YES! You can get featured in the news for FREE. Here’s how:
We’ve seen logos on the websites we visit for seen on Fox News, as seen on the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, Mashable Refinery, ABC. We see those little badges and we’re thinking, wow, this is a legit website. They know what they’re talking about. It builds immediate trust. I mean, you look more professional.
example what I’m talking about:
Who do I want that?
Well, you know, you can get those for free. That’s right. For free. I’m going to tell you how this website you can visit.
However, you can also pay for a service on there. I like to subscribe. You can get these email alerts for free or you can reach out to these field reporters. Here’s what’s going on with that.
Okay, so there’s about 75,000 journalists and bloggers that are looking for people like you that are experts in something, whether you are a dietitian, a doctor, a psychologist, a schoolteacher, an entrepreneur, an SEO expert like myself. There’s so many people that these journalists and bloggers are looking for to interview. Okay? These people are writing news stories. They want credible sources.
They want to give you in return a link back to your website, a mention of your name, your business, it helps them. It helps you. Everybody wins, everybody’s happy. You get a logo on your website. Yay.
Now that website is helpareporter.com. It’s known as horror as helping reporter out. They have, of course, there’s some subscription packages. You can join it for free. And this works, guys, you can join for free.
How it all works…
Sign up. You’ll get an email every day. It could be annoying, I know. But you can see in that email. Okay.
If you’re someone like myself, an SEO expert, I keep an eye out for my clients. I’m like, okay, I’m looking for anything for my psychiatrist lady. I can send her this email, say, hey, can you go ahead and respond to this reporter? He’s looking for a source. Do you want to write about this?
Is this worth your time? And the submission in this email, they will usually disclose which website they will feature this on, which could be a blog, it could be a major news outlet. It really depends if you’re new, if you need some good backlinks, I would go for anything. Guys. Just you want to get a website that is getting traffic, you want to be cited, you want that citation, that backlink.
It helps. Most of the time these links are permanent, but depending on the website, those links can get flushed out. I’m just being very transparent. I’ve had a link on sites like Market Watch. I am featured organically in the New York Times bustle Business Insider.
News reporter did find me through my content. That’s why I always stress having a blog, have content that potential news reporters can find on Google. They’ll want to ask your permission to cite your content. They want to use your name. A lot of times they’ll put your photo on their website.
Yes, I’ve had features in the news too
For my old beauty blog. It happened to me when I got discovered for the New York Times. They sent a field photographer out to take my picture. I got interviewed by someone on the phone. It’s in New York. It was a lot of fun.
I think every business owner should experience this. You’re an expert in your field, you want to get cited all around the world for your expertise and in return, you get to put one of those cute little badges on your website helps gain you that credibility. Once again that website I mentioned is helpareporter.com. I’ll have it linked in the description of this podcast. But looking at you guys you can always call up your local news.
If you have something new going on in your business call your local news station, let them know hey they might show up to your news. You want to be on the morning news. How fun would that be? And also if you want to go if you have deep pockets you can always hire a PR agency that can help you get something newsworthy to your business and published all over wherever you want. Those PR services are usually they’re going to run you could be a couple thousand or around $300 for one published post.
Yeah, it is what it is. So anyway it’s worth poking around checking out helperreporter.com. Go ahead and register. What do you have to lose? Get those daily emails to see if you can get your name, your website, your company mentioned in the news.
Did this work for you too? Please let me know!
It’s a lot of fun. Alright thank you so much for listening. Hope you have an awesome day. Tata.
BTW, 👋 I’m Jen Ruhman the queen of SEO.. 😂 sure why not? I have an SEO company in San Diego, CA. Called Jen Ruhman SEO. Feel free to check out my SEO pricing and hire me for my SEO services today!
If you have a new site with low domain authority, you will want to go after low competition keywords. The low competition keywords may have a lower monthly search volume, but if you’re a newbie website this will be what you’re most likely to rank for. This is something I have to stress to all new bloggers. If you have a new website without authority, you will not be able to compete with big-name retailers.
On the other hand, you don’t want to go after keywords that are not even being searched for!
Heck, it makes me mad when SEO agencies show a client a list of low volume keywords they rank #1 for.
Yes, you rank #1 for keywords nobody is using. You don’t want to waste time and good money on those SEO efforts! Feel free to reach out to me for a keyword consultation. I’m great at finding keywords that will help you rank!
Make sure you use sub-headlines to break up your content. This helps organize each section so people can skim your site easily. It also helps Google understand how in-depth you wrote your content.
Use bulleted lists or numbered lists. Your content will be enriched and may appear In featured snippets.
Add helpful images. Try an infographic or an image that communicates a subheading.
Make sure the quality is 100% and make sure your post is at least 800 words
Email marketing is still a must for business websites and even blogs.
There have been many claims email marketing is dead but guess what?
In fact, email marketing is still alive and doing well.
Heck, email marketing is still kicking butt for many businesses.
Why should You Collect Email Addresses?
Numero uno – your email marketing is the only platform YOU have 100% control.
That’s the sad truth. If you’re familiar with all the wonky algorithm updates on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you know it’s true.
Second, an email address is still a great piece of contact information to reach your audience. Many people still check their email in the morning simply by skimming, deleting, reading, and opting to read later. Guess what? Just seeing your brand in their inbox rents a few seconds in that person’s mind.
Many people that visit your website are simply in research mode and not ready to be a customer – you need to keep in touch with them and reel them back in with email campaigns.
People don’t even need to read your emails for them to be effective.
They see them, think about you and carry on – or engage with your email. It’s a win-win.
As long as you’re not spamming them or being annoying with daily emails, email marketing is effective!
Heck, I get emails daily that I subscribed to years ago, some as way back to ten years ago. Do I unsubscribe? Yes but only if they’re annoying! Honestly, I don’t mind an occasional email. It shows your brand is alive and “keeping relevant”.
Third, people are not ready to do business with you. They subscribe because they like your services or products online, but they’re not ready to go forward. They’re waiting for a coupon or waiting to learn more; they’re simply in research mode. It can take as little as a few emails or even a dozen to get an email subscriber to convert into a lead.
How Do I Collect Email Addresses?
I recommend you use one of the following 100% FREE platforms using WordPress, you can add: Sumo Email Capture (the one I use on this site) or Bloom Email Optin by Elegant Themes. These two options simply help you collect email addresses in a pretty and functional platform. Design options such a popup that appears in the lower screen, content unlocks, ebook signups, and more! Next, you’ll need a place to create emails, especially automated emails hence the next step…
1 -Example of SUMO email capture2 – Example of Bloom’s email capture3 -Example of MailChimp’s email capture
How Do I Send Emails to My List?
My recommendation is the 100% free MailChimp. You can use this as an all-in-one email marketing solution by also using it to collect emails like Sumo and Bloom, but they’re not as pretty…yet! MailChimp is great at sending pretty emails using templates anyone can easily use. You can create an automated email response that drips scheduled emails. Or you can simply send out an email blast. Even better, have an automated email sent to your subscribers when you publish a new blog post.
What Do I Send to my Email Subscribers?
Sales – coupon codes HOT New items for sale Brand new blog posts Updated features added to your products / services Tips How-to guides for your products News about your business Happy Birthday Deals There are so many possibilities
Tips
Do not ever buy an email list! NEVER send emails every day!
The reason, you’ll get flagged for spam! This can affect your future emails!
Looking to hire someone to get your website started collecting emails?
I’m happy to help add email marketing to your website! I can set up a beautiful email opt-in, set up automated emails, a list of drip emails and more!
Final thoughts
Email is here to stay. You Need to Be Collecting Email Addresses! Don’t rely on social media alone! We have no idea what their platforms algorithms have planned. You’re showing up one day, the next day – you’re nowhere to be found.
Frequently, but updating your blog posts is better in my opinion!
I get asked this daily question:
Or,heya Jen, how often should I update my blog posts?
The most common question I’m hearing for SEO in 2021.
The simple truth:
The more frequently, the better!
This tip is crucial for SEO in 2021.
Blogging frequency is so important, I included it in my Top 5 SEO Tips.
If you’re not updating old content, you’re missing out on traffic.
It really is plain and simple as that!
Why I now prefer updating my old content than posting new blog posts
You put a lot of time writing your blog posts and not all, but many are your bread and butter for getting traffic on your website! These top ranking blog posts slowly lose their appeal in google search results.
Perhaps you’ve had a blog post that was getting a thousand views a day from google search results, but now it only receives less than thirty! You can refreshen these blog posts and make them great again!
It’s actually easier than thinking 🤔 of new content for a new blog post.
A word from the wise. Make sure you’re not bogging the same content.
Beware of keyword cannibalization!
What’s keyword cannibalization? When you’re writing multiple blog posts/pages that are competing against each other. If you have too many pages that are cannibalized, it will slowly poison your website. Google does not know what to rank and your site gets “watered down” for the authority of the topic. I had a client that hired someone to blog for their website and after years of duplicate content, the entire website fell from search rankings from the first page to the fifth etc. I took a look at his site and saw that the person that was blogging for them was lazy and just copying old posts from years ago and publishing them as new. Very sneaky, lazy, and unethical! However, the client confronted the blogger and she promised to stop duplicating old content. I checked on the site in the near future and the blogger was still doing it!
Besides, the blog posts that were getting a lot of traffic were from posts you put a lot of effort into and probably enjoyed writing,
Here’s my analogy of blog freshness
Did you know your blog freshness and SEO go hand in hand?
You need lots of great high quality content and it needs to be pruned like a rosebush 🌹 by updating the content, adding new information, not just creating new blog posts.
Don’t let your rosebush become overgrown and uncared for 🥀 .
(Did you like my analogy? Hopefully if you do have rosebushes and a green thumb, you go out and tackle that chore today too. – wear gloves🧤)
If you want to drive traffic to your site I’ll tell you the trick for combining blogging frequency for SEO benefits. (below) 😃
It’s true, blog posts that rank well in Google have these five traits in common:
Blog updated often
High-quality content
Sharable content
Fast loading
Mobile friendly
In-depth content
Great user experience
If your blog has all 7 of these characteristics, your blog is going to be booming with traffic! Unfortunately, these 7 traits take a lot of work to make happen.
Just getting “into the mood for blogging” can sometimes be your biggest obstacle!
Just dive in there 🏊♀️ already!
Content to add to old blog posts:
Just adding new content is great. 👍 Adding updated content that’s newsworthy is even better! The recommendations below not only update your content but also enrich it for a better user experience. I recommend you add some of the following that may apply to your blog post or page:
Images – maybe an update on your progress using a product
FAQ Schema – Adding new related questions with answers
In-depth content – Naturally sprinkle in related keywords
Videos – Embed your Youtube Videos into the related content
Add a story – If appropriate write why you wrote this post
Add related links to higher authority sources
Add bullet points – such as what you’re reading 😉
Add H2, H3, H4, tags to break up your text and add readability
You need to blog as often as you can (keeping quality in mind)
Don’t blog for the sake of having a new post
As a matter of fact, STOP publishing short blog posts. Google calls short blog posts “thin content”. There’s not much text for google to “grab on to” and analyze. Adding more text creates a more in-depth blog post, making you look like an expert! Not only that, but your content also becomes more trustworthy too!
When someone finds your blog post that answers their question and many more related questions, they may actually bookmark and share your page.
If your blog post does not have all five traits, you’re just going to be wasting your time and your dedicated reader’s time. Your blog post most likely won’t rank well in google either.
When you take the time to write a new blog post, you want to make sure it lands on google’s first page. Taking your time to write a well-written blog post that someone will actually learn something from and want to share – that’s your best bet. If you can make this happen, run wild and update daily! If you can’t, take your time with your blog post, even work on it throughout the week to develop the blog post into that high-quality slam dunk.
The trick for combining frequent blog post updates For SEO benefits
It can be overwhelming cranking out a fresh new blog post every day, so don’t! Just rewrite/update the old ones. I have some tips on how you can combine a frequent blog post strategy for maximum SEO benefits.
Blog about one main keyword and naturally add long-tail keywords – Let your blog post have one specific question and answer it from all aspects. This helps you concentrate on one topic rather than getting overwhelmed about sub topics.
Go “in depth” on one topic – As you see on this blog I have many posts about instagram, this casts a wider net for SEO. The more content I have about the topic, gives me my website authoritative points for being a social media maven.
Websites that update often, (once a week) sends a ranking factor to Google to come back and crawl your content regularly. This can help your other blog posts gain momentum and boost their ranks. I have also experimented by slightly rewriting an old blog post and republishing it – changing the time stamp. The blog post that was once old was new again and gaining lots of blog traffic like it once did.
Stale content?
Yuck! 🤢 Who left that blog post in the refrigerator for two years?
Ya, it’s kinda like that. Joking. Ok I admit that analogy was lame.
You need to take those blog posts out of the refrigerator and make meals out of them or throw them away (delete them if they’re outdated and not helpful)
Blogs that have not updated in a long time (1 year or more) usually see a decline in blog ranks. However, this is not the case if your content is being shared on social media! If you’re constantly promoting your content, you might even see an increase in traffic.
I hope I helped answer how often you should blog for your business. Remember, the more high quality content you have, the better chances you have receiving organic google traffic to your website. Having a blog that has hundreds of high quality posts also ensures you gain a boost in website traffic. Overall, a good rule of thumb is to publish/update at least one high quality blog post a week.
There are many set blogs that recommend publishing new posts daily. Sure it seems amazing, but may not fit with your website. If you have a news website such as a health news site, yes you should update often. However, if you’re a small mom and pop donut shop, you’re probably not going to update daily.
“But I don’t have time to be blogging or updating old content.”
Well guess what? I do have the time to update your blog posts… hire me already! (I’m an SEO expert in San Diego.)
Why is my blog is receiving ZERO traffic? Here’s Why:
It may have been de-indexed by google. If you were scraping content from other websites, have a spammy website, have bad HTML, keywords cannibalization, hacked, bad backlink profile etc.
Or maybe it’s just your SEO! Need an exact answer? Contact me today for an SEO consultation. Contact me for SEO here.
Don’t want to read? Listen to my podcast now:
Why You’re Not Getting Search Engine Traffic you deserve. You spent a lot of time carefully writing your latest blog post and it’s not generating any website traffic. ZERO. Worst of all, it’s not showing up in Google search results. Why?
Don’t worry, it happens when you’re new at blogging. I know your frustration. Yes, it can happen.
What’s up Google? Why don’t you like my brand new blog post? You might just have a technical error that you can fix.
So, I’m sharing my personal checklist why you’re not getting search engine traffic or simply not being indexed by Google.
#1. Your website has more than 1pair of “H1” tags on the page
Holy smokes. If you right-click on your website and examine the code and see more than one pair of “H1” tags. Better call your SEO service provider! The H1 tag is a very important tag in your site that tells google the main focus about your page. If you have too many or if you “H” tags are not properly optimized and or not working with your keywords, you’re not going to be listed in your desired keywords for Google search results.
The fix: Remove extra H1 tags ASAP! And make sure your main H1 tag is properly optimized for your keyword about the page!
#2. Your blog post isn’t indexed by Google – may have been de-indexed!
The fix: You need to manually submit your blog post URL to Google and your sitemaps. Clean up your website’s shady content.
You may need to do some cleaning up. You may have scraped content, spam, bad code etc. If it’s not that then perhaps Google’s bots haven’t discovered your new blog post, you’re not going to show up in Google’s search results. It can take a while but there’s a way to speed up the indexing process and cut in front of the line. Once Google receives your page and its bots examine the content, Google will decide where your page deserves to rank in Google SERPS (search engine Results Page) Once you’re indexed, your blog will start to receive search engine traffic.
Submit your Sitemap to Google in Google’s search console
#3 You’re Going After too Competitive keywords
The fix: Be more specific with your keywords longer is better
Instead of “Laptop repair San Diego.”
Try“Dell Laptop repair San Diego”
It’s true, you’ll receive more website traffic from long tail keywords. Have a computer repair shop in San Diego? Instead of just going after the keywords “Computer Repair San Diego” (which has a ton of competition) Go after a specific laptop you repair, try “Dell Laptop Repair San Diego” It’s working for my client. Hyphenet shows up on the first page for “Dell Laptop Repair San Diego. Wooo hoo! 🙂
You have a niche website and you need to know your audience. What would they want to read about and what other content would spark their interest while they’re browsing your blog?
What kind of personality does you brand have? – Caring? Funny? Serious? Creative?
Demographics – Income level? Gender? Kids? Education? Age? Marital status?
Does your Title and Meta description speak to your target market?
#5 Your headlines are boring and lack SEO
The fix: Try headline generators
Did you know headlines are the single MOST important part of your blog post? Make sure your headline is a long tail keyword, second, make sure it’s wrapped in an <H1> tag. Third, it needs to be interesting and irresistible to click. Don’t worry, it’s actually easy. There’s many headline formulas proven to drive traffic to websites. Try my favorite headline generators and bring a touch of interest and psychological triggers to your headlines.
Are you writing new blog posts as fast as you can? Slow down there buddy. Keep it about quality and length rather than spitting out a quick blog post for the sake of having new content. You want to carefully craft content that has valuable information and answers all your user’s questions. It should also have nice images.
Google prefers a blog post that’s 2,000 words in length rather than 200 words length
Longer blog posts are shared more often
#7 You’re Not Producing Sharable Blog Posts
The fix: Create a richer user experience and add quality resources
Think of all the types of blog posts you share with friends. It’s usually high quality, helpful, controversial or perhaps visually engaging.
Professional Graphics / Visually translates your content
Vertical graphics with the headline are great for Pinterest traffic
Useful information that answers questions
Appealing headlines that spark curiosity or instant gratification
Appeals to you target market
Controversial
Make sure your blog has social media share buttons
Case studies
Free content / ebooks
#8 You’re Not Adding Internal Links to your Blog Posts
The fix: Sprinkle related content throughout your post
Internal links help Google learn what your website is all about and rank it accordingly. Users will also appreciate seeing internal links to more in depth content on your blog. Internal links usually flow within the content, making it useful if the blog covers terms you’re unfamiliar with.
Google will see that you’re an expert for this category and rank you higher.
Make sure your internal links open in the same window
Internal links make your website easier for search engines to crawl
Internal links will improve your CTR (click-through rate) beneficial to your Google Adsense revenue
#9 You’re Not Using the WordPress Platform
The fix: Hire a website designer to give you a head start
I’ve seen other platforms that are horrible for SEO. I’m not going to say their names…. they’re in so many commercials and advertised heavily online. I just laugh.
You can’t do worthwhile SEO on some of these platforms. The “SEO” section they provide is a joke. I’ve had a friend ask me which keywords to add to his website platform’s SEO section!
I told her that’s not what SEO is. You don’t just write a piece of content and post keywords in a box. It’s a “red pill” moment there. I took my time and explained the world of SEO to her and she was so amused and thankful.
In other words, get yourself on WordPress! The platform is 100% FREE. 🙂 You can just buy yourself a domain and web hosting with GoDaddy. (renew that yearly and you’re set!)
WordPress is a website platform that’s optimized for quickly indexing your new blog posts. WordPress will significantly help your blog posts rank quickly. There’s so many good reasons I build my client’s websites on WordPress:
You don’t need to know HTML
Log in from any computer
Plug-ins for enhanced functions
Easy to use
Many SEO benefits
Many themes to choose from
Easy to make responsive
#10 Your Website is Too Slow
The fix: Utilize plug-ins and watch image file size
Google won’t rank your website on the first page especially if your website takes longer than five seconds to load. Users will get frustrated and click the back button to previous search results. You need to optimize your WordPress website and perform regular maintenance.
Optimize your images keeping the file size low but quality high as possible
Place your long-tail keywords on your image ALT tags and Title for image search traffic
#11 Your website looks Spammy
The fix: Remove low quality links and remove excess keywords
You’re doing things that make your website look low quality and spammy. I recommend the WordPress plug-in Yoast SEO. It will help keep your blog post within Google’s guidelines. It will also make sure your keyword density is not in excess. You may also have thousands of spammy backlinks. Don’t do the following:
Don’t keyword stuff
Don’t link to tons of affiliate links
Don’t link to lots of low-quality links
Use Google’s disavow tool to remove spammy backlinks
Don’t have multiple pop-ups
Don’t have tons of ads, especially above the content
That’s right. Backlinks are like the bread and butter to your SEO. Some great ways to gain quality backlinks – Do this!:
Build quality, helpful content
Have sharable images/infographics
Guest post
Build a useful tool
#13 Your site’s robots.txt file is blocking Google
I cannot believe how many times I’ve examined a WordPress site and it has been set to discourage bots to index the page. Many times web designers check the box as pictured below and forget to uncheck the box when the site goes live!
The fix: In WordPress go to: Settings > Reading > and uncheck the box: “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”
Hey bloggers, thanks for reading 10 Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Search Engine Traffic. If this blog post helped you, please share this post.
Would you like help getting your website optimized for Google? Don’t forget, I’m a San Diego SEO expert and ready to help your website get ranked higher in Google search results.
The fix: Make your site mobile-friendly! There’s free plug-ins available. You can even activate AMP pages.
The biggest algorithm I have seen affect websites is known as the “Mobilegeddon”. This update happened on April 21, 2015. This had many businesses scrambling to make their websites mobile-friendly. It was a nightmare for large websites with complex navigation. Even worse, it was sink or swim in mobile search results! At the time, Google search results had a “mobile-friendly” tag next to the mobile listing SERPS. Websites that were prepared gained the traffic they deserved.
UPDATE: I have 5 SEO Tips you can do that will BOOST traffic to Any Website
There’s a blog network that works for every niche. Take a look at each of these paid blogger networks. Every blogger can earn money online! Everybody such as stay at home moms, dads, fashionistas, foodies, travelers, you name it. They all earn money from at least a few of these paid blog networks.
“But I think it’s too complicated…”
I talk to tons of bloggers and many say their blog brand is not established enough or they think it’s difficult or they’re not tech savvy enough.
But they’re wrong.
No blog traffic yet? Monetize your blog now because eventually, you WILL get traffic!
Imagine waking up realizing one of your pinterest pins went viral and one of your blog posts went viral.
I LOVE Ranking Small Businesses Higher in Google Search Results! My favorite moment is when my clients call me saying… “Jen, whatever you did to our website, we’re finally getting more calls and emails…THANK YOU!!!”
