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Thurs., February 27, 2014

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Watch: The VP Comes Bearing Gifts

Featured

Watch: The VP Comes Bearing Gifts

Vice President Biden stopped by for the premiere episode of "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and had a couple of surprises for the new host and his first guest, Amy Poehler.

See what the Vice President brought to "Late Night."

3 Steps to Identify Blog Topics that are Relevant to Your Audience

Posted: 26 Feb 2014 03:16 PM PST

Posted by Aleyda

If you're reading this post right now, chances are that you have experienced this (or know someone who has): You have the deadline of a blog post coming, but you still don't know what to write about.

Sometimes you get away by writing about breaking news or a trend in your field, by doing a review of a new product or service, or by covering a recent conference or meetup that you have attended, but you can't do this all the time. You also want to write about something that is not only useful but also attractive, something that allows you to connect with your audience.

And you might be an experienced blogger, copywriter, or marketer. You might also know your audience pretty well; you have built your personas, completed and developed keyword research, and have already tried some techniques to get through the "writer's block." You have browsed through the content of prolific creators to get inspired and even tried Portent's content idea generator, but you still have a hard time finding a relevant and exciting blog post idea each time that your deadline approaches.

This likely happens because although you know where to find the dataâ€"and might even have it alreadyâ€"to get you inspired and identify ideas, the hardest part is to make it actionable, since it's so easy to get lost in such a vast amount of information.

What you need in order to identify blog post ideas that will allow you to connect with your audience is an actionable and simple process that is easily repeatable, applicable to any industry, and scalable:

Step 1: Gather the relevant data

How can we avoid getting lost when there's so much data available through so many sources? By focusing only on gathering the most important data that's relevant to your goal: Identifying a relevant and attractive blog post idea for your web audience.

Here's the data that you will need:

1. Your own most popular posts

You don't need to go through all of your previous posts, just select the most popular ones:

Most visited posts on your blog: Use Google Analytics to identify those blog posts that have had the highest amount of visits, the most valuable visits (those that generated the highest amount of conversions) and the most engaged visits (those that had the highest duration and generated more pageviews on the blog). Keep only the top 20% of them.
Most shared posts on social networks: Use SocialCrawlytics to crawl your blog and see which are the posts that have been shared the most by your visitors in their favorite social networks. Again, only keep the top 20% of them.

After gathering the data, consolidate these two "Top 20%" lists, eliminate the duplicates, and create a spreadsheet with the following information for each post:

Title
URL
Visits
Conversions
Visit duration
Shares in each social network (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)

Now you know which of the posts has been, until now, your own most popular content. You know what has attracted better traffic and visibility in social networks, and the social networks that your audience prefers.

2. Your competitors' most popular posts

It's time to collect the most popular posts from your competitors, and although you don't likely have access to their full analytics, you can still identify some important statistics:

Most shared posts on social networks: Crawl their blogs with SocialCrawlytics as you did before.
Most externally linked posts: With Open Site Explorer, check to see which posts have earned the highest amount of links from other sites.

With this information you can consolidate these two lists into one and create a spreadsheet for the top 20% of posts by your competitors that includes the following data:

Title
URL
Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
External links
Linking domains

Here you have another very valuable and highly targeted source of information:
The most popular blog posts of your competitors!

3. Your community's and influencers' most shared content

Besides your own top content and that of your competitors, you can also identify which content is most liked in your own social communitiesâ€"the different groups that are connected to each other and form your audience.

For Twitter, you can get your communities and the influencers, topics, and locations per communities by using Tribalytics, just by adding your Twitter handle:

Once you identify your different communities, their most popular topics, and influencers, you can get even more specific by using Twtrland to obtain the most popular tweets for your influencers:

Create a list with the top content shared in your influencers' top tweets and segment it using the different topic areas identified for your communities. Complete it with social and search popularity-related data for each one of them:

Title
URL
Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
External links
Linking domains

Here's another very relevant input for your blog post ideas: The content that your influencers like to share and that has been popular in your own Twitter communities.

4. The hottest relevant content in social networks

After having identified the posts topics and pieces that have performed better for you, your competitors, and in your social communities in the past, you can identify which have been the overall most popular pieces of content in social networks about those same topics in the latest times.

Organize the best-performing content that you have now into different topics categories or areas and use Buzzsumo to search for them.

Download the most shared content in social networks for each category. You will have a list with the following information:

Title
URL
Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
Content type

Consolidate the lists, segmenting again per category and organize it by prioritizing the overall best performing content for your topics in social networks.

5. Your relevant web industry questions

Another very relevant source of blog post ideas is the questions asked by your online community in social networks, such as Twitter, and on sites like Quora.

Go to your relevant topic's questions, and create a list with the highest-voted questions. Automate this process by creating an IFTTT recipe for their RSS feeds, by adding them directly into a Google Docs Spreadsheet.

You can complete the previous list of questions with the ones that users make directly in Google by using the SEOchat related keywords tool, a multi-level suggestion keyword finder that will give you the queries that your audience searches for in Google about your desired topics.

By doing this, you will learn which are the biggest questions that people ask on the web about your relevant topics. A direct source of ideas to create posts that answer them.

6. Your industry web content requests

Subscribe to HARO or ProfNet and get daily email alerts each time a media outlet asks for the input of a specialist about your selected categories of content. Create filters to apply a label to those emails that specifically include one of your relevant content topics:

By doing this you will learn how journalists are looking to cover these topics and the type of content they're writing about them already. This can serve as an ongoing reference for content ideas: See what important sites are writing about your relevant topics at the moment.

Step 2: Ask the relevant questions

Once you have gathered all the previous data you will have a very complete, but still manageable, prioritized and categorized source of potential blog post ideas from different type of sources:

Analyze and make this data actionable with the next steps:

Ask yourself which are the characteristics that differentiate this top content and questions? What do they all have in common? From the areas where they are focused to the style or format, identify the patterns that they follow and make a list of criteria with them.
Create a list of potentially attractive posts ideas by taking as an input the already existing popular content, questions and requests that you have identified before, applying the criteria that you have identified that they all share.
- Specifically ask the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and "how" for the potential topics, thinking on how these will target your audience needs and emotions.
- Classify each idea with a level of "interest" based on how relevant is for your audience and the amount of search volume that exists around each topic (you can validate the keyword planner information with those of SearchMetrics and SEMRush).
Search and identify which of these post ideas have been already covered, whether by you, your competitors, or any other site in the past. See which sites have published the posts and the degree of success they had with them. It's also important that you specify in which content format (text, infographic, video, checklist, slides, etc.) and type (guide, news, review, webinar, report, competition, etc.) they have been published, as well as when they were published (since it's not the same to have been covered five years ago than just a couple of months before).

By following these steps you will have a list of blog posts ideas with this information:

The blog post idea
Interest
- Search volume
- Relevance level
Coverage status
- Publication URL
- Content format
- Content type
- Publication date
- Shares in each social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.)
- External links
- Linking domains

Prioritize those ideas that have the highest level of interest and that haven't been published yet.

Step 3: Identify your blog post opportunities

For each of the highly prioritized potential ideas for posts, ask the following questions to filter them further and validate your opportunities:

Is this topic related to your business's vision and goal?
Is this the type of post content that is really interesting and useful for your audience?
Is it clear how the post will help your audience solve an issue or improve what they have?
Will you be able to write the post to be easily consumed and understood by them?
Are the resources needed to write the post feasible for you?
Will it be profitable for you to rank with this post?

The winning idea will be those for which you answer yes to the questions.

In case that you have identified a topic that has been already covered in the past with a blog post, but it complies with the rest of the previous criteria so is still attractive to pursue, then think about how you can create a unique selling proposition that differentiates yours from what came before. Two common options are:

Do a follow-up post, completing or expanding the initial information.
Reformat the post to build a tool, create a checklist, a guide, a list or compilation of resources, an infographic, a presentation or a video that makes it easier and more attractive to consume, and then write a post to announce it.

Some examples; rinse and repeat.

I contribute my writing to Moz, State of Digital, and at WooRank and itÂ´s fundamental for me to have a process to follow to be able to come up each month with new blog posts ideas, so I've followed this process in the past to write these posts:

It has worked pretty well for me in the past and hopefully it does for you too!

Do you use a process to identify your blog posts ideas? I would love to hear about it.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

The Future of Content: What To Do Now Guest-Posting Is Dead

The Future of Content: What To Do Now Guest-Posting Is Dead

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 02:41 AM PST

As every SEO is aware, Matt Cutts recently made a very strong statement against the use of guest-posting. The points he made were clear and (if we're honest) fair. Guest-posting has become more and more spammy over the past few years, and has been over-utilised by many in the SEO industry. However, this condemnation of guest posting means that many people working in content and/or outreach may now be at a loss as to what to do and how they can utilise their skills.

Luckily, this post is here to help, and will concentrate on ways you can improve your (and your client's) website and boost rankings without spammy link-building tactics.

Website Basics
First and foremost, now is the prime time to take a thorough look at the site you're working with. When was the last time you updated your meta data? Are you still using and tracking relevant keywords? Are your pages delivering good conversion rates?

If your answers to any of the above are less than certain, then it's time to put a plan together to thoroughly update your website.

Keywords – how can you possibly write effective meta data or even webpages without having focused, user-based keywords? Check what people are searching for and what they're clicking through on. Adjust your keyword selection appropriately.
Update your meta data – now you've got relevant keywords selected, it's time to update all your title tags and meta descriptions. Ensure you're up to speed with the latest guidelines for length and structure, and that you make them both keyword-rich and user-friendly (and never forgo the latter for the sake of the former).
Update your H1s – a logical step forward from checking your meta data. Ensure you're using the most search-friendly terms, and that everything is properly formatted. It's a great opportunity to check for issues such as multiple H1s or even pages that are missing them all together.
Do a content analysis – time to get down and dirty with your onsite content. Are all of your pages still working for you? Are the beneficial to your users? Are they helping to make conversions, or are they dead ends where people drop off your site? Do a thorough analysis of your website and trim the fat. If a page is no longer of any use, then get rid of it. If a page needs altering to make it more relevant to current user needs, then improve it! Make your onsite content work for you! There's no point ranking well if your site drives users right back to the SERPs.

Your Own Content
Ok, so those are all pretty basic (but vital) things. What next? Time to be clever and focus on your own (or your client's) area of expertise. What do you have specialist knowledge about? Do you have access to interesting statistics or useful information? Start planning out high-quality content for your own website. It's time to focus your effort on making your site stand out, and positioning yourself as an expert in your field. Yes, I know, this was one of the premises behind guest-posting. But now it's time to bring everything back onsite, and boost the quality of what you're producing while you're at it.

Start planning and creating useful, engaging pieces of content that will actively encourage people to visit your site. Ensure that they will actually be beneficial to your users, and take this opportunity to improve your brand's image within its industry. Doing this should help to improve your user engagement, boost brand visibility and reputation, and help drive new yet relevant users to your site. It could even lead to a few people naturally linking back to your site without resorting to any dodgy or spammy tactics at all!

To get you started on ideas for onsite content, check out one of our older blog posts on the subject.

Try Something New
Ok, so you've improved your website; it's up-to-date, fresh, and useful. But, as ever, the challenge is getting people to click on it in the SERPs, and then guide them through to convert. So what else can you do?

Rich snippets. You've (hopefully) made your all meta data enticing and keyword-rich by now, so the next step is to make your pages stand out even more. Rich snippets are the answer! Whether it's showing your average review rating in stars, an image, or even a video, rich snippets are a great way to grab people's attention and get clicks. So look through your pages and think what you could add to make them jump out.
Following on from this comes Authorship. Images of the wonderful people who are writing all your website's great content is another good way to capture people's attention in the SERPs.
Next up, time for something crucial – load speed. If people click on your page they expect it to load almost instantaneously, so don't keep them waiting. The longer it takes for your site to load, the more likely it is that people will leave it. Additionally, Google has admitted that load speed also has small effect on rankings. So what are you waiting for? See if there are any major issues with your site-load time and, if there are, get to work! Even if there aren't, it's still worth seeing if there are any small things you can alter that will help to improve it.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

Finally, it might be time to try something a little different. Obviously, guest-posting used to have an added benefit of pushing your brand out there and raising awareness in those who had never heard of you before. So what can you do to replicate this without annoying Google?

First, you can try to start a company newsletter. Make it weekly, monthly, quarterly – as frequently as you like. Just ensure that you make it very easy for people to sign up, and encourage them to do so. It's a good way to push your brand out to people who may have been on your site but haven't yet converted. It's also a good way to bolster fresh onsite content.

Secondly, leverage the connections you do have. If people have reviewed you or your services, ask them for a link back. Alternatively, encourage satisfied customers to recommend you to others – you can simply ask, or provide incentives for them to do so, depending on budgetary restraints. Utilise those skills you developed outreaching all those spammy guest-posts and hone them into doing something much more beneficial (and debatably easier) – getting people who like you to talk about you online.
So there you are – a whole host of things that content and outreach specialists can do to improve your website and rankings in the post guest-blogging era. Have you got any other ideas for how to boost rankings without guest-posting? Or are you going to continue with blogging despite the warnings? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

The post The Future of Content: What To Do Now Guest-Posting Is Dead appeared first on White Noise.

Seth's Blog : Most of all, money is a story

Most of all, money is a story

Money's pretty new. Before that, we traded. My corn for your milk. The trade enriches both of us, and it's simple.

Money, of course, makes a whole bunch of other transactions possible. Maybe I don't need your milk, but I can take your money and use it to buy something I do need, from someone else. Very efficient, but also very abstract.

As we ceased to trade, we moved all of our transactions to the abstract world of money. And the thing about an abstract trade is that it happens over time, not all at once. So I trade you this tuition money today in exchange for degree in four years which might get me a better job in nine years. Not only is there risk involved, but who knows what the value of anything nine years from now is?

Because of the abstraction and time shift, we're constantly re-evaluating what money is worth. Five dollars to buy a snack box on an airplane is worth something very different than five dollars to buy a cup of coffee after a fancy meal, which is worth something different than five dollars in the grocery store. That's because we get to pretend that the five dollars in each situation is worth a different amount--because it's been shifted.

Most of the time, when we're buying non-commodity items, we're asking ourselves questions like:

How much pain am I in right now?
Do I deserve this?
What will happen to the price in an hour or a week? If it changes, will I feel smart or dumb?
What will my neighbors think?
Does it feel fair?
and, What sort of risks (positive and negative) are involved? (This is why eBay auctions don't work for the masses).

Pricing based on cost, then, makes no sense whatsoever. Cost isn't abstract, but value is.