The post Blogging 101 Tips: Learn Our Stress-reducing, Efficiency-boosting Process appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

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?

The post Blogging 101: How Long Does My Blog Have to Be? 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!

The post Blogging 101 Tips: How to Schedule Blog Posts appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

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

The post Blogging 101 Tips: Be the Expert
 appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

The post Cuppa SEO Webinar Series: Blogging 101 appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

One of the top comments I receive during every Blogging 101 webinar or workshop is that people find the thought of blogging stressful. This is understandable, especially if you’ve never blogged before, because the entire process is one big question mark.

Today, we’ll be laying out our process on how to create a blog campaign — which will make blogging more fun and less stressful.

How Often Should I Blog?

We’re asked this question all the time. Blogging three times per week is optimal for most businesses, but it’s often not feasible because of time constraints. Twice a week is better than once, and once is better than none.

Since it’s the easiest, let’s go with publishing one blog post per week. This is the minimum amount of times you should blog on a weekly basis. Every other week, or once in a while isn’t very effective. In many ways, its like exercise — with consistency comes positive results, and with inconsistency comes weakness.

Many of you may be thinking, even one blog post per week sounds daunting, so let’s dive right into the process of making a blog campaign.

How to Create a Monthly Blog Campaign & Lower Your Stress

1) Schedule Time
Just like you’d schedule an appointment with a client, the dentist or your doctor, you need to schedule time for yourself to create a monthly blog campaign. So, take out your analog or digital calendar and schedule one hour exclusively for blog campaign creation. Treat this appointment with the respect you would any other.

Schedule time in April to work on your May blog posts. In May, schedule time for your June blog posts (and so on). You always want to create your campaigns a month in advance. This takes the stress off when you actually sit down to write your blog. It also gives your brain time with the subject matter — either consciously or unconsciously — which makes it easier to actually write the blog post.

2) Choose Your Blog Topics & Titles
That’s it. No need to figure out every detail, just think of 4-5 blog topics for next month and write a tentative title for each. I know what you’re thinking, “what should my blog topics be about?” The answer is easier than you may think. Topics should be about the pain points and struggles your customers are experiencing. In other words, your blog topics can be about the questions and problems your clients talk with you about (that you help them solve).

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have nothing of value to say. This occurs because since you do what you do every day — it’s common place to you. But it’s not common place to your customers!

3) Write a 2-3 Sentence Overview
Think of this as the cliff notes version for each of your blog posts. What is it about exactly? Or even better, write three sentences that describe the beginning, middle and end of the post. The overview DOES NOT need to be well polished, it just needs to be clear and relevant. If you think you’re going to need to do some research on a particular topic, it’s a good idea to pull together 2-3 pieces of online research material (other blog posts, articles or websites) that you can review before writing your post. If you’re quoting or heavily referring to one of these sources, be sure to site it in your blog post so the origin of the research is noted.

4) Save, Smile & Treat Yourself to a Coffee!
Once you’ve completed steps one through three, you’re nearly done. Make sure you clearly name and save the document, something like, “Blog Campaign for May 2016.” But before you do, create a “Blogging” folder to save it to. There’s nothing worse than doing all this prep, and then not being able to find your work. Next, brew up a fresh cup of coffee and enjoy!

Now, when next month comes along, you’ll know exactly what you will be writing about each week on your blog. No more staring at a blank page, under pressure, wondering what to do.

I hope these blog campaign tips help you blog consistently, week after week!

Learn More
To learn more about blogging, feel free to sign up for our complimentary Blogging 101 Webinar.

You can also click on “Blogging” in the categories section to your right.

Happy blogging!

The post Blogging 101 Tips: Creating a Blogging Campaign appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

The post Blogging 101 Tips: Figuring Out What to Write About appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

When your blog is a subpage of your main URL, it’s part of the site & supports its authority.

When your blog is a subdomain, it’s actually a second website that competes with your main URL.

A subpage blog looks like this: www.YourWebsiteURL.com/blog/

A subdomain looks like this: www.blog.YourWebsiteURL.com

I hope you enjoyed this Bleet!®

The post Blogging 101 Tips: Set Up Your Blog as a Subpage (good) vs. a Subdomain (bad) appeared first on Cuppa SEO.

Maybe you went from publishing a new post once a week to posting once a month, or not at all for long stretches. If this has happened to you, you know how hard it is to get back on schedule. 

One of the reasons it’s so hard to get back on track is because your entire brain, including the part that writes blog posts, is like a muscle. Use it consistently, and it remains strong. But once you start publishing blog posts inconsistently, your “blogging muscles” get weak.

The good news is that once consistency re-enters the equation, you start working your way back to a place of strength.

Some of the things that weaken when you stop writing regular blog posts include:

Writing Skills
Without constant practice, the act of writing can become more laborious, and your content more disjointed. So blog at least once a week! And if you don’t have time for a full-length blog post, write a Bleet!®

The Freshness of Your Blog
One of Google’s algorithms, Google Penguin, looks at your blog to determine if there’s fresh content there. If you’re blogging regularly, Google Penguin takes notice and gives you a little extra credibility. If not, your credibility goes in the other direction.

Website Authority
With websites, there’s something I like to call the “buoyancy factor,” which essentially means how much authority (credibility) your site has with Google and the other search engines. The better your buoyancy, the higher your ranking in search results. Your authority is affected by many things, including how often your publish blog posts.

Case Study: Cuppa SEO’s Blog

You might be wondering just how much weight a consistent blog post — written week-in-and-week-out — carries. Although I’ve cultivated many blogs to robust health, I’ve never tested the effects of removing a consistent stream of fresh content from a healthy blog. So I decided to conduct a test on my own blog. Here’s what happened …

• Before the experiment, Cuppa SEO ranked 1st & 2nd for my top two keyword phrases in Google search results
• I stopped blogging completely for 15 weeks (don’t try this at home)
• After about 90 days my position started to slip, and after 15 weeks my ranking slipped off of page one for both keyword phrases
• Once I started blogging again, I began to improve my ranking after a few new blog posts were consistently published
• After 9 weeks of blogging 1X per week, I’m ranking on page one for both keyword phrases again, although I haven’t worked my way back to the #1 & #2 position … yet

As you can see, the simple act of blogging can have a dramatic influence on where your website ranks in a Google search. The higher you rank, the more likely it is that customers will find you — which of course means more business.

If you’d like more blogging tips, feel free to download Cuppa SEO’s free Blogging 101 E-book.

Happy blogging!

The post Blogging 101 Tips: With Inconsistency Comes Weakness … appeared first on Cuppa SEO.