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Once Labor Day is over, businesses start to come out of the woodwork, in need of services, as well as spending their budget before the end of the fiscal year.

This fall is a big question mark.

What will business be like? Will organizations be reaching out for services as usual, or holding onto their cash because of the pandemic?

From what we’ve see thus far at Cuppa SEO Web Design, it’s probably going to be a mixed bag. Some businesses will still want services performed, while others will opt to wait — or simply won’t be in a position to spend.

Regardless, there’s one thing you can start doing today that will help improve your visibility through the fall, winter and beyond. Because no matter what the pandemic brings, more visibility is ALWAYS a good idea …

What I’m suggesting you do is blog.

Blogging once a week, consistently, will help improve your website’s visibility by adding fresh content to your site. Fresh content makes Google happy, and more likely to bump you up in search results. It adds SEO value to your site (as long as you’re writing rich, relevant content), and also gives you something to share on social media — which of course can drive even more people to your website.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking the you don’t know how to blog, don’t have time for it, or simply don’t have anything relevant to say — you are not alone. Many of our clients feel the same way. But it’s still advisable for you to blog, so here are a couple of resources to help make blogging less stressful and more doable.

• Watch our Blogging 101 Webinar
• Download our complimentary Blogging 101 E-book

It can take up to 90 days for the fresh content you’re writing to start to take hold within Google’s algorithm, so technically the best time to make sure you’re blogging at least once a week would be the beginning of June (you can always create a calendar reminder for next year). Since June is already gone, the best thing to do is start this initiative ASAP!

If you have any questions, just let us know!

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

The post The Top Thing B2B Businesses Can Do STARTING TODAY in Preparation for Fall appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Why are you writing a blog in the first place?

Are you hoping to drive traffic to your website? Are you trying to establish yourself as an expert in the field?  Maybe you want to generate discussion on social media. No matter why you are writing, one critical question is “How Long Does My Blog Have to Be?” Not too long ago, just about any SEO expert would have given you the same answer: around 500 words. Today, the answer may be more nuanced. You could probably cover some topics in less than 300 words, while others may need 3,000 words.

The short answer to this question is, it depends. Your blog posts should have enough content to cover your topic but be readable enough to keep your audience coming back for more.

Longer Posts or More Posts?

The word count for your blog affects your publishing schedule. If you write shorter posts, publish more frequently.  In any case, don’t overdo it. This will only lead to you getting burnt out and your readers getting overwhelmed.

Three Best Practice Guidelines

Are you ready to get started?  Here are three main considerations:

1. What Works for Your Topic?
   If your blog focuses on in-depth analysis and journalistic style writing, you’ll probably be writing longer posts.  If you prefer topics like “Strange Things I Saw on the Way to Work,” you’ll probably be better off with short posts.

2. What Works for Your Audience?
   Who are your readers?  Why are they reading your blog? No matter what the topic is, every good blogger writes for their audience. Write what works for them, and you are more likely to succeed. If you already have many readers, you may consider a reader survey. If you’re not there yet, check out your analytics to see which posts are more popular and get the most comments or shares.

3. What Works for You?
   What kind of writer are you?  Is your style more concise or wordier? If you’ve been struggling to write long posts, maybe you should try your hand at shorter content. If you feel you’re leaving too much left unsaid, why not see how a longer post works?

The best thing about blogging is that you have the freedom to do what you want to do. If you want to write 10,000-word blog posts, you can. If you’d rather post a picture of a kitten with a clever caption, you can. The content you create is completely up to you. Look around and see what other people are doing. Look at your numbers and see what your audience is responding to. In the end, go with what works.

Want more tips and insights from Cuppa SEO?

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Yet somehow, you still haven’t started actually blogging yet. What’s holding you back? There are a number of things that might be doing it. Here are some of the most common blocks that keep brands from blogging regularly, and how you can overcome them.

“How Will I Find the Time?”

Your brand’s marketing department has a thousand other tasks to perform at any given time. The team is stretched thin as it is. How will anyone manage to write and research three or four high quality, engaging blog posts every week on top of their regular duties?

There’s a very simple solution. If you don’t have anyone on staff available with both the time and the writing talent to maintain a good quality blog, you can simply outsource it. By hiring professional writers, your brand can produce high quality content, week after week, that will engage your audience and generate interest, while at the same time freeing your own team up to focus on the myriad other tasks on your plate.

“How Do I Come Up with Topics?”

This is another issue that can turn people off of blogging. They start out strong at first, creating three or four brand new blogs each week, each on a different topic of importance or concern to their audience.

But after a while, their ideas start to run out. Three or four times a week becomes once a week, becomes once or twice a month at most, simply because they don’t know what else to write about. Even if you’re outsourcing your blog, you’ll likely have to come up with many, if not most of the topics, yourself. So how do you keep things fresh, week after week?

Keep your ear to the ground. Search popular news sites for new stories about your industry. Set up Google alerts for the most popular keywords related to your brand, industry, and products, to be notified whenever someone else posts about them. Check LinkedIn and other sites to see what people in your field are talking about at the moment. All of these things are fodder for blog topics. The potential is limitless, if you just know where to look.

“What If Nobody Reads It?”

Maybe you maintained a blog for a while, but you couldn’t get anyone to take notice. With nobody reading it, it didn’t seem worth the time and resources to continue blogging.

Well, just writing the blog isn’t enough. You need to promote it. Post it to social media. Share it with friends and connections in your industry. Develop an e-mail list and send it out as part of your weekly newsletter.

Also remember that building up a following takes time. The readers won’t come overnight. But if you continue blogging consistently, and continue promoting your blog, then people will start to take notice, and you can build up a loyal readership that’s invested in you and your brand.

You can always find plenty of reasons not to blog, if that’s what you’re looking for. But in the end, you have to remember that there are many more reasons TO blog, and a lot of success to be had by creating content for your brand. But the only way to see that success is to get over your aversion and blog, blog, blog!

Want to Jumpstart Your Blogging?
Download Cuppa SEO’s complimentary Blogging 101 ebook for tons of tips and strategies!

The post How to Overcome Your Aversion to Blogging appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Scheduling allows you to completely prepare a post so it’s ready to go — but it won’t publish until the designated time. Let’s take a quick look at how to do this …

Once you’re logged into WordPress, and you’ve started working on a new blog post, you’ll find the scheduling option under the Publishing tab on the right-hand side. If the tab isn’t already expanded, click on the arrow in the upper right corner. You should then see the following:

By default, your blog post is set to publish immediately. But if you click on the edit button, you have full control of when the post will actually go live:

Once you’re done, be sure to click the “OK” button, and then click on the “Schedule” button to complete the process. When the day and time you scheduled arrives, your post will publish immediately!

Once it’s published, be sure to share your latest content on social media!

I hope this blogging 101 tip helps you brew a better blog!

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Being an expert in your industry makes it possible to provide relevant solutions to your customers. It also makes it easier to identify trends that can help your customers even further.

And although experience can make you an expert, constant learning is also a key component to your remaining one. Whether it’s from articles, blogs, a mastermind group, trade shows, or some other medium, fresh input is critical to remaining a thought leader in your industry.

What I’ve found, though, is that people who are experts in their industry often feel that they have nothing to write about. They don’t feel like an expert, or they believe nobody would want to read what they have to say.

Although there are many reasons behind these concerns, there’s one thing I’d like to share. To you, what you do every day feels common place — it’s natural to you, so it’s easy to believe everyone has the same information/understanding you do.

This is simply not true. You’ve probably worked for years to become really good at what you do, and what’s “well-worn” knowledge to you is BRAND NEW to the rest of us that don’t do what you do. Sharing this knowledge can be super helpful — and has great value — to your clients.

And that’s what a blog is all about — sharing relevant, useful information with people who need it.

Think about it. You know what your customers’ biggest problems and pain points are. You know exactly how your products and/or services can solve their problems. The only difference is, instead of discussing these pain points and solutions face-to-face with a client, you’ll need to put it into words and write about it on your blog.

So, if you’re thinking “why would anybody want to read what I have to say?” The answer is, it’s the same reason your clients come to you in the first place — because you have something of value to offer.

Remember, things that are common place to you, are NOT common place to your clients! And I don’t know anybody who finds a solution to one of their problems boring or irrelevant, do you?

In my industry, clients want to know more about SEO, user experience (UX), web design, conversion (CV), blogging and social media. Each of these main topics has many, many sub topics that I can focus on in a blog post — giving me hundreds of things to write about.

This is quite possibly the most important of all the blogging tips I share, because a blog cannot exist without content. And it will never engage with readers unless that content is relevant and useful.

Want more blogging tips?
– Blogging 101 Tips: With Inconsistency Comes Weakness
– Blogging 101 Tips: Set Up Your Blog as a Subpage (good) vs. a Subdomain (bad)
– Blogging 101 Tips: Creating a Blogging Campaign

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