What makes your blog float to the top?

Published on by Jean M. Cogdell

Is it a catchy title, fancy SEO or what?

Anyone know where to order a website life jacket?

Do you know what an SEO is?

This writer hasn’t a clue!

Learning to market and use SEOs is just one of the many things writers are faced with everyday.

In fact the more I write, the more I discover writers need to wear many hats.

Writers need to market what we write, whether it’s a blog post, a children’s book or a 600 page novel. If we want people to buy it, we have to sell it. It seems writing is also a business of sorts.

Writers have to be editors, before we send it to a proper editor. Writers have to be illustrators before we hire someone who can draw. And the list goes on.

Neil Patel said, “Your content marketing campaign will fail unless you integrate SEO.”
Read more at Business2Business. At his blog, Kissmetrics.com, he explains that marketing your blog is like having a conversation between two people. SEO meets Content. Their conversation gets Google’s attention.

Nope, still don’t understand.

head-46204_640

Branding?? Nope, no longer done in Texas. The cattle here are bar tagged just like everything at Walmart.

cowboys-754724_640

Hey, but the Cowboys still look just as hot.

Steve Masters lists 5 Ways To Come Up With Original Blog Post Ideas  Over at the business 2 business community blog.

So SEO and Branding are two jobs I’m just going to let dust cover for now. These two things are just way over my head.

How about you guys? Any of you pros at this SEO and Branding stuff?

Did this help? Anyone? Anyone still there?

All this info made my head hurt. I need a glass of Merlot. I’m going to go find something to do now that will let my brain rest. Maybe watch Judge Judy.

You can find me on Twitter @jeancogdell, Facebook at jean.cogdell and Amazon.com, stop by and say hey! Please remember to with a click and share this post with your Twitter peeps and Facebook fans.

 

Related articles

14 thoughts on “What makes your blog float to the top?”

  2. I’m definitely not a pro, not even close, but those I’ve found that have what I would call successful blogs and successful books focus more on being social rather than SEO, etc. Of course, they’re “being themselves” falls quite nicely in the whole “branding” scheme of things. They’re good neighbors in the social media neighborhood. Not forced, but true. Just being friendly to other bloggers and writers out there, sharing content from others, commenting, etc. Might be the slowest way to go about it, but I think it might be about the most stable way, too.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Hi Jean, really interesting post.i can’t pretend to have enough experience to offer any advice. But I think that we all have a Unique Selling Point – ourselves and the way we see the world. So I intend to be me, and write to please myself, and if other people like it, or even like some of it, that’s a bonus.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. And that is exactly why I hate this writing field now… Don’t get me wrong, I could do each of these things with ease. But it irks me that it has become necessary at all. This idea of marketing the writer rather than the writing, to sell a particular book or a writer’s persona, rather than have the readership pick it up on merits – this is particularly aggravating.

    But then the internet world happens to be like that too. This SEO business is another one of the intellectual robberies/scams that have come to be ennobled as the right thing to do. For example, if I am a worthless writer and I have the best SEO team in the world, even my mediocrity will come up tops on the Google search. But if you are a great writer, with no SEO techniques, you will languish somewhere at the bottom of the pile. This is not just about the writing field, but as applied to any other field, it is just this – crooked marketing. I think it is cheating. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to believe that a writer has to be judged on the basis of his/her writings, not her website, not her tv persona, not her cute interviews or splendidly photogenic images caught ‘by accident’.

    Branding is just about as irksome too. Branding what? Your image? yourself? This objectification of everything, assigning a value or appraising a value on such intangibles is also some kind of scam approach. But look at the world – everyone is busy doing just that. There used to be a time when writers used to just write, not think of the marketing, the publicity, the salesmanship etc. It is sad. But may I just say this without offending anyone? If you are a genius, you don’t need marketing. If your work is of exceptional quality, it sells itself. We have just become cynical and deluded in thinking that we need these things to make us successful. Sorry about the long rant, but just had to say it, in your defense. Great writers need not resort to gimmicks, just have faith in their own selves 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Whew! Now that was some response. Thank you. No, I really mean it. I love exchange filled with passion. I agree with most of what you’ve said. However, even the best writers can get lost in the abundance of talent. Publishes have more than they can sift through and that’s why self-publishing was born. Even some established authors are going that route. The future will prove very interesting.

      Liked by 2 people

Comments are closed.