Dynamic Blog Writing Starts With the Basics

Writing a successful blog for your business can be tricky, especially if you don’t know the tools of the trade. You might write an awe-inspiring piece with well-crafted language and cheeky phrases, but if you aren’t using the correct tactics, the blog will flop.

All that time you invested into writing will feel like a waste because the blog will get lost in the world of the Internet, and no one will have the opportunity to read it. Have you noticed that a limited number of people are reading your posts? If so, here are some blog writing tips you can try to gain more views, increase the number of shares and, ultimately, draw in a larger following for your business.

Get to Know Your Audience

When writing blog posts, you need to consider who your audience is. Posting the right kind of content in the places that see the most traffic is vital to the success of the blog. So, you have to ask yourself: “What do my followers care about?” Answering this question is a great place to start when it comes to creating relevant content.

Of course, currently trending topics are always popular, but you also want to post blogs that are “evergreen.” Evergreen blogs are pieces of writing that will always be relevant. For instance, blogs about current events will be irrelevant in just a short period of time, but blogs related to the history of your business are evergreen, as their relevance will never change.

Utilize Your Keywords

Aside from defining your audience, you need to discover which keywords would prove to be most beneficial to your business. To gain more from your SEO, use long-tail keywords. These keywords usually consist of three words or more. By doing so, you specify exactly what your blog talks about, which will stand out to an audience that is looking for content related to that topic.

It might take some practice to weave these keywords into your blog writing seamlessly. If your keywords stand out awkwardly, your audience will recognize it, get annoyed and leave because they feel like they’re reading one giant advertisement. In addition, Google’s crawler spiders will be able to tell and will penalize you for it. Don’t let your keywords change the outline of your writing, either. Work your keywords into your topic, not the other way around.

Set Yourself Apart

If you want to stand out against your competitors, you need to choose a topic that hasn’t been covered by every other blog, but is also popular enough that people want to read it. If you write the same topic that a ton of other blogs have written, it’ll just get lost in the crowd.

When you’re brainstorming topics, conduct searches to see how much content already exists for those topics and related topics. What you’re looking for here is a topic that has enough search traffic to be valuable, but has yet to offer a good solution. It may take time to find a topic that fills an existing content gap.

Once you find your topic, see where the current content falls short. Then, see how you can approach it from a different angle or provide a new perspective to address the needs of the reader, whether that’s through more research or new information. Now you can develop and produce your content with a fresh take that hasn’t been done before.Have you noticed a drop in customer engagement with your blogs but aren’t sure how to fix it — or don’t have time to do so? If this sounds like you, Optimized Scribes can help. We have an experienced team to handle all your SEO and copywriting services, so you can be sure that your business is poised for success. Contact us today to learn more about our services and see what we can do for you!

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SEO Tools Your Business Can’t Live Without

SEO has a ton of technical elements that you can wrangle under your control using a handful of excellent tools. Most of these tools allow you to gain insight into aspects of your internet marketing you’d have no visibility for otherwise, such as how your page is crawled by search engines. Others are there to inspire you, keep you organized and make life easier.

Without the right SEO tools under your belt, determining how to improve is like fumbling in the dark. Even your best guess as to things like the right keyword to use could be wrong without sufficient data to influence your decision. Having these tools often separates true professionals, like SEO copywriting services, from ambitious amateurs.

So, to help you make smart decisions, keep tabs on your key SEO performance metrics and simplify your workload, take a look at the following 16 best SEO tools for businesses:

Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools

While some of the tool sets listed in this article are nice-to-haves, these two are absolute musts. Without them, you basically fly blind on your quest to gain rankings and traffic.

Google Search Console provides a suite of tools that allow you to measure and optimize your site in potentially limitless ways. The most simple tool, Fetch as Google, shows you exactly how your site looks both to the search engine crawler bots and to end users on the search results page. You can also manually force a crawl on new web pages, meaning you don’t have to wait for hours or days for Google to notice your new content. On top of all this, you’ll receive insights for your traffic, keyword relevance and more.

Bing Webmaster Tools provides a similar suite of helpful tools, but not quite as robust. Since Bing supplies voice search results for millions of devices, you should not overlook the #2 search engine when making optimization changes.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Etc.

SEO hinges on your ability to signal relevance to search engines when someone uses a search term related to your business. Part of the difficulty businesses face in this task comes from not really knowing what keywords and terms are related to their business in the first place. Often, a business can assume someone will visit them by typing one query phrase, when in reality the majority of traffic comes from a far different phrase.

To make sure you aren’t off-base with your own keyword use, you are going to need a keyword research tool. Luckily, several out there are absolutely free to use.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner is likely the first free tool that springs to mind. You’ll have to sign up for a free AdWords account to use it, even if you don’t intend to run paid search engine ads. Then, you simply have to plug in some sample keywords, a business category or a sample web page URL to get actionable suggestions. Each suggestion includes data like search volume, competitiveness and typical bid price. Even though you won’t be bidding on your organic SEO keywords, these dollar amounts still signify how much “value” a keyword has in your industry.

Ubersuggest is another free tool that’s well-liked for its ability to spit out thousands of possible results. However, these results aren’t quite as easy to organize, so be prepared to sift through a lot of duds.

In addition to these free tools, there are more data-driven paid tools, like SEMrush. These tools account for deeper metrics, like conversion potential and whether you’ll compete with high-traffic sites for rankings. They can often provide a solid return on investment when used regularly to drive SEO strategy and optimization changes.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test and Page Speed Insights

It may seem like we’re covering a lot of tools from Google, but that’s just because they have so many free and useful products out there!

The first worth mentioning is the Google Mobile-Friendly Test. People are always on the go and use their devices nonstop these days, meaning that a huge chunk of your potential traffic is going to come from smartphone users. According to recent data, industries like Food & Beverage see as much as 72% of their search traffic come from mobile. Others are closer to 50/50.

In line with the mobile trend, Google wants to ensure that the search results it displays don’t irk its mobile user base. As such, they’ll tend to rank mobile-friendly websites better. You can use their mobile friendly test linked above to give your site pages a quick scan and receive feedback. Some of their suggestions will be technical and may even require a site overhaul, while others are quick fixes.

The speed at which your page loads is another ranking factor many websites don’t consider. Users tend to back out of pages that take too long to load. Accordingly, your ranking may suffer if your site is too slow. You can receive free optimization suggestions via Google — similar to their mobile-friendly tool — when you paste in your URL to their PageSpeed Insights tool.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo offers lots of food for thought and some inspiration for your next content ideas. Similar to a keyword planner, the free tool can use a keyword phrase to come up with a list of the most viral and popular articles related to that query. Businesses can then use these suggestions to mold their own content and inform their overall strategy so that they can get more clicks.

Yoast

Yoast is a plugin for WordPress sites that automatically scans your content and analyzes it for SEO effectiveness. Using the software, you can track not just keyword use on a single content page, but across the whole site. You’ll also receive pointers on SEO nice-to-haves, like using active voice and short paragraphs in your content.

Ahrefs Site Explorer, Moz, and Other Backlink Analyzers

This might be the most useful category on this list simply because backlinks are such a powerful ranking signal. Google tends to rank sites better when they have lots of shared links among popular, authoritative sites.

To help you track the links coming to your website, you can use tools like Ahrefs, Moz and others to perform a deep analysis. You’ll find out who’s been linking your site, as well as how much you’re linking internally to your site from its various pages. Importantly, you’ll also find a complete list of broken links — links pointing toward your domain that end up on an error page since the address is incorrect.

Copyscape

Our final suggested tool may not be sexy, but it’s definitely vital. In fact, if you’re going to spend money on just one SEO tool, make it this one.

Copyscape quickly analyzes your content to make sure it’s not a duplicate of other content found on the web. Some duplicate phrases and quotes are likely to show up, but if more than 15% of your content can be found somewhere else, then it may be flagged by Google and result in a ranking penalty. Worse, you can be approached by other companies accusing you of stealing their content!

Give yourself peace of mind and prevent a fairly harsh penalty from spiking your traffic by running a Copyscape check before uploading any new content.

Other SEO Tools Professional Copywriting Services Often Use

The tools described are just some of what we use here at the Optimized Scribes office. Other popular tool sets for SEO include:

• QuickSprout
• LinkMiner Plugin
• Google Disavow Tool
• Screaming Frog
• Moz
• Majestic

Got any favorites we missed? Let us know in the comments!

You don’t have to spend hundreds a month on SEO tools that don’t work before you even see results. You can work instead with an experienced SEO and copywriting services team to handle all the work for you and use the same tools as the pros. Contact us today to find out more!

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How to Create a B2B Email Marketing Campaign That Actually Works

Want your next B2B email marketing campaign to be a success? Then put yourself in a prospect’s shoes and try to make your messages as contextually relevant and interesting as possible.

Getting this strategy right requires careful segmentation and planning of your customer journey. But when everything clicks metaphorically, you can earn real mouse clicks more reliably. Those email marketing clicks can lead to real revenue, too. According to a survey from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing has a 122% return on investment (ROI) rate, which is over four times higher than social media marketing or PPC!

As a reseller agency and regular provider of white label email marketing services, we’ve seen what B2B email marketing is capable of in action. Our carefully crafted campaigns have generated leads, nurtured interest toward conversion, and helped existing customers engage in a deeper relationship with their service vendors.

The key to finding success is to make whatever offer you’re sending through the email as juicy as possible, without coming across as a desperate salesperson. A decision maker for the average business hears so many lame sales pitches throughout their day that they eventually tune them out. Yet, they’re still human. They like the idea of getting great info or tools that can make their jobs easier.

Separating your B2B email marketing missives from the average “goes straight to spam” email requires careful planning, documentation, and discipline. To get you started down the right track, put the following best practices into action.

Separate Your Sales Prospects by Persona, and Know Why They Buy

Persona-based marketing segmentation may sound like B2B Sales 101, yet far too many teams neglect the valuable work of getting into their customers’ heads. Deciding on the traits of your target audience has significant performance consequences.

Start by looking at your own customers. Ask yourself:

• What industry niches are they in?
• Are there any common traits to the business’s size or service model?
• Do you find particular luck converting a certain job title or role?
• What specific traits about this prospect’s job role or their service model make your solution valuable to them?
• What common objections or concerns did they need addressed before they committed to a purchase?

Third-party research and general statistics about your target market can help, but your own past customers are your best source of this data.

Once you identify these traits, see if you can break down your customers into a few convenient groups. For instance, your personas may look like:

• Ardent Accountant – In charge of procurement approval, this persona has share of the final say for saying “yes.” Worried about ROI and measurable performance returns above all else.
• Eager Entrepreneur – Business owner who wants to see their business grow with minimal risks. Can get excited about features and emotional appeals, but needs concrete use case examples.
• Skeptical Supporter – Department head or assistant to decision-maker who only runs the best ideas by their superior. They want assurance that solutions will be integrated, well-supported, and can provide documentable promises or guarantees of effectiveness.
• Overwhelmed Owner – Loves their small business but has trouble keeping up. Wants solutions that lessen their workload and streamline their workflow. May not be well-versed in technical concepts or industry terms, so needs benefits and features broken down.

Plot the Journey of Your Typical Customer

With a few customer archetypes in mind, you can then begin to consider how each type of customer may navigate your marketing funnel as part of their customer journey.

Realize that almost no one will want to “BUY NOW” or “DOWNLOAD THEIR FREE TRIAL” after just hearing about your company. Instead, they may go through the typical marketing funnel phases.

 

 

As such, each campaign should be broken down into not only your main personas, but also the discrete steps they need to convert from one leg of their customer journey to the next.

Information is almost always the best starting point. Who doesn’t want to learn things that help them in their business life? Getting someone to read something is also an easy “yes” decision for them to make. Then, you have made them aware of your company, and they are already committing to engage.

According to one study, prospects who say “yes” to a small ask by a sales rep are then 135% more likely to say “yes” to a bigger commitment.

Keep your personas in mind when determining what sort of content, information, offers, and messages you need to get a conversion.

Looking at the “Overwhelmed Owner” persona, here is a sample of the types of emails segmented by customer journey stage for a hypothetical cybersecurity service:

• Awareness – “10 Tasks Successful Business Owners Do Every Week”
  • • Email containing quick information that offers up immediate value. Should include a Call to Action (CTA) at the end encouraging a person to read more content or commit to something like a webinar sign up or a white paper download.
• Evaluation – “Are You at Risk of a Customer Privacy Breach?”
  • • Teaser for an in-depth white paper or guide to protecting personal data with cybersecurity. Explains basic concepts and connects B2B business’s solution to valid concerns an owner might have. CTA for a free trial or a security audit signup.
• Purchase – “Handle Digital Purchases as Securely as the Big Name Brands”
• • • Talking explicitly about features of the B2B company’s products/services. Offer concrete examples of value and overcome objections the business owner might have. CTA for a limited-time offer that entices.
• Advocacy/Retention – “5 Small Ways to Keep Your Trade Secrets a Secret”
• • Mixture of general information and solution-specific information to continue offering value to converted customers. CTA to try add-on cross sale or receive a discount for recommending solution to others.

Measure, Experiment, Improve, Repeat

Creating campaigns that separate the legs of your customer journey introduces a lot of complex variables, but this is a good thing! It means you have more factors to tweak and experiment with, so you can chase improved performance over time.

Start by highlighting a few priority metrics. These should absolutely include conversion rate for your CTA. They might also include things like: open rate, unsubscribe rates, earnings per email sent, etc.

Then, try and optimize your campaigns to chase improved performance using email marketing A/B testing. Altering headlines can be one way to try and improve open rates, for instance. Or, you may decide to try a more graphically robust layout to see if that improves your CTA conversions.

Keep track of your data and document changes that lead to performance improvements. For instance, you should keep a list of your most opened email subject lines of all time to serve as an example for future writers.

Consider Using White Label Email Marketing From an Experienced Reseller Agency

Undergoing the process of strategizing, creating, and optimizing B2B email marketing campaigns requires a lot of up-front work and continual evaluation, but the results speak for themselves. We’ve helped dramatically raise both the quality of our client’s B2B marketing emails as well as their campaign performance just by keeping these best practices in mind.

Also, don’t be discouraged if you feel like your campaigns are barely moving the needle on performance at first. The whole objective is to make incremental improvements that keep your clients’ needs at the forefront of your campaign strategy. That takes time getting adjusted to, but the end results are worth it!

You may also want to consider sharing the load with a reseller agency that has more time and experience on their side. By collaborating with a white label services provider, you can ensure your campaigns or your clients’ follow all of the best practices that promote success.

 

 

Interested in improving your B2B email marketing campaign performance? Take a look at our email marketing services, and then contact us today to learn how we can help you!

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The History of Writing Blogs, and What We Can Learn From It

The phrase “blog writing” conjures up dozens of different images depending on who you ask, and most of them would be right! A blog can be an intensely personal diary of feelings, experiences and observations just as much as it can be a highly polished portfolio of a business’s most important thought leadership contributions.

But since we’re marketers, “blog” most often refers to a specific digital marketing channel that improves your ability to rank on search engine results pages. By crafting outstanding content through blog writing services and sharing it to your business blog, you can signal relevance to search engines when someone looks up related queries.

Business blogs these days must abide by minimum standards of quality in order for this SEO strategy to work, though. Where do these quality standards come from? Well, technically they come from Google, which regularly updates their search algorithms to favor high-quality content and punish keyword-stuffing blogs that attempt to abuse the system. More accurately, the quality standards we see marketers strive to adopt today comes from the journalistic nature of early blogs from yesteryear.

By analyzing these original blogs, what they stood for and what motivated their creation, we can get an idea for how to improve our own content quality and the related SEO performance. So buckle up for a history lesson as we examine the origins of the blog and learn some important content marketing lessons along the way.

1994–1999: The Early Internet Gives Rise to Dedicated “Web Logs”

Back in the early 90s—before a flood of America Online free trial discs hit just about every household in America—the internet was mostly used by students, academics, government employees and employees of certain corporations.

Unsurprisingly, what is recognized as the very first “web log” was started by the first category: a student. Justin Hall, an 18-year-old student at Swarthmore College, wanted a repository where he could save his favorite links to online websites. He began his blog in January of 1994, which was a combination of his own personal experiences as well as a curated list of interesting links. Since “bookmarks” didn’t really exist then, and early online communities were always on the lookout for good link recommendations, it didn’t take much for Hall’s blog to take off.

Within a few years, other “online journals” began popping up. Many of them were dedicated to niche interests, such as Shack News, which began in 1996 as Quakeholio, a dedicated community for the video game “Quake.” Quakeholio’s Steve Gibson later got hired by Ritual Entertainment, the makers of “Quake,” to work full-time creating articles for their website, likely becoming the first paid blogger.

In 1997, a fellow online diarist in the spirit of Justin Hall named Jorn Barger described his journaling activities as “logging the Web.” In 1999, programmer Peter Merholz shortened the term “Weblog” to “blog.”

By the early 2000s, blogging had moved from a personal activity to a paid one. Gizmodo, Gawker and other commercialized publisher websites rode the boom in internet use through the early decade. Websites earned money by garnering substantial reader bases. Readers’ eyeballs translated to impressions for online display ads, creating an advertising revenue-based business model that some blogs could thrive off of.

2000–2007: Blogging Takes Off, But Remains Distant From SEO and Content Marketing

Early blogs had everything to do with earning readers. Whether you were running a blog for yourself or a business, the goal was generating traffic through a combination of reader retention, referrals and link promotions on other sites.

Businesses in the early age of the internet generally relied on people to either know their web address by heart or find it through a direct online search. However, some businesses caught on to the traffic search engines could bring. An enterprising HVAC company in a bustling region could use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to associate its website with the term “air purifiers,” for instance.

Interestingly, the link between blogs and SEO was still very hazy during this time. Writing advice to aspiring bloggers in 2004, internet marketing guru Yaro Starak explained that, “search engine optimization (SEO) is an area that most bloggers will never get into in any real depth.” Instead of regarding SEO as the work of keyword stuffers, Starak describes that, “at the highest level, very technical minded people are testing and tracking things to optimize search rankings for their websites and blogs.”

Indeed, the early work of SEO was very much a technical endeavor. Early SEO blog resources like Search Engine Watch scrutinized the efforts of businesses down to the letter. “The words ‘air purifiers’ appear in the body copy twice in bold text, for no apparent reason,” they write in a 2003 case study. “In the past, Google has said that it may consider words in bold to be a bit more relevant to a page. My guess is that this is why the words were placed into bold on this page — to try and please Google.”

Articles like that one arose out of frustration with Google’s constant algorithm changes. Businesses tried everything they could to rank, including manipulating whatever content they had to satisfy the mighty Google algorithm gods.

2008–2012: Content Marketing, SEO and Blogging Intersect Thanks to a Panda

 

 

Like any good business model, blogging and SEO soon got abused into oblivion. Online retailers and ambitious local businesses began to game their search results ranking with black hat practices like keyword stuffing, invisible text and deceptive content headlines.

Similarly, online blogs proliferated while taking a huge dip in average quality. With the rise in broadband connectivity, the advent of social media and the release of the iPhone in 2007, millions of people began to read blogs daily. Eager to cash in on this traffic, poor-quality blogs wrote headlines about the day’s hottest news, seeking to trick people into clicking on their website above others and viewing ads.

Search users had enough. Those keeping an eye on internet culture predicted that content farms—websites pumping out poor-quality content to earn high search rankings—would soon reach a breaking point. “The jury’s out on whether the content farm approach will prove successful,” opined Tech Crunch’s Ashkan Karbasfrooshan in 2010, “but I am betting that in 2011, you will start to see a regression to the mean, with the very same companies who are rushing to emulate the leading content farm companies revert back towards a more balanced approach to publishing and focus on quality.”

Karbasfrooshan wasn’t wrong, but he overestimated the common sense and goodwill of the typical business that ran content farms. It wasn’t introspection that led to the slow death of garbage content, it was a panda bear.

Specifically, it was the Google Panda update in 2011. “In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with ‘shallow’ or ‘low-quality’ content,” Search Engine Land wrote in February 2011. “Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.”

Google Panda impacted an astounding 12 percent of U.S. search results. It scrubbed content that was copied wholesale from other sites as well as content that showed signs of deliberately trying to game the system, such as through keyword stuffing.

The Panda update marked a turning point where blogging’s craftsmanship and SEO’s profit motive intersected. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at this Google Trends graph, where searches for “content marketing” rose steadily just a few months after Panda was released.

 

 

Business owners had to come to terms with the fact that search engine ranking mattered to their bottom line, but that quality mattered to Google. Suddenly, they had a strong incentive to enlist the help of content writing services that could follow the guidelines of SEO experts.

2013–Present: Trying to Relearn the Lessons Early Bloggers Taught Us for More Effective Content Writing Services

Panda was far from the last Google update that had a profound impact on digital marketing. The company has steadily updated their algorithm year after year in order to place relevant, high-quality content at the top of search results for eager search users to devour.

But just like how content farms abused the blogging publisher model, many content writing services and SEO agencies still get content writing wrong. They obsess over things like keyword usage, even though Google now explicitly states that “creating compelling and useful content” is a more effective ranking strategy than “inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users.”

So what lessons can we learn from early bloggers to break out of bad content writing habits? For one, your business blog should exhibit the qualities of early bloggers:

• Passionate—Intensely interested in the topic at hand and dedicated to sharing their news and ideas with their community
• Introspective—Blogs had a strong voice and felt like they were personal, being written from the heart for an intimate-feeling audience
• Timely—Always wants to stay up to date so that the blog can provide the most relevant and late-breaking information possible
• Informative—Early bloggers didn’t just deliver updates; they also created educational resources for readers in an easy-to-digest format
• Audience-Focused—The most successful blogs always catered to their readers above all else; word-of-mouth and strong referrals from high-traffic websites were the easiest ways to earn readers before the days of social media

Above all else, early blogs had a purpose. Back in the days when there wasn’t much out there on the internet, some bloggers like Steve Gibson felt like they had a mandate to bring information to the public. Creating a new community meant that something exciting was being built—a place for like-minded people to gather, discuss things and stay up to date.

While topical blogs are a dime a dozen these days, you should still consider it your duty to give your industry niche and customer base something unique to digest. After all, your voice isn’t out there, nor is your business’s distinct perspective.

So whether you are a marketing agency considering how to write better for a client or a business owner thinking about how to squeeze the most performance out of your website content, think small to write big. When you can embrace the enthusiast mentality of early bloggers and deliver outstanding content to the loyal fans in your audience, that’s a recipe for making everyone—including your business, your readers and Google—happy.

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A Day in the Life of Your Content Writer

When you entrust your valuable client accounts to a white label SEO writer, know that you are in good hands. These writers are dedicated professionals—many of them working full time. A few will come into the office every weekday, while others will spend the majority of their work days writing from home.

So what does it look like when a private label SEO content writer gets up in the morning to start their day? How do they ensure their clients get a high level of quality along with all the necessary technical SEO details?

Read on to find out and to experience a full day in the life of someone who writes content for a living.

Morning Check-In, Brief Housekeeping, Getting Work Done

 

A telecommuting content writer’s day starts fairly similarly to the average office worker’s, but with a few key differences. They wake up to an alarm, stretch their legs, brush their teeth and shower if they haven’t done so the night before.

After making a pot of coffee and a light breakfast, it’s time for the long commute from the dining nook to the home office. There, they will log in by 9:00 a.m. and sign into their office’s preferred chat client. We at Optimized Scribes use Skype to communicate. All of our writers, editors and project management teams share a “Check-In Chat” group where we each say “good morning!”

If there are any questions about the work ahead, a writer may chime in. Otherwise, they will briefly check their email for urgent messages before logging into their project management software tool.

A project management platform provides a cloud-based system for checking assigned tasks and attaching related files. Our writers can see at any given time their assignments that are due today as well as any tasks due later and general tasks that do not yet have an established due date.

These tools keep content writers organized, focused and always sure of what they need to do next. Best of all, they can log in anywhere! That means that on any given day, your writer can cozy up at a local coffee shop with a croissant and cup of joe while they hammer away at the keys.

Since there are only so many hours in a day and lots of content to write, they get straight to work! The typical work day has approximately eight to 12 articles lined up, each one usually at least 500 words. A fast writer can knock out three to five of these articles before lunchtime, putting them in good standing for the rest of their day.

Lunch Time and Then White Label SEO Housekeeping Tasks

 

 

All of our writers get an hour-long lunch break. Some will use this time to scour the fridge and heat up some leftovers or a quick meal. Others will treat themselves to takeout or a quick lunch out. After all, it’s great to get out of the house when you work from home!

Many of our clients reach out to us later on in the morning. That makes just after lunchtime the perfect opportunity for the writer to log back into work email and see if any of their client contacts have anything important to say.

We also try to schedule most of our meetings either immediately before lunch or in the early afternoon. No one wants to be on a group chat or a phone call right before they sign out for the day, after all!

Around once a quarter, all of our writers, editors and project managers take an hour or so to check in on a Skype call. We discuss priorities and any action items, such as a different way to include keywords in the average blog assignment. We also make a point to solicit feedback and ideas for how to improve the workflow or meet our client needs more ably.

On a more regular basis, a writer may have a brief call-in with one or both of our project managers to discuss priorities. They talk about monthly project needs that still have to be met as well as any looming assignments that may soon drop into their online project management platform tool.

Once these meetings are over—or if there are no meetings to speak of—the writer gets back to work doing what they do best: creating killer content for our clients!

Finishing Off the Day, Signing Out and Taking a Well-Earned Break

 

 

The core Optimized Scribes team ends their work day at five, just like most of corporate America. We all say goodbye, and our administrative team usually takes the time to thank the writers for their work for the day.

In their last hour of work, a writer may begin to wind down their day by checking on assignments ahead. They may see if a last-minute email dropped in their inbox, or they may take a look at bigger projects they need to tackle the next day. Many of our assignments are finished quickly, but some take extensive prewriting.

After checking to make sure the day’s queue is complete and sneaking a peek at what tomorrow may bring, the writer logs off to take a well-deserved break. Then, they take care of their dinner plans, spend a few hours of leisure time before bed and finally go to bed to rest up for the next full day of eager writing.

The beauty of this work relationship is that it’s flexible, but always organized. Our team stays in constant touch, and there are multiple people keeping a check to make sure guidelines and deadlines are being met. We like to think the end results—happy clients and outstanding blogs—speak for themselves!

 

 

Interested in having one of our talented writers lend their expertise to your content writing needs? Contact Us Today to discuss your project and request a sample!

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What to Look for in a Norcross SEO Agency

What do you do when you need information? Whether it’s discovering an area to eat, inspecting film times or reviewing the reviews of a business prior to you come by the store, you possibly open a search engine. You’re not the just one either. Over 40,000 people utilize an internet search engine every second.

They could be searching for fun realities concerning cats, or they could be searching for something related to your business. If you desire your business to turn up in their outcomes, you need to optimize your online web content for online search engine. That’s where seo, or SEO, can assist. Luckily, there are agencies that will take treatment of all of it for you. Discover what to seek in a Norcross SEO firm.

Experience

SEO is an ever-changing landscape, and you need to ensure that whatever company you rely on with your business’s online presence understands what they’re doing. It’s constantly an excellent suggestion to look online and see how much time they’ve been around. It requires time to learn what jobs as well as what does not.

An excellent way to discover seasoned companies is to consider their customers. A lot of SEO firms will have a listing of their customers showed on their web site somewhere. Watch out for customers that are of similar dimension as well as in a similar industry to your own to ensure they can collaborate with your details needs. Do not hesitate to request for study from any SEO firm you’re thinking about working with. They should more than happy to share what they can do for you.

Authentic Interest

Every solitary business out there is distinct and also has something unique to supply. That implies the SEO for every business additionally needs to be distinct. Also within markets, SEO has to cater to each individual business, so you require an SEO firm that can accomplish that. Luckily, it’s easy to inform whether they’re serious concerning personalizing their services for you.

When you’re speaking with the appropriate SEO company, they’ll likely ask you some basic inquiries about your business, yet that’s simply the beginning. They’ll require to ask you about your target audience, the objective of your website, various other types of advertising, what sort of competitors you’re up versus and also much more. If a company stops working to ask you for details regarding these examples, they possibly uncommitted all that much.

Transparency

Search engine optimization is a distinct procedure in that it’s regularly taking place. Look fads transform swiftly, and also even metrics for just how online search engine price content can alter. That means That means you need an SEO firm that’s sincere regarding the service it can supply. If it sounds as well great to be true, it most likely is. Remember, SEO is never an assurance.

Your site’s search results listing will certainly not transform over night, as well as also provided all the time in the world, it still might never ever reach the front page. If a company ever before provides you anything like that, it’s most likely best to deal with another person. Never fail to remember that SEO agencies can not control internet search engine’ algorithms. They simply need to function within them.

A Norcross SEO Agency You Can Trust

If you’re looking for a Norcross SEO company that will certainly aid keep your business affordable and optimize your SEO gains as long as possible, look no even more than Optimized Scribes. We can integrate top quality web content, citations, backlinks and also much more into a good package that will certainly assist improve your web existence. Contact us today to read more.

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5 Pain Points You Face When Partnering With a White Label Agency

Nearly all of the most common pain points marketing companies face can be broken down into “too much work, and not enough people to do it.” The services of a white label agency can help solve this problem by lightening your load, handling clients at scale and freeing up your resources to focus on strategy, retention and client satisfaction. Compared to onboarding a new employee, all of these benefits can be had with less risk and training overhead.

According to a 2018 survey of agencies by Hubspot, the top pain point marketers faced was “finding new clients,” according to 60 percent of respondents. Forty-three percent said there’s “not enough free time to focus on administrative tasks,” and 35 percent said “finding employees with the ‘right fit’.” Other common pain points listed included “hitting client goals and expectations” (23 percent), “keeping existing clients” (16 percent) and “keeping employees” (12 percent).

While it may sound like a tall order to say that all of these issues can be solved by a white label agency, it’s actually fairly accurate. Outsourcing some of your services like search engine optimization, or SEO, and content writing to a third-party frees up internal resources and gives you the flexibility you need to stay on top of everything.

To illustrate just how helpful white labeling can be, here are five of the most common marketing agency pain points and how outsourced marketing services can help alleviate them:

“We Have No Stable Source of Reliable Leads”

Finding solid client leads is arguably the most important aspect of running a marketing business. Clients keep the lights on and give employees something to do. Without a steady stream of clients to maintain pace with your growth plan or to give your employees something to do, cash flow quickly becomes a dire concern.

A white label agency can help remove this bottleneck to revenue generation. It can provide reliable services at scale at a predictable rate, and at a relatively lower cost-per-assignment compared to a full-time employee.

With more of your work being handled by a dependable out-of-house white label content writing agency, your leadership team and project heads can focus on putting your tendrils out there to find client leads.

Finding good clients takes work, too. “With digital, and the increased trackability, we’ve found more clients asking for numbers and data when pitching. This just means that reporting and analysis has to be a priority for all companies,” one successful CEO told DMNews.

This extra effort pays off, since some of the easiest clients to nab are often the sketchiest—or the least reliable. Outsourcing gives your team the time to focus on presenting yourself well and putting in the legwork juicier clients expect in return for their hard-earned cash.

“We’re Having Trouble Scaling Up While Meeting Client Expectations”

Some agencies have the opposite problem of the pain point above: they have too many clients to handle! This scenario runs the risk of delivering diminishing returns to clients. After all, there are only so many hours in the day, so that leaves less time to perform more work.

Or, you could outsource some of this workload to another agency. With the right relationship and quality guidelines, your clients can still receive the caliber of work they are used to despite the fact that they share your services with more people than ever.

More work being performed means better cash flow and the opportunity to continue scaling your client base without having to sacrifice quality or divide your attention too thinly. In other words: outsourcing helps your marketing business grow!

“We Lack the Tools or Expertise for SEO and Content Writing Best Practices”

Doctors and legal professionals all have continuing education requirements because knowledge is ever-growing.

We feel like marketers should be just as obligated to constantly update their knowledge in the same way! Technical SEO has evolved greatly in just the past few years, and it’s going to keep on changing.

Knowing about the right techniques and having the right tools at your disposal makes putting all this knowledge into action that much easier. But we get it—very few successful CEOs and top-level marketing employees have the time and energy to keep up. They may also be wary of investing in courses or tools that may or may not pay off.

Their alternative is to trust niche experts to do the job for them. White label agencies that specialize in SEO and content marketing will already have access to best-of-breed tools and know about best practices that keep their clients competitive.

All of these benefits help your clients measure their performance better, while providing insights on how to optimize. Outsourcing therefore not only helps you take on more work, but improve the overall quality of that work.

“There’s No Time for Strategic Planning or Administrative Tasks”

Is your business website stagnating? Do you have projects sitting for months on the backburner? Are your project teams overwhelmed? Have some clients been getting so-so work because you don’t have a cohesive strategy for getting them better performance?

As a business owner or busy agency employee, all of these issues are more common than you might think! In fact, some of the businesses with the best customer-facing areas have the messiest back offices. Finding the time to handle day-to-day tasks can feel impossible. Sitting down to create a long-term strategy for your business or your clients is even harder!

Sharing your client workload with a white label services provider can free up time for all these tasks. As a result, your employees can get more breathing room to tidy up your calendar, handle lingering tasks and start looking at what’s ahead.

Often, just a little bit of extra time is what you need to get back on top of your business strategy and create better work for your clients. Your business runs better, your employees are happier and your clients get more of your attention than ever, so you can help them shine.

“We’re Having Huge Difficulties Finding (and Retaining) Talented Employees”

Similar to the problem of finding client leads, many marketing companies struggle to fill all the desks in their building. Being desperate to find an employee to help handle all the slack means you can end up compromising. That, or the moment they are onboarded, they begin to feel burnt out because they are taking on so much of the workload at once.

Outsourcing some of your marketing tasks to a third-party white label agency doesn’t just remove your need for these employees. Yes, you can avoid taking on an expensive employee you have to provide benefits for, but you are just as likely to rewrite the job duties so that a new hire can take on more responsibility.

For instance, instead of hiring a full-time writer who must while away at their desk for 40 hours a week, you can hire someone who is a brilliant content strategist and editor. With their mind on your team, you can develop better content topics, tie this content into more campaign cross-promotion and ensure a higher standard of work reaches your client’s inbox.

At the end of the day, you can hire the best workers to help propel your vision of your company’s future, not just someone who can help you keep your head above water in the present.

Finding the Right White Label Agency to Work With

In sum, working with a reliable white label agency can help you:

1. Find better client leads and woo higher-value contracts.
2. Produce more work without sacrificing end quality, setting the stage for growth.
3. Access tools and implement best practices that are on the cutting edge.
4. Have more time for day-to-day tasks as well as long-term planning.
5. Hire better employees who propel your company forward.

Establishing a relationship with an agency that provides you all these benefits can be easy; you just have to start looking. When you can find what you’re looking for, your company can set the stage for growth while keeping your clients happier than ever.

Interested in finding a white label agency that can meet your needs? Give us a try! Contact us today to learn about the services we provide that can help you grow and how we bend over backwards to meet your clients’ high expectations.

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Four Dirty Little Secrets About White Label SEO Most Agencies Won’t Tell You

Hey, you wanna know a secret? Most of the branded content published online was written by a third- or even fourth-party subcontractor. Yes, there may be a very personal-looking byline from a marketing head on that blog, but that’s all part of the white label search engine optimization (SEO) illusion.

A whopping 68 percent of marketing agencies outsource their SEO to white label content writing services. Twenty-eight percent place entire content marketing projects into another agency’s hands.

Why? Because it just makes sense. As an agency, you have an obligation to make your clients happy and ensure their marketing performs. That duty does not necessarily mean that you have to do it all yourself.

In fact, you may be doing your clients a disservice by trying to take it all on yourself. You owe it to them and you owe it to your entire company to evaluate all of your options. Then, you must determine the best strategy to make your target outcome happen.

The decision to outsource SEO and content writing services to others is never easy, but when it works, it works well! Many agencies even end up developing a symbiotic relationship with their white label content writers where they, their client and the content writing company are all happier for it.

Outsourcing is a reality of the business, and these four dirty little white label SEO secrets help ensure that it all goes according to plan.

White Label Content Writing Won’t Dilute Your Brand Voice or Results When You Do It Right

The thing most agencies get wrong when it comes to white labeling is that they think of the end product as something they have no control over. You would have to work with an absolutely terrible content writing and SEO agency for that to be the case!

In reality, the interaction between the agency and the content writers is just like any other B2B relationship. Expectations and guidelines are set, something is produced in an attempt to satisfy those prompts and the agency client gets to evaluate the results.

If the results aren’t up to snuff, you can send back an edit request and try again. Or, you can give a different writer or white label agency the opportunity to try their hand.

Quality and following directions are just like price in that way: if your business can’t find what you need somewhere, you get to go somewhere else.

Expecting a specific outcome that meets all of your SEO and quality guidelines while adhering to your client’s preferred brand voice is just par for the course.

You really aren’t putting too much at the mercy of someone else—and if you feel like you are, then you either have to get more specific with your prompts or move on to someone who gets what you want more intuitively.

Google Can’t Point You Towards the Best White Label SEO Options

So you know that white label SEO services necessarily have to do things your way. But how do you find a company that can get it right?

If your answer is “just Google it,” then you may be in for a rude awakening. Unfortunately, the logic that a good SEO company will know how to rank at the top of search engine results just isn’t true. Instead, the companies that do the best work may be so busy tending to their clients that they have to put their own SEO on the backburner.

“What happens is most of the very good companies, the ones that are in high demand, the ones that do consistently great work and get great referrals, they don’t actually need to rank. Many of the companies that rank well for best SEO plus city name or best SEO plus a region or plus a particular specialty, like best ecommerce SEO, are not the best. They are, in fact, the folks who are simply without any client work and so they’re concentrating all their energy on trying to get new clients.”

– Rand Fishkin, Former Moz Marketing Expert

The internet may ironically be a really poor source for finding what you need, then. What is a good source? Referrals! Try to find a white label SEO agency within whatever you consider your niche. That can mean finding an agency with a “just right” size, one that caters just to your specific clientele or one able to get glowing reviews from other people and companies you respect.

Word-of-mouth is still one of the most important digital marketing techniques, so rely on it to find a writer or agency that suits you.

You Can Never Take Promises of Results at Face Value

 

Content writing outsourcing can bring all of the above benefits and then some, but you should still be wary of so-called “guaranteed” performance results in terms of ranking. Quite simply, no matter how smart the technical SEO person is or how great your content writer is, they cannot control the search engine algorithms, let alone how competing companies make use of them. A great white label SEO agency can do everything right but still have just so-so ranking results.

However, the other hard work they put into the project still counts for something! Site visitors are more likely to enjoy the content, and search engine giants like Google always value quality and user experience over technical SEO factors.

What can be promised is great quality work and attention to detail. Ideally, your outsourced agency also has the tools to constantly measure, adapt and improve in light of actual results. So, while no one can promise your client will be ranked No. 1 overnight, they can promise that they will follow all the best practices to make that happen.

Getting an Outside Content Writing Service Can Make Your Great Ideas Even Better

Outsourcing content writing and SEO naturally scales your available client load while helping you meet your deadlines more efficiently. You also gain specialized expertise that can include someone else paying for the tools you desperately need to get performance.

But what you may have overlooked is the fact that, if you’re already a great writer or content strategist, a white label services provider might actually make your writing even better. Why? Because an outside perspective can amplify your great ideas while integrating them with a writer’s own natural intuition.

This kind of relationship requires a talented writer with an understanding of not just your guidelines but also the intent of your content. When they can grasp that, they can turn what would have been a so-so post you could have written yourself into something much more engaging.

Don’t take offense—it works both ways; the writer could have the kernel of an idea, bounce it off of you and receive more detailed guidelines on how to execute.

The bottom line is: two heads are better than one.

As an agency that specializes in white label content writing services and SEO ourselves, we’re talking from experience! Many of our clients are actually high-profile marketing agencies that make use of our talent to produce amazing content on a consistent schedule while developing their voice.

Collaborating is the name of the game, and professional writers like ours are eager to try new things and put words to others’ ideas. The end results speak for themselves, even if who actually made them happen is a trade secret.

Curious about some of the white label content writing work our agency has done? Take a look at some of our agency partners’ happiest clients! Or, contact us today for a writing sample based on your very own project.

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7 Cool Google My Business Features You Should Be Using

Never one to rest on their laurels, Google has been quietly adding useful features to their Google My Business (GMB) platform over the past several months. Abilities like new call-to-action buttons, deeper insights reports and direct chat messages all provide business owners advantages they definitely should not overlook.

These changes may not seem like much individually, but they combine into a huge leap forward for business search results. Overall, Google seems to be adding in features similar to those that made Facebook business Pages so popular – just in time considering that the reach for most Facebook Pages recently fell off a cliff. Using these new GMB features properly can significantly increase the chances of a customer conversion each time your business appears as a search result.

You can take maximum advantage of the new Google My Business features and increase the conversion chances for search users by considering the following seven most beneficial features below.

New Google My Business Features’ Most Important Addition: Business Messaging

Chat functionality is easily the biggest game changer among the new GMB features. It basically changes Google search into a new direct 1:1 conversation channel for customer interactions and sales conversion opportunities.

Consumers love messaging tools, especially 18-35 year olds. 60% say it’s much more convenient to shoot a business a quick message compared to dialing a number or sending an email. It also helps them multitask since they can send a message and wait for a response – as opposed to dancing along to hold music.

More than 2 out of every 3 consumers say they use social media networks to resolve customer issues or ask questions. Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular of these tools, which is no surprise considering that 68% of people still use Facebook.

Having the option to message a business directly while you’re browsing through a platform like Facebook just makes sense. Leaving the app to do something like use a website contact form creates friction, which makes people not want to do it. Letting them message you without having to leave the app is convenient, and it increases the likelihood that someone interested in your services will nibble.

This same logic now applies to Google search, thanks to their new chat function for businesses. People can discover your listing and send a question or customer inquiry your way right within the search platform. Advertise this feature, and you could see a spike in potential customers sending business inquiries.

Activating chat for your GMB profile is easy. Simply find the “Messaging” section, turn it to “ON” and then create a generic welcome message. You can also set your preferred contact phone number to display for customers who want an instant response.

New Call-to-Action Buttons

When people select your business listing in search results – and also when you earn a featured search result – a button displays allowing the search user to take immediate action.

The first use of this button was to suggest to the user to “Visit Website,” but Google later added a “Call Now” functionality that gets used pretty commonly. “Get Directions” is another frequent choice, especially for restaurants as well as brick-and-mortar businesses local to the search user.

The whole aim of these buttons is not just to create an obvious call to action, but again to make in-app conversions possible and therefore more convenient. Well over half of all searches come from mobile devices now, so convenience and reducing in-between steps is the name of the game.

Businesses on GMB now have additional options other than these three choices, including:

• Ask a Question (use Messenger).
• Place an Order.
• Reserve a Table.
• Book an Appointment.
• View Menu (or a list of available services).
• Browse Inventory.

These buttons can appear automatically when you use the proper markup within your website’s HTML code. You can also have them appear when you link specific URLs within your location settings tab in the GMB app.

Decide carefully which buttons you want to appear. Prioritize ones that directly kickstart the customer journey so that more people can go from discovering (or re-discovering) you in search to taking immediate action.

Overhauled Business Info Sections

The business information sections underwent minor cosmetic changes, so make sure to review everything, such as your business hours and phone number, to ensure it’s correct. GMB also allows users the opportunity to submit up-to-date information for businesses, so you can check in to see pending updates suggested by users or other sources.

One sort-of-new addition is the 750 character-long description of your business. This feature disappeared when Google quietly buried Google+, but it has since resurfaced. Use this space to quickly describe the goods/services you offer while differentiating you from competitors.

Women-Led Attribute

In honor of International Women’s Day for 2018, Google now allows businesses to add a “Women-led” attribute to your business descriptors. As a women-led business ourselves, we think this feature is a nice feather in the cap for businesses trying to stand out from the herd.

New, More In-Depth Insights Reports

Google has always been great about letting business users see their most important data in an easy-to-digest form. For GMB, they now have a huge range of new features and graphs for you to take a look at.

• How customers search for your business – Find out how many people discover you after searching for a generic business category compared to searching for your business name directly.

• Where customers view your business on Google – See if your listing gets more traffic through Google Maps or Google Search, which can influence your respective SEO strategy.

• Customer actions – See what customers do when they interact with your listing, which includes website visits, requests for directions and calls.

• Direction requests – A heatmap showing where people are when they request directions. This display is especially useful for informing your geographically based advertising strategy.

• Phone calls – See the volume of phone calls placed per day or hour-by-hour. This helps you monitor call inquiries while helping inform staffing.
• Photo views and Photo Quantity – See who took a look at your business photos, and also see how your business compares in terms of photo quantity to others in your same category.

Admin Role Management

You can now more easily give people access to your GMB profile and control what they can and cannot edit.

Video, New Layouts and Other Additions

The changes above come alongside a host of updates and tweaks, including the new ability to upload videos to your GMB profile. Google also completely overhauled the look of features like the “Add Photos and Video” tool, so take a look around your GMB, if you haven’t yet, to see what’s changed.

New to Google My Business? Get Help From a Local Marketing and SEO Agency

If you haven’t yet claimed your business on Google My Business or have trouble making heads or tails of all the features it offers, you’re not alone. Countless business owners ignore or underutilize tools like GMB that could help them grow their business and evolve their digital marketing strategy.

To start making the most of every tool you have at your disposal, it helps to look to the experts. We at Optimized Scribes have years of experience helping business owners just like you put their best foot forward online and get found by thousands of more people.

Start growing your customer base and improving your online reputation when you contact us today!

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How Helping Others Can Help Your Business

Social philanthropy is quickly becoming an important component of all brands, even for small businesses. Without some sort of charitable element, all of your branding principles can ring hollow. Perhaps even more importantly, supporting charities provides synergistic ways to promote you company in a positive light.

As a matter of fact, supporting local causes is one of the best ways for small businesses to get their name out there. Business owners should not feel like they are being selfish or exploitative by recognizing this. Their efforts to promote an important cause and their business at the same time get people to pay attention.

Besides, charities need your support! Individuals can only do so much, and even local groups and non-profits rely too heavily on volunteers to organize most things on their own. They will need sponsors and vendors and event support. They could also use signal boosts from as many media outlets as possible, including small business marketing channels.

So start helping your business, your community and those that need help the most by adopting social philanthropy as a core component of both your branding and your operations.

How Giving Through Social Philanthropy Helps You Get More

Let’s jump right to it: very few people care about the marketing messages that small businesses put out there.

Yes, there is a slim demographic who will be absolutely excited about your services and products, especially when you are offering them at a discount. But most people skim right over these messages. Even if what you are telling them brings value to their life, they have become deaf to it.

Why? There’s just too much saturation. We’ve learned to ignore most of it. According to a 2014 study, people see around 362 ads in a single day. Their brains actually notice 153 of them, which equals just 42%. You can bet the farm that most of these memorable ads come from brands they already recognize or from companies packing huge marketing budgets.

Small brands can combat this ad blindness by marketing for a worthy cause instead. Everyone cares about their community, the less fortunate, and important causes like the environment and animal welfare.

91% of people said they were likely to switch to a brand that promotes a good cause. 92% of people said they would buy products that offer concrete social or environmental benefits.

By arranging events and broadcasting charitable messages, you give people the opportunity to feel like they’re contributing — even if they’re just attending an event or offering a social share.

Ideas for Effective Charity Marketing for Small Businesses

Examples of great philanthropy marketing ideas include:

• Offering matched donations or donations for every share your post gets (which can end up cheaper than paid advertising’s cost-per-impression)
• Arranging or sponsoring an event where your branding and products are given prominent placement. The annual Chili Cook-Off at Terrapin Beer Co. benefits the Humane Society but also serves as a huge draw.
• Contributing to an important cause through donations and volunteer work, which earns you local press coverage. Remember that link citations from website like local newspapers are important SEO ranking signals!
• Co-creating a product or promotional event where every sale donates a portion of proceeds to the cause. Sweetwater, another local brewery, makes a Waterkeeper IPA and donates a portion of each sale to protecting the Chattahoochee waterway.

Some Final Thoughts

No matter what charity you choose to collaborate with, ensure that it has a direct positive effect on the issue it claims to help. Many charities have fallen under scrutiny for using donations to fund huge marketing campaigns for “awareness” rather than helping anyone at the local level.

Also, make sure you can connect the charity to your brand philosophy and that the cause you support is consistent with your business practices. A cigarette company promoting a collaboration with a lung cancer charity group would be a bad move, for instance. Practice what you preach!

When you are able to combine great charitable causes with effective marketing tactics and a cohesive branding strategy, you can help your business while you help the world. After all, that’s what being a business owner truly is about. 

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