Tag: seo techniques

Magazine platforms mean everything to your business model, which means they mean everything to ours, too. We’ve built our business on multiplatform publishing, which includes everything from a portal to social media to events to ecommerce content strategy.

Now, magazine platforms have taken on an entirely new dimension. Is it just us, or does Apple Newsstand seem antiquated these days? With that company, Google, and of course Facebook jumping in to the game, the temptation is for digital publishers to just hand over all content and call it a day.

But, of course, you can’t do that. Your approach must be much more nuanced and considered. After all, why do these services want your content so bad? Because it’s worth a lot of money!

Our most-read audience development posts of 2015 reveal a desire for better understanding of email marketing, search optimization and social media best practices
This year we’ve tackled everything from email marketing to creating blockbuster posts and creating social media plans in our Audience Development articles. However, there are a few that have consistently been our highest

I’ve always adored SEO when it comes to content creation. After all, don’t you want to write about the things people are searching for? Why would you write about anything else? A blockbuster post, which we consider any post that drives a considerable percentage of your website traffic every month, is usually in your top ten to one hundred traffic-driving posts. They’re usually composed of evergreen content too, which doesn’t expire quickly

More often than not, it’s the result of picking a great keyword with high search volume and a low number of competing pages. Over time, it could drive thousands or hundreds of thousands of page views to your site every month.

In other cases, you may have just gotten lucky with your blockbuster post. But lightning doesn’t usually strike twice, or at least not dozens of times. And you definitely want more of them. If one blockbuster post is sending you 5,000 unique visitors every month, two could send you 10,000. Three could send you 15,000. Wouldn’t you like to spend a couple hours writing three articles that send you 15,000 unique visitors every month?

Audience Development is at the center of the Mequoda Method. It’s the foundation of our methods for building large, profitable email lists. Since Mequoda has been Mequoda, we have written about effective audience development, and this year we went back to update some of our most fundamental lessons – many that ended up on the list you’ll find here, of our most-read posts.

Audience development is a fundamental part of online publishing. Our top ten audience development strategy posts dive into search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and the website conversion architecture necessary for building an online audience. They were the most viewed posts in these categories that we published in 2013. Enjoy!

Each year, as the Mequoda team gets together with our Gold Members at our annual Mequoda Gold Member Summit, there’s a bit of magic in the air, it feels like a family reunion. And like a family, we get together to share with each other all of the great things we’ve made happen over the past 365 days.

Mequoda’s only purpose in life is to prevent any other publishing company from going out of business, ever. That’s why we offer our decades of experience, proven best practices and user-friendly Mequoda Method for digital publishing success in our three-day Internet Marketing Intensive, the definitive training course in publishing and marketing content online.

You may never be Rupert Murdoch.

But you could become Consumer Reports, Morningstar, Meredith or any of the many publishers who are currently making millions from their content on the Internet by attending Mequoda’s Internet Marketing Intensive this January in New York City.

White hat SEO techniques are complex and take time to acquire.

Kim and I teach our in-house Audience Development Workshop 10 or more times per year. And yet every time I sign a new audience development consulting client, Kim needs to remind me to schedule the workshop.

I am both a journalist and engineer by training and tend to focus on the mechanics of what needs to be done. I’m all about getting the keyword research started that will form the website taxonomy and guide the editors content generation, headline writing, and tagging on a day-to-day basis. I know I’m in this for long haul with the client, whether we’re tuning up an existing website or starting from scratch, it’s going to take years to make white hat SEO as natural as good spelling and grammar.

The word “natural” should be synonymous with white hat SEO. Natural writing and natural linking building are parts of this very in-depth language of optimization. And it’s these two that help connect with audiences and satisfy requirements put forth by Google.

What do you consider natural SEO? Let’s take a look at a couple suggestions.

With the recent Google Penguin update it can be very confusing deciding which SEO techniques to utilize. Here are a few articles that might help dispel the confusion.

Buying links can come back to haunt you.

There was a time when black hat SEO techniques were used to generate significant money. Do you remember searching for content and receiving page results where there was no content – only the keyword phrase repeated over and over?

This was one of my first experiences with black hat SEO, and back in the day, people could get away with this. They would create “optimized” pages with no actual content, and would sell advertising. To this day I wonder about the revenue they generated by doing this; I imagine it was significant.

Discover dozens of successful methods for starting, running and getting the most from your content-based business

Yesterday, I talked about what best practices are and where they come from.

Today, let’s talk about best practices that will be discussed at the Mequoda Summit East 2011 in just two weeks.

Learn How to Start and Run a Successful Online Business at the Mequoda Summit East 2011, September 13-16th

Discover first-hand the techniques used by online publishers and content marketers for supercharging your online business

(Boston, MA)—The Mequoda Summit East 2011, a hands-on program featuring keynote presentations, panel sessions, interactive workshops and networking opportunities, will take place September 13-16th, 2011 in the greater Boston area.

This Mequoda Summit will feature a new three-track format, new speakers and all the networking opportunities Mequoda Summits are famous for. The agenda for the Mequoda Summit East 2011 includes the following:

Early bird pricing for the Mequoda Summit East 2011 expires on July 31st

Register now for the Mequoda Summit East 2011 and receive the lowest price available

Dear Publishing Professional,

It is that time again to start considering your place at the Mequoda Summit East 2011. If you want to join an intimate group of knowledgeable online publishers so you can begin adopting best practices that have led to success.

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week

Three reasons why we are good at SEO

In the Mequoda Daily yesterday, I talked about writing and titling blockbuster SEO articles.

This method of targeting relevant keyword phrases your audience searches for is a true white hat SEO technique because it involves researching questions being asked and providing informative, high-quality answers.

Care2’s CEO Randy Paynter shares 3 important developments in SEO, helpful for all online publishers and digital marketers

In an Audience Development panel at IMAG’s 8th annual conference in San Francisco last week, Randy Paynter from Care2, the largest online community for healthy and green living, shared three important developments in SEO.

1. Google’s Panda Update: We’ve written about the Panda Update and have offered white-hat SEO tips to help ensure your high-quality content is being found. But what and who determines if your content is “high quality”? Paynter shared a great resource straight from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog that offers over 20 questions publishers should ask themselves to answer this very question. Another important, yet potentially scary fact Paynter noted is that Google is penalizing entire sites, not just pages. So if 90% of the content on your site is “high quality”, but 10% is considered “spammy” by Google’s new standards, your entire site may be penalized.

Learn white hat SEO strategies for ranking higher in search engines during our SEO Campaign Management session at the Summit

In the Mequoda Daily yesterday, I talked about a rare chance to see inside one of the most successful SEO campaign management operations on the planet that includes hard data, which has now been gathered over a two and a half year period.

When it comes to SEO campaign management, theory is great but skill-building activities are priceless.

Easy SEO techniques for titling a blog, naming a product or writing headlines for a landing page

If a blog or sales letter is never found in a search engine, does it even exist? If that same blog or sales letter doesn’t speak the same language as its target audience, does it make a sound?

Think about these two things for a minute.

If you’re spending all of this time writing and launching a landing page, don’t you think it would be worth a little extra time to make sure the only light of day it sees isn’t through a tab on your website, or through your selective email list?

Keyword research, in its simplest form, is easy.

Catch up on the Mequoda Daily’s blog posts for this past week

Start writing for the Internet so your website can be found and indexed by search engines

Get ranked in Google and make search engines become your largest source of targeted website traffic!

Once you have identified your target audience or demographic, you must streamline your online marketing strategy. Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vital. For a basic overview and useful tips,

Sam Knoll knows his way around the business world. He has had a number of successful careers including in manufacturing, mail order, and retail. His latest enterprise is an online newsletter devoted to health and dietary supplements.