(Be Prepared) Not Every Blog Post Will Rank Highly In Google

July 8, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

It’s important when running a blog to keep in mind that not every blog post you write will rank well in Google.

I especially see with newer bloggers the disappointment after they write a quality blog post and 2 or so months down the road it’s nowhere to be found in Google search.

This is part of the game of SEO.

Some posts/pages will do better than others….Some will be buried, while others will shoot to the top of Google.

It’s important NOT to get discouraged and instead keep putting out high-quality content.

Just be sure to learn from the blog posts that are actually performing well in the search engines and try to replicate your process with future fresh content.

Although not every blog post you write will be a home run, below are a few strategies to give you the best possible chance of ranking highly in Google.

SEO Strategies for Ranking a Blog Post in Google

To give yourself the best possible chance of ranking your blog content in Google moving forward, here are a few methods to test out for yourself:

1.) Target the Right Keywords

Probably the most common mistake I see beginner bloggers make is targeting keyword phrases that are far too competitive. If you target keywords that are too broad (example, “dog training”) there’s no wonder why you’re not ranking highly in the search results. Instead try to aim for keyword phrases that are longer-tail and a bit less competitive until you build up the authority of your website. By longer-tail I mean phrases that have 2-6 (or even more) words in them (example, “training your dog to stop barking”). Be sure to use keyword research tools to help you identify these types of terms. There are free options available like Ubersuggest and Keywords Everywhere. Don’t get too hung up on monthly search volume metrics when starting out. Instead just get used to gaining some ranking traction with your blog posts (regardless of the amount of search volume).

2.) Create Long-Form Style Content

Google more than ever is looking to rank in-depth and comprehensive content in their search results. They really appreciate when a topic is covered in full and answers all of the questions on a given subject. With that being said, for some of your blog posts, try to make sure they are 1,500 words or longer, using proper headings to help break up the content. Not every blog post has to be long-form style (in fact, I encourage you to mix it up a bit for your readers/Google), but it is important to incorporate detailed blog posts into your overall strategy for better search engine rankings overtime.

3.) Optimize Your SEO Tags

You will want to optimize every blog post with proper SEO tags. The SEO tags to focus on are your Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Header Tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.) and Image ALT Tags. To read more about these particular tags and how to optimize them, check out my post here. Optimizing these tags really helps build your SEO foundation and lets Google know which keywords you are attempting to rank for. If you are using WordPress, make sure to install Yoast as they make it super easy to optimize your SEO tags.

4.) Optimize Your Content

Similar to your SEO tags, it’s vital that your blog content is also properly optimized with relevant keyword phrases and internal links pointing to other pages of your website. By adding your target keywords into your copy (without keyword stuffing), you are strengthening your keyword relevancy so Google will better understand your content which can result in higher search engine rankings. Now internally linking to other pages/posts can help users navigate your website more effectively and also spread necessary link equity/juice throughout various pages/posts.

5.) Consistency in Content Generation

Now that we know we won’t get all of our blog posts ranked highly in Google, it’s important that we are consistent in our content generation. If you’re consistent in your content strategy, you really give yourself a much better chance to eventually rank for certain keywords and phrases. Creating content on a consistent basis also gives you the opportunity to target many different types of keyword phrases. I recommend at least publishing 1 blog post per week. This equates to 4 or so per month, which is a great starting point. Another underrated benefit of consistent content generation is that it shows Google that your website is relevant, fresh and constantly being updated. This can help improve your search engine rankings overtime as well.

6.) Build Backlinks to Blog Posts

If you want to really increase your chances of ranking highly in the search results for a given blog post, then you should focus on building backlinks to certain blog articles of yours. A great way to do this is through guest posting. Here you would write an article for another website in your niche. Within your content you are generally allowed to add a link pointing back to your website. Try to build backlinks to specific posts or pages you would like to rank highly for. This not only helps build the authority for your overall website but also for the specific blog post/URL you are targeting.

7.) Add Article Schema Markup

Schema markup helps Google better understand what your content is about and can also aid in ranking for rich/featured snippet type results. Adding article schema markup can really give your blog articles a boost and potentially help them rank better. There is a really great plugin for WordPress that will allow you to easily add article markup to every single one of your blog posts, see here. You should also strive to craft your blog posts with header tags, bulleted/numbered lists, answer specific questions etc. to give yourself the best chance for featured snippet type results.

Conclusion

Ranking your blog articles in Google is no easy task. In fact, it takes lots of trial, error and fine tuning overtime. However, if you follow the steps above and keep producing top-notch content, you give yourself a much better chance. As always, be sure to track your progress so you can make educated decisions on how to approach your blog content moving forward. Understanding your data with certain tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs etc. can really give you the insight you need for higher search engine rankings in the near future!

What is currently working well for ranking your blog content?

How to Build Backlinks for a New Website? (Link Building Technique)

June 30, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

One of the biggest problems I see with new bloggers and webmasters is a lack of knowledge on how to build quality backlinks for their website.

This prevents a lot of people from seeing the type of results and momentum that they desire.

Especially with a brand new website, it’s vital that you incorporate consistent link building work into your overall strategy to strengthen the authority of your website/brand.

We want to give Google positive signals that your website is important and relevant enough for other external sources to link to.

If done correctly, overtime, this is a surefire way to gain more traction in the search engines and increase your organic traffic.

In this post we will uncover a super simple technique to build quality backlinks for new website owners and a step-by-step process that anyone can follow.

Why Is Building Backlinks Important?

Before we get into the specific strategy for building backlinks to a new website, let’s briefly discuss why this is important in the first place. These are just a few of the many benefits of building links to a new website:

SEO Purposes

If you want to give yourself a better shot at ranking in the major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo it’s essential that you adopt an on-going link building strategy. Google looks at the strength of your backlink portfolio as a ranking factor (this is just one of many ranking factors Google analyzes, but it’s very important). Every time you build a quality backlink to your website, you’re basically saying to Google “hey, my website is valuable and important and other people are linking to it”. This is how I’ve seen some of my most significant ranking increases for certain keywords, through building quality and natural backlinks each and every month. This obviously can also result in increased organic traffic when your organic keyword rankings improve. Just keep in mind that it takes some time for this technique to kick in and for Google to recognize new links built to your website. Stay patient and be persistent!

Brand Awareness

Having your link published on external websites is great for overall brand awareness and exposure. Even just one solid/authoritative website linking out to you can be a game changer. Every time you build a quality backlink you should also look at it as building additional buzz around your brand and/or company. Generating backlinks for a new website is such an underrated way to get your name and message out there and can potentially lead to more customers/clients/business down the road.

Referral Traffic

Increased referral traffic is the icing on the cake when it comes to building backlinks to a new website. Whenever your link is displayed on another website, you have the chance of people clicking on that link and visiting your URL. A few backlinks that I have personally built for my blog continue to generate me referral traffic on autopilot each and every month. This has directly led to more email subscribers, SEO/blog coaching students and product/affiliate sales. If your links are published on other relevant websites, this referral traffic is incredibly targeted, primed and ready to take action.

Now that we’ve discussed a few specific benefits of building backlinks to a new website, let’s look into a specific strategy to help you accomplish this.

How to Build Backlinks for a New Website

Now there are many strategies for building backlinks to a new website, but in this particular blog post I wanted to touch upon one of the easiest and most effective methods out there (especially for new website owners).

Guest Posting

Guest posting is simply writing an article to be published on another website relevant to your niche, subject or expertise. Within this article you are generally allowed to place your URL within the content or in an author bio section.

Through guest posting, you really tap into the three benefits we laid out above.

You get the SEO benefits of improved search engine rankings/organic traffic, you generate more brand awareness/buzz and you produce more referral traffic from people clicking on your link within your guest posts.

Also, it’s important to know that guest posting is a win-win for both the writer and the publisher. Other websites are always looking for fresh and unique content. They get rewarded with engaging content and you get rewarded with the backlink and increased web exposure. Truly a powerful tactic!

How To Find Quality Guest Post Opportunities

Let’s look into a few methods to actually find quality guest post opportunities.

1.) Research Relevant Blogs: Start by simply researching related blogs in your niche. For example, if you’re in the technology niche, you may do a simple Google search for:

“technology blogs”
“top tech blogs”
“technology blogs accepting guest posts”

This may sound simple, but I’ve found some really quality guest posting opportunities this way.

2.) Use Search Queries: Drilling down even further, you should try to use strategic search queries in Google such as:

“write for us” + “keyword”
“guest post” + “keyword”
“writers” + “keyword”
“submit content” + “keyword”
“contributors” + “keyword”

This will help you identify websites that are specifically looking for content contributions.

Just replace “keyword” with something relevant to your niche. For example, if you’re in the technology niche you might try “tech”, “technology”, “web apps”, “computers”, “smartphone”, “automation” etc.

Here’s an example of a guest post opportunity I found on Teckrr.com using the search query “write for us” + “technology”:

3.) Utilize Guest Posting Tools: There are tools out there that can help you find guest posting opportunities in your niche that may also be helpful. A couple examples below are:

Spot Check the Domain Authority (DA)

You will want to look into the domain authority of any potential guest post opportunity.

See MOZ’s domain authority description below:

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. Read more here from MOZ.

If you’re trying to build backlinks to a new website, your own personal domain authority is most likely a 10 or below. Therefore, I would only target websites that have a domain authority of say 15 or higher (the higher the better).

To start, building links on any website that has a higher DA than yours will be super helpful.

To check the DA of other websites you can use this free DA checker here. Paid SEO tools such as MOZ and Ahrefs are also another option when looking into the DA of a website.

Here’s an example of what you’ll see:

Organizing Your Guest Post List

Now that you know the general process of researching potential guest post opportunities, I recommend compiling/organizing a list of at least 20-30 websites to start.

Important: You need to make sure that the websites you are targeting for your guest posting efforts are relevant to your niche/industry. You only want your content published on websites that make sense so you do not raise any red flags in Google. For example, if your blog is about technology, you wouldn’t want to publish content in the “dog training” niche. Make sense?

The simplest way to put together your list is by using Microsoft Excel or Google sheets. Here you will have columns for the URL, Domain Authority (DA), Contact Email, Status etc. It’s a good place to add notes and keep track of your progress. See below for example on how you can set up your list generation documents moving forward:

Crafting a Guest Post Email Outreach Template

Now that you’ve generated your list, you will want to come up with an email outreach template that you can send out going forward.

Keep this simple and to the point but also make sure it’s unique/compelling (as websites get pitched all sorts of stuff all the time).

You want to make sure your email stands out from the crowd and explains how you will provide value to the webmaster. Point out maybe a specific article of theirs that you really like to demonstrate that you’ve actually taken the time to browse through their website.

It’s also really important that you pitch them 3-4 blog topics right in the initial email. I’ve tested this and found that when I presented topics upfront it led to quicker and higher conversion rates.

Here’s an example outreach email for guest posting (feel free to modify to your liking):

SUBJECT: Guest Post Contribution for (INSERT SITE NAME) | Contributing to (INSERT SITE NAME) with a Guest Post

BODY:

Good afternoon,

My name is Evan Hoeflich from EvanHoeflichMarketing.com and I really enjoy the quality content you publish on your website. I especially like this article here (INSERT LINK) as it correlates directly to what I write about on my website. I’m reaching out to see if you’d be interested in a guest post on one of the topics below. I believe it would be of great interest to your readers.

Would you consider any of these topics for your blog?

Topic Pitch 1

(brief description: 2-3 sentences)

Topic Pitch 2

(brief description: 2-3 sentences)

Topic Pitch 3

(brief description: 2-3 sentences)

Kind regards,

Evan Hoeflich

Writing Your Guest Posts

If you get the go ahead from any guest post opportunities, you are now ready to begin writing your article.

Generally you will have to follow some writer guidelines provided by the webmaster, or sometimes you can find them directly on their “write for us” page, example here.

Make sure to abide by these guidelines for the best chance of your article getting published.

Also, make sure that you are provided a do-follow backlink within your article for the best results. This will ensure that Google will follow and credit you for this link.

Conclusion

Mastering the guest posting process takes time, practice and dedication but it is truly one of the best ways to build backlinks for a new website. You need to make sure that you implement this strategy on a consistent basis in order to see the best results. For new websites, this can be an excellent method to get your name out there, increase your search engine rankings and generate more awareness around your company.

Is guest posting something you’re willing to try to build backlinks?

Have you had any trouble with this strategy in the past?

Blogging Report (April & May 2019) – A Look Into My Traffic Data Over The Last 2 Months

June 23, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

I realize I’m a little behind on my blogging reports, so I’ve decided to combine both April 2019 and May 2019 into one post here.

The past few months have been abnormally busy for me, but I plan to get back on track starting this month!

With that being said, I continue to see positive growth despite me not being able to put as much work into my website as of lately.

This goes to show you that blogging combined with proper SEO is a true asset that can work for you at all times.

Now let’s get into the data.

Organic Traffic for April & May 2019

April 2019 and May 2019 were two of my highest months all-time in terms of organic traffic (see screenshot below).

April 2019 came in at 342 organic visits and May 2019 came in at 266 organic visits.

The long term chart above really shows the organic growth overtime with my blog.

Although at times it has been super slow, you have to keep pushing forward in order to eventually see breakthroughs or hit certain traffic goals.

We all know that blogging is not an overnight process.

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases

Comparing your data year-over-year really gives you a good gauge to how your blogging efforts are paying off. Let’s take a look at year-over-year comparisons for both April 2019 and May 2019 below:

Organic traffic when comparing April 2019 versus April 2018 is up 147.83% (342 visits vs. 138 visits)
Organic traffic when comparing May 2019 versus May 2018 is up 56.47% (266 visits vs. 170 visits)

Here’s a look into both April & May 2019 compared to April & May 2018 (combined organic traffic is up 97.40% year-over-year – 608 vs. 308 visits):

Next Steps for Driving More Traffic

The summertime in general tends to be a little bit slower for my blog. Knowing this and also knowing that I haven’t put in enough time as of recently, I will be really upping my content generation and overall SEO work. Two areas I will focus on in particular over the coming months are below:

1.) More Consistency in my Content Generation

Now that my schedule has opened up a bit, I really plan on getting back into a good rhythm of consistent and quality content generation. I have a lot of good topics on the way that I think will really help my readers and new visitors that come to my website. Remember, always focus on creating value with your content so you can build a strong relationship and bond with your readers. Some of my future topics are actual questions that I’ve been asked recently that I feel will make great topics!

2.) Hammer the Link Building

I am overdue to build natural and quality links to my website since I’ve been a bit behind in general lately. I will be looking for relevant guest post opportunities in my niche to get both my content and website link published on other authoritative websites. Guest posting is a great way to spread your message, gain more exposure and build quality backlinks to your website. Link building is really important if you want to improve your keyword rankings within Google (and stay there). This can be a great way to noticeably increase your organic traffic and build connections with other bloggers in the process.

Conclusion

As bloggers, we all experience times where we are not able to put in as much time as we’d like to on our website. The past couple of months was one of those phases for me. However, one of the benefits of blogging is that once in a while you can truly take time off and still see organic growth (as I’ve demonstrated in this blogging report). This is why blogging is unique and by no means do you have to be a slave to it. Just make sure that after some time off, you hit the ground running again with fresh ideas, inspiration and valuable content for your readers!

How was your April and May 2019?

Blogging Reports

5 Ways to Build Quality Backlinks in 2019 (Guest Post)

June 11, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

Acquiring high-quality backlinks is still a great way to rank highly on the search engine results pages. Google has confirmed that high-quality backlinks are one of their top three ranking factors. But building backlinks in 2019 can be a bit of a challenge. It’s easy to acquire low-quality links, but those don’t have the same power they once did. In fact, they can even hurt your rankings.

So what are you supposed to do? How can you acquire the types of links Google and other search engines consider to be high quality? Here are five ways to build natural and quality backlinks in 2019.

Create solution pages and informative resources

The most important thing is that you create content that people are going to want to link to. Not many people are going to link to product pages or promotional pages. However, if you solve a related problem on a page or if you create a helpful resource related to your niche, it will be easier to get people to link to that. For example, let’s say you’re trying to build links to a site about weight loss. You can create a page with specific information about eating disorders and contact other sites with resources about eating disorders.

Focus on relationships

Find related sites that are not direct competitors, and build relationships with the people behind those sites. Go to conferences or events. Contact important people within your niche. Follow them on social media and build relationships. Don’t just ask for a link right off the bat. Get to know these people first. Offer them something of value. After you have established a relationship, you can ask them for a link to your site. In many cases, they will be happy to help you out, especially if you have helped them out in some way.

Write a guest blog post

Guest blog post links are still valuable if the site you are writing for is related to your niche. Try Googling “write for us” + your niche to find websites that accept guest blog posts. Make sure your post is well written and well researched. Read the websites’ guidelines and follow them. Don’t just write a promotional post about how great your business, products, or services are, but write a helpful and informative post that is related to your niche. You may find a lot of sites that will accept low-quality posts, but don’t use them. Having a poorly written guest post could hurt your company’s reputation.

Reach out to competitors’ backlinks

There are several SEO tools that will help you to find websites who already link to your competitors. This can be a great place to start when you’re doing outreach in the hopes of building links. If they have a resource page that already links to websites about eating disorders, for example, and you ask them for a link to your resource about eating disorders, it is likely that they will give you a link. There are also a lot of outreach programs like Buzzstream and Pitchbox that will scrape these websites for contact information, which will make it much easier to reach out to them.

Contact link roundup sites

It’s easy to get links on link roundup sites. All you have to do is perform a search like “keyword” + “link roundup” or “keyword” + “weekly roundup” and you will find a lot of sites that meet your requirements. Then all you have to do is find the contact information and reach out to them with suggested content for their next weekly roundup. This will work much better with the informational resource pages that solve a problem the reader is having. Create the kind of content these sites will want to link to.

Even in 2019, high-quality link building is still one of the best tactics for SEO. Your main takeaway from this should be that you want to really focus on creating high-quality and engaging content. It will be much easier to promote your content if it’s informative, entertaining, or solves some type of problem for the reader. Follow the tips above, and you will be building high-quality backlinks in no time.

Author Bio

Sara Crawford is a digital content strategist for WT Digital Agency and an author from Atlanta, Georgia. She has written novels, produced her own plays, and performed as a singer/songwriter. She is passionate about the act of creation, and she adores the written word.

How are you building links in 2019?

Do Local Businesses Stand to Gain Anything When They Start Blogging?

June 8, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

This is a guest post written by Junie Rutkevich.

The short answer is yes, they do!

Blogging is just a modern term that we’ve given to the decades-old art of content marketing. Businesses – big or small – have used content marketing to get their message across and attract more customers for a really long time.

Even blogging has existed for a long time now, serving as a content distribution medium. We can confidently say that blogging carries huge benefits for local and small businesses. In this post we’ll be discussing why you should start a blog for your business, and some tips to take it to the next level.

Cost Effective Inbound Marketing

Blogging can be used as a very effective inbound marketing tactic. Instead of spending incessantly on Facebook or Google ads, take some time to devise a content marketing strategy. Try to think of the message your business wants to give out to potential customers.

For example, if you’re a business selling Android app development services, it makes sense to have a blog dedicated to mobile apps and their development. Blogging and content marketing is a natural way to attain and retain customers by providing them relevant and valuable information that will influence their spending decisions. By explaining different topics in a non-salesy way, you form a bond with the customer. They don’t just view you as a company asking for money, but a company with views and real value.

We’re not suggesting that online advertising should be totally ignored in favor of blogging. The scope of online ads is huge, but blogging carries its own significance and huge benefits for businesses big or small. Compared to online ads, blogging is hugely cost-effective and has long-term benefits. Each year, the costs for Facebook Ads keep increasing making it an expensive option.

Your blog on the other hand, gets better as time passes. The older your content is, the better its chances of it appearing in the Google SERPs. That’s not to say that only age matters, you need to focus on SEO, content quality and many other factors to make your blog truly stand out. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Why Every Business Should Have a Blog

If you’re still not convinced to the value proposition of blogging, we’ve got much more to convince you. Let’s start with some hard numbers.

43% of business owners don’t have a clue about blogging, or don’t have an active business blog. Of course these businesses are missing out on more customers and leads, but this is also your chance to get the edge over your competition.

Chances are, some of your competitors aren’t using blogging as a marketing tactic. You can adopt this strategy to get ahead. That’s because 55% of business owners who do use blogging, use it as their number one inbound marketing strategy and say they have benefited from it.

Many companies have adopted a new strategy where people come to them for information on their business domain, rather than pushing sales via outbound strategies. How successful is this strategy? Well, let’s look at some numbers:

800% traffic for businesses that publish regular content
60% lower marketing spend due to blogging
3x more leads for businesses with active blogs

If these numbers still aren’t enough to convince you, we still have many more reasons that might.

Source: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/benefits-of-blogging/

A Blog Can Help You Establish Authority

Blogging is a great way for businesses to show that they’re an authority on their subject matter knowledge. Businesses that share their knowledge and experience with the audience come off as more authentic as well.

Successful companies are known to publish blog articles to assert authority as a leader in the industry. And you ever have to hire a digital marketing agency to do the heavy lifting for you, pick the one that uses this method. You’ll be surprised as to how many marketing companies out there don’t believe the power of content and blogging.

This helps businesses build trust with customers. So first you build trust with customers, and then you try to sell them products/services, rather than the other way round.

An Opportunity to Create Value for Your Customers

People like to follow brands that tell stories that are a reflection of the customer’s life mission. What people don’t follow are brands that publish sales offers over and over. What do they stand to gain from sales posts?

But even for brands that create great blog posts for their customers, they have to think about adding value so that the customer experience is elevated. Companies need to realize that with blogging, they’re providing something for free in the hopes that the customer will make a purchase from them in the future.

So how do businesses create value from blogging? For a business in the food industry, this could be sharing recipes. For a business that sells smartphones, this could be sharing a list of the best productivity apps, and so on. These are mere freebies for people, but they might just like them enough to become your loyal customers.

An Active Blog Improves Your Business Site’s SEO

Having an active blog that publishes high quality content can do wonders for your site’s SEO. One way that blogging helps SEO is by increasing the number of indexed pages on your website. In fact, Demand Metric says that blogging is responsible for increasing a site’s indexed by pages by almost 434%.

And it’s easy to understand why. When you regularly post quality content to your blog, the search engine crawlers see this new content and index it. The crawlers also look for keywords so this content can be searched for through search engines. The more keywords they find, the better. This is why it’s a good idea to create content that includes keywords relevant to your business.

Final Thoughts – Improve Your Business with Blog Posts

Having an active blog not only gives your website SEO a boost, but it also makes your business stand out. 86% of visitors on a company website want information about products or services. And a blog can become an excellent method of dispensing this information.

A blog post offers you a unique way of positioning yourself and your services. It can help you reflect on your company’s purpose and its values. The blogs should be focused on creating a connection between the reader and the business.

A blog post can be written to directly address a common problem potential clients may be facing. By explaining solutions to the problem, potential clients might find your company to be more competent or trustworthy compared against the competition.

So if you haven’t already, start a company blog. It’s not hard and holds many, many advantages.

Author Bio

Junie Rutkevich is an Internet Media Influencer and working part-time as an SEO Expert in Logic Inbound Tyler team. She has been working as an SEO Expert for more than 10 years, helping local businesses scale up their clientele. Aside from work, she loves spending time feeding the stray dogs in her local shelter.

Blogging

Blogging Pros and Cons – Uncovering the Good and Bad of Blogging

May 13, 2019 Evan Hoeflich 4 comments

The goal of this post is to be completely transparent and uncover what I have personally discovered as the good and bad of blogging.

Before we get into the thick of things, let me start off by saying that I encourage anyone to get their feet wet and start a blog for the overall learning experience (and especially because there are so many potential benefits).

However, I also think it’s important to be realistic and highlight a few areas that aren’t so sexy or attractive when it comes to blogging.

We see a lot of blogging success stories online (which are incredibly inspiring), but what we don’t see are the millions of people that are struggling to gain any sort of traction with their website.

Also, the successful bloggers generally had to work pretty hard initially and stay consistent for a long period of time before they gained momentum and saw any noticeable results.

Now again, this article is not trying to scare you away from blogging at all and in fact, in my opinion there are way more pros than cons when it comes to blogging.

But I do want to be honest and list out both the positives and negatives that I’ve experienced.

Creating and running a blog whether it’s part-time or full-time can be an incredible opportunity and hopefully this article will help answer any questions you may have and steer you in the right direction.

Blogging Pros and Cons

Like any type of business, there are pros and cons that should be considered before getting involved. Just because blogging is the right business model for one person, doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for another. Please take the time to read the blogging pros and cons below to see if this is something that you would like to pursue.

Pros of Blogging

1.) Very Inexpensive to Get Up & Running

One of the biggest benefits to starting a blog is that it is incredibly inexpensive to get up and running. Remember, a blog is a business (if you treat it like one) that you can have live on the web for literally $3 per month. Compare this to a brick and mortar store (like a local jewelry shop) and the expenses are way WAY less. This is part of the reason why online businesses in general are so attractive. You don’t have to pay rent, there’s less overall overhead expenses and it’s affordable for almost anyone who wants to get involved.

2.) Flexibility To Work from Anywhere with an Internet Connection

This is an attractive benefit to many aspiring bloggers as you are not confined to one place when you work on your business. You can work from home, the local coffee shop, while on vacation or anywhere where there’s a solid Internet connection. To me, this is insanely liberating and one of the reasons why I started my blog to begin with. I really enjoy working from home and having the option to choose where I spend my working hours. So many people are restricted to an office cubicle for example which I know can feel like being shackled to the ground (I used to work an office job and very much disliked the cubicle lifestyle). With blogging, the flexibility is endless and really provides you with location freedom that so many people strive for.

3.) Asset that Works For You 24/7

For me personally as someone who has always been obsessed with investing, creating various streams of income and entrepreneurship, this is my favorite “pro” when it comes to blogging. Once your blog starts gaining some momentum and especially if you’re beginning to generate a steady flow of organic traffic from the search engines, it turns into an asset that works for you 24/7, 365 days a year. In fact, I wrote a whole post on this here. You can be sleeping, at the park, playing golf, eating lunch etc. and your blog can be working for you, generating traffic, leads and sales on autopilot. Now it will indeed take some work to get to this point and that’s one of my “cons” below, but in my opinion it’s way worth the effort to have an asset like this working for you at all times of the day. Once you publish a blog post, it is up there forever for people to discover.

4.) Can Work Into a Busy Schedule

Many of the successful bloggers we see today worked on their blogs part-time before making the transition to full-time. So the good news here is that people who currently work a full-time job, can absolutely still be building a profitable blog part-time on the side. As long as you’re giving it 1-2 hours per day or alternatively devoting your weekends to your blog, it’s the type of online business that doesn’t require full-time work when first starting out. Blogging is such an amazing opportunity because almost anyone can work it into their chaotic and busy schedules.

5.) No Ceiling on Income You Can Earn

Every blogger’s income will be different, but having the global reach that you do when running a website gives you an earning potential that is really unlimited. With billions of people using the Internet and so many different traffic sources to tap into, it’s not uncommon to hear people making full-time incomes from their blog (and sometimes much more). As bloggers we are always producing more content and working on growing our readership which makes it very possible to earn a very good income and scale up overtime. I will caution that bloggers should not be too focused on income though when just getting started and instead be more focused on providing as much value to the marketplace as possible. If you do this, it will give you a much better shot at earning the type of income that you want from your blog.

6.) Positions Yourself as an Authority in Your Niche

Having your own personal blog is a great way to position yourself as an authority figure in your niche. Building a reputation and credibility is crucially important in the online space and can lead to more people sharing your content and more doors opened. Through blogging you can provide your expertise on a given subject, valuable information, tips, tricks, insights and more to slowly build up the authority for your brand and your website. Having a platform such as a blog to communicate relevant information allows you to really brand yourself as an expert and influencer in your niche overtime.

Cons of Blogging:

1.) Growing Competition

It seems like almost everyone nowadays has a blog and the competition continues to grow each and every year. However, in my eyes, competition is a good thing and it’s important to note that most bloggers will quit only after a couple months of blogging anyways. Keep in mind though that everything is much more saturated in general these days and for example, it’s not as easy to rank on page #1 of Google as it used to be. You will have to be creative in your content generation strategy and really work hard to stand out from the growing competition. This is something to be prepared for when starting your blogging business.

2.) Takes Time to Gain Traction

Each and every blog is unique. Some blogs will grow very slowly and others will grow incredibly fast. In general though it’s important to understand that blogging does indeed take a while to start gaining some traction. Organic growth of a blog does not happen overnight and you will need to be producing high-quality content on a consistent basis. There are also no guarantees that your blog will gain traction in the first place, so some people may think that this is a bit of a gamble. However, if you really stick with it and focus on publishing content that will really help your audience, there’s no reason why you can’t start seeing results for yourself. Just know that you must be in this for the long-term in order to succeed.

3.) Requires Hard Work & Strong Commitment

Let’s face it, you really do have to put in a lot of work if you eventually want to make a career/full-time living from your blog. It takes hard work to style your blog, create quality content, implement proper SEO, build a following and keep readers engaged. It takes hard work to build your email list, create your own products and build up your blogging revenue. Plain and simple, blogging is not easy and requires a strong long-term commitment (as discussed above) in order to have any shot at success. If you’re not willing to roll your sleeves up and put in some serious effort, a blog might not be the best option for you.

4.) Requires Some Technical Knowledge

In order to properly set up, manage and maintain your blog, you will need to be prepared for some technical work. Luckily, if you’re using WordPress they make it really easy to craft your blog the way you want it. Nonetheless, you will still need to install necessary plugins, set up an external email autoresponder, ensure your website speed is fast, equip your blog with necessary tools, widgets and much more. This shouldn’t sway you away from creating a blog to begin with though because all of this can be learned and there is a wealth of information online to help you.

Conclusion

I hope this blogging pros and cons list was helpful and gives you a better idea of what it takes to create, manage and run a blog. Again, this is based off of my personal experience. To re-iterate, the cons of blogging that I provided are definitely not to scare anyone away but to help reveal a few areas where some people may run into obstacles. In my opinion, I think anyone should start a blog if they are really interested and devoted as it will be a learning experience like no other. The pros of blogging to me far outweigh the cons and this can truly be a business model that provides more freedom, flexibility and opportunity for many people!

Have you started your blog yet? If not, you may want to read this here.

If you’re looking for additional assistance and/or coaching, please visit my page here.

Check out my video version of this post here!

Blogging

Blogging Report (March 2019) – Second Highest Month All-Time in Organic Traffic

May 4, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

Over the long-term when looking at my organic traffic trend in Google Analytics, it’s motivating to see that I’m now generating over 200 targeted organic visits to my website per month…

There was a time where I wasn’t even breaking 50 organic visits in a given month when just starting out, so this is a noticeable improvement.

This is why I always encourage bloggers to remain persistent with their efforts and never give up.

Although you may not be seeing the type of results you want right now, you MUST be in this for the long term.

It takes time for you to build up the authority of your website and for Google to take notice as well.

As long as you’re providing massive value and optimizing your website with SEO best practices in mind, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t begin to notice organic growth on your blog.

With that being said, let’s jump into my March 2019 blogging report.

Organic Traffic (March 2019)- 237 Visits

March 2019 was actually my second highest month all-time in terms of organic traffic at 237 visits.

I’m seeing lots of search engine ranking improvements in Google which in return is generating more organic traffic to my website.

This traffic comes in passively without me having to be physically working on my blog, which truly makes my website an online asset.

This is why I love blogging combined with proper SEO!

Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Increases (March 2019 vs. March 2018)

Organic traffic when comparing year-over-year is up 78.20% (237 visits vs. 133 visits).

I’m definitely happy with over 100 extra organic visitors coming to my website this year.

This has resulted in more email subscribers, YouTube subscribers and revenue for my online businesses.

This first chart below shows my organic traffic over the long-term (plotted monthly).

You can see the overall trend in organic traffic is marching upwards!

This next chart compares the full month of March 2019 versus March 2018 (in organic traffic).

In both screenshots above taken from Google Analytics, you can see that my blog is gaining more traction and generating increased traffic from the search engines.

This is a trend I’m going to continue to push for with the SEO work laid out below.

Next Steps for Continued Year-Over-Year Growth

These blogging reports really help me take a step back and see where I need to be spending the most time on moving forward to increase my traffic and readership.

Below are two ares that I will be focusing on in the coming months.

Targeting Less Competitive Keywords

I think we all tend to target keywords that are way too broad and/or competitive, I am definitely still guilty of this. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t aim our sights high every once in a while in our keyword strategy, but we also need to be realistic and go after terms we can actually rank for. Trying to rank for keywords that are just too competitive can leave you buried in the search results (and very frustrated). Instead my focus here will be to target long-tail type keywords that contain 3, 4, and even 5+ words in a given phrase. I’ve noticed that these blog posts rank a lot better and much quicker. Check out my post here on keyword research and targeting long-tail keyword phrases.

Quality and Comprehensive Content

A common problem I see with many bloggers is that they try to post too often on their website which takes away from the quality of their writing. Google more than ever is looking for in-depth and comprehensive content to rank on their first page. My best performing blog articles are generally the ones that are at the very least 750 words or longer and really cover a subject in its entirety. Strive to answer your readers questions, provide examples and make your posts as informative as possible. Quality content that is highly valuable to your readers will give you the best possible chance of ranking in the search engines.

How was your March 2019?

That wraps up this monthly report!

I hope some of the tips and insights I provide with this series is helpful for your own blogging journey going forward.

If you’d like to follow my monthly blogging reports I recommend visiting and saving this link here.

How was your March 2019?

Blogging Reports

Why You Should Embed YouTube Videos in Your Blog Posts?

April 20, 2019 Evan Hoeflich 2 comments

Today’s blog post is based around a super simple topic, yet something that I’ve personally seen noticeable results with…

What I’m talking about here is embedding YouTube videos in your blog posts.

This is just another way to stand out from your competitors and add more personality to your blog.

Today we will be going over some of the benefits of embedding YouTube videos in your blog posts, but first let’s explain how you would actually do this in the first place.

How to Embed a YouTube Video in WordPress Blog?

First things first, head over to the video that you would like to embed into your blog post and click on the “Share” button.

Now you have two options here:

Option #1, you can grab the “embed” code and paste that directly into the “Text” editor within WordPress (see next steps below).
Option #2, you can grab the URL provided and paste that directly into the “Visual” editor within WordPress (for the sake of keeping this particular blog article to the point, I only demonstrate option #1 below. However, option #2 is dead simple and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment below).

Next “copy” the embed code (alternatively, as stated above, you can just copy and paste the YouTube URL provided directly into the “Visual” editor within WordPress).

Lastly, find the blog post you’d like to edit and once inside hit the “Text” tab. Then simply just paste the embed code in from the previous step.

You will also want to “preview” this to make sure it looks okay (note: you can adjust the height and width dimensions of your video if necessary).

Benefits of Embedding YouTube Videos in Your Blog Posts?

Now that we’ve gone over exactly how to embed YouTube videos directly into your blog content, let’s examine some of the benefits of this strategy.

Again, a simple yet powerful tip!

1.) Provides Readers Exposure to a New Platform

Many of your blog readers may not know that you have a YouTube channel unless you embed your videos into some of your posts. This is a such a great way to expose some of the traffic from your blog to your YouTube channel. If these people already like your blog content, there’s a good chance they will like your YouTube videos as well. Which leads to the next benefit!

2.) More YouTube Subscribers

When you embed high-quality videos into your posts that help explain or sum up the content, people are way more inclined to subscribe to your YouTube channel. They are now primed and ready since they are already visiting and hanging around your blog. Embedding your YouTube videos within your blog content as an on-going strategy can really help grow your subscriber count and help build a loyal audience (both on YouTube and your blog).

3.) Longer-Time Spent on Page

If a visitor happens to watch your embedded video on one of your blog posts, this will most likely increase the time spent on that particular article. This is incredibly beneficial from an SEO perspective. The longer you can get people to stay on your website and click around, the better. This is a really easy and helpful tip to better optimize your blog posts for SEO.

4.) Potential for Inbound Links

If your content and videos are high-quality and provide loads of value, then these types of posts (copy with an embedded YouTube video) can attract inbound links. Informative articles get linked to and shared all the time. When you produce a really good piece of content on your blog that combines both text and video, you increase your chances of other webmasters linking out to you. Another huge SEO benefit that could lead to increases in targeted organic traffic.

5.) Makes Content More Engaging

Have you ever come across a blog post that flows fluently, smoothly and is very easy to read? Well, embedding YouTube videos within your blog posts can provide the same experience to your readers if done properly. YouTube videos within blog content can be a great way to break up the text and make it easier for your traffic to digest the information and stay on the page (similar to why we use text headings). Videos reveal additional layers about you, your brand and also helps add more personality to your posts.

6.) Deeper Relationships & Connections

When your readers either see your face or hear your voice (through video), this helps build deeper relationships and connections with your audience. Complimenting your text content with video really invites people into your world and creates a unique experience. It also shows that you’re transparent, human and willing to put yourself out there to help people your readers. This is a great way to build a following that will last for the long-term.

Bonus Tip:

Make sure you are also adding your blog article links within the YouTube description section (see screenshot below). This is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your blog with YouTube!

Conclusion

It’s hard to believe that so many wonderful benefits come from such a simple tactic like embedding YouTube videos in your blog posts. Yet, I’ve noticed over the course of my blogging experience, it’s the little steps over a prolonged period of time that yield the best results. Make sure to combine this strategy with other foundational blogging techniques for the best results!

Do you currently embed YouTube videos within your blog posts?

Have you noticed any positive benefits yourself?

Check out my video version of this post here!

WordPress

3 Tips To Make Your Sales Funnel Future Ready (Guest Post)

April 16, 2019 Evan Hoeflich 2 comments

This is a guest post written by Anubhuti Shrivastava.

If you want to keep your brand alive then it’s important to build and maintain a comprehensive sales funnel. It should have the capacity to nurture quality leads and guide them down through the pipeline in order to maximize conversions.

But the dynamism in the marketplace demands you to design the channel with a futuristic approach and optimize each and every phase. This process requires you to brainstorm and identify ways to improve the overall funnel for boosting sales.

It can be tough but a little bit of caution is enough to empower you with numerous ways to modify and make the funnel future ready. Let’s begin with the basics and try to look at the refining process with a different perspective with the motive of increasing sales.

How Can You Define A Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a tool which provides sales reps with essential insights into where the prospects are actually in the sales process. Also, it helps them to optimize different business processes which they accomplish in order to close a deal. Generally, these processes include:

Awareness: Grabbing the prospects’ attention by providing them with amazing offers
Consideration: Personal meeting and eventually signing the deal
Loyalty: Converting customers into permanent clients
Advocacy: Your loyal clients will indirectly become promoters

You can observe each and every member of your sales team and evaluate the way in which they are completing these steps. Also, measure the time required by each of them to finish one stage. Once you are done with analysis, identify the ways to optimize each and every process and eliminate the unnecessary and tedious processes.

Based on the outcomes you can choose the best sales CRM and tweak it in order to stay away from wasting time on redundant processes. The insights provided by the CRM tool can be used to create a precise sales funnel.

Which Factors Can Be Optimized To Improve Your Sales Funnel?

First of all, in order to empower your sales team, it’s necessary to guide them in creating a reliable funnel. This will allow them to analyze each and every movement of the prospects. But it’s not enough to just recognize key business processes and keep an eye on sales reps to gain an idea of their performance.

Along with this, sales managers must have knowledge of using the data generated by the CRM system and use it to improve the following aspects:

Identify the niche audience serving to which can be the most profitable venture for your business.
Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team and provide them with proper training to help them in filling the gaps.
Study the way in which sales reps are engaging with new customers and track all the conversations to identify the bottlenecks.
Evaluate the most profitable region for your business and optimize your efforts in the same direction.
Figure out which of your products are performing better and which fall short in fulfilling the customer requirements. Discovering the products with maximum conversions will allow you to develop an effective product line.
Analyze different channels such as webinars, cold calls, newsletters, conferences, advertising, etc. and recognize which of the channels are proving to be the best in providing you with maximum quality leads.

How Can You Make Your Sales Funnel Future Ready & Capable To Endorse Your Products & Services In The Best Possible Manner?

1.) Remarketing Can Be The Magic Wand To Grab More Leads & Increase Conversions

You can identify a different set of targeted audience and use remarketing campaigns or tools to attract them. For example, you can focus on prospects who have placed orders or abandon their shopping carts at the last moment or those site visitors who explored a few pages but left the portal without taking any action.

One of the best ways through which you can engage with one of the above set of potential customers is by providing them with something unique. You can come up with some interesting ideas to organize a contest for grabbing the attention of prospects. Also, building a visually appealing and intuitive landing page can act as an anchor to capture quality leads.

It’s a better choice to leverage one of the website builders available in the market for building an impressive landing page for your sales funnel. It will help you in building a concise page with high-end images, compelling CTAs, and personalized content to attract more visitors. You can use precise forms to gather details and discover quality leads that can be easily converted.

2.) Make Your Offer Unique

The majority of the sales reps provide their prospects with exciting discounts, redeemable coupons, and free deals to capture their attention. But all these have become common ways which are used by most of the brands. Therefore, to implement a unique strategy you can leverage marketing apps to grab more leads.

With the help of integrating analytics these apps can provide you with the following insights with which you can make well-informed business decisions:

Tips on how to enhance the performance
Comparative analysis with business rivals
Examining current actions and identifying the problematic areas

3.) Eliminate Blockages By Studying Your Conversions

Visitors should not feel pressure to explore more pages of your business website. But they should feel that curiosity from inside. You can revoke their interest by incorporating small changes which can streamline the entire experience. For example, by analyzing your conversion details you can locate the points where the visitors are losing their interest.

Make their journey interesting by providing them with elements like appealing images, simple forms, seamless UX, intuitive interface, etc. Test your product and consider valuable feedback to improvise its functionality. Experiment with payment options and evaluate the impact of integrating features such as completing the purchase using special menus or choice of delivery.

In a nutshell, nowadays it’s not important to use conventional tools for building a sales funnel but it’s more relevant to leverage out-of-the-box techniques. This can allow you to create a funnel which can grab more customers, maximize sales, and build awareness for your brand.

Author Bio:

Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea and Benchpoint. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry.

Any comments/questions? Let us know!

Business

Blogging For Income – Are You Doing This Backwards?

April 7, 2019 Evan Hoeflich Leave a comment

I was inspired to write this post based on a common trend I see with some of my coaching students and also beginner bloggers in general.

Too many people get into blogging with the sole purpose of making extra money, without any sort of plan, and without any real direction.

We see all these success stories of bloggers who are making full-time incomes from their websites (which is entirely possible) but I personally think this gives people the wrong motivation and message.

The main problem I see with many beginner and aspiring bloggers is that they’re blogging for income.

Now if you continue to just blog for income, your readers (if you even receive any) will be able to see right through this.

You don’t want to be a blogger who overloads their website with banner ads, Google adsense, affiliate links in almost every single post etc.

Blogging for income and using “money” as a main motivation in my opinion, will make it almost impossible to build a sustainable and thriving business.

In fact, this mindset needs to be shaken up a bit!

Now you’re probably wondering, “okay Evan, so if I’m not blogging for income what the heck is the point of starting a blog in the first place…What am I blogging for?”

Well instead I want you to switch your mindset from blogging for income to blogging for value (or blogging to create value).

Let’s jump into this in a bit more detail below.

Blogging For Value Instead

Now of course as bloggers we want to make extra money and for some of us, even turn this into our full-time incomes…

But as stated above, it’s going to be painfully hard to get there if your mindset only revolves around money, money, money!

Blogging for value or blogging to create as much value for your readers as possible is the ticket to building a sustainable business in this arena.

A blog is one of the best ways to share high-quality and helpful information in your area of expertise and should be used for that.

People who just blog for income will quickly run out of topics to write about and most likely lose their passion along the way.

Creating value provides a huge sense of purpose and a reason to keep producing quality content.

Here’s the kicker and why this type of mindset is a win-win in my opinion.

If you blog to create value rather than income, overtime the income will actually follow.

If you give, you shall receive…this saying is true with blogging too.

When you are committed to giving and producing helpful content for your readers, making money becomes a lot easier with your blog.

This is such a simple concept, yet so many people have this backwards.

Below are a few specific ways that we can begin blogging for value:

Blogging to Answer Questions

A blog is the perfect platform to help answer questions that people may be searching for in your niche. People type in questions to Google all the time, and being able to help answer some of these positions yourself as an expert and authority figure. Not to mention, question and answer style blog posts can rank well in Google assuming you are optimizing them properly for search. If you provide a really thorough and thoughtful answer to a particular question that may be nagging at someone, you build immediate trust and credibility with that person. This can snowball upon itself (with other blog articles you write) assuming most of your content is value based, and eventually lead to a tribe of engaged fans, followers and readers.

Blogging to Solve Problems

Solving problems ties in directly with the point we laid above and should be used in a similar approach. You need to think of yourself as a problem solver. Do your own research and see what types of issues people are running into in your niche. Craft quality and informative content based around solving these problems. Sometimes this can even provide you with a good foundation to build out a product of your own. People are willing to pay for information that addresses a particular obstacle or hurdle they may be faced with. Always be solving problems!

Blogging to Educate

Informational articles that help educate your readers on a particular subject (without wanting anything in return), is another powerful value based approach. I know when I personally come across an article that really leaves me with a sense of “I really learned something new here“, it makes me that much more inclined to sign up for the newsletter or return to the website in the near future. Become almost like a teacher in your niche and provide practical, actionable and educational type content for your readers to indulge in.

Blogging for Relationships & Community

Instead of blogging for income, blog to create relationships and a community that will last a life-time. Blogging is a long-term and never-ending journey. You want to build a community that will stick with you for the long-haul. As a blogger, you must always respond to comments and emails if you want to establish an engaged following and eventual customer base. Blog for the people that visit your website by making them feel welcome and supporting them with content that is useful and beneficial to their lives. Fall in love with your readers, show gratitude, invest your time in them and they will eventually invest in you.

Conclusion

Let me make clear that making an income from your blog is definitely important and should still be a goal of yours, but know that you must create value first for income to follow. I still encourage you to monetize your website, build your email list and create quality products but only if you’re providing value in the process as well. I know at first even when I started out as a blogger, I was too focused on just making money, it wasn’t until I completely changed my mindset from blogging for income to blogging for value (or blogging to create value), that things really started to take off.

I hope this post helps some of you maybe re-evaluate your current blogging strategy.

At the very least, it will be a good reminder just how important creating value in the marketplace is!

Do you fall into the trap of focusing too much on income when it comes to blogging?

How has creating value helped your blog grow?