In 1994 the first blog was born. It was just about a decade late (January 2005) when a study showed 32 million people read blogs. As of February 2011, there was 156 million public blogs in existence! Despite this, chances are that you think you know what blogging software is… You don’t. I don’t. Nobody does. The reason is that, despite the explosion of blogs, nobody has properly defined the classification “blogging software”, not really, at least. Blogging platforms, such as WordPress, Joomla, and TypePad can fall under that category as do multi-blog publishing software such on Blogsy, Ping-o-matic, and Blog Promoter.
Nonetheless, at the core of blogging is the ability to focus on writing itself – the actual article. Whilst so many application developers and programmers, tend to focus on the platform, InboundWriter’s “blogging software” is squarely focussed on the content.
An Overview on InboundWriter
InboundWriter, is the brainchild of Eightfold Logic, an in-bound marketing firm out of San Francisco. InboundWriter allows authors to focus on the content itself, producing better quality content, and better keyword placements for maximizing search traffic.
The editor itself is a beautiful WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web-based document editor chalked full of potential. It’s a simple editor that allows the author to focus on the content. If that wasn’t good enough, InboundWriter assigns a value to your article based on different factors on a 0-100 scale.
The InboundWriter “Add New Article” Process
- Enter three search terms (used for prospecting top related keywords), after clicking on “Create New Document”.
- Enter three domains (top-level is best, but it is possible to use subfolders or individual URL’s), to be used for dialing in relevancy accuracy during keyword prospecting.
- Wait thirty seconds for InboundWriter to analyze.
- Arrive at the “New Document” dashboard, complete with your relevant keywords. Keywords are scored based on 0-5 stars. The algorithm can be shifted if you choose to target long-tails with lower competition, or top (most popular) keywords in your documents vertical.
- Write your article. You’ll need a minimum of 250 words to see your Document Score. Once you reach 250, working in your keywords into the Title and Body will ensure it is property optimized. Moving a keyword within the body or title can shift the score dramatically. It’s something most editors would love to have and authors alike.
Cool Features
Inbound Writer will make suggestions as to how to improve your document score. For example it may suggest that you change the order of your title.
Notice how the dial shifts to reflect the change and estimates the scale of the improvement.
How Much Does it Cost?
InboundWriter is free for up to 8 articles per month. Over that, it is $19.95/mo for unlimited articles. Those who sign-up now will be locked into this price for the next calendar year. Another cool thing in the works from the InboundWriter team is a WordPress plugin.
The Bad News?
One of my biggest gripes with InboundWriter is that it will not be compatible on my iPad as it runs on flash. There is also no API (not yet), which would be a great way for other popular article composition programs to take advantage of the InboundWriter keyword suggestions.
Alternatives?
If you want to browse around for similarly priced alternatives, it is worth noting that Wordtracker offers keyword suggestions and Wordstream has a similar plugin for Firefox. Other services such as Zemanta offer content development suggestions in-situ on blogging platforms like Movable Type and WordPress, whilst Bruce Clay’s SEO Toolset has an integration with Pixelsilk that provides content optimization suggestions. However, none of these specifically score your pages for SEO effectiveness like InboundWriter.
Summary
There are very few dedicated tools for writing documents for the web and as a result, EightFold Logic identified that there is no equilibrium, or bar for content writers to live up to. InboundWriter intends to set the bar and have created something that shows a lot of potential. With products updates such as popular social media keyword research (and possibly trending topics) planned for summer 2011, Inbound Writer could be an essential tool for anyone who writes for the web and wants to maximize their reach.