Generating New Content For Your Blog
I have been optimizing websites for search engines for quite some time now (roughly 6 years). While some things can easily be overlapped from blogging to traditional website optimization, other things are drastically different. Link building, social media promotion, contests, and on-page optimization are all SEO techniques that can be applied to both blogs and traditional websites. While content building is not the only optimization difference, I believe it might be the biggest different between blogs and websites. I mean, I don’t go to a site selling diamonds for the “latest news” about diamonds. I do, however, go to a diamond retail site to buy a nice bracelet or necklace for my wife (while the differences could go on I have decided to limit it to content…for this post). So, naturally, the biggest hurdle for me when I started optimizing personal blogs was the constant generating of relevant , unique content.
From early on I enjoyed fishing for links, forum commenting, and manipulating on page factors, but writing 5 – 7 days a week (or more) came at a price. While content generation will not be a problem for some bloggers, I have decided to list a few tips that helped me when I added blogging to my daily list of activities.
- Large Pool Of Ideas – It took my quite a while to generate a blog that I felt I could reasonably talk about without sounding foolish. I work as an SEO in the travel industry, I like to blog, and I am dad. It only seemed natural to combine all these things for me. Plus, it gives me greater choice among topics. While I might not excel as much in one particular area I should always have something to write about.
- Pen and Paper – In the digital age I can’t believe I am even bringing this up (if you don’t like paper use your net book, iphone, or blackberry). What I recommend doing is writing every idea that you have down on paper. I can’t even explain how many ideas I lost from a restaurant to my house. Sometimes I would think of 3-4 decent ideas for a blog posting, but by the time I would get home and in the house I had forgotten all but one decent idea. And you and I know not all “decent” ideas turn into a good post. After a few weeks of practicing this technique I realized I did have a lot of good ideas. Some days I would write down 7 – 8 ideas which I could turn into 3 – 4 good posts.
- Create A Weekly Column – Create some type of catchy idea that you can write about each week (Mommy Monday). This will allow a few days for you to generate some good content.
- Guest Blogging – Offer guest blogging opportunities to encourage other good writers to contribute to your blog. Also, don’t forget to make it worth it for the guest blogger. Give them a few links or maybe even allow them to sell one of their own products on the page they publish on your site.
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few days I will review my favorite apps or plugins. The reviews will apply to the web industry.
Marc is currently obtaining a Masters Of Arts in Religion. Although not considered well read by a friends wife and a conversation hog by another friends wife, Marc spends hours wasting time on political/news websites, blogging, and reading religious books. Lastly, he quintessentially defines football fanatic. 
