Cornwall SEO

Content Marketing Blog

Lyndon Antcliff

3 Essential Elements of a Successful Blog Post

By

A successful blog post is one that achieves the task it was created for.

It could be to attract the attention and change the mind of just one person or it could be to excite millions of people to come together and perform one act of kindness.

Whatever the goal, I have identified three elements for success every blog post has.

  • One tree in a forest of trees
  • Social glue within the tribe
  • Delights the brain of a minimum, viable amount of readers

One tree in a forest of trees

First blog post in a brand new blog of a non-famous person will fail.

It is the first tree in what will be a forest of trees. Your tree will not be judged alone, it will be judged within the context of other trees. A person with a horde of fans and followers already has the forest built. When that first tree is planted, it is not alone.

This means a blogger must be willing to put the hours into growing her blog before that one blog post will become a blog post.

A blogger does not have a successful blog post in isolation, it is supported by the body of work which has gone before.

Each tree you plant, nurture and grow makes your forest bigger.

Social glue within the tribe

Human beings desire to connect, communicate and cooperate.

We are many tribes belonging to the one tribe of humanity. We go forward together. A blog must belong to a tribe of many. It cannot be successful if it is a tribe of one.

A blog is a communication tool, it communicates and to others in the tribe and hopefully persuades.

It is a transportation device for taking a thought from the blogger to the reader. The tribe the blog wants to be a part of is the recipient of these thoughts.

A blog post gives ideas, creativity, inspiration, and guidance to the tribe. It becomes the glue that helps hold the tribe together, to enable the tribe to achieve its goals.

A successful blog post adds to the library of the tribe, it is another notch on the communal totem.

Delights the brain of a minimum viable amount of readers

A change in the state of mind must occur in the reader, to allow the reader to know the blog post was worthy of her time.

The number of readers a successful blog post needs could be 1 or it could be 1,000,000. It depends on the specific objective of that blog post.

If you need to persuade one person to change their mind and perform a specific task for you and your blog post only existed for that purpose, then if that occurs the blog post is a success.

If your intention is to get 10,000 people to download an app that will change the world, and you do that, then your blog post is a success.

When you are starting out fresh, you have no readers. But you will. You write for those who seek to know you and desire to dig in deep.

It may be a future post attracts but the past blog posts change them from a reader to a fan.

Your forest of blog posts will enable you to create fans, not the one successful post.

Learn what delights, understand the number of people you need to attract. Focus on those who the blog post is for.

Are there other things which make a blog post successful?

Possibly.

But, I can’t think of any that belong to all successful blog posts.

it helps to be mindful of these three elements when creating your blog posts. We do tend to over complicate things, forgetting that simple truths are often what makes something work.

You could argue that “being useful”, is an essential element. But I would say it belongs to the element of “Social glue within the tribe”. Being useful helps the tribe, it improves your standing with the tribe.

There is much detail within these three elements worth exploring.

It is worth remembering though.

You grow your forest one tree at a time.

An infographic to help your content strategy

By

Content marketing is not simply about building content. It’s about employing a specific strategy to employ content and social media marketing to improve the emotional response when people come into contact with your brand.

By using a mix of effective, proven content marketing techniques you can increase the way people feel about your brand, enabling positive reactions as they come into contact. Increasing the chances of building links and creating social media shares and mentions.


Content strategy

Source

Citations
Emily Jarvis Christoph Sisson Jay Bear Douglas Holt Peter Noel Murray Joe Pulizzi

What is the future of Content Marketing

By

Content marketing is war

 

Content marketing is street fighting, no holds barred, open warfare.

Content used to be cool.

But that time is gone

it’s no longer art, it’s no longer elegant. Yes the good stuff still exists but it gets drowned out. No one seems prepared to sift through the bytes of shite that are vomited daily.

It’s a myth that good, “quality content” rises to the top. You don’t do content marketing if you love content. You do it if you love the sound of the screams of your competitor make as you rip their eyeballs out.

One of the problems that people have when talking about this subject is they use the past to try and determine what we should do now. Myself included.

What is going to happen in the next 10 years is going to be completely different to what has happened in the past 10 years.

I don’t know what will happen, but I know it will be different.

Therefore, focus on fundamentals.

  1. Help people.
  2. Care about people, and make bloody sure they know you care.
  3. Know your stuff, stay sharp and frosty.

Do those three things and everything else will fall into place.

Update:

Someone pointed out that they were confused about this post and that is mentions war and then “caring about people”. The war is of course metaphorical and directed at the other content your content is fighting against. I realise that using such aggressive terms whilst advising to use empathy may seem contradictory. I do not.

Indeed, when people go to war they care very much for the people they are fighting for. When you create a piece of content it helps to care about the people you are writing for and not such for the content you are compete against.

I think the idea that you are going to war against the competition is a valid one, perhaps I should have made this more clear. It is important to be able to use criticism as fuel to move forward.

I hope this makes things clearer.

What are the beginner mistakes when content marketing?

By

 

What are some common beginner mistakes in content marketing?

Not understanding the fundamentals and overcomplicating the process

  1. Content marketing is only about two things, communication and persuasion.
  2. Your CM should enable the reader to do two things, save time, and make money. Everything else is fluff.
    You don’t need a third, the above is enough. Now I have saved you time, go make some money.

You don’t need a third, the above is enough. Now I have saved you time, go make some money.

But let’s look at this in more detail.

1.  Creating content for the wrong person

A specific mistake may be that a beginner looks at all the content that is being produced, notes that certain types of content are more common and think that is the type of content to create.

The flip side of that mistake is when a content type is perceived to be ineffective because it is so common. The listicle is a prime example.

Not creating content that works, because the creator has a personal prejudice against that type of content. An example is our friend, “the listicle”. If you work in creating content with a view to drive traffic, you will learn to loathe the listicle. But the hard truth is

NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK

The content is not created for the creator, it is created for the reader

It may be that in your experience you think this type of content is not effective, but that is a different process than thinking, “urgh, I hate listicles, they’re grody to the max.”

The best content creator, in my experience is the one who likes getting under the skin of others, the one who likes to get a rise out of people, the one who needs a reaction to validate their existence. Good content creators are troubled people.

2. Thinking it’s all about the tool

Having a tool means you don’t have to work as hard, it has the promise of saving you time. This is why the idea of the “tool” is very attractive. A blog post that details a list of tools will always work as a type of content, the more comprehensive the list the better, even if most of the list is not read.

This is because each tool highlighted, each description is a little promise that it will save you time and any content that saves you time gets shared, bookmarked and linked to, more than one that doesn’t.

This is probably why we see so much content detailing the many tools available to us, such as 12 Free SEO Tools. A blog post I did recently and drove a nice bit of traffic to this blog.

But you don’t need any tools to do good SEO.

You don’t need tools to create great content.

Yes of course a tool is useful as a mechanical aid to perform a specific task, but excitement over tools is similar to when the DIY nut goes to the store and ends up spending hours going through the specs of the drills when all she needed was a hole.

It’s really about what happens in the brain of the reader at the time they consume the content

We are wired to compare things, to sort things. The SEO mindset puts this on hyperdrive and so when asked to create content will head to the tools. Therefore if you want to attract the SEO to your blog, create plenty of listicles.

The most simple tool and probably the most effective when it comes to creating content is pen and paper.

But that just sounds boring, doesn’t it?

3. Thinking you can’t come up with new ideas

I often come to a point where I have used up all the obvious ideas for content to create.

The solution to the creative process is the one that works for you. It’s about trying a few out before you find one that fits. This is such a common problem with writers and creative artists that there are many ideas out there about how to get to the point where you have a pile of workable ideas.

My personal solution to this problem is this

  1. Change the state of mind. Creating content and coming up with ideas for content are two different things and you should think about them differently, just as the state of mind for writing a first draft is different than editing.
  2. Go for a walk, and change your metabolism. There are studies that prove that walking aids thinking, plus less chance of distraction
  3. Consume fantastic content. No this does not give you permission to buy the DVD Box set of The Walking Dead to watch from the start, just to experience that “Nagen” moment again. It means consuming content that takes you away from the problem and allows your subconscious to work on it, whilst shovelling tasty food at the other end.
  4. Discussing with other human beings. Even though the actual information that another person can tell you may not help you, the act of shifting your brain to one on one, the personal communication mode is enough to help shake the box and allow the ideas to flow.

Whatever works is what works. If the ideas are not flowing, pick a solution you have never used before and see how it works. With a mind to developing your own personal box of solutions.

In conclusion.

There are many mistakes that will be made when a beginner, and don’t let them slow you down when it comes to creating content. Mistakes are there as aids to learning, if no mistakes are being made you are probably not trying hard enough.

At least as a beginner, you won’t have a huge amount of people watching what you do and picking it apart.

SEO Audit of UK Conservative and Labour Party websites

By

uk general election seo audit

Websites are tools of communication and persuasion. And as such should be used correctly by political parties to achieve their aims. Following best practice web design and SEO it is relatively simple to create a website that Google will love, which increases your chances of ranking higher in the search engine results pages.

Performing an SEO audit on a website is required to establish whether or not a website is following best practice and is optimised in the most effective and efficient way.

It does take a lot of time and effort to do a full audit, but I thought I would show a few examples of what an audit can pick up. As the UK general election is in full swing I thought it would be interesting to look at the two main political parties.

Due to the amount of time a full audit would have taken, we have only been able to do a partial audit and focus on a few important things

Disclaimer: I have no allegiance to any political party, am a swing voter and have approached the analysis of both websites with a completely open mind.

conservatives.com

H1 Tag

No H1 tag exists.
Not good, Google values a H1 tag, I would suggest an H1 tag which echoed the title tag. As it would seem that is the most important keyword for the site

Although there are H2 and H3 tags

<h2>Share The Facts</h2>
<h3>Why we need a general election</h3>

Missing a H1 tag is not best practice, and is an opportunity missed to highlight a specific keyword to Google that the page finds important.
<title>The Conservative Party</title>
Functional and showing what is important, but missing an opportunity to add a slogan which will be seen by many. Missing an opportunity for further communication as the title tag is listed in the search engine results pages and does get scanned. A slogan is perfect for that context.

Meta Description

<meta name=”Description” content=”The Conservative Party – Building a country that works for everyone” />

Again, very functional, very conservative. A phrase that is all about getting on with the job with little fuss. I think this works for the Conservative brand.

Canocilization

Although tricky to say, canocilization is a technical issue with the URL structure, it should follow a logical and hierachical structure, allowing Google to easily decide which of your pages you have deemed the most important.

It is crucial you are able to tell Google which is the front page to your website, as that is the one it will want to rank.

You must only have one of the following that will show in your browser, if not Google may index the duplicate URL and it will weaken your ranking potential.

  • http://yourdomain.com
  • http://www.yourdomain.com
  • https://yourdomain.com
  • https://www.yourdomain.com

The Conservative website has correct canocilization,  is correct, as only https://www.conservatives.com is available.

Duplicate content errors
Pages within the folder, “http://press.conservatives.com/archive/” are throwing up duplicate content errors. Possibly these pages should be non-indexed if not needed to rank or the con. This allows Google to know the exact pages needed to rank. Whilst not a major issue, optimising this will make the site more easier for Google to index the correct pages.

Oh, and something interesting popped up. The meta keywords tag is now redundant and yet the Conservative website has, <meta name=”Keywords” content=”conservatives, conservative, conservative party, tories, tory, david cameron, centre-right” />

Did you spot the error?

 

labour.org.uk

H1 tag

Very bad situation with regards to the Labour parties H1 tags.

<h1>Labour</h1>
<h1 style=”margin-bottom: 0.6em;“>We will build a better, fairer Britain.</h1>
<h1>JEREMY CORBYN’S 10 PLEDGES TO TRANSFORM BRITAIN</h1>
<h1>Labour</h1>

You only ever have one H1 tag, whilst you can have many H2 and h3 tags.
It is how Google knows to structure what is important on the page.
A website is a communication and persuasion tool, it should be constructed along best practice guidelines. It’s actually very simple and logical to do this and getting the H1 tag this wrong is inexcusable.

To a web designer or SEO this is quite shocking as the error is not a simple mistake as it is repeated a number of times. Leading me to question the methodology of those who put this website together.

My questions to the Labour party if they were a client would be:

  • Who is responsible for the oversight of the website?
  • Did the web designer who put this page together raise the bad practice issues?
  • What processes are in place to catch such simple mistakes?

I wouldn’t lay the blame at the person who was tasked to do the actual coding, but would investigate the management and systems that allowed this to happen. As whomever is in charge is doing a very bad job.

Title tag

<title>We are Labour &ndash; The Labour Party</title>

Not quite sure of the purpose of the duplication. “The Labour party – insert slogan here“, would be better. Seems redundant and a waste of a call to action opportunity.

Meta Description

<meta name=”description” content=”We are a people-powered movement. Be part of it.“>

This tells me that the “movement”, is a movement and not a party, is powered by people. Not sure what else a “movement” would be powered by. “Be part of it”, not sure if this is telling me what to do or asking me. It certainly does not inspire a click through if seen in the search engine results page, which is the purpose of the meta description.

Canocilization

This is a complete mess.

Home

Home

Are both available to the browser.
Yes that is correct, the Labour party website does not yet have a https certificate, which enables data to be encrypted between the browser and the website. It is best practice to have one and Google is saying you should have one and Google uses it as a ranking signal. This is again a basic error which any beginner web designer or SEO would know.

Also, the front page now redirects to http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/home/splash, which means there are now 3 front pages. It is important you only have one front page to present to Google as it has to chose which one it is going to rank.

The request for contact details would have been better as being above the fold on the original front page and still have the same URL structure. Still filling the screen, but without messing with the structure of the website and its optimisation.

A quick fix would be to redirect the https page to the http page, as well as to redirect http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/home/ to http://www.labour.org.uk and get rid of the splash page.

But the best solution is to get a https certificate and then redirect all front pages to https://www.labour.org.uk

Other UK political parties are:

libdems.org.uk

snp.org

ukip.org

greenparty.org.uk

plaid.cymru

mebyonkernow.org

More information on what is important best practice:
Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide from Google, this is a great starting guide from the people who you really should be listening to.