Walter Chen says, “”Free” is the most awesome price of all. “Free” gets you started when you have nothing. “Free” took me from 0 to the first 1,000,000 visitors to my blog. “Free” is also the price that most people gravitate to when they are first starting out. But, the trouble is, most of those people also think that you have sign up for some big, expensive service once your audience numbers get serious. Nope. You don’t have any excuses, because free web services and products available today are so good that you can easily use them... [...]

Dave Schneider says, “While the old adage, “You get what you pay for,” usually rings true, sometimes what you can get for free is pretty good. Luckily, many people sympathize with bloggers who don’t have the investment to buy tools to help improve their effort. They have created some awesome free tools that can take your blog to the next level Here are eight that rank high on my list: 1. Quicksprout’s content analysis Many people associate Quicksprout with Neil Patel, a powerhouse content creator. But it also is an awesome content analysis tool. You put in a URL and the analysis will... [...]

Roger C. Parker says, “The series approach to blogging, as I described in How to Turn 1 Idea Into 2 Months of Content Marketing (and More),offers an easy approach to help you plan, create, and repurpose blog posts into future content. Among the benefits of a series approach: Immediate – It removes the guesswork of choosing what to write each week. It also provides an opportunity to go deeper into topics to share more information while building market anticipation for future blog posts. Long term – It makes it easier to keep your blogging on schedule. You create content equity for... [...]

Jami Oetting says, “The difference? It lies in the details. In an age where enormous amounts of content are being created every single day, it’s imperative that agencies and their clients’ brands are consistently experimenting with new ways to stand out. Luckily, there are a ton of simple ways to amplify your content with very little effort — from simple plugins to eye-grabbing headlines to images. To provide you with some direction, here are 16 simple ways to drive more engagement and traffic to your clients’ blog by leveraging different tools, platforms, and mediums. 16... [...]

Baer says, “Last month, Google announced the creation of its new parent company, Alphabet, which will house the Google we know along with lesser-known experiments like Calico and Google Fiber. This isn’t news to you, but here’s what makes it interesting: If you were to search LinkedIn for “Google Alphabet”, you’d find a collection of articles written by CEOs, Presidents, and Ph.Ds. One titled “Google’s Alphabet in 2050 from A to Z” aims to predict future Google holdings. Another titled “Google’s Tragic Alphabet Soup” discusses why this decision will kill Google’s brand... [...]

Daniel Faggella says, “When we left off in Part 1, we were just getting into the brass tacks of generating consistent leads with your blog. Today, we’re going to go deep into the tactics, but I want to serve up a warning: If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, you need to do that first. Tactics without the underlying strategy will not work nearly as well as having the complete picture. Let’s dive in. The Truth About Conversion When people come come to us at CLVboost (my employer), they almost always thinkthey need more traffic. It’s almost always not true. Traffic is like gas.... [...]

Tom Fanelli says, “Just how valuable is your blog in the array of marketing efforts you’re investing money in? It’s likely you’re measuring ROI for other efforts, such as PPC ads, but figuring out the return of producing original content for your blog is not as straightforward—and, for that reason, it’s often overlooked. But translating the value of your blogging efforts into an actual dollar amount can be incredibly useful. After all, how can you determine whether it’s money well spent or a waste of precious marketing dollars? How can you take steps to make... [...]

Corey Eridon says, “When I’m walking around the city and I have to cross the street, I do this thing where I start looking both ways before I’ve reached the intersection. If there are no cars coming at that moment, I like to run across the street immediately instead of waiting to reach the intersection — otherwise a bunch of cars will probably be there by the time I get to the crossing signal. Some people call that jaywalking. Law enforcement, for instance. I call it efficiency. The same can be said for a method of blogging my team has adopted: the crowdsourced Google Docs... [...]

Anthony D. Nelson says, “Over the years, you’ve certainly read something about how Google loves fresh content. Perhaps you’ve read that sometimes it takes its love of freshness too far. Now it’s the middle of 2015. Does freshness still play a significant role in how Google ranks search results? To find out, I decided to conduct a small experiment on a blog. Specifically, I wanted to see if my test could answer the following questions: If you update a blog post’s date, will it receive a boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs)? Can you fake freshness? Do you... [...]

Kieran Flanagan says, “Anyone who runs a business blog knows how much of a challenge it is. Developing a great blog with great content that attracts lots of readers and subscribers requires you to be consistent, resourceful, and creative on a daily basis. But with blogging’s challenges come its many benefits, often in the form of traffic, leads, loyal fans, and — eventually — customers. The key is nailing down the right strategy for publishing, optimizing, and promoting content so you can grow you blog into something spectacular. So what’s the “right”... [...]