The Web Authority

Have you run out of ideas for what to write on your blog? Here are a few tips where to look to get your creative juices rolling.

1. I like to use Google News to find targeted content on my topics that I am blogging about. I even subscribe to Google News Feeds in my specific areas. When I don’t have a topic, I look in current events in my topic or in the tech section.
2. Subscribe to other blogs and e-newsletters on your topic. Sometimes seeing an article on a specific topic gels with me and allows me to either create a review of the article or to spin off totally new content in a similar vein.
3. Watch websites in your market. Look for authoritative websites on your topic and keep an eye on them. Sometimes you will see a trend happening over time over several of there authoritative websites that will keep your content on the mark.
4. Watch professional forums on your topic. Keep you finger on the pulse to see what others in your selected market area are complaining about, commenting on, and in general watching as a group.
5. Wikipedia is a great resource for information and tips on where to go, but don’t use it too heavily, many others are as well and you want your blog to have a unique point of view not simply more redux on the same topic.

These are just a few of my tips, you can click my post title and read another blog writers list of where they find content for even more ideas.

Yahoo has said it, but I couldn’t have said it better myself. Why should you have an ad landing page and how to make a good one.

Once you read the article you will understand that to drop your pay per click reader on your home page or a peripheral page in your website is just not a good plan. Landing pages should have a tight match between your pay per click ad message and your keyword ad trigger list for the best conversion results. Not only will conversions increase, but all three pay per click giants have a quality score with some even spidering the landing page to determine your score. The higher your score, the potentially lower your click cost, and hopefully the better your conversions.

If you are not getting the conversions that you think you should be from your pay per click program, make sure to read Yahoo’s list and update your own landing page strategy.

Click our post title to go the a great site called Add This. I haven’t implemented the code yet, but will most likely this weekend, but now you can add automatic social bookmarking links to your website with a one click addition. Super simple and super easy.

On top of that Add This will even track the use of your book marks and your popularity. Great for a free service. If you are not sure what social bookmarking is, it is the new Web 2.0 buzz or simply a way for readers to interact and share your website with others using Digg, Yahoo, Google and Del.icio.us. So if you want to provide great ways to spread your news virally, social bookmarking is a must.

If you don’t monitor Matts Cutts blog, you should. He is the mouthpiece to our industry from Google. Here are his current words of wisdom:

If I were wondering why I didn’t show up in Google, I would review our webmaster
guidelines and read the information listed under Don’t
load pages with irrelevant keywords. As always, webmasters are free to do
what they want on their own sites, but Google reserves the right to do what we
think is best to maintain the relevance of our search results, and that includes
taking action on keyword stuffing.

When you read Matt’s full post you may get a laugh, but legitimate sites are using these techniques too. I just found a lawyer site that I do e-newsletters for that has white on white text on the home page stuffed with keywords.

You know some of these techniques used to be mainstream in our industry years ago to get placement, but now Google has gotten smart – very smart. If you use these techniques now, really you may be banned from Google as this one was. Then you’ll be hiring me to remediate your website and to contact Google and to get you back online. Services of that nature are expensive the best scenario is to simply not use them and to remove them if you are using them with a sense of urgency.