Category Archives: Marketing

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The Internet Marketer’s Google Penalty Recovery Plan

If your site has been hit with a Google penalty, the loss in traffic and revenue can be absolutely devastating. Some marketers might well choose to scrap their site and start all over again (which isn’t a bad idea if your site isn’t a monster), but for others who have a good flow of traffic and great amount of reputation and subscribers, restarting isn’t an option.

So, what do you do if you’re hit with a Google penalty?

Act Quickly

The first thing you need to understand here is that time is of the essence. The longer you wait to start recovering your rankings in the SERPs and traffic, the more money you are going to lose (or not make, same thing). Further, your reputation is going to take a hit, meaning even your most loyal clients might start wandering over to the other side of the fence to see where the grass is greener.

Your first order of action should be to audit your entire website. Determine whether you have an algorithmic or manual penalty and then pinpoint the cause. That’s the first area you should focus on. Typical Google penalties include black hat SEO practices, buying links, low-quality or duplicate content, high-bounce rates, on-page strategies deemed manipulative, spamming and low-quality backlinks, so be prepared to tackle those issues.

Depending on which update from Google caused the penalty (e.g. Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, etc.), your course of action will be dictated by the latest fixes. Take a deep look into your messages on your Webmaster Tools account and look for communications from Google that might have warned you (such as the Web Spam Team).

Take This Time to Fix Everything

Of course, you can just fix the problem as stated by Google and move on, but it’s much wiser to use this as an opportunity to clean up your entire site. Take a long, hard look at your practices – was this penalty an anomaly or have you been toeing the line in terms of white hat SEO practices? Run an analysis on your site with Hubspot or Nibbler and fix up any code errors, warnings or other problem areas that are holding your site down.

Any backlinks (aka inbound links) that are coming into your site that are low-quality or “bad” should be removed immediately. This can be an arduous process if you have a lot of links, but using tools such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer, you can expedite the process. Using these tools, check out all the websites that are linking to your site and really evaluate which are “good” sites that are beneficial to your ranking and/or business. Get rid of any sites that might be bringing you down (especially if those sites are the penalty trigger). Don’t only remove these links, but construct a list of them and request Google disavow them from your attributable backlinks.

Submission to Google

Once your site is completely fixed up, if your penalty was manual, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google. If your penalty was algorithmic, you have to wait until the next time Google updates its algorithms (this can happen a few times a day or once a week – Google doesn’t release this information unless it’s a large update like Hummingbird or Panda). Either way your site’s recovery is completely in the hands of Google’s team. But by keeping a detailed record of all the changes you made to come into compliance, you show that you are eager to play by their rules. Going above and beyond what you were penalized will look good in the eyes of Google’s team and you will likely be reinstated to your former glory much faster than not.

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Is It 2011 All Over Again with Newest Google Update?

Many Internet marketers remember February 2011 very clearly. It was when Google rolled out its Panda update, which instantly changed the way websites were ranked by the Internet search engine giant’s algorithm.

Will Googles latest update – that rolled out starting on April 21 – cause the same amount of angst and teeth-gnashing? Possibly.

 

Mobile-Friendly Algorithm

Google is finally acknowledging that most people are accessing the web via their mobile devices – such as their phones, tablets and new iWatches – rather than on old-school laptops or (gasp!) PCs. It’s new algorithm, which doesn’t yet have a deceptively cute animal name the way Panda and Penguin did, is expected to radically change the way marketers search results by being more mobile-friendly.

A recent survey by the consulting group gShift found that a majority of marketers expect Google’s new algorithm to change their site’s page rankings. And about two-thirds of the online marketers polled said they already have taken steps to make their websites more mobile-friendly in anticipation of the update’s roll out.

 

The Rise of Mobile Web Access

It’s a testament to how quickly technologies can improve that the majority of web users now use mobile devices to access their favorite web pages and apps. Increased bandwidth, exponential expansion of memory and data processing, and near-universal WiFi has made mobile the way to go for most Internet users.

Only a few years ago – perhaps not coincidentally when Google was rolling out its Panda update – it was unthinkable for most people to stream their favorite TV shows or play multi-player games from their phones while on the go. But today, it’s as common as having a cup of coffee in the morning or chatting about “Game of Thrones” over the water cooler.

 

Who the Update Will Effect

About a third of website owners polled by gShift said they get between 11% and 50% of their traffic from mobile devices, and that’s probably on the low site. Another study conducted by the mobile commerce platform Branding Brand found that 43% of all traffic to major retailers comes from smart phones and tablets.

If you have taken steps to make your web page more mobile-friendly in recent months, you’re not alone. An estimated 68% of marketers surveyed by gShift said they have made the move to mobile-centric web pages.

And it makes perfect sense. Digital marketers understand how important it is to provide page visitors with websites that are optimized for the devices they are using to land on them. Having a well-defined mobile strategy today is as important as SEO and link-building were prior to Panda and Penguin: It was simply something that you had to do in order to be successful. Not doing it was unthinkable.

 

Please note that this update aims to show websites that are mobile friendly to people who are browsing on a mobile device – ie cellphone

So far we have been told that it does not effect standard computer browsing – just mobile devices
 
Although this is new factor – it is only one small factor out of hundreds that they take into consideration 
 
You can see more about this at:
 
 
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Top Secret Algorithm Update

While Google, as usual, is remaining tight-lipped about what its new algorithm will look like, there are some clues if you know where to look. For example, in March Zineb Ait Bahajji, a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, hinted that the new update will have a more profound impact on search results than either of the previous “Big Two” updates did.

While Panda weeded out websites with poor quality content and Penguin, which came in 2012, penalized sites that used backlinks and other artificial means to boost rankings, the latest Google algorithm update is anticipated to value pages that are most optimized for mobile users.

So if you haven’t already converted your web pages so that they are mobile-friendly, there isn’t much time left. You don’t want to wake up to discover that your top-ranking web pages are now nowhere to be found.

Going forward – it would be worth while looking at a more mobile site, if you think your customers will be searching for you on their mobile devices (ie cell phones)
 
We have a number of responsive templates that you may find suitable 
 
Get in touch with us to find out more

 

 

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Are You Retargeting Your Visitors?

Did you know that only about 20% of all first-time visitors to a website will become a conversion on that visit? That means 80% of your site’s visitors are leaving without converting, even if they want to. With shopping cart abandonment making major waves in the eCommerce industry because of how recoverable these consumers are (studies show that about 68% of all abandoned shopping carts can be recovered), it only makes sense that the people who bounce off your site are recoverable as well, even if you don’t run an eCommerce site.

What is Retargeting?

If you don’t know what retargeting is, it’s a simple concept. You place a code in your site’s footer (typically JavaScript) and that code compiles a list of all your site’s visitors. When someone comes to your website, the code implants a cookie into their browser that acts like an “on” switch for advertisements.

Then, as your visitor browses other sites on the internet, as they come to sites that have ads on them, the cookie you left in their browser activates your site’s ad. This helps do a number of things, including keeping you fresh in their minds, reminding them that they might have wanted to make a purchase with you or simply creates another avenue to your website.

The point here is that you are getting advertised across the web to an extremely targeted audience: people that have already expressed interest in your website. Whether they left to look for better offers, they left the stove on or had to run into a business meeting, you get another crack at them by simply adding some code to your website and running a few ads.

But Won’t People Find this Intrusive?

Of course, some places people absolutely hate targeted ads, such as ads that hit on keywords from people’s emails. This is intrusive and likely to backfire unless you’re a fairly large brand. Nobody wants to think that a penis enlargement cream site is filtering through their emails and placing ads on their Gmail account!

But with retargeting, your ads will actually provide people with a better, more individualized browsing experience since the ads will be tailored to their interests. It’s always important to think about how your ads will be perceived by your audience. There’s a fine line between being intrusive and being customized and the best websites walk this line perfectly.

Retargeted Emails

Of course, not every internet marketer’s site lends itself to retargeting code and ads. Some marketers will do better to retarget their visitors through email campaigns. It’s important that you re-contact people who fell out of your sales funnel so you can bring them back in.

As with the shopping cart abandonment, there’s no telling why the person fell out. They could have simply been distracted by a football score and forgot to go back. The power could have went out, any number of things could have happened so assuming that everyone who bounced from your site did so because they didn’t like what they saw is faulty thinking that leads to zero sales.

What do you have to lose by sending out some emails saying, “Hey, we’ve been thinking about you and we want you to come back! Here’s 10% off your next order” or “Did you forget about us because we didn’t forget about you! We figured you might have some questions so let’s set up a time to chat so I can answer them for you!”

The point is, you miss all of the sales that you don’t reach out and grasp, so retargeting visitors can only result in sales, what’s the worse that can happen, they ignore you? Well, right now if you aren’t retargeting, you’re the one ignoring them!

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5 Key Factors That Make Good Webcopy Great

 

The start of the month in internet marketing land should be called copytime. Every website out there is looking for brand new copy, from blogs to social media posts to web copy. Of these three important types of copy, only one is going to represent your website day in and day out. While none should be ignored or written off with any type of nonchalance, I personally believe that webcopy should be the most scrutinized of the three.

After all, many blogs are informal. Social posts aren’t meant to serve as your doctorate. But web copy, this is what the people are looking at when they get to your site. And not only that, it’s what the search engines are looking at when they rank your site. So, it’s easy to see why webcopy should be carefully crafted, but it’s not always so simple to see how it should be crafted.

Five Points to Keep in Mind When Creating Copy for Your Website

Here are five things that you want to keep in mind as you sit down to write your web copy:

1. Capture. The first thing your copy needs to do is capture the attention of your viewers. If you have some bland, boring headline followed by copy that drones on and on, you’re going to bore visitors right off your site (if not to sleep!). Be a little provactive, a little funny, stir it up. The average person browses dozens of websites each and every day, what is going to make them stay on yours?

2. Portray. Your webcopy should be very clear in conveying your value proposition. Visitors need to know exactly what makes you different from your competition. Why should they spend their money with you when there are 50 million other sites selling the exact same product or service? If you can’t answer this, then how can you expect your customers to understand it?

3. Stand Out. People don’t really have time to read everything you write. Even if you’re the most interesting writer in the world, eating a nice juicy steak is more interesting. You aren’t going to compete with reality, so make your content easily accommodating in that you have all key points standing out for quick scanning. Headings and subheadings are a must. Numbered and bullet lists help people get the information they need, do what they have to do and then get on with their life. You aren’t inviting them over for tea, you’re inviting them to learn what you have to offer them and then convincing them to take it and leave.

4. Describe. Description is vital for many products and services, yet so many marketers buy into the “picture is worth a thousand words” ideaology of content creation. Pictures are amazing, yes (videos are even better), but you need the details, features and benefits of your products and services in writing. Why? If nothing else, for the search engines and to rank for keywords, but trust me, there are still people out there enjoy reading everything they can about a product before making a purchase. Remember, an informed consumer buys more.

5. Perfection. Finally, it’s vital that your webcopy be absolutely free and clear of errors. No spelling mistakes, no grammatical errors, no txt spk. You want to convey authority on your site and nothing will lose it faster than mspelling a werd or too or making grammer errors or having poor punctuashun?

Overall, webcopy is to a website what a salesperson is to a brick-and-mortar location. You wouldn’t hire just anybody and send them out there uninformed and unpresentable, don’t do that with your webcopy.

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Are Your Marketing Tools Helping You Reach the Right People?

Marketing is all about reaching the right people at the right time. Unfortunately that can turn into a guessing game if you don’t have the right tools. The marketing tools that we use are essential to our success so if you’ve just been “winging it” or going on intuition, you’re only selling yourself short.

Use Marketing Tools to Reach Your Audience

Here are some of my personal favorite marketing tools that will help you find the right people to get your message, product or service in front of. Of course, you will need to know your target demographic first, but after you do, these tools will help you engage with the right influencers in your industry, the most active fans and most of all, your motivated buyers.

1. Lead Social. While you will have to pay to use this social media tool, it’s one of the best in the game for anyone marketing on Facebook. What it does is it measures your Return on Investment (ROI). Your Facebook ROI is crucial for your budget so if you aren’t reaching the right people, then you’re just throwing money out the window. Lead Social works by assigning a monetary value to each of your Facebook ads and regular posts. In addition, Lead Social highlights users that are engaging with your content the most, giving you an opportunity to reach out to them, follow up with them, thank them, whatever. What you get is real time statistics on how much value you are getting out of each of your posts and ads. Then, just replicate your most valuable posts and ads (and boost them) so you reach people in the places it does the most good.

2. Tactics Cloud. This is one of my favorite Twitter tools of all time because it lets you target any person you want on Twitter. Find relevant users and follow them for follow backs. You can search for groups of users by location, keywords, who they’re following, who is following them, etc. Essentially, this is the ultimate search tool for Twitter marketers, giving you a direct route to the people you need to reach.

3. Little Bird. If you are trying to build relationships with influencers in your industry, Little Bird is the tool you need to find them. This shows you who you should be following as well as people that should be following you. Basically, you can think of this tool as a matchmaker, all you have to do is reach out and build the relationship.

4. GroupHigh. My final tool for reaching the right audience that I keep in my belt is GroupHigh. While this is another paid tool, it’s a valuable one. This gives you an enormous database of bloggers from which to search and the ultimate search tool to do it with. You can find the bloggers that you need to get in contact with, get their contact info and keep up with all of their latest posts. GroupHigh also lets you track your outreach efforts and relationship building.

All in all, I highly recommend all of these tools if you’re really trying to reach the right people in your industry and your target demographic. Of course, if you’re not on Twitter, it doesn’t make sense to get a Twitter tool and the same goes for Facebook tools with Facebook. But it serves your best interest to check out the tools that are out there for each social media platform you are on and beyond.

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Choose the Right Social Media Platform with This Simple Question

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when it comes to social media, you shouldn’t have a problem putting all of your eggs in one basket if you don’t have the time or budget for an extensive social media campaign. There’s nothing worse (in terms of social promotions and brand imaging) than putting social widgets on your website only to lead to malnourished, underwhelming social media sites.

The Importance of Updating Social Media

When a viewer gets to a neglected social media page, a few things happen. First, your lead might think you are out of business. They also might think they are in the wrong place. Third, they might just assume that you don’t care about your customers (or don’t care in general) and just write you off as an option for buying.

The bottom line? If you’re not going to update every one of your social media pages constantly, it’s better to cut your losses and just delete the accounts. Of course, social media is super-important, so a better option would be to delete all but one, but which one?

The One Question that Tells You Which Social Media is Right for You

The best way to figure out which social media platform should be your main focus is to ask yourself the following question: If I only had to use one social media platform for the rest of my life, which would it be? This might seem simplistic, but let’s look deeper into the question.

What is in a social media platform for you? Do you need pictures of your products to get visitors over to your affiliate sites? Is your marketing based on real-time actions? Are you a B2B or B2C marketer? In short: what drives customers to your site?

When you know what your audience is doing, you know what you need to do. For example, if you are an affiliate marketer for Amazon and your only social media presence is to share reviews, having a Facebook account set up where you can share links complete with pictures might be your best bet. On the other hand, if you only deal with flash sales online, Twitter will allow you to stay plugged into the pulse of your audience so you can reach them as it happens. Looking to land higher-ups in the company and sell them software? LinkedIn has the largest amount of professionals so that’s where you will want to be.

The key here is to recognize what each of the social media platforms means for your specific means of promotion. If you only want to pin up items that you are reviewing and then forget about them, Pinterest might be the way to go since you won’ t have to deal with answering questions from posters and commenters.

When You Have It, Run With It

Of course, if you can’t decide on which social media platform you’d choose if you could only choose one for the rest of your life, there’s a very simple option: look at your Google Analytics and see which social media sites are driving the most traffic to your websites. Then, take a serious look at how much time you’ve put into each of those sites.

Are you getting 20% of all your traffic from LinkedIn but only spending 5% of your time there? Then increasing your effort on LinkedIn might be a good strategy over focusing on another platform that brings in 30% of your traffic but takes up 85% of your time.

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Responsive Website vs. Native App – How Far Do You Need to Go Mobile?

With the coming of the mobile revolution being heralded for years, it seems we’re finally here (even though it came in with a whimper, more than a bang). With that said, it’s now critical that every marketer that wants to stay competitive be not only findable, but viewable on mobile devices. Mobile devices make up a greater portion of all searches each and every year, and we’re finally starting to see some viable means in terms of mobile purchasing to warrant the push to either responsive websites, native apps or both.

But what’s the difference?

What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive website (or more accurately, responsive web design) simply means that the site is coded and designed in such a way that the content will adjust to fit on whatever size screen it is being viewed on. So if you’re looking at a site on your 27-inch desktop monitor, it will look great, but if you visit the site on your 3-inch mobile device, it will also display correctly.

Responsive websites eliminate the need to have a dedicated site built for mobile (in addition to your standard website). The coding in the site responds to the device it is being viewed from and tells the browser exactly how the content should be displayed so there are no errors and functionality is preserved. If your audience connects to your site via a number of devices (e.g. computer desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, mobile phone, etc.), a responsive website is a critical investment.

Benefits of responsive web design include:

– Your site is indexed as mobile-friendly by search engines, while still maintaining all of its normal indexing

– All of your updates to your website can be done in one place and show up on any viewing device

– Your site becomes flexible, able to reach all viewers no matter the device they are using

– All of your updates are seen by anyone who views the page and are not limited or restricted by device

What is a Mobile App – or Native Mobile App?

Mobile app and native mobile app are two terms used interchangeably for the same thing. A mobile app is an application designed specifically for use on mobile devices. It is an entirely separate program from your website and instead of being stored on servers, it is downloaded by the user and stored on their smartphone.

What this does is it allows users to connect even when they don’t have internet access. This is due to the fact that the app is stored locally (though some mobile apps will require internet). That means native mobile apps grant faster access for users than mobile (or responsive) websites do.

In addition, mobile apps have permissions that can help your sales such as access to the phone’s camera or speaker. This makes it easier for customers to interact with you. The downside here is that native mobile apps require different operating systems for Android and iOS phones, so it does cost some money to develop them…twice.

There are also a few more downsides and upsides to mobile apps:

– While faster than websites on mobile devices, mobile apps have fixed layouts meaning you must design one for each operating system

– Your audience for mobile apps is limited to people who have smartphones

– Search engines don’t index mobile apps because they aren’t stored on the internet, but rather on the user’s phone

– Updates can be tricky because the user must download them for updates to appear. Not everyone does this, so your newer content might not gain as much traction

– It is both expensive and time-consuming to develop native mobile apps and then get them approved by the app stores (Google Play and the Apple App Store)

Ideally, you would have both, but for now, a responsive website seems like the safer plan for internet marketers until your business demands a mobile app.

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Overcoming the Curse of Knowledge with a Simple Survey

As internet marketers, we have many curses thrown upon us each day, but none so heavy as the one most of us don’t even take into consideration, The Curse of Knowledge. The Curse of Knowledge is a simple theory that makes a whole lot of sense when you finally learn about it, but can lead to serious pitfalls if you don’t. Simply put into marketing terms, when you look at the websites and material you create each and every day, you fail to see it with fresh eyes, thereby falling into the Curse of Knowledge.

 

What is the Curse of Knowledge?

Technically speaking, the Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for those with a certain level of knowledge to understand how those with a lesser level of knowledge view the problems and situations being discussed.

For example, if I had studied nanotechnology for decades and was asked to give a speech at a local high school, if I didn’t take the curse of knowledge into account, my speech would likely fly right over their heads. I’d be so excited about what is new in the field that I’d fail to have an introduction to basics and a way to make my concepts and terminology universally understandable.

For marketers, this takes place when the content on our sites speaks to an informed consumer, using terms and concepts that we might understand, but the average consumer doesn’t. This can be detrimental to your conversion rates because if someone doesn’t understand what you’re selling, why in the world would they buy from you?

 

Overcoming the Curse and Boosting Conversion Rates

The key then, is to be able to see your website with fresh eyes, that is, a set of eyes similar to your consumers’ and not a professional in the niche. There are a few ways to go about this, one of which is probably going to net you the best results. Let’s take a look at your options:

1. Have Friends Look at Your Website. If you have friends or family that aren’t involved in your niche or the marketing industry, have them take a look at your site. Ask them to go through the site as if they wanted to make a purchase. You can even tell them the product you want them to find and purchase. Make note of where they get hung up, where they get frustrated or how quickly they find the product and make the purchase. In other words, track their movements for any signs of resistance and then work on eliminating them. Be sure to ask them exactly what they thought of the site afterward and recommend any improvements.

2. Set Up a Survey. Quite possibly the easiest and most effective way to find out where your visitors are having trouble is to set up a survey for those leaving the website. Qualaroo is a simple tool that will allow you to generate a survey and place it on the important pages of your website such as your checkout page. Ask why the visitor decided to leave the page and if they have any suggestions on how to improve the page/visitor experience. While you won’t get an answer every time, the ones you do get will be some of the most valuable (and free) marketing research results you’ve ever gotten.

It’s also important to follow the visitor flow charts on your Analytics and metrics tools. Finding out where customers drop or bounce off the page is important, as is the way in which you fix it.

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Crafting the Perfect ‘How To’ Blog for Your Website

Since Google is cracking down on website scraping (even though Google is the biggest website scraper out there giving viewers condensed content scraped from other sites right in a box at the top of SERPs), the ‘how to’ article has become a bit of a taboo. In reality, unless you have an entire site built around ‘how to’ articles (i.e. eHow, Yahoo Answers and Instructibles, etc.), you are fine to go ahead and continue using this click-heavy format:

– Introduce the problem
– Present the benefits of your solution
– List the steps
– Provide detail
– Wrap it up and call to action

 

The Right Way to Write a How To

In fact, since everyone else is scared to write a ‘how to,’ you’ll be one step ahead of the competition. Just make sure you do it correctly, that is to say, in the following order:

1. Introduce the Problem You are Solving. Obviously, you want your reader to know that they are in the right place to solve their problem and that you are the person that has the solution. Make the reader understand that even if they don’t realize they have this problem, they likely do or will, and thus, need to read the solution.

2. Present the Benefits of Your Solution. Why is your solution better than anyone else’s solution? Why should the reader keep reading? Are you going to solve the problem in the blog or are you going to provide half the steps and then a free eBook download at the end with a comprehensive look at the solution? Are there going to be videos? Is this a multi-part blog? Let them know!

3. Give Them the Steps. Your steps should be laid out in a list, a screenshot, a picture, etc. Just give them them the basics and a brief explanation. If you need to, you can get into more detailed paragraphs or chapters on each step in later blogs or an eBook. But laying out the steps in a numbered or bullet list will allow faster-paced readers to skip to the sections they need. Perhaps they have half of the solution and just need the last few steps. Remember, the easier you make it for every single reader that comes to your site, the better it is for you. Cater to the beginner, but also make it easy for the seasoned pro to glean what they need and get on to the next step. Don’t waste anyone’s time and they won’t waste yours.

4. Detail is Key. The detail to your solution is going to be key here. For instance, if you provide a solution without an example, what’s to say that the writer really has life experience solving this problem? They could just be an affiliate for a product spinning content from their associates. Graphics, step-by-step instructions, easy to follow language, all of this falls under detail.

5. Conclusion. Your conclusion is where you wrap up the ‘how to’ and recap the benefits that your reader now possesses. It’s important to never forget your call to action. If you don’t have one specifically and are just writing an informative or authoritative blog, add your contact information and have the reader sign up or contact you for more details. You can also link to other solutions you’ve provided, or have an opt in or email sign up for a newsletter or eBook.

As you can see, there is absolutely no reason to abandon such a highly effective blog format. Google is really just trying to punish ‘how to’ sites at large, not the average internet marketer.

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Running Out of Things to Blog About? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

In this content heavy market, blogs and reviews likely drive a large chunk of traffic to your site and sales from it. Unfortunately, this also means writing (or outsourcing) a steady stream of blogs for your website, which means you are working with limited resources. If you’re paying for your blogs, then unless they are making you more profit than they cost you to outsource, you’ll eventually run out of capital. If you’re writing your blogs, you’ll likely hit some dry spells where you don’t have any more good ideas for blogs (if you haven’t hit some already).

 

Three Techniques You Can Use to Create Fresh Blogs When Yours are Stale

For those that have run out of topics to blog about, take comfort in the fact that this happens to just about every internet marketer that doesn’t have a team of writers tirelessly wracking their brains for killer blog topics. So if you find yourself teetering on the brink of an empty tank, try these three techniques for refilling your think tank:

1. Play I Spy. Unless you are the only person or website in the world in your niche, in which case just say that in blog after blog since there’s no competition, you likely have saturated marketplace to deal with. While that’s difficult for any number of other reasons, for blogging purposes, it could be a goldmine.

Simply go on a little “spying” mission to your competition’s blogs and see what they are blogging about. This could give you inspiration in any number of ways, maybe you see things from a different perspective and find ways to differentiate yourself; maybe you think your competition is completely wrong and you can blog why.

Most importantly, see which topics have gotten the most social shares or comments, those are the topics that your demographic wants to read or talk about, meaning you need to be covering them. The point is, use your competition’s blog to not only stay relevant with everything that is going on in your niche, but also as some motivation to set your site up as more knowledgeable and authoritative than your competition’s. Do this through blogging.

2. Look Inside. After you look around you, you should start to have some inspiration or ideas for blogs. Now, take a look at your own personal journey as an internet marketer. Think about your successes and your failures, these are what interest people.

Without a personal spin or attachment to a blog, it simply reads as some research that some copywriter did and then threw together in a few minutes. You should have some sort of personal story to relay that shows why what you’re saying matters.

People want to learn from other people’s mistakes as well as follow in the footsteps of their success. Outline what went right or wrong for you, how and why it happened, and share what your readers should take away from that. (It helps if what they take away is whatever you’re selling, but not every blog has to be sales-driven.)

3. Use Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo is an amazing search engine that is geared towards filtering through the metrics and results of content marketing. You simply enter a search topic or keyword phrase and then find all of the content that’s been published on that topic or keyword.

You can filter by date, type of content (e.g. articles, interviews, giveaways, videos, infographics, etc.) and then see how many shares each link has gotten across the various social media platforms. This will help you keep your finger on the pulse of the industry as well as come up with fresh blog topics.