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In order to get your blog posts noticed by the major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo you must follow a specific formula to make this happen.

You wouldn’t believe how many people get this wrong, which is why they generate little to zero organic traffic.

In this post we will go over exactly how to create blog content that ranks in Google so you can put yourself well ahead of the competition.

If you haven’t started a blog yet, you may want to check this post out.

Now let’s get into it!

1.) Keyword Research- Look For Long-Tail Keywords

The starting point to any successful piece of blog content begins with keyword research. Using tools like Ubersuggest (free), Google Keyword Planner (free) or MOZ Keyword Explorer (paid), you’ll want to start generating a list of a few keywords per blog post. Remember to try and focus on long-tail keyword phrases as they are less competitive and easier to rank for. Long-tail keyword phrases are generally 3-5 word terms, sometimes longer. See example below:

• This post you’re reading right now is targeting the keyword “How To Create Blog Content“…but it’s also targeting “Create Blog Content That Ranks In Google“.  So with one long-tail keyword phrase, I’m actually targeting two different keywords. These will be less competitive compared to for example, “Blog Content” which is incredibly general…Does this make sense?

Just like anything, the more you practice the art and skill of keyword research, the better you get at it. When starting out just get used to compiling some keywords together based around the specific topic you’d like to write about. Don’t try to find the “winner”, instead grab around 2-4 that may be good candidates to target.

2.) Make Blog Posts 500+ Words Long

Now that you have your keyword(s) mapped out, it’s time to start writing your blog post. It’s essential that you do not take shortcuts here. You always want to publish the highest quality content possible. So with that being said, make sure your blog posts are at the very least 500 words long. I personally have seen the best results when I write my blog posts over 1,000 words long. Long-form style content tends to rank much better in Google from my experience.

Google favors websites/blogs that have a sufficient amount of content published. If Google sees two websites competing for the same keyword (say 350 words vs. 1,000 words) and both are blog posts, Google will pick the one that has more quality content to rank higher. Get into the habit of ensuring your blog posts are over 500 words but eliminating any fluff as well. You want your blog posts to be in-depth and valuable content for your readers.  

3.) Copy Optimization/Internal Linking

Once your blog is written, you’ll want to make sure it’s optimized properly with your target keywords sprinkled in throughout the content. This gives Google a better idea of what your blog post is about and gives it more authority from an on-site SEO perspective. Do not just stuff your keywords in here though, make sure they ready naturally and are placed strategically in your post. Remember that creating blog content that ranks in Google is just as much for real humans as is it for the search engines.

You will also want to add a handful of internal links to other relevant blog posts or pages on your website. Google encourages webmasters to guide visitors to other helpful content on their site. It helps people get around better and also spreads some ranking power (link juice) from page to page. Try to add 2-3 internal links per 500 words or so.

4.) Write Proper SEO Tags (Yoast)

A crucially important step is ensuring that you write proper SEO tags for each and every blog post. This really lets Google know what your article is about and which keywords you are targeting. To learn more about the specific SEO tags check out my post here: How To Do Simple Search Engine Optimization. These tags will contain your most important keywords and will create a strong SEO foundation for that page. Listed below are the main keywords you should focus on (remember to check out my post above for more details on each SEO tag).

• Title Tags (60-70 characters long)
• Meta Descriptions (155-160 characters long)
• Header Tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.)
• Image ALT Tags

A great SEO plugin if you use WordPress is Yoast. They make it incredibly easy to implement SEO tags for each and every blog post you write. It’s important to take your time on this part of the blog creation process as writing properly optimized SEO tags could mean all the difference in getting floods of organic traffic to your content or none at all. See screenshot below of how Yoast looks when optimizing your tags (this is showing your Title Tag, URL slug and Meta Description).

5.) Link Building to That Specific Post

A more advanced but incredibly powerful strategy to really set yourself apart from the competition is to build quality backlinks to your specific blog post(s). The best way to do this is through guest posting, where you would reach out to other relevant websites in your niche and find out if they’re interested in a guest blog post from you. You would then write a quality article for their website and embed your blog post link (using specific anchor text) and send it off for publishing. This is how you build natural and quality backlinks to your website/blog posts.

This strategy can give you a huge boost in terms of search engine rankings and many times is just what you need to cement yourself at the top of the search results!

6.) Consistency

Last but not least it’s important to be consistent in your overall blogging strategy. You need to realize that not every blog post is going to rank super highly in the search engines. Some will do great and others not so great, which is why you need to continue to publish quality, fresh and unique content. At the very least you should be blogging once per week. That’s four blog posts per month. Can you handle that?  If you can do more that’s even better, just make sure you’re not sacrificing quality. Stay patient, remain persistent and results are sure to follow.

That about wraps it up and to be quite frank this blog post that you’re reading is a good example of what you should strive for. It’s targeting a specific keyword(s), it’s over 1000 words long, it’s properly optimized with internal links, SEO tags etc., and eventually I will build natural backlinks to it through guest posting.

Was this post helpful to you?

Are you already using this formula? Let me know in the comments section!

Rather watch the video version of this blog post?

How To Create Blog Content That Ranks In Google

One of the most common questions I receive on a monthly basis is people asking me in some form or another “how to become a successful blogger and make money”.

Unfortunately, there’s really no straight forward way to answer this question as building an authoritative blog is a process that takes time, effort and dedication.

However, anyone who is willing to roll up their sleeves, put in the work, learn the right marketing strategies and dive in head first has a great chance of success with their blog.

In this post we’ll look at a few powerful blogging tips that will help guide you in the right direction:

Blogging Tips- How To Become a Successful Blogger

Before we dive into the list below, if you want to learn the basics of actually starting a blog (like signing up for hosting, choosing a domain name, installing WordPress, picking out a theme etc.), then I highly recommend you check out this post here.

The blogging techniques we will go over today are ones that I have personally used (and still use) to increase my overall reach, search engine rankings, organic traffic, leads, conversions, readership and exposure.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

1.) Create Your Blog Around A Specific Niche (that you’re passionate about)

Highly successful bloggers will tell you that they absolutely love the niche they operate in and what they write about on a consistent basis. It is essential that you create your blog around a niche you’re passionate about, so generating content never ever feels like a chore. When you write about something you love, it shows in your work and will ensure your content comes off as fresh and engaging for your readers. It also ensures that ideas will always be flowing and you’ll never run out of things to write about (assuming you’ve picked a big enough niche, which is also recommended). Try to choose a niche that is full of hungry people looking for more information, answers and/or solutions to their problems. For example, my blog is based around Internet Marketing, blogging, SEO, passive income, entrepreneurship, personal development/finance etc. This is an area and subject that I really gravitate towards which makes producing content an absolute breeze. Which brings me to my next point…

2.) Generate Consistent Content

Consistent and quality content is the lifeblood of any thriving blog. If you want any shot at becoming a successful blogger, you must publish top-notch and unique content every single week. This shows the major search engines like Google and Bing that your site is relevant and worthy of coming back to. On the flip side, blogs that struggle to produce content on a regular basis will soon fall out of the search results and be outranked by fresher and more evergreen websites. At the very least, strive to publish a 700 – 2000 word blog post once a week.

3.) Have An SEO Strategy In Place

The most successful blogs are generating much of their traffic organically through the search engines. This means they have proper search engine optimization (SEO) in place to take advantage of the keyword phrases they want to rank for. For bloggers, SEO doesn’t have to be too complicated. Plugins such as Yoast really help to cut some of the learning curve for beginners.

To start, focus on making sure that all of the most important SEO tags (Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Headers Tags and Image ALT tags) are properly optimized with your most important keyword phrases in place. This will provide you an excellent foundation and explain to the search engines what your site/pages are about. You’ll also want to make sure your content (blog posts and pages) is properly optimized as well with target terms and internal links where appropriate. In both your SEO tags and content, please make sure not to ‘keyword stuff’.  Meaning do not add an unnecessary amount of keyword phrases, as this could hurt your site more than help it. Keep it natural and modest and follow the lead of plugins like Yoast for keyword density recommendations. We will discuss another SEO strategy below separately since it deserves its own paragraph (link building). For now, follow the link above to read a little bit more about a few SEO best practices…especially if you’re new to this.

4.) Have People Contribute Articles To Your Blog

A very underrated blogging strategy is opening up your website for guest posts/sponsored posts.  Accepting guest posts is beneficial for a few reasons 1.) It provides you with consistent content 2.) It can create an additional stream of revenue (I’ll explain more below) and 3.) It allows you to connect with other successful bloggers. When you’re blog is brand new, you can start by accepting free guest posts to get things rolling. However, once your blog starts gaining more authority, you can charge anywhere from $10-$500 per post (if not more) for people to publish content with a backlink on your website. Other bloggers are always looking for backlink opportunities and are willing to pay top dollar if your site is worth it. This is a win-win situation as not only does it create an additional income stream but it also gives you consistent content as well. I’ll give you a real simple trick to get this started…see screenshot below:

In the navigation area of your website, make sure to add a “Write For Us” or “Contribute” or “Guest Post” page. Thousands of other website owners search Google daily using these search queries looking for guest posting opportunities. When you have a page dedicated to this, it increases the likelihood of receiving article submissions. I personally receive numerous requests/submissions each and every day since I added this page to my website.

5.) Share Blog Posts on Social Media | Encourage Sharing As Well

This step is pretty self explanatory but it’s vital that you share each and every blog post your write on your social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon etc. Social media is only continuing to grow in popularity and more and more people are spending their time there. This is another audience that you can capitalize on and traffic that you can drive back to your blog. Another thing you’ll want to do is have “share” buttons on your blog so people can easily share your content with friends, family, co-workers etc. This sometimes has the chance to make a post go viral so it’s important to have share buttons in place. Encourage people to share your content with others and maybe offer an incentive if they do. Get creative in your social media approach and don’t be afraid to try different methodologies.

6.) Focus Heavily on Link Building

Link building can produce some dramatic increases in terms of search engine rankings, organic traffic and domain authority. This should hands down be a mandatory and on-going focus each and every month. To explain a bit further, Google ranks websites based on their on-site SEO (explained above- meta tags and content) as well as their off-site SEO (# of quality backlinks). The more quality backlinks your blog has pointing to it, the higher up in the search results Google will generally place you. This in return will bring you in more organic traffic. This is incredibly powerful information to understand as it could mean the difference in getting 10 organic searches versus 100,000+ organic searches per month.

Now a really simple and natural way to build quality backlinks is through guest posting on other authoritative websites. You would start by creating a list of relevant websites in your niche to see if they are accepting guest posts. An easy way to do this is to use certain search queries in Google like:

• “write for us” + “keyword”
• “guest post” + “keyword”
• “contribute” + “keyword”

Once you generate your list you would simply pitch these sites a few blog topics that they would be interested in. Most will let you place a link within the content of the article or in the author bio which would provide you with a powerful backlink. Did I mention this is powerful? Again, you want to build as many quality backlinks as possible and work at this every single month (if not every week). Eventually you will start to see real momentum with this approach and will realize that all the hard work is well worth it. To gauge your progress, keep track of the guest posts you get published on other websites (on an excel spreadsheet) and also enter your site in MOZ’s open site explorer feature every couple of months. This will give you an idea of your overall domain authority and how many links are pointing to your blog.

7.) Monetize Your Blog and Make Money

There are endless ways to monetize your blog so that a percentage of your visitors turn into buying customers. For starters you can create a “Write For Us” page like I explained above and start charging for article submissions to your website. Another quick way to make sales is through affiliate marketing and utilizing banner advertisements. For example, see the screenshot below of how I’m using banners and ClickBank products to make extra revenue from my blog. Every time a visitor clicks one of my banners and purchases the product, I get paid generally 50-75% of the commission!

I also have a Recommended Tools section where I refer people to the tools that I personally use in my online businesses. This is a navigation link so it’s one of the first things people see when visiting my website (check out my “SEO Services” pages too which are also income generators). See screenshot below:

Last and certainly not least is building your email list. This is incredibly important if you want to have life-long customers who will continue to buy from you months and even years from now. A good way to capture email addresses is to offer a “Freebie” whether it be a report, video series, informative email follow-up etc. Encourage your visitors to enter their email address in exchange for a high quality freebie. Always create as much value as possible and in return people will be happy to buy from you down the road. You can then follow-up with them promoting your own products, affiliate products, other blog posts and more. See screenshot below of the squeeze page I have set up on my blog (I also have an exit popup as well):

If you’re interested in learning more about the email autoresponder I use, please take a look at my ConvertKit Review here.

8.) Patience

Finally we get to patience! Which is a trait that every accomplished blogger has. You need to realize that becoming a successful blogger is not going to happen overnight. It takes time for you to master your craft, for people to find you, for Google to place you in the top of their search results and for you to make money from your efforts. I wish I could tell you that there is a quick way to make this all happen but there isn’t. You need to adopt a long-term mindset if you ever want to build this into a part-time and/or full-time income. Stick to a plan, like the one laid out above, be persistent and you will put yourself miles ahead of the competition.

I hope these tips sparked some motivation to get things moving in the right direction for yourself.

Don’t let a few small hurdles hold you back…Keep pushing forward until you get the results that you desire.

If you have any questions whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Although my blog revolves heavily around digital marketing, it also focuses on my experiences, successes and failures in this industry and ultimately the lifestyle that comes with it, which inspired me to write this post.

I get questions all the time based around “How To Start a Lifestyle Blog” or “How Can I Start a Successful Lifestyle Blog” etc…

Now “lifestyle” is a broad subject and could mean many different things to many different people…however, starting any type of lifestyle blog will be very similar in terms of taking the first initial steps and coming up with a game plan.

In my opinion this is one of the best blog types to start no matter what niche you operate in.

The reason being is that there are so many people that are looking for tips, demonstrations, strategies, techniques, motivation and leaders to help them progress in life.

And with a lifestyle blog, this is where you can position yourself as an authority figure, and provide valuable content for your readers to gain knowledge from.

Let’s get a little more specific though.

Initial Steps On How To Start a Lifestyle Blog

1.) Sign Up For Web Hosting: The first step is to sign up for web hosting. NOTE: It’s important that you do not go with any free blogging platforms if you are at all serious about starting a lifestyle blog. You need full control of your blog and a reputable web hosting company to back you up.  The service I recommend is HostGator and you can sign up here for an extremely low rate (at the time of writing this it’s $3.95 per month).  It’s a no-brainer.

2.) Choose A Domain Name (you will do this right after signing up with HostGator in step #1…see screenshot below): I always recommend using your full name in your domain name if possible, similar to my blog here…and especially if you’re trying to brand yourself as a leader.  Even just your name as the domain is great too, for example: evanhoeflich.com. If your blog, brand or idea has nothing to do with your birth name, no problem. Just come up with a catchy domain name that is relative to your niche/blog.  You have complete flexibility with your domain name when joining HostGator, so feel free to brainstorm a bit before settling on anything. Here’s the screen you will see when registering your domain name.

3.) Install WordPress: I’ll save you some time here. Please watch this short video on how to install WordPress: How To Install WordPress

4.) Choose An Engaging Theme For Your Blog: This is a more enjoyable step in a way because now that you have most of the initial technical stuff out of the way, you can begin thinking about the style of your blog. Pick a theme that matches the vision of your website. There are numerous to choose from so don’t rush this process. Instead take your time to pick something that is simple, yet attractive to visitors (don’t try to get too fancy or flashy, some of the best blogs have very simple themes).

Once you’re logged into WordPress, in order to pick your theme, on the left navigation menu go to => “Appearance” and then => “Themes”. 

See screenshot below:

4.) Install Necessary Plugins: I won’t go into too much detail here about WordPress plugins as this post would end up being way too long, however a few important ones that come to mind are highlighted below.  Please do your own research on this step as well:

• Yoast (SEO Plugin)
• Wordfence (Security Plugin)
• W3 Total Cache (Speed & Performance Plugin)

5.) You’re Ready To Start Blogging: With all the above steps out of the way, you are now ready to start blogging. It’s important that you learn some SEO basics for your blog in order to get recognized in the search engines and generate organic, natural and free traffic. It’s also important that you produce consistent content and adopt a long-term strategy/mindset when it comes to your lifestyle blog. Trust me, you will get much better at writing over-time and it can actually become quite addicting. So get out there and start sharing your message with the world!

A Few Final Recommendations for Starting A Successful Lifestyle Blog

1.) Record & Publish What You’re Doing: People love following someone who provides frequent updates on their journey, on what’s working and on what’s not working. Think of your blog as a journal really, and record anything interesting that you think your readers will benefit from. Don’t be afraid to highlight what you’ve struggled with, what you failed at or what you need to work on as well.  This builds more trust, credibility and transparency with your audience.

2.) Show Real-Life Examples: This goes hand in hand with the point above. Most people respond very well to real-life examples. A good technique to accomplish this is by taking actual lifestyle photos and uploading them to your blog, videos, visual screenshots etc.  These connections that you build with your following is what separates you from the thousands of other lifestyle bloggers out there.

3.) Create Massive Value: Again this correlates with the other two points above. The most successful lifestyle blogs I’ve seen on the Internet are the ones who create the most value for their audience. The main goal of your blog should always be to bring as much value to the table as possible. This means, writing in-depth and demonstrative articles, giving away e-books or video courses for free, starting a private Facebook group, answering all your visitor’s questions via email, responding to comments and so much more (these are just off the top of my head).  If you approach each and every blog post with this mindset, the monetary success is sure to follow.

“The main goal of your blog should always be to bring as much value to the table as possible.”

Hopefully, if you’ve stumbled upon this post, you’re a little bit more clear on how to start a lifestyle blog.

Or maybe you’ve already started one but are looking for more tips.

Either way, I hope at least one of these points help you out in your own journey online.

Remember to always be patient as well as consistent.

Learn from your mistakes and build upon your successes.

If you have any questions, I’d be happy to help!

It’s so important to realize that your blog does not have to be perfect.

Too many people are paralyzed by the fact that they think everything has to be “just right”.

Unfortunately this results in most aspiring bloggers/writers to never even get started.

The great thing about a blog is that it’s supposed to be flexible, transparent and NOT perfect!

You will see with my blog here that it’s nothing fancy, or elaborate, or professionally written.

But more importantly it’s a platform that helps get my message out to interested readers.

The objective behind this post is to tackle one of the most common obstacles I see in blogging and that’s getting your blog started.

Keeping in mind that a blog is somewhat an extension of yourself and should contain different layers.

You are free to write what you want, when you want to and how you want to.

Strive for providing value and not perfection.

So here is an easy tip if you’re wondering how to start a great blog…without trying to be perfect

Keep is SIMPLE!

Focus on getting your thoughts published rather than having the perfect format or the best images or the most creative headline…

As stated above, (especially if you haven’t started your blog yet) the main goal is to jump over the big hurdle I see and that’s to just get your blog started and in the works.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t even begin the blogging process based on artificial fears and barriers that build up over time.

It’s vital that you adopt the right mindset in order to break free from the shackles that fear and procrastination hold over you.

As the Nike slogan goes, just do it!

However, back to my main point, do yourself a major favor and keep your blogging strategy and design dead simple.

This means picking a WordPress theme that’s attractive yet clean & easily navigatable for visitors, sticking to a set content generation schedule, being aware that blogging is a long-term approach, and learning some really basic SEO techniques.

This is a simple yet effective approach if you’re wondering how to start a great blog.

Another quick tip is to make sure your content is helping people find answers to their questions or solutions to their problems in your given niche.

And this comes down to creating immense value.

Is every blog post going to be a home run? Of course not…

But as long as you have a strong urge to help others by sharing valuable insight, tips or tricks…you are ahead of 99% of the competition.

So to sum things up, keep it simple when it comes to creating a blog, provide valuable content and overcome the biggest hurdle and just get started.

Have you started your blog yet?