5 Tools All Marketers Should be Using for a More Engaging Blog - DailyBlogTips

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5 Tools All Marketers Should be Using for a More Engaging Blog Posted: 14 Dec 2016 04:40 AM PST Do you have a roadmap in place for developing high-quality blogs? Do you know which writing styles resonate with your audience? What about which topics they love and how to approach them most efficiently? Do you know which blog development tools are at your disposal? Using blogging tools correctly is one of the most efficient things bloggers can do, but many overlook it completely. Today, there are dozens of fantastic tools on the web designed specifically to help bloggers share their thoughts and build a more engaging platform. With that in mind, here are the top five top blogging tools that you should be using (10 more here if you have time!). 1. Grammarly Grammarly.com is a powerful spelling and grammar checker that picks up mistakes Microsoft Word will not. From overused words and passive voice, to confused possessives and contractions, Grammarly does it all, and it's a critical tool for any blogger who wants to escape the embarrassment of pushing out a blog riddled with typos. Plus, since it plugs directly into Google Chrome, it checks all of the text you write online, including your emails. There's a desktop version, as well, for those times when you're offline. Grammarly offers both a free and a paid plan, and it's well worth the investment for bloggers to hop in on it. 2. BuzzSumo Content fatigue is a real thing for busy bloggers, and it can be tough to keep the creative juices flowing when you're feeling exhausted by the sheer volume of content you have to create. Fortunately, a tool like Buzzsumo.com can help. BuzzSumo is a simple, far-reaching tool that can do everything from helping you research keywords to showing you which content is performing the best for a given topic. Here's how it works: just select the "content research" tab at the top of the screen and type in your keyword or phrase. Click "search," and BuzzSumo will give you a list of the top-performing posts for that phrase. You can also use the platform to search for influencers and monitor keywords or topics. 3. HubSpot's blog topic generator HubSpot is one of the leading names in the online marketing industry, and their blog topic generator tool is made by bloggers, for bloggers. While BuzzSumo can combat content fatigue by showing you which content is performing the best on social media, HubSpot's blog topic generator fights fatigue by simply giving you an actionable, exciting list of blog headlines to choose from. Here's a sample list of blog topics created with the input words "digital" and "marketing." 4. Hemingway app Did you know that the most desirable reading level for your online content is about 8th or 9th grade? Do you know what an 8th or 9th-grade reading level looks like, though? If the answer is "no," there's a fantastic tool out there to help you. It's called the Hemingway App. A simple app that you can just copy and paste your text into, Hemingway shows you places where you can swap out complicated words for simple ones, shorten sentences, and correct overly-difficult words and phrases. Ideal for anyone who works in the online space and worries about the clarity of their writing, Hemingway is a fantastic check-in that can work wonders for your online material. 5. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer As a blogger, you know that your headlines are critical, and that they've got to be good to draw readers in. But do you know how to measure their emotional impact? If not, head to the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer by AMI. Just input your headline and the tool will give you an immediate analysis of its quality. For best conversion rates, shoot for an EMV score of between 50-70%. For an example, here's one of the HubSpot headlines, plugged into the EMV analyzer. Simple Tools for Better Blogging Every great blogger wants his or her blog to succeed, but this can be easier said than done. If you're looking for a way to transform the success of your blog and make writing it easier, these five tools are for you. Dave is the CEO of Dave's Computers Inc. He writes a weekly column for Daily Blog Tips covering the best tips about blogging and Internet marketing. You can also find him on LinkedIn. Original post: 5 Tools All Marketers Should be Using for a More Engaging Blog

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ProBlogger: How To Structure Your Blog Content For Great Rankings

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How To Structure Your Blog Content For Great Rankings Posted: 13 Dec 2016 05:00 AM PST From ProBlogger SEO expert Jim Stewart of Bloggers SEO. Content may be king, but if you don’t optimise your blog content in a way that Google likes, your readers will never find it. Structuring your content in a way that Google understands means higher rankings across your entire site. This makes your blog more visible to readers searching for your topic, and more likely to show up near the top of the page when they search for your niche. But how do you know what Google is looking for? Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is simply a way of organising the content on your site so that it’s more likely that Google will understand it. It’s a process like anything else, and it can be tricky considering all the updates Google sends out. Stick to the fundamentals of content structuring and you’ll see a definite improvement in your rankings. Search Engine Optimisation Fundamentals Keywords Choose one or two long-tail keywords to focus on when optimising your blog posts. These are strings of words that readers might use to look for the content on your blog. The idea is not to stuff as many keywords as possible into your work, but to concentrate on just one or two and rank well for them. For the best results, pick one keyword string to emphasise per post, and one secondary string, if any. Everything on your page should relate back to these two keywords, and you should incorporate them in specific parts of your blog page. Blog Post Page Title The page title is the first thing your readers see, usually in a link that has been shared or in the search results. More importantly, it’s the first thing that Google will see. The page title should tell Google and the reader what the post is about. If you want to rank for a specific phrase, you'll need to use it here. Include the keyword within the first 50-60 characters of your page title. If you have a long title, use your keywords at the beginning. Google stops displaying after 60 characters, so anywhere past that is getting too long. Body and Headers Most blog CMS/Themes typically will use the page title as the URL and as a H1 at the start of the page. Remember, good SEO is about good content structure, so use your headings accordingly. Don't have multiple H1s on a page, H2s should follow H1s, and H3s should follow H2s, etc. Each section header should have one of the two keywords incorporated into them. Try to use the same keyword in the first paragraph directly after the header, and use it in a natural manner in the text. URL Include the keyword in the page URL. Search engines look there to find your page’s relevance, so make sure to include a keyword string in each one. Your CMS or blog theme may just use the page title for the URL, which is perfectly fine. Meta Description Your meta description is designed to sum up your blog post in one short sentence. The meta description is limited to a maximum 160 characters and should summarise your page. Include your keyword string to ensure your readers and Google alike know exactly what your page is about. Usually it will be shown in search results, so make it something that people want to click. Your Blog Content Getting past the mechanics of putting keywords in the technical spaces in your blog, it’s also important to optimise the actual content that you’re publishing. You’ve set up the framework, now what about the interior? Images Blog posts don’t only contain text. Great posts also include images to break up a visual wall of text and add interest for the readers. Google can’t really see images, so you have to add alt text to tell it what it’s seeing. You can also use the title element for an image so when a user places their mouse over it more information appears about the image. This is helpful for Google and the user. In addition, captions are a great way to use your keywords as well as offer more information about the image. Finally, with images, don't forget to use a filename that is descriptive and contains your keywords. Content Google likes posts that reference other posts on the site, as long as they have a logical reference point. Use your keywords as an anchor text to link another post on your site. An easy way to do this is to create a series of posts on the same subject, then daisy chain the links between all of them. It shows authority over the subject, since you obviously have a lot to say about it, and it organises a way for readers to follow your thread. Google likes authority sites, those sites that have many different posts on the same subject. It proves knowledge, which Google values when assigning rank. If you structure your content this way, every post you write will have a great opportunity to rank. Just remember to write for the reader and structure it properly for Google. Jim Stewart, CEO of BloggersSEO, is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger's SEO expert and will share his vast SEO knowledge to equip you with the systems and skills to optimise and monetise your blog using tried and tested techniques. What Jim doesn't know about SEO and blogging isn't worth knowing. The post How To Structure Your Blog Content For Great Rankings appeared first on ProBlogger.

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