Often when you’re trying to keep up with writing enough content, it’s hard to find the time to do anything extra.

But that definitely doesn’t mean you should give up. If you split your tasks into small chunks, you will be surprised what you can accomplish.

In this article, I’ll show you 10 two-minute tweaks that can help you improve your blog.

1. Make a Title More Compelling

Even if you’re great at coming up with attention-grabbing titles these days, you most likely have some great posts gathering dust in your archives that could use a better title.

Most readers judge your posts by the title. A few small tweaks like adding an adjective, number, or even rephrasing the title to make the benefits of reading the post clearer could give you a huge boost to your traffic.

Here’s an example:

Old Title: Using Twitter Effectively

New Title: Six Clever Twitter Tricks to Save You Time

It’s easy to see which of those is going to get more attention … yet they could easily describe the exact same post.

2. Link to Another Post

Backlinks are good for SEO Here’s a great one for this Post: 4 Reasons Why Blogging Is Important For Marketing and SEO

One great way to decrease bounce rate is to give your users ample amount of opportunities to check out other related content.

You probably have posts languishing in your archives that hardly anyone sees. Take two minutes to find an appropriate place to link them from an existing post.

You can also link to your new posts from your older articles. Perhaps you’ve gone into a topic in much more depth since you first wrote about it, so you should point your readers to your best material.

3. Update Your About Page

When did you last update your About page? If you’re like most bloggers, you’ve not touched it since you created it … and that might have been years ago.

Take a quick peek right now. Is there anything out of date? Look out for:

Biographical details, new updates, press and mentions, etc.
Information about your services and products – you may have ditched old ones or added new ones.

4. Add a Photo of Yourself

Photos can be a great way to help readers connect because it shows them the person behind the words. If you’ve got a good recent shot (it doesn’t have to be a professional one) add it to your About page.

You could even use it in your header or in your sidebar.

Alternatively, you can add images to your older posts. A photo helps to break up the page and makes it easy to read your content.

5. Remove a Widget from Your Sidebar

Most blog sidebars are hopelessly cluttered. Readers often struggle to find the options they actually want (like subscribing to your blog or following you on Twitter) in the middle of all the clutter.

Take a look at your sidebar and find one widget that you could do without – then remove it. Hint: tag clouds and little calendars aren’t usually adding much to your readers’ experience.

6. Deal With Any Comments

Even if you’re not inundated with comments, it’s easy to get behind with dealing with them. Have a two-minute check for any that need a quick reply … or for any spam that’s snuck in past your filter.

Unanswered questions don’t create a great impression for readers.

They make it look like you don’t care about your blog or that you’re an absent blogger. If you find it hard to keep up, you might want to close comments on posts older than a month.

It’s also a good idea to turn off comments on pages (such as your About page) so that these don’t get cluttered over time.

7. Put More Information on Your Contact Page

Some bloggers put a contact form on their contact page and nothing else. While that’s not a disaster, it does create barriers for readers who may want to contact you in other ways.

Depending on your business, you may not want or need to include a phone number or address on your contact page, but it’s often a good idea to add:

Your email address (not all readers trust that contact forms will work, and they may prefer to create their message to you through their email client).

8. Add “As Featured In”

If you’ve been blogging for a while and have guest posted on other blogs, or been interviewed in a blog or podcast, then make sure your new readers know … especially if those blogs or podcasts are well-known names in your field.

My header includes logos of some of the key sites where I’ve been featured.

OptinMonster also does the same on their front page.

You should use your header or your sidebar for this. That way, every visitor on your site can instantly see that you’re an authority on your topic.

9. Fix a Typo

Typos happen to every blogger … but they can create a poor impression. If your posts and pages are riddled with spelling mistakes, you’ll look less professional and potential clients will – understandably – question whether you’re much good at paying attention to small but important details.

Read carefully through your blog articles starting with the ones that get a lot of traffic. If you spot a typo, fix it.

If you’re sure your work is typo-free, look out for sentences that you can improve or images / videos that you can add.

10. Add a Call to Action

When you get to the end of a blog post, it’s easy to just stop … but that’s a huge wasted opportunity. Instead, you may want to include a “call to action” – a prompt for your reader to do something.

You might want them to:

Leave a comment.
Share your post on social media.
Comment on your post on social media.
Take action in their business or life.
Read a related post on your blog.
Check out one of your product or services that’s related to the post.
… or any other action that would benefit you (and hopefully them too).

Each of these tweaks could take you just two minutes – but it could reap you huge benefits.

Wisdom of Syed Balkhi

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WordPress: August 6 – August 27

Blogging: August 8 – August 22

SEO: August 9

Social Media: August 29

We also offer individual and small group classes in your office or home.

Yes, more can be done but this is key! If you do have time to do more SEO it’s because you NEED better SEO. We can help with that. But if you’re crazy-busy because you have so much work, this may be all you need to do. Create Basic Blogs following Jay Rosen’s advice. Be sure to share it on Social Media; always linking back to the Post on your website.

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WordPress: Sept. 5 – Sept. 26

Blogging: Oct. 5 – Oct. 19

Social Media: Nov. 14

SEO: Nov. 21

We also offer individual and small group classes in your office or home.

There are 70 million new posts each month. As a result, blogging is still a prominent part of an online marketing strategy.

A recent survey, out of all the content marketing modes out there, 90% of businesses used blogs to help market their brands within the last 12 months.

Here’s Why

1. Blogging Builds Loyalty And Trust

Providing advice and reliable information that consumers can use will establish authority on the topics you discuss.

Blogs are a great way to slowly nurture your audience and prove your expertise when it comes to your industry and product line.

2. Blogging Increases Visibility

The next part of building great content is making sure it is search engine optimized. Blogs that answer the questions consumers are asking about in your industry are helpful for SEO.

Additionally, incorporating keywords throughout your captivating and unique headings and subheadings, is a sure-fire way to help increase visibility.

Internal linking is a way to increase visibility. Link building throughout other pages, blogs, and product pages on your site can help build brand visibility, awareness, and authority.

3. Blogging Creates Brand Awareness

New and original content can make your brand more prominent amongst the rest of your competitors.

4. Blogging Drives Engagement

Blogs provide more shareable content than just your products or service posts for consumers to share with others across social media.

Thanks for your Wisdom Kristi Hines

Lists can be a crucial tool in making your post more readable and conveying information more effectively. PLUS Search Engines like lists!

You may have been taught to avoid using bulleted lists. But when you’re writing for a general audience, lists make it easier to take information in. They can also create a more informal and friendly feel.

For instance, compare these two paragraphs:

Version 1:
Some useful tools for new bloggers are Google Docs, which lets you work collaboratively on blog posts; Dropbox, which stores your files in ‘the cloud’ so you can access them from any computer; Audacity, which podcasters often use to edit audio files; and WordPress (of course), which is the most popular blogging platform in the world.

Version 2:
Some useful tools for new bloggers are:

• Google Docs, which lets you work collaboratively on blog posts
• Dropbox, which stores your files in ‘the cloud’ so you can access them from any computer
• Audacity, which podcasters often use to edit audio files
• WordPress (of course), which is the most popular blogging platform in the world

The text is practically identical in both versions. But the second version is much easier to read – especially if the reader is skimming, as they can easily pick out the four tools at the start of the four bullet points.

As you can see, lists also create extra blank space (known as ‘white space’) at the start and end of each line which adds to readability.

Where Could You Use Lists in Your Posts?

• At the end of the introduction, to explain what your post will cover.
• In the middle of the post, to break up a long section.
• When giving suggestions or ideas.
• When linking to several different resources.
• At the end of a post, to help readers decide what to do next.

Thanks for your Wisdom Darren Rowse

You’ve probably heard me caution about adding too many Plugins but this is a good one. Having Related Posts at the bottom of each Post will most likely increase your ‘views’. It’s part of the free Jetpack plugin. Many Themes come with Jetpack already installed – it’s easy to add if you don’t have it. I certainly wouldn’t use everything that comes with Jetpack though – you get to choose what you want activated – or not!

Here’s what Jetpack says about Related Posts:

The Related Posts feature scans all of your posts, analyzes them, and lets you show contextual posts your visitors might be interested in reading after they’re done with whatever post they’re on.

Most sites who activate this see an increase in traffic. Unlike many other related post plugins, we do all the analysis, processing, and serving from our cloud, so there is no additional load on your server. (That’s why many plugins like YARPP or Similar Posts are often banned by web hosts, but Jetpack Related Posts are allowed.)

To start using Related Posts, head to the Jetpack page in your blog’s dashboard and click the Activate button for Related Posts. You can also customize how the related posts section looks by going to your Jetpack → Settings → Traffic page and clicking on the “Related Posts” card.

Now notice my Related Posts below!

1. WordPress is the best SEO

WordPress Focuses on User Experience.

WordPress’s themes and plugins work together to make websites professional, user-friendly, and attractive.

The result?

Visitors enjoy the experience they get on a WordPress site.

They stay longer, decreasing your overall site bounce rate.

If you’re looking to improve your site’s SEO ranking, this is excellent news for you. Google wants to reward websites that provide a great user experience.

2. Optimizing Images for SEO Is Simple on WordPress

Images are essential to your blog posts. One or two of them, used in a timely way, breaks up your blog into interesting, readable sections.

But images don’t only lead readers into the heart of your text.

They’re also powerful tools for SEO, especially when you use WordPress.

WordPress allows you to “create alternative text” for each image you use. This means you can plug in your keywords as image descriptions that’ll be noticed by search engine crawlers.

3. WordPress Is Optimized for Mobile Users

Mobile usage has grown rapidly in the past few years

The great news is if you’re already using WordPress to power your site, you don’t need to do anything extra to make your website accessible on mobile devices.

Why? Most WordPress themes are already optimized for mobile users.

4. WordPress Helps You Integrate Your Campaign with Social Media

Social media is gigantic today, and it’s one of the best platforms for marketing your brand.

What’s more, success in your social media campaign will indirectly improve your SEO ranking.

On WordPress, you can create customized social media buttons for your blog so it’s easier for readers to share your content.

You can add a social media feed to your site.

5. WordPress Has Awesome Plugins Made Specifically for SEO

When you use WordPress, optimizing for higher ranking becomes simple. All you need is to install the right free plugins.

Thanks for your wisdom Julia McCoy

Ecommerce websites live and die by their online presence and sales. The marketplace is fierce with new websites cropping up constantly, but it’s also ridiculously vast and can reach customers you’d never dreamed of reaching in the past. These two facts alone make it pretty clear that your ecommerce website must be easy to understand and easy to find – in terms of SEO or search engine optimization.

The world of SEO is constantly changing, but don’t let that scare you away from some of the concrete tactics that will never, EVER change in the world of SEO. One of those vital tactics is creating good, search-friendly product titles. In fact, they’re so important that we’re dedicating an entire article to helping you create the best titles for your products to help you catch the attention of those desirable customers.

Each product on your website should have a unique product title that not only clearly describes that product but uses terms that your customer will use to search for that item. Basically, the days of clever are gone and have been replaced by concise titles. It’s not as much fun for writers, but you’ll definitely appreciate the fact that you can reach a larger audience.

Read the rest of this important article by Filament Blog HERE

In the age of Instagram, TripAdvisor and Yelp, I don’t think I can overstate the importance of photos to local businesses. Even before platforms like these rose up and put the power of visually representing the customer experience firmly in the hands of the consumer, people wanted to see with their own eyes what they’d be getting for their money.

Don’t believe me? Read on for some compelling evidence to convince you to take GMB photos seriously.

How important are Google My Business photos to local search performance?

As part of BrightLocal (my company)’s recent Google My Business Insights Study, we analyzed the GMB Insights of 45,000 businesses in 36 industries across four countries, in order to learn how this data has changed over time and, crucially, to see if there are any correlations.

Here’s a look at the correlations between the quantities of images visible on a GMB profile and other GMB performance metrics such as website clicks, calls, views on search and more.

Businesses with more GMB photos get more clicks, calls and direction requests

There is a consistent correlation between the number of images on a GMB profile and the numbers of website visits, phone calls and direction requestions that came through Google My Business. The more photos you have on your Google My Business listing, the better your chances of leading customers from discovery to conversion.

We also looked at deviation from the median to get an understanding of exactly how much getting more images on your profile can affect customer actions. Here’s what we found:

• Businesses with more than 100 images get 520% more calls than the average business, while those with just one image get 71% fewer.
• Businesses with more than 100 images get 2,717% more direction requests than the average business, while those with just one get 75% fewer.
• Businesses with more than 100 images get 1,065% more website clicks than the average business, while those with just one get 65% fewer.

Businesses with more GMB photos get more views on search and views on maps

In case you’re fairly new to GMB Insights, here are Google’s own definitions of these metrics:

Views on Search: A customer found the business via Google Search, including local pack results from search.

Views on Maps: A customer found the business via Google Maps.

Looking at deviations from the median, we see that:

• Businesses with more than 100 images get 960% more search views than the average business, while those with just one get 62% fewer.
• Businesses with more than 100 images get 3459% more maps views than the average business, while those with just one get 71% fewer.

Businesses with more GMB photos appear in more direct and discovery searches

Direct search: A customer directly searched for your business name or address.

Discovery search: A customer searched for a category, product, or service that you offer, and your listing appeared.

Here are the key findings from analyzing deviations from the median:

• Businesses with more than 100 images get 713% more discovery searches than the average business, while those with just one get 65% fewer.
• Businesses with more than 100 images get 1038% more direct searches than the average business, while those with just one get 71% fewer.

How to get more photos on your Google My Business profile

Post them yourself

Seems obvious, right? But as the original GMB Insights Study shows, 6% of businesses with photos have just one photo on their GMB profile, and a shocking 24% have just 2 to 5 photos!

This is very easily remedied with some creative thinking, but you need to remember that to qualify as a legitimate business photo on GMB, it needs to reflect the customer experience, so I’m afraid photos of your staff every day isn’t going to cut it.

If you can, hold events and invite your customers along. This is a great opportunity to take some snaps (ideally with customer consent, of course). Take photos of interesting parts of your office interior, too, and you can definitely get away with multiple photos of the outside of your location building, provided you have one.

Get customers to post them

It’s very possible that upon leaving your business, any Google-using customers will receive a request for a review from Google

To make the most of this, try to encourage your customers to take photos of their customer experience during it, rather than after the fact. Car dealers are performing exceptionally well in GMB, so look to see what their photo-generation strategies are.

For example, if they’ve bought a luxury item, get your salespeople to ask if the customer would like a photo taken of them with it. To the customer, you’ve just done them a favor but for your business, you’ve just put a brand-building bullet in the chamber of their smartphone.

If you’re a service-area business without a physical location like a plumber, decorator or builder, ask to take photos of your handiwork once it’s complete. Get the happy customer in the shot and you’ve done even better!

Contact us if you’d like some assistance in setting up or updating your Google my Business page.

Thanks for your Wisdom Jamie Pitman