Blog writer with a point

“Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”
- Steve Martin to John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles

A blog writer with a strong point to make, an eleventh grade vocabulary, and a sharp wit can make reading a client’s website far more interesting; maybe just interesting enough for a reader to cough up their credit card and buy something. But it’s more involved than that, isn’t it.

Effective blog writing is more about marketing than anything else. But an average blog writer won’t tell you that. Many value their craft over your sales. Harsh, I know, but I’ve seen many writers while during my time as an advertising creative director. I’ve always aimed at the end sales goal and derived my satisfaction from achieving it. But don’t get me wrong, you can’t build a loyal community of customers without great content crafting. But a successful blog writer team has to love commerce as much or more than they love the clever turn of phrase.

Writing content for a website that wants simply to make a point is, frankly, far easier than writing one that’s got careful key phrase structure written into it. I know instantly when I’m looking at one and, believe me, it’s a treat to find someone else who knows what they’re doing. The part that’s usually the toughest for everyone is the endurance.

If your website content is merely making a point, it’s missing the point.

You want traffic and you want a loyal following. Careful key phrase choices, ongoing hammering of useful content which weaves in those phrases, and great writing will be a good start. But that’s still missing the point.

The point is that a great blog writer team is one whose key focus is on marketing. If it’s not, they will not have the talent, craft, and endurance to succeed at getting your website to the top of the Google search rankings.

Ion Leap will bring a blog writer team to your Internet brand building. Our teams combine a marketing-driven writer with a great content builder. The result is a happy union of art and science which will turn your website content into a proper expression of your brand where consumers see it most.

Contact us at the link above, appropriately named “Contact.” We’d love to show you a quick presentation on the difference our blog writer team approach will make for your brand.

Content writing. Step 1 – know thy audience

At Ion Leap, our constant refrain is that your company’s content writing is a very important part of your brand. Success at this can be broken down into logical steps. This is Step 1 of what will be a series. I’m not going to give away too much, but you’ll get some good detail out of it.

The Gutenberg Bible. These guys knew their target audience.
Thus their continued success.

I’m always amazed at how few companies spend real time and money getting to know their audience. When this step goes wrong, every other time investment you make in your content will miss the mark.

The best way to understand your market is to look for consistencies in who’s buying your product now. If you’re collecting data on them, this will be easier. Cross tab it with other resources like credit information and you’ll know which of your current customers has equity in their homes, paid off their car loans, have septic systems, etc. There’s a wealth of data out there which you can cross-tab with your current data and it’s all perfectly legal.

Look for seasonality. You can measure this both in your sales and in your web traffic. This can lead to an understanding in how long it takes to close a sale. Too many companies rely on anecdotal information from the sales force for this.

Look for consistencies in demographics, geography, income, purchase behavior, product preference, etc. In other words, get serious about knowing your audience. Effective content writing can’t really speak to your best prospects until you know them fully.

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as hammering out content writing that you know for certain will work. And if you fully know your audience, your content writing will connect in ways that other marketing efforts simply miss. It’s such a satisfying feeling to sit back and watch the sales results pour in.

Content writing – somethin’ on

When it looked like the entire Internet was going to be shrunk down to the size of a cell phone, the pundits were predicting the end of content writing for websites; the screens would be too small to read. These were the same experts who predicted that the Internet would replace the printed book and newspapers would die forever.

After the hype dies down from these new technology introductions, content wins again. And with the advent of all these new technologies, there are simply more channels for viewing the content. The question is, where will the content writing come from to fill all these outlets?

Bruce Springsteen had it right in his song, “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).”

Now, to butcher Bruce’s lyrics to suit my own ends. My edits in italics -

I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a trunkload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my high speed Internet, see
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We clicked ’round and ’round ’til half-past down
There was fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on

Well now lots of content, my baby couldn’t wait
So I paid a fortune for a faster baud rate
A whole lot faster than my Japanese car
I came home, plugged it in, counted my lucky stars
A message came back from the great beyond
There’s fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on

Well we might’ a made some friends with some billionaires
We might’ a got all nice and friendly
If we’d made it upstairs
All I got was a note that said “Bye-bye John
Our love is fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on

So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
’Til my PC lay in pieces there at my feet
And they bsted me for disturbin’ the almighty peace
Judge said “What you got in your defense son ?”
“Fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on”
I can see by your eyes friend you’re just about gone
Fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on
Fifty-seven million websites and no content writing on

Doing our part to put somethin’ on

A glut of outlets and a company like Ion Leap are made for each other. When you’re ready to fill your website with content that won’t make Bruce Springsteen want to pump his PC full of lead, contact Ion Leap. We’ve married the art of great content writing with the science of search.

Content writing and beyond

Videos, slide shows and other forms of media are often not thought of as a part of content writing. But if it helps build out your brand, then it’s something Ion Leap can create for your company.

People learn things differently. Some learn best from reading; others learn better from visuals; still others learn best from auditory input.

Ion Leap will surround your target market with a variety of media, all of it created to maximize the brand experience for your target prospects. Our content writing experts will create a brand for your company online that’s as magnetic to your prospective customers as it is to search engines.

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.