Marc's Blog

Mesmerizing Blog Optimization Tips And Tricks

February 5, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

content creation

This is a guest contribution from Junaid Ali

In the world of digitalization, you cannot just get online, share your content, and simply be recognized by your targeted audience, now can you? It is rather hard to get where you want to. Marketers work hard and worry only about rankings. The digital marketers or anyone who works on or around the internet are dwelling in the world where they know that the importance of SEO cannot be questioned. This is the problem with many people who jump in the digital world without knowing the tactics to survive in it.

Search engine optimization is the heart of digital marketing and some people are not even familiar with technicalities and functionality of SEO. I have compiled some new tips and tricks for you that will help you to optimize your blog and leave you mesmerized by the results:

#1: Amazing content

content marketing

For your blog to prosper and thrive, you need to have amazing content on it that would attract an audience and make them get addicted to your style of writing, that they would want more and come to your blog. Your content should be authentic, useful, original, and specific as it is the new compelling content. This is what we have been hearing since forever and that good quality content is necessary for a blog to thrive but in 2017 that isn’t the only thing that will help you. Now, the only way to reliably build links is to make their content stand out enough to earn links. It can be through incorporate design and formatting directly into the content.

The thing is if you don’t have the resources to create content like this then small improvements to the format will have to do. Remember, even your best post gets old. That’s why it is essential that you revisit your best articles from some time ago and update them as Google loves fresh content and will give you a boost when you refresh your content with new data.

#2: Smart Content Marketing

content marketing tips

Content marketing exploded in 2016 and is even more famous in 2017. Smart content marketing is a real thing and can benefit you a lot, only if one knows how to use it effectively. For starters, your content should always have a purpose, if it is an arrow thrown blindly in the field; it isn’t likely that it will hit its target.

Secondly, your content should be engaging and attractive to the readers, you can add some pictures in your blog. Remember, UX is an extremely important ranking factor. The average time people spend on your content should be better than your competitors then your rankings will surely tank. To be successful with content marketing, you need a content marketing strategy and a fruitful plan for how it can support your goals. The bonus content marketing tip is the content resurrection.

#3: On-Site SEO

seo tips

It is an important factor that by 2017, everyone should have their websites optimized and mobile-friendly. It’s no surprise Google looks at how sites display on mobile as well as the info they provide. Google has already made it crystal clear that how much mobile friendliness now adds to your site’s SEO score and if your site is not mobile-friendly and you’ll need to tone down the use of pop-ups as well or else Google will penalize you. You need links on your site to get a targeted audience, not just any links but relevant and topical links. It is no surprise that backlinks are a key to get good rankings. 2017 is bound to get competitive but these tips will definitely bump your SEO rankings up real quick as more and more people get the wind of it.

#4: Social Media Rankings

social media audience

Your content will get more and more readers only and only if is it reaching a lot of people. To ensure that your content is spreading like wild fire in a forest, you need to get on the high horses of social media and feel its power and see that it will do wonders for your blog. We live in the world of digitalization, where almost every human being has access to social media sites.

So, if they see your content flashing on their screen and they click on it. Viola, your rankings are increasing. You should have accounts on every possible social media platform so people can easily reach you and your blog. Advertising on your blog is important as it helps your SEO rankings. Dare to leverage the power, which is social media and watch your rankings soar.

Looking for some ways to do that? Here are some tips:

First of all, pay attention to the content. It must be good (as we emphasized earlier), attractive and informative. No one is looking for a business brand or product news all the time. If you want your blog to succeed, focus on other hot topics that people look for and share content on those topics. Moreover, keep in mind the word limit for every social media platform. As Twitter allows a 100-word content, others like Snap Chat offer only a 24 hr storyline. This means that you need to be active and consistent while sharing content on the social media.
To improve the social media rankings of your content, do add the social media sharing buttons on your blog page. This helps a lot.
Also, don’t forget to use powerful words and strong call-to-action in the content.

#5: Refined keywords

keyword research

In 2017, while all the focus is on creating engaging content that will stand out from the rest of them. Keyword research is still extremely important in optimizing your blog even in 2017. You will need to think beyond the commercial keywords. When it comes to keyword research pick low comp keywords for your content that will immediately be seen and searched. You also need to make your smart content marketing stand out from the ever-growing competitive crowd. On top of that, the new content strategy is to refine the keyword tool selection. The thing is once you have found phrases that are 3-5 words long. They will not get as many search hits as refined key words. This way you’ll get more traffic than you realize as there are tons of keywords you’ll get ranked for.

In Conclusion

Blog optimization takes time, energy and a great strategy for it to make it all work. 2017 is as competitive as it can get but I hope that by following the tips and tricks mentioned above, you will get better outcomes and the rankings that you desired and they will surely leave you mesmerized.

About The Author

Junaid Ali is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform competition and generate profitable leads. His current ventures include Elephantation, a Dubai branding agency, eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and others.

How To Do Research For Your Blog Posts

February 4, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

The best bloggers typically conduct hours of research each week for their blogs. They reference past blog posts, stats, videos, and anything else that will strengthen their content.

Not only does research strengthen your content’s value, but the right research will also set you up for SEO success. Search engines like when you link to authority sites within your content.

However, conducting research is easier said than done. Even with our knowledge, we can’t insert links anywhere we please without copying and pasting them first. We also have to find those links.

There are plenty of ways to conduct research and get those links. We’ll explore just how in this blog post.

#1: Write The Blog Post First

Write the rough draft of your blog post without conducting any research. This is a blog post that you can write as quickly as possible. Laying out the outline will help you with this step. Your focus is to write the blog post as if you weren’t doing any research.

You want to go deep with your first draft and get it to at least 1,000 words. The longer your first draft is, the more room you have to conduct research.

This is the only stage of blogging where I’d recommend anyone gets a ghost writer as you can edit it later with the research. I am currently testing having a ghostwriter perform this part while I sharpen the content during my review.

#2: Examine Each Part

Once you finish writing the draft, the next step is to examine it while thinking of the consumer. Were all stones turned? Did you mention someone or another piece of content at least once in each tactic or portion of your blog post?

Don’t examine for typos and things like that. If you find them, great. But the focus is on these questions:

“How can I conduct research to make this blog post better? What am I missing that someone else covered?”

You can also write more content during this stage to cover more ground and provide more room for research.

#3: Create An Organized References Doc

Every week, I add at least 20 links to my References Doc. I conduct research in anticipation for what types of blog posts I will write in the future. As I examine each part of my content, I go back to this References Doc to see which links make sense in the article.

All I do in this References Doc is write the name of the article, hyperlink the title with the actual link, and mention the source.

I don’t want to focus on one source when I conduct my research. I prefer to spread the wealth to provide my visitors with more options.

#4: Mention People

One of the best ways to get people to share your content is to mention them in your content. When I conduct my research, I don’t just insert the link and move on.

I mention the author of the article and a key point that author made. That way, I can contact the author and ask him/her to share the article. People love sharing articles they’re in, and people have used this method on me a few times. It worked then and it still works now.

#5: Use HARO

For the heavyweights out there, HARO will make it super easy for you to mention people AND get them to share your content.

HARO is a website where reporters submit their queries and anyone gets to respond. With HARO, people have landed themselves on places like Forbes, ABC, The Huffington Post, and much more.

You as a blogger can also submit a query for your latest piece. As you get more people to submit their responses, you can pick some people who would be a great fit for your upcoming blog post.

By mentioning these people in your content, you do the following:

Make your blog post longer

Provide more value

Know a bunch of people who will definitely share your blog post when it goes live

That last one is powerful. If you publish a blog post every day and mention an average of five people in each blog post, that’s 1825 people who will almost definitely share your content each year. That number exponentially grows as their audiences decide to share your content as well.

In Conclusion

Conducting research for your blog posts is critical to your success. You’ll get your visitors to spend more time on your site, and you’ll attract more SEO traffic.

While research is critical, it’s a big mistake to conduct research while you write the blog post. Each time you conduct research as you write, you take yourself out of the writing flow. You also risk accidentally but habitually finding yourself on a place like Facebook when you should be writing more content.

What are your thoughts on conducting research for your blog posts? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Are You Ready For A Surge In Blog Traffic?

February 3, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Every content creator’s goal is to drive more traffic to their content. We see fellow bloggers getting hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, and we want in on the action.

But are you actually ready for that surge? Are you prepared?

It’s something most content creators don’t think about. Many people think that their brands will reach the upper echelons of success if they get a massive surge in blog traffic.

Did you ever think of what would happen if you got a surge in blog traffic? Let’s say Gary Vaynerchuk did everything in his power to promote your content to his community. You’d get a massive surge of traffic for sure.

But what happens if that traffic fades away? Do you still have a way to communicate with your audience? Or have you lost all of that traffic?

Most people only think about getting more traffic. If only they had more traffic, they’d be more successful.

That’s not real success, especially from the content brand side of things. All of the top content creators know that you need two things to become successful.

Traffic and conversions.

You can get millions of visitors every day, but if you convert none of them, then you’ll be out of business in no time.

It’s natural for us to want to boost our traffic. More people see our content, and that creates more possibilities with word of mouth.

However, you also need to convert your visitors into subscribers. As you communicate with your subscribers through email, you will significantly strengthen the bond you have with your audience. Your subscribers are the people most likely to spread the word about your brand and buy your products.

Traffic comes and goes, but subscribers continue paying attention to what you offer. And getting an email subscriber is different from getting a social media follower.

On social media follower, millions of people (billions in Facebook’s case) are competing for a single user’s attention. On Twitter in particular, logging in a minute later versus a minute earlier will determine which tweets you see and which tweets you miss.

Inboxes may get filled with about 100 emails per day, but that definitely beats competing with the billions of social media posts that come out every day.

And we love checking our inboxes. The instant gratification is too tempting to resist. We are addicted to our inboxes because we remember the best things that happened to us in the inbox.

My mind subconsciously thinks of moments like when Seth Godin said he’d like to be a guest on my podcast. I don’t open my inbox and consciously think, “When I opened my inbox a while back, Seth said he’d be a guest on my show. This email must be just as good or even better.”

But our subconsciouses think that all of the time. They want that instant gratification. Even if you don’t find something as good as one of the best email you received, you still feel good about marking the message as read.

People don’t have the time to mark every social media post as read. That’s why you need to turn as many of your social media followers, readers, listeners, and viewers into subscribers as possible.

To hone in on this mindset, the big step is to determine your landing page and site wide conversion rates. If you get 100 people to visit your landing page, how many of them do you expect to convert? If you get 1,000 people to visit your website, how many of them become subscribers?

When you’re thinking about these questions and optimizing for higher conversion rates, you’re almost ready for traffic.

Even at this moment, you’re not 100% ready for a surge in traffic.

The final step to ensure you’re ready for a surge in traffic is setting up an autoresponder that leads to product sales.

Yes, the money is in the email list, but if you don’t have an autoresponder, you’re not making money. Sure, there is always the possibility of you promoting an affiliate offer or one of your products later on.

But you need to make money with your autoresponder…especially if you want to earn the right to use Facebook ads.

I’m always testing different approaches with my autoresponders. My favorite approach is to send three emails containing free content and then 3-4 emails promoting the product. In those free content emails, the content is related to the product I’ll sell shortly, and I do some soft sells in the postscripts of some of those free content emails.

Once you get some sales, you’re in business. At that point, you’re ready for a surge in blog traffic.

But even when you’re ready, you’re still not done.

You can run A/B Split Tests to boost your landing page and site wide conversion rates. Once tweak to copy can boost your conversion rate by 10%. To put that into perspective, if you attract 1,000 people to this new and improved landing page, you’ll get an extra 100 subscribers.

You can then optimize your autoresponder. See which messages perform better than others. Tweak the messages which are under performing.

Finally, we have the sales page, the one thing I didn’t talk about. If you get product sales, you have a sales page that converts. However, is it converting at 1%, 2%, or something much higher?

Track the number of people who visit your sales page and see how many visitors buy your product. It’s easier to do this on some sales pages than others, but it’s well worth the effort.

Try changing one thing. Whether it’s the copy or the promotional video you use, make something different. See how that affects sales.

If you can double your sales page’s conversion rate, then you’ll double your income. You also double your income if you do just one of the following:

Double your blog traffic

Double your conversion rates

Double your autoresponder’s effectiveness (sometimes an effective follow-up is all you need, but look at all of the messages in yours)

In Conclusion

If you take action based on this blog post, you’ll be ready for that surge of traffic. Until you are ready for the traffic, stop reading those “How To Get More Traffic” blog posts.

You need to be ready for the surge in traffic. Now’s the perfect time to prepare.

What are your thoughts on the prep work for a successful content brand? Do you have any tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

E86: Living The 17-Hour Workweek Through Outsourcing With John Jonas

February 2, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

John Jonas is the author of the book How I Replace Myself by Outsourcing to the Philippines. Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Workweek changed his life, and John figured out how to achieve that lifestyle, but he saw the 17-hour week as a more practical method to avoid boredom and make the approach more practical. John is all about working as little as he needs to so he can spend time with his family play golf, and help others live the 17-hour week lifestyle.

Quotes To Remember:

“Outsource something you are currently doing.”

“Anytime you can gain by focusing on your business is a win.”

“There’s a different culture in the Philippines that provides a higher likelihood of success.”

“The real situation is you manage someone into becoming a rockstar.”

“The real key to success is how you handle a person.”

What You’ll Learn:

Task you should outsource FIRST
How to find Filipino workers that can be part of your team
How to make sure you’re finding effective low-cost employees
Strategies for managing a growing team
How to get into the 17-hour workweek

Key Links From The Show:

Recommended Books:

How I Replace Myself by Outsourcing to the Philippines by John Jonas

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith Jr.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley

Support Breakthrough Success On Patreon

Please consider supporting Breakthrough Success on Patreon. I publish five episodes per week which I carefully prepare for, and I choose to not run ads in my podcast to enhance the listener experience.

I offer my patrons various perks, and even a donation as small as $1/mo would make a big difference for growing and maintaining Breakthrough Success.

You can support Breakthrough Success by going here.

E86: Living The 17-Hour Workweek Through Outsourcing With John Jonas

February 2, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Quotes To Remember:

“Outsource something you are currently doing.”

“Anytime you can gain by focusing on your business is a win.”

“There’s a different culture in the Philippines that provides a higher likelihood of success.”

“The real situation is you manage someone into becoming a rockstar.”

“The real key to success is how you handle a person.”

What You’ll Learn:

Task you should outsource FIRST
How to find Filipino workers that can be part of your team
How to make sure you’re finding effective low-cost employees
Strategies for managing a growing team
How to get into the 17-hour workweek

Key Links From The Show:

Recommended Books:

How I Replace Myself by Outsourcing to the Philippines by John Jonas

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith Jr.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley

Support Breakthrough Success On Patreon

I offer my patrons various perks, and even a donation as small as $1/mo would make a big difference for growing and maintaining Breakthrough Success.

You can support Breakthrough Success by going here.

How To Find More Time For Content Marketing

February 2, 2018 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Many content creators have no problem with creating new content. They create blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and other forms of content. The problems for these individuals lie within content marketing.

It’s common for content creators to see marketing as a necessary but mundane task to perform in order to keep their content brands afloat. Even though content creators understand how important it is to market their content, few find the time to promote their content. Most content creators are just too busy creating.

There is a difference between being busy and being productive. Creating content is a productive activity because all content brands need content to survive. However, excessive content creation can turn into busy work.

A content brand is successful when it has a constant flow of content that is constantly getting promoted. In this blog post, you’ll discover how to find the time for content marketing.

Change Your Mindset

Before we talk about finding more time in your day to promote your content, we need to talk about the mindset. Many content creators view marketing as a necessary evil. These same people view content marketing as something that takes them away from creating new content.

Instead of viewing content marketing as something that takes you away from creating new content, view content marketing as a way of increasing the impact of your existing content. View content marketing as the avenue for spreading your message.

Changing your mindset to make content marketing enjoyable and fun will allow you to more easily implement the tactics I’ll discuss now.

Make Sacrifices

During Episode 77 of the Breakthrough Success Podcast, Dave Jackson talked about making sacrifices to maintain and grow his podcast while spending more time with his family. His solution was to make sacrifices in his existing schedule so he could repurpose some of the time in his day.

As the Cleveland Browns weren’t doing very well at the time of the interview (and at this blog post’s publication), he stopped watching football on Sundays. This was normally a Sunday tradition, but now he had an extra three hours in his day.

Sacrifices like these add up. I recommend looking at your current media consumption (TV and the web) and reducing the amount of time you spend consuming other people’s content. You can use this time to promote your content instead.

Establish A Routine

Content marketing is vast and filled with options. You can promote your content using social media, and that subset of content marketing also contains many options. Even when you pick a single social network, there are still plenty of tactics to choose from. For instance, Facebook presents its users with paid advertising, groups, organic reach, messenger, and more.

And that doesn’t even include things like influencer outreach, getting on podcasts, writing guest posts, collaborations, and growing your email list.

You need to choose which content marketing tactics you’ll implement. Then you need to establish a routine that allows you to habitually perform the tactics you choose to focus on.

Here are some ways you can establish a routine:

Choose a time each day to perform individual content marketing tasks.

Stack a bunch of tasks together and always do them in the same order.

Batch the entire work in 2-3 days of the week so you have the other days free.

Integrate content marketing into your content creation (i.e. reach out to influencers and ask them for opinions/resources that you can then include in your content).

Maintain A High Level Of Energy

Your energy determines how effective and efficient you are with promoting your content (and performing any task in general). If you stay seated too long, you’ll get tired, and the energy lag will hurt your ability to promote your content and pursue more challenging tasks.

Every 25 minutes, I get up and walk around for five minutes. I don’t look at any screens during this time. After the five minutes, I’m back to content marketing. This timeframe is based on the Pomodoro technique which provides a five minute break for every 25 minutes of deep, concentrated work.

I prefer to walk around during these breaks as this allows me to refresh and have energy when I sit back down.

Some of the simpler ways to maintain a high energy level are to eat the right foods and get enough sleep. If you feel tired, take a 10-15 minute nap. Naps help you feel more refreshed which will make it easier for you to tackle bigger challenges.

In the end, you’ll have the most energy if you’re doing work that you love doing. However, you need to keep your bodily needs in check to ensure you’re not burning yourself out, and as a result, not performing at your best.

Delegate More Tasks In Your Business

Chances are you perform a variety of mundane tasks. Even if they are necessary for your business to grow, they are mundane nevertheless.

Some people would fit content marketing into that category, and if you do, then delegate it by all means. However, there are certain parts of content marketing (i.e. relationship building) that should not be delegated to others.

To determine what you need to delegate, write a list of all of the things you want to do for your business. After you write that list, write a list of all of the things that you actually do for your business. Delegate all of the task that aren’t on both lists. If you have a tight budget, delegate the one task that takes the most time and is the easiest for you to explain to a freelancer.

In Conclusion

Content marketing is critical for the success of any content brand. We all know it, but our actions speak differently. Some content creators enjoy creating the content but see marketing as a necessary evil.

By finding more time in your day to promote your content, you’ll reap the rewards of added exposure and traffic to your content.

What were your thoughts on these tactics for finding more time to engage in content marketing? Do you have any time saving tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.