BBP 057 Blog Posts – Why Quality Matters Over Quantity with Ryan Robinson

Shownotes:

It’s super easy to get caught up in the weeds of SEO but the truth is having high quality content on your blog is a key ingredient. In today’s episode, hear how creating quality content can influence your SEO result and take you to the first page.

Guest Info

Blogger and podcast host at ryrob.com where I teach 500,000 monthly readers how to start a blog and build a profitable online business.

Ryrob.com

Navigate the Episode

[00:36] – High quality content is the foundation of SEO

[02:58] – Think through purchase intent

[04:00] – Ryan’s writing process

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Transcript

[00:00:07].950] – Liz Stapleton, Host

SEO can be a lot to handle for even the most experienced blogger, and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. The truth is that having quality content is one of the biggest keys to succeeding in SEO.

[00:00:18].960] – Liz

Hi, I’m Liz Stapleton, your host for the Blogger Breakthrough Podcast. Thank you for letting me be part of your day. In this episode, I’m sharing some SEO tips for quality content from blogger and Podcaster, Ryan Robinson, that he shared with us during the 2021 Blogger Breakthrough Summit. Let’s hear what he has to say. On that publishing.

[00:00:36].180] – Ryan Robinson

Beyond that, publishing truly transformative, excellent like high-quality content that helps real people. I think that’s the foundation that you should always have in mind.

[00:00:46].380] – Liz

OK, so truly transformational content is easier said than done. So where do you start in deciding what you want to write about? Do you go about it in a very kind of analytical way or how would you get there?

[00:01:06].070] – Ryan

I think the way that I started versus what I do today is a little different, to be fair. So today I do kind of a mixture of keyword research and planning based on, you know, market opportunities, blended with also answering reader questions. Because I have so many people that ask me super specific things that I realize other people have the same questions. So today I’m kind of a blend. But when I first started out definitely like very, very narrowly focused on keyword opportunities.

[00:01:36].940] – Ryan

So oftentimes that comes from competitor research. So seeing what other people in my space are writing about always gives me inspiration. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee, like, “OK, you know, because Neil Patel’s writing about this, that means I should do it, too.” I think there’s there’s a lot of kind of missteps you can make if you’re just chasing the competition. But chances are if someone who’s been doing this for many, many years, they have clearly monetized content, there will be opportunities you can identify just from looking at competitors and kind of double checking your own keyword research whether it’s using a free tool or something like Ahrefs or Moz.

[00:02:16].450] – Ryan

I think those are really, really valuable and just kind of validating like, all right, there are real people out there searching these things and I’m very SEO focus. But again, like if there’s real people searching on Google, there’s also real people talking about it on Facebook, other social networks, too. So I think it’s it’s kind of a winning combination by thinking through a SEO lens.

[00:02:39].570] – Liz

Yeah, I think it helps you figure it out. But also you want to write for people, not algorithms.

[00:02:43].990] – Ryan

Sure.

[00:02:44].650] – Liz

Because that’s going to. If you’re just for the algorithm, people are going to stay and it’s not going to do a lot of good. So going back to kind of keyword opportunities, how do you determine that a keyword is an opportunity?

[00:02:58].310] – Ryan

Hmm, I like to think today that purchase intent kind of drives a lot of my focus when I’m doing keyword research. If you get an article that does really, really well SEO wise and you get, let’s say, 10,000 people to it coming a day, but they all just leave, they they don’t complete any sort of action for your business. That’s arguably not that much of a win. Right? Unless you’re doing display ads and somehow generating lots of revenue from that.

[00:03:30].440] – Ryan

But, I don’t often advocate for that kind of route with blogs or at least most bloggers. So, yeah, I like to think through purchase intent. So, you know, whether that’s like some sort, of course, that I want to eventually sell one day or, you know, a digital book you might be able to offer based on your skills and your expertize, just thinking through like, all right, who’s searching for, you know, the term, like “how to write a blog post?”

[00:04:00].170] – Ryan

What are some ways that that might be monetized, whether it’s through recommending affiliate tools, selling your own products? Right. Having a Podcast that people can subscribe to and you can get sponsors from the Podcast. I like to kind of think through before I actually get started in the writing process, like, “All right, how can a post like this,” doesn’t need to be today, but “how can it be monetized at some point in time?”

[00:04:24].800] – Liz

OK, and then. What is your writing process, what do you what do you think is the best way to go about creating that transformational content once you kind of settle on the focus of the work?

[00:04:38].220] – Ryan

Yes, this is the million dollar question. I think lots of different writing processes do work for different people. But for me particularly, I always, always, always start with a headline. And so I kind of approach it with some sort of framing in mind that that feels most natural to me. And I always try and gut check that by researching, just doing a Google search. Seeing the 10 headlines that come up on the first page often gives you a pretty good insight into what Google’s saying the intent of searchers might be. You know, if it’s like 10 results that are all talking about top tools for something, then that tells me that you should probably consider following that format for your headline, too. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the right way to go. But that often kind of dictates the headline dictates the structure an article will take for me. OK, and then I’ll kind of outline it. I’ll do a little competitive research to make sure there’s not something I’m completely missing and to look for opportunities to kind of use my own experience or my own research to backfill holes that I’ve identified competitors kind of miss.

[00:05:51].300] – Ryan

So, yeah, from outlining then today, my process is a little different as far as writing goes than it was a few years ago. I, I use a couple of good freelance writers that I’ve worked with for years now and I’ll kind of like take the headline, take the outline and then I’ll kick it over to them and they’ll often generate a first draft. That’s a couple thousand words, few thousand words, and they get it back to me.

[00:06:14].100] – Ryan

And I’m more of an editor who, my gosh, I’m so obsessive about my process. Like, I end up doubling or tripling everything I get back from them as far as word count goes. But that’s fun.

[00:06:26].340] – Liz

OK, so how important is word count? I mean, it depends, I think, on the topic. Right? But if you want to kind of touch on that, explain how it relates to whatever you’re writing about. I think that’ll be helpful for a lot of people.

[00:06:39].240] – Ryan

Yeah, I tend to be one that really leans into like in-depth, comprehensive. We talked about like transformational earlier. I hesitate to give like a really specific number to people, but I don’t tend to publish anything less than like 5000 words on my site these days. For the most part. Sometimes there’s, there’s a little variance, I like, I published a guide to blog marketing recently that was like 12000 words, that was the first version that went up.

[00:07:11].220] – Ryan

And that’s that’s on the really high end. Right? But sometimes I’ll I’ll have something that’s. Yeah. Sometimes I’ll have something like 2000-3000 words, but like rarely is it anything less than that.

[00:07:24].270] – Liz

OK. Gotcha. And then if you’re getting articles that are this long, you know, which take time to create to make them good, how often are you publishing? Does it when it comes to sort of SEO…Because there’s a lot of like talk of you need to publish at least once a week. Right? For blogging when it comes to SEO quality over quantity, is it fair to say? And how do you decide when you’re publishing?

[00:07:50].250] – Ryan

Yeah, I for sure take the approach of quality over quantity today in my process and to be honest, like for for most of the time that I’ve been blogging, I haven’t had, like, a rigorous schedule of all right, I need to publish this on this day. It’s often kind of just kind of a how am I feeling about writing today? And if it was a good writing day or a good editing day, like, am I getting something up?

[00:08:17].460] – Ryan

I do aim for trying to publish something once a week when I’m like really on my game. But oftentimes I find that even though I aim for once a week, it’s more like once every other week or maybe three a month. That’s kind of what I’ve realized I’m falling into. 

[00:08:35].010] – Liz

All right. I hope this episode has given you a better idea of why creating high-quality content is so important to SEO and what that might look like for you. To hear more amazing SEO tips from Ryan, head over to bloggerbreakthrough.com/PodcastDeal to get access to the rest of his session and all the other 2021 sessions as well. Be sure to join me next time when we’re going to take a look at the very basics of SEO. So if this episode went over your head, you’ll definitely want to check out next week’s. I’ll catch you then.