Here at the Search Engine Academy, we teach people how use proper techniques to search engine optimize their content and get listed on the search engines like Google. None of this is theoretical, it’s what we use in our own work too. Many of us who are instructors also have SEO and web consulting businesses, so we have to “eat our own dogfood” as it were.
Last year, we started using a collaborative bloogging platform from a company called Innogage. Tom Williams is the founder of Innogage, and his philosophy around SEO and blogging meshed so well with what we teach in our classes, that we decided to use his tool for our own work.
What Is Collaborative Blogging?
First of all, though, what is “collaborative blogging”? Many of us started using blogs as a way to post information about our industry or company, and typically it came from one person. This is great. However, it’s so easy to be enthused at the beginning, only to falter and lose steam after a period of time. You run out of ideas, out of time, or just “don’t get around to it”.
Instead, by having a collaborative blogging platform, you may have multiple people from the company or organization that are each providing content. Perhaps each person only posts once per month. That’s not such a big deal, right? So if you have ten people, each writing once per month, that’s approximately 2-1/2 posts per week. Great!
Each person will have a different take on things, a different idea or even different passions. Each of the contributors will start to develop their own followers and readers can subscribe the content that engages them the most.
SEO Your Blog Posts
The next step is to SEO the content for the search engines. How do you get lots of people to properly create well-optimized content without having to send everyone to training and become experts at SEO?
Enter the Innogage tool, called Innoblogs. They have built into their system (which is based on the WordPress platform – something familiar to many of us) a Search Engine Optimizer that automatically scores each post as the person is writing it. It’s on a scale of 0-100, and turns from red to yellow to green when it’s fully optimized. If the writer is stuck and doesn’t know what to do to raise the score, the system tells them exactly how they need to fix it.
Furthermore, the tool builds automated, targeted keyword links within the content that the writer doesn’t even think about. It just happens, helping the entire blog to function as a link building tool.
Today, along with my fellow Master SEO instructor from Washington DC, Nancy Wigal, we’re interviewing Tom Williams to find out more about how this all works. You can register for the free SEO webinar online or watch the recorded webinar after we get it posted on the Search Engine Academy website. I hope you’ll join us!
Let us know in the comments if you have ever collaborated on a blog system and how that worked for you.
I am salivating for the tool you discussed today! Thanks guys. My question was also about availability of the tool for “agency” use. Sounds like a portal of sorts is in the works that may answer that. We’ve created our own home-grown process between Base Camp and Google Docs but still too manual for sure. Having some “auto-magic” (as you say) would be huge leverage for those of us who don’t like to work so hard while still delighting clients …haha. Thanks for the great content. Can’t wait to try this.
Hi Patricia! Glad you liked it. I’ll make sure that Tom Williams answers your question. If you’d like to see the tool in action, I can give you a tour or I know Tom would be happy to discuss it directly with you.
Hope you’re well! Just had Beth K in my class last week. 🙂
Hi Patricia, Tom Williams from Innogage here. I’m so glad you enjoyed the webinar today. Tom Petty and Nancy Wigal are some of the best SEO practitioners out there. I love talking to them.
I LOVE when agencies use my software. That is actually how most of our Innoblogs sales happen – through agencies and agency partners. It’s a great fit because your clients will be successful which makes you (the agency) look like gold.
You can reach me direct if you want at twilliams [at] innogage.com (replace the [at] with @). I hope to hear from you.
p.s. Tom and Nancy – NICE BLOG!
Its really a great article, you have shared such nice info.Thanks.