Strategy-driven content writing

At Ion Leap, we believe your website and other marketing content = your brand. So, obviously, great content writing is critical. But what defines great in the field of content writing?

How your prospects define great content writing

People use search primarily to solve problems and find information. If your website has the kind of content which helps them to do this, they’ll love it. They’ll even recommend it to their friends. If they have a blog, they might put up a link to it.

How search engines define great content writing.

Many people don’t know this, but search engines define it the same way you do. In fact, they define it exactly as you do, because to make money, search engines must deliver the best search result. But they have to go about it differently. Search engines have to use your code and your content to understand your website. And if they like what they see, they’ll rank it higher when they present their results. So what they look for content that seems like it will solve the problems and give great information to those searching.

Google and Bing (not so much Yahoo) are attempting to mirror what humans look for in search.

Right now, Google and Bing look for about 400 words content with contextual use of the specific key phrase that your customers type in. They tend to like linking, but soon they’ll punish those websites who are doing nothing more than what I call “link farming,” having completely unrelated directory sites link over to them. Google and Bing want the sites on the other end to have good content as well. Think of it as a credible person recommending another credible person. It carries more weight.

Ion leap brings the two together for search success.

We will bring a great content writer together with a marketing-driven writer who will optimize that great content writing so the key phrases which folks are looking for are scattered through the copy in just the right formula that search engines want.

Google changes their algorithm to keep us on our toes.

We’re always seeing the rankings change; sometimes it takes big swings, so Ion Leap must scramble. There really is no silver bullet. Just like in your traditional business, your online brand must change and adapt to stay on top. That’s another reason Ion Leap succeeds. We’re process driven an always looking for the best way to keep our clients on top. Content writing and management will always be the thing the search engines reward because it will be the thing your prospects (who are also Google and Bing customers) want and need.

By being strategically driven, Ion Leap is in touch with what customers want in particular categories. Rather than just focus on the search engines, we plot and plan to get your website attractive to your prospects. And that’s just what Google and Bing are doing. By keeping our eye on the marketing motivations, we’ll marry up your content writing to your prospects, and Google and Bing will reward that.

Does your blog writer speak Google-ese?

Great blog writer copy is what your prospects want, but if your blog writer doesn’t speak the language of the search engines, you’ll never be found by your prospects. Enter Ion Leap.

We started Ion Leap to bring blog writer teams to companies like yours. We knew that to succeed at search, you must write lots of great content that your prospects want, but you must also write it in a way that Google, Yahoo and Bing want. The balance of the two is what our blog writer teams achieve for companies like yours.

What Google, Bing and Yahoo want.

Search engines see only code and written content. The leading search engines want your site to be easy to crawl, to be written in specific code like CSS, and to have lots of mentions of the key phrase your prospects are using in their searches.

What your prospects want.

This one is easy to answer. They want answers, good information nicely arranged and easy to read.

Some think these two are diametrically opposed. Not Ion Leap.

If you listen to the code people, your blog writer doesn’t matter. And if you listen to your blog writer you’ll think that all that code stuff is mumbo jumbo. The truth is, they’re both very necessary and should be working together in concert to make your website rise to the top.

Ion Leap is the first company to do this.

Our blog writer teams craft wonderfully compelling copy. We write it, with code in mind, in a way that the search engines will love. All of this is over-laid with strategic expertise from years in the marketing field. The result is utterly unique. Talk to us on the phone and you’ll agree. Please use the contact link above to learn more.

3 reasons most content writing fails.

1. Lack of a key phrase strategy – Content merely for the sake of filling up a blog is a waste of someone’s time and your company’s money. You must start with a key phrase strategy that marries what you offer with the way your prospects search. Then you have to map it out across your entire offering, choosing which product or services you want to push and when.

2. Consistent, fresh content writing that executes the key phrase strategy – Search engines are rewarding freshness of content. They are also rewarding careful, contextual use of key phrases. This takes a kind of disciplined creativity and persistence that very few companies have in-house. Does your company really have the bandwidth to create 12 to 15 postings every week which have 400 words of content, carefully written to weave in the precise wording of your key phrase strategy? Almost no companies have this in place.

3. Bad writing – Let’s face it, not everyone is a good writer. There simply aren’t any shortcuts to good content writing. But that doesn’t stop many companies from using off-shore writers for $4 per post. Some companies we speak to seem to think the only audience for their content is search engines. But many of your prospects really do read what you put on your website, more in some categories than others. Your brand matters to them. It certainly should matter to you. But the quality of your writing affects more than your readership. Having lots of other websites linking to your site is a key component to any search engine optimization plan. But who wants to link to a poorly written website?

As the Google algorithm gets smarter and smarter (it was changed 400 times between 2008 and 2009), it’s figuring out how to punish those websites who are attempting to trick consumers with weak content. Will it eventually be able to tell if you’re “content spamming” by hiring cheap overseas writers who really aren’t creating useful content. Put it this way – if I have to pick the winner between tricky SEO companies and Google, my bet is with Google. The real winners will be the consumers who want to find good content on your website.

Considering that more and more consumers are looking online before a purchase, Ion Leap encourages you to think of your website as the point of your “brand spear.”  It’s often the first exposure to your brand that any prospect gets. Content writing from Ion Leap is written here, on shore.  It’s “white hat,” meaning we never attempt to trick the search engines.

Content = Brand. What you put out there really matters. Ion Leap is a content writing and content creation company (video, interviews, press releases, etc) that takes your content and your prospective customers very seriously. Click a few more of our blog postings and you’ll get a sense of just how highly we regard brand building via content writing. We think you’ll agree your brand is worth great content building.

Content writing. Not gimmicks.

If you want your website to get a high organic ranking, remember this – search engines want the same thing your prospective customers want:  fresh, relevant content. Google and Bing want content writing that matches up with what your prospects are searching for.

• Content. Not link building schemes.
• Content. Not junk writing with no real care for the product, the service or the ultimate reader.
• Relevant, engaging content. Not gimmicks.

And if you think you can “cheap out” and go with a gimmicky way of getting your content done, you will be proven wrong.  You’ll know when the day comes too. Suddenly, you’ll find your organic ranking plummeting because Google has changed the algorithm to spank the cheats.

Google and Bing in particular are building their criteria to match the human experience on the Internet. When they see an Internet coding company finding a clever cheat that allows a website with weak content to trick the algorithm, they change the algorithm. Wouldn’t you?  The top search engines have to protect their brand. They have to offer the best search results to their users. And they have to block the cheats.

Content writing that attempts to honestly and consistently build a good solution for consumers will be rewarded because it’s exactly what people are trying to find. This isn’t difficult. My favorite analogy is car dealers. You know when you’re getting scammed even as you walk in the door. A more reputable dealership has a look about it. They’re not in a hurry to sign you up and get your money. Instead, they want you to stay a while, learn about the car and become an advocate. Mostly, they want you to tell your friends. Content creation is exactly like this. If it’s done well, you’ll tell your friends with links – real, honest links instead of linking schemes.

If you’d like to build your brand online, Ion Leap is the perfect company to help. We create engaging, search-effective content. Some of it is video, some audio, some really fun games and other techniques. Most is really engaging content writing by subject matter experts paired with marketing writers who guarantee the copy will be optimized for search. We create content writing that gets you ranked far higher on organic search, not gimmicky writing.

Contact us at the link above and let us get started on a brand building project for your company. We’re purely ‘white hat’ when it comes to content creation. We don’t do gimmicks, just solid, engaging, brand building content writing. That’s the Ion Leap approach.

Blog writer team ranks you how high?

Every company with a website wants their site to rank on line one, page 1 on any Google search of about 20 key phrases. Of course, that’s totally unrealistic for 99% of all companies. But you can get far higher than you are now. What you need is a blog writer team from Ion Leap.

Beyond the success of your search engine optimization, you have only two other ways to get there –

• Link building
• Optimized content

Unfortunately, like many web businesses, the category that Ion Leap occupies is full of those who are totally over promising. Do a Google search on the phrase “Google Ranking” and read about all the companies who can get you there with just one day’s work. Why, it’s a modern business miracle!

Link building, like content creation, is a slow slog. It takes regular work by our group which includes a professional blog writer team and link building partners. Ion Leap has strategies to get you there in a way that won’t waste your investment on a single content post. But it will take a little time.

Our blog writer teams help companies get higher rankings in a way that few companies can. If you’d like to learn more, look around our website and then click the “About Us” link at the top of this page.

The answer to the question? We can get you ranked very high as long as you’re realistic, patient, and want to build valuable content for your prospects. At Ion Leap, that’s what we’re all about – extending your company’s brand to the Internet. Your real brand, not some thin representation that’s just there to sell stuff. Your targets want real content about you, about how your brand solves their problems, answers their questions, and makes their lives better.

That’s where a blog writer team from Ion Leap comes in. We will bring your brand to life on your website with relevant, key phrase rich content that both your prospects and Google will love. We’re doing it now for companies with the same goal as you – getting a great ranking on the search engines. They also have the same issue as you – not enough time, or the right talent to write this kind of content yourself.

Look through our website and contact us at the “contact” link above.

Google = Human

Google’s goal has become increasingly apparent to me lately. Think about it – they want to offer you the best search results possible. To do this, they must assess websites like a human would.

Google “spiders” crawl all over the Internet looking into websites and comparing them against their ranking system to see if your site fits into an ever moving standard of what folks like about websites. What consumers like is a site that gives them good, solid answers to the things they’re searching for.

Google only sees words and code. No fancy pics or entertaining movie content. But it’s amazing how much it can tell from that code.

Compare a website to a real-life experience. Let’s say you’ve got aging parents and you need a caregiver to help out. Not using the Internet at all (remember those days?), you might start by asking someone.

Word of Mouth = Links

On the web, the closest Google can get to word of mouth right now is by looking to see if other websites out there are recommending a caregiver. The way sites recommend other sites is by posting links; but not just any links. Google wants the link to contain a specific phrase common on both websites – your website and the referring website. That’s a truly good word of mouth recommendation in the eyes of Google. So it crawls both sites, sees the links pointing at each other, sees that both have lots of mentions of the word “caregiver” and recognizes that both are more credible as a result.

But there’s more. When you meet someone in real life, and want to trust them with something as important as caregiving, you want them to be an authority on the subject.

An Authoritative Personality = Specific Content

In the pre-Internet days, you’d trust a subject matter expert more than you would just any ol’ person off the street. So you might look for things you can read about this company. You might write to several caregiver companies and request a brochure. In that brochure you’d find pictures and copy that describe the caregivers. To make a decision as important as a caregiver for your parents, you’d pay close attention to the words they use, to their presentation of themselves. Then you’d go to meet the ones you’re interested in. You’d listen to how they present their subject. Do they speak with authority?

On the web, Google has a way of judging the authority of a website. It crawls for specific key phrases and words, and presents your website as an option to the searcher who puts in those words – but only if they’re on your website in a specific way. They must be –

• Used in your meta tags
• Used in your headlines
• Used often throughout the website
• But not overused

Authority = Experience

In the old days, if you met a caregiver with very little experience, you’d know it in a second. The main clue is age. The next clue is their resume. You’d definitely check references.

On the web, Google does the same thing. It looks for the age of the website. Sites that have been around a while will rank higher than the new kids on the block. It checks to see if you’re legit. If your website shows clues that you’re using the website as part of a link farm, or you’re from countries with a history of internet fraud, you won’t rank well and you may not rank at all.

Enthusiasm = Regularly Updated, Fresh Content

In the pre-Internet days, no one would choose a caregiver if they didn’t send signals that indicated enthusiasm for their chosen profession.  When someone is interested and engaged in providing the best caregiving service, you can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice

There are many websites out there that go dark for long periods of time. Google comes in and looks around for the dates of your last postings to see if you’re busy exploring your chosen profession, are engaged in what you do, and are providing ongoing, fresh information to your customers. If not, you won’t be valuable to Google or consumers.

To Be Human is to Change

The Google algorithm supposedly changed 400 times in the calendar year 2009. It changes for many reasons, but mainly for two –

• To better match human needs on the Internet
• To stay ahead of those who attempt to misrepresent their websites to trick search engines into ranking them better.

The tricksters out there will continue to try to fool Google into ranking them higher, but they’ll never get ahead in this game. Google is protecting their brand. And what a brand it is. Watch the changes and work on your web brand diligently.

You’ll be rewarded just like you would have in the old days.

Maybe we should all begin to see the world more like Google. It turns out this newfangled technology is developing a lot of old fashioned values.

Writing Blogs in 2010

The lifecycle of information in the digital age seems like it gets shorter every year. The percentage of information being written versus the amount actually getting read is only going to get worse. But there are good signs on the horizon.

The Portable Internet is Getting Larger

When the world looked like it was going to go entirely mobile, I was very concerned that the size of small screens would cripple the Internet as a medium for serious blogs. But now there’s good news. The Kindle and other portable book technologies are pointing towards a new, larger, more portable Internet that will be more text focused than ever.

While the Kindle is entirely focused on books, it’s inevitable that there will be other content pointing towards the same technology. Just the other day I saw a completely flexible unit debuted at CES that resembles the experience of holding paper. Everything old is new again.

Click here to read more about it

The Continued Rise of Video

Will the popularity of video cut into the reading of quality websites? My bet is that it’s already happening. The slow slide of the newspaper industry may be pointing to either fewer folks reading, or simply fewer minutes in the day to sit and read.

As smart as Google is, I suspect they’re already working on ways to search video content more effectively than just the weak tagging system that YouTube uses. Character recognition and other techniques are surely being explored to make video ‘searchable.’

A More Apparent Scarcity of Talent

When cable TV began to offer hundreds of channels, pundits predicted the death of books and magazines. What they didn’t count on was a scarcity of content, so the channels remained full of mostly junk. If you don’t believe me, turn on your local cable channel. It’s downright scary.

The availability of all these channels, websites, stations, magazines, self-published books and more simply makes it more apparent that there’s ‘nothing on.’ The lack of good content in so many places only serves to make the truly wonderful content stand out all the more.

The Continued Economic Difficulties

Budgets continue to be smaller. The job market is tight. But for companies like Ion Leap, that means we stay lean, fast, and responsible presenting a good way to solve clients’ staffing and budget issues.

Content creation is a super low cost way for companies to build something of lasting value for their prospects. And that won’t change in 2010, or likely for a very long time to come.

The Algorithm is Angry

Changes are clearly afoot in the Google algorithm, that mystical formula they use to rank web properties in their search results.

We regularly go in and perform searches on our clients’ key phrases to see how they’re doing. Google Analytics tells us this, but we like to do it on our own anyway, just to be sure.

Druids making human sacrifice to their gods, based on report by Julius Caesar.

Early this morning, I was surprised to see rapid moves up on specific phrases and rapid moves down, depending on how they were typed into the search bar. This is one of the things we watch very carefully. We’ll keep you posted.

Speaking of search engines, please take our brief survey regarding how you type in search phrases. Click here to take Ion Leap’s survey at the Survey Monkey website.

Ion Leap is constantly keeping up with the Google algorithm because it’s critical to your success. If you’re a business that relies on being in the top two pages of search results, please consider us. We specialize in organic search ranking by creating what the mighty Google algorithm wants – content, content, content. We can hear it now: “FEED ME CONTENT.”

Building a web resource? Or renting a brand in Adwords?

Welcome StumbleUpon users. If you like what you read here, please consider posting a link to our website.

What are you paying a month for your key phrases in Google Adwords?
$2,000?
$8,000?
More?

Getting to the top of the organic (free) rankings on the left side of a Google results page often seems like voodoo to companies, and it’s easy to understand why. Chances are you paid someone to search engine optimize your website; so where’s the love? You should be on page 1, position 1, right?

Your prospects and Google have something in common. When they come to your website, they want to find something of value. If they don’t, they dismiss your site. Google dismisses you by ranking you on lower pages. Prospects simply dismiss you. And they’ll often dismiss the same weak content if they click it from an Adword campaign.

You see, customers are figuring out the paid Adwords game real fast. That’s why they’re 60% more likely to click the organic links on a search results page than to click the paid ads on the right side. They’re getting used to finding thin web content when they click them.

They want content. They find salesmanship.
They want answers. They find slick marketing speak.

Ion Leap creates content that will be as valued by your customers as it is by Google. We’ll update your SEO, too. But then we’ll go much further with link building and especially content creation (and much more) that will give you a lasting brand, and a lasting organic ranking, for years to come.

Ion Leap Services:
SEO assessment and updating
Link strategies and ongoing execution
Keyphrase research, strategy and tactics
Social Media strategy and execution
Blog assessment or launch
Ongoing heavy content creation – films, blog posts, slide shows, etc
Content, content, content

No blog writer team? Poof. No permanent search presence.

Welcome StumbleUpon users. If you like what you read here, please consider posting a link to our website.

In an earlier posting, I pointed out an article in the New York Times business section in which a company turned off it’s Google Adwords campaign, the one that shows up on the right hand side of the results pages. They only did this for a very short time but it had disastrous consequences. A blog writer team from Ion Leap could have saved them.

We know what it costs to buy certain words and some companies are spending a lot of money to stay in the game. But the problem with that approach is that they’re building no lasting presence on search pages. They’re basically buying their way to get clicks to a site that Google and Yahoo consider weak sites.

What if Google and Yahoo are right?

Think about it. The Google algorithm is designed to give the best search results to their customers. So you might want to consider how Google judges a website and whether or not you’re offering your readers a good experience. If you’re not showing up on the organic side (left side) of the first couple pages of a Google search, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re not considered a great website by Google or by your prospects. Sorry.

If your website is showing up on page 3 or later, there are really only a few reasons –
(1) You’re fighting the good fight, but for a very desirable and competitive key phrase or word.
(2) Your website offers your prospects a very thin experience and no really useful written content.
(3) Your website is relatively new compared to entrenched competitors.

What can you do?

Hire Ion Leap to assess your site and begin to create content using our blog writer teams in a way that Google and your prospects want – key phrase rich content, written to build an interest community among your target audience. Let us help to build legitimate links on other sites pointing back to yours. Let us create videos, slide shows and other useful content to increase links and enhance the user experience for your prospect groups.

It’s not easy, but the lasting nature of the resource you’ll have built will serve your business for years to come. In the end there are no shortcuts to building a valuable resource on the Internet and we’re always amazed that folks fall for the promise of instant search engine optimization. It’s never going to be possible. Google wants you to earn it.

Ion Leap is a great disciplined, process-driven way to get this done. Click the contact link above to reach us and get started building lasting value for your company.