Episode 51Nov 4, 2023· 1:06:56

An SEO Anaylsis of a Blog with Steve Economides

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About this episode

Steve shares valuable insights into optimizing website content, improving readability, and increasing search engine rankings. We'll dive into the importance of keyword-focused subheads, effective headlines, and utilizing SEO tools to evaluate domain authority. Join us as we learn from Steve's expertise and discover how to write a blog that ranks. Let's get started! More Show Notes From This Episode: What’s up my…

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Full transcript

00:00

Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show!

00:07

What's up my bloggy friends?

00:26

Famous Ashley Grant here and I just want to welcome you to the Bloggy Friends show.

00:30

We're so excited to have you join us on this journey of sharing our knowledge and experiences with you.

00:34

Whether you're a blogger, a content creator, or just someone who's interested in learning more about the digital world, we've got something for you.

00:40

So grab your notebook and a pen to take some notes or just sit back and take in all the amazing information and ideas we're about to share with you.

00:46

Let's get into it.

00:49

Alright, so Steve, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you could be here. Can you do us a favor and tell us what it is you do?

00:54

What do I do? Well, I'm doing less and less work for money these days and more and more work because I just want to.

01:03

Gosh, my wife and I have been married 41 years. We have five kids.

01:08

I've had several careers. Started off as a graphic designer, working for a printing company, then worked for several big design studios, ended up being an account exec for Fortune 500 companies.

01:22

I serviced Motorola, Intel, a big hospital chain, and a large equipment rental company and did that for about 23 years.

01:33

And then in 2003, we started a writing business. We always had a side hustle. It wasn't really a hustle to make money.

01:42

It was hustle to help people. We help people get out of debt. And we ran a ministry at our church.

01:49

It was called the financial counseling ministry, but it was basically a ministry to help people who were struggling financially to get their life right sided and get their finances in good shape.

02:00

And that turned into a newsletter that we wrote called Home Economizer in 2003. We started launching that and became our website.

02:10

And a year after we launched, actually 14 months, because I was in the marketing business and advertising business, I was pitching. And so I pitched newspapers and I pitched TV shows and radio stations.

02:23

And 14 months after we started, we got on Good Morning America. And we had 11,000 visitors to our website in one day when we normally were having like 100 or 200.

02:35

And that led to a book contract. And we've since written three books on personal finance. One is called America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money.

02:43

The second is Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America's Cheapest Family. And the third one is the Money Smart Family System Teaching Financial Independence to Children of All Ages.

02:52

And so we've written and have had a website since 2003. It's now called Money Smart Family. And we get probably about 20 to 30,000 visitors a month.

03:05

And we make some money with that. But what happened in 2015 is we were speaking all over the country and we got tired of traveling and hauling our books around and selling them.

03:17

And so I was talking to a friend who wanted to learn how to write a book and how to build a speaking business. And he was running an SEO company.

03:26

And he asked me to help him with his SEO company. Now, 2015, so I've been running the website for 12 years. I thought I knew SEO. I was submitting.

03:37

I had a little button to submit to search engines every week. And I wrote my content. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just writing what we wanted to write about.

03:46

Well, we did a little tool on my site. And it turns out that I had one blog that was written about Walmart EverStart battery warranty.

04:02

And that was getting us 3,000 visitors a month. And I had no clue. I just wrote about this because I liked the battery and we bought it for our cars and they lasted a long time and the warranty was great.

04:12

Well, that just flipped the switch in my mind going, I did that by accident. What if I did it on purpose?

04:20

And so that started the last eight years of not only doing it for our site, but doing it for other people's websites.

04:28

And that's what we're going to talk about today. As a matter of fact, we're going to go and take a look at the very popular website.

04:39

But we're going to tear it apart gently. And we're going to look at tech. So when I deal with websites, the first step is a technical SEO audit.

04:52

We look at the technical side of it. Are there any broken links? Are there broken images? Internal linking. Is that set up? Are there page speed issues?

05:04

So we look at technical. Then I look at the content and we evaluate the content to look at what's ranking, why it's ranking, and can it rank better?

05:14

And then we'll talk later on. I'll share some tools that I use. And then we'll finally look at how do you do this on purpose, intentional blogging, so that you pick a topic, you have a pretty good idea what the search volume is.

05:31

And you know by looking at somebody who's on the first page of Google about how much traffic they're getting and then what you can expect.

05:40

So it's a totally different strategy. We're flipping it upside down. Instead of writing what we want to write about, we find out what people are searching for.

05:49

And then we write about that. And you can usually mix the two together. Pick a topic, but then find out if people are searching for that or searching for a slightly related topic and then write about that.

06:01

Still write what your heart is saying, but still get it so that it reaches more people.

06:06

Well that's definitely what we're all excited to hear about. And I'm honestly very nervous because you've already told me before we started recording that the quote unquote popular website that you'll be talking about is mine. So I'm the one in the hot seat today.

06:20

And that makes me nervous and excited. So I'm interested to hear everything you're about to share. But also, like I said, admittedly very nervous.

06:28

Reader's Digest version of my background is I've been doing writing since 2007. I went, I guess you'd call it pro that year in the sense that I was starting to be paid to be a writer.

06:38

But I actually started doing it online around 2009. And only in the last, I'd say, well, the better part of a decade have I been writing for my clients in a way that is supposed to make it SEO optimized, all that good stuff.

06:51

But, you know, I'm like the Cobblers kids that always has their shoes needing to be fixed. I never take the time to work on my own.

07:01

So yeah, I'm anxious to hear what you're about to say about my website, but please be gentle or I'll cut you off. I'm just kidding.

07:10

I'm just kidding. I'm a good job.

07:12

I'll take it.

07:14

We're all learning.

07:16

And it's, it's okay.

07:19

It's okay. All right, so I'm going to share my screen. And I've got a whole series of windows to go through, hopefully in some type of logical manner.

07:28

So here we go. Let me see if I can do this without blowing something up, breaking the internet.

07:35

We're going to do a window. There we go.

07:39

Okay, here's the website.

07:42

Here it is. Welcome to the famous famous Ashley Grant.

07:46

Now we're talking at this point. I'm just looking technically at the site.

07:52

Now Google has some parameters. It's called the algorithm.

07:57

They're about 200 points. Maybe there's more now. I don't know. It used to be 200 points that Google evaluates whenever they look at a web page.

08:07

And I've got the, they also produced a manual website evaluators guide.

08:13

So in some cases, websites are actually looked at by a human rather than just letting the algorithm do.

08:20

And what they say is that the website is supposed to be set up.

08:25

And I'm showing you a tool used to be free. It costs about ten dollars a year now called SEO Minion. This is a Chrome extension.

08:34

And this tells me a lot of details about the page itself.

08:39

I'm going to zoom in a little bit so you can see what I'm looking at.

08:43

So this tells me right here that you have 222 words on your page.

08:48

That's a little bit light for a page that's going to rank for any type of search volume.

08:54

But it will probably rank for famous Ashley Grant if somebody searched for that.

08:59

Because your title, your meta title is famous Ashley Grant. Let's get internet famous.

09:06

Now your header one is right here. Welcome to famous Ashley Grant 2.0.

09:12

Now if we look at the source code on this, look to the source code window and we search for H1.

09:21

That's header one. This is what's called a tag.

09:26

And Google bots look for these little carets and the tag.

09:30

And they're looking to see what it is that you've put in your header one tag because this is very important.

09:37

This is like the top priority for Google. When it crawls your site, it wants to know what your header one is

09:42

because the header one and the meta description tell Google what your site is all about.

09:48

So if you're selling widgets and you sell widgets for five dollars and I don't know what a widget is.

09:57

I don't know what a widget is on WordPress, but I'm talking about a little mechanical device.

10:01

But your headline says welcome to ABC website.

10:09

That doesn't tell Google what you're really selling and what the website is all about.

10:14

So we'd like to be clever with our headlines and our titles.

10:20

But in the world of SEO, we've got to think clever second and think optimized first.

10:27

So right now your website is probably ranks for and we'll actually find out if it ranks for Ashley Grant.

10:33

It should. But right now you're telling Google that your website is all about famous Ashley Grant.

10:41

And that's fine. That's what it is.

10:45

And this this goes into it also goes down here and it tells me if you've got.

10:52

If you've got your images tagged, I don't I didn't look for that, but it's it should tell me.

10:59

Anyway, it's all your total images download. I can images without all text.

11:04

You do have all text on all your images and all text is just another opportunity to optimize your page

11:11

for the keyword search that you're looking for. And so image all tags are designed by Google

11:19

to help someone who is visually impaired to use a screen reader to know what what the image is about.

11:28

And so your image all tag is right here in orange. It says famous Ashley Grant.

11:33

So when a screen reader comes down, it's going to say famous Ashley Grant.

11:37

Now, I would go even further. I would say if you're wanting to rank for a writer as a writer,

11:44

I would say famous Ashley Grant, a writer or blogger standing on a bridge in the country

11:53

because you want to describe the image to somebody who's visually impaired.

11:57

And so you're helping Google, but you're also adding more content to your page.

12:02

So that's just a great picture. I'd love to be standing on that bridge. It looks beautiful.

12:07

I don't know where that is. I was as thin as I was back then.

12:12

That picture is actually from Lake Carlton Arms in Lutz, Florida.

12:16

That was where my husband and I lived for most of the beginning years of our marriage.

12:20

And then we moved up to Richmond, Kentucky.

12:23

So that that's where that bridge is, is an apartment complex down in Lutz, Florida.

12:27

That's beautiful. Beautiful. And you don't even see the mosquitoes.

12:32

So, all right. So this is just the homepage. We just looked at the homepage and we saw, you know,

12:40

you could do a better job describing what your website's about.

12:45

You could have more content. And if you wanted to rank as a writer, as a blogger,

12:54

as a, I don't know, an author, whatever, you'd have paragraphs or panels that would talk about that.

13:01

But now let's jump into what the website is. What's going on with the website, technically.

13:07

So this is SEMrush. It's a little bit of a pricey tool.

13:11

It costs somewhere between 90 and 120 dollars a month, but you can get a seven day trial for free.

13:17

So it's worth doing. So what it is, I created an audit of your site

13:22

and it tells me there's 91 errors. Now, don't get overwhelmed with this.

13:26

890 warnings and 1274 notices. But we'll just jump in here and take a look and see what's going on.

13:32

So mixed content issues. That means that on any particular page you have an HTTP link.

13:41

See right there, HTTP. Hope you can see that on a page that is an HTTPS page.

13:48

So what that means is you should go in and make those secure.

13:54

Google ranks sites or downranks sites that have insecure content on them.

14:00

So minor issue, but this would tell you all the links and it seems like it's images.

14:07

I don't know why. So you have a CDN probably serving images from an Amazon web server and they are secure.

14:15

So just something to be aware of. It's not going to take your site down, but it is going to cause it not to rank as well.

14:24

20 internal links are broken. So you got links from one page to another.

14:29

Oh, they're going to your, it's all your contact page. So your link to your contact page is broken.

14:36

So if we click this. It should give us a 404 error.

14:43

So we got to find out where your contact page is and fix that.

14:47

Someone told me to delete it. Someone told me that I shouldn't have a contact page if I don't want people to randomly contact me and spam me.

14:56

Okay. As far as Google best practices are concerned.

15:01

There are a minimum of like four website, four pages that a website should have.

15:07

Obviously the homepage that tells what you're all about. There should be an about page or I'm sorry, web homepage that tells you what the site is about.

15:16

An about page that gives credibility and visibility to whoever is creating it.

15:21

And this is more important if you're dealing with finances or medical stuff.

15:27

It was the medic update in 2018 where they started requiring or expecting websites to be very transparent about who was providing the information behind it.

15:38

And if they were dispensing medical advice, but the person who was writing it was not medically medical or certified in that area, those websites were really hit hard for not being credible.

15:55

But there's just a value in saying, Hey, I'm Ashley. Here's about me. Here's what I do. Here's what I've done.

16:02

Right. And then having a way to contact the website was a very important part of this transparency and and kind of.

16:13

I don't know what you want to call it. Anyway, I can't come up with the word, but it's it's it's it's an important part of having a website that Google is going to rank because you're you're available.

16:23

You are you're hiding behind something like you. Maybe you're from Pakistan and you're you know, you're a black hat SEO person and you're trying to make them think that you're actually grant this famous writer.

16:36

But you're really, you know, somebody else trying to get people's information. So it contact pages are important.

16:43

So I would I would disregard that information that somebody told you and just put it on there or make it work.

16:51

Or pages have duplicate title tags. That means that you're you're you have pages that have.

16:58

So here are two pages have the exact same URL. Oh, so you have a duplicate post.

17:06

So that's why you have dash two and they're both they're both live. So I would just get rid of one.

17:14

Oops, I don't want to go there. So that that's a minor issue. The bigger issue is the broken internal links and the missing the.

17:24

Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. And the mixed content. And these are kind of in priorities. Duplicate meta descriptions, one page return to four oh four status.

17:34

That's going to be your. Your contact page.

17:39

I don't know what this this isn't real critical, so we're going to skip over that. I'm just going to go over to warnings.

17:45

You need a plug in unminified JavaScript and CSS files makes the page load slower.

17:51

So I recommend using WP Rocket costs a little bit, but it makes pages load faster.

17:57

It puts the JavaScript it minifies makes it smaller, makes pages load faster and it puts it.

18:02

It defers JavaScript to the bottom of the page so that the top content of the page loads right away.

18:09

And we want pages to load in less than four seconds. And that's critical.

18:13

So what we're going to do right now is we're going to jump over to this window, which is Google Page Speed Insights.

18:19

And this is your home page. And this is mobile, which usually 60 to 80 percent of your visitors are going to be mobile.

18:26

And you've got a performance of 82 percent, which is good. Your accessibility, 100 percent best practices, SEO, 100 percent.

18:33

I don't think Google knows what they're talking about, but that's OK.

18:37

I think you could do better. But what they're saying is your first content paint, the first item on your page paints up in one second, which is really good.

18:45

Your largest content pain, which is your image, paints up in two seconds, which is less than four.

18:49

So that's good. The only thing they're saying is wrong with your page is that your your main image is a little bit too big.

18:56

It could be 58 kilobytes instead of 100 kilobytes. So if you click right here, you see if this will do it.

19:04

It used to be that they would resize the image. Now, this shows you how big the images.

19:10

And so if I was helping you with your website, I would say reduce that image down to whatever size it is on the page.

19:19

It looks like it's about 600 pixels wide. And that's going to reduce the size, increase the page load speed or reduce the page load speed.

19:25

And it's going to be fine. So really, you don't have a lot of problems on your home page as far as technical SEO is concerned.

19:31

You could you could improve the speed a little bit.

19:35

But if you're doing desktop, you're doing you're doing phenomenal desktop.

19:40

So they're just thinking you a little bit on mobile.

19:44

So that's your technical SEO evaluation.

19:49

Any questions?

19:51

No, I'm just scared when you start getting into the content, because I was going through kind of a phase where I was trying to figure out what in the world this website is all about.

20:02

But this is something a lot of people have to deal with. It really is.

20:08

I think you have a post on chocolate pedicures.

20:12

Yes.

20:14

We're going to talk about that one.

20:16

positive affirmations. We're going to look at that. Okay. But so that's technical and

20:23

you're doing okay. You can have some areas to improve on, but that is the technical SEO.

20:30

So now let me get, let me switch to the technical SEO.

20:32

Don't we all have areas to improve?

20:34

Well, it's, it's, you know, I'm old and, and I still got areas that I got to improve on.

20:41

So that's, it's, that doesn't change. I don't think. All right. So let's go into the content.

20:49

Let me get that window ready.

20:51

I'm going to repeat, be gentle.

20:54

Okay. Let's go on now to content and let's see, make sure I get the right window. So

21:04

we're going to look at your website from a 30,000 foot view. This is again, SEMrush.

21:12

And what this is showing us, this is organic research. This is showing you all of the organic

21:18

positions. You have 888 keywords in the top 100 positions. Now, 2011 to 20 doesn't really

21:28

matter because you're not going to get any traffic in the SEO world. The top three is

21:33

where about 70% of the clicks occur. Top three is right below the ads. And we're going to

21:38

look at a search page to see your search results. So, but this shows you over the months, you

21:44

know, in, in November of 2022, you had eight keywords in the top three, four in the top

21:50

17, and then 47 in the 11 to 20 space. Now in my mind, when I'm evaluating a website,

21:58

11 to 20 is what I call low hanging fruit because they're ranking. They aren't on the

22:05

first page yet, but if there are some gems in the 11 to 20 area, those are usually pretty

22:12

easy to move up into the first page and start getting traffic from that. Okay. So right

22:19

now you've got 822 and 65 in November, you had 817 and 47. So you've, you've gained some

22:29

and that's, that's good. That's, you know, this shows you some nice growth, but you really

22:33

haven't been posting stuff. So it's, it's just kind of pre-wheeling on its own. But

22:40

right here, this, this shows you, this is your position. Let's get these in the right

22:44

order. So you're number one for 365 affirmations. So if someone were to search for that, come

22:56

on, come on, I'm on a very fast internet connection. Okay. 365 days of affirmation. You get that

23:07

search volume is 40. You get, this is about 3% of your total traffic. This one right here

23:14

gets about 70% of your total traffic, 365 daily affirmations. Wow. Let's, let's just

23:20

jump and take a look at what that looks like in search. So this right here, 365 daily affirmations,

23:29

this is a tool I use called keywords everywhere. Let me zoom in so you can see this a little

23:34

better. Keyword everywhere costs about, cost me about $10 a year. What it does is it tells

23:40

me what the search volume for any particular keyword I type in is. It also gives me recommended

23:50

keywords over here. And I can usually see, sometimes I can see search volume. Oh here,

23:59

here we go. So I can see the associated search volume with those keywords. And this is how

24:05

I plan my blogs for myself and for my clients. I'm not going to write anything unless I know

24:13

that people are searching for. And so now if I was looking to write a blog about 365

24:25

daily affirmations, make this smaller, I would look at who's ranking. Now I'm using another

24:34

free tool. This is called the Moz bar, M O Z. This is another Chrome extension. This tells

24:40

me the domain authority of the website and what position it's in. So famous Ashley Grant

24:47

is number one for 365 positive affirmations, 365 daily affirmations. The second site is

24:55

medium and they have a very high domain authority. For some reason it's not showing up, but I

25:00

think they're an 80 or a 90. You are beating out a website with an 80 or a 90 domain authority.

25:09

They have a 95 domain authority. Why is that? Why would you be beating out a domain authority

25:15

that's that well ranked? Well, let's take a look. Their page with an 895 domain authority

25:26

only has 848 words. They have their keyword 365 affirmations that improve your life right

25:33

in the start of their meta title. They've got a decent meta descript, but you are better.

25:42

Why is Google ranking you better? Because they like your website better? Because you

25:48

write for GoDaddy? No, they're ranking your website higher because you answered the searcher's

25:55

question. Searcher's question was 365 daily affirmations, right? Let's look at your page.

26:04

You have 4,000 words on your page. Medium, which has a domain authority of 95 only had

26:11

800 and some words. So you have outflanked them with word count. Higher word count in

26:19

Google's eyes means more credibility, particularly if your word count is on topic. If you just

26:27

had a bunch of Greek text on here, you know, or on Lipscomb, whatever dollar, it wouldn't

26:34

count. But you have physically got 365 daily affirmations on this page and that results

26:42

in 404,000 words. So that is a big reason why you're beating out a top ranked 95 domain

26:51

authority website. Now, let me back up and explain what domain authority is. Domain authority

26:56

is determined by Moz actually. Google does not determine it anymore. It's on a scale

27:04

of zero to 100. It's kind of the value power reach of your website. So a new website would

27:10

be a zero or a one. Your website has a domain authority of 30. It means that you have a

27:17

lot of backlinks from some very large high ranking websites. You have a lot of content

27:24

and your content is pretty well structured. Okay. So you're doing for a blogger who isn't

27:31

really working hard at building a blog, a domain authority of 30 is very respected.

27:37

Now, when I started learning SEO, our website, money, smart family.com and a domain authority

27:43

of 27 by applying what I've learned, our domain authority is now 52, which means that I can

27:52

rank for some very competitive, high volume keywords. And as long as I do my research

27:59

and Frank higher domain authority sites, I can beat them just like you did. So this is

28:05

kind of the game I play is I look at who the competition is when I want to write an article.

28:11

I find out what their word count is. I look at their article and I question whether they're

28:16

answering the question as best it can be answered. And then I write a better article. So that's

28:23

kind of the content game. So that's your top ranking page and you did really well. Now

28:30

let's look at one that, let me jump over here. Let me show you your pages. So this is now

28:40

we're still looking at organic research. We're looking at the pages, your top pages in SEM

28:46

rush. So this is your top page and it gets 83% of your organic traffic. Now this is not

28:52

exact you'd have to, if you want to go in and find out exactly how much traffic it gets,

28:57

you use Google analytics. But according to SEM rushes algorithm, this page is your most

29:03

popular page. This black Dahlia drink revenge. This is a funny page. It gets 10% of your

29:11

traffic. You have, you have six, because everyone was looking for that drink. Oh my goodness.

29:16

Do you remember the show revenge that was, Oh God, I read the blog. Yeah. And it was,

29:23

it was a drink that everyone was trying to find. And I went to a conference and someone

29:28

knew how to make it. And I was like, that's it. I gotta, I gotta put it on the site.

29:34

We're going to talk about how you can rank number one. Cause right now you're number

29:37

three. Okay. And you can get a little more traffic. Okay. So let's, let's look at this.

29:43

So this is UK. So you wrote that blog in May of 2021. It's been, it's been kind of, you

29:53

know, going up and down. It's recently though. Look at this year. You've gotten, it's picking

30:00

up some extra keywords in the 50 to 100 range. It's not, that's not great, but it's, it's

30:05

is going up. So you're, it says you're number two for black Dahlia drink and black Dahlia

30:11

cocktail. Now I would say black Dahlia drink, 140 search. We can use the word cocktail or

30:18

you could write your headline black Dahlia drink slash cocktail to rank for both of these.

30:24

And hopefully we can take it up to position number one, but let's look at, let's look

30:28

at what search results look like. So meal sheet and cocktails.com with a domain authority

30:35

of 32 ranks number one right now in my area. If you search in your area, maybe a little

30:40

different. The number two position is the Chicago Tribune. They have a 92 and then Ash,

30:46

famous Ashley Grant is number three with a domain authority of 30. Now this one here

30:52

has a domain authority of 32. That's close enough for you to take them if you wanted

30:56

to. So let's see what it would take to beat them out. Right. And so we'll go to their

31:02

page and we'll open up SEO minion and look at their, look at their page. Okay. So they've

31:11

got a nice image on top. They've got some word count. They've got a recipe card. So

31:17

they're using a plugin for the recipe. Okay. They've got another large picture. So they

31:23

only have about 300 or 400 words. Let's see. Nine. Oh, they say 920 words because they've

31:30

got because they've got a lot of other copy on the page. They've got all these other articles.

31:39

So their word count, Google is seeing 900 words on their page. Let's look at yours.

31:45

This is yours. Your picture's a little smaller. You've got the TV show link, but you really

31:54

don't have the recipe here. Okay. Well, you know, I mean that's, that's what it is. It

32:01

is in there. It's just not written out as sexy. Right. Oh yeah. I see. Okay. It's right

32:05

here. What you put it. Okay. So now let's look at the word count. So 377 words versus

32:14

900. So if you were wanting to beat out a domain authority of 32, you may want to revise

32:23

this copy. Now it's let's let's let's go back and see what the search volume is. There's

32:30

no search value for black Dahlia drink, but I think there is for cocktail. Or did I spell

32:39

Dahlia wrong? Oh yeah. I spelled Dahlia wrong. That's what it is. Did I spell cocktail wrong

32:46

too? Okay. So there's a nice search value for black Dahlia cocktail. You are number

32:58

two for that. So you could take the number one position. Let's look at black Dahlia drink.

33:07

Now I want this drink. I'm getting thirsty. So this is, this is the one you want. And

33:15

again, same search result. These guys are in first position. So we need a strategy.

33:21

What could you do to outrank them? I can add more words and better pictures.

33:27

What about writing? What about writing the history of the black Dahlia drink? Where did

33:31

it get its name from? You know, maybe a very dark story. It could be, but it's answer the

33:39

searchers question. Black Dahlia cocktail. Well, I want them. It's not, they're not saying

33:45

they want the recipe. They're just saying they want to know about the drink. Okay. Now

33:51

there is search volume for recipe, by the way, this is, this is Google suggest that

33:57

shows up here. And I use this a lot when I'm looking for related keywords and for subhead

34:05

ideas. So you should have a thing about the revenge show that you could have a link to

34:12

IMDB on that. You could have, if there was, happens to be a YouTube video where the drink

34:18

is discussed, put the YouTube video in there. The more types of video, huh? Maybe I should

34:25

make the video. Well, maybe yeah. A video making the drink. Yes. And talking about it,

34:32

the more types of content you have, the more interested Google is in it because we like

34:37

variety and words may appeal to 60% of the people, but a video may pick up another 20

34:44

to 30% and a podcast on it may pick up more. So if you had three types of media on the

34:51

page, you know, that, that could outrank the competition. So that's how I look at this.

34:57

I go, okay, they, they've got a lot of words, but you know, if your words were all related

35:02

to the drink and their words are cheeseburger burritos and egg, clans, zucchini, lasagna,

35:08

but your words are all related to the drink, you're going to outrank them. Okay. So that's,

35:15

that's that page. Now let's go on to one of my favorite topics. It's chocolate. I love

35:19

chocolate. It's really good. This is, let's go jump back over here. Um, okay, here it

35:28

is. I picked this one just because I saw chocolate, but your, your third most popular post is

35:33

50 things I like about myself. Your fourth is your homepage and your fifth is my first

35:38

time getting a chocolate pedicure. Now I got to ask what's a chocolate pedicure.

35:43

They literally, they, they wash your feet in a chocolate bath. They put a chocolate

35:48

mask on it. They use a chocolate exfoliant and sometimes they'll serve a chocolate martini

35:52

with it. This, the story about this is pretty funny. I actually was doing a column called

35:57

my first time for the St. Pete times at the time. And they would have me, they would have

36:02

me do things I had never done before. And one of them was, was a chocolate pedicure.

36:07

And so I went and had it done.

36:09

And wait, you know, the cheap side on me needs to know, did you have to pay for it?

36:15

No. I love it.

36:18

That's what it's like to be a blogger.

36:22

That's, yeah, I love it. That's great. Okay. Well, so let's tear this page apart. So it

36:27

says right here that it ranks for chocolate pedicure number 210 search volume. Do you

36:34

want to be number one?

36:35

Yes.

36:36

Okay. Well, let's, let's take a look at, oops, boy, I had my fingers in the wrong place.

36:44

C-H-O-C-O-L-A-P-E-B-D-I-C.

36:45

I do feel like I should pause to say I did tip the people though, even though I didn't

36:52

pay for the pedicure.

36:53

That's perfect. Look at that. Look at that. You have the rich snippet. You're in the zero

37:02

position above the videos and everything. That's pretty cool. You're number one. I don't

37:08

think we can improve on that.

37:10

Go team.

37:11

But you are beating out how to do a chocolate pedicure at Home Edits Benefits. Let's take

37:16

a look at them.

37:18

Okay. They've got a nice stock folder. Yeah. And look, it's not exact. I mean, they're

37:27

soaking the foot in water or something, you know, lots of ads. I know, I know warm soak

37:35

chocolate. You know, they, they, your, your blog is far superior and that is why Google

37:41

has put you in the first position. Let's look at, let's look at the SEO minion and see what

37:48

they say. They've got 1771 words. How to do a chocolate pedicure at home.

38:04

942 words. So this is a case where having more words doesn't necessarily do it. You've

38:10

answered the question better in Google's mind with 900 words versus 1700. I want to see

38:18

what their domain authority is. Let's get rid of their ad. Oh, their domain authority

38:23

is not showing.

38:24

Sneaky.

38:25

Bold guy. That's, that's strange. It should show up, but they're, they're probably, they're

38:33

probably not a 95. They're probably close to yours.

38:37

Let me show you another tool. This is a fun one. Don't just Google search domain authority

38:50

over time. And you probably don't even need to spell it right, but I'm going to this cool

38:57

little website will tell you the history of your domain authority. They put in this one.

39:08

Oops. This one here. I have to tell you, not a robot. It's website at CEO checker. This

39:15

is free. Their domain authority. Wow. They used to be a 71 and now they're a 65.

39:25

Old ski.com. Let's, let's see how famous Ashley grant has done over the years.

39:33

Oops. Smart.

39:36

Got to say you're not a robot again.

39:43

Oh, you've been as high as a 31. You've dipped to a 28 in 2021 all through 2023. You were

39:54

stable at a 30. You dip down to a 29 and you're back up at 30. If you make some of these improvements

40:00

on your website that we talked about the technical SEO side, your domain authority will probably

40:05

go up to a 31 or a 32 because broken links create a bad user experience. And so Google

40:12

is going to be less inclined to send people to your site. You have broken links and that

40:17

kind of stuff and mixed content. So that's good. Let me, let me just brag a little. Okay.

40:22

I don't know if it goes back to 2015. Yeah. Well, it goes, goes back to 2021 and we will

40:42

show you here though. Yeah. 2021 we were 45 and we are now 52. So I'm telling you if you

40:51

work on the technical and I'm not putting up a lot of new blogs, maybe one or two a year,

40:56

but I am constantly going in and improving my content and I just recycle them every year,

41:02

bring them to the top of the list. And I have a whole blog calendar that I just keep recycling

41:09

stuff and sending out email newsletters, but your domain authority will go up if you keep

41:14

your site in technical SEO shape and you work on improving your content.

41:19

I definitely will work on that because my goal is to get up to that, that special 50,000

41:25

page views mark so I can qualify for Mediavine. There you go. There you go. That's cool.

41:30

I mean, there are other, there are other ad syndicates that you can join without the,

41:38

the Mediavine threshold, Ezoic and a few others that you can start making money. I would Google

41:46

AdSense doesn't pay squat, but there are other ones. So you definitely want more traffic.

41:53

Okay. So let's, let's look at now how to write a blog that ranks.

41:58

Yes.

41:59

Okay. So I'm going to share a new document. This is something I wrote for my clients several

42:08

years ago and I've been improving at it. The company I just kind of retired from, I still

42:19

consult with them is called Big Guy Digital. Don't go to their website because Austin hasn't

42:24

updated. We used to be called Phoenix SEO. He bought the company, changed name to Big

42:29

Guy Digital. He's six foot seven and that's why it's Big Guy Digital. But sweet guy, he

42:36

and his wife are wonderful people and I love working with them. I just don't love going

42:41

into the office every day. So I work from home and do a little consulting. So carefully

42:47

select number one, carefully select your keyword targets by evaluating the competition. So

42:53

we want to know what keywords have the highest search volume and who ranks in those positions

43:01

and whether you can beat them or not. So give me a keyword. Let's talk about an article.

43:06

Maybe you're thinking about writing and let's, let's evaluate that.

43:17

Getting famous as a blogger.

43:19

Okay. So let's go here. Oops. Here. I can tell you famous bloggers is going to have

43:30

a lot of search volume, but becoming famous. Oops. Okay. Look at this right here. Rooster

43:47

Vane ranks number one, how to be a successful blogger. There's no search volume for becoming

43:52

famous as a blog, but it seems like the intent of that Google is saying is becoming famous

43:59

on YouTube, how to become a famous blogger. There's your topic, right? Okay. Let's look

44:06

at that. Okay. We've got ads. So people think this is pretty important. They're buying ads

44:13

on that. Rooster Vane is the number one position. There's a 39 and number two, which means with

44:21

a 32 domain authority, you can compete for this. So let's look at what these guys are

44:28

doing in some rush. Let's see what keywords there they have, how they're ranking. And

44:36

we're also going to look at a page and come up with a plan for what you need to do to

44:43

rank. Okay. So this is their page. They have a domain authority of 25. You can take these

44:50

guys. You can totally have this position. You're going to take them. Watch out Rooster

44:56

Vane, I'm coming for you. They have 2300 words on their page. How to be a successful blogger

45:07

is their title tag, right? Okay. Let's look at their content. Oh my gosh. They're stealing

45:16

my content. This is exactly what we're going to talk about in how to write a good blog.

45:20

Their paragraphs are pretty short. They've got lots of line spacing in between. And let's

45:25

just take a look at this. Oops. What it would look like on mobile. They need more subheads.

45:33

This is hard to read copy. You use subheads and we're going to talk about this to walk

45:38

the reader through scanning your article. You shouldn't have this many paragraphs without

45:45

a subhead. It's just overwhelming for somebody on a phone to read. See, but this is good.

45:53

Write big paragraphs, recognize your power. I don't know how important that is. Technical

45:58

chops are important. Their subheads are not keyword focused and optimized. They're cute,

46:08

but they aren't going to help a reader understand what the topic is. And there's definitely

46:14

not going to help a Google bot. So I can see flaws in what they've done and that gives

46:22

you opportunity to take their position by writing something better. So how to become

46:28

a famous blogger? What would you say are some of the tips for that?

46:37

Researcher topic. Okay. I always like to interview experts to get their opinions as well. That's

46:48

the big thing I love to do is ask and interview people. I mean, there's so many answers that

46:59

could come to mind, but of course I'm blanking on them now that I'm in the hot seat.

47:03

That's okay. Now I don't know this is controversial, but I just type into chat GPT, write 20 ideas

47:14

on how to become a famous blogger. Let's see what Chad GPT came up with. Write 20 tips

47:22

on how to become a famous blogger. Quality content, create high quality content. What

47:32

research to engage in content consistency, stick to a regular posting schedule, engage

47:36

with your audience with comments, use SEO optimization, social media promotion, collaborate

47:42

with others, do email marketing, make it visually appealing. So right here, you've got an outline

47:49

and I know this is controversial, but I use chat GPT all the time to fine tune stuff I've

47:56

written and I even wrote, had to write an avatar for me, for my writing style. I said,

48:04

are you familiar with Steve economy? This and the book, the America's cheapest family

48:07

cut your grocery bill in half and the money smart family system. And it said, yes, I said,

48:14

write a description of the writing style that I use. And it did. And so then when I was

48:22

writing the next article, I said, right in this style, I took its words, put it in there

48:27

and it did it. Yeah. It wasn't exactly my style, but it was close. It described it as

48:34

cool, fun, a few exclamations every once in a while, informative, always giving examples.

48:40

It was, it was fun. So I use the heck out of chat GPT and this is the free version.

48:46

This is 3.5, but so your content is here and then you can always say, Hey, expand on this

48:54

where you can write it and say, proof this and tell me if it makes sense. I've had it,

48:59

I've had it go through articles and I tell it to look at it for logic and sequencing.

49:07

Am I writing in the right order? And it comes back with, with suggestions. So I, I'm a big

49:15

fan.

49:16

One thing I'll definitely leave. What now?

49:20

I think, I think you can, I think you can take this position and write the blog. So

49:27

I'm going to put you in the hot seat. When's it going to be done?

49:30

Let's see. Today's the sixth. Well, I'm pretty slammed with work this week. So I'll say next

49:37

Monday.

49:38

Next. Woo. I like it. I like it.

49:41

At least by the time this episode comes out.

49:46

So let's, let's keep going through my list of how to write a blog that ranks. So that's

49:51

the research aspect of it. Look at their image, alt tags, look at their meta description,

49:57

look at their length of copy. And if their domain authority is higher than yours, you're

50:01

going to have to exceed their length of copy by 20 to 30%. But in this case, your domain

50:07

authority is higher than the one that's ranking. So all you need to do is write a better scripted,

50:12

better thought out, more detailed article. Neil Patel, who's kind of the, the, the, I

50:19

don't know. I don't want to call him granddad. He's not that old, but he's, he's the guru

50:24

of blogging would say, if you're writing a blog post, a listicle, you know, and the competition

50:30

has 20 ways to become a famous blogger, then you should write 25 ways. Just an idea that

50:40

you can exceed theirs. Meta title, start shoot for nine words, plus or minus three, make

50:47

it.

50:48

Oops. Make it 55 to 65 characters, but don't force it. The headline should read natural.

50:54

Naturally. I use post schedule. This is a free tool to write my headlines and I'll write

51:04

15 to 20 headlines when I'm working on our article. Are you familiar? Should I show you

51:10

the co-schedule?

51:11

No, no, I'm familiar with it. And we'll leave it in the show notes for sure. All the, all

51:15

the tools that you mentioned, we're definitely leaving in the show notes. And one thing that

51:18

I definitely want to make sure we put in the show notes is I actually wrote an article

51:21

for go daddy on how to properly use AI to write a blog post. So we'll, we'll have to

51:26

leave that there too.

51:27

Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's a great idea. Okay. So I, I play with a headline until I get a score

51:32

of 80 or better. I always try to use a number according to Brian Dean from back Blinko who

51:43

was bought by SEM rush in the last year, headlines with numbers in them get 30% more clicks.

51:51

Then those that do not have numbers use a power word best ultimate amazing, something

52:00

like that. Ask a question. Questions get more eyeballs and clicks than just statements.

52:10

Meta description, describe the contents, use the keyword in there. Many descriptions are

52:16

not crawled for keyword ranking, but they are measured. They are the main reason why

52:25

someone would click. So what I do with open AI chat GPT, when I'm writing a meta description,

52:33

I'll run my meta description through it and I'll say, make this more compelling to encourage

52:39

people to click on it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it comes up with stuff that's too

52:44

salesy, you know, but, but I still manage it and I use, sometimes I use exactly what

52:51

they're right. Use custom URL. Keep the keyword that you're trying to rank for closer to the

52:59

backslash. So if it's, if you're ranking for famous blogger, don't make it 20 simple ways

53:06

to become a famous blogger. So to be famous Ashley Grant slash famous blogger dash how

53:14

to become or something like that. It doesn't, the words don't have to be sequential, but

53:19

keep the keywords right next to the URL if possible. Overall word count. I can't tell

53:26

you the number of clients. I'll tell you one that come to me and they've spent 10,000,

53:33

$20,000 on SEO and the SEO company they're working for one in particular was a law firm.

53:44

They came to me with a domain authority of one after having spent $24,000 for two years

53:54

on SEO and all it got them was 24 articles that were 800 words or less. They had no ranking.

54:06

They had lots of articles and I ended up taking most of their articles off their site, combining

54:11

them into longer articles and putting them back in within three months. We had their

54:15

domain authority up to an 11. They're now in a 24 I believe. I'm trying to keep my mouth

54:26

shut. Ashley your screen went dark. I said your screen went dark. So did my mind. Oh

54:35

no. Oh, you're having dark thoughts. I'm feeling bad for that law firm. Well they're doing

54:43

well now and they've grown from three attorneys to nine and they're really doing okay. But

54:49

the point is articles need to be at least 800 words and most likely more based on the

54:58

competition. I keep going back to that. Look at who's ranking and then do better than them.

55:06

Do your content. Include the keyword in the first paragraph in the first sentence if possible.

55:14

You can't use it completely. Use part of it and use synonymous words. They're called relevant

55:19

keywords, latent keywords, semantic keywords. If you're writing a blog on how to become

55:26

a famous blogger, don't always say famous blogger. Say reputable blogger, influential

55:33

writer. Come up and ask Chad GPT or search out synonyms for famous and use those words.

55:42

And a lot of the SEO tools look at the exact use of the exact word over and over again

55:49

and that's called keyword stuffing. That doesn't fly anymore. So don't do that but do use semantic

55:56

keywords. Answer the searcher's question in two sentences by the third or fourth paragraph.

56:03

This is critical and it's strategic if you want to end up in the rich snippet or zero

56:11

position. Rich snippet is usually larger type. It's at the top of the search results and

56:16

they will pull a paragraph from your site if you have answered the question very succinctly.

56:22

So how to become a famous blogger? Write relevant content, long form content and be consistent.

56:30

Boom. That's your answer. Put it in a paragraph. Maybe put it in a block quote to give it more

56:36

emphasis and there's a likelihood that if you get to that first position, Google's going

56:40

to give you the rich snippet. Use lots of sub heads. I talked about this before. To

56:46

walk scanning readers through your blog, use keywords and synonyms in the sub heads. So

56:54

constantly, don't constantly, don't make every sub head famous, reputable, well known. Don't

57:01

do that. Look at Google suggests for what some of the people also search for topics

57:10

for. Keep your sentences short. I'm going to recommend using Hemingway, which is Hemingway

57:16

app.org I think it is. It'll be down at the end of this article. It'll grade your copy

57:27

and we shoot for a sixth to seventh grade level on blog topics. If we're writing on

57:31

mental health topics, we shoot for a ninth to a 12th grade level. If you legal topics,

57:38

you go a little higher on the education scale, but the key is still keep your sentences short.

57:44

Unfortunately, literacy in our country has been going downhill. Use images, use JPEGs

57:50

instead of PNGs. Make sure your images are a hundred K or less for here on images shoot

57:55

for no bigger than 300 K. We want the page to load quickly. Always put image alt tags

58:01

on your pages. Make sure whenever you put up a blog on your site, you have at least

58:07

two to three other pages linking to that and you link to other pages within your site.

58:12

Otherwise what you have is called orphan copy and an orphan page in your site has no links

58:18

to it from anywhere. And Google says, well, gosh, if it's not important enough for you

58:22

to rank the link from your site, it must not be a very important article. Cornerstone content

58:29

on websites, the most important content on any website has links from almost every page.

58:35

So just keep that in mind. Always internal link off page optimization. If you can do

58:42

get links from other sites to your site. So if you write this article on famous, how to

58:48

become a famous blogger, you should get on some podcasts and see if they'll give you

58:53

a link directly to that page. And in the link, you want to also control the anchor text by

59:02

having say, having them say something like famous Ashley Grant wrote an article on how

59:07

to become a famous blogger and have the anchor text be famous blogger that carries more weight

59:15

and transfers more domain authority than just having it be click here. So, and this is the

59:23

end. These are the tools we talked about the Moz bar. It's a Chrome extension. We didn't

59:28

talk about internet ninja tool side by side comparison. This tool is free and you can

59:33

put in two to three websites and you'll see the word count. You see their meta description.

59:38

You'll see their subheads. You'll see their two, three and four key phrase word, two,

59:46

three and four word phrases that they use over and over again. It's really a cool tool.

59:53

It'll measure keyword density and that's, that's nice. SEM rush get, get it for seven

59:59

days for free. SEO minion. It may cost you $10 because it comes with keywords everywhere

1:00:06

now they're hooked together and the Hemingway app I use if I need to find word count, it

1:00:13

isn't showing up in SEO minion. I use word counter. So I'll send you a PDF of this. You

1:00:22

can put it in the show notes, but that's, that's how I do SEO and it's made me lots

1:00:29

of money and gotten our website to be highly ranked and highly competitive. And the unfortunate

1:00:36

thing about doing SEO is that your work is visible to everybody. So when I tell you that

1:00:45

you can go out and outrank somebody, just know that somebody can come in outrank you.

1:00:53

And my perfect example, this humbles me. Okay. I used to rank number one for three stickers.

1:01:06

Now depending on the month, that's a 17,000 search volume keyword. Sometimes it's 21.

1:01:12

Let's see what it comes up with today. Now it's not showing up here. Oh, it's only 8,100

1:01:17

today. I used to be number one. I'm now in the twenties for some reason. These guys have

1:01:26

a 56. I should be able to beat them. I've reworked my site. I've looked at what they've done

1:01:32

and I can't get it back up. It's just frustrating. But I used to get about 12,000 visits a month

1:01:40

to my site and now I'm in the base. There it is, Money Smart Family. 190 tested and

1:01:48

easy ways to get free stickers. So the sword cuts both ways. We can take positions. We

1:01:56

can also be taken. But SEO is fun. It's rewarding and it's something that most everybody can

1:02:03

do without spending a lot of money and it can get you more traffic.

1:02:10

And I think the biggest thing we've learned is that the blogger's job is never done.

1:02:16

That's for sure. I'm currently moving all my content to a new theme that's going to

1:02:25

be faster, better looking. And I am such a nerd when it comes to content. I can't just

1:02:35

copy and paste it. I'm sitting there, every one of them going, okay, is that meta description

1:02:38

good? Now I'm going to change that. I need to add 10 more points to this. I've moved

1:02:45

about 250 pages. I have about another 75 to go and it's just taken me a long time because

1:02:50

it's not a high priority. Our site is performing okay, but it will eventually be done.

1:02:56

Yeah, and then you'll come up with something else to do to it.

1:03:02

I've got to be shooting more YouTube videos. Our YouTube channel has 280 videos and we

1:03:07

get probably 30,000 views a month. We've got close to 8 million views in total and we just

1:03:16

do videos on how to save money. Some of our top ones are DIY carpet cleaner, how to make

1:03:23

a mouth guard for yourself, a night mouth guard if you clench your teeth, just silly

1:03:27

things. How to clean your carpet easier. I've got all kinds of videos up and I also embed

1:03:36

those videos on my site. We get multiple types of content on our pages which help them rank

1:03:44

better.

1:03:45

Yeah, I'm definitely playing with YouTube a little bit right now. I'm starting to get

1:03:49

all of my podcast episodes onto YouTube. The goal is to use all of that to build my authority

1:03:55

and look like I know what I'm actually talking about.

1:04:01

All you do, and you've got, just from the work we've done together on another website,

1:04:08

you know how to write, you know how to structure content, you know how to do it for everybody

1:04:14

else.

1:04:15

I get the impression you were saying something but the computer froze on my end so I'll have

1:04:20

to listen back to it and hear what you said.

1:04:24

I told you you know what you're doing.

1:04:29

In terms of questions that I have for you, I probably do but what I'm going to intentionally

1:04:32

do is write them down after we're done recording and then I'm going to bring you back and ask

1:04:36

you all of them. How would you feel about that?

1:04:38

Okay, cool. That'd be fun.

1:04:40

That way we get a two-parter out of this because I mean you shared so much awesomeness and I

1:04:45

feel like people need to hear more of what you have to say and so I want to kind of digest

1:04:50

all of it because it was a lot and then write down some questions and bring you back.

1:04:54

I'm sorry, I tend to, I do talk a lot.

1:05:00

Hopefully it was organized enough that it made sense and it would be beneficial to people

1:05:06

who really want to hear.

1:05:07

Yeah, never apologize for giving too much info.

1:05:10

Never apologize for giving too much info.

1:05:11

You gave awesome stuff and I'm very excited about it.

1:05:14

I just want to make sure that the questions I ask actually make sense with what you said.

1:05:18

Okay, now I got to give one warning.

1:05:22

Okay.

1:05:23

Don't anybody try to compete with Money Smart Family or the famous Ashley Grant.

1:05:29

Never.

1:05:30

That's a battle out.

1:05:31

We gave you this good information for free.

1:05:33

Don't compare our websites and try and steal traffic.

1:05:36

Just don't.

1:05:37

It's not nice.

1:05:38

Yeah, please don't.

1:05:39

But be a good bloggy friend, not a bad bloggy friend.

1:05:44

Nobody should write on chocolate pedicure.

1:05:47

No chocolate pedicure writing.

1:05:51

I'm going to update my own article and try to make sure that I can beat out anybody who

1:05:55

might be thinking about it.

1:05:56

Well, Steve, I think everything you shared was awesome and I really appreciate you being

1:06:02

here and we'll leave all of your content and your links and all the good stuff that people

1:06:08

can find you online in the show notes.

1:06:11

I really appreciate you being here.

1:06:13

Thanks, Ashley.

1:06:14

It's been fun.

1:06:16

Here, we'll talk again.

1:06:18

Well, my bloggy friends, I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests had to share with

1:06:23

you.

1:06:24

To get the show notes for this and all episodes, go over to famousashleygrant.com backslash

1:06:28

podcast.

1:06:29

Until next time, may your page fees be high and your bounce rate below.

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