Saving money when you buy articles shouldn’t mean sacrificing quality. Many blog and website publishers focus on the cost of individual articles. However, there are other ways that you can lose money when buying content for your site. Here’s how not to.

1. Check Out the Competition.
One of the quickest ways to do this is to browse the websites of some of your successful competitors. Notice we say “successful.” This will give you an idea of the types of content your target audience is looking for and help you make the most cost-effective decisions when it’s time to buy articles.

2. Do a Little Market Research.
This is just another way to figure out what your target might expect from your website. Even if you simply post a question in a forum related to your niche, or in a web place like Yahoo! Answers, it can save money when you buy articles.

Also, don’t forget about your most accessible focus group — your social network. Talk to family, friends, colleagues and neighbors that may fit into your target demographic for your site (for instance, organic gardeners, parents, dieters) and get their feedback.

3. Ensure Provider’s Article Samples Suit Your Audience’s Needs.
Simply being able to string together words isn’t enough. Style, tone, catchy titles, and a deep understanding of the subject matter all combine to keep your web readers hungry for more. On the other hand, stilted language, bad grammar and spelling, keyword nuttiness, poor research and fluff are major turn-offs. Don’t take your audience for granted.

4. Make Sure You’re Getting Edited Articles.
The one-time cost of an article shouldn’t be your only concern. Having to rewrite or edit an article you receive from a content provider takes time. Time costs you money. You could spend hours each week fixing up articles that are poorly researched and poorly written.

Instead, make sure from the outset that you will be getting edited articles from your content provider. This may cost you a little more initially, but in the long run it saves you money when you buy articles. You may still want to tweak a few things in the article to suit your taste. But, you should never have to edit it from scratch.

5. Get The Rights and Terms You Need.
Getting exclusive or full rights helps you to save money when you buy articles. These days most website and blog publishers use versions of articles on their sites, in press releases, or for article marketing. If you had to pay for additional rights each time you buy an article it would get pretty pricey. Spare yourself the hassle and the higher costs; make sure you understand the rights you’re getting when you buy articles.

6. Look for Quality Writers.
Poor content hurts your business. It reduces web traffic and tarnishes your brand, both of which reduce your revenues. Also, consider that the less web traffic you get, the more you’ll have to spend on advertising or public relations to bring the crowds back.

7. Check for Plagiarism.
Finding out the “original” articles you bought are plagiarized can be costly. If the provider isn’t willing to replace the articles, you’re stuck with them and still need to buy more. Plus, the actual writer could sue or report your site to search engines like Google if you don’t remove the articles. Your site goes offline and you lose money.

Use online plagiarism checkers to make sure articles are original. Copyscape is one of the most popular and costs just a few cents per article. There are also free plagiarism checkers available, such as ArticleChecker.com.

Start saving money when you buy articles – without sacrificing quality. Contact us today to take advantage of our professional writing and editing services.

So you’ve had your website or blog for a little while, but it’s beginning to get a little stale already. Content planning comes in handy when keeping up with the demand for fresh content becomes overwhelming.

Both audiences and search engines need a reason to surf by your site each day. The more often they come, the higher your page ranks in search engine results. Try these tips to inject some new life into your website content planning and boost your website traffic:

5 Easy Content Planning Strategies

1. Get in touch with your audience. If you’re not clear on what type of content will keep whetting your audience’s appetite, ask them. To improve your website content planning, conduct online surveys or polls from time to time.

You can easily post polls daily using online services if you don’t have polling capability built into your site. Also, keep surveys short and sweet and provide an incentive; people are more likely to respond.

2. Be seasonal. There’s always a market for stories that are seasonal, such as summer or Christmas, or stories that are timely, such as Valentine’s Day or a special month. Take an hour or so to do some brainstorming and jot down the articles you can create around these themes.

3. Respond to an unexpected or major event. When these events, such as Hurricane Katrina or Michael Jackson’s untimely death occur, audiences often want more information or insight. Think of creative ways you can serve their needs during your content planning.

4. Solve a problem your audience has. This is an essential part of website content planning. You can create SEO content or articles around perennial problems your audience has (such as gardening or coping with the flu), or unexpected problems or hot-button issues.

Remember a few years ago when tainted pet food grabbed the attention of pet owners everywhere? Pet website and blog publishers who were on the ball knew the importance of providing their audiences with timely information they could use to protect their pets.

5. Eavesdrop on social networks. At this stage, you’d be remiss to not include the buzz on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and Twitter in your content planning.

Sometimes your website audience just gets into a topic before you do. After all, you may be busier with other things such as upgrading your site, marketing, or customer service. Social networkers can help you to stay in the loop so that you keep your website content fresh and engaging.

For help with content planning and brainstorming for your blog, newsletter or website, contact us today.

Source: Core Content Media
Type: Original SEO article
Keyword density: Content planning – 2.4%

Content Planning – 5 Easy Ways to Keep Websites and Blogs Fresh by Core Content Media is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://corecontentmedia.com/contact/.

You’ve got great website content, but search engines aren’t showing you any love – and your visitors are clicking away sooner than you’d like. What’s the solution? For starters, try avoiding these four mistakes:

1. Not Optimizing Old Website Content.

Most website and blog publishers are aware of the importance of optimizing their new website content. However, old content often gets overlooked during the SEO process.

Some blog and website content is perennial – it has value year after year for your visitors. This is especially the case when you have content that’s solution-oriented. “How-to” posts and articles are some of the most popular searches conducted on the Internet.

Even if you have articles that are a few years old, it may still be worthwhile to optimize them with strong keywords and keyword phrases. It only takes a few minutes to conduct keyword research using a tool such as the new-and-improved keyword search tool at Google Adwords, or other effective keyword research tools.

With those powerful keywords in hand, even if you just use them to rewrite the title, subtitles, the first paragraph, and the final paragraph, it can make a difference to your page ranks.

2. Not Using Enough Long Tail Keywords In Your Website Content.

Competition for short tail keywords on the Internet is fierce. So, if you’re still stuck on page three, four or 10 of search engine results pages, you’re not taking advantage of a very simple technique – inserting long tail keywords.

Consider that the search term “health” produces 124,000,000 searches on Google’s keyword tool. But, “women’s health care” brings up 60,500. You stand a far better chance of getting to the first or second page of search results for the long tail term than you do using the short tail keyword.

Many website visitors don’t browse past page one or two of search results. So, it’s very worthwhile to include long tail keywords in your blog or website content to boost your traffic.

3. Not Maximizing Internal Links In Your Website Content.

Ignoring internal linking is another common mistake publishers make when creating content for websites or blogs. Instead, many focus on external or back links, while not taking advantage of the benefits of internal links.

Not only do internal links enhance the usability of your website for your visitors; they improve your website’s structure and how search engines crawl and index your pages. Even better? Internal links are SEO tools you have total control over. You don’t have to rely on someone else linking to your site, or posting comments with your url to create back links.

Once you have enough content on your site, focus on creating contextual links to other posts or articles your readers may find interesting or useful. Also, be sure to use strong keywords or keyword phrases in your anchor text when building internal links in your blog and website content.

4. Not Tracking The Popularity of Your Website Content.

It may be very important to you to publish certain types of website content for your audience. But, if you’re not giving them what they want they won’t come as often, which affects your search engine’s rankings and your revenue. Your content strategy needs an overhaul.

So how do you do that? Start monitoring and tracking your visitors behavior on your website or blog. Those handy domain tools aren’t just for show — they provide valuable insight into the type of website content you should be focusing on.

Over time you may be able to afford to try convincing your visitors that they need the other less popular content on your site. But, in the online world, a visitor just has to click on their mouse to get to your competitor. It’s best to start off by giving them the website content they want.

Avoiding these four website content mistakes will help you to stay on track for reaching your SEO goals and building a loyal following online.

Source: Core Content Media
Type: Original article
Word Count: 656
Keyword Density: Website content-2.4%