Do you want to rank in the top search results for your keywords? It takes a lot of work and one post can’t share all the information you need to know, but here’s a short five step guide to help you begin your journey to the top of the search results. Before I start, this short story will help you remember the basic principals to follow to boost your blog growth.
In high school, I grew up as the “Asian kid.” In fact, I fit the stereotypes perfectly. I enjoyed math, played chess, and played piano. If you asked anyone in my high school, who’s the “Asian kid,” the answer would have been Justin Ham. I was ranked very highly for “Asian Kid.” It’s a silly story that is very relevant in theworld of blogging and SEO. You see, in my high school if you asked anyone who’s the “Asian kid” I would have ranked in the top results in most people’s minds. It was like I ranked first in search for the term, “Asian kid.” It’s fascinating how Google took the approach of social influence and applied it to their algorithm. The more people that reference you through out the web, the higher your ranking will go. The more authority the person that references you, the more impact that person makes on your “search results.” It’s just like high school, but on a much larger scale.
This principle can be used to help us start brainstorming some strategic ideas for growing your blog tribes. As many of you know, in order to become the top blogger, you need to find a seat with the “influencers” in your blogosphere. The trick is to find a way to make the best of the best link to you. Of course there are many other factors that influence your rank, but if you follow the next five steps written here, you’ll be able to be strategic and make every post boost your traffic. These are the five steps that will teach you to reach an audience so large you can finally create your dream tribe.
Step 1: Find The Key Influencers to Grow Your Blog
The most important step to strategic blogging is to create the perfect list. Don’t be mediocre on this step. You must grow and learn from the best by following them first. In fact, these top bloggers will be the best resources for you to read about expert tactics. The most important piece of information you’ll learn is what your audience values. If your following the bloggers you want to be like, you’ll see what type of information your audience is looking for. Take time to search google, yahoo, twitter, iTunes and more to find experts in your field. They will guide you and show you a pattern that will help you excel into the next level. The better the foundation of experts, the larger the your web tribe will become.
Step 2: Find Your Audience’s Passion
Wouldn’t it be great if you could write a post that went viral every time? Well, to get there, you have to understand your audience’s interest, and you can find it out by searching for patterns. There are patterns in everything that we do. Recognizing your audience’s patterns early helps you stay aware of your community to grow it rapidly. It’s not about finding the next big thing, but rather finding out what does the audience care about. We’ve always enjoyed relationship, romance, humor, food, etc. There’s been patterns. The same goes for your audience’s passions. You have to find the patterns in the audience’s interest. If you miss the patterns, you will have to try a lot harder to create an audience, but find the patterns and people will love your material.
Quick practical insight: The two tools I use to find patterns are social crawlytics or buzzsumo. Both provide enough information to search for the patterns. The first step is to run the top five sites that you found to find out which posts had the most activity and shares. Next copy and paste all the posts to an excel spread sheet and look for patterns.
Step 3: Find the Patterns of Interest to Increase Impact
You’re now on a hunt. Your goal is to find patterns. It’s time to go data mining to find patters. Don’t stop until you’ve found the passion pattern. If you find common topics or common trends that are occurring within the blogosphere you live in, it’s like striking gold. Your aim is nothing more than to find the passion of your audience and to read it and learn it. Once you learn it, then you can add your insights to it by conglomerating all that you’ve learned into a new post. Don’t ever copy the authors writing and always give credit where it is due, but by reading all the popular posts from the experts, you will become the expert.
Step 4: Find Your Platform to Reach the Millions
Now you have a golden blog idea that can shock the world, but you need a platform that to release it on. Before you write anything, you need to find the biggest platform that will accept your idea. So, begin reaching out to your top targets and see if you can get a guest post out there, and find the platform to show your new found ideas that can help your audience become an expert. (A lot of blogs, don’t require a full post, but some may ask for it. In this case, go ahead and ask).
Step 5: Repeat
The first sale is always the hardest, but you did it. You started your growth strategy to rank to the top. Just to let you know, it took me months to get my first guest post out, but it was posted on Fire Pole Marketing andJohn Lee Dumas commented on it. I was shocked. It was worth it. You don’t have to start big, as long as you start and keep going at it, you’ll get there. After the first one, all you have to do is repeat.
You have to let go of your old habits, your old thoughts, your old self to strive to become a new you. So, it may be fearful, it may take a lot of risks and work to do this, but you can. Don’t stop and keep going.
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