Simple Blog Traffic for Beginners

(1)

(2)

By Yaro Starak

1

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Blog Traffic For

Beginners

A Step-By-Step System To Build Your Blog

Traffic From Zero To 1,000 Daily Readers

Written by Yaro Starak

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole

or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author

(3)

By Yaro Starak

2

3

Social Media ...56

Traditional Traffic Generation Techniques ...64

Repurposing Content ...70

Publicity And Networking ...71

Create Significant Resources To Give Away ...77

Create Even More Significant Resources ...82

Techniques If You Have Money To Buy Traffic ...89

Big Marketing Ideas ...92

What Techniques Would I Start Fresh With Today? ... 97

Chapter Six: Leverage – How To Get The Most Out Of Your Traffic ... 99

Own The Traffic: Your Email Newsletter ...99

The Myth Of The Super Blog ...101

Chapter Seven: Your Blog Breakthrough ... 103

The Power Of Compound Interest ... 103

The Daily Habit ...104

The Tipping Point ...105

The Flywheel ...105

Put It All Together ... 106

Other Guides Available From Yaro ... 108

Master Your Mindset ... 108

How To Buy & Sell Blogs And Websites For Passive Profits ... 108

Blog Traffic For Beginners ... 109

Advanced Courses Available From Yaro… ... 109

The 2 Hour Work Day ... 109

Blog Mastermind ... 110

(5)

By Yaro Starak

4 The Legal Section

For the sake of clarity and brevity here are the two most important legal considerations regarding this book, in plain English -

1. You can’t publish the content in this book unless I grant permission. 2. I’m not responsible for anything that happens to you as a result of

following the advice in this book.

I don’t mind if you quote small sections, a paragraph or two, within your own writing, and appreciate a link back as credit if you feel appropriate.

Here is the slightly more complicated way of saying the same thing. Copyright Notice

Any unauthorized reproduction or transmission of any aspect of this book is

prohibited. You may not resale, repackage or give away any part of this book by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the author, Yaro Starak. This is NOT a free book and should not be freely distributed. You can only purchase this book from the websites www.entrepreneurs-journey.com or www.ejinsider.com. If you purchased or downloaded this book elsewhere please contact me immediately. Legal Notice

This book is not intended as legal, financial or investment advice. The purchaser of this book assumes all responsibility for their outcomes as a result of following the advice and materials in this book. Yaro Starak and the Blog Mastermind Partnership assume no responsibility or liability for the actions of any reader of this book.

(6)

By Yaro Starak

5 Chapter One: Let’s Talk Traffic

Hello, my name is Yaro, thank you for purchasing this guide.

Congratulations for deciding to equip yourself with the most important skill you can develop to build a profitable blog.

The importance of traffic

Traffic is a part of every single success story online. No matter what industry, topic, service, product or business model used, everyone needs to figure out how to market what they do and attract an audience.

I have made my living from the Internet since the early 2000s - I started with a

Magic: The Gathering (trading card game) news site, then built an online

proofreading business, and also made money buying and selling blogs and websites. In 2005 I started my own blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. It began as a hobby site where I told stories about my previous experiences as an entrepreneur, but within 18 months my blog became my full time business. By then I had over 1,000 readers per day and turned that audience into a $5,000 a month income stream.

To some people 1,000 readers is nothing, while others struggle to reach 100 readers a day.

Since you purchased this guide I know you are at the stage where attracting your first 1,000 readers will make a big difference to your blog. I consider 1,000 readers an ideal target to aim for, because with 1,000 readers you can start making enough money from your blog to make a significant difference to your life.

I did not stop at 1,000 readers with my own blog, nor was I happy with $5,000 a month, but these were key stepping-stones that eventually led to making over a million dollars thanks to my blogging business.

(7)

By Yaro Starak

6

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Without that initial platform of 1,000 readers, I would not have a business. Now it’s

your turn. It’s time to build your platform…

The Purpose Of This Guide

The purpose of this guide is to help you attract the first consistent stream of visitors to your blog, with the goal of reaching 1,000 unique visitors per day.

This means at least 1,000 unique people come to your blog each day - day after day. You’ll have a steady, repeat, regular readership and a steady stream of new readers who find you each day, and this will be an asset far more powerful than any spike of traffic that disappears a day later.

New Readers Vs Repeat Readers

Most blogs have a mix of repeat readers and new readers, and you should expect the same from your blog.

New readers are people who stumble across your work looking for answers via a search engine or other exposure points where your work is mentioned, featured, or linked (other blogs, podcasts, news, social media, etc).

Repeat readers bookmark your site, follow your RSS feed, join your email newsletter, or keep track of you on social media. These people visit your blog more than once. They know you best. They are your

true fans and members of your tribe (and thus more likely to

purchase things from you, so nurture them).

There is a very good chance, for example, that you are a repeat reader of my content, which led you to purchasing this guide you are reading now.

At the beginning of this process, we’ll focus heavily on attracting new readers. However it’s important you know that attracting new readers is only half the battle.

(8)

By Yaro Starak

7 The Conversion Process

Conversion is the process you implement to take your new readers and convert them into repeat readers. This process continues as you turn your repeat readers into paying members or customers.

This guide is primarily about attracting new readers. Some of your new readers will turn into repeat readers naturally. That’s what happens when you produce valuable content – people come back for more.

In the beginning, 80% of your effort should focus on sourcing new traffic, but as you develop your blog business you will find the ratio changes. In the future you might only spend 20% or less of your time on new traffic and the rest on converting readers into subscribers and then buyers.

How To Convert Your Blog Readers Into Paying Customers

To take the next step after traffic and learn more about conversion, in particular how to use your blog as a platform to make $10,000 a month selling your own digital training products, you need to join…

Enroll in the next round of Blog Mastermind, my premier blog training program. Over 2,000 members have already participated since I began teaching it 2007, with many graduates going on to make thousands of dollars from their blogs (and even a couple of million dollar blogs!).

If you are a teacher, speaker, author, expert, consultant, or you want to build a blog as an authority platform to sell your products and services, this is for you.

(9)

By Yaro Starak

8 You Are Going To Create “Traffic Assets”

As you follow the steps in this guide you’ll create “traffic assets” that continue to deliver traffic long after you build them.

Traffic assets take time to create. Like a baby, they demand the most from you when they are new. As they develop, momentum keeps them running and you will not need to work as hard to keep the new traffic coming in.

Bear in mind I’m going to give you more traffic techniques than you can handle. I don’t expect you to apply them all, that is not realistic. However, I

guarantee if you strategically approach this process, test a good proportion of the techniques I give you, and then focus on the ones that work for you, you will reach your goal of 1,000 readers.

Action Step: Measure Your Progress

Working towards a measurable goal is important. It gives you a specific destination to aim for, and a way to measure your progress as you go.

In order to stay motivated, you must celebrate your first 10 readers, your first 50, 100, 200, 250 readers and so on as you work towards that 1,000 daily readers milestone.

For our purposes we are measuring daily “unique visitors” to your blog (a unique visitor is one person visiting your site in

a 24-hour period).

All website statistic services provide information on unique visitors, and the standard for website statistics is Google Analytics. I use Google Analytics and I recommend you do too for the purposes of measuring your performance as you work on the tasks I give you in this guide. Monitor your daily unique visitors,

which is the main statistic you will find in your dashboard in Google Analytics.

Do This Now: If you have not done so already, go install Google Analytics on your blog so you can begin tracking your progress from day one.

(10)

By Yaro Starak

9 Chapter Two: Content Marketing

Traffic is often viewed as a faceless commodity. However, traffic is people, and to attract more people to your blog, you need to give them a reason to visit.

In exchange for creating something of value for people, you receive their attention. It is that attention that then gives you the power to open up a relationship, and from this relationship comes the potential to make money.

At the heart of this process is a value exchange, so you need to offer something of value to begin the dialogue.

Blog posts, or articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, presentation slides, reports, and so on, are all known as “content”. That should be fairly obvious to you.

What is not obvious is how to structure your content so it’s compelling, engaging and encourages sharing. You need to maximize the value of your content.

This is where your traffic education process begins. You are about to become a content marketing professional by learning how to leverage three core content concepts...

Core Concept 1: Pillar Content (How You Create Value)

Many years ago I coined a phrase to describe the most valuable blog content.

I called it the “Pillar Article”.

The name describes key pieces of content that form the pillars your blog is built on. To my surprise the concept caught on with other bloggers and it became the standard label and formula for good blog content. You may already be familiar with the Pillar concept, but since it is fundamental to attracting blog traffic, I’ll explain it for you here.

(11)

By Yaro Starak

10 What Is A Pillar?

A pillar is blog content, usually an article, which does some very important things:

 It will bring in a rush of new readers and backlinks (other sites linking to your blog).

 It will continue to bring in more readers over time as you and other people refer to it, even though it may be buried in the archives of your blog.

 Eventually it will bring in traffic from search engines (this is largely because other web pages have linked to it).

 You can list it in a separate area (like a “top articles” or “resources” page) with all your other pillars so your best content can easily be accessed and

appreciated.

 It’s not time sensitive, so in twelve months time it will still be relevant and popular.

How To Create A Pillar Article

Here are typical article types that have consistently become pillar articles: 1. The “How-To” Article

Think about your industry and write an article that teaches how to do something. Be certain to only write how-to articles on topics you genuinely understand and have experience with.

Some possible examples:

 If you are a marketing consultant, write some advice on how to market a business using no money.

 If you blog about dogs, write how to choose an appropriate dog name.

 If you blog about how to write a first book, produce a how-to guide on approaching publishers.

 If you blog about food, write recipe guides on how to prepare popular dishes.

 If you blog about your life, write how-to guides on self-development from the life lessons you have learned (e.g. How you got a job, how you dealt with breaking up with your boyfriend, etc).

(12)

By Yaro Starak

11

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com It should be reasonably obvious which how-to topics are popular and relevant to your

audience and which you feel capable of explaining well. Remember to tell stories from your life or other people’s lives as case studies to make your how-to articles more compelling and credible.

2. The Definition Article

There are certain key concepts that need explaining to anyone new to an industry. If a concept is important or complicated, produce a pillar article that defines the concept, clearly explaining what it means and how it can be implemented. It may seem simple and obvious to you, but remember you are an expert in your field, so explain it to the newbies in simple terms. If you can tell a story as an example, then your article will be even more interesting and useful for the reader. Here are some example concepts (topics) from the world of entrepreneurship: MVP (minimum viable product), Pivot (to change strategic focus), Growth Hacking

(growing a business), explaining the different levels of investment (Angels, VCs, Series A, etc) and Kaizen (incremental improvement).

A glossary style definition page makes a good pillar article. If there are a handful of key concepts in your industry, write an article that lists the concepts and provides a one-paragraph definition for each. A resource page like this is a good reference and often referred (linked) back to by other bloggers and websites.

Why Not Just Link To Wikipedia?

You may wonder why bother doing this if most terms are already defined elsewhere on the web at sites like Wikipedia?

It’s okay to link to other websites for definitions, especially in the short term when you are just getting things set up, but it’s a lot better if you write your own definitions. You can describe concepts in your own words, using your own unique story and voice. This helps to build credibility and trust.

It’s always smarter to include your own version of a definition if you are capable of explaining a term or concept, rather than link to other sites and drive traffic away from your blog.

(13)

By Yaro Starak

12

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com 3. Present A Theory Or Polarizing Argument To Stir Emotions

One of the most successful strategies I’ve seen used to attract blog traffic is simply having a strong point of view about something. The stronger your opinion the better, because it will polarize what other people think and elicit emotion. Controversy attracts attention and encourages engagement. People will leave comments, link to your post in reply articles on their sites, and share your content through social media.

Studies of virality show that content that stimulates high arousal emotions – anger, fear, joy, lust, awe and surprise – are more likely to result in wider distribution. Your goal should be to create pillar content that triggers one of these emotions. 4. Create An E-Course, Free Report, Or Article Series

This is one of my favourite pillar concepts and is responsible for a huge chunk of the traffic I’ve attracted to my blog.

Think of this as a Super How-To technique, where you provide the “A to Z” guide of how to do something important.

You have several options for presenting this information:

 Type the content into several blog posts and interlink them together. You can also highlight them as a stand-alone series in your archives. As one

example, I did this with my Business Timeline history series, a collection of articles that reviews my “life story” as an entrepreneur.

 Create a PDF that your readers can download. The benefit of this method is that the file can be shared easily (forwarded through email for example) and you may benefit from viral marketing effects, especially if you produce a top quality report.

 Write the content as a series of email newsletters (an e-course) that you also publish on your blog. This way you solve two problems – create an email sequence for your newsletter subscribers, and create pillar content for your blog.

One of my top ways to use this technique is to come up with fairly lengthy solution to a big problem my audience has that I have some experience with.

(14)

By Yaro Starak

13

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com From Pillar Articles To A Free Report

I wrote a series of blog articles to explain how I launched membership site training courses.

I came up with 9 topics I would cover in 9 articles, which took about six weeks to write. I released them one-by-one on my blog as I finished each article, and some of them became Pillar Articles (How-To Pillars).

I then took the articles and combined them into a PDF to create a new report – The Membership Site Masterplan – that I gave away as an incentive

to join my email newsletter.

I went further and used the initial 9 topics as the modules I covered in a training course, which I sold to my audience.

You don’t have to go as far as I did with this technique. Keep it simple to begin with and just plan an article series for your blog. This might become your email newsletter course, or a free report. Start with normal blog posts and see what you end up

writing.

The important thing with this concept is to create a complete all-in-one solution to a common problem. Big guides genuinely help people attract a lot of traffic. 5. The Top List Article

You have no doubt seen many of this type of article all over the internet. The usual titles are “Top 7 Ways To…” or “10 Tips To Improve…” or “Top 25 Celebrity…” etc. These top list articles work well for a couple of reasons –

1. Lists are easily digested by human beings. It’s been tested and proven that articles in the 300 to 700 word range with lots of clear dot-point bulleted lists and a compelling headline are good traffic pullers. In this case it’s all about ease of consumption for people with short attention spans – i.e. most web surfers.

2. Lists provide directly actionable lessons that people love to share. Humans have a drive to be seen as the source of valuable information that helps or entertains other people. This is why list articles are often heavily

(15)

By Yaro Starak

14

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com shared across social media. We have an inherent drive to distribute things to

our fellow human beings for the social kudos we receive in return.

This technique is great if you are short on time. A list article can be written up in half an hour, starting with an opening paragraph, then seven dot points and a concluding paragraph.

Short, sharp and to the point. 6. A Technical Blueprint

A technical blueprint is a step-by-step, visually enhanced article demonstrating exactly how to complete a task.

Often the pictures tell the story more than the words do. Designers and programmers use this style of blog post to show how they code a website, design an image using Photoshop, code software, or simpler activities like attach a file to an email.

You can apply the principle to almost any industry that has common tasks that may be

complex to understand. In this case it’s more about the imagery and less about the story.

7. Embedded Multimedia

If you take every previous format listed above and mix in some embedded multimedia, you increase your chances of it turning into a pillar article.

Different people prefer to consume content in different ways. Some like to scan and read words, or listen to audio, watch a video or live stage presentation, or participate in a group exercise.

You can focus on one medium and still do well, but understand that some people just won’t pay attention to your work.

(16)

By Yaro Starak

15

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com If you want to have maximum impact, use video, audio, text, graphics, spreadsheets,

slides and live streaming content like webinars, and include these in your written articles.

Capacity is the main challenge here as it’s difficult to create quality work in one format let alone duplicate it across multiple mediums. My advice is to have one main format and then when possible, recreate or enhance your work in one other format. In today’s world of social distribution on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube, hitting people on multiple platforms with multimedia gives you a better chance of reaching a critical mass of people and creating a pillar outcome.

A good example from my blog is an article I wrote – How To Set Up A Stand Up Desk And Why It Could Save Your Life

This post features graphics I cut from an infographic someone else made, and a special video I created on the same topic for YouTube. The article was widely shared across social networks and became a pillar, ranking well for stand up desk related search terms.

Don’t forget you can also embed other people’s work if they allow sharing. YouTube videos are a good example – you can embed almost all of them in your blog posts. Of course it’s better if a video is your work, rather than someone else’s.

(17)

By Yaro Starak

16 Can You Publish A Pillar Every Week?

A successful pillar article is never guaranteed, but if you follow the formats above and combine them with the marketing techniques I will reveal to you later in guide, you have a much better chance of creating a solid base of pillar content.

Make sure you celebrate your first pillar and don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t immediately earn results. This is not an exact science. The only way to win is keep putting in the effort and produce value for your audience.

Core Concept 2: Nothing Matters More Than Your Headline

There is one area more than any other you need to focus on to enhance the

likelihood that your blog content will attract traffic: Headlines.

The headline is the first part of your blog article that a person reads, which acts as the gatekeeper, responsible for whether the visitor continues on and reads the entire article, or at least scans it, or scurries off looking for more entertaining subject matter. On most blogs, what you type as the headline of your article also becomes the “title”, which is what appears in a browser at the very top.

As you will learn in the upcoming chapter about search engine optimization, the title bar is the most important element when it comes to determining what search words

(18)

By Yaro Starak

17

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com your article will rank for in search engines. It also influences whether people will click

through to read your article at all.

In summary, your blog headlines are responsible for –

 Whether a person reads your article or skips it

 Which search words your article ranks for in search engines

 Whether people click through to your article if they find it in search results

 How your article is presented everywhere else online, including the headline if you share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, RSS readers and other social media sites.

 When it comes to your email newsletter, what subject line you use is the most important element, which is just like a mini-headline.

To be a good content marketer, you must learn how to be a good headline writer. To develop this skill you need practice. Nothing helps more than writing articles and newsletters and coming up with good headlines and subject lines. If you can also pay attention to the titles of some of the more popular articles on the web you’ll get some clues.

But you can speed up your learning process by studying headline templates that are proven winners.

Here are some of the best headline formats I use on a regular basis…

How To Write Award Winning Blog Headlines

To begin with I’ll list the most common formats I use for headlines on my blog

Entrepreneurs-Journey and in other writing I do.

The “How” Headline

The “How” headline format is by far the most common headline used on my blog. This includes “How To Do Something” (don’t over use this).

(19)

By Yaro Starak

18

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Here are some examples -

 “How To Avoid Hype When You Sell”

 “How To Outsource Your Blogging – A Case Study”

 “How An Autoresponder Made My Life Easier”

 “How You Can Make Passive Income Online”

 “How My Biology Blog Landed Me My Dream Job” The “Why” Headline

The “Why” is the next most common format on my blog. It’s a good headline format because it opens a door in the readers mind. The headline says why something is important or relevant or secret or effective, but you have to read the article to learn more.

“Why” headlines also work fantastically as questions.

Here are some examples of “Why” headlines I have used on E-J…

 “Why People Struggle To Get What They Want”

 “Why Blogs Fail”

 “Why Some People Succeed Against All Odds”

 “Why Thinking Like A Fish Can Help Your Business”

 “Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?” Open Loops

The above are examples of a psychological technique called “opening a loop”. The question opens a loop in the reader’s brain, and the brain has a strong desire to close it by learning the answer.

Here are some more examples...

 “Is All Publicity Good Publicity?”

 “Is Your Marketing Strategy Using This Powerful Principle?”

 “Are You Solving A Problem Or Just Spinning Your Wheels?”

All of these headlines ask a question with the promise of providing the answer in the article.

(20)

By Yaro Starak

19

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com The “Context Phrase: Headline” Format

This headline format is all about placing a statement or name or phrase just before using a headline with a colon to break it apart. Here’s an example -

 “Tony Hawk: How A Personal Brand Can Build A Business Empire”

I really like this style of headline because it allows you to use one or two or three preceding words before a standard how or why or what or any type of headline. The preceding words give context and grab attention.I like to use them to make headlines more specific, talking about a person or event, followed by the headline that explains what the article is actually about.

Here’s another example…

 “Scam Alert: Don’t Buy Any Internet Marketing Products Until You Read This” The “Scam Alert” part of this headline makes it so much more compelling because of the controversy, while the rest of the headline reveals more about what exactly the article is about (and notice again the open loop?).

You can use this headline format to give more zing to bland headlines. You can also use it to link articles on a broad topic together into a series.

Here are some more examples from my blog archives –

 “Market Saturation: Is It Too Late For You To Make Money Online?”

 “Trade Show Checklist: How To Successfully Sell Your Product At Trade Shows”

 “Ego, Passion And Expertise: How To Find Balance And Win Clients”

 “From Video Games To Netbooks: How Chris Guthrie Made $150,000 Online After Losing His Job”

 “How To Be Creative At Work Part 2: Are You A Director Or Collector?” The (Brackets) Headline

The brackets headline is similar to the above colon separated headline where you aim to highlight or combine elements using the brackets as the separator.

Here are some examples…

(21)

By Yaro Starak

20

 “Take Control Of Your Publicity (Or End Up Like Bill Clinton)”

 “The Truth (And Myth) About Passive Income”

 “How Not To Be Boring (And Why Your Website Will Thank You)” The List Headline

The list headline has always been one of the strongest formats, well used long before the World Wide Web in traditional print media.

Like the “How To” format, the list format is often overused and thus becomes less effective, so be careful.

Generally speaking the numbers 3, 7 or 10 are my favourites and have proven the most effective. It’s important you use powerful word choice when applying the list format otherwise your headline will look like just another boring top ten list.

Here are some examples:

 “7 Tips To Super-Charge Your Online Communication”

 “My Top 10 Methods To Make Money Online”

 “7 Blogging Tips You Can Apply Today”

 “3 Steps To Avert Disaster When Things Go Wrong”

 “3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting Your Business”

Notice you can begin headlines with the number, or personalize the headline using a personal pronoun like “my” or pair it with the ever-effective word “steps” if you are teaching something.

If you like using “steps” and publish a lot of tutorial style articles, you can use - “A

Step-By-Step Guide To…”. This works well in any niche.

Psychological Triggers For Better Headlines

I recommend a healthy dose of good old-fashioned brainstorming to generate a lot of ideas to find that perfect headline.

To help you get the final zing into your headlines, here are some psychological triggers and hot points to apply in your blog headline writing.

(22)

By Yaro Starak

21

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com The Famous Name Technique

Read this headline…

 “What Do Microsoft, Tim Ferriss, Donald Trump and Katy Perry Have In Common?”

There’s nothing in this headline that tells you what the article is about. The

publication the headline is used on gives it context (this headline was used on my blog), but the elements in the headline are not related in an obvious way.

That of course is a curiosity hook – and a good one – but the other key point here is leveraging famous names.

Headlines that use famous names of people or places or events can be very effective. Sometimes they are time sensitive based on when something is newsworthy, but some celebrities or places will always be well-known.

I wouldn’t recommend you force famous names into your headlines just for the sake of it. However if there is a person mentioned inside the article, it’s worth asking if you can leverage their name in the title.

The Controversy Technique

What’s so powerful about this headline?…

 “Is Email A Bigger Productivity Killer Than Marijuana? (UK Study Says Yes)” It’s controversial, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Similar to the previous point with famous names and places, if you can see an angle in the article that is controversial, that can be pulled into the headline, go for it. Alliteration And Cadence

It’s not always easy to produce alliteration (a repetition of sounds like “cool camping careers”), but if you can find a way to apply this, or at least have good cadence or flow so your headline “sounds” good, your headline will perform better.

If you’re not naturally good at reading the flow in a headline, find someone who is (to give you feedback). Changing just one word can make a huge difference to the way a headline sounds when a person reads it in their head.

(23)

By Yaro Starak

22

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com People Thrive On Variety

If your headline is common the assumption is that the article is too. If they come to your site and see five “how to” headlines in a row, you will start to lose them. Simplify

I spend a lot of time during headline brainstorming sessions trying to remove words. Taking

unnecessary words out of your headline so you are left with the minimum amount of words required always results in a better headline.

Short headlines have more impact. There’s more

whitespace around the words, which creates contrast and thus focus on the words. There is also less to read, which helps all those apathetic and lazy readers.

It works.

Avoid Passive Tense

Your headlines should be in active tense, not passive. If you see an “ing” word, like for example “Planning”, it should be made active, to “Plan”. It takes some practice, but eventually you will start to see passive tense and it will annoy you.

For example the headline in this chapter you are reading now could be stated as -

 “Writing Award Winning Blog Headlines”

When I see the word “Writing” I know it should be “Write”. However, you have to be careful to spot the right words to make active, it’s not a rule to apply in every

instance.

Once you get a feel for this you will automatically see how best to switch words from passive to active, often converting them to a popular format like a “How To” or a “Why” headline. In this case the headline works much better as –

(24)

By Yaro Starak

23

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Focus On Individuals And Use Personal Pronouns

An important tip for bloggers is to write as if you are talking to one person. This applies to headlines as well.

Often a well placed “You” or “Your” into a headline will make it more personal and more attention grabbing because it speaks directly to the reader as an individual.

 “Do You Blog Strategically?”

 “Does Your Blog Have A Hook?”

 “Can You Make Your Blog Reader Feel Like This…”

Many beginners make the mistake of trying to appear like a large company, using phrases like “We care about good customer service” and “Our business is a market

leader”, even when it’s just them.

I encourage you to keep all communication with your audience as one-on-one as possible, even when over the internet. Be personal and direct and they will feel like you are talking only to them, even if you are writing to thousands. This is what I am doing right now as I write this to you.

Headlines Control The Internet

You might be wondering – Why so much focus on headlines? There is no more important aspect of your content marketing than headlines. Every traffic outcome you desire is predicated on the first impression your content makes. The first impression is your headline.

Core Concept 3: Case Studies, Stories And Metaphors

The content on my blog that receives the most

traffic always contains some aspect of personal storytelling, usually in the form of a case study. Writing about strategies, theories and tactics is great, but people engage when you combine these concepts with a story or metaphor to illustrate exactly what someone did.

(25)

By Yaro Starak

24

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com You can focus on your own story if you have a relevant one to tell, or someone else’s

if they represent the concept better.

Whenever you tell stories you avoid generic explanations. You make things specific rather than abstract. The more specific and “real world” you can be with your case studies, the more readers will respond to your writing and follow your work.

For example, if I was writing about using online advertising to get traffic to my tomato growing blog, I might write something like this…

I spent some money on adwords to get traffic to my newsletter.

Or I could turn this into a case study with specifics that people pay much more attention to because I present tangible results and data, like this…

In one week I spent $151 on Google Adwords to buy traffic using the following list of keywords -

 “How to grow tomatoes in winter”

 “Growing tomatoes in winter”

 “Grow winter tomatoes”

 “Tips for growing tomatoes in winter”

 “How to grow tomatoes in cold weather”

The result of this was 3546 visitors over the week, delivering 543 opt-ins to my newsletter, which you can see at

www.growingtomatoesinwinter.com/newsletter/

The second explanation is a lot more specific and interesting to the reader. People want to know details, it gives them direction and clarity and makes you a much more valuable resource to them.

What stories can you tell?

If you’re blogging to promote a business, this is a perfect chance to tell stories of how your product or service is helping people.

(26)

By Yaro Starak

25 Action Step: Use The 3 Core Concepts In Your Content

I’ve given you the three most important content tactics to apply to your blogging –

1. Pillar Content 2. Killer Headlines

3. Storytelling Case Studies

Coming up in the traffic techniques chapter many of the methods I instruct you to use involve content production. It is absolutely vital that you include these three concepts whenever possible in all content you create.

It doesn’t matter if you are creating videos, a podcast, writing short or long articles – these concepts will boost your traffic results.

Do This Now: Write an outline for your next article including how it will make use of the three core concepts. Choose a Pillar structure, write a powerful headline and use a story or case study.

You Must Identify And Leverage Your Core Strength

The above concepts and techniques are universally applicable no matter what kind of content you produce or what topics you cover. There is one more critical concept you need to apply in order to create content for your blog that will deliver the traffic results you are after.

This is the final piece of the content marketing puzzle, and in my opinion the most important piece.

You need to figure out your core strength when it comes to content production.

I can’t teach you your core strength. You have to figure out what it is and nurture it. What I can do is explain the types of core strengths bloggers tap into and offer you some tools to explore your own strengths.

(27)

By Yaro Starak

26 How To Identify Your Core Strength

Core strengths when it comes to blogging often start with a preferred medium of content production –

 Written

 Audio

 Video

I am best with the written word. I can do well with audio in the form of podcasts, and video as well, but they are not my core strength. I’ve practiced the craft of writing the longest, I enjoy it the most and it’s the area where I experience the sensation of “flow”.

Which brings me to the next criteria for finding your core strength…

Where do you experience Flow State?

Flow is that place you go when you are completely “lost” in the task you are doing. Time melts away, work becomes effortless, even joyful, you forget where you are, and your output is of high quality.

Flow is an important experience to look out for because it always points you in the direction of a core strength.

Some people enter flow while dancing, or performing or speaking on stage. Often adrenalin sports force you into flow, as does anything where your physical senses take over your conscious mind.

I see flow as a simple idea – your body and mind focusing together on

something you enjoy.

Put simply, this is what will make the hard work you’re about to do, seem a whole lot less like work. And that’s a key advantage you need over all the people who start a goal like this but fade away quickly.

Where Core Strengths Come From

(28)

By Yaro Starak

27

 Subject Matter

This might seem obvious, but passion for a subject almost always leads to a core strength. Most successful blogs are born from someone having passion about a subject and the blog is simply a manifestation of that passion.

 Goal Achievement

The successful attainment of a goal, or the ongoing quest towards a goal often leads to the development of a core strength. You may not even like what you are doing, but having a destination, an outcome you desire strongly enough that you focus on every day, leads to the development of a core strength.

 Practice

Malcolm Gladwell explained in his book Outliers, that people become exceptionally good at something when they put a lot of time into it. He stated that 10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery. You may not have put that much time into something yet, but rest assured that whatever you practice a lot will become a core strength for you.

 Experience Or Unique Situations

Sometimes life gives you unique experiences by random chance, or perhaps you went after them deliberately. It might be tragic circumstances, like a life threatening illness, or the loss of a loved one, or something you strived for, like participation at an Olympic games or winning a tournament.

Experience is so effective at building a core strength because we learn best through experience, and many successful blogs have been built on this strength.

 Natural Talent

You obviously can’t control this aspect - it’s determined by genetic lottery - but if you happen to be born with a unique talent that can be leveraged somehow through your blog, it’s a crime if you don’t use it.

It might be a gift for writing, or natural charisma when presenting on video, or perhaps artistic talent to use in an art or music related blog. Whatever talent you have, it’s a gift that you should harness wholeheartedly.

(29)

By Yaro Starak

28

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com The kind of core strength you are looking for is

one that you can apply somehow to your blog content.

The whole point of having a core strength is to share it with others and leverage it for above average results.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t identify your core strength immediately. This is not obvious for everyone. Sometimes (nearly always actually) the best thing you can do is begin the blogging process even without knowing your core strength just to see what comes easy to you, or what challenges you enjoy.

The act of doing is always the path to an answer. Do not self-reflect for too long. You never know until you create.

Coming Up Next: An Introduction To Search Engine Optimization

The next chapter provides an introduction to core concepts you need to understand about Google and how search engines decide what content should rank well.

If you have studied Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before, this won’t be new to you, so you can skip the chapter. If however you have never studied SEO, or you need a refresher, this is an important chapter.

(30)

By Yaro Starak

29 Chapter Three: Search Engine Optimization

As you no doubt realize, the Google search engine is potentially a very large source of traffic for your blog. It’s a free traffic source, which makes it even more appealing. The problem with SEO is the rules

constantly change, because search engines are always trying to improve the quality of the results they deliver. There’s a reason why the previous

chapter focused entirely on content production…

As a blogger, your content is the best SEO tool you have.

All search engines rely on a combination of what your content is about (the words you use) and a popularity ranking that is based on how much attention your content attracts.

In the world of the internet, attention is measured by links and engagement. Your content ranks well when other quality sites link to it, it is shared through social channels, and when people demonstrate a high level of engagement with it.

The environment you compete in plays a part too.

If you produce a blog about a topic with not many people searching for information about it, it doesn’t matter how good a job you do with SEO, there just isn’t enough demand for your work.

On the flipside, if you enter a market with your blog where there is demand for the subject, and the current websites and blogs about that subject do not have very many links or quality information, that’s an ideal situation. It’s easy to rank well when the competition is weak.

That, at least from a broad view, is how SEO works.

Basic SEO Training For Bloggers

Most of the work you do to improve your search rankings is a by-product of your content marketing, the focus of this guide.

(31)

By Yaro Starak

30

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com That’s great news because as a blogger you should feel a whole lot more

comfortable producing content rather than trying to figure out things like keywords. I am not an SEO expert and you do not need to be either. However, I do consider it helpful if you have a basic knowledge of how search engines work.

Let’s begin with a brief history lesson...

How Google Changed The Search Engine Game

Before Google search engines like Lycos, Looksmart, HotBot, Altavista, Yahoo! (this is what Yahoo! looked like in 1997), were the leaders.

Search results were erratic back then and relied on matching keywords on the web page to the keywords you type into a search box. There wasn’t nearly as much content to search through either.

Since there weren’t that many good websites, rather than search for things, often you would simply “surf” following links from website-to-website.

As the web became more crowded it was clear that a powerful search engine was vital, yet no one had really cracked it.

Google’s First Great Invention: PageRank

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, invented PageRank and it formed the basis of how Google’s early search engine worked.

PageRank is the algorithm that gave Google its competitor-killing edge, a way to greatly improve the accuracy and validity of a search response to a user query. Although PageRank faded somewhat in importance as more factors became part of the search algorithms, it’s still vital you understand what PageRank is.

In essence PageRank provides a means to determine the value of a web page for any given search term or keyword phrase. This value is determined by how web pages link together, with the more popular (and theoretically better) sites receiving more links. It’s these incoming links that help the site have a high PageRank value and thus display higher up in search results.

This is how Google explains PageRank:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.

(32)

By Yaro Starak

31

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google

combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Source: http://www.google.com/technology/

What Bloggers Need To Know About SEO Today

Pagerank was just the start of a process of refinement that has continued and still continues today.

Today Google and other sophisticated search engines rely on a combination of variables that constantly evolve. Here are just some of them -

 Incoming links to your site and how you get them.

 The relevancy (to your site’s subject matter) of the pages linking to you.

 The PageRank authority of pages that link to you (how many links they have).

 The keywords other pages use to link to your pages.

 The keywords on your blog, in particular in places like page titles/headlines.

 How much social syndication your pages receive.

 How long people stay on your site.

Some of those factors you can control, others you can manipulate but not directly control.

As you can tell, things quickly become quite confusing. Thankfully, assuming you produce quality content and implement the marketing techniques I present to you later in this guide, most of the above elements will take care of themselves.

(33)

By Yaro Starak

32 It’s Not Just About Any Old Links Anymore!

Encouraging other sites to link to your blog is still vital. Without links, it’s like your blog has an empty resume – no credentials to back it up – and thus it’s a lot harder to rank highly in Google and attract free traffic.

However, there is a common error that many new bloggers make once they learn about the importance of link building. They see links as the path to free traffic, so they run out and build as many as they can from as many different sources as they can find.

This is a mistake. You need to consider some important factors first, including –

 You should aim to develop a natural link growth profile

 Where you attract links from counts, too many links from the wrong places can actually hurt your search rankings

 What keywords other sites use to link to your blog matter, so you need to think about what kind of target audience you are going after

 Spamming sites just to build links will not make you any friends

The Natural Linking Process

A natural linking process is a reflection of what would naturally occur as you build a quality blog.

The story should go something like this…

At first no one knows your blog exists. You publish some content and you struggle to gain attention. Then one day someone finds your site and decides to share it on Facebook. From this share another blogger discovers your article and links to it.

Events like this repeat and become more common. You reach more people through different platforms, which helps you reach even more people, which leads to more links to your blog.

An UNNATURAL linking process is if you go and pay a company to leave 500 comments on random blogs all linking back to your blog.

Content of value should attract incoming links because people want to share that value with other people. Links that you pay for, or links that are created just for the sake of creating links, do not help your cause.

(34)

By Yaro Starak

33

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Google is smart. They are good at determining what links are relevant and should be

considered a “vote” for your site, and which were artificially generated and thus carry no benefit.

Your Link Neighborhood

Another important factor is what “category” of site links to you. Your blog should

naturally attract links from blogs about related topics. Links should come from your own neighborhood, so to speak. If you write a blog about tennis, and a blog about manufacturing fridges links to it, that is not a related website.

If a blog about sports shoes links to your

blog about tennis, that’s more likely to be seen as from the same “neighborhood”.

Link Quantity Vs Link Quality

Not all links are equal. Each link has a value based on how important a search

engine thinks that page is. If a high ranking site links to you that is a valuable link and will help your ranking. If the page is not so important, then the link is not so valuable. There are many factors that determine how “valuable” a link is. Some pages are naturally considered more important – for example a link from an official university website or a mainstream news site like CNN or the BBC.

The amount of links you attract is not as important as the value of the links. Gaining thousands of links from unimportant sites will not do much. Gaining just a few links from the top sites in your industry will help you rank at the top of search results.

Of course it’s harder to get links from more popular sites, but not impossible.

What About Keywords?

Hopefully you are beginning to see how everything comes together. Links are the most important ingredient, and attracting links from existing authority sites is of prime importance in your quest for a high-ranking blog.

(35)

By Yaro Starak

34

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com As I mentioned earlier, you do not have to confuse yourself with keywords to rank

well in Google. Many of the top blogs never even look at keywords, they just write amazing content for humans.

However, I do believe there is some value of at least being aware of how many people search for certain things and what words they use to search with. This is where a keyword tool can come in handy…

The Only Keyword Tool You Need

To keep things simple I recommend you only focus on one tool until you get better acquainted with keywords.

That tool is Google.

Google provides a Keyword Planner within their AdWords advertising system that you can use to look up relevant keywords. Google tells you what kind of search volume there is (how many people search each month), like this this search I did when I typed in “girls tennis shoes” -

Who knew that 1,600 people per month search for “high heel tennis shoes”!

As you can see in the picture above, Google will also tell you the competition for a phrase.

Bear in mind that data is competition to buy ads through their system, not

(36)

By Yaro Starak

35

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com between the two (people who buy ads for a phrase will possibly also build a website

to try and get the traffic for free), but it’s not absolutely relevant.

If you really want to see what you are up against to compete for a phrase, go to Google.com and type it into the search box and see what sites show up in the first page of results.

The good thing about this process is you can experiment and see how well your blog ranks against the competition. Just do this -

1. Find a keyword phrase you want to rank for.

2. Write an article on your blog and use the keyword phrase in the title.

3. Roughly 24 hours after you publish your article go to Google and type in the phrase and see where your article shows up.

4. Attract new links and see if your rankings improve.

You can get a lot more advanced, but to start with this is the approach I recommend you use.

What Is The Long Tail And Why Is It So Vital To Bloggers

The final concept I want to teach you before we move on is the Long Tail.

The easiest way to illustrate what the Long Tail is to look at how the book selling industry has changed…

Barnes & Noble has physical stores with finite shelf space. As such they stock the biggest hit books that sell the most and ignore all the not-so-popular niche books. This is the only formula that is financially viable when you have a limitation like shelf space.

Amazon has virtual shelf space as an internet company, and thus can potentially “stock” all books. They can make obscure niche books available, which are not best sellers, but will sell some copies.

The Long Tail is all the sales of not-super-popular books, which when combined together is significantly more profitable than selling only the best sellers.

Until technology came along that allowed abundant resources, the Long Tail of product inventory just wasn’t financially viable to stock. Now thanks to virtual products and digital shelf space, it is.

(37)

By Yaro Starak

36

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com The Long Tail is a vital concept in our

quest to grow blog traffic because search engines leverage the Long Tail of digital content.

Google is a tool for searching the Long

Tail of information. It allows you to

discover content about incredibly niche subject matter.

While the most popular trends are searched more often (the “head” of the graph) there is much more search volume in the Long Tail of not quite as popular but still relevant search queries. Your blog is going to succeed not

because you rank for the most popular phrases in your industry, but because you attract a small amount of traffic to a

range of niche articles you create.

You won’t easily rank for -- “tennis shoes”.

But you can for -- “boys size 12 Asics red tennis shoes”. This is harder to rank for -- “gluten free cooking”

This is easier -- “how to cook gluten free pizza using a potato base”

When you reach your goal of 1,000 daily visitors it will be because each of your 100+ articles receive 5 to 50 visitors a day, not because two articles you wrote get 500 a day.

It’s important you adopt the Long Tail concept as your mantra, because you will see each article as a small piece of the Long Tail traffic castle you are building.

Pillar content is your foundation. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, the best formula for building those pillars is to create content that taps into Long Tail traffic.

Source: http://www.longtail.com/about.html

Chris Anderson is the “father” of the Long Tail concept, which he popularised in his seminal Wired magazine article – The Long Tail. If you want the longer story with lots of data to back up the concept, Chris has a book too, strangely enough titled The Long Tail.

(38)

By Yaro Starak

37 Your SEO Foundation

Now you have a foundation understanding of how SEO works, including an introduction to these key concepts –

 PageRank

 Link Building

 Keywords

 The Long Tail

In the next chapter we are going to set up your blog’s internal structure. This process naturally flows from what you just learned about SEO.

The next chapter is the final “set-up” chapter before we move on to the meat of this guide – the techniques you apply to bring in the traffic.

It is vital that before you put in all the content marketing effort, your blog is a well-oiled machine, ready to perform.

(39)

By Yaro Starak

38 Chapter Four: How To Set Up Your Internal

Blog Structure

This chapter is about internal blog optimization, the “easy” part of optimizing your blog. It’s easy because it’s completely under your control – you only need to tweak your own blog.

That hard part is called external optimization – all the things you do to build traffic channels that bring people back to your blog from other places online. That’s our focus next chapter.

Once you’ve completed the steps in this chapter, the search engines will know your blog exists and your blog will display content in a way that is more effective for attracting traffic.

It doesn’t mean the traffic will suddenly come flooding in, but it will place you in a good position to leverage the work you do creating and marketing your content.

Step 1: Get Your Site Listed In Google

Here’s a question every new blogger asks…

How do I get my blog into Google?

Google finds new webpages by crawling the internet using little robot computer programs called “bots”. The bots job is to index all the content on the internet, and it does this by following links.

So the simple answer is – Get a link to your blog from another site.

To get the Google bots to discover your blog, you need a link from a site that Google does already know about.

There are three steps I recommend you begin with. Here they are – a) Setup A Sitemap

A sitemap is a listing of all the pages in your blog. You then take this “map” and give it to Google (the next step) and also make it available on your site so the little bots can find every page of your blog.

(40)

By Yaro Starak

39

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com To make this process easy, install the Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin, which

includes a Sitemap Generator. There are many other plugins and sites that can create a sitemap, but with just this one plugin you can control all the SEO elements we care about, which keeps things simple.

The Yoast website provides instructions, so seek them out if you get stuck installing or configuring the plugin.

b) Submit Your Blog To Google Webmaster Tools

Add your blog to Google’s Webmaster Tools, which provides plenty of helpful information about the “health” of your website as Google sees it.

You will need a Google account (Gmail) to use Webmaster Tools, which is free. Once you login, you can then submit your sitemap and verify ownership of your blog. Google provides instructions on how to do this. c) Get A Link To Your Blog

Once a link to your site appears on another site (ideally more than just one) your site is destined to show up in Google and the other search engines – though it may take a few days.

The next chapter contains plenty of link building ideas. However, as a starting step you can take right now, simply add your blog site address (domain name) to your social media profiles.

For example, make sure you put your blog address in your Twitter account, and link out to your blog posts in tweets. Do the same with your LinkedIn profile, your YouTube and Pinterest profiles, your Google+ account, and any other online profiles you maintain.

These are some of the easiest ways to get links to your blog. Your first links may not be incredibly traffic-producing, but they are all you need for inclusion in Google and other search engines.

(41)

By Yaro Starak

40

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Should You Ever Buy Links?

You may be tempted to buy links as a way to increase your rankings or get your blog into Google. I do not recommend this. It can cause more harm than good, because Google can readily tell if your link-profile is natural or not, and may penalize you for buying links. If you have money to spend on marketing, use it to create resources to attract links naturally (good content, giveaways, etc). This will do a whole lot more for your blog.

Step 2: Optimize Your Page Title For Every Blog Post You Publish

The title of each article is the most important factor determining how many people will read it. Why?

 It’s the headline people see on your blog and click to read the article

 It’s the headline that will appear in Google search results

 It’s the headline that will appear on social media when your content is shared

 The keywords you use in your titles are the number one factor that influence which search terms your individual blog pages rank for

 When people link to your blog articles, they will usually use the title as the anchor text

(42)

By Yaro Starak

41

What Is “Anchor Text”?

In a link, the words that are blue and underlined are called the “Anchor Text”. As per what you learned about PageRank earlier, in SEO terms a link is considered a “vote” for that article. That vote is contextual to the anchor text. This means that what keywords used in the link matter – they tell Google that this article is relevant to these words.

Once you install an SEO Plugin like the YOAST Plugin recommended earlier, you have the ability to adjust your blog titles easily.

As you can see in the picture above, the YOAST plugin provides an area where you can type a new title into the SEO Title field. Note that this will not change the

title/headline of the post itself, only the title that is displayed in Google results. You have the headline writing guide I provided in the content marketing chapter. Use the templates to create powerful titles for every blog post you write and use the YOAST plugin to control exactly how your titles appear.

(43)

By Yaro Starak

42

Don’t Forget: If you want to experiment with your search results in Google as I mentioned in the previous chapter, make sure you use the keywords you are going after in the title of the blog post.

Step 3: Set Up Your Permalinks

Each blog article you write has a Permalink. A permalink is the URL or web address that article resides at. You can control the words added on to the end of your domain name to specify the unique location of each article.

For example my About Page is at:

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/about/

This is important because the keywords you use in the permalink are relevant for what keywords that article ranks for in search engines.

The combination of the title you choose for your blog article, the anchor text other people use to link to that article and the permalink you use for its web address (the URL), all contribute to how that blog article ranks.

How To Change Your Permalinks

Most advanced blogging tools have a simple permalink edit function.

In the picture above from my WordPress blog, you can see where I can change the permalink so it only contains the most important keywords for this article.

Each blogging system has a default setting for how permalinks are controlled. The most important rule for you to remember is to include only the keywords you want that article to rank for in the permalink.

Simple Blog Traffic for Beginners

1

Blog Traffic For

Beginners

A Step-By-Step System To Build Your Blog

Traffic From Zero To 1,000 Daily Readers

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole

or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author

2

Table of Contents

3

4

The Legal Section

5

Chapter One: Let’s Talk Traffic

The importance of traffic

6

The Purpose Of This Guide

New Readers Vs Repeat Readers

7

The Conversion Process

8

You Are Going To Create “Traffic Assets”

Action Step: Measure Your Progress

9

Chapter Two: Content Marketing

Core Concept 1: Pillar Content (How You Create Value)

10

What Is A Pillar?

How To Create A Pillar Article

11

12

13

14

15

16

Can You Publish A Pillar Every Week?

Core Concept 2: Nothing Matters More Than Your Headline

17

How To Write Award Winning Blog Headlines

18

19

20

Psychological Triggers For Better Headlines

21

22

23

Headlines Control The Internet

Core Concept 3: Case Studies, Stories And Metaphors

24

25

Action Step: Use The 3 Core Concepts In Your Content

You Must Identify And Leverage Your Core Strength

26

How To Identify Your Core Strength

Where Core Strengths Come From

27

28

Coming Up Next: An Introduction To Search Engine Optimization

29

Chapter Three: Search Engine Optimization

Basic SEO Training For Bloggers

30

How Google Changed The Search Engine Game

Google’s First Great Invention: PageRank

31

What Bloggers Need To Know About SEO Today

32

It’s Not Just About Any Old Links Anymore!

The Natural Linking Process

33

Your Link Neighborhood

Link Quantity Vs Link Quality

What About Keywords?

34

The Only Keyword Tool You Need

35

What Is The Long Tail And Why Is It So Vital To Bloggers

36

37