In my last post here on the Cafe, I laid out a simple strategy for getting more blog traffic from Google Analytics.
The basic idea was that you can get greater returns on your time by finding the traffic sources that currently work for you and leveraging them for greater results.
And while the post got a fantastic response (over 65 comments and growing at the time of writing this), nearly every comment had the same question:
“Google is sending most of my traffic. How can I possibly leverage more traffic out of the Big G?”
The message was clear: many of you guys and gals still feel like search engine traffic is a mystery force - that you are at the uncontrollable whim of Google.
Today we’re going to change that mindset by skipping the theory and demonstrating a simple, concrete tactic you can steal right now to improve your Google rankings and leverage more traffic from search engines.
I want to show you that there is something you, as a blogger, can do to to directly influence your Google rank, but first we have to understand why controlling search engine traffic seems so hard right now.
Why Even Basic SEO Is Against Your Blog
Even on a good day, Search Engine Optimization is about as straight forward as reading tea leaves or gazing into a crystal ball.
That’s not your only problem though - heck, it’s not even your biggest problem.
No, your biggest problem is that SEO simply isn’t built for blogs.
If you’ve ever wondered why controlling search traffic seems harder for bloggers, it’s because it is.
Basic SEO practices tells us that if we want a page to show up higher in Google search results, and therefore get more traffic, we have to “optimize” that page for a chosen keyword.
Then we need to get outside links to point back to that page, using that chosen keyword as anchor text.
And that’s a complex enough system to follow for anyone, but as a blogger you have to face one very hard question: Which post gets to rank?
If your desired keyword is “model making“, and every post you write is about “model making“, which one of your dozens of posts should you try to rank for the keyword “model making“?
Which one gets the backlinks?
Which one gets the Tweets?
Which ones get lost in the archives never to be seen again?
All those similar posts are weakening your potential Google rankings by spreading out reader attention, backlink potential, and keywords.
Google is hesitant to rank you for your desired keywords, because it simply doesn’t understand which of your many posts are the most relevant.
Increase Google Rankings With Resource Pages
Where many bloggers get confused - and where your blogging train might be leaving the tracks - is in the difference between content geared toward search engine visitors (people who find you through Google) and content geared toward repeat visitors (people who come back as subscribers and fans).
Repeat visitors want fresh, new content.
Search engine visitors want a one-stop resource that answers their question.
It’s the battle between “more is better” versus “quality over quantity“.
Since our goal is improve our Google ranking, and therefore traffic, our strategy is clear: give Google a centralized page that it can rank for large, competitive keywords.
We need what I call a Compendium or Resource Page.
Compendium Pages are blog pages that are meant to organize your posts for specific keywords into centralized, easily rankable, resources.
Think of them like categories, only pickier.
Let’s try an example to illustrate:
We’re trying to rank #1 in Google for the keyword “model making“.
However, we have too many posts about the subject to choose just one and we want to get traffic to all of them.
To get around this, you could create a Compendium Page (just a new blog page) and call it something like “Model Making 101“.
Then we would provide an introduction to the topic, followed by a list of links to your best model making posts, organized as if it were a beginner’s guide to the subject.
It might look something like this:
Model Making 101
Model making is awesome because . . .
- Basic Tools For Model Making
- The 5 Best Classes For Model Making Beginners
- Model Making Exercise To Hone Your Skills
Also, take a look at Ana’s resource pages:
Think about what this does for your blog:
Google gets one page it can rank for big keywords
Instead of bombarding poor Google with backlinks that all use the same keyword as anchor text, but point to different posts, you give them a more focused backlink strategy that is much easier to organize and will compete much better for crowded search terms.
Google visitors get funneled deeper into your content
Search engine visitors are picky creatures because they don’t find your blog by just “surfing.”
They typed in a specific search and they want a specific answer to it.
With a compendium page, instead of immediately hitting the “Back” button, if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for, their attention is captured by headlines that might be more relevant or specific to their needs.
Other visitors get instant primers into your topic
Visitors from Twitter or Facebook will get an instantly useable, endlessly sharable resource, and a quick introduction into the kind of content they’ll get by subscribing to your blog.
You get a simplified backlinking strategy
Instead of constantly striving to build links and drive traffic to any of the dozens or hundreds of posts you have, you get to focus your efforts and promotional strategies onto one page that funnels visitors toward your other posts.
It also frees you up to optimize your smaller posts for long-tail keywords without splitting your focus.
Other bloggers are more likely to link back to your resource
Bloggers aren’t very likely to link to someone’s individual posts these days.
They will, however, happily link out to resources that are insanely useful for their readers.
Your Compendium Pages become excellent link bait that attracts organic backlinks and massive social sharing.
But the best part of this strategy is that surprisingly few bloggers are utilizing it yet.
A few of the bigger players have caught on and are starting to take advantage, but now is an opportunity for smaller blogs to stake big claims in competitive search results.
So what now?
Now go brainstorm your top keywords that you can turn into Compendium Pages.
Aim for 4-5 pages, with around 10 links per page to start - you can always tweak it from there - then start building backlinks to your new resources.
Not only will this method simplify your SEO world considerably, but it’s also the fastest way to take control of your search engine traffic.
I’ve tried to layout the Compendium Page strategy as briefly and clearly as I can in this post.
However, if you’re not quite clear on how to build one yourself, or if you just learn better visually, you can watch a video I put together that gives you a demonstration of this strategy.
{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
Daniel you hit the kill on the head with these lines:
“No, your biggest problem is that SEO simply isn’t built for blogs.”
“Basic SEO practices tells us that if we want a page to show up higher in Google search results, and therefore get more traffic, we have to “optimize” that page for a chosen keyword.”
Blogs were never meant to be used to make money or anything serious. Blogs discuss content such as ‘what’s new now’ whereas proper SEO expects you to to be focused, and organized.
Here’s how to prepare for and write keyword focused content that really gets ranked and bring you consistent free targeted traffic.
If your blog overall topic (let’s use my topic for example) is ‘Blogging for Beginners’, it doesn’t mean all the topics you write on will be targeting the keyword ‘blogging for beginners’.
You need an overall blog topic, which is your content target for your blog. Mine is ‘Blogging for beginners’. And this was taking into consideration when I was buying my domain name and titling my site.
Then I wrote my home page targeting ‘Blogging for beginners’. But every other pages on my site targets different keywords of their own but that falls under the topic ‘blogging for beginners’.
How do I find these keywords to write on?
I throw my overall topic keyword ‘blogging for beginners’ into an advance keyword research tool including Google Adword tool and it brings back for me many related keywords for Blogging for beginners that are actual searched keywords that I can each create content for.
Examples of keywords under ‘Blogging for beginners’ which are actual search for keywords are:
Blogging for dummies
How to start a blog
how to write a blog
blog optimization
blogging advice
And so on…
Of all the related profitable keywords I get (judging with number of times the keyword is searched for vs. number of competition for it) , I select the ones that have high searches that I will then use to form what is referred to in blogging as ‘Categories’ .
I then arrange all the other related keywords I find into the categories I have selected. I do all this in an excel document. It’s like building your site content structure before actually setting up the site.
So once that is done, when it’s time to start writing I just pick a keyword at a time and write on it.
If I pick ‘how to start a blog’, I write the article and optimize it for the keyword ‘how to start a blog’. And I thrown in related keywords such as ‘start a blog’, ‘starting a blog’ and so on.
These other keywords are also actually searched for. But since they mean the same thing as the primary keyword for the page, you use them as second, third keywords. Not re-writing a related content for them.
This eventually gives you a chance to not just rank for the primary keyword for the page, in this case ‘how to start a blog’, but the other keywords too. As you work on your site and it grows, eventually you’ll have that single page bringing several search traffic through the keyword you wrote it for and other related keywords.
Since how to start a blog is an actual keyword-focused content page on my site the page presently gets found at the search engines for keywords such as:
How to start a blog (primary page keyword presently on page 5 of Google)
how to start a blog to make money
how to start a blog and make money
starting a blog
start blogging for money
And so on…
I do this for the 100 plus keywords I found for overall keyword (and everyday I look for more keywords to form my content).
So at the end of the day my site is competing for hundreds of well search keywords at the search engines. It will take time for many of them to make it to the first page of Google, but before they get there I have their related low competition keywords bringing search traffic to that page. And eventually the site will be found for tens of thousands of keywords.
This is how to plan blog content structure in other to have an optimized well laid out content and easy navigation that the search engines can easily crawl and index, even your inner pages.
Your categories link to home page. And some related keyword pages. The posts in your categories which is your third in the content structure (home page first structure, categories second and then third tier structure page which are attached to the categories).
So you see Daniel you don’t continue to write on a single topic and question yourself which to rank later. If you really want to optimize your pages and rank for many search keywords and multiply your traffic using SEO, each post you write targets a different actual search keyword that you will optimize the page to rank for. Moreover continuing to write almost similar content on your site is not really offering value.
This is one of the changes I am teaching at my website. If you don’t already guess, though I write about blogging, my primary website is not a blog. However, I teach my readers how to create a theme based keyword focused site using a blog and suggests a website for some who would like to re-consider.
Blogs where not designed for SEO. But it doesn’t mean you can’t use them properly for it. While a website can better be used to create a theme content based site that will continue to grow in traffic and income without necessarily updating it too regularly as a blog demands, a blog can also be used to achieve same goal.
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Hi Daniel,
Creating compendium posts is a very interesting advice. I have never thought that I could do this for the search engines. Your strategy seems to be easy to understand and do.
Thanks a lot.
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Hey, Jens, glad you liked the post! It is an easy strategy, that’s one of the reasons I like it. It’s a simple but effective way to organize your content and simplify your SEO, and not enough bloggers are utilizing it.
-Daniel
Hi Ana and Daniel.
Daniel thank you for this interesting tip. I have never thought that way. Off course i don’t have a lot of experience in SEO so your idea helps me obtain a deep knowledge.
As a beginner in the SEO world what I usually do is to link through an anchor text (which is one of my keywords) to my blog home page. I guess this action is not as good as the tip you suggest….but why?
Could you please help me understand better why we cannot just point to our blog home page?
On the other hand, if we don’t focus only on one keyword but we write different articles with different keywords….what we are supposed to do? Create many different compendium pages?
Thank you for this article and the video, you explain the idea very well!
Hey Lenia,
I’m going to start off my answer by saying that I am not an SEO expert so my answer comes from a working knowledge over the years and hopefully any resident experts will correct my explanation if I tell you something a little off. That said…
Only linking to your homepage brings a few drawbacks. A) Google likes to see that your internal posts are getting links. B) Your homepage can’t be optimized for every keyword you want to rank for. C) Your older posts have a shorter lifespan because they’ll be buried and most visitors simply won’t get to read them - and that’s a ton of wasted effort and wasted content.
Using Compendium Pages is similar to building multiple homepages - one homepage for each big keyword you want to rank for. So to answer your second question, yes, you will probably build multiple Compendium Pages and I recommend that you build one page for each of your big, primary keywords. Smaller, long-tail, or less popular keywords don’t really need a page of their own.
In the model making example from this post you might have one page called “Model Making 101,” one page called “Easy Airplane Models,” and another called “Guide to Painting Your Models.” Each one of those would include a short introduction about the topic and links to your best posts about each of those keywords, organized as if they were the table of contents for a book on that keyword.
Most blogs will probably end up with about 3-5 Compendium Pages. Then you can build links to those pages the same way you did to your blog homepage, only now you’re links will be more effective because each keyword is pointing to an optimized page on that subject, instead of your general homepage. Google will like it better, and so will the visitors that find you in the search engines.
Hope that helps explain a little better. If you have any other questions feel free to leave another comment or shoot me an email and I’d be happy to help out.
-Daniel
Thank You! I’ve been trying to figure out how to best backlink to my pages, and you just answered my question on a huge scale. I now have a plan instead of a whole bunch of thoughts going on in my head. I was thinking about linking to my tag pages, but this makes much more sense to me and I can tailor the page to fit the keyword much better. Talk about the right time, the right place. Thanks again.
You’re welcome! Thanks for the comment. I’m glad you liked the post and hope it helps simplify some things for you.
-Daniel
This is a great idea! I really like it for getting people deeper into your content in a more meaningful way.
One thing I would add is that these compendium pages should contain some content on them, not just links. Having the content will be helpful for ranking in Google and can also give a more natural flow to the page. The examples that you have seem to do a decent job of that.
I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Jeffery!
You’re absolutely right, that’s why step one always has to be providing that introduction. I mean you can add the content in other ways, but an introduction to the posts always seemed to flow more naturally to me.
-Daniel
It is bad to rely only on traffic from Google, I found several other options here.
I think creating compendium pages helps to reduce the bounce rate. Because the visitors found more than one option which satisfy their need.
Yep, as we’ve said lower down in this comment thread relying on any traffic source 100% is a mistake, Google or not.
But you’re right, Tessa, compendium pages not only help you get more traffic by simplifying the SEO, they help get more out of that traffic by lowering bounce rates and increasing engagement.
-Daniel
A compendium or resource page? Couldn’t that also be classed as an archive page or a news page? I had never dreamed of optimizing that page, but when you think about all of that content being readily accessible from a landing point of view, there should be a lot less bounce. Luv it!! ThanksAna
Compendium pages or Resource pages - call them what you will. But they are separate from Archive pages and News pages because they have significant differences.
1. They are manually organized. You choose the links and the order they’re included in, instead of having Wordpress lump everything similar together for you.
2. Compendium pages aren’t for was new or updated, but for what’s best and timeless of your content. I like to think of them as a table of contents that organizes my best posts so a reader can flow through them more like a book.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, Chloe, I really appreciate it.
-Daniel
I agree with Leo, referral traffic is by far better than search engines traffic and converts much easier, of course as Ana said Google can bring traffic without actually having to “promote” your posts everyday since if you rank well for a popular key phrase, traffic will keep coming without having to do anything.
About the method Daniel shared with us I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet it’s certainly a great way to get traffic not only from search engines but from referrals too since as Daniel said the possibilities that a blogger will share a resource page are much higher than a regular post…
I only have one question is it better to use a blog page or a static page as a resource page?
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The only difference I’ve found between different types of pages is that it’s best if you can remove the sidebars and eliminate distractin. I use the Premise plugin by Copyblogger to create a landing page, but you can use a standard blog page just fine.
As for search versus referral traffic, I don’t think anyone really disagreed with Leo, it’s just that, like he said himself, it depends greatly on your business and marketing goals. And let’s face it, being number one in Google for a high converting keyword is pretty darn close to a trusted referral.
I’m with Ana on this one. Referrals are fantastic and we should all work to get more of them, but I’m going to focus my efforts in the time between referrals on building traffic sources that are more stable, controllable and predictable to ensure my business survives regardless of what other authority figures decide to do (and that includes Google).
I’m glad you liked the post, Kostas, I hope you get some great results from this technique. Thanks for the comment!
-Daniel
I like the idea but it’s going to take a bit of work on my part. Most of my pages are redirects and I’ve excluded them from the sitemap.
Hope you get it worked out, Clara. Any particular reason you set your pages up that way?
-Daniel
Hi Daniel,
I think this is an excellent strategy. I have an index page on my blog to help visitors find relevant posts. But I think by having a compendium or resource page makes better sense especially when your blog has lots of content on different topics.
This strategy makes everything that we care about much easier: the search engines rank our posts better, our visitors find relevant content and go deeper, other bloggers share our content, and backlink building is much simplified.
Thanks for sharing this strategy!
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That’s why I love it! Everybody wins!
Never heard of this strategy before, I will add it to my weekend to do list.
I suppose you would also update the list regularly to keep it ‘fresh’ for Google
Ideally, yes, it would be something you add to and curate from time to time, but in my experience that isn’t as necessary as you might think, particularly if you can get some back links and popularity to it and make the page an authority. It seems that as long as people are still enjoying the content on your compendium page and finding it relevant, Google doesn’t much mind if it doesn’t change. The updates tend to be more for keeping it useful to customers.
Thanks for the comment, Lilibeth.
-Daniel
I absolutely love this idea… I am in the process of building a few pages like this but all based on generating new email subscribers.
The concept is very strong.
Thanks for this breakout. Powerful stuff here.
Ryan H.
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Glad you enjoyed it, Ryan. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
-Daniel
Daniel,
These ideas of compenium pages is a great one. I have done this a couple of times and it has worked quite well. You explained this concept very well and have given me some ideas!
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Glad you got some new ideas out of it, Steve. It does work like a charm
Thanks for the comment.
-Daniel
That’s actually an interesting approach to SEO. Another way for blogs (although not opportune by any means) is to use tags and tag pages when you have a ton of pages that are cannibalizing the keywords. For instance, let’s say you are doing a review series on a product and the series is meant to boost your authority to the top level review.
By tagging the pages and then linking to the tagged pages, you are able to keep everything in one place which helps the visitor find all the information about a certain keyword and helps Google understand how to group things together.
Just an FYI (since you mentioned anchor text) Here is a snippet from a searchengineland article that talks about anchor text and its future effects on search-
“Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.”
(source: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078)
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Thanks for the additional resource, Leo; as the post said “SEO mind races…”
I echo Ana on this one: Thanks for adding that info, Leo. I missed that article, but that is super, super interesting!
-Daniel
Hey Daniel,
I really like this idea of compendium pages since it makes both Google and real people happy. Plus, as you say, you have a better chance of having other bloggers link to this page.
It also sets you up as authority and even gets your newer followers to go back and read past posts, which in my book also means increased sales in affiliate products mentioned in some of those past posts.
Thanks,
Peggy
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You got it! I love solutions like this too because I feel like everybody wins. It’s good for me, it’s good for my readers, it’s good for Google, and I don’t have to feel like I’m gaming the system just to get new people in the door. And you’re right about increased sales because readers are spending more time in your content, getting exposed to, and educated about, your offers. Glad you liked the post, Peggy!
-Daniel
Great advice, Ana!
I’d like to see more articles on how to make it “without Google” — I’ve seen a few bloggers tackle the “life after AdSense” issues - but few tips on how to concentrate on obtaining the bulk of traffic from sources other than Google.
For example, my blog has long been listed on yahoo and now on Bing, and I have good placements on both search engines. But I looked at my stats for last week. Over 70% incoming traffic arrives via Google. I had ONE arrival via yahoo and 7 via Bing. In an entire week! So, I conclude the people visiting my blog aren’t using anything but Google?
And, in light of the recent publicity over Google’s recording of websearch histories, I wonder if that 70% will now diminish, and some of the other search engines experience a jump?
What do you think about that, Ana (and Ana’s readers) ???
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Dave, if you think about it both Chrome and Firefox have Google integrated into their browsers already so most user just use the built in features.
Personally, I don’t touch explorer or bing and completely forgot yahoo had a search engine.
It’s a good point, Dave, the only problem is that not many bloggers make it without Google. That’s why no one ever writes about it. In my previous guest post, which I referenced at the top of this page, the comments were crystal clear - Google sends the majority of blogging traffic, like it or not.
I’m all for diversifying traffic sources and not just relying on one source, but what I’ve seen online is that making it without Google, means having enough fans to support you. John Chow did it a few years back when Google dropped him from the ranks, but it wasn’t Twitter or Facebook that kept him going (and eventually got him reinstated) it was the fans he had built up over the years that knew and liked him.
Truthfully, I’ve never known or heard of a blogger that willfully blocked Google and still succeeded — but I would love to.
-Daniel
If I may….
It really depends on your marketing model. If you have a lead generation model, then you don’t necessarily need google or any search engine. You just need to find a way to generate that traffic to your page and have an offer worthy enough for them to take a chance on you.
I think a lot of people try to idolize Search engines for something other than just another ad medium. All ad mediums have “costs”. For the blogger, marketer or business it is really just about factoring in those costs for visitor acquisition.
Sometimes search works. But to place all your hopes that search will be your main traffic medium forever (which, for whatever reason, is what people think) is discounting the fact that changes in the algo happen often and have been known to wipe away any ground made.
In the end, acquisition should be the blogger or business’ main focus. Any ad medium that can deliver quality traffic will do.
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The reason I am so fond of the SE traffic is the fact that it could be considered the most leveraged free traffic source I know of.
Most of the other sources take continuous effort to keep churning traffic; otherwise, that traffic source will die out.
I kind of agree. But kind of don’t. Actually the best traffic is referred traffic from someone that the person trusts. Is it practical to employ? Depends on who you know, how much they respect you and what they are willing to do for you.
If someone like Pat Flynn recommended you to his “following” in a post in which he talked about how great your newsletter was, then all preconceived initial misgivings would be diminished and the likelihood of you converting them over would be much higher than say, someone coming from search who didn’t know your website from any of the other listings.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that search is bad. What I am saying is that there are plenty of examples of marketers that have been able to kill it without search being much of a factor, especially when YOU are the brand.
The key, in my opinion, is to broaden levels of engagement. You know what I mean. I would imagine that if you placed a blog post about a new product and then measured it against a e-blast with the same product, your e-blast would do much better than your blog post in terms of conversion rates in spite of the fact that your post may get 2, 3, or even 5x the page views.
I agree with you, Leo - referral traffic is BEST.
However, I wasn’t talking about best; just the most leveraged one, i.e. the most predictable of one. Not saying reliable, but at least I have some control over it.
I can’t rely on Pat Flynn mentioning me.
I can’t rely on my readers loving my posts and linking to them.
I certainly can’t rely on social media in any way, shape, or form.
However, I CAN conclude that if I rank highly for specific keywords, I’ll be getting traffic as long as I am able to stay at the top.
Hello Leo,
I just want to quickly point out that though I get what you mean but it takes some real effort to get referral traffic from authority sites. Getting referral traffic from some sites might be easy but from the sites that command authority, not so much. I mean the blogger personally recommending something about your site or your product.
So even when it can convert, it’s not something you can rely on.
Moreover, you really don’t want to build your business chasing traffic everyday. Else it becomes like the 9-5 job many of us are running from.
One strong benefit of doing business online is passive income. The ability to be able to get visitors even while you’re sleeping or off on vacation and have them taking your most wanted response, which could be buying an affiliate product, your own product, clicking an ad or joining your list. All this with no chase from you.
Do good search engine optimization. Complement it with guest posting and blog commenting and you can get really targeted traffic that will achieve your bottom line.
Refferal traffic coming to your site from a good comment you make. Or a blogger mentioning you. And the searcher who has a problem and looking for a solution finding your site.
Some might think some searchers come to read free content. But if your free content is really good and then you’re asking the person who came looking for that information to pay some few dollars to get a product that further provides answers to his or her problem, I am sure a good number will if you’re doing everything right.
I have to agree with the previous answers, Dave.
Ideally, I could care less if Google or social media disappears one day and we don’t have to worry about it.
However, I have a feeling it’s not going to happen any time soon.
So while my readers are using those venues, we’ll have to use them as well.
As far as Google privacy goes, I don’t think anything is going to change. For now, it’s something to talk about and express our outrage and all, but in a few days the dust will settle and we’ll go back to allowing Google to collect a dossier on us - nothing they haven’t already been doing for years.
The only way I know how to keep on going without any support from Google is guest posting.
As a matter of fact, that’s how Danny Iny did it.