First, I must say how happy I am with all those who entered for the contest. I truly appreciate you all for your kind gesture in helping to promote the SEO Web Content Scribe. As I mentioned while announcing the contest, the giveaway was simply a way of calling on all our friends and esteemed readers to help in promoting the site.

As a new site just starting out, I’m really happy with the out come. Though the entries were not much, but the result is really astounding! Thus far, there were more mention on the social media over the period of the contest, giving the site an unprecedented exposure. For this I’m really grateful to all that entered for the contest.

And now, the winners are:

Once again, congratulations to all winners. They will be contacted by email to receive their different prizes.

And for those who did not win this time, I do hope that when next we run another contest you will be among the winners! But all the same, I think all of us are winners!

Thanks.

The post Blog Readers’ Appreciation Contest – Announcing the Winners! appeared first on SEOWebContentScribe.com.

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Nevertheless, you mustn’t fall into the mistake that many make. They wrongly regard their blog as their main business but that is not the truth. Your blog is simply a tool whose purpose is to help you update your site with informative content to keep readers coming back for more.

Why You Should Include Information Content on Your Website

Understanding why you should provide content in your business website will help you understand the importance of adding a blog to your site. It doesn’t matter what niche you are serving, the following are a few reasons why you should include content on your site:

1. Increase your credibility

Having relevant content on your site can help to increase the credibility of your business. This is something you don’t want to miss out on. A blog will help you provide important information to your current customers and potential clients. And if this information is interesting and relevant to their needs, this improves your chance of adding those people as future customers. This is because once they realize that you are providing an informative service to them, they will gain trust in you and your product and be more ready to give you their business in the future.

2. More high search engine rankings

With the recent changes in the search engines, including good and relevant content is a must for your business sites. When Google launched the Penguin update a few months ago, e-commerce sites were badly affected because most were low on content but heavy on link backs. You don’t want this to happen to your site. Your business site is your money site and must be treated with wisdom and care. Adding a blog is a sure way of constantly updating your site with good and relevant content which is the only way to increase your site’s chances of being ranked high in the search engines. Using SEO optimized content in your blog will ensure that your site remain in the top picks. Search engines will locate and rank your site based on the content provided. If they determine that the content is good, unique, and relevant to people, your ratings will improve. Higher rankings mean potential customers can more easily search and find your company, and that, in turn, means higher profit for you!

Deciding On a Blogging Software

When you are prepared to add a blog to your business site, one of the decisions you will need to make is the choice of blogging software to use. You may actually be very good in writing good and relevant articles for your blog, but the blogging platform you choose to do so will determine to a great extent your success.

Blogging software is what will help you to manage the articles that you write. Most will provide features such as word processing, database storage, archiving, search options, and RSS newsfeed. Each of these, along with others offered, can help make using a blog more effective and time efficient for you.

Though there are various options out there to choose from, the better choice, at least from the wide spread use, is the Wodpress. With over 60 million users, the WordPress blogging platform is definitely the best content management software (CMS) in the market right now.

Now, if you must use WordPress, you should choose self-hosted wordpress (WordPress.org) instead of the free version (WordPress.com). The self hosted version can easily be integrated into your existing business website without any problems. Besides, it keeps all your articles and content live on your own website. And you know this is good for your site as you are able to attract more new visitors with the content you showcase. Also, your site’s rankings will increase giving your business a more professional and credible stand.

Using a free version however, will rob you of these benefits because your posted content is not directly available on your site as it is hosted outside your site.

Conclusion

It is definite that a blog will help you increase your business success. It doesn’t matter which niche you are in, up your chances of success by adding a blog to your website now if you have not done so. Take your time to consider your business blogging needs and then take some time to research your options before making a final selection. Do it well and you will soon reap the rewards.

Photo credit: Freedigitalphotos

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Alright, I know most marketers think content marketing is just about creating quality content and distributing it through different online channels to your target audience.  They argue that as long as your target audience love your quality content and goes on to share it with their online connections, you will succeed as a content marketer.

Besides, they contend that you don’t really need SEO content since, to them, search engine optimization is long dead and buried with the recent Google Panda and Penguin updates.  To them social media is now the new SEO!  And with this they believe that creating your marketing content with the social media in mind will give you the desired results!

FACT: Google Did Not Kill SEO But Rather Re-Enforced It!

As much as I want to agree with the above arguments I also want to say they are only half truths. And, as you may have known, half truths can be damn dangerous!

Agreed, social media is today playing a big part in traffic and lead generation and also in building brand awareness and loyalty. But, simply writing a good piece of content and sharing it with your social media connections or using it on your business website is not enough.

Beyond creating quality content, your content should be expertly optimized for the search engines. It should be able to score good points with the search engines, helping it to gain higher rankings in the SERPs. The trick is being to do this while also appealing to your human audience for them to eagerly share it online!

It doesn’t matter whether your content is social media updates, blog articles, web content, case studies, etc. SEO optimizing your content with your target keywords will give them a better chance of achieving your business and marketing goals.

The following are just a few reasons why you must consider SEO content when marketing with content.

1. People still depend on the Search Engines to get information online

Despite the growth of social media and people depending on recommendations from friends to make buying decisions, the search engines still remains the most popular and easiest means of finding any topic of interest on the internet. Just think of what you did in the recent past when you wanted some information about a topic. Where was the first place you looked? Did you fire up your Facebook page or profile and prowled through the content there to see if you can get what you wanted or, you went to Google, or any of search engines of your choice, and keyed in your request?

I’m sure the answer is obvious.

Now, can you see why you mustn’t ignore the search engines in your marketing content creation? You must understand that the search engines remain the biggest resource about any subject today. And to retrieve any information from the search engines, searchers use keywords. it is the keyword phrases used by searcher that the search engines use in determining the results shown. They will never dig into their data bases and return the best written content!

SEO optimizing your content – writing your content with the right keyword phrases in the right places – is what will help your marketing content to get good placements in the SERPs! It’s just plainly the simplest way to position your product or service on the search engines so that when a prospect goes to the search engines looking for information in your market, you will be right there!

2. Most people never look beyond the 1st page of the SERPS!

Now, think again about when you used the search engines to locate some information. How many times did you care to look beyond the first 3 pages of the search results?

None? A few times?

Do you think others are caring to do so? (Well, I particularly got curious about a rare case which I wrote about on my internet marketing blog here!) But apart from such rare cases, I believe most people who use the search engines only care about the ten top search results in the first page.

Knowing this, it is important, if you want to drive traffic from the search engines, to put your web page on the first 10 results, better still, among the top three! And, you can only do this if you are using SEO content. Simply creating quality content will not catapult that content to the top. It is SEO optimization that will do that.

So, in creating your web content, SEO optimization must be taken into consideration. QED!

3. Organic search traffic have always proven to be more targeted than any other traffic

With search engine optimization you’ll not only get the benefit of generating just a high traffic volume but also traffic that is more targeted to your offerings. If you’ve done the right thing with your search engine optimization and not just a matter of keyword stuffing, then the chances of people, who are looking for just what you’re promoting, finding you are much higher.

I know that there are many sources of traffic online but most of these are not really what you need for your business. For example, traffic from social media sites most times are nothing but useless. For one most are just social connections looking to socialize and not doing business. But are you there to socialize?

Again, maybe you are driving traffic to your sites from blog commenting which is a good thing. But then you must understand that most traffic from blog commenting are nothing but bloggers seeking a reciprocal visit or a back link from their blog comments. Such traffic may just be useless to you also

If you truly want better results from your traffic then focus on those who are actively searching for your products or services. If anyone has a need to be met and goes to the search engines to do a search and finds your site, that prospects is more open to generate a sale for you than a blogger or a social media friend  who comes around for his/her own benefit.

Marketing Takeaway

Using SEO content for your online promotions is something you should really focus on. You should create good, quality web content always but in doing that never forget SEO. Writing SEO optimized content may not be your specialty but if you truly want to receive some good results from your content marketing, then getting SEO marketing content (even if it means using freelance services like we offer here) is something you must consider.

So, what do you think? Disagree with this article or is there something you want to add? I’m always glad to hear from you. Share your thoughts with us in your comments below.

The post Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Use SEO Content For Your Online Marketing! appeared first on SEOWebContentScribe.com.

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Andrew Nacin

I must say this is one of the reasons I love the WordPress blogging platform. It is really surprising that for a free software, the WordPress team are never tired of working to ensure that the platform is up to date. We must really give kudos to the WordPress team!

Unfortunately, many users, either because they have had issues with updating sometime in the past or because they have implemented some customizations which may be over ridden during the update, never care to update when there is a new version.

The truth is updating your wordpress blog to the newest version have more benefits than trying to keep your customized features. In this article I want give you a few reasons why you should keep your wordpress blog up to date by ensuring that you are running the latest version.

Why You Should Update Your WordPress Blog

here are a few reasons why you should update to the latest version of wordpress:

1.    Security – Just like the latest update, wordpress 3.4.2, most of the updates are security updates which if neglected can cause serious problems later on. You should note that because of the popularity of WordPress for building e-commerce sites and as a CMS platform being used by millions of businesses, it is one of the most targeted platforms by hackers. A WordPress security update will always aim to fix such a problem before it happens.

For example, in announcing this latest update, Andrew Nacin said:

“Version 3.4.2 also fixes a few security issues and contains some security hardening. The vulnerabilities included potential privilege escalation and a bug that affects multisite installs with un-trusted users. These issues were discovered and fixed by the WordPress security team.”

2.    Bug Fixes – It is interesting to note that apart from security issues most of the updates are maintenance updates aimed at fixing bugs discovered after an earlier version was released. Just like the security update, maintenance updates are also very importance because not updating will make your blog vulnerable to unwanted problems down the road.

Again the 3.4.2 version just released is also a maintenance update.  Here again is the blog post announcing the update:

“After nearly 15 million downloads since 3.4 was released not three months ago, we’ve identified and fixed a number of nagging bugs, including:

• Fix some issues with older browsers in the administration area.

• Fix an issue where a theme may not preview correctly, or its screenshot may not be displayed.

• Improve plugin compatibility with the visual editor.

• Address pagination problems with some category permalink structures.

• Avoid errors with both oEmbed providers and trackbacks.

• Prevent improperly sized header images from being uploaded.”

Now, take a look at those issues again. Do you really think you would want to ignore such very important vulnerability issues? I for one wouldn’t dare!

3. Feature Enhancements – This is another reason why you should update to the latest of version of WordPress. The truth is that most times the updates are nothing but additional features being introduced.  The WordPress team and developers are always working to keep up to date with new trends bringing in new features and enhancing existing ones. The good part of it all is that all of these come without any cost to the users! Frankly, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t want to take advantage of such updates! These updates will not only improve your use of the wordpress blogging platform but can also enhance your site’s functionality.

Indeed, the above may not be much but when you consider what could happen if you don’t update your WordPress blogs I’m sure you would regard the above as very important reasons to update right now.

I wouldn’t draw the curtains on this post without pointing out that updating to the latest version can really be a breeze! Understanding the challenges involved in updating to new versions (I have faced such challenges a few times before the automatic update feature was introduced!), the good team at WordPress came up, some time ago, with a way to easily and automatically update your wordpress blog right from your  blog’s dashboard.

Now, it is important to note again that though updating has been made real easy, you should take precautions like backing up your files and database before updating as something could go wrong when updating.  Besides, if you have done any form of customization to your themes or any plugin, backing up before updating is a must as not doing that can lead to losing the customizations.

Time to update to WordPress 3.4.2!

That is it for now. I hope I have been able to convince you to take the bold step in updating to the latest version. So, why wait any longer, go on now get WordPress 3.4.2!

If in any way you are still worried on how to go about it, I will be doing a new post later on where you will receive a step by step guide on how to update your wordpress blog. You are free to wait for that post!

Over to you: I’ll love to hear from you and also to connect with you in the comments below. Feel free and share with us your experiences in updating wordpress blogs. You can also post your questions if there is any and I’ll do my best to answer them.

BTW. Click here if you are having challenges with your wordpress blog setup or you simply desire some customization to enhance your blog’s functionality! 

The post WordPress 3.4.2 Update Announced – Why Updating Your WordPress Blog Regularly Is Important! appeared first on SEOWebContentScribe.com.

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For the past few weeks I have working on setting up this site and I must say it has been challenging moment. Now that the site is up, I realized I just need to give it a little push in the area of promotion.

Purpose of the Contest

Now, I want to be straight with you. The purpose of this contest is to have some extra hands in promoting the site. Of course, what you will be doing is just what you have always done, but this time you will be getting some rewards for your efforts!

I know without the prizes you will be eager to perform the various tasks required in the contest. However, as an incentive, I’ve simply these prizes at least to reward for your efforts. As they say, you scratch my back I scratch your back!

How to Enter

Entering for the contest is simple indeed. I’m using Rafflecopter for the contest and so you will need to sign into the widget below.

After you are signed in, do any of the options available to you. There are only a few options which I think you can do in a few minutes. To increase your chances of winning  I encourage you to do all of the options!

Again, as much as possible, you are encouraged to come around once a day to do more of the options as this will help you garner more points necessary to make you one of the winners!

Declaration of Winners

The contest is expected to end Friday 5th October, 2012 while the winners will be announced on Monday 8th October, 2012. Please ensure that you enter the contest using a working email address because that is the only way winners will be contacted.

The winners will be determined by the points earned as reported by Rafflecopter. Note however, that I’ll need to validate some of the options to determine their genuineness. So, where this is required in the Rafflecopter giveaway widget, please ensure you input the required action.

The Prizes

The prizes will go to three(3) winners. These are the people with the highest points at the end of the contest.

1. First Prize:

(a).  300 x 250 banner ad on the WebIncomeJournal.com for a month – Value $90

(b). Three(3) premium wordpress themes – Value $127.

Total first prize = $217

2. Second Prize:

Four(4) Premium WordPress Themes – Value $150

3. Third Prize:

Three(3) Premium WordPress Themes – Value $127.

Altogether the total value of the prizes is $494! I’m sure you want to be part of this, right? So, what are you waiting for? Go on, join the fun!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Content marketing

This is both to increase traffic and to attract potential customers through offering articles and blog content that is relevant to the interests of site visitors.

This is indeed a wise decision!

However, for a business blog to be viable, there is the need to write and publish good content on a regular basis because without this, readers will not have any incentive to come back for more.

Unfortunately, as we know, not all business persons are writers.  Besides, the rigors of running a business sometimes make it really difficult to devote time to writing articles.

Understanding this problems I want to use this article to offer you some practical tips on how to ensure a continuous flow of informative and educative content for your retail business blog so that you can profit with your efforts.

1. Write on Topics That Interest You

This is very important because there is the need for you to constantly update your blog with new information and content and it is necessary that you maintain interest in your chosen topic. If you attempt to write articles or content on topics that are of little or no interest to you, your content will soon reflect your lack of enthusiasm and will therefore affect the blog’s performance. However, when you choose to write on subjects that you’re passionate about, your blog readers will catch on the passion and your blog will be the better for it.

2. Decide On a Posting Schedule

As a business person, your time is very precious. Whether you’re providing a service or a product in your retailing business, there is so much to do that adding running a blog to the workload is something that must be undertaken with care.

For this reason it is important that, right from the on-set, you should decide on your posting schedule. The frequency of your posting will be determined by the time available to you and what you want to achieve. It is a good idea to try posting 2 to 3 times a week. This may not always be full-length articles. The idea is to keep the blog current and therefore maintain the flow of traffic.

3. Take a Deeper Interest in Your Business Operations

Chances are you may have taken most of your business operations before now for granted. You may not have taken any conscious attempt at mapping your processes. But documenting the processes of your operations could really prove useful in your content creation. Content ideas based on your business operations can help pass you across as an expert in your field to your site visitors.

Besides, your potential customers and clients will be able to know more about your business and will be more open to doing business with you as they would have come to trust your expertise and genuine desire to help.

4. Keep Abreast Of What Is Happening In Your Industry

These days information is changing at a rate unimaginable. To ensure that your blog is current with happenings, you must devote time to reading and studying. Check out other related blogs to know what they are writing about. Join forums related to your business. These could help you generate content ideas based on the questions and answers featured on them. This is good, not only for the knowledge you’ll gain about your field, but also the new contacts who can become your potential blog readers which could be converted to paying customers!

5. Stay “Google Alert” And Be Onto The Trends!

Another way you can ensure you are not short of topics to write about is to “have an ear to the ground” on what is happening on the net. You can do this by subscribing to Google Alerts! With your subscription,  Google will send you an alert every time your chosen subject is mentioned either in a blog post, forum discussion, news site or just any website, depending on your selected preferences.

Another Google tool that will help you in this area is Google Trends. from this site you could have an understanding of what is “hot” at the moment and also have an insight into how that topic has fared over a period of years.

Used very well, these tools can help you have a constant flow of topics to write about on your blog.

6. Read Other Blogs

Visiting and reading other blogs or websites related to yours can also give you ideas on what topics to write about. Use your primary keywords to search in any of the major search engines, such as Google or Yahoo!  You may want to search for news articles or blogs related to your field.  These articles can serve as a springboard to help you find something to talk about.

Conclusion

Being consistent in posting to your retail business blog is very important as it will help the major search engines to find and rank your blog high on the SERPs. This is because search engines love fresh quality articles. Once you’re able to rank your retail blog on the search engines, potential customers will be attracted with ease and generating more profits will become something that will come quickly. So constantly updating your retail business blog with fresh content is something you should always work at.

IMPORTANT:  SEOWebContentScribe.com is committed to helping businesses create optimized web content that is guaranteed to increase website traffic, push online visibility and improve brand awareness in an extremely cost effective way. You don’t have to make it harder on yourself struggling to create content for your sites. Click here for the details.

Over to you: Do you have a retail business blog? If yes, had it been fun creating content for your blog?  Let’s have your responses in your comments below.

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As businesses exist to create customers so your website or blog exist to drive traffic. Without traffic a business site is nothing but a piece of white elephant – a monumental waste!

Now, different proven strategies exist to help you drive traffic using a blog or website but many of them come with a price tag. So let’s consider a situation where you’re just starting out and are short on the cash, or maybe, you simply want to maximize your profits by reducing some of your operational cost, don’t you think looking for some free methods is a good thing?

This is where these free methods comes in. These are tested and proven; and are very good free sources for highly targeted and profit-centric traffic.

Let me however quickly say that, depending on your approach, you may want to invest some money in outsourcing these traffic methods to free up some of your time for other business activities that will impact on your ROI.

Having said that, here are the proven free traffic methods you should be using right now.

1. Forums and Online Communities

Since the inception of the internet, forums and online communities have been a place where you could meet with people of like minds and discuss topics of common interest. Though they have changed over time, one thing you can benefit from them is driving highly targeted traffic that is good for your business success.

One great thing about forums and online communities is the ability to target a predetermined audience. You could decide on a certain demographic and then choose a community or forum that matches that demographic. If you have done your home work well, your offers and promotions will be delivered to just the right audience.

Furthermore, forums and online communities give you a platform where you could easily build a reputation and trust for your company.

2. In House Newsletters

Starting a newsletter and providing people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles, is a proven way of ensuring a constant flow of traffic to your site. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up and recommend it to others. And the more people that subscribe the more people there will be that will go to your site, thereby increasing your site’s traffic.

3. Trading Links with Similar Sites

This actually has various advantages and you don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With trading links, the efforts of each site will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on your link and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites are in the same niche.

Care should be taken when trading links with other webmasters. With the recent changes and algorithmic updates by Google, you must be careful when choosing a link partner. Some sites must be avoided at all cost. Besides, it’s advisable to vary the anchor texts. The recent Google Penguin update specifically targeted this type of link building. So, it is better to pick different anchor texts based on your target keyword phrases and use these across different sites. (Please read this very instructive post about an incident I related on my other blog.)

4. Writing and Submiting Articles to Article Directories

Writing articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product and submitting these articles to article submission directories is another powerful but free way of driving traffic to your business site.

This is more effective if your articles provide tips and guides to your target audience. Writing articles that are informative and educative would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.  The idea is to make people find your articles so interesting that they want to find out where the article originated. Your link and brief description of your company included at the end of the article will be a great resource as it will be the path people will follow to your site.

5. Quality and Customer-Centric Content on Your Sites

Another very good way of generating free traffic to your blog is by providing quality content. Visitors who come to your blog after reading your content will want to come back again. Besides, the content will determine if the site visitors will sign up for your blog updates or email list. Some will also want to bookmark the blog giving them a way to come back to the blog without any further work on your part.

Providing good content on your site or blog is very important. If in any way, you’re not good at writing web content, it is advisable to get a professional content writer to create web content for you. Though, this may cost you some money initially, the investment will definitely pay for itself sooner.  Of course, that is what we do here on SEOWebContentScribe.com. We are committed to help you write highly engaging content for your sites. You can click here for details.

Indeed, nothing stops you from doing this yourself only ensure that your web content is entertaining, informational and of great quality.

6. Investing In Search Engine Optimization

Search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used and rank your site according. Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for and the search engines in return, use keyword in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs. All you have to do is to strategically optimize your web content for the search engines. This is what SEO is all about.

Conclusion

These free methods of driving targeted traffic to your business site or blog may appear simple enough but it’s unfortunate that very few businesses are really using them. Worst still is the fact that the few who care to use them, only a handful are using them correctly. You can actually separate yourself from the crowd by learning all you can about these methods and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.

Feel free to share with us your free methods for driving website traffic. Or if you have any question post it in your comments below.

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You have successfully confirmed your email address and so, you’re qualified for the download!

You have taken the first step to using The Wordsmith’s Guest Blogging Manifesto to ethically steal hordes of traffic from a-list blogs. I’ve just sent an email to your inbox with your free download. Go on now and get your special guest blogging guide.

Also… because you are now an exclusive subscriber to VIP members only newsletter, you will be receiving my finest FREE web content marketing tips and materials every week to help with you content and website marketing.

Regards,

Chadrack Irobogo

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