SPI 341: How to Become an Inventor Entrepreneur with Ryan Gorman

Ryan Gorman is an entrepreneur with over fifty inventions. He'll teach you strategies for developing a product, selling your ideas, and protecting your intellectual property at every step.

SPI 341: How to Become an Inventor Entrepreneur with Ryan Gorman from The Smart Passive Income Blog.

from SPI 341: How to Become an Inventor Entrepreneur with Ryan Gorman

#1668 How this founder funded his startup by making millions through online poker

Today’s guest is Michael Jackness. He’s a guy who gave up online poker and got into e-commerce. He did it despite the existence of Amazon. Michael Jackness is the founder of Terran.com which owns and builds amazing brands and content sites.

Michael Jackness is the founder of Terran.com which owns and builds amazing brands and content sites.

Sponsored by

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More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

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Episode 21: Dominic Cummins, Founder @ RightMind, Inc. on How to Hire the Right Candidate the First Time

If you need to hire new employees, or are struggling to find the right fit, Dominic Cummins has some advice for you.

Stop hiring for skill sets, and start hiring based on personality traits.

Dominic is the founder of RightMind, Inc. and an expert at turning brand stories into relatable narratives that produce brand advocates. He works with Fortune 500 Companies to create their stories and hire employees who accurately represent it.

This week he explains how to hire the employees who don’t just have the skills to fulfill the position but more importantly, the traits. We talk about the DigitalMarketer mentality of “giving a damn” about your job, how to audit skills prior to onboarding, and Dom’s wild, fraudulent interview story.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why you should look for traits, instead of skills, during the recruiting process
• The difference between a good sales representative and an amazing one
• What questions to ask during an interview to know if a candidate is a good fit for the position
• How to make a candidate comfortable answering questions about their past experience
• The most effective way to onboard an employee and audit their skillset

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

RightMind, Inc.
Dominic on LinkedIn
DigitalMarketer Engage Post (This may be gated if you are not part of the DM Lab community)
DigitalMarketer Lab Trial

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to The DigitalMarketer Podcast? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

iTunes not your thing? Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, or TuneIn.

The post Episode 21: Dominic Cummins, Founder @ RightMind, Inc. on How to Hire the Right Candidate the First Time appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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5 On-Page SEO Elements (+1 Bonus Tactic) to Optimize in WordPress

OK, ya’ll… this is going to be fun.

I’m going to SEO this blog post in WordPress as I write it for you. How meta is that?

There are 5 on-page SEO factors you need to consider while creating blog posts or pages on your website:

1. The slug
2. Body text
3. Images
4. Title tag
5. Meta description

(RELATED: Designing Your Search Marketing Strategy)

Now, while I’ll be walking you through the process in WordPress, you can SEO these elements in any Content Management System (CMS) or shopping cart solution that is worth a darn. 

In fact, if you can’t alter even 1 of these 5 elements in your CMS or shopping cart—start planning a move to something else (like WordPress).

First, let’s make sure you have the right tools for this job…

Which SEO Plugin for WordPress?

The clear decision here is the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. Anything less is uncivilized.

This plugin will not only allow you to edit the 5 on-page SEO factors we’ll discuss later in this post, but it will also give you the ability to…

• Create a sitemap
• Verify Google Webmaster Tools
• Create breadcrumb navigation
• Edit your robots.txt file
• NO-INDEX pages

…and a ton more.

Here’s a look at all the options available in the Yoast WordPress plugin…

If you’re stuck with some other plugin like All-In-One SEO or Headspace II, you can import your information over easily using the SEO Data Transporter function in the IMPORT/EXPORT section of Yoast SEO…

Now that you have the right tool… let’s do some on-page SEO.

5 On-Page SEO Factors in WordPress

Alright, alright, alright… let’s get busy applying SEO to your WordPress post or page.

The keyword phrase I’m optimizing this post for is “on-page SEO.” I told you this was going to be meta.

On-Page SEO Factor #1: Optimize the Slug

The first thing I do when I create my new post is alter the file name, or as WordPress calls it, the slug. 

Applying the keyword or keyword phrase to the slug has a surprising SEO impact.

Here’s where you’ll find your slug…

DANGER: This is the one on-page SEO factor that you should be very careful with. DO NOT make changes to the slugs of existing pages or posts on your website without doing a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page. Google, and your users, do not like finding 404 Error pages where pages used to exist. The 301 redirect will permanently redirect anyone visiting a URL to a new URL.

You can use a plugin like Simple 301 Redirects to make things easy.

(NOTE: Before you set up your site SEO, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our FREE proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

On-Page SEO Factor #2: Optimize the Body Text

Wherever it’s natural to include the target keyword in the body copy of the page or post, do so.

But don’t force it. 

You want the body copy to flow, and you’re not looking to keyword stuff.

And, thanks to the Google Hummingbird algorithm update, feel free to use variations of the keyword by incorporating synonyms and changing the order in which the keyword exists.

Whatever you do, don’t be this guy…

Always err on the side of User Experience (UX) and not SEO. It’s just not worth it in the end to rank well for a keyword only to have your users flee your website in horror when they read your copy.

Instead, work the keywords in there where they naturally fit within the body and the headings.

And, if you can’t easily work the keyword into the copy—you might want to reconsider the keyword you’ve chosen.

On-Page SEO Factor #3: Optimize the Images

The biggie here is the ALT attribute in the image metadata. You want to ensure that you put a description of the image in the ALT attribute and do so for EACH image on the page.

Then, use your target keyword in the featured or primary image on the page.

But the ALT attribute is another place where people go SEO overboard. Don’t stuff keywords into your images.

Instead, imagine that, for whatever reason, a person can’t view the image on your page. Use the ALT attribute to accurately describe what the image is about.

In the evolving “semantic search” (Google’s algorithm attempts to understand the meanings of words and phrases through the context that surrounds them) this will become more important.

Also, name the file with an accurate description of the image as well…

Now it’s time for the granddaddy of all on-page SEO elements…

On-Page SEO Factor #4: Optimize the Title Tag

The title tag is not only an important SEO element, but it is also an important UX element.

The title tag is the most prominently displayed text on the Google search results page.

As a result, the title tag will be more effective if it reads properly to a user.

As a rule, the earlier the target keyword appears in the title tag, the more impact it will have on your SEO.

But don’t stress about it—just be sure to include the keyword in the title tag. If you can include it early in the tag, do it.

You’ll edit your title tag in the Yoast SEO plugin. And, as a bonus, the Yoast SEO plugin allows you to view how your title tag will appear in the Google search results from within the EDIT POST screen using something called a “Snippet Preview.”

OK, on to the last on-page element in WordPress…

On-Page SEO Factor #5: Optimize the Meta Description

So the meta description is not actually an SEO element.

Optimizing it will not improve your rankings but it’s still important for a number of UX and conversion reasons.

First, the meta description often appears prominently in the Google search results page…

This meta description WILL BE READ by most of the people that are choosing which search result to click on. So… it’s an SEO element.

On top of that, the meta description is often “pulled” by social sharing plugins as the descriptive text placed on sites like Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. You’ll get more clicks from social media if you’re meta description is optimized.

Here’s how a blog post we published appears on Facebook…

Like the title tag, you’ll optimize the meta description using the Yoast SEO plugin on the EDIT POST screen. And, as with the title tag, you’ll see what the meta description will look like in the “Snippet Preview”…

Ideally, your meta description should be short enough not to be truncated or cut off. But Yoast’s preview is based on characters, (150 to be exact), whereas Google is based on pixels. So it might cut your description off when Google won’t. You can use this free online tool to check based on pixels.

And that’s it—easy peasy.

Now you have optimized your on-page SEO, and your ranking is already on the rise.

(NOTE: Before you set up your site SEO, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our FREE proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

Bonus Tactic: SEO Siloing

Google has made it tough on SEO’s and it will get tougher.

If you’re just beginning to learn SEO, you’re in luck. The rules have changed so much that being a newbie might give you an advantage. You won’t have to unlearn a bunch of things that don’t work anymore.

(RELATED: Designing Your Search Marketing Strategy)

But if you’re an SEO veteran, you likely have the battle scars from countless algorithm updates to prove it.

But here’s the good news. There’s still 1 tactic that works as well as it did back in the old days.

It’s called “siloing.”

But siloing isn’t just great SEO practice. The creation of a silo document also allows you to maintain your editorial calendar (if you’re publishing content) and provide a great User Experience (UX) for human visitors.

Yep, this document simultaneously pleases search engine robots and ordinary site visitors.

What is a website silo?

At its core, a silo document is a spreadsheet that allows you to record information about your website at the page level.

Here’s an example website silo for a tax preparation and accounting company…

I’ve also included it as a download you can use for a template for your own website. Download it here!

If SEO is your only concern, your silo document might contain only the 4 columns in the example above. Let’s take a look at each of the columns,

• Location: As you can see in the image above, the numbering system allows you to indicate web pages that are nested within other pages in the site architecture. For example, pages 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. are nested within page 1.0, which is a category page.
• Page type: Every site will have different page types. If you have an eCommerce site you’ll likely have product category and product detail pages. Blogs will likely have pages, posts, categories, and tags.
• Page name: This could be the page name in your content management system or this section could be used to denote the topic of the page. In any case, you’ll want to use this column to express what that page is about.
• Keyword: Most of your pages will have at least one target SEO keyword. This is the keyword that will be used in the title tag, meta description, file name, and alt tag. The keyword and variations of it should also be used in the body copy in a natural way. If your pages have more than one keyword, a second or even third column will be needed.

The first benefit to putting this document together is evident in the image above. It gives you a simple way to plan and communicate the SEO keywords that are being targeted at a page level.

Often there are multiple stakeholders working on a website. PR folks, coders, web designers, and many others might be creating, editing, and deleting pages.

The silo document can be used to communicate SEO information with all of these parties.

BONUS TIP:  Google Docs can be used to house your silo document. The advantage is that you’ll be able to share and collaborate with other members of the team without creating multiple versions of the silo.

How to Use the Silo Document for SEO

At least 1 column in your silo is used to denote the SEO keyword that is being targeted on a page. But the best silo documents don’t stop there.

Here are some additional SEO columns that can be added to your silo document,

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• File Name

The silo can also be used as a reference when you are executing an important SEO tactic, cross-linking. Cross-linking is the act of linking to a page on your website from a page on your website.

For example, if a web page on digitalmarketer.com mentions “types of Facebook posts“—I might cross-link to a page on that topic. See what I did there?

Cross-linking your site is a great way to send signals to Google about what a page should rank for in their search results. It works, try it.

In the most extreme case, every page would cross-link to the page which it is nested within. For example, using the example silo the cross-linking would look like this,

• 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 would cross-link to the 0 page (Home) using the targeted keyword for that page as the anchor text.
• 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc would cross-link to the 1.0 page using the targeted keyword for that page as the anchor text.
• 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc would cross-link to the 2.0 page using the targeted keyword for that page as the anchor text.

I think you get the picture.

When you do this, you send a signal to the search engine as to what a page is relevant for.

BONUS TIP:  Good content management systems (CMS) and shopping cart platforms make it easy to organize your website according to your silo through the use of categories, tags, product detail pages, etc. WordPress is beloved by so many, partly because of the way it naturally silo’s your website.

The cross-linking on a blog might look like this…

How Do Website Silos Improve User Experience?

If Google has taught us anything over the last couple of years, it’s that they don’t like people that try to game their search rankings.

I’ve developed a good rule of thumb that has kept me in Google’s good graces over the years. When considering SEO tactics for my website I always test the tactic by asking this question,

“Will this SEO tactic be good for my human site visitors?”

When you run changes through this filter, you’ll almost never go wrong with Google.

Siloing your website passes the test because a properly executed silo organizes information in an intuitive way. That’s good for search engine robots and human visitors alike.

Nothing frustrates site visitors and crushes conversion quicker than poor site navigation and information architecture.

Notice how important cross-linking and proper website siloing is to your sanity when shopping on an ecommerce store. In the image below, you can see how REI has organized “Shirts,” “Shorts,” etc. under the category of “Men’s Running Clothing.” This is great for human visitors and search engines alike.

How to Use the Silo Document as an Editorial Calendar

As if that weren’t enough, the silo is also fantastic for keeping your SEO strategy in lock step with your content strategy. Simply add 2 columns to your silo and you’ve got a very useful editorial calendar.

By adding a “Published” and “Writer” column to the silo, you’re now able to track who is writing content and when it is published or due.

Notice the addition of blog related “Page Types” in the 4.0 section of the silo. We now have 4.11 and 4.12 (posts) nested inside of 4.1 (category) which is nested inside 4.0 (blog home) which is nested inside the 0 or home page.

Now that’s a great silo!

More Uses for the Website Silo

Remember, the beauty of the silo document is that it gives you the ability to make notes at the page level. It’s a living document that changes as you create, edit or delete web pages.

Here are a few uses I’ve found for this document over the years…

• Notes for internal or outside web designers
• Tracking conversion rates at the page level
• Determine gaps in the content strategy
• Identify and remove/edit outdated web pages
• Organize a plan for a site migration

The silo truly is a powerful, multi-functional document.

Download the silo template below and get started using it. I would love to know how you plan to use it in the comments section below.

Download the silo template document here!

(NOTE: Before you set up your site SEO, you need to know who your ideal customer is, where they are, and what they will buy. Download our FREE proven Customer Avatar Worksheet now and get clear on who you’re selling to.)

The post 5 On-Page SEO Elements (+1 Bonus Tactic) to Optimize in WordPress appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

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What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics

Let’s begin with a simple fact:

Anyone can start a blog, but not anyone can start a blog other people want to read.

In the throes of self-pity, you might be tempted to believe it’s because of the fickleness of human nature, a lack of influential connections, or perhaps the realization of how difficult building an engaged audience actually is.

And you would be partially correct. All those factors do play a part.

But what if I told you the primary cause of failure for bloggers is actually their choice of what to blog about? Not their connections, not their persistence, not their understanding of how blogging actually works, but the accidental, unfortunate decision to write about the wrong blog topics.

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The good news is, I’m about to prove that assertion to you right now. Even better, I’ll show you how to uncover exactly what to blog about, increasing your chances of success 100X.

Blog Topic Insights from Studying 13,360 Bloggers

Over the years, my team and I have mentored 13,360 bloggers in every imaginable niche, language, and style. Everyone from meteoric success stories like Laurel Bern to thousands of students who have struggled to break through the noise.

And we’ve noticed some patterns. Some very interesting patterns.

Data from students shows us that some blog topics get traffic quite easily while others are nearly impossible. For instance, you can blog about square-shaped tomatoes with as much vigor and persistence as you like, and you’re never going to take off, because… nobody cares.

In fact, the range of blog topics where you can expect to both get substantial traffic and monetize is relatively narrow. Some blog topics that seem plausible from the outset, such as freelancing, actually don’t have a prayer of success.

In other words, your choice of what to blog about is critical. If you make the wrong decision, you can execute every traffic and monetization technique flawlessly, and none of it will work, because having the right blog topic is critical.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to finding your blog topic:

Step 1: Choose a Popular Niche

Before you write a single post, it’s worth asking yourself a simple question:

Is anyone in your niche getting significant traffic?

If not, what makes you think you can be the first?

For some reason, people are happy to invest hundreds or even thousands of hours into publishing content without stopping to consider if anyone else has ever been successful. Worse, they believe that competition is bad. They take pride in being the first person to write about a topic and believe that’s an opportunity.

It makes me want to cry. Not only is that perspective flat-out wrong, it’s tragic because it leads you to invest time into projects that never had a prayer of success.

So, how can you tell if a niche is popular or not?

The easiest way is to reference a research library like the one we have in Freedom Machine. It does all the heavy lifting for you by giving you a list of successful blogs, their most popular posts, and examples of how they monetize.

But let’s say you don’t have that. What can you do?

There’s no exact science to it, but here’s the process I recommend:

Find a List of Popular Blogs in the Niche

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This is trickier than it sounds.

Let’s say you’re blogging about how to trade stocks. Does that put you in the “stock trading” niche, the “investing” niche, or something else?

My advice: go to the broadest category that makes sense. In the case of trading stocks, that would actually be the “personal finance” niche, assuming you’re targeting people who want to trade stocks for themselves (more discussion about this later).

From there, just run a simple Google query like “best personal finance blogs”, and chances are, you’ll find several lists to browse through:

From there, you just need to dig a little deeper and find out how popular those blogs really are.

Plug the Blogs into Ahrefs to Uncover Their Traffic

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One of my favorite things about Ahrefs is it gives you both social and search data. Let’s go through an example, and you’ll see what I mean.

In their Site Explorer, you can type in any URL to pull a report on the site:

You’ll get back a report with an enormous amount of data. Going back to our trading stocks example, let’s say I found out that Mr. Money Mustache is one of the most popular personal finance sites, so I plug it into Ahrefs. Here’s what comes back:

And that’s just a sample. In the left sidebar, there are lots of additional reports where you can go even deeper.

If you want to look at social traffic, for example, you can click the “Top Content” link, and here’s what you get back:

There’s all the content on the site, sorted by total shares. As you can see, the top 10 posts all crossed 2,000 shares, so it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is doing well from a social traffic perspective.

Personally, I like to see at least five sites within the same niche with at least five posts above 1,000 shares. That’s usually enough to start guessing what readers in the space want to read more about. More on this later.

A Word of Warning about Popularity

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Stop for a moment and think about another question:

What’s your end goal for building a blog?

I’m guessing it’s not just to get a bunch of traffic and feel good about yourself. You want to turn that traffic into money somehow, right?

Well, some niches are dramatically easier to monetize than others. You can get a lot of traffic writing about the daily activities of celebrities, for example, but that doesn’t mean you’ll make money blogging about it.

Some niches can only be monetized through advertising. A good example is the news. Every time you read an article on a news site, they get paid a few cents for an “impression.” That’s how they survive.

If you do the math though, it takes a lot of traffic to start earning enough from advertising to quit your job or do anything meaningful. Like… hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

For that reason, when my team evaluates popular niches, we also look at how the blogs are monetizing. Ideally, we want to see people selling some type of products and services because those genuinely have the highest ROI on blogs. If all we find are popular sites stuffed with ads, it’s a bad sign.

The bottom line?

Popularity is good, but it’s not enough. When you’re doing research, also pay attention to how blogs in the space are monetizing.

Step 2: Choose a Single Tribe That’s Hungry for Content

When you’re researching a niche, you’ll notice blogs seem to focus on different types of readers.

In the personal finance niche, for example, blogs like Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar focus on fundamentals like secure investments, living frugally, and so on. At the same time, there are other blogs like I Will Teach You to Be Rich and Mr. Money Mustache that focus much more on how to increase your income and improve your lifestyle.

If you feel like those sites are fundamentally different, you’re right. While they both occupy the personal finance niche, they serve different “tribes.”

Here’s what I mean by tribe:

A tribe is a group of people who congregate online around common interests.

In the personal finance space, the two biggest groups are “save and invest” people and “increase your income” people. Neither tribe is right, but they don’t really mix well with one another. You won’t find a blog focusing equally on both tribes.

So, how does this help you?

It allows you to narrow in on your target audience. Here’s what to do:

Name the Tribe for Each Popular Blog in Your Niche

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Earlier, we talked about identifying at least five blogs with more than 1,000 shares on at least a few posts. Now let’s go back and figure out which tribe they are talking to.

For instance, here are the popular posts on Mr. Money Mustache:

Do you see the pattern?

Mr. Money Mustache is clearly positioning himself for getting rich and against extreme frugality in some of his most popular posts. In other words, he’s speaking primarily to the “increase your income” people.

So, go through your list of five blogs. Based on their most popular posts, who are they resonating with? If it’s not immediately clear, here’s how to figure it out:

1. Skim through their popular posts for patterns.
2. Read at least a few of them to get a better idea of their philosophy.
3. Based on what you’ve learned, assign the tribe a name.

When you’re finished, you should have a pretty good idea about who’s interested in reading what. From there, you’re ready to…

Choose the Tribe That’s the Best Fit for You

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Not all decisions can be made with spreadsheets and numbers. To succeed at blogging, you also need to consider what you enjoy talking about. The sweet spot is the overlap between your interests and everyone else’s:

For instance, let’s say all of the blogs you studied were suddenly interested in having you take over as Editor-In-Chief. Ask yourself…

1. Based on your own approach and philosophy, which tribe would be most excited to have you as their leader?
2. Which tribe do you feel like you could help grow and achieve their objectives?

In other words, you’re looking for an existing blog and tribe to serve as a model for what you want to build. It’s already built a following, so it’s clearly viable, and you feel like you could also contribute in a meaningful way.

That’s what I call the Zone of Magic. Ideally, it’s where you spend all your time.

What to Do It If You Don’t like Your Options

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Before we move on, there’s one important question we need to address:

What if you’re not a good match for any of the existing tribes in your niche?

Approximately 60% of the students who go through our flagship course, Freedom Machine, find themselves in this exact situation. They have zero interest in writing about any of the topics they find on other popular sites in their niche. Even worse, they feel like those bloggers and their tribes just “don’t get it.”

If you find yourself in that situation, here’s a little tough love for you:

If there’s not an existing tribe who’s clearly interested in the same things you are, and you start a blog anyway, you’re essentially telling people they are wrong and need to change the way they think. In general, people don’t respond well to this. Not only will they refuse to share your posts or buy your products, but they might send you some hate mail as well.

The better, safer, and ultimately much more rewarding approach?

Go back to the drawing board and find a tribe whose interests align with yours. Instead of fighting them, just figure out where they want to go and show them how to get there.

Here’s how…

Step 3: Write About Their Proven Interests

Which would you rather write about: topics you think your readers might like, or ones you know will get traffic, because you have proof of those topics being popular in the past?

Obviously, it’s better to have the proof, right? You might as well invest your time where you have the best chances of success.

In this section, I’ll show you how to uncover those proven interests, as well as put your own spin on them. Let’s jump in.

Drill Deeper into the Site Stats

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Earlier, we used Ahrefs to examine the most shared posts on Mr. Money Mustache. Let’s go back to that:

In general, the highest-quality shares are the ones from Facebook, so I tend to sort posts that way instead of by overall shares. Save these for later by running a custom export of the first 20 rows and saving it to your computer.

The next step is to dig into the keywords driving the most search engine traffic. You can find those by clicking on “Organic keywords” in the left sidebar.

The default sorting by traffic is fine, but if you’re a beginning blogger, I would recommend eliminating all keywords with a keyword difficulty (KD) over 40. Again, do a custom export of the first 20 rows and save it to your computer.

You should go through the same process for all the most popular sites serving your tribe. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a list of dozens or maybe hundreds of posts proven to be popular with your audience.

Choose Posts Where You Can Add Value

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So… now you have a big list of popular posts on other sites serving your tribe. That’s obviously useful information, but here’s the big question:

How do you use that information without sounding like a copycat?

You didn’t get into this to regurgitate the ideas of other writers. You want to publish content that’s uniquely you.

Here’s how:

Copy the topic, not the advice.

For instance, one of Mr. Money Mustache’s most popular posts is Getting Rich: From Zero to Hero in One Blog Post. The topic is getting rich, and the advice is to live simply and frugally on half of what you make.

If I were to write a post on the same topic, I would talk about getting a remote job where you can live in a cheaper country like Mexico but continue making US dollars. In other words, I would give completely different advice on the same topic, and I would interweave my own story of moving to Mexico into it.

I’d also choose a different headline like, “How I Became a Millionaire from My Wheelchair.” Again, it’s the same topic, but an entirely unique headline. No one would accuse me of being a copycat.

You can follow the same approach with the most popular topics in your space. Scan through the list of posts you exported from Ahrefs and choose the ones where you can write about the same topic but give your own unique advice.

Write a Better Version of That Post

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Okay, you’re almost ready to write your post. Finally!

Before you start scribbling down your thoughts, consider two final questions:

1. What made the post you studied on the topic popular?
2. What can you do to create an even better post?

It’s like the old saying, “Stand on the shoulders of giants.” When you find a popular posts model, you always want to know why it worked, and you want a good idea of how to improve upon it.

At some point, I’ll write a post detailing exactly how to do that, but here’s the short version. There are five ways to improve upon any post, and they all begin with the letter ‘D’:

• Detail: make your post more detailed (or comprehensive).
• Design: include an infographic or organize your points in a more useful way.
• Data: include unique stats or examples to back up your points.
• Drama: amp up the emotion by infusing your post with personality and stories.
• Distinctions: give advice based on your unique perspective as an expert.

For instance, the Getting Rich post on Mr. Money Mustache is pretty short and lacks a lot of detail, so if I wanted to compete, I would probably write a much more comprehensive manual for getting rich, clocking in at 3000+ words. I might also add in my personal story, giving it extra drama.

Regardless of which method you choose, here’s the bottom line:

Your goal is to write the best post ever published on a proven, familiar topic.

Is it easy?

Hell no. Usually, it’s a lot of work.

But this is how you win.

• You stop writing about whatever you want and limit yourself to proven topics.
• You study the competition.
• You create content so much better than theirs, that it makes them want to call their mommy.

‘nough said.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

The post What to Blog About: The Data-Driven Guide to Choosing Blog Topics appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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What to Do When Someone Steals Your Blog Content

The post What to Do When Someone Steals Your Blog Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

This post is based on Episode 108 of the ProBlogger podcast.

One day, you come across someone else’s blog online that has surprisingly familiar content.

Very familiar content. Yours, in fact!

In most cases, they’ll have taken entire posts for your blog – images, links and all – by “scraping” your blog’s RSS feed.

Occasionally, it might be a little different. Perhaps someone has copied your whole post onto their brand-new blog because they really don’t know any better. They may even think they’re doing you a favour.

Whatever the exact situation, though, it’s never pleasant to realise that someone has effectively stolen your hard work. It’s even worse if they’re passing it off as their own.

So, you’re probably wanting to know what to do when someone steals your blog content.

In this post, I’ll be outlining the steps you can take to get that content taken down from their website – but first, it’s worth considering whether you want to take any action at all.

Should You Bother Fighting Content Thieves at All?

Let’s be clear: I know you’ll probably feel angry to find that someone is ripping off your content. But if their site doesn’t rank at all highly in Google and is covered in ads … chances are, no-one’s reading it anyway.

Years ago, I all but gave up chasing down sites that steal my content. There are so many that I could spend a couple of hours every single day just dealing with it. I decided, instead, I’d rather spend my time creating more content that serves my readers.

Before that, I’d tried to tackle the problem because, back then, bloggers felt that Google would penalise sites with duplicate content. So if someone else copied my post onto their site, I worried that I would be the one penalised.

Since then, Google has become increasingly smart about working out who’s the original source of the content.

If you find that a piece of your content has been used without your permission:

1. Google a sentence or two (in quotation marks) from your post.
2. See which site ranks more highly: yours, or theirs.

If your site is ranking more highly … it’s not worth your time doing anything at all. If their site ranks more highly than yours, though, it’s probably worth taking action.

How to Reduce the Impact of Content Scraping

“Scraping” is when someone steals your blog content directly from your RSS feed. They’re probably using some sort of tool to automate their theft, so in almost every case, they’ll simply publish your post exactly as it appeared on your blog … including all the links in it.

That means that it’s a great idea to:

• Include at least one link in each post to another post on your blog. Hopefully you’re already doing this, as it’s a great way to encourage readers to stick around for longer! If readers come across the stolen content, they may well follow these links back to your blog.
• Use a tool like the Yoast SEO plugin to include a link to your blog, and to the original blog post, in the footer of your RSS feed. If someone is scraping your RSS feed, they’ll probably publish that footer too. You can put in any text you want – e.g. “This article was originally published at….” or “The original source of this article is…” which can help clue Google in about which version of the content to prioritise in searches! (And if you’re not already using Yoast, I strongly recommend it for its many other SEO benefits too.)

When You Probably Will Want to Take Action … and How to Do So

While most content theft is the automated type I’ve described above, some is different.

I will take action if people use my content without acknowledging the source. They might strip out any links to my sites, and they might even publish it under their own name.

This only happens rarely, in my experience – but every year or so, I find someone doing this. Sometimes it’s just with one post, but often, it’s with a whole bunch of posts.

I’ve come across a number of bloggers who’ve taken over a hundred posts from ProBlogger or Digital Photography School, put their own names and images into those posts, maybe rewritten the first couple of paragraphs, and published it as their own.

This does make me angry! I put a lot of time into the content, or if it’s been created by a paid writer for dPS, they’ve put a lot of time in (and I’ve paid for it)!

I have a process I follow to take action – rather than just calling them out on Twitter straight away, which is always a bit of a temptation.

Step #1: Contact the Site That’s Taken Your Content

The first port of call should always be to contact the blogger in question. This can be tricky, as there may not be any contact details on their site. If you can get in touch with them, though, tell them clearly that they’re violating your copyright.

At this stage, you’ll probably want to be polite (if not exactly warm and friendly). It’s worth giving people the benefit of the doubt. More often than not, they’ll know exactly what they’re doing and why it’s wrong, but sometimes they may be genuinely clueless, or they’ve been duped themselves.

In one case, for instance, a blogger had hired someone to write content – and that person had ripped them off by stealing a whole heap of content from my site, and also from other bloggers’ sites.

I normally ask people to remove the content within 24 hours. If they’ve done something really bad (e.g. they’ve stolen a lot of content to pass off as their own), I’d also ask them to issue a public apology.

Step #2: Contact the Host of the Site That’s Taken Your Content

If you can’t get a response from the blogger, the next step is to contact their webhost. You can normally track down the site’s host through whois.net: type in the URL of the site and you’ll see a list of details. Look at the “name server” to see where the site is hosted.

(This can also be a way to get contact details for the blogger, if you can’t find those on their site.)

Hosting companies can get into serious legal trouble if they host a site that is violating copyright laws, so it’s in their interests to quickly take down any stolen content.

Many hosts have a process you can follow to issue them with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice against the site in question.

The DMCA notice is a legal document that you’ll need to sign (so do make sure the blog really has stolen your content before issuing it – don’t take someone else’s word for it, but check into the facts yourself).

You can issue the DMCA notice to the blogger or directly to their webhost. Most hosts will take down copyrighted content very quickly after receiving a DMCA notice.

If the blog is on Blogger, Tumblr, Medium, or any other large blogging platform, look in the Terms and Conditions or the Frequently Asked Questions to find out how to issue the DMCA notice.

So that the host can investigate, you’ll need to provide:

• A link to where your content was originally published online.
• Information about when you published it.

I’ve only had to go as far as issuing a DMCA notice five or six times in ten years, so hopefully you won’t need to get to this stage.

If you’re in contact with the blogger, simply telling them “my next step is to issue a DMCA takedown notice” will often be enough to prompt them to take swift action.

Step #3: Bring More Pressure Onto the Blogger

If you can’t issue the DMCA notice, or if the process ends up delayed, you might decide you want to go further.

A couple of ways to do this are to:

Contact the Blogger’s Advertisers

If the site has ads all over it (and most of the sites that steal content do!), then contact their advertisers and explain that their ads are on a site that’s stolen your work. The advertisers may will withdraw, or threaten to withdraw, their ads – and you may well find that a blogger who had no ethical qualms about stealing your content will suddenly take it down when their money is on the line.

Publicly Shame the Blogger

I’ve  done this a few times – sometimes, perhaps, a bit earlier than I should have! I’m lucky enough to have a fairly large social profile, so my readers’ outrage probably helped a little. Even if you don’t have a large Twitter following or Facebook page, though, calling out a blogger on social media can prompt them to take swift action.

Hopefully, by this point, you’ve succeeded in getting your content taken down. If not, you have a couple of more drastic options:

• Filing to get the site banned from Google and other search engines, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
• Taking legal action. This can be a very expensive route to go down, so it’s definitely best viewed as a last resort.

In most cases, though, I’ve found that I don’t need to go beyond step one – sending the blogger an email. They’ll probably make some kind of excuse (I’ve never had anyone actually admit to knowingly stealing my content) – but they most likely will take that content down.

With any case of contact theft, it’s worth asking yourself: do I want to spend my time fighting this, or can I use my time in a more constructive way?

Only you can answer that – you’ll want to consider things like whether the site is outranking yours, and whether they at least link back to you as the source.

If you do decide to take action, I hope the steps above help you. Feel free to share your own experience, tips and suggestions in the comments.

 

Image credit: Markus Spiske

The post What to Do When Someone Steals Your Blog Content appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

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4000 Instagram Followers, but only getting around 800 Impressions

I'm currently using 10-15 hashtags, and a Dx10 Engagement Group using Telegram. Is there something I can do to increase my impressions?

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ONPRE Mariana

ONPRE Mariana is a New Warrior Member of Warrior Forum. Check to see what ONPRE Mariana is saying about Internet Marketing.

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