There are several types of web content writing we’ll cover over the course of the 90-Day Content Marketing Challenge. For example, we’ll talk about how to create compelling blog posts, off-site articles, incentive reports, guest posts, email messages and backlink-building comments.

In addition, we’re going to focus on how to get the most mileage out of all this great content we’re creating! So, expect a lot of emphasis on promotional activities throughout the next 90 days, as well.

Of course, it takes a lot of time to research, write and promote your web content. In fact, it can get downright overwhelming if we let it.

But, don’t panic and drop out now!

Lack of time is a challenge for everyone. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who has unlimited amounts of time to devote to these tasks. From what I’ve seen, it is one of the biggest struggles many online business owners face – myself included. I perform these services for my paying clients and the time left over to work on and develop my own projects is really limited.

It doesn’t take long to realize how important strategy, time management and goal setting are in this equation. So, let’s start there.

Developing a Clear Strategy – and a Concrete Action Plan

I didn’t want to launch into a big, longer-term project like the 90-Day Content Marketing Challenge without a solid plan in place. Therefore, I’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks researching topics and developing an outline/game plan for it. I am laying it out here so you can see the thought process and apply it to your own Content Marketing strategy.

Here Is How the 90-Day Challenge Will Be Structured:

• Introduction: (this week) – a look back and getting started

• Week 1 – Week 12 Each week will focus on a different topic – i.e., link building and article marketing. (Week 1 starts 09/06)

• Conclusion: Review of accomplishments, final results and opportunities for improvement

Here is my Web Content Publishing and Promotion Schedule for this challenge: (You can adopt this one “as is” – although I highly recommend establishing one that fits your own goals and objectives).

Daily and Weekly Action Items:

• Blog Posts – 3x/week (I am going to shoot for 5x/week – but will focus more on making each post really count long term vs. posting for the sake of posting)
• Guest Blog Posts – 1x/week
• Article Marketing (write and submit) – 3x/week
• Backlink Building – 30 minutes/day – goal: 5 new anchor text links a day during this time
• Social Media Sharing – we won’t focus on social networking until later in the challenge. This isn’t my area of expertise, but is somehow one of my largest sources of traffic. (Go figure, right? ) Don’t worry – I’ll conduct interviews and gather tips from real experts to share with you here! For now, I will continue to utilize Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as part of my promotional efforts.

“Set It and Forget It” Tasks

In addition to these daily and weekly action items, there are also a number of one-time projects we’ll talk about during the challenge. These are larger, more time-consuming projects – but they can benefit your business well into the future. Examples include creating an opt-in landing page, a follow-up email autoresponder series, and a viral incentive report.

As you can see, there are a lot of different facets to a comprehensive Content Marketing plan. The great thing is you don’t need to do everything – you simply need to do something.

Til Next Time,

PS If you’ve signed up for the 90DCMC, you’ll get an email from me this weekend with action items for Week 1, plus a worksheet you can use to create your own plan and track your progress. (If you haven’t signed up yet – you can do so by completing the form below)!

I just signed up for the Scribe SEO Plug-In, created by Brian Clark and his team at Copyblogger.com.  I have a ton of respect for Brian and just love Copyblogger.com (Really, who doesn’t? )  Anyway, today (02/26/10) is the last day to sign up for the introductory $27/month rate (then it goes up to $97/month) – so I figured no better time than the present to sign up, take a look and see what it is all about for myself.

I have to admit – at first glance, I’m kind of confused by the Scribe SEO plug-in.  So, am wondering if anyone else might be, as well?

I just left a comment asking for clarification on the Copyblogger site – it is still awaiting moderation, but I am really hopeful it will be posted with a response. I think I must be missing something – I am certain the product is a good one given the wealth of experience and knowledge behind its creators – plus the abundance of stellar reviews it is receiving … but I am just not “getting it” based on the experience I talk about below…

Anyway, here is what I wrote:

I just installed the Scribe SEO plug-in and ran one of my blog posts through it as a test. (I am not new to SEO and have a pretty good grasp on how it works).

I have to say… I’m kind of confused by it. The page I tested is optimized for a specific keyword phrase I selected based on both Micro Niche Finder and Wordtracker – it’s in the title, 1st sentence, and appears throughout the copy at a density of 1%.

However, Scribe is showing zero usage of any primary keywords in either the title or body – even though combinations of the terms it suggests clearly appear in the title and body??

Is this tool NOT meant to work with longer tail keyword phrases? I am assuming this because the suggested phrases are all 1 – 2 words in length and quite frankly, there isn’t a snowball’s chance I’m going to rank in the top 3 by targeting those broad phrases.

I obviously have great respect for what you do – or I wouldn’t have signed up. But, would really appreciate some insight on how to effectively use this tool.

Thank you!

Anyway – am hoping to hear back on this.

In the meantime, would love to hear your experience or input on this topic, as well. Please leave a comment below! (WebCopyResults.com is a Do Follow site).

Til Next Time,

PS I just ran the Scribe Content Optimizer on this exact post and here are screen shots that were returned. (Note: I didn’t try to optimize this post based on keyword research – I created this particular post more as a way to ask a question and get your feedback).

Somehow, my content returned a score of “94″ – while the other post that was deliberately built around a specific longer tail keyword phrase returned a “40″:

Further, I am suprised to see the inclusion of “confused” as a primary keyword – and “anyway” and “effectively” being returned at all (see below).  Thoughts?

Just a quick post to give a heads up that I just added a list of Internet Marketing terms to the Content Marketing Toolbox today. I’ve been planning to create a list of general Internet Marketing terms for a while – largely because I’ve received a number of comments and emails from readers asking for it!

My intention is to continually add to and update this list of basic Internet Marketing terms as time goes by – and would welcome your feedback on what you think should be included.

We all had to start somewhere when we decided to build a business presence online – and my hope is that this article becomes a trusted resource to others who are just starting out on the journey.

Let me know what you think!

Til Next Time,

PS Don’t forget to sign up for WebCopyResults.com Tuesday Tips – (the big blue sign-up box is in the upper right-hand corner of this page!) Subscribers will get my upcoming report on Article Marketing, which covers the ins-and-outs of submitting to different directories (including which one approved one of my articles and achieved a page 1 (#3) ranking on Google within 24 hours).  Pretty cool stuff!

I recently got a great reminder of  how powerful search engine optimized content can be.

While reviewing the stats for my alternative finance site, the list of top keywords web searchers used to find it caught my eye.  I was surprised by the results and – after doing a little further checking – delighted to find that not one, but two articles I had written, posted and forgotten about were popping up on  first page search results – for pretty competitive terms. (Don’t you just love working on something once and having it produce results for months and years to come? )

But, that isn’t the best part – the really exciting part is that longer terms I didn’t target (specifically) were also pulling in traffic!  There was enough overlap between what I had written and those longer search phrases to draw traffic to a site that I hadn’t added to in months.

Inspired, I looked closer at the stats (FYI – I use Awstats available as part of BlueHost’s hosting package) – and saw that the average visitor to this site was returning between 6.5 – 7 times per month – even though the site has less than 30 pages of content and hadn’t been updated since May.

Pretty exciting stuff!

These were small victories – but still highly motivating. I always intended to get back to work on the site eventually (it is, after all, my pet project ) – but had back-burnered it to work on more pressing projects.  I had relegated that site to “some day” so I could focus on whatever was on my “must do” list at the time. Although overall traffic to the site is low at this point – these two pieces of information (top keywords and repeat visitors stats) opened my eyes to what was possible if I take ACTION.  IF I commit to adding fresh and informative content to it  – on an ongoing basis.  If I can get these results after just a few months and with less than 30 pages of content – imagine the potential after another year or two – and another couple hundred (or more) pages of content?

I can’t wait to find out!

How about you – what have you already done right? Even the smallest success is still a success – and a great building block for much bigger and better things.

Til Next Time,

P.S. The top keywords report in Awstats is also a great way to brainstorm new article ideas – take a look at your results and see if new article topics come to mind.  For more creative ways to kickstart your content marketing efforts, be sure to sign up for our eNewsletter!

The Internet is flooded with search engine ranking tips ranging from the seemingly straightforward (use keywords!) to the profound (“According to the latest Google algorithms…”).

Of course, everyone with a website would like to achieve a better search engine ranking  -  but is that really possible?

Yes! IF you plan for it.

Because I don’t happen to have any control over what the “Big G” does  or doesn’t do (shocking, I know! ) – I don’t really put a lot of effort into trying to anticipate what they are going to do next.  Instead, I stick to the tried and true and focus on what isn’t likely to change any time soon.  (Namely that search engines love fresh, unique content that helps them return relevant search results).

The good news is that you can control how much original and value-added content you create on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Therefore, making the commitment to create as much great search engine optimized content as you can on an ongoing basis is perhaps the single best way to improve your search engine rankings.

Beyond making (and keeping) that commitment, here are a couple more of my favorite Search Engine Ranking Tips:

1. Go for the low-hanging fruit. Target long-tail keywords and phrases, especially if your site is new.  You will most likely get a higher search engine ranking for “supplement medical insurance for seniors” than you will for simply “medical insurance.”  The number of overall searchers will be lower than for the more general term, but the results will be much more targeted. Be sure to use your favorite keyword research tool to help you decide which words are worth your time. (Try this FREE keyword tool to help you get started).
2. Include your keyword or phrase in the Title EXACTLY as it appears in your research.  The closer to the front of your title, the better. Then, repeat this word or phrase EXACTLY as is in the first sentence of your article.  Finally, make sure it appears once for approximately every 100 words in your article.  This will give you a keyword density of around 1%.  Some say shoot for a keyword density as high as  3% or more – but using the exact same phrase 15+ times in a 500-word article is likely to either confuse or irritate your human visitors. (But, if you can achieve a higher density that is still readable and makes sense – go for it).

So, that covers some of my favorite search engine ranking tips – I just added a few more (and perhaps better?) ideas on this topic to the Content Marketing Toolbox.

Til Next Time,

P.S. What are your favorite search engine ranking tips? Please drop a line in the comment section below to let us know!

Ranking well in the search engines is not going to happen by accident.  With thousands of new sites coming online every single day, you HAVE to be proactive if you want your site to perform well in organic search results over time.

Here are six things you can do immediately to get the best results:

1.) Invest the time in keyword research – or hire someone (ahem, raising hand in back of the class) to do it for you.  Believe me, its time and/or money well spent.  This step will make the rest of your search engine optimization efforts so much easier because it will give you a clear idea of where you want to go.

2.)  Incorporate your targeted keywords or phrases into your page names (or article titles).   If you are launching (or relaunching) a new site, by all means select a domain name that includes your most important keywords.   Don’t forget to add your keywords or phrases to your title tags, as well.

3.) You will want to use headings and subheadings throughout your copy for a number of reasons.   For one, headlines (and subheadlines) are meant to grab your readers’ attention and pull them into your copy.   They also help break up large bodies of copy and make skimming the contents easier on both human visitors and search engine spiders.  So, it makes sense to include your keywords and phrases here, too.

4.) Optimize your  alternate text (or Alt Text).   All this means is if you have any photos or images on your site, you will want to take the extra step of adding appropriate “alt tags” to them.  Search engine spiders can’t “see” images, so this copy allows them to “read” what the image is.  I just realized I had forgotten to add them to the image on my “Rates” page.   The image is of a message in a bottle – my thinking when I added it was “oh, I know.. let WebCopyResults.com get your message out”…  what spiders “saw” instead was… “message in a bottle” (the text that came with the image)… CONFUSING and inconsistent with what I was trying to convey.

5.) Of course, all this talk about optimizing your site has to flow through to the actual page content.  One word of caution, though, is don’t go crazy.   Remember, your content is PRIMARILY meant to appeal to and benefit human visitors.   Keyword ‘stuffing’ is frowned upon by search engines and is annoying to human visitors.  Most sources recommend using a 1 – 3% keyword density, meaning if you have a 500 word page, your keywords should appear anywhere from 5 – 15 times.  Personally, I think 3% is too high, so I normally shoot for 1 to 1.5%.

6.) Add a site map.  This will quickly and easily allow both spiders and readers to see what your site has to offer.