While there are endless ideas available on what changes to expect, here are three of the more interesting online marketing predictions.

1. Content Grows Up

According to Jayson DeMers, contributor for Forbes, content is going to grow up as people start to see that, while new posting new content regularly still holds value, those 500 and 600 word blog posts are too easily turned out.

Jordan Teicher, contributor to an article on Contently titled 21 Content Marketing Predictions for 2016, agrees with DeMers.

Instead, predictions conclude that more and more entrepreneurs and content marketers will see greater results from delivering more precise and thorough (more helpful) content.

Amanda Todorovich, content marketing director at Cleveland Clinic and contributor with Content Marketing World, supports this expectation:

Expect: bigger, longer and more in-depth information surface as sites begin sharing more 1500 and 2000+ word blog posts. Quality over quantity.

2. Content Gets a Makeover

Another online marketing prediction concludes that many of those short blog posts will get a makeover, which is called content repurposing.

It is believed that content repurposing will finally have its year in the sun as entrepreneurs find this form of content marketing to be an invaluable tool that increases the return on their initial investments.

This is the opinion of Garrett Moon, co-founder of CoSchedule, Sujan Patel and many others who expect to see content comebacks and repurposing for a better user experience and more engagement.

Expect: companies to turn to content repurposing to help personalize their tone and point their content toward new audiences.

3. Content Creators Get Promoted (Sorta)

According to Adam Blake, contributor for HubShots, this year may change the dynamics of your marketing team. He predicts that SEO managers and content creators will be fulfilling the same role, eliminating the need for two different employees working in two different departments.

While this is just an opinion, two new ideas come into play with this assessment of this year’s biggest online marketing changes:

More than ever, Blake’s idea raises the bar on who you should be choosing to write when outsourcing original content, showing entrepreneurs and content managers what they should have known all along: when you hire the right content writers, there’s a good chance you won’t need the assistance of a SEO manager or expert.

Expect: more and more companies merging these two job titles and reaping the benefits of hiring capable professional writers to do the job of several.

Good Year for Great Content

This is just a small collection of online marketing predictions, but the recurring theme can be easily spotted:

To rise above other brands, your business goals should include providing great content, the kind of content that provides value to your audience.

The post 3 Online Marketing Predictions That Will Change the Content Game appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

That’s because Buzzfeed has quickly become a leader among news sources as well as social media platforms. So, what can marketers learn from watching this success story unfold?

Shareable lists are popular but these aren’t the only lessons to be found when watching Buzzfeed.

Here are some more tips and techniques to be noted and utilized by marketers looking to establish themselves.

1. Become Dedicated to Shareable Content

Buzzfeed is a top role model and a tough act to follow when it comes to shareable content, but don’t let that discourage you from trying. Your goal should be always to create something that connects with readers that they would want to share.

2. Write Headlines that Create a Traffic Detour

Sometimes the only chance that you will get to impress potential readers is the headline you write. This is why it is essential that you write catchy, traffic-driving titles that are sure to detour traffic.

Try rewriting some great hit titles that you have seen or using a title generator, but remember to make it original.

3. Keep Your Focus Interactive and Compatible

Make sure that you are writing, formatting and visualizing content that is interactive and compatible.

Whether your readers are on a smartphone, tablet or computer, they need to be able to easily navigate your blog and read your posts. That best recommendations are for simple, well-spaced written content, high-quality visually appealing images and easy to read headlines.

4. Variety is Key to Your Success Story

Don’t just stay inside of your comfort zone. Make sure that you are creating and publishing a wide variety of content types and information. You want to appeal to as many interests in your target audience as possible.

From different post types to a variety of visual aids and infographics, you can spice things up and never become too predictable.

By watching Buzzfeed climb the ladder of success, marketers and consumers can learn how to secure their very own success story based on better traffic, more readers and higher engagement with consumers.

The post Is Buzzfeed’s Success an Easy Act for Marketers to Follow? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

If you have ever looked into using eBooks for small business marketing, then you have most likely heard that eBooks are a great form of content for business marketing.

However, if you’re new to the content marketing scene, then it may be somewhat confusing…

The Benefits of Using eBooks for Small Business Marketing

For anyone who is looking to build their business online, eBooks offer a wide array of tangible benefits.

• Lead Generation – This is the one you are probably most familiar with, offering a free eBook in exchange for an email address. This allows you to build your email list and potentially generate new leads.
• Thought-Leadership – Obviously, one of the hardest tasks to accomplish is establishing yourself as a leader in your industry. By publishing and sharing an eBook, you can position yourself as an authority in your niche.
• Share Your Business With Customers – One of the biggest problems with growing your business may simply be that your potential customers do not understand what you’re offering. With an eBook that thoroughly explains your products or services, and their benefits, you can help your clientele understand what you offer.
• Build Your Brand – Whether you are selling products, services, your business or yourself, building your personal brand is an essential part of positioning yourself as someone that consumers can trust and look to.
• Offer Expertise – Whatever your area of specialty may be, an eBook can help you share your valuable expertise with your target audience, which further builds trust and establishes you as an authority in your niche.

Using PDF eBooks for List Building & Lead Generation

The simplest type of eBook comes in a PDF format, and can be created using your average Microsoft Word or other writing program. These are great for small business marketing because other than the writing part, they can be put together relatively easily.

Simply use whatever email program that you prefer (AWeber, MailChimp, etc.) to create a popup or sign up form to capture emails and have it redirect to a hidden page or post on your website.

This allows you to easily build and grow your emailing list and generate leads without having to sit and send out each copy of your eBook individually.

For those who are already on your email list, simply send out a special newsletter advertising the free eBook download.

Publishing on Amazon Kindle for Authority & Profit

For the more experienced business marketers, you may want to consider publishing on Amazon Kindle for eReaders. This option offers the chance to establish your authority, share valuable information and still make a profit.

That is not to mention, Amazon also offers a free preview of the first few pages. This allows you to insert links to your site that users can follow even if they cannot afford to purchase the eBook.

Although there is a bit more work involved in publishing via Amazon, it offers plenty of benefits that make it worth the while.

The most important ingredient for this type of eBook publishing would be creating plenty of hype before actually releasing the eBook.

Regardless of what type of eBook you choose to publish and promote, there are numerous benefits that can be had by the savvy startup or small business.

The best choice is simply to decide which method is best for your business and hire an ebook writer today.

The post How to Use eBooks for Fantastic Small Business Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The growth of your freelance writing career will depend greatly upon how you approach your work as well as whom you choose to work for.

Strategy, planning and organization can be vital for your freelance writing career but you’ll also need to be savvy and have skills related to business and technology.

If you’re not the most adept person in these areas, working daily in the field of freelance writing will help you build the skills needed to become a highly respected writer.

These four steps will also help get your freelance business off of the ground.

1. Find Work as a Freelance Writer

Once your writing career is established, you will miss having days without deadlines and free time to write about your personal interests. For the moment, however, your main goal is choosing a reputable source for freelance writing jobs, somewhere that will help you advance in your writing career.

There are numerous websites for freelance writers and none of them share the same policies and functions, so you will have to choose the platform that works best for your needs and the skills you have to offer.

It would be impossible to list all of the freelance sites providing work for writers, so here are a few worthy of mention.

Fiverr

Writers create small advertisements called gigs which offer ultra-cheap freelance services. While $5.00 seems grossly undesirable for someone with above average writing skills, it is important to think of Fiverr as an excellent source for making new connections.

These connections are site owners and managers who’ve grown weary of sifting through gigs every time they need an article or blog post written.

If you take your work and the deadlines seriously, you’ll gain popularity quickly due to customer feedback and the five star rating system.

Note: It’s against Fiverr rules to trade contact information with your customers but if they like your work, the more resourceful ones will hunt you down and hire you full time. I now manage the content of several blogs due to my humble beginnings at Fiverr.

Freelancer

Completely opposite from the Fiverr platform, the Freelancer site allows website owners and content managers to post their writing projects so freelance writers can bid to get the jobs they want.

Freelancer gives writers access to larger projects including articles, blog posts and product descriptions.

If you are an American freelance writer and English is your first language, you will have an advantage that does not require underbidding to get the jobs you want.

By meeting deadlines and delivering topnotch work, your freelancer portfolio will lure in direct freelance writing offers.

Note: You are only guaranteed payment for work on Freelancer if the employer has uploaded a down payment, called a milestone, for the writing project. While the rates won’t compare to the well paid writers at Crowd Content, this is a great site to learn about the world of freelance writing.

Crowd Content

I have been writing professionally for more than five years. In my personal experience, no other freelance writing site compares to the variety of work and the money that can be made on Crowd Content.

Unlike other sites where writers are charged or paid unfairly and promotions are slow coming, the Crowd Content platform protects the writer and rewards him well for delivering pristine work on time.

2. Sites to Avoid

There are many other great websites for freelance writers, but there are a few platforms to avoid. Personally, I was not impressed with the iwriter platform. Writers are often forced to complete the work they accept within extremely short deadlines, often less than an hour.

You won’t have access to larger paying jobs until you’ve spent a considerable amount of time working for peanuts, and their rating system is severely lacking.

You also won’t have much luck on the Elance platform, which is now called Upwork, until you have established yourself as a successful writer and have an impressive portfolio or solid writing samples.

On this site, you may find that a formal education is necessary to compete with the many other freelancers who are also looking for work.

3. Start Your Writer’s Portfolio

As a freelance writer, it is important to remember that the work you complete for others is no longer owned by you once payment has been received. However, it is highly recommended that you create a writer’s portfolio and share the links to some of your best work.

You should also strive to keep this portfolio updated with recent projects as they are completed.

Note: Regardless of how talented you are a writer now, your writing skills will improve with each new project completed, and this will be evident in your portfolio. There are several sites to choose from but I have found that Clippings Me is the best place to start your own portfolio …and absolutely free unless you choose the optional upgrade.

Establish Credibility with a Website

Regardless of how tech savvy you are, a website that showcases your work and services is detrimental to your successful freelance writing career. There are many options available but if you need something that is both affordable and simple to use, a writer’s website on the WordPress platform will be easiest to manage.

Many successful freelance writers today have opted to include a blog on their dedicated websites to help establish credibility in the field.

It is highly recommended that you also add a blog to your site and write about things which are closely related to the services you provide and helpful to current and future clients.

4. Socialize and Interact Online

There are numerous websites and social media platforms to help you advance as a freelance writer but this will involve dedication and engagement.

Not only will you need to share interesting and relevant information through guest blogging and social media, but you will also need to like, retweet and share the content of others to build a strong rapport in the community.

Social Media

Recommended platforms for freelance writers include Facebook and Twitter. Also, it is important for freelance writers not to overlook the value of LinkedIn and Google Plus when looking for work and advancement.

Guest Blogging

Never underestimate the value of guest blogging.

While you won’t receive immediate reward in the form of payment, your article or blog post will help you establish credibility in the field. In the process, you will also gain helpful links for your writer’s website and add variety to your online portfolio.

Guest blogging on reputable sites such as the Crowd Content blog requires engagement after your articles are published.

For your success, you should share articles to your preferred social media platforms, and respond to questions and comments left by others.

The four steps listed above will help you lay the foundation for a successful freelance writing business. While there is still much more to be learned, this is a great beginning for any serious freelance writer.

The post How Did I Build My Successful Freelance Writing Career? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Typically, it doesn’t take new freelance writers long to realize that writing great articles is as much about resources as it is about spelling, grammar and punctuation skills.

Unless you were one of the lucky few, your early days as a writer didn’t rake in a lot of dough, so those writer resources had to be cheap… or better yet, free.

ALSO – Access Thousands of Freelance Writing Jobs

If you are a successful writer who understands the importance of short and longtail keywords, high page rank linking, and SEO optimized content, you likely have some of your favorite tools installed on your browser or bookmarked for easy access.

Here’s mine.

1. SEOQuake

The SEOQuake toolbar and plug-in is an excellent free resource for a number of SEO practices.

From finding high-quality links to include in your optimized content to analyzing the keyword density of the competition, the SEOQuake toolbar delivers instant access to a wealth of information as you browse the web.

Once it is installed, you will immediately be rewarded with new information regarding your keywords and whom you should be linking to, such as page rank and the age of the website.

For the more advanced SEO user, you can also explore Google SERPs, perform a website SEO analysis, obtain a website’s whois information and much more.

You can also filter your results each and every time you search for information, thanks to the SEOQuake toolbar that will remain in the upper left corner to eliminate the links you have no intention to use.

2.  Small SEO Tools Plagiarism Checker

With so much information available on the Internet about your topic, there’s a good chance that some of your word choices may have already been used by other writers. With the plagiarism checker at SmallSeoTools.com, you can paste your article into the blank field and allow this free tool to score your article for originality.

The image below shows an excerpt scoring 100 percent in originality. However, if there had been any commonly used phrases or duplicate content found by the free plagiarism checker, the line would have been highlighted with red rather than green. By clicking on the plagiarized content, you will be taken to the original source.

3. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

If you aren’t familiar with some of the great things happening over at CoSchedule, then you may not have heard of their free Headline Analyzer tool. As you probably already know, your article or blog post title is one of the most important aspects of the entire post. This is because your headline may be the only impression that you get to make on your perspective audience.

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.”

Brian Clark, CopyBlogger

The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer scores your title based on a number of factors, such as unique and emotional word usage, length, search engine optimization and sentiment.

With its unique scoring system, you can ensure that your title stands out from the crowd and is designed to generate interest and promote clicks.

#4 – Hubspot Topic Generator

Hubspot’s Topic Generator is another great free tool when you have keywords but lack a clear topic and title. This topic generator allows you to enter up to 3 keywords (nouns) from which it generates numerous blog post titles.

This is a great tool for writers because you can use a title exactly as suggested or use it for inspiration in creating your own topic and title.

The three keywords chosen for the results below were: freelance writers, content creation and free writing tools. With the right results, you will have enough titles for an entire week.

#5 – Google Keyword Planner

Determining the best keywords for a website or even just a blog post can be a serious undertaking. In order to help things along, the Google Adwords Keyword Planner is a great free tool that cal tell you the search volume for a particular keyword, related keywords and the CPC (cost-per-click) of the keywork in question.

It is a great way to determine what the most competitive keywords are, find long-tail keywords that are easy to rank for and hone your keyword strategy.

These are five go-to writing tools used by professional writers who not only appreciate ongoing collaboration, but also want their clients to see positive results with the content provided.

There are still many other free writer resources that deserve to be mentioned, providing aid to freelance writers on every facet of content creation from idea planning to sharing.

Which free tools can you add to this list? Please share in the comments section below.

The post Amazing Content: 5 Free Tools You Need for Your Writer’s Playbook appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It is no surprise that, across the board, most of these experts say bad will be the biggest pitfall for businesses in 2016.

Google loves fresh content, giving better ranking to websites that consistently add new articles, blog posts and other information on a regular basis.

With this kind of pressure, site owners and content marketers struggle to keep the flow of good content coming.

Sadly, the pressure of always having to publishing content can sometimes lead to the publishing of some really bad content.

What is Bad Content?

Obviously, for a content marketing campaign to be successful, you must be meticulous regarding typos, formatting errors, misspellings and even worse… poor research and inconsistent data.

Still, there are other bad content practices that must be done away with in 2016 such as…

1. Duplicate Content

Automated software can be beneficial for overworked content marketers but you should avoid posting duplicate content across your social media platforms.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the rest should all be original. Stay away from article spinning and other second rate content writing practices.

This year the competition for viewership and online real estate is expected to be tougher than ever so be unique to your audience.

2. Too Much Promotion

Just say no to overly promoted content for your content marketing campaign. Sure, everything you are going to publish will be promotional is some way …but it doesn’t need to be so obvious.

Focus on how it was, back in the beginning, when the original goal of content marketers was simply providing free information that would benefit potential clients and customers.

3. Poorly Formatted Content 

2016 content marketing techniques include getting rid of those giant blocks of text that readers and followers will shy away from.

Even the best content will be skimmed over or worse, ignored, if it is not easy to read.

Optimized subheadings, bullet points, links to sources and yes!

Infographics should all be an important part of your marketing campaign.

4. Following Content Marketing Rules

If you are a bit of a content marketing rebel, you already know that rules are made to be broken.

While you can find some really good advice about great articles and blog posts online, you should know that not all business models benefit from the same cookie cutter content marketing ‘rules’.

Be trendy or march to the beat of your own drum so long as you remember to provide quality.

5. Content Without Personality

Liz Murphy from B2C writes, “The most common of those rules being the use of second-person narrative, which is defined by the use of the pronoun “you,” as if you’re addressing someone directly …often leads to boring, instructional writing that’s devoid of personality.”

Of course there’s exceptions to this statement and there’s other ways content can lack personality, but avoiding second person is a good rule of thumb.

6. Playing it Safe with Content

This goes back to the pitfall about following content marketing rules. Break them!

Find your voice and write in your real (and educated) personality with authority on the topic.

If writing in second person makes you happy, then do it, but most importantly, be consistent and write with a respectable dose of personality.

7. Stale Titles

Some of the best content is overlooked because of tired titles that have been used time and again. Be creative in choosing interesting and catchy titles for your articles and blog posts.

Don’t let ho-hum and over-used titles steal your content marketing thunder.

A great tool to improve your headlines is Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer. Paste in your title idea and get scored on elements such as length, sentiment, and word balance until you come up with a catchy title, reflected by a high score.

8. No Show, All Tell

Want to know another technique that will make your articles blog posts reach more of your target market in 2016? Stop thinking of of content marketing as simply writing!

This year, experts predict that more and more site owners and content marketers will realize the benefits of using visual content.

Videos and infographics will be on the rise this year which means increased exposure for sites that figure this out first and start producing interesting, high-quality videos.

These are just a few of the many content marketing pitfalls that will trip many site owners and writers up in the New Year. Make 2016 your brand’s best year yet with top quality content that avoids these and many other content marketing pitfalls.

Which content marketing strategies will you change in 2016?

The post 8 Content Practices That You Need to Stop Now appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Keeping up with it all can be more than a little confusing, huh?

In the hopes of achieving reader engagement and building an impressive following, most marketers will be publishing daily and weekly blog posts in 2016.

How can you be sure all of that hard work and money spent buying blog posts is going to pay off?

According to market researchers, below are five of the best content writing practices to be seen in 2016. Most of these you have already seen in action, but a few of these blog post ideas may surprise you.

The post 5 Types of Blog Posts You Should Publish in 2016 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

So how exactly does someone publish great content that isn’t about themselves?

The post Content Creation: It’s Not Always About You! appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The online community is an untapped source of SEO gold that is successfully mined and brought to surface with user generated content.

Online Community, Your Personal Goldmine

How do I love thee, online community? Let me count the ways….

Sorry, some love had to be injected into this topic because once you see the value that  community can bring to your website, you might get emotional …and that’s okay.

In fact, most site owners and content managers work so hard at building good SEO, they overlook some of the easiest (and most obvious) optimization goldmine opportunities.

Online Community Generates SEO Love

Skeptical?

That’s what happens when you give all of your attention to SEO and it doesn’t return your love with traffic and search engine rankings for your website. Listed below are some of the best reasons to fall in love with an online community and collect some SEO gold for your website.

#1 – For the Love of Content

At this point, you are well aware of the relationship needs that exist between your website and Google. Great content is absolutely necessary for this love to thrive and grow. An online community can add literally hundreds of pages of great content to your site, at no cost to you!

#2 – More Hang, Less Bounce

Interaction that occurs within the community will spread to give your entire website a warm fuzzy SEO feeling. This lower bounce rate builds website value and increases optimization as more and more visitors decide to hang out.

#3 – Here’s Linking at You, Kid

Natural links are great for SEO but very difficult to achieve. With an community built by users sharing their life experiences and information learned in the process, your website gains much needed credibility and turns the head of Google and other search engines.

Best of all, your users become invested in your online community, and begin caring that it is being used correctly.

#4 – Suitors for your Site

An online community is a superb way to improve the level of traffic coming to your website. Even better, much of this improved traffic will be returning visitors who have found your website to be helpful, interesting or entertaining.

#5 – You Can’t Run from my Love

Your visitors’ previous exit strategies diminish as they stay and clicks through the various categories of your site, checking out pages upon pages of your amazing SEO optimized content.

Research shared by the University of Michigan reports a 19 percent increase in profits for sites with online communities.

User Generated Content and the Online Community

Whilst the explanation is entertaining and rather cosmo, the facts remain true and accurate. The online community is an untapped goldmine in SEO benefits and Google is going to fall in love with you all over again.

These results are provided with help from your target audience’s contributions: user generated content. Now is the time to decide which types of online communities will be best suited for your site.

The post 5 Reasons Why Your Online Community is an SEO Goldmine appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The post Episodic Content: What It Is and Why It Works appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It seems as soon as everyone becomes educated about the newest SEO techniques, the rules are changed once again, costing website owners valuable time and money.

This cycle of events leave many businesses wondering how they can properly, efficiently, and most of all affordably, market their products for the online audience without losing money.

Increase Site Traffic with Content Marketing

The best technique to increase ranking and drive websites to the top of the search results now is content marketing.

Rather than pushing advertising and sales at visitors, the strategy of content marketing is to offer them something free instead of openly selling. The idea is to create and distribute relevant, valuable content to attract visitors to the website in an effort to educate buyers. 

In this process, site owners hope to acquire regular visitors who will return time and again for more information. Content marketing relies on the belief that if website owners will deliver valuable information to buyers on a regular basis, buyers will reward these sites with their loyalty in return.

With this form of marketing, business owners are finding it much easier to engage with their target audience. This increase in traffic and gaining of visitor loyalty will hopefully promote a profitable customer action.

Many believe this type of marketing also levels the playing field between larger companies and small businesses as needing huge amounts of money for advertising is no longer necessary.

Any website or business which offers intellectual, relevant content can create a forceful marketing strategy.

Relevance is a key factor in content marketing. Providing great information on topics relevant to products or services will help build traffic and increase ranking which will make your site increasingly more popular.

In fact, content marketing can be more effective than all of the social media combined when following a strategic plan and an organized editorial calendar.

How to Form a Content Marketing Plan

You have taken the first step by reading this article. Next you have to decide exactly what you want to gain by providing this valuable information to visitors, particularly those within your target audience.

Are you working to raise awareness about your product? If so, your strategy should include relatively short daily posts incorporating the use of social media, banners and other supporting materials and media.

Are you providing research for your visitors and/or educating them? If so, your site may benefit best from weekly articles of considerable length.

Another option to consider is the use of list style articles such as top ten this or top ten that, as these are great tools for websites needing customer appeal.

Deciding what you hope to accomplish can help build a working content marketing strategy.

Becoming Popular with Content Marketing

The biggest mistake site owners can make when creating a strategy is to offer worthless content to their readers.

Failure to post relevant and valuable topics for your readers will harm the websites validity and respect, robbing your website of the popularity it deserves. Stuffing content with keywords can render the writing useless and visitors may go away aggravated and possibly even insulted, which can damage the reputation of your business.

Avoid the temptation to post in random. Instead, develop a strategic content marketing plan and set goals you can stick with.

The post How to Make Your Brand Popular Using Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Absolutely!

With category descriptions, your e-commerce store will be divided into categories, just as a brick and mortar store has many departments. How much longer would it take to find everything on your shopping list if there were no departments?

The categories of a clothing store might include men’s clothing, women’s clothing and children’s clothing, with sub-categories of each. An online liquor store might have categories of beer, wine and spirits, with corresponding sub-categories. Are you starting to see how important category descriptions can be?

Benefits of Category Descriptions

Category descriptions can actually benefit your online business in a three very important ways, but it requires the help of a professional category description writer with plenty of experience in sales copy. Unlike product descriptions, category descriptions are not meant to promote and should not include a sales pitch.

The primary purpose of category descriptions is to inform and guide your customers, making it easier for them to shop for the items they need. Category descriptions can also entice consumers to click into your e-commerce catalog, and browse in the areas that will interest them most. Here are the three primary reasons your e-commerce site needs category descriptions:

1)    Impress Google with original keyword rich category descriptions

2)    Establish yourself as a leader in e-commerce

3)    Increases the likelihood of a sale

Category Descriptions that Drive Consumers

For superior category content that drives consumers, your freelance category description writer will need a list of categories, sub-categories and important keywords as well as a list of popular or best-selling brands for each category. An appropriate word count will vary, depending on the products you offer to consumers, but most category descriptions fall between 100 and 200 words, on average.

Adding category descriptions to your e-commerce site is a small project that won’t be too difficult when you choose an adequate writer, but this small effort can lead to impressive sales increases over the months that follow.

Are you using category descriptions to increase sales?

The post Are You Missing out on This E-commerce Secret Ingredient? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

While it would be great to tell you they’re wrong so you could remove blogging from the list of tasks that are already weighing you down and distracting you from your workload, your site does need a blog and it needs to be updated regularly with useful content with relevant keywords.

The creation of a blog is not too difficult and can easily be outsourced, but the editorial calendar and social media engagement can be a huge challenge when you want to build a following and be recognized as an authority by Google and other search engines. This is especially true when trying to run the day to day operations of your business.

The best advice to follow is to simply do your best, and try not to become so overwhelmed that you let your blog lay dormant. Look for ways to organize your time such as adding and scheduling content on one day of the week and assigning work to writers on another. Adding just one article per week can make all the difference in the success of your blog.

Three D’s of Downsizing your Do List

After these changes, you may need to find more ways to cast off the constant pressure and stress of work, and feeling like there aren’t enough hours in your day to get everything accomplished. If this is the case, you should read and apply the following three steps to your overwhelming list of pending tasks.

Step One: Delete

You may be surprised to find that some tasks can be marked off of your to-do list completely. Take your name off the guest list for meetings that aren’t necessary and don’t be the first to volunteer for additional projects. Regarding your blog, don’t worry about making unnecessary changes if it’s running smoothly. Why engulf yourself in more work?

Step Two: Delay

While procrastinating may seem like a bad idea, a delay in action can actually help you get more accomplished in the ‘here and now’. When working on your blog, set a date that you will come back to these less important tasks. This will help by clearing your mind and putting your most important tasks in queue.

Step Three: Distribute

Outsourcing is one of the best ways to become more organized and accomplish the most with your blog, allowing you to focus on the operations of your business. Hire professional writers to create original keyword rich content on a regular basis, choosing dates that correspond with your editorial calendar. Why lament over writing blog posts when you can save time and money hiring someone else?

Sometimes you’re the right person for the job and that’s the bottom line. Other times, it is best to put your trust in the competency of others to help manage a more successful blog. Before your task list becomes too overwhelming again, rid yourself of the stress: delete, delay and distribute the work!

Which tasks could you happily distribute to someone else?

The post Are You Feeling the Pressure of a Neglected Blog? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Manufacturer’s Product Descriptions Sabotage Your Sales

You’re busy with social media engagement and numerous other marketing techniques. You’ve even found Facebook post writers to help share relevant content from other sites. It’s understandable if you want to use the manufacturer’s product descriptions to save time and money …but don’t!

You’ve worked too hard to settle for copy and paste product description verbatim from manufacturers’ websites. Don’t sabotage your site’s traffic and sales by sharing the same dull product descriptions that hundreds, if not thousands, of your competitors are using!

While you may not realize it, Google will actually filter your site out of consumer search results for duplicate product descriptions. You have enough competition already. The last thing you need is to be penalized by Google! How will your products stand out if they appear the same as everyone else’s?

Engaging and Original Product Descriptions

You’ve accidentally overlooked the true value of relevant and engaging product descriptions that are SEO friendly and pleasing to Google and other search engines.

Perhaps you never realized that Google actually penalizes sites that use duplicate content …even copied product descriptions, by filtering them away from top search results, no matter how original the rest of your site is!

While it is impossible for Google and other search engines to rank sites with duplicate content, hiring creative keyword savvy product description writers will not only help boost organic search rankings but also assists with perfect landing pages for shopping engines and make your business stand out!

Keyword Rich Product Descriptions

Now that you know how valuable original product descriptions are to search engines and your online business, you should take another look at those duplicate product descriptions provided by the manufacturer.

You need relevant keywords to optimize your product descriptions to attract buyers and increase traffic. Did you notice the obvious lack of keywords in those copy and paste product descriptions? 

Product Descriptions Help Your Customers too!

Freelance product description writers with superior writing and English skills will help describe your products and explain their best features in a way that not only builds sales, but also helps your customers make educated decisions about the brands they buy.

Don’t make the mistake of hiring inexperienced freelance writers for your product descriptions as one misspelling or grammar issue can taint the credibility of your business and the quality of your merchandise.

Perfect Product Descriptions Revealed!

Great sales copy that truly helps your consumers will include an equal balance of product details and product benefits. A professional product description writer can easily add the keywords you need to help rank your site without losing the quality and flow of the writing.

Consider text that is between 80 and 125 words for your product descriptions, which should allow plenty of room to add the main features and benefits as well as the necessary keywords. Too much length and busy consumers won’t take the time to read them.

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