What to write.
How to write it.

Writing a new blog post every week would be exhausting. And unnecessary! I manage one site which has only 13 blog posts. Together, they are bringing in nearly 10,000 clicks from Google per month.

Quality over quantity. And it starts with writing just one post.
 

I can’t promise rankings and traffic. No one can. I don’t control the Google algorithm—I just know how to make the most of it.

If we work together on an ongoing basis, I’ll be honest—it’s likely that some of the posts I plan for you won’t shoot out of the gate like a racehorse. But some of them will.

Websites for which I’ve been creating content briefs for 6+ months usually have 2 or 3 real winners (posts bringing in 200+ clicks per month).

At about six months in, pages/posts I’ve either planned out with a content brief or optimized are almost always the best-performing pages on a site.
 

SEO is a long game, especially if you have a new site or a site that’s not enjoyed much Google traffic in the past. It can take up to 6 months for Google to start noticing your new content, so don’t worry if the rankings we hoped for don’t show up immediately.

After 6 months, if the content we created together still isn’t ranking like we want it to, I may recommend you have me edit and/or optimize it. I do that on a page-by-page basis and won’t hesitate to recommend it to you if I think it will make a difference.
 

I wear two hats—I’m an SEO and an editor.

If you can hammer out a solid rough draft, I can take it from there. Simply send along what you’ve got. I’ll send you a quote for what it would cost for me to polish it up and turn it into something you’ll be proud to put online.
 

The cool thing about SEO research is that it enables me to identify topics and write outlines for just about any industry. I can tell you what to write about, but what I can’t do is write credible, expert articles on something that I don’t have real-world, first-hand experience and expertise in. (And that’s the kind of content that you need.)

That said, if you don’t have the time/energy/talent to take my briefs and hammer out at least a solid rough draft, then you have options. I recommend hiring a freelance writer who is a subject matter expert to write the post for you. (I can give you some recommendations to copywriters I trust or online forums to find great freelance writers, if that’s what you need.)

A number of clients do just that—they take my briefs and hand them directly to a freelance or in-house writer who has subject matter expertise, and it works wonderfully. Freelance writers love my detailed briefs. And it ranks like a charm.
 

I could go on for hours about AI writing and how it’s very likely to change how a lot of us (me included!) do our work.

But, as of today, generative AI writing tools (like Jasper and ChatGPT and soon Google Docs, Gmail and Microsoft Word) aren’t reliable enough to actually create factual content.

Also, by definition, robots don’t have the real-world experience you do. They can’t write from your first-hand perspective because they don’t have a first-hand perspective.

Does this mean you should stay away from AI writing tools completely? No.

AI writing tools are just that … tools. A creative sparring partner. You can absolutely take the outline in the brief and use an AI writer to get you past the blank page syndrome.

But once that’s done, put the AI aside. Make that post your own. Add stories. Add experience. Add what you actually think. Very carefully check everything that’s been AI generated to ensure that it’s both factually correct and that you’re willing to stand by it, as a brand.

But if you’re worried that somehow Google will know that you’ve used an AI tool and you’ll get dinged for it being part of your process then … rest easy. Google has clearly stated that it doesn’t care how your content is created, so long as it’s helpful, reliable, people-first content. 

Get in touch and I can tell you specifically why your posts aren’t working for you, but here’s top reasons why sites like yours typically don’t get traffic from Google.

• You may be writing on topics that are just too competitive for your website. Your posts are great, but they just can’t compete against the likes of Hubspot and Forbes. (The cure? Choose topics that you do have a chance at.)
• Your posts may be too short to cover the topic comprehensively. (The cure? Really dig deep and satisfy users by writing the best answer on the internet for the question behind the keyword.)
• Your posts might be too long for Google to understand, or covering too many sub-topics which aren’t closely related to each other. (The cure? Zoom in on one topic and cover it thoroughly. Sometimes it’s just a simple matter of making your blog post into two posts which target different-but-related clusters of keywords.)
• Your posts might not have a natural target keyword. One example of this would be a “thought piece.” If your idea is genuinely novel, then by definition people aren’t looking for it! Posts like this can be a valuable addition to your blog, but they tend to do better on social media than they do in Google search.

 

Absolutely. SEO is only one way to get traffic to your site, but once you’re writing one blog post per month (that you’re proud of!) you’ll also always have something to talk about in your monthly email newsletter. The blog posts we create together can also easily be sliced and diced to make lots of great social media posts.

You can even use your new blog posts to drive targeted traffic, if you play your cards right. People always show up in social forums like Facebook groups asking the same kind of questions they ask Google. Once you’ve got a satisfying answer to the question on your blog, you’ll be ready when that question comes up again. And again.

Watch your analytics. You’ll soon realize that for every 1 person who asks a question, 20 people click. Boom … you’ve just introduced your brand to 21 new people.