Does Keyword Research Even Matter Anymore?

Keyword research. I’m sure you’ve done it before.

You probably know what it’s like to use keyword research tools and come up with lists of keywords to track and rank for. I’ve done it dozens of times myself. Why? Because it’s one of those “standard practices” that we do in SEO and online marketing.

But search engines today aren’t looking only at keywords! Search engines are looking at hundreds of different factors. And keywords? They are only a small part of the big picture.

Don’t get me wrong. I think keyword research is still important.

But here’s the thing…

Keyword research isn’t the only aspect you need to be researching when optimizing a website or planning your content marketing.

I want you to go a level deeper—to the level that users are searching for and search engines are indexing for.

I’m going to share with you three ways to go beyond basic keyword research. Although keyword research should still be a part of your SEO, it’s only the start.

I’m confident that these advanced research methods will add rocket fuel to your marketing, attract targeted traffic, earn valuable links, and ultimately boost your revenue.

I will explain in detail how to use each of these powerful research methods.

First of all, let me preface this by revealing something you may not know about Google: the algorithm changes 500-600 times per year.

That’s a rate of nearly 1.5 changes a day!

Even with all the marketing ability I’ve developed running my various businesses, I can’t hope to keep up with the rapid pace of change in the Google search algorithm and its machine learning. Odds are, neither can you.

So, now that you understand the why, let’s dive into the how. This is how we do keyword research in today’s world.

1. User intent

One of the biggest mistakes I see many newbie online entrepreneurs make is that they focus too much on the specific keywords in their research without focusing enough on user intent behind those keywords.

You may be thinking, “Neil, what is user intent, and how do I use it to improve the traffic and conversions on my site?”

User intent is just what it sounds. User intent refers to the user’s ultimate goal in typing a search query.

Let me make a quick point about the terms I am using.

• Keywords: A targeted phrase you’re trying to rank for. You do keyword research. You use this phrase in your content, making sure it appears in all the right places.
• Query: The phrase or words that a user types into Google. This could be a short phrase, a question, or just a string of words the user is typing.

I try to keep those two terms—keywords and query—straight, but sometimes I use them interchangeably.

As SEOs, we tend to focus on keywords, right? That’s what we want to rank for, obviously.

But users don’t care about our keywords. They just want to get the best result for their query.

And that’s my point: every query has an intent. Every time someone types something into Google, they are trying to accomplish something. They have a goal.

For example, when I am up late at night watching Gossip Girls reruns and I Google “Chinese food,” my user intent is to order some Chinese food.

And guess what? Google knows this. And, voila, this is exactly what comes up!

However, if I change the wording ever so slightly, typing “great Chinese food” instead of “Chinese food,” what appears is quite different.

By simply changing one word, I shifted the intent of my search from ordering Chinese food to finding great Chinese meals and restaurants in a given area.

See the difference? Sure, the difference involves a change in wording. But the deeper change was one of intent.

Google gets it. The whole search engine is designed to deliver really good results based on the user’s intent.

Check out this video from Google. User intent is the whole reason why Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars to refine its algorithms and enhance its machine learning process.

If the search engine is that focused on user intent, we should be as well.

So, how can you use this to improve your keyword research?

You have to take advantage of user intent to understand which keywords you should try to rank for.

Basically, you need to understand the user’s goal when they input certain queries.

Let me give you another example.

See if you can figure out the intent behind this query: “order a birthday cake”

Pretty straightforward, right?

If this “order a birthday cake” was one of your target keyword phrases, you should understand that the user’s intent is to order a birthday cake.

The great thing about user intent is that it becomes far easier to figure it out as the query becomes longer.

Long queries are really valuable for two reasons:

• We can identify exactly what the user wants and give it to them.
• We can gain targeted organic traffic for super-specific long-tail keywords.

Double whammy!

Let me show you exactly what I mean by expanding that “order a birthday cake” query.

Most users don’t simply want to order a birthday cake. They want to order a specific type of cake, for a specific type of person, in a specific location, for a specific purpose, and at a specific time.

See where this is going?

Take a look at this doozy of a query:

How’s that for user intent?

You can use this super-focused intent to create super-focused content!

For this query, you know that:

• Someone wants to order a cake…
• for a girl…
• who is probably between 4 and 10 years old.
• They don’t want to make the cake themselves.
• They want it delivered to their venue.
• And they live in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
• Most likely, it’s a mom, dad, or party planner who’s typing in this query.
• They probably have a limited amount of time on their hands. They’re busy.
• They live with or know about children and understand what children like.

I could go on and on.

This is the level of keyword research that you want to do. You’re not just spinning a bunch of variations from some keyword tool. Instead, you’re diving into the reasons, the motivations, and the desires of the user.

We could even sketch a persona based on that keyword and then target that persona in our marketing efforts.

Kelly is a 33-year-old working mom. She has a 3-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter who turns 6 on August 2. Kelly loves her kids but isn’t able to spend much time with them because of her demanding job as a paralegal in downtown Atlanta. Kelly wants to surprise her daughter with a special birthday party with a princess theme.

You might not be able to achieve this level of research for every keyword, but you can at least get a general idea of the general intent of your target audience.

Basically, if you know why a user is looking up a certain keyword, you will be able to determine what keywords you want to use on your website and in your content.

Using my first example, if you were a Chinese takeout restaurant, you would want to rank for “Chinese food,” “order Chinese food,” or “Chinese takeout.” Ideally, you would also try to rank for local terms such as “Chinese takeout downtown Las Vegas.”

However, if you ran a Chinese recipe niche site, you might try to rank for “great Chinese food,” “awesome Chinese recipes,” or something similar.

2. Search query type

Another important element of diving deeper into keyword research is understanding search queries and search query type.

As I explained above, a query is what a user types into Google. A keyword is what you’re trying to rank for.

Let me show you a keyword and a query example so you can clearly see the difference.

Keyword: Men’s skinny jeans

Query: Where to buy men’s skinny jeans

Do you see the difference?

The keyword is a relatively straightforward term. The query, however, is more specific because the user wants to accomplish something (user intent—as discussed above).

But there’s another remarkable thing about those queries.

Whenever you are doing keyword research, try to understand what kind of queries lend themselves to people hitting the “buy now” button.

It’s really important because if you could figure out the types of queries that lead people to purchase immediately, you would be able to get more sales.

And if you could figure out the queries that pulled people into the top of your funnel, you’d be able to structure an amazing content marketing campaign.

Here is the good news: you can find that out, and you can structure your content marketing around those types of queries.

Here’s how.

There are three basic types of queries:

1. Informational
2. Transactional
3. Navigational

Let me explain each of these so we can get clear on how to target each one:

1. Informational searches are pretty easy to figure out. The user wants to get information on a certain topic. For example, “how to structure a content marketing campaign” is an informational query.
2. Transactional searches mean that the user is trying to buy something or transact in some way. “Buy skinny jeans online,” “order flowers las vegas,” or “whole foods coupon” are all transactional queries.
3. Navigational searches take place when the user is trying to get to a specific website but doesn’t remember or doesn’t want to type in the URL. For example, if I wanted to visit the Men’s Health website, I would search for “mens health” or “mens health mag” rather than typing “http://ift.tt/xr10Oq” into my search bar.

Nearly every query fits into one of these three types.

What’s even better is that nearly every query has a specific position in the marketing funnel.

Make sure you understand, of course, that most search traffic is informational.

In other words, you’ll be gaining most of your leads in the top of the funnel through informational queries.

Informational queries build awareness and aid the user’s consideration, just like the marketing funnel predicts.

Let me share an example now so you can see how to apply this information to your content marketing and SEO strategies.

Say you are selling men’s skinny jeans and trying to decide which keywords to try to rank for.

Some possibilities:

• Men’s skinny jeans
• Top men’s skinny jeans
• Skinny jeans men’s style
• Best men’s skinny jeans
• Distressed men’s skinny jeans
• Hipster men’s skinny jeans

Now comes the important part of understanding the search query.

If you were an e-commerce store that sold men’s skinny jeans, the keywords you would try to rank for would be very different from the ones you would target if you were running a blog on men’s fashion and writing an article on why skinny jeans are appalling.

This is the difference between informational and transactional search queries.

Basically, you want to research search queries related to your industry to discover new keywords you can try to rank for.

Let’s say you are selling men’s skinny jeans. You want transactional queries. Looking at the different search queries, you will notice that common keywords that pop up are:

• Men’s skinny jeans sale
• Men’s skinny jeans online shopping
• Men’s stretch skinny jeans

Within an e-commerce environment, it’s important to understand the specific nature of a user’s transactional query. They might be looking for sizes, features, and specific product types.

Most e-commerce search functionality offers support for “non-product” queries but has limited ability in allowing “subjective” queries.

By enhancing keyword support in the most relevant areas of your e-commerce website, you’ll be able to gain organic traffic to those internal pages where the user is prepared to transact.

If, on the other hand, you run a fashion blog and are writing that article on men’s skinny jeans, you might find search queries like these:

• Fashion blog men’s skinny jeans and boots
• Men’s skinny jeans outfits
• Men’s skinny jeans
• Spring outfits men’s skinny jeans

As you can see, all these queries contain the keyword phrase “men’s skinny jeans,” but the secondary keywords you should try to rank for will change based on the user intent behind the search query.

By knowing which queries you are targeting, you will be able to come up with a more targeted list of keywords to try to rank for.

Plus, the keywords will result in greater conversions of your visitors into either blog subscribers or buyers.

3. Demographic research

The third and final part of keyword research is demographic keyword research.

You know about demographics, right?

Demographic research is a powerful marketing tool. You can use the information you gain in your demographic research to target specific types of people.

You’ve probably seen sample personas like this one:

Most personas contain demographic data:

In the persona above, it’s helpful to know that Brandi…

• is a female
• is 36
• lives in the LA area
• makes 38k a year
• has narrow feet

Personas affect everything in marketing.

• Different personas will respond differently to web design standards.
• Some personas may prefer a certain color scheme.
• Specific personas might have a specific response to certain words or headlines.

Personas affect keywords too.

Let me show you how.

Let’s say your target demographic is men ages 18-35 looking to lose weight.

However, you’ve chosen to target the keyword “easy fat loss.”

What you may find is that the majority of people searching for “easy fat loss” are women 30-45. (I’m just using this as an example, so this assumption may or may not be true.)

Thankfully, there are several excellent tools you can use for keyword demographic research, including Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs, Keyword Discovery, and, of course, the AdWords’ Keyword Planner.

Some of these tools, such as Keyword Discovery, are particularly structured to enable demographic keyword research.

The more you can segment and analyze your data, the better you will become at identifying demographic keyword trends.

A report like the one below, for example, alerts you to the fact that men and women between the ages of 35 to 54 search for “oscars” at specific times of day.

The demographic information behind some queries is obvious.

• Men’s skinny jeans. The demographic is most likely young men.
• Amazon books for teenage girls. This demographic could be either a teenage girl or the parent of a teenage girl.
• Best foods for pregnancy. Probably a mom-to-be.

By using the right research tools and figuring out which queries your ideal demographic is typing, you’ll be able to be more precise about the keywords you try to rank for.

Here’s a parting word of advice about demographics: narrow it down.

We would all like to think that our product is good for everybody. However, if you can identify your ideal client and demographic and really capitalize on this, making sure every keyword you rank for is something that demographic is searching for, you’ll have a higher conversion rate than if you went too broad with your keywords.

Specific, long-tail queries will draw in the specific and eager customers you want to attract.

Conclusion

Here is what you need to know: Keyword research still matters. It is an integral part of any successful online business.

But basic keyword research on its own will not get your as far as you need to go with your online marketing! Your standard practice of typing a few phrases into Google Keyword Planner and exporting the list into your tracking software isn’t how it’s done anymore.

You have to be willing to dive deeper into your research to uncover the who, what, and why of each of your keywords.

If you can go beyond the basics, you will improve your marketing success.

I’d love to hear about any innovative strategies you know that take keyword research to an advanced level. What methods do you use to go beyond basic keyword research?

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The Ultimate Guide to Using Google Search Console as a Powerful SEO Tool

Every SEO, webmaster, and digital marketer has a powerful tool at their disposal.

I would go so far as to say that this tool is a must-have. You can’t do SEO without it.

What is this powerful tool?

It’s Google Search Console, or GSC for short (former Google Webmaster Tools, or GWT).

GSC is a free service provided by Google to manage your website’s search functionality. The search console is a collection of reports and tools that help you rectify errors as well as strategize and optimize your search engine rankings.

I want to show you exactly how you can use this powerful tool to improve your SEO.

Putting it bluntly, GSC is to SEO what oxygen is to humans. You need it. Your site can’t live without it.

The article you’re about to read will put you in a graduate-level intensive study of GSC. Once you understand the information shared here, you’ll become a GSC ninja.

And it’s going to make a huge difference in your SEO.

First, let me give you a quick overview. The article is pretty long, so you’ll want to set aside a good half an hour to read it.

The article is divided into sections and subsections, based on the the GSC menu:

I’ll give most of my attention to the first four sections: Parts A through D. Parts E and F are important but mostly self-explanatory. 

Part A: Search Appearance

The Search Appearance section helps you visualize what your website would look like in the search results.

Please be aware that there are many code snippets such as rich cards, rich snippets, and different types of framework such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as well as the usual HTML corrections that can help your website stand out and look ultra informative in search results.

Here is what each element in this section represents and how you should use it to your search advantage.

(a) Structured Data

Structured data (in the form of rich snippets), when programmed into the HTML code, marks up your content so that Google can categorize and index it better. Google uses it to serve up “rich” results.

SERP results that look like this are using structured data:

I searched for “blackberry sauce” on Google.

The image above contains the first four results.

Look at the results carefully. Two results, 3 and 4, look “richer” because they contain ratings, votes, and reviews. The fourth result even displays the calorie information.

Which result would you be tempted to click on? It depends on what you’re looking for, of course, but I headed straight for results 3 and 4.

Why? Because the rich results told me that the site would not only help me learn how to make blackberry sauce but also provide reviews from people who have made it before.

Plus, I know how long it will take me to make it. I can also have the confidence that other people did it and liked it. And I can even find out how many calories I’ll be consuming when I eat it.  

See the power?

Visually, rich results will help you bring in the traffic.

Currently, Google supports rich snippets for the following:

• Articles (AMP-only, I’ll get to this later)
• Local Businesses
• Music
• Recipes
• Reviews
• TV & Movies and Videos.

That may not seem like a huge list, but you’d be surprised to see how much rich information you can add to your site.

It makes a huge difference!

How to leverage Structured Data for SEO: Ask your developer to build rich snippets into all of the mentioned features available on your website. Ask them to refer to Schema.org for code snippets and help.

How does the GSC > Search Appearance >  Structured Data section help?

It tells you where you have gone wrong with your rich snippets coding and provides you with a tool that helps you test live data (see the blue button in the image below).

(b) Rich Cards

Rich Cards are a new invention by Google. They work like Structured Data (see (a) above in case you haven’t been paying attention) but are visually more appealing. Check this image out to learn the difference between rich snippets and rich cards:

Image from: http://ift.tt/1TWvwHN

When your content is visually appealing, it may translate to heavy user engagement, thereby increasing your traffic and sales. Google currently allows users to deploy rich cards for Recipes and Movies.

How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO: As in the case with rich snippets, ask your developer to build rich snippets into either recipes or movie information, if you host such information. Refer this page for sample code snippets.

How does the GSC > Search Appearance >  Rich Cards section help?

It tells you where you have gone wrong with your rich cards coding and informs you how many cards you can enhance. Like in the rich snippets section, Google equips you with a tool that helps you test live data.

Image from: http://ift.tt/1TWvwHN

(c) Data Highlighter

The Data Highlighter is an excellent substitute for Structured Data, and you don’t need a developer to write the code snippets in your HTML.

It marks up the same content that Structured Data does.

That being said, this tool has limitations. You have to write the tags individually per URL. Basically, if you have thousands of pages on your website, it can be a pain.

How to leverage Rich Cards for SEO

• Click on “Start Highlighting.” A pop-up will appear.
• Enter your URL, and choose the data you want to highlight (articles, events, reviews, local business, movies, products, restaurants, TV shows, etc.).
• Once you’ve made your selection, Google will render the page in GSC and allow you to highlight the relevant data.
• You now have to select the text or images per page that you want to highlight. You can highlight titles, images, category, and ratings.
• Google will then prompt you to highlight data in other pages as well and help create page sets.

Here’s a helpful video for a tutorial on this feature:

(d) HTML Improvements

HTML improvements is a report that reveals any problem areas that Google has discovered while crawling/indexing your site.

Here is a list of issues that may surface in this report:

• Duplicate/long/short meta descriptions
• Missing/duplicate/long/short title tags
• Content non-indexable by Google

How to leverage HTML Improvements Report for SEO:

It’s simple. Just fix the problem areas that Google has reported.

Here are some basic SEO rules that you may already be aware of:

• Ensure titles are up to 70 characters long (or up to 612 pixels in width).
• Ensure descriptions are about 160-165 characters.
• Each page must be supported by a unique title and description.
• Google should be able to crawl all pages you want to rank in SERPs. Ensure that critical content is not blocked by robots.txt or .htaccess files.

(e) Sitelinks

Sitelinks are automatically generated by Google. You can’t necessarily change these because Google uses its algorithm to decide when and how to display them.

Here’s how sitelinks appear on SERPs:

Even though you can’t set your sitelinks, you can do some things that will potentially add and improve them.

To encourage Google to add sitelinks below your URL in the SERPs, keep adding relevant, helpful, and meaningful content to your website.

When your content reaches critical mass, Google will automatically display your categories as sitelinks.

(f) Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

AMP is a relatively new addition to GSC.

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a technique that allows developers to build fast-loading HTML and JS pages. It is based on open source specifications.

The idea behind AMP HTML is to make web pages render quickly on mobile devices. The number of people using their mobile devices to browse the Internet is growing exponentially. Google introduced AMP HTML to help website owners remove any pages loading sluggishly for mobile devices.

How to leverage AMP for SEO:

Embrace the technology. Ask your developer to get up to speed on AMP, and then convert your regular HTML into AMP HTML.

The AMP subsection in GSC informs the webmaster about coding errors. Read the Google Webmasters Blog for details.

This section digs deeper into your rankings and reports on links to your site, how your keywords are ranking, penalties imposed by Google, mobile-friendliness, etc.

There’s a lot in this section. I consider it to be the most valuable section of GSC for SEO actionable data.

(a) Search Analytics Report

The report digs deep into your site and shows you how often the site showed up in search results.

The report even displays clicks per keyword, how each keyword ranked geographically, its click-through ratio, and more. Here’s an image with each category broken down into parts and how you should leverage each feature or filter to improve your SEO:

1. The number of clicks per keyword. This helps you learn how each keyword ranks in the search results and how many clicks it received. You can build backlinks, add/optimize content, or create specific landing pages to increase the number of clicks per keyword.
2. The total number of impressions per keyword. This helps you understand how users interacted with a keyword. For example, a high number of impressions and a low number of clicks implies that your page title or description is not well written or that you have not built in rich snippets.
3. CTR (click-through ratio) is reported as a percentage. It is basically the CTR:Impressions ratio expressed as a percentage.
4. Checking the Position box tells you the search position per keyword. For example, position # 120 implies that ? particular keyword landed on Google SERP #12. You can then optimize keywords and pages based on the keywords you want to rank higher.
5. The Queries filter helps you search specific keywords from within the results, check how one keyword compares with another, and sort the keywords. The filter tool gives you a deeper insight into each keyword. Use this filter to drill down into the keywords and improve the performance of those that already rank high.
6. The Pages filter helps you filter URLs, compare one page with another (excellent for A/B split testing), and sort out pages in terms of clicks. Use this feature to figure out your top, middle, and worst performing pages, and then deploy SEO to improve their rankings.
7. The Countries filter comes into play if you are targeting a global audience. I’ve experimented with this, translating the Quick Sprout blog into 82 languages, and have seen some amazing results. This filter helps you filter your site performance by country and compare site rankings between two countries.
8. The Devices filter shows you the devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile, used to access your site. You can compare search figures between the devices to get advanced insights. Use this filter to optimize your site for devices often used to access your website. For example, if mobile devices make up most of your searches, you can focus on improving your mobile user experience and creating faster loading pages.
9. The Search Type filter reports the volume of searches for web, images, and videos. Let’s say you own an art gallery but are ranking low for image searches. You can then optimize your alt tags and image titles to help improve your image search rankings.
10. The Dates filter helps you set up a date range. You can compare site performance between two date ranges, just as you would do in Google Analytics.

(b) Links to your Site

This section reports the websites that link to your URLs and the keywords used by most backlinks.

You can gain a lot of valuable insights from this report.

Here are the two biggest takeaways:

• You’ll know whether you should be disavowing backlinks that look suspicious (pharma or drug enhancement sites, adult themed websites, foreign language sites, PBNs, thin content sites, link farms, unrelated spammy sites, and other sites that practice black-hat SEO).
• You’ll get a good perspective on who is linking to you and what they’re linking to. This information can help you increase the number and quality of backlinks by targeting similar sites or by increasing engagement/advertising on the sites that already link to you the most.

(c) Internal Links

This section reports on the number of internal links pointing to a page.

Here’s how you can use this report in SEO:

1. Many internal links to a web page inform Google that this is an important page. As a result, that page should rank higher than other pages for keywords present on that page.
   
2. You should focus on building internal links to important pages that do not have any or many internal links pointing to them. Avoid sending all your links to the “about” or “contact us” page. Instead, use internal links to strengthen your deep internal pages, such as content-rich articles or information pages.
   
3. Pages that have internal links pointing to them, but have been deleted or renamed, should be identified and redirected (using 301 redirects).

(d) Manual Actions

This report informs you when Google penalizes your site for any spam or black-hat techniques.

Keep in mind that a “manual action” is different from an algorithmic penalty. Algorithm penalties are automatic and will not be reflected in this section. Manual penalties, on the other hand, are more severe and require you to take extensive action.

After fixing the reported issues and ensuring your site contains meaningful content, you must file a reconsideration request to get your site ranking back in the SERPs.

Read Google’s Quality Guidelines to learn what Google considers to be webspam.

(e) International Targeting

This section is applicable only if your website serves translated/modified-for-a-country or regional content for users in different geographies beyond your main location.

For example, if your website attracts viewers from the UK, you may want to present a UK-English version to visitors from that area.

Or if you sell to customers from France and Germany, you should translate your website into those languages for better targeting.

In such cases, your web developer will employ the hreflang tag to inform Google to serve the appropriate page according to geography.

This GSC section reports on the accuracy of your hreflang tags. This information can help you fix and optimize your coding.

(f) Mobile Usability

This report lists problems that might be keeping your website from delivering a positive web experience on mobile devices.

Google reports on elements that are too close together, content that is wider than the screen, content for which the viewport is not set, and other places where the text is too small to read.

Everything in this report matters. Mobile optimization is a significant ranking factor, and your website needs to be totally up to par.

For SEO purposes, fix all the issues reported, and make sure that your website delivers a great experience on every device.

Part C: Google Index

This section reports on how Google is crawling and indexing your website and keywords.

(a) Index Status

The indexation status displays the URLs indexed by Google, blocked URLs (by your robots.txt) and any URLs that have been removed.

If you come across pages that are not indexed or blocked, you can find out what’s happening on your end and correct the errors.

If there are any indexation issues, you may want to examine your robots.txt file or look into the accuracy of your sitemap.

(b) Content Keywords

This section reports on the keywords in your content and their significance in search results.

Drilling down into each keyword will help you understand the top pages where that particular keyword or its variants are situated.

The report helps you understand the keywords and pages that are not ranking well. Such reports help you optimize your content by introducing keywords and variants in the title, headers, alt tags, on page SEO, tags, and content.

(c) Blocked Resources

Google needs complete access to your javascript, CSS, JQuery, image files, etc., in order to index and render your pages correctly.

If you block Google from accessing any of these resources either by disallowing access in your robots.txt file or by any other means, you will stop Google from indexing and rendering your pages to viewers.

This section informs you where the blocked resources are hosted.

Unblock whatever is necessary to enhance your search engine rankings.

(d) Remove URLs

Some areas of your website must be kept private and away from the prowling eyes of the search engines.

For example, you may want to prevent search engines from crawling your members’ private data, third-party content, or content that is of no value to your viewers.

The tool in this section informs Google that its bot must not index such URLs. After filling in the “Temporarily Hide” field, you can specify whether you want to remove the URL from the cache or search results or both. You can even temporarily hide URLs and make them indexable later.

Removing URLs containing thin, valueless, and third party content can really improve your SEO, and blocking search engines from accessing your members’ private data will help protect your brand.

Part D: Crawl

This section reports on Googlebot’s website crawl rate, the errors it picked up, sitemap, robots, URL parameters, and the indispensable Fetch as Google tool.

(a) Crawl Errors

Here’s what you’ll see in this section:

• the last date Google crawled your site
• server errors (Request Timed Out or instances of your site blocking Google)
• Soft 404 errors (the URL does not exist, but the server does NOT return a 404 page)
• URL pointing to a nonexistent page
• URLs that redirect to an irrelevant page
• URLs that are blocked for Googlebot mobile

Fixing any errors will help improve your SEO.

(b) Crawl Stats

Crawl stats report on Googlebot’s daily crawl on your website, pages crawled, kilobytes downloaded, and the time it took to download a page.

Not all of this information is actionable, but there are some things that you want to pay attention to.

As a whole, this report shows how active Googlebot is on your website and how heavy or light your pages are.

I’m assuming you have already used Page Speed Insights for tweaking your loading speed and are adding fresh and helpful content on a regular basis. If not, run your website through this test, and make any improvements that it recommends.

(c) Fetch as Google

The Fetch as Google tool allows you to test the way Google fetches your URL and renders it.

Here’s how to use the Fetch as Google Tool:

• Enter the URL you want Google to fetch.
• The Fetch Button checks whether the URL connects and whether the tool encountered errors, redirects, or any security loopholes. It checks the code but does not render the page.
• The Fetch and Render button fetches the page (and checks for all the issues mentioned above)  and renders it.
• You can fetch the page for Desktop, Smartphones/Handhelds and even check the Mobile XHTML/WML (older hypertextual computer languages for mobile). cHTML for mobile is mostly used on Japanese mobile phones, so you may not have to use this feature.
• After you Fetch and Render a page, you should, if required, submit it to Google for indexation.

Google can return any of the following statuses:

• Complete: Google successfully crawled your page.
• Partial: Implies that you have blocked Google from accessing some of your coding resources such as Javascript or JQuery, etc. These should be unblocked; otherwise, Google cannot render your page correctly.
• Redirected: You set up a redirect to another page (maybe because you may have deleted the page or some other reason).
• Not Found: Google could not find the URL on the server.
• Not Authorized: Google (and other viewers) have been blocked from accessing the URL.
• Blocked: Your robots.txt blocks Google from accessing your URL.
• Unreachable or Temporarily Unreachable: Google’s request got timed out.
• Error: Some error prevented Google from accessing the URL.

When should you use the Fetch as Google tool and resubmit pages for reindexation?

• After fixing any of the statuses described above
• After optimizing a page with copy, images, or videos
• After adding a new category/sub-category to your site
• Whenever you optimize your site for mobile (select the Fetch for Smartphones option)
• When you change your sitemap.xml or your robots.txt files
• When you set up 301 redirects
• When you buy an SSL encryption, which changes your http into https

(d) Robots.txt Tester

The robots.txt file (http://ift.tt/1jLiEV5) informs search engines about the pages they should crawl (and those they shouldn’t).

When a crawl bot looks at this page, it will crawl anything that’s not disallowed.

For example, you don’t want search engines to view your CGI-BIN, admin login, Forgot Password, members’ private data, and some other areas of your website.

To prevent search engines from accessing such areas, you have to write a robots.txt file.

The robots.txt Tester section tests your robots.txt file and reports errors and warnings. It also allows you to test pages to check for any blocking.

(e) Sitemaps

A sitemap.xml is a critical part of SEO. It informs search engines about the URLs on your site along with the date they were changed. It helps search engines crawl and index your URLs efficiently.

This section in GSC allows you to submit Sitemaps. It also informs you about the number of URLs that were submitted and indexed.

Essentially, the tool helps you fine-tune your sitemaps.xml file to ensure all your URLs are indexed.

(f) URL Parameters

Quick warning:  Work on this section only if you know how to code. Otherwise, you should ask your web developer to handle it for you.

URL parameters are values that are dynamically entered per URL. For example, if you own a product website that sells globally, you may set a Country parameter that differentiates pages that should be served in different geographies.

This GSC section allows you to tell Google how to handle your URLs.

Like I said earlier, this is a technical area, so don’t go near it without your web developer. Setting the wrong parameters can ruin your SEO.

Part E: Security Issues

Security issues are a big concern with nearly any website today.

Google takes the issue very seriously. You may have seen warning screens like this one:

Google also displays these warnings in the SERPs.

Sometimes, websites are flagged for phishing.

If your site has been compromised, hacked, or is simply vulnerable to hackers, you’ll find out about it in this section.

If, on the other hand, you see this message, you’re clean.

What if your site is hacked?

Check out this video.

Hacked sites can be costly to fix, both in time and money. Thankfully, Google has a helpful tutorial on the process, which you can explore here.

Here is the process summarized:

Part F:  Other Resources

“Other Resources” is a collection of Google’s tools, helpers, and testers.

Here is a list of all these pages as summarized in GSC:

Structured Data Testing Tool	Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to check that Google can correctly parse your structured data markup and display it in search results.
Structured Data Markup Helper	Not sure how to start with adding structured data markup to your HTML? Try this point-and-click tool.
Email Markup Tester	Validate the structured data contents of an HTML email using Email Markup Tester.
Google My Business	Make sure your business looks great on Google Search, Maps and Google+ for free.
Google Merchant Center	The place to upload your product data to Google and make it available to Google Product Search and other Google services.
PageSpeed Insights	Use PageSpeed Insights to find out how to make your web pages fast on all devices.
Custom Search	Harness the power of Google to create a customized search experience for your own website.
Google Domains	Find a domain name and build a website with Google Domains.
Webmaster Academy	Learn to create a great website with valuable content and have it findable in Google Search.

 

I consider all of these resources helpful but not essential.

Don’t feel like you have to spend a lot of time on each of them. For example, if you’re not selling any products on your website, then you have no need to check out “Google Merchant Center.”

Choose the ones that are most important to your business and SEO, and focus on those.

Here are my four main suggestions, in order of importance:

1. Pagespeed Insights: Use this tool to improve your site loading time, and make an instant improvement in SEO.
2. Google My Business: If you run a local brick-and-mortar shop, check this out. It’s essential.
3. Structured Data Testing Tool and Structured Data Markup Helper: Once you’ve mastered the basics of SEO, move on to structured data to further enhance your website.
4. Webmaster Academy: You can never learn too much about SEO, right?

Conclusion

If you’ve read through this guide, you know more about GSC than most people on the planet. Even better, you can use this information to improve your SEO, your website, and your business.

GSC is a powerful tool, and the more you learn how to use it, the better an SEO you become. So what do you think, are you going to start using it to improve your rankings?

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How to Write 5 or More Articles a Week and Not Burn Out

If you’ve tried (and failed) at blogging, don’t feel bad.

You’re not alone. Creating content, especially good content, is hard work. It takes a long time. Most of the time, you don’t see instant rewards.

So, how do some people write three, five, or even ten articles every week?

You might think that they work 80-hour weeks, are blessed with some genius gene, or have an army of assistants at their beck and call.

The reality is prolific writers are normal people. The difference lies in their habits—habits that have allowed them to repeat a pattern of success every day.

Do you want to write five or more articles a week? Studies show that there are massive marketing benefits to doing so.

Take a look at this data from Hubspot. Their research revealed that businesses who blogged 11 or more times per month had the largest amount of inbound traffic.

Source

But it’s not just traffic they gained. Traffic can be a vanity metric. These companies got more leads too!

Source

Content is like the gift that keeps on giving.

If you push yourself to produce content now, you’ll be reaping the rewards for months and years to come.

Take a look at another piece of Hubspot research. They discovered that they were generating more contacts from old posts than they were from new ones.

Source

The path to content marketing success is persistent, repeated content generation.

And in order to achieve persistent, repeated content generation, you’ve got to learn to write more.

That brings me to the point of this article. I want to show you some of the methods I’ve used to produce thousands of blog articles over the years.

Consider this your personal cheat sheet. By using one, two, or all these tips, you’ll be able to produce vastly more content than you are right now.

And here’s the best part: you won’t burn out.

Burnout is a huge cause of failure. Remember, content marketing is a long term commitment. Fizzling out after a few weeks of red-hot intensity isn’t going to give you the results you need.

So, let’s dive into the tactics. Here is how you can write five or more insanely good articles every week and keep at it for the long term.

Create a goal, and make time for it

Let’s start with the obvious. You’ve got to set a goal for yourself.

Maybe you won’t aim for five posts a week. Maybe you’ll shoot for three at first. That’s fine.

The important thing is to set a goal.

• According to goal experts, we should first establish a vision of what we want to achieve. In this case, the vision is five articles a week.
• Second, we clarify that goal in our minds.
• Third, we determine what we need to do in order to accomplish that goal.
• Finally, we need to spend time on that goal.

Source

Notice that critical point in the circle of goal success is “spend time on the important tasks.”

For you, the important task is writing. In order to achieve your goal, you must take time.

The same is true for any goal. You must “get to work” and “stick to it,” which takes time.

Source

Set aside time to write every day

It might not sound all that exciting, but it works. Persistence. The more often you do something, the better you’ll become at it.

According to Angela Duckworth, a psychologist who specializes in the subject of personal grit and self control,

“You don’t need to have talent to succeed. You need to have persistence.“

By persisting every day in your commitment to write, you’ll eventually reach the point where you are easily whipping out five articles a week or more.

I want to challenge you to write every day. Writing every day is mental training. The more you do it, the stronger and more powerful you will become.

Brian Clark of Copyblogger has a simple and memorable “10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer.” Here’s his advice:

Source

Pretty simple, right?

That’s all there is to it.

Write every day, and you’ll soon be achieving your goal of five articles a week.

Create a deadline for yourself

Many of us work better if we have a date and time by which we have to finish.

Let’s say your boss came to you and said, “Can you create the report, please?”

You say, “Sure, when do you need it by?”

Your boss replies, “Oh, whenever.”

When will you get the report done?

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a month.

You don’t have a deadline, so your boss’s request might get shoved aside in favor of more urgent tasks.

But what if your boss said, “I need the report by Tuesday at 3 p.m.”? Then what happens?

Hopefully, you’ll get it to your boss by Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The same deadline-setting power applies to writing articles.

Break your five-article goal into manageable chunks—perhaps 1 hour of writing every day. Put that writing hour into your schedule. By 3 p.m. every day, you should have written, say, 500 words.

Easy enough, right?

Deadlines aren’t tyrannical methods of cruel and unusual punishment. They are a tool to help us achieve our goals.

Shut down all distractions while you write

Distraction-free writing is the way to produce content quickly.

A single distraction can cost you anywhere from 27 seconds to 25 minutes!

If you’re fielding distractions while you write, you’ll never be able to produce content that is coherent and effective.

What kinds of things might be distracting you? Here’s a survey of what often distracts employees at work.

Source

Some distractions are necessary and useful. But all distractions will impair your ability to write content.

Instead of working, many employees are avoiding work by involving themselves in harmless but time-sucking activities.

Source

Distractions can jeopardize our lives (in the case of driving.)

Source

But distractions also jeopardize our productivity.

An Atlassian study claims that 80% of workplace interruptions are trivial, and only 60% of our time is spent in a productive way.

What’s the solution?

• Shut the door.
• Turn off your phone.
• Close down your email.
• Block out your schedule.
• Tell people not to interrupt you.

Avoiding distractions will enhance your writing and allow you to achieve your goal.

Write at the same time every day

Your brain gets used to doing the same thing at the same time every day.

If you train your brain to prepare for writing action and engagement at the same time daily, you’ll start writing better and faster.

This principle is known as muscle memory. You can use this mental trick to get better at a task—even writing.  

The key to it is to repeat the same activity at the same time on a daily basis.

William Faulkner, a noted American author, is reported to have said,

“I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.”

Source

What worked for Faulkner may work for you too.

Write down thoughts and inspirations as soon as you get them

A lot of writing time is wasted trying to come up with ideas.

Instead of burning precious writing time thinking of ideas, create a list of ideas beforehand. Then, when it’s time to write, you’ll know exactly what you’re supposed to do.

Many writers get into the habit of carrying around a notebook to write down ideas as they come to them. Try to do the same. You may be surprised at all the good ideas you come up with when you’re not even trying.

Write only about topics that interest you

If you’re trying to write about boring topics, you’ll have trouble getting very far.

You’ll be banging your head against a wall if you try to produce content you’re not passionate about.

It might be time to change your focus or to select topics that do interest you.

When you’re truly interested in the subject matter, you’ll be able to produce content quickly and easily.

Write in the morning (or whenever your mind is the most energetic)

Productivity researchers explain that we should channel our energy to get more accomplished in less time.

Take some time to find out when you’re at your sharpest mentally. Use that time for writing. You will be able to write better content, and you’ll do so with energy to spare.

You’ll hit your goals, and you won’t burn out doing it.

Write on an empty stomach

Neuroscientists from Yale claim that the brain works better when you feel empty rather than full.

The hunger hormone, known as ghrelin, can activate the brain’s hypothalamus and hippocampus, allowing you to research better, faster, and more effectively.

While you should certainly eat enough to maintain your energy, you may want to delay that big meal until after you’ve had your writing session.

Make up a writing ritual

Writing greats from history have used writing rituals or routines to prime their brains for writing success.

Habit researcher Charles Duhigg has determined that positive routines can help us develop constructive habits—even the habit of writing.

Source

Why not invent your own writing ritual? It doesn’t need to be anything complicated or serious. Maybe it involves coffee, a shower, a playlist, or something else.

Doing the same thing in the same way at the same time, as you’ll remember from above, can prime the brain for repeated success.

Set a timer

Try the timer trick.

Set a timer for 45 minutes to an hour. Use that time to do nothing but write.

When the timer goes off, you may be surprised to see how much you’ve accomplished.

Get help with the tasks you don’t like doing

Let’s face it. Not every writing task is enjoyable and fulfilling.

If you’re forcing yourself to do unpleasant writing tasks, burnout will be much more likely.

Instead, outsource these tasks to someone else. You can hire someone on Fiverr or assign tasks to your assistant.

Here are some aspects of writing that you may want to outsource:

• Copyediting/Proofreading
• Formatting
• Finding images
• Adding images
• Designing images
• Fact checking
• Researching
• Outlining
• Creating titles
• Uploading articles to your blog

Get inspired by a guest-posting opportunity

Getting a guest-posting gig will provide a surge of inspiration and will add to your writing passion.

Suddenly, you have a deadline, someone who’s counting on you, and a new audience with whom you get to share your story.

Instead of simply waiting for this inspiration to come your way, actively seek it out.

Find a music playlist that gets you going

Music can improve your productivity like few other things can.

When it’s writing time, grab your headphones, cue your writing playlist, and get going. Some educators have discovered that the right kind of music can “trigger creativity, awareness, motivation, and poetry.”

Check out these Spotify playlists that could improve your writing.

Write your outline in advance

One time-draining hurdle for writing is creating an outline.

As time-intensive as it is, an outline helps to structure your writing and improve the flow of your content.

Try creating your outline ahead of time, and see if it helps you write faster. When you have an outline in place, your brain is already familiar with the way you should structure ideas.

When it comes time to write the content, all you have to do is add verbal substance to the outline.

It’s simple and fast, and it keeps you from burning out.

Check your typing speed, and set a goal to improve it by 5 wpm each week

Your typing speed matters.

If you’re not the world’s greatest typist, there’s no need to despair.

Follow this simple path to improvement.

First, take a typing speed test. This simple test from Key Hero should do the job.

1. Write down your score—you don’t want to forget it.
2. Set a new goal. Aim for five words per minute faster than your original speed.
3. As you type throughout the week, keep your goal in mind. Try to type just a little bit faster than you’re used to typing.
4. One week from the time you took your first test, take the test again.
5. How did you do? Chances are you saw some improvement in your typing.
6. Keep setting your goal higher every week until you’re able to achieve speeds of 60-80 words per minute.

Watch cat videos

Can cat videos help you write better?

Apparently so, according to one study from the University of Indiana. Researchers found that after watching videos of cute cats, workers experienced improved moods, better energy, and more positive emotions.

The net effect? Greater productivity and a higher quality of work.

If you’re into cat videos, don’t feel bad about it. Instead, watch these cuddly critters, and then write some great content.

Here’s a cute cat playlist to get you started.

Conclusion

You can write better. You can write faster. You can write five articles a day.

And when you get there, you might not be able to stop!

When I first started blogging, I was really slow. Writing was painful.

Today, writing is like second nature. I’ve done it so much that I can’t help but do it every day. This article, which is more than 2,300 words, took me a little over an hour to write.

There is something energizing and fulfilling in producing content that helps people to improve. Plus, the benefits to your business will convince you that daily writing is the way to go.

What’s your experience? Do you aim to write a certain number of articles every week? Do you think that five a week is too high or too low?

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A Step-By-Step Process to Tell Compelling Stories and Improve Conversion Rates

I’ve noticed that there’s something that scares most marketers.

We love our data.

Most marketers find it fun to review their traffic, engagement, and subscriber numbers. It allows them to test new things and measure their effect.

Data is logical.

But when it comes to content marketing, there’s a component that doesn’t always seem logical: storytelling.

I’m not talking about writing a fiction novel. I am talking about having the ability to write about even the most boring topics in a fun-to-read way.

It’s something that many marketers, even good ones, struggle to do.

Do you also have trouble with this part of creating content?

I see you nodding.

I’ll be honest: that’s a problem. If you can’t write persuasively, you’ll struggle to get subscribers, traffic, etc.

The good news is that it’s a skill that can be improved.

And if do it well, you can create content that sparks conversations across your niche. You’ll find that dozens of blogs start mentioning and linking to your content with very little effort on your part.

Although this skill might seem like something abstract and impossible to improve upon, it can be translated into a proven process that you can follow. This makes developing it a lot easier.

In this post, I’m going to show you that process, step by step.

If you implement it, your content should produce more traffic, referrals, backlinks, and subscribers. 

Step 1: Identify and describe the problem (3 parts)

A story can be really interesting to you but completely uninteresting to someone else, depending on how it’s told. That’s because we care about different things and enjoy things in different ways.

When you’re creating content, there are two places you can start:

• The problem (that you intend to solve for your readers)
• Your readers

Either can work, but starting with your readers is the most logical place to begin.

The more you understand your audience, the more you can tailor your content to them. Ideally, you want to be able to answer questions such as:

• What are their passions?
• What are their biggest problems?
• Whom do they care about most?
• What do they do for entertainment?

You can figure out some of this by doing some basic demographic and psychographic research.

The ideal way to figure out these answers is to talk face-to-face with some of your readers.

There are three ways to do this:

1. Know some people in your target audience in your daily offline life. Offer to take them out to lunch and talk to them.
2. Ask email subscribers to answer a survey, or have a quick chat with them. Offer a small reward if they agree (even a $5 gift card could be enough).
3. Host webinars. Not only are webinars great because they convert subscribers into customers, but they are also great because they give you a chance to actually talk with your most engaged readers.

Once you’re having a conversation, you can ask most of those questions above although you should try to phrase them in a way relevant to your niche.

For example, since I write about marketing, I could ask questions such as:

• Why are you learning marketing?
• What do you hope to accomplish as a marketer?
• How will marketing affect other areas of your life?

Analyze the answers from 10-20 different people, and you’ll start to see patterns.

Next, identify the problem and the pain: Each piece of content should solve one specific problem. And all problems produce pain, which is where the emotion behind storytelling factors in.

If you understand the pain, you can explain the problem better than most readers can themselves. If a reader sees that you can do that, they’ll believe that you have the solution.

All content and stories should start with the pain because that’s how you draw in the reader.

Before you start writing, you should be able to fill in the blanks:

The problem I solve for my reader is ______________________.

And:

The reason my reader is motivated to solve this problem is because _______________(the pain).

Finally, you need to put that pain in the context of your reader.

For example, say you write about fitness. You identify that many gym-goers get wrist pain while bench-pressing. The pain is a clear physical one, and your reader wants to solve this problem.

But think of the difference in the pain for:

• A casual gym-goer
• A high level athlete

For the casual gym-goer, the pain is annoying because it makes it harder to get into shape.

However, for a high level athlete, the pain isn’t just physical—it’s preventing them from improving and achieving important goals in their life.

You can’t write a story to appeal to both audiences at the same time. That’s why the first part of this section was so important.

With all this identified, you can move onto the next step, which is where you can actually start the story.

Step 2: Drive the pain home

Now you’re beginning your content.

While you might want to remind your readers of the pain throughout your story, the intro is where you need to drive it home.

You want to use everything you’ve learned from step 1 and describe the pain your reader is facing in great detail.

Copywriters often call this “amplifying” the pain.

Let’s look at an example. Here’s the intro from an article on Smart Blogger.

I’ve highlighted a few different things here:

1. A common fear the readers of that blog have.
2. Illustrating the pain and frustration his readers feel (describing why).
3. Amplifying the pain by connecting this specific pain (little traffic from each piece of content) to a bigger pain (failing to get traffic and subscribers on the overall blog).

So, how do you do this for your own content?

There’s no set formula, but to start, make a list of:

• The problem
• The pains specific to that problem
• The bigger pains related to the problem

Remember earlier, our example problem was that our athlete was getting wrist pain in the gym.

At this point, you’d have some notes on your outline, like this:

• The problem – You can’t work out effectively and can’t make progress in the gym.
• The specific pains – Sharp wrist pain every time you try to bench-press a decent weight.
• The bigger pains – If you can’t work out, you can’t achieve the level of play that you want. If you can’t get rid of this pain, you’ll see your teammates and opponents surpass you because they aren’t limited by it.

Those three points come together really naturally from there.

After pain, offer relief: You’ve effectively “broken down” your reader. They’re feeling the pain and worried about what happens if they can’t solve the problem.

But now, you turn it around and offer an answer. You’re the only one who understands their pain, and you know how to solve it. Why wouldn’t they be interested in what you have to say?

Make your transition, just like in the example post from above:

There are two parts to this:

• State your solution
• Give an optimistic example

In the case above, the author’s solution to traffic problems was to leverage Slideshare. Then, he gave an example of Michael Hyatt getting 70,000 views on his content on Slideshare.

In our example, the solution might be to fix our athlete’s bench-pressing technique. You could give a personal example or an example of a student who was able to get past their pain and add 50 pounds to their bench press within three months of implementing the solution.

Essentially, you’re saying that you understand their end goal and now want to show them how to connect the dots.

Step 3: Craft a narrative

Now we’re into the meat of the story.

It’s time to not only give your solution but explain why it works. The more context you can give, the better.

For example, Alex Turnbull (Groove HQ blogger) wanted to write a post about improving conversion rates through design.

But to make it more compelling, he crafted a narrative—a before and after story. He went through the steps that Groove used to increase their conversion rates by 100%.

If you can give detailed examples throughout your solution, you’ll make the story much more interesting.

However, it’s not always possible, so focus mainly on providing the best possible solution for your reader and then add examples if possible.

Step 4: You can only be compelled if you believe in the story

Here’s a part that many marketers miss.

If you did the first few steps right, your readers will read your content with an open mind. After all, you seem to really understand their problem and pain and claim to have a solution that works.

If you want your readers to be ready to take action at the end of your content or landing page, you need to give proof.

On landing pages, this is typically done with testimonials and case studies.

For blog posts, you do this with data and research throughout your story.

The more evidence you can provide to show that your solution should work for your reader, the more likely they are to take action.

For example, I wrote a post about “How I Generated $332,640 in 3 Months From Instagram.”

In this post, I outlined the strategy I took, but I also provided proof—a screenshot of the sales I made:

When you include proof like that, your reader will believe that your solution worked for you and thus might work for them too.

Want to make your story bulletproof? The key factor above is that the data and personal examples show that your story is true and that it worked in the main scenario you’re writing about.

Sometimes, that leaves some readers with the question: “But will it work for me?”

That’s where you need to pile on the evidence.

In that same article about using Instagram, I shared multiple examples (case studies) of other businesses using the exact same model to achieve great results:

The point is to remove as much doubt from readers’ minds as possible.

Step 5: Inspire action and bring it home

Your story (content) is essentially complete at this point.

You’ve done the following so far:

• Described the pain
• Offered hope of a solution
• Detailed your solution
• Backed it up with examples and data

As you know, simply reading a blog post alone is almost always useless.

The real value for the readers is in applying the information they learned from your posts.

Some readers are self-motivated and will figure out how to do that. However, many of your readers won’t know what to do unless you tell them (or at least give them a hint).

You’ve probably noticed I end all my posts with some sort of a conclusion. In that conclusion, I include a call to action.

For example:

It’s your chance to remind your readers of the main steps that they should take to apply whatever solution you showed them.

This is also an opportunity to include a call to action for anything further that might help them.

You might tell readers to try some strategy you laid out. And you can also include a call to action to sign up for a course you offer, subscribe for an email list, or download a content upgrade.

Conclusion

Truly compelling content inspires readers to act on your advice.

Making a big impact in your readers’ lives will help you get more traffic and turn more of those readers into subscribers and customers.

While creative storytelling isn’t the strength of most marketers, we’re not trying to write a fiction masterpiece here.

Instead, you should aim to tell stories to intrigue readers so that they keep reading and then take action. If you follow the 5-step process I’ve shown you, you’ll be able to do exactly that.

If you’ve read or written any great pieces of content lately, share them below so that we can all see more examples of compelling stories.

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