Blog Topics

A

Anneke

New member
Hey everyone,

As the Marketing Director for TurnKey Internet, I am in charge of writing our blog posts. I was having some writing block this morning and thought I'd ask you guys what you'd like to read about. What hosting-related topics appeal to you? What might catch your roving eye?

Thanks, in advance, for the ideas!
 
Two topics that seem to generate a lot of interest are Disaster Recovery and SEO, with SEO leading the pack. :)
 
SEO definitely leads the way. I can't tell you how many articles I see pop up in my RSS Reader every day - it's a staggering number.

The other that seems to raise it's head on a regular basis is shopping cart comparisons. What "X" does that "Y" doesn't do etc. Lots of people want to sell online.
 
With all the SEO articles out there, do you think it makes sense to write another one? I wonder if getting creative with topics might end up getting you more views. On the other hand, SEO is popular for a reason. People are hungry to know more. Hmm.

Disaster recovery, I like!!
 
I would love to read honest and unbiased reviews on web hosting companies. The reviews I read before are either written for some fee or published to promote affiliate links.
 
There are a TON of articles for SEO, but there's also millions of people who crave the information too. While you may not rank too high for key words like "SEO", you can possibly squeeze in some other words which are in the same group and build the traffic.

The big part of an effective article is the knowledge level of the article itself. I see hundreds of hosting companies posting about how wonderful cPanel is, and they touch the bare surface when it comes to "create email addresses with only 4 clients". To me, while it's informative to the novice user, if the knowledge of the person writing the article was deeper, there'd be more readers (i'd think).

I can write all day about PCI Compliance, Server Security and marketing as that's where a lot of my knowledge is based, however if someone wanted me to write about a Dodge Durrango (my car), the only thing I'd be able to say is that it's white, it's a V8 4x4 and I have to fill up gas every 380 miles. Beyond that I can't tell you much more! I do know that It handles 160,000 miles very well! ;)

So knowledge of the topic is going to be the saver in the article. Touching the surface will get a browser or two, but details will get you a repeat visitor (usually).
 
Good thoughts, all. What I'm gathering here is that, with tried and true topics like SEO, you're best bet is to have a really truly knowledgeable take -- the more common the subject the more in-depth, expert information you need to make it a worthwhile article.

I was thinking about writing an article on why there is no one method when it comes to SEO, and that the room left for experimenting and interpretation is what makes it such a hot topic. Nobody can REALLY figure it out for sure so we all continue to search and read in the hopes of getting ahead of everyone else. I also hope to include a succinct guide based on my own techniques. Does that sound like something you'd read?

Beyond that, I'll work on coming up with some articles based on what I know best: creative branding and self-promotion.
 
How about...

-simple solutions to complex hosting problems

or

-how to market your website the free and easy way
 
A Proven SEO Method, or Process

For folks interested in SEO, I use a 4 Step method that has proven to be very effective thus far.

First, do the proper keyword phrase research and analysis. In other words, identify the keyword phrases people are using to try to find your products and services. This is an often overlooked step because most web site owners and or web masters don't know how to do this properly.

Second, you need to analyze the web competition that already holds the Top 10 positions for the keyword phrases you want to target. You need to look at your competitions On-Page SEO and their Off-page SEO. Part of the Off-page SEO analysis is counting the back links to your competitor's web sites. You'll have to either get more or better back links than they have.

Third, you need to have the correct balance of On-page SEO applied to your web site. These are things like titles, keywords, descriptions, body content, etc. The search engines have to really understand what your web site is all about, and good editorially sound content provides that.

Fourth, you need to get back links to your web site. There are a myriad of ways of getting back links, although getting good back links that count has become more difficult as a result on ongoing changes Google has been making to how they value back links. There is a ton of information available on how to acquire back links.

Now all that being said, there is obviously a lot of detailed information on how to accomplish these 4 steps that people need to know. For that, reading all the articles, ebooks, .pdf's, blogs, forum postings etc. can be somewhat helpful. The sad truth is, there is a lot of either bad or outdated information floating around. This makes self-learning SEO an even greater challenge.

To the fellow that mentioned there needs to be more, deeper content, I absolutely agree. For now though, at least the beginners have a basic process to follow.
 
I like the marketing idea, people love to hear about that stuff; free and easy will catch attention as well. Also, how about security?
 
You know what, a detailed article on how to research keywords for your market is something that few ever put out information on. Many brush past it saying to checkout KeywordSpy or Google Adwords or buy a $500 program to do the work. Some say view the source of your competition and steal their words and just do a better job than them. The "brush off" is so overlooked that you could probably have a whole series of articles on different methods used and have enough information for a dozen (or two) articles.

If you allow detailed articles like that to be syndicated, I wouldn't be opposed to posting it and the link on some of my own sites. - food for thought!
 
Are there studies out anywhere that show SEO techniques actually working long-term? If so, I'd love to site them in my article.
 
handsonhosting said:
You know what, a detailed article on how to research keywords for your market is something that few ever put out information on. Many brush past it saying to checkout KeywordSpy or Google Adwords or buy a $500 program to do the work. Some say view the source of your competition and steal their words and just do a better job than them. The "brush off" is so overlooked that you could probably have a whole series of articles on different methods used and have enough information for a dozen (or two) articles.

If you allow detailed articles like that to be syndicated, I wouldn't be opposed to posting it and the link on some of my own sites. - food for thought!
Click to expand...

Hey great idea! And absolutely, once I'm done writing I'll make the articles available for syndication to whomever wants them!
 
SEO Details

Hi Guys,

I think one of the biggest reasons you don't see truly detailed, in-depth deep subject matter articles on SEO is because if you are a true SEO expert, why would that person want to give away the knowledge they worked very hard for and usually paid dearly for.

IF a real expert writes a tell-all article on any facet of SEO, are they not quite possibly, and in reality more likely, creating a crop of up-and-coming competitors?

What possible incentive is there for someone who truly knows the strategies, techniques, tools and processes to freely give that information away so that any one of thousands of potential competitors can read their play book?

This is a serious question to this forum and I’m truly interested in your replies. Conor, you seem like a pretty well informed guy, I’d really like to hear your feedback.

Now I would like to add just one proviso to my comments.

This is written from the perspective of someone who makes their living at doing SEO as a full-time profession. Not as a hobby, not as a corollary job function, but as someone whose sole monetary returns are based on doing SEO work. What is that person’s incentive to divulge their means to a livelihood?
 
Hi Cal,

We need to have a sit down one of these days. I'm in La Vista. Drop me a PM and I'll take you out to lunch!

A tell all book or article can be damaging to some small startups, but having been in the industry, you know yourself that there's people that do a half assed job and get paid "X" and then there's people who have been doing the job for years that get paid "Y". Usually it's when someone goes to the low bidder, gets everything screwed up, they then come to the people with the experience and want things fixed.

For me, in the hosting business, I've been doing it for 15 years personally, and any information I have, I share. The chances that the person I'm sharing with is targeting my same market is very slim. Now I have some friendship relationships with direct competitors and we help each other out from time to time with heads up about customers, random questions about why something may not be resolving correct etc - but we never discuss marketing tactics or anything like that.

When it comes to SEO, it's a cut throat world. I've been doing SEO for, well I guess since I started on the web, but I don't advertise it and take on very select market clients.

I'm happy to "help" someone in the industry, but I'll not do their homework for them. Like yourself, I've spent years gathering information and finding what works and what doesn't. I'm involved with a handful of SEO brainstorm type places and "insider information" type groups (there's nothing INSIDE about it!). Having a quality set of bookmarks for the SEO end of things is a necessity, and SEOBook does a pretty decent job of that too.

Probably the question I get asked most is how to determine what the keywords are, and what the market is that the client wants to serve. "web hosting" for example is so broad, and while you can niche it out into various control panel software or ecommerce software, it's still a very wide market. It's not like you can narrow the niche down to a website selling St. Bernard Pups in the Midwest.

There's a new gimmick released almost every week to make research easier, and as stated, there's a lot of OLD information that is no longer relevant, but people never go back and update old posts from 2005 or 2000.

There are definitely some industry trade secrets that I share with very few people, but there's so many of the basic tasks that people skip past that with a little effort they'd push their site higher in organic seo listings.
 
Seo

Hi Conor,

Thank you for the offer; I'm always open to a free lunch. :) I'll send you a note when I'm scheduled to be down your way. I have several very satisfied clients in your neck of the woods that I occasionally visit.

Regarding your comments, they’re pretty much spot on. Seasoned people are often called in to fix previous screw-ups, been there, done that and wore out the T-shirt. I also have other respected SEO’s as confidants, but they don’t live in Omaha or the Midwest, but on either coast and in Europe. The strategies and techniques and testing we share are all invaluable, to us and our clients.

I also like very much to help people with SEO basics, but when a client wants to save a few bucks and do the Off-page SEO themselves, I like to cap the number of inevitable emails about “Now how do you do that again?” If you want the deeper knowledge go learn it, or pay me to teach you, either way you typically have to pay for what you don’t know, either in time, money or trade.

SEO being a cut throat business, amen to that and it’s just getting worse. For such a nascent industry there are a plethora of options. I personally have tried five (5) different back link acquisition companies and they either did no good at all or actually fouled things up. The level of incompetence, not caring or just plain crooks is staggering. To EVERYONE looking to hire ANY SEO-related company, VET THEM OUT FIRST!!! You need to validate their claims of success by doing these steps.

1) Get the keyword phrases their client is targeting
2) Get the URL of their client
3) Get the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for the keyword phrase
4) Do a Google search and CONFIRM the search result

If your prospect SEO company can provide this information, you’re already ahead of the pack.

The only caveat is you need to have some idea as to the competition for that keyword phrase. Very low competition keywords are extremely easy to get a first page Google listing.

Anyway, for all the forum members’ patient enough to read these ramblings, the last thing that Conor stated in his last posting is something all of you should pay close attention to.

“There are definitely some industry trade secrets that I share with very few people, but there's so many of the basic tasks that people skip past that with a little effort they'd push their site higher in organic seo listings.”

Folks, if you just do basic SEO to your web sites, you’ll have better results than 95% of all the other web sites out there. Just take a little time and do it…
 
Are there specific guides you recommend? I'd love to link from my article to the most helpful free SEO resources. Thanks for all the great information, guys!
 
Yes, I read every word of this thread with great interest. I'm very much of the attitude that whatever you give, you get back tenfold. Of course, you don't want to simply hand out trade secrets that ensure your continued business success, but rather just enough to position yourself as a go-to expert in the field.

There are a number of members on this forum and other forums that I make it a point to read every one of their posts and threads, one of them being Conor's. There are too many to name here, but surely Anneke and CSN-UK are others I follow.

SEO is such a cut-throat business, I can see where you're coming from. I wish I had more time to devote to the subject. :D
 
Anneke - probably one of the top places that I've recommended to my own clients is SEOBook.com. They provide lots of information for FREE on their site. They do have a paid program and material that you can purchase also, but some of their information provided for free is just as valuable! Also, check out their SEO Bookmarks. They have a link on their page where you can download basically 30 bookmarks that all help in SEO and keyword research.

seochat.com is another place that has so much information that it can be overwhelming. BUT there's a ton of people testing different theories, and that makes your job easier :)

With regards to reading longer threads - the more information, the better. Like Steve, I spend a lot of time reading his posts, blogs, forums and the same with most of the users here too. I don't think there's any thread that I actually SKIP past as there's a lot of information in each of them.
 
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