All right, can you guys see this this whole region right here is a little thinner than the rest of my hair and better than that, i was talking to my wife this week and she noticed i had my first gray hair.

I don’t know if you can see, but there was there was one in there and i have wanted my first gray hair for a long time. All my friends have a couple and i just think you look so dignified, so i’m pretty excited about that.

But i’m also excited about talking to you about young things, so we had a young new blogger working at our office this summer, he’s about to head off to school and, as i’ve been working with him, teaching him different skills so that he can write well for The blogs he’s making for us he’s making a blog a niche site about air guns and we’re not releasing the domain name.

So it’s a perfectly. You know sterile case study, nobody going to the website and giving us an artificial boost, since we already have an audience. So we’ll be excited to reveal that i guess in about nine months when that one, when the site is a year old, so today is just you and me: it’s a private lesson in blogging.

You’Re going to learn all of the things that an advanced blogger does that really puts that sparkle on the blog post that makes it rank so well on google, when you get good at blogging, you can fairly well guarantee a number one ranking or number one.

Two. Three ranking on google just about every time, so, let’s get into the nitty-gritty, i’m excited about this. First, let’s talk about answer targets um! If you haven’t watched our video on snippet, optimization you’re wasting your time here that video is crazy, important, it’s more important than this video you’ve got to go watch it.

So here is what we usually see when somebody is trying to write an answer target. I just took the example post: how much does it cost to become a lawyer and a brand new blogger writes something like this: the law school you pick will make a huge difference in the cost of your education and how much people spend varies wildly well, yeah.

Everyone knows that already. This is just obvious information. You don’t need to go, read a blog post to know that not everyone’s legal education is going to cost the exact same amount. It’S just a three sentence way of saying.

Well, it depends – and i don’t know so – that’s what someone brand new does and when tanner just first started. He was writing that kind of stuff, and so i i was working with him and he’s a quick learner super smart guy.

So then he started writing something like this answer target. There are many factors that affect how much law school costs, but a good average is 73 562.. Okay, let’s talk about that, that is what most of you are writing at this kind of 102 level.

Um, it’s like yes, it does give a specific number um. It is helpful. This is what most of us see across the web. If you want to get to become the professional writer the person who can guarantee wins on seo.

Most of the time, you need to learn how to take your writing to the 103 level. The problem with this answer, paragraph is the first thing out of my mouth was basically it depends, and the reader already knows it depends right um.

So we want to take the most information you could possibly give them and pack it into two or three sentences um. So here’s what a 103! This isn’t just a dynamite answer target would look like. Students spend an average of seventy three thousand five hundred sixty two dollars for tuition and books to complete law school, but basic living costs.

Add thirty, two thousand five hundred ninety four dollars to that total man that just packs in some information, because you in the previous one you got the the total cost and was like. Does that include books? Does that include housing? It’S just it’s a it’s a thin answer, it’s specific, but it’s still thin, and this is number three.

It’S like you’ve taken your little lemonade and you’ve made a thick old smoothie of content in there right. Um college tuition rates vary between 5642 to 60 000 per year, see instead of saying it depends on what law school you choose.

Everybody knows that, so they give a specific range. It’S smoothie baby, many law students work during part of school, so their average student loan is 56 000. So it’s more information yeah. It may cost that, but you can work during school.

It’S just it’s a smoothie of info baby and that’s what we need to get to with the whole article when you hear word counts when you hear us say you know we’re writing 1300 words uh for this blog post, fine, but the word count is totally irrelevant.

If we’re comparing lemonade to thick old smoothie right, we need it packed with information through the post and that’s where you’ll get good at quickly expressing yourself and quickly writing things down, as you just write, more blog posts.

But what still takes the time is doing more research. So when somebody starts writing they’re spending, 90 percent of their time figuring out how to express themselves and 10 percent of the time going to get information to fill that when you become a more advanced blogger.

You’Re spending – oh, i don’t know 25 of your time expressing yourself and 75 of your time getting meat to put in that smoothie yeah. We need a smoothie where you’re like grinding up raw steak and just chucking it in there all right.

So that’s number one is answer. Targets number two is photo illustrated articles. This is something that we’re really getting into and tanner’s done a good job with. I want to show you this example that he wrote on how to clean an air gun we’re going to blur out the text because we’re not revealing this website.

But you look at these photos and instead of just explaining obvious things, number one be safe and be sure to clear the gun number two find out where the clog is like things that are pretty obvious to someone instead of that, as a step by step.

Yes, he’s explaining some of the nuances and things that may not be obvious, but a photo says a thousand world words says a photo, writes a photo. I don’t know what the phrase is. I can’t remember by having photos that illustrate really works.

Well, look at wikihow how many times have you googled how to do something and you’re taken to a wikihow article? That’S photo photo photo photo with very little text and they’re ranking crazy well on the search results, because those photos are so good or graphics illustrations showing how to do something.

So we’re doing a lot more of that. We’Re not going real short on the articles. We’Re still providing the text but really trying to illustrate with photos, even if they aren’t professional, just a quick cell phone snap to teach how to do things.

That’S a much more advanced approach. It’S trying to have the best information instead of just checking boxes of article length and using keywords in the post and things like that. Okay thing: number three structuring the article correctly: we teach the post recipe.

Many of you guys know that if you haven’t seen our video we did a couple years ago on how to write the perfect blog post in one hour definitely check it out. It’S been one of our most popular videos, but the post recipe works in many places and in other times it just kind of feels like you’re, trying to force an article into it.

So you have to understand why someone googled the thing – and this is something that a more advanced blogger gets very good at – is understanding searcher intent. Let me give you an example of where it may not be obvious, say: you’re writing an article on.

What’S on the best air gun for varmint hunting, and you do a ton of research you find out it’s this gamo swarm maxim right, and so you write the article and you’re like it’s all about the gamo’s war maxim and you write write this article.

You missed the searcher intent. Sometimes people want pure information. Sometimes they just want to hang out and learn about this. So you need to understand what someone really wants. Someone who’s researching a new pellet gun.

It’S rarely like hard work like it’s fun for them right. This is partially a hobby for almost everyone who has searched this, and so they want to see 20 guns and they want to see. Oh, i’m excited about this feature on this gun, and this is so cool on this bb gun and all these different things you just they want to like.

Have the experience of hanging out at the gun counter at a gun, store right and so don’t write like just tell them go get this one. They want just that cool information. Now an another search result may be completely different.

Maybe they’re searching um what size staple fits in this staple gun man. They don’t want to know all the background in the history. Just tell them what size staple and be very factual information short get to the point and be done right, a thorough response, but to the point – and so you have to understand the searchers mentality.

Do they want just hard information? Do they want some entertainment etc? A quick tip is edit as you go, i used to write, write, write rough and then i would then spend time going back and editing through it and then adding the photos and then publishing and i’ve changed that i feel like i can move more quickly.

If i’m writing a little bit slower and word smithing and checking over my writing and adding those photos as i go through the post, i think the reason that this works better is because it reduces the amount of time you have to go back to different thoughts In your mind, we can work on this thought that fits in this paragraph and then be done with it and go back.

We don’t have to go kind of re-remember and re-reading what we’re doing next is off-topic subheadings. This can be a huge problem for new writers. We’Ve talked about this before, but you just have to really think of what is a very complete answer to the original question.

Without string off topic – and usually you can identify this when somebody’s talking about the history of or other examples of where they’re like you can tell they’re just ran out of meat to put into this article and so they’re kind of grasping at straws.

By talking about the history or adjacent things, we want to stay right on topic and give it as complete of an answer as possible. Okay for the next tip we’re going to go to tanner, who learned a lot about this because he’s been doing so much writing.

We’Ve got to go, find him [, Music ] and i’m going to drop my mic by the way these mics are awesome. If you haven’t gone to our recommended gear section to look at this tascam dr-10l, this is the mic.

You want, if you’re doing out your youtube all right. Tanner, you had some information about uh writing environment because you faced a lot of writer’s block over the last several weeks. I’M gonna come sit over here by you, okay, yes, so that is correct.

Um! I one one of the things that i found was in order to to write. Well, i needed to find the correct environment, and for me in my mind, i compartmentalize a lot so like my home is a place where i rest and relax and prepare for the next day of work.

Whereas a location like the office is is a place intended solely for work, and so when i’m, when i’m at work, i’m better able to to stay in that working mentality, so number one find a dedicated spot that you can write.

You know most of you, almost all of you are going to be riding at home, so go, you know, set up a desk in a little home office or an extra bedroom or wherever some place, that you can yeah or go to a library, a dedicated spot.

That you can focus and not have any visual distractions of other stuff going on yeah. Okay, you told me: you listened to video game music. Let’S talk about that! Yes, so when i, when i write um it’s best for me, if i have, if i have some kind of background noise, and so i listen to a lot of video game, soundtracks uh, some good soundtracks are like the skyrim soundtrack dude.

Those are my video games and the reason for that is because they’re they’re designed to give you to keep you invigorated for the next task, without pulling your attention away from what you’re already doing um.

So i i find video game music. I find uh songs without lyrics, really anything um that isn’t gonna work. To keep my mind focused on what i’m what’s not in front of me for me i do the opposite. I don’t like any sounds when i’m writing um.

For me. I this stupidly expensive, airpods pro, have actually been really awesome. The noise cancellation is great on them, but you know noise cancelling headphones or just go to a quiet place. I would like silence when i’m trying to think, and so if i’m trying to write a blog post and the kids are in the next room and i’m trying to ignore it, like eventually, i find like i’m just getting irritated and i’m not doing a good job.

Writing so go find a quiet spot or just get the sound that works for you. You know you like listening music. I like sound, i like quiet, then. The last thing i would say is time: don’t take every five minutes you have to try to go force in a couple minutes on an article.

Wait till you have a dedicated hour that you can just focus and do this a lot of you say you know. Oh that’s hard to do whatever, but just find the time i promise you’re going to write so much better and so much faster.

If you have the the right environment the place, that’s dedicated, you have the sound right for you and you actually have the time to make meaningful progress on the article, pretty cool yeah, all right.

Now we’re going to talk about a couple other things that we learned in working with tanner this summer. Next we’re going to talk about research, so tanner was new to pellet guns, the topic of the website when he got started um, and so we literally just bought.

I’M sitting down at anna’s desk here, she’s out filming, so this is believe it or not. Not my lotion, um, okay and i don’t need a mirror. I mean, as you can tell, i don’t spend a lot of time. Unfortunately, look at the mirror um, so research is incredibly important if you want to write great content and it’s totally overlooked.

You know i hear all the time from somebody who says you know. I really want to write about mod mods for trucks right. That’S what i want to make my site on i’ll, be like oh, okay, cool, like uh. What kind of truck do you have and they’re like? Well, i don’t have a truck and i’ll be like oh so you’re buying a truck.

Is it something you’re? No, i kind of live in the city and i would like a truck someday but – and i always think like don’t make that sight, don’t it’s just you can tell when somebody is in the thick of the topics that they’re writing about and when they’re not doing What they’re talking about and so tanner spent a ton of time like almost every work day, he’d go out and say: i’m gonna go shoot pellet guns for a little while just little bb guns, you know um and he just needed experience and time and know How to clear a bb, because he’d actually done it right and which gun he preferred, because he’d spend a ton of time with them place that we can easily mess.

This up is actually by doing what we preach, which is making a hit list of the articles. You’Re going to write before you start writing now that helps to reduce writer’s block, but at the same time it can lead you to writing articles that are appear to be beneficial from a search analysis, standpoint and the traffic you think you could get.

But the truth is you’re not terribly interested in um it. It’S fine. If you’re not like in love with every topic, you write, but if you write about something as you’re learning them and you’re actually doing them boy.

That is great great content when somebody’s actually doing what they’re talking about so in terms of the research i feel like. That is a really big one. So whatever you’re doing go be a master at it go learn everything you can go, get every possible podcast on the topic and just binge and then as you’re driving to the store as you as you’re, exercising whatever you’re learning and becoming better.

Your vocabulary is going to be the right vocabulary for the topic, etc. You guys taking on a blogging project, feels intimidating in the beginning, but all of what we just talked about in how to become a better writer, it’s about just being a good teacher.

It’S just teaching well the information that people have come to your website to learn, to learn and so go become a great teacher with tons of anecdotes and little information to toss in, and there will be nothing stopping you from getting to the top of the search Rankings thanks everybody for joining me in this video love.

Talking with you guys and we’ll see in the next one photo a photo says: a thou. No, that doesn’t sound right a photo. I don’t know

Source Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6-E4bYhhYw