In Defense of the About Page

It’s long been accepted as a self-evident truth that your Home page is the most important page on your website. It’s your first impression, handshake, elevator pitch, morning makeup routine and “Hello world!” all rolled into one.  But I think as the world becomes overly polished, a Home page risks

I Tried Jasper AI for Month. It Wasn’t What I Expected.

I’m not an AI kind of guy. But there’s been a lot of the-sky-is-falling hullabaloo about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and whether it’ll put all of us bloggers out of a job, like how the sewing machine slaughtered the tailoring industry.   So I went to find out. I shelved my

Why You Take So Long to Write a Blog Post (And 10 Ways to Fix It)

Not to poke fun at Ron Stefanski at One Hour Professor, but headlines like this are just bogus: How to Write Blog Posts Fast in 2022 (4000+ Words Under 60 Minutes) (onehourprofessor.com) It’s actually a decent article on how to transcribe your dictation for faster blog post writing. But for

No Sh*t Sherlock! The Curse of Obvious Blog Writing

I despise obviousness. And guys, it’s everywhere. You can’t get away from it. If you thought COVID was bad … (No? Too soon? Ok …) Obviousness: The act of stating something everyone already knows. Syn.: you don’t say, open-and-shut, self-evident, apparent, thanks Captain Obvious, no sh*t Sherlock! When I read

Why Are Bloggers So Bad at Writing Bullet Point Lists?

“Dear God,” you’re saying right now, “Did this guy actually write an entire blog post just on how to write a bullet point list? What … a … nerd!” Yes, I did. And I’m not sorry. For all the writing that bloggers do, most of them are surprisingly bad at

I Found Some Funny Affiliate Disclaimer Examples

The FTC requires that bloggers (as marketers) make a prominent statement that disclaims their relationship to companies that pay them to sell or promote their products. Blah blah blah. You can gift-wrap your affiliate disclaimer in several ways: Fine Print: Shrink that disclaimer to 9-pt font, make it light gray,

Signposting: How You Can Offer a GPS to Your Readers

I remember atlases, my friends. I remember MapQuest. I remember printing off seven sheets of 8×11 turn-by-turn instructions for a cross-country road trip, highlighting my route on a pixelated map, and praying to Sweet Baby Jesus that I didn’t take a wrong turn. Today, I am wholly, unabashedly dependent on

What You’re In For When You Edit Outsourced Content

We can’t clone humans yet, but could outsourcing content come a close second? Your fingers can only type so fast; your brain can only grind away so long. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could hire someone else to think, type, and edit the same as you? At least, that’s

Scannability Is EVERYTHING to a Blog Post!

When was the last time you read a blog post all the way to the end? I’m talking every word, every headline, every semi-colon. … Have you ever done that? What makes you think your Reader will? Roughly 60 percent of Americans never go past the headline when “reading the

The 10x Content Method & Co. – How to Rank a Blog Post Number One!

On May 22, 2015, Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, published a video titled, “Why Good Content Needs to Die.” In that video, Rand argued that the publishing web had fundamentally changed. That merely regurgitating content wasn’t enough to win the SERP war anymore. That the minimum viable strategy for ranking