Hi there. Welcome back to this week's episode of the simple SEO content podcast. And today we're going to talk all about blogging, but more importantly, how to write a really great blog post and a really great blog post does a couple of things for us. One, it ranks high in the search engine results so that people see it. And we get a lot of traffic from it. And number two. It converts like crazy. And so it helps our business make more money. It helps us book sales calls. It helps us book our services. It helps us sell our products. It's a really great blog post. And it's one that you're looking at your results two or three years in the future. And you're looking back at that and you're like, wow, that was a good blog post because I wrote that thing five years ago. And it still ranks in position one and I still get traffic from it. Every single day and that my friend is what I want for you. So let's jump right in and talk about what makes a great blog post, because a great blog post is going to change things for your business. A great blog post. Has a series of items that you take a series of steps that you take during the development process. It starts. With a fantastic idea. That ties to a product or a service or your business, because when we tie to a potential revenue stream, we have a better chance of converting. So I want you to make sure. That the blog posts that you're creating tie to your business. And they help your ideal customer. Creating blog posts on 27 million different subjects is not going to help you. Google wants to see that you are an expert and your website is authoritative on this particular subject, whatever your subject is. So you need to make sure that your content makes sense from that perspective. Basically stay in your own lane, determine what your lane is. Choose your four content pillars that all tie to your core products or services. And stay in your lane. Create really great content. On those core subject areas and really spread out from there. So we talk about. The hub and spoke model. So you're going to have a keyword in the center. That's your hub, that's basically your topic or your pillar. And then from there, you're going to have spokes that go all around it. That is your actual content plan. So those are all the different blog posts or all the different social media. All the different topics that fit within your hub, your central pillar. That's what I want you really to think about and make sure that you're doing so you're going to want to do some research. You're going to want to brainstorm, come up with an idea that, you know, ties well. To your products or services that fits within one of your content pillars. Okay, then I want you to do some research and identify a key word. That your website can rank for. That your ideal customer is using. That is tied to this topic. And the reason I want you to look twofold. Is my ideal customer using this keyword. And can I rank for it? If your ideal customer is not using that keyword, they're not searching that keyword. Nobody's looking for it. There's no traffic to get. You're not going to get traffic to a keyword that nobody's searching for. If you write a blog post and you choose a keyword that you can't rank for, you could do everything right. You could have a fantastic blog post. But nobody's ever going to see it, which means you're going to get no traffic to it. Because your website's not ranking at the top of Google for that keyword. So you're not going to get the traffic. And I don't want you to create content. That's not going to generate traffic because what the heck is the point in that you need to know that the content you're creating is going to help drive traffic to your website. Otherwise, why are you spending time creating content? Right. Let's just be real. We want to make sure we're going to get traffic to it. So now you've got a good idea. You've done some keyword research. Then I want you to write, and I want you to really think about your ideal customer. Who are they? What information do they need? What questions do they have? How am I going to help them? How does my product solve their problem? How does my service help them? We really focus on them. Google's latest, big algorithm. Update is actually referred to as the helpful content algorithm. And Google is continuing. To evolve and change and add to the helpful content algorithm. It came out in fall of 2022. So it is relatively new. Their main focus is, does this content help? Is this content written for a person or is it written for a search engine? Is this content written by an AI tool? You and I can both tell if something is written by an AI tool, the same as Google, the same as your potential customer. A really great blog post is not written by an AI tool. This morning, I was reading a digest that I got from medium, and I like to stay on top of what are people talking about on medium what's happening over there. And so it was on SEO. And it was actually on keyword density score. And it was very curious because Google says don't use, you've heard me talk about it before Google says don't use a keyword density score. Don't don't write with keyword density in mind. We don't want it. There is no perfect one, et cetera. So I'm reading this blog post. And it was awful. And I'm like, this is not written by a person. This is AI hundred percent. This is a copy paste straight out of AI. I know it has to be. So I just, out of curiosity, I copied and pasted 1500 words, and I plugged it into an AI content detector just to see. And sure enough, it told me there was only 13% chance that it was written by a human. It was definitely AI content and it should be edited significantly to make it sound more like a human. We can identify the difference in content created by a human. Versus content created by chat GPT and some of the other AI tools. It is not the same quality. So right for your ideal customer, Google does not want, and is not going to reward sites that have a bunch of AI content, because it's not going to benefit the end user. It's not going to benefit the reader. So just write your own content. You can use chat GBT for some brainstorming. I've talked about it. I've given you some ideas, some things you can do, but do not write it. Write it in air quotes, do not just tell it to write me a blog post on X and let it populate and be like copy paste. I'm done. No. Cheaters don't win. In SEO. Uh, cheaters haven't won in over a decade. Google's not going to let them start winning. Now. We've had all sorts of algorithm updates over the last 12 to 15 years to address cheater tactics, things that worked at one point that no longer work. Google does not reward easy answers in Google does not reward. Buying links. They do not reward AI content. They do not work reward. Content that is only created to rank. They're just the really, really, really focused on great content. I remember being at SMX east search marketing expo east in Manhattan in the fall of probably 2012. And they were maybe 2013. So at least a decade ago. And the whole push and the whole focus back then was hire someone with a journalism degree, hire someone with communications background. They can learn the SEO side of it, hire a journalist to figure out how to really create great content for you. I was ahead of my time. You guys. So make sure you're focusing on great content. At that time in 2012, my journalism degree was suddenly super in demand and it was something that everybody wanted. It has not changed. And I do not see it changing because here we are in 2023, we still have a focus on creating great content that provides value to our customer. Google's not going to change. So just focus on it and know you're going to need to write your content yourself, at least for now. To have great quality. She going to write it. So you've brainstormed, you've identified a key word. You've written award, really great blog post. And I know we're supposed to tell you, don't write to a certain word count. And I always say that. And the reality is your blog post needs to be as long as it needs to be, to provide value, to answer questions, to give the insights and the depth. That it needs. I will tell you, Google tends to rank longer, more in depth blog posts higher. Than shorter ones. So if you're thinking that you're going to rank high with a blog post that's 300 words, it's not going to happen. But a blog post that's 300 words basically tells you. Nothing. And really doesn't provide much value to your ideal customer. So you're not going to rank because there's nothing there. Usually blog posts are going to be anywhere from, at this point. 500 words is a pretty short 1, 7 50 to a thousand is a little more in depth. And we're actually starting to see some really long like skyscraper type content where it's just super long, 1500 to 2000 words. I honestly think this is part of why we see the recipe posts that tell us about everything, including where they bought the bowl. Nobody cares where they bought the bowl, but they think they need to tell us where they bought the bowl to get it to be long enough. You don't need to do that. Just write a great blog post, provide value, ask. Questions. Think about the questions your ideal customer would ask. Answer their questions, anticipate them and just be a resource. Then you want to go back through and you want to edit. Using your optimization keyword. So look to make sure that you're optimizing and you're editing. So you've edited it. Then go ahead and optimize it. Make sure you write a title tag that uses your keyword. Write a meta description that uses your keyword. Remember, these two are going to go in your code. Google's going to read them. And Google is going to look at them to understand what your content is about. But they're also going to show to your ideal customer in the search results, which means you want to write them for the person who you hope to have click. And come through to your website. So title tag is less than 60 characters, including. Spaces. Meta-description is less than 160, including spaces. Both need you use your keyword. Then you're going to want to, right. Make sure you look at your headers in your blog posts. Those are your sections. So how you've broken up your blog post or how you've broken up your content piece, make sure you have your keyword in those sections. If you've used. So an H one tag by default is generally the name of the page, the title of the blog post, et cetera. Most website builders. If you have to edit yours, you have to add one. Make sure you use your keyword in there. If not make sure your keyword is in your title of your piece, which it should be. Because remember we chose a keyword before we started writing. Then I want you to make sure it's. So it's in your headers, your H two or your H three, your H two are your section headers and your H three are your subheaders for your sections that break down. So if you have three points and you have two points in each of those three. And your big pointer, H two and your small points or H three. Then you want to make sure that you have an image or multiple images. It's actually ideal to have one image, every two to 500 words. You want to break it up. If you have something that you really need images to help showcase what's going on to help explain the post. Use extra images. If you're like me and you do a podcast and a video version and a blog, go ahead and add in your video or your audio version on your blog post page, because that's going to help people connect in different ways. Make sure you're using your keyword. In your video file or in your image file, make sure you're using your keyword in your image. Alt text. Because again, Google is going to look for that. If you don't yet have my SEO content quick start guide, go ahead and visit the freebies page. I have the link in the notes. You can also go to the website, etched marketing.com. Freebies is in the navigation towards the right. Or if you want to take the really super easy route. Find me on Insta. Make sure you follow me while you're there. And then just DME the word SEO. And that's actually going to have the little chat bot, send you the SEO content quick start guide. And that's got all the rules for your optimization and a checklist. That's going to explain to you exactly how to do all of this and let you really see to make sure you've done what you need to from an SEO standpoint, before you hit publish on your next blog post. So you're really great blog. Post involves a keyword that you can rank for that your ideal customer uses. A topic, your ideal customer is interested in. Enough content. To really be helpful and give them great insights and information, your background, your expertise, your experience, your personal anecdotes to really build it and rounded out. And then optimization so that Google understands what it's about. So they're more likely to show it to more people to bring targeted relevant traffic to your website so that you can start to nurture them. Writing great blog posts makes a huge difference. If you need help. With tips on how to write your blog posts to make it easier. I just did an episode. On how my content production hacks, make sure you go back and listen to that one, because that's going to walk you through how to choose the right, like how to write content in a faster way by batching it. And I walk you through my whole process. If you're not sure how to choose the right keyword, listen to the episode. Everything you know about SEO, keywords is wrong and here's what to do instead, because that's going to walk you through. The most common mistakes that people make. And how to correct them so that you get results. The whole point of this. As to get results. There's no point in creating content. That doesn't get seen. And if you create content without doing search engine optimization on it, nobody's going to find it. And if you do search engine optimization without on a site that doesn't have good content people aren't going to stay. They're not going to engage. They're not going to come back. And eventually Google's not going to rank you because Google knows whether or not people are engaging with your content. So if you want to win with Google and you want to get organic traffic to your website, You have to use both SEO and content marketing. You need both of them together can like peanut butter and jelly. If you have any questions. You know how to find me at edge to marketing academy on Insta, just DME and let's chat. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week.