This week there's no Genevieve! She's been incredibly busy with her work and hasn't been able to get all of her tasks done. I'm keen to update you all on her progress though, and move on with the next lesson. She can just do extra homework next time around!
I know some of you are following along for tips with your own sites so I feel it's important to keep going. Besides, when she sees my surprise for her, I'm sure she'll get straight back to work on her site and moving forwards.
Let's Get Updated
After the last post, I asked Genevieve to write 2 new posts for her site. She's been getting indexed and got a few initial rankings, but with only 5 posts up, the site is a little thin. I would expect it to have to double in size before those page one rankings come, depending on how well things go.
I told her to write one article as a keyword based article from the list I gave her, and one article simple explaining something from another post in more detail.
What this means is that she would be looking over one of her other posts, seeing what could be expanded, then writing an article on it.
This is a great way of making sure your site has a good level of content and some great internal linking. People will stay on your site a lot longer and deem you a much more useful resource if they can get further information on certain things.
Whenever I run out of content ideas, this is my go-to method.
While Genevieve gets on with those, I'm keen to get her site's content built out in the meantime, and I also decided to jump ahead slightly to the next stage: Outreach.
Reaching Out
Once your content is built, your site is “marinating” in the Google soup, and you've got a few quality articles on there, it's time to go knocking on the doors of other websites in your niche.
Your competition doesn't always have to be your competition.
If you make friends with other webmasters in your niche, there's a good chance they'll end up sending you a link or some traffic in the future. It pays dividends again and again.
I've mentioned this a few times before, and it's the first thing I teach people to start doing once their site is built out.
So I had assumed Genevieve would be on this stage by now, but alas, work and life have a nasty habit of getting in the way. Since she emailed me and insisted she wants to keep going with this project, I decided to do her a favor, and create a post for her.
Link And Ego Bait
There are two ways of reaching out to other sites in the beginning. The first is to comment on their posts regularly and they'll take note of you. After a while you can reach out and offer to guest post for them, or ask them if they'd be willing to link to you. Since I'd rather Genevieve do this herself, I haven't opted for the second method.
The second method is just to play to their egos. Create a list of “Great blogs” in your niche, include them in it, let them know about it.
I spent about 30 minutes (it doesn't take long) finding 10 good resources for “home workouts” and put together this little post. When Genevieve gets more time, she's going to email/contact the owners, and let them know that she's linked to them, and politely request they share the post. Some of them will likely even include a link back to her site in the future as a thanks.
Additionally, it's a great way to start a relationship with somebody and open up opportunities for more links and shout outs in the future. Who knows, one of those webmasters may just create their own resource list later and stick you on it.
It's happened to me several times.
This is a great way of reaching out to others and really making yourself known. In some niches people will be so happy that you've linked to them that they'll link to you again and again as a thank you. It really depends how common this practice is in your niche space.
Linking Requirements
You can't just link out to any old site. Here's the criteria I use when linking:
- Ideally they are not your direct competitors for particular keywords.
- They must have good content.
- They have a contact form or email address for you to reach out to.
- The content must be quality.
Additionally, I like to head to page 3 or 4 of Google for some of my links. People who are struggling to get to page one are more likely to appreciate you linking to them. This also avoids you linking to your direct competitors.
It's fine to link to massive authority sites, as they are already going to have a much bigger link profile than you and won't really be your competition. However I sometimes feel like big authority sites don't need my help or won't appreciate the link as much. It really depends.
If they've got a huge Twitter following, it's always worth linking to them.
Letting Them Know
Once you've published the post, it's time to let them know about it. I usually write something like this:
Hey,
I love your site and just linked to it from my article here: (link),
It's a list of great sites/resources/whatever in xyz niche/on xyz topic and yours had to be included.
Thanks for writing good content and keep it up!
By the way, it would be awesome if you could share this article out with your social following, let me know if you do so.
Thanks a lot!
Bryon.
If you wanted to be a bit bolder, you could also say “P.S I hope you return the favor some day”.
Other Ideas
As well as simple “best resources” articles, you can try a few other things as well. One is the expert roundup post where you ask a question to a bunch of experts, include their answers in the post, and let them know about it.
They'll share it out with their following to show “Look I'm an expert!” and as a thank you for you linking to them.
This type of article needs more work because you have to prepare the questions, contact people, and type up their answers. However, it's also going to attract a lot more attention and get you some good links from people wanting to cite a good resource.
I'll go into more “Link bait” ideas in the next update, hopefully with Genevieve back in action too!
P.S We'll also share the results of this little article as well.