“… and a dash of pepper…” While out with a group at a Vietnamese noodle restaurant, two friends ordered the same Pho dish. I don’t know if you’ve ever had pho before, but most restaurants have a plate of multiple types of “add ons” that you add to the pho to make it better, like […]
Of Cooking Ingredients and Content Marketing: A Lesson in Pseudoscience Read More »
If you’ve ever had a strange physical sensation and became a bit paranoid about your health, you likely searched for that symptom in Google. If you’re like most people, the first few results were not a doctor’s article giving you background of the symptoms, but rather a forum with dozens of people freaking out over
Google+ isn’t the most popular social media engine around. But it is one of the most important for two reasons: Google still rewards people that use Google+ in a way that improves search engine rankings. Google plus is unlikely to become obsolete, so starting your account now puts you on a better path in case
While the internet has changed the way customers find products and services, it hasn’t replaced the average in-person company. Companies that rely on a storefront or in-person conversations can still attract business, because a great deal of business is still completed in person. What the internet has changed is how people find those companies. This
Recently we’ve been working within our own analytics data and talking to businesses about how they use visitor information, and it’s come to our attention that images and image searches have become a place of serious misunderstanding in the online marketing and content marketing world. Below are three different thoughts on images and marketing. Ignore
A few weeks ago a company contacted us to add content to their website. They were feeling desperate – their website had been online for months, and yet it had not attracted a single conversion. We checked out their site thoroughly and were a little surprised. The site was actually pretty good. It wasn’t perfect,
Every company and website wants visitors. They want someone to come and purchase a product or service because they need customers to generate some type of revenue, and the only way to get those customers – especially online – is to get people to your website. There are two methods of marketing a website: Inbound
What is the Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Marketing? Read More »
Many businesses limit their online marketing budgets to a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a month. Because of the financial limitations, most of those companies put all of their marketing money into pay per click ads. The hope is that with their monthly investment of a few hundred dollars they’ll be able to
Content Marketing vs. PPC – Short and Long Term Benefits Read More »
Great Leap Studios has a customer relationship manager that does a lot of cold calling. That’s because few businesses are aware of the value of content marketing and SEO, and the only way to help them learn about our services is to give them a call and let them know that content marketing exists. It’s
For better or worse, rewriting content is a part of content writing. While every great copywriter tries to write from scratch using their own knowledge and the research they’ve completed for the project, often you’re asked to write an article that is nearly identical to another article that already exists. You have two options: Do
5 Tips for Rewriting Articles From Other Websites Read More »
I’m going to level with you, reader. I love being behind the scenes. I love writing for other people, using my ability to research and understand common sense to craft articles and content that reads like it was written by an expert. I love making websites successful, and I love it even more when I
Being Pseudo-Famous in the Internet Marketing and Online Marketing World Read More »
Most marketers are familiar with online advertisements. You visit a webpage, and somewhere on the webpage is an image ad for some type of product or service. You may also have noticed that often these advertisements are based on products or services you recently searched for. For example, if you did a Google Search for
How Content Marketing Improves An Ad Retargeting Program Read More »
Recently we wrote a blog post about the benefits of writing an outline. Ideally, an outline reduces pauses in between article topics so that you can quickly and easily get into a groove and write as much content as possible before your fingers get tired. We want to expand on that today with three additional
It would be a stretch to call myself an organized person. I’m not disorganized, mind you. I’m simply not someone that’s gone out of their way to utilize or develop organizational strategies. When I was freelancing I kept all of my tax data on a basic Excel sheet. I have several resources for one of
How an Outline Can Help You Write Web Content Quickly Read More »
Ask any company what they want from their content marketing or SEO strategy, and they’ll tell you that their goal is to be on the first page of Google, ideally the first one or two listed in the Google search algorithm. It’s an obvious goal – the further you’re listed from the front page, the
We started our careers as freelance writers at Elance.com. One of the reasons we made such a name for ourselves was because we provided high quality content – something many buyers were looking for but few were able to find. At one point, our team of two was listed number 3 out of over 34,000
San Jose and the surrounding cities are a haven for modern technology. Many of the world’s most renowned software development companies and hardware manufacturers are based in San Jose, and many more are founded in that city regularly. Yet as someone that has spent a lot of time in San Jose, I’m amazed how little
SCROLL DOWN TO THE END FOR AN EXCITING UPDATE Today I embark on a soon to be short lived, mathematically and realistically impossible journey to become the one billionth view of Psy’s Gangnam style YouTube video. As of today, I am number 971,518,818. Only 28,481,182 to go before Gangnam style reaches an unheard of billionth
1 Billion for Gangnam Style – This Author’s Pointless Quest to Be the 1 Billionth View Read More »
The 2012 holiday season is here! That means that everyone that started marketing their website in 2011 is seeing their hard work pay off. Content marketing has a “fast” component. Every time a new page is added to your website, it has the potential to be listed in a few days to a few weeks,
Market for the 2013 Holiday Season During the 2012 Holiday Season Read More »
We threw together this quick infographic with a couple of terrible font choices (long story) to give you a fun visual way to understand how easy it is to fund a content marketing campaign. By shrinking your sales staff by just one individual, you can fund enough content to last you 3 to 10 years,
INFOGRAPHIC: Putting Your Sales Expenditures into a Content Marketing Perspective Read More »
Last week, we discussed a type of content writing known as “Active Content.” Active content is content that has some type of call to action. Often when readers visit your site for information, they read what they need and then close the page and move on. Adding a call to action gives them a mental
When you write a lot of content in advance, you occasionally find yourself with extra content. This is content that you may have decided not to use, or may simply not have a place for on your website. Wasted content can be frustrating, because you invested in this content and now it doesn’t appear to
Google rewards websites that have a significant amount of content. The more content the better (provided it is of a high quality), and it’s implied that simply creating the content should position your website in such a way that your hits increase and your sales/conversions increase with it. But many content marketers have found that
Wikipedia is fundraising again, and it’s time that everyone that uses Wikipedia donates. As a writer, Wikipedia is a frenemy. On the one hand, Wikipedia can make it harder to move forward with your content. For us here at Great Leap Studios, the benefits of the latter outweigh the former, and that’s why we’re encouraging
Soon it will be December. What would become Great Leap Studios started in a living room by two people passionate about writing. December was traditionally a month off – not because either writer decided to take the holidays off, but because most non-retail companies consider December a dead time for marketing. It’s cold, marketing budgets
Clear Out Your Budget – Get Started on 2013 Today Read More »
This post was written by Leslie Van Zee of Vantage Local – experts in local online display advertising. For correspondence or questions about online display, visit www.vantagelocal.com or followed on Twitter at @VantageLocal. Adobe’s 2012 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey revealed that online marketers tend to invest heavily to attract a web-based audience, yet they don’t
Optimizing Content for Conversion – Turning Visitors Into Revenue Read More »
Numbered lists are considered a staple of marketing content. People like numbers. For whatever reason, lists that start with a number draw in more readers than articles that don’t. The most likely reason is that numbered lists indicate that there will be numerous points that the person can take away from the content, while a
We’d say we’re not ones to toot our own horn, but let’s be honest – if we didn’t, who would toot it? With all of these horns lying around here all un-tooted, someone has to toot them. It may as well be us. After all, they are our horns. Seems like a no-brainer. Word on
The Silver Surfer is in trouble. He made some risky bets in Three Card Poker, and now he owes $10,000 to the Mafia. There’s no time left – he has 1 hour to pay back the debt, or the mob will collect it for him, and they’re a little fuzzy with the math. He turns
What Would the Silver Surfer Need to Do to Pay Back $10,000 in Debt? Read More »
Google’s pagerank is fluid. It updates constantly through its web crawlers and it’s not really a number, but a mathematical generation of value that can change any given minute of any given day. But Google does release a “pagerank” every three months or so – a numerical representation of your current rank in the Google
2012 November Google Pagerank Update Expected Soon Read More »
Quick post for today, but answering a common question that people have about the future of search – whether or not the most popular search engines can ever be beaten. Spoiler Alert! The answer is yes. Take DuckDuckGo.com, for example. It’s a simple search engine with no ads that doesn’t track your search history. It
Search engine algorithms are always getting refined in order to create an ideal search environment. The better a search engine does at matching people to their search queries, the more likely they’re going to be used. If another search engine comes along that challenges Google and Bing in terms of matching people with ideal search
3 Expected Changes in the Google and Bing Search Engine Algorithms Read More »
Recently I’ve written several guest posts on this conspiracy theory that many SEO strategists have about the way Google has been updating its search results. It is widely believed that Google’s search engine updates are designed specifically for two purposes: To force more people to use their products. To force more people to use Google
Addressing the Google Conspiracy: Google Favoring Its Own Products Won’t Last Read More »
Google is constantly upgrading their algorithm to reflect changes in today’s search engine environment, and they’ve recently rolled out a new update that directly effects the value of quality content. According to Matt Cutts, the webspam team leader at Google, the Google search engine has been updated to reflect the dissatisfaction that many users face
SEO Tip For New Websites – Create a Readable Layout Read More »
Effective search engine marketing is about anticipation. You don’t want your company to just be catching up all the time. You want to strike before other companies, so that when your services are in high demand you’re already leading in local search. For a lot of companies, that’s easier said than done. But for pest
Many of the companies that turn to us for content have already started a website and created a blog that they simply can’t keep up on their own. Often some intern or non-writer fills it with a few basic, boring posts and then forgot about it, updating it once a month or so with some
Many people struggle with one aspect of content marketing: whether or not content alone is enough to rocket you up in Google. We know two things about the Google search engine: They reward unique, well written content. They reward incoming links. At first glance, content marketing is the former only. It’s a method of developing
At Great Leap Studios, we offer two different types of content options. Option one is to simply order bulk content as needed. You can fill out the order form and quickly receive as many pieces of content as you need to run your website. This is a popular option for companies that already have content
Our free content offer is still in effect. Companies that want an opportunity to see what it’s like to add site building content to their website are welcome to contact us and fill out our free content form. Within 24 hours, one of us will contact you to discuss how to craft a high quality
Hey I Just Met You, and This is Crazy, But Here’s Free Content Read More »
Content theft is a common problem in marketing. You write some piece of content, and another website uses bots to steal that content and post it on their own site. It’s an issue that doesn’t necessarily affect your status in search engines as much as some people believe, but it’s still one that can be
