17 Actionable Content Marketing Tips For More Traffic
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17 Actionable Content Marketing Tips For More Traffic

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

17 Actionable Content Marketing Tips

This is a list of actionable content marketing tips.

In fact, these same strategies helped grow my blog to 449,058 monthly visits:

Backlinko – Users – September 2021

So if you want more traffic from every piece of content that you publish, you’ll love this list of tips, techniques and strategies.

Let’s get started.

1. Publish β€œX vs. Y” Posts

β€œX vs. Y” posts are posts like:

  • β€œConvertkit vs. MailChimp”
  • β€œPaleo vs. Keto”
  • β€œUberEats vs. Postmates”

And β€œX vs. Y” posts are a GREAT way to get more traffic to your site.

Why?

First, X vs. Y keywords don’t have a lot of SEO competition.

For example, I published a post optimized around the keyword β€œAhrefs vs. SEMRush”.

Backlinko – Ahrefs vs SEMrush

Sure enough, that page rocked to the top of Google within a few weeks.

Ahrefs vs SEMrush – Post – SERPs

Second, people that search for β€œX vs. Y” keywords tend to be pretty advanced.

Think about it this way:

Somebody searching for β€œAhrefs vs. SEMRush” already knows about SEO. They’re just looking for the best tool.

This is why CPCs on β€œX vs. Y” keywords tend to be super high.

Aweber vs. Mailchimp – CPC

This is an EASY way to get more replies to your outreach emails.

All you need to do is add links to your social profiles in your signature.

Add links to your social profiles in your signature

Seriously. That’s it.

And there’s data to back this up.

When we teamed up with Pitchbox to analyze over 10 million outreach emails, we discovered that social profile links increased response rates by up to 9%.

Linking to Social Profiles May Slightly Improve Outreach Response Rates

Our data also showed that adding a link to your Instagram profile seems to make the biggest difference.

Links To Instagram, LinkedIn And Twitter May Lead To More Outreach Replies

This leads us to…

3. Use The Animalz Revive Tool

I boosted my organic traffic by 260% simply by updating and relaunching an old post.

Organic traffic boost for White Hat SEO

Question is:

How do you know which posts to work on first?

Enter: The (free) Animalz Revive tool.

Animalz revive tool

This tool uses your Google Analytics to find pages with the biggest traffic drop.

Animalz revive – Advice

When you find a page that’s dropping, you have two options:

You can revamp and relaunch the post like it’s brand new.

For example, we update and relaunch our β€œGuide to SEO This Year” every November.

Backlinko – SEO this year

Or, you can quietly update your content. In fact, few years ago we gave our guest posting guide a much-needed update.

Backlinko – The definitive guide to guest blogging

And that single update boosted search engine traffic to that page by 17.68%.

Search traffic boost for guest blogging guide

4. Try The PBC Formula

Your blog post introductions are HUGE.

After all, they’re the first thing people see when they land on your post.

Unfortunately, most blog post intros are way too long.

Long post intro

Well, I recently developed a short blog post intro formula that works GREAT.

I call it: β€œThe PBC Formula”.

The PBC Formula

Here’s the full breakdown.

First, you quickly Preview what your post is all about.

Blog post intro – Preview

Then, you list out a bunch of Benefits that someone will get from reading your post.

Blog post intro – Benefits

Finally, cap things off with a Call-To-Action.

Blog post intro – CTA

That’s all there is to it.

5. Publish β€œPower Posts”

When we joined forces with BuzzSumo to analyze nearly 1 billion articles, one finding stood out:

A very small number of β€œPower Posts” drive the majority of social sharing online.

Power Posts

Our data showed that 1.3% of the articles published are responsible for 50% of social media shares.

I call these high-performing articles β€œPower Posts”.

To be clear:

There’s no formula for creating content that will get shared like crazy.

(If there was, everyone would do it. πŸ˜€ )

But when you publish epic Power Posts you increase the odds that people will share your stuff.

For example, we published a Power Post called: β€œHow to Write a Blog Post: The Definitive Guide”.

Backlinko – Write a blog post

This single post took 50 hours of work.

  • 20 hours to write the post
  • 15 hours to design illustrations and visuals
  • 10 hours to take and edit screenshots
  • 5 hours to code and assemble the page

But in the end, that hard work paid off.

Our Power Post brought in 10,555 visitors in the first week alone.

Write a Blog Post – First week visitors

And a good chunk of those visitors were from all the shares we got on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Write a Blog Post Guide – Shares

In fact, that single page has 6019 total social shares.

Write a blog post – Social shares

Let’s face it:

Most topics are SUPER competitive.

For example, take a super niche keyword like β€œsite seo check up”.

According to Semrush, this keyword only gets 90 searches per month.

Site SEO checkup – Search volume

And it has a keyword difficulty score of 90.

Site SEO checkup – Keyword difficulty

It’s the same story with most topics nowadays.

By the time you write an article about something, there are already hundreds (or even thousands) of posts out there on that topic.

What’s the solution?

Write about trending topics.

Trending topics are popular topics that aren’t super competitive (yet).

And if you want to find trending topics, I recommend checking out a free tool called ExplodingTopics.com.

Exploding Topics – Homepage

This tool lists out topics that are growing fast in 29 different categories.

Exploding Topics – Keyword overview

That way, you can pounce on these topics before they really take off.

7. Include Native Content With Social Shares

β€œShare your content on social media” used to be a useful content marketing tip.

Not anymore.

Today, most social media algorithms (like Facebook) bury posts that send users off of their platform.

Social Media Algorithms Prefer Native Content

While there’s no way to totally get around this, I recently found a little loophole that does help:

Post native content with your link.

For example, my social media posts used to just be my blog post title and a link.

Social share with link only

And these posts would get BURIED.

Today, I write a little bit of native content to go along with the post.

This native content gives social media algorithms what it wants (original content and engagement).

And once the post starts to spread around the platform, you get what you want (more traffic to your post).

For example, this LinkedIn post got over 41k views.

LinkedIn post views

And that’s mostly due to the fact that the post wasn’t just a link to my site.

My post had a little bit of valuable content to go along with my link.

Valuable content in LinkedIn post

8. Use Padlock Posts

You may have noticed these greyed-out posts in the Backlinko blog feed.

Padlock post on Backlinko

Internally, we call these β€œPadlock Posts”.

They’re basically normal blog posts that only Backlinko email subscribers can get access to.

And when someone clicks on a Padlock Post, a little popup appears that asks for their email.

And while it’s still early, these seem to be working REALLY well.

In fact, this Padlock Post has brought in 1,614 email subscribers so far.

Padlock post – Email subscribers

Not bad.

9. Include a Keyword in Your URL

Keyword-rich URLs aren’t just for on-page SEO.

(Although they definitely help with that too.)

As it turns out, including a keyword in your URL can increase your organic click-through-rate by up to 45%.

Keyword-Rich URLs Correlate With A Higher Organic Click Through Rate

I should point something out:

Your URL doesn’t have to be a 1:1 match for the keyword someone’s searching for.

As long as the text in your URL is similar to the keyword, you’ll usually get a nice CTR boost.

Our method for seeing if keyword-rich URLs positively impacted CTR

For example, a while ago I published a post called: β€œ17 Ways to Improve SEO Rankings”.

Backlinko – Improve your SEO post

My target keyword for that post is: β€œImprove SEO Rankings”.

Improve SEO rankings – Keyword in title

Even though my URL doesn’t contain that exact term, it’s close enough.

Improve SEO rankings – Keyword in URL

10. Add More Cuts to Your Video Content

People want videos that move FAST.

This is something that I struggled with when I first started shooting videos.

I wanted my videos to look β€œnatural”. So I filmed entire YouTube videos with only one or two cuts.

And this made my videos move SUPER slow. My videos were full of β€œumms”, β€œaaahs” and β€œyou knows” which slowed things down.

Today, my videos have 80-100 cuts each.

That way, each video moves along at a super rapid pace.

Which helps my Audience Retention stay nice and high.

YouTube analytics – Audience retention

11. Write Longer Headlines

Want to get more social shares from your content?

Try writing longer headlines.

The BuzzSumo study I mentioned earlier found that longer headlines are strongly correlated with high levels of social sharing.

This was true when we measured headline length in terms of word count:

Long Headlines Are Correlated With Increased Social Sharing

And character count:

Long Headlines (80+ Characters) Are Correlated With More Social Shares

We actually found that long headlines generate an average of 76% more shares vs. short headlines.

For example, this headline from one of our posts is 15 words.

Page Speed Stats post – Headline

Which may have helped that post rack up 2036 shares.

Page Speed Stats post – Social shares

12. Optimize Around Untapped Keywords

Most keyword research tools have the same problem:

They show everyone the exact same set of keywords!

What if there was a way to find untapped keywords that your competitors haven’t found yet?

Well, there is.

Here’s how to do it:

First, log in to the Google Keyword Planner.

Then, click on the β€œStart With a Website” tab.

Keyword Planner – Start with a website

And enter a competitor’s homepage…

Keyword Planner – Enter website

…or a blog post.

Keyword Planner – Enter blog post

And the tool will scan the page for keyword ideas

Ideas that most people don’t see.

Keyword Planner – Keyword ideas

Very cool.

13. Use Blog Post Templates

Templates can REALLY help you scale up your content marketing.

For example, whenever I start on a new post, I don’t open up a blank Google Doc.

Instead, I work from one of our proven blog post templates.

For example, when I sit down to write a case study, I use this PDF workbook to help me get the important parts on paper.

Case study PDF worksheet

Then, I transfer that to a Google Doc and start writing.

In fact, working from a set of templates has helped us scale up our publishing schedule.

14. Use Emotional Titles

According to our analysis of 5 million Google search results, titles that pack an emotional punch get more clicks.

Emotional Titles Have A Higher Organic Click Through Rate

That said:

It’s possible for your titles to be TOO emotional.

That same study found that headlines with β€œPower Words” had a lower CTR.

Power Words In Title Tags Were Correlated With Lower Click Through Rate

So I recommend using titles that have some emotional sentiment. But if you go overboard, your CTR can start to suffer.

For example, this title is emotional. But it’s not β€œclickbaity”.

NerdFitness – Emotional headline

15. Optimize Around Brand Keywords

β€œBrand Keywords” are just like they sound:

They’re keywords optimized around brands and products.

Here’s an example of one of our posts that’s optimized around a Brand Keyword.

Backlinko – SparkToro review

So: why optimize your blog content around Brand Keywords?

Because they’re usually NOT competitive.

For example, take a keyword like β€œSparkToro”.

According to Semrush, that keyword gets 8.2K searches per month. And it has a decent CPC too.

SparkToro – Search volume and CPC

Despite those impressive numbers, the keyword difficulty on this term is only 43.

SparkToro – Keyword difficulty

The downside of Brand Keywords is that you’ll never rank #1 in Google for that term.

And depending on the SERPs for that brand keyword, you may not be able to crack the top 3.

For example, we published this guide to the Google Search Console few years ago:

Backlinko – Google Search Console

And considering that the top 5 results are all Google.com pages, #6 is about as high as this page will ever rank.

Even so, that post still brings in 1,126 visitors per month from Google.

Google Search Console Guide – Monthly visitors

16. Tell Relatable Stories in YouTube Videos

One of the powerful things about YouTube is that it’s a very personal medium.

Unlike a blog post, someone is actually watching YOU deliver your message.

Which makes it the perfect place to take your guard down. And reveal some personal tidbits about yourself.

For example, I try to include a 30-60 second little story in every single one of my YouTube videos.

Most of these stories share how I initially struggled with the topic that I’m covering in that video.

That way, I don’t come in like some know-it-all.

It shows that, like anyone, I had to learn things through trial and error.

As long as these stories are short and relate to your topic, you’ll find that your audience will appreciate them.

YouTube comment relating to a story

17. Write Compelling Meta Descriptions

No, Google doesn’t use the meta description tag to understand the content on your page.

But users use your description to figure out which result to click on.

Pages With A Meta Description Have A Higher Average CTR vs. Pages Without A Description

Now:

The copy in your meta tag will depend a lot on the page.

But here’s one template that tends to work well:

Meta Description Template Formula

And here’s an example of that template in action.

Post meta description

Bonus #1: Reverse Engineer Your Competition

There’s a place for originality.

And creative thinking.

But there’s also a place for straight-up copying what your competitors are doing.

And you don’t need their Google Analytics password to do it either.

In fact, there are a bunch of awesome content marketing tools that will show you what’s already working for someone else.

If your main focus is on link building, Detailed.com shows you where the top blogs in almost every niche get their links from.

Hubspot links from Detailed

And if you want to see a specific site’s most-shared content, BuzzSumo is the tool for you.

Buzzsumo – Moz 2021 content

Or maybe you want to see the pages on a site that brings in the most organic traffic. Well, Ahrefs can hook you up with that info.

Ahrefs – Top pages by organic traffic

Bonus #2: Create Stats Pages

Stats Pages are a great way to build backlinks without needing to do a bunch of outreach.

Here’s why:

Stats Pages are optimized around β€œ[Topic] + Stats” keywords.

And who tends to search for β€œ[Topic] + Stats” keywords?

That’s right: bloggers and journalists!

And when they use one of your stats in their article, they’ll usually link back to your stats page.

For example, we published this list of email marketing stats a few months ago.

Backlinko – Email marketing stats

And it quickly hit the first page for keywords that bloggers and journalists search for (like β€œemail marketing stats”).

Google SERP – Email marketing stats

Which helped it pick up some solid links, like this one:

Email Marketing Stats – Backlink

Nice.

What Do You Think?

Now I’d like to turn things over to you:

Which content marketing tip from this list was your favorite?

Or maybe you have a tip that I didn’t cover here.

Either way, let me know and leave a comment below.

291 Comments

  1. Brian, that’s are really helpfully tips, thank you! Can you make a post how to write blog post like you – short sentences, meaningful, a lot of useful graphics. That’s a magic and works like kids book!

    1. Great article. Thanks for your efforts. Appriciate it.

  2. 19 great tips, thank you. Now all I have to do is to put them into practice.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Rob. Yup, that’s the tricky part! I tried to make these super tactical so that they’re easy to put into practice. For example, tip #11 should only take about a minute to do.

  3. How do you “Padlock” a post?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      It depends on your CMS, theme, and email service company (Mailchimp, Convertkit etc.). But the basic gist is you need a way for your email service to forward current subscribers to the padlock post. And have new subscribers confirm their email first. From there, you need to hack your CMS so that your padlock posts stay in the same spot in your blog feed.

      So yeah, not super easy to pull off. But it can be 100% worth it.

      1. Okay… so basically, I need to find freelance on fiver to hack my theme. πŸ˜›

        Thanks, that’s in my future todo list now. πŸ™‚

        1. Or if you’re using WordPress you could always consider Ryan Stewart’s plugin:
          β€œCapture & Convert”

  4. Mel Avatar Melsays:

    Man, really upset this isn’t, “The Definitive Guide to 17 Actionable Marketing Tips.”

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Maybe next time πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

  5. Hey Brian! I am a big fan of yours and read all of your articles. I am starting a new blog and I would love it if you made a blog post about how to get users/traffic on your website if it is brand new.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Josh, thank you. I appreciate that.

  6. I am in the real estate and mortgage niche in San Diego – everyone talks about PPC, sending direct mail, etc — I focus solely on creating hard hitting, targeted long form blog posts. Brian, we use your site, and how you lay out how to do these, as our guides. I can say that 2 items that are “secret” you talk about. (1) Using a “Table of Contents” at the start of the article with clickable links (2) We added Schema Mark up – real estate — and these were HUGE game changers.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Scott, that’s great! It’s always good to see someone using content marketing in local niches like that. It really does work! And as you’re probably finding, your competition is probably light years behind the stuff you’re doing.

      And yeah, adding a table of contents has been helpful for us in terms of getting sitelinks and for overall UX.

  7. Hey Brian! As usual, I have learned many things from this post. Thank you so much for covering this topic. Cheers!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome. Glad you learned something new.

  8. I liked tip #12. Optimize Around Untapped Keywords.

    Great use of Keyword Planner for getting untapped keywords.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Cheers. Yup, that little tip still works super well even after all these years (I first started using it 5+ years ago).

  9. Cool, Cool Tips brian.

    I jotted down all the main points. Here they are.

    Publish X vs. Y post.
    Link to Social Profiles in Outreach Emails
    Try the PBC formula
    Write about the trending topic
    Use padlock post
    Use blog post templates
    Optimize around brand keywords

    And others I knew before πŸ™‚
    However, I’ve sworn to publish only power posts (and have proudly removed all the mediocre posts from my site :p )

    But I have quick questions–

    How can I create a padlock post on my WordPress website? (I’ve also featured it in my most recent article)

    Thanks a ton brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Rahul. To answer your question: I addressed that before (in my reply to Brian’s comment). But basically, it requires some coding to work.

      1. Yes Brian, just read it.

        Thank you.

  10. Thanks Brian

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Danish. Glad you enjoyed it.

  11. Been enjoying the tips from your recent acquisition! Look forward to the emails each Tuesday.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Nathan. That’s good to hear. People seem to really like Exploding Topic Tuesday! I might write a post about it here soon.

  12. Great tips once again Brian. I’ll try your PBC formula and Padlock posts. Also using blog post templates sounds great if that’s going to speed up the content creation process. Wasn’t even aware that longer titles lead to more shares, I always tend to make it around 10 words max. Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Anthony. Blog post templates have been super helpful. It’s allowed me to double out blog post content production (still only 2 posts/month. But still).

  13. Hi Brian,

    Content marketing shouldn’t be hard. The only thing content should understand the users need and try to create content that visitors can relate.

    The content marketing tips you have mentioned in the post, are incredibly awesome, especially the Create Stats Pages method.

    I hope it will work for my client.

    Thanks,
    Umesh Singh

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Umesh.

  14. Even I subscribed you with the padlock πŸ˜†

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice! That goes to show that it really does work.

  15. Aamer Avatar Aamersays:

    Awesome post!!!!
    Shared on Twitter…

    My very first week of email subscription and I got the blog post of my own niche… Thanks a lot for this post… Really helpful…

    Is there any blog post regarding the latest usage of WordPress that covers useful tools, plugins, widgets… especially for beginners?

    I have been writing content for others and want to start my own website using WordPress but it seems somewhat complex to me…

    If there is, let me know… It would be a HUGE help…

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Aamer. Have you seen WPbeginner.com? It sounds like the exact site you’re looking for.

  16. Thanks for another great post Brian. I will be sure apply this to my content marketing strategy.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Darshana.

  17. Your style is the best, Brian. When I receive an email from you, I always know I will learn something interesting. Thanks for being an inspiration.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Romain! I really appreciate that πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

  18. Hey Brian, another great post! I do see people rank for a brand name and it seems to generate them traffic but do you have to choose a brand name related to your industry? For instance, I am in branding but if I rank for nike, won’t it be untargeted as they are looking for clothes or trainers?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Alex, thanks. I recommend choosing a brand name related to your industry. It doesn’t have to be a competitor or a site in your exact niche. But it should be a brand that your target customer searches for. For example, I don’t have an SEO software company, but I still want to rank for Ahrefs, SEMRUsh etc.

      Why? Because my target audience of professional marketers uses those tools. So this is a way to get in front of them.

      1. Excellent post Brian. I really like the PBC formula. Packing in so much value right at the beginning is important and I think your formula is perfect.

        Thanks Brian!

        Take care,
        Steve

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          You’re welcome, Steve. Yup, you gotta hook them right away or they’re gone.

  19. Can Google still crawl the page with the Padlock content on it?

    This seems great and I look forward to trying it out.

    Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Anthony, no they can’t. And you don’t really want them to. It’s meant to be for email subscribers only.

  20. Great tips, Brian. I’ve been curious to see how your Padlock Posts have been performing for you since seeing them go live on the site. So I’m glad you shared those details.

    But my favorite tip from this list is much simpler than that: it’s the meta description template formula in tip #17. I know how important meta descriptions are, but I always feel like mine are a little lackluster regardless of how much time I spend on them.

    Seeing one broken down into a little template like you did helps quite a bit — not just because I can follow that exact structure for my own descriptions, but also because I can come up with my own templates for different types of content. It sounds simple, but it hadn’t occurred to me to do that before.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Kyle, thanks man!

      Meta descriptions are kind of strange. Google doesn’t always use them in the results. But when they do, it can boost your organic CTR by 50%+. So they’re 100% worth spending some time on.

  21. Keri Avatar Kerisays:

    Another great piece of content, Brian. Thanks for always publishing information that helps us elevate our content marketing efforts!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Keri, thank you!

  22. Thanks, Brian – as usual, some good to know and some even better to know about tips! Always something new to learn – thanks for sharing.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Alison. Absolutely: there’s always a lot to learn. And I try to document what I learn here on the blog.

  23. Again a great content Brian and amazing tool the Padlock thing. But how I can create a Padlock post on my worddpress site?
    But how Google can crawl this page?

    thanks
    Claude

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Claude. You basically need a coder. There’s no plugin that I know of that can do the job. Also: Google won’t be able to crawl the page. To me, that’s OK. I’m not trying to rank the content.

  24. Hey Brian,

    Awesome post as always.

    I do have a question for you about the padlock posts.

    1. How are you creating them? Are you using a plugin for it?

    2. Does the padlock keep them from being indexed by Google?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Thomas, thank you! If you ctrl + f “CMS” you’ll see my reply to another comment.

  25. I have a team of writers and I always send them links to your articles all the time. Because this is so awesome and real. Thanks.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘ πŸ‘ πŸ‘

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thank you, Makysm.

  26. Dear Brian.

    Am I allowed to put a backlink in my review I will make the review relevant.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      It’s your call but I usually do.

      1. Yuhuuu
        Thanks brian

        Always amazing me

        I love your “x vs y” post

        I got idea create blog with focusing comparing item

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          You’re welcome, Helmi.

  27. Brian, I congratulate you. You guys keep posting really great content.. Awesome!!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Marcelo. We all work hard on every post so that’s always nice to hear.

  28. Very impressive post Brian.

    Your PBC formula is very good to write an impressive article.

    I didn’t here about Animalz Revive Tool yet.

    I will use this tool to check my old posts.

    Thanks.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Abuzar, thank you. Yeah that cool is pretty helpful πŸ‘

  29. usha Avatar ushasays:

    Good content keep it up

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      πŸ‘ πŸ‘ πŸ‘

      1. April Avatar Aprilsays:

        All hail King Brian: Master of SEO, sharer of knowledge, and all round friendly human.

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          πŸ™‚

  30. Very useful as usual… Thanks Brian

    Though, i run an entertainment blog and I start to be writing about “X vs Y” posts

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good Ahmmed. Let me know how it works for you.

      1. Rayhan Abdullah Avatar Rayhan Abdullahsays:

        thanks #Brian that was really helpful ❀️

  31. Thank you for publishing this awesome post! I am going to be using Animalz and also finding those hidden keywords through Google Keyword Planner! I am always struggling with finding Arts & Crafts information for blogs – you have given me some that will work perfectly!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Bette, you’re welcome. Happy to hear that you found advice that will work in your niche.

  32. Thank You, Brian for this great content ideas but can you tell me How I can Use Padlock Posts?? I am using WordPress as CMS

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Vipul. I talk more about that in an earlier comment.

  33. Nick Avatar Nicksays:

    Great job dude. I don’t leave comments usually but wanted you to know.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks man. I appreciate it πŸ‘ πŸ‘ πŸ‘

  34. Ava Ferguson Avatar Ava Fergusonsays:

    Hello Brian,
    Thanks for your email. Great ideas and usu-full help for most marketers. I am lunching a new blog site Ava’s Nook, scheduled for
    Mar. 30/2020. If you come a cross it, please let me know your thoughts
    Best regards
    Ava

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Ava. Good luck with the new site.

  35. Hi Brian,

    Great content as usual.

    When your SEO course “SEO The Works” will open?

    Also, I have a question:

    You optimized your SEO training page here in Backlinko with the keyword “SEO training”…

    Will this SEO training page rank globally in Google?

    I mean: Will it rank several countries Google?

    As most of the time Google might shows local SEO training results…

    Please answer.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Rintu, thank you. We plan on opening up enrollment for SEO That Works in a few months.

      To answer your question: most “SEO training” results in the SERPs are for online training (not local). So we should hopefully rank globally for that keyword.

  36. Samsuzzaman Riton Avatar Samsuzzaman Ritonsays:

    Hey Dean, I read the entire post and found it super insightful.

    Writing content isn’t enough. Rather writing contents with a proper strategy on the table makes or breaks SEO’s goal. That’s where this post will come handy for me, Dean.

    Thanks.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Well said πŸ‘ πŸ‘ πŸ‘

  37. Lorenz Avatar Lorenzsays:

    Dear Brian,

    how Do you implement the β€œpadlock – postsβ€œ technically ?

    I have an already existing detailed guide with >70 visitors a day and it would be cool, if I could implement this technique for this post.

    The people come directly with the URL to this post.

    Kind regards,

    Lorenz

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Lorenz, I talk about that in the comments section here. But it should be relatively easy to padlock a public post like that.

      1. Lorenz Avatar Lorenzsays:

        Thanks Brian! πŸ™‚

  38. Great suggestions Brian. I really liked the one about the PBC Formula and I am going to try it out.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Bob, thank you. Let me know hot it goes.

  39. Hey Brian, awesome tips, as per usual, thank you! Question: how highly would you prioritize allowing comments on our blog posts for SEO purposes? We do a lot of product reviews, and do quite well on the SEO front, but have never allowed comments on posts as I haven’t wanted to prioritize responding/managing spam, etc. BUT, starting to wonder if the SEO value is worth it. How would you decide whether or not to do this? Thanks!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Paul, thank you. I honestly don’t think comments have a direct SEO benefit. But they can indirectly help in a bunch of ways. Plus, you get to build a cool community like we have here at Backlinko. So to me, the moderation issue it worth it.

      1. Paul Zalewski Avatar Paul Zalewskisays:

        Thank you Brian!

  40. Hey Brian,

    Thanks for sharing this in-depth post on content marketing tips.

    I love the idea of updating old blog posts using the Animalz tool.

    Will definitely check it out and see how it works for me.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good. Let me know how it goes.

  41. Hi Brian, how do you think I can apply the “X VS Y” technique to my flower site
    Roses VS Gerbera?
    Thanks for the interesting post!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Itamar, in that case I’d maybe look at brand names. Like brand name X vs brand name Y.

  42. As always, your information you deliver is gold. Thank you Brian! I truly appreciate the work you do.

    I am going to try writing longer blog post titles to improve social click through rates.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Austin, thank you. Keep me posted on how it goes.

  43. Nice content you’ve unleashed here!

    But I would like to know if template also goes a long way in affecting S.E.O.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Victor. The template is just for producing content. It doesn’t directly impact SEO.

  44. Great post as usual Brian. You’d have elevated this to the status of epic if you’d provided examples of “great” and “bad” approaches for each tactic. For example, you’d say newbies do this, while a pro would do this. As a newbie in SEO and content marketing, such examples would add more clarity.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Paul, thank you. I honestly don’t think newbies and pros should take different approaches. If something works, it works.

  45. Wow Brian, love all your tips. Thanks for this awesome post! I thought I read once in one of your posts (maybe on skyscraper content?) we should use power words in titles, but here you prove they can harm your ctr?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Stephanie, thank you. Power Words can help CTR in social media. But, as it turns out, not so much with Google organic.

  46. Santosh Avatar Santoshsays:

    One the most useful content marketing posts I a really long time. Thanx Brian! This is gold!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Santosh.

  47. You are reading my mind, everytime you write a blog its exactly what I am busy with at the moment. Im struggling heavily to keep producing content. I spend to much time over editing the post to make it look perfect. Then the next day I do it again.. I hope the post templates can help me out πŸ˜›

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Tim, on the other hand, it’s OK to spend time editing and improving your post. It’s tough to get your content to stand out. So that extra effort can be worthwhile.

  48. Hi Brian, Once again You’ve managed to open up my mind to some new stuff..
    I tried the optimizing untapped keywords technic but unfortunately came up with pretty much the same keywords. I suppose it has to do with the competitor I ran my check on. I’ll give it one more shot soon. Thanks anyway.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Raz, yeah that could be. I’d try it with a few different sites.

  49. This is great stuff! My company writes a lot of guest posts for link building, so we’re always looking to improve our titles so we get better rates of placement with our publishers.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Joshua, thanks! In that case, this should help.

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