Tricks to Great Blog Posts - #seopodcast 155

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name's Chris Burris, owner of E-WebStyle. Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. How are you guys doing today? Wait, don't answer that. We can't hear you anyway. You are listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. This is podcast number 155. Last podcast is 154, and we have a tip from that podcast. Next, I don't even know why my tip says that. It's regarding web design, and it says make sure your CTA is prominent and easily understood. Yeah, great. That's one of the most important things with a CTA is that it has to be prominent, meaning it has to be easily accessible, can be seen, whether it's a mobile browser or a web browser, and also understandable. Let people know exactly what it is. Make sure it's clear, the action that you want people to take. And we think that just your number, phone number, prominent place, not good enough. We think call your number. Call for a white paper. Call for something. So make that CTA a little bit stronger. Yeah, you definitely want it to give people, the more impactful the CTA, the more likelihood people will actually take that action. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers, where our mantra is don't be a deuce. If you're near some sort of electronical device, electric device, some sort of social media device, go ahead and tweet right now. And you can tweet, or should tweet, hashtag SEOpodcast155. Make sure you tag us in it, at ewebstyle, that way we can link up networking and all the good things that come with being social. And now for our section, the algorithm cataclysm. Oh, that's good. That's good. We've got, there was another Panda refresh. They're calling it 3.8. It says, as always, that it will affect less than 1% of the sites that are out there and where, of the search results that are out there. 1% of Google searches worldwide. Worldwide. So, a lot. A whole bunch.

It says its intent was to release or capture sites that deserve it according to the algorithm. Re-injus went after they knew it would be. So, pretty cool. You missed on that. Wraps up our pataclysm. We can still do the news here. Google Goggles are out, right? 1,500 bucks. You can get some Google Goggles. I don't know how it's like, I'm sure they're not delivering today. Yeah. And it's not too far in the future. It says that these are for people who are on the leading, leading, cutting edge of technology. Yeah. I want one. Yeah, I need one. Somebody sponsor me a pair. Yeah. Make it two. Just two. We'll do any color. Blue. Yeah. I don't even know if they come in colors. We'll paint them. We'll be the first ones to paint them. We'll be like, I want it red. And it breaks everything. Use like lead paint. Now it can't get signal. One of the interesting things they did at the event that they were releasing the Google Goggles, they had people with the goggles on who were parachuting. They had people who were rappelling off the side of buildings. And in order to broadcast it live, they actually had to create their own networks, right? Their own Wi-Fi networks. They actually used military. To use. Yeah. Above 1,000 feet. There's no 3G. There's no 3G above 1,000 feet. And so they ended up using military-grade technology in order to create the network to support this event. Necessary to afford product launch. I thought that was pretty cool. That's awesome. It turns out Google Chrome is actually crashing MacBooks. I don't know if you've heard about that. There's something in Chrome that's actually causing what's called a kernel panic. And they say, well, blame it on the operating system. Software shouldn't be able to cause a kernel panic. And apparently a kernel panic is not as nice as it sounds. Because panic is like, ooh, you should be worried. Yeah. Kernel panic is almost blue screen. Right. You know what I'm saying? It

is. Yeah. It's like blue screen. It doesn't shut down the app. It actually requires a reboot. Yeah. I've had that. And I'm an avid Chrome user. That's why I'm sitting here with the blank stare on my face. Like, is that the reason why? But it hasn't happened in a while. Like, it happened, like, last year sometime. When I ended up having to get my, which will end up being a different issue. But I did have that kernel panic. And I was using Chrome. So. Yeah. Maybe it's a newer version or something. On our Facebook page. By the way, you can get to our Facebook page. Facebook.com slash. E-Wip Style. Or our Twitter page. Twitter.com slash. E-Wip Style. Or our YouTube page. YouTube.com slash. E-Wip Style. And you can send it. That's good. You can send us an email at. Podcast at E-Wip Style.com. Oh, I love the whole guy. You live podcast at E-Wip Style. And Eric Boyle's, on our Facebook page, he actually posted, hey, there's a new standalone podcast app that's coming out on Apple devices. So you can actually get an app that's focused specifically on podcasts. You don't have to go through iTunes or whatever. Hopefully, that'll help people find us easier. Yeah, I liked it. It was cool. So, what's really interesting, the number one iOS app right now, Google Chrome. Wow, and it's crashing. Well, it's crashing on the MacBooks, right? Yeah. So the iOS app is really for the mobile stuff. So, yeah. But that's pretty cool. Number one app. That's pretty cool, but it also kind of sucks. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's cool that Google Chrome, go Google, but it's not working across all Mac devices properly. Yeah. Apple. I mean, you guys can't do anything right. Clearly, as shown by your success. So we actually have three reviews. There are no tear tattoos today. And I thought, I'm going to read kind of the most endearing one last and kind of paraphrase it. Here we go. This is from UK. That's not his, he's actually

from the UK. Yeah, the UK. SEO tips. This is orange.octopus. Kind of a cool name. The title, the review reads, great entertainment, great knowledge building, great tips, bang up to date issues, discussions, and solutions. That's got to be like British phraseology. You will not regret listening to this, Oliver Wilde, the Sheffield Builder. And his website is asandow.co.uk. And he does ask us not to kick him in the shins. What are you talking about? Yeah, we punch you in the face. Dude, punch you in the face. Next, we've got top quality content and funny too. That's the title, Nicholas Greening. These guys give top quality, up to date content. And to top it all off, they are very easy to listen to and very funny. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. On all, that is very nice of you to say. Keep up the great work. Thanks, Nick. Actually, thank you, Nick. Yeah, punch in the face to you, Nick. Here's a good one. This is from, I really like, it's really long. I actually took a screenshot of it and posted it on our Facebook page. Again, that's facebook.com slash ewitha. So you can read this whole thing. It says, I appreciate your info and enjoy the show. It says, I'm very knowledgeable in the computing. And this is by Cath Moore. I'm very knowledgeable, fairly knowledgeable in the computer arena. But my experience was always with hardware and networking, right? So that kind of sets up the background. He's actually almost 53 years old. And because of heart attacks and numerous health issues, he goes into a lot of detail here. He's been on disability since 2005. He hates it. He's grateful that the country is supplying him a modest income. And he refuses to live like he's disabled. I think that's awesome. He loves photography. He's in Abilene, Texas. And he loves shooting. That's a good four from us. Yeah, just around the bend. Well, in Texas, that's three days away. To build a, so he's working to build a business shooting live

music and concert photography in Abilene, Texas. No one else is doing it. His point is... Because Abilene's kind of small. Yeah. There's not that much live concerts. He has to work to find them to go to it. His point is, saying all of this, is that people like you are willing to share information about what you do that allows people like him to have a shot at doing some really good things. Sympathy I don't need. Information and education that will give me a hand up. I can accept that. But thank you for doing what you do and for making it fun to listen to. You guys rock. Punch in the face. Put tiff. Put tiff. Don Hanson. Thank you. That's great. I actually... This is going to be up in our office for a while. Yeah, yeah. That's what's up. That's very cool. And finally, from Facebook, we got a question. First, it says, you guys rock. That's a great way to start so that we will actually answer your question. I want to include my keywords in my domain, but don't want it too long. What are the pros and cons of getting a shorter URL and direct it to the keyword domain? The idea is to brand shorter but have the longer for potential Google juice. I appreciate your help in advance. I'll be listening Friday. Well, two things. First one, with the Panda updates and all the recent changes, keyword-rich domain names aren't as impactful as they used to be. And so if you can get it and it's not that long and it's really a spinoff of the company name, great, fine, do it. But I wouldn't invest too much effort into trying to get the right keyword in your domain name because, frankly, that is just a minuscule percentage of the algorithm at this point. They have made changes to really kind of shuffle away from that. Great example, eWebStyle, SEO Houston, right? Yeah, we rank well for SEO Houston, and SEO is nowhere in our domain name. Right, so

it's not a necessity, and you would consider that a pretty competitive space. So there are other things to focus on. With our clients, I always talk about, okay, have the domain that kind of captures what you do quickly. That's actually very useful. Therefore, it's probably going to have the keywords. Keep it shorter, you know, so really kind of stilted conversation about what you do. And then potentially have an abbreviated version that you can use for email or give people over the phone that goes forwarded. So you don't have to write, you know, we make shelving for garages.com. You don't have to give that over the phone. You can say, you know, WSFG.com, and then have that forwarded to we make shelving for garages. You know, something along those lines so that on the phone it's easy to give out. On the card, it's easy to print on any other promo materials, easy to display. Basically, as long as anything that's online has the longer domain, right? And once you're online, it doesn't matter because it's just a click, right? So at the end of your email, you don't have the short one. You have the long one because that's, you know, especially if you're using Gmail, I promise you that's getting indexed. Yes, it is. And I would also say work think about branding. It may be in your best interest to get a domain name that has the company name in it just for the sake of branding because you can, as long as your site's optimized well and you're doing all the other 3,000 things correctly, then your site will still rank. And that way, your site will rank and your company name will be branded. And so I would almost say, yeah, if the keyword domain name is available and it's not, you know, stupid and long and crazy, then, yeah, get it. But if not, don't worry about it. Brand your company name. Yep. Cool. All right. Let's get into some more content. Yeah, so today I wanted to talk about

a little bit of social and a little bit of blogging because these both have a direct effect on SEO. If you're generating content where there's articles or posts or news events or whatever it is and you're publishing this content, chances are you are publishing it on your blog. You're probably dropping it in some newsletter somewhere. And hopefully you're Facebooking it and tweeting it and digging it and things like that. And so I was on Search Engine Journal, found an article that I had read the other day, actually. And I thought it was pretty cool. So I wanted to share with you guys. It's called Seven Foolproof Tactics to Write a Better Blog Post with Social Media. And this was pretty cool because I'm blogging a lot on my personal blog. And so I've actually followed some of these tips already. So I thought that was pretty cool. I like the fact that it says foolproof in the title. Yeah, anytime you can use the word foolproof, that means it applies to more people. Because there's a lot of fools out there. Didn't recognize that was the alternative meaning for foolproof. Okay, I thought it meant, can't mess this up. Right, even fools, it's foolproof. It's kind of like child proof. You got foolproof. Foolproof blog post. That would have been a better title right there. But we'll get into that. So tip number one, study your audience's words on social media. I think this is key when writing any post, any article, any content that you plan on publishing with the purpose of getting people back to your site. One could actually say this is a key word. Yes, definitely. A good example would be if we got the Olympics coming up, right? And so if the people in your social circles, your followers, your G plus circles, your Facebook friends, and this and that, if they're using a certain language or cheering for a certain team or pulling for a certain country, things like that, and you want to attack that sort of demographic

of people, then take the words that they're using and include those words in your post. Yeah. Because if they're using them, then they're probably searching for them. And if they're searching for them, you have a higher likelihood of showing up if it's in your post. So... Yeah, very, very salient for, you know, there are different regions. Like, I know there are nicknames for people from different countries in Latin America. So, like, Javier, who's here, works with, is from Honduras. They're called Catrachas. I know within Mexico City, they're called Chilangos. So, if you're, you know, targeting those particular areas, then you can actually use those names in your blog posts so that, you know, it comes up relevant. One of the things that really helps is it makes them feel good because you're actually aware of those things. And they may be searching them. Number two, find trending hashtags. And so, just like, you know, hashtag SEOpodcast155, that's our hashtag. You know, hopefully one of these days it'll start trending. Well, and it probably won't because it changes everywhere. Right. Maybe we should change that up. Maybe it should just be SEOpodcast each week. Maybe. We may be making a change. You know, maybe eWebSEopodcast. We have to somehow... Get us in it. Anyway, we'll work on that. We'll take that discussion offline. Yeah. It's called tabling that. Yeah. But anyway, find trending hashtags for whatever you're blogging about. You know, whatever your article is, see what's trending that's even similar to what you're talking about. And if it's close enough and if it's relatable enough, then include that in your post. If it's right on, you may want to include the hashtag in your title because you can search for hashtags on search engines and they not only pull up the Twitter posts that use those hashtags. They pull up anything that uses that hashtag. And so if it's in your post, if it's in your title, then you can show it there as well. So, tip number three, do interviews. Interviews are always good.

People love interviews. Yeah. Check. That's on our list. Yeah. Do interviews for two reasons. One, interview people. Especially if your industry, you know, has so-called specialists around and rock stars or whatnot. Interview them if you can. It may come at a cost, but it may be worth it. And also, not only interview people, but get interviewed if you can. That's how you get on a lot of different guest posts and things like that. So, if you were, let's say you were going to be interviewed, first write up, write your own post about the interview you're going to do discussing such and such topic with that trending hashtag, by the way, and then go do your interview. And on that interview, have them linked back to your post. And that way, your interview can help the post gain more people or people watch interviews, especially if it's a video. They tend to watch them. And we all know video helps ranking. And so, yeah, do some interviews. We did all of that recently with thebusinessmakers.com. They posted the video of that interview that we did. By the way, you can find that at thebusinessmakers.com. And I think we're in the archive now. We were on the front page for about a week. And when they first posted it, they had, you know, a link. I think they had a link to you and not to us, not to eWebStyle, because you as the SEO rapper. And then, you know, we just sent them a note. Hey, could you link here and here and use these keywords? And, you know, sometimes they'll say no. Sometimes they don't have time. In this case, actually, John Whiteside was very amiable, and he did it for us really quickly. So, you know, try and get those. In this case, we want a keyword anchor text coming back to us. And see, I took it a step further. After they did that, I took that same link. I wrote a small post about it, blogged about it, tweeted it, Facebooked it.

And so, that way, it was able to get shared some. So, yeah, interviews. Number four, avoid stock video and images. I think this is extremely important in regards to blog posts. And more so for the stock video. All blogs use images. Most of them are stock. Usually, they come from some sort of Google search. And so, you know, it makes the post look good. If you have an original image, by all means, use that because no one else has it. Right. But in regards to stock video, you know, stock video sucks because everybody's already seen it. Yeah. Unless it's an e-com site. Right. You know, if you're selling paper and Xerox has a video about the papermaking process or whatever, then use that video. Yeah. I mean, because you can't go and recreate that video anyway. Yeah. And so, in certain cases, stock video is okay. But usually, you know, use your own. If it's a personal blog, your media should be personal as well. Yeah. Use, number five, use Facebook Insights to get inside your reader's head. So, it goes without saying. You want to make sure that. Just for you, those of you who don't know, Facebook Insights is kind of the Google Analytics of Facebook. So, it gives you, you know, who's liking you and actually who's sharing it and talks about reach. So, how many people actually had that particular post or whatever that information was on their own wall or had access to it. So, it's some pretty good advice. Good information can be found there. Yeah. You can figure out, you know, what sort of posts do they post frequently, right? What do they always share? And then tailor your new blog post, your new article to fit that sort of criteria so they'll be encouraged to share it and repost it and things like that. Number six, tap into your frontline people, custom service reps, retail reps, things like that. This is a great idea, especially if you are a, let's say, a bigger company. Let's say, a

bigger corporation and you have lots of employees, tap into the personal brand of some of your frontline people. If you create a new blog post, let them tweet it. You retweet it. Let the company put it out and let them kind of send it to their own group of people who by default will probably be oriented to that same industry. And so, yeah, tap into your resources so the message can get shared a lot more frequently. But here's a great example of that. Sweden is turning over the at Sweden feed to a Swedish citizen every week as a way to promote. Stephen Colbert got wind of it, actually is now vying to have the Swedish tweet. And because he put them on air, they went from like 33,000 followers to 65,000 followers, and he's got some millions of followers. And now they're like responding to them. You're going to have to wait. One chick said, I finally have something Stephen Colbert can't get. Wow. That's pretty funny. But that's a great example. You're tapping into your frontline people. Yeah, tapping into the people who respect you. I mean, we do it here, right? So, like, for example, punch in the face to Bill and Aaron and the guys on our consistent group, Dean, Darren, you know, the people who watch. We use them for resources, you know, and that's our frontline. So, punch in the face to you guys. Yeah. Number seven, last one, remove jargon from your website. I think this is kind of suspect. Industry specific. Sometimes industry specific jargon may be exactly what you need if you're targeting, if you're B2B. Right. Right. If you're B2B, then, yeah, I'm targeting SEO. I'm not targeting search engine optimization. Right. Yeah. And so, I think, take that one with a grain of salt. Well, a good example might be if you're an air conditioning company, you shouldn't be out saying, we provide the best HVAC services around, right? Because no one's searching for HVAC, at least no consumers are searching for HVAC when they're

looking for an air conditioning service. So, that would be a good example. Now, if you're targeting. If you sell air conditioning parts to distributors and service providers, they actually may be looking up for HVAC. So, not only should you have air conditioning parts, you should also have HVAC parts. And other industry jargon, you know, we call it a compressor, but the industry term could be something else. Democulator. Yeah, democulator. We have the democulator plus. Yeah, you should use that. So, that was the top seven tips. I'll post that link on Facebook. But, I think anybody's out there who's blogging and really creating articles and posting them for the whole purpose of generating links and people to share it, then I think those are great tips and they should help. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. We got a, I think we got a little blank stare. Yeah, we got a little blank stare. Actually provided by somebody. Oh, I'm interrupting your blank stare. Sorry. Yeah, it was all the way blank. That blank, that was, that was one of those, I can't believe y'all did that blank stare. I'm appalled blank stare. This is actually provided by Bill Hamburg on our, on our Facebook page. Yeah, well, Facebook. So, Facebook changed your email address. And, you know, and I saw it, but I didn't, because I don't, because that don't concern me. But it does. And you, and you, and you, and all other 900 million plus users use Facebook. If you go into your account, and you click on your, and you click about page, look at your email address. I'll wait. No, I won't. Look at your email address, and it'll probably say, mine said mostseriousatfacebook.com. Right. They changed it from chuckatmostserious.com to mostseriousatfacebook. They didn't even give you Chuck? Yeah. So, they changed our profiles to an atfacebook.com email address. So, yeah, Facebook, you can't, you can't shove your email platform down my throat. I don't want it. I don't want to use it. And I'm changing it when I get it

back to my desk. Yeah, you can undo that. Just follow that same path that he just described and click edit, and then just change the information. Change it back to Chuck at mostseriousats. Everyone should put that. Yeah, I said, yeah, maybe, yeah. Use your own. Come up with something. Rewind. All right. You guys have been listening to the most popular SEO and internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because he's pointing you out. You over there. Somebody in Sweden who listens tweet about eWebStyle. That'd be really cool. Especially if you have access to the Swedish Twitter account. That would be very cool. I'm sure they're well above 66,000 now because of the publicity from Stephen Colbert. Actually, I want to go check it out. We just gave some more. Yeah. And we probably have listeners in Sweden. Yeah. We do. That's one of the countries. So, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the reviews. There were actually three, two. By the way, you do not realize what an absolute total pain in the butt it is to have reviews in different countries. Because now, it's easy to pay attention to one. Okay, I got 103 reviews. When it hits 104, I have a new one printed out. Now, I don't remember how many I had in the UK. So, if we've added one, I don't know. I don't remember when I read the last one. Yeah. So, I think one of them may have been a repeat today. They may need to improve that. Well, yeah. For how we can manage our own podcast, right? It's our podcast. Let us manage it simply. Anyway, in order to write a review, just go onto iTunes, create an account, and write that review. And then, if you choose to, send us an email, podcast at ediswebside.com. And let us know that you wrote the review, and we'll give you a little bit of link love and a punch in the face. Punch in the face. Thank you guys for listening.

Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Bye-bye for now.