How to Attract Readers with Lists
December 9, 2008 by SEO for Recruiters Guy · Leave a Comment
Lists are a great way to bring traffic to your blog… but why do they work? Well, it is quite simple, people are impatient and they don’t want to waste time. When someone reads the title of your blog article they evaluate it very quickly to make a value assessment. First they look for a clear subject and test to see that it is a subject that would be of interest to them. If all your title includes is words that convey the subject of the article, then an important piece of information necessary for busy professionals to make a good judgment is missing; the length of the article or at least some indication of the length.
If you make your article title into a “list” style title, then it will quite naturally communicate the length or relative length of the article to people who might see the title in a list somewhere. Say for instance, you want to write a quick article about how to attract top flight candidates, if you title it: “An investigation into methods and practices which will yield a nominal increased in highly qualified candidates.” it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to click on the link… it sounds dry and LOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGG.
However, if you were to title it “5 Quick Ways to Get More Candidates” anyone seeing the title in a list will at the very least think that it must present a group of concise statements that will address attracting candidates. If that is a topic that is of interest to the person seeing the title, then likely you will get a visitor.
So my advice is to the recruiters out there reading this, keep lists at the top of your ‘list’ as a great way to title your blog posts.
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All Work and No Play Makes You Dull - JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 6
December 6, 2008 by SEO for Recruiters Guy · Leave a Comment
I hate to work on the weekends… it makes me think that all I do is work. So I’m not doing it. My present for today (Saturday) was actually to myself. I took the day off and watched my favorite football team beat their hated rivals in a series that goes back 109 years.
Congratulations to the midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy and Navy fans everywhere.
Navy now leads the series 53-49-7 since the first game in 1890.
Navy has won 13 straight times against Air Force and Army since 2002, outscoring the programs 441-205 during the streak. The Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy (which goes to the academy with the best record against the other two schools) remains docked with Navy.
JBE 24 days of Christmas (presents) - Day 4 - The Big “No No” of SEO and How to NOT Get Burned
December 4, 2008 by SEO for Recruiters Guy · Leave a Comment
There are only two ways to have your website optimized so that it ranks well in search engines. The first way, you can do it yourself. It take lots of study and many hours of research to find out what your strategy should be before you even start the implementation of your SEO program. Then it takes a LOT of consistent and tedious effort and constant monitoring to measure results and implement improvement processes. Usually this isn’t a good investment of a recruiter’s time.
The second way is to hire someone or some firm to do the implementation for you. This is probably the methond that is chosen by most recruiters or recruiting firms who are enlightened enough to understand that the actually NEED search engine optimization. There are literally thousands of SEO companies, consultants, and experst who can perform SEO on your website for you. There are some that are good and their are some that are not so good. Then there are some who you should run away from as fast as you can.
The big “no no” of SEO for me is Blackhat SEO. Usually you can tell a vendor of the blackhat variety by how they talk to you about their service or what they say in their advertisements. If you see or hear something like “top 10 on Google guaranteed in 48 hours” or “top Google listings for keywords that you choose in 1 week” then you can be pretty sure these guys are only talking to you for one reason. They want to get into your wallet in a BIG way. These companies are the kind that will say and do anything to separate you from your hard earned cash. The job they do can be categorized into one of two categories - 1) Blackhat techniques or 2) completely worthless.
Blackhat SEO can yeild results, which for a very short time [usually long enough for you to pay the HUGE upfront fee for the SEO consultant], can indeed have your site ranking at the top of Google and the other major search engines. Trouble is that the results are temporary at best. At worst the practice can result in your website being REMOVED from the index altogether so that you don’t show up for ANY searches at all.
The other ‘results’ [and I use the term very loosely] that you may get from some of the nefarious vendors of ‘guaranteed’ search engine optimization programs are what I call ‘worthless.’ These results are actual high ranking of your site in the major search engines for keyword search terms that don’t receive any actual usage or searches. An example of such ‘result’ would be ranking highly for the term “concrete scuba tanks.“ I use this as an example because as an experiment, I bet a colleague that I could rank #1 on Google for a search term within 7 days. {here is my article on the SEO attaining #1 on Google} which I actually did in 6 days. The only trouble is for SEO to be effective the keywords that you rank highly for have to be actually used by people on the Internet. And I can guarantee that, other than the people who I have pointed to my article, NO ONE in the world is looking for concrete scuba tanks on the Internet… or anywhere else for that matter.
So here are the top three things that you should use to evaluate a potential vendore of SEO for your website:
- The SEO vendor should not offer an OUTRAGEOUS guarantee of performance
- The SEO consultant should be able to point you to successful websites they have optimized
- The search optimization company should be able to provide positive, glowing references
My number one rule for making the right pick is avoid at all costs the clowns who guarantee quick number 1 listings on Google - they’re crooks.