Grant Maddox, Author at Crowd Content - Blog https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/author/grant-maddox/ Content Creation Advice You Can Actually Use Fri, 25 Nov 2022 12:22:47 +0000 en-CA hourly 1 Capitalizing on Voice Search Traffic in 2016 and Beyond https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/seo/capitalizing-on-voice-search-traffic-in-2016-and-beyond/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/seo/capitalizing-on-voice-search-traffic-in-2016-and-beyond/#respond Fri, 02 Dec 2016 01:35:19 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13971 Reliable voice recognition solutions are changing the way people search for things on the internet. There’s no need to totally rework your pages to take advantage of this development, but there are a few simple ways that you can incorporate voice search into your content creation strategies. How Does Voice Search Work? When conducting voice […]

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Reliable voice recognition solutions are changing the way people search for things on the internet. There’s no need to totally rework your pages to take advantage of this development, but there are a few simple ways that you can incorporate voice search into your content creation strategies.

How Does Voice Search Work?

When conducting voice searches, users simply speak their queries into their smartphones or into microphones attached to their computers. The convenience offered by using the spoken word to interact with machines makes it no surprise that voice’s share of total search traffic is increasing markedly.

In its “2016 Internet Trends Report,” venture capital firm KCBP states that 1 in 5 searches by Android users in the United States is powered by speech recognition. Bing has also revealed that one-quarter of all searches made through the taskbar in the latest version of Windows are spoken aloud. Both figures are up from virtually nothing five years ago.

Catering to Voice Searchers

When people chat with Siri, Cortana and other digital assistants, they tend to ask a lot of questions. This means words that typically begin a question such as “who,” “what” and “where” will appear more heavily in search requests.

You can alter your content to include some of the specific questions that potential visitors are likely to pose. If you run a sports equipment distributor, you could include, “What equipment is needed for” followed by the name of a sport, repeating this phrasing for each type of goods you stock. FAQs and speech-bubble-1426772_1280other Q&A-style documents should see a healthy boost in search rankings from voice sources.

Search entries of longer-than-average length are expected to trend since people are speaking in whole sentences for voice search instead of just typing short phrases. Long-tail keywords, already an important part of SEO, will assume even greater significance as this tendency continues, so you would do well to improve your grasp of them.

One thing to watch out for is the possibility of your website’s name not being recognized correctly in voice search, especially if it has an unusual spelling or pronunciation. Little can be done about this apart from using misspellings on purpose within your site, but if you’re thinking of launching a new brand, you can choose its name carefully to make sure it’s not susceptible to this problem.

The Future Impact of Voice Searches

The software that parses natural conversations is getting better and better all the time. Expect upcoming voice recognition systems to display a keener awareness of context-specific cues and individual users preferences. They’ll be able to more accurately direct potential buyers and readers to your online resources as long as you’ve adjusted your text to honestly address their questions, concerns and needs. Assuming you’ve done your homework, conversions should increase while bounce rates drop.

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There have been numerous shifts in the search landscape over the years, and each time, they’ve wrong-footed the unprepared. Show a healthy respect for voice search when refining your SEO strategy, and you’ll be ready for this game-changing advance.

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RSS Feeds: Old But Proven Tech for Spreading Your Message https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/rss-feeds-old-but-proven-tech-for-spreading-your-message/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/rss-feeds-old-but-proven-tech-for-spreading-your-message/#respond Mon, 21 Nov 2016 17:44:25 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13899 RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, is a way of letting your audience know when you have a new blog post, news article, video, podcast or product on your site. This protocol is more than 16 years old now, and it was one of the most popular methods early bloggers […]

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RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, is a way of letting your audience know when you have a new blog post, news article, video, podcast or product on your site. This protocol is more than 16 years old now, and it was one of the most popular methods early bloggers used to retain readers.

RSS has been declared dead time and again, but it’s actually still with us, and it still represents a solid method for promoting your content.

About RSS

Users of RSS reading software subscribe to the RSS feeds served by popular websites. They then get notifications when those sites publish new content. There are usually previews of the articles and posts within the RSS feed, and some organizations even provide the full text. This makes things easy for consumers because they don’t need to visit each website regularly; they’ll know whenever there’s something new that they want to check out.

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RSS allows people to stay up to date on the online resources they’re interested in without having to clog up their email inboxes with newsletters and promotional materials or follow dozens of companies on Twitter. It doesn’t require any personally identifying information or per-site user accounts. Subscribing to and unsubscibing from a feed is as simple as clicking a button. There are desktop, mobile and web-based options when it comes to RSS reader packages, and they range from the spartan to the sophisticated.

How to Make an RSS Feed

All the links and other info comprising an RSS channel are contained in an XML file. This file must conform to the relevant RSS specifications or else there’s a chance that RSS reader programs might garble it.

There are, broadly speaking, two sections of an RSS file. The first contains the name of your channel, which can be the same as that of your site, an image and other data that will remain constant. The second consists of a list of items, with links to your pages and either summaries or full text, that you’ll update whenever you add new content.

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After you’ve created this file, upload it to your web server. Then add calls to action and links on your home page and other popular areas of your site so that people will know where to find your RSS channel. Every time you edit your feed to incorporate new elements, your subscribers will see them in their RSS readers.

Automated RSS Tools

Rather than manually editing XML, which can be a challenging endeavor, you may wish to take advantage of hassle-free software to make it a piece of cake. WordPress automatically generates RSS feeds, unless you disable them, but you can probably get better results by manually altering the settings. If your content management platform doesn’t create RSS channels for you, then you can explore RSS Builder, which is cost-free and open-source.

Expand Your Reach

There are several directories on the net that maintain lists of RSS channels. Submit yours to a few of them that target the same topics and demographics that you do. You’ll thereby attract more viewers to your site and grow your user base.

As a proven and time-tested framework, RSS feeds can contribute successfully to your content marketing strategy. Setting up your own RSS channel isn’t too difficult, and it will provide you with another avenue for visitor acquisition and retention.

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Avoid Online Obsolescence With Evergreen Content https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/avoid-online-obsolescence-with-evergreen-content/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/avoid-online-obsolescence-with-evergreen-content/#respond Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:48:41 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13783 While you’re probably excited about capturing your share of traffic related to trending or newfangled developments, there’s a lot to be said for evergreen content. Pieces that hold up well over time will keep drawing readers to your site long after your more timely posts and pages have fallen into obscurity. Evergreen Content Explanation Unlike […]

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While you’re probably excited about capturing your share of traffic related to trending or newfangled developments, there’s a lot to be said for evergreen content. Pieces that hold up well over time will keep drawing readers to your site long after your more timely posts and pages have fallen into obscurity.

Evergreen Content Explanation

Unlike texts focused around the events of the day, evergreen pages are intended to remain relevant for years to come. Instead of showing a rapid spike in views followed by a decline to almost zero traffic, these resources tend to have a more steady pattern of visits with their popularity growing slowly as time passes. The types of content that lend themselves to an evergreen strategy include:

  • How-to guides
  • Case studies
  • FAQs
  • Articles on historical events
  • Glossaries and dictionaries of industry terms

These forms of information don’t change rapidly, so covering them on your website should produce a boost to traffic that will be permanent rather than temporary.

Advantages of Evergreen Techniques

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Assuming you know enough about your subject that you can create in-depth articles with real value to them, you’ll be building your brand as a trustworthy resource in the field. You’ll start to get backlinks and social shares that will increase your audience. Because evergreen assets cost very little to maintain, you may able able to stretch your content marketing dollars further and achieve an enviable ROI.

Your search rankings may also improve because Google has implemented sophisticated algorithms to determine when searchers want fresh content and when a page that’s a couple of years old will suffice. Because you’ll be creating authoritative resources that are timeless, Google will direct search traffic your way whenever appropriate.

Tips for Evergreen Success

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Rather than taking a scattershot or random approach to evergreening your material, you can follow a few easy rules to make sure you’re not wasting your time or energy:

1. Focus on Specific Niches

Information on broad topics is easy to come by, and it’s hard to do it better than it has already been done. By targeting your efforts towards more specialized areas, you’ll have a better chance of standing out among a crowd.

2. Consider Long-Form Content

While you might not have a lot of time to delve into newsworthy or time-sensitive items in great detail, this isn’t the case with evergreen content. SEO firm Backlinko recently found that the average length of Google’s first page results was 1,890 words. You can harness the full possibilities of long-form writing and thorough keyword research in a way that might not be practical when reacting to the immediate issues of the day.

3. Update Your Pages When Necessary

Although one of the features of evergreen content is its longevity, you’ll still need to update it from time to time. Whether this means twice a week or a couple of times per year will depend on the nature of the info it contains. Moz shows how a new page was able to grow from fewer than 100 visits per month to more than 7,000 in less than a year simply by updating it about once a week.

Incorporating evergreen content can improve the performance and popularity of virtually any website. You don’t need to eschew punctual, up-to-the-minute posts; you can simply add evergreen documents to your overall mix.

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Colors are Crucial in Making Your Site Fresh and Vivid https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/colors-are-crucial-in-making-your-site-fresh-and-vivid/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/colors-are-crucial-in-making-your-site-fresh-and-vivid/#respond Mon, 24 Oct 2016 16:16:27 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13527 The colors you use to display your web content can have a big impact on user engagement and conversions. Not only do the colors of your text matter, but so do those you use for your logo, nav elements, CTAs and other peripheral aspects of your web pages. Indeed, research shows that people form an […]

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The colors you use to display your web content can have a big impact on user engagement and conversions. Not only do the colors of your text matter, but so do those you use for your logo, nav elements, CTAs and other peripheral aspects of your web pages. Indeed, research shows that people form an opinion of a product within 90 seconds of first seeing it, and the majority of this is based upon its coloring.

Enhance Your Brand

Certain colors conjure up specific mental states in viewers. You’ll want to chose wisely so that your site is consistent with the image you wish to portray. While there is some variation in the way hues are perceived in differing cultural contexts and by certain demographic groups, the following associations usually hold true:

  • Red – excitement, love, heat, danger
  • Orange – food, confidence, warmth
  • Yellow – youth, happiness, sunshine
  • Green – wealth, growth, environmentalism
  • Blue – trust, conservatism, serenity
  • Black – edginess, elegance, death
  • Brown – food, ruggedness, outdoors
  • Purple – luxury, prestige, spirituality
  • White – purity, simplicity, goodness

Besides these general impressions given off by each color, there are combinations that convey a specific message. For instance, red and green promote topics related to Christmas while the colors of a flag highlight the country or organization represented by it.

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Choosing Tones That Work Together

Once you’ve decided upon one or a couple of colors that you like, you’ll want to find other hues that mesh well with them. One school of thought holds that tones that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel look good together. Others advocate triadic schemes, which means using colors that are 120 degrees apart on the color wheel.

A study published in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics attempted to get to the bottom of people’s preferences in this area. The researchers found that the most successful schemes employed adjacent colors accentuated by occasional use of triadic colors as highlights.

If you’re having some trouble deciding among the millions of possibilities, you can try out the free Adobe Color CC web app or peruse the user-generated palettes created by the Colourlovers.com community.

High-Contrast Text is Key

Regardless of the coloration you eventually decide upon, remember to set up a high contrast between your text and background. A failure to do so means that your words will be hard to read, and you’ll therefore have problems enticing visitors to browse to your website. Black on white is traditional in written material for a reason, and dark gray on a light pastel color isn’t bad either.

Calls to Action

Your CTAs ought to jump out to your users. Rather than a bland or laid-back color, like brown, gray or navy blue, you’ll want to grab the eyes by using red, yellow, bright green or another vibrant hue. In a famous A/B test, HubSpot found that conversions increased by 21% after changing a CTA button from a color that fit in with the rest of the page to a bright shade that stood out.

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Present a Winning Appearance

Modern high-res displays can show millions of different colors accurately. This doesn’t imply that you should feature a large number of them on your website. By carefully selecting a few hues that represent your brand and look appealing in combination with each other, you can delight your website visitors and keep them coming back for more.

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Refine Your Online Message With This 1 Simple Action https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/refine-your-online-message-with-this-1-simple-action/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/refine-your-online-message-with-this-1-simple-action/#respond Tue, 11 Oct 2016 17:01:58 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13359 There’s one almost effortless step you can take to make your written words compelling, easy to read and pleasing to the eye: choosing appropriate fonts. Many content managers have neglected this task, and indeed it probably doesn’t register consciously in your visitors’ minds. Nevertheless, presenting your pages in the right fonts can made a difference […]

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There’s one almost effortless step you can take to make your written words compelling, easy to read and pleasing to the eye: choosing appropriate fonts. Many content managers have neglected this task, and indeed it probably doesn’t register consciously in your visitors’ minds. Nevertheless, presenting your pages in the right fonts can made a difference in perceptions of your site. Data published in the Journal of Advertising and Promotion Research found that fonts played a significant role in the way participants responded to advertising.

Categories of Fonts

There are five generic families of fonts as defined in the CSS web specifications. They each have their own particular traits and are suited to different purposes.

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Serif

Fonts belonging to this category contain serifs: little tails, hooks or lines at the edges of letters. Frequently used serif fonts include Times New Roman, Georgia and Baskerville Old Face.

It’s the received wisdom in the publishing industry that serif fonts are the easiest style to read in printed form although scientific studies on the matter have been inconclusive. They are common in books, magazines and other long-form, physically tangible material.

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Sans-Serif

Hard-to-see decorative flourishes have no place in the sans-serif family, which makes these fonts look more simple, sleek and modern than their serif-laden brethren. Arial, Tahoma and Helvetica are popular examples.

It used to be the case that readers preferred sans-serif fonts on their computers because they rendered better on low-res screens. In 2012, Nielsen Norman Group found this to no longer be true. Unless they possess old displays, users don’t find sans-serif necessarily more readable than serif fonts.

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Monospace

Monospace fonts are designed so that each character occupies the same amount of horizontal space. This was important in the days of typewriters and early computers because these machines weren’t sophisticated enough to deal with the justification of text and variable spacing between letters. Courier New, Lucida Console and Monaco are all monospace fonts.

Websites related to programming often list code in monospace typefaces because it’s important to tell exactly what each character is and its precise position in relation to the rest of the program.

Cursive and Fantasy

Fonts belonging to the cursive and fantasy categories aren’t meant for lengthy blocks of text because they’re too hard to read. You can, however, employ them to good effect for titles, logos and other areas where they’re intended to make a visual impact rather than being scannable.

Choosing the Right Fonts

You’ll probably only want to use a limited array of fonts within your website. Any more than about five, and you’ll risk distracting your guests while presenting them with conflicting messages. You can choose one for your main content, another for headlines and subtitles, and perhaps a third for miscellaneous material.

Select fonts that present the tone and image you want to portray. This is more an art than a science, but a study from Wichita State University may provide some guidance in this area.

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You can find plenty of free fonts to embed within your website from Google Fonts and Font Squirrel. Be aware that anyone who doesn’t have your fonts installed will have to wait for them to download, reducing your page speed. It might therefore be better to stick with commonly found fonts for faster loading times. CSS Font Stack has a listing of web safe fonts that are already installed to a large fraction of users’ computers.

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Make your content seem better – without anyone being able to put their finger on exactly why – by carefully picking your fonts. This is a really low-cost solution that shouldn’t occupy too much of your time or require you to buy anything. You’ll accomplish the twin objectives of increasing user engagement and tailoring your site’s appearance according to the composition of your intended audience, both worthwhile goals.

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Sitemaps Help Users and Search Engines Find Your Website Treasures https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/sitemaps-help-users-and-search-engines-find-your-website-treasures/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/sitemaps-help-users-and-search-engines-find-your-website-treasures/#respond Thu, 29 Sep 2016 22:51:03 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13312 Sitemaps are powerful tools for web administration whether you run a blog, an e-commerce outlet, a news platform or any other kind of website whatsoever. A sitemap is a collection of links showing the structure of a website, making it easier to find resources within a given web domain. HTML and XML are the two […]

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Sitemaps are powerful tools for web administration whether you run a blog, an e-commerce outlet, a news platform or any other kind of website whatsoever. A sitemap is a collection of links showing the structure of a website, making it easier to find resources within a given web domain. HTML and XML are the two main formats for sitemaps, and they each confer specific advantages in different circumstances.

You can have the best content on the web written by the best content writers, but if Google and your visitors can’t find it, your efforts could be for naught. Here’s a quick guide to setting up effective sitemaps.

HTML Sitemaps Are for People

An HTML sitemap is simply a normal web page that points to the location of resources on your website and allows viewers to easily click to them. There’s no standardized format for HTML sitemaps because they’re intended for use primarily by humans.

If your site is large, there’s no need to include every page in your sitemap. For instance, a retailer would probably not link to every single product in inventory. Similarly, a popular blog would almost never feature every one of its posts on its sitemap. Instead, sizable sites typically list category pages, topic pages or pages for each month of the calendar. From these destinations, users can drill down to the specific content they’re looking for. Check out Apple and Mashable for a couple of outstanding examples.

HTML sitemaps were once common, but they’re now absent from many major sites. Webmasters now try make all their content easy to reach through normal navigational links, so the importance of presenting a sitemap to users has decreased. Still, sitemaps serve as a method of last resort for showcasing your resources to visitors who may be having trouble finding them.

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XML Sitemaps are for Web Crawlers

Sitemaps using the XML protocol are meant to serve web crawling software deployed by search engines. These “spiders” from Google, Bing, and other search companies are constantly scurrying across the internet and following the links they encounter so that they can properly index the billions of websites out there. With a comprehensive XML sitemap, you’ll make it easier for these crawlers to access all your web pages.

Google states that an XML sitemap may enhance the crawling of your pages by its bots particularly if your site is extensive or your internal link structure is spotty. While the search giant doesn’t guarantee any benefit, it does declare that you’ll definitely not be penalized for having a compatible sitemap.

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Using Sitemaps

If you have WordPress installed, you can add an XML sitemap with the renowned Yoast SEO plugin and obtain an HTML version with the additional WP SEO HTML Sitemap plugin. Joomla! fans can try out Aimy Sitemap, which has a free, downloadable version as well as a more sophisticated paid option. There are high-quality sitemap generators for almost every other widely used content management platform.

You may wish to make your HTML sitemap yourself because it will be actually read by humans, but the XML sitemaps generated by automatic tools should be fine without any manual editing. Place your XML sitemap in your root directory. So if your domain is www.mycompany.com, you can put your sitemap at http://www.mycompany.com/sitemap.xml.

Then log into Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and enter the location of your XML sitemap so that these search firms will know where to look. These two services allow you to manage your sitemaps, view data related to how your site appears in search results, issue instructions on how your web pages should be crawled and more.

Create an HTML sitemap to assist your website visitors, and deploy an XML one to increase your site’s exposure to search bots. You can produce both of these files completely free of charge, so there’s nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain. As National Geographic writer Mark Jenkins opined, “Maps are essential. Planning a journey without a map is like building a house without drawings.”

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Page Speed Matters for Content: Boost Yours with these 4 Steps https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/page-speed-matters-with-content-boost-yours-with-these-4-steps/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/page-speed-matters-with-content-boost-yours-with-these-4-steps/#respond Tue, 13 Sep 2016 22:23:27 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13245 Featuring compelling content on your web pages is probably your main goal, but don’t forget that it’s also important to get it to load in users’ browsers with as little waiting time as possible. The energy you spend crafting a top-notch website will go to waste if unacceptable page load speeds send your audience clicking […]

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Featuring compelling content on your web pages is probably your main goal, but don’t forget that it’s also important to get it to load in users’ browsers with as little waiting time as possible. The energy you spend crafting a top-notch website will go to waste if unacceptable page load speeds send your audience clicking elsewhere in a hurry. Page speed is thus a key component of delivering an enjoyable user experience. Google approves of quickly loading websites, and website speed has been one of the search firm’s ranking factors since 2010.

Quantifying the Impact of Page Speed

It’s just common sense that people prefer to get what they’re looking for as soon as possible, but really, how much of a difference could a second or two make? Well, on the internet, even minor delays turn out to matter a great deal. Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox web browser, found that after cutting the average load time of its pages by 2.2 seconds, downloads increased by 15.4 percent. Customer analytics company Kissmetrics says that 40 percent of prospective shoppers will leave a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Much as in top-level sprinting, several seconds too long is all it takes to drop hopelessly behind your competitors.

Boost Your Page Speed

If all this talk about the value of fast website speed has you pondering a complete overhaul of your site or beefing up your hosting solution, don’t get ahead of yourself. There are a number of ways to speed up your website that are cheap, quick and nearly hassle-free:

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1. Optimize Your Images

Images that are too large can really degrade your website performance. For most JPGs, you can reduce size and quality without too great an impact on clarity and detail. PNG images are massive by comparison and should only be used sparingly for logos, professionally designed graphics and other high-value resources. Try out the Kraken.io website, or download FileOptimizer for Windows if you seek help in reducing your image sizes.

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2. Enable Compression

Compress your HTML, JavaScript and CSS files so that they’ll take up less bandwidth while traveling through the ether. Using the Deflate or Gzip algorithms, you can cut the size of your files by half or even more, getting them to your users’ machines that much faster. In most cases, turning compression on is a simple, server-side option. Talk to your web administrator or hosting provider for all the details.

3. Leverage Browser Caching

Making your web pages cacheable won’t affect speeds for newcomers to your site, but it will make their subsequent visits speedier. Once your cached content loads, it will remain on your readers’ computers so that the next time they wish to view your site, they won’t have to grab it all again through the internet. Now you’ll be able to instill in your visitors the habit of frequently browsing to your site because they won’t have to wait around, re-downloading content they’ve already seen. There are various methods for handling caching, and you or your web hosting firm can alter them in your server configuration files.

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4. Minify Your Code

Your code was hopefully written for ease of understanding and editing. The problem is that all the whitespaces and comments that are vital to code maintenance serve no functional purpose for web browsers. By all means, keep your bulky, original files around for internal use, but when serving them to website guests, use minified versions that have all the extra baggage taken out. The Online JavaScript/CSS/HTML Compressor is a handy, multifunctional minifier that will reduce your files to but a fraction of their previous sizes.

Without engaging in a complete reconstruction of your pages, you can nevertheless take small measures to make them show up on viewers’ screens more rapidly. Free online tools, like GTmetrix and Google’s PageSpeed Insights, will identify further areas for improving your page speed. Lower your bounce rate, increase conversions and enhance the satisfaction of your users by serving them engrossing content with less lag.

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Why Readability Scores Could Make Your Content Better https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/why-readability-scores-could-make-your-content-better/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/why-readability-scores-could-make-your-content-better/#respond Tue, 06 Sep 2016 07:34:05 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13231 We all know that headings, images, bullet points and other elements can make your content stand out and seem attractive, but we shouldn’t forget about the readability of the actual text itself. Overly wordy or fancy phrasing can put readers off. On the other hand, too simple a writing style may make your website appear […]

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We all know that headings, images, bullet points and other elements can make your content stand out and seem attractive, but we shouldn’t forget about the readability of the actual text itself. Overly wordy or fancy phrasing can put readers off. On the other hand, too simple a writing style may make your website appear naive or ill-informed. With the proper use of readability scores, you can efficiently target your desired audience with professional and easy-to-scan web pages.

What Are Readability Scores?

The most popular readability metric is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level index. It uses a formula to determine what grade level of readers a piece of content is appropriate for. Lower numbers signal that a text is easily understood while higher values mean that a piece is more difficult. This system aims for a rough equivalence to the U.S. school system, so a score of 5.0 corresponds to around a fifth-grade reading level. The related Flesch-Kincaid reading ease test uses similar calculations, but it expresses results on a scale from 0 to 120 with higher scores awarded to more readable passages.

The factors that go into these estimates are the average number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word. Lengthier sentences and words cause text to be graded as harder to read.

Why Are Readability Scores Relevant?

Although Google’s exact ranking formulas aren’t available to the public, there is a correlation between reading ease and search placement. SEO software firm Searchmetrics released a white paper that says that the average Flesch-Kincaid reading ease score among the top search results is 76. This corresponds to a grade level of around seven or eight.

There is an argument to be made that technical or literate audiences prefer more complex content, but don’t go too far with this line of reasoning. Remember that even the most educated readers can understand content that’s basic, so you won’t necessarily lose them if you use straightforward language. The UX consulting service Nielsen Norman Group recommends keeping your texts at the 12th-grade level if you’re writing for an audience of college graduates. This allows you to cater to their tastes for more refined reading material without alienating less erudite readers.

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Don’t worry about “dumbing down” your words and sentences. The whole point is to make your website clear and engaging without omitting anything important. Journalist Malcolm Gladwell, of “Outliers” fame, was able to effectively communicate his ideas without taxing his readers beyond the ninth-grade level according to a chart produced by Contently. Cormac McCarthy penned critically acclaimed fiction at a fifth-grade reading level. Unless the message you’re trying to get across is more complicated than that of these two gentlemen, there’s no reason for you to employ language any more demanding than they did.

Readability Tools

It’s easy to figure out where your document falls on the Flesch-Kincaid scales because there are a number of convenient resources that will tell you. If you use Microsoft Word, you can adjust your proofing settings to enable the display of readability statistics. Every time you perform a spelling and grammar check thereafter, you’ll see a box like this one:

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Microsoft Word is a commercial product, and if you’d like a free option instead, you can head over to readability-score.com. Copy-paste your content or enter a URL. The site will analyze the text and then display its readability scores. It also offers additional information, such as estimated reading time, and it will show you your longest sentence and word:

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Unless your content is already perfectly pitched to your patrons’ preferences, readability scores can be a valuable addition to your content-creation arsenal. Use them wisely to identify when you ought to break up overlong sentences and replace problematic phrases with simpler synonyms. This will improve user engagement and may even make an impact on your search performance.

If you’re looking to find a content writer for your website that can match the reading level of your audience, be sure to contact us.

Note to the reader: The above post is rated 10.2 on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level and 52 for reading ease.

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Why Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords Allow for Better SEO https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/seo/latent-semantic-indexing-keywords-allow-for-better-seo/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/seo/latent-semantic-indexing-keywords-allow-for-better-seo/#respond Mon, 08 Aug 2016 21:06:03 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13140 Now that Google and other search engines punish keyword stuffing as a frowned-upon tactic, optimizing your content to attract traffic has become harder. Top search firms, SEO content writers and SEO strategists currently employ Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), which allows them to determine what a page is about regardless of the frequencies of words present. […]

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Now that Google and other search engines punish keyword stuffing as a frowned-upon tactic, optimizing your content to attract traffic has become harder.

Top search firms, SEO content writers and SEO strategists currently employ Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), which allows them to determine what a page is about regardless of the frequencies of words present. You can use LSI principles to your advantage to achieve higher SERP placement.

Latent Semantic Indexing Details

In addition to accounting for changes in tense, pluralization, word order and the like, LSI also identifies synonyms for important phrases as well as verbiage that’s routinely used in conjunction with main subject words. For example, the keyword “professional sports equipment” is semantically related to the terms “fitness equipment” and “agility sports training.” “Affordable legal services” is pertinent to searches for “legal document review” and “legal advice.”

By including words that are legitimately associated with the keyword you’re targeting, you’ll let the search algorithms know that your text is appropriate to serve to people interested in that topic. Online marketing company New Media Sources conducted a case study and found that a new page using LSI techniques got 20 times as many hits as a similar page created at the same time that did not use such a strategy.

Paris underground, métro Concorde

How to Use LSI

You can tweak your website to include LSI keywords without making it sound awkward or artificial. Ultimate Keyword Hunter is a great resource and is available for free download merely by providing your email address. If you prefer a web interface, try LSI Graph although unregistered users are limited to three queries per day.

Before delving into these specialized tools, however, you should be aware that Google routinely provides valuable info every time you search the web. Whenever you start typing in the search bar – as long as you have autocomplete turned on – you’ll see a list of possible matches:

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Also, at the bottom of every search results page, Google provides a list of related keywords:

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You’ve probably been conducting latent semantic analysis every day without even realizing it! Though the help given by Google in this area isn’t as sophisticated as that offered by dedicated software, it still serves as a great starting point. Since the purpose of any adjustments you make is search engine optimization, this data coming straight from the horse’s mouth shouldn’t be discounted.

The development of latent semantic indexing is a phenomenon that allows writers and website owners to produce results that are easy to read while still being SEO-friendly. There’s no reason to try to cram in dozens of ill-fitting pieces of jargon: By introducing just a few carefully chosen LSI keywords, you can really enhance your search performance.

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3 Reasons You Need Responsive Design for Your Website https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/3-reasons-you-need-responsive-design-for-your-website/ https://www.crowdcontent.com/blog/content-marketing/3-reasons-you-need-responsive-design-for-your-website/#respond Tue, 19 Jul 2016 20:34:56 +0000 https://crowdcontent.com/blog/?p=13060 In May 2015, Google announced that the volume of search requests from mobile devices overtook the number from traditional computers in 10 countries, including the United States. The growing popularity of mobile platforms poses challenges to content managers, but using responsive design within your website may allow you to capitalize on this trend. Responsive Web […]

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In May 2015, Google announced that the volume of search requests from mobile devices overtook the number from traditional computers in 10 countries, including the United States. The growing popularity of mobile platforms poses challenges to content managers, but using responsive design within your website may allow you to capitalize on this trend.

Responsive Web Design Overview

The responsive philosophy of website creation posits that webpages should appear attractive on a wide variety of hardware. To deliver content that’s well suited for viewing on PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets, properly designed sites employ techniques that include:

  • Conserving bandwidth by sending smaller images to tiny screens
  • Variable font sizes to improve readability
  • Proportional scaling of page elements
  • Adjustments to layout based on screen resolution
  • Lazy Loading to reduce initial loading times

While there are a number of strategies for catering to your mobile audience, the use of responsive design offers several distinct advantages over most of them.

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1. Managing a Responsive Site Is Easier Than Alternatives

Producing in-house mobile apps is one popular course of action, but this requires considerable development resources, and apps need to be updated somewhat frequently to avoid obsolescence. Another approach is to create different versions of each page for multiple devices. This involves a lot of duplication of effort and increases your file storage requirements. You may have to play catch-up as new models come on the market with display characteristics that you had not anticipated.

Avoid having to hire app programmers or engage in arduous beta testing by instead making your website responsive. You won’t have to try to guess what specific products your audience is equipped with because your new pages will look great on all of them.

2. Responsive Websites Provide UX Benefits

Mobile-unfriendly sites can be frustrating for users: Hard-to-read text, cropped or unappealing graphics, and the need to zoom in or out can really turn visitors off your brand. Salesforce Marketing Cloud found that 27 percent of users will leave a site if it delivers a poor mobile experience.

Although dedicated apps address some of these concerns, they’ll appeal mostly to only your hardcore fans. Sites that incorporate responsive features, on the other hand, make it convenient for casual viewers as well as long-time customers to access content from mobile browsers.

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3. Boost Your Search Rankings With a Mobile-Friendly Site

As SearchEngineLand.com explains, Google now incorporates mobile-friendliness into its search algorithms. This means that redesigning your site to be responsive could allow you to score well in search results and displace sites that don’t adopt these methods.

It might seem that responsive design is a no-brainer, but a study from Pure Oxygen Labs in 2015 found that only 20 percent of the leading online retail sites used responsive designs. There’s therefore an opportunity for you to get a leg up on your competitors by incorporating responsive web design into your online undertakings.

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