How to Write a Blog Post in Under 60 Minutes

Writing blog posts is an important way for business owners to connect with customers and promote their brands. However, regularly publishing fresh content can be time-consuming. The good news is that you can learn how to write a blog post in under 60 minutes without sacrificing quality. Follow this step-by-step guide to write and publish blog posts efficiently for your small business website or blog. Choose a Blog Post Topic Coming up with ideas is often the hardest part of writing a blog post. To choose a topic quickly: Write down 5-10 ideas related to your products, services, or industry. Think about what your customers care about. Check Google Trends, Buzzsumo, or social media to see current popular topics. Consider trending news or seasonal events you can tie in. Brainstorming for a few minutes can give you several good topic options to choose from. Pick the one you’re most excited to write about. Research and Outline Now spend 15 minutes researching the post topic and organisation: Search online and take notes on key information, facts, statistics and examples to include. Jot down an outline with 3-5 main headings about what you will cover in each section. This upfront work makes the actual writing much easier. Write a Draft With your research and outline completed, you’re ready to write. Set a timer for 30 minutes and start drafting. If you’re writing a 500-word piece, aim for around 100 words per section. Use your outline to guide the flow, filling in paragraphs with your notes and additional commentary. Remember to: Break up walls of text with headings, lists and images. Keep sentences short and vocabulary simple. Insert keywords naturally to help with SEO. Link to internal blog content or external references. Stay focused and keep writing until your timer goes off. Thirty focused minutes should produce a draft of 500+ words. Edit and Format the Post Now, you can take a short break and then come back to polish up your draft blog post. Spend 10-15 minutes on editing and formatting: Read through and fix typos or grammar issues. Break up paragraphs that are too long. Add images, graphics, or YouTube videos to reinforce key points. Format the text properly using heading tags, bold, italics, bullet points and text colours. Insert metadata descriptions, tags, and hyperlinks. This fine-tuning prepares your post for publishing. Publish and Promote You’re in the home stretch now! Take any last steps needed, then get your blog post live: Publish the finished piece on your website or blog. Share the post link on social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Add CTAs inviting readers to comment or share the article. Consider repurposing the content into a YouTube video or thread on Quora or Reddit to expand the reach. Track Performance In your first week after publishing: Monitor traffic sources and visitor metrics in Google Analytics. Watch for social shares, backlinks, and comments. See which sections draw the most readers. Use these insights to refine your next blog post to improve engagement. If it all seems too hard… outsource Writing quality blog content on tight deadlines can be challenging to sustain long-term. If your schedule doesn’t allow for regular posting, consider outsourcing your blog writing. Contact us today to learn about our small business blog writing service. We can produce SEO web content based on your requirements to take this task off your to-do list, and can even publish the posts for you too!

Why Guest Posting Is Still Important in 2024

In the fast-changing world of digital marketing, the fundamentals still reign supreme. Guest posting – publishing content on another website – remains one of the most effective strategies for expanding your reach, establishing credibility, and boosting visibility in 2024 and beyond. As a business owner, you juggle countless responsibilities. Staying on top of the latest marketing trends while running daily operations seems next to impossible. But guest posting requires no complex tech stack or immense time investment to yield real results. This evergreen strategy offers tremendous value for brands of all sizes and niches. Let’s explore why guest posting should still be an integral part of your 2024 marketing blueprint as a business owner. The Power of High-Quality Content Google’s updates over the years reiterate the supremacy of unique, insightful, and engaging content. In 2024, magnify your focus on crafting stellar guest posts chockfull of value. Well-researched ideas transformed into compelling articles have a long-lasting effect on your brand visibility and credibility. Concentrate on identifying topics that resonate with your target audience instead of chasing ephemeral trends or vanity metrics. A guest post on an industry authority website, carefully optimised and promoted, elevates your brand for months and years – not just days or weeks. Keep the focus on overdelivering value to the readers of your guest article. Thanks to their innate shareability, well-crafted guest posts indirectly serve as lead generation and brand awareness drivers. However, going overboard with self-promotion can backfire and should be avoided. Diversifying Your Digital Real Estate Think beyond the blog when planning your guest posting pursuits this year. The digital landscape is becoming increasingly multidimensional – podcast interviews, video explainers, and community forum contributions can all fall under the guest posting umbrella. Doctor up your orphan content assets for guest appearances as well. That detailed how-to guide languishing on your hard drive could experience a new lease of life and introduce your brand to scores of fresh audiences. Varying your content forms and platforms diversifies your audience reach. It also bolsters your brand as a flexible, dynamic thought leader that adapts seamlessly to emerging mediums. Guest posting on multimedia and interactive formats aligns perfectly with increasingly distracted reader preferences. Cultivating Connections and Relationships In recent years, guest posting has evolved from a purely transactional arrangement to a more mutually beneficial partnership between brands. Make it a priority in 2024 to nurture real connections with the websites and publishers featuring your articles. Explore ongoing content collaborations, community engagement opportunities, or permission-based marketing avenues with your hosts. Building lasting relationships amplifies the visibility and credibility upside of your one-off guest contributions over time. Tactical SEO Best Practices While Google’s organic algorithms emphasise customer experience over tactics, optimising your content remains essential. High search visibility and valuable on-page time correlate strongly with conversion and revenue. Sprinkle relevant long-tail keywords organically within your guest posts, along with descriptive title tags and meta descriptions. Curate high-quality external links citing authoritative resources to boost domain authority. Technical SEO also matters – ensure guest articles meet the host website’s image alt text, site architecture and internal linking best practices. Adhering to critical optimisation factors preserves the host’s site integrity while expanding your brand’s organic visibility. Captivating Multimedia Content Text-heavy articles are slowly giving way to snappier, visual-forward guest contributions incorporating images, infographics, embedded video, and more. This shift aligns with increasingly distracted reader preferences and the meteoric rise of platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Take advantage of this by developing captivating guest blog posts that pop, thanks to eye-catching visuals. Canva makes it simple for non-designers to create standout graphics and illustrations on a budget. Infusing multimedia elements into your articles helps them stand out while being more consumable for modern audiences. Showcasing Authenticity Guest posting presents a valuable opportunity to express your brand’s authentic point of view on industry challenges, emerging trends and news events. Share your unique perspectives through anecdotes and insights that today’s audiences crave over generic thought leadership. Readers have unprecedented access to information today. They value authentic angles over sales-forward content. Infuse your perspectives, experiences and personality sensibly within your guest posts. Doing so establishes your brand as approachable and memorable versus faceless. Crafting Mobile-First Content With over 60% of website traffic now originating from mobile devices, ensuring your guest posts render seamlessly on smaller screens is non-negotiable. Use brief paragraphs, snappy subheadings, bolded key points and other readability best practices. Check how your guest articles look on a mobile browser during the drafting process. Validate whether images and embedded multimedia adjust down without compromising legibility or page speed. A mobile-friendly guest post protects the host site’s responsive reputation while keeping readers engaged. Staying Updated on Latest Trends While the fundamental appeal of quality guest posting persists, staying updated with emerging trends is key. Monitor your industry’s innovations, changes in search engine algorithms, and reader behaviour. Infuse trending topics and the latest happenings organically within your guest content where appropriate. Doing so spotlights your brand as being in touch with developments versus dated or out-of-touch. Contact Us If You Need Help Guest posting remains a foundational marketing pillar, delivering outsized value relative to your time and monetary investment. For business owners on a budget with limited capacity, it is an evergreen strategy that will always be relevant. If you need help creating guest posts or publishing them on third-party websites, contact us today.  Our in-house writers write guest posts every day, and we’ve partnered with two great agencies that can help you get your posts published.  For more information, contact hello@inkelves.co.uk.

How to Remove Malware from WordPress Websites

A computer screen with program code warning of a detected malware script program. 3d illustration

WordPress is the most popular content management system used for building websites, and it is what the Ink Elves website is built on. The open-source nature of WordPress makes it easy for anyone to create a website with little technical knowledge. However, this also makes WordPress sites prone to hackers looking to infect them with malware. If your WordPress site gets infected with malware, it can cause a lot of problems like slowing down your site, redirecting visitors to malicious sites, and even getting your site blacklisted by search engines. Removing the malware quickly is important to limit the damage caused by the attack. The Ink Elves website was recently hacked, and links to Chinese shopping pages were added. It could have been worse, and we were lucky enough that Tyler from https://www.xcitewebdesign.co.uk/ made us aware of the attack. While we ended up re-installing WordPress and then running a Malware removal software to resolve the issues, we learned a few useful things along the way. Here are some steps you can take to clean a malware infection from your WordPress site if the worst does happen. Scan for Malware The first step is to scan your WordPress site for malware and check exactly what files have been affected. There are various free and paid online malware scanners you can use for this. Sucuri Scanner, Wordfence, and Malcare are some good options. Your website host may also have a malware scanner you can use. Run a complete scan of your site with one of these tools. It will detect any malware present and show you the infected files. Certain WordPress plugins like Wordfence also have built-in malware scanners. Review Any Unusual Code Carefully review all the files reported as infected. Malware often gets injected into legitimate WordPress files and hides amongst the existing code. So, inspect each file closely for any unusual-looking code that doesn’t seem to belong. Watch out for encoded text, strange-looking strings, and functions named in foreign languages. This malicious code needs to be removed. Update Passwords Once a site gets hacked, all its passwords get compromised. So, you need to reset the passwords for your WordPress admin account, FTP accounts, hosting account, etc. When Ink Elves was hacked, we couldn’t log in via WordPress, which made life difficult. Always use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication wherever possible for extra security. Also, remove any suspicious user accounts that may have been added by the hacker. Clean the Database Hackers will often make changes to your WordPress database like adding new admin users, inserting redirects, and even disabling security plugins. Scan your database using a tool like wpscan to identify any inserted malware. Then, clean your database by removing any suspicious entries. You may need to restore a previous clean database backup if the current one is too corrupted. Reinstall Core Files Some malware modifies the main WordPress system files. Simply deleting the malicious code may not be enough as the files could be still infected. It is better to revert to a clean version of all the core WordPress files, which is what we did. Manually reinstall WordPress by replacing the wp-admin and wp-includes folders with a fresh copy from wordpress.org. You may also need to delete and reinstall other themes/plugins if they are affected. Disable File Editing One way hackers inject malware is by editing themes and plugins to add malicious code. To prevent this in the future, disable file editing from within WordPress. Install a security plugin like Disable File Editor, which removes the ability to edit plugin and theme files from within the WordPress admin. This will prevent future infections by closing off this attack route. Update Everything Make sure all your plugins, themes, PHP code, and WordPress core are fully updated after removing the malware. Old, outdated software versions often contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, and it is common for hackers to exploit outdated plugins. Use a plugin like Wordfence to check for any missing updates. Keep your site updated to stay on the latest secure versions. If you don’t check the site regularly, make sure automatic updates for all plugins and themes are enabled. Review Users & Permissions Check if any unauthorised users were added during the attack. If yes, delete them. Also, review the permission settings to see if the hacker made any changes like adding admin access to other accounts. Revert any suspicious permission changes. Additionally, install a plugin like User Role Editor to customise user roles and permissions as per your site requirements. Change Hosting Passwords Your hosting account credentials may have gotten exposed during the hack. To be safe, change your hosting account passwords. Review the FTP accounts and reset the passwords there as well. Doing this will ensure the hacker doesn’t have backdoor access through old passwords. Clean Up Backdoors Hackers often leave backdoors to make it easy to reinfect a site again. Look for any suspicious files, custom user accounts, changed permissions, hidden code snippets, etc., that could be potential backdoors. Completely remove any backdoors you find to prevent repeat infections from going ahead. Switch Hosting Providers If your current hosting provider seems unreliable in terms of security, consider switching. There are many good managed WordPress hosts that offer advanced malware protection and removal. Their infrastructure is also more secure compared to generic shared hosts. Migrating to them will add an extra layer of safety for your site. Reset Admin URL Malware often targets the default wp-admin path to break into sites. Once you’ve removed the infection, you can further obscure the admin URL. Install a plugin like WPS Hide Login which lets you change the admin path to something random. This adds security through obscurity. Improve Overall Security Beyond just removing the current infection, take steps to improve your overall WordPress security. This will prevent future malware attacks. Some good options are installing a web application firewall, using strong passwords, enabling 2FA, regularly updating software, limiting user roles, and disabling file

How to Write Marketing Blogs Your Clients Will Actually Read

There are approximately 1.8 billion websites online today. Not all of these are active. Nevertheless, that’s a lot of material. The sheer diversity of online web content has created a big problem for web marketers. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to attract and hold an audience’s attention. Data published in 2014 revealed a horrifying truth. Contrary to what naïve marketers believed, the average visitor spent less than 15 seconds perusing a website. So, was all that effort spent writing blogs and web content in vain? Actually, no. Interesting content still draws in readers. The internet is our biggest resource. We all use it as our personal encyclopedia. Need answers to a burning question? Ask Google. Need advice on a tricky issue? Ask Reddit. The Truth is Out There! The drive for information works in our favor when we are a content marketer. If we target the right topics, people will read the content we produce. But not everyone gets it right. Fluff won’t cut it. You can’t wing it by waffling about random stuff you dreamed up after ten cups of coffee. It’s also a bad idea to recycle the same old content in a new wrapper. Your audience is more discerning than that. Keyword Research No self-respecting marketer can afford to ignore keywords. They can make or break a marketing campaign. Use them as a framework for content. SEMrush is a great tool for keyword research. Analyse domains and carry out in-depth keyword research. Write Relevant Content Think about your target reader. What questions do they have? When they visit your website, what are they looking for? Once you have the answers, you have topics. The aim of the game is to write useful content. Stay away from generic topics covered a million times already. Drill down deeper. Instead of writing a beauty blog about ‘Makeup Tips for Students’, dig into the detail. Write a post about ‘Why Waterproof Mascara Is Every Student’s Must-have Makeup Item’. It’s way more interesting. Research for Topic Ideas If you are struggling for inspiration, conduct some online research. Reddit is an excellent resource. Visit Reddit and you enter a crazy rabbit warren of diverse subreddits. Find one that relates to your business and see what people are talking about. It’s bound to throw up a few interesting, topical ideas. Social media is also helpful. Twitter trends are often very revealing if you’re looking to write a news-style post. Don’t ignore Quora either. Whilst some questions on Quora are clearly contrived, many are genuine. Start using Quora questions as a starting point for marketing blogs. Try Different Types of Post Writing the same type of post week in and week out is boring for you, let alone your readers. Mix it up a little. Listicles are always popular, as are how-to guides. Flesh out your FAQs page with more in-depth content. Share some personal stories to humanize your business. Marketing posts are a valuable tool in your arsenal. Don’t turn off your clients with boring, generic content. This is a golden opportunity to build your brand, so embrace it with open arms!