blogging

How long should a blog post be?

September 17, 2019 By purpletc

How long should a blog post be you may ask!

Every few months we get some new advice from a blogging guru saying that our blog posts need to be longer, or shorter, or that they should be broken up into 10 pages of bite-sized chunks… it can make you crazy. Let’s talk about this. How long should your blog posts really be?

It would be great if there was a magic
number that guaranteed best results, wouldn’t it? But that’s like asking
someone to tell you how long your conversations with other people should be.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than a few words or sentences; sometimes you have a
nice long talk. It all depends on how much you have to say to each other,
doesn’t it?

The same approach works well with your blog posts. Sometimes you’re sharing just a quick tip or a recipe for example. In that case something around 400 to 500 words will do just fine. Add a pretty picture and call it good. However, most SEO tools are going to be looking for between 600-700 words. Always make sure to include text in your image alt area as well!

Other times you want to go into a little more depth. You want to cover different aspects of a topic, share some examples and give your readers as much information as you can. In those cases make it as long as you need to make it. Long posts are great. They help establish your authority and if the content is great, they are often shared on social media. Plus long posts give the search engines a lot of text to sift through and give you more chances to rank for long-tail keywords. So, the reality is – there is no PERFECT post length.

How long should a blog post be? www.thepurpleteacup.com — Don’t forget to Pin me!

The best advice is to mix longer and
shorter blog posts. It will make your blog seem more natural and organic. Don’t
force yourself to reach a certain magic word count if you don’t have that much
to say on a topic. Keep it short and to the point. Your readers will thank you.

If on the other hand you have a lot to share in a different post, go for it. Break the longer content up into small paragraphs and help your readers stay on track with subheadings and bullet points. Make it easy to scan longer posts so your readers can get an idea of what the content is about before they commit to reading it all. And if you are looking for a quick way to write posts in under 10 minutes – check this out!

And if you’re finding yourself writing a
few thousand words, consider breaking it up into a series of blog posts
instead. It will help both you and your readers from getting overwhelmed with
one long post. Link from one part of the series to the next to make it easy for
your blog readers to follow along.

Above all, enjoy the process of writing and
pay attention to what your readers prefer. If your short posts tend to do
better, consider keeping your posts short and to the point. If you’re getting a
lot more engagement and social media shares on longer posts, combine a few of
the shorter blog post ideas into a longer one. And whatever you do, don’t get
hung up on a number of words.

Hey, come and check out our Facebook page and give us a like! We love to know what people are looking to learn in WordPress world! Our group, The Bloggers Bistro is filled with an amazing group of Female Entrepreneurs learning how to blog to promote their business, their passions and their voices!

How to Build Trust for Your Website

April 29, 2019 By purpletc

If you want your website to be as
successful as possible, then there are a lot of different factors that you need
to take into account. Which of these is most important all depends on who you
ask but one thing that we universally know to be highly important is ‘trust’.

Google wants to provide its users with answers. This is one of its main services and if Google can’t do it, then people will look elsewhere – such as Yahoo – to get what they’re looking for.

But in order for Google to provide answers,
it needs to know which sites it can trust. The results pages are not ‘curated’,
meaning that Google doesn’t have a team to actually check the content. And that
means that it needs to start recognizing sites that deliver popular answers in
a programmatic, algorithmic manner.

How can you make sure that this all works
for you and your site is considered one of the ‘trusted’?

The
Right Links

The first and most important way to
accomplish this is with the right links profile. You need to attract links from
sites that Google already trusts – but how do you know what sites those are?

One strategy is to look at Google’s ‘In the
News’ section. Here, Google highlights breaking stories by sharing posts from
popular news sites and sites in that niche. This is a very important tip
because in order for Google to share that content as news, it must already have a high amount of trust
for those sites – and this will rub off on you a great deal.

Another tip is when possible, to try and
get a link from a .edu or .gov domain. Google likes these sites because they
have obviously got a certain amount of credibility and by aligning yourself
with them, some of that credibility is likely to rub off on you as well!

Branding

Another useful tip is branding. Google likes brands and has shared this information openly in the past. If your site name is currently the same as your keyword – rather than a catchy company name – then you’re doing yourself a disservice. (The Purple Teacup is already taken – just letting you know)

Likewise, you should also try to get links from other big brands. Google knows brands like Coca-Cola, like the BBC and like The Verge and that means they can pass on a lot of credibility.

Check out our article on SEO and Branding here.

Degrees
of Separation

Of course it’s not exactly easy to get
links from the BBC, or from the biggest sites in your niche that Google is
featuring. So what can you do if you’re still ‘small fry’?

One answer is to think of this as a game of ‘degrees of separation’. If you can’t get a link from the BBC, then getting a link from a site that has a link from the BBC can work a great deal!

Researching
Backlinks

How do you know what links a site has pointing to it? Simple: use a backlinks tool. And this also has the advantage of allowing you to research precisely which links worked for the biggest sites in your niche… so that you can build the same ones! Check out our article on being a guest blogger – guest blogging is great for backlinks

Whatever you do, keep blogging – the more content you have the happier Google and other Search Engines are!

Looking for ways to improve your SEO? Check out our SEO Awesomeness Course – an incredible resource for categories, tags, and keywords. And join us over in the Bistro! Our free Facebook Community where all the fun bloggers hang out and tag about WordPressy stuff.

How to Not Screw up Guest Posting!

April 18, 2019 By purpletc

While no SEO technique is perfect, guest posting is perhaps the most reliable and useful tool for building a backlink profile that is available to marketers today.

For those who aren’t familiar, guest posting creates links to your website from external blogs and sites by providing them with free content. You write a post or article for a blog or website and send it to them to publish on the proviso that you can include a link to your own website in there.

As a result, they get free content and you
get a link back to your site. Everyone wins…

But as with any tool, it’s all about how
you use it…

Tip
1: Don’t Overdo It

The first important tip to keep in mind is that you mustn’t overdo guest posting, as with any other search engine optimization strategy. A good links profile is one that seems ‘natural’ and thus you don’t want there to be an overabundance of any one particular ‘type’ of link. Use guest posts in conjunction with other methods and make this part of a broader strategy.

Tip
2: Choose Authority Blogs

Probably the most important factor to consider when getting guest posts is the type of blog that your link is going to end up on. In that regard, the best option by far is to get your links on authority blogs and sites.

Authority blogs and sites are those that Google already trusts as an authority and these will thus be able to act much more effectively as useful ‘testimonies’ as to the quality of your site.

One excellent way to find high authority blogs is to look at Google’s ‘In the News’ section. This will show you sites that Google trusts enough to feature reporting on breaking news. If you can get a link from one of these, then you can be sure they will help you a great deal.

Another tip is to look at the links profile of the blog you’re planning on targeting. Trust for Google works a little like ‘degrees of separation’ and if the blog linking to you has a link from an .edu site for example, then this will translate to more trust for you too!

Tip
3: Write Excellent Content

The content you write is also highly important. It needs to be a high quality post, not only so that it sends more of the right signals to Google, but also to encourage other high caliber blogs to want to link to you. (It’s also important to ensure your branding is strong for the same reason).

At the same time, you need to write excellent quality content that is directly relevant to the topic of your website. This is important because it will help to communicate the topic of your blog to Google and will make the link more relevant. Google demands that all in-bound links be highly relevant at all times. What’s better than having a link embedded naturally into a post that you wrote?

The “Vanity Plate” for your Website

January 24, 2019 By purpletc

You have heard of Vanity Plates for your car, what if I told you that now you can have a EMOJI url for your website!Click To Tweet

(copy this and place it in your browser)

the?☕.ws

Yep, that’s right – The Purple Teacup Co has a “The purple heart cup dot website” URL. Now, why would you want something like that?

It’s cool
It’s a way to stand out
With URLs getting longer, this is a great way to shorten it!
It’s fun

So, how do you get a super cool, fun way to stand out, emoji URL – simply – go here

Once you decide and pick your fancy smancy new URL – where can you send it? Literally anywhere on the internet – you could have it go to your own website, a Facebook page or group, a campsite, you could even send it o a link to a profile on your Instagram or Pinterest. As long as it has a URL – you can forward it there!

Then, you want to set up the Domain Forwarding. I recommend adding “masked forwarding” so that it doesn’t get all “yucky” on the way through the internet (are you likely all the technical words I am using in this article).

So, go, and make a fun little emoji URL – and I would love to see it – come and join us in the Bloggers Bistro on Facebook. Lots of great free training, just like this one!

5 Free Stock Photography Sites for Bloggers

July 28, 2018 By purpletc

One of the challenges that most bloggers face is finding good quality stock photos that they can use within their blog posts. Here are my top 5 choices for stock photo resources.

(Please remember to always check terms and condition and licenses. Things can change from when this was published.)

1. Pixabay

This is my first go-to when I need an image. They have a large existing catalog and it keeps growing. In many cases, they will have a series of images so if you are looking to do a collection of posts, you can get matching images without using the exact same one.

2. Stock Snap
Hundreds of high-resolution images added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions. This is a great site for lifestyle bloggers to find free stock photography that will work with their blog.

3. Unsplash
I love that the photography community is looking at using their talents for good and not evil! (LOL) Many photographers have side passion projects that they never expect to sell, but just want to create beautiful images. This is an example of professional photographers sharing their talents for free.

4. Gratisography
Gratisophy has the perfect picture for your personal or business project. Amazing high-resolution pictures are added weekly and all of them are photographed by Ryan McGuire and free of copyright restrictions.

5. Public Domain Archive
Some people go down the rabbit hole of Pinterest, but this is MY guilty pleasure site. I love looking at the amazing photography on this site and it would be the perfect fit for a lifestyle or travel blogger.

BONUS! This is a late addition that I want to make sure you know about!
PikWizard just arrived at my doorstep and I am loving the fact that these images are new and fresh. NONE of these I have seen anywhere else! I would DEFINITELY recommend them as an added resource to your list!

blogging

The Right Links

Branding

Degrees of Separation

Researching Backlinks

Tip 1: Don’t Overdo It

Tip 2: Choose Authority Blogs

Tip 3: Write Excellent Content

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