When you run and operate a website, you should strive to keep it in order and under control. When doing so, clients and potential ones will check out your site and enjoy your content. Otherwise, if you have a lot of issues with your Web pages, you will cost yourself some business. Furthermore, Google takes this into consideration when looking at website rankings and where to place your site in the organic rankings. With this in mind, Google now looks at secure websites and gives them an extra boost. Here are a few reasons why Google values safe websites.

Legitimacy

Above all else, when determining SEO rankings, Google will want to discover and reward sites that are real. Now, this may sound funny, but in the past, plenty of site owners would make fake websites full of spam or targeted offers. This was not good for visitors as they would not enjoy any true value from the website. When discovering a spam or fake site, Google will knock it out of oblivion and the site owner will not see any traffic.

For this reason, it is obviously important that you show Google and the other search endings that you mean business. When seeing a secure site, Google will know that you have a real website with a legitimate product or service. In reality, a spammer or someone who wants to make a cheap AdSense site will not take much time to use SSL or other methods to secure a site. For this reason alone, if you want to do well in the organic rankings, you must set up your site with https ability. When doing so, you will go a long way in maintaining stable rankings.

Long-term

If you have SSL on your site, it is obvious to most people that you plan to stick around for the long-term. This is important to Google as they want to give their customers value. You must realize, when looking for something important, people will trust Google and will want to land on a website offering true value to its users. Otherwise, in the long run, Google will suffer as the leading search engine wants clients to find what they seek.

So, when you think about it, you will understand why Google would want to place an SSL site on the first pages for many keywords. In the long run, even if you do not have a login system or credit card payment setup, you should consider an SSL certificate as you will go a long way in showing Google and other search engines you are serious about your online ventures and value the long-term strategy you have laid out. Otherwise, your site will look like any other and you will struggle to get on the first page of Google.

Quality

As mentioned, Google has, and always will, value a quality Web page. Meaning, when looking at a page with a lot of great information and plenty of happy customers, you will likely encounter a website with https security.

Think about it for a minute. When you land on a great site such as your email provider, bank or even a local restaurant, it probably has an SSL certificate. Without this, many will leave the site as they will not want to leave it up to chance. As people use other devices and become more aware of the situation, they are likely to convert to this way of thinking. When this happens, not only will you get more traffic, but current clients are likely to stay on your site. For this reason, if you want to do well in the organic search rankings and see your site thrive, you must have an up-to-date SSL certificate. Simply put, if you are truly in it for the long-term, you need to invest a small amount of cash in getting your site secure for every user.

Luckily, with a bit of cash and a couple of hours of your time, you can do so with ease. Then, in the short and long run, you will see your site thrive as people from all over will enjoy a site of high quality with all the necessary safety precautions

Throw up fewer errors

One metric Google takes a look at is the errors on your page. When using old and outdated code, you are likely to cause browser errors to your visitors. While this may not seem like a big deal on your end, it can cause a visitor to grow frustrated. Other times, people with older or outdated computers will struggle to load your website. For this reason, you should take the time to buy and install an SSL certificate. With this ten-minute job, you will see your pages load without any errors. Furthermore, people will take notice and feel more secure about going to your website.

If you have any sort of errors, whether with your SSL certificate or code, you need to fix them quickly as your site will never recover in the rankings and you will have a hard time impressing customers. Remember, with one or two errors, you can see an otherwise perfect site suffer in the organic search rankings.

So, if you can fix it up and make sure it is secure, you will have an upper hand against your competition. This is true even if they have an older page with more content as small errors will kill their SEO strategy.

Visitors

Now when looking at your site, Google will take notice when you have a lot of people come and stay for a long time. On the other hand, when you have a high bounce rate, you will see your site suffer. A bounce rate is the rate in which a person comes to your site and leaves without clicking another link on your site. When a potential client lands on your site, they will want to see a secure page. When they do not, they are likely to leave your site never to return.

On the other hand, if you have a secure site and let customers know this, you will rise in the rankings as Google values a site where people stay for a long time. This is a smart reason for you to rush out and install an SSL certificate. While this is true, you must make sure to do it right as one error can cause you to waste your time and money. Without a doubt, once you test it and make sure it works well, you should advertise this fact and let clients know your site is fully secured.

If you run a website, you must think of the future. While it is easy to make one on the cheap, you must invest in a few things. For starters, you should build a great site that people enjoy. Not only that, you must offer relevant, interesting and unique content that will set your site ahead of the competition. Finally, you must install an SSL certificate as customers will take notice. Furthermore, with https, Google and the leading search engines will value your site and you will see it zoom to the top for many organic search terms.

The trend in long-tail keyword use in marketing strategy is largely the result of cost efficiency in advertising. Used as a cost conversion mechanism in search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising campaign, long-tail keywords reduce cost-per-click while increasing the number of click-through observations. By increasing the rate and quality of SEO and PPC response, long-tail keywords have been the subject of Web search engine providers like Google, as those companies attempt to improve long query proficiency.

The Power of Long-Tail Keyword Advertising

The concept of virtual crowd marketing establishes consumer equity at point of search engine keyword classification. Long-tail keywords from natural language searches online offer key insights into advertising conversion. When visitors observe SEO or PPC advertising spots, the decision to ‘click-through’ to a company website is a discerned one. If conversion of visitors to customers offers the rationale to strategic advertising placement, keyword precision is critical.

Long-tail keywords create a record of natural language searches leading to advertising engagement. Popular for building crowds of customers, long-tail keywords go viral more than any other keyword language taxonomy. Peer-to-peer sharing of a brand, its advertising, and website marketing collateral is more likely in response to long-tail keyword searches. Named after statistical long-tail distributions, the probability that long-tail keyword searches will increase the magnitude of advertising ‘click-through’ frequency is high.

Gaining popularity in the past several years, long-tail keyword advertising is especially agile in its ability to sell a volume of unique items, all under the same name brand. For instance, long-tail keyword advertising strategy is use by online retailer aggregators such as Amazon.com, and Yahoo.com to sell a range of warehoused, and third party goods.

Compatible with operations strategies designed to reduce distribution and inventory costs, long-tail keyword searches capture the most precise advertised item per search engine query. Companies can use reporting on long-tail keyword searches to control inventory and cut logistics costs according to the power law distribution or Pareto distribution theories.

Perfect for application in channel marketing strategies online, long-tail keyword placement allows for flexibility after an advertising campaign goes live. An apt method of creating modular campaign design in businesses where advertising is limited to a niche segment or where product lifecycle is abbreviated, long-tail keyword strategies allow advertisers to leverage user-driven innovation, social network analytics, and multi-scale marketing components in development of an online advertising campaign.

Long-Tail Keyword Strategies

The integration of long-tail keyword strategies in PPC advertising campaigns increases competitive advantage in niche markets. Designating channel advertising placement in niche segments of a market allows a business to target customers precisely where competitors are not. Equally, ratio of quality to cost can may influence the decision to incorporate long-tail keywords in a campaign.

The most efficient and effective keyword strategy for SEO and PPC advertising, long-tail keywords are the highest caliber search results, as the inquirer has added precision to the query. Long-tail keyword strategies are higher return on investment in marketing. With visitor volume expected to be low, on demand ‘click’ through payments structured by SEO and PPC advertising hosts add value to conversion.

Online marketing studies show that long-tail keywords are responsible for upwards of 80% of visitor conversion in a SEO or PPC advertising campaign. The fact that cost-per-lead is far less than average makes long-tail keyword marketing well-suited to market entry in competitive segments.

The ‘5’ Most Effective Long-tail Keyword Strategies

Expand market reach and advance conversion by following the five ‘5’ steps to long-tail keyword advertising strategy:

• 1. Query Reports

Prior to initiating a long-tail keyword strategy, the best method of building a taxonomy is by running an AdWords query report. Running a query on a recent AdWords campaign reports terms not already listed as part of a campaign. Using an existing Google AdWords account is the most expedient and reliable method of building a long-tail keyword list. Reflecting recent user observations, the Search Query Report offers important insights into aggregate response and keyword performance. Query results inform bidding as well. Comparison of competition levels for each keyword enables calibration of an ad campaign according to the highest performing keywords at a lower cost per conversion.

Competitor keyword reporting is critical for design-in of unique advertising content. The use of competitor keyword performance in a long-tail keyword strategy will assist in filling gaps in not covered by another similar advertiser. The benefit of tools like KeywordSpy, AdGooRoo and SpyFU, is that online advertising placement can be channeled to exceed competitor reach, or to generate traffic in segments where they are not. This also reduces cost of bidding. By identifying long-tail opportunities, advertisers can increase conversion and outperform competitors.

• 2. Keyword Localization

The localization of keywords increases foreign language syntax proficiency, as well as assists in the acknowledgement of demographic values. Appending keywords with location terms (i.e. country, state, region, city, town, zip or area code) AdWords Analytics reporting will provide metric reporting on ‘click-through’ traffic resulting from keywords searches. Include qualifying terms to add definition to localization information to maximize the reach of advertised product and service segmentation. Qualifiers used in long-tail natural language searches add new keywords to those results. Supplement keywords with add-ons and commonly used descriptive terms (i.e. color, style, model, type) to structure search syntax more narrowly.

• 3. Website Search Engine Record

Reported data from a website’s search box can add further information about what visitors are searching for. Google’s Custom Site Search box is a popular tool used in long-tail keyword queries. Investigation of a website’s search box often reveals unique information not accessible on a third party site. Review searches for terminology related to products, phrases, and map directions. Reporting of exact data from a website search box adds knowledge to a long-tail keyword strategy.

• 4. Search Engine Referral Traffic

Secondary referral traffic to your website offers another compendium of long-term keyword data. Indices of organic search referral traffic identify which keywords were searched immediately prior to y arrival at a website. Although some of this traffic will be categorized as “Unknown Keywords – SSL”, the benefit to secondary search engine data is that it serves as a simple random sample of a global population of potential consumers.

Much like a snowball sample designed to capture objective response from a large general population of unknown users, search engine referral traffic data offers a natural solution to this concept, generating data about long-tail keyword searches. Tools like HubSpot’s Sources Tool and SEOMoz report on secondary search engine referral traffic, including long-tail keyword search phrases. Analysis of volume of searches redirected to your site increases the chance that the long-tail keywords selected for an online advertising campaign will optimize marketing return on investment.

• 5. Cloud Content

Third party virtualization services can also be used to gather information about search engine content from a website. Cloud aggregation of website traffic data is continuous. Advertisers can source details about website performance at anytime from storage. Cloud-based visualization capabilities optimize long-tail keyword search data in graphical illustration. Reporting of visitor frequencies, as well as trend analyses of long-tail keyword searches from website traffic data found on a cloud, can be used by marketing specialists in creation of an online advertising campaign.

When you run a website and use WordPress, you can make a great blog that people from all over the world love to read. While this is a great outlet to use, it is wise to take a proactive approach to prevent problems such as too many blog comments or spam. Other times, you will have to deal with people who comment multiple times, either on purpose or accident. While it is easy to manually delete comments if you run a small blog and only make a post or two a week, it is a challenge when you run a larger operation and have a lot of blog posts and a busy comments section. Simply put, when you run a blog, you will want to weigh the benefits and downsides. However, when coming up with this plan, you must realize your ideas, strategies and business will grow. For this reason, you will want to come up with a comprehensive and practical solution. At the same time, you will need to devise a plan that works now. With this in mind, here are three ways to remove duplicate comments from WordPress.

Manually

As mentioned, if you have the time and patience, you should manually remove blog comments. To do this, a site owner should log in to his or her WordPress account a couple of times a day. Then, one should look at the comments and make sure users are not posting too frequently. When this happens, you should simply delete all the comments except the original one. Of course, if all comments are spam from the same user, you should delete all of them. To take this further, ideally, the site owner should block the IP address and not allow the user to comment on the blog.

With this, not only can you take an approach which allows you to remove bad users, but you can also avoid a solution causing you to delete legitimate comments. Either way, with a manual removal plan, you can enjoy the best of both worlds. However, if you are a busy webmaster and do not have much time, this is not an ideal solution. Think about it, if you have hundreds of comments a day, you will have a hard time manually removing duplicate ones. In fact, with this system, you would have to hire a person to remove excess comments. Either way, you must think of your long-term wants and needs when coming up with a plan.

When doing so, you will discover that manually deleting has limitations but is perfect if you run a small blog with only a small amount of followers. With that being said, this is the best approach if you want to plan slowly and think you may need to come up with an automated solution in the future. Simply put, when starting out, you can probably rely on this method without much trepidation.

Community based

Now, when people make a lot of comments in a row, you will want to take action. As mentioned, it is only easy to delete multiple comments when times are slow and you run a small blog. However, over time, you will probably want to think of a more comprehensive and effective solution. At the same time, while coming up with a strategy, you will not want to anger or hurt customer’s feelings by making them jump through hoops to make a comment or two.

Instead, with a community based plan, you can do a couple of things. For starters, you can employ a community flagging system. With this, other commenters can inform you of spam comments or multiple ones. This is the perfect solution when you have a lot of interested followers who care about your blog and want to help. While this is a great way to prevent long-term spam and duplicate comment issues, you should know it will still require you to manually log in and remove the duplicate comments. However, this is a great way to save time and allow you to do other things for your visitors. Not only that, with this approach, you will keep the visitor experience a good one as they will not have to deal with a burdensome and annoying approach to simply make a comment or two.

Remember, when you involve your current followers, you can take a lot of guesswork out of it and end up with the best solution for your needs. Again, you must attempt to make the user experience a good one and you can do this with a community based solution. In the long run, this is a great solution that will allow you to save a lot of time and money as you can concentrate on other pressing matters.

Plug-ins

Now, without a doubt, one of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the ability to use so many plug-ins. With many software applications available, you can run your blog and keep things in order with ease. With that in mind, you should consider a solution to your duplicate comment problems. For starters, you should, of course, manually remove some comments. However, as mentioned, most site owners should look for a complete solution.

One way to do this is to use a plug-in which prevents this in the first place. With a proactive approach, you will not have to deal with too many blog comments in the first place. But, it is wise to think about this more deeply as you will want to keep visitors happy and not frustrated. To do this, you must search for the best plug-ins for your situation.

With some software solutions, you can remove duplicate contents without any work on your end. Without a doubt, with this system, you will enjoy a few benefits. For starters, your clients will not notice a bunch of annoying blog comments. At the same time, people will not grow frustrated when dealing with prevention techniques many use.

If you run a blog, you must understand the importance of participation. Think about it, when visitors can make a comment or two you your blog posts, you can reach out and potentially reel a customer in. Other times, with comments, the site owner can gain interest in his or her idea or strategy. While this is true, if you want to have a comments section, you must police it wisely. One way which many bloggers do so is to force people to sign up for accounts or log in. This is annoying, and most will end up clicking the back buttoned of the browser. No, you need to take a proactive approach while still giving the visitor a decent experience. Remember, there are so many sites out there that you cannot afford to annoy users. With this knowledge, you must know how to proceed wisely. Ideally, you should come up with a multi-faceted approach, which allows you to keep the comments flowing and prevent a ton of spam or duplicate ones.

Luckily, with these three easy to follow tips, you can keep people coming back. They will not grow frustrated by reading mountains of duplicate comments by people who made mistakes or wanted to spam the blog comment section.

More than ever, content matters, and having the right content on your websites is essential for ranking well in the search engines. In addition, great writing has a number of side benefits that can help improve visitor engagement and tertiary search engine metrics. However, most website operators are not great writers, and even those who are generally have better ways to spend their time. In order to succeed in the search engines, you’ll likely need to hire a freelance writer.

Freelance writers create the content on your website, and there a number of ways to use what they write to help your website rank better. In addition, hiring a freelance writers lets you know that you’ll have someone who is ready to create content when you need it. However, you’ll want to make sure you hire the best freelance writer for your needs. Here are a few tips to consider when looking for freelance writers and great website content.

Why Writing Matters

In the past, Google and the other search engines generally ranked websites based on off-site activity. Links to your website would help it grow, and anchor text could have a profound effect. In recent years, however, Google has developed sophisticated algorithms that help it determine if a website is one that visitors will enjoy. Since Google depends on delivering great results, their algorithms must be able to avoid recommending spammy, uninformative pages. One of the ways they do this is by algorithmically determining if the content on your website is well written.

Nobody knows exactly what goes into the algorithm as its contents are guarded closely, but most experts believe that the writing is checking for spelling errors and even basic grammar. There are a number of formulas that have been developed over the years to determine if writing is readable or not, and most believe that Google uses similar techniques. These days, fooling Google is all but impossible; you need good content that is written well.

What do Freelancers do?

The writing field is notoriously difficult, and many writers don’t have full-time employment. As a result, many depend on freelance writing for part- or full-time income. The Internet has increased demand for freelance writers in recent years, and many perform most of their work online. Website operators looking for writers will find plenty to choose from.

Freelance writers with web experience understand the importance of keywords, and they know how to perform necessary research to ensure that the content they deliver is accurate and reliable. While not all writers have the same skills, most take their jobs seriously and are able to perform great work on a consistent basis. By building a relationship with freelance writers and giving them regular work, you can stock your website with content the search engines will love.

Finding a Freelancer

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to find freelance writers online. Writers will often post on Craigslist, and some also work through third-party websites. These websites allow you to place orders at competitive prices and read the work before choosing to accept it or not. These third-party websites have a variety of different ways to facilitate the workflow, so look around to find which works best for your needs.

Many of these websites also allow you to place orders directly with writers you like best. Even though there is a charge for this service, the final prices are competitive. These websites are also great for those who want content created from different voices, and they allow you to diversify your writing without having to reach out to individual writers. For most, third-party writing websites are a smart choice.

Keeping Your Writers Happy

Great freelance writers often have more job offers than time, so they can often afford to be selective. Because of this, offering significantly less than the writer usually charges will often fail. That said, if you feel that your content should be easy to produce, you may want to see if you can negotiate a discounted rate. Similarly, freelance writers enjoy regular work, and they may offer discounts if you promise to deliver work to them on a regular basis.

One of the top complaints that comes from freelance writers is payment difficulties. The writers you hire depend on prompt payment to pay their bills, so make sure to follow through on promises. Many will also demand half of the final bill upfront, so be prepared to put down a bit of money. Great content is worth paying for, and a happy writer will often go the extra mile to keep you coming back to them in the future.

Hiring an Individual Writer

When hiring an individual writer, it’s important to determine when you’ll deliver work, what you expect and how they will be paid. Be upfront, and try to give your writer examples of the kind of work you need. It’s often best to start with a small order that you can read through their work and determine if the produced content meets your needs. Don’t ask for samples longer than a few hundred words as some website operators use this as a scam to get free work.

Freelance writers generally have portfolios, so ask to see examples of previous work before you hire a writer. There is no universal online test for determining how good a writer is, and you’ll have to use your own judgment before hiring someone. Different writers have different styles, and you’ll want to know that the tone and style they use matches your website.

Using Content

Your main website needs great content, so hire a writer if your content could be better. If you aren’t sure how good the content on your main website is, ask a freelance writer to edit it for you. Even small mistakes can hurt your website in the search engine rankings, and potential customers and clients will find misspelling and basic grammar errors to be signs of poor professionalism. Many websites suffer from basic structural issues; freelance writers can help.

You’ll also need content for your blogs and supporting websites, and you’ll want great content for your social media properties. Freelance writers can help you meet all of these goals, so hire a writer with experience writing for different types of platforms. Doing so can allow you to focus on SEO and advertising campaigns while still having great content delivered for your website.

In the past, it was sometimes possible to get mediocre websites to rank well. These days, doing so is nearly impossible, and Google will eventually sniff out any shortcomings eventually. By focusing on creating great content and hiring great freelance writers, you can separate your website for the competition and see long-term, durable results.

In addition, succeeding on today’s web requires regular updates, and most website operators lack the time or expertise needed to continually create top-notch content. Freelance writers depend on their writing for their livelihood, and their experience can help you succeed online. While they aren’t cheap, the service they provide is worth what they charge, and hiring a freelance writer can be the difference between a website that languishes near the bottom and one that climbs to the top of the rankings.

There is nothing more jarring than finding out that your website has been banned by Facebook. This often occurs with no warning because the algorithms that run to protect users from spam and malicious websites are completely automatic. This article will discuss why a website URL might be banned from Facebook and the steps that can be taken to resolve the matter.

Why Was the Website URL Banned from Facebook?

Facebook cares about its users and, as a result, has very strict rules about what is allowed on Facebook and what is not. Unfortunately, some of those rules are not actually written anywhere that can be accessed by the common user. There are several reason why a person or website might be banned, but the most common is if a user does the same action “too many times.” The number of times an action can be performed is unknown by most people, but doing it more than that number will have your account labeled as potentially malicious. Actions that cannot be performed too many times include friending people, messaging people, joining too many groups, and sending too many identical emails. The most common reason why a website URL might be banned is it was posted too many times in a promotional manner by the same person.

Another reason why Facebook might block a URL is if it on a list from another website, such as a security company. These companies can have problems with their watch lists, just like Facebook can.

Why is it Important to Not Be Blocked?

It is critical to ensure that a URL for a business is not blocked because, should customers encounter a link that is labeled “possibly malicious,” they are much less likely to actually continue to the site and will distrust the company. This will result in a smaller audience, a greatly reduced amount of web traffic, and falling revenue. As a result, being blocked from Facebook is a problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

How Can I Fix This Problem?

There are a few different methods that can be used to stop a website from being banned on Facebook.

Contact Facebook

One of the most reliable ways that can be used to get a website unblocked from Facebook is to contact them. There are two ways that this can be done. If there is no message that is alerting the person who manages the page that the website has been blocked, then that person will need to go through the contact forms located on the “Help” page. If there is a message that alerts users to the fact that a website has been banned, then the first thing that needs to be done is to click on the “Let Us Know” link that is located at the bottom of the message. This button will lead to a form that can be used to contact Facebook and inform them of the precise problem, as well as alert them to the fact that the URL is not spam. The reply times differ from person to person, but this is definitely the first step that anyone can try.

Contact the Company that Might Have You on a List

One common culprit is McAfee’s advisory listing. McAfee is a highly respected web security company that has a list of websites that potentially pose threats to the common user. The algorithms that they use to determine if a site is potentially dangerous can create false positives from time to time. Facebook’s algorithms take these advisory listings seriously, so the fastest way to get back onto Facebook is to get off the advisory listing. Simply contacting the company and explaining the situation will solve the problem in many cases.

Appeal to Friends, Family, and Customers

If it seems as though Facebook is not taking notice of the fact that the website has been blocked, then it might be time to contact friends, family, and customers and ask them to also contact the company on your behalf. This will result in a greater number of messages being sent to Facebook about the problem, which will force a greater amount of attention to be paid to the problem. This does not produce immediate results, but will usually cause Facebook to work more quickly to unblock the URL.

Appeal Directly to Facebook Security and Developers

There are many different Facebook officials that have their own pages, including the security network, the developers, marketing, and Facebook in general. One way to get more attention paid to the problem is to like all of the official pages and then, when any of them posts content, make a comment. At the end of that comment, be sure to mention the problem. One great way is to start a forum thread on Facebook Help about the problem and then link that forum question to the comment. This will repeatedly draw attention the problem and hopefully get it resolved within as short a time as possible.

Use a URL Shortener

Another option for addressing having a blocked URL on Facebook is to use a URL shortener. Facebook blocks most URLs that have been run through programs such as these, but there are a few that have had some degree of success with regards to getting past the ban. The main one that is used is the Google Shortener, which can be found here. When attempting this method, it is best to be careful about the number of times a shortened URL is posted because, in many cases, posting a URL an excessive number of times is what caused the URL to be banned in the first place. Posting a limited number times and seeing if the URL is still blocked is advisable.

Change Your Domain Name

This method of action if a URL is blocked on Facebook may seem to be slightly extreme, but it is the most effective way of resolving the issue if Facebook has done nothing. Before using this method, it is best to give Facebook at least a month to act. If you have not received a message from Facebook regarding the matter, or if the URL has not been unblocked within this time, other options should be sought. It is possible for you to purchase a new domain name. Transfer all of the content from your site so that it is under the new domain name. Once this has been completed, all of the links that used to be directed to the original URL can now be redirected to the new URL.

Having a URL blocked on Facebook is often simply a waiting game. It is up to Facebook to determine whether or not the URL is worth reinstating and sometimes that decision-making process takes an extended period of time. Because there are not a lot of reliable ways to bypass the block, it is best to appeal to Facebook and draw as much attention to the problem as possible. In extreme cases, purchasing a new URL and having it be the redirect to all of the old links might be the best option.

Many small business owners have built a website, and a large percentage of them have a blog on their website. However, a lot of business owners want to know how often they should be posting to their blog.

There are several reasons why business owners might want to know the answer to this question. One reason to keep a blog fresh is because the major search engines reward fresh content.

Another reason why a business owner might want to know how often to update their blog is because they want to keep new and existing customers satisfied. Fortunately, the answer to this question can be quite vague.

Posting one time per week

A lot of businesses are posting to their blog once every week. Every week, they create a new blog post and add it to their website blog. Small businesses have been doing this for quite some time, and for most of them, it appears to be working quite well.

Why post once per week?

There are several reasons why once per week seems to be the magic solution. One of the main reasons why this works very well is because it’s beneficial for maintaining customer relationships. It’s useful to view a blog as a courtesy call, and this call is sent to all of your profitable, important customers.

When a business owner releases a new blog post, he or she makes sure that the customer is thinking about their business. By posting a new blog post every week, business owners are actually strengthening their relationship with their customers.

Aside from strengthening existing relationships, a weekly blog post will also create a rhythm for the relationship that exists between customers and business owners. In many cases, it almost becomes a ritual. Customers will start to look forward to the weekly blog post, so they will check back at least once per week.

By creating a weekly blog post, the website owner is able to provide useful updates and information to his or her readers. Although this article is primarily for business owners, any website owner can benefit from a weekly posting schedule.

Get a feel for content

By posting at least once every week, website owners create a useful skill. When business owners force themselves to post every week, they’re building a valuable skill, and this skill enables them to constantly think about how they can provide more value to their customers. The new skill gives business owners a competitive advantage.

What weekly blog posts do

There are many benefits of doing weekly blog posts. Such a post can be used to set specific buying criteria. Website and business owners can use a weekly blog post to establish true credibility and authority. They can use weekly posts to explain why customer service is so important.

For search engines

Website and business owners want to keep the search engines happy. A lot of blogs receive the bulk of their traffic from the major search engines, so it only makes sense to want to keep the search engines happy.

It’s nearly impossible to find any conclusive studies that show a specific posting frequency significantly impacts search engine rankings. However, that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to start posting once per month. Search engines love fresh content, which is why they encourage website owners to update their blog frequently.

However, many people find it interesting that search engines look more closely at writing style than posting frequency. It couldn’t hurt to add new blog posts frequently. From an SEO perspective, there are several benefits to frequently updating a blog. Google absolutely loves fresh content.

By posting at least once per week, website and business owners can keep the search engine spiders coming back frequently. If the search engine spiders are frequently visiting your blog, then they will quickly index your new content.

It’s pretty obvious that content is what drives search engine traffic, so by posting to their blog regularly, website and business owners can increase their search engine traffic. Currently, many people have an infrequent posting schedule.

They might add one post to their blog and wait several weeks before adding more content. Even if you only post one new blog post per week, it’s best to maintain a consistent schedule because it will keep the search engines happy.

It’s great for sharing

There is something that webmasters can learn from the NBA. Basketball has a handful of top scorers, and there is a specific reason why these individuals score more often than most other players.

Put simply, it’s the players who take the most shots who score more than the rest of the players. This is also true for baseball players. Statistics show that the top-scoring baseball players also have the highest number of strikeouts.

Every new blog post gives webmasters the ability to score more points, but in the case of websites, points would be considered traffic. By posting a new blog post every week, website and business owners create more opportunities for their content to be shared, which increases online visibility.

What about every other week?

Many webmasters would like to post once every other week. Although they can post as often as they want, it’s almost pointless to post less than once per week.

A small group of individuals say they do just fine posting once per month, and while it might be working for them, posting once per week seems to be much more effective. If you imagine the main blogs that you visit, then you will probably realize that these blogs are updated every week. There are several other reasons why it’s important to avoid posting less than once per week.

Frequent blogging helps grow business

When you blog often, you’re effectively growing your business. Many studies show that frequent blogging has a significant impact on business growth. Frequent blogging attracts more leads and traffic, and there is plenty of data to back this up.

On average, updating a blog once per week provides double the amount of traffic than blogging less frequently. Studies also show that companies that blog more than 15 times every month can have as much as five times more traffic than companies that don’t.

Small business owners have the most to gain from blogging regularly. By posting at least eight times a month, companies can significantly increase their sales.

What is most important

Some people cannot post more than once every two weeks. What is really important is creating a posting schedule and sticking to it. Consistency is extremely important. At the end of the day, there is no magical posting frequency.

Since every situation is unique, the answer to this question is different for everyone. However, it’s best to post at least once per week. This is the frequency that seems to produce the best results for webmasters and business owners.

If it’s possible for you to post more often than once per week, then you should strive to do so, but it’s crucial to maintain a consistent level of quality. It makes no sense to post once per week if all of the posts provide almost no value.

The general opinion of guest blogging has dropped in recent years due to the distressing trend of spam guest blogs. Many blogs that publish guest posts regularly find themselves assailed by webmasters attempting to pay for dofollow backlinks, a practice which is strongly discouraged by the search engine king of SEO, Google. Accepting such a guest post can put your blog at risk of a penalty from on high. Thankfully, there are a few rules you can follow to protect yourself against these sorts of spammers.

First, a note: guest blogging is swiftly becoming a poor SEO strategy. For several years, it was a valid strategy to gain powerful dofollow backlinks from authority sites. Now, with the rise of spam in the guest blog world, Google is likely to remove most of the benefit that comes from these links, even so far as levying penalties against the worst offenders. However, this does not mean that guest blogging is a bad thing. It simply means that you need to be careful about the links in your guest blogs. Guest blogging is still a valuable tool for networking, exposure, branding and community formation. With that in mind, feel free to accept guest posts, just be cautious about their content.

Rule #1: Scrutinize the Author

When an author offers to write a guest post for your blog, the first thing you should do is search their name and look up two things. First, look into their own personal blog or blogs. What sort of content do they publish? If their content looks in any way low quality, you can bet that the content they provide for your blog will be of similar quality. If their content is high quality — that is, something you would want to see on your own blog — then you can open up consideration.

The second thing you want to check is if they have guest posted on other blogs. What is the quality of their other guest posts? It’s always possible that they try to outsource their writing, and the quality of that writing may vary. Guest posts may get the short end of the stick in these cases, so watch out.

Any author you accept to write on your blog must have a track record for high quality content, particularly content relevant to your industry and niche. You should also make sure they don’t use spammy tactics for linking. Your goal is to only publish content from authors who provide quality and depth in their writing.

Rule #2: Scrutinize the Links

You need to have a consistent link policy for guest posts. Some sites are known for stripping any and all links from the content they publish. Other sites will allow one or two links, and others will allow as many as the author can reasonably include without coming across as spam. The exact number of links should vary according to the quality and depth of the content provided; deep, well-researched content is likely to have more research citations, after all.

The basic policy should look something like this:

• • A minimum of two or three links. No maximum beyond the discretion of the writer
• • A maximum of two links to the author’s sites, including social media handles and personal blogs
• • As the publisher, you should reserve the right to remove any link that you deem suspicious or potentially detrimental, either to the content or to your site. Make use of this rule to remove any link that leads to a site that does not provide value to your readers. Use the same quality indicators you use for links in your own posts

Rule #3: Scrutinize the Content

What is the quality level of the content this guest author has provided? That’s the most important question you should ask once you’ve determined that you’ll accept anything at all from the author. No matter how good their reputation may be, you need to make sure each individual post is something you want on your blog. Ask yourself a few questions about the content on offer.

• • Is this content something I want to have published on my blog?
• • Is this content written about a subject that’s been done to death online already?
• • Does this content offer something new and thought-provoking to an ongoing discussion?
• • Is this content copied or spun from another source? (Use tools such as Copyscape to check)

You want unique, powerful content for your blog, even if the primary purpose of that piece is to provide a gateway back to the original author.

Rule #4: Own the Content

This rule is important for two reasons. The first reason is that you need to reserve the rights to any content published on your blog. Google penalizes copied content. Even posting content you own on two individual pages is enough to get that page penalized. If a guest author offers a piece of content without the guarantee that you own the content, they are free to post it on their site as well. Instantly, Google sees copied content and penalizes both sites.

Note that this doesn’t mean the content is attributed to you. Unless you paid for the content to be ghostwritten, the original author should still receive credit. Half of the point of guest blogging is to spread the name and brand of the original author, after all. You don’t need to take credit for their work; simple make sure they won’t repost the content elsewhere.

The second reason is to make sure that you’re the one in control of the content. This ties into another general guideline, which is to never give out author accounts on your blog. Even reputable blog authors may stoop to underhanded tactics when they are given control on a site, with the right incentives.

Sure, it’s a bit of a headache to go in and format a post to publish yourself. On the other hand, it guarantees that the author won’t come back in a few months down the line and add unwanted links to a piece, edit it in a way you don’t want, or delete it entirely. If an author is requesting an account on your blog, at best they don’t know what they’re doing. At worst, they’re trying to get an interior access so they can perform some kind of attack.

Rule #5: Encourage Community

Guest posts shouldn’t be content airdropped from a passing website. They should be thought-provoking, powerful pieces of content that foster a discussion and a community. This means they need to encourage community on your own site. It also means they need to encourage an interaction between your site and that of the author. Sending traffic back and forth for discussions is a great way to build a community.

Guest blogging is a powerful tool for building community, even if its power in SEO is fading. Google is not going to penalize your site for guest blogging, as long as you stay within the linkspam guidelines. Keep an eye on the content you publish, make sure it’s as useful as you can, and you’ll receive the full benefit of an interested audience.

Google Adwords is a popular online advertising platform that places various ads on Google’s search engine as users search for specific keywords. The advertisements appear at either the top, bottom, or side of search results after the user makes a specific query. Several factors determine the placement of the ad. The relevance of the keywords and the amount paid per click are both determining factors in the rankings of paid keywords. Google is the world’s premier search engine with millions of users per day. Because of this, Google Adwords is the company’s primary source of income. In 2012, Google’s total advertising revenue totaled 42.5 billion dollars.

Google offers three payment platforms for potential advertisers: cost-per-click (CPC), site-targeted advertising, and cost-per-mille (CPM). Cost-per-click is the most commonly used platform, as Google only charges the advertiser between a few cents and a few dollars for each individual click the advertisement receives. The cost-per-mille platform charges advertiser for every thousand impressions the ad makes. The site-targeted advertising platform places targeted images, banners, and media ads on specific sites. Ranging from local, national, to international distribution, Google Adwords is unanimously the most popular search engine advertising campaign on the Internet.

SEO, as you well know, is the systematic process of increasing visibility and traffic of a certain website using organic or natural methods, which makes the primary goal of search engine optimization is to increase the page rank of a certain website. SEO techniques vary depending on the website and the search engine being optimized for. Each search engine uses a different algorithm for ranking, so it is important to do proper research before altering the content of your website for SEO purposes. Search engine optimization involves the alteration of content and HTML code to increase relevance for specific keywords. Additionally, increasing the total number of backlinks and inbound links is another popular search engine optimization technique.

That being said, web analysts often speculate on the effectiveness of search engine optimization vs paid advertising generated by Google Adwords. Purists are firm in believing that the two techniques are completely independent and do not compliment each other. However, a small minority believes that including a Google Adwords campaign increases organic traffic generated by search queries. Truthfully, the organic traffic of a particular web page is completely separate from the traffic generated from Google Adwords.

There is a reason Google is the most popular search engine in the world.

If Google awarded more organic traffic and increased page rank for paying customers, competitors like Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.com will gain considerable market share. Google does a good job at maintaining the integrity of its results by separating paid traffic from organic traffic. The executives at Google realize that seasoned users of search engines differentiate between paid advertising and organic search results. In fact, they often recognize the fact that the paid advertisements are not usually relevant to the keyword they are searching for because the advertiser paid a significant amount of money for the ad placement.

Why Adwords has no effect on organic traffic

A study conducted by Search Engine Journal proves that Google does not award organic traffic to paying customers. Using an app called Google Webmaster Tools, a comprehensive report was generated for pre-selected websites to prove where the majority of their traffic originated. The report concluded that websites with no Adwords campaigns generated traffic from organic clicks, or the total number of click-throughs on a website for a particular query. Organic traffic was also measured by organic click per query, which measured the total number of clicks divided by the total number of website appearances in search engine results pages. The report compared websites with Adwords campaigns to websites without paid advertising and concluded that an Adwords campaign has no effect on organic search results.

SEO vs AdWords

Website owners realize that visibility from search engines account for a significant amount of traffic. Web developers are often conflicted when devoted limited resources to either search engine optimization or paid traffic via Google Adwords. Effective SEO usually involves the use of a marketing firm. However, enlisting the help of a marketing firm is very expensive and not always 100% effective at increasing traffic.

For example, a reputable marketing firm may demand up to $2,000 per month for search engine optimization. By forgoing external marketing firms, web developers spend a significant amount of time on search engine optimization. While generating traffic is a priority, the time used for optimizing keywords and adding backlinks can be used on creating more relevant content and marketing on social media networks. The alternative to SEO is paying Google for traffic. The cost of Google Adwords varies on the specific keyword being paid for. Popular keywords will obviously cost a lot more than niche or longtail keywords. Before focusing on one specific traffic-generating technique, one must consider the products being sold at the particular website being promoted.

High-end products and services with significant markup such as jewelry, legal and financial services, cars, and home renovation may benefit from search engine optimization. Because the return on investment for expensive services and products are so high, minute increases in traffic due to search engine optimization is well worth the effort. For example, if a financial firm gets one click-through generated by SEO and charges $900 for their services, the company will still generate respectable revenue. The same cannot be said for low-end products like clothing and silverware. The volume of traffic needed to see the same return on investment is much greater and the time invested in search engine optimization may be considered wasteful. SEO techniques take a significant amount of time before the user sees an increase in traffic. In fact, many organic traffic campaigns take up to six months to see positive results.

An Adwords campaign takes a lot less time to see a return on investment. Increases in traffic can be seen in 24 hours. In addition to this, some keywords only cost a few cents per click, making it a financially viable option for small business owners. Optimally, both SEO and Google Adwords should be used simultaneously to generate results. While search engine optimization takes time to increase traffic, web developers can see an immediate return on their investment via Google Adwords. By the time the SEO campaign sees a return on investment, Google Adwords would have already increased visibility. The two techniques will eventually compliment each other and the web developer should see an exponential increase in website traffic.

Use WebMaster Tools for Traffic Analysis

Google offers a free program called Google Webmaster Tools to analyze the effectiveness of your website’s advertising campaign. Google Webmaster Tools allows users to see how much traffic is generated from each keyword. Using this tool, web developers can tweak their advertising campaign and stop spending money on keywords that don’t generate traffic. Conversely, undiscovered keywords can be optimized or paid for in order to increase traffic. The program is completely free to use and is a necessity for an effective website advertising campaign.

In conclusion, years of evidence and web page analysis have proven that a Google Adwords campaign has no effect on organic traffic. Google rightfully chooses to maintain the integrity of its search algorithm by not rewarding paying customers with higher page ranks. Because of this, paid advertising is completely separate and denoted by a yellow highlight banner. Small businesses benefit from the affordability of Google Adwords as opposed to hiring an external SEO marketing firm. Additionally, users will see faster results via Google Adwords as SEO takes time to materialize results. If your budget permits, it is recommended to use both of these traffic-generating techniques. While, Google Adwords benefits in the short term, the strength of effective search engine optimization cannot be underestimated. Websites ranked on the first page of Google obtain the status solely through SEO and often maintains the position on the first page for years. Because of this, SEO should not be ignored. The most profitable websites use both techniques: Adwords for short-term traffic and SEO for long term visibility.

The most exciting part about creating a new website with WordPress is how quickly and easily you can deploy it. You can then tinker with every little setting, add in new plugins to extend your WordPress installation and customize your code until your website reaches perfection.

On your way to making that perfect website, it’s important to keep in mind that you will need to customize certain things like your titles, meta descriptions and links while enabling things like sitemaps for search engine spiders to use.

Below is a comprehensive list of must-have SEO and SEO-related plugins for your brand new WordPress site.

Bear in mind that not all of these plugins have to be installed together as some bring the same or similar features that other plugins allow. Some plugins may be better for you to install due to the technical skill required or the degree of optimization that you can perform. This means that you should thoroughly review the plugins and their features individually before installing them.

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

This WordPress plugin has been around for years and it has attained the status of being one of the most highly rated plugins available for WordPress. It brings the basic features that allow you to optimize meta keywords and descriptions on each page or post while bringing some more advanced features that make creating a high quality website easier.

For example, WordPress SEO by Yoast comes with a feature that allows you to provide a “Focus Keyword” that you can optimize your post or page for as you create it. If your focus keyword is lacking in density, this plugin will suggest a few ways you can include it in your content to make it more agreeable with search engines. This makes it a must-have for your WordPress site if you plan to blog or to fill it with hundreds or thousands of articles.

WordPress SEO by Yoast provides XML sitemaps, RSS feed optimization, social sharing integration and the standard SEO features like tweaking the meta content of your pages.

2. All-in-One SEO Pack

While debatably not as feature-rich as WordPress SEO by Yoast, the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin makes it easy for novice webmaster and website owners who want to perform quick SEO on their website to deploy a brand new WordPress site.

The basic set of features that other SEO plugins for WordPress provide are available with the All-in-One SEO Pack. You can change individual page titles, meta keywords and descriptions.

The unique features that All-in-One SEO Pack provides includes the ability to fine-tune navigational links, utilize advanced canonical URLs and generate meta tags automatically based off of your content. All-in-One SEO Pack is also one of the few plugins that supports the features needed for WordPress e-commerce websites.

3. SEOPressor 5

SEOPressor 5 provides you with real-time recommendations that refresh as you write content in the WordPress administration section of your website. It analyzes keywords in places besides your content’s main body, which means that your title and header tags are included in its evaluation of your keyword usage.

The interesting part about this plugin is that it seems to rate keywords in a way similar to how Google and other major search engines value them. This allows you to stop focusing on just one exact phrase or long-tail keyword while trying to aim for other keywords that are related due to latent semantic indexing and other newly added features to search engines.

In addition to this, SEOPressor comes with a handy feature that will automatically stylize and decorate keywords while adding alt text to images.

4. SEO Ultimate

SEO Ultimate provides all the standard features that other SEO plugins provide, but it also gives you a few handy features that you won’t find in any other SEO plugins.

The most important feature that it provides is referred to as “Deeplink Juggernaut”, which is just a fancy way of saying that it can automatically create a deep interlinked scheme for your website by searching for keywords in your post and then automatically linking them. You can use this to link your posts and pages while creating your content with the autocomplete link tool provided, or you can scan your post after you’ve completed them to create links.

The best part about the Deeplink Juggernaut feature of SEO Ultimate is that it allows you to avoid most over optimization penalties by giving you the ability to control how many times a page is linked across your entire website in content or just how many times it’s linked on just one page.

The other key feature that SEO Ultimate provides is Open Graph integration, which allows you to maximize your content’s documentation and compatibility across other networks like Facebook.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

While most SEO plugins include the creation of XML sitemaps as a standard feature, not all of them do. Sometimes, you may just want to ensure that your sitemaps will be as compatible as possible with search engine spiders.

To achieve this, you can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. It will create a sitemap that can be easily interpreted by search engines, which in turn ensures that every piece of your content is crawled and indexed. This is especially useful for brand new WordPress sites, as search engines tend to miss content even when it’s linked directly from the main page simply because your website is new.

The other plus that this plugin brings is that it will automatically notify search engines when you create new content. This will help foster more visits by search engine robots, which in turn means that your content can begin ranking faster.

6. W3 Total Cache

The speed at which your website loads is one factor that search engines like Google use to determine how useful your website is to visitors. It’s also one of the most influential factors on statistics that can negatively affect your website, such as the bounce rate of your visitors.

W3 Total Cache works by taking everything that would normally be left up to a potentially lengthy database query and then caching it as a plain HTML page that can then be served up almost immediately. This is a great plugin for websites that are likely to receive a lot of traffic in the future or for websites hosted on shared hosting plans that can potentially be affected negatively by other customers with unoptimized sites.

7. Contextual Related Posts

With the recent Google Panda and Penguin updates, interlinking content that is closely related has become more important than ever before. Although there are a few plugins that can link related posts, they don’t do so with the same depth that the Contextual Related Posts plugin does.

It comes in two flavors: you can have posts linked automatically right after you install the plugin or you can create custom templates for a manual placement. It supports WordPress thumbnails and allows you to define which of your posts should be excluded from displaying related posts.

8. 404 Redirection

As you rearrange the pages on your website and tweak the URLs, you’re almost guaranteed to have links that will ultimately provide 404 errors. Instead of letting these pages become completely removed from Google’s listings, you can use 404 Redirection to turn 404 errors into 301 redirects to your home page.

This will allow you to pass any link authority that your old links had to your website’s homepage.

Managing thousands of followers is often more difficult than acquiring them. When you’re cluttering your timeline with hundreds of tweets each and every minute, it can seem impossible to cut through all of the noise and identify your target audience while maintaining meaningful interaction, which is the foundation of any successful Twitter campaign.

Many marketers agree that launching and maintaining an effective Twitter campaign is more difficult than it seems, especially for those who are unprepared. If you’d like to maintain a huge Twitter following in no time at all, this checklist will have you set up and ready to become the next successful Twitter sensation.

Understanding the Basics

• Hashtags – A hashtag, such as #ILUVNY, is simply a word or phrase that is preceded with a pound or hash symbol, allowing people to search for a variety of tweets about a specific subject. By using hashtags with your tweets, you gain exposure to thousands of people who would have previously never seen your tweets.

Best of all, these people are already interested in what you’re tweeting about. This is one of the most effective and simplest ways of growing a massive targeted audience, building relationships with the audience, and selling to the audience time and time again.

• Lists – Another terrific way of tracking Twitter users is by organizing your followers into categories and placing them into segmented lists. A Twitter list is nothing more than a group or grouping of followers and leads.

Creating a Twitter list is easy. In fact, all you have to do is open the drop box located on the right sidebar, click on “Create New List,” select a name for the list, and choose whether to make the list public or private.

You are allowed to create up to 20 lists, with up to 500 people on each list. The most effective lists are organized according to the types of Twitter followers marketers encounter, which can range from individuals to large organizations.

Unfortunately, most people fail because they neglect to vet their followers before adding them to their lists. Lists should only include followers who provide value for your Twitter stream. It is these people you want to re-tweet and rely on to re-tweet your messages as well, which is necessary for a successful Twitter campaign.

Organize Lists and Searches with Hootsuite

When you have identified some useful hashtags and begun populating some lists, it’s time to begin organizing them. This is where the power of Hootsuite begins to come into play. Hootsuite is a social media interface that publishes to Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, and other social sites. Hootsuite also allows you to manage multiple profiles, shorten URLs, schedule messages, and monitor the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns.

With Hootsuite, you can also create columns related to keyword searches or certain hashtags, which can be viewed right next to your home feed, making it extremely easy to identify target audiences and optimize campaigns. You’re also able to effortlessly move between hundreds of social media profiles that can each have their own lists and search columns. This allows you to easily monitor a massive amount of information in only a couple of clicks.

Hootsuite is tremendously valuable for managing keyword streams. To set up a Hootsuite keyword stream, simply click on “Add Stream” near the top of the screen, select “Keyword” from the options tab, and choose your keywords. After doing so, a column will appear showing all of the tweets including your selected keywords. You can use these keyword streams to find new followers already interested in the products or type of content you provide.

List streams are extremely valuable as well, and the set up process is rather similar to the set up process for keyword streams. Simply select “Add Stream” again, then select “List” instead of “Keyword” from the options, and finally select a list already existing on your Twitter account. These search columns and lists will become a valuable resource for identifying and targeting new followers as well as discovering interesting content to re-tweet.

Have Plenty of Images Ready to Use

In a recent study on Twitter activity, 92 percent of all brand engagement consisted of tweets that included links. In the same study, tweets with image links were found to have double the engagement rates of tweets not containing image links. Thus, it’s important to consistently tweet high quality images that may gain the interest of Twitter followers. To hit the ground running and remain armed with useful images, you should subscribe to photo sharing sites and begin stockpiling an array of potential images.

Funnel Followers to Blog Posts

Twitter is a terrific place to discover interesting blog posts and articles. In fact, “How To” guides and “Top 10” articles are often quite popular on Twitter. Therefore, you should write engaging and helpful articles for your particular field and find attractive titles to post on Twitter along with your blog’s URL. You’ll not only attract more followers by providing helpful and interesting information, but you’ll increase your site traffic as well.

Needless to say, you should have a blog set up with adequate content and a nice theme prior to launching a Twitter campaign. Luckily, there are dozens of fairly nice, free WordPress themes available, making it possible to get a blog off the ground in only one or two days.

Create Useful Messages

It’s important to tweet as often as possible and provide your followers with quality tips and messages. Since it’s impossible to be on Twitter day and night or always have something creative and useful to say, you should create a list of interesting tips, articles, and references to be ready to use whenever you want. Ideally, the list of messages should contain useful tips, industry-specific information, and references or links to your blog.

Services like TwitterFeed can be useful for allowing you to connect your Twitter account to your blog or create a schedule for future tweets. However, even if you do opt for one of these services, nothing replaces a human presence on social media.

Have Twitter Buttons on Your Website

If you have a blog or website already, which you should, you must make it easy for visitors to share it with others. Thus, you should have social bookmark buttons strategically placed on your website or blog to make it easier to share and begin spreading virally. When selecting buttons, just stick with the default buttons, since people understand what they do and tend to trust them more.

Create Special Offers

If you already have a sizable target audience, it may be a wise idea to develop special offers specific to Twitter users. This will help create a buzz and allow you to reward your followers while attracting new followers as well. Therefore, it’s a good idea to brainstorm and have some special offers or contest ideas prior to launching a Twitter campaign.

Develop Landing Pages Specifically for Twitter Users

When you have a special offer for Twitter users or are holding a contest, you should consider developing landing pages for the event that are optimized specifically for Twitter. This will allow you to manipulate your site’s average visiting time, improve the effectiveness of your campaign, and ultimately increase your revenue. Thus, it may be helpful to have a landing page or two up and ready to go, or at least be comfortable with creating landing pages before going live with a campaign.

With this checklist in hand, you’ll be managing successful Twitter campaigns in no time at all.

Blogging has exploded in popularity over the last few years. Individual writers write blogs daily on nearly every subject, from traveling to investments. Businesses have started blogs in conjunction with their websites as a way to keep their goods or services relevant. Blogs keep an audience entertained, invested in a particular site or subject and help a blogger or business to reach out to their consumers and fans. Personal blogs on fashion, makeup, politics and movies have transformed everyday people into well-known experts or internet celebrities. Many people start blogs as a hobby or an outlet.

Some start them specifically to monetize, promote themselves or products and spin their blog into other industry opportunities. New and established bloggers want to know how to attract an audience, keep readers coming back and convert those readers into loyal fans. Questions relating to reader acquisition and retention often come up when discussing how to run a blog. A common concern among bloggers is how long each new blog post should be.

The Blog Reader’s Habits

Content, tone and length are important elements to any writer and bloggers are no exception. The length of the post can determine if someone dives in to read or clicks off of the page. Some blog guests scroll down to preview the length before investing in reading the post.

There are readers who love long posts if the subject interests them. Most modern readers; however, have a criminally short attention span. The availability of information on the internet can be overwhelming and frustrating for the average web surfer. Most people aren’t interested in reading large chunks of texts online and skip long passages rather than plow through them. Guests visit blogs to read a quick, informative piece on a subject that interests them. They rarely expect the depth and investment of a feature article or essay.

An Ideal Post

Keeping these habits and expectations in mind, short, to the point posts are best. There has been much discussion about how long or short a blog post should be. Many scoff at the idea of setting a word limit, but bloggers still seek guidelines. Blogs that mainly use photos tend to focus on the images and require less words. Blogs that tell inspirational stories tend to run long. With these exceptions, the ideal length for an informative blog posts is between two and five hundred words. This length broken up into smaller paragraphs on the page works well.

Why is this the perfect length for blog posts? While two hundred words barely seems like enough, that minimum achieves several goals for bloggers to keep in mind. It is long enough to be informative, give specific detail and description and pique interest. The longer five hundred word posts can do the aforementioned and offer more detail.

A two to five hundred word post is also short enough to read in a few minutes. This fact is more important than most bloggers realize. Readers want information in spurts instead of taking it in all at once. The blog is a fitting vehicle for this type of information relay. Visually this length looks substantial enough to cover a subject, yet isn’t too overwhelming on the page.

Can Good Things Can Come in Short Packages?

Keeping a blog post brief is also important because many people read blogs on their mobile phones or e-readers. The size of the screen doesn’t lend itself to long posts that readers have to keep scrolling down to read. Obviously this is still an easy task, yet impatient people still consider it a hassle. Mobile users want to be able to read a post and scroll down to read or make comments quickly. Some blog guests discover content through social media.

A blog’s regular readers may tweet or like a post, causing a friend to click through. Coming from Twitter’s one hundred and forty characters and the quick updates on Facebook, a long post can seem jarring. Friends may also discuss posts if the subject is relevant. Summarizing a shorter post with one or two points is much easier than trying to sum up a one thousand word, mutli point post. Like it or not this generation wants commentary and news in quick doses.

The Series, or Posts: The Sequel

Sometimes a subject needs in depth explanation and the blogger needs to get across several key points.

If a post starts to get longer and longer, splitting the post into a series or multiple parts is a great approach. Series tend to bring readers back to the blog and encourage more comments and conversations. Blog series postings often become the most popular, talked about posts and become liked and tweeted by readers. If a series post is popular it increases hits and links specifically because there are several shorter posts to read. Series also make the next blog topic a no brainer!

Where’s My Content?

In addition to these elements, bloggers must also contend with frequency of postings. Post too little and readers will become frustrated with the lack of interesting content. Post too much and readers will miss posts or bloggers will burn out and view the blog as a chore. As a rule bloggers should post frequently on subjects of interest to them and their established readers. A study done by UC Irvine revealed that most blog readers visit their favorite blogs at least once per day. Frequent posts can seem daunting, but no blog post needs to be a dissertation. Some bloggers mainly post photos and add minimal words to describe the scene. This method works well with makeup and fashion bloggers. Bloggers who write on these subjects may find shorter one hundred word or less posts better for their audience.

Pace Your Blog

While some subjects are timely and require in depth posts over a shorter period most subjects do not. Political blogs covering an election or blogs about the movie of the moment may have longer posts to cover the relevant information. New bloggers often feel pressure to do it all at once. Instead they should pace themselves.

An important realization for bloggers is that they have plenty of time to dive into their topic. Most blogs focus on one specific topic and can cover it from various angles. This is the perfect strategy for in depth discussion and exploration over time. In a few months time the average blogger will have written and covered more material than a typical book on the same subject. The blog platform lends itself to discovery, growth and new information over time. This is an even better reason to shorten blog posts and give readers information in bites.

Rules Are Meant to be Broken

Depending on the blog subject longer or shorter post may be warranted. What word count makes a perfect post length will continue to be debated for as long as blogs are popular and relevant. If a blogger writes beautiful descriptions and paints a lively scene, posts will naturally run longer. If the blog mainly consist of pictures or product descriptions shorter posts will work. The real perfect answer is to write the amount of words that will help convey key points to the readers. If readers are interested and learning new or interesting information each post will be the perfect length.