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  • Your Overview Page Deserves a Little Respect

    Your Overview Page Deserves a Little Respect

    A client and I were discussing an overview page on their website recently. They said: “This page doesn’t get any traffic. Can we just get rid of it?”

    Built in 2018, the page in question hadn’t been kept up to date and no longer accurately reflected that section of the site. There also wasn’t anything unique or compelling on this page to signal an underlying purpose.

    The client experienced a weak page. But “weak” isn’t a diagnosis. Before deciding to trash your neglected overview page, it’s worth considering whether low traffic is the problem – or – does the weak content and performance indicate an unrealized potential and purpose?

    When you add a new service, launch a new program, or publish a new event series, the child pages get all of the attention. Your overview page sits there, waiting for you to refresh it’s content, as it slowly becomes less useful and out of date.

    From my standpoint as a Sage Web Developer (TM), an overview page is often a key structure within your site architecture:

    • It creates meaningful relationships between pages
    • It gives visitors context before they go deeper
    • It helps keeps navigation consistent

    That’s not nothing.

    Let’s take a look at what the overlooked overview page is intended to do, whether that function is still valid, and how we can craft the content and structure to make the best darn overview page possible.

    Inside an overview page

    If your site has a Services section with individual pages for each service, the page at /services/ is your overview page. Same idea for an Industries section, a Resources hub, or an Events section with individual event pages listed under it.

    In WordPress and most content management systems, this is termed a parent and child relationship. The parent page holds the broader context; what this section is, why it exists, how the pieces relate to each other. Child pages inherit that context and go deeper, each one handling a specific service, event, or program in detail.

    The connection between them supports both roles. The parent page without children is a collection of summaries with nowhere to go. Child pages without a parent are isolated. They are harder to navigate back from, harder to understand in relation to each other, harder for anyone (or any search engine) to read as a coherent whole.

    This parent-child structure also makes breadcrumb navigation1 helpful. That small trail at the top of a page — Books › Fiction › Literary Fiction — help visitors knows where they are and how to get back. But they only work when the hierarchy is meaningful. If the structure is flat, or when the parent URL returns a 404, breadcrumbs lose that meaning.

    Overview pages help orient people, but that’s not all!

    Websites are full of links. How useful these links are in helping users complete tasks is another story. Links have to guide users as they follow the scent of information. A vague or confusing link often leads users down a wrong path and in turn increases their rate of failure.

    Jared Spool, The Secret Lives of Links

    Research on physical wayfinding2 offers a useful frame here. Intersections are critical decision points: the places where people pause, look around, gather information, and choose a direction. Importantly, people tend to defer that decision until they arrive at the intersection, where they can actually see their options.

    When someone clicks “Services” or “Events” in your navigation, they usually aren’t ready to commit to one specific thing. They’re orienting in a content intersection.

    A well-structured overview page gives visitors a place to self-select, read a short summary of each option, and move toward the one that fits their situation, instead of bouncing between detail pages trying to figure out the difference.

    Routing is only one of the jobs an overview page can do. For some sections of a site, it can also provide substantial context.

    Some overview pages carry meaning that child pages can’t

    Individual pages are good at details: dates, locations, focused content, unique calls to action. What they can’t do as easily is develop the bigger picture.

    Take a community organization that hosts events throughout the year. Each event page does its job: here’s what’s happening, here’s when, here’s how to get involved. But none of those pages can fully answer the question behind the question: why does this organization put on events?

    That story belongs on the overview page. Not buried in a summarized history on an About page – right here, at the top of the top-level Events page!

    The listed events might connect neighbors who don’t otherwise cross paths. They might raise visibility and foot traffic for local businesses. Or direct money to community nonprofits through admission fees or vendor participation. They could be the thing that makes a town feel like a place people want to live in, come back to, tell others about. That’s a mission. And a list of events or stand-alone event pages, no matter how well-written, just doesn’t communicate that broader purpose.

    This applies anywhere the whole is more than the sum of its parts:

    • A nonprofit’s programs section
    • A chamber of commerce’s business services section
    • A university department’s research initiatives
    • A service firm’s areas of expertise

    In each case, the individual pages explain what each thing is. The overview page explains why it matters and helps guide visitors to information and/or action. For a visitor who is still deciding what they want to do, or search engines trying to understand a section of your site, the overview page is a cornerstone3.

    Author and UX Consultant Steve Krug is perhaps best known for his book, “Don’t Make Me Think“. Required reading for anyone interested in improving the usability of their website, the title is also a great mantra to keep in mind when designing page content or structure.

    Many websites handle the parent page in one of two ways: they skip it entirely and make the nav item a dropdown trigger with no destination, or they build a page that’s essentially just a list of links.

    Issues with the first approach, using an empty link as a dropdown trigger:

    • An empty link (e.g., <a href="#">) provides no destination URL, so Google’s crawlers cannot follow it to discover or index any linked sub-pages. It does not pass link equity to any destination, and it’s not a valid way to link to sub-content.
    • Screen reader users expect top-level items to either be links or buttons with clear roles.
    • Many users expect top-level navigation items to be clickable, especially if they appear similar to other links.
    • On touch devices, there’s no hover, so dropdowns must be triggered by tap.

    While it is true that a lot of users do not know they can (usually) click on a top-level link that has a dropdown menu to get to an overview or parent page, your own website menu may be perpetuating the unpredictable navigation faux pas:

    If I clicked on “About” and “Contact” and they both go to real pages, why doesn’t “Services”? Maybe I did it wrong?

    click-click-CLICK! (the user has rage clicked and left the site)

    The assumption might be that most visitors arrive from search, land directly on the page they need, and never browse. Why build parent-child content relationships if nobody’s following these pathways?

    But, the question suggests a solution before we fully consider the user needs. If someone wants to explore, or needs context before they can make sense of what they’re looking at, or is trying to figure out whether this organization does anything else worth knowing about – your overview page is a critical point of entry.

    As Mr. Krug suggests, “Don’t make your users think”. Predictability builds trust. Indecision makes it harder for people to guess correctly and more likely to choose wrong in successive clicks.

    A better overview page

    Publishing a page with some links to sub-pages on it is not the same as building a useful overview page.

    Too often we see landing pages with very little text and a big image on the first screenful. Even when those pages do contain the right information for the user, in many situations they don’t provide enough context to tell people whether they are on the right track. As a result, users don’t bother scrolling anymore in search of the right information, nor do they click on any visible link: they quickly decide that the page is not worth exploring any longer and simply leave. Thus, the good information scent that the link to the site may have provided (for example, on a search-results page) is wasted by the poor context provided by the actual page.

    Raluca Budio, NN/G, Information Scent: How Users Decide Where to Go Next

    The best version of an overview page improves clarity for visitors, makes the whole section feel coherent, and gives search engines a clean map of how the pages relate.

    A few things that should be on every overview page:

    • A brief intro that frames the category. Two or three sentences that tell a first-time visitor what this section covers and why it exists.
    • A summary of each child page, with a link. Not just a heading and a link, an actual sentence or two that explains what the child page covers and who should go there.
    • Clear, descriptive links. Avoid “Learn more” link text that doesn’t tell people what to expect. “View dog washing packages” or “See summer festival details” tells someone exactly what they’ll find. Or, use your Page Title as the link!
    • Any context that applies to the whole category. The kind of information a visitor needs to understand before they can make sense of the individual pages.

    Build it for people, and the search benefits follow. A page with real content, clear structure, and meaningful internal links is genuinely helpful and unique.

    When to skip the overview page?

    A site with only two or three child pages under a section may not need a dedicated overview because the dropdown itself is short enough to scan, and a parent page might feel like an extra click to get somewhere that was already visible. Other reasons you might want to skip it:

    • A single-service or single-product site has no branching to manage.
    • When the pages are so distinct that no meaningful context connects them.

    A related case worth its own conversation: location pages. It’s a common local SEO tactic to create a network of city or region-specific pages primarily to capture local search traffic. A “service-areas” parent in your URL structure makes sense because it groups those pages cleanly and signals their relationship to search engines.

    But that parent doesn’t necessarily need to be a developed content page. When that parent is indexable, thin, and adds no unique angle it’s better to keep it very minimal and clearly navigational.

    Where there is something non-trivial to say at the parent level (e.g., explaining overall coverage, how service areas work, distance constraints, or cross-location FAQs), then it can be more than a mere content container.

    An overview page is never really finished

    Remember that page from 2018? The one that hadn’t been touched while the rest of the section grew up around it? That’s the most common situation website owners face. Your website isn’t static. It’s a content garden that needs pruning and attention.

    Treat your overview page the way you’d treat a Menu Du Jour: any time something is added, removed, or meaningfully changed in that section of your site, the overview page should reflect it. That’s content strategy in practice, an ongoing review of content that ensures it supports your business and the people using your site.

    Block editor tip: Using a query loop bock in WordPress is one easy way to sync your content updates. In addition to displaying posts, the query loop can also pull in pages with a shared parent. You can create a unique style for how this content displays so it doesn’t just feel like a blog archive view.

    Assess your overview pages, give ’em a little respect

    Overview pages are easy to overlook because they don’t get updated the way service pages or blog posts do. Check in on your parent pages — for services, events, programs, or anything else with child pages underneath it — incorporate them into your regularly scheduled content reviews4.

    • Does it give visitors enough context to understand what this section is and why it exists?
    • Does it briefly explain how the child pages differ from each other?
    • Does your top-level navigation item go to this page, or does it only open a menu?
    • Is the content actually current?

    If you find gaps, that’s good news! An overview page with unrealized potential is one of the easier wins for people and search. A focused update can improve navigation, strengthen your site structure, and give visitors a better sense of what you’re about. Your structure is there. It just needs a little time and respect.

    1. A note on the humble breadcrumb: Breadcrumbs are important supplemental navigation, especially for more complex sites. They help visitors build a mental model of your site, where this page lives and what else might be nearby. Breadcrumbs also support internal linking, which distributes relevance across related pages. A well-structured breadcrumb trail reinforces the same topical relationships your URL structure and parent/child hierarchy are already signaling. ↩︎
    2. Brunyé, T.T., Gardony, A.L., Holmes, A. et al. Spatial decision dynamics during wayfinding: intersections prompt the decision-making process. Cogn. Research 3, 13 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-018-0098-3 ↩︎
    3. The term “content cornerstone” is used in Yoast’s WordPress SEO tool to describe your most important, high-ranking content. The articles you most want Google to notice. But an overview page is a cornerstone in the structural sense: the page that anchors a section of your site. Take it away — or let it go to seed — and the structure it was supporting starts to show it. ↩︎
    4. Schedule a monthly or quarterly content review, plan a half day to review a section of your website and make it better by clearing out the R.O.T.! ↩︎

    Emily Rapport

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  • Writing with AI: humanity required

    Writing with AI: humanity required

    AI writing tools promise to save time and make content creation easier. When we prompt AI with a question, it might even say “Thinking…” and then provide a comprehensive, 3,000 word response that sounds reasonable. But is it really thinking as we understand that activity? No, it isn’t, and it’s easy to forget that because its really good at language patterns.

    As ChatGPT might put it, the critical truth is that AI is just a predictor of patterns. It can’t verify facts or evaluate quality. The human in charge must provide good input, apply critical judgment, and edit ruthlessly.

    AI tools might just be the worst thing ever

    In Star Trek, a simple program instructed “food synthesizer” evolved over time into an all-purpose “replicator”. The replicator could parse a verbal request and generate an appropriate object from its database of known patterns (with some restrictions). Science fiction imagined this as a perfect solution to scarcity, satisfying our wants and needs should we merely make our wishes known. But, there are always consequences right? Friction matters. All things are not equal. Without obstacles, characters can’t grow and stories become predictable.

    Writers for the later versions of the show hated this plot device:

    “Replicators are the worst thing ever. Destroys storytelling all the time. They mean there’s no value to anything. Nothing has value in the universe if you can just replicate everything, so all that goes away. Nothing is unique; if you break something, you can just make another one. If something breaks on the ship, it’s “Oh, no big deal, Geordi [LaForge] can just go down to engineering and make another doozywhatsit.” Or they go to a planet and that planet needed something: “Oh, hey, let’s make them what they need!” [The writers room] just hated it and tried to forget about it as much as possible.” – Ron Moore, writer/producer, Star Trek: TNG and DS9

    Unlike science fiction stories, AI does have real world consequences.

    First, there’s the exploitation and bias inherent in training AI. Lacking considered design to prevent harms, AI has tragically resulted in suicides, racial profiling apps, abusive content, and porn. We’re subject to AI sprinkles on most products and services, whether we want them or not. Constant, imperceptible nudges to our decision-making around what shows to watch, what purchases to make, what opinions to hold.

    And then, there’s the water. 

    “Each time a model is used, perhaps by an individual asking ChatGPT to summarize an email, the computing hardware that performs those operations consumes energy. Researchers have estimated that a ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than a simple web search.” – MIT News, “Generative AI’s Environmental Impact”

    This isn’t just about the electricity needed to power the data centers either. Immense quantities of water, often in desert regions (because computers like it dry), are required to keep these hard-working mega-computing centers cool.

    Stop the world – I want to get off 1

    As AI becomes embedded within our daily transactions, our work, and the internet of things, it’s tempting to imagine we can escape this maddening world. Turn off our computers, quit our jobs, trade in our cars for horses, and start a commune with our friends … I mean, we could, but it’s unlikely that most of us will exit the thrum of modern life completely. Do we know how mechanical things actually work anymore?

    My point is, let’s try to use AI with a better understanding of the tool rather than as a magical fix or truth-telling machine.

    Language generators will always generate more language

    Language is powerful. Humans rely on language to know the world around us, to communicate, to understand, to influence, and to describe our thoughts and emotions.

    When we talk to AI, it is easy for us to be swayed by its authoritative confidence, even when it is completely wrong (or just slightly misleading). In our minds, language creates mutual understanding and builds trust.

    AI is designed to satisfy this human desire to connect. By being responsive to our needs, it’s cementing our investment in its output. Left unchecked, this tool will keep going well past the point of usefulness. This means you need to be the fact-checker, the quality controller, and the BS detector. 

    As a human, I want to use AI, so I don’t have to do [X]

    Ok, that’s an oversimplification. Commercial AI tools have a lot of useful, low risk applications like transcribing and structuring meeting notes, building relational databases, or helping us plan a menu or exercise routine.

    Using AI isn’t always about the fastest way to get something done either. Anyone who has tried to create with AI knows it can be a prolonged and tedious process. AI can be a boon to progress but, like any intern-level coworker, it needs guidance and regular quality checks in order to produce a good result.

    I’ve experimented with AI design and UX tools, writing and coding, and the AI that now seems bolted on to every service. I’m going to focus now on AI as a writing partner because that’s the most common use case for many of my clients (and myself).

    Don’t believe everything you read

    The patterns of AI writing are recognizable across LinkedIn posts, website content, emails, contracts, and documentation. When left to its own predilection for black and white comparisons, a self-assured tone, and general blandness, AI writing has acquired the personality traits of that extrovert acquaintance whose stories you strenuously avoid at parties.

    When we make a request, AI tools aren’t “thinking” about our question and they aren’t searching the web for the most accurate answer. They are gearing up to generate the word patterns that form the most likely response.

    At first glance, content appears in order. On a more careful read we may spot grandiose statements and verbose language that isn’t actually saying anything.

    Your AI-writing partner is a sociopath and it simply can not restrain itself. It’s function is to produce patterns of words that sound like a genuine response – and to keep you talking to it. 

    Garbage in, garbage out

    If you type a vague request, don’t expect useful output. Providing AI resources and specificity will help you to develop higher quality content that sounds like you and is actually helpful.

    Here is some groundwork that you can do to improve your collaboration with AI tools:

    1. Create your writing guidelines
      • Build a reference document that defines your writing standards.
      • Include your target reading level, tone descriptors (professional but approachable, no-nonsense, conversational), and sentence structure preferences. 
      • This is a living document, add to it to make it better.
      • This can also be super detailed – it’s really just guidance for AI and not meant for people to follow.
    2. On your own, without AI, draft an outline of what your article will cover – these can be single words, directions, or snippets of ideas.
      • This framework is incredibly helpful in preventing AI from going off on a 4,000 word tangent. You’re also giving AI some tips about how you talk. 
      • If you use Google, ask Gemini to do a preliminary review of your outline and make some suggestions for improvement without handing AI total writing control from the start.
    3. I recommend supplying a forbidden terms list. This helps you stop the marketing jargon, unnecessary qualifiers, hard sell language, and industry buzzwords you want to avoid. 
      • Watch out for: solutions, comprehensive, robust, actually, really, very, it’s important to note, utilize, synergy, truth, the hard truth is
      • Prefer plain language like: use, tools, complete (delete unnecessary qualifiers)
    4. Give examples of the language that you do want: the words your clients use, plain language alternatives to technical terms, and brand-specific terminology.

    There’s also bias in how we make requests. We tend to ask leading questions or frame prompts in ways that push the AI toward answers we expect. By providing more specific guidelines, we can mitigate this and give AI tools meaningful limitations.

    Be more specific: crafting better AI writing prompts

    “Write a post about [topic]” will give you a generic blog post number 47,892. It’s not likely adding anything to the conversation which means it’s not going to produce any measurable results for your website.

    A good prompt includes several key elements:

    • Role and context: Define who the writer is and what expertise they have. 
    • Audience: Describe who’s reading, what they care about, and their knowledge level.
    • Purpose: State what the content should accomplish.
    • Constraints: List your requirements and restrictions. Specify tone, length, what to include, and what to avoid. This is where your forbidden words list becomes useful.
    • Format: Define structure, heading levels, and any specific requirements.

    Good (content) design is all about the requirements.

    With specific prompts and project knowledge, you’ll spend less time going back and forth with AI trying to follow it’s mindless regurgitation of words, and more easily guide it to cover the right topics and speak to the right audience.

    Getting meta: use AI to improve your prompts

    You can also use AI tools to make your writing prompts better. Start with your first attempt, then ask it to: “Review this prompt and suggest improvements to make it more specific. What’s unclear? What assumptions am I making? What details would help?”

    Direct AI to be a critical expert (for example a content strategist). You’ll get more insightful feedback that doesn’t uniformly pat you on the head and claim you are a genius.

    Save prompts that generate good results. Over time, you’ll develop templates for your most common content types.

    Please do your own SEO research before writing your outline

    Most of us blog because it serves an SEO function and helps establish our topical expertise. While AI can help with content creation, it can not do your SEO strategy for you. AI tools don’t know what keywords matter for your business, what terms people are searching for, or what you’re trying to achieve with a particular article – unless you give it that data.

    Ask AI to “optimize this article for SEO” and you’ll get terrible advice: stuff more keywords in, add more headings, make it longer. The tool wants to please you, sometimes to a fault. 

    • Do your keyword research first. Use Google Search Console to see what terms people actually use to find content like yours. Look at the questions your clients ask. Check what’s already ranking for the topics you want to cover.
    • Give the AI clear direction. Instead of “Optimize for SEO,” try: “I’m targeting these keyphrases [researched list]. The primary audience is [X] and [Y] who have the following pain points [A, B, C]. Include [focus keyword] in the title, first paragraph, and first H2 heading. Use related terms naturally in the body. Keep keyword density under 2%.”

    Even if you’re not an SEO expert, you can improve AI recommendations by being specific about your target keywords, understanding your audience’s actual search behavior, and pushing back when suggestions feel off. Trust your knowledge of what your clients need over generic optimization “advice”.

    The human spark: apply the critical thinking that AI can’t

    “Not all content marketing is thought leadership. In fact most of it is not. True thought leadership takes a position on a topic, and the reader can agree or disagree. If the topic is something they can’t disagree with, it isn’t thought leadership.” – Andy Crestodina, Orbit Media, The AI-Driven Content Strategy

    Human experience develops our own pattern recognition abilities, informing insights and connections. You might realize that three separate client conversations from the past month all circle around the same underlying issue. Or, you’ll go for a walk and suddenly conceive an elegant solution to a thorny problem.

    Where AI tools follow linear paths based on their training data, human thinking makes intuitive leaps, pulls in relevant context from seemingly unrelated areas, and finds the through-line that ties distinct ideas together. That’s good content!

    Even if you rely on AI for your content writing, judgment calls remain entirely human work: deciding what to keep, what to revise, and what to scrap. Writing is editing, not word count.

    Making AI output sound (more) human

    AI-generated content has tells. Generic connector phrases appear constantly: “it’s important to note,” “the hard truth is,” “critically,” “the reality is” – UGH. It’s ironic (and also a kind of creativity negging?) that AI is so obsessed with convincing us of hard truths and critical realities.

    • Read content aloud, you’ll immediately hear the false notes. 
    • Delete unnecessary connectors and qualifiers. 
    • Variety’s the spice of life2. Vary sentence structure and length.

    AI will keep generating text if you let it. Knowing when to stop is a human skill.

    The law of the instrument 3

    AI writing tools can be useful when you understand their limitations. They help you get past the blinking cursor on a blank page and speed up technical aspects of writing like correcting grammar and spelling errors.

    Don’t hand the entire writing process to the AI. Always start with your own outline or structure and revise in stages. Trying to fix everything at the end is harder because the quantity of content will be overwhelming and lack priority.

    Remember, it is your human expertise, judgment, and understanding of your audience makes your content valuable. 

    And maybe, don’t let AI be the first tool in your toolbox.

    Jotting some ideas down with pen and paper can be highly productive, there’s a strong correlation between the physical act of writing, creativity, and learning.

    Are you using AI writing tools in your content marketing?

    I’m curious if you are using AI to help you with creating or optimizing content. What have you learned along the way? What has been a challenge for you? Are you all-in or hesitant to use AI?

    1. Stop the World, I want to Get Off was a 1961 musical, followed by a film in 1966. The title is a recurring cry from Littlechap whenever life becomes overwhelming, symbolizing a desire to escape the chaos, responsibilities, and emptiness of modern life. ↩︎
    2. William Cowper, an 18th century poet wrote “Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour” in his 1785 poem The Task. ↩︎
    3. The first recorded statement of the concept was Abraham Kaplan’s, in 1964: “I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” ↩︎

    Emily Rapport

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  • What’s worth writing about (and reading)?

    What’s worth writing about (and reading)?

    Humans tend to favor the things we enjoy and that we have learned to be successful at. If blogging feels like “Ugh, I have to write this,” try reframing it: “I want to document what I know so I can stop explaining it repeatedly.” Moving from obligation to choice will make the work feel less like a burden and more like building something useful that will benefit you (and your readers).

    Business blogging that supports your work

    The value of genuine expertise has increased in direct proportion to rise of generic content (affectionately termed, “AI slop“). Most informational queries (think “how-to” or compiled “best of” articles) are answered in AI overviews.

    You’d do better to focus your efforts on content that AI can’t easily create:

    • Answers to questions you’ve been asked. Look through your email. Check your last few client calls. What did people ask? What did you explain? Write that.
    • Content based on your experience. Not “10 Tips for Better Time Management” but “Here’s what I learned managing three major projects and a why I’ll never do that again.”
    • Your take on industry developments. Not hot takes for the sake of being controversial, but “Here’s how this new regulation affects my clients” or “I’ve been watching this trend for three years, here’s what I’m seeing.” You have context others don’t.
    • The stuff no one else is saying. Every industry has conventional wisdom and biases. If you know something that contradicts or offers new perspective on standard advice (and you can back it up with your experience), that’s valuable content.
    • Deep dives into specific problems. Better to thoroughly address one specific challenge than superficially cover ten related topics.

    Consistency over frequency

    How often should you publish on your blog? It depends…

    But for the sake of having a goal, let’s say: 1-2 solid posts per month is realistic for most small businesses. That’s enough to build a library of content over time without making blogging your entire job.

    What matters more than frequency:

    • Consistency over time. Better to publish monthly for two years than weekly for two months before burning out.
    • Quality over quantity. One genuinely helpful 1,500-word article beats five rushed 400-word posts that don’t say anything.
    • Strategic focus. Writing about topics that support your business goals, not just filling space.

    Some months you’ll do more. Some months you’ll skip entirely because you’re busy. Totally acceptable.

    Gaps in the content resume: when you stop blogging (and start again)

    I stopped blogging in 2018.

    Not because I didn’t think it was valuable. I stopped because I’m a company of one and at the time I was running two businesses, a gallery and my web design agency. Finding four hours (my minimum) to write a quality article while managing client work, admin tasks, gallery events, and life stuff was physically impossible.

    This fall, I started writing again. And I remembered that I really enjoy writing. For me, it’s an active exploration that deepens my own understanding of a topic.

    I accept that publication schedules can be flexible. I’m sharing on LinkedIn and BlueSky (getting a little dopamine hit when a few people “like” or share). I’m not trying to become a influencer (gross, Gen X person here) or build a following. I do want to develop a backlog of articles that support my authority and expertise (and link back to my service pages).

    If you’re not a writer: video and audio can be a big advantage

    Nearly everyone adds pictures. But a minority are adding contributor quotes and videos. A small percentage add audio or publish podcasts. The less common the element, the more likely it is to correlate with performance. Greater efforts drive greater impact.

    Andy Crestodina, “What content works in 2025?“

    If talking feels more natural than writing, record yourself. Answer a common client question on video. Explain a concept on audio. Embed the media on your post and include a transcript.

    • You sound like yourself. When you’re talking, your authentic voice comes through. No fighting with how to phrase things or what sounds “professional enough.” You just explain it the way you’d explain it to a client.
    • It’s (maybe) faster. Recording a 10-minute video or audio explanation takes 10 minutes. Writing a 1,500-word article takes hours. If you edit your videos, there probably won’t be much time savings though.
    • It’s highly shareable. Video clips work well on social media. Audio can become podcast episodes. The transcript becomes your blog post. One recording, multiple formats.

    Always, always include a transcript. You may be creating awesome video or audio content but if you don’t include a transcript, you are missing a key opportunity and doing an accessibility fail. Search engines can’t watch videos, they need text to understand and index your content. Transcripts make your videos accessible to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who prefer reading. Transcripts also help visitors quickly scan for information rather than watching the entire video. Learn more about what media needs a transcript.

    Making blogging more manageable (not perfect)

    The internet is full of blogging advice that assumes you have a content team, unlimited time, or that “growing your platform” is your primary business goal. Blog posts are supposed to support your business, not become the work itself.

    The best advice I can give you is to just start writing (or recording). Don’t get stuck in the analytical mind of comparison and judgment. This is a process and you’ll be reviewing how articles perform over time, so don’t overcomplicate your work. We’re not aiming for perfection.

    Perfect is the enemy of good (and done).

    Voltaire (mostly)
    • Write what you know. Writing 101! Look at questions you’ve answered in calls or meetings this month. Write about those. Follow your own curiosity and dig deeper than the superficial answers.
    • Write the way you talk. If you write like a corporate press release on your blog, people will lose interest. Use plain language, keep it relevant to your reader, avoid jargon.
    • Repurpose and reuse. One blog post can become an email newsletter, several social media posts, a resource to send prospects, or an answer to forum questions in your industry.
    • Batch your writing when possible. Some people write better if they draft three posts in one session, then edit them later. This can be a handy way to block out 1-2 days a month and get all of your writing and scheduling done.

    Hit publish, wait for applause…

    Crickets.

    Even great content doesn’t magically attract readers. Be deliberate about getting it in front of people. If you loathe self-promotion, remember that sharing your content is about sharing your expertise – not trying to “sell” yourself. You’re building your authority and engaging authentically with your community and audience.

    • Share it directly with people who need it. When someone asks a question your blog post answers, send them the link. When you see a relevant discussion in a professional group, share it (if it’s helpful, not promotional).
    • Email it to your list. If you’re not building an email list, start. Even a small list of people who want to hear from you beats hoping Google sends you traffic someday.
    • Link your posts together. Linking is the magic glue of the interwebs. When you write something new, go back and add links from older related posts. This helps readers find more of your content and helps search engines understand what you’ve written about.
    • Use social media, but don’t depend on it. Share your posts there, yes. But remember those platforms want to keep people on their platforms, not click away to your website. Social media is for brand visibility and conversation, not traffic (usually) – though it can have some relevance in AI search results.

    Reference your own content in other contexts. Speaking at an event? Mention your blog post on that topic. Answering questions in industry forums? Link to your relevant content.

    Don’t obsess over analytics

    So you’ve started blogging. You’re sharing posts on social media. How do you know when it’s working?

    Track the basics in Google Search Console

    • Which posts are getting impressions in search
    • Which keywords people are using to find you
    • Which posts are getting clicks (and which aren’t)

    Check Google Search Console maybe once a month. Try not to obsess over this data. Look for patterns. Notice which topics are getting traction. Capitalize on what works and keep experimenting.

    Pay attention to direct responses

    • Are people mentioning your posts in conversations?
    • Has anyone sent you a question that references something you wrote?
    • Are prospects coming to calls having already read your content?
    • Which posts get engagement (comments, shares, saves)?
    • Are people asking follow-up questions?

    Qualitative signals matter as much as traffic numbers. On LinkedIn and BlueSky, engagement matters more than views. A post that sparks three meaningful conversations is more valuable than one that gets 1,000 views and no response.

    Give it time before judging results

    • 3-6 months minimum before you’ll see any significant search patterns
    • At least 10-15 posts before you can see patterns in what resonates
    • A year before cumulative impact

    The metric that matters most: Are you getting more qualified inquiries from people who found you through your content?

    This, again, isn’t just about posting any old content – it’s about creating unique and useful content that has the potential to rank and includes a compelling call to action. It’s critical to do keyword research if you are serious about crafting content that will match the intent of those long-tail search queries and result in conversions.

    What you won’t see: Overnight success. Viral hits (probably). Thousands of daily visitors (for most small businesses, volume is less important than getting in front of the right people at the right time).

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Does blogging help small businesses grow?

    Yes, but not overnight. Blogging helps you answer common questions, demonstrate expertise, and get found by people searching for your services. Over 6-12 months of consistent publishing, you should see more qualified leads finding you through search and better conversion rates from prospects who’ve read your content first.

    What are the best topics for a small business blog?
    • Case studies from your work. “How we helped [type of client] solve [specific problem]” shows your expertise in action. Change names if needed, but share the specifics.
    • Behind-the-scenes content. How you approach projects, what your process looks like, the tools you use and why. This humanizes your business and helps prospects understand what working with you would be like.
    • Opinion pieces grounded in experience. Your perspective on industry trends, based on what you’re seeing with your clients or in your market. This is where your unique value shows up.
    • Problem-solution posts. “Here’s a challenge my clients face and how I help them address it.” Practical, specific, and demonstrates your expertise without being promotional.
    • Local or niche-specific content. If you serve a specific geographic area or industry, write about topics relevant to that audience. You won’t compete with national sites, but you don’t need to.
    How do I promote my blog if I don’t have a big audience?

    Share posts directly with people who need them – send links when someone asks a question your post answers. Build an email list (even a small one). Link your posts together. Share on social media without depending on it for traffic. Reference your content when speaking at events or participating in industry discussions.

    Is it better to have a blog or focus on social media for my business?

    Both serve different purposes. Your blog is the one place online you control – it builds long-term search visibility and demonstrates expertise. Social media is for conversations and visibility, but platforms want to keep people there, not send them to your site. Use social media to share your blog content, but don’t depend on it as your only marketing channel.

    Do I need technical skills to run a business blog?

    Basic writing for the formatting knowledge is helpful, but most business blogs need simple technical optimization: clean URLs, compressed images, alt text, and proper heading structure. If you can format a document and upload images, you can create a blog. You can also record video or audio and get it transcribed if writing isn’t your strength.

    Can I benefit from blogging without a dedicated marketing team?

    Most successful small business blogs are written by the business owner. You already have the expertise – blogging is just documenting what you know and answering questions you’ve already answered dozens of times. Start with what you know, write in your own voice, and publish consistently. You can do it!

    I want to create videos but where should I upload them?

    YouTube is usually the better choice for most small businesses. It’s free, handles all the technical stuff (encoding, streaming, mobile optimization), and YouTube itself is the second-largest search engine. Videos on YouTube can show up in both YouTube and Google search results, giving you two chances to be found.

    Hosting video directly on your site can slow down your pages and require more technical management. For most small businesses, embedding YouTube videos on your blog posts gives you the best of both worlds: your content lives on your site with the transcript, but YouTube handles the video infrastructure.

    How do I create a transcript of my audio or video content?

    Tools like Descript, Otter.ai, or even YouTube’s auto-captioning can handle transcription. Clean it up a bit (remove the “ums” and false starts), add some paragraph breaks and headings, and you have a blog post.

    Rev.com has pretty accurate AI transcription, you can also connect Zoom to Fathom or use it’s AI transcription tool. Google it – there’s tons of options.

    Need help developing a content strategy that fits?

    Let’s talk about what blogging for your business could look like.

    Explore content strategy and copywriting services or reach out:

    Schedule a complimentary call

    Just start writing

    Here’s a starter for your next blog post:

    • Pick a question someone asked you last week and answer it.
    • Record a five-minute video explaining something you know well.
    • Write 500 words about a common problem your clients face.

    Send me a link to your article. I’d love to read it!

    Need help or have a question? Leave me a comment or send me an email. I’m always happy to discuss content strategy and answer any questions you might have.

    Emily Rapport

    , , ,

  • Write better blog posts: 13 blogging mistakes and how to fix them

    Write better blog posts: 13 blogging mistakes and how to fix them

    If you aren’t a writer, creating blog posts can feel like a chore. And when a task is not something we want to be spending our time on, it’s easy for that task to fall to the wayside.

    Maybe you’ve started to use AI writing tools to fill the gap, or you have a marketing team or intern cranking out posts for your website and social media. Still, the content you create isn’t attracting the traffic and conversion results to match the effort invested.

    Tell me again why I need to write blog posts?

    Blog content can serve your overall marketing strategy by meeting people where they are in their decision-making process.

    • Build trust and awareness for your brand
    • Reach potential customers searching for solutions to their problems
    • Target niche audiences with specific questions and needs, allowing you to compete for more achievable keywords
    • Repurposed for social media, your content can be shared across channels, provoke discussion and debate, all of which helps surface your content in both traditional search engines and AI search

    Companies that blog regularly generate 67% more leads than those that don’t. But to see these results, your blog posts need more than just regular publishing, they need strategic improvements.

    Google and other search engines seek fresh, useful, timely content. Yes, a lot of informational queries are now answered in AI overviews. That’s not necessarily bad – if it satisfies the intent of the search query.

    When you position yourself as a subject matter expert, with a thoughtful and unique perspective, dynamic blog content begins to gain traction. “Yes,” you say “but there’s so MUCH content being created every day, how can my post stand out and make it into the top 10 SERPs?”

    Avoid common blogging mistakes: “Them’s table stakes”

    Technical flaws, generic content, and incompleteness can undermine your credibility and make it harder to appear in search results. I’ll walk you through 13 common blogging mistakes that prevent your content from reaching its full potential.

    Ready to implement these fixes? Download my free Blog Post Checklist at the end of this article to keep these 13 improvements handy every time you publish.

    Content strategy and planning

    Content and pathways - the abstracted user journey

    1. Random posts with no content strategy

    Publishing random blog posts whenever you have time leads to inconsistent results. Without a clear content strategy, your blog becomes a collection of unrelated articles that don’t build on each other or serve your business goals. Having a plan means front-loading some discovery work which, you may argue, you don’t have time to do. But, if you have time to do it wrong … I think you see where I’m going with this.

    Your content strategy helps you to maintain clarity of purpose with firm boundaries around what makes sense for your business. Don’t waste time following the lead on trending topics. Find the content gaps in your industry, add your own angle, and offer a unique perspective that ties back to your business and what you do best.

    Develop your content strategy:

    • Define your target audience and their pain points
    • Brainstorm topic clusters around your main services or expertise
    • Whittle it down to core topics you can commit to writing about
    • Plan content themes for each month or quarter
    • Develop a content calendar to maintain consistency – if you can manage 1 post a week, that’s great, but pick a schedule that works for you (be realistic)
    • Advanced: Align blog topics with your sales funnel stages

    Topic clusters can work particularly well for business blogs and build that E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) signal Google loves. Develop a comprehensive pillar post on a core topic, with supporting posts that dive deeper into specific aspects, shows search engines (and readers) the depth of your expertise.

    2. Writing for your business instead of your audience

    Many business blogs focus on telling: company news, product updates, and internal achievements. Rather, we should be showing our expertise by crafting content around the topics readers care most about.

    As a small business, you are more likely to have direct access to your customers than larger organizations. You have first-hand knowledge of real customers problems and questions. That’s content which can provide unique value to readers in showing (not telling) your understanding of, and solutions to, customers’ real-life challenges.

    Plan first. Then write for your audience:

    • Think about the questions your customers ask most often
    • Research those topics to discover what other published, ranking content exists and what gaps you might be able to explore
    • Address specific pain points your audience faces
    • Use language your customers use, not industry jargon
    • Share insights that help readers succeed
    • Focus on benefits to the reader, not features of your business

    Before writing any post, ask: “What’s in this for my reader? How does this help them?” If you can’t answer that clearly, reconsider the topic.

    3. Skipping keyword research

    You might have a fantastic idea that you would love to write about. But great ideas without planning … will disappear like tears in rain. In order to compete, you must consider audience intent (you got this, this is your business!) and the words that real people use to describe their problems.

    Keyword research should inform your topic choice, not be pinned on blindly like a donkey tail after the fact. Use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, AnswerThePublic, or Google Trends to find keywords and run your own Google search analysis to discover what people are actually searching for.

    Understanding the search volume around your keywords is another aspect to consider. If the keywords you are optimizing for have no traffic, well – they won’t result in any clicks if no one is searching for those terms. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doesn’t have to be complicated, but ignoring it is an opportunity lost.

    Essential SEO practices for every blog post:

    1. Research keywords before writing
    2. Include your primary keyword in the page title, first paragraph, and variations throughout the content (be cool, keep it natural)
    3. Use descriptive headings (H2, H3) that include related keywords
    4. Write compelling meta descriptions (155-160 characters with your keyword and a call to action) – these blurbs can encourage clicks when your post appears in search
    5. Add internal links to other relevant posts on your site
    6. Include external links to authoritative sources – “be helpful”
    7. Optimize images with descriptive filenames and alt text, and size them for web use

    Focus on creating content for humans first, then optimize for search engines. Keyword stuffing and other manipulative tactics will hurt your rankings. Learn more about SEO fundamentals from Google’s own documentation.

    4. Trying to cover everything in one post

    Trying to cover everything in a single blog post often results in surface-level content that doesn’t provide real value. A comprehensive article on a specific, narrow topic is fine – but you want to avoid the generic 101 overview.

    Narrow your focus, stand apart from the crowd:

    • Choose one specific problem to solve per post
    • Break broad topics into a series of related posts
    • Target one primary keyword per post
    • Provide actionable advice readers can implement immediately
    • Link between related posts to create topic clusters
    • Approximate length of an article: 1,500 – 2,000 words (more if this is a comprehensive or pillar page)

    Instead of a “Complete Guide to Vegetable Gardening,” break it up into separate posts like “When to Plant Tomatoes in Your Region” and “How to Prevent Common Tomato Diseases”.

    Tip: Create an editorial calendar around this series of articles and connect it to an email list specific to this topic. You can use these articles to create a drip campaign in email and social channels.

    Writing & formatting

    An eyeball overwhelmed by internet things

    5. Formal, dense content distances readers

    Using flowery words and complex sentences doesn’t impress readers and may repel the very people you’re trying to attract.

    If you make your content easy to read, you aren’t ‘dumbing down’, you are opening up your information to anyone who wants to read it. You are making it accessible.

    Sara Winters, “Thoughts on the ‘dumbing down’ argument“

    Online readers prefer conversational, easy-to-digest content that feels like it’s written by a real person. Dense paragraphs and complex language make your content harder to read, especially on mobile devices.

    Engage readers with conversational content:

    • Write like you’re talking to a friend
    • Use short paragraphs (2-3 sentences maximum)
    • Ask questions to engage readers
    • Use contractions and casual language when appropriate

    6. “Walls of text” without formatting and structure

    Large blocks of text are intimidating and difficult to read, especially on mobile devices. Structural elements (like headings and lists) help readers scan and process information and get to the content they care about more quickly.

    Reader-friendly post structure:

    • Include headings each new topic and subtopic, approximately every 200-300 words
    • Use bullet points and numbered lists
    • Add relevant images, charts, or graphics with concise alt text
    • Use bold text sparingly to highlight key points
    • Include white space between sections
    • Consider adding videos or other multimedia when appropriate

    Structure helps machines (AI and Google) better understand and serve your content. Why would you want to make it harder for these tools to connect you with your potential audience? Take the time to add meaningful structure to your posts.

    7. Treating blog posts like advertisements

    Nobody visits your blog to read sales pitches. Readers come for helpful information and solutions to their problems. Blog posts that focus primarily on promoting your products or services will drive readers away.

    Let people see you as human. Be real. Ask yourself, Who would you rather see at your door, a friend or a door-to-door salesman?

    Bernard Roth, The Achievement Habit

    Provide value without being salesy:

    • Focus on solving reader problems, not selling solutions
    • Share industry insights and best practices
    • Provide actionable tips readers can use immediately
    • Tell stories and share case studies (without heavy promotion)
    • Mention your products naturally when they’re truly relevant

    When you do promote your services, try to make it feel natural and helpful rather than a hard sell.

    8. Skipping the proofreading and editing process

    Writing is editing. Unclear writing, as well as typos and grammatical errors, can undermine your credibility as a trusted expert. Through editing, you’ll connect loose threads and find deeper themes to develop. You can tighten up unclear messaging and maybe even discover a new angle you hadn’t thought of before.

    Even after you hit publish, you can always come back and make changes to your web content. Step away from your writing for a day or two, you’ll catch so many things you missed: awkward phrasing, logic gaps, unnecessary repetition – and moments of inspiration that, on reflection, serve only your burgeoning writers ego (guilty!).

    Help your inner blogger emerge with an editing workflow:

    • Write your first draft, then step away for a few hours (overnight if possible)
    • Read your post aloud to catch awkward phrasing
    • Use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor for basic grammar and readability
    • Check that your main points are clear and well-supported
    • Verify all links work and statistics are accurate
    • Have someone else review important posts

    Investing ONE hour in refining and editing your content shows readers you value their time.

    Technical optimization (pre-publish checks)

    People laboriously putting together a book by hand

    9. Long, unedited URLs confuse readers and Search Engines

    Long, convoluted URLs like “yoursite.com/blog/2024/03/15/this-is-a-really-long-title-about-our-latest-product-announcement-and-why-you-should-care” hurt both search rankings and user experience. And you definitely want to avoid keyword stuffing in URLs.

    Search engines prefer concise, descriptive URLs. People are more likely to click on and share short, readable URLs. It’s all about trust and meeting expectations.

    Lead with your primary keyword (the main thing people are searching for). In the example below, “marketing strategy” is the primary search term, with “small business” being the qualifier.

    Long and confusing: /how-to-choose-the-best-marketing-strategy-for-your-small-business-in-2024

    Optimized: /marketing-strategy-small-business/

    Removing the date also makes this evergreen content that you can improve and add to over time.

    Clean up your URLs and keep them human-readable:

    • Keep URLs under 60 characters when possible (3-5 words)
    • Include your main keyword
    • Remove unnecessary words like “and,” “the,” “of”
    • Use hyphens to separate words
    • Edit the default URL WordPress creates
    • Don’t keyword stuff or create misleading, “clever” URLs

    10. Oversized images l o a d i n g . . .

    In the digital world, three seconds is an eternity. A single uncompressed image may be several megabytes, causing your blog post to load slowly, even on good internet. “So long mobile users and people on slow networks and older devices…” you whisper to yourself as you upload a 3MB PNG image exported from Canva to your latest post.

    Page speed directly impacts both user experience and search rankings. Google considers speed a ranking factor, and users expect pages to load in under three seconds. Many free tools like TinyPNG or built-in WordPress features can automatically optimize your images without noticeable quality loss. My favorite tool is ImageOptim.

    Optimize images before you upload them:

    • Compress images before uploading (aim for under 100KB when possible)
    • Use the more modern and compressed WebP and AVIF formats if available
    • If you can’t, use JPG for photos and PNG for solid graphics – using PNG for gradient images will 10X the image size (I’m looking at you and shaking my fist in an agitated manner, Canva!)
    • Resize images to the maximum display size needed (most blog content areas are 800-1200px wide – not 4000px)

    11. Missing alt text on images hurts accessibility and SEO

    Alt text (alternative text) describes an image for people who can’t see it visually. Don’t exclude visitors with visual impairments, people on slower connections, and people using reader mode from fully experiencing your content.

    Alt text can also help search engines understand your content. When search engines can’t “see” your images, they also miss important context about your content.

    Alternative text should always be used when images convey contextual meaning. This also applies to images posted to your social media channels and used in your newsletter.

    How to write effective alt text:

    • Describe what’s actually in the image
    • Keep it under 125 characters
    • Include a relevant keyword IF you can do it naturally, but recognize that this is not the purpose of alt text and you should not use this as a place to stuff keywords
    • Don’t start with “image of” or “picture of”
    • Skip alt text for images that are purely decorative

    Learn more about writing effective alt text from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative.

    12. Missing calls to action leave readers without a next step

    A blog post without a CTA is like giving a great presentation, dropping the mic and walking offstage. Your audience may be left in awe, but they are probably not taking that next step to subscribe to your email list or contact you about your service. Obstacles to action generate inaction.

    Guide readers toward the next step, whether that’s subscribing to your newsletter, downloading a resource, or contacting your team.

    Provide that logical next step:

    • “Download our free [relevant resource] to get started”
    • Natural mentions like “If you need help with [challenge], here’s how we approach it”
    • “Get weekly tips like these delivered to your inbox”
    • “See our complete guide to this [topic]”

    Need help creating an effective content strategy? See how we can help your business blog reach more customers.

    Post-publication: don’t forget to share your work (and make it shareable)

    Lucky 13. Publishing without promoting your content

    Hitting publish doesn’t mean you’re finished. I know, crafting that great blog content took a lot out of you. But creating the content is only half the battle. If you don’t actively promote your posts, they may never find their intended audience. Content promotion extends your reach and helps drive brand awareness as well as more traffic to your website.

    Content promotion strategies:

    • Share on your business social media accounts (share snippets from your article, multiple times over several weeks) – if creating a post on LinkedIn, let the first comment be a link to the actual article.
    • Include recent posts in your email newsletters
    • Engage with industry communities and forums where your audience is
    • Reach out to people mentioned in your post
    • Repurpose content for different platforms
    • Add social sharing buttons to your post to make sharing easy

    How do I know when I’ve made it? Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studies has a lot of great content around marketing strategy and analysis, here’s one on measuring content performance.

    I see better blogs in your future…

    A person floats in a relaxing pool that looks like an eye

    To recap, do these things:

    • Pre-writing research (keyword research, topic validation)
    • Create SEO-friendly URLs
    • Optimize images
    • Write engaging content that speaks to your audience
    • Promote your posts

    Focus on providing real value to your readers. You may not skyrocket to international acclaim and Google’s coveted Top 10 results overnight, but over the next 3-6 months, ceteris paribus, you might just become noticed as a trusted expert.

    Get your free better blog post checklist

    Ready to put these fixes into action? Download the Blog Post Checklist – Keep it next to your desk or bookmark it in your browser. Before you hit publish, run through the checklist to catch common blogging mistakes before they go live.

    This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
    Name

    Images used in this post created by Naila Conita

    Emily Rapport

    , , , ,

  • Effective Newsletter Communication: Building Readership

    Effective Newsletter Communication: Building Readership

    If you are feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities of online marketing, don’t overlook the humble eNewsletter and the advantages of direct marketing. A regular newsletter to clients can create a solid foundation for you to grow your audience and your business.

    Evolving from bulk email to newsletter service

    If you have been sending bulk emails out from your personal account, it may be time to graduate to an eNewsletter service.

    Many mail clients will block the receipt of mass emails from private accounts as spam. If you attach large graphics or PDFs these may or may not be displayed – or even opened.

    An eNewsletter can be plain text or HTML (formatted words and pictures), the latter being more popular, and is emailed to your contact list. An eNewsletter service provider also has its own tools so that your missives are not marked as spam (although they may be labelled “promotions”).

    Reporting tools are also useful to track your campaigns and see whether people open, click, or forward.

    There is a slight learning curve to using some of the online publishing tools but once you complete your first newsletter you will have a template for successive mailings.

    Newsletter formats that work: examples to learn from

    Video newsletters with extended reach

    Some of the most effective newsletters go beyond traditional text and images. Paul Boag, a UX Expert and Consultant, is both efficient and engaging in his approach to content marketing. Creating video content, podcasts, and online courses he repackages and distributes this unique content across multiple channels. Drip campaigns to email subscribers, chunked content supplied to LinkedIn and other social media, and repurposed blog posts with searchable transcripts. This strategy offers multiple benefits:

    • Accessibility: Transcripts make content available to hearing-impaired users and those who prefer reading
    • SEO value: Searchable text content helps with search engine visibility
    • Content multiplication: One piece of content serves newsletter subscribers, blog readers, and search traffic
    • Flexible consumption: Recipients can watch, read, or skim based on their preference

    This approach transforms a simple newsletter into a content marketing system.

    Targeted drip campaigns

    Beyond regular newsletters, consider using email communication in targeted drip campaigns. These automated sequences can nurture specific segments of your audience:

    • New client onboarding: A series of emails introducing your services and setting expectations
    • Seasonal reminders: Automated campaigns tied to industry-specific busy periods
    • Follow-up sequences: Post-consultation or post-project emails that encourage referrals or additional services

    Drip campaigns allow you to provide personalized, timely information without manually sending individual emails.

    But … I don’t have anything to say!

    To make the prospect of newsletter writing less daunting, try jotting down some ideas throughout the month. Commit to one morning a month to write it and send a test email to yourself and a friend to check for errors. It won’t be the great American novel, just a few paragraphs to remind people that you are still out there providing useful services.

    Take advantage of events, workshops, a seasonal change or holiday to send a note to your contact list.

    Keep it simple

    Email newsletters should be tailored to the busy person’s inbox with one or two key items for their immediate attention. Craft an email newsletter that speaks to the needs of your audience:

    • Write your own content: There are some services that generate industry-specific content but they also sound generic. You know your clients and you know your business, trust your own voice.
    • Keep it simple: Avoid creating an email that is too long to be shown in full when received. Edit and curate so that your reader does not have to do this work.
    • Include a call to action: Whether you want people to contact you, visit your website, or download a resource, make it clear and obvious.
    • Include contact information: Always provide a link to your website and your contact information.

    Writer’s block: breaking through the blank page

    When staring at an empty newsletter template feels overwhelming, AI and writing tools can help jumpstart your ideas.

    AI writing assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, or Jasper can help you:

    • Generate content ideas based on your industry and recent events
    • Create subject line variations to test
    • Draft initial content that you can personalize and refine
    • Suggest different angles for the same topic

    Content prompts to try:

    • “What are three challenges [your target audience] face with [seasonal issue]?”
    • “Write a brief update about [recent project] focusing on the client benefit”
    • “Suggest newsletter topics for a [your profession] in [your location]”
    • “Help me explain [technical concept] in simple terms for small business owners”

    Other helpful tools:

    The 5-minute head start: Ask an AI tool to create a rough outline based on one idea you’ve jotted down. Use that structure as your starting point, then add your personal voice, specific examples, and local insights that only you can provide. AI can help with the first draft, but your personal experience and voice are what make the newsletter valuable to your specific audience.

    Stick to the main points that you want to communicate and save the extra content for the next, regularly scheduled email blast or blog post. Follow up any event announcements with a phone call or postcard to let people and clients know that they are important to you.

    Building relationships through readership

    There’s a difference between accumulating new subscribers and cultivating engaged readers.

    Active readers vs passive followers

    Passive followers consume your content but remain silent. They may open emails, but they don’t respond, engage, or take action. While these subscribers have value, they represent missed opportunities for deeper connection.

    Active readers engage with your content in meaningful ways:

    • They reply to your emails with questions or comments
    • They forward newsletters to colleagues who might benefit
    • They click through to read full blog posts or case studies
    • They respond to calls-to-action, whether that’s scheduling consultations or downloading resources
    • They provide feedback that helps you improve your services

    Strategies to cultivate active engagement

    • Ask questions: End newsletters with genuine questions about your readers’ challenges or experiences. “What’s your biggest obstacle with [topic]?” invites response better than “Contact us if you have questions.”
    • Share behind-the-scenes content: People connect with people, not perfect brands. Share brief insights about your process, lessons learned from recent projects, or honest reflections on industry changes.
    • Create conversation starters: Reference current industry discussions or pose thoughtful questions about trends affecting your audience’s work.
    • Acknowledge responses: When readers do reply, acknowledge their input in future newsletters (with permission). This shows other subscribers that you’re listening and encourages more engagement.
    • Offer exclusive insights: Give newsletter subscribers content they can’t get elsewhere such as: your perspective on industry developments, early access to resources, or invitations to subscriber-only events.

    The relationship dividend

    Active readers become referral sources, case study participants, and loyal clients who stick with you through market changes. They provide the feedback that helps you refine your services and understand your market better.

    A smaller list of engaged readers will consistently outperform a large list of passive subscribers when it comes to business growth and client acquisition.

    Email marketing strategy: frequency and timing

    Once a week, once a month, quarterly, whatever works for you as long as you stick to the schedule. Consistency builds trust and keeps you top-of-mind with your audience.

    If you have a special event or workshop between mailings, send out an invitation or reminder notice about one week in advance. Consider these timing strategies:

    • Regular newsletters: Monthly for most service businesses
    • Event announcements: One week advance notice
    • Drip campaigns: Varies by purpose (daily for short sequences, weekly for longer nurture campaigns)
    • Seasonal communications: Tied to your industry’s natural rhythms

    Choosing an email newsletter platform

    Selecting the right email marketing platform depends on your budget, technical comfort level, and business needs. Here are a few options with their strengths and limitations:

    MailerLite

    • Best for: Small businesses wanting simplicity without sacrificing features
    • Pros: Intuitive drag-and-drop editor, generous free plan (up to 1,000 subscribers), excellent deliverability, built-in landing pages, affordable pricing that scales well, automation features that are easy to set up
    • Cons: Template selection smaller than some competitors, fewer advanced integrations than enterprise platforms

    Brevo

    • Best for: Small businesses wanting email + SMS marketing in one platform
    • Pros: Very generous free plan (up to 300 emails/day, unlimited contacts), includes SMS marketing, transactional email capabilities, good automation features, excellent deliverability, includes basic CRM features
    • Cons: Daily sending limits on free plan can be restrictive for larger campaigns, interface can feel cluttered with all the features, phone support only on higher tiers

    Mailchimp

    • Best for: Absolute beginners who want extensive resources
    • Pros: User-friendly interface, robust free plan (up to 500 contacts), extensive template library, tons of tutorials and support content
    • Cons: Becomes expensive quickly as list grows, pricing jumps significantly after free tier. Personally, I find this platform increasingly hard to use and confusing post Intuit acquisition.

    Constant Contact

    • Best for: Local businesses needing hands-on support
    • Pros: Excellent phone and chat support, event management tools, good for retail and service businesses, strong deliverability
    • Cons: Higher starting price than alternatives, interface feels dated, limited automation features. Limited design options.

    Anti-spam law compliance

    Using a professional email service isn’t just about features, it’s about legal protection. Laws like CAN-SPAM (US), CASL (Canada), and GDPR (EU) require specific elements in commercial emails:

    • Clear sender identification
    • Easy unsubscribe mechanisms
    • Physical business address
    • Honest subject lines

    Professional email platforms automatically include these compliance features and maintain required unsubscribe processes. Sending bulk emails from your personal account can violate these laws and also impact your email deliverability.

    DNS configuration

    To ensure your emails reach inboxes instead of spam folders, you’ll need to configure DNS records for your domain:

    • SPF records tell email servers which IPs can send email for your domain
    • DKIM records add digital signatures to verify email authenticity
    • DMARC policies protect against email spoofing and improve deliverability

    Most email platforms provide step-by-step DNS setup instructions. This technical setup is required and will improve your email deliverability and protects your domain’s reputation.

    Need technical DNS support? Reach out, I can help.

    Platform Selection Tips

    If you’re new to email marketing, start simple. You can always migrate later as your needs grow.

    • Consider growth: Look at pricing tiers for larger subscriber counts. Some platforms become prohibitively expensive as your list grows, while others offer flat-rate pricing.
    • Integration needs: Ensure your chosen platform integrates with your website, CRM, or other business tools you currently use.
    • Deliverability matters: Research recent deliverability rates and reputation. The most beautiful newsletter means nothing if it lands in spam folders.
    • Test before committing: Most platforms offer free trials or free tiers. Test the interface and features with a small list before making a long-term commitment.

    Measuring newsletter success

    Another advantage to moving away from those bulk emails sent from a personal account, modern email marketing platforms provide valuable insights into your newsletter performance:

    • Open rates: How many people are reading your subject lines
    • Click-through rates: Which content resonates with your audience
    • Unsubscribe rates: Whether your frequency or content needs adjustment
    • Forward rates: How often recipients share your content

    Use this data to refine your approach and improve engagement over time. Happy mailing!

    Subscribe to my newsletter for monthly articles like this in your inbox.

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    Emily Rapport

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  • Building a Coaching Website That Attracts the Right Clients

    Building a Coaching Website That Attracts the Right Clients

    Building a successful coaching or consulting practice starts with your expertise. Your website can serve as a helpful resource that introduces your work, builds your brand, and signals your authority and expertise. A thoughtful online presence is key to helping potential clients understand your value and approach.

    Why your coaching website is your most important marketing tool

    More professionals are offering coaching and consulting services than ever before. Trends driving this growth include the rise of online coaching, increased demand for personal and professional development, and the diversification of coaching niches. All of which means potential clients often have many options when seeking help. A professional (not Facebook) online presence gives your prospect a way to learn about your approach and determine if you might be a good fit for their needs.

    Your own website gives you complete control over how you present your work and expertise. Unlike social media platforms where your content must compete against opaque algorithms, your website is a finely tuned environment where you own the content, the presentation, and the experience. This builds stronger credibility than scattered posts across platforms you don’t control.

    Most importantly, your website will appear in search results when potential clients are looking for solutions, and establish the trust and authority critical to building your business.

    Essential elements of a successful coaching website

    Clear messaging about your coaching niche

    The biggest misstep coaches (and any new business venture) can make is trying to appeal to everyone. Ironically, it’s tough to follow our own good advice. You may coach your clients to focus on a specific audience or outcome, but when it comes to your own messaging, think narrowing down feels risky. “I help people reach their potential” or “I coach anyone who wants to improve their life” sounds inclusive but actually attracts no one. Potential clients need to feel that you address their unique concerns and they need to understand the specific benefits they will gain from working with you.

    When in doubt, be more specific. Consider something like “I help overwhelmed executives develop leadership skills and work-life balance” or “I work with women entrepreneurs launching their first business.” Honing in on a more specific group and challenge helps the right people recognize themselves in your messaging while naturally filtering out those who aren’t a good fit.

    Creating content that shows your coaching expertise

    Content creation allows you to showcase your coaching philosophy and give potential clients insight into how you work. When people can see examples of your thinking and approach to common challenges, they begin to trust you and can imagine what it would be like to work with you as their coach.

    Focus on addressing questions that come up frequently with your coaching clients. Share insights from your coaching experience (while maintaining confidentiality), frameworks you use in your coaching sessions, and your perspective on challenges specific to your coaching niche.

    Don’t worry about giving away your “secrets” through content. Sharing your methodology helps to build trust. People want to understand your coaching approach before committing to work with you. Regular content creation also positions you as a thought leader in your coaching specialty.

    How professional coaching website design can help build credibility

    When someone is considering hiring a coach, they’re making a significant personal and financial investment. A professional, well-organized coaching website helps build the confidence they need to take that step.

    Position yourself as an expert by highlighting your real-world experience that’s relevant to your coaching niche. Did you lead teams before becoming a leadership coach? Did you successfully launch a business before coaching entrepreneurs? Did you navigate your own career transition before helping others do the same? This lived experience often provides more credibility than formal certifications alone.

    This includes having a website that functions well across all devices, using consistent branding that reflects your coaching personality, and maintaining professional communication throughout your site. Details like working contact forms, clear navigation, and professional photography contribute to an overall impression of reliability and attention to detail. All qualities potential coaching clients want to see in their coach!

    Essential coaching website tips

    Making the right first impression on your homepage

    Your consulting website homepage should immediately communicate what type of coach or consultant you are and who you can help. A clear headline that addresses your ideal coaching client’s primary challenge or goal is a great way to start. For example, “Leadership Coaching for Overwhelmed Executives” or “Life Coaching for Career Transitions.” Follow this with a brief explanation of your coaching approach and clear next steps for interested visitors.

    Consider including client success stories, coaching certifications, or results in a visible area of your homepage. This social proof helps visitors feel more confident about exploring your coaching services further. A brief video introduction that allows potential clients to get a sense of your coaching personality and communication style can also be highly effective and set you apart from other consultants in your niche.

    Building trust and connection on your About page

    In any service-based industry, you are the product. People want to understand your background, coaching credentials, and what led you to coaching before considering your services.

    Consider framing your content development with the question every potential consulting client has: “Can this coach help me?” Share your experience with clients similar to them and how your background relates to their challenges.

    Frame service offerings within a bigger picture

    Some coaching websites list features instead of benefits: “Weekly 60-minute sessions,” “Email support between sessions,” “Personalized action plans.” While these details matter, potential clients care more about what they’ll achieve through coaching. You’re selling your expertise and an aspirational goal, not a productized “session.”

    Changing your framing to a value-based approach also helps you focus pricing around the transformation you provide rather than hourly rates or fixed deliverables, positioning your coaching as an investment in results rather than a commodity service.

    Should I show my coaching rates?

    You may find that you struggle with whether to display coaching prices. Price is likely a top consideration when choosing to work with a coach or consultant. Clear pricing answers one of the main initial questions clients have, improving likelihood of conversion and speeding up the decision-making process.

    On the other hand, if your services vary widely by client or project scope, displaying a fixed price can set wrong expectations and create more confusion or pushback. Offering price ranges or starting prices can help orient visitors without overcommitting to fixed fees. In general, I recommend experimenting with pricing. The great things about web pages is they aren’t print. So, test out some pricing structures and see what works best.

    Just ask: coaching testimonials and client results

    Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials. People genuinely want to help others who have made a positive impact on their lives. If you feel awkward, consider these approaches for getting coaching testimonials:

    • During your regular check-ins when clients share wins, “That’s awesome! Can I share that result?”
    • Send a follow-up email 2-4 weeks after coaching ends
    • Request specific feedback: “What was most valuable?” “What changed for you?”
    • Make it easy by providing a simple form or asking just a few specific questions
    • You can also include a request for feedback on your email signature or in your newsletter footer

    Satisfied coaching clients are a tremendous resource and can be your biggest advocates. Plus, authentic testimonials with specific details and outcomes create valuable content that search engines recognize as trustworthy, helping your coaching website rank better for relevant searches.

    Consulting articles and resources help establish your expertise

    A regularly updated coaching blog serves multiple purposes: it improves your website’s search engine visibility, provides value to potential clients, and demonstrates your ongoing expertise in your coaching niche.

    • Create content that answers questions or objections that you frequently encounter in your work.
    • Write about real concerns – this can help you develop authority around long-tail keywords that support your core services.
    • Consider offering free resources with a prompt to subscribe to a newsletter. These can provide immediate value while giving interested visitors a sample of your coaching approach and a reason to stay connected with your work.

    Coaching contact & client intake

    It may seem obvious but these interactions are often overlooked. Your contact page should make it simple for potential coaching clients to reach out while also beginning the client qualification process.

    If you offer free discovery calls (which many coaches do), explain what potential clients can expect from these conversations. Be clear about the purpose: is it to determine mutual fit, provide immediate value, or both? Help them prepare by suggesting they think about their goals and what they hope to achieve through coaching with you.

    Need help with your coaching website?

    Whether you are looking for a redesign, starting from scratch, or in need of a few updates – I can help. Request a complimentary call:

    Request a free consult
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    View my websites for coaches and consultants.

    SEO 101 for coaches & consultants

    Understanding how people search for coaching services

    Effective SEO for coaches starts with understanding how your ideal clients search for coaching and consulting services. This boils down to search intent. People searching for problems expect helpful content and solutions, while those searching for specific services expect to find providers and pricing. Websites that match their content to how their audience actually searches will rank better and attract more qualified visitors.

    Are people searching for “business coach” or “life coach”? Or, are they approaching their search from a problem-solution mindset? Research the language your potential coaching clients use to describe their challenges.

    • “How to get promoted at work” (executive coaching)
    • “Starting a business while working full time” (entrepreneurship coaching)
    • “Confidence coaching for women” (life coaching)
    • “Leadership training for new managers” (leadership coaching)
    • “Career change at 50” (career coaching)

    Make sure to include long-tail keywords that reflect specific challenges in your content as well as broad coaching terms. “Leadership coaching for introverted managers” is a long-tail, specific key phrase that can help support and inform queries around a head term like “leadership coach.” Over time, this approach builds topical authority and helps you rank for both specific problems and general coaching searches.

    The web is made of links. Internal linking between related pages helps search engines understand your content structure and connects visitors to relevant, useful content. Linking to external, authoritative websites is also good (when you are providing more useful, relevant information). Don’t forget to link your articles back to their related service pages!

    Creating coaching content that ranks in search results (yes, you can use AI)

    With the help of AI, we no longer have to stare at a blank page tapping our pencil and wondering what to write about. AI is so good at producing thousands of words! And, Google has said that it will reward high-quality content, however it is produced, so it’s not cheating…

    Although AI can be a helpful tool, it’s important to understand it’s limitations as well as its strengths.

    Search engines reward website content that consistently provides unique, useful, relevant content to a matched search query. AI can help you generate ideas and drafts but it is even more important to craft your own unique voice, to push your LLM of choice to be critical, provide clarification, and to question its eager assumptions. Prompting AI is a bit like “programming in prose“. In the end, LLMs just make patterns of words. They aren’t really connecting ideas and they don’t understand or remember what they’ve written (fingers crossed / yet).

    That’s still your job.

    Thought Leadership Content

    Thought leadership content demonstrates your expertise by sharing unique perspectives on industry challenges and emerging opportunities. AI systems and search engines increasingly recognize and reward original insights, personal experiences, and professional commentary that can’t be replicated by automated content generation.

    Share your take on industry developments, challenge conventional wisdom when you have evidence from your coaching practice, and ask better questions that help others think differently. This type of authentic, experience-based content builds authority and trust that generic information cannot match.

    Building your coaching website: ready to start?

    Start by establishing a clear messaging about your coaching niche, draft essential pages and services that reflects your consulting style.

    • Focus on one area at a time rather than trying to perfect everything simultaneously. Is it good enough? Hit publish.
    • Remember that your coaching website should evolve with your practice. What works for a new coach building credibility differs from what works for an established coach expanding into group programs or online courses.
    • The investment you make in your coaching website today will help you build the coaching or consulting business that supports your life in the future, rather than letting the ups and downs of business dictate what comes next.

    A strategic, professional coaching website doesn’t just showcase your services. It becomes your most effective business development tool, attracting your ideal clients and positioning you as the clear choice when people are ready to invest in personal and professional development.

    Reach out to me to discuss any questions you have or comment below!

    Emily Rapport

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  • The Future of SEO in an AI World (Don’t Panic)

    The Future of SEO in an AI World (Don’t Panic)

    You’ve just finished tweaking your meta tags, optimizing your H1s, and crafting some valuable long-form content. You hit “publish,” sit back with your coffee, and move on to the next project.

    A few weeks later, you’re reviewing your monthly performance report and notice something strange: your traffic looks fine, but your clicks have dropped significantly.

    Welcome to the new frontier of search, where AI writes the summaries, answers the questions, and sometimes doesn’t even need to send users to your site.

    So what does that mean for your SEO strategy? Let’s walk through what’s actually changing and what you can do to stay visible when helpful robots are running the show.

    AI is reshaping how search engines interpret and serve your content. Instead of simply pointing people to your site, both search engines and AI platforms are increasingly providing direct answer to queries—often using content from your site to do it.

    Google blends generative AI into how it understands user search intent, ranks results, and serves features like AI Overviews. Meanwhile, standalone AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are becoming alternative ways people search, sometimes skipping traditional search engines entirely.

    What’s happening:

    1. Fewer clicks, even when you rank #1. “Zero-click” searches are now common, but they often represent a better user experience. When someone gets the answer they need immediately, that’s still a touchpoint with your brand—especially if AI draws that answer from your site.
    2. Traditional SEO fundamentals matter more, not less. Generative AI models rely on structured, well-formatted content to understand and surface accurate answers. Semantic HTML, clear heading hierarchies, and schema markup help AI understand the relationships between your topics and key information.
    3. The audience of “humans and Google” is expanded to include “humans and machines.” AI summarizes, interprets, and repackages your content, so the clearer and more valuable it is, the more likely it is to be surfaced in AI-generated results.

    Local businesses have a major advantage

    Here’s where smaller, local businesses have an advantage: while big publishers might dominate AI summaries for broad topics like “best chocolate chip cookie recipes,” they can’t compete with you on local, transactional searches.

    Local and transactional searches still drive action

    When someone searches “emergency plumber in [your town],” “custom birthday cake [your city],” or “therapist accepting new patients near me,” they need to take action locally. AI can provide the basics, but it can’t complete transactions or bookings (yet).

    Your Google Business Profile is your secret weapon

    A complete and up-to-date Google Business Profile has more impact on local discovery than trying to rank nationally for broad topics. Make sure your address, photos, hours, services, links, and reviews are current and comprehensive.

    Hyper-local content creates competitive advantages

    Is there a local event that is related to your business? Or perhaps a local cause or organization that can be tied in to an About page? For example, you could highlight local community connections through partnerships, board memberships, volunteer experiences, or other aspects of local life that are meaningful to you.

    If applicable to your business, content like “Best venues for small weddings in [your county]” or “What to expect from physical therapy after a car accident” can leverage your insider knowledge and local expertise in ways that big publishers can’t match.

    The key is avoiding what I call the “vanity SEO trap”—chasing broad, high-volume keywords that won’t drive local business. Optimize for what people in your area are actually searching for: services, needs, and location-based solutions.

    Get cited: structure content that AI will love

    The most actionable strategy for any business now is creating content that AI can easily pull from and attribute. This requires some attention to how you format and present information.

    1. Lead with direct answers. Don’t bury key information in long paragraphs. Start sections with clear, concise responses: “Yes, we offer evening appointments” or “Our deep cleaning service takes 3-4 hours.” When AI encounters this structure, it can easily extract and cite your answer.
    2. Embrace structured formats. Think FAQs, how-to guides, numbered lists, and tables. These formats help both humans and AI quickly find and use your information. For example, a therapist might create content answering “What should I expect in my first therapy session?” with clear, step-by-step information.
    3. Create comprehensive topic clusters. AI understands topics and relationships, not just keywords. Build one comprehensive guide supported by specific pages—like a “Guide to Therapy Services” pillar page with dedicated pages for different conditions or treatments. Link strategically between related content to show AI the depth of your expertise.
    4. Use schema markup and structured data. This helps AI understand your content context, especially for local businesses. Rich snippets displaying hours, pricing, and reviews can appear directly in search results even when users don’t click through to your site.

    Google Business Profile strategy

    Your Google Business Profile isn’t just a listing, it’s your primary tool for appearing in AI overviews, voice search results, and local pack listings where most local discovery happens.

    Post regularly with purpose

    Aim for 2-3 posts per week that answer common customer questions, share service updates, or highlight your expertise. These posts appear directly in search results and map listings, giving you visibility even in zero-click scenarios.

    Optimize for mobile and “near me” searches

    Over 80% of local searches happen on mobile, and your Business Profile is often the first thing potential customers see. Complete profiles with current information significantly improve your visibility in these critical searches.

    Use the Q&A section strategically

    Encourage satisfied customers to ask and answer questions about your services. You can also seed this section with common questions you receive, providing clear answers that AI can surface in search results.

    Building authority that AI recognizes

    AI doesn’t just regurgitate content—it makes quality judgments about which sources deserve to be cited. Your goal is becoming one of the chosen few by demonstrating expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

    Display credentials prominently

    For professional services, clearly show licenses, certifications, years of experience, and professional affiliations. AI systems are increasingly sophisticated at evaluating these trust signals.

    Create content that demonstrates real experience

    Share case studies (with appropriate privacy protections), lessons learned, and behind-the-scenes insights that only someone with hands-on experience could provide. Generic advice that sounds like it could be written by AI won’t stand out.

    Keep content fresh and updated

    AI tools favor recently updated pages. Regular updates signal that your information is current and reliable.

    In an AI-driven search world, being the most helpful, accurate, and locally relevant source wins…

    Get the free Local SEO Action Checklist.

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    Measuring success in the AI era

    Traditional metrics like organic traffic and click-through rates don’t tell the complete story anymore. Focus on these indicators instead:

    • Brand mention tracking. Monitor when your business appears in AI-generated summaries or featured snippets, even without clicks. Tools like Google Alerts can help track brand mentions across the web.
    • Local engagement metrics. Phone calls, direction requests, and form submissions from your Google Business Profile often matter more than website visits for local businesses.
    • “Near me” search visibility. Track your rankings for location-based searches in your service area. These searches typically have higher commercial intent.
    • Question-based keyword performance. Monitor how you rank for queries that start with “how,” “what,” “where,” and “when” related to your services, as these are prime targets for AI summaries.

    Don’t be discouraged, your human expertise is more valuable than ever

    The future of SEO isn’t about outsmarting algorithms, it’s about showcasing your unique knowledge and experience in ways that both people and AI can easily understand and share.

    Your website, content, and local expertise matters. Success now means being the most helpful, authoritative voice in your field and location. So, grab a towel, go forth and make your content clear, helpful, and true to your business.

    Questions about implementing these strategies on your website? I help local businesses like you create websites that speak to your audience and perform well in today’s search landscape. Reach out for a free consultation – I’d love to help you get more qualified leads for your business.

    Emily Rapport

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  • Your Website is a Service: Human-centered Design

    Your Website is a Service: Human-centered Design

    Your website is a service, not a brochure or a product. As a service, your website should prioritize the tasks and information that your readers need most. Crafting a website with your readers in mind is more sustainable over time. It also translates to better search performance.

    Setting expectations

    Websites should be accessible, usable, and useful

    People need to use your website to access important information and services. Website content that is accessible is designed to follow the P.O.U.R. guidelines:

    • Perceivable
    • Operable
    • Understandable
    • Robust

    When designers, developers, and publishers consider accessibility from the beginning we can create a more inclusive digital experience. Content that is easy to scan and read enables more accurate translation, is easier to maintain, and is more findable.

    Write content for people

    People are busy and often distracted. Writing clear, easy to read copy helps them to “get” your content, do what they need to do, and move on with their lives. Sometimes this will result in shorter time on page, or “less engagement” in terms of Google Analytics. But, that’s not always bad! If you’ve helped people get to the content they need more quickly, you’ve created a more positive and successful web experience.

    Using plain language can help you to avoid convoluted or cliché expressions. Simplifying the words you choose – for example, write “use” instead of “utilize” – will make your content more impactful and meaningful.

    • Use active verbs
    • Write shorter sentences
    • Avoid abbreviations
    • Avoid generic “click here” link text
    • People will skim and scan and that’s okay

    Links allow people and search engines to navigate your content. When crafting links, consider the following:

    • Action – What do people need to do?
    • Clarity – Links should look like links, ie. underlined
    • Visibility – Don’t hide essential elements (search, menu)
    • Promises – A link is a promise. Tell the reader what to expect.
    • Words – Choose the right words. Language is more powerful than images.

    Research on usability indicates that when users fail to navigate correctly on their first attempt, their success rate tends to decrease. Making sure your links and navigation are clear and that content relationships are visible (through breadcrumbs for example), all help people understand and navigate the virtual space of your website.

    Check out these tips for writing great links for websites and emails on Smashing Magazine.

    Internal links also help search engines crawl (discover) and index (store in its database) the pages of your site. As Google states in its guide to how search works, “Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page.”

    Don’t be afraid of linking to external sites. The idea of “keeping” people on your site is not realistic. Links to high-quality, useful external sites can be helpful to your readers. That’s the job of well-crafted content; get people the information they need, when they need it.

    Structure your content for readability

    Web pages and documents with a clear structure and hierarchy are easy for people to understand. Typically, a person will scroll a page and scan the headings to get a sense of what the page is about.

    In HTML, the markup language of a webpage, we have some core elements that create structure in our page:

    • Headings – H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6
    • Lists – <ul> is an unordered list, <ol> is an ordered, or numbered, list (this list is a <ul> element)
    • Blockquotes – more than a visual style, a <blockquote> is a different element from a paragraph, but it may include a paragraph
    • Paragraphs – the basic, essential element to display text content

    Good page structure helps people scan content and find what they’re looking for more easily. It also helps Search Engines to understand your content. Page structure is a factor in technical search engine optimization (SEO) as well as usability and accessibility. Use your elements!

    Using headings to define blocks of content

    Headings organize and define blocks of content. They help all readers scan your page to understand the content and find the information they need. This includes sighted readers, readers using assistive technology, and search engines.

    • You should only use one H1 per page – this is usually your page title.
    • Don’t skip a heading level. Headings 1 through 6 are available to use but you might not need them all. Just make sure they appear in order (ascending, descending).
    • Don’t use headings just because you want your text to stand out visually.

    Conclusion: Your audience is people – prioritize their needs and expectations

    Keeping your audience in mind when developing content, optimizing for search, and testing for accessibility, will all ultimately help you develop a more successful web presence (one that can be found in search and is optimized for conversion).

    Need help or have questions about content? I provide team training to help content publishes create useful, optimized, accessible content and make the most of their website tools. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions, I’m always happy to help.

    Emily Rapport

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