KHML Podcast 2 | 9-16-22
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[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. I'm PIP from Seymour digital media. You're listening to know how marketing lab podcast. This podcast brings together different experts in marketing from our Facebook group, cyber punk geeks marketing mixer. Each week we get on here and we talk [00:00:20] about something. Search marketing, like Google.
Or SEO, social media marketing from Facebook to TikTok or website marketing. If you're a marketer or aspiring marketer, a business owner, or entrepreneur, this podcast for you, we're gonna share the best SEO search, social and website strategies. We share tips and [00:00:40] hacks, Google ad strategies what's going on in the current market.
Each week we discuss something exciting and awesome in marketing. And my name is Rena little from little works in media. And Greg is here. Greg, do you wanna introduce yourself? Hi everyone. I'm Greg from original [00:01:00] 72 creative. Awesome. And today's topic is blogging and we're gonna go through blogging, the whole thing about blogging.
And then next week we're gonna be talking about distribution. So this is a really great one to pay attention to. If you're interested in getting some bits and pieces about [00:01:20] blogging, that will get you to the next level in your marketing, because most people really just function in the way that they're trying to get information out to their.
And they focus on being the purveyor of information. And they're not really thinking about how the blog actually works in the world and with marketing and on [00:01:40] your WordPress site or whichever site you're using. So Greg, where are we starting again? I think one of the things at the very top was to think about creative and choosing the right topics and things.
So maybe we chat on. great. Okay. One of the things that I get back from my tutoring clients or [00:02:00] training clients is that when they sit down to write their blog articles, all of a sudden they hit blank. They don't really know what to write about. They don't know where to start. There's so much information.
And generally when I'm training people, I do get that feedback. They're always like, I don't know where to start. When you sit down and you organize your content calendar. That's [00:02:20] where all of your information's gonna pile out. You're gonna start organizing topics and you wanna organize them according to your different categories.
Perhaps you have different categories in your business that you could cover that would use different keywords. We wanna make sure we're getting a really good plan. Of [00:02:40] topics across time and across categories. So for example, if you're a marketing company, you don't wanna be focusing only on Facebook all the time.
You wanna make sure you're gonna hit some of those other topics like Twitter or or MailChimp or whatever other ways that you do business and can teach people. And [00:03:00] then what I do and what I recommend to people is. Dump have a dump spend about 30 minutes, brain dumping onto a piece of paper, write it all out and then organize your categories.
And if you are like me and things hit you, when you're in the world, say when I do my training, something will [00:03:20] come to me or someone will ask me a really great question that I hadn't thought about how to answer. And what I usually do is I keep a little record. I've got a notebook with. With a folder on my phone one of those notebook apps.
And generally I'll just jot down a couple of sentences to trigger my memory. Maybe I'll take a photo if it's about something [00:03:40] in the world, so that I have a photo to put with my blog post, and I'll just bank that. And then when you sit down in your organize your content calendar, which should be the next step, you want to make sure that you.
Pulling all of your best content. So stick to your best content [00:04:00] and your best content looks like something that's relevant to your topic, to your industry. Something that people haven't really been talking about too much, because you'll find that you will be offering something that's unique, something that's out there in the world already, but you have a different perspective or you disagree with, or you might have something to add to it, [00:04:20] those kinds of things, wherever you're gonna be able to add your own value.
I would say something that solves the problem or something that answers a question. Yes. Yeah. Yes, definitely. And that moves us into the second. So you've got all of your topics, what you wanna help your clients discover. And then you wanna make [00:04:40] sure that you're writing your blog article to answer those questions that people are gonna be putting into the search engine.
So not just many people think about solving in their clients problems, but you also wanna be solving problems for people who aren't yet your clients, that's the point, get them to your website so that perhaps you can do business with them. [00:05:00] So the creative, that's an interesting comment. I don't know if I've ever thought about it specifically that way, but coming at the article as someone who hasn't worked with you or is looking to work with you, what are the specific questions that they typically ask?
[00:05:20] And catering to those, because that will give you that much better SEO results in people who will be new clients, finding you. That's a great tip. Yeah. And you wanna make sure. And that's why I'm talking about with blog articles. You always wanna make sure that you're adding your own value. If you're taking somebody else's blog article and rewriting it, [00:05:40] technically that's plagiarism and not really a good look, especially if you're not CI citing, you can take pieces from other people's.
Paraphrase and sight. That's always good, but what the meat of the article should be are your own ideas, your secret sauce, whatever it is that you're adding to it. Otherwise what happens [00:06:00] from a user experience is if I'm asking a question, putting it out Putting it into the Google search engine. I'm gonna probably read the top three blog articles or articles.
And if they all say the exact same thing, I'm gonna be annoyed because that just tells me that it's the same stuff, regurgitated on every site. And nobody really likes that. [00:06:20] So that's really not a very good look. And the blog post that always gets my attention is the one that. Actually does solve the problem.
So they do that thing where they solve the problem. They sound like they know what they're doing and very confident they've organized it very easily for me. And three they've added their own bit that I'm not gonna get from anywhere [00:06:40] else. And that would make me want to reach out to that particular person, rather than any of the other blog articles I've read on the same topic.
And one of the things I've always struggled with for content related stuff, we're coming up with blogs, which is the main reason I don't have a blog for myself is [00:07:00] that I feel like everything's almost been said for the web development community. And when I see it online, I'm like why bother writing about that?
It's already been written about, it's just gonna be my point of view. Like what can I put a spin on it? Do you have. A suggestion of for people that they have a lot of content that's [00:07:20] similar to what's out there. Is there a, yeah. Do you feel there's a good way or, proper way of basically putting out the same information, but with a twist?
Yes. Yes. So that's really common, especially when you're doing. Educational pieces like how-tos for example. So the how-to is not really gonna change that much, really [00:07:40] from one writer to the next. But what's gonna change a lot or what can change is the why? So share your why do you do it like that?
Is there something that you like to do? That's slightly different than other people? So for example, if you're teaching people how to add your alt text to your photo, [00:08:00] including. The bit where you wanna change the name of the photo before you upload the photo. That's not part of the general how to that's a that's like pulling information from somewhere else or a different example might be, we do SEO people will recommend putting in alt text on photos [00:08:20] for SEO purpose.
But maybe you want to also add in the accessibility piece and then you can add examples. That's another way of adding in unique content, your examples or your case studies are in other ways of creating unique content, your opinions. those are unique content. If your [00:08:40] opinion is unique, all of that kind of stuff that can really add.
So instead of just a basic and you get that, actually it happens a lot on recipe blogs. If you see those, they have a really organized structure, particular structure. It doesn't really switch that much between blogs, where they tell Giant stories right before you get, and it's actually [00:09:00] annoying it, it does a couple of things.
It helps with SEO a little bit annoying. Yeah. It's annoying. You might not wanna do it to this extent, but what that does is it allows way more space to put ads on your page, which is primarily why they do it in particular. Cuz that's the only way that they're making money with their recipes. But perhaps what you wanna do [00:09:20] is.
Put in a little anecdote those blog posts, what they do is they put in the anecdotes, they put in the substitutions for you. They put in the things that they've noticed. Can you freeze it? Can you not phrase it? Can all of those kinds of details that are helpful, but not necessarily part of the general how to.
[00:09:40] So anecdotes are great and they only take a sentence or two generally, and you don't have to fill the page because generally if you're running a business blog, you're not putting other people's ads on your business blog, cuz that's not particularly great for branding. Yeah. And for the most part, those types of things, like they're trying to get [00:10:00] people to the site and keep them on the site.
So they have this big, long thing to have a longer page reading time and more space to get additional ads and things like that. Most people aren't gonna be, developing pieces for that purpose. No, it's more about the writing and what the, what you're [00:10:20] putting out there. And the media.
Yeah, and the media. So the other piece that I totally forgot to mention, which is important to put unique content up is video. So if you can get a video to accompany your blog post, generally, you don't want your blog post to be transcript of the video. You want the blog post to [00:10:40] recap what's in the video in a different way, saying it in a different way, like organizing.
Because on video, we tend to ramble. We don't always do full sentences, all that sort of stuff. So transcripts aren't particularly great experience for readers, a summary of what's been said then some additional information, [00:11:00] maybe a handy checklist, things that you can't put in a video are really great for blog posts.
And downloadables, if you really wanna provide good value for your reader. and you've got a checklist. It's nice when they wanna come back and do that checklist, but let's say they don't work that way. Let's say they're a little bit more old school. Maybe you wanna provide a [00:11:20] downloadable checklist so that they can print it off and use a pen as some people prefer.
That kind of thing. Think about all of your users and who you're targeting for me. I target a lot. Women solopreneurs who are not particularly tech savvy, or not confident in technology. And so therefore my blog [00:11:40] should have things that are going to satisfy the way that they're already working in addition to what I'm trying to get across spreadsheets, things like that.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's the kind of creative side of it, but we have a lot to cover in the technical side of it too. Don't. Yeah, we had, we talked about [00:12:00] the mechanics of writing as well as images and copyright. I think I'm just gonna go, I'm just gonna tick two of my approaches to writing the copy, because there really should be an entire workshop on how to write blog posts, but there are two tips that I think are the best, and that happens with the H [00:12:20] two tags, which are subheading.
Because you always want subheadings, H two takes in your blog posts. And we always think if you're, if you're an academic writer and you've, especially if you're in the social sciences or sciences, you're gonna have your title's gonna be introduction, then it's gonna be like something basic, like the five [00:12:40] key points.
and then it's, but it's not gonna say of what there's no, like major nouns in there. And then it'll say conclusion, but what we want really wanna do is to flip that around and be specific. So you really want to include your main points in your subtitles so that they become the answer to a question that someone's [00:13:00] gonna put into Google.
So for example, instead of putting the five top tips to. that's too broad. You might wanna say the five top tips to write creatively for your blog posts or for your audience, for, to write for. Yeah. You could write for social media newbies or something like that, make sure [00:13:20] that you're putting specifics in your age, two tags that are going to help you with your keywords that you're trying to rank for.
That's the first thing, the second thing is you're gonna want to proofread and the best way to proofread. If you don't have somebody to do it for you is to read it aloud because when you read it in your [00:13:40] head your eye and brain will correct. Your you'll correct. Your brain will correct the mistakes as you read it.
If, when you see those little things that go around on social media, when there are like no vowels in anything. And it says, if you can read this, you're the smartest person in the world. When actually pretty much everyone can do that. [00:14:00] So your brain is actually designed to do that. So don't read silently when you're proofreading read aloud, because then you will be able to your tongue will trip over the mistakes.
Want to know more about SEO. We've got a class for that. Our mission is to educate students about the [00:14:20] right tools, techniques, and strategies to grow their businesses. Using the most up to date search engine, marketing optimization, techniques and tools. Find out [email protected]. When I'm writing, sometimes I will skip complete words.
[00:14:40] Yes. Like I'm like I'm writing something and I'm thinking about what I'm writing and I know I thought it, but I didn't actually write the word, get it down. Yeah. exactly. Cause sometimes we're in a rush sometimes for whatever reason, our brain doesn't help us because it likes to fill in for us.
And that's exactly right. It's really hard. [00:15:00] Edit your own work. That takes a long time to develop that skill. I remember going through my own grief, trying to, trying to learn that skill and I don't know if I'm still successful at it, but I certainly can proof read other people's work, but yeah.
So definitely read it aloud. and read it in a normal reading voice. Don't [00:15:20] speed read. That's gonna, it's also gonna, because you do skip when you speed read anyways. Yeah. So those are the two things. And then we should really talk about, I know that PIP stone went on keyword research. So we'll probably link to that, cuz you're gonna want to actually make sure that you're doing your keyword research for your blog articles.
That'll really help you. And I generally write the outline of. [00:15:40] Blog. Yeah. And just at the same time that I know on that. Yeah. I would say going into it, you should know the keyword that you are going to be optimizing a specific post for definitely specific blog for the most part. Yeah.
So you might know the [00:16:00] short keyword, but you might not have settled on the long tail keyword at that particular minute, but you definitely want so, so for me, it's a push and pull. So I'll start with the short keyword. Then I'll start to build my, my foundation. So what the I'll build my outline.
And then all of a sudden it'll become super obvious who I'm writing it for. And then the long tail [00:16:20] keyword will present itself. And then that goes in this. And variations go throughout the H two tags and the alt text, all of that stuff. It goes in your MEAG, all those good places that we know to put our keywords.
And and that's really important. Oh. And there was one other thing about the building of the blog post that is [00:16:40] good to know. You really need to be familiar with copyright laws in terms of where you're getting your images from. Please. Absolutely be clear that you have the rights to images, even ones that are marked comments, copyright comments creative comments that they sometimes still have [00:17:00] the attribution requirements.
And if you're skipping the attribution requirements, there's actually, I think I've talked about this guy once already on alive here, but this guy in Europe, this is his own. His only way of making money is by catching people, mismanaging his photos and not putting the proper attribution. And he charges [00:17:20] people like, I think it's $900.
For the retroactive annual license and then you're hooped cause it costs way less to buy a photo. It costs way less. Absolutely. Please don't make that mistake be absolutely sure that you're doing it correctly. Better to take. Yeah. I've had a lot of [00:17:40] people caught with that, but I maybe over my 20 plus years I've had People, I believe who have had issues with with images, which I think that's pretty good over, over 20 years and only two of my clients have come across an issue or someone's contacted them about copyrighted [00:18:00] images.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, for me, it's been two also. And one was unnecessary. The other one was a company. Absolutely. Absolutely took the image. They just thought that they, if they found it on the web, that they could just, and it, they could actually physically download it, that it was theirs to [00:18:20] download.
So that's, I actually have a really great story about that, but it's probably a little bit too long for next time. I'll tell you off camera maybe. Yeah. All right. OK. So at, on images we should probably go through the basics of obviously naming your images [00:18:40] with your keywords in it, and obviously using the alt text to to describe the image as well.
Now I know the alt text of an image is really meant to describe what that image is. And I know a lot of SEO people basically. [00:19:00] Keyword stuff that instead of describing, do you have any comments on yes, I try and find a middle ground. So my idea is that if you can. If you can actually describe it with your keyword in it that's ideal.
But putting a whole bunch I actually just went through a site and they, [00:19:20] somebody put like Vancouver British Columbia on every single photo. just because they were really wanting to rank for local. And I don't even know. We'd have to ask PIP if that's helpful. I really don't think it is. I think, stick to what it's used for this prime function is.
Accessibility. So we wanna [00:19:40] make sure we're actually doing that, especially since there are so many rules. Now legislation is being passed in British Columbia and Ontario about accessibility and making sure that websites are accessible. So yes, definitely use accessibility as your number one, but number two, if you could try and stick a keyword in that's great, but number three, if [00:20:00] you.
Organized for accessibility, Google, actually, that's what Google wants right now. Google is really privileging websites that are organized for accessibility, and there is actually a BC grant to help you pay for the upgrades to get your website accessible. So there's, [00:20:20] that is still available for anyone that's interested.
So I actually think that keyword stuffing in alt text is becoming less and less relevant. we had a comment from Mona. She mentioned that she gets emails all the time. For her website and about the photo copyright INFR. Yeah. And [00:20:40] all of their imagery is their own. So their bogus, ah, yeah, that happens too.
That. With with one customer in particular and this customer, I actually did all of the photography on the site. Oh, funny. So whenever's funny. Something comes in. I'm like, yep. Disregard that. It's bullshit. Yeah. [00:21:00] oh yeah, you're fine. Yeah. There, there are so many fishing expeditions out there when it comes to copyright.
I, I haven't seen one for copyright, but when it comes to that also domain information lots. Lots of domain registration is another big one. Yeah, they'll try and get you, man. They just don't stop finding yeah. Ways to try [00:21:20] and mess you. let's move on to on page SEO. I know we already talked about images and stuff like that.
But some of the on page SEO and SEO tools we can mention, I guess I'll mention the ones that I've used most for allowing SEO on the site are [00:21:40] Yost, which probably most people know about. Has been big for a long time. But rank math, which is the one that I'm currently using. Okay. Both of those and there are others, but those are two that can be used to help you optimize your blog with everything you need to do on [00:22:00] the site.
Maybe we'll go through some of the major on page SEO things. Yeah, that definitely need to be looked at for a block. Sure. So your title, should I have your keyword? You have to have H two tags. You want the alt text, you want an internal link. You want an [00:22:20] external link. You wanna have a decent amount of content, so not thin content.
And I recommend having a featured image, although I don't think that has anything to do with SEO, but it really helps when you're sharing your link outwards. Distributing. We'll talk about that next week. Oh, and your MEAG, which will become the [00:22:40] little description underneath the name of your page on Google search results.
I think it's called a C. So those are the basics. Yeah. One of the other things I had mentioned and had come across as a technique to get links or anchors as they would be called there a [00:23:00] link, it can be an external link, an internal link or. A link to something on that specific page, which is referred to as an anchor but adding a table of contents at the top of your blog can get those links that will shoot you down the article directly to. Where [00:23:20] it's answering that question. And that sounds great. Those are very good for for blogs, not only for being able to get to your, the content that the reader's interested in most right away.
But also for getting those anchor questions in a link that will go down to that section of the. Yeah, that sounds really great. That sounds great for user [00:23:40] experience. Sometimes we don't want the entire blog post. We just want our question answered, but also please only use that if you're writing long blogs so maybe 750 plus words.
Otherwise it's just annoying, which I would say most blogs, you should be trying to get at [00:24:00] least over 600 words. I don't know, or it to, I don't know about that really be well, I think to really be worthwhile in, in ranking and get an, your keyword density on there, you should probably be over 600 for sure.
For biggest impact. I would say, I think there are lots of ways around that. If you've got video, you certainly don't [00:24:20] need that much content. If you're hitting, if you're hitting a really niche if. Nicheing down your topics. Super narrow then small blog posts can rank very easily with long tail keywords.
And I reco I think that long tail keyword strategy is. A great strategy to go with and [00:24:40] and being super specific. So instead of writing all the things about the one topic, you get your topic as it's your topic, that's going to be more narrow. I wish I could. I'll come up with an example in the comments below for somebody to show the difference between a general blog topic and an, and a narrow blog topic, but it's like [00:25:00] really narrowing down your thesis if you've ever done any academic.
It's a really narrow sliver of the pie of the whole topic pie. . Yeah. But yeah, generally you definitely wanna be over 350 words. That's a minimum for sure. I like to bracket between 350 and. Like around [00:25:20] 500 and then anything between 500 and a thousand. And or if you're doing a really big one, because sometimes you wanna make a series out of it instead of one giant long one, even if it does rank and you're right, that's good.
If you're doing a super long one then that's where the table of contents is perfect. It just works perfectly. But I always think of that as lost [00:25:40] opportunity because you really have five long tail keywords in that one blog. So they could actually rank separately. If you do separate ones, you can as you post the subsequent blogs, you can interlink all of them to like, that's right.
Get that going as well. Yeah. [00:26:00] We're about time to wrap up and it's probably good because those were all of the points we've already gone through in our oh, great. In our list. So we hit everything. We scheduled today. Excellent. All right. So join us next week. If you're watching this from another channel we are found in the [00:26:20] cyberpunk geek peak marketing mixer in Facebook, is it.
Yes. I know it's a mouthful. I never get it. I feel like such a moron. So that's where we actually are. So you can join us there. If you wanna ask us questions during the week, otherwise you can join us next week for the second part of the blogging, which is going to be distribution. [00:26:40] So now that you've written your blog, you've got it all up.
You've done up all the beautiful SEO. How do you get it out into the world distribution? Join us next week. And that's a topic with you and phon. So everybody. Yes, it is. That's joining. All right. See you next week. Have a great week, everyone. Thanks everyone. Bye.[00:27:00]
The conversation never stops in our Facebook group. Cyber punk geeks. Join us at facebook.com/groups/cyber punk geeks. To ask your questions, meet new friends, and learn even more about search, social and websites.[00:27:20]
