SEO, when done right, never interferes with web design, but sometimes redesigning a site can unknowingly interfere with search engine optimization. This is why teamwork among SEOs, designers, marketers and developers is critical during a blog redesign process.Here are 5 common web design mistakes that kill search engine optimization:1.

High-traffic pages are removed or deletedThe blog redesign process often identifies site content that is no longer a priority, but pages should never be deleted. Older blog posts often bring in a high volume of traffic, and those aged URLs create domain authority and page authority for organic search traffic. Instead of removing pages, protect your SEO and visitor experience by using 301 permanent redirects to ensure visitors via organic search and referral ... > Read more

One of my favorite types of blog post is the case study – a personalized story of success or failure (or otherwise interesting or unexpected results). As blog posts go, it’s not as easy to churn out as a “top 5” post (ahem), but you can learn so much more from them. It’s often easier to take something actionable away from specific examples and real stories than vague abstractions, so a well-written case study is a great way to get attention and links.

As an added benefit, a case study is always unique, whereas standard tip posts are often just reproducing information you can find elsewhere on the web.If you haven’t considered writing this type of content before, I encourage you to give it a shot! Think about a specific strategy you implemented recently that really knocked it ou... > Read more

Content marketing, along with social media and SEO, is an incredibly important component of any inbound marketing campaign – efforts designed to bring your target audience to you, instead of you trying to force your brand on them.You’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is king” before, and that’s because it’s true! The search engines read your webpage content to determine if it matches a search query, your target audience reads content you produce (blogs, articles, whitepapers, etc.

) to learn more about your given industry, and producing great content is what earns your company a reputation as a valuable and trusted source of information. In short, a great content marketing campaign can accomplish a lot!But running a great content marketing campaign is more complicated than c... > Read more

 We got the following message via our Contact Us form this weekend:To Elisa Gabbert: Saw your article in Website magazine! I write a marketing blog via WordPress and was writing to get your advice on how to distribute this blog beyond LinkedIn/Twitter – seeking vehicles that are low budget ... Thank you in advance for your response.Thanks for your question, Howard. I always think it's better to answer questions like this via a blog post rather than a personal email. That way, other readers get the benefit of the information too. So here are five low-cost ways to distribute your blog posts to a larger readership.Social mediaHoward is well aware of this channel, as he says he is using LinkedIn and Twitter for distribution already. But don't dismiss other social networks – Larry foun... > Read more

 Richard Kraneis, a longtime WordStream reader, recently left a comment on our blog questioning whether a certain post would "drive qualified traffic to our website." This brings up an interesting question: Why blog? What are the goals of blogging?Of course the answer is different depending on whether you're talking about a personal blog or a corporate blog, but this is a business blog, and we wouldn't devote resources to blogging if it didn't make good business sense.

Here are three reasons that might motivate you to write a blog post for a corporate blog. In my opinion, every blog post doesn't need to fulfill all three purposes, though it's great if they do. The important thing is that every post fulfills at least one of these purposes, and that you don't focus only on one of the thr... > Read more

Corporate blogging is a great Internet marketing technique for multiple reasons. Not only does a company blog give the search engines more content to index (growing your trust factor), a business blog can be instrumental in building your online brand. Blogs are inherently social in nature, which means they are also a great way to connect with current and potential customers.

In short, a well-written blog can help all aspects of your web marketing campaign, including SEO. Here are five simple ways to better optimize your business blog for SEO: Write naturally It may sound like a “duh!” thing to say, but you’d be amazed at how many blog posts out there are crammed with keywords and anchor text. It’s the number one rule of any content marketing campaign: you have to wr... > Read more

Many people start a blog with one intention: making money. While this is not a good sole reason to start a blog, it is a nice added benefit that comes with building up your blog with quality content and maintaining a decent amount of traffic. It’s not a mystery that you can make money from your blog, but many users often struggle with it and end up giving up altogether.

You cannot expect to make a lot of money when first starting out. You have to create a name for yourself and prove that your blog can stand on its own. While these five methods to monetize your WordPress blog are sure to come in handy, you’ll also want to take note of the essential tips for building and maintaining a successful blog. Pay Per Click This is one of the most popular methods used to monetize a blog a... > Read more

What’s the old saying? “One definition of crazy is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results”? Are you “crazy” when it comes to online marketing or do you adapt and learn from your mistakes? After 12 months, I’m adapting. Around March 1 of last year I began my Online GED Site blog.

I never expected it would make tons of money. I hoped it would teach me about blogging, WordPress, Google Analytics, keyword research, and using some of WordStream’s free tools. Here’s a graph of my visitor traffic for one year. It took 8 months to attract my first 1000 visitors. Now, during this last month, I attracted 1000 visitors in 30 days alone.   What were my mistakes? A failure to build backlinks, building an email opt-in too... > Read more

This is a guest post by Erin Everhart. Erin is the marketing associate for web design company 352 Media Group, a certified Microsoft Surface developer and leader in web marketing. She specializes in social media marketing, search engine optimization and content management, developing web marketing and blogger outreach campaigns.

She’s a frequent blogger across multiple sites and holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Florida. She has an unhealthy addiction to salt, EM dashes and the Gators. Follow her on Twitter: @erinever. Traditional advertising is so 2010. It shows too: People just aren’t trusting and are learning to tune out those banner and video ads that pop up. So why spend your money on something that may or may not get you results, especially when there are ... > Read more

If you write blog content with any consistency, you've stared at a blank page anxiously as time winds down on a deadline. But one of the great things about being a blogger is the wealth of keyword tools available online. Rather than being left to your own brainstorming devices, you can use any of a number of tools to come up with great blog ideas.

One such tool with a lot of great features for blog ideation is Google Insights for Search. Getting Started: Using Google Insights for Search Terms & Filters We'll start at the beginning and look at some different ways to seed our search for great blog ideas. We have some great options at our disposal for filtering the types of insights we get from the tool right out of the gate. If we're running a local blog we can use time range in the... > Read more

This is a guest post by Erin Everhart. Erin is the marketing associate for web design company 352 Media Group, a certified Microsoft Surface developer and leader in web marketing. She specializes in social media marketing, search engine optimization and content management, developing web marketing and blogger outreach campaigns.

She’s a frequent blogger across multiple sites and holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Florida. She has an unhealthy addiction to salt, EM dashes and the Gators. Follow her on Twitter: @erinever. AP officially recognized blogs as credible news sources in September 2010, but people have trusted blogs a lot longer than that. In fact, due to an over-saturated, price-driven advertising market, blogs — and the recommendations and sharing of inf... > Read more

This is a guest post by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant to iAdvize, a live chat support tool. Corporate blogs have a reputation for being nothing more than another way of distributing press releases. This is because most companies just don't understand how blogging is supposed to work, and they view it as a way to talk to the public rather than with them.

While corporate news, sale announcements and product launches are all important things to have in a corporate blog, they don't have to be the focus. A good corporate blog offers readers a reason to subscribe and can keep customers connected and interested in a company, even when nothing in particular is happening. But while creating an engaging corporate blog is not complicated, very few companies seem to have mastered it. However, som... > Read more

I've been blogging now for a little over three years now, and one of the important lessons I've learned during that time is that, to have a successful blog, you need to build relationships with other bloggers. Now, smart link builders have long understood that "link building is relationship building," and you will get more links by forging friendships than you will cold emailing strangers and begging for links.

The same holds true for "blog building," and developing relationships with your contemporaries is something that should be part of every bloggers' strategy. Networking with other bloggers in your niche allows you to: Develop mutually beneficial connections Generate more awareness for your own blog Establish credibility and cache for you and your blog (via a rec... > Read more

On-page SEO just isn't enough to secure great rankings. You also need incoming links, which signal to search engines that people value your content. You'll get the best results if these links are: From high-authority domains Relevant to your marketspace Deep, i.e., not just to your home page Optimized with targeted anchor text So how are you supposed to get these links? Write great content and hope for the best? Yes, to some extent, that's a strategy, but unless you're very patient, you'll probably want to be more proactive about getting good links.

One way to do this is by writing guest posts for prominent blogs in your space. The WordStream blog invites proposals for and submissions of guest posts that cover topics of interest to our audience (including SEO, PPC, keyword research ... > Read more

I heard about Problogger’s 7 link challenge via Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. This challenge—to link to seven past blog posts that fit into seven categories—doesn’t set off my fear of heights or eating bugs, so I thought we should take a stab at it. As Lisa points out, this challenge can benefit “old and new readers” of our blog, by highlighting some of best posts from the archives that you may have missed.

  Without further ado, here are the seven (give or take) links: Your first post: The first post on the WordStream blog, not counting the welcome announcement, was Larry’s “How to Achieve the Best Results for PPC & SEO,” a list of 10 best practices that formed the cornerstones (can you have 10 cornerstones?) of our product ... > Read more

Let’s face it. Sometimes you have to write a blog post on a topic you’re not all that interested in.  Maybe your boss told you to write it, or you know the post will appeal to readers, or the work will earn you a decent amount of money. Whatever the reason, writing about topics you don’t love can be necessary and even worthwhile.

  Because you’re not passionate about the topic, it’s important to make the writing process as painless as possible. Here are some tips for getting it done quickly and painlessly: Write on a full stomach. Well, your stomach doesn’t have to be completely full, but make sure you’ve had a substantial meal and perhaps a cup of coffee before starting the post. Food (especially healthy “brain” foods) and c... > Read more

One of the biggest pain points for bloggers is trying to come up with fresh blog topic ideas. It's not easy to generate new ideas for content on a regular basis, week in, week out. Some bloggers get their inspiration from trending topics, hot news stories or even seeing what people are blogging about.

While others tap into an internal, creative spark to discover topics. Whatever your method, the brainstorming process is a hard slog at times and many bloggers can hit a creative wall. This week, WordStream launched a new software suite "WordStream for SEO," which features a set of powerful keyword analysis and content authoring tools. One of the key benefits of WordStream for SEO is that it helps anyone who writes and publishes Web content on a regular basis avoid writers block by... > Read more

If you own a small business, you confront a unique set of Internet marketing challenges to  create a innovative small business marketing plan. You may not have a large marketing budget, a substantial marketing staff, or expansive knowledge of the industry’s best practices. Luckily, there are blogs out there focused on helping small business owners market their product or service online.

Here’s a list of our top 12 small business marketing blogs: Small Business Mavericks Internet marketing strategist Caroline Melberg updates her blog daily with concise small business marketing tips and commentary. Her latest posts deal with Yahoo Search’s viability, the importance of testing one’s Web pages with every browser, and whether Facebook should add a blogging feature. The Marketing... > Read more

Guest posting is a great way to promote and grow your blog. Websites are always looking for fresh content and love nothing better than good, free unique content. Glen Allsopp of ViperChill Viral Marketing is a great example of someone who's been able to build a very successful blog and a lot of "public success" by guest posting frequently on other websites.

Glen was even able to earn 5 figures by guest blogging last year. So it's clear that guest posting can be a very effective strategy with lots of potential. Also, we at WordStream frequently publish guest posts and have received some fantastic content from guest bloggers like Terry Van Horne of SEOPros and Blake Bowyer of EyeTraffic Media. So if you're interested in guest posting on WordStream, just shoot us an email. That bri... > Read more

This morning, Chris Brogan wrote on his blog that he's planning to use Bing as his only search engine for 30 days. Day 1 of his little experiment didn't go so well—he found that a search for "Chris Brogan" returned, above his own blog, results for Chris Brown. His response? "Um, no.

" Chris Brogan is a pretty well-known name, if slightly lesser-known than "Chris Brown." If he can't get top billing for his vanity search, how well can the rest of us plebes fare? I "googled" myself on Bing back when it launched and remember thinking the results were inscrutable and disappointing. I decided to try the same search again to see if the Bing results had gotten better (or worse). Well, certainly not better. ZoomInfo? Really? I would only expect to ... > Read more

Welcome to the WordStream Blog! We’ll be covering a variety of things related to Internet marketing here on the blog, but since we sell a keyword management tool, we thought we'd start there. So, in the next week, we'll be rolling out a series of keyword-related content. First, later on today we’ll be publishing our “search marketing philosophy”; a ten point search manifesto penned by WordStream founder Larry Kim.

Additionally, we’ll be publishing our Keyword Management & Optimization Guide—a series of series that will cover: The Value of Keyword Discovery & Expansion The Kinds of Traffic You Should Be Optimizing For And Finally: How Sharing SEO & PPC Information Can Improve the Results of Both Channels **Special thanks and a collective edi... > Read more