I want to share a video with you. It was created for current Scribe customers to let them know what’s coming next month, but I’m going to hook you up too.

It’s a preview of the Scribe web-based application. So while you can use Scribe right in your WordPress interface, you will also be able to use this web-based version to analyze any content before posting it online on any platform. Or analyze and optimize older content for any platform. Total freedom.

This is especially useful for professional web writers who create content for clients. The Scribe web version even generates an SEO analysis report that you can deliver to your clients along with the content.

This video preview was made by Sean Jackson (one of the technology ninjas behind Scribe) for our current customers. So trust me, it’s not a sales pitch. But it’s very useful for getting an idea how the Scribe web-based application works.

And if you decide to hop on board nowr, you’ll get Scribe Web during your very first month as a customer at no extra charge. You’ll also get every other version of Scribe we develop, all inclusive.

Check out the video preview of the Scribe web-based version here.

• Take the Scribe for WordPress tour
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Take Scribe WP on a Free Test Drive

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and wants you to know that Thesis + Scribe = SEO Made Simple. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

When I first started Copyblogger in 2006, I was almost militantly against on-page search optimization. Seems strange, since I’d been a successful student of SEO since 2000.

It was because I saw all these people fretting over keywords like it’s 1999, and yet they had no links. Their content was weak. Their sites weren’t trusted.

You can’t optimize something that’s dead in the water. So my initial goal was to get people to focus on content that attracted attention and links first. Only then do you have something you can make better (that’s what optimize means, naturally).

Fours years later, it seems things have swung in the opposite direction for some. Social media “experts” maintain that SEO doesn’t matter because search traffic just “happens.”

Yes, search traffic “happens” if you produce unique content and don’t make it impossible to find. But the “right” search traffic doesn’t just happen, not unless you’re lucky (which simply means you don’t know what you’re doing).

This article is designed to help you know how to tell search engines what you’re talking about is the same as what people are looking for. That’s all SEO really is.

And yet . . .

I feel compelled to quickly discuss the things you need to focus on first. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz gives us a quick list of the stuff that must come prior to on-page optimization, so I’ll repeat those here with my own commentary:

Accessibility – If search engines can’t see your content within the code, your page can’t be indexed and ranked. This is why Chris Pearson created the Thesis Theme for WordPress, and why he obsesses over making it better. Code matters.

Content – Now that the code structure is right, we come to what people actually want. Create great content and the people, sharing, and links will follow. And then you hit the bonus round: Google gives you even more goodness.

User Experience – The easier your site makes it to consume and share your content, the better you’ll end up doing SEO-wise. People don’t consume or share content that creates barriers, sometimes even if only a little.

Marketing – To paraphrase Rand on this one, spreading the word is often more important than being right, being honest, or being valuable. I like to say promoting your content is a virtuous necessity. Whatever works for you, but do get the word out.

Okay, now let’s move on to the five areas to focus on with your web page, blog post, online press release, whatever . . . they’re all the same in the eyes of Google.

Five SEO copywriting elements that matter

Before we get into this, let me share a few strategic considerations.

When I’m building an authority site, I don’t care about optimizing everything I write. I use a lot of metaphors and pop culture references instead of keywords to get people reading and linking to build the overall trust of the domain. Then when I want to rank well for something, like copywriting, or seo copywriting, or landing pages, my job is much easier.

If you’re a news blogger (or newspaper), things are different. You want to optimize everything as best as possible up front, then move on. Different strokes for different folks.

That said, here we go.

1. Title

Whether you optimize up-front or later, you at minimum need to know what keywords you’re targeting and include them in the title of your content. It’s generally accepted that the closer to the front of the title your keywords are, the better. But the key is that they appear in the title somewhere.

You’ll notice that the title of this post contains the keyword phrase “SEO copywriting,” but it’s positioned at the end of the title. That’s because I go with the more compelling headline first and foremost. But I can serve an alternate title in the title tag (which is the snippet of code Google actually pulls the title from) thanks to a post feature in Thesis (also available with the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress).

So, I can always enter a more search-optimized alternate title later, such as:

SEO Copywriting: The 5 Essential Elements

The emphasis on keywords in the title makes practical sense from a search engine standpoint. When people search for something, they’re going to want to see the language they used reflected back at them in the results. Nothing mysterious about that.

Having keywords in your title is also important when people link to you. When your keywords are there, people are more likely to link to you with the keywords in the anchor text. This is an important factor for Google to determine that a particular page is in fact about a particular subject.

You should try to keep the length of your title under 72 characters for search purposes. This will ensure the full title is visible in a search result, increasing the likelihood of a click-through.

2. Meta Description

SEO copywriting is not just about ranking. It’s also about the presentation of your content in a search engine. The meta description of your content will generally be the “snippet” copy for the search result below the title, which influences whether or not you get the click.

It’s debatable whether keywords in your meta description influence rank, but it doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. You want to lead off your meta description with the keyword phrase and succinctly summarize the page as a reassurance to the searcher that your content will satisfy what they’re looking for.

Try to keep the meta description under 165 characters so the full description is visible in the search result. Again, you can create a meta description in WordPress right in the posting area with Thesis or All in One SEO.

3. Content

Unique and frequently updated content makes search engines happy. But you know that part. For search optimization purposes (and just general reader-friendliness) your content should be tightly on-topic and centered on the subject matter of the desired keyword phrases.

It’s generally accepted that very brief content may have a harder time ranking over a page with more substantial content. So you’ll want to have a content body length of at least 300 words.

It might also help to bold the first occurrence of a keyword phrase, or include it in a bulleted list, but I usually don’t get hung up on that. It’s also debatable whether including keywords in subheads helps with ranking, but again, it doesn’t matter – subheads are simply a smart and natural place to include your keyword phrase, since that’s what the page is about.

Which brings us to . . .

4. Keyword Frequency

Keyword frequency is the number of times your targeted keywords appear on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the words on the page.

It’s generally accepted that keyword frequency impacts ranking (and that makes logical sense). Keyword density, as some sort of “golden” ratio, likely does not. But the only way to make sense of an appropriate frequency is via the ratio of those keywords to the rest of the content, so density is still a metric you need.

In other words, the only way to tell if your repetition of keywords is super or spammy is to measure that frequency against the overall length of the content. A keyword density greater than 5.5% could find you guilty of keyword stuffing, and your page could be penalized by Google.

You don’t need to mindlessly repeat keywords to optimize. In fact, if you do, you’re likely to achieve the opposite result.

5. Page Links

Linking is the fundamental basis of the web. Search engines want to know you’re sufficiently “connected” with other pages and content, so linking out to other pages matters when it comes to search engine optimization.

Here are some “rules of thumb” for linking based on generally accepted best practices:

• Link to relevant content fairly early in the body copy
• Link to relevant pages approximately every 120 words of content
• Link to relevant interior pages of your site or other sites
• Link with naturally relevant anchor text

Again, these are guidelines related to current best practices. Don’t get hung up on rules; focus on the intent behind what search engines are looking for – quality search results for people.

Yes, there’s other stuff . . .

There are other elements as well, such as URL structure and keywords, keywords in image alt files, tags and categories, and various other minutia (here’s a list of on-page elements and their varied importance). If you focus on the five areas above, however, you’re covering the vital elements of effective on-page optimization.

I know there are a lot of SEO ninjas out there who might be reading. What would you add as a vital on-page optimization element? Let us know in the comments.

Up next: Does Writing for People Work for SEO?

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

If there’s any one thing that can be said about SEO with certainty, it’s that it manages to cause a lot of confusion.

For example, it seems like many people’s idea of SEO was formed 10 years ago, and hasn’t bothered to change with the times. Even an online veteran like Robert Scoble is completely clueless about modern best practices for search engine optimization.

So, before we go any further, let me answer the question posed by the headline . . .

Yes, SEO copywriting still matters.

Here’s why.

Search is still the biggest game in town

“Pick your survey, search remains one of the top activities on the Internet and has been for over a decade,” said search industry legend Danny Sullivan when I pinged him on Twitter. Danny pointed me to one such survey that shows search is the most common online activity after email, and that fact cuts across generations.

“People make billions of unique searches each month,” said SEO guru Aaron Wall via email, “and unlike Facebook flittering, those people are in focus mode.” In other words, compared with most Internet traffic, searchers are the most motivated people that hit your site.

If they’re looking for a product or service, there’s a good chance they’re looking to buy it. If they’re searching for information and your site provides it, you’ve got a great chance of converting that drive-by traffic into a long-term subscriber.

And of course if you’re a professional web writer, whether freelance or with an agency, this discussion is purely academic. You try telling the client not to care about Google traffic, and let me know how that goes.

So, search traffic is clearly important, as long as it’s targeted search traffic. Let’s look at the elements that constitute the modern practice of search engine optimization so we can attract those highly-focused visitors.

Off-page elements eat the biggest slice of SEO pie

Take a look at the image below, generously loaned to me by SEOmoz:

A quick review of the chart reveals that as far as SEO goes, what happens off your site matters more than what’s on it.

• 23.87% – The general trust and authority that your domain has is the largest indicator of SEO success. As Authority Rules makes clear, what works for search engines is what works with people as well.
• 22.33% – The number of links to a specific page matters a lot too… so think twice about link viability when your content is just out of the gate.
• 20.26% – The anchor text of external links matters because this is Google’s way of finding out what your page is about according to other people, not just you.

In other words, it’s like my favorite saying goes:

What people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

In this case, Google wants to know that people are linking to you, and the words they’re using (link anchor text), because that’s a more trusted relevance indicator. So yes . . . compelling content is always rule number one. But just like great content goes unnoticed without promotion, great content doesn’t rank well if you don’t make it clear what it’s supposed to rank for.

But how do we get people to notice our content so they can link to it? That’s where social media comes in. Blogging, social news sites, Twitter, Facebook – these are organic content distribution systems powered by your audience (and their friends).

It may come as a surprise that some of the brightest minds in social media are SEOs, and they’re completely on the up-and-up and non-shady. It’s just that they’re too busy getting things done to proclaim themselves social media experts or some other nonsense.

The huge influence of “off-page” factors on search optimization is why I wrote the SEO Copywriting 2.0 series 3 years ago. I updated it for 2010, but it is still directly on point, because it deals with fundamental aspects of strategic content development that don’t really change.

If you haven’t, check out SEO Copywriting 2.0 to get more out of the remainder of this series. An understanding of content development strategies is critical before going the “last mile” with on-page optimization.

SEO copy is the “last mile” to strong search rankings

Are you familiar with the “last mile” problem in the broadband industry? You can have thousands of miles of high speed fiber optics carrying loads of data cross country, but if the final connection to the customer’s home is aging copper or pokey coaxial, the benefit of the optical cables is lost.

Likewise, if you do everything right by building an authority site that Google trusts, but don’t tell Google that your page content matches what people are actually searching for, the targeted traffic benefit is lost. That’s what effective SEO copywriting does – it tells Google which words are the most relevant ones.

You don’t have to optimize on-page upfront. But you do have to begin with the ending in mind from a keyword standpoint, due to the importance of anchor text when people link. We’ll go more into that in part two of this series.

And if you ignore this SEO stuff? Sure, you’ll get plenty of untargeted “long tail” traffic otherwise, but what good does that really do you? Even with an advertising business model, irrelevant traffic bounces off your site quickly, leading to disgruntled advertisers who don’t renew. And if you’re selling something, you’re only burning bandwidth.

The beauty of building a reader-focused online presence based on valuable content is that you can do well even if Google hates you. But the irony is, if you actually follow that path, Google loves you.

Take advantage of that. It’s the critical last mile of a well-rounded online marketing strategy that makes a huge difference to your overall success.

Traffic must convert, or why bother?

Now we come to the big point. Everyone loves traffic – it’s addictive and strangely gratifying in its own right.

But traffic doesn’t pay the bills. It’s people who take the actions you need them to who do.

Going back to that confusion, many think that a search-optimized web page is some ugly keyword stuffed mess that sends people running for the hills on sight.

That’s not true. At least not when done well.

Danny Sullivan said it well at the close of our discussion:

“Unfortunately, too many assume that SEO means trying to trick search engines. It doesn’t. It simply means building a site that’s friendly to them.”

And that’s what we’ve been talking about here at Copyblogger for four years now (and helping at the code level with Thesis). Now let’s further explore on-page optimization specifics in this Simple SEO Copywriting series.

Next in the series:

• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
• Does Writing for People Work for SEO?
• Introducing Scribe: SEO Copywriting Made Simple

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Unglued Media. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Creating great content is not hard. In fact, it’s quite easy. That is, if you understand three simple words.

If you summarized every single book and article written on writing for the web, you’d get these three words. Yet, no one–not even the experts, authors, or pundits–have ever consolidated all this knowledge into one simple, sticky formula.

Until now.

Write with these three words in mind, and anything you publish on the web will rivet attention, stoke desire, and get action.

Don’t believe me? Well, after you’ve read the rest of this article, give it a shot. And let me know what you think.

1. Clear

In less than four seconds visitors need to be able to comprehend what you wrote on your web page. I didn’t say “read.” I said “comprehend.”

Even before Steve Krug wrote it, the unbreakable law of the web has always been this: don’t make me think.

Your headlines, subheadlines, links, labels and navigation should all communicate clearly what lies in, under or behind them.

This is part of giving readers control. No tricks. Nothing clever or cute. Never lie. Just straight, uncensored, easy-to-digest truth.

Do it any other way and you’ll repel people. Bore readers. Lose money.

2. Concise

Writing for the web is a minimalist affair. Your words, sentences and paragraphs are short. Precise. Lean. Tight. Web writing trades in sheering off useless words. Cutting flabby paragraphs…

Even shedding entire pages.

Think that’s harsh? Jakob Nielson recommends you cut up to half of the words for every print page you plan to put on the web.

There’s a great benefit for you behind all this editing: You’ll become a ruthlessly good writer. You’ll get much better, in fact.

Best of all, writing clear and concise won’t make you boring or dull. Far from it.

3. Compelling

The Rich Jerk is irritating, annoying and loathsome. But he’s compelling. Interesting. Persuasive. That’s why he won’t go away.

Why? Because he’s tapped into human emotions—greed and pride—that pull people into his copy… whether they like it or loathe it.

You have to do the same. You have to uncover what makes your reader tick. What strokes his ego. What plucks his gut strings. What keeps him up at night. And when you uncover that hot spot, punch it.

If he’s a political junkie, wave breaking news in front of him. An Apple addict? Share the latest hacks and apps for the iPhone. A wine lover? Hustle the best bottles his way.

Whatever it is, give your reader what he wants. Or he’ll go away. It’s the law.

What About SEO Copywriting?

Forget about it. Seriously.

If you focus on writing clear, concise and compelling copy, you will naturally write keyword-dense copy. You’ll naturally write for the search engines.

In fact, that’s why I think the label SEO copywriter is redundant. Every web writer worth his salt is a SEO writer. At least they are if they write clear, concise and compelling copy.

The question is, content creator, are you?

What Do You Think?

Did I miss it? Are there more than three words that describe successful online content creation? Let me know and we’ll debate it.

About the Author: Demian Farnworth is Senior Web Writer for an international humanitarian aid organization and blogger for Fallen and Flawed. Follow him on Twitter.

What’s the one stat that most bloggers care about the most? Is it page views, visitor location, referring sites or subscribers? I know for me and most other bloggers out there, getting more subscribers is a priority that is pretty high up on the list.

Why? Subscribers are people who have said they want to read or hear what you have to say. They want to stay in touch, probably because you provide value that improves their lives in one form or another. Subscribers are your constant traffic source when you aren’t being flooded with social media traffic and your Google rankings aren’t that great.

In this post, I want to look at a simple method I used to increase my subscribers that you can implement today. More importantly, this is something that is going to continue working for you for years to come if you lay the foundations properly.

Keyword Research

Before you think you’ve heard it all before, bear with me. Keyword research can be time consuming, boring and often result in finding high traffic keywords with a lot of competition. That isn’t what I’m going to share with you today. In fact, this is all about finding keywords with ‘decent’ traffic and minimal competition so that you can easily start to rank in the top 20 results.

First of all, I want you to take a look at the most popular pages of Wikihow. These are the most popular ‘How to’ pages on the whole of the site and can be a great aid for inspiration.

What you should be looking for is “How To’s” that are related to your niche. I most regularly blog on the subject of personal development and self improvement, so I looked for things that could improve peoples’ lives in general. Whatever it is you write about, see if you can find any how to content that relates to your topic. You’ll notice that in the first few hundred results, most articles have hundreds of thousands of views. What this means is that although these articles may have had a traffic spike from the likes of Digg or Stumbleupon, to get that much traffic they are probably getting a lot of search engine referrals.

The best thing about search engine referrals is that they are constant and once you’ve put in the work to get them then the visitors are likely to keep coming for a long time. A particular page I found for example was ‘How to Make Friends’ which is perfect for my niche and also a topic I have some knowledge on due to frequent traveling and moving.

Now, once you have some ideas from the list, put your keywords into the Google External Keyword tool. You could of course just search for ‘how to’ but hopefully this exercise has given you some inspiration for niche-relevant phrases that you can use later in this blog post. Make sure when using this tool that you use the exact match feature so you can get a more realistic count for search volume.

Once you’ve found a keyword that is related to your niche, and a phrase that gets 1,000+ exact match queries per month then you are ready for the next part. As a side note, do a quick search on Google to check out the competition, or in other words, see how difficult it would be to rank for this phrase. What you are looking for is:

• How many sites in the top results have your phrase in the title
• How ’strong’ the domains in the rankings are – i.e. about.com is very strong
• How many backlinks pages in the 6-10 positions have

It should be easy to tell with this criteria whether a phrase relating to your niche and ‘how to’ is going to be easy to rank for or not.

Creating an Ebook (Writing Time!)

Once you have your keyword you need to provide a solution, an answer. Most search queries out there are people looking for solutions to their problems or queries and they’ll often do quite a lot to get an answer.

In my case I decided to spend most of a day (Saturday to be specific) and write up an eBook on how people could solve what they were looking for, how to make friends. My eBook is 24 pages, although yours doesn’t have to be that long. The reason that I mentioned this should be relevant to your niche earlier is because you should have some knowledge on the subject as you are the one who is going to have to solve the problem.

I used Open Office (free) to create the eBook which has an export to PDF creator built in. It also keeps all backlinks which most PDF creators don’t, so I highly recommend it.

Setting Up Your Landing Page

I mentioned that I was going to help you increase your RSS subscribers and this is exactly what I’m highlighting now. First of all, you want to make sure that your landing page, whether it is a static html page or blog post is optimized well for on-site SEO. When I set up my ‘How to Make Friends’ page I made my URL http://www.pluginid.com/how-to-make-friends/ and the title only included those keywords.

One other thing I did on the landing page was create a simple graphic of the eBook for download to help people visualize what they would be getting. You can pay $20 on Digitalpoint Forums to get one of these made or if you have Photoshop do a quick search for eBook actionscript on Google and you’ll find some nice solutions. I actually made mine myself.

So, what I did here is put together a simple landing page showing off the new eBook, with its graphic and an email subscription box in order to receive it for free. This subscription box was linked directly to my feedburner email sign-up. I also mentioned on the page that this would sign people up for my regular updates but that they would not be spammed and could unsubscribe at any time (because this is true).

Getting Links & My Results

There are hundreds if not thousands of articles on how to get links so I’m not going to be going into detail here. Basically, for those with no SEO knowledge, links are one of the most important factors in getting a page to rank in the search engines. In theory you want to get as many relevant links as you can pointing to your page with the anchor text being the same as the title of your page ‘how to ….’.

Once you’ve done this, within a few weeks you should start to be getting traffic and feed subscribers. For me, the results were a lot more sudden so you could experience the same result. First of all, within a week of setting up the page I had already received hundreds of targeted visitors to the page:

(Over 2,000 now)

Bear in mind that most of this traffic came from ranking on the second page of Google. I’ve recently moved up to position 8 on the first page of results.

This traffic also led to an increase in feed subscribers. Remember that within 5 months of the site launching I had managed to grow to around 500 subscribers, not an amazing achievement but not bad either. Since implementing this however, I gained over 100 subscribers in just over a week, and it brings me new subscribers on a continual basis.

Now, don’t just read this and procrastinate; actually get out there and do it, and start creating your own results rather than being a spectator to the results of others. There is so much potential in this and I actually have another one lined up. The day I spent writing the eBook should benefit me for years to come.

About the Author: Glen Allsopp writes on the subject of Personal Development over at PluginID. His aim is to help people ‘plug into their identity’ and find their true potential.

“How to Become an SEO Ninja” is the tagline for Naomi Dunford’s ebook, SEO School. Since I’ve promised to do more book reviews around here, I figured giving you the scoop on a new ebook about search engine optimization would be of interest.

Ever since Aaron Wall joined Teaching Sells and four months later transformed his profitable SEO Book into an interactive training program, there’s been a void in the “SEO ebooks you can trust” market. While I’m sure there are others, I haven’t read those… but I have read SEO School and it’s solid.

Let’s take a look at the particulars.

Will You Really Become an SEO Ninja?

I happen to know a few true SEO Ninjas, and they’re on an entirely different level of existence. So, if you look at it that way, obtaining Ninjahood might be a lot to ask from an ebook about the fundamentals of search engine optimization.

But since we’re talking Eastern stuff here, I’ll paraphrase Buddha:

You’re asking the wrong question, silly.

Those at the highest level of SEO do truly impossible tasks… like salvaging and optimizing a 150,000 page ecommerce site that’s invisible to searchers thanks to 6 years of bad advice and worst practices. A true SEO Ninja can devise black hat moves that Matt Cutts hasn’t imagined yet, and discard the technique 20 minutes before Google catches on.

If you’re the average small business owner or online entrepreneur, that’s not what you need.

Three Reasons Why SEO School is Worth It

I’m going to cut to the chase on this one, since none of us is getting any younger. If you’re looking to eliminate the confusion and contradiction that inevitably surrounds the SEO field, SEO School is worth buying because it is:

1. Easy to understand. Naomi lays it all out in an easy-to-understand and conversational style. She had both her 9-year-old son and 70-year-old father read the book before release, and they both got it. Naomi does tend to use colorful language, so if naughty words are an unbearable distraction to you, take that into account.
2. Comprehensive. Naomi covers all the bases, from the psychology of search to keyword research to the Google Sandbox to competitive intelligence and more. And she gets to the point instead of padding the book with theory. It’s just “here’s what to do and how to do it.”
3. Inexpensive. It’s only $39. Enough said… grab a copy.

For the small business owner or budding online entrepreneur, SEO School combined with the user-friendly and search-optimized Thesis Theme for WordPress will have you set up and on your way.

For a limited time, when you buy the search-optimized Thesis WordPress Theme, you get SEO School absolutely free. Click here to find out how!

Buy SEO School today.

About the Author: Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of DIY Themes and Lateral Action. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Are you writing for (search engine) spiders? Take a quick look at this copy:

This article provides free writing tips, so be sure to check out this free writing tips article if you are interested in free writing tips.

Does that writing style sound familiar? I’m sure anyone familiar with search engine optimization and SEO copywriting realizes that an article with such an “introduction” is (desperately) optimized for the term “free writing tips.”

But is this approach one that actually works?

Will Search Engines Spiders Subscribe to Your Feed or Newsletter?

It surprises me that a lot of innocent webmasters think that this is a healthy on-page SEO approach and that the results will be great. They read about SEO from all sorts of reliable sources and decide to implement some of the tips.

Let’s take blogging as an example and see what results you can expect. Let’s forget for a moment that search engines will likely view an introduction such as the one above as low-quality, and good luck getting any organic links to that type of content, which you’ll need to rank.

Let’s pretend instead that it’s actually smart SEO. What happens from the perspective of your loyal site visitors and subscribers?

It’s only natural that once your readers realize you are no longer providing quality content and shifting instead to useless keyword-filled articles, they will not be thrilled to stick around. As a result, only a handful of your initial readers will continue to follow your website, if that many.

Let’s also see things from the perspective of a visitor who finds you through a search engine. Yes, that person drops by, but once she sees that your content is keyword-stuffed garbage, she leaves and never looks back.

Is Short-Term Thinking the Way to Go?

Are you willing to risk losing most of your loyal visitors for some short-term search benefits? Even if an approach such as the one I’ve mentioned would work, it can only be seen as something short-term. What happens once the inevitable occurs and you no longer rank well?

Your initial loyal subscribers are gone and the ones coming from search engines don’t stick around. As you can see, the results are definitely not worthwhile and that’s why you need to wake up and understand how things actually stand.

Subscribers Come Before Spiders

A business model that doesn’t provide value at its core won’t get you anywhere. Building upon a shaky foundation is never a good idea, and that applies to being a webmaster just as it does everywhere else.

A business model built on a targeted audience of loyal subscribers, on the other hand, leads to many possibilities. So concentrate on building your fan club.

Stop searching for shortcuts and work towards establishing a solid foundation worth building upon. You don’t write for search engines and you most definitely don’t write for spiders. You write for human beings and try to convert them into loyal subscribers. And human beings are, without a doubt, interested in quality content.

So who are you writing for? Do the needs of subscribers always come first or are you still looking for a quick-fix and chasing after something that simply isn’t there?

About the Author: Alan Johnson is the author of The Online Business Handbook.

Hey everyone, I’m back in town and working on a new post as we speak. But in the meantime, just wanted to share a pretty powerful free tool that Aaron Wall recently released.

Even though we’ve corresponded for the last couple years, I finally got to meet Aaron in person at Elite Retreat, and he’s both smart and laid back. His new Rank Checker tool for FireFox is really useful for checking your search engine rankings across Google, Yahoo and MSN… and doing it privately.

Check out the details and download Rank Checker here.

Content marketing works wonders, especially when compared or coupled with traditional advertising. Of course, I’ve been talking about tactics for creating compelling and persuasive content for over two years here at Copyblogger.

The missing elements that make content marketing truly work are strategy, observation, and rapid readjustment. And it’s exactly these elements that make social media such a dynamic and profitable environment for ambitious new media content producers.

In the world of software, agile development is an approach for software engineering that promotes development iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project. In other words, software is developed, released, and improved through regular adaptation to feedback and changing circumstances.

Let’s take a look at the mind and skill set that’s required to develop profitable new media assets with agile content development. It all comes down to understanding the social media feedback and iteration process.

The Dynamics of Social Media Content Strategy

Seth Godin characterizes the process this way:

Here’s what we used to do:

Create —> Edit —> Launch

Here’s what happens now:

Create —> Launch —> Edit —> Launch —> Repeat

Social media represents such a fantastic opportunity because it allows us to create and launch media properties directly to the public. But even more of a blessing is the direct and indirect feedback process that naturally happens in this space.

You put something out there, and the crowd will reveal the direction you should go. It’s not necessarily always the wisdom of the crowd, but rather the desires and objections of the crowd that guide you.

Sell Access, Not Products

Likewise, in Teaching Sells, we advocate agile content development for online training programs. You have a strategy and curriculum in place, but you allow for improvisational flexibility that improves the quality of the content and enhances the learning experience.

Viewed in this context, it makes much more sense to sell access to knowledge rather than information products. This leads to more profits through recurring subscriptions and related sales, and you get the additional benefit of getting paid to create the content.

Thinking you’ve got it right on your own and sticking to it is an arrogance the crowd will not forgive. You’re an indispensable part of the equation, but so is the audience.

The Fallacy of Getting it Right the First Time

Top copywriter Michael Masterson eloquently argues that this iterative approach works for any type of business in his new book, Ready Fire Aim. Many of you are familiar with Masterson as the lead author of the AWAI Accelerated Course for Six-Figure Copywriting, but he’s also a personal role model for me since he uses his copywriting skills to launch and build businesses.

Masterson says a business will never devise an ideal selling strategy until the company launches and starts trying to sell. So, prepare carefully, but then simply launch and see what works. Once you hit that sweet spot between your offer and what the crowd wants, then it’s time to accelerate the growth of the company with additional products or services.

So, it looks like everyone agrees:

Create —> Launch —> Edit —> Launch —> Repeat

The editing phase represents your go-forward strategy for content, product development and promotions. In essence, a new media property is a constantly evolving platform that stays tuned to the audience or becomes irrelevant.

Perpetual Launches with New Media Platforms

As I’ve mentioned before, the exact same principles apply to these huge Internet marketing product launches you keep seeing. They’re using a pre-launch and launch sequence to gauge response, identify potential objections, and proactively eliminate those objections on the fly. The goal is for the final sales page to be a mere formality, because the prospect has already decided to buy and wants to make sure he gets in.

The difference in my approach is that I’m also building an asset with the platform. The new media property itself has value that’s independent of any particular launch or promotion, therefore increasing the value of the overall enterprise.

Take a look at this product launch blueprint video from Jeff Walker (I cheated and linked directly to the video, so you don’t have to opt-in). As Jeff illustrates, these launch principles apply to any niche, and can be used to build entire businesses, not just to launch products.

Every Company is a Media Company

While it’s true that anyone with social media skills can become a successful new media owner or producer, it’s existing small businesses that need a mind shift. Rather than starting a blog to promote your business, you should be creating new media assets that transform your business into something bigger.

Here are some questions for those pursuing a business blogging strategy:

• How do we create a media platform that has independent value to visitors?
• How can that platform grow our existing business model?
• How can that platform create diverse revenue streams?

When advertising gives way to authoritative content, and that content tends to be found on web sites that offer independent value, the answer is clear. Successful companies of any stripe must view themselves as media companies in order to effectively market online.

About the Author: Brian Clark is the founding editor of Copyblogger, and co-founder of Teaching Sells.

Keyword research can be the difference between a successful blog and one that goes nowhere, but it often seems as if many bloggers think it’s something that doesn’t apply to them, or is “only for SEO.” To the contrary, keyword research goes way beyond search engine optimization, and is all about discovering what real live people are actively interested in.

That means keyword research helps you choose profitable blog subjects, identify content topics that are in high demand, and spot monetization methods that work. With that in mind, Copyblogger associate editor Jonathan Morrow and I have put together a 5-part comprehensive guide to keyword research for bloggers that walks you though the entire process using real-life niche examples.

Here’s what’s covered:

1. Keyword Research: It’s Not What You Think
2. How to Choose a Popular Niche for Your Blog
3. How to Find Post Topics That Score Big
4. Keyword Research Can Help You Make Money From Your Blog
5. A Primer on Keyword Research Tools

It’s 7,739 words of juicy content, and it’s all free with no registration or other hoops to jump through.

Check it out here, and make sure to bookmark it for future reference since we’ll be updating it from time to time.