Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be an excellent middle ground. It helps you make more content without hiring an entire team with far more expensive fees.

That said, is it really suitable for your content marketing strategy? Are there problems you might run into? And finally, is it even effective?

Why Would You Use AI for Content Marketing?

Content marketing continues to yield significant ROI for a lot of websites. However, you can’t just make whatever you want and expect immediate results. To generate the most ROI, you need to consistently produce high-quality content.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy feat. High-quality content isn’t easy to make, after all. As a result, content marketers can’t produce as much content as they want. Hence, many marketers hire content writers and site managers to increase content production.

Big companies might have an entire team of editors, researchers, and writers to ensure they’re publishing new content multiple times a day. If you’re new to SEO or a small business, you might be unable to keep up with your competition.

AI content creation tools can make long-form blog posts from scratch. In most cases, you only need to provide a title, list some keywords, and do a few tweaks to get an instant 1000-word blog post. For small content marketing operations, this seems like a great way to compete with bigger companies.

The Potential Problems With AI Content Creation

Google is cracking down on AI-generated content. As a result, several websites that used to do well in the past couple of years stopped getting traffic altogether. Google has essentially punished AI content to clean up the SERPs.

Remember, Google prioritizes the end user. Therefore, they want searchers to find high-quality and relevant content. AI-generated content tends to be robotic, stiff, or outright plagiarism. Bot-generated content tends to be less coherent (as opposed to ones written by real content writers), so Google wants to avoid it altogether.

Even the most expensive AI content tools occasionally create nonsensical, outdated, or irrelevant text. Sometimes, the generated content isn’t even relevant to the title and keywords you input. So, if you’re not careful, you might post gibberish content that none of the end users will appreciate.

Can You Still Leverage AI for Content Marketing?

Surprisingly, yes.

Despite all the negative things I’ve mentioned, there is a way to use AI content generators to streamline your content creation. However, you still can’t rely on AI content tools to create content from scratch. You’ll still get penalties if you use a generator, copy-paste the result, and publish it without a second glance.

Instead, you can use AI content tools to help you make better content. Here are some ideas on how to incorporate them into your content creation strategy:

• Get content ideas. If you’re running out of ideas, AI content tools can suggest titles, keywords, and talking points for you to expound on.
• Use it as an outlining tool. Instead of letting the AI generator do all the work, just generate an outline with potential talking points. You can add and remove points from the outline as you see fit. This will reduce the time you need to research a topic.
• Add a “human touch” to your AI-generated content. Google can detect nonsensical, almost robotic sentences in AI-generated content. To avoid the penalties, you can use your AI tools to generate a draft and thoroughly do edits. Here, you can write more conversational phrases, use a relaxed tone, and add realistic examples.

Do note that you still need to invest significant time and effort into making AI content less spammy and robotic. In this case, your AI content tools are no longer used for instant, copy-paste content. Instead, it’s now an additional tool to improve and streamline your creation process.

Should You Purchase an AI Content Generator?

You can, but you must understand the possible risks of posting unedited AI-generated content. If you’re a small business looking to invest in content marketing tools, a good word processor, grammar tool, or plagiarism checker might be a better first option.

If you already have all the basics, you can consider getting an AI content tool to boost your creation process.

That said, Google still prioritizes content that appeals to real people using the searches. So, it would be best if you were very careful about your use of AI.

You can’t let it churn out content for you. Otherwise, your site might suffer from penalties and lost traffic.

The post Should You Use AI for Content Marketing? appeared first on SiteProNews.

In short, you should apply digital marketing tactics that fit your goals, target audiences, and industry. SEO experts continuously manage, audit, and improve every aspect of a website or blog to ensure consistent ROI. Sometimes, it takes a few changes to get the right keywords, design, and structure to climb up the SERPs.

If you have an underperforming blog, you likely didn’t make the best choice somewhere in your implementation. The key is to audit your underperforming blog posts, look at the data, and spot the aspects you can improve.

Remember, you don’t have to delete or replace a blog post. You just have to revamp the content and SEO to start getting more out of them.

Here are a few easy optimizations you can do to boost an underperforming blog post:

1. Do a New Run of Keyword Research

Keyword rankings depend on how audiences conduct their searches. Hence, new keywords may appear, and high-volume ones fall off. That’s why it’s best to regularly perform a fresh run of keyword research every so often, so you can replace and optimize for new and more desirable keywords.

That said, changing search volumes isn’t the only reason to reoptimize your keywords. In some cases, it isn’t the search volume that’s the problem but the relevance of the keywords with the blog post’s content.

This can happen when the blog post’s topic and discussions aren’t relevant to the chosen keywords. Search engine algorithms aim to deliver the best, most relevant, and most informative content to the searchers. So even if you’ve strategically chosen a high-volume keyword, an irrelevant blog post isn’t going to get as much traffic or conversions.

2. Compare the Data With Your Best-Performing Blog Posts

If a few of your blog posts are getting less traffic than others, look at your best-performing posts and see what others are missing.

That said, there could be many reasons one is doing better than others. You can start by looking at and comparing the following:

• Writing style (tone, language, niche slang, etc.)
• Click-through rates
• Bounce rates
• Word count
• Formatting (font styles, text size, sectionings, headings, etc.)
• Images and videos
• Audience targeting (who you’re writing for)
• Keywords (search volumes, relevance, stuffing, cannibalization, etc.)
• Promotion (social media, email lists, newsletters, and so on)
• Backlinks
• Internal and external links
• General content quality (Is one more complete or informative than the other?)

As many factors are at play, you want to be thorough with your auditing. You can use tools like Google Search Console to get as much data on your blog as possible, allowing you to better analyze and compare the differences.

As a general tip, if one of your blog posts are doing way better than the rest, you should use it as a reference for how to make new content and reoptimize old ones.

3. Update Outdated Information

Outdated information is a one-way ticket to falling off the SERP rankings. People have little to no use for them, so a blog riddled with them will be ignored by search engines and audiences alike.

New laws, trends, technology, and products can affect your niche. For example, a new law might change a few legal processes in your state, so you should update your legal guides accordingly. Likewise, a new software update means it’s time to add new information to your tech posts.

If your competition publishes more relevant and timely in formation, they’ll eventually overtake you in the SERPs. So updating your older posts should be done even before they start to fall off. This way, you won’t have to wait for site crawlers to pick up on the changes made after slipping down the rankings.

4. Pay Attention to Formatting and Design

If people can’t properly consume your blog post, it won’t matter how good the actual text is. Blog posts that are hard to read and difficult to understand aren’t going to keep site visitors on your page. Likewise, you don’t want your website to be buggy, slow, or user-unfriendly.

So, pay attention to the following:

• Site speed or loading times
• Color schemes
• Navigation and menus
• Links and anchor texts
• Text style, size, and color
• Headings and lists

Basically, website optimization can affect the consumption of your content. You want to make it easy for people to read your blogs and explore your website.

5. Promote Your Underperforming Blog Posts

Some blog posts need a head start. Directing traffic into newly-optimized posts is a great way to get things going. You can do this for posts with newly-updated information, high-quality posts that fell off, and older posts that might be relevant to your newest content.

So, link and promote them on your social media, newsletters, and email drips. You can also add links to older posts to newer ones, as long as they’re relevant and can be incorporated into appropriate anchor texts.

The post How to Reoptimize Underperforming Blog Posts appeared first on SiteProNews.

Why Should Your Business Perform Customer Research?

Customer research is a crucial aspect of digital marketing and product creation. Delivering content and products your target audience wants is a great way to generate interest and boost conversions.

For example, if you make products for teenagers ages 14-17, your ads, content, or product design needs to reflect that. Likewise, your marketing tactics will change if you want to target working parents in their 30s-40s. In other words, you want your product and company to be as attractive to your target marketing as possible.

This isn’t just a corporate tactic that only big companies use. Small businesses can get themselves off the ground by doing simple research and optimizing their digital marketing strategies. Doing so can improve your branding, language, tone, content creation, offers, and SEO keywords.

How To Conduct Customer Research and Get Quality Data

So, how do you get to know your audience? Here are a few easy ways to do customer research:

1. Look Up Demographic Data

The simplest way to do customer research is by looking at the average characteristics of your target demographics. For example, if your target market is young adults ages 18-30, you should look into trends, products, language, imagery, and content they prefer. If you’re looking for younger consumers, you might want to market on platforms they frequent or work with celebrities they follow.

Additionally, you might be targeting multiple demographic groups at once. For example, you could target young adults who also have certain hobbies or work in a specific industry.

So, identify your target demographic and do some research on them. You don’t have to conduct surveys or collect data to do this. Instead, you could quickly look up research and articles to get the needed information. Statistics, studies, and trend reports are widely available online.

2. Use Simple Surveys

You can use surveys to gauge customer satisfaction. Video game developers always use this tactic, allowing them to get feedback through a Feedback button and help them identify potential problems that need to be solved.

This strategy can also be used to identify a demand for a specific product. For example, if you’re unsure about adding a new product to your store, you can ask about people’s opinions on them. Ask them what they think about it, what they want, and how much they want it to be in your shop.

Surveys can be delivered through landing page offers, email list subscriptions, pop-ups, and social media posts. In addition, some marketers will offer benefits for taking the survey (i.e., free in-game credits, access to more content, etc.).

3. Review Customer Care Data

People have questions, concerns, and complaints. Whether you have a fully-functioning customer care team or handle the email inquiries, you will have access to some of this data. When you note these inquiries, you’ll be able to identify common service problems, questions, and product complaints.

This data can be used in several ways:

• The most common questions can be addressed in an FAQ. This can reduce repeated email inquiries about the same thing.
• Problems and complaints about your services can be used to improve production, delivery, distribution, etc.
• Product complaints can help you address issues like defects, design, and manufacturing problems.

More importantly, you want to identify what your target market has to say about your products and services. After all, everyone can complain or give suggestions, but your customer’s opinions and experiences are the most crucial.

4. Check Sales Data

Current sales are a great reference to which products your customers prefer. Launching a new product that doesn’t perform as well suggests that there might be problems with the marketing or product itself.

If you’re only selling one product, you can still take previous sales data and use them to identify trends. For example, you might sell more after running paid ads.

That said, sales alone don’t provide all the information you need about customer preference. So, make sure you’re cross-referencing that data with customer support data, reviews, surveys, and demographic studies.

Bottom-line

Knowing who you’re selling to helps you optimize your marketing strategies. Researching your target markets will enable you to write more appealing blogs, plan more effective marketing campaigns, and create better products.

The post 4 Easy Customer Research Strategies For Small Businesses appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, knowledge is power, and knowing what you’re up against can enable you to take the appropriate steps to protect your company. This has become especially crucial in a time where eCommerce and digital marketing have become a staple in doing business of all kinds.

This post will talk about the most common security vulnerabilities, so you’ll recognize red flags to avoid or spot them before they cause any damage.

1. Phishing

Phishing scams are the most dangerous and widespread threat to small company websites. 90 percent of all security breaches that organizations face are caused by phishing. Not to mention, it affects even vulnerable individuals that have no huge businesses.

Phishing attacks have existed since the internet’s inception. They occur when a hacker poses as a trustworthy contact and entices victims to provide personal information. Remember when someone sent emails about an inheritance they wanted to share with you?

However, these days phishing is becoming harder to spot. Some scammers will try to replicate official emails and layouts from banks, social media, and Amazon accounts.

The best approach to prevent these attacks is to train your personnel to be on the lookout for them. Some of these emails might try to pretend they’re your company’s bank, a member of the board, or a hosting site where you run your website.

2. Malware

Malware is a harmful program that is designed to harm and infect a computer system. The malware carries a wide range of website security hazards, from adware to infections.

A web server infected with malware might be exposed to information theft, privacy attacks, and website hijacking. Make sure you avoid shady emails, suspicious ads, and malware-flagged websites.

3. Ransomware

Cyberattacks, including ransomware, are also common security vulnerabilities. In a ransomware attack, the software prevents you from accessing sensitive data unless you pay the hackers money. These hacks happen on a daily basis to a wide range of businesses.

You may, however, prevent attacks by keeping your systems up to date and employing high-quality site security software. Also, backup your company data and use caution while opening new files on a computer. Before you may open a file, your anti-virus software must validate its contents.

4. Vulnerabilities in Passwords

Many hackers can crack passwords or use programs to attempt different combinations until they gain access to your devices and websites. They also employ keylogging to gain access to user accounts in other circumstances.

A computer user’s keystrokes are logged using keylogging software. It then sends a message to the cybercriminals who installed the dangerous program. To protect your website against this, take the following steps:

• Creating a strong and unique password
• Require users to reset their passwords on a regular basis
• Verifying user access with two-factor authentication
• Never use your login or personal information as a password

Hackers might swiftly gain access to your system if your website does not have sufficient password protection.

If your website allows customers to sign in, make sure to apply these steps and constantly impose these reminders. For example, some websites will require their users to create strong passwords with capitalization variety, special symbols, and numbers upon sign up. You can also regularly remind them to change their passwords every now and again.

5. Vulnerabilities in Cross-Site Scripting

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a different type of security vulnerability in website design. When JavaScript codes are added to a website, they can target and tamper with client scripts, resulting in XSS.

Users’ sessions are hijacked by these scripts when they utilize a website’s search function or leave comments. As a result, it has the potential to smear the website and redirect users to a website that may steal their personal information. Utilize HTTP, use suitable headers, filter your input on arrival, and use Content Security Policy to avoid this.

Bottom-line

Business has migrated and evolved to adjust to the changes brought by the internet. This means new problems and vulnerabilities, which you should already be looking out for.

So, as your business grows, make sure your data, websites, and your customer’s data are safe from malicious entities.

The post Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities You Need To Address ASAP appeared first on SiteProNews.

SEO-wise, About Us pages are among the most visited web pages after the homepage. For example, when someone finds your website through blogs, social media posts, product placements, and ads, one of the first things they’ll do is find information about your company. They might want to know who you are, what you do, and who your target audience is.

That said, About Us pages are often an overlooked marketing opportunity. Some companies will only put very basic things like their company name, contact details, and a bland one-line description. Instead of contributing to your marketing strategy, an unoptimized About Us page can feel like an unnecessary filler page.

To get the most out of your About Us page, you need to ensure its content and design push a potential customer towards making a purchase. So, here are a few tips to help you build an About Us page that actually helps your marketing and SEO:

1. Show Off Your Brand Goal

In branding, brand goals are non-financial or marketing goals that describe your brand motivations, culture, and products. Sure, you want to sell, but there should be other objectives that drive your company forward.

Brand goals are part of a larger branding strategy that creates your company’s identity. They can be indicative of your intentions, planning, and target audience. For example, your company could be a women-owned and run company that wants to create products made for and by women. Likewise, you can also focus on using innovative ideas and technologies to push traditional industries forward.

In highly-competitive markets, branding can be the only thing that differentiates you from the competition. You want people to choose your products over other slightly similar ones because you have the right motivations. You’ll want your target audience to know that your products are specifically made and marketed to them, unlike the other options currently on the market.

2. Incorporate Company Formation and History

Much like how older and more established brands often market their legacy, giving a peek at how your company has formed and evolved is also a great addition to About Us pages.

For example, think of how Apple’s company history is presented as a marketing strategy. It’s a company started by three friends, built their first computer in a garage and succeeded through the brilliance of their ideas. Apple’s company history is often used to emphasize its push for innovation and triumphed despite its humble beginnings.

Like brand goals, company histories are a great way to show how far you’ve come since founding a company. That said, you don’t have to include every single detail of your company history. Instead, you want to choose the most important parts that contribute to your branding.

3. Introduce Some Key People

Instead of vaguely alluding to having experts and experienced teams, introduce them! Have brief bios with their names, titles, and achievements. Instead of claiming to work with experts, you can show off your team and what they’re capable of.

That said, you don’t have to write long bios for each key person or team. Instead, you can just add a photo of them for social proof or display their full names so people can quickly look them up on LinkedIn.

4. Create a Separate Contact Us Page

Some websites include all company information on About Us pages, including their contact information. However, this might pose problems with user intent.

When people are looking for contact information, they’re not looking to read about your company or your employees. More importantly, when people are looking for your contact information, they’re likely intending to inquire or are looking for your store address. So, don’t make it hard for them to find this information.

Instead, have a separate Contact Us page that has your address, phone numbers, and email addresses. You can also add a contact form like most sites to make the email process faster.

5. Don’t Forget Your CTAs!

Again, you want your About Us page to contribute to the customer journey. After building trust through the content on your page, make sure there are Calls-To-Action (CTAs) to guide people into taking the next step.

A good About Us page is filled with a bunch of impressive information that boosts your brand reputation and marketing. However, people don’t always know what to do after being presented with useful information.

CTAs are short, encouraging statements that urge site visitors to take a certain action. For example, you can add CTAs asking people to subscribe to your email lists, read your blogs, or go to your shop.

The post 5 Tips On Building a Great “About Us” Page appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, getting published in high-traffic and high-authority blogs isn’t that easy. Since they’ll be publishing your posts as content on their own website, all blogs that allow guest posts will screen every application and submission. They’ll want content that fits their blog, audience, and content strategy.

So, if you want to be a guest author, you’d need to prove your skills, experience, and credibility. One way to do so is to write an excellent manuscript.

Why You Need a Great Manuscript

It’s important to note that not all guest posting sites accept upfront manuscripts. High-ranking sites like to ensure they get high-quality content by prioritizing a guest author’s CV. Therefore, they usually won’t accept manuscripts until you’ve given them a list of previous guest posts, your experience, and your achievements.

Luckily, not every guest posting site does this. Many blogs welcome finished manuscripts and publish them based on the quality of the writing alone.

That said, although your experience and credibility are important factors, the real crux of getting a guest post published is the quality of the manuscript. Editors will always reject poorly-written manuscripts, even if they’re from a pre-approved guest poster.

Tips on Writing the Best Guest Post

Basic writing skill isn’t the only factor in getting a manuscript published. Most blogs and publications that welcome guest posts likely already have an impressive backlog of content. So, your manuscript needs to be high-quality and unique on all fronts.

Here are a few tips to help you brainstorm and write the perfect manuscript:

1. Look for Content Gaps

High-authority blogs know and follow basic content marketing and SEO guidelines. This means they’re not going to keep publishing similar content and repeat main keywords. Doing so might cause keyword cannibalization or affect their domain authority. Audiences also don’t appreciate repetitive content, so topics that have already been done before will likely be rejected.

So, while you brainstorm possible topic ideas, be sure to check if they’ve already been covered. As most blogs require anywhere from 500 to 2000 words per manuscript, avoiding topics that are sure to get rejected will save you a lot of time.

2. Read the Guidelines

Most websites that accept guest posts will have a “Write For Us” or “Guest Blogging” page. This is where they’ll post information about guest post submissions and other requirements.

For blogs that welcome upfront manuscripts, they’re going to have an exhaustive list of what they want from aspiring guest writers. These guidelines could include:

• Accepted topics
• Minimum and maximum word requirements
• Desired writing tone and style
• Accepted document formats (i.e., Docx, Google docs, ODT, etc.)
• Required information (i.e., author’s experience, links to previous guest posts, company links, etc.)
• Required attachments (i.e., author’s headshot, images, etc.)

Some editors will even leave special conditions like “include the word “firetruck” somewhere in the email” and won’t entertain your pitch when you don’t follow it. Special requirements like these are to make sure you read the guidelines before submitting your manuscript.

The whole point of guest post guidelines is to make sure the editors are getting submissions that are fit for their blog. They’re looking for guest posts that match their content and SEO strategy. Since different companies have different strategies, you need to make sure you’re writing specifically for the blog you want to get published on.

For example, a tech blog isn’t going to publish a blog from a gardening business because it’s irrelevant to its content and keywords. Likewise, blogs that regularly post 4000-word articles won’t accept anything shorter than that.

3. Write for the Host’s Audience

Different blogs cater to different audiences. Some audiences appreciate a laid-back and digestible tone, while others prefer a more authoritative and knowledgeable style. Some audiences are more knowledgeable than others, so the desired wording, vocabulary, and topics will differ from blog to blog.

More importantly, editors will always cater to their audience, not yours.

For example, if you’re dealing with an audience of marketers, SEO experts, and industry authorities, your content needs to match their level of knowledge. In this case, “How To Do Keyword Research” or similar beginner-level topics will not fit the audience’s need.

Similarly, if you’re writing for a blog that caters to small business owners, SEO newbies, and fledgling marketers, submitting a manuscript with niche slang and expert-level marketing concepts will be too much for the audience’s level of expertise.

4. Proofread Your Manuscripts

The secret to getting a guest post published quickly is to make sure the editors have as little work to do as possible. For popular guest posting sites, their editors might be getting hundreds of manuscripts a week, so they’ll immediately ignore anything irrelevant or poorly written.

Additionally, you also need to check for plagiarism. Even when you didn’t intend to use the exact same words as someone else, search engines will still take high-plagiarism ratings as an unfavorable SEO signal. Editors will check for this, too, so make sure you’ve run your manuscript through plagiarism checkers before submitting them.

That being said, don’t rush your writing process. You need to put in enough time to research, write, and look for spelling and grammatical errors. Remember, if the editors are already getting a lot of submissions, rejecting a few poorly-written manuscripts isn’t going to affect them.

Bottom-Line

Guest posting isn’t just about your knowledge or writing skill. You also need to consider the blog you want to get published on, their previous content, and their audience. The general theme is that guest post manuscripts should cater to the accepting blog; otherwise, they will get rejected.

So, before you even brainstorm topic ideas and do research, make sure you know who you’re writing for.

The post How to Write the Best Guest Post Manuscript appeared first on SiteProNews.

That said, what’s in it for the host? Should you allow guest posts on your blog?

How Does Guest Blogging Benefit the Host Site?

The common practice of guest blogging is a system of equivalent exchange: You submit high-quality and original content to another site, and you get a backlink in return.

The one who submits content gets a quality backlink and exposure to the host site’s audience, while the host site gets fresh and original content.

Allowing guest posts can have other advantages, such as:

• It’s an opportunity to publish content from other industry and niche experts.
• You can provide your audience with a different perspective.
• You can build a relationship with other reputable sites and companies.
• You reduce the content you have to create for your blog.

In some cases, bloggers open for guest post submissions when they encounter changes that can potentially affect their writing schedules, like a company expansion, a rebrand, or traveling.

Why Do You Need to Screen Submissions?

If you’ve pitched a few ideas and manuscripts before, you might notice that some sites are quite strict with their submissions.

That’s because host sites also stand to lose and gain something from the exchange.

In most cases, allowing guest posts will get you a lot of submissions. Since it’s a well-known SEO strategy, people are always looking for sites willing to host content and give them backlinks. However, not all of those submissions will be high-quality, original, or relevant to your blog’s theme or content. Additionally, not every author is going to be qualified.

Remember, content and backlink quality are SEO ranking factors. This means hosts can’t publish low-quality content and link to low-quality sites. So you can’t just accept every submission that comes through.

This means you need to look out for two crucial things:

1. Submission Quality

The guest post itself should be high-quality. It needs to be relevant, original, well-written, and proofread. It needs to be free of rookie errors like spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

2. Backlink Quality

Since you’re getting content, you need to give backlinks in return. However, you don’t want to link to low-quality sites. Watch out for spam, duplicates, and plagiarized content.

3 Ways to Screen Your Guest Post Submissions

When it comes to submissions, you must have a system to check the content, the author, and their website.

Here are some tips to help you create a streamlined and effective screening process:

1. Have A Clear Guest Post Guideline

Screening guest posts can be a lot of work, but it’s only the first step to publishing guest posts. You still need to review, edit, and reformat them before they go live on your blog. However, restricting possible irrelevant content from the start should help reduce the emails and submissions you have to go through.

Since guest posts are a viable marketing tool, a lot of people are eager to get their manuscripts published. However, you don’t want to get gardening and maintenance articles clogging your emails if you’re running a digital marketing blog.

So, be clear about what you want from guest blogs and make sure they’re accessible through your website.

Here are a few crucial things you need to include in your guidelines:

• Allowable topics, themes, and content
• Minimum and maximum word count
• Acceptable document files (i.e., .docx, HTML, etc.)
• Desired writing styles (i.e., the tone, formatting, and delivery of your ideal submission)
• Details you want to be included in the pitch (i.e., author details, links, previous work, etc.)
• Submission instructions (i.e., links to forms, emails, attachments, etc.)

In short, be very detailed about what you want from the submissions. For example, if you need author headshots, brief bios, links, attached images, or other specific details, make sure to include them all in your guidelines.

If you’re getting a large volume of submissions, you can also include your estimated turnaround time. Some guidelines are even frank enough to say they’ll ignore and won’t reply to pitches they don’t like.

2. Ask for Title and Outline Pitches

Manuscripts can range from 500-3000 words. They not only take so much time for authors to write, but it’s a lot for you (or your editors) to read through.

One way to make it easy for both parties is to only allow title and outline pitches. This will enable you to look at the crucial parts of the pitch without going through the entire 1000-word manuscript. In most cases, the title and summary are enough to give you an idea of what the content will be.

Of course, don’t forget to look at the author’s website and do some research on their past writing ventures. An applicant or author’s credentials can hint at the quality of writing to expect. Fortunately, most authors will try to layout their qualifications, as they’re trying to convince you that they’re a reputable source who will deliver a great guest post.

Finally, make sure you set deadlines. Asking for titles and outline submissions means that the applicant doesn’t have to write anything until you’ve approved their pitches. Setting reasonable deadlines makes sure your publishing schedule is unimpeded.

3. Use Online Forms

Some hosts prefer that submissions are directly emailed to their editors. However, using forms can make it easier to sort data that are being submitted.

You can ask people to submit the title, summary, and outline along with an attached manuscript. Then, you and your editors can just look through the titles and weed out irrelevant content. On the other hand, if a title or summary sounds fantastic, you can immediately open the attachment and review the manuscript.

Additionally, you can also ask authors to fill in information about themselves. Ask for their names, website, a brief summary of their qualifications, as well as links to previously-published content. This will allow you to see whether it’s worth linking to their websites.

If their company or products are associated with thin content, plagiarism, link farms, or spam, it’s best to steer clear of them.

Bottom-Line

Like most SEO experts would tell you, your content should always prioritize “quality over quantity.” So even if you’re not getting as many submissions as popular sites, you still need to make sure your guest posts benefit your website’s SEO.

Otherwise, you’ll end up publishing spam and low-quality content, which can start to affect your rankings.

The post How to Screen Guest Post Submissions for Your Blog appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, there’s nothing like asking the customer directly. Getting feedback straight from your customers saves you from speculating. For example, instead of concluding that one of your landing pages isn’t effective, you get to ask customers exactly why it isn’t working.

That said, using customer feedback forms is not without its challenges. You want honest feedback, not just a positive one. In some cases, customers will write down inaccurate and nonsensical responses, which don’t really help paint a picture of their experience with you.

So, how do you get accurate and thoughtful responses in your feedback forms? Here are a few valuable tips to help you create the most effective customer feedback form:

1. Survey Your Regular Customers

Customers who stand to benefit from changes and improvements in your business model are most likely to give you honest feedback.

People don’t care about writing accurate feedback for shops and brands they don’t usually buy from or recognize. After all, if they don’t come back as often or know much about you, they won’t really care to give their actual feedback.

However, if you are a brand they know, like, or consistently buy from, they will have an incentive to air out what they think of your company, products, and services.

You can reach familiar customers through the following ways:

• Email Drip. Send electronic feedback forms to people subscribed to your email list.
• Loyalty programs. Ask members of your loyalty program (i.e., membership cardholders) to fill out a brief feedback form at check-out.

If you’re a small business, you might be able to recognize your regulars as soon as they step into the store. If so, you can ask them to fill out forms while they’re waiting in line or while they’re dining in.

In any case, choosing return customers who already have a connection with your company is a great way to avoid unwilling participants.

2. Use Targeted Feedback Forms

If you have a wide range of products and services, it might be wise to use targeted feedback forms for different customers.

For example, you can give feedback forms to customers based on their recent product purchases. You can ask them about the products they paid for and disregard other categories that weren’t in their transactions.

Though you have multiple versions of your feedback form, each one will be considerably shorter. This also makes it easier to hand out brief feedback forms while the customer is waiting in line or at check-out.

However, this method might require you to get more responses. After all, you want to audit data about your entire business model to know how you’re doing.

3. Make It As Easy As Possible

As mentioned, customers don’t really have a concrete incentive to write accurate and thoughtful feedback. You are asking for their time, so it’s crucial that it doesn’t cause them any more trouble.

If customers have a terrible time navigating your website, answering your feedback form, or understanding your questions, they might get frustrated and give up on it.

You’ll get more high-quality responses if your survey is easy to find, understand, and fill out. The more high-quality answers you get, the more valuable it is in assessing customer feedback.

Here are a few ways you can make feedback forms as accessible as possible:

• Send direct links to the feedback form instead of asking customers to find it themselves.
• Pay attention to your website’s UX (i.e., loading speeds, navigation, color scheme, etc.) so people aren’t having a hard time navigating to your forms.
• Proofread and edit your questions.
• Choose standard fonts that are easy to read.

4. Keep It Short

Even your most loyal customers have their own personal schedules to attend to. So avoid giving your customers 5-page feedback forms.

Feedback forms that take too long to fill out won’t hold the respondent’s attention, and they’ll end up either abandoning it or start writing rushed responses.

Here are easy ways to make feedback forms short and straightforward:

• Use A Satisfaction Scale. Ask customers to rate each category in 1-5 (i.e., 1 being the worst and 5 being the best). This makes answering forms quicker than letting them write down paragraphs.
• Use A Checklist. Have customers check off categories of products that they like. You can ask for more specific suggestions and feedback at the end.
• Use Character Limits. If you’re letting customers write down their thoughts, you can add character limits on text fields. If they have more pressing concerns, ask them to send you an email instead.

Shorter feedback forms don’t just benefit the respondents. It also makes it easier for you to audit their responses. For example, a Likert scale (5-point scale) can be easily translated to data for auditing. More pressing customer issues should be discussed and resolved through other channels.

Bottom-line

Customers willing to think about and write down their thoughts will give you more concrete and helpful feedback. However, you need to remember that customer feedback forms are often filled out at the customer’s discretion. If it takes too much of their time, they’ll be less willing to give you accurate information.

Not listening to customer feedback leaves your business stagnant.

However, without accurate information, you won’t be able to properly assess how customers truly feel about your business. Not only do you need to know about the things you’re already doing right, but you also want to know about what you need to improve on.

The post How to Get Better Responses on your Customer Feedback Forms appeared first on SiteProNews.

Other times, you post genuinely good content that doesn’t end up yielding the results you think it deserves. If an otherwise well-researched and well-articulated post isn’t getting enough traffic, then something must have gone wrong with your on-page optimizations and off-page promotions.

Here are a few tips on refreshing old content and boosting them on the SERPs:

1. Replace Old Keywords

You should always do a fresh run of keyword research. This is because keywords can lose popularity over time.

Keyword search volumes are dependent on how frequently users type them into the search bar. Therefore, if people start to change the specific terms they use for their searches, the keyword rankings will also change.

Once you have an updated keyword list, look for outdated keywords and replace them with new ones. This will recalibrate your blog post’s rankings once crawlers pick up on the changes you make.

2. Check for Outdated Posts

Information can get outdated. Depending on technological developments, changes in legislation, or significant socio-political events, the content you write today may not be beneficial in three months.

For content to be beneficial to readers, it needs to be relevant. So, for example, if you wrote a tutorial on troubleshooting a laptop, it shouldn’t feature information on how to do it on defunct operating systems. Likewise, if your post is all about business litigation, it should be updated on current laws and policies.

3. Add More Information

Check for possible thin content. There’s no definite word count that magically gets you a higher ranking in the SERPs, but your blogs need to be both informative and easy-to-understand. Anything that’s too short can be unhelpful, while anything that’s too long can be rambling and hard to digest.

Oftentimes, one-paragraph blog posts don’t offer much value. Likewise, people get disinterested if you keep rambling about one topic, go on unrelated tangents, and take too long to get to your point. Both can be unhelpful to readers.

For blogs that are too short, add FAQs, include examples, and flesh out the tips to be more thorough and easier to follow. For unnecessarily long posts, cut out any irrelevant details and ramblings.

4. Check for Readability

People can find a blog post in the SERPs, click to your blog, and leave seconds later. When users immediately leave, it’s either because they got what they need from those few seconds on your site, didn’t like your content, or found it hard to read.

Take a look at your blog post and see if it’s in any way hard to read or understand. If you don’t know what to look for, here are some helpful tips on readability:

• Avoid custom and fancy fonts. They’re appealing as titles and headings, but it’s best to avoid using them in your entire blog post.
• Look for unexplained niche terms and specialized language. Try to avoid the use of niche and complex terms that newbies may not be able to understand. If you have to use them, briefly explain them upon their first mention.
• Break up long paragraphs. Walls of text are intimidating, crowded, and hard to skim through.
• Use white spaces. Speaking of breaking up your paragraphs, make sure there’s enough space between them. White spaces make your pages look less cramped.
• Use heading tags. Another way to break up walls of text is to separate the sections with headings. This makes it even easier for people to find the information they need.

5. Link Older Blogs to Newer Content

Sending more traffic to an old post can help pull it back up the rankings. If you see a post that’s a few years old, promote them on social media posts and newsletters.

You can also add citation links to the text of your newer blogs. However, these links should be organic, so don’t link them to irrelevant keywords and blog posts.

That said, make sure you check for the other items in this list before promoting or linking them. Update the content, change old keywords, add new information, and check for readability. Even if you actively promote an old post, people still won’t read it through if it isn’t valuable.

Bottom-line

You don’t have to delete old content when it’s performing poorly. Doing so might cause you to lose organic links and create error pages. Instead, you can reoptimize, update, and reformat old blogs to make them more appealing to users and search engines.

The post 5 Ways to Refresh Old Content appeared first on SiteProNews.

Sometimes, you genuinely have a great blog post—it’s thoughtful, digestible, and complete. You’ve pulled all the stops, corrected mistakes, and improved what it’s lacking. So, why isn’t it ranking high?

If you’re doing this by yourself, you might want to consider either finding proofreaders or editors. After all, writers can sometimes miss grammatical and spelling errors in their work. However, there’s also a good chance you’re making SEO mistakes that do not benefit what might otherwise be high-quality content.

Let’s discuss the possible reasons why your high-quality blog post might be getting buried and develop simple solutions you can implement as soon as possible.

1. You’re Not Optimizing for Mobile Searches

While laptops and PCs haven’t fallen into disuse, smartphones and other mobile devices are now more commonly used to surf the web. There are various apps that aim to satisfy consumer needs—and they all have a downloadable mobile app. It’s not uncommon to see someone open their phone, type into Google’s search bar, and find something they want to purchase.

Not optimizing for mobile sites could simply be a matter of difficult-to-read font sizes, excessive indents, and wrong text placement. It could also be due to inserting specific keywords that are not commonly used in mobile searches. Not taking Voice Search into account might also slow down your mobile optimization efforts.

2. You’re Posting Repetitive or Duplicate Content

When Google’s algorithm finds two very similar content, it decides which is more useful and disregards the other. That means that the second blog post has not benefited your SEO efforts in any way. No matter how good both posts are, one will have to win out over the other.

Instead of writing updates and supplementary posts, refresh your old blogs instead. You can add changes to the information based on current events, changes in legislation, or changes in popular SEO strategies. Don’t split up two well-written pieces if you can manage to put them together.

3. You’re Overusing a Limited Set of Keywords

Setting a goal to rank high in high competition keywords is not a bad idea. However, looking for several high-competition keywords could really help you in the long run.

If you’re blogging to market a specific product or service, make sure to diversify the keywords you are using. A hundred different posts using the same exact keywords and anchor texts are all going to compete against each other. There are so many daily searchers that do not use the same popular keywords each time.

Also, consider localizing your keyword strategies. You can do this by planning to use keywords most popular in your area of practice or store location. Switch between global and local keywords when you’re writing your blog as a way to diversify them.

4. You’re Website Has Bad User Interface

Good blog entries can be enough to convince users to make purchases. However, visual design, layout, and the overall organization of your site can affect their first impression of you.

If the default text, site colors, and animations make it hard for users to read, they might just click off your post. If you’re using large or unfitting image formats for the design, it might slow the entire loading time. If your contact details or store links are difficult to find, a converted client might choose to find products and services elsewhere.

If your blogs are walls of text with no images to break paragraphs or sections, they might intimidate or bore the reader.

While site design does not directly affect the quality of your writing, it does affect how users experience the content you’re putting out. Make sure your site is accessible, and your formatting is easy to read.

5. You’re not giving the Audience What They Want

Well-written blogs do not always equate to good SEO. You might be creating thoughtful, well-researched content but still can’t satisfy a searcher’s need.

There could be many reasons for users clicking and leaving your page within seconds. If your user interface is excellent and your post is well put together, then it might be that your blog post didn’t have what they’re looking for.

Part of Google’s criteria for ranking pages is its user reception. The number of people who click on the site, the longer they’re on it, along with how trustworthy Google thinks your page is, will influence the ranking.

Find a keyword you’re competing for and check the first page. Read the content, pay attention to how the posts are organized, and find what yours are lacking. Chances are, there might be a difference in writing style and formatting, so pay attention to those and see how you can integrate that technique into your own content.

6. Your Content is Outdated

Look at your old posts and find what’s making them look dated. You could be using old statistical data, terminology that has fallen out of use, and less relevant examples than what’s on current events.

Your content refresh should not only add more information, but you have to also update for shifting social and political climates. Not acknowledging new laws, adjusting your use of popular vernacular, or ignoring high-impact societal changes decreases the relevance of your content.

7. You’re Not Promoting Your Blogs

The number of clicks from the search results to your page isn’t the only factor considered for ranking. You might have traffic coming in from other promotional platforms, like social media.

Unless you’re an established site with regular visitors, you will need to work harder to find traffic. Promoting it through other platforms—like Twitter or Facebook—not only helps  exposure, but counts towards your stats. Using email lists linking back to your website also helps.

Whether you are a long-time trusted site or just starting out, it’s good SEO practice to make your content visible to as many people as possible.

The post Reasons Why Good Blogs Don’t Get Traffic appeared first on SiteProNews.