Progress Report - Week 1
Alright I'm a bit more than 1 week in, and here's a progress report!
Quick Facts:
- Lesson completed: Level 2
- Posts published: 6
- Traffic: 0
- Sales: 0 (who would have expected that, huh :P)
There are no tangible results obviously, as my site is very new. So I'll focus on some of the things that I have learned personally.
My blog posts seem to reach ridiculous lengths: Over 3'000 words, and two posts over 4'000 words, one of them almost 5'000!
In no way am I doing this on purpose. As a matter of fact, I keep telling myself "Get to the point!" to keep it as short as possible... Still I manage to reach such crazy lengths.
After 7 posts, I am pretty convinced the problem is that I'm not identifying the true question that is hidden in a keyword.
Right now, I'm scared that I'll lose my readers because I'm not focused on the question they want solved. But as there is no traffic at the moment, I can't know that for sure, so I'll just leave it as it is and keep an eye on the average time on site metric in the future.
I'm conflicted because I really do believe I'm answering the question(s) hidden behind the keyword. For example if someone searches for "how to do affiliate marketing" then I find that simply saying "sign-up for an affiliate program and post your links everywhere" is not a quality answer...
Personally, I would expect some background information about generating traffic, and converting that traffic to sales. And the differences between the products an affiliate can promote (digital products, physical products, subscriptions, leads).
Anyways, I'm probably just overthinking it.
The point is: My goal for the future is to write shorter posts! My goal is to stay under 2500 words (my wrists are hurting, guys!!), I think that's a solid length to be thorough enough without boring the reader to death.
And finally, a big question popped up during the process:
The training so far has taught me to put the keyword in the following places
- Title
- Beginning of post (one of the first paragraphs)
However, the training also said to write a post that is 1'000 to 1'500 words long...
How do you manage your keywords in longer posts such as mine? How many keywords do you put into your text (excluding title keyword)?
I would especially be interested in your opinions on these post lengths:
- 1'500 -> 1x
- 2'000 -> ??
- 2'500 -> ??
- 3'500 -> ??
- 4'500 -> ??
What do you guys say?
Thanks for reading, and I hope in the next report I'll have some interesting numbers to show you guys.
Recent Comments
6
wow well done! I have been here 3 weeks and no traffic to my website yet! My problem is getting rated on front page as my niche is saturated.
As for length of post, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. Maybe read it several times and if you feel it is waffling, condense it. When I was writing my thesis for university, my professor gave me some good advice, make it as easy as 1,2,3. So I broke each of my chapters and paragraphs of a 10,000 word thesis into 3 top points. It just helped me keep on track and keep focus. Obviously you expand on it, but it stops you going off topic in that section.
The other key thing is getting someone else to read it and give you honest feedback about whether they were still engaged, or felt you answered what they would have searched for. Or put your posts on WA for review.
I believe a good variety of lengths in posts is key. If it takes 3000 words 'tell the story' then write 3000. If it takes 500, then write 500.
All the best, it sounds like you are on the path to great success, and I look forward to following you.
Sara
Sara, this is great advice! Thanks for sharing with me the technique that your professor taught you.
I agree with everything you've said regarding post length. In theory, I feel like I know what I have to do... but then when I'm doing the actual work, I am still experiencing a disconnect between theory and implementation :D
Also, getting feedback from someone else is exactly what I need - thanks for pointing that out. I'll use the feedback feature right now!
Thanks again for your valuable input.
Cheers,
James
See more comments
I just put my keyword in as many times as it feels natural in the content, but ALWAYS make sure it's in all the places Jay advises in his SEO blueprint Jay's SERP Ranking Blueprint If you use the Yoast SEO plugin on your website, it will also suggest how many times your keyword should appear in your piece of content. I take it with a grain of salt though, and go with what feels natural.
Great start by the way! Gosh when I started I struggled to write 300 words haha.
Hey Emily thanks a ton for pointing me to Jay's SERP article! That's what I needed.
I use the Genesis framework on my blog and it has the SEO fields included, which is why I didn't install Yoast.
However, I read several times on other blogs that the Yoast SEO plugin's keyword density info should be ignored. So like you said, writing it naturally is probably just the best - that seems to be the general consensus :D
I'll just stick to this approach and see what happens. If in 3 months a post isn't receiving any traffic from the keyword I targeted, I can add like 1 more and see what happens.
Thanks again for your comment, much appreciated!
You're welcome!
Good luck with your site, sounds like you have a great strategy for it and will do really well :)
We'll see, I truly hope so. Thanks for the encouragement on a Monday :D