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Grow Your Blog

How to Double Your Email Subscribers with a Welcome Mat (Leadpages Tutorial!)

Wanna grow your subscribers like crazy?

Want to get people to subscribe to your list before they even see your blog?

The answer is a MAGICAL welcome mat!

By that I mean… well, this. See how one of my biz-crushes Allison has this super cool landing page right when you visit her homepage?

grow-your-blog-welcome-mat

What if I told you it’s super simple to set that up so it’s automatically the first page your visitors see?

Aaaand that it’s also super easy to change it or remove it at any time with NO coding needed?

AND that this one little change could boost your opt-in rate by up to 535%?!

(Did I just blow your mind?)

It’s possible thanks to Leadpages. đŸ™ŒđŸŒ

Today I’m going to show you step-by-step how to combine your WordPress blog with Leadpages to make an email list building MACHINE, mmk!

Grow Your Email List with a Welcome Mat Using Leadpages

Okay, and maybe everyone else knew this, but I’ve been a Leadpages customer for 6 months now and literally just found this feature yesterday. YAH.

So I want to share it with you.

But First, What is Leadpages?

If you don’t already know about Leadpages, it’s a landing page creation tool that makes it dead easy and quick to setup targeted, fun landing pages. You don’t need to know how to code or anything: it’s all drag and drop AND they have beautiful templates to pick from.

It’s how I created my free content strategy course page!

grow-blog-email-list-welcome-mat

Lots o’ pro bloggers use it. And for good reason: it’s affordable and saves SO MUCH time. I thought it might be overkill when I signed up months ago, but I can’t picture life without it.

So yeah in a nutshell, it makes pretty landing pages effortlessly.

AND, with this exclusive link, you can snag a 14 day free trial to check out Leadpages for yourself.

Mmk, Now What’s a Welcome Mat?

The example from Allison I featured at the beginning of this post is what’s called a “welcome mat”.

It basically means a call to action that you’re putting on your site as the first thing people see. They can either sign up and convert, or choose a “No Thanks” option and continue viewing the rest of your site.

CONTINUE READING

5 Easy Blog SEO Tips to Skyrocket Your Traffic

Blog SEO is a big deal.

It goes beyond just optimizing your posts for a single keyword, although that’s important too. I’ve been studying SEO for over three years now and have a pretty foolproof system for growing organic search traffic easily and quickly for my blog and websites.

5 Easy Blog SEO Tips: Grow Your Blog Traffic

Google is always changing their algorithms, so you need to be aware of what’s new in the world of SEO. But, these tips are universal, despite any new mega-update from the Google overlords.

Read on to discover my 5 best blog SEO tips you can do today!

 

#1 Verify Your Blog with Google Search Console

Google Search Console used to be called Webmaster Tools. It’s basically the place where Google verifies your site’s identity, keeps track of changes to your site (i.e. new blog posts), and controls how your site appears in search results.

It’s free and super easy to setup! Once you verify your site, it will stay that way.

I recommend logging into Search Console and checking your stats every month, just to make sure your website is indexing properly and all systems are go.

To verify your site, login to Search Console with a Google account (either a @gmail.com email, or your G Suite account email).

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Enter your website URL in the white box. â˜đŸŒ

On the next screen, you’ll see different verification options. The easiest one is to verify with Google Analytics, which you can find on the Alternate Methods tab. If your Google Analytics account is setup with the same @gmail.com email address, it will verify your website right away.

Or, you can download an HTML file and upload it to your site to get verified. You can upload the file via FTP, or through your web hosting company’s CPanel/File Manager area. (Psst, this is where you would login to manage your hosting account – like on Bluehost or Siteground!)

There are lots of tools within Search Console, but the most important area to monitor for your SEO is the Crawl tab.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Click on Crawl Stats to monitor how often Google comes to crawl your site. This is the number of times Google’s algorithm is scanning your content, looking for new changes, and adding those changes to Google.

aka… how your blog shows up in search results! Super important.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

More crawls per day = good!

Another key area to check in monthly is the Sitemaps tab under Crawl. Here, you can manually submit a new sitemap to Google. Many WordPress plugins do this automatically, but it’s a good idea to do it manually once in awhile too.

You can see how many pages of your site are indexed here. To add a new sitemap, click on Add/Test Sitemap at the top.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

Then, type in “sitemap.xml” into the box and press Submit.

Easy Blog SEO Tips

If you want to learn more about Search Console and all it can do for you, I recommend reading this article from Moz.

 

#2 Use SEO Keywords in the Right Places

It’s not enough to stuff your SEO keyword everywhere you can find a spot anymore. Google is cracking down on “spammy” keyword stuffing practices and shady over-optimization.

What does that mean?

CONTINUE READING

How to Double Your Email List in 2 Weeks (+Bonus Email Course Idea List!)

If you clicked on this link with the burning desire to know how I managed such an amazing feat like doubling my email list in only 14 days, well, you’ve come to the right place. I did it by…


making you opt-in to secret shit like this.

Okay, hear me out.

We’ve all seen those posts around saying “Grow your list in 30 days”, “Get your first 1000 subscribers now!” and so much more. And you know what? They work, they really do. Creating a free email course WORKS. But where can you find an awesome email course idea, eh?

The method isn’t the problem, it’s the value.

Get ready for some super shocking news: if you combine the methods many of these posts spell out for you with the absolute BEST value you can provide to your audience, then you will be successful.

Free Email Course Ideas: Grow Your Email List in 2 Weeks

If you can’t provide any value, everything falls flat.

I know, real groundbreaking shit.

“Provide value. Gee, thanks, Michelle, but how do I do that?” you might ask.

That’s what I’m gonna walk you through today. Not only implementing a quick, easy way to grow your list, but how to provide real, tangible value to your audience, aka provide them what they want!

I doubled my email list in two weeks by creating a free 7-day email course about blog content strategy and planning. This course, to be exact.

DOUBLED ITTT!

Here’s how I created my free email course and marketed it, step by step!

 

Step 1: The Email Course Idea

Okay, this is the most important step because it’s, uh, kind of the whole thing?

It can be tough to come up with an idea for a free email course, video lesson or other big freebie (otherwise known as a “lead magnet”). I thought about mine for a long time.

The secret to coming up with a good idea? Stick with what you know, and what your readers need help with.

The idea is probably right under your nose.

For me, I love content strategy and writing… which is obviously why I started this blog, to help others with content marketing too. After awhile I realized, oh, I can teach others how to never run out of content ideas, and to effectively plan out a content system so they are never scrambling to get a post done, or wondering what to write about.

Not gonna lie, I have like 147 unfinished drafts laying out in various states of outline, 1st draft, 2nd draft and so on…

But I also have a no-fail system that makes it possible for me to write 2000 word posts in an hour.

So, once I realized that system would be helpful for other bloggers, I decided to create the free email course around that topic.

Still struggling to think of an idea? Download my cheatsheet of 60 amazeballs epic email course ideas for all kinds of blogs right hurr.

 

Step 2: Plan Out Your Idea

Once I decided on the topic, the first thing I did was create an outline of my free email course. I realized there were 7 things I wanted to teach.

So, it made sense to make it a 7-day email course, duh.

I wrote down the topic of each day (or “chapter”) and then a brief description of what I would cover. Like so:

  • Day 1: Why content strategy matters and what it can do for you + how to define your audience.
  • Day 2: What does your audience want?
  • Day 3: Overall blog content strategy – your categories, topics, pages, offerings.
  • Day 4: Set up an editorial calendar.
  • Day 5: Brainstorm and fill out the content planner for actual posts, related to Days 2 and 3.
  • Day 6: Content time! Homework to create 3 solid, rockstar blog posts.
  • Day 7: How to measure results and when to tweak your strategy.

Once you’ve got your basic outline down pat, it’s time to decide on a format. It doesn’t have to be an email course.

You could create a video that’s exclusive to your subscribers only, or an in-depth ebook, or so many other formats. Don’t think you need to do an email course just ’cause everyone else is.

Although, it is ridiculously easy to setup and a fun way to deliver value to your readers!

CONTINUE READING

Grow Your Blog: 7 Things to Do Weekly

I’ve been blogging for a whole year now… whoaaaa. Although, I only got serious about it two months ago.

Which is crazy, since I work in marketing as my full-time job. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past year of blogging, it’s that traditional digital marketing and being a “femtrepreneur” type blogger are two very different things.

Not in a bad way!

In my day job, I typically work with businesses and corporations. I’ve found the blogosphere works in a totally different way.

Here, in female blogger entrepreneur online coach course creator content marketer land, results matter.

It’s not about how long you’ve been blogging (though I’m sure that helps), or your writing or graphics or all that (although, they do make you look professional!). It’s all about sharing your knowledge with others, and if you’re useful, you’re useful.

So don’t worry if you’re just starting out, or don’t feel like an expert in your field yet, or think you’ll never hit “the big time”. You can do it. Just show up, and be valuable.

Okay, enough about that.

Grow Your Blog: 7 Weekly Tasks to Get Next Level

So while my day job and blogging-by-night worlds are on two different planets, and nothing really crosses over, I still think it’s great.

Because I love to learn. Above all else, I love to learn new things, especially when it comes to marketing.

So, even though I am but a wee babe in the blogging universe, I’m going to share the top 7 things that have grown my blog over the past two months.

These are things I do on a weekly basis that I keep seeing better and better results from every single week. Success upon success upon success. YO.

CONTINUE READING

How to Make Awesome Content Upgrade Worksheets with Canva

Wooo, are you ready for this? This is going to be a game changer for you fellow bloggers out there if you’re not already making sweet ass content upgrades like a pro.

 How to Make Awesome Content Upgrades with Canva

If you’ve been blogging for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard how important having quality content upgrades are to growing your blog’s following, and your email list… which helps grow your blog’s following. You get what I’m saying. And yes, it’s so true, content upgrades are truly the best thing since sliced cheese on sliced bread.

Let’s cover a few basics first before we dive right in…

What’s a Content Upgrade & Why Should I Care?

Valid question, pal. So a “content upgrade” is something that your visitors can download (or access) in exchange for their email address. So you get their contact deets, and they get some sort of cool THING. Like this shameless example:

The key here is to make the content upgrade not only valuable to your visitor to make them want to give you their email address to get it, but also to make it relevant to the original post it’s in. So for this post, I’m offering a five point checklist you can download to ensure your content upgrade is on point and ready to conquer the world. Easy, right?

CONTINUE READING