5 Ways to Avoid Writers Block
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
But often coming up with ideas about what to write about is difficult. It’s not unlike the novel writer who has started a book but then sits down at their computer and then can’t think of a thing to say.
Welcome to the world of “writer’s block”. We all have it from time to time and while it might be difficult to get those wheels turning in your mind as to what to say, here are some tips to keep those wheels well-oiled:
1. Visit blogs that talk about your topic. Oftentimes you’ll find a topic on another blog that you hadn’t considered yourself. Take a look through their archives and see which topics are getting the most discussion. Jot down some ideas that you think may be interesting to your own readers and then use that as a springboard for your own ideas.
2. Check your email. You likely subscribe to other people’s newsletters within your industry. What kinds of information are they sending you? Are you interested in that information as well? If so, it’s likely your readers are too.
3. Visit Google. Visit Google and do a search for one of your keywords then take a look at the links that show up on the left hand side of the page. Here you will have the option of searching blogs, videos, and discussions on the term you searched on. Visit each of these to see if you can’t get a spark going as to what you can write about.
4. Visit your RSS Reader. Many people use RSS readers which help them to keep up to date on what other people are discussing online. A quick visit to your own RSS reader will give you a wide array of ideas that you can use on your own site.
5. Visit Article Directories. Most article directories have a section that showcases the most published articles within a certain area of expertise. Find out which of these articles have been published the most and then write your own take on that topic for your own site or newsletter. This is usually a great indication of what is popular right now.
Writer’s block affects everyone. But thankfully the Internet has provided us with a vast amount of resources that can help us break out of our slump by simply doing a little bit of investigation ourselves.
Force Google to Notice You
Filed under: Google, GooglePlus, Internet Marketing, Marketing Strategies
Back in mid-to-late 2010, I published a blog post that explained in detail about rel=author. Essentially, it’s an easy way for users to see your head shot when they do a search in Google.
Here’s an example. All I’ve done here is a search on “google rankings drop” and in this screenshot alone, there are two search results that stand out – why? Because they’ve added this little attribute, which is a single piece of code to their page.
Now, in order for you to accomplish the same thing, you’ll need to follow a few simple steps.
The first is you must create a Google profile – if you already use Google+, then you already have one.
Secondly, you’ll need to do one of two things in order for Google to recognize that you are the original author of a piece of content and that it’s tied to your Google profile. The first is covered in the original post located here, but the second alternative you have is new.
The newest option is to be sure that you have added your name and email address to any post that you have authored. Google states that this option is best for those sites who have multiple authors contributing to it. The email that you use on the content that you’ve authored should then be placed within your Google profile. Once you’ve done that, Google will send a verification email to that address.
Now, why is this all so important? Aside from the obvious that it makes the content you’ve authored stand out in the search results, Google has now added the number of people who follow you in Google+, gives you the ability to follow them in Google+, and even a way to view the comments on that post directly from the search results.
Additionally, they’ve added a way to see how often your content is showing up in the search results via their Webmaster Tools – another very nice, new addition.
Aside from the fact that Google continues to improve authorship, and respond to what authors would like to see, the whole bottom line is that authorship builds trust. Now, while it’s easy to assume that since this is tied so tightly to Google+, that you might believe that it’s just a “round about” kind of way to promote Google’s new social network and, you may be right, but the bottom line is, if you want Google to notice you, use their own suggestions and make yourself stand out!
Written by: Kristine Wirth
How to SEO Your Videos
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Traffic, Videos
It probably comes to no surprise to you that it’s important to use online video as a way to get your message across; whatever that message might be. Whether you’re marketing a product, want to create brand awareness, want to showcase what kinds of services your business offers, you need video.
Not using video as part of your overall marketing strategy means you are missing out on a whole lot of traffic.
Today, it’s very easy to create your own videos, whether you’re using a screen capture program like Camtasia Studio, you’re recording it from your smart-phone or just using the built-in webcam on your laptop. Creating the video is easy. What to do with it once your done is a whole other matter…
Here we’ll take a look at a few fundamentals you can use when creating your video and then we’ll talk about the pros and cons of hosting it on your own site versus posting it on video-sharing sites.
Video Creation Tips
- When you’re creating your video or writing your script, avoid talking about specific dates or times. Your video will likely be available for quite some time and you don’t want someone getting turned off thinking they’re watching something outdated.
- Also, don’t forget to add your website address, your logo, or any other important piece of information to your video as to how people can contact you. Some folks place their URL at the bottom of the video and leave it there for the duration of the video. TIP: Because ads typically appear at the bottom of a video while you’re viewing it on YouTube for example, the ad will cover up your website address so try placing it in a spot that will always be visible to the viewer.
- Your voice and any audio you have on the video should be very clear. At one point in time Google was testing something called “Google Audio Indexing” or GAudi. This was located in Google labs which is being phased out so I’m not certain where this product sits right now. However, they are using automatic captioning which attempts to ascertain what is being said in the video and then translates that into captions. The bottom line is, you’d be better off making sure any verbal content in the video is clear enough so that you can take advantage of this service. It wouldn’t hurt to also mention a few keywords here and there as well.
- At the end of the video be absolutely sure that you tell the viewer what you want them to do next. Sign up for your newsletter? Visit your website? Call you?
- When you save your video, give it a keyword-rich name. Video54879.mp4 doesn’t tell Google anything about the contents of that video. Finding-Cheap-Books.mp4 however, does.
Once you’ve covered these bases, what do you do now? One of the first questions to consider is “Should I host the video myself on my own site?” or “Should I post this video to YouTube?”
Hosting Your Own Videos
By far the biggest factor is how much bandwidth you have with your hosting account. Some hosting accounts limit how much bandwidth you can use each month and if you happen to go over that amount, you’ll get charged extra.
There are some companies like HostGator for example who don’t limit your bandwidth at all.
But if you’re not willing to completely change hosting companies, you might want to consider using a service such as Amazon’s S3 service. They offer a very cheap alternative which currently charges $.12 cents per gigabyte up to 10 terabytes per month. It’s not unusual to get a bill for say, $4.00. A great alternative if you are looking for way to personally host videos but don’t want to pay your hosting companies overage costs.
If you decide to host your own video (see the tip below about using both your own site and YouTube to utilize the most traffic possible), you’ll want to also make use of these SEO Tips:
Posting Your Video
When you post your video at sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, etc., you get the added benefit of being able to share your videos easily not to mention that it gets in front of more people than it would otherwise have the opportunity to do.
The biggest downsides to posting on a video sharing site as opposed to your own though is that the viewer will be exposed to advertising within your video, and you’re often limited as to how long your video can be.
It’s not uncommon however, for people to use both of these. For instance, posting a short video on a video sharing site which is considered the “teaser” video and then encouraging them to visit your own website where they can watch the rest.
What’s Next? Video Sitemaps
Videos (at least at the time of this writing) have to rely on metadata in order to get it listed properly in the search results. One great way to make sure this happens is to use an XML Video Sitemap. See the Google Help file on creating a Video Sitemap.
There’s also a way to combine all of your sitemaps such as html, mobile, video, etc. See this Google post for details.
Additionally…
If you decide to post to a video-sharing site, don’t forget to write a description for your video that makes use of the keywords you’re trying to target for that video.
Also, don’t forget to add your URL as close to the beginning of the description as possible and be absolutely certain that you include the “http://” portion, otherwise your link will not work.
