Archive for the ‘Corporate Blogger Tips’ Category

Why Content Matters: Analogy

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

I often have to explain to people why content matters to a website when it comes to marketing online. I usually go with a simple analogy that helps explain how a search engine views your site, and why regular, frequent copy changes are considered so important to your search rank.

Consider the following:

You are out on the town, looking for a fun place to spend the evening. 'Let's go to a nightclub' you might say. So you cruise main street looking for some excitement. As it turns out, you happen upon two candidates, each directly across the street from the other.

On your left is a nightclub seemingly bursting at the seams. People are queued up around the corner waiting to get in, and the place is clearly over crowded and full of life.

On your right is a nightclub that seems to have plenty of room. There is no line, and no crowd. You could get in immediately and would have most of the place to yourself.

Which do you choose? If you are 'most people', you will be drawn to the excitement of the crowded nightclub. There are reasons for this...

The crowded nightclub is alive with excitement. People want to be there, and there is life and activity there. Others are clearly interested in getting in, and the overwhelming crowd implies that there is something to see, even if it is 'itself'. Fun.

Search engines see your site in a similar way.

Search engines deliver a product to their customers. Their customers are you and I when we perform a web search. The results we expect to be relevant, current, and exciting. Search engines, therefore, are on the lookout for exciting places to include in thier search results. Places that have relevant content, and lots of activity are considered better results than sites that are slow, stagnant, and lonely.

The content on your site is what search engines look at in order to determine relevance and excitement. Your site is more exciting when it has new content to share. The frequency of your new content is a major factor, because content becomes old pretty quickly.

Want to get your site to the top of the search engines? Make it exciting with some interesting content. Often.

New Sub Domains to Choose From!

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

We have been working to improve our system, and have implemented the ability for new customers to select from a growing range of custom sub-domains. This means we can now deliver an automated blog system through ListPipe that provides a little more autonomy from the ListPipe system itself.

We are starting with three new domains to choose from; one from each of our current target markets:

When a new customer of ListPipe signs up for a new blog, and subscription to our custom copywriting service, you will have the opportunity to select from one of these domains, and then have the opportunity to name your own sub-domain in the system.

The result is an automated system that allows you to create a blog site such as 'californiarealestate.myrealestateagentblog.com'. Naming a sub-domain with a keyword modifier provides an important advantage in SEO, and the more relevant domain names will go a long way to help expand our ability to market the blogs within our system.

We are thrilled that we can now deliver more relevant sub-domains for our future customers. Pass this news along to anyone you know in the real estate, dentistry, or chiropractic markets.

What are the SEO benefits of ListPipe?

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Search engine optimization has many facets. Our focus is on what is called ‘organic content’, which is what search engines look for when measuring the liveliness and relevance of a site. Search engines want to deliver the most relevant and most current sites at the top of search results, so they look specifically for sites that demonstrate recent activity, and relevancy based on keyword frequency.

Our goal is to provide you with a convenient tool that helps you widen your web marketing without you having to become an expert blogger. After all, you have spent plenty of time learning to be great at your profession; leave the web marketing to us. We’ll help you increase your page rank, rise to the top of search results, and attract search engine traffic to your site.

Here is a quick look at some of our key features, and their benefits to you:

  • Frequency: We provide one article each week. This is the minimum optimal frequency for posting, and indicates to the search engines that your site content is lively and current. Sites that allow their content to grow stagnant are discounted by search engines as ‘less relevant’ because they do not have current information.
  • Keyword Research: We load each article with keywords that are relevant to your industry, and add a second helping of supporting keywords and phrases to help search engines understand your relationship to your market. Keywords, when used properly, help search engines index your site appropriately so that you are listed in the appropriate results
  • Linking: We incorporate an advanced linking strategy into every article we publish on your behalf. Each article includes links to your home site from keywords, URLs, and even graphics. All this is coordinated in order to demonstrate to the search engines that your keywords are intimately related to your home site. We also include high-value links to your named associations, and industry-related articles. Our linking strategy is designed to build credibility for your home page by association.
  • Localization: Most web searches are for products or services that are local to the user. With this in mind, our content strategy incorporates a mix of localizing keyword modifiers including your location by city, state, and surrounding areas. Establishing yourself as a fixture in a localized community helps you climb to the top of the search results for the most popular searches.
  • Customization: The articles that we publish to your blog are customized with your unique information. This creates a one-of-a-kind article that is expressly written just for you. We call this Powerful Custom Content™ that search engines recognize as unique, fresh, and real. The advantage of Powerful Custom Content means that search engines recognize your content as real, human-readable content that is meaningful, and therefore valued highly in search results.
  • Marketing: In addition to our Powerful Custom Content, we provide additional marketing support for your blog to help increase the attention you get from the search engines. We incorporate linking strategies to lead search engines to your blog as soon as it is created, and include links to your blog in regular marketing announcements and promotional content. Sites in our system are noticed early, and are provided the advantage of direct links from highly ranked pages.
  • Personalization: We have made it easy for you to personalize your own blog with your own content, too. Adding your own content creates even more organic value for your site and we encourage you to add as much content to your site as you can. For your convenience, we provide you with the ability to log into and manage your own blog. Go ahead and add content, upload images, and edit to your heart’s content. To make blogging easy and less intimidating for you, we have included a series of ten instructional videos that visually demonstrate the basics of blogging.

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword…

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

lp_pensmall.jpgI have harped on this one before, but it is an important step in your internet marketing: You have to write content. ListPipe provides Powerful Custom Content for this reason. Our service provides regular, weekly content that is researched and optimized for specific key words and terms.

In addition to our Powerful Custom Content, your own copy writing can provide significant advantages in your ListPipe blog.

Writing your own content is not as difficult as you might think, and with ListPipe, is even easier. Because you are getting regular content from ListPipe that has been researched and optimized for the search engines, the pressure to create powerful content is reduced. When you have ListPipe content, your own content does not have to be as complex or optimized.

All you need to do is regularly post your own experiences with your product, or positive customer feedback. Two paragraphs is a perfect weekly supplement to our ListPipe content. Simply write a note to your customers telling them a) about your latest product, b) about a success you had in the last week, c) about one of your favorite product features or benefits, or d) about the growth or vision of your business.

Think of your weekly blog as your elevator pitch, and continuously refine it to match the latest current events in your company or surrounding your products.

By writing a simple paragraph or two each week, you will be providing the search engines with great index-able content that your customers can search for. Regular supplemental content will help you compete even more in your search for the top of the lists.

What is a Blog?

Monday, January 7th, 2008

Sample BlogPeople often ask me "What is a blog?". The most common follow-up questions is "How is a blog different from a website?"

My short answer is that a blog is very similar, if not the same, as a website. Although there are a few differences.

For reference, I have set up a demonstration blog at http://demoblog.squarecompass.com/

Blogs come in many shapes and sizes, and can fulfill a number of purposes. We'll get in to this later. For now, let's focus on answering the question; "What is a blog?"

In terms of content, a blog is the electronic equivalent of a journal or diary. Blog software is designed to make it easy for you to add content on a regular schedule, and to present it in a chronological series. Each entry you make is called a 'post', and each post can be of any length and can include images, audio files, and even video.

If you haven't had a chance to take a look at the demo blog, take a moment to look around.You'll see that there are several articles posted on the main page, each including images and links.

You will also notice a navigation structure along the right hand side of the page. You can also see this same navigation to the right of this post. The blog software takes care of creating this navigation for you, allowing you to focus on content development without the worry of managing a website.

As you browse the navigation, you will notice that there are links to pages that are not included in the 'journal' format. Most blogs allow you to distinguish between a 'blog post' (a 'journal entry'), and a 'static page'. A static page is a standalone page of content that you want to be available to your readers all the time, and that isn't dependent on the chronological format.

Blog postings are your regular updates, and static pages are your information pages. Common uses for these static pages are a 'Contact Me' page, an About Me' page, or other reference material that needs to be accessible all the time.

Blogs often include a 'blogroll' too. A blogroll is simply a list of URLs that the blogger chooses to include as additional resources or for reference. The blogroll can be an important SEO tool as you learn to create external links to other sites that are relevant to your blog subject.

Blogs are great SEO tools because they appeal to search engines for several reasons. In particular, a blog allows you to post content as frequently as you can. Search engines are constantly looking for new content to index, and blogs make it easy for you to provide indexable content. The more frequently you post content, the more often the search engines will visit your site to look for new content.

ListPipe blogs receive weekly content from our professional writers in order to train the search engines to visit frequently. The more frequent the visitations, the sooner new content is indexed and searchable.

Blogs are extremely flexible, and allow us regular folks the ease and freedom to create content on the Internet. Take a look at the sample blog to learn more about what a blog is, how a blog works, and what can be done with a blog.

I'll be posting regular content here in our SEO Tips Blog to help you better understand blogging, and how it can help you reach a wider audience and bring traffic to your 'normal' website.

ListPipe is Custom Copywriting for You

Monday, November 12th, 2007

ListPipe Custom Copywriting for the WebListPipe is a unique blogging system that helps you widen your search engine marketing online with what we call Powerful Custom Contentâ„¢.

Like casting a larger net across the Internet, ListPipe helps you get into more search results for keywords and relative terms with a blog website and regular weekly content. Designed for online marketers and blog marketers, we can provide custom copywriting content to you, directly into your ListPipe blog, or directly into your own blog with our new blog pluggin.

We research and publish keyword-rich content for our customers each and every week. Our goal is to help you rise to the top of geographically-specific search results. We do this by researching our content, posting regularly, and our own web based marketing.

ListPipe is currently servicing the real estate, dentistry, Isagenix, and Jiffy Lube markets. If you are interested in starting a blog and widening your internet marketing in any of these areas, click the Get Started button on our home page, fill out a couple of easy forms, and we'll take care of the rest.

If you know of a large market that we can develop custom content for, please let us know by filling out our Suggest a Market form. We'll be happy to hear from you and will consider any emerging market for new content.

Thank you for your interest in ListPipe online marketing.

Real Estate Agent Blogging

Monday, November 5th, 2007

Real Estate Agent BloggingReal estate agent blogging can be an extremely effective tool in capturing Internet leads for real estate agents. Real estate agent blogging is also an effective way to get to the top of search engine results, and is completely organic.

Research shows that organic rankings are more effective than pay per click because consumers trust organic search results more. When real estate agents blog on a regular basis, they create relevant content for the search engines to index. Relevant content is a strong search engine optimization tactic, and helps real estate agents increase their search engine rank.

ListPipe provides real estate agents with blogging resources including real estate agent blog training, a fully functional real estate blog, and regular, weekly content written specifically for real estate agent blogs. Our Powerful Custom Contentâ„¢ is designed to help real estate agent bloggers to reach the top of the search results with strong organic content.

If you are a real estate agent blogging about your business, or if you are a real estate agent wanting to compete for more leads over the Internet with Powerful Custom Content, Get Started with ListPipe today.

ListPipe is the original real estate agent blogging system featuring Powerful Custom Content written just for real estate bloggers.

Writing Your Own Content

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

ListPipe, Writing Your Own SEO Content

ListPipe provides Powerful Custom Content, written just for you. However, writing your own content is a great way to add value to your ListPipe blog.

Everything Counts

Search engines are on the lookout for new content to index. When we publish content to your site each week, the search engines take notice and adjust their visitation and indexing frequency accordingly. When you start blogging, too, the search engines are trained to come back even more frequently. The more often search engines visit your site, the quicker your new content is made available to searchers. Note that new content on your site is not available to searchers until it is indexed by a search engine.

Get The Balance Right

Posts don't have to be too long. In fact, a post of about 100 to 150 words is just enough. Add a couple of links, and repeat your keywords 3-5 times and you have a perfect SEO blog posting. Of course there are other more advanced tricks of the trade, however and because you are getting supplemental content from ListPipe, you won't need to worry so much about the heavy lifting. All you need to do is concentrate on saying what you want to, how you want to.

The Things You Said...

In fact, search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN look for posts that are specifically written in 'normal' language. In other words, avoid making lists of keywords, or using language that has an awkward cadence. Write in 'the spoken word' and you'll do fine.

When you work to include your keywords, have an idea before hand which ones you want to include, concentrate on one or two for each post, and mention them two or three times. If you are linking to another site, make sure you link from a few of the keywords, but not all of them. If you are not comfortable with keywords and linking, don't let that stop you from writing a basic post. Any relevant content will help your search engine marketing effort.