7 Ways to Use Your Personal Brand to Find More Clients

I’ve used a lot of different digital marketing tactics over the years.

SEO has been the main one.

Content marketing comes a close second.

But I’ve also used social media marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing, email marketing….

If it’s “digital” and “marketing,” I’ve probably done it.

But there’s one form of marketing that doesn’t fit neatly into the “digital” category.

It’s a mashup of personal, professional, digital, social, content, and whatever else.

It’s personal branding.

Personal branding is huge.

In fact, if you expect to succeed in any way in today’s socially-connected and digitally-driven world, you have to build your personal brand.

Personal branding isn’t just for celebrities.

It’s not just for big-shot entrepreneurs.

It’s not just for wantrepreneurs.

It’s not just for selfie-obsessed egotists.

It’s for everybody!

An article in Elite Daily puts it like this:

We often think about branding as something done only by large corporations, but everyone has a personal brand.

Everyone.

You may fill a back-office role in a massive agency, but you still need personal branding.

You may be an introvert who avoids other humans, but you still need personal branding.

If I were to pick one form of marketing that has been crucial to my personal development, professional success, and level of achievement, I’d have to say it’s personal branding.

In fact, I can point to a number of occasions when my personal brand has provided me with clients.

Over the years, I’ve learned several super helpful tips for cultivating my personal brand to build my client base.

My new audiences have not always grown quickly. It takes years to create credibility and grow your influence.

Personal branding is hard that way. You can’t simply pull out a few tactics, throw some money at it, and expect it to work.

Thankfully, however, there are some tried-and-true tactics that will give you a real edge. Some of them are really basic, e.g., being honest and authentic.

Others are creative, e.g., investing in strong visuals.

But all of them work. Give them a try. Take some time, and your personal brand can become a source of clients, just as it has with me.

The tips that follow are slanted towards content. Along with your personal brand building, you should also be using content marketing for your growth.

Tip #1: Show you’re an expert

The number one method for demonstrating your expertise is through rock-solid, long-form, super-helpful content.

Content wins the day. It’s just that simple.

You have to set yourself apart in an online space, where you are competing with other brands for the attention of your new customers.

To do this, show you are an expert in your field.

You can do this by establishing your credibility through talking about the clients you have worked with and the years you have been in the industry.

But you can also communicate this more creatively through tip sheets and Buzzfeed-like lists, which can give your audience information that matters in their lives.

Obviously, showing you’re an expert means two things:

1. Choosing an area of expertise.
2. Being an actual expert.

Don’t let number two trip you up.

Have you ever heard the phrase “fake it till you make it?”

There’s some truth to that. If you don’t feel like an expert, don’t sweat it. Just act like one.

Pretty soon, you’ll become one (even if you don’t feel it). Then, you can show you’re one.

Tip #2: Appeal to Millennials

You can’t leave Millennials out of the mix when you are building your personal brand to leverage a new audience.

Want to know why?

Here’s why.

Millennials will be the number one demographic that sees and responds to your personal brand.

One of the most important changes you can make in your branding communication is the social platforms you use and the kinds of content you create.

Why? Because Millennials are the socially connected generation.

Use popular social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat to market your personal brand.

In addition, create content such as videos to grab the attention of your audience and market your expertise.

Tip #3: Be authentic and transparent

One of the most important things you can do as you market your personal brand is to remain authentic and transparent.

Case in point is entrepreneur and coach Leigh Louey-Gung, who created a strong business for himself through a process of radical honesty.

Leigh was passionate about helping other entrepreneurs and created Secure Thoughts to help educate them about maintaining privacy on the web.

We are marketers at the end of the day, and you are crafting a specific narrative about yourself.

Remember, you always have to come through on your promises and back up what you say to your audience.

If you don’t, they will have no problem walking away.

Many of the clients I serve today came to me because they were scammed by some other agency.

I was able to maintain my integrity, keep my promises, and give them results.

Tip #4: Invest in strong visuals

I hate to say it, but if someone sees low quality photos on your site, they will subconsciously perceive you as not trustworthy or as unprofessional.

Get ahead of the game by having professional photos of yourself taken for your website.

Your photos and website may be your new customer’s first impression of you!

When I’m looking for a new hire, I can’t help but base my impression of them on their LinkedIn photo.

I’m trying very hard not to be biased against a blurry or drunken party profile pic, but it’s hard!

One of the best ways to get clients through your personal branding is simply to look the part!

Tip #5: Incentivize your target audience

One of the fastest ways you can use your personal brand to build your target audience is by giving something away.

And I don’t mean just anything. If you can give away a great product related to your personal brand, you have a greater chance of attracting a new audience.

Entrepreneur Magazine, for example, highlights the case study of a women’s boutique that gave away a kimono in order to attract new customers.

This strategy works really well for building a personal brand.

Let’s say you’re building a personal brand as a copywriter.

Attract customers by asking them to enter a contest by submitting their email addresses. The prize could be free copywriting for a week or copywriting for a special project.

Simple? Sure. But effective? Absolutely.

Tip #6: Be known for something different

Have you noticed a lot of people’s Twitter bios sound the same?

Social marketing guru. Coffee aficionado. Cat lover.

If you’re not intentional, your effort at personal branding might not be making you known.

Sounds familiar, right?

There are ways to set yourself apart, but it might feel uncomfortable.

For example, I learned (by accident) that wearing sunglasses (even at night) allowed me to build my personal brand.

(You can read more about why I wear them here.)

The people who do really well at personal branding, always have one thing they’re well known for.

It might be weird. It might be uncomfortable. But it makes them memorable!

What about face-to-face networking and personal brand building?

You need to have a business card on hand that sets you apart. Think creatively, but make sure your card is simple and provides the information a new client needs.

Try a card, for example, that’s made of a smooth paper, has a non-standard shape, or is a die-cut. These cards are more interesting and can leave a bigger impression.

Tip #7: Form strong online relationships with influencers who can help

Even though we call it personal branding, it’s really not 100% personal.

Basically, you can’t do this on your own. And you shouldn’t even try.

Personal branding is all about connecting with others, serving others, helping others, getting to know others, learning from others, adding value to others.

If you view personal branding as a form of marketing (which it is), you have to remember what the heart of marketing is.

What’s the heart of marketing?

No, it’s not shouting your message to the masses.

It’s giving value to the right people!

Some of my best clients started out as friends of friends.

For example, early in my career, I met an individual at a conference. To be honest, his personal demeanor and \grooming left a lot to be desired.

Most people ignored the guy. I spent some time with him and helped him out, doing what I could.

Eventually, he introduced me to more clients!

I didn’t realize it when I helped him the first time, but this guy was connected! And through him, I earned many more clients.

Over time, your relationships will help boost your personal brand and lead to a growing audience.

You may not be able to become BFFs with Tim Ferriss in your first few days of personal branding. Over time, however, you’ll build the right connections with the right audience and get the right clients.

Conclusion

Experiment with these seven pro tips for leveraging your personal brand to find a larger, more committed target audience.

As marketers, we have to be willing to take a few risks and to be creative in our approach.

You can use these tips to cultivate and attract your audience, but you’ll need to deliver on your content promises.

Your customers won’t be pleased in the long run if you’re not giving them new valuable information applicable to their lives or products that can make a difference for them personally.

If you’re ready to start building your audience and to attract new customers, use the tips in this article—they’ve worked for me as I’ve built my personal brand.

You’ll be on your way to charting a new path for your company and creating energy around your products and services.

Are you ready for an overhaul of your personal brand?

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You’re Probably Doing Link-Building Wrong

Google can be really frustrating sometimes.

If you’ve been in SEO for anytime at all, you know exactly what I’m talking about!

Google’s success and global search market dominance have largely hinged upon its ability to perpetually evolve and provide the best user experience possible.

As a result, SEO is in a constant state of flux.

It’s literally always changing!

But one thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that quality links are the foundation of nearly every successful SEO campaign.

Although many people have been predicting the demise of links as a primary ranking signal for years, link-building is still very much alive and quite well.

According to First Page Sage, links are still the number one ranking signal in Google’s algorithm in 2017.

As they point out,

inbound links have been the primary currency Google uses to determine its level of trust for a website since the search engine established itself in 1998.

It worked for them then, and it still works for them now.

So, yeah… Link-building is kind of a big deal, regardless of what the naysayers may think.

And this means one thing.

You need to have your link-building on lock.

Unfortunately, many link-building campaigns are full of holes due to misconceptions and misunderstandings as to what Google is really looking for.

It can be especially brutal for noobs, who are just getting their feet wet.

Here are some of the most common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make and how to resolve them.

Botching anchor text

The great anchor text debate has raged on for a few years now.

Okay, maybe that sounds overly epic, but employing anchor text is one of the most misunderstood aspects of link-building.

Back in the day, you could often outrank the competition by simply being obnoxious and going crazy with exact match anchor text (the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for.)

But Google quickly discovered that way too many people were gaming the system and launched a counterattack with Penguin in 2012.

They tweaked their algorithm, and the sites that went overboard on exact match anchor text were penalized.

Of course, SEO marketers didn’t want to incur the wrath of Matt Cutts and his minions, so they did the only sensible thing.

They went the opposite direction.

Many people ceased to use exact match anchor text altogether.

And I can totally see why.

To be honest, I’m still a little sketched about using exact match anchors.

But here’s the thing. Doing anchor text the right way can be encapsulated in one word: natural.

If it’s natural, you’re good to go.

What exactly do I mean by natural?

You want to make sure you’re diversifying your anchor text and not going overboard with any particular format.

The different types of anchor text

When you break it down, there are six main types of anchor text:

• Exact match – Like I already explained
• Partial match – This contains the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for but isn’t exact
• Branded – The name of your brand
• Naked URLs – This is the URL exactly how it appears in your browser
• Generic (also known as junk anchors) – Some examples would be “check this out” or “click here”
• LSI – This is latent semantic indexing, which is variations of your keyword.

If this still seems a little vague, here are examples provided by Ahrefs:

Speaking of Ahrefs… They performed some extensive research on anchor text fairly recently (mid-2016) to determine its impact on SEO.

There’s a ton of data, which can be a little confusing if you’re not an SEO nerd.

Allow me to give you the key takeaways.

First of all, anchor text continues to play an integral role in link-building, and SEO in general, and is unlikely to change any time soon.

Second, it’s completely true that you need to be careful when using keyword-rich anchor text.

Going overboard can definitely get you penalized.

However, this doesn’t mean you should never use keyword-rich anchor text.

It’s actually okay—as long as you don’t go crazy with it.

Ahrefs suggests “using exact match at around 2 percent and phrase match at around 30 percent.”

And that sounds about right to me.

The bottom line with anchor text is that it needs to be natural.

To achieve that natural effect, you want to use a variety of different formats.

This graph from Search Engine Journal offers their version of ideal anchor text diversity:

It’s usually all right to throw in some keyword-rich anchor text, but you need to be smart about it.

If you follow this formula, you should be good to go, and you can construct hyperlinks—both internal and external—the right way.

For more insight, check out the article from Ahrefs I referenced above.

In my opinion, it’s one of the best currently out there on anchor text.

The myth of never linking to directories

Ah…directories.

Most SEO marketers cringe at the mere mention of them.

And I totally get it.

I remember back in the mid-2000s, directories were popping up everywhere, and they were a cheap way to get links.

Most had little to no credibility and looked incredibly spammy. And quite frankly, many were.

So, of course, when you ask your average SEO marketer whether or not you should ever get links from directories, most would adamantly say “no!”

But I disagree (sort of).

Now, let me preface this by saying you shouldn’t get links from highly-questionable, spammy, irrelevant directories that have absolutely nothing to do with your niche/industry.

That’s a recipe for disaster.

However, Rand Fishkin of Moz made a really great point in one of his Whiteboard Friday sessions.

He basically said that there’s an ongoing myth that you should never get links from directories.

But this just isn’t the case.

There are plenty of high quality directories that can be very beneficial to your link-building campaign.

Here’s a screenshot of an example he provides about a monthly list of bars in Portland, Oregon:

The point here is that you should definitely take a link like this.

It’s legit and going to help your SEO.

Once again, I’m not condoning getting spammy links from low-quality directories.

But in many cases, the right directories can be quite beneficial.

Just use your best judgment.

Having a “quantity over quality” mindset

If you look at it on paper, it might seem more sensible to get a high volume of so-so links rather than only a handful of high-quality links.

I get it. It’s much easier to grab the low hanging fruit and take the path of least resistance.

But like with many areas of online marketing, you’re much better off opting for quality over quantity.

Just like it makes more sense to create one in-depth, longform, high-quality blog post than three or four mediocre, generic 500-worders, a single high-quality link can be much more valuable than dozens of low-quality links.

Think of it like this.

High-quality links do much more than just improve your link profile and provide you with SEO juice.

They can enhance your brand equity and bring in quality referral traffic as well.

If you’ve had a quantity over quality mindset up until now, it’s time to change it.

Forgetting about social signals

One of the other great SEO debates is just how big of a factor social signals are.

Some people seem to think social signals are a significant ranking factor, while others believe they’re just a waste of time.

I’m in the camp that believes they’re a substantial ranking factor. At least nowadays.

While I’m not saying they’re super high on the totem pole, you definitely don’t want to overlook social signals in your link-building.

In fact, Backlinko includes social signals in a recent list of Google’s 200 ranking factors.

More specifically, they mention the following social signals as having a considerable impact:

• Number of tweets
• Authority of Twitter user accounts
• Number of Facebook likes
• Facebook shares
• Authority of Facebook user accounts
• Pinterest pins
• Votes on social sharing sites
• Number of Google+1s
• Authority of Google+ user accounts
• Social signal relevancy

You get the idea.

A few years back, Moz broke down the potency of some of the more powerful social signals:

I know it’s a little outdated (2012), but I think this data is still fairly relevant today.

The bottom line here is that you should do everything within your power to maximize your social signals.

This starts with creating epic content that outperforms that of your competitors (see the skyscraper technique).

You should install social media buttons if you haven’t done so already.

This is super easy to do if you’re a WordPress user. Just install a plugin.

Also be sure to ask your audience to share your content.

Sometimes that’s all it takes!

And don’t forget that social signals do much more than just boost your SEO.

They can also have a considerable impact on your brand’s reputation and whether or not readers will stick around and read your content.

Just think about it.

Which brand would you take more seriously?

One with an article with a high volume of social shares like this…

Or an article with only a handful of shares?

I rest my case.

Conclusion

Like it or not, link-building is essentially the lifeblood of SEO.

And I really don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Until Google radically changes its algorithm, links are likely to remain one of the top ranking factors.

But like with many other areas of SEO, what constitutes proper link-building can be a little confusing.

There’s plenty of room for misunderstanding even for the most adept of SEO marketers.

By acknowledging any mistakes you’re making, you can tighten your link-building and make your overall campaign run like a well-oiled machine.

Can you think of any other common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make?

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Niche Pursuits Income Report for April 2017

During the month of April, I feared my business would fail.

Turns out my fears were overblown.

I think as an entrepreneur we have all experienced the emotions that come with owning a business.  One-day you look at your earnings or traffic statistics and it feels like you are conquering the world!  Then the next week, you see everything take a nosedive and you wonder if you have any control.

Well, fortunately when you average things out, they tend to not be as nearly as bad as your worst nightmares, but also are rarely better than your wildest dreams.

I'll explain a bit more about why I was a bit anxious about my business this past month.  But I'll give you a hint: the reason starts with A and ends with zon.

Oh, and I have a survey at the end of this post that I hope you'll take.  So, if all you do is look at the income numbers, I hope you will at least stick around by scrolling down and taking the quick survey.

But first…it's selfie time!  This is a really lame tradition I started a couple months ago, so I can't stop now…

Just another day at the home office…

Income Reports

As usual, I am going to break each “brand” out with its own income table.  If you just want to see the total overall, you can always scroll down.  But if you like the additional detail on each brand that I operate, it's all there.

Please note: *Gross Profit is the profit after all costs of good sold.  So, for any Amazon FBA product sales, I've already subtracted the manufacturing costs, returns, shipping costs etc.  However, this is not a net profit number…to get that, I'd need to subtract out salaries, software expenses, etc.

NichePursuits.com Income - April 2017

Income Source	Gross Profit	Monthly Change
Total	$7,664	+$2,545
Bluehost (Get Web Hosting for Just $3.95 Right Here)	$360	($180)
Jungle Scout: Amazon Product Finder, Special 10% Discount Here.	$612	($146)
Thrive Themes (See my strategy for increasing subscribers with Thrive Leads Here)	$1,187	($483)
AmaSuite 5 ($100 Discount Here)	$24	($125)
Easy Azon Plugin	$196	($34)
SalesBacker (auto-email Amazon buyers)	$233	($22)
MerchInformer Software. (See how to start a t-shirt business with Merch Informer here).	$648	$189
Authority Hacker: Authority Site System Course	$0	$0
Long Tail Pro*(*My affiliate commission only, not my ownership distribution).	$1,300	$848
SEMRush Competition Analysis (See an in-depth tutorial and video here).	$232	($28)
Inventory Lab: Amazon Profit Tracking Software	$15	$5
PointBlankSEO Link Building Course	$30	$0
Hire Writers	$125	$69
Content Refined (Exclusive 10% off When You Use Coupon Code: "spencer" at Checkout)	$228	($21)
Ninja Outreach: Link Building Software	$0	$0
Amazon Affiliate Bootcamp by Tung Tran	$870	$870
Human Proof Designs: Niche Sites Done For You	$1,603	$1,603
Click Funnels (14-day Free Trial)	$0	$0

Overall, NichePursuits.com had a good month.  I didn't do anything out of the ordinary, other than I allowed a couple of guest posts that resulted in some unexpected commissions.

Tung Tran wrote about 5 white hat link building techniques.  He sells a training course for building Amazon affiliate websites, and turns out a few people were interested in buying. 

In addition, Dom Wells did a guest post on How to Systematically build out niche sites.  Quite a few people went over and purchased his Done for You Niche Site Building packages.  This resulted in some decent commissions for me this month.

You will also see that I added Click Funnels to the income report.  I haven't made any sales yet, but Click Funnels is a tool I started using on a couple of new projects.  I really am enjoying how easy it is to create sales pages, sales funnels, and integrating everything into one system.  If you are creating landing pages or sales funnels, I recommend you check it out here for a 14 day free trial.

Home Goods Brand Income - April 2017

Income Source	Gross Profit	Monthly Change
Total	$17,436.43	($1,824.93)
Adsense	$535.68	($145.43)
Amazon	$1,477.09	($320.48)
ebay Sales	$599.85	($165.96)
UK sales	$2,640.62	($220.07)
Amazon Product 1	$8,837.35	($1,984.20)
Amazon Product 2	$3,207.62	$563.85
Amazon Product 3	$0.00	($45.82)
Amazon Product 4	$74.22	($94.88)
Amazon Product 5	$0.00	($34.80)
Amazon Product 6	$119.70	$540.96
Amazon Product 7	($55.70)	$81.90
Amazon Product 8	$0.00	$0.00

As I was following the earnings throughout the month for this home goods brand, this is when the fear of failure starting sneaking in.  As I mentioned before, I blame Amazon for the rough month!

As you can see from the income chart above, our top selling product on Amazon was down nearly $2,000…which accounted for all the decline in income for this brand.

The reason for this drop in earnings is an Amazon quality check.  When a certain numbers of customers return a product and provide feedback, Amazon has the ability to shut down your listing while they review the quality of your inventory.  This is what happened for about 5 days.  No sales at all for 5 days is where all the loss came from.

Without going into too much detail, “Amazon Product 1” can receive very subjective feedback.  Some people love it just the way it is, others return it and provide negative feedback.  Again, its subjective.  Some people say the Mona Lisa is a beautiful piece of art, others think they could do better. 

So, Amazon shut down the listing, reviewed our inventory and listing, and then listed it back as usual…no problems at all found.

I understand why Amazon has to do this, but it's incredibly frustrating when you lose out on a $2,000 in profit because of it.

However, the product is back up for sale and moving a it's usual pace again.  I expect May to be a good month for this brand.

Fitness Brand Income - April 2017

Income Source	Gross Profit	Monthly Change
Total	$1,534.06	$1,059.48
Google Adsense	$38.35	$1.89
Amazon Associates	$552.78	$101.50
Amazon Product 1	$519.54	($28.73)
Amazon Product 2	$228.65	$504.13
Amazon Product 3	$25.09	$228.75
Amazon Product 4	$169.65	$251.94

After a bad month in March, the fitness brand has made a comeback!  The biggest reason for the higher earnings was the fact that we didn't do any giveaways during April.

In March, we had discounted our new products that were selling on Amazon and we were losing money on each unit “sold”.

I'm also hoping by the end of May, we will be able to launch at least one of the new products we've been developing for the last several months.  It's taken much longer than expected, so I hope it's worth the wait.

I'm actually strongly considering starting a Kickstarter campaign for one of these new products because it's a bit more unique.  However, nothing is finalized yet.  I'll let you know once it actually happens. (Do I smell a Kickstarter case study in the future??)

Music Brand Income - April 2017

Income Source	Gross Profit	Monthly Change
Total	$1,059.80	$214.82
Amazon FBA	$195.06	($363.22)
Shopify Sales	$864.74	$596.74
Amazon Associates	$0.00	($18.70)

We've put a lot of effort into this music brand, so it's nice to see a small uptick in profits for April.  The brand is moving in the right direction for sure.

You will notice that sales are way down on Amazon and way up on Shopify.  This is by design as we are trying to push all our traffic to our own Shopify store.

We ordered a bunch of new inventory and we are now all stocked up and ready to grow (this was a much bigger effort than this one sentence might indicate).

I believe that we made some tweaks near the end of April that is helping things pick up in May (new Facebook ads, landing pages, and more).  We had an excellent first week in May, so I expect May to be much bigger than April.

Amazon Incubator Income - April 2017

Income Source	Gross Profit	Monthly Change
Total	$1,779.50	($1,599.29)
Amazon Product 1	$204.93	($37.95)
Amazon Product 2	$324.00	($89.10)
Amazon Product 3	$80.71	($59.29)
Amazon Product 4	$5.40	$18.63
Amazon Product 5	$2.61	($1.19)
Amazon Product 6	$0.00	$0.00
Amazon Product 7	$715.86	($29.20)
Amazon Product 8	$195.00	$120.94
Amazon Product 9	$2.78	($5.56)
Amazon Product 10	$189.00	($60.48)
Amazon Product 11	$0.00	$0.00
Amazon Product 12	($6.97)	($1,082.65)
Amazon Product 13	$21.30	($336.04)
Amazon Product 14	$5.95	$5.95
Amazon Product 15	$38.93	($43.35)

The Amazon incubator suffered from another Amazon hiccup.  As you can see “Product 12” was down over a $1,000.  This was another case where Amazon took down the listing.  However, we are not 100% sure why on this one, or if we will ever get this listing back.

We are in the process of researching the black box that is Amazon, and seeing if there are any options.  None of our other listings have any issues, so this is specific to this one product.

Overall, we hope things pick back up once we have a couple of products back in stock that have been out.

Total Income for All Brands – $29,474 (Last Month $29,126 / +$348)

So, despite all my worries with Amazon and other issues that came up, I was still able to eek out a small increase in income during April. 

I'm happy to have a flat or slightly positive growth month when so many things seemed to go wrong.  I expect good things going forward!

Undisclosed Income

I've been quite detailed in the income listed above.  However, I also have several other sites or income sources that I prefer not to be as detailed with.  I hope you don't mind.

Here's some additional sources of income that I won't reveal the exact amount of:

• Small niche sites making less than $500/month.
• Long Tail Pro Ownership.  I still own a portion of the Long Tail Pro business and receive quarterly distributions based on net profits.
• Investment websites.  I have invested in several other websites.  For most of these I own anywhere from 5% to 33% of the business.
• Jake FBA Business Partnership.  I invested in an Amazon FBA brand that Jake runs personally.

New Projects…(Big Deal, Short Section)

As you can see from all the brand reports, I have a lot going on.  However, I happen to have 2 new projects in the works that I'm very excited about.

One of the projects is specifically for Niche Pursuits readers, that I'll be able to share more about in the next few weeks. 

The second project is a software tool for Amazon associates.  That's right, I'm diving back into the software business! 

I sold Long Tail Pro a year and few months ago, and I'm ready to dive back in with another software tool.  This should be ready for beta testing in the next 4 to 6 weeks.  I've been working on it behind the scenes for the past 6 or 7 months.

That's all I'll say about the new projects for now.  However, just be aware that a couple big things are coming very soon.

Niche Pursuits Survey!

It's hard to believe, but it was just over 2 years ago that I conducted a survey to help me better understand the obstacles that my readers face.  I gained some excellent insights with that survey, and I'm now asking for your feedback again.

I put together this survey to help me better understand what you are most interested in learning about, what struggles you are having, and the types of things you want more guidance on.

I would GREATLY appreciate it if you took just a few minutes to answer this short survey.

Take the Niche Pursuits Survey Here!

Overall, I appreciate you reading this income report, and would love to hear any feedback that you have.

 

 

 

The post Niche Pursuits Income Report for April 2017 appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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The Content Optimization Hack to Double Your Blog’s Traffic

Do you know how much traffic you are losing if you are ignoring content optimization?

This post shows how Linkody nearly doubled its blog’s traffic in one month.

Most of us tend to produce content, do some quick marketing and then forget about the content we worked so hard on.

That’s a lot of traffic down the drain.

What if I told you that a simple content optimization process is the missing piece of your content strategy?

What You Will Learn

1. How to improve your content’s rank using Google Search Console
2. How to spot optimisation opportunities with Google Keyword Planner
3. How to conduct effective, on-page keyword ‘SEO’
4. How to track progress with Google Analytics
5. BONUS DOWNLOAD: The Google Sheet I use to automate the process

How We Doubled Traffic With A Simple Content Optimization Process

After discovering the potential hiding under the bonnet of the Google Search Console and connecting a few dots, we @ Linkody HQ realised that content optimization has huge potential.

We noticed that the keywords that bring the most traffic, in most cases, were not the ones we originally targeted and optimised while writing the articles.

Even if you carry out keyword research with due diligence and pick topics based on that, you will sometimes find that an article has a better ranking potential for other keywords.

We realised we were leaving a huge source of traffic on the table and that we could generate a lot more visitors to our articles, using proper on-page optimisation every once in awhile.

So, we decided to give it a go!

Fast forward one-and-a-half months, and we have nearly doubled our blog traffic since we began actively optimising Linkody’s blog! ;)

There is more: ever since we made this hack part of our content strategy, traffic has been steadily growing.

Moreover, we have noticed that together with the increase of website’s overall authority, the traffic to Linkody’s backlink monitoring tool has been growing faster than before.

Sounds interesting, right?

Let’s dig in.

Step #1 – Content Optimization With Google Search Console

Before we start: Just so we are on the same page, I need to make sure you have Google Search Console set up & ready. This video guide will get you there.

After that’s done – you will need to wait a while before the data is imported.

For those already familiar with the Search Console – congrats, that was the most complicated part of this process.

Here’s the part where you will learn how to find the keywords which will bring the most traffic, for each of your posts.

Step 1

Head over to Search Traffic (1) > Search Analytics (2).

There you will be able to see:

1. The queries by which people find you
2. All your pages
3. Countries
4. Device usage (Desktop, mobile or tablet)
5. Search Type (web, image or video)

Step 2

Select all the necessary metrics (1) – in this case, we selected all four.

Then click on pages (2) to see the site’s content neatly organised.

Step 3

In this case, you will need to organise all the pages according to the clicks (1) – a.k.a according to the traffic.

Then, go ahead and click on one of the articles (2).

As an example, we will select the “niche-sites-case-studies” post we optimised exactly one month ago. Let’s try to see if there are already any optimisation opportunities.

Step 4

Afterwards, you should click on the queries (1) to see all the keywords by which people can find your article.

It gets better, at the bottom of the page you can export all these queries (2).

This will give you a CSV file holding a list filled with all the keywords that have ever got an impression from a browser.

Step #2 – Analyzing Keyword Opportunities to Rank

Keyword search volume will change over time and your focus keyword might be replaced by a trendier query. KW Planner is here to save the day.

Note: To access the main functionality of KW Planner you have to set up 1 ad on AdWords. It can be turned off after the signup so you don’t have to worry about getting charged. Quick video guide here.

Now, let’s learn about spotting new traffic opportunities.

Step 1

Head over to Keyword Planner and click on Get Search Volume Data and Trends (1).

Then, upload the CSV file (2) you got from our friend, the Google Search Console.

Optionally you can open up the CSV from Google Search Console and copy the keywords to paste into Google Keyword Planner.

Step 2

After you hit “get search volume”, you can organise all the queries according to average monthly searches (1), to see what’s trending at the moment.

And then download the list of all the KWs (2).

Top Secret Step

This is where the magic happens.

I have created an amazing Google Sheet that identifies content optimization opportunites for you automatically!

All you have to do is copy and paste!

At the moment you should have two CSV files:

1. One from the Search Console with the data from your website.
2. Another from the Keyword Planner with Google’s search volume.

1. Copy paste your Search Console data in the second sheet (1).
2. And the info from Keyword Planner goes in the third sheet (2).

Step 4

After that’s done, head over to the first sheet where you will see the chart with similar looking data-

In this case, you can see the following:

1. Which keywords have the highest search volume
2. And which queries bring blog.Linkody the most traffic

At the beginning of a blog post’s life cycle, keywords that bring the most traffic and have the highest search volume rarely match.

And when we look at our blog the query that brings the most clicks is not always the keyword we originally tried to optimise for.

This is the optimisation opportunity you should be looking for.

You should generally target the query you find with the highest clicks as your focus keyword.

But also keep in mind that it’s worth investigating whether there is a potential to rank for keywords with a bigger search volume.

Note: 99% of the time high search volume means high difficulty to rank.

The probability to rank, for the keywords with the highest search volumes increases with time as your blog post matures by accumulating backlinks.

You can also give it a further boost by making significant updates to the content.

Nevertheless, be realistic about your chances to get organic traffic from high-end queries.

Step 4

In our example above most of the clicks were generated by the keyword “niche website examples” so we will select this as our focus keyword.

After checking the blog post, we realised that this specific term appears in the article only once.

That means there is great opportunity to optimise for this keyword with some simple on page SEO tweaks.

It’s also important to find 3-4 LSI keywords (semantic keywords) as well.

Then you want to sprinkle these keywords throughout your article along with your target keyword.

To find LSI keywords run a Google search for the selected focus keyword, scroll to the bottom of the page (1) and you will see the related searches (2).

Step #3 – On Page SEO Optimization

Once we know the focus keyword and LSI keywords for the specific post, it’s time to optimise the post.

Step 1

Head over to your blogging platform and find the post you want to optimise.

In this example, we will be using WordPress.

Step 2

We prepared a checklist for you to know how SEO on-page optimisation should happen. It’s 9 steps – take one step at a time and do the following for each of your posts:

1. The headline should start with (& include) the focus keyword (make sure the headline is under 70 characters).
2. Add a clickbait KW to your Headline – best, epic, awesome, deal of the year/month, etc.
   
3. Make sure there is an image in your post with the focus keyword as the alt-tag
   
4. Drop your focus KW in the first paragraph.
5. Add 3-4 similar LSI keywords in the content.
   • For us it was straight forward, we just added a couple of similar keywords from the list that Google Search Console produced.
6. Make sure your focus KW appears from 0.5% to 1% from the total content.
   
7. Add KW at the beginning of the URL. Important: If you edit the URL, make sure to create the redirect
   
8. Add a Meta-description that includes your focus keyword.
9. Use sub-headings with your focus keyword.

If you are running WordPress you can make this process a lot easier by installing the Yoast SEO plugin and setting a focus keyword when you are editing your post-

This is a long process but it’s one of the most important elements, without which content optimization won’t really work.

Step 3

It is important that you track your progress so please make a copy of this excel sheet

Just click on File > Make A Copy to grab a copy for yourself.

It’s fairly basic and self explanatory but make sure you fill it out each time you optimise a post for a new keyword so you can track your progress.

Step #4 – Tracking Results With Google Analytics

Knowing you have a problem is the first step towards fixing it.

You cannot know if you’re improving without data – so you’ve gotta measure it.

For A/B testing we use Google Analytics. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s free and gets the job done (here‘s a great video guide on how to set it up).

Step 1

Head over to Google Analytics and select your domain.

Step 2

It will take some time before you find the right content recipe that works so content optimization should be carried out every ~1-2 months.

With that in mind the data should be monitored regularly at the end of each month.

Step 3

To monitor only the organic traffic head over to Acquisition (1) > All Traffic (2) >Channels (3) > Organic Search (4).

Then click on the Landing Pages (1)

And you will be able to see all your website’s content. Find the post you optimised and click on it.

Google Analytics compares the traffic & different metrics for each month so you know the effect of your actions and what to improve the next month.

At the end of the day, content optimization is a game of A/B testing – test, see what works and optimise.

Discovering what works is also the hardest part and requires the most work.

Wrapping It Up

By following this framework, you can make sure that your content performs better as time goes by.

For us, it was an amazing discovery. As with many other blogs out there, our posts enjoyed a couple of good months of traffic and then started slowly losing attention.

Well, not anymore – now we keep our posts fresh each month and traffic is growing faster than ever before.

I hope this guide can help you to do the same.

If you are struggling, make sure to share your issues or concerns in the comments section below. I will do my best to help you out.

And finally, here are a few questions to harness our collective wisdom: How have you previously dealt with the loss of traffic? Do you have a content optimization strategy in your organisation and how is it different from this one?

Happy content hacking!

The Content Optimization Hack to Double Your Blog’s Traffic was originally published on Matthew Woodward

from Matthew Woodward http://ift.tt/2pderpU