and enhances the user experience. It is a much more productive medium than Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

Want to find out more about blogging? I invite you to check out our pricing and read sample blog posts before you sign up for our affordable blog writing services.

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Blog Writer’s Guide to Image Use – Prevent Copyright Infringement

Wow, I love this app!
Update your image use protocol.

As a quality blog writing service provider, my firm has developed some best practices over the years in regards to image use and preventing copyright infringement. I wanted to share a few with you in today’s blog post.

1. Use images in your blog posts. It used to be that just text was fine for a well-written blog post. But, in our very visual world of the web, without an image, your blog post looks dull and may not get the traction it needs to be shared. At McCord Web Services, we use only images that we have taken ourselves or images that we buy for one time use from DepositPhotos.com or iStockPhotos.com.

2. Make sure you and your staff adhere to the principle of leaving the purchased source in the image name. This way if you go to select an image to reuse from your WordPress media gallery if you see iStockPhotos or DepositPhotos in the file name, you know to buy a second license or not use it. Never, ever reuse a one time use photo thinking that just because it is in your WordPress blog media gallery you have full use rights. You do not!

3. Review your image use program with all staff. It does your firm no good if you know the image use rules, but your office staff who may do a blog post at some point in time does not!

4. Get in the habit of taking your own clip art photos. Why buy and image of a smartphone to use for your blog post when you can take a pic of your own and use it royalty free anytime you want? Typically, I will put MWS (McCord Web Services) in front of the file name of any pictures I take so that I know and my staff knows we own these image rights and can use them however and whenever we want for all our clients.

5. If you provide professional services like we do for blog clients, make sure your client knows the rules and you are indemnified from a future lawsuit from a client using one time use images that you may have purchased by putting it in your contract. We do.

If you need blog writing services make sure to check us out first.