SEO Tips - Web Design, SEO

6 effective ways to create killer content

Six Effective Ways to Create Killer Content

Posted by | Business, Online Marketing, Wordpress | No Comments

Imagine that you could create a single piece of content that determines your entire success on the web; it’s very possible. Creating a piece of killer content that gains the attention of your community, builds your brand and becomes a steady source of web traffic takes time and imagination but your investment toward content creation has a vast return on investment than aiming to create smaller, one-off pieces of work that are drowned in the vast information ocean called the web.

This article will explain six effective ways that you can create killer content that captures the attention of the web, launches your online brand and creates a never-ending flow of targeted web traffic.

#1: Write a definitive tutorial on a single subject

The web is jam-packed with powerful, informational pieces of content that teaches nearly any type of subject you wish to learn. You could become the source of information rather than being on the receiving end by compiling your knowledge, about a subject, into an incredibly detailed tutorial style blog post or website article.

The secret to creating killer content through tutorial style posts are the ideas, imagination and information you accurately deliver in a timely manner. Information you use for tutorial posts can be compiled through web research or through your own experiences; the later is the best choice.

You are the expert in topics you thoroughly understand; there will always be individuals that are still fresh to your niche and topics. Your task is to pour your best information into a piece of content which takes an individual from the very basics to becoming a master in the topic.

Tutorial posts can be done for any number of topics, such as:

  • Web design tutorials
  • Diet and exercise routines
  • How to repair a car

The list, quite literally, can go into the infinite. Taking the information you already retain and reinforcing it with additional information you’ve learned from the web is the secret formula for creating a tutorial post that entire communities will recognize and use as a definitive source when need be; that, is killer content.

#2: Design an infographic

Infographics have caught on like wildfire; they are easy to digest, passed around rapidly on social media and have an additional level of entertainment when people wish to learn something on the web. Infographics are the true body of killer content if you find topics people are interested in learning; the information is presented through design but still has the same amount of written content as one would pour into a blog post or website article.

Infographics are relatively easy to create; once one completes research, in a topic, the heavy design work can be passed off to those that have experience in design programs such as Photoshop. The inclusion of graphs, charts, design characters, typography and overall style of print layout should be tended with care as it ultimately captures the reader’s attention. However, the information, at its core, is the most important element and will need to combine entertainment with knowledge in a fun and easy format.

Added benefits of infographics are how easy they are shared on the web which can lead to viral traffic explosions. Infographics can be embedded with a few lines of code, uploaded to picture sharing websites, used in other content pieces and be quickly saved to hard drives. The design aspect, of infographics, will capture people more readily than trying to ‘convince’ them to read thousands of words.

#3: Shoot, edit and produce a video

People, in some ways, have taken a relaxed approach to content consumption ever since the invention of the television. It wasn’t too long after that web video was possible on the web which lead to wildly popular websites like Youtube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and many more.

Your content does not need to stick to a single medium such as text. Content can come in many different formats; one which has the potential to create lasting impact is video. Video lets you include additional methods to share information through visual and audible mediums; it creates a higher level of engagement in the viewer.

Video, remarkably, is extremely simple to create because of the falling price of technology. You can now purchase HD video cameras for less than $100 which come pre bundled with video editing software; this allows you to create engaging video from the comfort of your home or office without the high overhead that you would have faced just ten years ago.

Likewise, screen capture tools such as Camtasia can be used to record your actions, on-screen, and later edited to create a full featured video for your audience. Such uses of screen capture tools have started an entire vehicle to content delivery called ‘screencasts’.

Each video you create gives you an opportunity to reach multiple channels within your community. Video can be embedded within your website or blog, uploaded to video sharing websites like Youtube and readily shared in social media circles. An engaging, informative video is one of the best pieces of killer content you should aim to create for your website.

#4: Record and launch a podcast

Ever since the invention of the radio, people have been enthralled by audio recordings. Audio gives you the freedom to be entertained and taught without taking away from your current activities which, depending on your niche, can be phenomenal if your community is readily busy with their own projects.

Podcasts couldn’t be any easier than it is today; a $20 microphone headset and a free audio recording program, such as Audacity, are all that you need to get started with Podcasting. Your audio can cover any topic that you would in written or video form; your content is what matters though which is why you should take special attention to how well you are able to convey coherent thoughts and ideas through the medium.

There are dozens of ways to create podcasts, such as:

  • Reading, aloud, your previous content from your website
  • Interviewing key players in your market, niche or community
  • Having a free-for-all, roundtable discussion with current events

Think of your podcast as an additional channel for producing killer content. Your website can be the source for written content, video websites for the motion picture medium and Podcasting for audio; a strong command, and presence, in each medium further places you as a main player in your niche.

Once created, you may upload your podcasts to services like iTunes, embedded into your website or even placed on compact discs to be handed out to people when you meet in person. Your content is only limited by your creativity and willingness to record audio; once you gain a firm grasp on the format you will have yet another channel to reach people.

#5: Develop an ebook and share it for free

Ebooks, electronic books, are a fantastic method for content delivery because of their perceived value and overall free form on how content is shared. An ebook can cover any subject which fits your community, infuse print design elements and have the added advantage of hyper linking which can be used to point people to additional information. In essence, an ebook can be used as a killer piece of content because it automatically takes on the form of ‘higher end’ content.

The best kept knowledge has no value if it isn’t shared with others. A sure-fire way to build authority, within your niche, is by giving away your best secrets as this sets you on a new level in comparison to your competition. Although it may seem like you’re giving away the honey pot you are actually cementing your expertise on the subjects you know best; this makes people take notice and builds a greater level of trust which leads to a strong following online.

Ebook creation is easier than ever. A simple word processing program is all that you need to begin creating an ebook; it’s the time and resources to devote to writing that is the real pain.

An ebook can be formed through multiple methods, such as:

  • Compiling the best content from your website
  • Creating a long-form tutorial style piece of work
  • A compilation of quotes, suggestions and bits of knowledge from industry leaders
  • A white paper on the current trends, events and future of your industry

The ebook should take in all accounts of great copywriting which is why the title and cover design play important roles. Your ebook can begin to be shared in social networks, on your website, sold, given away to your email list, uploaded to sites like Scribd and many more once you’ve completed your work. The viral natures of ebooks are immensely powerful; they cement your placement as an authority within your niche and continually drive interested parties to you through content marketing.

#6: Compile information to create a case study

Case studies provide people with an introspective look into topics which may otherwise go unnoticed. Case studies can become a powerful form of content as they pull together your own knowledge, something interesting in the topic and information which your readers could use in their own projects.

A case study is a long-term engagement in order to produce sizable results but this investment on time and resources can become a definitive piece of work that is later referenced by many people in your industry. Compiling information about a topic, business or individual will drive attention to the subject and come full circle when the favor is returned through backlinking, social media shares and reciprocal attention from the topic’s community.

Case studies can come in many forms and cover any number of topics, including:

  • An introspective look at business practices of major market leaders
  • How an individual is changing ‘the game’ in the industry
  • Different methods how something was accomplished by an individual or business

The main draws of case studies are their detail to information and story telling style of content delivery. People read case studies because they place themselves into the same scenario; it’s much like interactive learning but with a story to hold on to. If you are able to find a topic which people wish to learn, discover someone doing it right and include your own take on how you believe it was accomplished you are fulfilling multiple channels of content creation; you’ve captured your reader.

Conclusion:

The time and resources you pour into creating killer content has a reciprocal effect; spending time to create a definitive piece of work, rather than a dozen smaller ones, will create a greater impact in your community than those which were compiled and published in a single afternoon.

Your content can be seen as a product. Product development is a time-consuming process but they produce a greater return on investment than simple one-off pieces of work. Think of your website as your business, content your product and your online presence will be met with enthusiasm; the item that sets your website above anyone else.

Best WordPress SEO Theme

Posted by | SEO, Wordpress | 38 Comments

Are you looking for the best wordpress theme for SEO out of the box?  Since you’re looking for a (SEO) search engine optimized wordpress theme I’d thought I’d give a rave review of what I think is not only the best wordpress theme ever designed, but one that is SEO friendly and highly customizable.

I’m talking about the Thesis theme developed by Chris Pearson of Pearsonified.

Not only is Thesis well developed it is very robust giving bloggers many options for customization.  And yeah, it’s the best wordpress theme I’ve seen where someone took the time to work in things that are important to SEO.  And I’m talking mostly about page structure here… mainly the use of H tags.

H Tags and SEO

If you’re like me you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on wordpress themes over the years only to have to go into the code to fix the H tag structure used.  Which is a pain when you have to upgrade wordpress and the theme frequently.  I can’t count how many wordpress themes I’ve come across where the H tag structure is totally screwed up.  Meaning, H1, H2, H3 and even H4 tags are used for things like the titles in the sidebar.

Thesis Theme for WordPress:  Options Galore and a Helpful Support CommunityH tags are really important to SEO, so each page of your site should only have one H1 tag, and subsequent H tags directly in your post content.  You shouldn’t have H2 and H3 tags wrapped around things that aren’t related to your post… ie.  Blogroll, Recent Posts, Pages, Calendar, etc.

If you want to see what I’m talking about you need to be using the Web Developer toolbar to disable the CSS of your site… or try it on this one to see what I’m talking about.  The post title should be an H1 tag and any subheadings in H2… and H3.

Thesis takes care of this for you and does a perfect job at it.  Right out of the box Thesis includes only a single H1 tag on each page, including the homepage.  Post titles on your homepage are in H2 which is correct.  On sub pages the Post title is H1… not the title of your blog (if you’re using text instead of a graphic) and any subheadings you use in your post are the only ones that appear on the page.  Perfect!

Title Tags in Thesis

Again Thesis gives you some options on the way to display Title tags in your pages.  Which is very helpful.  In your wordpress dashboard navigate to Design > Thesis Options to set the following options.

Change How Page Titles Display Easily
Change How Page Titles Display Easily

Home page settings:
Show site name in title
Show site tagline in title
Show tagline before title

All other pages:
Append site name to page titles

Because I’m super picky about my title tags here (for obvious SEO reasons) I’ve decided to add my own custom bit of code to display page titles.  If you look at the titles of my pages you’ll notice they’re only the post title or page title, nothing else.  That’s because I want my titles to be super targeted.  Including “Jeff Hendrickson Design” to the ends of my page titles only waters down the keyphrases I’m targeting.  So I leave it out.

Here’s the code I use to achieve this: (NOTE: You no longer have to use custom code to achieve this… it’s built into the admin of Thesis now.. Sweet!)

<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(‘name’); } elseif ( is_category() ) {
single_cat_title(); echo ” – “; bloginfo(‘name’);
} elseif (is_single() || is_page() ) {
single_post_title();
} elseif (is_search() ) {
bloginfo(‘name’); echo ” search results: “; echo wp_specialchars($s);
} else { wp_title(”,true); }
?></title>

Add Custom Meta Description Tags

Thesis allows you to easily add and edit Meta Description tags within each post or page by simply adding your description to a custom field.  All you have to do is add a custom field called “meta” to your post or page and insert your desired text.  This means you don’t need any extra SEO plugins to achieve custom Meta descriptions for your blog.

Also to make your category page titles more SEO friendly and unique you can change the titles of your category pages by simply adding a custom field “meta” to your categories.  This gives your category pages a more SEO friendly title then they would have otherwise.

Add Custom Meta Descriptions Easily
Add Custom Meta Descriptions Easily

Page Content Structure

The page’s content structure is very nice indeed in Thesis.  Your post title (H1 tag) and post content are high up on the page meaning your content is closer to the top of the page in the source code.  This means your page’s main content is the first thing Google or any search engine sees.  They don’t have to wade through countless links and basically all the stuff in your sidebars because your sidebar content appears after your main content in the source code.  You should see this if you view my site using the Web Developer toolbar and disable CSS.

Conclusion

If you’re a blogger using wordpress and you care about traffic and search engine rankings I suggest you pick up Thesis and try it out for yourself.  I only touched on the SEO aspects of Thesis but there are a ton of other great features that make it the theme I will be using here and on clients sites for some time to come.  It comes with lifetime updates as well and I’ve already seen some really sweet new features being added in the last update.  I am looking forward to what comes next.  My hats off to Chris and the team that developed and are continuing development of Thesis.  I appreciate it.

If you’re in the market for the best ever SEO wordpress theme then go get a copy of Thesis.  It’s currently $87 for a single license.   A drop in the bucket if you’re monetizing your site through search engine optimization efforts.

Thesis Updates

Thesis 1.6 has just been released.  It comes packed with a lot of new features that I think are pretty cool and much needed.  Check out this video on some of the new features. This video is on setting up drop down navigation…

As you can see Chris added new features that allow you to edit and customize your navigation menu easily from within the wordpress admin.  Pretty powerful.

In the below video Chris goes more in depth on setting up a site and doing customizations.

I’ve been using Thesis for well over a year on this site and can say without a doubt that it’s the best SEO theme ever produced and probably the best supported and most updated theme out there.  Even when I’m tempted to change the theme just for something different I don’t because I don’t want to have to go through all the customization and upgrade headaches other themes make you go through.  With Thesis it’s a lot more simple.

Grab a copy of Thesis and see for yourself.

FREE Top Ranking On Google – Are You Local?

Posted by | Online Marketing, SEO | 3 Comments

So Google Local and Google Maps have been around for awhile but there are still business owners who aren’t taking advantage of the power these tools bring.  Basically Google Local allows businesses to receive a free business listing under keywords people would use to search for local businesses.  So if you have a business and you’re not taking advantage of Google Local to list your business for free and receive a top ranking on Google then you’re plain missing the boat.

Here’s an example below of Google Local in action.  A simple search for Durham Pet Sitter returns a bunch of local businesses that offer this service.   I’m not sure how the businesses are ranked here… if its first come first serve or if there is some other algorithm that Google is using, but I’d say get on board before it’s too late and you’re listed under the “more results near…” link

Google Local in action

What Google Local is offering for Free to business owners.

Reach new customers on Google Maps and Google.com
Local customers are already searching for the products and services you offer. Why not make it easy for them to find you on Google search and on Google Maps? The Local Business Center is the place to start.

Works great for businesses of any size
Whether you run a single dentist’s office or dozens of coffee shops, manage all your listings from a single account.

Update your listing at any time
Use the Local Business Center to edit your listing whenever and however you like. Your Google Maps results will be updated in a few weeks, not next year.

Catch their eye with printable coupons
Google printable coupons are a free and easy way to bring in more business. You decide what your coupons should say, then customers print them out and bring them to your store.

Google Local gives businesses the ability to receive top rankings in Google without the cost of using Adwords or implementing an SEO campaign.

Sign up for Google Local Free.

How to update the Sitelinks in your Google listing

Posted by | SEO | No Comments

Did you know you can update your sitelinks that Google displays when someone searches for your brand or domain name?  Sitelinks are the extra links that appear under a main listing in search results to help searchers navigate a site without having to first go to the homepage.  They look like this:

Google Sitelinks

You can edit these by using Google’s Webmaster Tools under > Links > Sitelinks

There you can either block or update the current sitelinks Google has listed for your site.  There might be links listed there that you have never seen under your listing in search results.  That’s most likely because your website isn’t popular enough to need it.  And Sitelinks really only show up if someone is searching directly for your brand or domain name (that I’ve seen).  If you don’t own a popular website then this doesn’t really apply to you.  In anycase you can get a sense of what Google sees as your most important pages.

There’s more clarification about Sitelinks here, but I’ve posted the gist of it below written by a Google employee named Maile.

Sitelinks are created algorithmically to help users quickly navigate
to the information they need on your site. To display sitelinks,
Google must basically determine: 1) a relevant structure for your site
conducive to sitelinks, and 2) that sitelinks will be helpful for the
user’s query.

For your verified site in Webmaster Tools, you can view your available
sitelinks. If you choose to block a sitelink, it will then appear in
Webmaster Tools as blocked. Once the change becomes effective, the
blocked sitelink will not appear in search results. You will not
immediately see a new sitelink listed in Webmaster Tools to replace
your blocked sitelink.

For example, let’s say you have 8 sitelinks in Webmaster Tools. If you
choose to block a sitelink, it will be removed from your “Current
sitelinks” section and added to the “Blocked sitelinks” section. The
blocked sitelink will not appear in search results for 90 days, and it
can be unblocked at any time. (It does, however, take a bit of time
for the blocked/unblocked change to take effect.) Every time you visit
the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools, whether or not you modify your
Sitelinks settings, the blocked sitelinks will renew their blocked
time for an additional 90 days.

In search results, the sitelinks displayed are determined
algorithmically based on the user’s query. So, while Webmaster Tools
may show 8 sitelinks for your verified site, it’s possible that search
results show only a subset (e.g. search results display 4 sitelinks).
Furthermore, the sitelinks displayed in search results can vary
according to the query (e.g. different combinations of sitelinks for
different queries).

Common questions
Can I trigger new sitelinks to appear in Webmaster Tools?
New sitelinks appear in Webmaster Tools when a general sitelink update
occurs. Updates (i.e. new sitelinks in search results and/or Webmaster
Tools) are not affected by your blocking or unblocking sitelinks. New
sitelinks cannot be triggered manually.

How can I get sitelinks to appear for my site in search results?
Your site must have at least 3 unblocked sitelinks in order for your
sitelinks to appear in search results.  Therefore:

1. If you block sitelinks in Webmaster Tools and leave fewer than 3
remaining, no sitelinks will appear for your site in search results.

2. If you have fewer than 3 sitelinks algorithmically generated for
your site, you will not see a sitelink options in Webmaster Tools.

Sitelinks are calculated algorithmically. Having a crawlable,
intuitive architecture is helpful in generating sitelinks. Also,
creating compelling, unique content or providing a useful service
(thus making your site highly relevant to user queries) can increase
the probability of sitelink generation — and thus your site
displaying sitelinks in search results!

82 Premium WordPress Themes for $39 from ElegantThemes Learn more