So you’ve gone through the motions and created your site and it’s ready for the next step, adding content. We use the term content because it encompasses any sort of media or copy you add to your site. What it means in our case is though is articles, or posts. The more posts you have the more likely you are to get traffic and ultimately make money.
The end goal here is to make money with your site, that’s why you’re here reading this after all. However what we need to focus on at this early stage is getting traffic.
Once you have traffic the revenue is not far behind, and the more traffic you have the more money you make. That is almost always the case.
So let’s focus on getting you some traffic as soon as possible, the right way.
1. Keyword research
When it comes to content creation, you always start with research. You can’t just write about whatever you want to, or what you THINK people would want to read. You are all but guaranteed to fail if you do this. Sometimes this is ok if you have a lot to say about a subject, and you are up for promoting the article or video. For our purposes though, we are creating SEO content.
SEO content starts with carefully researched keyword selection, keywords that people are searching Google. So that when they search these keywords, you are a result on the results page. There are many different ways to do your keyword research and different people have different methods.
Many of these methods include the use of expensive paid tools. Tools that you do not need at this early stage. Well there may be one tool that I’ll recommend, but it’s very cheap. We’ll get to that later.
To see how I do my keyword research, stay tuned for a detailed guide.
2. Make an article hit list
Once you have done your keyword research for your selected niche, you should have a long list of possible article topics. You’ll need to narrow this down. Just because the keyword seems perfect for your niche and site, doesn’t mean should write it… not yet anyway.
I like to start with a list of about 50 article topics. Each one needs to fit into a specific category within your website. Sometimes people like to just attack one category until it’s exhausted then move onto the next, and that’s a good strategy. This will help build topical authority which is a good thing.
However you don’t have to do it this way, but I would recommend sticking to just a few at most in the beginning.
3. Begin writing articles
You’ve got your niche, domain, hosting, website, keyword research, and article topic list created. Most of the setup technical stuff is over with and you should have a good grasp on your path going forward.
Now it’s time to sit down and start writing. That’s great right? Well it is, but a lot of people are very intimidated at this point. They fire up WordPress and then sit and look at a blank screen and have no clue what to write, I totally get that. It happens to everyone in the beginning.
What you have to do now is actually learn how to write for the web. I say write for the web because its totally different than when you wrote a history essay your junior year in college. We aren’t writing for professors or teachers, we’re writing for people just like us.
Many of the same things need to be done and those skills you learned in school are going to help you, but you need to have a totally different approach here. You’ll learn a little bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to properly structure an article for the web before you even start writing. You have to learn how to research the chosen topic, take notes, and write about it. If you ‘re already worried that you don’t know enough about it and why would people even read your article don’t worry, that’s normal.