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The Essential Guide to Website Silo Structure with AI Integration

Kristen Poborsky — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 17:35:18 +0000

Discover how the strategic use of website silo structure, empowered by AI, can revolutionize your website’s SEO and user experience.

Welcome to the insightful world of website silo structure, a pivotal SEO strategy that’s crucial for enhancing your website’s and content’s search engine visibility.

A website silo structure isn’t just about organizing content; it’s about creating a coherent, keyword-focused framework that search engines love. And with AI’s touch, this strategy evolves into a powerhouse for SEO success.

I’m all about building great websites for my clients and driving massive traffic to them.

That’s all great, but if you haven’t thought about how you want to organize your content you’re missing a big opportunity to rank your site higher with the search engines and provide a great experience for your visitors.

Key Elements of a Website Silo

In the context of website silo structure, think of your website as a well-organized library. Each ‘silo’ represents a category of content, meticulously organized and interlinked to enhance both user experience and SEO.

Today it is so easy for you to use AI tools to analyze and optimize your silos for maximum search engine impact.

Understanding What a Website Silo Structure is

At its core, your website silo structure is about strategically organizing your content.

If I could pick one word to describe a website silo that would be organization.

You’ll want to cluster your website’s content around targeted keywords, enhancing the thematic relevance of each silo.

AI-driven tools can make this so easy for your website silo process, ensuring your website silo structure aligns perfectly with current SEO trends.

Benefits of a Well-Organized Website Silo Structure

A robust website silo structure offers numerous benefits for your visitors.

It simplifies navigation, reduces bounce rates, and clarifies your site’s focus on search engines, thereby improving keyword relevancy.

Think organization, better customer experience, and improved SEO rankings when you hear the word website silo. Organization and improved user experience are probably two of the biggest benefits I can think of when creating a website silo.

When you have those two things in order…you’ll get more points from Google because your visitors will naturally stay on your website and consume more of your content.

Getting Started with Website Silo Structure

Simply put, a website silo is about creating strong keyword-related themes on your website to improve the relevancy of your site in the eyes of the search engines.

And the best way to achieve this is by organizing your content

You want to organize your website content around your keywords and make sure you link your content to the page you want to rank for. What you want to do is to make sure that when you plan your site you organize your pages around the page you want to rank for.

Most often you want to make sure you rank highly for your home page so you’ll want links to and from that page from other pages on your site.

To implement an effective website silo structure, you’ll want to grab a piece of paper and begin by categorizing your main content areas.

Start by writing down the categories you have on your website…

This foundational step is crucial for both your visitor experience and SEO. Incorporating

AI in this phase helps in identifying content gaps and optimizing the overall structure for better search engine performance.

Recommended Tool: Google Analytics: Utilize its AI insights to identify pages with low engagement, high bounce rates, or declining traffic.

Recommended Tool: Google Ads Keyword Planner: Useful for identifying high-volume keywords in your niche that you might not be targeting yet.

Recommended Tool: ChatGPT: Useful for taking your keyword ideas and use it to generate a list of topics

Improving Your Visitor Experience with Website Silo Structure

A well-planned website silo structure makes it easier for your visitors to find relevant information, significantly enhancing the user experience.

AI can take this a step further by providing personalized content recommendations, ensuring that each visitor’s journey through your website is engaging and relevant.

Recommended Tool: ChatGPT: Use it to come up with content ideas for your customer journey based on the keyword research you’ve done.

Practical Steps to Build Your Website Silo Structure

Start building your website silo structure with a clear, organized plan.

Utilize tools like spreadsheets and templates to map out your content.

AI tools are invaluable here, offering insights into content performance and guiding your silo structuring efforts.

Recommended Tool: Google Analytics

Advanced Strategies and Tools for Website Silo Structure

Embrace AI for predictive SEO analysis and to stay ahead of evolving trends.

Regularly update your content and refine your website silo structure with AI-driven insights, ensuring your website remains both relevant and authoritative.

Recommended Tool: Google Analytics

Creating a structure and organizing your content helps to:

#1: Give your website visitors a clear path of where to go next on your site, lowering your bounce rate

#2: Gives the search engines have a very clear idea of what your site is about.

#3: Improves your keyword relevancy for the keywords you are targeting.

The bottom line is that Organization Matters

Implementing a website silo structure is a game-changer for your SEO strategy. It’s not just about organizing content; it’s about creating a seamless, intuitive user experience.

I encourage you to apply these strategies and share your success stories.

Search engines are more likely to rank your site higher for your keyword when the content is organized. This is why I love to create resource pages for clients on topics we know their audience is searching for.

Let’s use Infidelity as an topic example from a client of mine who is a Marriage Therapist. Here’s how we walked through the process of building his resource page

#1: We researched and found hot topics for our client who then wrote a series of articles on the subject.

#2: Then we created a resource page on the topic and linked all of the articles to and from that page.

#3: In the eyes of the visitor to the site we did them a big favor by giving them one resource page to find out everything they would need to know about the subject and

#4: In the eyes of the search engines, the client looks like an authority on the subject because his content is neatly organized.

A well-executed website silo structure improves your visitor’s experience

When you group related content you provide a better experience for your visitor.

Doing this makes it easier for them to find a lot of information at their fingertips without having to search or click many times to get at it. By doing this you are more likely to reduce your bounce rate which is the number of visitors that leave your site after only viewing a single page.

The key is to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for.

Make sure you keep the content links related to the category they are nested under and resist cross-linking categories unless it makes sense. Don’t cross-link just to build links.

Be methodical and logical, think about how you can help improve your audience’s experience and you can’t go wrong.

Struggling to Find Time to Create Content?

The content creator’s guide to AI shows you how easy and fast it is to create unique content that engages and builds your audience

The post The Essential Guide to Website Silo Structure with AI Integration appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

Increase Your Website Traffic with this Simple AI SEO strategy

Kristen Poborsky — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 19:24:03 +0000

When someone says the word SEO, your eyes cross or glaze over at the thought of it? Or do you cringe at the thought of using google keyword planner just like I used to? Do you ask yourself why does it really have to be complicated or hard? Give me 15 minutes of your time and I’ll simplify it for you. Yes that’s right. It’s definitely worth your time to invest 15 minutes, let me show you why. I did a little experiment this week because I knew I was writing this post and I wanted a fresh new example to show you. Here’s a peek at my traffic this week: I’ve been averaging only about 35 views a day on average and spiking up higher when I did a post. However I was looking for a bigger more sustainable longer term hit of traffic making sure I get my best content out there with search terms people are really looking for. When I did this it immediately doubled my traffic. And I’ve seen this traffic increase for 2 days in a row and it shows no signs of slowing down. And the post I experimented with jumped up into the #1 most popular post on my site. You can also increase website traffic with this simple SEO strategy.

Let’s walk through simple step by step process so you can get similar results using on page SEO

I highly recommend that you have these 3 things in place before you get started:

SEO by Yoast Plugin – you can find it here. I write about it in 7 Timeless SEO Strategies in the bonus tip at the end of the article
A Gmail account so you can log into the Google Keyword Planner
301 Redirect plugin so you can redirect the old permalink to the updated permalink and not have any broken links – you can find a good one here:

Okay so once you have both of those in place let’s dive into the steps…

7 Steps to Increase Website Traffic with A Simple On Page SEO Strategy

You can use this strategy with all of your content and I suggest that you start with your most popular content first

Step 1: Locate your most popular content

You can use this strategy with all of your content and I suggest that you start with your most popular content first because you’ll get the best results doing it this way. Go into your google analytics account and click on Behavior and then on Site Content then All Pages. Then you’ll want to change the date range to 90 days like this: Then look below at your top performing pages and make a list of them. Pick the top performing post and start there. Keep a list of other posts that you’ll want to work on later.

Step 2: Go to the Google Keyword Planner

Open the keyword planner and copy in the url of your post and it will analyze it and come up with a list of suggested keywords for you.

Step 3: Strategize Your Keywords

Here’s the important part…you want to look for keywords for you page that have between 300 and 700 searches a month. And preferably ones that are not high competition either. 300- 700 with medium or low competition will work best for your purposes. If you don’t find one that fits, use the suggested keywords and start drilling down from there using the keyword planner. The point is to just get this done and don’t obsess over the perfect keyword!

Step 4: Update your content with your keywords

Go in and change the following:

a. Update your permalink with the new keyword

b. Add it to your title

c. Add it into your content preferably in the first few sentences, in a subtitle and at the end of your blog post. Remember you don’t want to stuff keywords, rather add them in where they fit naturally.

d. Change the alt text of your featured image to include you new keyword.

Step 5: Set up your redirect

If you have linked to the content from other places on your website or on social media you’ll want to use the 301 redirect plugin to set up your redirect. This is simple to do…

Step 6. Publish your updated content

If your content is older and you’ve updated it, I like to add this at the top of it: Last Updated On: (add the date you updated). This lets readers know you have updated the content recently and that it is worthwhile for them to read it.

Step 7. Promote your content out on Social Media

At the very least you’ll want to promote your new content out on Google Plus. This will get the search engines crawling your site and they will put your google + post in one of the top positions right away for the keyword. When I did mine this week, it only took a few minutes for my google + post to get into the #2 place for my keywords: To recap the process: Before you get started get these 3 things in place if you don’t have them already:

7 Step Recap to Increase Website Traffic With This Simple SEO Strategy

Locate Your Most Popular Content
Go to the Google Keyword Planner
Strategize Your Keywords
Update Your Content With Your Keywords
Set Up Your Redirect
Publish Your Content
Promote Your Content Out on Social Media

It only takes 15 minutes tops!

Don’t let yourself get obsessed with picking exactly the right keyword. Find one that meets the criteria and works with your post and go with it.

Get everything right here in this handy checklist!

Welcome to a whole new era where you can now use a simple AI SEO strategy to get more organic traffic to your content FAST.

🟢 When someone says the word SEO, do your eyes cross or glaze over at the thought of it?

🟢 Or do you cringe at the thought of using Google Keyword Planner just like I used to?

🟢 Do you ask yourself why does it have to be so complicated or hard?

Give me just a few minutes of your time and I’ll show this simple AI SEO strategy…

Yes, that’s right.

Imagine your website as a high-performance car. Just like how a car needs regular maintenance to run smoothly and efficiently, your website requires consistent SEO tuning to stay ahead in the race for online visibility. But fear not, because AI is like your expert pit crew, ready to supercharge your SEO strategy with precision and speed.

Let’s buckle up and dive into how AI can turbocharge your website’s performance, making SEO not just manageable but remarkably effective.

Why Regular SEO Maintenance Is Like Keeping Your Car in Top Condition

Just as you wouldn’t ignore a sputtering engine or a flat tire, you can’t afford to overlook your website’s SEO. Neglecting it is like letting your car’s oil go unchanged: eventually, performance drops, and you’re left behind in a cloud of digital dust.

Step 1: Diagnostic Check – Locate Your Most Popular Content with Google Analytics

First things first, let’s pop the hood and check what’s working. AI analytics tools are like advanced diagnostic equipment, pinpointing your most popular content. This insight is like understanding which parts of your car are performing best, so you can optimize further.

Step 2: Fine-Tuning Keywords – Use AI for High-Octane Keyword Research

Now, let’s tune up the engine. AI tools are your high-tech tuning kit, suggesting the best keywords to boost your site’s performance. It’s like choosing the right fuel for your car to ensure maximum efficiency and power.

Step 3: Optimize for Performance – Strategize Your Keywords with AI Insights

With AI’s help, find the sweet spot for your keywords, just like adjusting your car for the perfect balance of speed and power. This step ensures your content is not only found but also races ahead of the competition.

Step 4: Engine Overhaul – Update Your Content with AI-Generated Suggestions

Time for an engine overhaul. Use AI writing assistants to rework your content, embedding keywords seamlessly. It’s like fine-tuning your engine for optimal performance, ensuring every part works in harmony.

Step 5: Redirecting Traffic – Set Up Your Redirect with AI Assistance

Changing your site’s structure without redirects is like rerouting traffic without road signs. AI-enhanced plugins make this process smooth, ensuring your site’s visitors don’t hit dead ends.

Step 6: Hit the Road – Publish Your Updated Content

Just as you’d choose the right time to hit the road for a smooth journey, AI tools can determine the best time to publish your content, avoiding digital traffic jams and ensuring a clear path to your audience.

Step 7: Accelerate on Social Media – Promote with AI-Driven Strategies

Finally, put the pedal to the metal on social media. Our unique AI-driven content creation and repurposing strategy makes it so easy to take your content and with a few prompts repurpose it FAST for social media, much like a navigation system guiding you through the fastest routes in real-time.

To Recap: Your AI-Powered Maintenance Checklist

Before you start your engine, make sure you have these AI tools in your garage:

#1: AI-powered SEO tool – my tool of choice is Yoast Plugin for WordPress.

#2: Google Analytics account

#3: AI-enhanced 301 Redirect Plugin – my tool of choice is Yoast Plugin for WordPress.

7 Steps to Supercharge Your Website with AI-Enhanced SEO

#1: Diagnostic Check with Google Analytics

#2: High-Octane Keyword Research with AI

#3: Optimize for Performance with AI Insights

#4: Engine Overhaul with AI-generated Content

#5: Redirecting Traffic Smoothly with AI Yoast Plugin

#6: Hit the Road at the Right Time

#7: Accelerate on Social Media with AI content repurposing strategies

Ready, Set, Go!

Don’t let the complexities of SEO intimidate you. Just like regular car maintenance, a little attention and the right tools can lead to remarkable results. With AI as your co-pilot, you’re not just keeping up; you’re setting the pace.

So, strap in, start your engines, and let’s take your content to the winner’s circle!

Struggling to Find Time to Create Content?

The content creator’s guide to AI shows you how easy and fast it is to create unique content that engages and builds your audience

Get The Step By Step Guide So That You Too Can Update Your Content With AI!

The post Increase Your Website Traffic with this Simple AI SEO strategy appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

The Profitable Content Creator’s Guide

Kristen Poborsky — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 22:00:40 +0000

How to make every hour and action count

The step by step guide to working smarter and creating profitable blog posts

It’s no secret that writing blog posts is the most important way to share your expertise and to get traffic to your blog.

And ultimately you want your blog posts add more subscribers and sales…right?

Doing it correctly is a compilation of several steps, planning executing and marketing if you want to get more eyeballs on your blog posts.

The bottom line is that if you want to want to build an online business, then blogging consistently and wisely is a non negotiable part of your strategy.

I’m sharing my personal and the very same step by step blog post plan and organization process I use for my blog posts and those of my clients to help you out.

Chapter 1

How to Quickly & Effectively Plan Your Blog Posts

Chapter 2

Use a Template For Your Blog Posts

Chapter 3

Blog Post Writing Hacks to Save Time

Chapter 4

How to Format Your Blog Posts for Readability

Chapter 5

Perform On page SEO for more Organic Traffic

Chapter 6

Smart Tips for Sharing your Content on Social Media

Chapter 1

How to Quickly & Effectively Plan Your Blog Posts

Did you know that planning and picking the right topics to write about on your blog when done right can quickly double your blog traffic?

In this section I show you the 3 SIMPLE steps to planning blog posts that your readers are wanting to read!

As with anything in business, having a well thought out plan helps to make execution that much easier.

The first thing you must do is to sit down and plan your content. I personally plan my blog content out a quarter at a time using a simple template.

Step 1: Pick a topic – this is key to getting more traffic to your blog post! You want to take your time to pick relevant topics for each month that your ideal client is interested in.

start the process by picking a topic for each month based upon my categories
Or, if I know what my hottest content categories are then I go right to those
Test new ideas – And I like to add in a new category to the blog so that I don’t get in a rut and can test out new ideas

Step 2: Research content ideas – this is where you validate your content ideas. Use any of the tools below to start researching your content. I advise my clients to use Buzz Sumo and find out if there is audience interest in your content. If you find zero content being written about your topic, you’ll want to head back to the drawing board and start brainstorming new content ideas.

Here’s 5 places to help you find content that your audience is interested in:

Buzz Sumo
Answer the Public
Facebook & LinkedIn Groups
Hashtagify.me
Popular blog posts

Don’t waste your precious time writing about things that nobody cares about!

If you do anything on your blog to start with, this is the step to spend time on…doing your research. It will help everything else I share in this post fall into place.

Step 3: Stay organized – use a spreadsheet to help you stay organized and track your progress. Here is how I use a simple spreadsheet to keep me organized and on track:

Add your monthly topics and content ideas to the content planner
Then as you progress along this system, use it to write in your keyword ideas
The date you published
Content upgrade ideas
Articles you linked to in the content

A good rule of thumb is to plan your blog post content no more than a quarter at a time.

Do your blog post research all in a single sitting at the beginning of a quarter. Then each month take a quick re-look at your plan after reviewing your blog performance.

Reviewing and adjusting your content gives you an opportunity to quickly adjust your plan when you see a see that a particular subject is off the charts. You’ll want to change your content plan to write more about hot topics to keep your blog traffic momentum going.

Looking for a handy checklist guide that’ll help you implement this everything else in this post? I’ve got this FREE Checklist that goes with it right here:

Chapter 2

Use a Template For Your Blog Posts

There a zillion ways you can format your blog posts…BUT you only really need about 7 post types on your blog.

In this section I list the top 7 most profitable and effective blog posts you need to be using on your blog. Plus my tips on what types of content each works best for!

Now that you have a plan….Look through it and figure out what post type format is the best fit for your content.

Picking a format and using a template takes the guesswork out of how to write your blog post and ensures that you have consistency across all of your blog posts.

I’ve found from my 8+ years of blogging for myself and my clients that there are essential 7 post formulas that will be a good fit for +95% of your blog posts.

Go through your content on your planning spreadsheet and pick one type of post that will be a good fit and make note of it to keep your blogging process organized.

Here’s 7 post types and how to best use each one for your blog posts:

Round up/list posts – great when you are writing a review of blogs, tools, resources

How To Posts – 95% of your content should be how to posts where you are teaching your audience something or showing them how to do something that solves a pressing issue they’re facing.

Video Posts – The best way to connect with your audience is to create a video post. Aim to have at least 1 video post per month on your blog.

YouTube Cut Up Posts – not ready to get on camera yet but want to get video into your blog? Then you can use other people’s YouTube Video on your blog posts…yes it’s perfectly legal!

Case Study Posts – You definitely need a few of these in your tool box. Case study posts are where you tell the before and after transformation story about your journey or that of a client who’s been successful using your methods, product or worked with you.

Ultimate Guide Posts – longer content where you write 1500+ words on a topic that you are knowledgeable about. I use these longer posts (the one you are reading is a perfect example) to list build and show my expertise on a particular subject.

Resource posts – when you have a large number of blog posts on a particular topic, you’ll want to create an epic post that covers the topic and links to your blog posts that you’ve written

No matter which post type you select from the list above…You want to write in-depth posts that solve a problem for you audience…no matter how small it might be!

A good rule of thumb is to write a post that is between 500-1500 words. If you are writing epic or cornerstone content such as this you’ll want your post to be 1500 – 5000 words length. Longer epic content that is well written and has traffic driven to it will help you rank faster for your keywords.

Make your post actionable…meaning you have given your reader a clear plan of action or next step to solve their problem.

Following a format and using a blog post template ensures consistency on your blog. I’ve found that by using this method, I now have the ability to write at my leisure and then come back a couple of times and make changes to my content as needed.
Ready to take your blog writing to the next level? Grab this FREE guide that will help you build a PROFITABLE blog FAST.

Chapter 3

Blog Post Writing Hacks to Save Time

As a business owner, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and blog writing probably isn’t at the top of your income producing tasks…BUT if you want to build a successful online business you gotta get traffic to your blog.

Blogging is the BEST way to reach more people and in this section I’ll show you my best tips to cut your writing time by 50%!

Over time you and with practice you’ll get better and faster at writing your blog posts.

Here’s my top writing hack that will cut your writing time by 50% right at the start.

Write your blog posts in chunks and use batch processing for your writing. Yes, you are more efficient if you don’t try to sit down and bang that blog post out in one sitting. Instead, I suggest that you work on a few at a time and lay out an outline and a plan. Then come back one by one and finish up the post.

Here’s the step by step process I use to quickly and efficiently write my posts:

Time block your calendar weekly to write, keep your writing time into small chunks and write often.
Write your outline – do this for multiple blog posts in one sitting.
Fill in your content – this is where you pick one blog post and go deeper. You may need more than one sitting to get it done, especially if you are writing a post that is 1500+ words in length.
Find photos/create graphics – I break this up into 2 chunks. First I go and find the images for my posts and set a timer for 10 minutes so I don’t spend too much time on this part of the process.
Create a content upgrade – you’ll want to do this when it makes sense. Not all blog posts need content upgrades. On longer, cornerstone content you’ll want to create a content upgrade to help your readers implement or take what you’ve taught them and have it for reference.
Do Keyword research – Brainstorm keyword phrases then use the google keyword planner to get keyword ideas
Perform on page SEO
Edit, edit, edit! You’ll want to edit your content multiple times during the writing process.

I normally batch process my blog post writing in 1-2 sittings each month. I already have them planned using the content planning spreadsheet.

Then I have time blocked on my calendar and I plan to write 4 posts in a single sitting.

Doing this takes the stress off of having to do it weekly.

Set your timer for 25 minutes and get writing. I usually do 3-4 of these short bursts then take a break. If I block out a couple of hours, then I am able to get into the flow and write 2 posts in a single sitting.

Getting writing done early in the day is a real motivator and makes me feel like I can push through and get my post writing all done! If you are a better writer in the afternoon or evening then by all means choose the time to write when you are most prolific.

Once my blog post are written, then I go find my images and add them to each post at the end all at the same time. I like to set a timer and spend no more than 5 to 10 minutes browsing per image at the most!

You can do your keyword research before you start writing your post or at the end before you do your on page SEO. When you do it is all up to you.

Don’t forget to walk away from you post and edit a few times before posting it. Doing this will help you look at your writing with fresh eyes and catch any changes or errors that need to be fixed.

Bonus tip: Build a library of draft posts. It never hurts to have 1-2 posts tucked away for those unexpected emergencies, when you want to take a break or go on vacation

Batch in 1-2 posts a month to use when you are on vacation or really need a break from blogging, you’ll be glad you did!

P.S. want some help?…The blog post productivity checklist plus every one of the action steps from this post is in this handy guide right here.

Chapter 4

How to Format Your Blog Posts for Readability

Why bother blogging if no one reads your stuff? That can happen if you write a sea of words and don’t format your blog posts for ease of reading.

In this section I show you simple formatting strategies what will help your readers stay on your blog and come back for more!

You might not know this but creating a world-class reading experience for your reader is important to helping you get more organic traffic to your blog. Google pays attention to the time that people spend on your pages and monitors if people jump off your page without reading all the way to the end.

So you want to entice and make it easy for your readers to more spend time on your page and to read all the way to the end of your blog posts.

The best way to do this is use sub titles, bullet points and list in your content.

You want to make your copy scannable because most readers will start by scanning your posts. Then they can see what they are looking for or something that interests them they will read further.

Blog Post Formatting Basics

1. Keep your paragraphs short – 1-3 sentences max. Avoid a sea of words, it’s overwhelming for your reader

2. Use subheadings – add them throughout your blog posts to make it scannable so your reader can quickly zero in on what they want to read quickly.

3. Break up your longer posts with images, video etc…this too will help to keep your reader interested and staying longer on your post.

Bonus tip: Add video to your posts when possible to keep your reader engaged longer on your page.

Using bullet points, lists and subtitles where ever possible to breaks up your content and make it scannable. A sea of words will scare away your readers! This makes your post easy to scan and allows your reader to dive into the parts that they are interested in.

Adding in interesting graphics/images into your content especially if it is a longer post helps to keep your reader on the page too.

Write in a conversational tone and make your paragraphs short – 1-3 sentence max.

6 Editing Tips To Improve Your Blog Post’s Readability

After you have completed your first draft and in your reviewing mode, you’ll want to keep an eye out for:

Filler words like – I think, etc, things, stuff. Go back and remove unnecessary filler words especially if you find yourself using them over and over…I know I do that myself and always go back in and remove those filler words!
Being negative or self-deprecating – it’s good to be critical, but be measured. Your posts should be positive in nature.
Long sentences with no punctuation – this easily can happen when you are writing quickly.
Long paragraphs that aren’t broken up – as I have mentioned before, you want to avoid having your post look like sea of words.
Waffling or off topic sentences – stay on topic through out your post. You want to make sure your content is laid out in a logical manner with a beginning, middle and end. Tie things up with a conclusion at the end.
Double Check Links in your blog posts – make sure your links work and a good rule of thumb is to have them open in a new tab. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a link only to go to a 404 page and it is a fast way to lose credibility with your readers.

Making your posts scannable, easy to digest and staying on topic with a positive bent will go a long way to winning over more repeat readers.
Looking for a handy checklist guide that’ll help you implement this everything else in this post? I’ve got this FREE Checklist that goes with it right here:

Chapter 5

Perform On page SEO for more Organic Traffic

Wouldn’t you like to get day in and day out organic traffic to your blog? In this section I’ve simplified the SEO process into 8 simple steps.

If you to get want day in and day organic traffic to your blog posts, then you need to perform on page SEO.

I know lots of are probably rolling your eyes at the mere mention of the word SEO but let me simplify this for you. I use a simple 7 step process that is effective and isn’t some complicated or technique that will be obsolete in 3 or even in 6 months from now…..

You can use these same simple SEO tactics for your new content and apply them to your underperforming content to drive more traffic to your blog posts!

Step 1: Locate your most popular content

Step 2: Go to the Google Keyword Planner

Step 3: Strategize your keywords

Step 4: Update your content with your keywords

Step 5: Perform on page SEO

Step 6: Set up your redirect (do this only if you are changing the permalink on existing content)

Step 7: Publish your updated blog post

Step 8: Promote your blog posts out on Social Media

Bonus tip: When possible link to other blog posts that have content that is related within your content. Linking content on your blog adds more SEO juice to your blog posts.

Use the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin to help make sure you haven’t missed a thing

Do it thoughtfully and link to content that will be helpful to your reader, don’t be a random linker…

Make SEO simpler plus have all of the action items from this post at your fingertips when you grab the Definitive Blog Post Writers Guide.

Chapter 6

Smart Tips for Sharing your Content on Social Media

Did you know there’s a right way to share your content on social media. Let’s turn off the auto-posting from your blog and get more eyeballs on your content.

And…if you are only sharing your content once, I share my best strategy to keep your content driving more traffic to your blog long after you hit the publish button.

Now you are ready to share your content and start driving traffic to your blog post. It’s important that you post your content by hand. That means you need to turn off any auto posting you have set up on your blog…

This step is key to getting more eyeballs on your content and ensuring that you have high quality content going out on your social media platforms when you want it and how you want it.

Finding out when you get the most traffic to your blog is as easy as heading over to your google analytics account and seeing when your traffic is at it highest during the week.

If you don’t know, it’s a safe bet that the highest traffic days are usually Monday-Thursday.

I personally find it too stressful to start out the week getting a post out so I set mine up for Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Use your social sharing buttons to promote your post out on social media after it has been published.

You want to use these buttons instead of auto posting to your site for a couple of reasons

It counts as a social sharing signal to google
You have more control over the content you share on your platforms

Rinse and Repeat….

Don’t let your blog posts go silent! You want to get out of the habit of posting only once out on social media!

Schedule time on your calendar a few days later to go and share again so you can reach a whole new audience with your content.

For twitter I like to use my tweet this content on my blog post to promote it more than a twice so schedule time for that over the next 3-4 days and you’ll be covered.

Then set up your evergreen content to be continually rotated out on social media. And my favorite tool that is super simple to set up is Social Oomph for rotating content.

Tools to help you rinse and repeat:

1. Social Oomph – for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

2. Hootsuite – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube

3. Meet Edgar – Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn

4. Onlypult – For Instagram

5. Boardbooster – for Pinterest

Ready to take your blog to the next level with this post? I’ve got the guide that has all of the action items right here.

Let’s recap once again the steps I’ve covered here that will help you work smarter and create profitable blog posts:

Plan your posts
Use a template to write your posts
Use productivity hacks like batch processing to cut your writing by 50%
Format your posts for readability (score points with google and rank faster)
Perform on page SEO
Share your Content – and don’t forget to rinse and repeat!

Over to you….l hope you enjoyed my profitable blog post writers guide.

What do you think of it?

Or… maybe you have a question you’d like me to answer.

Either way, let me know by leaving me a comment below, I’d love to know!

The post The Profitable Content Creator’s Guide appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

Top images that you should be using for your content

Kristen Poborsky — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 21:00:15 +0000

If you’re not already using images for all of your content, here’s some statistics to convince you why it’s important.

Statistic #1: Content with images get 94% more views. Why? Because images on social media platforms and on blogs are usually the first thing that catches people’s attention.

Statistic #2: When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. – Hubspot

Statistic #3: Social media content with images is more sharable, and it’s a smart practice to use the image you used when creating your content. According to studies, Facebook posts with images get 87% more engagement, and tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets) – Hubspot

So do I have you convinced about the power of images and why you should use them when creating content that you want to be profitable for your business?

I’ve pulled together a list of 6 strategic images and how to use them in your content.

These images will increase your readership and engagement with your content.

Include Images that give your content personality.

Images are the perfect opportunity to strengthen your brand “voice”. So consider your brand carefully when selecting an image for your content.

Does it align with the over all look and feel for your business? Do you have a theme or general type of image that you know will resonate with your audience or that they will quickly identify with your brand?

Narrowing in on the type of image and having guide lines for what types of images you select will help you strengthen your brand image.

Use images to help break up longer content.

When creating a resource page, a power page or any type of content that is over 2000+ words it is smart to include images throughout your content.

Used strategically to break up your content into smaller easier chunks serves to help break up the text, making your content easier to scan.

Select high contrast colorful images for your content.

This will help you stand out in and increase your engagement. A great idea is to try to incorporate your brand colors in your images where possible, both helping you to stand out and strengthen brand awareness.

Incorporate both fun and informative images.

If you use statistics, understand that your readers love graphs, charts, infographics.

Use images strategically to make your data visually interesting whenever you can in your content.

Use unexpected images to convey meaning.

Instead of using typical stock images for your content, stand out by picking images that convey the meaning instead of using standard stock images.

A good example is if you are a business coach creating content about communication where no one is listening.

You might expect to see an image set in an office with people chatting.

A not-so-obvious choice might be to pick a photo of someone on a mountain top shouting out into the distance with no one listening.

Incorporate Screenshots into your content to illustrate your stories.

Use screenshot images strategically when sharing success stories, testimonials, and case studies to strengthen your content.

Think of them as a visual aid/proof for whatever you are sharing. Screenshots can help position you as an expert in your niche.

You can also use screenshots to illustrate steps of a process when creating how-to content.

The images you use in your content across all platforms help tell a story as much as your words do.

It’s important not only to include images but also to include the right images to help you get your story across visually.

Images should be an integral part of every piece of content you create whether it is a written post, a video, or any form of content.

Instead of thinking about your images as an afterthought, something that you rush to choose after creating your content … think of your images the same way you think of your content’s introduction, close, or title: You need to put careful thought into each one.

Images support your words and hold your argument together.

If you follow these suggestions for selecting images for your content, you’ll find that your content creates a stunning reading experience for your visitors and is more visually appealing and engaging.

I’m all about adding the right images to your content. I believe that images are equally as important as having a strong headline. The image that I chose for my post here is a good illustration of an attention-getting image + title intended to draw viewers to my post on social media.

Founder (0ne of my personal heroes) and CEO Neil Patel of Quicksprout conducted a study of 41 blogs across several different industries and the findings pointed out that when custom graphics and images are added to the content, it gets a significantly higher amount of social shares than content with stock photos, screenshots and royalty-free images. In some cases, these images get up to 10times more shares.

Here’s a recap of the Quicksprout study:

Stock photo images on content get an average of 235 shares
Screenshots tend to get about an average of 165 shares
Royalty-free images averaged about 72 shares
Info-stats and infographics get an average of 538 shares
Hand-drawn images average 807 shares on social media- whoa!

After looking at those stats are you still confused about what types of images you should be using on your blog posts?
When it comes to putting your content out on social media, content with the right images makes all the difference if you want to stand out from the crowd.
Without a doubt, your first blog image should be at the very top of your post and centered. Enough said… Let’s dive into the top 6 images that you should be using for your blog posts

1. Screen Shots

When you are teaching something in your blog post then screenshots illustrating the step are the way to go. They make it easier to get your point across and easily illustrate what you are trying to teach.
One of my favorite tools to create great looking screen shots where I can add in arrows and text is Jing by Techsmith at: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

2. Graphs and Charts

When making a point or a case study, statistics really help to provide social proof. Using graphs and charts illustrate your research in a way that makes them stand out and the reader is more likely to be influenced by your content.

Recently I was working with a prospective client and I wanted to show him how doing the right content marketing could drastically improve his web traffic. I illustrated my point by sending him the above graph from a client’s website that illustrated how his web traffic had gone from 1055 hits in May to 2000 in July and then doubled to 4000 in October by redoing his website and following my content marketing system.

3. Infographics

Here’s a simple infographic created with Canva.
According to the Quick Sprout Study, infographics get an average of 538 shares. When was the last time you added an infographic to a page or post on your website? I know they have been all the rage and for a while everyone was doing them and now I am not seeing them as much.
That being said, it looks like infographics are not dead! I suggest that you add some next time you do a blog post. Here is a great resource for infographics:
https://www.canva.com: Super simple to use and they have templates built to help you get started creating infographics.

4. Stock photos

I believe that every post and page on your site should have photos to break up the text and grab the attention of the reader. The image you use should be relevant to the content you are sharing and be eye-catching.
Be picky if you go the route of royalty-free images, these often are of lower quality and run the risk of looking amateurish if you use crummy-looking photos.
Here are my picks for great places to get photos

http://photodune.net/ : love this one for $1 photos, this is a go to resource for me!
http://www.istockphoto.com/: a bit more expensive than photo dune and my next choice when I can’t find what I want there.
http://www.veer.com/ : another great resource for photos, fonts and illustrations!

Tip – Try using a stock image and adding copy to it on a blog post like the one I have created for this post. This is a great way to get more attention on social media.

5. Animated images

LOL! Who thought that a funny animated image like the silly frog above, graphics, or animated infographics, could generate the highest number of social shares of all the image types in this post?
The main issue with using animated graphics is that they are much more difficult to generate than any other image type.
Not very many blogs use animated graphics, but those that do find that such posts perform extremely well. On average, animated graphics generated 551 tweets and 680 Facebook likes.

Here are some resources for animated graphics like the example above

6. Hand Drawn images

Image courtesy of Daniel Ferencak

Why do you think cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Sponge Bob Square Pants are so popular? Because they tickle our sense of humor and are entertaining.

You’ve seen those hand-drawn arrows and fonts that look hand drawn. Yes, they catch your eye and these images are one of the more difficult image types to create yourself because need to have good illustration skills. Hand-drawn images get shared much more frequently on social media.
Did you know that hand-drawn images get 318 tweets and 489 Facebook likes? What was interesting about the data is that it seems Facebook prefers hand-drawn images more than Twitter does.

You can find hand-drawn images on the same sites I mention for stock images:

http://photodune.net/ : love this one for $1 photos, this is a go to resource for me!
http://www.istockphoto.com/: a bit more expensive than photo dune and my next choice when I can’t find what I want there.
http://www.veer.com/ : another great resource for photos

So there you have it – the list of the top 6 images that you should be using for your blog posts and why you should be using at least one of them on each of your posts or content pages on your site.

I’d love to know which of these images you are currently using and what are you going to try?

Want to sell more services & products on autopilot?

FREE Download: I’ll show you step by step the 7 simple changes you can make to your website that will have it making money while you are sleeping!

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Get the Profitable Content Creator’s Roadmap

This roadmap will walk you through the first steps towards creating your own profitable content.
You’ll get the 5 steps that show you how to create content so that you can start using them to create content that transforms instead of informs.
The 3 mistakes you might be making with your content so you can start creating content that leads prospects to work with you.

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The post Top images that you should be using for your content appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

Planning And Organizing Blogs Made Simple

Kristen Poborsky — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 01:05:00 +0000

One of the most asked questions I get asked is how do I make planning and organizing blogs easier so that I can be more productive?

Lots of my clients start out reluctantly content (blogging) and in our over 7 years of handling thousands of posts a year, we’ve created a process for planning and organizing blog posts that takes all of the stress out of the equation.

I’m sharing my personal and the very same plan and organization process I use for my clients and taught to my student in Smart Simple Content Marketing to help you get started.

Here’s my 7 part process to planning and organizing blogs:

Step 1: Use a Planner

When you plan your content in advance, it really simplifies your planning and organizing blogs into a more manageable task.

I recommend planning no more than a quarter at a time and I do my post research all in a single sitting at the beginning of a quarter and then generally take a quick relook at things based upon reviewing my blog performance.

So If I see that a particular subject was off the charts, I’ll change my content plan to write more about that subject so I can deliver more of what my audience is interested in.

Tools I use:

Content Planning Spreadsheet – I’ve got a spreadsheet already built for you and bundled it with my Blog Post Template in your Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download

Buzzsumo and Answer The Public for content research – links are included your Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download

Step 2: Use a Template to Write Your Post

After I have planned out my content the next step to planning and organizing blogs, I use a template to write my posts. This way I can hand it off to my team to set up on my site.

Using this template both my clients and I never miss a thing that needs to be included on our posts.

Having a template ensures consistency and it also allows me to write at my leisure, come back a couple of times and make changes to my content as needed. I also have the essentials on the template needed make completing my on Page SEO a breeze.

Tools I use:

Blog Post Template – I’ve got my template already built for you and bundled it with my Content Planning Spreadsheet in your Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download.

Using this template will really cut your time spent planning and organizing blogs.

Step 3: Use Batch Processing

I normally batch process my blog post writing in 1-2 sittings each month. I already have them planned using the content planning spreadsheet. Then I have time blocked on my calendar and I plan to write 4 posts in a single sitting.

Doing this takes the stress off of having to do it weekly.

I set my timer for 90 minutes first thing in the morning and I am able to get into the flow and write 2 posts in a single sitting. Getting these done early in the day is a real motivator and makes me feel like I can push through and get them all done!

Then I take a break and come back in afternoon and bang out the remaining two.

Once they are all done I go find my images and add them to each post at the end all at the same time. I like to set a timer and spend no more than 5- 10 minutes browsing per image at the most!

You can get more writing tips here that will help you during this part of the process – How to Become a More Productive Writer: 7 Helpful Tips

Tools I use:

My favorite three places to find images are photo dune, Unsplash and bigstock photos – links are included in your Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download

Bonus tip: Build a library of draft posts

Batch in 1-2 posts a month to use when you are on vacation or really need a break from blogging, you’ll be glad you did!

I break it down for you in this article where I cover the 5 steps to making effective use of your content creation time.

Step 4: Set up Your Content

Set up your post on your blog the day before.

Doing this in advance reduces the stress of having to write, post, and promote your content all in one sitting.

I don’t know about you but I want to enjoy this process and write great content for my tribe. From my experience and that of my clients, I know that having a stress-free method to plan and organize blog posts really helps!

Step 5: Perform On-Page SEO

You want to get the most traffic for your efforts, right?

Optimizing my blog post for keywords is an essential part of how I plan and organize blog posts. It should only take you 10-15 minutes and will pay off with organic traffic to your site.

I could write the entire process out for you here, but that wouldn’t be helpful enough

Instead, I’ve included the On-Page SEO Checklist that will take you through the entire process in your Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download.

Using the SEO checklist will not only really cut your time spent planning and organizing blogs, but it will also help you get more organic traffic.

Step 6: Post On High Traffic Days

This is key to getting more eyeballs on your content.

Finding out when you get the most traffic to your blog is as easy as heading over to your google analytics account and seeing when your traffic is at it highest during the week.

If you don’t know, its a safe bet that the highest traffic days are usually Monday-Thursday.

I find it too stressful to start out the week getting a post out so I set mine up for Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Step 7: Promote Your Post

Use your social sharing buttons to promote your post out on social media after it has been published.

You want to use these buttons instead of auto-posting to your site for a couple of reasons

#1 It counts as a social sharing signal to google.

#2 You have more control over the content you share on your platforms

Then schedule time on your calendar a few days later to go and share again so you can reach a whole new audience with your content.

For Twitter, I like to use my tweet this content on my blog post to promote it more than twice so schedule time for that over the next 3-4 days, and you’ll be covered.

Then set up your evergreen content to be continually rotated out on social media.

Tools I use:

Social Oomph for rotating content

Tweet This Plugin for WordPress

Shareaholic Plugin for Social Sharing

* Each of these tools are included in the Blog Post Productivity Workbook Download. I really encourage you to grab the workbook and use it to start planning and organizing your blog posts.

Back over to you…How do You plan and organize blog posts?

The post Planning And Organizing Blogs Made Simple appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content

Kristen Poborsky — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 00:25:22 +0000

Okay so you’ve decided to start creating content or maybe you have started and you’re at a loss about what to do next….

No matter where you are in your content creation process, you can use this list to help you create content that is high quality, meaningful to your audience and helps build your business.

Here are the Top 10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content

Or at any time for that matter!

1. Set goals

When content, you need to know what the goal is for your content

Setting goals is essential and actually, I believe that you should have this done before you’ve launched your website & started creating content so you have already built a great visitor experience when you start driving traffic to your content.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Am I creating to share my story?
Help others by publishing useful information:
Make money as an affiliate?
Promote my products and services?

Knowing this in advance will ensure that you’ve set up the right pages and have links to your content so that you make the most of your traffic.

2. Create an editorial calendar

Knowing the answers to #1 above before you create your editorial calendar will make this step that much easier!

You’ll have the who and why done in advance and this will help direct your topics and research when creating an editorial calendar.

It doesn’t need to be set in stone or filled out for a year in advance.

My rule of thumb is to start with 3 months and then look at your metrics before planning your next 3 months on your editorial calendar.

Your editorial calendar’s purpose is to give you a strategic plan on the type of topics you will create content around and when.

3. Build Your Social Media Platforms

You’ll need to set up your social media platforms when starting to create content and before you write your first piece of content as this is the prime place for you to share your content and start building traffic back to your website.

I highly recommend creating Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to start with.

Depending on your business type I would also add LinkedIn into the mix, making sure you are part of as many groups where your ideal client is as this is a prime source of traffic for many businesses.

Pinterest is also another place you will want to post your content as well. Make sure you understand how to use it as it is more SEO-driven. Just haphazardly posting out on Pinterest will not get you any traction.

4. Find a Tribe

Connecting with others in the same niche is the smart way to get more exposure to your content.

Your tribe members can give you advice, critique your work, promote a post for you and just be an overall support system.

Look for groups on Facebook that aren’t overly spammy or self-promoting.

5. Build Your List

It is never too early to start building your own list. This is one of the most valuable marketing assets you can have.

Social media platforms and followers may come and go but your list is the only thing you truly own and can use to nurture your prospects.

Take the time to get to know your list and build deep connections with them by sending them valuable content.

6. Start a newsletter

It doesn’t matter if you have 1 or 10k on your list.

You need to send a newsletter to your list on a regular basis. It is a great source of traffic and a good way to convert those warm leads into paying customers.

Be sure to be consistent with your newsletter and deliver great content. Resist the urge to be overly promotional and to promote other people’s content to your list unless it is something you really believe will help them.

I tell my clients to use Aweber to build their email list…

7. Write Content

Research and write great content that will interest your ideal client.

I like to use buzzsumo.com as a great way to find hot content ideas. Don’t overlook this critical step when starting out creating content.

8. Find Great Images

Social media is all about the pictures and the first thing that catches your reader’s eye is your image.

Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook all focus on images first, so having great photos will give your content better exposure.

You don’t need to be a professional photographer but you do need to use high-quality images with your content.

3 tips to help you select great images:

Pick a relevant image
High contrast Images
Add a copy to your image

**Unsplash.com, Bigstockphotos.com, or photodune.net are great go-to sources for hi-res images….

9. Basic SEO

The basics of on-page SEO are important when creating content on your website.

It doesn’t have to be hard or time-consuming….I’ve broken it down into some simple steps in this blog. SEO in 10 Minutes or Less

I suggest that you start with adding the SEO By Yoast Plugin to your website and then.

10. Set Up and Track Your Metrics

Lots of people make this mistake when starting out and they miss out on a lot of valuable information that will help them to grow their audience faster.

You’ll want to install the following plugins to your website:

Jet Pack – the set up the site stats, it’s full of great information
Google Analytics – first set up your account and then install the plugin and follow the instructions to get your account connected.

What you want to track are your top posts each month and start creating more content using the same topic when building your content calendar.

Here’s the recap list of the top 10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content

Set goals
Create an editorial calendar
Build Your Social Media Platforms
Find a Tribe
List Build
Start a newsletter
Write Content
Find Great Images
Basic SEO
Set Up and Track Your Metrics

Back over to you, are you just starting out with content creation or have you already gotten started and needed some tips?

Are you missing something from this list?

Please leave me a comment and let me what you are going to do to get your content creation efforts under way!

The post 10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

2 Important Pages Every Website Needs

Kristen Poborsky — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 22:00:42 +0000

You might think that the most important page that your website needs is a landing page…and yes I would agree with you.

However, there are 2 important blog pages that most digital CEO’s and online business owners overlook:

1. A Privacy Page

2. A Disclosure Page

Visitors to your website have a right to know how you are using their information and if you are making money using affiliate links. So just how do you create those pages?

In this post I’m going to walk you through step-by-step how to set up each of these important blog pages…and it is so easy you can do it in less than 30 minutes.

But first here’s the reason’s why you need them even if you aren’t promoting other people’s products with affiliate links:

Reason 1: It’s required by law if you collect personal information from users

If you are list building then you want to have these pages on your site.

Reason 2: Third-party services you may use require it.

If you are using Google Adwords or Analytics, you must include a Privacy Policy that informs visitors about your use of them.

Reason 3: Your visitors want to make sure you care about their privacy.

It shows that you can be trusted, especially before handing over their private information, such as their email address when signing up for a freebie.

How to set up a privacy policy page

Are you collecting email addresses, and/or using cookies on your site? Then you’ll want this essential page that informs your visitors what type of information you collect and what you do or not do with their information.

Step 1: Create your privacy page on your website

1. Log in and click on pages then add new

2. At the top type in the name of your page: Privacy Policy.

3. Use this free online privacy policy generator to quickly get a copy for your page: https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/ . It only takes a few minutes to fill in the information so it is customized to your business.

4. Perform a bit of on-page SEO to make it more keyword friendly using this guide here:

5. Once your page copy is generated, just copy and paste in your information to the page

6. Click publish.

Step 2: Add your Privacy Policy Page to Your Navigation Menu

Then add your page to the bottom menu of your site by going to appearance, then menus and select your bottom menu, add your page, and click “save”.

Need ideas to help you create your privacy policy page? Check out my privacy policy page.

How to Set Up a Disclosure Page

You need a disclosure page on your website if you make any money on your website from other businesses. You are required by law to disclose that you make money on your website.

Here’s a couple of examples: you receive a free product in exchange for a link or mention, you must disclose that. If you use affiliate links on your website, you must have a disclosure policy in place.

Step 1: Create your disclosure page on your website

Log in and click on pages then add new.
At the top type in the name of your page: Disclosure Policy.
Use this free online disclosure policy generator to quickly get a copy for your page: https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/ . It only takes a few minutes to fill in the information so it is customized to your business.
Perform a bit of on-page SEO to make it more keyword-friendly using this guide here:
Once your page copy is generated, just copy and paste your information to the page
Click publish.

Step 2: Add your Disclosure Policy Page to Your Navigation Menu

Then add your page to the bottom menu of your site by going to appearance, then menus and select your bottom menu, add your page, and click “save”.

Need ideas to help you create your Disclosure Policy blog page? Check out my disclosure policy page.

Sometimes, just having a disclosure policy blog page may not be enough.

If you write full sponsored posts about a company or product that you are endorsing, its a good idea for you to disclose at the bottom of the post that the post was sponsored, or that “this post is sponsored content” and don’t forget to let your readers know that all opinions are your own.

I like to let them know that I’ve tested out the product myself and have used it and recommend only products I’ve personally tried.

Remember those free products or software definitely count as sponsored content.

Anytime you’ve received something in exchange for a post or mention…you are required to fully disclose that information.

Make sure you’ve got your bases covered with your privacy and disclosure pages.

The post 2 Important Pages Every Website Needs appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

11 crucial elements your home page needs

Kristen Poborsky — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 22:00:43 +0000

I want you to think of your website’s home page’s primary job is to conduct an interview for you.

Every time someone visits your home page they are doing the following.

Critiquing what your site looks like.

Critiquing your copy.

Establishing an opinion of whether or not you can help them solve their most pressing problem(s).

Deciding if you are worth getting to know further by either consuming your content or joining your list.

And most importantly, if you are worth doing business with.

Do you think your homepage is making the right impression during this interview of sorts?

In this article, I share the 11 crucial elements your home page should have if you want it to help you conquer that interview and help build your coaching practice.

Quickly and clearly tells visitors how you can help them.
Video introduction.
How to contact you.
A well-thought-out customer journey.
An overview of who you are.
An overview of your services.
Client testimonials.
Great design including high-quality images.
Most recent blog posts.
A clear call to action.
Social media links.

Let’s dive deeper into each of these 11 elements deeper so you can use them to spiff up your home page.

Element #1: Your home page needs to quickly and clearly tells your visitors how you can help them.

You only have a few seconds to make that first impression. Just like you want to make that good impression face to face, you have to do the same on your website.

Three key things on your website will help do this for you

Your header image and copy.

Your introductory title.
Your introductory paragraph.
Video introduction

Each of these must clearly let your visitors know that they are in the right place and you are the right person to help them solve the problem they are struggling with.

Here’s an example of a highly successful multiple 6-figure relationship coach’s first impression on a website:

Element #2: Video Introduction

This element helps you with #1 and builds a connection with your visitors. You want to include a quick introductory video that explains quickly who you are, your philosophy, and how you can help.

This gives visitors more of a connection with you and a better understanding of your personality. People buy based more upon emotions rather than logic. So if you can build a sense of connection and rapport they will be more likely to stay on your site and move to the next step in your customer journey.

Here’s an example of a video from a branding coach’s website we designed for her:

Element #3: How to contact you

How many times have you been in need of tech support or customer service, but couldn’t get someone on the phone to save your life?

Don’t put your prospects in the same position.

Visitors should be able to find your contact information easily on your homepage. Most commonly found in the footer (like in the example from our website above), your homepage should include a mailing address, email address, and phone number in case someone is interested in reaching you.

People want to work with people. Having this information readily available offers comfort by letting people know they can get a hold of someone if need be and also adds credibility, making it clear that this is the homepage of a legitimate business.

Here’s an example where we have included contact information on a homepage of a business coach’s website:

Element #4: A well-thought-out customer journey.

You want someone to arrive on your website and know exactly what to do next and/or where they can find the information they want and need quickly and without being confused.

Your customer journey should also reflect your customer’s typical behavior highlighting their problem and then bringing the pages they should visit as their next logical step.

For example, if you are a business coach and you work with 3 types of clients, you should highlight each type of client, their typical problems, and then where they should go next to get more information on how to solve it.

The next step can be a service or product page or even a piece of content. The rule of thumb is that on every page you take them to there should be the next logical steps.

The goal of your customer journey should be to bring them closer to making a buying decision, to get them on your list, or to pick up the phone (or email) you to get into a conversation.

Here’s an example of three options for a customer journey experience from https://incedogroup.com website:

Element #5: An overview of who you are.

Having a short paragraph about who you are and the benefit of working with you compliments what you have in your header image, your intro paragraphs and your video. Ideally, the content on each of these sections should all say pretty much the same thing.

Doing this will reinforce your message and let them know that they are in the right place. Include a button or link that will take them to your about page.

Here’s an example of a great about paragraph:

Element #6: An overview of your services and or products

While your introduction section gives people an idea of what you do and how you can help them, having a services section where they can see what kind of services or products you sell helps them take the next logical step from your home page to another area on your site.

Ideally, you want to make each of these simple a very short paragraph in a button to go and learn more.

Here’s an example of a product section:

Element #7: Include a maximum of 3-5 client testimonials.

According to Spiegel Research Center, displaying reviews on your homepage and elsewhere on your site can increase conversion rates by 270%.

Visitors to your site consider these to be social proof that you are good at what you do. However, you don’t need to go overboard and have a lot of reviews/ testimonials.

Spiegel Research Center says that having more reviews isn’t better. They say that the benefit of additional reviews begins diminishing rapidly after the first five reviews.

As a rule of thumb, we tell our clients to give us 3-5 testimonials for a home page when working on a project together.

Here’s a very simple testimonial example:

Element #8: Great design including high-quality images.

A poorly designed page or one that looks like it was built ages ago won’t do anything for your image. Remember when I said that your homepage is conducting an interview for you?

Just like you wouldn’t go to an interview wearing a 10-year-old suit, or in ratty or torn jeans, you shouldn’t have an out-of-date home page or one that doesn’t look polished and professional.

That goes for images on your home page. Stock images are okay, ideally, you want to have high-quality images of yourself on your home page.

Using real photos of you, (your team if you have one) and your office on your homepage shares a behind-the-scenes picture of what people can expect when working with you and further builds rapport.

Having great headshots, images, and graphics greatly enhance your home page as you can see in this example:

Element #9: Most recent blog posts.

I’m passionate about creating content because I know when done right, it helps my coaching clients to fill their practices. That being said, when we design a home page for our clients I always recommend that they have the three most recent blog posts highlighted on their homepage.

Doing this gets people over to your content and consuming it.

Your content great way to showcase your expertise and to get your visitors on your website to know you better and excited about working with you.

Here’s an example:

Element #10: A clear call to action.

People visit your homepage (and any other page on your site) it should be clear what action you want them to take next.

This is key to your well-thought-out customer journey that we covered in Element #4. Think of your home page as a way to get your visitors to quickly decide if they are in the right place and then to take the next step that is right for them.

On your homepage, these calls to actions generally are:

Going to the next page on your site for more information
Consuming your content on your blog page
Subscribing to get a lead magnet or newsletter
Requesting a consultation either via phone or by email.

Sit down and decide on what one or two actions you really want people to take when land on your homepage. We generally suggest to our clients that they put contact information in a couple of highly visible places and then focus on getting the visitor to take action by going to other pages on their sites.

Having more than 1-2 options will only confuse your visitor and clutter your buyer’s journey.

Element #11: Social media links.

You want people to check you out, then follow and engage with your company on your social media platforms.

Include your social media links in a consistent place on your site where your visitors will naturally find them. We like to put them along with social media feeds in our client’s footers along with contact information

Just like this example below:

Wrapping up, here are the 11 crucial elements your home page needs to conquer that first interview and help build your coaching practice.

Quickly and clearly tells visitors how you can help them.
Video introduction.
How to contact you.
A well-thought-out customer journey.
An overview of who you are.
An overview of your services.
Client testimonials.
Great design including high-quality images.
Most recent blog posts.
A clear call to action.
Social media links.

The post 11 crucial elements your home page needs appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

Nine Website Development Mistakes You Should Never Make

Kristen Poborsky — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 03:14:55 +0000

Whether you have an existing website or are planning to build a new website, it’s important that you put some thought into it.

According to 2019 small business statistics from G2 Crowd, 83% of business owners feel that having a website will give them a competitive advantage.

I have to agree with these statistics.

As a marketing strategist and implementor my team I get to work closely with a number of coaches so I see the value of having a website that helps to market their business.

Having the right website enhances their business greatly and gives them the marketing platform that they need to capture leads, make sales, and grow their business.

Think of your website as being the home base for all of your marketing efforts.

If you don’t have a website or have one that is working to help you build your business, getting this in place should be your #1 priority.

Let’s go over what your website should be doing for you before we dive into the mistakes that you don’t want to make.

What Your Website Should Be Doing For You

Take a minute and go through this list and carefully consider whether or not your website is doing this for your business.

Represents your business, engages and educates your ideal clients.
Educates your visitors as to how you can help solve their biggest pain points with your products and services.
Collects leads for you. Are you building your email list?
Converts leads into customers for you. Do you market to your list weekly? Do you have a way for website visitors to contact you via email or pick up the phone and call you?
Connects your visitors to your social media platforms so they can come and visit you there too.
Full of educational content that leads your visitors to want to work with you by positioning you as the expert in your niche.

Does your website perform any or all of these important tasks for your business?

I’m sure you can see from this list why it is so important to have a website that has each and every one of these 6 elements incorporated into it. When you do, your website will be helping you to market your business 24/7.

Let’s tackle the most common website mistakes coaches make when building their website so that you don’t make those same mistakes on yours…

9 Common Website Mistakes

Mistake #1: Relying solely on third-party platforms such as social media to function as a website for your business.

Many coaches feel that with all of the marketing and advertising that is available on social media platforms that they don’t really need a website to build their business.

If you’re one of those who are relying on Facebook or any other social media channels such as Instagram to only build your business you are really missing out on collecting leads and making sales.

Why is this so important?

The big problem is that you do not own these platforms and you are at the mercy of them when they make changes to their algorithms or content changes. The people that you gather in your communities on these platforms are there only. You can’t email them and you haven’t collected their email lists so you don’t really own that valuable marketing asset called a lead.

This is why you want to get started building a website and make list building one of the main goals for your website.

Mistake #2: Investing in a website that you really don’t own.

I work with a lot of clients where they come to me and for some reason, they have been working with a web developer who actually owns their website and when they quit working with that person the website goes away.

In my opinion, this is the worst thing that you can do for your business because all of your hard work ends up going away when you part ways with the person that you were working with.

Here are a few other reasons why you don’t want to work with someone who owns all of your website properties.

You lack control which can add up in added cost time and headaches.

It is very difficult to make changes because you have to go through them and it could end up taking a lot of extra time.

It can be very expensive to have to go through them exclusively to make a small change that you could have made yourself.

Here’s an example from a client of mine:

Susan, a business coach had a very successful company and had a really good looking website. However, she was looking around for some new help to develop her website and her marketing further and she went with a big marketing agency.

What ended up happening is that they own her website and all of her marketing collateral. she ended up being unhappy with the performance and wanted to change where she could have more control over the timing of changes and working closely with someone one-on-one which was more of her style.

When Susan parted ways with the marketing agency she was left with nothing and her old website where she had built up all of her SEO juice was gone.

Susan then had to start all over from scratch and losing all of that great SEO juice caused her website traffic to virtually be non-existent.

Make sure that you own your own website it is on your own hosting and you have all the control over all of the passwords and content there in the same could be said for all of your social media platforms your email marketing and list building as well.

Mistake #3: Building a website without a strategy in place.

Having a plan in place where you define your goal, your audience, your content and even how you measure is so important to the success of your website helping you to market your business.

Here’s a list of things that you should take into consideration when building your website:

Who is your ideal client audience?
What is the goal or goals of your website
What kind of functionality do you need for your website
What kind of customer Journey do you want to provide for your website visitors

A pretty website without a strategy will do nothing to help you build your business.

Mistake #4: Building a website that doesn’t reflect your branding

The bottom line is that one platform doesn’t match the other it confuses your audience.

You may already have your branding in place or an idea of how you would like your branding to look. Everything should be consistent between your online and your offline branding across all platforms.

The other consideration here is that you want to have a clean and simple design and not make it overly complicated. You want to be smart about what colors, fonts, design elements, white space and how you use them all to create your overall design.

This is where having a professional design team that will create a mock-up of your website before getting even started really helps to build a better website for your business.

This step is the most essential part of our website and digital marketing services that we do for our clients.

Mistake #5: Not having any or unclear call to actions

Remember how we talked about what the goals are for your website? You must clearly state what you want your website visitors to do. Believe it or not, people want to be told what action to take.

You should take a look at every single page on your website, and think about where and how you can add a call to action.

If list building is an important goal for your site, then you want to make sure that you have things like forms alert bars pop-up any kind of lead form that you have should be prominent and click Worthy.

If you want people to pick up the phone and call you then you need to put your contact information in a prominent place on your website. Actually, you’re going to want your contact information in a couple of places on every single page of your website.

Mistake #6: Focusing more on the creative aspects than the goals of your website

As I have mentioned before, the main goal of your website should be to collect and convert leads.

You can’t rely on a pretty website to collect and convert leads for you. Your website has an important job to play in helping you to market and build your business. It must present visitors with the right information and give them the next steps. This is how you create an effective and user-friendly experience for your visitors.

You must engineer your content layout and design to support that.

The bottom line is that you want your website to be a lead-generating, customer-converting machine that helps to build your business.

Mistake #7: Your website isn’t properly built for mobile browsing

Did you know that 30% or more of all website traffic these days comes from a mobile phone or a tablet?

The number of mobile browsers is increasing every single year and if you haven’t properly optimized your site, you’re essentially turning customers away.

When you fail to have a mobile responsive site, you drive away customers, you hinder your search engine ranking and pretty much end up looking unprofessional.

Here’s how to know if your website is responsive or needs a little work use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool here’s the link: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

Here’s how to test your site:

1. Enter in your URL for your website

2. Click Test

3. Google will rate your website mobile-friendly nice using a color-coded guide

4. Review their list and make a list of changes that you need to make on your website and make those fixes a priority.

I highly recommend doing this test at least 2 times a year to make sure your site is working properly.

Mistake #8: Forgetting to include SEO as part of your strategy

Do you know that there are close to 3.5 billion searches conducted every single day? The odds are pretty good that there is somebody right now searching for your help.

SEO is invaluable.

You need to have an online presence supported by organic search. Customers are searching for your business and you need to make sure that they can find you. Just being on social media or having a website is not enough.

You need to have these SEO basics in place on your website:

A keyword for every single page and blog post on your site.
Add that keyword to your page title
Add that keyword to the page URL.
Include the keywords in your content on the page
include your keyword on your page images.

Install the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress and use it to help you complete the page description in the focus keyword in there and also use it to help you tweak your page content so that it is search engine friendly.

Besides having the SEO basics in place you need to consider how well your site’s load speed is. Making sure that your website loads quickly not only improves the customer experience it also impresses Google.

A website with pages with a higher page speed gets you ranked higher by Google.

Also note that your website page speed also affects your page rank your bounce rate and your bottom line because all of these affect your user experience which Google put a big emphasis on.

Mistake #9: You built your website and you never touch it

Lots of coaches build websites and never come back and add any content, or update it on a regular basis.

This is a big mistake and a missed opportunity to help you build your business.

Owning a website is not a one-and-done marketing task. Now I’m not saying that you need to revamp your website every single day, but you do need to make it a point to continually add fresh content to it.

You can do this by adding blogs and social content.

The best way is to keep adding new fresh content on a weekly basis it’s not something you need to do every single day but adding a new piece of content to your blog weekly is a good marketing tactic.

Here’s a couple parting thoughts on websites:

Before you start building or revamping your website remember that you should have a good plan in place.

If you feel that you can’t dedicate the time or are unsure about where to start, then you might want to consider hiring a team that specializes in building websites for your particular niche.

When you work with the right team they will know what elements that you need to include in your design and will help guide you quickly to create a website that helps you market your business 24/7.

Remember that creating a lead generating and converting website is the is the #1 foundation you should be focusing on first in your online business.

If it yours isn’t working for you then we suggest setting up a 30 minute digital strategy session to see how we can help you build one that helps you build your coaching practice.

Schedule Your Website Strategy Session Here

The post Nine Website Development Mistakes You Should Never Make appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

GDPR and how it affects your blog

Kristen Poborsky — Sat, 12 May 2018 04:24:43 +0000

You may have seen emails addressing GDPR hitting your inbox frequently this month. I know I get at least 3+ emails a day from other people I follow my email provider, various services I use to run my business and those of my clients all addressing GDPR.

I don’t know about you but the number of emails I have been getting caught my attention so I decided to research and find out what it really means for my business and my blog.

In this post, I will explain what I have learned and what I am personally going to do to make sure my blog is GDPR compliant.

What exactly is GDPR?

GDPR simply put is the General Data Protection Regulation law passed in 2016 to protect data and privacy for people in the European Union. It becomes enforceable on May 25th 2018…which explains why all of the emails currently hitting your inbox addressing this subject.

Okay, so you are probably wondering why should I care about GDPR?

It applies to anyone who processes personal data – for us bloggers it means collecting emails, names and any other information about a person.
You are accountable for the security of the information you are collecting.
It has a global reach – yes it might be a European law, however, if you collect the data of a European citizen…you fall under its reach regardless of your location.

How GDPR can affect blogging activities

Activity #1: Collecting Email Addresses

Collecting email addresses is the collection of personal data. If you have opt-ins on your website — then you have a responsibility for that data.

Activity #2: Running a WordPress Blog

You know those blog comments? They require the commenter to submit their personal information in order to leave a comment.

And did you know that WordPress creates cookies for those commenters? According to the new GDPR law, those cookies are classified as personal data.

Finally, let’s address the plugins that you use to run your WordPress Site. Those plugins may or may not collect personal data.

Activity #3: Tracking Behavior

Facebook pixels, Google analytics, and email analytics are all things that smart marketers use to get information to help build their businesses right?

These all fall under the GDPR law as well.

Activity #4: Webhosting

Simple things like backups and tracking the IP of who visits your website are common things that your web host does. Each of these fall under the GDPR laws.

How to be GDPR Compliant on Your Blog

Step #1: Process data lawfully

Collect and process list building data by consent only. In other words, don’t go adding people to your list without their prior consent. If you built your list with opt-ins and collected emails at events where people gave you their information, you’re covered.

And…don’t worry about having to reconfirm your email list. if you got opt-in consent in the first place, and have a clear “unsubscribe” option on your emails which all email providers require you to have, then you’re good to go.

Personally, I’ve witnessed a list that was researched and then asked to opt-in and the results were not good enough to warrant the time and expense to gather the data.

And frankly, it just pisses off a lot of people to be added to an email list without their consent. I see this happen all the time especially with people I connect with on LinkedIn…they then seem to think it is okay to add me to their email list.

I also personally would refrain from buying or selling lists.

Step #2: Collect a minimal amount of information

If you are list building, you will want to adjust your data collection to only collecting email and name. However, if you want more information such as phone number and gender for example…you’ll want to tell your subscriber exactly why you need this information.

I personally follow this rule of thumb of minimal data collection as asking for too much tends to turn potential subscribers off.

Step #3: Update Your Privacy Policy

In this post, I wrote about why you need to have a privacy policy. If you don’t have one or its been awhile, now is the time to update it and this post will show you how to do it.

You’ll want to make sure you mention what data you collect, what you use it for and who it’s shared with.

Step #4: Check Your Suppliers

You know those plugins, email service providers and web-hosting companies that also might be collecting data?

It’s a good idea for you to do a quick check and see on their site what they are doing to be GDPR compliant. My guess is that you’ve probably already gotten an email from them addressing this.

And make sure your systems are set up to protect personal data that you are collecting as well.

Step #5: Be Super Clear About Consent

This applies to your list building efforts…you’ll want to make sure that you let them know what they are consenting to. If you are sending a freebie and adding them to your email list, it needs to be stated in your copy.

Step #6: Keep Your Website Up to Date & Secure

One of the biggest mistakes I see is that most website owners overlook is performing routine website maintenance. Websites that get hacked most often are ones where the WordPress version and plugins are out of date.

And you’ll want to make sure you’ve got the right security plugins set up and maintained too. This is often overlooked as well.

Step #7: Check Google Analytics

You’ll want to log into your Google Analytics account and make sure your cookies settings are non-invasive.

Here’s how you can quickly Check the User ID:

1. Log into Google Analytics

2. Click on Admin

3. and navigate to the property in which you want to implement User-ID

4. In the PROPERTY column, click Tracking Info > User-ID.

Then you will be able to see if this is turned on or off. I would make sure it is turned off to keep your account GDPR compliant.

Now that you know what GPDR is and why it is important to you as a blogger. I hope these 7 steps to making sure your blog is compliant are helpful to you. I’d love to hear your comments and opinions about GPDR.

The post GDPR and how it affects your blog appeared first on Kristen Poborsky.com.

Wordpress Archives - Kristen Poborsky.com

The Essential Guide to Website Silo Structure with AI Integration

Key Elements of a Website Silo

Understanding What a Website Silo Structure is

Benefits of a Well-Organized Website Silo Structure

Getting Started with Website Silo Structure

Improving Your Visitor Experience with Website Silo Structure

Practical Steps to Build Your Website Silo Structure

Advanced Strategies and Tools for Website Silo Structure

Creating a structure and organizing your content helps to:

A well-executed website silo structure improves your visitor’s experience

Struggling to Find Time to Create Content?

Increase Your Website Traffic with this Simple AI SEO strategy

Let’s walk through simple step by step process so you can get similar results using on page SEO

7 Steps to Increase Website Traffic with A Simple On Page SEO Strategy

Step 1: Locate your most popular content

Step 2: Go to the Google Keyword Planner

Step 3: Strategize Your Keywords

Step 4: Update your content with your keywords

Step 5: Set up your redirect

Step 6. Publish your updated content

Step 7. Promote your content out on Social Media

7 Step Recap to Increase Website Traffic With This Simple SEO Strategy

Get everything right here in this handy checklist!

Give me just a few minutes of your time and I’ll show this simple AI SEO strategy…

Struggling to Find Time to Create Content?

Get The Step By Step Guide So That You Too Can Update Your Content With AI!

The Profitable Content Creator’s Guide

How to make every hour and action count

The step by step guide to working smarter and creating profitable blog posts

Contents

Chapter 1

How to Quickly & Effectively Plan Your Blog Posts

Chapter 2

Use a Template For Your Blog Posts

Chapter 3

Blog Post Writing Hacks to Save Time

Chapter 4

How to Format Your Blog Posts for Readability

Chapter 5

Perform On page SEO for more Organic Traffic

Chapter 6

Smart Tips for Sharing your Content on Social Media

Chapter 1

How to Quickly & Effectively Plan Your Blog Posts

Chapter 2

Use a Template For Your Blog Posts

Chapter 3

Blog Post Writing Hacks to Save Time

Chapter 4

How to Format Your Blog Posts for Readability

Chapter 5

Perform On page SEO for more Organic Traffic

Chapter 6

Smart Tips for Sharing your Content on Social Media

Top images that you should be using for your content

I’ve pulled together a list of 6 strategic images and how to use them in your content.

Include Images that give your content personality.

Use images to help break up longer content.

Select high contrast colorful images for your content.

Incorporate both fun and informative images.

Use unexpected images to convey meaning.

Incorporate Screenshots into your content to illustrate your stories.

1. Screen Shots

2. Graphs and Charts

3. Infographics

4. Stock photos

5. Animated images

6. Hand Drawn images

Get the Profitable Content Creator’s Roadmap

Planning And Organizing Blogs Made Simple

Here’s my 7 part process to planning and organizing blogs:

Back over to you…How do You plan and organize blog posts?

10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content

Here are the Top 10 Things to Do In Your First 3 Months of Creating Content

1. Set goals

2. Create an editorial calendar

3. Build Your Social Media Platforms

4. Find a Tribe

5. Build Your List