#google tools

I saw advice once that said if you see a good article, then you should try and follow the work of the particular journalist, rather than the particular outlet. Presumably you might do that with....Google lets you do like saved searched with notifications right? That’s a thing? I did a mini journalism course in high school and they said that’s how they follow their topics of interest. Does anyone have experience doing something like that? What about doing the opposite? I read a financial article about the wealth tax / income bracket discussion here in NZ and it was all “how do you define wealth anyway? Some people feel wealthy in having a good family :) “ which is the most cowardly waste of journalism approach they could have taken. If you ask that question I expect you to talk about the cost of living in different cities. So how do I make some way to highlight the author as an untrusted source when reading future discussions? Do I have to keep an actual list of names?

Steps to a 😍Google friendly website

  Things to do

Our Webmaster Guidelines provide general design, technical, and quality guidelines. Below are more detailed tips for creating a😍Google-friendly web.

 Give visitors the information they're looking for

Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your web. In creating a helpful, information-rich web, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your web.

 Make sure that other webs link to yours

Links help our crawlers find your web and can give your web greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search,😍Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. 😍Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

 Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your web develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other webs find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links to your web are placed there specifically to make your web look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links (such as link schemes and doorway pages) are covered in our Webmaster Guidelines.

 Only natural links are useful for the indexing and ranking of your web.

 Make your web easily accessible

Build your web with a logical link structure. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

 Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to examine your web. Most spiders see your web much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire web in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.

 Things to avoid

Don't fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to "cloak" pages, or put up "crawler only" pages. If your web contains pages, links, or text that you don't intend visitors to see, 😍Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your web.

 Don't feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to "guarantee" high ranking for your web in 😍Google's search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your web's flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index.

 Don't use images to display important names, content, or links. Our crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics. Use ALT attributes if the main content and keywords on your page can't be formatted in regular HTML.

HOW TO MAKE A SCHEDULE ON GOOGLE SHEETS 

Seriously one of the most useful things I have learned if you need a physical copy and need to be able to mess around with it more. 

My Favorite time to use this is when I'm trying to plan out my schedule for next semester and need a print out I can look at and draw on when registration comes along.

VERY SIMPLE I SWEAR, it really really can help you if you are a organized person like me. It may seem old 2005 but sometimes thats what you need. 

Another Great Tool is Using Google Calendar!

Okay First things First OPEN UP GOOGLE SHEETS

1. choose either a plain sheet or the Schedule Sheet (Recommended)

Example Above

2. If the pre-set times are good for you then all you have left is to fill in the activities, Merge for lengthy times and BAM you are done

3. If the times are not good and you need smaller intervals than use this equation = [insert letter + number here] + Time (HOURS, MINUTES, SECONDS)

You must put in the first time in order to create a starting point 

EXAMPLE ABOVE

4. If you wish to start at a blank slate then create a title Merge, Insert the time starting point and formula and let your creativity go wild

If you ever need help don't forget you can use the Help Tab in the Right Corner

THATS IT, PLANS YOUR WEEKS PLAN YOUR DAYS BE ORGANIZED

1. Low cost in comparison to AdWords and PPC

Organic listings are essentially free. When you are listed at the top, you don’t need to pay per click or allocate a budget for advertising, one of the main benefits of SEO is that it is the gift that keeps on giving.

2. Higher brand credibility – people trust Google

People trust that the first listing in google is a reputable company, by doing SEO, your website becomes THE brand name. The further back you are in rankings on Google the more people are skeptical about your website.

3. 60% of clicks go to the first result

This means that only 40% of clicks are left for the second through the millionth result on google for the keyword. Securing that top spot on Google is a sure fire way to gain thousands upon thousands of visitors.

4. You’ll always have access to data

You can discover new products by looking at keyword data and seeing what people are searching the most for. Customer data is extremely valuable in business and is not that hard to come by with the right tools. Manipulating it to your advantage can be exponentially beneficial for your business.

5. The results require minimal upkeep

Unlike advertisements the affects of SEO are permanent. They don’t suddenly stop if you stop paying for them. Of course you will need a little upkeep to maintain that top 1st spot ranking, but if you can get that top spot chances are it will be quite difficult for it to get taken away.

6. Your competitors are doing it

It’s a commonly accepted truth that writers write to be read.

If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll probably agree that each new piece of writing attracts a different level of publicity.

Some posts will blow up with views just days after publication, while others can languish unnoticed months later.

Even though they’re of relatively the same standard.

So what gives? And what actually attracts traffic online?

Interest in new content is a subject close to the heart of most digital publishers.

Refinery29‘s senior vice president of content strategy and innovation says, “We are not after building our business from lone fragments of celebrity news. Banking exclusively on the news cycle is far too risky a move if one is after sustained loyalty and growth.”

Ben Robinson, chief creative officer at Thrillist, agrees and notes that content is an area which needs to be approached strategically and methodically.

In his words, “Assuming we roll out a list of best burgers you could find in San Francisco, not updating them at least annually or even so often, would be a great downfall on our side.”

Evidently, the need for fresh and compelling content is a top priority for most of today’s brands. But increasingly, digital publishers are digging deeper into their archives to resurface buried gems, and it’s becoming clear that evergreen content does not necessarily have to be brand new.

Old is gold

Little tweaks here and there to previously published content can go a long way to effectively maximizing traffic to your site.

Old is gold, well, at least to those who know how to mine it. For brands growing into independent publishers, creating new content can be a great challenge.

But what makes the challenge even greater is that not many brands have creatives among their workforce. The other challenge is keeping up to speed with industry insights, and creating content on the go.

Creating new content only every so often has proven to be an uphill battle for many.

But what if we could get this out of the way by using what you have on your hands – your old and dusty (but still valuable) content?

Here are some helpful tips to see you through growth by creating a larger following to your content. Firstly, by attracting new readers, and secondly, by encouraging loyalty from existing traffic.

1. Learn from your audience

Content marketing is all about developing content that satisfies the needs of a particular audience. In order for your content to find relevance in its intended niche, proper homework needs to be done.

For digital publishers, creating surveys or engaging user interactive content can help get your audience talking. After collating their opinions, it is time to put them to use by revamping your old post ideas.

This can be approached from two perspectives:

Create spin-off posts

For posts that did statistically well, you focus on creating spin-off posts. Identify any ideas that might have been overlooked while compiling the post and give it an in-depth touch. Using readers’ comments and feedback emails, you might be able to know what they felt was left out and maximize on that.

The above post from Inked Hub Writers, for example, targets digital publishers and tells them what to look out for when putting up content that stands out for a specific audience.

This same post recently got a revamp, and this time, the SEO bit was left out of the post. As it turns out, there was conflicting interest mentioning SEO and audience, seeing both could have differing ways of analyzing what fares well.

With that information coming in, it was possible to put out a post on the same topic, which now went straight ahead to address the audience as the big focus in the post, as shown below.

These spin-off articles make ‘cluster’ content, which continues to link back to the original content, helping it to rank higher. In other words, it’s the same content, but with a fresh feel to it.

Try rebranding

The second consideration in doing this is concerning posts that didn’t perform to the writer’s expectation. Ask yourself what a salesperson would do to increase the sales or shelf life of an under-performing commodity, and re-spin it.

Identify the places that could use a makeover, incorporate new ideas and better editing, or lend themselves well to additional graphics and anything else likely to jazz up the article. A new take on the general outlook of an article could be all it takes for audiences to realize how great your content is and engage with it afresh.

2. Experiment with creative promotion

Not being creative or bold enough with marketing strategies is a common sin that creeps into many brands’ publishing departments. There’s a genuine phobia about promoting already-published content. The truth is that most of the archived content is simply there growing dust because it lacks a focused, creative promotion strategy to begin with.

Try sharing across multiple social media platforms. In today’s world, promotion has become much harder and easier at the same time. Thinking creatively as a publisher can help you leverage your old content and close in more viewership. A start to that would be asking some very simple but worthwhile questions.

The major one is, how has your social promotion performed so far? Today’s many available social media platforms provide a virtually unlimited target audience. How you sell yourself on these social platforms is what will count. Focus on the things that your audience will easily relate to.

For example, you could share one post across multiple platforms by simply playing around with the headlines. An online pesticide store could be launching a new product, for example, and publish a press release on it. Seeing as it would appear too redundant to keep sharing the same title, the editor can get creative in this scenario. Possible ways for sharing this across different social media platforms could be:

Writing an interesting post on the overarching need for households to keep their houses pest-free by providing simple executable do-it-yourself tips on Facebook

Highlighting the prevalent problem the pesticide seeks to solve. Making audiences feel like you relate to their problems and frustrations to help them get interested in your proposed solution for it in a simple tweet

Creating a discussion reel around the subject, and letting your target audience share their input around it on Instagram. This could look like: passive opinions, shared disappointments and a mention of what has worked for them.

Simply put, settling for only one way of running a promotion could only limit the chances of the content’s performance.

3. Republish on a different platform

This can also do the trick. Guest blogging has become a networking boon for the digital publishing industry. Not many brands, though, have mastered the art of republishing.

While guest blogging in most cases, takes in new content from scratch, some sites are willing to republish a piece on their site with your permission.

While this can be viewed differently by different parties, it sure can be an opportunity for an expansive reach. There is no limitation to how many times you can self-publish your own content.

To mean that, you don’t have to publish the content entirely, but you can share the link to a piece through other published pieces that are relevant to your content.

Whether you are self-hosted on a private website or use WordPress or BlogSpot, you can choose to increase the breadcrumbs leading to your content by posting it on various other sites. The more links you put out there, the more likely you are to increase your page views.

4. Optimize for SEO again

A great way to get URL topping results in search engine searches is to effectively optimize your content. The SEO landscape is crucial to successful content production so it makes sense to update your publish times and keywords as it changes and evolves.

You might have noticed that among even the most informative posts in search engines, some of them date way back, beyond three or four years. That does not mean that the information has changed since – but people may not be as likely to click on the link if they think the content is dusty or outdated.

Posts actually often reappear years later because they were well-researched and optimized for the particular needs they were addressing. The publishers can therefore keep updating them in any case where information has changed over the years.

Using Google’s keyword planner, you can identify relevant keywords that will link well with your work. It also gives quick ideas for terms the page was not targeting.

A little tweak on a title tag and inclusion of relevant modifiers in the body part of the article can also go a long way to putting your content out there.

It may be a wise idea to consider engaging the services of a professional SEO writer or agency who understand the steps involved to achieve this.

5. Digitally repackage your content

Branded content has an appeal that helps your audience identify with your brand. Most times, what this calls for is effective packaging.

So how do you go about updating your content packaging?

Firstly, consider visual appeal. A larger percentage of humans tend to be visual learners; this is a proven fact. You can rejig content in the form of an infographic, which in simpler terms is a visual summary of your content.

Infographics can be as detailed and as engaging as you’d like them to be. On the other hand, they can be as simple and minimal as the one below.

To some, infographics appear to be more ‘snackable’ than consuming large pieces of written content.

You can also consider revamping your old content into videos, podcasts or maybe even live chats that showcase its value.

For instance, video blogging, or what is commonly known as ‘vlogging’, has taken content development by storm. Most online users are engaging channels like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Instagram to get their content out there.

Many marketers and content strategists are now pushing their brands to produce more graphics and video content as a result.

What’s good about video and infographic content is that it is, by nature, very interactive and easy to understand. This increases its likelihood of being shared widely, hence reaching a greater audience.

6. Create ebooks and white papers

Traditional publishing, or more notably, print media once held a fair share of the content market. But that’s not the story today. In the wake of the digital media boom, today’s consumers of content are more accustomed to reading things online than in print format. For brands and publishers, this presents a great opportunity.

If you have published content or flyers relating to a certain topic, you can consider compiling these previous articles to form an eBook. Make it easily downloadable on various sites for free, but if you want to make that extra buck by ‘gating’ it, that’s all well and good.

White papers, like eBooks, can help identify you as an industry authority. All you need is to compile your different informative and relatable pieces to create a very informative white paper.

Wrapping up

Content has been, and will always be, an interaction point between brands, publishers and consumers.

Publishing content may continue to be a necessary burden for brands. But with the different possibilities that dusty old content in the digital archives can offer, this burden can be somewhat reduced.

Paying attention to the six tips above can help you revamp your old content and develop a good readership from it.

10 Smart Search Engine Marketing Tactics To Get Free Google Traffic

Search engines on average will drive 300% more traffic than social media. So how do you let Google know you exist?

One tactic is to put more focus on quality content. But content on its own can’t make you rank in “Top 10” search results. You should also take into account the importance of link building.

Link building is the most significant but also the most challenging aspect of optimizing your blog or website for search engines.

It has significant effects on how your website ranks in search engines. But what is “link building“?

“It is the process of attracting and establishing inbound links to your website which help your website achieve higher ranking with search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site“.

But there is a lot of buzz about how Google reacts to unnatural and spammy backlinks. Google is always updating its algorithms and changing the game by releasing Penguin updates that give you penalties for using unnatural ways of getting backlinks on your websites.

I’ve learned through hard work many search engine marketing tactics that can benefit your business. I’ve chosen the top 10 best strategies that I’ve implemented. Each one has resulted in great success.

Here they are!

1. Scoop.it

It is one of my favourite SEO ways to get good links within 15 minutes. It is an awesome content curation basement where people gather interesting content over the web and publish them in a magazine format.

Lots of these Scoop.it pages have high PR like 3 and more. This type of publications draws much attention via social engagement.

How do you do it?

Chose the category of your post or infographic you want to share, find the closely related Scoop it page and suggest your post. Based on my experience, 50 % accept them within a day what means a good amount of quality backlinks for 15 minutes of your work.

2. Finding broken links

This method is time-consuming and scalable. You should get much patience to find links that have 404 errors.

It is a real problem that it takes a lot of time and effort.

There are many companies that moved and changed their brand names, therefore, the links were deleted. I guess this tactic is totally worthy to spend time and efforts to gain these killer links.

How to find these broken links? In Google search you can use the following search strings that allow you to find some of them:

“SEO” + “resource page”

“Seo” + “recommended sites”

“Seo” + “useful links”

“Seo” + “toolbox”

“Seo” + “resources”

“Seo” + “useful tools”

So, as soon as you find pages, check whether all the links are working well. When you find such kind of broken links, you can instantly contact the owner of the website and inform him about this crap-shoot.

I can recommend you to use the Chrome Extension Check My Links. It will help you to find out all broken links that are highlighted in red.

Replacing dead links in Wikipedia

I guess you’ve noticed some dead links on Wikipedia pages. They don’t instantly remove these links and just add a footnote with the link “dead link”. That will give you a chance to replace it with your link.

You can find these links with the next search string:

site:wikipedia.org SEO + “dead link”

Or you can check out with the tool WikiGrabber to find all dead links on Wikipedia. After you find a dead link, you need to recreate it on your site and replace it with your link in Wikipedia.

3. Monitor competitor’s backlinks

It can seem kind of creepy to keep track of competitors’ backlinks, but I can make sure you will get a lot of great ideas how to get quality links based on them.

Before monitoring them you should figure out your top competitors in SERP, I actually use SE Rankingtool to monitor my top competitors. As soon as you get their target keywords, enter them into your backlink tool like Webmeup or Ahrefs, you will get a diverse list of backlinks linking to their sites.

Weekly or monthly checkups will help you to stay awake with what SEO tactics your competitors use to acquire links and draw up a plan how to replicate as many links as possible.

4. Getting the most out of Infographics

Creating and submitting infographics is the most effective and powerful link building strategy in SEO. It taps into the visual content marketing trend and Visual.ly is one of the leaders in this segment.

Most people try to stay away from this method, creating a professional infographic costs a pretty penny. But you can easily create by yourself with the following resources:

Visual.ly

DailyInfoGraphic.com

AmazingInfoGraphics.com

Piktochart.com

Coolinfographics.com

Submitinfohraphics.com

Infographicjournal.com

Personally, I use the last one. It has a good functional and various themes, even for free users.

You can also find some freelancers on Odesk or Freelancer that will do it at low cost.

Just few points you should keep in mind:

Include only real data sources

Embed your website link in the infographic source code (probably, someone will use this info-graphic on his website and you will get a good backlink)

Use attractive design

Be brief. Don’t blur your facts in text

Limit the size of your infographic to 1500 pixels

Use statistics that will make the info-graphic more actionable

Share it via social networks

To get the most out of your infographic, you can offer bloggers to post it as a guest post. You can also share you work on above-listed websites, or you can find the submission sites with the search strings:

“submit infographic”

inurl: submit infographic

intitle: submit infographic

“infographic directory”

When you submit an info-graphic, make sure to write a unique description with 200-300 words to take real advantage from it. With this form of creativity, you will make your campaign successful in your niche.

5. Answer online

Businesses need not only to build up quality links, but also build good relationships with customers. Monitor the activity of your potential customers and check out how they are doing online.

They will gather in groups to discuss some items on forums and blogs. Try to monitor all the activities online. You can check on Yahoo answers, topical forums, Quora and etc. You can use Google Alerts and add your keywords to track any mentions about your service. Try be helpful and user-friendly, don’t be spammy.

It can take some time, but it will pay off. You can gain a good authority on the websites. People will know you and follow you. They will start linking to your website to get additional awesome content.

6. Reverse guest posting

Reverse guest posting is the opposite of guest posting. The idea is that you find guest bloggers to write a good content for your website.

The idea of reverse guest posting works completely in a different way. You don’t need to find just any bloggers that have time to write a content. The main idea is to build up a good relationship with authority and famous bloggers. Ask them for content for your blog.

What are the benefits of reverse guest posting?

Effective mechanism to build relationships

The post can be shared via social media by that blogger

Fantastic way to place that link

Show your readers a new perspective

You have control of the process of reverse guest posting

How Does Reverse Guest Posting Work for you?

You should figure out what you want to get out of a guest writer and define the subject of guest articles. How often you want him to contribute on the blog.

It is easy to make a list of famous bloggers you want to work with. Make some research and find other bloggers you can’t know them.

Contact these bloggers and talk to them about this opportunity.

Few steps how to reach out google bloggers:

Use Twitter search to get bloggers with search query “guest post SEO”

Use Google with search strings “guest post by”, “guest blog by” and specify your topic

Use the websites you already know or ask others for any recommendations

You can use Followerwonk tool for outreach

You will be surprised with how many bloggers will want to talk to you.

7. Blogger reviews

Reviews about products, software or services are one of the best ways to get good backlinks at scale. It is especially good for e-commerce websites.

How do you catch the attention of bloggers? You can offer some free stuff and they may start reviewing it on their sites. It is quite an intensive and time-sapping process. You need to find bloggers, contact them, send them products, wait for product reviews and send email reminders.

It is a hard work!

Try to find bloggers in your niche. If you sell some products or information that can help people to learn something, for example, “ways how to make coffee”, you should use search strings like “how to make coffee”, “make coffee home” and etc.

You will get a list of bloggers and filter out authority websites. So, right now you have to reach out them with the following email template:

Make sure what you are writing. Check your language and grammar mistakes. Don’t be too spammy. I want to note that you don’t ask them to post your links and reviews. You just let them take a decision about your product.

8. Get feedbacks about your website

This is an easy mechanism of getting backlinks. I’ve met a bunch of feedback websites where you can get a dofollow backlink. You should register, submit your website, write a small description about it. I love ConceptFeedback.com website, but before submitting your website you should leave five reviews on other websites.

Here are some sites you can check out:

ConceptFeedback.com

BounceApp.com

SuggestionBox.com

Criticue.com

Or you can find them in Google using search queries “website feedbacks”, “site review”, “website customer review”.

9. Quality links from brand mentions

Monitoring any mentions about your brand or product is a good way to get quality backlinks. It is vital to know what customers think about you online. You can use Mention tool to track all mentions about your business.

It works fine for me. You should create an alert like for Google Alerts and you will get mentions about your brand or service. If you notice someone mentions about you without a link, you can contact that person, tell him thank you and ask him kindly to place a link to your product.

You can use the following email template to outreach:

Following this tactic, you can gain a bunch of quality backlinks.

10. Reverse image search

Reverse image search is something new and totally different from the other link building tactics. It is one of the greatest way to get links.

If you manage a website and use only quality images, you should keep track of your image theft. You can take some advantages from theft to gain quality links.

So, how to do that?

In Google image search you can enter the search string like site:yoursite.com and you will get all images on your website that Google has indexed. Click on images and see how they are displayed.

If you find out someone is using them without your link, you can reach out the admin and let him know about it. Site owners, usually, try to avoid any conflicts, and you will have a high rate of response to your email. Don’t forget to mention that the image is originally from your website and ask them to place an attribution backlink.

To simplify your SEO process, you can use TinEye to check all images that are used by other people from your website.

It is a call time on posting…

I’ve mentioned just my favourite ways of intact link building tactics out there. Take enough time to digest them and check out how they will work for you.