by Kyrill Poelmans | Mar 7, 2016
How People Become Successful with Blogging
Ever since the Internet started to become a part of every household, it has been a vital place to share ideas, values, emotions, opinions and advancements. It’s very easy to reach and for this reason, the Internet is a platform for everyone to free their mind. One of the most convenient and productive way to do so is by creating a Blog. Many of you probably don’t know exactly what this is. That’s why we give you an answer to the question ‘What is a blog?’ today. We’re here to guide you through the basics in blogging land.
What is a Blog?
A blog is a website which is maintained by an individual or small group of people, where they show their opinions, ideas, instructions and so on. It is different from a regular company website or something like that in a number of ways. Firstly it is updated regularly and secondly, it is written in conversational style. Readers of a blog are also able to comment on any post, unlike a website, where you can only comment on defined posts. The readers might agree or disagree with any point of the author. A blog could also be part of the regular website. It can be created with low to none financial assets and in return can get you handsome amount of cash.
Why Blogging?
There is not just one but a number of reasons why blogging is the way of communication you should use. Textmetrics can’t list all of them but here are the most common ones.
- To Express Oneself: This world has become so crowded that your thoughts and opinions are dubbed under those of elites and experts. Blogging is the perfect way to make your own opinion count.
- To Promote Something: It is an efficient way promote yourself, your products, services, skills, and company.
- To Help Others: This is becoming a very common purpose of blogging. People start a blog to help others with their knowledge and skill. Textmetrics is doing the same.
- To Establish Oneself: Blog is a good platform for establishing oneself in any field of expertise. Many of these blogs have a particular topic in which the author demonstrates its expertise.
- To Make Money: Blogging also can be used as a source of money. Authors earn amounts of money through advertising or affiliate marketing.
When is a Blog Successful?
There are many factors which play their part to make a blog successful. Writing a great content is just a part of a successful blog, factors apart from this are headlines. Headlines are what grabs the attention of the readers. The more attractive it is, the more visitor you will get. It tells the reader what is inside the post. A blog is successful when it gets a huge amount of regular visitors. They know what a particular blog offers and want to get updates from that blog. SEO or an easily searched blog are also signs of an successful blog. There is an unlimited number of blogs thriving to get the attention of visitors. The blog which comes first when searched for is more likely to be visited by the users, then the one which comes in last. SEO is what makes a blog come first searched.
SEO – Key to a Successful Blog
Many of you know what is a blog by now, then comes the SEO. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is basically the finishing touch of your blog. It makes sure that it comes on the top in the rankings when a particular topic is searched. SEO requires some technical knowledge and skills that could be gained from whitepapers. Of course, it takes a lot of time to master, but Textmetrics is there to help you out. Textmetrics lets you know how your post is regarding SEO, it provide guidance to write accordingly and even provide options to improve your post. This tool helps you out choosing right keywords and provide suggestion and tips which you can apply directly.
Ultimately, blogging is a creative tool to make you stand out of the crowd and prove your expertise until it is successful. If you are not sure what to write on, then read this, it will help you out. As far as technical things are concerned, use Textmetrics. Subscribe now and get 7 days free trial period.
Create your free Textmetrics account and start optimizing your web content!
by Kyrill Poelmans | Jul 7, 2015
If you’re writing your own blog, whether it’s a business blog or a personal one, you probably need some visual content to support your writing. Most of the times you’ll search for photo’s and end up with some stock photo’s which you’ve seen a million times before. Or you risk using copyrighted illustrations, just because you think nobody will sue you for using their pictures. But, why would you? It’s not that hard to get high quality images and illustrations for your blog, so kick out your stock photo’s and use one of the following tips for creative and free visual content!
Where to find your visual content?
1. Creative common
There are a lot of pictures on the Internet that you could use for free, just by giving the makers of the pictures a little credit; the so-called pictures with Creative common. If you use pictures with a creative common license in your blog, you’ll be able to give your readers some nice and relevant visual content without any costs. There are multiple creative common licenses, all to be found on this special flickr page! Make sure you read the terms and conditions, you don’t want to get in trouble for ignoring them!
2. Be your own blog photographer
Why rely on the pictures from someone else? You can take some pictures yourself! Even though your not a professional photographer, you probably know exactly what kind of visual content your blog needs to be more powerful. Especially when you’re writing about your personal life, there is better you than your own pictures. So try to find out about your own photography talents and share them on your blog! This is also another way to show your personal style and why you differ from all other bloggers; your pictures will be as unique as your writings.
3. Illustrations, info graphics and schemes
If you can’t find interesting creative common pictures and you don’t feel like taking some pictures yourself, you could consider using a illustration, info graphic or schemes to support your blog. Pictures are not the only way to illustrate your blog. In fact, info graphics, illustrations and schemes can be even more effective if you use them the right way. Keep in mind that also these visual contents could be copyrighted. So be careful! If you want to be sure that your illustrations, info graphics and schemes are relevant and not copyrighted, you could also consider to make your own!
4. Audio-visual content is the way to go
Why should you use just pictures if you could give your audience a bit more of an experience? Especially when you consider that people prefer to sit back and watch something instead of reading. Video is the solution! You could create your own video(blog), but the Internet is full of audio-visual content, so why not borrow some useful video’s from other people? It’s actually quite easy, because if you just embed your favourite YouTube video, you won’t have to think about copyright. So videos are an easy way to add some visual content to your blog without a lot of hussle.
5. Get permission to use copyrighted content
Although above tips are all ways to get around copyright content, but what to do if you find a really great one that you want to use? Just be fair and ask the one who made the picture, info graphic or illustration. You can always try to get permission. Most of the people will appreciate the fact that you asked. We won’t say that every photographer would say ‘Yes!’ to your question, but at least you can try right? This prevents a lot of trouble afterwards.
What are you waiting for? Kick out your stock photos
Like showed above there is more than enough beautiful visual content on the world wide web available for you, you just need to know where to find it. So kick out your stock photos and give your blog some creative refreshments! Because good visual content will complement your writings.
by Kyrill Poelmans | May 18, 2015
Let’s be honest, most of us amateur copywriters think we write a lot of interesting and very good webcontent.
Of course, there are always possibilities of improvement, but we don’t really like people criticizing our content too much.
But what if we told you could improve your written webcontent, in just four simple steps? That’s a chance you should take!
Inspired by Inspired by Danny Rubin, we provide 4 simple steps to you that tell you exactly how to improve your content quickly!
Step 1 – Finish your text in the Textmetrics on-page SEO editor
The first step is to finish your text in the Textmetrics on-page SEO editor. The editor will provide some steps about headings, italic tags, keywords etc.
Textmetrics combines thousands of SEO rules to get the best results in the multiple search engines.
By using Textmetrics, you optimize your content for websites and web pages, so from now on you can call your normal content: ‘webcontent‘.
Step 2 – Check your webcontent for grammar mistakes
This next step might sound unnecessary for a lot of people, you might think, I can write a simple article without any mistakes.
But research tells us that even the best writers make a lot of grammar mistakes. Especially when you write articles in a language that you don’t natively speak.
Don’t underestimate the importance of grammar in your professional webcontent, a lot of people see grammar as a reflection of your professionalism.
Our personal favorite grammar checker is Grammarly. If you use the Textmetrics editor for your SEO friendly, you can check your webcontent immediately in your browser.
It’s pretty easy, so why would you skip it?
Step 3 – Copy to your favorite text editor and use Ctrl+F
You might think, why do I need to use Ctrl+F? Well, because we’re going to make some simple changes to your content that will improve the readability a lot.
Your webcontent is way better off without these commonly used words and sentences!
Make the following changes:
-Delete the words “very”, “just” and “really”
-Delete the words “in order” (as in “I did this in order to do that”)
-Delete the word “that” (as in “I believe that you are correct”)
-Delete the word “quite” (excess word)
-Replace the word “thing” (replace with specific word for the “thing”)
-Change the word “utilize” (switch to “use” or pick another verb)
-Change the words “get” or “got” (pick another, more descriptive verb)
-Change -ing verbs (I am writing becomes I write)
Don’t forget to check your content after making these changes, it’s possible that they don’t work out this one time!
Step 4 – Kill your darlings
Every writer has his own darlings. Words that you use way too much in your content. And the next step to improve your content is to kill your darlings.
Look for these words, expressions or sentences and change them in something else or delete them immediately.
Although it might feel like you’re totally changing your own writing style, but that’s a good thing.
By killing your darlings, you will see that your written content evolves in more valuable and professional webcontent.
Step 5 – Submit your work with confidence
Make sure that you fully support what you write. Make sure that you dare to bet your life on what you write.
Check your content and ask yourself if you like what you write, don’t just write what people want to read.
You are responsible for what you publish, so you should support your own work with the full 100%! If you don’t, then don’t publish!
We personally think that this last step is one of the most important steps to follow.
Although it isn’t specific at all, most of the people that read this tip know exactly what to change in their articles!
Follow these 5 little step and in just a few moments, your content will be optimized technically and you will get the best out yourself! Start improving your own talents! If you want to make sure that you don’t miss anything, use our free trial of Textmetrics to check your content on all the important stuff!
by Kyrill Poelmans | Apr 1, 2015
Nowadays it’s more of a must than a choice, using SEO on a daily base. Don’t you join this online revolution, you will feel it in your bad online results. But SEO isn’t that easy to control. Of course there are millions of tips posted online that will help you end up higher in the results of our most popular search engines, but then you still have a long way of work to go. We wrote a little article for all the Textmetrics loving SEO newbies. By reading this article we hope to get you one step closer to SEO success!
Don’t forget your biggest priority, your customers!
Because of the loads of SEO tips and tricks on the internet, lots of content creators forget what SEO is about. Reaching your target audience! Lots of views in the search engines is a very good first step to reach your audience, but it’s not the most important thing to achieve. The best way to reach your target audience in a nice way is to produce content that they love, like and share. The final goal isn’t just getting more views, but it’s to engage your customers to your brand, website and blog. People need to feel like they HAVE TO return to your content! Of course keywords are important, and it’s smart to optimize your web content, but a content creator should never forget his customers. That’s the first and maybe the most important tip that we have for you today!
Keywords, keywords, keywords
Now that we made our first point, we can continue with the technical stuff. Probably you’re already expecting the next point, even if you just know really a little bit about SEO, keywords! It’s really important for you as a content creator to think about and to choose the best keywords for your pages. Luckily for you, you’re now on the blog page of Textmetrics, the tool that helps you to make your own, simple keyword list. You can try it out yourself by making a free account here! Do you want to know more about choosing the best keywords? We have found another article for the most fanatic newbies!
Update your content
Customers love nice, fun, new and interesting content. Maybe it’s a bit logical, but some business owners appear to forget this fact. Followers become followers of your business because you give them trust, interest and the constant trigger of new and fun articles. So, just a simple question: “How to get followers?” Just make sure to update your website, make new pages with new content. No-one likes to read 10 times the same content, so start producing original content! And there is more, by following this tip you will get an extra advantage on Google. They like to rate active websites higher in their search results!
Linkbuilding
Linkbuilding is definitely as important as optimizing your own web content. By getting links from other sites to your website you will get more and more popular in the search engines. It works exactly the same as in real life, if your best friend tells you that you NEED TO try that new cocktail, then you’ll believe that the cocktail is delicious! And that’s exactly the way Google ‘thinks’. Do you want to know how to reach the best results by using linkbuilding? Read this article!
Please feel free to leave your own tips for our (co-)newbies!
