When one of your services is ranking clients on search engines using valuable content, understanding how search engines view older web content writing is an important question. It [...]]]> People talk a lot about getting their site ranked on page one for key phrases, but I’ve never seen anyone experiment with getting OFF of page 1.

When one of your services is ranking clients on search engines using valuable content, understanding how search engines view older web content writing is an important question. It takes a lot of work to claim a key phrase for a client. By the time you’ve achieved a good ranking for a client on about 20 phrases, you start to worry that those you’re giving less attention to might start to fall off of page one.

It’s a valid concern because no one is quite sure how the Google algorithm – that mythical website ranking voodoo – really assesses the pages of our hard work. At ion Leap, we keep circling back to older phrases to add fresh content and work the pages using social media, but that will get overwhelming at some point.

There’s a phrase on ion Leap’s website that I worked very hard to get ranked on page one over a period of about 9 months using our very experienced content writers. It currently sits at page 1, position 5, that all-important above-the-fold spot. I can’t give out any more details on the phrase because someone may swoop in and try to push me down the page.

I’m currently testing the rate that content sitting neglected on a website will fall off of page 1 search engine results. The funny part is, I have very little data to go on:

• We SEOs suspect that freshness counts greatly, but that might depend on the competitiveness of the key phrase in question
• Social media chatter is believed to be a growing factor, yet after 9 months of no chatter whatsoever, we’re still ranked for that phrase
• At ion Leap, we’re always believed that content will win out in the end, and this phrase is backed by a very solid wall of content with good key phrase density and great SEO
• Competitiveness of the key phrase in question has grown, and a major software company has released a piece of software with the exact name of the key phrase (and you can bet they’re working that phrase), yet we’re still above them

Stay tuned for more on our web content writing neglect experiment

We’ll continue to report back on this experiment from time to time. What we may be seeing through this experiment is a move by the search engines to give even more rewards to valuable content writing. In our opinion, this would be a wonderful tweak to the algorithm.

Read more on how our web content writing services will help you achieve SEO

Contact us about web content writing services

Respect where you’re working and the limits of your readers.

At ion Leap, our blog writers don’t aim to please their English teachers, their friends, [...]]]> When your blog writer sits down to write a post, are they writing for you or for themselves? Are they writing to please the fine art that they practice? Or are they writing to please the god of Commerce?

At ion Leap, our blog writers don’t aim to please their English teachers, their friends, or their critics. We aim to write blogs that please:

• The search engines so that those searching for your product or service can find your website
• The reader who clicks your page 1 ranking on a Google search

Getting you ranked on page 1 for a Google search is always a top priority of an ion Leap blog writer team. But it is not the top priority. The number one priority is to turn someone who is searching for you into a customer. And the way to do that is to make certain that the entire search experience is successful for your prospective customer.

When your prospective customer finds you on a page one ranking on Google, very often what they find when they click that link is a blog post. That blog post is very often not a very successful landing page.

At ion leap, our blog writers take the entire search experience into mind. Our goal is to turn a search experience into a sale. The way to do that is to focus not only on the blog posts,  but on the landing page experience, and to turn that experience into and engaging one. The landing page must be engaging in every way. It must have all sorts of media on it – video, bullet points for fast reading and comprehension, long-form copy for those who like it, and most importantly A CALL TO ACTION.

If your landing pages have all of the above, then they will have a much better chance of turning a Google search into a sale.

And it’s even more involved than that. At ion Leap, we refer to something we call The Psychology of Search.

The Psychology of Search

For each of our clients, we take into account what will motivate a sale. Some sales processes are very considered, requiring several higher-up approvals – this is very true in B2B marketing solutions.

If you’re in a commoditized category, then your prospects aren’t going to be motivated by much more than price. But if you’re in a category that has a lot of angst involved in the purchase, then your prospect can be motivated by much more than price. And that’s where persuasive marketing comes in. And that can (and should) be reflected in your website content. Your landing pages MUST be very driven by search psychology. A good blog writer will understand and deliver on that.

We’d love to assess the search needs of your company. Contact ion Leap and ask us to do a FREE assessment of how your communication should engage your prospects.

“Sir, nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
– Samuel Johnson

At ion Leap, we don’t put pen to paper (or finger to [...]]]> The art and the science of web content writing services should probably be balanced about 50-50. Yet, invariably, the art outweighs the science. Perhaps most writers are frustrated novelists.

“Sir, nobody but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
– Samuel Johnson

At ion Leap, we don’t put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) without a purpose. And that purpose is almost always to get a client found by their prospective customers. Does that mean we’re all science and we don’t bring art to the practice of web content writing services? Not at all. But the reason we have such high artistic standards has nothing at all to do with art. We believe art must serve commerce. That’s why we write so beautifully.

When web content writing fails

Companies often hear from their peers that they must have a blog on their website. They’re rarely sure why this must be or how to maintain it to their advantage, yet they dutifully launch their blog. Some even keep it active for a few months before they miss that weekly deadline. Then a skipped week turns into an empty month. You know the rest.

Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
- Blaise Pascal

Bringing great content to your readers again and again requires a rare writer; one with an endless source of great ideas. At ion Leap, we bring blog writer teams to work on every client. The writer on the team is the more creative one. The SEO is the more scientific one. They work together to create content that both your audience AND Google will love.

The Google part of the equation is the easier part. Coming up with great ideas for your audience is more difficult. Too many writers take the artistic approach too far. We look for writers who understand that the idea is more important than how many fancy words you use to express it.

“Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.”
- Matthew Arnold

The discipline of web content writing services

Then it all comes down to discipline. We like to train Google to crawl our clients’ websites twice a week. The way that’s done is by posting twice a week. It sounds easy until you reach week 10. By then most writers start to run out of steam.

“Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
- Gene Fowler

B2B web content writing services can be the most difficult. At ion Leap, we’re smart enough to recognize what we simply cannot write. We’re currently working with clients in two very complex business categories. No one but the client could truly write it in a way that will make it have real value to readers. But the client doesn’t have time to write the blog. So what do you do?

At ion Leap, we’ve found an inventive and fun way to get around this issue. We still regularly deliver beautifully written blog posts under these difficult circumstances, and they’re pleasing to the readers and the search engines.

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
- Thomas Jefferson

Learning from Mr. Jefferson, we’ll wrap up this blog post. If you have questions about our web content writing services, CONTACT US. We’ll be happy to provide several references.

This screen grab was made just minutes ago, on December 7, 2011. It paints a very interesting story for the use of social media in general and for business in specific.

Alec Baldwin was booted off a commercial flight for keeping his cell phone on to continue playing a game of Words with Friends, [...]]]>

This screen grab was made just minutes ago, on December 7, 2011. It paints a very interesting story for the use of social media in general and for business in specific.

Alec Baldwin was booted off a commercial flight for keeping his cell phone on to continue playing a game of Words with Friends, a scrabble-like game for mobile devices.

Baldwin began tweeting about the incident: “Flight attendant on American [Airlines] reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving.”

The airline fired back at their Facebook site
and Baldwin’s responses continued until Twitter apparently deactivated Baldwin’s account.

While I have no opinion about Mr. Baldwin, the incident is a good example of how new boundaries are being learned in the use of social media.

The rules in the world of social media are very much like they are in the real world, especially for those using social media for business. Good advice is to wait a night before sending that angry email or posting that Facebook tirade. Think before you speak. Be nice to people, even if you don’t like them. Watch what you say and who you “friend.” If you are confronted by people with anger management issues, take two steps back, speak clearly and firmly, then throw them off the plane.

This applies in the social world, just like it does in the real world. One is becoming more and more like the other. Confrontations are inevitable. Eventually, those of us using social media for business will become more selective about whom we allow into our circles.

Does social media strategy for your business include dealing with unruly “friends?”

If you’d like to discuss how to get your strategy and tactics prepared to meet the more real-world behavior that you will inevitably encounter, contact ion Leap.

Each 500-word treatise which each writer crafts will be uploaded onto the company’s blog in a millisecond [...]]]> Imagine an army of writers – literally thousands of writers in each company – sitting monk-like at their keyboards (or microphones using speech to text), crafting wonderfully written content for readers to enjoy and Google spiders to crawl.

Each 500-word treatise which each writer crafts will be uploaded onto the company’s blog in a millisecond or two. In the next millisecond, the spiders will have crawled it, categorized it, and judged it based on the nearly instant social media comments and “likes” – or perhaps based on facial recognition recognizing the number of those who glanced at the content and smiled.

That same day, several hundred videos could be posted, each filmed in 3D HD. The power of the petaflop will ensure that search engines can understand the spoken word, the visual content and the supplied metadata that defines what the content really is about.

Several hundred live conversations via mobile devices about the postings and videos might be listened in on, understood and measured against all this content. After all, while we have to respect privacy, we can still listen in and understand.

The question is, will the computing power of the petaflop and exoflop completely change what is created and how it is search categorized and understood?

Will the petaflop kill the written word and change how search marketing solutions work forever?

When you have a petaflop parked in your devices, think how much the world will change for those who create content and those who consume it.

First, who needs the written word any more? Already we see readership declining in printed material. Why will it be any different in the online world? When everything can be delivered quickly and simply via snippets of video, who will want to read anymore?

The wide availability of petaflop and exoflop computing will change things; there’s simply no doubt about it. While my wild imaginings might be way off the mark, I think anyone in the business of content writing and creation can understand that the availability of more and more computing power will mean I don’t sit on the floor of the Seattle airport plunking away at a keypad to get my thoughts down. And it won’t mean that we have dedicated content crafters who are subject matter experts. More likely, the ideas of many human “experts” will be instantly pulled in as an aggregate and instantly mixed in with the readers’ reactions.

Just today, a good friend in Seattle amazed me as he demonstrated Siri on his new iPhone. It’s a speech command app that is as near to human interaction as I’ve seen since Dave, the futuristic astronaut, was asked by the supercomputer Hal if he’d dream. This, plus the ever-growing power of supercomputing will make a big difference for us content companies.

And search marketing solutions will have to change. They’ll have to because the nature of what we search for and how search engines value content in a petaflop world will change.

Stay tuned.

Earlier tonight I posted a cool YouTube embeded video into a very short blog [...]]]> Google+ is now available for business accounts. I’ve been dabbling with it on a personal gmail account I use since being invited into it by Mike Valentine, SEO expert. (There’s a high value embeded link for you Mike )

Earlier tonight I posted a cool YouTube embeded video into a very short blog I wrote to make a point about the importance of content writing in the rapidly changing media landscape. A few minutes later, I went back into my recently opened Google+ account for my gmail-managed business email. There, on a group about Content Writing, was my blog post – just minutes later!! How cool is that? (see a grab of it above – yes I shamelessly +1′d it)

Content writing by competent blog writers who understand the changes will win

Attending conferences and participating in lots of online communities is more critical than ever for those trusted to write the blog content that gets companies ranked. It’s not enough to be a compelling writer. You’ve got to keep up with the rapid changes and learn to take advantage of them in inventive ways. My mind is spinning with ideas for how this can help my clients.

The blog post I put up earlier featured a great video about the rapid changes in the media landscape. There have been at least 2 others like this in the past (maybe I just like the graphics and cool music); but every time I see one of these, I’m not so much overwhelmed with the statistics, but energized by the opportunity for the content writing professionals out there and the companies who use them.

The early bird gets the worm?

Those who staked a claim with key phrases are ahead of others who are just now getting into that game. The same might well be true for companies who get into Google+ early; those who generate social media buzz around certain topics; generally, those who take content seriously. It’s all content.

By no means am I one of those who think this is yet another “holy grail” of SEO. Much like QR codes, this will be yet another thing we all have to absorb and learn to manipulate to our advantage. But this social sharing tool is put out by the world’s largest search engine. That presents some serious opportunity as far as I’m concerned.