Get More Traffic Now: 5 Secrets of the Most Popular Blogs by Jessica Foster #455

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners here at eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, your SEO ninja for today. The SEO ninja. You know, you don't really look like an SEO ninja in this picture behind us. You look more like an SEO superman. Yes, there is a picture behind you. But then there's ninja tricks. Oh, it is ninja tricks. Yeah. Ready to learn our secrets. And then this article's ninjas. So I feel ninja-y today. Ninja-y. Remember, we are broadcasting live here from Houston, Texas, and Matt and I, we are your Results Ninjas. Rebels. Rebels. We're ninjas. We're ninjas. I feel like you saying ninja actually means you're more of a rebel than... As always, welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. If this is your first podcast, howdy, welcome to the show. If you've returned, you know how we usually format it. We're going to change it a little bit today. We actually, at the last minute of today, decided, hey, we've got to do a podcast. We haven't done one in a while. We found this really good article. Get more traffic now. Five secrets of the most popular blogs. And this article is written by Jessica Foster. Jessica Foster. Punch in the face to Jessica Foster. Actually, if you're watching, if you're on YouTube first. Patif. Great, great to see you. You can see that article behind us now. We've added a TV. We are constantly improving. It's pretty awesome. Patif, punch in the face. It's right there on Matt's shirt, by the way. You can get those. If you're on YouTube or out there on any video media, you got extras happening. Yeah. And special. Oh, look at that. Special effects. Site can't be reached. That's also available. Yeah. That is live. All right. So, if you return to our podcast, you might be looking for some tips or some tricks, and you can get those tips and tricks. You can get those by going to

eWebResults.com slash SEO tips or just tips. That'll get you there. Or just Google and you'll find us because we're top of the search. All over the place. Yes. For sure. If you'd like, look at Matt's shirt. Like, I don't know if you want to zoom in there on Matt's shirt because we have that capability. Matt, look over at this camera. Hi. And you can see his shirt. It says, Internet Marketing Acronyms, SEO, PPC, Patif. Those are legit acronyms. So, you can get those shirts and see all of our t-shirts, internet marketing related, of course, by going to eWebResults.com slash swag, which we don't have pulled up and we don't need to pull up. So, the article, I think we've already covered that we're going to talk about that article. I say we jump right in. Let's get on with it. Does that sound good? All right. So, this is a good, great article by Jessica. And really what she does is she digs into kind of the statistics and the focus that five different very popular blogs have and talks about how you can apply those to your particular blog or situation or content or whatever. There are many case studies to how you grew their traffic, like how they grew their traffic. And really it's just a case of reverse engineering, which I absolutely love. So, this was a great little find. So, good job, Chris. Yeah. Excellent. All right. So, the first one is Business Insider. So, Business Insider generated more than 30 million website visitors per month. There's no doubt that there's some golden knowledge to uncover in their content strategy. The secret to getting, was really getting the story first, right? So, the CEO, Henry Blodgett, actually revealed multiple secrets, but the one that was really important was getting to it first, timeliness. So, if you're the first, so we often talk about in terms of content, whether it's video, whether it's audio, whether it's text, that content which answers people's questions. Be mindful that the questions that they have today

might be different, right? So, today's questions, and a good example that they even cover is GDPR, right? We did this. We did a podcast on GDPR, right? So, while having evergreen content is great, there's something to be said for creating fresh, trending content. So, SEO for news, very different. Yep. Okay. SEO for news, very different. Also, Google gives you credit for the first person coming out with an article. Yep. And that's really what you want to focus on when it was published. There's a number of things that you need to do. Just one tip for you small business owners out there, if you want to grab a lot of great traffic, is use Twitter. Yep. Okay? As the news source. Right. And then post it on Facebook. And so, a lot of people that aren't on Twitter get their news from Facebook. Yep. So, if you go grab it real time from Twitter, and then move it to Facebook, you're the guy that knows everything that happens before it happens. Yep. He's on top of everything. Yeah. So, that's the simple and easy trick from Business Insider, is be the first to market with the information. I mean, we did this for geofencing, a number of things, and got ranking really quite well. We put out a proposal to one of the universities here in Houston. That was for- Yeah. Because they found us- Yeah. For Beacon. That was Beacon Marketing. And then, we did that with cryptos. You know, we do have a great new crypto client. Yeah. You know, we did that for- Punch in the face to John. Yeah. So, we also did that for THC Marketing. Yep. We came out with a bunch of blogs there. Really, I was just looking around where the traffic was, what to rank for, and, you know, you've done some of those things, grabbed a number of clients in those areas, being the first to market, right? Yeah. And so, what is marketing and how do you kind of think about what is happening and

what you can do that people haven't done yet- Right. And get in front of the crowd versus with the crowd. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Be the first. Huffington Post, an estimated 16.7 million visitors per month. Nice. She was saying 500 visitors per day became a household name and really started as a political blog. So, they cover a lot of information now, but really started as a political blog. I liked when Huffington actually stepped down, she said this. This is pretty interesting. Just in case I get hit by a bus today, let me state this for the informal record. In my last year at Huffington Post, we made about 110 million in revenue, give or take, and we weren't profitable. So, yeah, they had a lot of expenses. And what's interesting is what they were doing was they had a niche. They were publishing with a purpose. So, that's the secret. Make sure that you publish with a purpose. And in her case, it was unbiased news stories, right? So, the typical media. I don't know. Well, that's what everyone says, right? And it really did fill that niche, right? So, they surpassed existing news sites like Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. LA Times, not New York Times. Oh, LA Times. Sorry. New York Times is still the leader. What I can tell you about Huffington Post, I read a lot. You know that, right? Yes, a lot. A lot, yeah. Yeah, and there's this great book out there. It was like Confessions of a Media Manipulator. Right. Okay, and it was by Ryan Holiday. So, punch in the face to Ryan Holiday out there. Really loved your book. It gave a real insight into how the blog world operates and how information or rumors are passed around really quickly. And he referred to the Huffington Post quite a bit. Right. About how their writers got information and the stress that's put over them to generate views. Right. So, even if it's true or untrue, they publish it. It was very insightful as we

start to build out some new sites for clients and for ourselves. So, I can just tell you, unbiased is very, you know, quotes. I feel it's used very biasedly. Yeah. I mean, like the whole fake news. Yeah. I mean, it's really coming quite rapidly. Yeah. Like this fake news, how do you tell the difference? What's true and untrue? I mean, usually where there was smoke, there was fire. But now, today, you don't even know. There's a whole lot of smoke. Yeah. Yeah. And mirrors. And you can even, yeah, that's good. So, what he said or what she said in reference to this is, before you create content, ask yourself these questions. Have I asked my audience directly what they're interested in reading? Do I know their pain points, fears, needs, and desires? Do I have the data to support this or am I assuming this is what they want? What is the primary purpose of this content? What is the ultimate goal that I want to achieve with this content? And what actions do I want users to take when they read this content? So, this actually we need to incorporate into our employee guide for our content writers. I think that this is phenomenal questions to ask. And really, all content should have a purpose. You need to understand, just like marketing dollars, all your marketing dollars should have a purpose and they're trying to achieve a particular objective. And if you don't know what that objective is, you're just kind of blown in the wind. What I can tell you is a lot of clients that are coming to us, if you look at the graph of why they're maybe getting beaten by their competitors and they're outworking them, is they're ranking very far on, I guess, the y-axis for number of words that they rank for. X-axis. X-axis. Yep. Yep. Sorry. See, depends how you look at it, if your head's sideways, right? Yep. And then… He reads a lot. Sometimes it's late at night in bed and this head is in

fact sideways. It's true. And then the upwards axis of the amount of traffic that you get. Right. And so if you're way over here on the graph to the y-axis, way out to the, say, right. Right. Yep. Okay. And your competitors are kind of hearing a little bit of the sweet spot box. Right. You're not focusing your content on the right keywords. Right. So it's really, that's about what is the search volume for a particular keyword. Well, what I think that, you know, people are doing is they don't really have a purpose for their content. Right. They're just kind of producing stuff. One of the things we actually do is build out a content map based on the AIDA model. Mm-hm. And we try to create three pieces of content in each category for each keyword theme or focus… Right. …you know, section. The theme. I call it a theme, but people get confused with that. So like a vertical or… Right. …a keyword phrase. Concept. Yeah. Concept. And I'm really building out the kind of 12 pack and the AIDA model does something to the Google algorithm. I don't know. Right. And it just triggers viralness. Yes. Okay. Really good results. Yes. For sure. Yeah. I think all those questions are great. I like the one, you've got to be really careful about assuming what your clients want. How many times have we had prospects come in and like, I want to rank for this? No, you really don't because those people aren't going to convert or you think that's what they're asking for, but there's no search volume for it or, you know. So I had a client that signed a contract by one of our new salespeople. All right. We actually now have new salespeople come in and I'm doing the onboarding call with them. Yeah. And we were kind of going through some things and they were paying a lot of money for SEO for a keyword that had 10 keyword searches per month nationally. Nationally. Nationally. And so I told

them like, hey, I know that this is what you want to do, but I don't think your money's going to go to good use. We need to reevaluate what you're going to do. And since there's not a lot of search volume here, we need to do things to generate demand. Right. And so I said, let me come back to you with a recommended proposal to run Facebook ads and Facebook videos and then do some YouTube organic marketing as well as on LinkedIn. Organic marketing is working quite well. And I said, you don't need a full website. You just need a landing page because you have one service and we want to capture their information. So we really reworked the whole strategy based on the client said, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to go after. And signed the agreement and said, I want to go after this. And I'm like, I don't know if we want to do that. Well, that goes, I mean, that goes to the name of the company, eWeb results, right? Yeah. And so you really got to break down what are the results that they're interested in? Is she really interested in placing well for a phrase that gets 10 searches per month? Well, she may in her head be interested in that. And is that going to deliver value? Is that going to deliver the results? Frankly, that'll keep her as a customer in the long run. Well, you know, and that's kind of one of the things we're massaging here is we do have this kind of onboarding process. I believe let's date before we get married, right? Yeah. And let's get to know each other. And so the paid consultation that comes in is super important. Yep. You know, but a lot of times clients, you know, they've kind of done their research, they've figured out what they wanted, and they just say, hey, I want to do this. And a lot of times they'll go to a company and the

company says, hey, if you want to pay me this, I'll give you this. I can do that. I can do that. I can catch you in the first position for a 10 search phrase per month. Yeah. Is that going to be cost effective? Is that going to be useful? Are you going to have a good ROI? Like I really try to put myself in their shoes and say, is this the right use of your money? Yeah. Is this the right strategy? And if it's not, you know, I've turned away clients. Yeah, absolutely. Because I want to deliver a good campaign and good results and generate referrals. And also, if you're focusing on the wrong terms, I've seen this with used car dealerships. Yep. I have a used car dealership client that we've had a council on that. I have a pool client. Right. Same thing. That there's keyword volume out there that doesn't align with what they think. They're like, hey, I do it this way. Okay. So they, everybody does this. And really, I'm starting to become a data ninja. Right. Okay. Data scientist, data ninja is potentially what I would say. And you just, you got to look at this kind of stuff. And so at the end of the day, the data is what really matters. It's all that matters. I mean, that's, I mean, that's the, it's like a math formula. Yeah. Almost. You know, you can kind of figure out where your break even point is, how much traffic you're going to get based on placement, how long it typically takes to get in that placement. You just, you just kind of back into all this stuff. And then you use these big players as case studies to reverse engineer what they did and follow along their path and kind of go after some of the terms that are not as competitive. And we can go through that in a course or class to show you kind of how we go about doing that. But it's very strategic. Yeah. It's

like kind of sniper. And very data driven. Yeah. Data driven. For sure. Really good. All right. So next we, she talks about TMZ. Estimated traffic is 13.8 million searches per month. Obviously TMZ is the drama queen of Hollywood news. And they said that their, their trick is tipsters. Right? So, you know, they've got people out there who will give them, people are digging into the inside scoop. They'll come out and, and give them information, inside information. And so we're going to ask you if you know something new or interesting about search engine optimization, we're going to follow what this article says. Why don't you become an eWeb tipster or an eWeber? Ooh. An eWeber? An eWeber. Right. And we haven't really rolled this out, but we do have a mascot. And it is a, uh, boxing platypus. Look. It's us. That's pretty awesome. That's our three shots. That is pretty cool. What? Very cool boy. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and follow. So, so yeah. So if you've got tips, some new things happening in, uh, in SEO, tell us your story. Tell us your short little case study and you know, we'll make sure that we can share information about that and the details of it and why it was successful and those types of things. I mean, I, I really love working in new verticals cause I love digging into the content. Yeah. Or digging into the data. It is time consuming. It's, it's, it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. And again, the methodology across all industries is the same. And if that works, have a good methodology, have good execution, and you can deliver results. That's the secret. So one of the points that she makes with the, with tipsters is, Hey, I don't know if you say have a podcast, why don't you interview people who might have information that would be great as a, that a tipster might provide. Guess what we're going to do. We've already got, we've already got,

uh, some podcast, uh, interviews, uh, scheduled for us. So. Well, very exciting. It's on your calendar. It's just far enough out that you haven't. Oh, I know. I know who it is. Lock. Yeah. We got a bunch of big names that are going to come to the E web results unknown secrets of internet marketing podcast. Yeah. Uh, people that you probably follow and know out there. Uh, we're really stepping up our game. We're coming up with new channels. I know we've been saying that we're just busy right now. Uh, but it's all happening. We're building out the, the digital assets to do that. So just be patient, stay tuned. Uh, we will get caught up. They'll be here. They'll be like right here. Well, I, we gotta have it in front of us too, so we can talk to them. Like we're going to have to, I actually, you know what we want is the little robots. Okay. Oh. Where they like drive. Yeah. They can, they can achieve like. Yeah. Run around and knock over cameras. That would be awesome. That sounds like a bad idea. So, uh, all right. Number four is the verge an estimated 11.6 million visitors per month. Um, the verge is the Jack of all trades, uh, covers everything from entertainment to tech science. And they say their secret is referral website. An Alexa audit of the verge revealed that the blog's primary traffic sources are sites like sneaker news, footlocker, finish line, Nike. All of those sites are major, major shoe and, uh, athletic apparel. I, I don't, I don't, I'm not part of the 11.6 million. Can you tell me a little bit about the verge? I am also not part of the 11.6. Riches are in the niches. And it looks like shoe niches. Apparently that's a, that's a very, I mean, Nike's referring to you. I mean, it's a, it's a good idea. It says, yeah, Nike.com. So is it a sports website? Uh, I don't know. Um, is there anybody out there that's watching

us live that can comment and let us know? That knows that the, for what the verge does. But the verge says they're Jack all trade entertainment to tech, to science, to product reviews. So they, they must be doing something. Maybe it's product reviews, right? Yeah. Maybe it's product reviews. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So what this looks like is creating content that provides value to your preferential referral sites, content like, reviews their products. Yeah, there you go. Offers comparisons of their products over competitors, references other articles on their website. I am like 99% sure I've been on the website and, and like looked at information. I've listened to the song, I think, or isn't there a band like the birds? I think there is. I don't know. Anyways, what I can tell you is, um, product reviews are awesome. Yeah. We did a product review, uh, Sammy, uh, one of our content writers. Yeah. Uh, did a product review. Of content. Of air story. Mind mappings. Yeah, air story. Air story. And that's still on the first page in Google. And that was something that was a, a big notice point about two years ago that we saw, that there's just so many different things we could do. Yep. But, but you should definitely, uh, consider doing that cause you could get referral traffic from Nike. Yeah. Yeah. And to the tune of like, what, what, what was the truck? 40 million visitors per month. I'll take it. From, from just Nike. All right. Pretty impressive. These are, this is New Balance. We're going to start doing a New Balance reviews. Okay. Good. Cause mine are some Brazilian brand that I couldn't even tell you their name. So, uh, we'll go with New Balance. Not Italian, but Brazilian, huh? Brazilian. Yep. Okay. And I'm also, we were shopping. Uh, you were just in Vegas, were you not? I was just in Vegas. It wasn't. You didn't even tell me. You were like, I gotta, I gotta take Friday off. Yeah. And then

my Facebook feed starts blowing up and I'm like. He's in Vegas. He's in Vegas. And then he's like, are you going to be back in time to do a podcast? That's what I thought. That's what I was, I was like, I don't know if he's going to come back. It was a half day on Friday and then back, back for work on Monday. Um, all right. So next is Lifehacker. Estimated monthly visitors, 3.5 million. Uh, the Lifehacker's tagline is do everything better. I like it. Right? Hack their way into success. Ironically, perhaps that they are doing the same. They're actually hacking their way into success. Uh, their secret is community generated content, right? So that's- Crowdsourcing, yeah. Yeah. Users providing the content and then people commenting on them and, uh, and getting, uh, getting everything. Those, those are absolutely the best way to grow a platform. I mean, let's think about Facebook. Yeah. Instagram, Twitter. Twitter. Bro, I'm officially a influencer now on Twitter. Oh. And I have, I got emails coming at me now that I've hit over 10,000 of promote this or promote that. Wow. Look at that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, so I guess I kind of went over that threshold. That's what happens when you write a book. Like, didn't they tell you, hey, you're writing a book, eventually you're going to become an influencer. Of course, that wasn't your goal when you wrote, build your brand mania. Not at all. Not at all. Koi, I'm so surprised. I'm an influencer now. Man, I'm a brand expert. All right. So, so yeah, get other people to actually write, write the content for you. Um, start with your audience and generate a list of topics that they want to read about. Then use SEO tools to identify the appropriate keywords and then reach out to people and have them, uh, write articles and contribute articles and contribute information. So if you want a guest post on eWeb results, go to, I think it's either SEO resources or about us, but it's- Can

you, can you hover over about us here? Yeah, go, uh, no, SEO resources, become a guest contributor. Right, under SEO resources, become a guest contributor. Yeah, so if you would like to have a guest post on our site, we also, um, are going to be starting eWeb results media very soon. So this was a great article, uh, that we just covered, uh, get more traffic. And now five secrets of the most popular blog. And you just go in there on SEM rush, figure out what they're doing. That one's gone. And, uh, yeah, punch in the face for that article. What, uh, what good stuff. Like, yeah, it's, it's data. I know you really liked it. It's data driven. Well, they kept saying hacking in there and ninja and you skipped those words. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a guy that, uh, I, uh, befriended at South by Southwest. That's a growth hacker. Uh-huh. And, um, you know, he actually knows somebody that you know and, um, you know, is very blackhat stuff. Yeah, yeah. So, uh, but he hacked his way through news. Why has it gotta be somebody that I know? Isn't it somebody that you know? Well, no. Oh, well, I introduced him to you, but you're working with him for your other company. But, but essentially, um, what, what he did is he, he got funded a bunch of money in one of the venture capital kind of startups. Right. And, and then what he did is, uh, he grew a new site by, uh, creating content and getting it moving on different blogs. Like really when, uh, I read the Ryan holiday book, I was like, I know a guy that did this. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's super interesting. He does a bunch of stuff with like bots and things and, uh, very different way of doing SEO than, uh, what we do. And it's really for kind of affiliate sites, affiliate launches, turn and burns. Um, but, um, it, it is effective. It's kind of a cat and mouse game

with, uh, Google with, with Google. But I, I don't like looking over my shoulder and I also don't like, um, worried about a client site having some of that. Disappearing. Disappearing. Yeah. I mean, that wouldn't go over well. Yeah. So, so yeah. But anyways, um, I do love though reverse engineering, what is working and understanding how the Google algorithm works. And so if you're a tipster out there and you have some good pieces of content or some things that are working, let us know. And we will give you a shout out or a punch in the face. So yeah. Um, yeah. It won't be a shout out. It'll actually be a punch in the face. Boom. Yeah. Cool. Look for this. Yes. Uh, if you like this podcast, we're going to ask you to do one simple thing and that's share it with three people. That's three simple things. Yeah. Well, it's one. Yeah. Or if you click, if you click, click your whole, like, you know, just share with everybody. Just share with everybody. That's the one. That's the one. The one thing. Just share with everybody our podcast if you like it. If you're looking to grow your business with the simplest, largest marketing tool on the planet. E-Web Results. Then call E-Web Results for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, that's somebody, again, sometimes I'm always fearful that people still don't know. What do we do? We do websites. Ooh. Since when? Ninety-one. No, that's my other company. Ninety-nine. Since 1999. It's only eight years different. Since 1999, right after Al Gore invented the internet, we started E-Web Results immediately. E-Web style. It was E-Web style and now we realize it's all about the results. Boom. So we changed. So, yeah, if you need a website, if you need a landing page, if you need an entire sales funnel, if you need PPC, PPC could be AdWords or Facebook ads or Instagram ads. Like, just if it's internet-based, give us a call. We'll

let you know that we do it. So we have a new service. Yes. That we've rolled out that's working like gangbusters for our existing clients. We haven't added it to the website in the services section yet. Yet. Yeah. Ivan over there has a big part to do with it. Yeah. We've started a video production service which we're helping generate unique content for SEO purposes and reach out to us if you have an interest. If you're having trouble ranking and you can't get over the top, we've found some strategies that absolutely work. 80% of all searches by next year are going to be video searches. So if you're not doing video, you need to think about it. You're shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah. Yep. Make it easy and simple for you. If you don't want to be on camera, we can hire actors. Yep. Yep. So. Yeah. If you've got a referral for us, we can do all of those things. Send them to us. When they pay their bill, we pay you. Easy enough. Really simple. So please remember we're filmed live here at 5999 West 34. No, we are not. Oh, we're not there anymore. We are filmed here at 13501 or is it 13105? I think it's 13105 Northwest Freeway, Houston, Texas 77040. At the Accelerate Studio. Yeah. At the Accelerate Studio. Yeah. At the Accelerate Studio. Powered by Growthly and eWeb. If you would like a transcript video or audio of this podcast, you can get that from our website, eWebResults.com. We are the most popular internet marketing podcast. Let's say that we're one of the most popular internet marketing podcast. If not the most popular. Okay. Because depending on how people look at it. So we'll break it into two pieces. Yeah. We are one of the most popular internet marketing podcast. If not the most popular internet marketing podcast. Available on the known universe. Yes. Thank you. That's because of you. Because you guys keep tuning in. Send us questions. Contact us. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on

Twitter. Do all of those wonderful things. Until the next podcast. My name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bitson. Bye. I think she's gonna set me free.