If you sell your services and/or products from your website, chances are you’re also writing blog posts to showcase your subject matter expertise in your field.
And I’ll bet that you’ve noticed the typical life span of your blog post looks something like this:
- You spend a couple of weeks to come up with an idea, and write the article.
- You publish the article.
- You tell everyone you know about it (some through an email blast to your current subscribers).
- You promote the heck out of it on all your social media channels.
- Lots of people read it and some people will share
- Then everyone forgets it ever existed.
And if you’re actually tracking your traffic Analytics, you’ll see a huge spike on the first few days after you publish the article — and then not so much after that!
There’s another way to go about this that can drive continuous, ongoing traffic to your site through your blog posts.
You might have heard of it. It’s called SEO! 🙂
Today I want to show you a surefire way to make a few simple tweaks to one of your existing blog posts, and as a result drive recurring traffic to your site…all through that one blog post. And as an added bonus, you won’t just get any kind of traffic — you’ll get the right people who are actually interested in you and your brand.
Ready? Let’s dive right into it!
Step 1: Identify the ideal blog post on your site.
Whether we’re talking about King Google or another search engine, remember that all search engines really want one thing: high quality, relevant content!
Let me give you an example: If someone searches for “gardening tips for winter,” the search engine’s goal is to query all of the one billion-plus websites on the Internet and return the highest quality, most relevant articles on that topic.
In this example, the #1 article ranked on Google for “gardening tips for winter” is an article by naturallivingideas.com.
Looking deeper into the article, it shows 9 important tips for gardening in winter.
So this post is ranking high because not only does it contain content that’s relevant to the search term, it also contains quality content.
The lesson I want you to take away from this exercise is in order for you to start driving traffic to your site, you must first identify your highest quality and relevant content.
And one of the best ways to judge the quality of that content is by its popularity.
In other words, which of your blog post(s) has received the most traffic?
Once you’ve identified your most popular article, you can take steps to make sure Google knows about the article and displays it to users searching for articles on that topic.
But first, we need to find your best content.
To do this, go to your Google Analytic account.
Click Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Then, set your date range to the last six months.
After you do that, you’ll see a list of the most visited pages on your website.
My results, for example, showed that the most popular blog post on my site was “How Old is Too Old To Be A Successful Entrepreneur?”
Step 2: Pick a keyword phrase to focus your article on.
The next step is to help Google show your blog post to people searching for information on that article’s topic.
The easiest way to do this is to focus your article on the word or phrase that people are actually searching for.
For example…
In my most popular article, “How Old is Too Old To Be A Successful Entrepreneur?”, I explain why it’s never too late to start a new venture, and that there are specific advantages older folks have over their younger competition. I wrote this article as a result of many conversations with many talented people who were afraid to start their own gig because of their age.
But here’s the problem…
At the time I wrote this, I really wasn’t thinking that this post would be the one that would bring traffic to my site. It did really well when I first published and shared it.
But past that initial response, I got ZERO recurring monthly traffic from Google to this article!
So I soon realized that chances of someone actually going to Google and searching keyword phrase “How old is too old to be a successful entrepreneur” are very slim.
The post was not doing well because I had built the article around a keyword phrase that no one ever searched for.
So I got to work!
Google has a free tool that you can use to learn EXACTLY how many people are searching for keywords in your industry. It’s called the Google Keyword Planner.
It’s intended to be used for people running paid ads on the Google AdWords platform, but it’s free and open to the public, even if you aren’t running paid ads.
I’ve dedicated an entire video that walks you through using this tool in my training course “You Can Do it: Create and Sell Your Own Online Courses.”
Using Google Keyword Planner, I started brainstorming variations of keyword phrases and looking up monthly searches for each phrase.
One of the first phrases I thought of was “starting a new business.”
I plugged this phrase into the Google Keyword Planner and found that there were just over 500 searches per month for this phrase, and the competition was medium.
Here’s what’s important about that: I’ve found that focusing on keywords with less than 1,000 monthly searches, with low to medium competition produces the best results.
In other words, it’s easier to get ranked when your keyword or phrase matches this criteria.
Also, you want to focus on keywords for which other people are running paid ads on the search results page.
Now, with my new keyword phrase in hand, it was time to tweak the original blog post so that Google would know to show this article to anyone searching for that phrase.
Step 3: Tweak your blog post for the new keyword phrase.
There are 3 quick tweaks you should make in order to do this.
Tweak #1: Use the keyword phrase in the URL of the post.
The first thing I did was to rename the URL of the post itself to match my new keyword phrase. This helps Google properly identify this article as being relevant to that search term.
Double-check your website’s configuration to make sure the old URL is properly redirected to your new URL. That way, if anybody has bookmarked the old URL, they’ll still wind up on the correct article.
Tweak #2: Use the keyword phrase in the article’s headline.
The second thing I did was to put the keyword phrase in the post’s headline.
The best way to do this is to try and fit the keyword naturally within your existing headline, as a natural part of the sentence.
Tweak #3: Use the keyword phrase throughout the article.
Lastly, you need to go through your post and find opportunities to use your new keyword phrase in the body of your post or article.
I’ve found that by including the phrase 2 to 3 times in the first 300 words of your article, your chances of ranking for that term increase.
A word of caution here: Never try to stuff your article with lots of keywords! Google hates it when you try to game the system and will penalize your ranking. Always use your keyword phrase naturally throughout your article.
Now it’s your turn.
Are you ready to start driving traffic to your website every month?
If so, focus on the 3 steps I’ve outlined above, and use the words that your target readers are using. To recap:
Step 1: Identify your most popular blog post.
Step 2: Pick a keyword phrase to focus your article on.
Step 3: Tweak your blog post for the new keyword phrase.
Need help? Let’s talk.
Now, if you’re thinking “yeah, I really need to do this,” but you’re still feeling unsure about which steps to take, which keyword phrases to use or how to replicate this process for your topics and your site, I’m here to help you.
Book a FREE 30-minute coaching call with me right now, and let’s talk about it!
I want to hear from you! Please share your comments below!