{"id":1759,"date":"2016-10-20T11:07:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T18:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.canirank.com\/blog\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2020-11-25T10:50:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T18:50:18","slug":"how-to-get-your-blog-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.canirank.com\/blog\/how-to-get-your-blog-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Your Blog Noticed in 8 Simple Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve poured hours of mental energy into a new blog post that\u2019s packed with really useful information. You\u2019re showing people how to do something amazing and giving away all of your trade secrets for free.<\/p>\n

But no one seems to care. No one even notices your blog.<\/p>\n

At CanIRank, we\u2019ve experienced this same frustration. As a newer SEO intelligence and keyword difficulty tool<\/a>, we don\u2019t have the web authority built up that automatically propels blog posts to the top of the search results pages. We know how challenging it is to compete with established players who\u2019ve spent years building up their blogs with frequent postings.<\/p>\n

Below,\u00a0I’m going to share the eight-part process<\/strong> we use at CanIRank to get new blog posts noticed and to drive traffic to our blog.<\/p>\n

1. Evaluate Your Blog Content Topic<\/h2>\n

Before we ever start writing, we evaluate our content topic idea by asking these five questions.<\/p>\n

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  1. What is the demand for this blog topic?<\/strong> In other words, are any of our potential customer groups<\/a> looking for help on this topic? To gauge demand, it\u2019s helpful to consider the following:\n
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    • Search volume<\/strong> for the question you\u2019re answering or the keywords you\u2019re writing about<\/li>\n
    • Whether there are people asking about this topic in Quora <\/strong>or forums<\/strong><\/li>\n
    • Whether people are discussing this topic on social media <\/strong>and in other blog posts<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Are we FBD?\u00a0<\/strong>(First\/Better\/Different)\n
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      • Are we the first <\/strong>to write about this content topic? This is the best case scenario because having a monopoly on supply means top rankings!<\/li>\n
      • Can we do it significantly better<\/strong><\/a>? This is the next best scenario because often, depending on your niche, you can find topics where the ranking content is pretty weak. Then all you have to do is write something more comprehensive, more up to date, more useful, better.<\/li>\n
      • Do we have a different<\/strong> angle? Maybe you\u2019re in a niche (like we are!) where most topics have been covered extensively – and covered well<\/em> at that. But if you can figure out a different approach or even a different medium (slideshare, video, infographic) than the one all of the current rankers are using, it may still be worth taking on the topic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        \"how<\/li>\n

      • Is the blog topic likely to do well in relevant online communities?<\/strong> For us in the SEO software and growth marketing niche, we consider whether participants in communities such as Inbound.org, Reddit, and GrowthHackers will want to read and share it. We\u2019ve found that it\u2019s likely to perform well if it\u2019s original, data driven, incredibly useful, and\/or funny. Regurgitated concepts – even if they\u2019re written beautifully – tend to fall flat.<\/li>\n
      • Are there aligned interests?<\/strong>\u00a0In other words, does the blog post naturally incentivize others to spread the word about it? For example, in our post about how to outrank Amazon<\/a>, we incorporated advice from ecommerce store experts and linked to their businesses. We didn\u2019t have to beg them to share the blog post; they were delighted to promote the piece because it made them look good. We love it when people link to CanIRank on their blog or mention us in a Tweet so much that we add that third party content to our social media posting calendar to help promote it. Obviously, we want everyone to be aware of something that flatters us! It\u2019s an ego thing.<\/li>\n
      • Can it be used as a reference?<\/strong> This generally means research and data. Sometimes an interview with an authority on the topic or a collection of quotes from experts might meet this objective. Really comprehensive lists of tools and resource materials are also used as references.Think about creating content that people will want to link to and share to help support their own point. Online marketing communities tend to get excited about content that falls into these broad buckets:\n
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        • Success (and failure) stories<\/strong> – a detailed summary of how an individual, team, or company met an objective that others in the marketing community are also trying to achieve. Alternatively, confessions of massive failures and lessons learned in the process make for great hooks. The cool thing about this content format is that literally everyone has some success or failure story that they\u2019re uniquely positioned to share. \u00a0Some examples:\n
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          • Breaking SlideShare: How I Got 2,000,000 Views From Only 16 Presentations<\/a><\/li>\n
          • How Two Ordinary Guys Grew Their Instagram Following From 800 – 16K In Just 4 Months<\/a><\/li>\n
          • Here’s What We Learned Growing Our Blog from 200 to 27,000 Visitors<\/a><\/li>\n
          • 17 Email Marketing Lessons I Learned After Writing Over 1,000 Promotional Emails<\/a><\/li>\n
          • Growing a Site from 0 to 10k Visitors in One Month: Noah Kagan Edition<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
          • Comprehensive or numbered\u00a0lists of tools and\u00a0resources<\/strong>. Time is money, so \u201cultimate\u201d lists of tools, resources, blogs, experts, etc are popular because they cut out a whole lot of research time for others within your niche and provide real value.\u00a0But if you\u2019re going for an \u201cultimate\u201d list, make sure it\u2019s truly comprehensive – readers really resent exaggeration.<\/span> If you can’t honestly claim that you covered every single worthwhile resource out there, it’s better to just go with a numbered list. Some examples:\n
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            • 21 Beautiful Free Image Sites and Tools<\/a><\/li>\n
            • SEO Tools: The Complete List<\/a><\/li>\n
            • The Ultimate List of Blogs that Pay for Guest Posts<\/a><\/li>\n
            • The Ultimate List: 70+ Best Tools for Skyrocketing Business Growth in 2016<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
            • Examples of how others are doing something innovative or otherwise totally crushing their competition<\/a><\/strong>. The first thing I do when approaching a new marketing objective is to look for examples of other people who\u2019ve really done an awesome job accomplishing that objective. I don\u2019t need full-blown case studies – I want a curated list of examples. Like these bloggers have done with the following pieces of content:\n
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              • 10 Awesome Pitch Decks from the World’s Fastest Growing Startups<\/a><\/li>\n
              • 33 All-star Popup Examples<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                2. Perform Keyword Research Before You Start Writing<\/h2>\n

                It really helps to do keyword research before<\/em> you start writing. One good place to learn the fundamentals is Brian Dean\u2019s comprehensive guide to keyword research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

                Once you have an understanding of what keyword research is, CanIRank\u2019s Grow My Content<\/strong> keyword tool to save you a lot of time in your keyword research process.<\/p>\n

                The video below walks you through how to use the <\/span>best keyword difficulty tool<\/span><\/a> available.<\/span><\/p>\n