SEO
Overview
This month, we have SEO Expert Brian Dean in to share with you some search engine optimization strategies.
These strategies will help you increase your web traffic which in turn will increase your optins.
More Traffic = More Subscribers
Many list building and marketing experts tell us to focus on improving our conversion rates.
Yes… conversion rates ARE important, but they should not always be our main focus.
Sometimes we need to focus on traffic, and that is where Brian Dean comes in.
He has built his blog to over 100,000 unique visitors per month and his email list to over 60,000 subscribers in just 2 years.
A BIG chunk of that traffic comes from search engines.
Key Points
- How and why Brian strayed away from the conventional publishing schedule.
- Exactly what SEO (search engine optimization) is, and why you NEED to focus on it.
- Why traffic from google is much more targeted than Facebook, Twitter, and other mediums.
- How Google works, and why getting inbound links to your website is a must.
- How to identify a keyword people are already searching for and how to optimize your post to rank for that specific term.
- Why targeting high search volume keywords is not always the best course of action.
- How to get high quality backlinks which will shoot your posts up the rankings.
Detailed Summary
0:10-Bryan introduces Brian Dean
1:02-Brian talks about why he chose the blog post route
Brian publishes 1x month, but spends the same amount of time on one post as he would if he published once a week
2:10-Brian explains why a 1x a week post didn’t work for him
3:02-Bryan asks what SEO is and why he should pay attention to it
SEO is search engine optimization
Brian defines it as optimizing your site so Google knows what your site is about and then promoting it so Google sees it as important
3:27-Brian explains why SEO is important
3:39-Brian tells a story of what happened when Google went down for a short time
Internet traffic went down by 64%
4:28-Google is an almost unlimited traffic source
On Google, people are actively searching for what you do
5:05-Bryan talks about the discoverability of Google
There are hundreds of millions of people a day doing searches for stuff on your topic potentially
6:30-Bryan gives an example of how important it is to use the right words in your blog post
7:47-Bryan talks about an exercise that Brian walked him through that helped increase the traffic to one of his blog posts by just switching out words
Use words that people are searching for so they can actually find your stuff
8:40-Bryan asks Brian to give a high level overview of how SEO works
8:54-Brian explains how it works
Basically, they’ve been working on an algorithm. You type in a keyword into Google and Google has an index of all the pages that are a good fit.
9:37-Brian goes into a little more detail on how Google works
Your goal is to get your page optimized around a keyword that people search for so you show up in the general index for when people search for that keyword.
11:00-Bryan gives a brief overview of back-linking and why that’s important
The more authoritative companies you have pointing towards your blog, the more likely it is that Google will serve that article at the top of the search results when someone searches for your keyword
11:37-Brian gives another analogy for SEO and how Google works
12:01-Bryan talks about the 2 main pieces for getting traffic from search engines
#1-Having the page setup so it goes into the database for potential things to show people when they search for that word
#2-Getting backlinks
12:22-Bryan asks Brian to look at one of his articles (a recap of the Get 10,000 Subscribers launch) and give suggestions
13:25-Bryan asks Brian how he can get a lot of traffic to this post from Google
13:33-Brian explains the steps he should take
Step 1-Identify a keyword that people are already searching for
13:42-Brian talks about what Bryan ideally should have done when he set the blog up
You can optimize your URL around that keyword
14:08-Bryan asks what he should have done to set the URL up correctly, with the right optimization
He also explains that he struggles with coming up with the right keyword, and his approach is to write the blog post and then think about SEO. He asks if he can do keyword planning around that approach
15:01-Brian talks about the 2 different ways to approach it
1-Start with keywords. You look at keywords and base your content off of that
2-Write your blog, case study, etc. Then find the keywords based off of that
15:50-Brian gives an example of how he used the 2nd approach for one of his posts
16:27-Bryan asks what would be the best keyword to pick out for his post
16:33-Brian talks about the things you need to consider to pick your keywords
-Search volume
-Competition
-Likelihood they’ll buy your product
-Market fit
16:57-The easiest way to do it is to go into the Google keyword planner
17:24-Google keyword planner walk-thru
-For an already published article, copy/paste the URL under Your Landing Page
-Sometimes there are great matches, sometimes there aren’t
18:57-Bryan finds a potential keyword and asks how he would qualify that
19:07-Brian explains why that specific keyword isn’t a good match
20:03-Bryan asks what to use and how to find one that matches
20:04-Brian explains why SEO can get complicated and that it takes time
-Looking at variations is good
20:56-They find a match and show how to use that to better optimize the site
21:30-Bryan asks what to do next
Brian: Look at the search volume and what’s closest to your niche
23:09-Bryan asks if there’s a minimum you should search for
Brian: No minimum. If it shows any, at least consider it
23:39-Brian explains how to look for competition and what competition means in Google keyword planner
Brian recommends using KWFinder.com for competition measure
25:43-Bryan asks what to do on the page to optimize it
26:13-Brian tells Bryan how to optimize
-Optimize your URL around that keyword
-You want that keyword in the title of the blogpost somewhere
27:09-Brian gives some advice on what to do with the title of the blog post
-You want those keywords in the title
-Title is the most important...optimize your title around the keyword
27:44-Bryan asks what else he can do to better optimize his post
-Include the keyword in your first hundred words
-You aren’t writing for a search engine; you’re writing for people
-Need to write for the words people are searching for so they can find it
29:11-Bryan talks about the mental shift to his thinking when it comes to SEO and how to optimize
-Not writing for Google, but writing for your audience
-Google is telling you the words to use so the most people can find you
29:51-Brian gives some insight into the difference between your audience interacting with your blog and a random person finding your blog
-An intro needs to speak into what the person is searching for. SEO friendly intro
-Speak to your searcher
31:06-Brian talks about coming back to your blog post and wordsmithing later to get the best optimization
-The URL is the only one that has to be right from the beginning
31:23-Bryan asks if there are any other high-level things to do to help optimize better
-Make sure you include your keyword a couple more times
-You want it in the title, the first 150 words, and then a couple more times
-Search for your keyword in Google, scroll to the bottom, and look at the “searches related to” section. If it makes sense for your article, put some of those keywords in there
33:15-Bryan asks how to get popular people to link to your stuff
33:43-Brian suggests reaching out to people
-Search for people who have inferior articles to yours, see who has promoted them, and reach out to ask if they’ll promote you
-Easy, but very effective
35:00-Brian suggests one more strategy
-Resource pages
-Look for people who have resource pages and send them your article