Insider Update
New SEO Course & More on Building an Audience from Scratch
What are your thoughts on the concept for the SEO course mentioned in this video? Would you be interested in this course? If so, why or why not?
Please leave a comment below. Your feedback will help me make the perfect course for you. :)
Here's the secret link to my old video, if you're up for some nostalgia.
Update: Meet Our SEO Expert
Since there have been so many comments about the course and questions about SEO and what will be covered in the course, I want to take this opportunity to introduce Viola.
She's been running an SEO agency for the past years. I'm currently working together with her to turn her knowledge, expertise and methods into a practical course for you.
Yes, I would like to see a syllabus but I have watching your instructional videos for years so there is no doubt that you have the chops.
THank you, Duncan!
Looking forward to the audience building course/project. I feel as though this topic gets glazed over most of the time or assumes that a business owner has deep pockets to fund a team of experts. Keep doing the amazing work you do, it is very much appreciated. As soon as the beta group is open you can count on me applying to it!
Thanks for your comment, Kevin! I definitely want to keep the SEO course and the audience building course affordable. The beta group will be relatively high priced, though, since it’s something that doesn’t scale and will take a ton of my time.
Sounds like something that is perfect for me. Can’t wait!
I’m glad to hear that!
Hi Shane,
I am a previous purchaser of several of your courses, and a follower because they have been produced with quality and value. My comment on the SEO Course would be, please make the course “hands-on” ie: here is how you do it. Not so much on the theory, but the actual process to do it.
Blessings!
Chuck
That’s good feedback, thank you! I aim to provide a very action-oriented course. Something for busy entrepreneurs, not full time SEO geeks. :)
Hi, Shane,
It’s great to see you in Budapest. I live in Hungary, and I follow you from a long time, love your courses, and I can’t wait to attend on your next courses (both). SEO is something I know that is important, but I never felt it to be close to me, and now I think your SEO course will be something I will learn from a lot. I hope that I manage to get into the beta group, too.
Thank you for the secret video, too. You always motivate me to do things better. :)
Thank you, Tibor!
Sounds interesting! I am working as an SEO copywriter and always interested to expand my knowledge :). Nice focus if you aim at solopreneurs.
Thanks for your feedback, Michiel!
Shane, thank you for the update! I would be very interested in your Audience building course. The SEO component would be very helpful as well. The only obstacle for me is the cost of entry. I have Course Craft and am trying to pull time away from my other business ventures to build my course. Adding additional costs for more courses before I have my product up is making my head swim and my wallet thin. Is there a way to give special pricing to those who are in your previous course or courses? That way they be able to build their business and save some of the initial costs before they are actually earning income from their product sales. Additionally those same people become the raving fans that edify the product creators new course or courses to new customers.
Would your new SEO/Audience course work in other internet retail businesses?
Thanks for your feedback, Cliff! I never recommend that anyone buy any of my products if it doesn’t fit the budget. And you’re right that there’s no point in racking up a ton of expenses before you have a business that’s going somewhere or earning something.
In general, we almost always offer some kind of a discounted offer for existing customers and/or for early customers. That’s going to be the same for the SEO course.
I appreciate your long standing focus on your customers. That’s what keeps us coming back! I am very interested in your beta test as well.
Will it work with non course products?
My main concern with SEO – getting a REAL look at how much potential traffic a topic can generate. I’ve never seen a remotely accurate traffic estimation tool.
I would like to see real-world examples of getting a certain page to rank – especially if it’s outside the marketing/make money online niche.
That’s an interesting point! Traffic estimations are indeed quite tricky.
We will be doing some SEO work for the focus & action course, to serve as an example.
I’ve often wondered if “page rank” even matters, generally…
I always thought focusing only on any single metric was just a distraction & another “rabbit hole!” :-/
Hope to learn the practical “truth” about these various metrics in your course! :-)
Shane, I look forward to a SEO course for the “rest of us” that know we need to know and understand these things but they are secondary to what we do in our business lives!
Yes, exactly!
Excellent idea and concept to address the course specifically towards “soloprenuers”. You are spot on when you mention in the video that SEO is an endless rabbit hole you can fall into that never ends. I look forward to seeing what is produced and would absolutely sign up to serve on the Beta test group.
Thank you, Kelley!
Honestly I would buy almost anything you release but SEO just doesn’t get me excited. I’d this and never finish it.
Having said that I understand its essential for the long term game and I’m sure plenty would benefit.
Thanks for your comment! SEO is good to have in your toolbox, but it’s not a must-have. I’ve basically ignored it for a long time now as well and I still managed to create thriving online businesses. I’m trying to make something that’s like SEO for non-SEOs, but of course it will still not be for everyone. :)
Hi Shane
Yes definitely interested in a decent real life SEO course for new sites.
Just to let you know, your comments won’t load here https://activegrowth.com/seomatt/ regardless of device and browsers used and your contact page doesn’t load any contact form
Regards Steve
Thanks for your comment, Steve!
Weird issue with comments and contact forms. I’ll ask our developers about it. In the meantime, try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5). What you experience could be a browser caching issue.
Yes rather strange comments load here but not that page and contact page empty! Did try hard refresh, different browsers, clearing cache and laptop as well as phone
Hi Shane,
I contacted Thrive Themes support about these things almost a week ago (on the 17th) and Sergiu Andreca told me he will send a note to your team about it.
I really love your work. In honesty Id probably buy any course you put out. Is their any chance of a course on using/making vids course. Thanks for all you do mate.
Thank you, Patrick!
I want to create a course on video marketing, yes. Originally, I wanted to create one by the end of this year, but I have more learning and experimenting to do, before I’m happy with my own progress in this area and ready to teach.
Hi Shane, the SEO piece is exactly the one that is missing from the puzzle of selling the course about singing that I just launched. I have quite a bit of traffic through social channels, and the (fun) time it takes to create content I don’t have to nerd on SEO dashboards. BUT as you mention, I wouldn’t say no to the extra traffic. Perfect pitch you deliver there.
And I’ll be happy to volunteer on your guinnee pig list.
Hello Linor,
If you enjoy creating content, you’ve got a great advantage. Good SEO needn’t be more than a small add-on to the work you’re already doing, to ensure that you’ll get more traffic in the end.
If it comes from you, I’m sure it would be good, interesting, clear and useful.
So… Yes, please. To both.
I’ve gone through your productivity course and it is the best think I’ve ever done for myself.
Maybe this step by step aproach to SEO and building and audience in just what I need right now. If this is the kind of course you’re thinking about (101 kind or from scratch-ly), then I’m in! Even if I have to deal with english (spanish is my language).
Hello Mariluz,
I’m really happy to hear that the productivity course was so good for you. :)
Hi Shane,
I’ve been a fan for a couple of years now. I appreciate the practicality of what and how you teach.
I’ve owned a wholesale coffee roasting company for the last 16 years, and website and online things have been an acquired taste, and a necessary part of our business.
SEO appears to be complicated and time consuming, so I’ve never really looked into it.
I look forward to you simplifying things.
You may just be the perfect customer for what we have in mind. :)
SEO was never in my fortress, but would be good to get the most important SEO stuff into my workflow
This is where I’m at now as well. I’m at a point where I should add back in that 10% of SEO work, just to give more “juice” to the work I’m already doing on my website.
Hi Shane,
Awesome to hear about your new course plans! Love your “Insider Updates!” Great concept! :D
My immediate feeling when I saw “SEO” was “meh…” But, that’s before watching *complete* video (I was on my phone)…
After watching the video, I’m as enthused as ever to participate in another course from you! It’s great that you will make it both action-specific & geared to solopreneurs!
As you so accurately described in the video, my time is better spent creating products (online courses) & content, not falling down the SEO rabbit hole!
I think what would be the most important for me would be how to know what moves the needle in SEO and what’s “extra – nice if you have time” tasks… There is so much SEO noise out there!
Over the last several years, I’ve studied the basics (took the Thrive University course (https://thrivethemes.com/courses/seo-if-you-dont-want-to-learn-seo/) but it turned out I was already doing about 90% of those recommendations! [Definitely not wasted time, though, because it confirmed I was already doing much more than I realized! ;-)]
As others have said in these comments, I’ll likely buy any course you create! Your quality is already established…IMO! :D
I’m also very eager for the “audience-from-scratch” course, and would likely apply for the BETA group! :-)
Thank you for your comment, Karen!
I’m hoping to deliver a course that has a very good signal to noise ratio. I agree that it’s easy to get overwhelmed with floods of (often conflicting) information about SEO. We don’t want to add to this problem, hence the focus we chose for the course.
I like your approach to SEO. I want to know about and use it, but not be a slave to it. Bringing in an expert is also a great idea. I’m eager to learn more about your plans for the course.
Well said, yes. :)
I would be interested in how to do keyword research for articles, with a lot of different examples of how to do it. So, an over-the-shoulder approach would be interesting for me, with reasons why someone did what he did, etc.
Great suggestion, thank you!
SEO course is up to day for me. It will be great!
The 80/20 rule for SEO. Sounds very practical – I’m in! I’m also interested in joining the beta group for your Audience development course. Please add me to your list.
Thank you, Randal!
Thanks for the update, Shane. I have done your CourseCraft training and I’m in the midst of developing my first online course. Personally, I don’t think that I need another SEO course (I’ve already done a few). What I do need, though, is a course on keyword research. Yes, I’ve watched a ton of videos on this subject (also the ones on the ThriveThemes blog). And yes, I use Ahrefs on a daily basis. But every time, I do keyword research I get in some kind of rabbit hole and end up with no results.
What I’m looking for is a well-structured course which teaches me to develop a list of 10 to 15 keywords I can use for 10 to 15 blog articles. And all 10 to 15 keywords are profitable (meaning LMS>1,000 & KD20mio (mine is 19mio). And these articles in the top 10 SERP’s have little to no backlinks. And above all: those 10 to 15 keywords are all part of the same theme (my course topic!).
To develop such a list of 10 to 15 keywords requires probably mainly a very structured approach and I’d like to know what that approach is.
Thanks for reading this long comment!
Hehe! I must need an SEO course! I have no idea what “LMS” or “mio” refer to, Harry! ;-) LoL!
Well, „mio“ clearly stands for the millions of Euro we are going to earn in the near future! ;)
That’s hilarious, Susanne! :D I like your thinking! ;-)))
And since I’m in the US & — and only think in $$$ — it explains my “confusion!” LoL! ;-p
Hi Karen!
LMS: Local Monthly Searches; so an LMS of 1,000 means that at least 1,000 are searching for that particular keyword
AR: Ahrefs Ranking; my website is around 19mio. This means that 19 million websites rank way better than mine. Facebook, for example, ranks 1.
I’d like to compare my website with another website around AR 20mio. So, if in the top-10 of Google all websites are below 100,000 I will never have a chance of ranking for that keyword. So, I will choose another keyword.
Hi Harry,
Thanks for the “translation!” ;-) So many new terms to learn! LoL!
So on “LMS”… Is that specific to “local” businesses only… I don’t really care about “local” so does that mean I wouldn’t necessarily need to focus on LMS?
Oh… Ahrefs… I always thought they were too “big league” for my business scale (and too expensive), but I can see how the comparison example you’ve illustrated would be very helpful when it comes to KWs…
Thank you again! :-)
Hi Karen,
The Local in LMS has nothing to do with a local business. It means the local market.
I live in The Netherlands. Our local market as far as Google is concerned is “google.nl”.
The word “training” is also a Dutch word and means the same as the English word.
If I want to know how many people in The Netherlands search for the word “training” I can’t rely on the general search volume for this word. I have to first choose the specific local market “google.nl”. In this market is the local monthly search volume (LMS) “only” 4.8k whereas the global search volume for the same keyword is 408k.
The local market for google in the US is “google.com”. In this market is the LMS for the keyword training is 74k whereas the global search volume for this keyword is still 408k.
In the US I would never ever try to target this keyword, although it has a high search volume. Why? Because this keyword is extremely competitive. It has a KD (keyword difficulty score) of 74/100. In the top 10 of the google search result page show only websites who are in the top 38k ranks of websites. To give you an idea, my website ranks around position 20mio.
So, the trick with keyword research is to find keywords that have a certain amount of LMS (because otherwise, why bother) and have a low KD. And furthermore, in the top 10 of Google searches, there need to be at least one or two other competitor websites who rank around 20mio or lower (lower means >20mio ranking position). For keywords like this, I have the possibility to rank in the top 10 positions of Google and gain some traffic.
Furthermore, competitor websites in the top 10 of Google need to have little to no backlinks because it is extremely difficult (at least that’s what I find) to get backlinks to your article.
Hi Harry,
Thank you so much for this explanation! And, your examples! That really helps place it in the proper context!
I’m so glad I asked about the “local” meaning! :-o It’s way more involved than I thought!
I have never even tried to worry about getting backlinks… Hopefully Shane’s course will include that information as well, and how important they might be…in the greater scheme of things!
Shane, I hope you’re following this detail topic closely for your SEO course… I mean is this a “critical-moves-the-needle” *substantially* or just “useful?”
Thanks again Harry! :-)
Hello Harry,
It seems you are totally on the right track with your method.
What is stopping you from selecting keywords and to get going?
This is great feedback! I know what you mean. You can watch a tutorial and keyword research that seems to make sense, but then still fail to find anything good in your own niche!
Yes! That’s **exactly** the problem: “You can watch a tutorial and keyword research that seems to make sense, but then still fail to find anything good in your own niche!”
Count me in. Also, you look happier and more rested since that vid last year. The move must have been a pita at the time. Glad you are looking well!
Interesting observation!
I would say that in general, my life has gotten better over time for quite a long time now (smaller ups and downs along the way notwithstanding). So yes, I think I am happier and more relaxed now than I was back then. :)
Keep me posted on the beta group, Shane. I’m not sure about the SEO course. I already know more than anyone should about how Google (and other search engines) operate. Yet, I do like the approach you’re talking about — practical SEO.
“I already know more than anyone should about how Google (and other search engines) operate.” – I feel your pain on this. Although this isn’t the case anymore, I was that deep into SEO at one point as well. :D
Definitely interested in the building audience from scratch beta course. Planning to launch my new business on August 1st ( 8 days from now) without an existing audience so would be the perfect test bunny for you if timing correlates.
Thank you, Vida! That’s good to know.
YES! Count me in for the SEO course for entrepreneurs! I am currently working through your “Focus & Action – Level Up Your Productivity” course and worth every penny!
I’m very happy to hear that, Marnie!
I definitely would be interested in the SEO and Audience building courses. I do take note of what you say. Appreciate it.
Thank you for your support, Steven!
I look forward to seeing what you think is important from an SEO POV :-) As someone who’s been teaching it for years, it’s always great to see the way different people approach it.
Thanks for your comment!
Hi Shane, that’s exactly what I need (both courses!), since I’m just starting out without much of an audience. I’ve already done some SEO, but felt pretty frustrated and overwhelmed (the rabbit hole…), so I can’t wait for the courses to be released! Love your work, by the way (Thrive Themes, CourseCraft etc.).
Thank you for your support, Melanie!
Hey Shane, SEO sounds great. My main struggle is that a lot of the tipps & tools I see do not seem to work very well in the German language. Is there any chance you will be covering this in your course? :-)
Hi Ann! <3
That’s a great question! :-)
We get insulated — and isolated — by only working in one language!
Wonder if there *can* be “general principles” SEO theory that applies to predominant & common “business” languages???
Hi Ann, this really surprises me. The really good SEO stuff (let’s say Brian Dean level kind of stuff) works no matter what language, at least in the western world.
But tips and tricks from Search Engine Land or AHrefs, although in general not too shabby resources, simply do not show the whole picture. Maybe that’s why they don’t work.
Because I have experienced multiple times that Backlinko style SEO really DOES work.
Hey Phil, I have been frustrated so many times with SEO, keyword searches etc. I use Neil Patel’s stuff now, mostly. But have tried a bunch of other stuff in the past.
Germans who search will write like Germans write by tacking all words together: Oberweserdampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is a word! Can you see how keyword search services would break down weeping? Especially as people might tack the words together in a different order …
This is just one example … :-D
Another issue is probably my market segment.
But maybe it is because I don’t know enough about it. :-/
ps. Why is Brian Dean always “screaming”? :-o
Good point! When I look to all the marketing gurus in US, I often feel that there is more of a difference than just the language.
Yes, there is also a cultural “mindset” difference! It’s very pervasive, not just on an individual-level but more like a “countrywide” pre-conceived philosophy…
Huge challenge but would be a fascinating case study! Would need lots of data points to draw any valid conclusions… :-/
Shane…??? You’re always up for a challenge! :-D
As ever I am a willing guinea pig … lol :-D
Yes! That too, Susanne. I totally agree. The culture is quite different, too.
You’ll be pleased to hear that the expert I’ve enlisted for this course is German. She’s done work for clients in Germany as well as internationally. Also, according to her, everything we teach applies for English websites as well as for non-English ones with one difference: non-English is always easier.
Wow! Awesome, Shane. I am sitting here grinning from ear-to-ear. :-D So where do I sign up?? :-)
Non- English is easier? You will have to prove that! NOW I am eager to get the course!
Same thing is Spanish. Buzzsumo? Moz? Answerthepublic.com? Non of them give you more than 5 useless results for each query in Spanish. I don´t know if this is because there is no info in Spanish to be searched, or because these tools won´t crawl sites in Spanish.
For instance, Facebook ads won´t let you target an audience by job position, companies, or more detailed differences. You can pick, gender, age and location only…. what??? yep. Why don´t they just duplicate in Spanish what they offer in English? Who knows…
Hello Marisa,
It’s more because there is less demand in sophisticated SEO and marketing tools on the Spanish side of things. And the tools creators have not focused on it.
Ahrefs and SEMrush however, have huge international keyword databases. I recommend you to check their trials.
Generally speaking, there is a big content gap in many non-English languages and the level of digital marketing and SEO is lower outside of the US. (Also because the markets are smaller and the competition is lower.).
In terms of German, Susanne, I have a client ranking for top terms in the relationship/psychology niche on a relatively low domain authority site. This would never happen in English.
We will add a lesson on keyword research in different languages and add examples. :)
Hey Viola, thank you and I appreciate that you take part in the conversation here also before the course!
Thank you for you comment and your tools recommendation Viola! I´ll give them a try :)
And, yes, I would be very interested in your guinea pig group. :-)
Hi Shane, I am looking forward to both and I hope, the SEO course will also work for German websites.
We are looking at the SEO principles that will allow you to decode Google and build a site structure, content and links that satisfy both users and Google.
Those principles are true across languages.
Count me in. There are so many SEO courses; you don’t know which one to choose. I have been following you for a few years now and I have found everything you put out has value. The Building an Audience Couse; I have been waiting for since the first time I heard you mention it.
I am looking forward to both courses!
Thank you for your encouraging comment, Charles!
Looking forward to your audience building course/project and SEO. Your always providing top quality content and courses and looking forward to the upcoming one. I would like to be included as one of the beta testers.
Thank you, Sam!
Hey Shane,
good to see you back after your 3 weeks of ghosting-vacations ;)
Now, just to give you honest useful feedback — and you should know I love all your products — after hearing your impromptu pitch on the SEO course, I thought ¨I know enough SEO to get by… I don´t need an SEO course¨. Besides, I think that outreach / guest posting / affiliations –that you so tenderly and detailfully (is that a word in EN?) explain in Course Craft– eats SEO for breakfast and lunch. Geeking out on SEO has a thunderous decrease in ROI.
Having said that, I know that I have to wait for your sales page and the curriculum of the course – and that I´ll probably eat these words — and that you´ll probably blow my uncombed hair as always.
Now, as for your list building course…. next year? really???… such a bummer — I´m crossing out days in my calendar with a red pen waiting for that course.
Sorry today I´m not a good fan. Perhaps I´m subconsciously getting back at your for ghosting on us… ;) Nice T-shirt Shane…
Marisa
Hi Marisa! <3
Such harsh words! ;-) (jk)
SEO doesn’t thrill me either, but it’s probably still something I should feel more confident about!
Like you eagerly awaiting the Audience course! :-)
I know Karen!!!! harsh words! I feel like a traitor now!!! **What am I now? a Lannister??? ;)** I take everything back Shanie! Please don´t unsubscribe me!!! ;)
Ps: do you guys wink in real life? or get winked at? I haven´t since I was 5 — I should review my emoji policy ;) (ooops)
I don’t wink … I flutter. So much more effective. :-D lol
Hey Marisa, Nice to see you … talking about ghosting … :-D
As always you are cracking me up. Nice T-Shirt indeed. So different from his other T-shirts … :-D The only thing that I notice is that the T-Shirts are always ironed. I mean who irons T-Shirts?
Back to biz: Backlinks and writing for others is also bumming me out. I hope this falls into the “not really needed” category …
Hey Ann! I would never ghost on you without letting you know frist ;D
Perhaps if Shane buys 365 T-Shirts bulk, saves on electricity and iron amortizations, and gains the 10 minute worth of his time, it makes sense to use a fresh ironed out of the bag T-Shirt each day and throw it away after use.
Just a theory.
Hi Marisa,
Thanks for your feedback! I’m not trying to make a course that appeals to everyone. As a Course Craft student you already know why this would be a grave mistake. :D
So, no worries about your lack of excitement for this course.
I look forward to both courses! I never expected you to come out with an SEO course, but it’s great, it’s actually something I know next to nothing about and I always felt was a bit of a weak point for me. I loved Course Craft and I’ll probably be taking these next two as well.
In terms of feedback:
1. please include the SEO principles/techniques for YouTube and the like. Although our websites are the place where the “inner circle” is likely to gather, external platforms are often where the actual audience building happens.
2. please base it on free or relatively cheap tools. Additional expenses are always an issue when the audience isn’t there yet…
3. I’d love to see real case studies. Everything always seemed a bit “fuzzy” to me in this area. You often see “we did X and got result Y” for things like email marketing or lead generation, but I don’t think I ever read such a case study for SEO. I’d love to see real cases where a principle/technique has been applied successfully before I invest tons of time in implementing it.
Thank you for your feedback, Lorenzo!
1) YouTube SEO is so different from website SEO, they practically have nothing to do with each other. I could create some content around this, but it doesn’t fit the same course. Basically, YouTube SEO is mostly about video production because what’s rewarded more than anything in YouTube search is watch time. If you make a video that people watch for a long time and that has people staying on YouTube after they finish watching, YouTube sends you traffic. Optimizing titles, tags, description etc. is practically meaningless compared to the watch time factor.
2) Yes, we’re looking to keep this to a low budget. The typical entrepreneur who doesn’t want to become a pro SEO won’t be spending $500/month on expensive tools.
3) That’s because people who have great success with SEO campaigns don’t want anyone to know about it. They want to protect their keywords, link sources etc. from competition. We have some anonymized examples we can show and I’ll be doing some case study work for the focus & action course, though.
1) That alone is already very useful information that none of the articles I’ve read on this topic managed to make clear, thank you very much. That’s kind of unfortunate though, as it means that any random two-hour long music compilation or similar that people leave in the background when they do other things that just happens to have your keywords in it will always beat your videos with actual information, no matter how good your production is…(I’m thinking of things like “music for concentration”, or “alpha waves for self-discipline”, things like that)
2) Good!
3) I see. Anonymized examples would still be very useful, I think.
Looking forward to the course.
I am little bit concerned when you talk about “easy keywords” in regards to today’s SEO approach. I have some doubts that there are keywords that are easy to rank for and are worth the effort.
I am a first time student of Brian Dean and his very intense and very detailed SEO That Works course and I think this combination of high quality content created for linkbuilding together with a decent outreach approach still works very well (but involves quite some effort in it).
If you put up a “sales pitch” for a SEO course for Solopreneurs, the 2 questions I would love to see answered is a) proof and b) what additional cost would you deem absolutely necessary, because tools – especially in the SEO space – can quickly sum up to quite a few hundred bucks per month. Total cost, if you want (haha, that’s the procurement person in me)…
In general, I would be in for both, SEO for Solopreneurs and Audience Building Beta (if I understood it right) if my comments above do not disqualify me :) just because it’s Thrive / Shane products.
Hello Phil!
Valid points.
There are three main components for successful and sustainable SEO (no hacks/cheats):
1. technical SEO and site structure
2. content and on-page SEO
3. links
If you have a very young website, you will have to dig deep to find low difficult keywords in your niche. But it’s the best way to leverage your content. Start very specific and with long-tail keywords. Build authority and relevance for those. Be the big fish in the small pond. Then expand from there.
For people with aged sites: The keyword difficulty they can aim for is dependent on how hard/easy their current top performing keywords are. It will allow you to estimate how ambitious you can be in your keyword selection.
Lastly, long-form and high-quality content is the best way to gain links. And they are still one of the main ranking factors. Brian Dean is the man and that is totally right.
Hey Viola!
Quick question…
By ¨long-form and high-quality content is the best way to gain links¨, do you mean that one 2000 words article every two weeks is better than six 700 words articles in the same period of time to gain organic traffic for your overall site? (for new sites, not for Seth Godin of course ;) )
Thanks for all your tips!
Marisa
Awwww, the typical consultant answer: It depends.
It depends on the keyword and the page 1 average.
Have a look.
What type of content is Google currently ranking? What type of page (product, sales page, blog post) and how long is the content? Try to be competitive with what you are seeing.
From my intuition and experience, I would assume that 700 words in the English market could be quite short.
I would try to do 3 articles of 2.100 words instead of six short ones.
But again: Only reviewing page 1 will hold the real answer.
Great answer Viola! Never thought of checking what actuallly ranks and deconstuct from there.
Thanks!
The answer to what works for Google is hidden in plain sight. If Google likes it, it ranks Page 1. There is lots to learn from reviewing the content type, length and optimization from ranking posts.
“Deconstructing” as Marisa said sounds easy, but from what I’ve read over the years (10+ ???), Google’s ranking factors keep changing…if you listen to the SEO “experts” out there… We know their algorithms keep changing to one degree or another…
The question is how to definitively know *which* ranking factors are “in favor” right now…and be fairly certain they will still be in favor tomorrow…
It seems fairly certain — judging from ActiveGrowth & Thrive Themes websites — that original, genuinely useful, long-form content is highly regarded by Google… Long-form presumes that readers will stay n the site longer… So that’s 2 ranking factors…
However, how much weight do other ranking factors carry…and what are they?
Enthused but still skeptical about just how effective deconstructing from page 1 results can actually be…
Hoping I’m wrong, or that you have figured this out! ;-)
Hey Shane, that’s definitely interesting to me. As you say, I’m not the technical guy who wants to spends endless time on keyword research etc., but rather keep these efforts as short as simple to concentrate more on the course production, funnel & content creation.
I’d be interested into
– learning how much one can achieve SEO wise with how little work input
– the experiment itself, how much traction my site could get through this
– learning how to properly analyse changes whether they were useful
– learning SEO strategies that go beyond “writing keyword dense posts”
– how to use already existing platforms or infrastructure (like other sites, strong social media platforms etc.) to cross-improve SEO
– how to “stabilise” the traffic (not good today, gone tomorrow)
– how to really rank great for some keywords
– to find a formula for a ideal content to product ratio, how much do I have to produce content wisely to get the maximum of traffic out for the actual pages, without becoming an “influencer” who hast to post thousand times a day
– how not to dominate just one keyword / niche, but maybe also broader topics
I guess that’s a lot to begin with and some obvious things every marketer would like to know ;-) but I really look forward to seeing your solutions here.
Have a great day & talk soon!
All the best from Austria,
Niko
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! This is super helpful for us to know what topics to cover in the course. :)
SEO… hm, never meant much to me. If Yoast gives me greens, I am happy. Maybe there is more to it?
About audience… my biggest problem is to expand my audience, reaching out to people who do not know me yet. Want a challenge? Still working on my courses for people with diabetes, doing videos etc. My problem is still that you cannot really target them like with the facebook pixel etc, because nobody in FB speaks about having diabetes, they have no common interests (no, diabetics do not look for sweeteners and diet food all the time).. In any given number of people over 40 years, 8-10% have diabetes and I want so much to reach out to them.
Totally echo your thoughts about Yoast plugins! “Green is good” :-)
You raise a very interesting dilemma/challenge!
I’m in a completely different niche, but it also has such a broad interest spectrum, it’s very hard to fine some fine-grained demographics that are simple to plug into some analytics or algorithms…
Hope to learn about how to do this more effectively… :-)
haha, yoast is totally my approach to SEO… well for a few months now anyways. I have a million old articles to update … lol
Re diabetes. There’s a ton of support groups on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=diabetes&epa=SERP_TAB
Yes, and I am well known in the German diabetes groups. I do not post very often, since people use to tell one another: go ask Susanne Zuckertante! I will be a little more active now because I launch a webinar for my course again, this time in a better way than before, I hope!
Yes, I hear your pain! I have the same in my space. You really have to define and then enforce very strict boundaries.
Interesting!
I bet Facebook does know how to target diabetics. On FB specifically, the thing to do would be to create content on your website that is highly specific to diabetics, pixel the traffic you get and then create a lookalike audience. That way, you can reach a lot of people who are in your target market, even if they’ve never explicitly told FB about it.
In terms of SEO, this could be a matter of keyword research and understanding how to find the right keywords to target and create the right content for those keywords.
Thank you. I have tons of specific diabetes content on my homepage and the Facebook pixel running since 4 months. I did no paid Facebook ads yet because I cannot believe that Facebook can find diabetics without them telling FB so and I did not want to spend money I do not really have just now. But could give it a try when I promote my course with a webinar „1×1 of blood sugar testing (Why, when, how should you prick your finger and what the numbers tell you)“
Suzanne, Facebook and other companies know who is pregnant before they even tell anyone (this is from leaked documents). Your buying habits and comments reveal all sorts of indications about you – and quite a lot of that data is bought and sold between companies to combine different sources. You can be sure that Facebook knows exactly who is diabetic and who isn’t :)
Ok… then I will go and ask Facebook!
Thank you for your insights!
Yoast plugin doesn’t really tell you what topics to focus on, how to build your website – or more importantly: How to build links.
As for diabetes. If you know your niche, you will have a good feeling for the common questions and issues people have anyways.
But just glancing at the keyword tool, there are so many good keywords in German.
– Guides for Typ 1 + 2
– Article on Anzeichen, Symptome
– Guide on Ernährung
– Test, Selbsttest
– Artikel on Diabetes und Füße/ oder Schweiß
– Review bekannter Produkte
– Vorbeugung
– Tagebuch
– Ratgeber
All of which have pretty low difficulty. So, if you are site has some power, you can work on them. See you in the course maybe. :)
Yes I am sure I know what my customers need! It looks so difficult for me to get noticed because there are all those huge sites from Pharma and Diabetes Devices Brands, I know personally that they have dozens of people working on their sites about diabetes. Looking forward to your course! I have a beginners 4 week course ready and online, am working on some small „mini courses“ for specific situations (how to … inject/store insulin properly etc) and I really need more traffic.
I have two very large monitors on my desk. I play your course, (whatever it is) Shane, on one of them and my own website ( or whatever you are teaching) on the other. I follow you click by click doing exactly what you are showing. This has proven to work extremely well for me even though I’m old and was not raised in the computer age. I would be interested in and buy any program you release, that I can follow along in the above method. Your programs have taught me that this old dog can indeed learn new tricks if the trainer is as good as you are.
Thank you for your comment, Jim! I’m really happy to hear that. I’ll make sure that this course is as practical and follow-alongable as possible. :)
OMG SEO drives me nuts because it seems such a grey area. When I think of SEO I mentally cringe. I know it’s important, though I avoid it more than embrace it.
If you have an SEO course that has universal techniques, not relying on current ‘hacks’ that seem too prevalent in the current quick fix culture, that would be great. I procrastinate about SEO because I really don’t know how to do it properly. The tools seem more confusing as well. And, as someone else has said in the comments, you end up having to buy more tools that are used for five minutes and then forgotten about.
But still SEO is a necessary task and I know I need to face up to it. I just don’t quite know which are the first steps to take to get me on the path that gives me the momentum to continue.
Many times we hear about a Google update upsetting or wiping out a site. Which implies to me that many courses are about the current situation and not about fundamentals that are timeless. Can an SEO course be about timeless fundamentals rather than time-specific tactics?
With respect to audience building, I have tried FB ads, Manychat, social media and nothing much seems to work but it all becomes a costly drain on time and money. Either I‘m crap at building an audience or my audience doesn’t like the messages I send – or both! Whatever the problem/s is/are, I don’t know what to do about it except perhaps to go to an expert and pay money – which I don’t have. So help in building an audience would be excellent if it can help me specifically and not in a generalist way! Again, this is an area that I just want to ignore but I know that is not a good strategy!
Thank you for your comment, Jedda!
I’d love to be able to un-cringe SEO for you. :)
Regarding sites getting wiped out: in general, the more you rely on short-term loopholes to rank, the more vulnerable the site is to Google updates. There are tons of tricks and tactics that used to work 3, 5, 10 years ago and now don’t work anymore. But 10 years ago, you could learn that the way to rank is to create high quality content that matches keyword intent and get legit links to that content. If that’s all you did, you would find yourself in 2019 still doing the exact same thing and still getting results.
Hi Shane, at this stage you could sell me a brick and I’d still buy it! :) Here are my thoughts…
– I don’t think it’s possible to ‘trick’ Google into getting a better page ranking than the article deserves. Google has uncovered all the tricks. IMHO, there are two criteria for ranking #1 on Google. Firstly, provide the most comprehensive answer to the search term. And, second, own a website with good authority.
– I’m not convinced keyword search tools are reliable. I’d be disappointed if a course just recommended another ‘tool’ on a monthly subscription fee.
– I’m yet to find an SEO course that can show me proof. For instance, write an article using the recommended SEO tips, and 3 months later show me that article ranking #1 in Google.
– I’d be interested in a course that could demonstrate quantifiable results from A/B testing. For instance – here’s an article ranking #1 using this title and here’s the same article ranking #5 using a different title.
– I am massively excited about the ‘audience building’ course. Email me the link, don’t worry about a sales page! :)
– Please can you just release the ‘here’s how to earn a million dollars and retire’ course :)
All the best,
Anthony – trying desperately to swim against the tide!
Thank you for your feedback!
The point about tricks is contestable. On the one hand: yes, Google has gotten a lot better at removing spammy results and plugging loopholes. On the other: they’re still far from being able to actually determine something like content quality or relevance. They still rely on a set of signals that can be understood and reverse engineered to some degree. I would say that SEO is still “tricking” Google to some extent, but the kind of stuff you have to do to trick it is just much more in line with what naturally good, human-focused content would do.
The perspective we have for this course isn’t about any trickery, though. If you’re a business owner and content creator, you’re already doing a ton of work to create your website. You might as well add a little bit of work on top to do some SEO and get the traffic you deserve.
I like your idea about SEO A/B testing. Of course, SEO isn’t very A/B testable, but maybe we can do some kind of case study that really shows the factors we teach matter and change your rankings.
“Please can you just release the ‘here’s how to earn a million dollars and retire’ course.” – well, the main problem here is that I know how I can do that, but I don’t know how to generalize it so that you and every other customer can, too.
If anyone could get to the heart of understanding SEO and audience building, it would be you Shane. Have struggled with these topics for years and feel like it is layer upon layer of detail. The more I learn the more overwhelmed I feel
Thank you for your comment, Kim! I’m not the one presenting the course material, but I have found someone who knows a lot more about SEO than I do and she’s creating the course under my tutelage and with my help. I am extracting her SEO knowledge and putting into a Shane-like format, for the course. :)
Thanks Shaun. SEO is an area that as a non-marketing person I find challenging. I look forward to it
Yes, please include me in the guinea pig test group. Covering audience building between content and social platforms will be useful to cover in the audience building course.
I liked when you said that you don’t want to be stuck doing keyword research, but more delivering content that will attract the right audience. Looking forward to the beta opening for this.
Yes, and your timing is perfect for me. I have just rebuilt my website from scratch using Pressive and all of the Thrive Themes plug-in and I am thrilled with the results. I’m just a couple of weeks away from relaunching and have done what I hope is a good job with SEO but could use more help to fine-tune and maximize the results. Shane, you are one of the few people who always doles out advice in a way that makes me want to listen and more importantly act on what I learn. Thank you!
Hi Shane,
welcome to my hometown! :-)
Actually a great idea with the course…
Greetings from Budapest:
Christian
Thank you! Unfortunately, I was only in Budapest for a few days, this time. But I love coming back for a visit every chance I get.
Strongly look forward to both of your courses. I count on you a lot not just for the value you deliver in the courses but also for your thoughts and philosophies. I believe your thoughts have been very well shaped by the so many books you have read – it’s palpable :) Good luck on course building and waiting to pounce upon as soon as the courses are released :)
Thank you! I do like a good book. :)
Go ahead Shane, the course is of great interest, especially if focused on soloprenour who wants to devote the bare minimum to this and devote himself to something else.
Thanks for your feedback, Agostino!
Very interested in ANYTHING you produce. Consider you one of the very few “real genuine gurus” on the net. Suggest you make it minimal theory and heavy on the nuts and bolts…how to…over the shoulder do this etc…go from beginner to advanced….break it down into bite size chunks….and use a funnel if necessary….Whatever you do keep it simple at your standard of under promise and over deliver at minimal but fair pricing. To make money on the net or any business, you need….1) Tools; 2) List (audience); 3) Quality Product(s); 4) Traffic. It seems everyone wants to sell tools and blow smoke or ignore the rest…Thus all the shiny objects….Solve it and you will have very few if any cancellations in my opinion.
Thank you for sharing your ideas!
Hi Shane!
I’m really happy to see that you’re working on new courses :) I follow you from the beginning and I’ve purchased everything you’ve made (I’m also a subscriber on thrive themes).
My consideration about SEO is high: it’s the fifth year now that I’ve leaved my ICT Manager previous work. 5 year that I’m a freelance, and every single client has come from organic traffic from my blog. This is 100% SEO.
I know it’s not the best options to have only one channel, I’m also ready with social, facebook page, pixels etc, but I have never payed them. SEO works! :-) and I’m sure I will know something new with your course.
Thank you for your encouraging comment, Giovanni!
Nice one, sounds super interesting! Regarding SEO: I would love to really understand how to build an SEO and user-friendly structure for my website within WordPress. I really struggle with how to use parenting, menus, categories, tags, etc. in order to a) serve my audience better and b) help me rank.
Moreover, I’m very unsure what to do with paid ads landing pages vs. my organic pages, since they often use the same keywords. I want to avoid duplicate content issues. So what’s the best practice here?
Lastly, please provide insights on how to properly use multiple languages (and benefit from the SEO). I’d love to see very specific recommendations for easy-to-use plugins that I can rely on so I don’t do any harm to my rankings.
Guinnea-pig coaching sounds interesting. Feel free to hit me up, I’d love to find out more.
Thanks for your comment, Philip! We will be covering the best site structure for WordPress users to implement. Regarding the multilingual site, this is a pretty advanced use case. It won’t be covered in the course, but we can maybe create some bonus content on this topic, if it interests more customers.
Many thanks for considering this, Shane! I’d really appreciate some bonus content around that. But hey, entrepreneurship is about figuring stuff out, so I’ll find the necessary resources. I just love your clarity when presenting things ;-)
Yes, implementing silos in WordPress is not as obvious as one would think.
For paid ads landing pages: Ideally, you will want to deindex them. It will refine your tracking since 100% of your traffic and conversion come from ads.
It will avoid competing for the same keywords with your own SEO articles.
And it will avoid duplicate content issues since paid ads landing pages tend to be very similar.
I hope this helps! Cheers, Viola
Hey Viola Eva, many thanks for this, it was super helpful actually.
Best
Philip
Yes, I am interested. I have a solid SEO and social media process that doesn’t take too much time and works good for me as a solopreneur. But I am always open to learn new approaches. I really learned a lot from Course Craft, so I expect the new SEO course to have the same value. Count me in!
Thank you, Wouter!
Hello, Shane,
that sounds good. I love your results-oriented classes. I am looking forward to further announcements.
Best regards
Marie
Thank you for your kind words.
Hi Shane,
the SEO course is not so interesting for me, because in this environment I have enough knowledge to cover the part that SEO will make up in my projects.
But I am very interested in your Audience Building course and in the test group, because I have to build up lists and audiences for some projects (own and customer projects) in the next months. But these projects are in German language.
Best, Kai
Thanks for your feedback, Kai!
Gosh Shane, I bought something called Backlink BattlePlan (or something like that) a long time ago from someone! I doubt this is a resurrection but it did make me smile.
You deliver some great content and yes I would be interested in SEO and anything you put out.
Cheers
Those were the days, Steve…
SEO has changed (and also not changed in some ways) since then, so it’s definitely going to be a very different course. :)
I cut my teeth on SEO. I purchased and learned Brian Dean, Tim Soulo, and several SEO courses. I am a member of several closed SEO groups.
I spent years to practice it, and now I have 10K organic traffic to my site.
SEO was recently quite technical and complicated stuff but… nowadays SEO should not be so hard. Now it’s more content marketing than SEO. Everything in SEO depends on your content. Solopreneur can do it.
What are hards in SEO are Link Building and Outreach. I didn’t find an easy legit solution to get backlinks. I have not idea how soloentrepreneur can do it.
However, without backlinks, you can spend ages to wait when Google notice your site even if it has excellent content.
So, I’m very interested to see your approach. ))
It’s true that there’s no easy way to get good links. What you can do, however, is pick keywords for which you don’t need a ton of links to rank. For most sites and especially for the typical solopreneur, it’s must better to (easily) rank for a whole bunch of low-traffic keywords than trying to go after some behemoth keyword with loads of traffic and impossible competition. Like you say: with good content marketing and minimal link building, you can get there. Do that long enough and you level up your site to the point where you can go after some tougher keywords.
Hey Shane,
SEO is essential for any online business in my opinion, but it can be tedious and immensely time consuming, especially when you’re starting and it’s not something you like doing. So a course, that is very professional and at the same time not too deep sound pretty interesting, although I have no idea what it would be like. I’m already learning SEO and I’m definitely interested in what (and who) you can offer. Looking forward to both courses.
Feedback:
– As Lorenzo D said – YouTube is also of great interest to me, if there is something specific for YouTube or social media in general, I would like to see it in the course;
– free AND premium tools should be included (as far as I know both work perfectly well). It’s always nice to learn premium tools if you can invest and make you life a little easier;
Kindest regards,
Stan
Thank you for your input, Stan! I appreciate this kind of feedback a lot.
I’ve started to dig a bit more into SEO and audience building, but sometime it’s just overwhelming to do this in addition to the regular everyday business. So yes, pls count me in for joining the piggi-group :)
Thanks for your willingness to participate!
Hello Shane,
First my story, followed by some idea’s about SEO.
Two years ago I was coaching a solopreneur/bookeditor in an very small niche. I suggested her setting up an online channel. But finally she stayed in her comfortzone as so many booksellers.
But this coaching gave me the boost to dive deeply in SEO with help of Yoast.
Last year I decided to go online with my meditationcourses and practise SEO for my own website. Firstly I bought a membership, pagebuilder and communityprogram from IMU.nl Great stuff and very good support for the Dutch market. But also too expensive alltogether for my very small business.
Pagebuilding with a laugh and a tear
So I quit and did some research for other pagebuilders. I found Thrive promising the best opportunities specially because of the Apprentice module. I knew Architect already from the editorcoaching.
My former host didn’t support Apprentice so I had to migrate to WPX (btw on your recommendation.) That was five months ago and I am still very happy with my choice.
After the migration I had to set up my website completely from scratch. I renewed the SEOoptimalization for all pages, posts and images. All together a bunch of work, taking four months. But as you mentioned in your old Budapest video, without hard work the avarage is a men’s result.
SEO
Another thing is that I have to build-up a new audience. My former one is based on my previous professional field i.e. organisational development.
How I gonna do that.
I shouldn’t suggest to do a lot of effort in SEO. I did so and I see not much organic growth. And Google-ads is quite expensive also to be a good help.
I think I rather go for Facebook and Instagram. That enables me to target exactly on possible leads. I expect more conversion for the same costs as Google. I will give it a try for a month and analyse what comes out.
My planning:
This moment I have a free Journal part 1 that tells about my 40 years meditation experience. Visitors can download it by subscribing on a mailchimplist.
Next three weeks I finish another free product, ‘every week an meditation’. Visitors can by it for free with Sendowl and are subscribed on a mailchimplist too.
Somewhere in september I will finish a first part of a payed course on psychology ans meditation.
My conclusion
I love Yoast specially their internal link-builder. As you can see on my website I use a Bibliotheek with long specialised articles and links to other pages. That’s a SEOmonster! After a while I will replace them with newer articles and put them in the course-sector.
Yoast premium is complete but too much! I think p.e. readability-scores are not that important for solopreneurs.
What is missing is an overview of keywords/frases assigned to pages so I easily can see wich ones are used already. I am wrestling with that.
Research for keywords is timeconsuming but I suppose impossible to avoid. Finding more related keyphrases? Too much!
May-be it is enough to focus on SEO-title, first paragraph, keyphrase, metadescription and images-conditions.
But my best suggestion is to focus on Facebook and other social media.
Thanks Shane for your amazing efforts and practical insights.
Walk in Grace,
Hans van Zanten
http://www.zanzen.nl
Thank you for sharing your experiences. The Yoast SEO plugin is somewhat useful, but it’s really not enough for your site’s SEO. For example, a really important factor is the overall structure of your site and Yoast doesn’t provide any feedback on that.
Hi Shane, I agree with you Yoast is not enough for my site. But until now it was the best choice for time- and moneysaving. So, I am curious tto your solutions. Like always they will surely of great help and value. Btw, these comments are already helpfull! Good to engage us as your fans to optimize the two courses. So, thanks Shane and thanks everybody.
Hi Shane, I’m loving the thrust of your focus this year. The SEO for Solopreneurs on the face of it would be very helpful – in terms of providing “do this, don’t better (yet) with this” kind of advice. Measurement of key metrics would be useful too so participants can track progress of their efforts.
And that brings me to the second item about Audience Building. I am effectively starting over at the moment with my wife as we are about to launch an online membership for people with back pain. We have large personal networks that we haven’t nurtured very well and a small brand-related list so we’re effectively starting afresh. I’d be interested to know more about the beta release of the course if you’d add my details to the list?
Thanks for your comment, Ryan! More news on the audience building test group will be coming soon(ish), after I’ve completed work on the SEO course. :)
Hello Shane, I would like to “apply” for the beta test group. I am now busy making 2 specific target groups for myself and my wife (tax advice for entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs in general (Growth Scale Exit)) would like to be considered for the Beta test group. I am also a member of THriveThemes. We advise and help entrepreneurs in the Dutch language area. Thanks in advance for the trouble Peter Jansen of Internet Matching.
Thanks for your application. :)
SEO…I know nothing about this and it is on to learn list, so I course would be off huge benefit to me. Yes, I am in,
the same for a Building your audience course as well. Really looking forward to them.
That’s great to hear, Chris!
Audience building has been my toughest pain, because when it comes to show up everyday without seeing results is discouraging.
I hope this include content ideas, calendar planning, fast content creation and repurposing
My aim is to provide a complete solution. That’s what I always try to do with my products. :)
Shane,
thank you for the update – I would be interested in both courses and expect them to be highly practical and actionable. I am Course Craft-er and TT member, so I know and appreciate your products and content.
On SEO course:
What’s your & your German SEO expert’s take on recent (exagerated?) ‘alarm’ by CEO of Social Media Examiner and declaration on the ”Death of Google Search Traffic and What It Means for Marketers” (here’s the link to his article http://bit.ly/32QcH5Y) ?
Do you plan to address the following 2 issues:
1) SEO and blog/website duplicate content (in particular, on LinkedIn and Medium) – how to leverage other platforms without SEO damage.
2) Social media marketing considerations that could be helpful (practical tips that could make a difference)
On AUDIENCE building course:
Do you plan to include social media component in your system? In particular, LinkedIn is gaining popularity not only among corporate professionals but creatives as well + many new features introduced/on the way.
On TEST group:
It would be great if you could consider diversity element in terms of e.g. gender, type of products/services, geography (local or global focus), types of clients (corporate professionals or ordinary public). The same method could work diffferently for these cases.
Thanks again for your work and for consistently soliciting feedback and listening to your customers.
Enjoy summer and look forward for getting new updates!
Alla
Thank you for your comment, Alla! My take on the article you shared is that someone went: “we need a headline that will get clicks!” and someone else responded: “let’s do the death of SEO, that works great every time!”
I was in the SEO game for many years and basically every change Google made back then led to a slew of “death of SEO” articles. And now, almost 10 years later… the death of SEO is still being announced on a regular basis.
It makes of a catchy headline. That’s it.
Things are always changing, online. Yes, a lot of what was good SEO years ago “died” and was replaced with other stuff. The way people use the internet and websites changes. Platforms change. Trends change. But the basic idea of optimizing your things so that people find it has remained and will likely remain for a long time.
In the course, we’ll cover duplicate content and content cannibalization. Social media won’t be part of it, as it doesn’t constitute a significant ranking factor.
Publish your content on your website first. You can even submit the pages directly using Google Search Console to attain ownership for the content in Google.
Then distribute to social media and Medium after.
Social signals are surely good for your content (and drive traffic), however, Google as an enterprise can never rely their algorithm fully on social signals – or they would be bound to Facebook etc.
And here are my thoughts on “zero-click searches”:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-zero-click-searches/286401/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-serp-seo/282445/
I totally agree with Chuck cparish’s comment. It’s vital to keep the course implementation orientated. Absolute minimal theory.
Thank you for your comment, Christopher!
Shane, you always come at things from the practical perspective. I am looking forward to this opportunity to get better at SEO and unravel some of the mystery.
Thank you, Mike!
Shane, I’m looking forward to your audience building course, because building 1000 true fans opens up the world and enables one small person to catalyze change in many, which is the true potential of the internet. I hope you feel gratified to have inspired and enabled so many of us to launch our own empires into motion. Thank you – we are deeply grateful!
I’m super excited about your guinea pig group, which I would love to be a part of – being part of a sharp like-minded group is extremely helpful for me (lonely solopreneur) but also I’m really motivated by producing good data to share and providing help and being an insightful case study for the rest of the group (more motivating than making a pile of $)
I know enough about SEO to be dangerous already, and like you said, want to focus on my courses, not my SEO. But I would benefit from a clear, streamlined process of best practices to use so I could be efficient with the list of 10-20 things I need to do and know I was doing ‘enough’ for decent results (in other words, what kinds of results could I expect from minimum effort, moderate effort and tons of effort SEO practices, so I can decide how much time/outsourcing I want to put in). Right now I’m just vaguely guessing and hoping I’m not leaving a lot of organic traffic on the table.
Also thoughtful explanations about:
–why niche sites based on keywords won’t work (do they??)
–if/how quality content can be rewarded over crappy auto-generated stuff
–how to break new keyword ground (by introducing new concepts or terms that aren’t searched for all day but should be because they’re great solutions to problems that people are searching for answers to)
–how to play the long game in SEO (I think that means building out a suite of useful content on a topic that people love to reference and link to and .. what else?)
–how SAAS and stuff behind a login can get SEO traffic (what about free courses that are all behind a login? Or a webpage that people come back to over and over to use as a tool, which is a great service to provide, but it’s only one page so has very limited SEO potential)
–how to do great SEO for podcasts/embedded videos (are transcripts enough?).
PS Kudos to you for partnering with women in your work. It’s a breath of fresh air to see smart, capable women taking the lead in some of your projects. A huge percentage of online businesses are run by women now, because traditional work isn’t flexible enough to accommodate being a mother, so there’s a huge spot for women role models and mentors in these techie areas that have traditionally all been men. Thanks for openly showing that women are some of the most badass internet marketers out there :P
Thank you for your comment, Kendra! You bring up some really interesting questions. Some of these will be covered in the course. For more niche questions, we’ll probably do one or more Q&A sessions with customers. Since the focus of the course is 80/20 and a practical approach that doesn’t take too much time to implement, there are many details we’ll not cover in depth. But in a Q&A session, we can get into the geeky details for anyone who’s interested. :)
As for the women I work with: I’ve been very fortunate to meet and have the opportunity to collaborate with many people, some of whom happen to be women. And I’m also lucky to have been raised to expect nothing less.
Yes , if you keep the price not too much for people like me who are beginners.
Well, it’s won’t be a $2,000 guru course. :D
Cool stuff again. I’ interested in both offers and totally agree with what cparish@penguinwebs.com said.
Hey Shane,
To this day, my most successful endeavour was the use of Backlink Battle Plan! I absolutely loved that course.
So yes, I would be interested in an SEO course.
I am in the middle of another course right now. Hopefully this one will deliver.
Tom Reilly
Wow, that’s so cool to hear! Thank you, Tom!
Hi, I really like your content and your presentations. They are always good. I appreciate that.
The reason I’m not interested in SEO is because I had my website value appraised by two appraisers several years ago.
One appraisal was $1.2 million. The second appraisal, $800,000.
Both appraisers explained it was mandatory that the sale of my products was the result of “paid” advertising. (traffic that could be generated with reliable results).
They also said, if my sales were due to organic traffic (SEO) the value of the website would be valued at only 25% of the original appraisals.
Basically, a website buyer wants reliable and consistent results… which is seldom the case with SEO.
That’s an interesting point. I think anyone who knows what they’re doing would valuate a website in a more differentiated manner, though. Stating that organic traffic makes a website 75% less valuable is a crazy over-simplification, in my opinion.
If you have a relatively young website with low domain authority and it pulls in a lot of organic traffic then yes, that looks dodgy and the traffic could drop off a cliff at any moment. A close analysis of links and content would be important. But if you have an older website with tons of content and links and high domain authority, the organic traffic would make it more valuable rather than less. I mean, would you spend more to buy a site that brings in $1MM revenue by paying $900K for traffic or one that brings in $1MM revenue from organic traffic?
Having said that, if those guys have any high domain authority sites to sell at a 75% discount, send them to me! ;)
As you may have seen, Viola has jumped in to answer some of your burning SEO related questions. I recommend you pay close attention to what she says. I’ve added a quick introduction for her below the video as well. Give it a look!
Hi Shane.
I’m interested in being a test subject and I’m happy to pay. I was in Course Craft: you praised my sales page for plotting a novel.
Hi Shane,
great news! I want to add my thoughts on your projects:
1 About the SEO Course: I’ve been following an Online Business Course which shows how to build a OB from Scratch, also including SEO as the main source of traffic. I find, that only few of the customers (we meet yearly) reached their goal of earning money with it or even get an relevent amount of traffic. I think thats mainly because the course shows you a “thats how it works”-path, but not preparing you for pitfalls, problems, questions along the way.
2 I have had some articles that I really invested time and integrated the stuff from the course but they just dont rank on any interesting level – while others boost up to top 10 on Google without having done anything different. I feel like the Course Provider just wasnt the most experienced “tour guide”, leaving questions and problems open.
3 I would really like to see proof of your SEO Expert – since I trust in you because you have proven your talk – but I hardly trust another online course/ SEO expert easylie. Because what they usually dont tell you first is: You have to spent a lot of time FIRST before you see the results (if any) and can say that they deserved your time or not. Sorry for beeing a little suspicious here, no offense.
4 About the Audience Building Course: I’ll be glad to join you on your group. What you get is someone with passion, not giving up trying until my vision of an indipentent coaching business is reality. Pursuing that for years, by now having clients in my office in Germany for 1on1 coaching. Implemented Course Craft to the step of releasing my course with a partner in a few weeks. What I would really benefit on your course, would be an honest expectation of traffic results and time to invest. + step by step, hands on lessons.
Thanks for reading all through. Hope that supports your projects a little.
Benedikt.
You are right with point 3.
Time is actually one of the most powerful ranking factors. And often ignored. Our approach to this course is sprint-based.
Think of a rocket launching. A lot of thoughts go into how to design the rocket and then a lot of work for lifting it out of the earth atmosphere.
Only then it sails smoothly towards its destination.
SEO (and any organic audience building for that matter, think building a following on FB or IG) takes time. It takes consistent, strategic and efficient efforts to gain momentum.
For your observation 2: What is the difference between your articles that rank and those who don’t? Keyword difficulty? Amount of links? Page 1 content types?
If everyone on page 1 is a long ultimate guide and you are trying to rank a product page, it will never work.
A page 1 analysis is an important step to understand why some articles work and others don’t.
Definitely keen to learn the basic but effective SEO that every solopreneur needs and can actually manage themselves (along side all the other things!!)
Oohhhhh yes please,. IT Will suite, the course builder course perfectly.
Now i Soon dont miss anything (shinny) from you Shane.
…
Will there be a section specially for another, language in SEO ,my primarely language is danish and most SEO tools are designed for english.
So a topic about language difference in SEO
And trends btw. From contry to contry
.
Looking forward to be invited ad a “pig”
Jonas
..
Hello Shane,
I have a question about your Audience Building course, especially in relation to your first podcast episodes about the Customer First approach.
I understood you suggested to start up any new project trying to find and serve some paying customers (in order to learn what to create).
This was also a way not to waste time and to start generating revenue from the start…
So now I’m wondering:
Why are you saying we should start creating an audience (I guess, not willing to pay from the start) and, only after that, trying to convert a portion of it in paying customers?
Thank you for your much needed clarification
Matteo
Hi Matteo,
I’m by no means suggesting anyone should create and audience first.
The audience building course will be about how to build an audience for your existing business. This is a very different idea from “how to become an influencer”, where you’d try to simply build up an audience and then try to monetize it somehow.
For someone starting out from scratch, I would tell them to do the customer first approach and/or follow Course Craft. Once you’ve don that, then you’re ready to build the audience.
Thank you for your answer Shane.
Unfortunately I haven’t bought Course Craft and I can see it’s closed now… :(
Could you please let me know if such a course explains as well (maybe more deeply) the customer first approach or if it follows a different path? In the second case, which route do you think should be preferred among the two?
Thanks again for your very appreciated help,
Matteo
Hi Shane, are you still looking for beta testers. I have a couple of new resources that I am trying to develop, but have virtually non existent SEO.
Names for SEO course?
System for
Entrepreneurial
Optimization
(SEO)
or…
Simple
Easy
Optimization
Sounds great, Shane. I look forward to hearing more about it, and would love to be considered for the beta group as well.
Thanks
Linda