Category Archives for Content Marketing

How to Repurpose Content Successfully

In order to repurpose your content successfully, you need to carefully plan out your content when you first start writing it. If you’re writing a long-form blog post, you might want to break it down into different sections to make the information easily digestible.

You can then repurpose these sections into different formats. It’s easier to do it this way as you don’t need to do too much editing to get your content to fit another format.

Here are the methods you can follow to repurpose content the right way:

1. Start with an outline

Whether your original content is in blog format or in video format, you need to write down how your content is going to flow. You can just wing it, but that means your content may end up a disorganized mess.

By creating an outline, you get to save time by identifying the points you need to cover in your content you’d also spend less time editing and reorganizing your work.

Use headings and sub-headings in your outline. And while you’re writing down the points you want to cover under each heading, also write down your ideas on how you can reuse that particular section somewhere else.

This system is like hitting two birds with one stone – you plan your original content and how you can repurpose it in one sitting.

2. Have a specific audience in mind for each repurposed content

This point is very important because if you don’t plan ahead who you want to see your repurposed content, then you may not be able to serve up the kind of content these people will engage with.

Knowing your audience is very important for any business to succeed. Repurposing content is no different.

Before you repurpose your content, look around and see what kind of content your target audience usually likes in say, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, and more.

If you’re targeting middle-aged women in your niche, then you should create videos with this specific audience in mind. Doing this makes you relatable so even if they’ve never heard of you before or visited your website, your message will resonate with them, and they’ll most likely end up following you.

If you don’t know who your audience is, then you may be hitting blindly in the dark. You could get lucky and find some success, but generally, it’s the well thought out content that is made specifically for a certain group of people that succeeds.

3. Use your brand’s identity in your repurposed content.

The reason you’re repurposing content is that you want your brand to be seen in a number of different places. How can you achieve this if you fail to use your brand’s logo, colors, or even font faces?

As we’ve covered in previous chapters, branding is important for your business’ success. Branding helps build your credibility and makes you look trustworthy.

It’s important for people to be able to identify your content across many different channels, so do make sure you make it easy for them to do so.

4. Repurpose your content into any of these formats

This isn’t a conclusive list by any means, but these formats should give you plenty of head start and allow you expand your reach as quickly as possible. Some may not be a good fit for your niche, so you need to do some research about that.

Ebooks

If you’ve got a series of blog posts or articles on the same topic, then you can easily create an eBook. Don’t just copy and paste the posts. You still need to go through the eBook with a fine-toothed comb to make sure the content flows well.

You can then use this as a lead magnet or content upgrade for your blog. A high-quality eBook can help position you as an authority in your niche and help you get more leads and sales from both old and new subscribers.

Infographics

The saying a picture paints a thousand words is accurate. An infographic can contain information that may be equivalent to a thousand-word blog post or even 10,000 words.

With infographics, you just need to extract the main points in your content and then transform it into a graphic.

Don’t use too many words in your infographic. Put an emphasis on the graphics part, make it pleasing to the eyes, and upload it to image-oriented sites like Pinterest and Instagram.

Slide Decks

Slide decks are quite easy to create on any presentation software like PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Just like infographics, try not to be too wordy on your slides. Instead, use graphics and icons to emphasize your main points.

This makes your slide decks more easy to understand and will attract more shares than if you just upload a boring text-based slide deck.

Videos

If you’ve got great content that can be used in a video, then repurpose it as a video. Tutorials and how-to articles are the best types of content to convert to videos. You can even add your video tutorial to your main content – this is not only great for your website’s SEO, but you’ll get more traffic via your YouTube channel.

Roundup posts

Just like with eBooks, if you’ve got a bunch of posts or articles around the same theme, you should also consider creating a roundup post. This not only allows you to build a longer-form article but it also provides you with a linking opportunity to those old posts.

Internal linking is also great for SEO and encourages your audience to visit other pages on your website.

Podcasts

Podcasts are great for people who are always on the go and value their productivity and efficiency. With a podcast, you can just read out your content and record with a good quality microphone. With a bit of editing, you’re done, and you can then upload it to your preferred podcasting platform.

Conclusion

Again, there are many other content types you can repurpose your content to. Check out what your competitors are doing, or you can ask your audience for their input. It wouldn’t hurt to ask them a few questions, and you just might receive some golden nuggets in return!

How do you repurpose your content? What has been the most effective marketing channel for you? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

The 5 Ingredients That Make Content Great

In the online marketing world, you will often read or hear these words, “content is king.” This is why many businesses have started to employ content marketing strategies by putting up blogs on their sites and posting their content in many different places.

Publishing valuable content that actually helps people is not only good for your brand’s SEO, but it also encourages engagement with your audience. It also sets you up as an authority or thought leader in your niche, which in turn leads to new sales for your business.

However, to create great content you should put in these 5 ingredients to make your content to truly stick!

It’s original

Google hates duplicate content. Don’t just copy and paste other people’s content because it can get you in a lot of trouble.

Don’t even think of using robots or content spinners to create spun content. This just results in more garbage content on the Internet.

If you truly want your content to be great, then you need to create original content. And by original, I don’t mean rehashing. If you want to establish yourself as an authority in your niche, then you need to take the time to write something that not many other people know.

Or if you don’t have the expertise, then you can outsource it to someone who actually knows the subject.

The point is that people, and search engines, will reward you in the long run for taking the time to make original content.

It’s actionable

Because there’s no call to action or the content itself wasn’t actionable at all. What you just read doesn’t tell you what you’re supposed to do so it leaves you confused.

If you want people to recognize your content as being great, then you’re going to have to give out actionable advice or tips in your content.

You don’t have to give them a step-by-step breakdown, but your content should at least make it easy to identify what your audience needs to do to apply the information you’re giving them.

It’s got a great headline

The headline is the first thing people see when they come upon your content. They’re not going to jump into the body, no. They’re going to read what your headline is all about and only then will they decide if they want to continue reading.

In essence, a great headline is what makes your reader want to continue. If you wrote a generic and boring headline, your readers might not want to go far enough to read the first paragraph. They ‘d just close the browser tab and move on to the next website.

It solves a pain point

People will check out your content if they think you can help them. If you’re offering the solution to a problem or you have the answer to their questions, then they’re going to check out your content.

Nowadays, people don’t just want answers.

They want answers fast. They want answers immediately.

Even if you do have the answers to their questions, if they can’t find it quickly, they’re going to leave and look somewhere else. Make sure you structure your content in such a way that your audience can immediately see what they came to find.

It’s written in a language your audience understands

This is an important ingredient for making great content. Of all, you need to know who your audience is so you know the kind of language they use, their slangs and terminology.

If your content is geared primarily towards millennials, then use their language. Don’t use difficult words that are more fit for people in the academe.

By using their language, you’re making your content relatable. You’re making it easy for people to trust you and they ‘d easily welcome you into their community because you belong. Your language will tell them that you’re one of them.

As you can see, it is not that complicated to create great content if you put in these 5 ingredients. Do you think there is some ingredient missing? Then let me know by writing a comment below!

How to Use Keywords In SEO

Surfers and information seekers throughout the world use internet via keyword to find information on any products or services. These set of keyword phrases are vital for your search engine placement.

The quality of these keywords is critical for a good ranking in search engines. Researching the right keywords for your website should be the key so that when people perform a search for a particular keyword phrase they will be able to find your site.

I have categorized this article into 3 phrases like keyword research or keyword identification, keyword selection, keyword placement, keyword density, keyword ranking and keyword marketing.

Before I would go further I would like to discuss building your website for your business you should focus on certain other SEO strategies like clean navigation, a search engine friendly website architecture so that search engine spiders or robots can easily gather information from your website.

Once your site structure is done it is time to create the content for the site, which is the crucial part and where the keyword research, keyword density comes into play. If you follow these steps which I have mentioned below it is sure that your website can enjoy a higher ranking in search engines.

Step 1: Keyword Identification or keyword research

This should be the first step while building your content because your content will be built around with the keyword and phrases which has been identified at this stage. Which is very critical and if not done correctly you won’t achieve the desired results. There are different ways to identify how people search on the web.

1) Think about what keyword would you chooses while you search for certain products or services. Think from the customer point of view and not from a search engine or SEO point of view.

2) The other way is you can ask your own customers or friends that how do they search on the net to find that particular products or services. Usually, all people think differently and might not use the same keyword phrase to find that product or services. Collect them and store it.

3) Keyword suggestion tools. Type in your keyword and phrases into these tools you will find 100’s of keywords for that particular products or services is searches on the web every month. Tools like Jaaxy will help you to find that how many times these keywords are been searched and how much competition is there for that particular keyword phrases.

Always choose a keyword that is less competitive, so that your website will rank well for that particular keyword phrase on the search engine results.

4) The other way is if you have already had a website online check its weblog and gather that keyword which helps people to find your site. This will help for existing website to recreate the content.

After these steps are done using your spreadsheet to determine the keywords It is ideal to have more keywords rather than focusing on a few words. In that spreadsheet matches the following keyword in terms of how many times the keywords are searched and how much competition is that keyword facing on the web.

Step 2: Keyword placement

Placing the keyword is very crucial because if the keywords are not placed properly the search engine spiders will have a difficult time in identify and storing information from your web pages. Use a related keyword while starting a paragraph and throughout the web page evenly.

Some webmasters and SEO experts use keyword spamming or keyword dumping which is ethical for a good search engine optimization. An ideal density would be anything between 10-15 % keyword densities on the page.

Use keywords which are related to that phrase so that it gets relevancy for that web page.For example When I search for a keyword “dog supplies” I found 100 of related terms which like “dog supplies online” “dog supply store” etc so think and figure out keywords which are more related to that topic.

At this stage, your website content should be ready keep in mind with the 3 top priority factors. This will determine your website success or failure in the search engine. The next stage is keyword marketing.

Keyword marketing is also vital for Pay per click marketing where the keyword is the king. If your website wants the maximum ROI (return of Investment) you will have to apply the maximum keywords while bidding your keywords.

Your website visibility will increase if you choose the maximum keyword for your Pay per click marketing.

The bottom line is to gain a high ranking in search engine use keyword which is related to your business on your onsite and offsite website marketing. The keyword is the king when it comes to content and content is the king when it comes to Search Engine Marketing.

How To Monetize Your Blog

There are many reasons to start a blog. One of the main reasons is often to earn enough money with a blog to escape the 9-5 life and start living a life of freedom.

Unlike those bloggers where teenagers share their angst-filled thoughts, you’re blogging as a business.

You’re looking to turn your content into cold, hard cash. And that means you need to create a plan as to how you’re going to monetize your blog.

Let me share with you the following three ways to do it:

1. Sell Your Own Offers

Do you have your own products or services? If so, then your blog is a natural outlet for advertising these offers. And best of all, there are plenty of ways for you to promote your offers on your blog, including:

Using graphical ads. You can place banners and graphics of all sizes in your header, sidebar, footer and even between the content.

Note: A word of warning, however: Just don’t stuff your blog so full of graphical ads that it looks like a circus rather than a blog.This will rather get the people leaving your blog than reading your content.

You can place your text ads in the same places you put your graphical ads. Your blog should be about great content and not be overwhelmed by ads.

This is often one of the best ways to advertise your offers because it puts your ads directly in front of your readers. In other words, you can create blog posts which contain promotions.

Nobody likes to read ad after ad. Your blog readers are coming to your blog for the great content– not the ads.

Instead, you can weave your offers directly into useful content.

Example: If you’re writing a “how to” article about how to lose weight, you might have a step that talks about reducing calories. You can then include a link for your low-calorie cookbook.

If you really are interested in selling your own products I can recommend ClickFunnels. With Clickfunnels it is very easy to build high converting landing pages and sales funnels. (See here my review)

2. Promote Affiliate Products

Usually, if you start blogging you don’t have your own products or services. That is absolutely no problem.

Another option is for you to promote affiliate products on your blog. This includes:

Digital products, such as those found at Clickbank.com. These are often some of the best products to promote, simply because they usually have high commission rates (50% or more).

Physical products. Because of the overhead and fulfillment costs associated with physical products, these tend to have low commission rates– as little as 5% or 10%. Depending on what you’re selling you may have high conversion rates, especially if you sell through a trusted vendor like Amazon.com.

Services. These also tend to have lower commission rates, simply because the vendor is trading his or her time for dollars. There are exceptions, such as certain services which the vendor may have automated or otherwise found out how to do at a low cost.

And some of these programs also award recurring commissions to affiliates. This means that if you sell the program once, you get paid again and again for as long as your referral remains a member of the program.

Here’s a hint: If you want to start selling products, it is always a good idea to start a mailing list. If you want to know how to start with email marketing check out this post!

Let’s say you send your visitor to an affiliate product. Of course, only a small percentage would immediately buy the product.

Again, don’t do too many ads. Try always to bring value first and then advertise.

3. Sell Advertising

Another way to monetize your blog is to sell advertising to other marketers in your niche. Here you can sell banner ads and other graphic ads, text ads, links (especially if your blog has a high Google Page Rank), and even ads embedded directly in your content.

The benefit of this particular monetization method is that you get cash in your pocket no matter what happens with the offer. In other words, you’re not in charge of writing ad copy or trying to figure out how to get your visitors to buy an offer. All you have to do is sell the advertising space and let your advertisers take care of the details.

The money you get per visitor is pretty small. I would always recommend trying affiliate marketing because the earning potential is much bigger and no one wants to see a website with a lot of ads on it.

And of course, you can certainly use more than one method at any time. You just need to do a little testing to see which methods bring you the greatest revenue.

What method did you try on your blog? And what has been your most effective? Let me know by writing a comment below!

A Novice Guide to Become a Reliable Content Writer

If there is one role to be filled out the Internet which matters most to a site, it is none other than content writers. Of course, we could not disregard the fact that web designers and programmers are likewise crucial in providing an excellent site. It is the material that matters to the audience.

It is always a must to work with content writers to fill in the page of a site. It may also be interactive, nevertheless without something to check out on it, the site is as excellent as absolutely nothing.

Being a content author does not just involves that a person knows the best ways to write. It also suggests that one knows the best ways to communicate with millions of audience worldwide. Here are some excellent tips for an emerging content writer who wishes to pursue his profession in Internet writing

1. Write Clearly and Direct to the Point

If a material writer would consider the millions of audience who will be reading his posts, the crucial objective for him is to communicate to his audience in easy to understand and simple words. Some audience is foreign English speakers, likewise, regional slangs must be avoided. Standard English should be the language to be embraced by content writers

While some writers have the habit of writing long paragraphs simply like a treatise, in material writing, this is one of the mistakes the post would not be checked out by the audience. Composing straight to the point is a should for content writers.

2. Know The Purpose of Writing

One error most content writers have in content writing is the inability for them to stick on the bread and butter of the content. The fundamental rule of material writing is to know the purpose of what a material writer needs to compose. The concepts must be centered on that purpose.

Some content writers take so much time in the fancies to the degree that a reader will be detoured on its purpose. A material author should write something that would make it sell an item if one would like to offer an item. If promoting an occasion is required, a material author must compose something intriguing to the audience that can assist promote an occasion.

3. Design of Writing

One of the essential aspects of a content author is his style of composing his piece. While content authors may have a various design of writing, it needs to always take into factor to consider the organization of the written piece.

The majority of the material authors on the Internet are composing in a conversational tone. This is really useful to readers. Individual clichés and expressions must be avoided by the content authors. In this method, the composed piece can be understood widely.

Perhaps, these three guides will assist a content author in his occupation of pursuing his composing career in the web. The most crucial thing a content writer must have is his enthusiasm.

While some authors have the habit of writing long paragraphs just like a treatise, in content writing, this is one of the pitfalls the short article would not be checked out by the audience. One mistake most content authors have in content writing is the inability for them to stick on the bread and butter of the content.

The standard rule of material writing is to know the purpose of what a material author requires to compose. If one would like to offer an item, a content author need to compose something that would make it offer an item. While content authors may have the various design of writing, it should always take into factor to consider the company of the written piece.

Introducing Content Marketing

There are many different aspects of good internet marketing, which include SEO, press releases, social media marketing, influencer marketing and more.

Once upon a time, internet marketing could mean simply picking one of these facets– such as SEO– and then trying to spam it until a site got to the top of Google and started getting thousands of views.

Today though, this method just doesn’t work and in fact is much more likely to get you penalized by Google.

Today, the only way to succeed online is by delivering quality and the best way to do that is by updating your blog regularly. This is the central tenet of content marketing and as you will see, content marketing can provide the backbone of your entire digital marketing strategy …

What is Content Marketing?

Just what is content marketing? Well, essentially, content marketing means that you are going to promote your website via content and you’re going to use this to bring more people to your website and to get them to engage with your brand.

People are not going to visit your website or blog out of the goodness of their heart; they will go there because they are looking for something and that something will normally be content. People use the web to find information, for entertainment or for news– all of which means content.

Your core strategy then is going to be to publish content to a blog regularly and to use this as a way to gradually bring in more and more visitors. Eventually, this should allow you to establish trust and authority within your niche and to build a big following of regular readers who want to find your content.

Your content is also what you’re going to use to succeed in the various other types of internet marketing. Over the next few chapters, you’ll see how content is essential and for SEO as well as for social media.

That’s because the content is what people are searching for on Google and it is what you will mainly share on social media.

The aim is not to bring people to your site in the short term to make sales. Rather, your aim is to get people to subscribe to your site, to bookmark it and to read it regularly.

The way this works is simple: first, a visitor finds your site ones on Google or via a social media post. The article looks and sounds interesting, they read it and hopefully, they have a good experience. That’s not going to lead to a sale and it’s not going to lead to a subscriber.

Rather, they will just make a mental note that your site was reliable and interesting and so if they see a post from you again on their travels, they will be more likely to read it the next time. It’s important that your branding and web design game is strong as this will ensure that they recognize the fact that they’re returning to a website that they have already seen once before.

Eventually, you’ll get to the point where they have a question and they decide to turn to you for advice. They know you’re reliable, they know they enjoy the way you write and so it makes sense that they’ll seek you out when they want to know something.

At this point, you have their trust and it will be much easier for you to persuade them to make a purchase or to read your site regularly.

Eventually, they’ll become regular subscribers and they’ll start actively looking into whatever you’re posting next. This will then mean you have a captive audience and the next time you want to sell a product, you’ll be able to!

And no– this strategy is not just for online businesses or ebooks. This strategy can likewise work for a high street store or a hairdressing company– it’s all about getting more people to read your content regularly so that you have built that audience and that trust.

Of course, some internet marketing strategies might rely less on content marketing than others, but this is an activity that every business should be engaged in. And it all revolves around providing value for free.

How to Fill Your Site With Stunning Content that Will Attract Visitors and Build Trust

That may all sound great but the next question is how you are going to go about doing this. How do you go about adding content to your site that is so exciting that people will want to read your site on a daily basis? Especially if you aren’t a writer naturally?

The first thing is to understand the type of content that gets read and the type of content that gets shared.

And a clue here lies in a term that is generally looked down upon in the community: click bait.

Click bait is content that is designed to get people to click and that very often provides little-to-no value. You’ll likely have seen this type of content on Facebook: these are the posts with titles like ‘You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next!’ or ‘Top Ten X, Number 7 Will Shock You!’.

These titles get people to click by leveraging the power of curiosity. The titles are purposefully vague while also being emotionally charged (by telling you that you’ll be shocked or outraged in some way).

To look at, the articles appear to offer something completely new, unexpected and shocking.
When we click on the links, we very often are met with something rather disappointing and the reality fails to live up to the hype.

Now, I’m not about to tell you to write clickbait content. What I am going to do, is to tell you to write content that is similarly shocking and interesting.

What you absolutely must avoid are titles like:

“Ten Great Ab Exercises”

Or

” SEO for Beginners”

These titles are contrived: we’ve all heard similar things countless times before and they just fail to stand out or to look exciting.

Your aim is to write something as intriguing and as shocking as a clickbait title but then to actually deliver on the promise by making sure that the reality is every bit as impressive as what you were promising in the title.

Instead of ‘Ten Great Ab Exercises’, how about ‘What Happens if You Do 100 Sit Ups Every Night?’ or ‘Anatomy of Your Abs– The Ab Muscles You Didn’t Know You Had and How to Train Them’.

Instead of ‘SEO for Beginners’, how about ‘The Psychological Impact of Making $$$ Online’ or ‘How I Make $200 a Day From a Site I Built Last Year’.

These titles are inherently more interesting because they’re different, because they have a human element because they promise real value.

If you use those kinds of titles, you’ll get clicks– especially if you post them to the right forums. And if you deliver that value to your content, then people will eventually start seeking you out for more unique and exciting stories.

Oh, and ‘stories’ is a very key word here. People love stories. Giving any post a narrative structure (structuring it like a story) and talking about real people who have been affected by your advice is one of the best ways to ensure that people will want to read your content.

Some other tips:

• Space your content out well– avoid large chunks of text
• Use lots of highly descriptive headings that will inform your readers as to what each chapter is about
• Use a nice big font
• Decorate your content with attractive images
• Write in a manner that is concise, entertaining and easy to read
• Provide lots of links to other resources within your content

From there, it is simply a matter of posting consistently (at least once a week, ideally more) and keeping the quality high. The length of each post doesn’t matter as much but occasionally posting long-form posts (800 words plus) will stand you in good stead with Google and help you to provide even more content to your visitors.

What if You Can’t Write?

What if you don’t know how to write? What if English isn’t your first language? In that case, you need to consider hiring a writer. There are lots of writers online and they charge anywhere from $1 per 100 words to $10 per 100 words. You don’t need to spend that much, but it is highly recommended that you avoid the very cheapest writers (anything under $1.50 is risky) and that you pay for better quality content. This is an important investment as you won’t be able to build trust and find regular readers if your content is written in pidgin English.

One concern here is that you might not know how to check if the content is good, seeing as you won’t be able to read it in the native language.

The solution here is to find someone who can tell the difference and to get them to check it for you. I can’t stress enough how important this is!

I hope you can now understand what content marketing is all about and now I have a question for you: Are you already using content marketing? If so how good is it working out for you? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Article Marketing is a Digital Cash Cow

One of the newest ways to draw traffic to a website is by an internet marketing technique known as Article Marketing.

There are three things that assist a website in being successful, popularity, navigation, and content. Navigation is in the hands of the Webmaster. Whereas popularity and content is the responsibility of the website owner. Article marketing helps these last to two to excel.

The internet is controlled by search engines and they are information junkies. And like any junkie, they are forever in pursuit of a new fix. Knowing how to take an article and distribute it to your advantage is a present-day necessity.

Because when a search engine gets high on some content it rewards its owner by promoting a website’s ranking which generates the ever welcome organic (free) traffic. And traffic is the life-supporting blood of internet prosperity.

Article marketing needs obviously articles to operate. Unlike articles one might find in newsstands and magazines, internet content has specific requirements to have any real value.

Since search engines locate information requests from internet users by using a system utilizing keywords internet articles must incorporate keywords into the body of written content.

Understanding how to create articles with the proper amount of keyword density is not accidental. If one has not taken the time to research this needed article marketing requirement they should seriously consider hiring professional writers to accumulate needed content.

Placing articles void of this keyword density necessity on their websites or to Article directory’s do so in vain.

One key components of article marketing is the submitting of content to Article Directories. There are hundreds if not thousands of these type of directories on the internet. These directories act as a source for website owners to find fresh content for their own websites or newsletter.

The more directories one submits there articles to the more exposure a website gets. Search engines favor large sites when indexing. By having an article in directories the search engines will visit your website more frequently.

And if the content pleases the expectations of the search engines it will improve where you rank with other websites promoting the same services or products.

When submitting to Article Directory’s every article is usually allowed to include an author’s resource box. This resource box is another important area to understand to make article marketing meaningful.

The resource box allows the reader to know who wrote the article and how to find them if so desired. Because of copy write laws, it must be included anywhere the article is placed on the internet.

In this resource box an anchor texted URL is placed in it which not only makes it easy for the reader to click on your site but when placed on another website creates a backlink.

As the article is used more and more on the internet these backlinks start to increase the popularity of a website. At least that’s how the search engines will register these numerous locations.

When submitting articles to directories be sure to use different formats Experiment to see which type of format is generating clicks. Good article marketing requires intelligent labor.

To run a successful article marketing campaign one must be consistent and quality conscious. When you first start a campaign consider submitting at least one article a day you can slow down a bit but never stop.

Article marketing succeeds because of its creating a viral effect. It behaves like the well-known pyramid game.

An article once it spreads starts to create backlinks in an ongoing exponential fashion.

The more it appears the less value it has with the search engines. Even though its value for improving search engine ranking diminishes it still grows in value for generating traffic. Another thing to be sure to do is proofread the articles before submitting them.

Good article marketing needs good grammar too. The better your article appears the more credibility it will get. And the more credible the more readers will trust the source.

Article marketing can be very time to consume because you will want to spread your articles to as many article directories as possible this will suck up a lot of time. This dilemma can be resolved a couple of ways.

One way is to engage the services of businesses that specialize in doing this for you. This will save you time but many of these services, the better ones, can be pricey. Another way is to purchase software that is designed to submit articles.

Normally they have hundreds of directories cataloged in their application. Many directories have automated receiving plug-ins that will automatically except.

Many don’t allow automatic submission from software devices. Submit your articles to the major directories personally then use the software to contact the rest.

Regardless of how you decide to run your article marketing efforts be sure you do it. Article marketing is a time-proven benefit to engage in if you wish to increase traffic to a website. And we all know another word for traffic is Money.

The more traffic your article marketing generates is the more money you’ll be stuffing in your virtual pockets. And that’s all we want, right?

The 5 Best Free Keyword Tools

If you want to be successful with SEO you need to know which keywords are easy to rank on and write articles that target these keywords.

However, how can you find such keywords? The goal is to find keywords that are easy to rank (low competition) and still have enough traffic so it is worth to work on.

To easily find these keywords it is wise to use a keyword tool. I’m sure there are much more than the five I mention. However, these are the tools that I use and I can recommend.

The title says that the keywords are all free and that is correct. However, there are usually paid plans for each keyword tool. With the paid membership you get usually more keywords, more searches or more data.

Should I pay for a keyword tool?

I wouldn’t see it as cost and more as an investment. Because if you find keywords that your competitor doesn’t you can easily rank faster and higher than your competitor and have a big advantage.

That’s why I am paying for some keyword tools and I can recommend to you to do the same!

So here is my list of my favorite keyword tools 🙂

Jaaxy

Jaaxy is one of my favorite tools when it comes to keywords research. You enter a keyword and within seconds you can see whether a keyword is easy to rank on or not.

What really helps are the “traffic lights” that show you if a keyword is good (green), average (yellow) or poor (red). However, the disadvantage of Jaaxy is that they don’t have any information about paid traffic.

If you are only interested in free traffic than this tool is great but if you are searching for good keywords for your PPC campaign I would use another keyword tool.

Keyword.io

When I need new ideas I’m using Keyword.io. You enter a keyword and you get a huge list of long tail keywords.

That has two advantages. On the one side, it is much easier to rank on long tail keywords as it is on short keywords. So, for example, it is much easier to rank on “how to do affiliate marketing for beginners” than on “affiliate marketing beginners”.

On the other side, it is easy to find new ideas. So, for example, if you enter “affiliate marketing” you get a list of 450 keywords. I’m sure you’ll find at least one new keyword you have an idea you could write about.

SemRush

SemRush is also a great keyword tool to get a lot of information about a specific keyword. The functionality is very similar to Jaaxy.

However, the advantage of SemRush is that they also offer information about PPC campaigns. That means you get information about how much you need to pay for a specific keyword, ect..

SpyFu

SpyFu is another great tool with a lot of functionality. One the one side SpyFu is a great tool to spy on your competitors’ website. You can easily see the keywords they are ranking on and for what keywords they are paying.

On the other side, you can get a lot of information about specific keywords. You get information about traffic volumes, competitors, cost per click (PPC), and the ranking history.

Google’s Keyword Planner

If you have been working with Google Adwords I’m sure you already know the keyword planner from Google.

It is not as detailed as the other tools, but you can still get data about the search volume and the competitors. However, the data is only very rough data. For example, for the keyword “affiliate marketing” you get a search volume of 10,000 to 100,000 searches per month and the competition is medium.

Of course, you can use that data but I would recommend using the other tools to find specific data. However, this tool is also great to find ideas. You can use the function “find similar keywords” to find new ideas for new posts.

Conclusion

As you can see there are many very good keyword tools out there. Together with these tools, I can always find new keywords and ideas I can realize.

Now I want to hear more from you! What is your favorite keyword tool and why?

SEO – Advantages and Disadvantages

There are a lot of discussions about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The one side thinks that SEO is the best strategy to build an online business while the other side thinks that SEO is a waste of time.

But who is right?

What is SEO?

The goal of Search Engine Optimization is to rank your website high on search engines like Google.

That is achieved by creating valuable content for specific keywords. The more content you have the more websites Google can index and the more traffic you can have.

Advantages

Let’s at first have a look at the advantages of SEO.

Free source traffic

I believe that is one of the best arguments for SEO. You don’t have to pay anything for your traffic.

That’s also a reason why so many people try to succeed with SEO at the beginning of their online marketing career. You don’t have to invest any money (besides website hosting) and you can already earn your first money.

If you think about it that can be a very effective method. Let’s say you pay $50 per year for website hosting and you earn $500 the first year. That doesn’t sound like a lot but compared to your input you 10X your investment!

Compared to the return on investments in the stock marketing (usually between 5-10%) that’s more than 10 times more effective than investing in stocks!

Targeted traffic

Another great benefit of SEO traffic is that the traffic is highly targeted. As the user is already searching for a specific keyword on Google they show interest in a specific topic.

If you now can provide value and show them that you are an expert in your niche you can convert these people into your buyers.

High potential

There are over 3.5 billion searches on Google every day! That is a huge potential for traffic.

Of course, not everyone is searching for information in your niche, but there is more than enough traffic in your niche! If you want to you can use the free Google Keyword Planner and search for the volume of keywords.

For example, the keyword “banana cake recipes” has between 10,000 and 100,000 searches every month! And believe me, the people on the first site of Google for this keyword don’t have a problem earning money 😉

Disadvantages

Besides all these great benefits there are also some disadvantages of SEO we want to have a look at.

Takes a lot of time

The common mistakes people do at SEO is that they think that they can get a lot of traffic within the first month. However, if you have a brand new website it can take between 3-6 months to get your first traffic.

And that really depends on your niche! If you are in a niche with a lot of competition (like earning money online or weight loss) it can take much longer to get a good amount of traffic.

That’s also one of the reasons why people quit early. They set up a website, write posts for 2 months, they don’t see any results and they quit before even Google recognizes their website.

This is compared to paid traffic where you can get your first traffic within minutes a very long and demanding road.

The reason why this process takes that long is very obvious. Google needs to know if your content is valuable and helpful before they help you getting traffic.

Takes a lot of work

As I said it takes minimum 3-6 months to get the first results of Google. In this time you have to stay active and post new posts regularly.

Only if you keep updating your website Google will give you more and more traffic.

As I said, one of the advantages is that the traffic of Google is free. However, you have to put in a lot of work to get that free traffic. That means you don’t have to invest any money but a lot of time.

You could hire a writer to outsource the content creation but that questions the advantage of the free traffic. Maybe it would be more effective to pay for traffic instead of paying a writer but that is a decision you have to make as an online entrepreneur.

Controllability

One of the biggest disadvantages of SEO is the controllability. You can’t control the amount of traffic you get from Google. That may be 10 clicks today and 50 clicks tomorrow.

That makes it really hard to build a reliable business if your only focus is on SEO. There are stories about online businesses that crashed with a Google update.

I heard from one business that went from $10,000/month to $400/ month within one month. The reason for that was a Google update that destroyed the ranking of that website.

I believe that you can’t say you have a successful online business if your only traffic source is SEO. As I said from one day to another it can happen that your earnings shrink.

A good way to avoid that problem is to build other traffic sources. This can be paid sources like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads or other free traffic sources like Facebook or Pinterest.

I believe that the best way is to try to convert the SEO traffic into email marketing leads. That way you can create a huge email list and be independent of Google updates. If you want to know how to start with email marketing you can check out this post with 8 steps to email marketing.

Conclusion

I believe that SEO can be a great way to build a huge source of free traffic. However, you should be careful to also build on other traffic sources so you’ll be independent of Google updates.

Also always you should have a look at the big picture and not think that 30 posts will give you a huge amount of traffic. Have a look at website with a lot of SEO traffic. They usually have more than 150-200 posts and create new content every day!

If you want to learn more about SEO I can recommend the Wealthy Affiliate. In this training program, you’ll learn how to build a website based on SEO and how to earn money with it! (Click here to check it out)

What has been your experience with SEO? Do you think SEO is great or do you think otherwise? I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below!

10 Tips To Find More Ideas You Can Write About

If you have a blog you should regularly post new content. At the beginning that can be very easy because there are many topics you can write about. However, after some time it can get really hard to find new topics you can write about.

I’m sure you know all that feeling sitting in front of your computer having no idea what you could write about. It always feels like you’re wasting a lot of time. And you are.

When I started with blogging I had the same problems. However, with the time I found different methods how I could find new ideas and I want to share my methods with you:

Tip #1: Inspiration from other blogs

It’s always a good idea to have a look at other blogs in your niche. What are they writing about? What posts have the most engagement (comments)?

However, you should never copy any content from other blogs. It may seem like a good idea, but that really hurts your ranking in SEO. Google always checks if your content is already posted somewhere and lowers your ranking if you are copying content.

Tip #2: Current topics – news

Is there a product of a topic everyone is talking about in your niche? Are there maybe exhibitions that your audience could be interested in?

The news channel is always a good source of new ideas and information. However, here it is important to write about news that is relevant to your niche!

Tip #3: Learn from your newsletters

I hope you already signed in for many newsletters in your niche? If not, you should do that right now! Why?

Because that’s an easy way to get information about new product launches or other news. You also get a lot of content and information you can use to write your own article 🙂

Tip #4: Learn more about the problems from your niche

What are the biggest problems in your niche? Search for the problems in forums of your niche and write down all the problems they have.

That way you can easily find ideas for new content. In addition, that makes you content highly relevant to your audience and that makes your blog even better!

That way also more people start reading your blog and leave your link in forums or other blogs.

You can also find problems in Facebook groups or in the comments of your own blog.

Tip #5: Remember yourself

How was it when you started in your niche? What has been your problems in the beginning? And how did you solve them? Write down your problem and how you solved it and make a post out of it.

With that method, you can find many ideas for tips and instructions, especially for beginners.

Tip #6: Learn, learn, learn

You should always keep growing. Invest time in reading books, visiting seminars, watching webinars or buy digital info products. The more you know the more you can write about. All these things lead you to an expert status in your niche.

And that will give you more readers, more trust, and more income.

Tip #7: Variety on your blog

Mix up different topics like reviews, competitions, surveys, etc. to get a variety of different blog posts. Nobody wants to read only product reviews.

If they only read about product reviews they soon will think: “he only wants to sell something” and they will never come back. The biggest part of your blog should be helpful content.

From time to time you can post a product review but the main part shouldn’t.

Tip #8: Stunning visuals

Your blog shouldn’t be only text. Add some visuals to make your blog more beautiful and worth looking. If you have great content and beautiful images your blog posts will be shared more often on your social networks.

Tip #9: Change your environment

Sometimes it really helps to change your environment. Instead of sitting in front of your desk all the time change your environment and go to a coffee shop instead.

Or go to the park with your laptop if the weather is great. Or maybe it helps to leave your desk and writing your blog post on the kitchen table. This can help you to boost your productivity and idea finding. I stopped planning on my laptop. Instead, I go outside and write down my weekly plan on a piece of paper.

That way I much more relaxed and I have much more ideas.

Tip #10: Don’t make this mistake

The biggest mistake you can make is to get stuck in front of your laptop. If you have no idea what you could write about and sit down for hours thinking you are wasting your time.

Especially when you pressure yourself to write that article. In the end, your article is not written very well and your reader doesn’t get a lot of value. And they notice that.

Sometimes you notice that yourself and throw your article away 😀

I hope that my tips help you to get ideas what you can write about 🙂

How do you find new ideas? How do you find new topics you can write about? I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment below 🙂