Day 4

Anyway, you get the idea.

Loads of traffic.

Today's tip might be the best you will ever hear and could transform your marketing overnight.

You see, this is what most people do when they start to blog.

They are super passionate about a subject and they just write what comes into their brains.

The result is tumbleweed.

You can't even get your Mum to read your ramblings.

The reason has nothing to do with your words (although your structure might be poor too)

You have probably written an article about a subject you are super passionate about.

The reason has to do with what we call 'distribution'.

How Poor Distribution Kills Blogs Before They Begin

I love blogging. 

The very act of writing a blog is fun, it engages my brain and as I can't sing, dance or paint it is my main way to be creative.

Blogging is an art. 

Now, if you want to blog to be creative then that is fine.

That is no different than someone who loves to draw,  sitting down and getting their pencils out one Sunday afternoon.

But if you are here, I am guessing you want your website to be read and for it to make you money, either through sales you make through the services you sell or through selling products.

If that is the case then you need to write content that solves problems.

Because that is really all Google is, a giant problem solver.

If you have a leaky tap, you search for information on how to fix it yourself and when it looks too complicated you search for local plumbers.

If you have a fault on your car, you Google possible causes and then you eventually search for a local garage.

Not happy with your teeth, you read up about cosmetic dentistry and.....you get the idea.

Problems, problems, problems.

So you need to understand what problems that your audience is facing and then write about the solutions.

And yes it really is that simple.

Google is a distributor of solutions. 

They search the web and find the best answers to the problems/ questions a searcher has.

That is all SEO (search engine optimisation) really is, the art of solving problems.

Now, to ensure your solution is found there are a range of techniques and tools, this is why SEO (search engine optimisation) is so important.

Google is your most powerful distributor and yes you will need distributors of your content for your blog to have traffic.

Google has the largest audience base for people searching for answers to problems. 

That is why Google allows you to pay to be in the top of the search results, they know how powerful their network is for businesses.

Later in this course we cover distribution in more detail, but for now please understand that if your blog has weak distribution it will not succeed.

And one of the best ways to distribute your content is to have it served up by Google to your target audience.

Poor distribution kills blogs because the writers/ owners give up. 

They give up because they have a lack of readership, they give up due to a lack of income.

Sadly this can be easily fixed. 

But to fix this you need to start solving problems.

How To Find The Problems Your Audience Has

So we are now at the part where the rubber hits the road.

We need to understand our audience and their problems.

To do this there are a few ways, some are free and some require tools but here goes.

Using Quora To Find Problems

The website Quora is a great place to go.

If you have never heard of it, Quora is basically a giant question and answer website.

All you need to do is log in and then search for your niche in the search bar.

So let us say you own a mortgage advisory service, head over and type in the phrase mortgages:

Once you do this you will find a wide range of groups, sub niches and of course questions. 

Read the questions and pick one that resonates with your skills set and that you can answer.

When we get involved with traffic generation later in the course we will talk further but yes you can actually generate traffic by answering the question here but for now we are simply collecting problems that your audience has.

Using Ubersuggest To Find Problems

Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool acquired by SEO and marketing legend Neil Patel.

The tool is completely free and lets users find what keywords a searcher is typing into Google.

If we remember this simple saying 'Keywords = Problems' you will be able to forget the geeky SEO talk and start thinking in real marketing terms.

Marketing is about making change happen.

The change the searcher seeks to make is to have their problem solved. 

The person with the leaky tap wants to have it fixed.

The person who dislikes the colour of their teeth wants to make them whiter.

That is the change they want, and very often they will pay good money to have that problem solved. 

So become a problem solver.

Ok, so with Ubersuggest you can find these 'problems'.

For this example you work as a kitchen fitter, type in a keyword related to your industry (here we use taps)

As we can see, once we type this word in we get the results.

Over 14,800 people in the UK search for information about taps each month. 

And there is a difficulty score of 65 (100 being the highest).

This tells us that to rank on Google for the word taps will be very difficult.

But don't worry that is not what we are doing or stressing about at this point. 

We want to look for the keyword ideas (the problems):

As we can see there is a keyword variation 'taps for kitchen'.

This might be a great idea for a blog post '100 Amazing Taps For Your Kitchen'.

It might end up ranking on Google organically (which is brilliant, but it might take some extra SEO work) but you also have a good chance of that post being shared on social media networks and don't forget how useful this post would be for your customers.

You are solving a huge problem for them 'I don't know which tap to buy'.

And people like a business or person that solves their problems for them. 

Using Ahrefs To Find Those Problems

For those of you who have the budget, a tool called Ahrefs is a great way to find these keywords (problems).

Ahrefs is a premium SEO tool that will allow you to find the keywords the audience search for on Google.

Again we can see a lot of things a wine blogger could write about. 

There are other factors involved in this such as 'keyword difficulty' and search volume but let's not over complicate things at this stage (we will look at this later).

If you build a blog that has detailed posts that solve problems you will see traffic (we will cover traffic generation later too).

SEO a huge and complex subject, but that is not the goal at this stage, we are trying to find out our audiences pain points.

Once you know the pain points you will be able to create a great website.

A Word About Searcher Intent

One important subject we haven't touched yet is called 'Searcher Intent'.

Searcher intent is a way of saying 'what is the objective of the searcher'.

They might be looking for information or they might be looking to buy.

They might be looking for inspiration.....you get the idea.

We used the example 'Taps' earlier.

Well most people searching for taps want to buy a tap.

It makes sense.

That doesn't mean a post that features a wide range of ideas for taps won't rank on page 1 of Google, there is a good chance it would.

What it means is that it might not.

This is part of the puzzle of SEO. 

You have to figure out if the content you create matches what people are searching for.

Remember we talked about keywords being problems.

That is all they are.

But some problems need immediate solutions and that reflects in the searcher intent. 

Search intent is a mine field but at its heart it simply requires you to think about 'what the searcher needs'. 

That is the key to content and gaining traffic.

You need to figure out the intent behind your audiences problems.

Homework: Play With The Keyword Tools

For today's homework I suggest that you simply go and have a play with the keyword tools.

That is all. 

Get used to them, choose which one suits you best.

There are others out there and you can even play with Google's keyword planner tool. 

It works well, I just happen to feel that the others mentioned here will give you more concrete results.

See ya tomorrow.

Andy