I am the guest blogger today at A.R. Silverberry's blog.
My topic… "The Importance of Keywords in Your Marketing Toolbox."
Since Google defuncted (is that even a word? I like it though) their FREE keyword search I've included a new FREE resource in the article. Hope you have time to stop by, leave a comment and share with your social media network.
Thanks a bunch!
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Best wishes,Donna M. McDineMulti Award-winning Children's Author
Connect with Donna McDine on Google+
A Sandy Grave ~ January 2014 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ 2014 Purple Dragonfly 1st Place Picture Books 6+, Story Monster Approved, Beach Book Festival Honorable Mention 2014, Reader's Favorite Five Star ReviewPowder Monkey ~ May 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ Reader's Favorite Five Star ReviewHockey Agony ~ January 2013 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. ~ Reader's Farvorite Five Star ReviewThe Golden Pathway ~ August 2010 ~ Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc.~ Literary Classics Silver Award and Seal of Approval, Readers Favorite 2012 International Book Awards Honorable Mention and Dan Poynter's Global e-Book Awards Finalist 
One of your online marketing tools should be article marketing, and article marketing includes your blog posts.
Simply posting to your site isn't enough. You need to create a search engine optimized article that will bring traffic, increase your visit lengths, and enable the visitor to share your post.
Below is a SlideShare presentation that gives you simple instructions on creating effective Blogger posts. And, much of what's shown, is useful on WordPress and other management systems.
So, off we go:
OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOGGER BLOG POSTS This is the first SlideShare presentation I've made and I'd really appreciate your input (comments):
1. Was it easy to understand?
2. Was it engaging?
3. Do you think it needed music or some kind of sound effect?
4. What's your impression of SlideShare presentations?
Thanks so much for your help!~~~~~
MORE ON ONLINE MARKETINGThe Author Website – Keep it Simple and to the PointBook Marketing – 9 Quick Tips for Being a Guest Blogger on Blogging SitesCommenting on Blogs Still Works~~~~~
To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).Karen Cioffi
Award-Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter
Author Online Presence Instructor
Create and Build Your Author/Writer/Home Business Online Presence
http://www.karencioffi.com/author-online-presence-ecourse/Karen Cioffi Professional Writing Services
http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/karen-cioffi-writing-services/
Five SEO Blog Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Site If you’re new to the writing game, you may not be aware of some of the essential steps needed to actually get in the game - steps that will make your name and brand visible. And, visibility is a ‘biggie’ if you want to increase traffic to your site and move forward in your writing career.
One very interesting fact about having content online is you never know who will end up finding it. It could be an agent, a publisher, someone who wants to hire you for your writing style. You get the idea.
Why is it important to become familiar with SEO blog tips?Simply put, the answer is to generate visibility.
Writing is no longer a solitary career. Now, if you want to create and build visibility, along with readers to your site (traffic), you need to build a platform and promote it.
So, what are some tips to help you get started in the right direction?Well, the very first and most obvious tip is to have a website or blogsite. Once you have one set up, it’s your job to post content to it on a regular basis, no less than once a week, two or three times a week is better though.
It’s that content that will establish you as an expert in your genre or area. This will help you down the road, after you’ve traditionally published or self-published one, five, ten, or more books and/or e-books, and you want to expand your writing career.
But, before we go over five of the basic SEO blog tips for new writers, let’s first go over what SEO actually stands for: Search Engine Optimization. This marketing strategy allows the search engines, such as Google, to find your site and content.
Being aware of SEO blog tips is essential to having the search engines not only find your site, but to also index your content, and make it available to online searchers.
Five SEO Blog Tips:1. Use a keyword in your article title. Try one of the free keyword search tools to find an effective keyword. I use http://googlekeywordtool.com/
A keyword, according to Compendium.com, is “any word or phrase a searcher might use to describe or identify a desired resource on the Internet.”
2. Use that keyword in your article’s subheadings, and be sure to bold or italicize your subheadings.
3. Use that keyword within the content – just don’t overdo it. You don’t want to stuff your article with as many ‘visibility generating’ keywords you can fit in, search engines frown upon this practice. Your article needs to be an informative, engaging, and understandable read.
You primary focus should be to write for your reader.
4. When searching for effective keywords, look for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are words that will move you away from highly competitive keywords.
As an example, if you write business articles, a generic and highly competitive keyword might be ‘incentives.’ I did a Google keyword search and the keyword ‘incentives’ came in at: 1,500,000 global monthly searches, and 823,000 local monthly searches. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use a keyword with that much competition.
That’s where the long-tail keyword comes in.
If you used the keyword ‘business incentive,’ you’d reduce your competition to 22,200 global monthly searches and 14,800 local monthly searches. That’s quite a difference, and it narro
Hi Karen. Good post. It was easy to follow and simple enough to put into practice.
My one comment is regards to the comment that it's best to post early in the morning. I feel this presumes your only readers live in America. For me, living in South Africa, it's okay to post to my blog early, but no Americans will read it for hours. Therefore I rarely post to social media in my morning.
Thanks for the reminder about the need for to use SEO effective keywords. That's one thing I need to remember.
Shirley
Karen, loved the post. It was clear, informative, and easy to understand. I'm trying to get up to speed on this stuff, so it's a huge help to me right now.
I'm going to try this out on one of the blogger blogs I post on.
Thanks again.
Excellent Karen. This is a fresh way to share content which is easy to unerstand and engaging. I think that music or sound effects would detract from it. It's perfect as is. I'll have to give it a try - maybe in my next WOTM post!
Thanks Shirley! I appreciate the input! And, you're so right - the internet is worldwide. I think the time is for all though, no matter where you are. Studies show that people tend to open and read posts early in the morning.
Margaret, Thanks for the input! It's really easy to tweak posts and so worthwhile. Glad you found it helpful.
Maggie, Thanks for the input! Slideshare is such a simple tool to use and does offer a fresh approach to content.
What I especially like about it is you don't need to create a video and you get the HTML code to put on your own site.
This is great, Karen, easy to understand and very helpful. I'll have to keep slideshare in mind!