by Susan | Feb 20, 2023 | Business Owners, Career Professionals, Content Creators, Marketers, Students
“Keywords are the bridge between your content and your audience” – Brian Clark
Every search begins with a keyword.
Every website is ranked based on a keyword.
Every online advertisement is placed based on a keyword.
Your customer is looking to buy based on keywords.
You should also sell based on keywords.
- Identify keywords:
If you are writing your resume, look into the job description for the keywords.
Check out LinkedIn profiles for roles that you see yourself in, and mine those for relevant keywords.
Check out company and business function descriptions to identify keywords that you want to rank high for.
Once you have the right keywords, then you can write compelling content.
2. Get Long-tail keywords
The term “long-tail” comes from statistics. Where there are extreme values, there are fewer data points. The distribution of most data, displayed on a chart, creates the appearance of tapering off at the end; a “tail.”
For each additional keyword added to a keyword phrase, there are a smaller number of people searching for that specific combination of words.
Check out http://www.wordtracker.com/blog/introduction-to-long-tail-keywords for a good description on long-tail keywords.
The presence of a long tail for a particular keyword indicates that there is a group of people who are looking for very specific information. This is your target group. These are not casual surfers, but high-potential customers. They could be recruiters in your dream company and you want to write for them.
Targeting long-tail keywords has the following benefits:
- Those searching for the long-tail keyword are more likely to be your potential customers.
- Search engines can display results more accurately for long-tail keywords.
- There is less competition for long-tail keywords.
- Your site will stay high in the rankings for a longer time, relative to shorter keywords.
3. Identifying your top keywords:
To identify and gather keywords relevant to your site you must go beyond the obvious:
Identify 3-5 main keywords based on your ecommerce or blog site topic. One of these must be embedded in your domain name, such as Cheaptickets.com.
Use Google suggest (a.k.a. auto complete) and review the keywords indicated by “Searches related to.” You can also use Google Keyword Planner tool or other software in order to add to your list in this manner.
Even better, ask ChatGPT to give you a list of keywords. Then ask it to refine, and then refine some more.
Continue the process until you have 3-5 high potential “core” keywords and about 50 long-tail keywords.
4. Important attributes of the keywords in your target list:
A. Volume: They must have high search volume. This is for the keywords, and also for the search results produced by Google. High volume = more people are searching for this keyword.
B. Relevance: Less relevance means wrong audience. If your content is written for the wrong audience (i.e. targeting keywords will low or no relevance), you won’t get customer interest. For the right audience, you want to put out compelling content.
C. Commerciality: Present of ads in search results indicates that people are willing to pay for the resulting information, i.e. this indicates the presence of a market.
5. What do you do with the keywords:
A. Write content: Obviously you want to write content, compelling content. Blog-posts, white-papers, curated content, stories, etc. All these can provide insightful information to your customer and keep them engaged.
B. Monitor ranking: Monitor the performance of your content against the keywords. This will tell you how your site and content perform and give you a chance to tweak the same, i.e. improve SEO.
C. Write cornerstone posts: For your “core” keywords (the 3-5 that you selected), you want to write longer, more informational posts. Then add multiple hyperlinks to these posts.
D. Ensure keywords are hyperlinked to your other content: Ensure that each of your blog-posts has at least 3-5 links to your own blog-posts. Ensure that you have at least 2 links to external sites. Use keywords to insert the links on. E.g. instead of hyperlinking “click here”, put the hyperlink on “herbal cure for dry cough”.
E. Include in your URLs: Ensure your “core” keywords are in the URL slug.
F. Use advertisements for your keywords: When your competition has all but captured all your top keywords, then use ads for those keywords. Counter-intuitively, you can also place ads for the keywords where your content is ranking high (to ensure you capture maximum value for those keyword searches). Do this when there is sufficient volume of searches.
Keywords are the foundation of search engine results. Targeting the wrong keywords means that your content is invisible to your target customer.
At Accelevaite, our guides and courses help you write better and get noticed. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized. You can build credibility and a powerful presence online with your writing.
by admin | Feb 19, 2023 | Business Owners, Career Professionals, Content Creators, Marketers, Students
A solid content generation strategy has some essentials.
Impactful content, that achieves the expected results, should satisfy all of the following conditions:
- Relevant or appropriate
- Engaging
- Insightful
Whether you are presenting a business idea to your executives, writing content for your customers or crafting your resume, these rules apply.
- Relevant:
Relevant = closely connected to the matter at hand
Appropriate = suitable or proper in the circumstances, fitting to a particular purpose or to a target audience
How would you know what these are?
You get the chance to establish this – by declaring the “focus keyword”.
The focus keyword is the primary property of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
You will lose your customer if you write for the wrong keyword.
2. Engaging:
When a user clicks on a search result and begins consuming your content, they should get what they are looking for.
The user provides the input, in the form of the focus keyword.
You, as content provider, should ensure that the title and the description, that appear in the search results, provide exactly what would be expected when someone plugs in the keyword.
Your goal should be to provide highly relevant, interesting and valuable content to keep the user on the page for as long as possible. Provide valuable links to other pages on your site, and to other relevant sites.
Time your reader spends on your post/page = Degree of engagement as recorded by Google. The more time they spend, the more engaging your content or site is.
3. Insightful:
Your reader should always get more than what they already knew, before they read your content.
There are various methods of providing insights:
- Arouse curiosity
- Provide a framework
- Provide data or information
- Save them time by bringing information from various sites into yours (through content curation; not duplication)
- Answer their questions (anticipate questions and use them in the form of keywords)
- Teach them something new
- Provide them with results of a survey (i.e. other peoples’ opinions)
- Bring them expert advice (through guest interviews)
If there is no insight, your content won’t be engaging.
At Accelevaite, our guides and courses help you write better and get noticed. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized. You can build credibility and a powerful presence online with your writing.
by admin | Feb 13, 2023 | Business Owners, Career Professionals, Content Creators, Marketers, Students
Whether you write content for marketing, blogs or build presentations, there are some components that help make your writing catchy and sticky.
I have listed a number of these components here. Consider these next time you write content and watch your writing improve.
A good quote makes you ponder. Some quotes are powerful enough to change people’s behavior. Everyone has a favorite quote, or two, or three.
My favorite quote is an African saying which ends in “…..when the sun comes up, you better be running”.
You can use powerful quotes to set the stage for a presentation.
Dilbert cartoons works just as effectively.
I have written three examples of striking headlines. Use in your subject lines or blog titles, and watch the open rate climb up.
Next time you feel the urge to click on a headline, pause and examine what made you click.
Lists make for easy reading. They are good for SEO. When you add a sub-heading to each list item, your writing becomes powerful.
Here are three examples of re-framing technique. The idea is to get your customer to pause and re-think their cancel decision.
Whether you write a blog, a white-paper or a presentation, have an outline. Better still, show that to your audience and then stick to it.
Having an outline before you write, let’s you gauge completeness and flow.
Ask chatGPT to write you an outline of whatever you want to create. Then follow the outline.
Too many CTAs confuse the reader. On one page, or one blog-post, ask for one action. Click here, subscribe to my mailing list or buy now.
Better way is to assertively describe the action. Instead of “buy now”, say “get your awesome guide today”.
The internet works on SEO. SEO helps rank websites, products, profiles and almost all content in the online world. Search results work off of keywords.
If you write well for the wrong keyword, you are attempting to sell to the wrong audience. Your customer will not see your product.
This post shows you how to pick out highly relevant keywords.
Don’t leave home without it.
You have to understand SEO. If you are a student, mid-career professional or business owner. If you are marketer, content creator or a website owner. Everything is subject to SEO. Lower ranking causes invisibility, as in invisible presence or sales.
There are rules for readability. Search engines rank easily readable sites higher.
The Hemingwayapp helps you check if your writing is good for, say, sixth grade (considered good readability).
You already know about ChatGPT. Also check out midjourney, copy.ai, synthesia.io.
They all help you write better and create content at scale.
When you display numbers, people are better able to compare, or understand the magnitude of something.
Ranked in the top 1% in my school (250 students) tells you something.
550 single star ratings can mean anything.
Out of 5000 it is 10%. But if a product has 550 single star ratings out of 100,000, it has an entirely different meaning.
- Psychologically appealing:
Use psychological techniques such as FOMO, anchoring, sunk cost, recency bias, emotional desire, etc. to get people to act on your messaging.
Appeal to the human side for urging decisions. Where logic does not work, try appealing to emotions. People make decisions from their gut, and then use logic to justify.
When you use analogy, people understand better.
This post contains an example of analogy for influencing your customer’s mind and two other creative pricing techniques.
- 10-20-30 rule for presentations:
I love the 10-20-30 rule from Guy Kawaski on presentations. You can’t go wrong with his prescription: 10 slides, 20 mins, 30 size font.
Did you know you can use ChatGPT for proof-reading? Just paste a block of your content and ask it to check spelling, grammar, etc.
Oh, by the way, it can write code for you as well.
For capturing your reader’s attention, add images, audio and videos. That is good for your customer, and also for SEO.
At Accelevaite, our guides and courses help you write better and get noticed. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized. You can build credibility and a powerful presence online with your writing.
by admin | Feb 13, 2023 | Business Owners, Career Professionals, Content Creators, Marketers, Students
Every now and then you come across something that instantly arouses curiosity in your mind. You want to know the answer immediately.
Here are three examples of well-crafted, attention-grabbing titles:
- Hovding: The world’s safest bicycle helmet isn’t a helmet.
Then what is it? Right?
See for yourself at https://hovding.com/
2. Book title from the authors of Feakonomics:
Not many people can resist thumbing through Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s book “When to Rob a Bank”hoping to get the answer quickly.
3. Blog-post on peeling a banana: When someone asserts that you have been doing a very common thing incorrectly for a long time, you have to know the right way. As simple a thing as peeling a banana.
When you see a title like “You’ve been peeling bananas wrong your whole life, and it’s time to stop” then you will have an irresistible urge to learn the right way. Click this link to find out.
Writing titles that instantly grab attention is a skill that comes with practice. Accelevaite provides guides and courses to help you write better and get noticed. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized.
by admin | Feb 12, 2023 | Career Professionals, Marketers, Students
On average a recruiter spend 6-8 seconds on a resume, to decide if they should read it.
On average about 11% of resumes are considered suitable for the roles applied for.
More statistics here.
Your resume has to be spot on, to go to the next level.
The big question is, how do you know that your resume is good enough for submission.
Note: Your resume can never be perfect. If you don’t believe this, take your best resume and send it to someone to take a look. I will give you $10 if they come back with no comments.
You need to have your resume at 80% completeness. The other 20% will come when you tailor it for submission to a particular position. That’s when the specific job related requirements, keywords and re-ordering come into play.
The following list contains all the sections you need in your resume. No more, no less.
Here is a cardinal rule of resume. One page for one decade of experience. Junior professionals and students – one page. Senior and mid-career professionals – 2 pages. No more than 2 pages.
Please also read the 3 mistakes to avoid on your resume at all costs.
- Name, contact:
Put down your name, location, telephone number and your email.
City and state are good enough. No need for exact home address.
Keep your email in the format [first name].[last name]@ xxxxmail.com
Your personal mobile phone is expected. Don’t use a phone that could be answered by someone else.
Do not include a photograph and other personal information such as gender, date of birth, etc.
2. Summary:
Keep this to 80 or max 100 words. Include your expertise, experience and achievements in this section. Only the top ones. Use starting clauses such as “deep experience in …”, “stellar track record in …”, “exceptional understanding of …”.
When tailoring to a specific job description, ensure that the keywords sought by the hiring manager (from the job description) are included in the summary section.
The summary section, by far, determines whether the reader will read the rest of your resume.
3. Core Competencies:
You can also call this a “Key Skillsets” section. Ideally a bulleted list, you can have this in a two-columnar form, or even a table.
Include skills and competencies that are expected in the role you are targeting. For technology roles, you can have databases, networking, operating systems, business applications, programming language, etc.
For business roles, you can have processes, solutions, customer engagement, team management, etc.
When tailoring to a specific job, ensure the right keywords are included. Also re-order the skills to position the required keywords at the top of the list.
4. Key Accomplishments:
Include between 5 and 7 accomplishment in bulleted form. Specify the value created, in the form of quantified benefits, such as “shortened average time taken by 20%”. Where application, indicate magnitude, like “led a team of 15” or “managed a $25 million annual budget”.
Use power words to start each accomplishment. Some examples are:
“Led a global team for…”
“Successfully managed…”
“Built a company-wide process for…”
Don’t include more than one bullet for the same type of accomplishment.
When tailoring to a specific job, ensure the first 3 accomplishments directly address the requirements in the job description.
(hint: if you cannot do this, then you are probably not a good fit for the job you are applying for).
5. Work Experience:
Each work experience should contain:
a. The name of the company.
b. Your title.
c. Description of the company. One sentence only, and if relevant.Start and end dates of employment (month and year are sufficient).
d. Bulleted list of achievements.
Ensure dates of employment are contiguous (i.e. no gaps). If there is a gap or more than 3 months, then you should explain. For example: May 2011 – August 2012 – Took time off for spending time with my grandparents. Or as relevant.
In the achievements bullets, list the activities you performed (not what the role is expected to do) and the end result (preferably quantified).
For example: “Led a global 18-month program with a 9-member team for re-designing XXX’s [company name] packaging process, resulting in 20% decreased use of non-recyclable materials”.
6. Education:
Start with the most recent one first.
Include university name, type of degree, month/year (from and to) or graduating month/year.
Optionally include field of study (especially if rare (e.g. city planning) or in vogue (e.g. artificial intelligence).
Include your GPA, if stellar, and other achievements such as Dean’s list.
For undergraduate students, move this section to the top of your resume.
And add a section for University Activities where you can list your areas of interest and the activities you participated in and teams you were part of.
7. Certifications:
Include if relevant for the position, such as PMP for Project Managers. You can also add this to the education section.
8. Other:
Include language proficiency, volunteering, any leadership initiatives (e.g. standing for local elections), causes you care about, etc.
9. Patents & Publications:
You can also include Patents in “Other”, if you don’t have my space in the 2-page resume.
For Ph.D’s and scientists, include all your publications in the Publication section and then the 2-page limit does not apply.
The above applies for most jobs, primarily in the United States. Other countries may have some additional, generally accepted concepts. Do research those.
The singular purpose of a resume is to get you that first screening call. Once you get that, then your resume has lived a successful life. Its mission is fulfilled.
Do check out the transformational job search strategy as well. Accelevaite guides and courses help you write better and get noticed. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized.
by admin | Feb 12, 2023 | Business Owners, Career Professionals, Content Creators, Marketers, Students
“You are the average of the 5 people you spend most time with” – Jim Rohn.
It has been my experience too. The more I followed a particular blogger, the more my writing and through processes became similar to theirs. I did not realize this, until a colleague at work commented. (Incidentally she said she liked the way I come up with “3 points” for any argument!).
So, here are 3 steps in which you can find and engage with influencers on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, because that is the best forum for career professionals and business owners, with more than 810 million members. Most members put out content and share thoughts on that platform.
- Identify influencers:
Strategically pick out 5 influencers and reach out. Connect to them or follow them on LinkedIn.
2. Read and Engage with their content:
Read, engage and share their content on the forum. You may have to tweak your feed settings or unfollow and follow others, until you strike a good balance of feed quantity and quality.
Hit the “like” button, offer compliments where appropriate and ask questions. Best way to engage is to comment. Do this only if you can add value or provide insights.
3. Reference them in your content:
There are two ways in which you can get their attention.
One is by referencing them in your content. Provide due credit to their piece if you are referencing. Or put out their story, provided you have been following them for a while, and have permission to do so.
Another way is to respond to other comments and questions on their posts. This is something that the author or post creator does. And when a follower takes on this role, it gets their attention. Again, do so only when you can add value and have the right information to satisfy the question.
Following key influencers has huge advantages. It improves your skills, thinking and writing. It shows your interest and expertise on a particular topic. Your comments help you get noticed. When the influencer shares your content, or “comments”likes” on your comment, you are exposed to their huge audience.
Accelevaite provides guides and courses help you write better and get noticed. This post shows examples on how you can engage influencers and grow your outreach. Better writing is a sure way to find your next job, get customers to take action and generally have your ideas and thoughts recognized.
