Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Create a Blog that Doesn't Suck

So let's get started. How to create a blogged that doesn't suck Number one. Pick a niche and not just any niche but a big enough niche. And here's example of what I mean by a big enough niche. This is Google trends. The bigger the market cap, the easier it iss You see this right here? Nutrition, digital marketing. The red line is an industry I'm in. The blue line is an industry that I tested creating a blogging nutrition. Do you think I know a lot about nutrition? Raise your hand if you think ideo Wow no one raise their hand. Well, I know you shouldn't need fried foods or junk food. Other than that, I actually don't know anything about nutrition, but I got a really popular nutrition log. Just shows you pick a big enough niche. It's not that hard. And you don't want to just pick a big enough niche Gonna pick a niche that doesn't have marketers. This is Wendy, Smart lady. I don't know what a in person actually, I've never even talked to her. Wendy has this block called wellness mama. Rig...

ht. Well, this mama now is a life about her and her kids and nutrition. Wendy gets 10 million unique visitors. A monster block. That's a lot. You think my marking ball gets 10 million visitors a month? No, I'm competing with marketers. I like competing with Wendy from wellness. Mama. I don't like competing with more MEES. I'm not saying Wendy isn't smart or anything. It's just a less competitive space. Here's example. Quicks brought one of my blog's and wellness mama. My page authority is higher if you look at the linking route domains and total follow route domains. I have more than double the amount of back links that she has. Yet she has more than 10 times a traffic. What does that show you? She picked a big enough market, and it's not as competitive. So now that you got your market, you can use Google. Trends have been cures. It shows you what's big, and then you just google those keywords and phrases like the blog's like, Do they look like marketers? Do they know what they're doing? Based on the tips I give you, they don't start competing. Assume you also love that niche as well, so step to create content with content. There's something you guys need to know. Eight out of 10 people read the headline, but only two out of 10 people were Read your posts. That's a huge drop off. Most people don't read your content. The read your headline, but not the content. So if you can actually create a headline that's attractive like Buzzfeed, you see Buzzfeed is blowing up and they rank on Google. Even though they don't have much content per page, it's because their headlines are so amazing. So what they're headlines is a few rules numbers and negative words. Increase. Click the rates. Keep your headlines under 65 characters. Research. Remember we talked about title tags When your titles or your headlines or too long? What happens? Google gives you a dot, dot dot don't let them dot, dot, dot you. That's like someone cutting you off. So keep it under 65 characters. Make your headlines match the content. If someone reads a headline, that's really attractive, but they don't want to click through where they click through, and the content doesn't match it. What's gonna happen? They're gonna bounce back off, and it's gonna hurt your search rankings in the long run you also want to use odd numbers on numbers. Perform really well better than even once. Why I have no clue. But from every test I ran on, numbers tend to work better. You also want to aim for six word headlines. Another thing you want to do is avoid words with multiple meanings in different countries, where it's mean different things. You also want to use powers and adjectives. Good examples of these are like fun. Interesting, incredible. It just makes your headlines more appealing. So let's go over example of a headline five shocking fax that will change your approach to social media. How well do you think I did? Good. I got one thumbs up, Got too high. I got a five out of seven. Five out of seven, if you go back to it was too long. And what else did I miss? Six words. Yes, that's correct. So I didn't get him all but that's OK. You know, in school, when teachers like a you don't get a and you're all set Well, you know what with the Neil Patel system, a c'est pasi and it's gonna so if you don't get all of them It's alright. Just go for being average with headlines. You're not going to be perfect and it's OK now that you got your headlines down. Let's create content that teaches educational content lists how two guys. Things that are detailed If your content is so good that someone reads it and like, Oh, wow, I read this article on how to create a blood. Get traffic to it. And now I know what the next 10 steps I need to take to generate. That did a good job. I was going the other day for how to install a day. I automated my whole home. So I'm like, Let's put it the day So that way, when I sit on the seat, I live in Seattle in Vegas and it gets cold was like that with my two. She's a warm. It's like Google it and the articles from, like how stuff works. It just talks about how toe today works, but it ranks for how to install a today. I'm like, screw this article. I didn't learn anything from it. You think I'm ever going to click on the article from HowStuffWorks? No, I actually try to avoid that you are all every time I do a search now. So if your article doesn't educate, you're not doing well. Really? Try to teach. You also want to be consistently awesome. This kid makes his mom mad all the time. Some parents would be like that sucks. Like at least he's consistent about it. You know, to expect Justin blogging if you tell someone you're gonna blawg once a week, you blood once a week. If you're gonna block daily block daily, you can always add more content. But you don't want to take it away. So all blawg Weekly and then as they have more time on my block starts working out. I'll start blogging twice week. Then I start bawling three times a week and I try to go to seven. But I do try to stay consistent. If you don't, you'll notice a drop in traffic. I did that once when I was starting my blawg, but all this time I call my traffic's not growing fast enough. I decided to quit for a bit, and what happened was it took me 2 to 3 months to recover that traffic that I lost and get back to where Iwas it's like, Oh, consistency is really important. When you're writing the content, you also have to create a conversation. The word you and I are all conversational pieces. If I was just giving you a lecture. Hello. My name is Neil, and today I am going to teach you how to get more traffic to your website and how to create a block. Open up your books toe Lesson one, Chapter 12 Right. If I started talking like that and we didn't have a conversation, there was no Q and A. What would happen? You probably all walk out of this room. Or, if you're polite, you, you know, stay in your seats and look at your phone or you would throw something at me, neither room. I wouldn't hate any of that. If you throw something at me, I deserve it. I'll try to dodge it, but in essence you got a critic conversation you got entice people. You have to keep them on their toes. And by doing this, you'll also find that you'll get more comments. So what else? Well, there's a few things. One your block posts should be ideal if you can help it words or more. I know that sounds like a law, and you're like, Wow, 2000 words. Well, there's something that's being said. About 2000 were blonde posts. Did you know the average page that ranks number one on Google or on Page one of Google has over 104,200 words. It's one of those 104,200. And I believe the average page that ranks on number one is 2400. Just shows you that content is king. The more detailed content that you have, the better off you are. You also want to use 3 to 5 headings throughout your posts. You want to wrap up your post with a conclusion? A lot of people scroll down there skimming the headings help from skim. They see the conclusion. Boom. They know what they read or what the Post is going to be on. They go back up and they re read. I've done scroll map test to show like the density and the scrolling of a page. And that's how people most people read block posts. You also want to create infographics, but ones that are relevant have this company nestled Analytics stuff conversion related. So I credit infographic on how colors affect purchases. That's relevant. Got me over 5000 Tweets 6000 likes one radio show interview another one analytics company. We had so many employees that didn't know what a bounce, right? Waas So I guess just when someone leaves your sight, I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's more complicated in that you're engineer the analyst company. Shouldn't you know exactly what a bounce rate is? So these guys being stacked guys and math guys they created this formula is like all right, Neil, Here's what a bounce rate iss Do you know what it is now? And they're quizzing him like, No, I don't know it as well as you guys, but I rather infographic I'm like, Cool, I get it. I don't get the formula, but I got it. It's breaking down. Complex information, something simple. So I got it or got the gist of it and left in 2000. Tweets 600 likes 300 linked insurers. Here's another one. What makes someone leave a website? This is all relevant to my business. If I was a dentist and a credit infographic on what makes someone leave your website. You think that's relevant? And Google wants to rank that? No, you're just manipulating them to get social shares and rankings. They don't like that. But if I created a infographic on why kids don't like going to the dentist's and how to fix that, moms could be like, Oh, this is really cool. I know how to convince my son to come to the dentist. So here's some tips with them keeping visual and limit the word count. I remember when I started first quitting infographics. I'm frugal. I went to 99 designs and dribble to find places or people to help me out, and they started adding all of these texts. I'm like, Whoa, this is a graphic. This isn't a text image making visual. If the images don't represent the content, you're not doing a good job. You wanna make the complex information easy to understand. You also wanna have 5 to 6 main points, right? So if I'm doing infographic on how colors effect purchases, I may have one point on. Here's the meaning of colors. Black means this pink means this. I may have another point on how men perceive colors versus how women perceive colors. I can then talk about colors you should avoid using on your e commerce site. These are all examples, So assuming the story flows while together, you gotta infographic with 5 to 6 points with visuals telling majority of the story. You also want to use simple colors. No neon prints, nothing too flashy. Put your logo at the bottom. Make sure you have embed code at the bottom of the infographic you can use. If you have a WordPress bog WP and bed code generator, that's a plug in. It makes it so people can take the infographic on your site. Put it on their site, and it'll help you generate some links. Social shares, traffic and again When you're creating infographics, why not just pay to get him done? If you want to learn how to design a great take a class or course on that are use a softer like in program. Or you could just go to dribble d r I B b b l e dot com or you can go to 99 designs dot com. I'm paid to get the info. Graphic design. When you have the infographics, you have the content. You can't forget about the comments. People will leave. Comments. No man is an island. Remember when someone responds or writes a comment, respond to him whether it's negative. Positive. Make sure you respond. I can't emphasize this enough. You leave a comment on my block. I will do my best, always to respond to it. I could be traveling during the brakes here. I was actually going through my phone to seeing comments, e mails, even though I couldn't respond to everything. I was at least marking like I need to get back to these people. Make him happy. Some people leave me 500 down. Word comments. I'm like It's a lot, but I'm gonna get him. If you take the time to leave something so detailed and thorough and you're showing your appreciation for me, I have toe show my appreciation for you. It's a nice thing to do now that we've got content on lock down. Let's discuss promoting it. Remember wellness Mama, My competitor, Wendy I Chris, I call Nutrition Secrets first month of launching it 35,419 visitors in 30 days. No budget to spend on marketing. I think it's spent less than, ah $ or 2000. Mainly it was like domain related, trying to find a really appealing domain name, all within one month on a segment I didn't know I didn't use my brand name to promote my readers to nutrition. That's how easy it is to create a blawg and any niche and generate traffic. And I'm gonna show you step by step, how to do so. One ideal time to post is usually Monday at 11 a.m. E S t. If you're in the US, that's ideal our or use that tool. What was the tool that I talked about earlier? That tells you when your social followers online simply measure? There you go. Uh, you guys are looking to your notes. Pay attention. I will call on you. I'll call you up here if you don't pay attention. Now. I'm kidding. When you're doing all of this. If you don't post that the ideal time, it's like someone's coming to your blawg. Do you think they were content would be valuable? Yes, I love it. I wanna fall this person, and then they sleep at night, and you, like, check out my new post while they're sleepy. Then they wake up in the middle of the morning already have so much stuff in their in box, they miss it. So make sure you posted the ideal time and send out emails that the ideal time, ideally early in the morning early mornings like six AM do really well. Why, when someone comes in tow, work at eight AM what's right up in the inbox? Your email about your block post doesn't matter If you wrote the block post the day before, shoot the email roughly a 6 a.m. for the Social Web midweek and weekends. Noon six PM is when people love going on these social sites or try to be on their share during these times. That's when you're gonna get more. Retweets likes some loves, right, whatever they call it These days, I haven't used Snapchat yet. One day on a use Snapchat. I don't get the concept of filming myself in life and just feel like, Hey, guys, check out my dinner snap. I don't know if it works that way, but snap and then, like, check it out. Now I'm paying the bill for my dinner. Snap. I'm in the car driving snap. Probably get in the accident for snapping while I'm driving. Check out the accent just got in because of you guys snap. But all examples of how to use social media. So another strategy like using is linking out to people. Show some love. It's not all about you. Not just about linking to your own site. Linked other people, too. For every block posts that I right, I link out at least 25 times every 1000 words at least 25 times 2000 block posts, 50 times not exact formula, but the broth number I don't link out just the link out has to be relevant and makes sense. And then when I link out, I send this email So mike from nutrition Secrets. When I test this out because I'm like, Let's run experiment and let's use someone else's name is not known. So Mike would send out an email. We love John, as you can see in other examples. Hey, John, I just want to let you know I'm a huge fan of your work so much that I even linked out to my latest vlog post insert. You are all feel free to share it if you like. The post your number one fan, Mike. Now, I don't want to break copyright law. I took your number one fan from Eminem. Remember that song? Your number one fan Stan works really well. Like, Wow, Mike, you're my number one fan. I am. I want to send out toe Wendy from wellness Mama, your number one fan, Mike, please link out to meet and share my content works really well. That's our post have gone viral. We wrote a post called Ah, What happens to your body after you quit sugar and it started getting shared like hotcakes because everyone's like, Wow, this is amazing cause we linked out to all these people and they shared it The like Good article would even have a big social following. So here's my secret strategy with guest posting. This is what I talked about earlier. Let's say your name is Andrew. Andrew is a writer for Forbes. Andrew writes about marketing our business. I would email Andrew and I'll say, Hey, Andrew, I just want to say, Love your article on Forbes. It's a great article on entrepreneurship and it our marketing. And it taught me X, y and Z keep up the great work. Your number one fan, Neil. Chances are, and he's going to see that email cause Forbes or whoever it may be, they all have their own internal email system. They'll send it off to him. He'll decide if you want to respond or not. And Andrew will be like, All right, this guy's pretty good Second email, I'll say, Hey, Andrew, I noticed you wrote an article on six ways to grow your traffic through content marketing. It was really great. I learned a, B and C from it. But have you also thought about covering how to start a block from scratch? I know what content marking a lot of your tips are for people who already have a bog. Well, what if I don't even have a block? I think it will benefit a lot of your audience. Your number one fan, Neil, and he's not gonna get offended by like, All right, cool. Good tip. Now, chances are Andrews not gonna write that article. Normally, they never Dio they will say thanks. Precede this suggestion But most people don't, Right. So then I'll go back to Andrew a few days later and I'll say, Han Drew, I really love what you're doing and I want to pay for it and help you out. You've done so much for me, and I've learned so much over the last three months or whatever it may be that I want to do something for. You know, if you can introduce me to your editor at Forbes All right, that article on educating people on how to start a block from scratch and get traffic to it because they know you don't have time. And I don't want to burden you with it because he already done so much for me. Really appreciate it. Your number one fan, Neil in most cases will not most like, 30% of the time. Andrew, you she shoots off introduction to the editor and the editor response because ah, writer toe writer introduction is really powerful with the editor versus if a random person, head of the editor, so follow that formula. It works just like blogging on Forbes Huffingtonpost Inc entrepreneur A lot of these places. If you send me these emails with your number one fan, Andrew or John, it won't work. And then when you send me and I don't respond, I always get those emails back from people like. But you told me a what work. How do I know it's gonna work unless you actually do the introduction? Neil, that's really messed up. I don't have faith in anything you say anyone like. All right, here's the introduction, right? Just don't do that to me. Don't use my own tactics against me. So now let's talk about generating income from your block. You don't want to be lazy. Don't just think short term, trying to put some ads or some affiliate marketing. Instead, you want to first start off by collecting e mails. E mails are one of the highest converting channels. That's why companies like Amazon makes so much money. They keep emailing you saying bye bye bye. I used to buy DVDs so much, so many DVDs about like over 1000 $2000 worth just would only send me emails of DVDs because I knew I loved him. So you can do, like, newsletter opt INS, which less than 1% your audience will subscribe to. Or you can get a bit more sophisticated. Do like sidebar opt ins, which are offering a free E book or course like I do double my traffic and third, double your traffic in 30 days. Those convert really well e books, courses, journeys. You can also do pop ups. These work really well, right? Someone comes to your website right away, especially if you have a lot of mobile traffic, right when they come to your site. You asking for a name? Email works really well. You can also exit public diving to your sales pages. This is me before one easel wear glasses and I used to have hair and then I lost it all. Sadly so. I miss it. They should come up with a solution for that. But I didn't exit pop up, drove people toe a sales page converted. Really? Well, then I added in some call to actions in my sidebar this ad right here. Ben, he's a friend. He looks really creepy. Comforts really Well, people like clicking on creepy dudes. Um, I have another ad right now in my side roads like make money while our make dollar dollar dollars while you zzz so use the dollar signs that works really well. I have another ad that works while it's ah for my friend Sarah, and it said she was like a Playmate of the Year. At one point in her life says, Like Neil taught me how to make money without taking off my clothes. A lot of people cook on him and then actually converted to really well because I taught her how to create income from a website like palpable domain. Name is called sara Underwood dot com. Sick Cool. This works like, Yeah, I already have millions events now art. Another thing In my sidebar, I did a heat map test, and I found out that most people click on a section that talks about your most popular articles. Your recent case studies your latest articles. Your favorites. I do current hits all time. Neil's favorites. I change it up now to be like my guides. Current hits all time works extremely well. There's a company called Conversion Rate Experts. There's if you look in the middle, had case studies so that case studies then broke down how you can actually generate income from C R. O. And then these case studies drove traffic to sales or lead pages where people they collected email or lead in your budget and their sales reps would call you up and then try to close you all very effective. You can also gettinto exit pop ups like I have here, right or Tim Sykes. Learn how he turned 12,000 for 15 into three million trading stocks. You can also use hello bars, right drive people to exact lead page sales page. Whatever it may be, you can use tools like click funnels or lead pages to create these pages or unbalanced. Here's an example of one right sales page. It goes this very long. It's never ending the text. Keep scrolling from their government, keeps going more and more even link two case studies have more texts, then more texts. And if you think this is it, then there's more texts, and then it's often and these pages work. You just got to drive traffic to him. So here's some general sales rules for you. I always add a few up cells and down cells. Did you know that on, check out when you have upsides and downsides to double your revenue. That's huge. If you're pitching speed and automation, whatever you're selling, if it helps someone get the results faster and quicker and better, they will pay for it. You also want to make sure up cells in relevant. Hence, I talked about speed and automation. You want to try selling digital products and physical goods they both convert while physical. Typically better. But digital has more margins to do. A combination of that. You can use tools at Kuala Roure Surveymonkey to figure out what people want and what they don't want. Just ask him simple questions like What problem can I help you solve? What would you like to buy? Why'd you come here? All these questions help you figure out what people want. You want to create everything products or services to you don't want to create a practically last for six months. That's why those diet companies make so much money they'll credit diet bat tons of income and then it just goes down the drain because it was a diet like quick hit. They burning their name on that to create another product don't do that kind of stuff crea every being product, something that you can keep selling your year after year after year. So that way you have consistent income. And when you saw last but not least, the money's in the people who say no. If I have 100 people who visit my website, I'm lucky if one or two by plus usually don't buy, so you want to capture e mails and then trip those people, educate them, help him out, build a relationship. That's why social media is also important. And then later Astle's people if they want to buy, once you've built a report with. So let's get into some questions now, you know, we have a whole bunch of questions particularly focused on Google. Plus, all right, it's, uh, I actually always been wondered about this myself. Do you have any tips for kind of best practices there? It's kind of a unique social media platforms, a little bit different. And do you have any indicators? How much it really impacts rankings? Yeah, Google, plus his impact rankings, and you don't need to use it. So I'm curious you send one email to a writer, uh, ego stroking his and a 2nd 1 You send the 3rd 1 And I'm curious. What are some of the psychological lovers? Or why is the writer making the introduction like, where you tapping into I'm tapping into? He wrote a really valuable piece of content. He knows it. And then from there, I'm telling him, Hey, I know you're busy But he agreed on that second email without saying it or not. I point out a valid point. I'm using logic on how writing on a specific thing could have benefited his audience, that he didn't write on whether he has time or not. Introduction to ah editor shows that I'm smart enough and that I care what he's doing. I'm trying to follow in his footsteps. I'm doing like ego stroking. Uh, I'm making him feel like I know him by sending multiple emails is doing all in one thread. I'm keeping the short into the point. I'm getting him to response and engage, like getting him to take action, because if he takes a few actions like responding to me, it shows that he's engaged. If you just email someone cold, they're less likely to do something for you because you're not committed. If someone writes you email a few times, you open it up. You answer a question for them where you say thanks. You're more already committed to that person. So I'm just trying to build a report, build a connection with that person before I asked for the favor. Hi. This is great information, but it's also a little bit like drinking from a firehose. All right? And so I've got to imagine that all that you've done, you've got a resource that I'm looking for. Maybe other people are looking for, so I'll actually be launching a brand new site. It will be an e commerce site with content component. So if I'm so, I'm starting from scratch. So if I'm looking for, like, a big picture road map, right, where can I work? Do you have a resource on your site or do you know about a source for a big picture road map of content marketing or traffic? Um, for traffic? Well, actually, let's But let's talk about both since you mentioned it. Okay, If you just Google WR traffic in 30 days, there's a guy that gives you a homework assignment once a day for 30 days. That will help you get more traffic away, that the exact steps you should take. There's another one called Advanced Guide to Content Marketing. It breaks down everything you need to know about blogging in the order you need to take from creating a successful block to generating traffic. So one of the things you mentioned was that you usually include about links per 1000 words on at least your blawg content. My personal block. Not problem. Yes. Okay, cool. So, um, do you have any best practices that you use for like no following some of those links or they are well, I follow more. I don't even care to pass a juice like my thing is at their contents valuable. I will link to it. See, a lot of my articles have stats and data. It also makes me look authoritative by using information that's tangible. Even the nutrition website. If Mike is making a claim, he writes the articles, it's under his name because it's his sight. I don't know anything about nutrition. I was trying teach him about nutrition or I mean teaching that you can create a blogger and go traffic really easily. If he writes an article talking about how fat combined, what sugar or carbohydrates is what causes belly fat right? He can't just say, Hey, that's combined with sugar is what caused belly fats. He links from studies from Harvard toe government websites backing up the point he's trying to make and thats example, When you link out that's relevant to the user, it shows that you know you're talking about you've done your research for them and you don't want to link out just for the sake of it for the link. You only want a link out in the examples like that one in which it's beneficial for the reader. So you mentioned about using Buffer is I've heard that if you go away from Facebook to another platform, they tend to not Sharia post as much with Facebook. They have their own schedule, er, so if you have a fan page, you can just schedule ah post within their That's what Ideo So you mentioned. Obviously metrics shares tweets in terms of supporting R. A. Y. Social can be difficult. What other metrics do you suggest tracking to help convince your boss your client that social is working. The first is go to bust sumo and typing competitors. Girls, you'll see all their content and you show Hey, look, our competition's doing it. That's one thing that really helps push your boss or business partner, Whoever it may be that quantum markings important to start Googling for terms you later industry, you'll see that a lot of the terms that rank or sites that rank are sites that have content may not be their content pages, but they have a lot of contact. That's another thing that will help show your case. Three. There's case studies online if you Google, like the are a way of content marketing, etcetera, showing how much R a Y it actually produces for businesses. Just be to be examples and B to C, and you can take different exams from companies like Look here, boss, it works. I always showed you my competitors and what they're doing or are compares and what they're doing to. I showed you all the sites that rank in our space have a lot of content, even if it's not the pay drinking and three I talked about the R y of content marking by showing you case studies in R B two C or B two B room.