John Doherty

The Internet has a content problem. Every day more and more content is being pushed out into the nether regions (ok, that’s inappropriate) of the Internet and most of it is terrible. And worse than that, the good content that is published on the Internet is few and far between and hard to find.

My goal with this blog is to help people get their content found. Because of this I’ve written posts like:
11 Ways To Drive Gobs Of Traffic To Your Site
A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy
Linkbait Is Not A Content Strategy
The Future of Cross Platform Publishing

We’re being inundated with a lot of crap content as well these days. Every post I see on Inbound.org (so basically all content produced by “marketers”) is “How To…”, “X Reasons That…”, “The Ultimate Guide To…” Read more about The Internet’s Content Problem …

A lot of talk has happened about content, content marketing, and blogging in 2012. We can thank Google, Tom Critchlow, and people like CopyBlogger for this, and I truly do. I love content and writing, and content writing and content marketing. I love it so much that I told people to stop blogging if they’re not going to put the time and effort into it.

I often have people tell me that I’m a good writer. That’s not a humblebrag, it’s a statement of fact. The truth is that I have always been a writer and loved writing, but honestly I used to suck at it. I’ve been writing on the Internet, on blogs of various kinds, for a decade now. And honestly, a lot of my stuff used to suck. And honestly, a lot of content I wrote on this site when I started it almost 2 years ago now….sucked.

I think I’m a decent writer and blogger now. So how have I done it?

The answer is plain and simple – I’ve written, practiced, and analyzed the results, and then written some more, practiced new lessons, and analyzed the results, then I write… You get the idea. Read more about Becoming A Better Writer …

Alternatively – “When Saying Yes Hurts”

I see a lot of bloggers writing about the importance of saying “no”, and then I often see responses to these such as “Good for you!” and “Alright, way to get your priorities in order!” The interesting thing to me is that when someone says that they are learning to say no, it means they are already really good at saying “Yes.”

You don’t have to learn how to do something if you already know how to do it.

I can’t help but think, though, if sometimes we have to say “Yes!”. I want to talk about the types of people and priority in which saying “yes” is. Hopefully this speaks to the values through which I live my life. I started thinking about this post because I’m currently at TechStars’ Foundercon in Boston, just 5 days after I got back to NYC from Boston, because a respected industry peer asked me to speak in their stead. I wanted to and I needed to. Read more about Prioritizing “Yes” …

SEO is not about quick wins. I get asked all the time to “give us something that we can do now that will have a noticeable effect”. People, everyone, wants to get the most bang for their buck, and this especially happens in business where there is direct pressure to produce ROI. After all, no one brings in a consultant until they are unable to solve their own problems. At this point, your problems become mine. And if you’ve been seeking quick wins and they’re not working, what the heck makes you think that me giving you quick wins is going to fix your problems? Quick wins have not been solving your issues until now, so why do you think anything is going to be different with my quick wins?

Remember, doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results isn’t smart. It’s actually a sign of madness. Read more about From Quick Wins to Hard Work …

It’s probably not a secret anymore that I love Microsoft Excel for data crunching. Nothing makes me happier than getting a whole mess of data and making sense of it. While I’m definitely not an Excel ninja on the level of Mike Pantoliano, I’ve learned a number of tricks in the past couple of years to help out a lot with my work. Whether it’s keyword research, building a sitemap, or cleaning up URLs and finding duplicates in rows, here are eight of my favorite Excel functions that make my life easier every day.

For all of these, the data is in cell A1, unless otherwise noted.

Stick these in your list of functions!
Read more about Eight Useful Excel Functions for SEO …