Free Traffic Forever: The Scalable SEO Strategy That Never Stops Working

Blog Post / By

Jon Morrow

Despite being in a wheelchair and not being able to move anything but his face, Jon Morrow has used content marketing to generate over 200 million page views and over $50 million in revenue for sites like Copylogger, KISSmetrics, and Smart Blogger. Today, he is the CEO of SmartBlogger.com.

Today we were going to be talking about the mythical beast of free traffic and how to make it last forever, because that’s the big criticism of free traffic. Right? Is that it’s undependable. You never know when it’s going to come in. You never know when you’re going to get slapped. You never know when it’s going to disappear and ruin your business. Right.

I’d like to expose how that’s actually a myth. I’ve been doing this for about a decade now, working with some of the biggest brands online. And the majority of those brands, actually, all of the brands that I’ve worked with directly, they’ve never had their traffic go down in the past decade. And they’re using the strategy that I’m going to teach you now. And there are reasons why it’s worked for the past decade. And there are reasons why it will work for the next decade.

Before we get going, the important thing to know before we get started

is that everything here that I’m talking about applies to English speaking countries like the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. And I’m also assuming you’re targeting customers nationally or internationally, not focusing exclusively on specific city or region. The reason why I say that is, SEO changes depending on which language you’re working in.

 

Also, if you’re doing local, so that if you’re only looking for clients in one city like, San Diego, or Austin, then it’s one set of strategies. If you’re going big and targeting a large group of people, then it’s another set of strategy. So, I’m talking about how to do things on a large scale here today. And I just wanted to make that totally clear.

 

When you are in business, everything is about time.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, or whether you are working for someone else, there is never enough time to do everything you want to do, ever. More ideas, than you could possibly implement. And it’s a little bit like having a selection of seeds that you are planting, and you only have so many seeds you can plant.

Imagine if each seed is an hour of your time. And you’re counting on those seeds to grow and to turn into something more. And if it doesn’t grow, if the nightmare happens and everything you grow dies, that’s bankruptcy right there. That’s getting fired from your job. That’s investing your time unwisely. All right. And I get it, I understand it.

 

I also know that when it comes to content marketing, this is what happens  for the majority of businesses. That they invest all this time writing all this content, creating podcasts, doing YouTube videos, and they get nothing but wilted crops.

How many people you’ve invested a lot of the time in content marketing whether it’s articles, videos, podcasts, or whatever, and the results have just been disappointing that you just haven’t seen the results you wanted? And that’s scary. As a business, you can’t afford that.

What I want to do is teach you a safe way to do this. It’s simple. It’s not easy. But we’re going to walk through and I’ll show you how to do this

 

because you can’t afford to take risks with your time. That’s one thing that I’d tell you. By the way, when you’re going home and deciding what to do with your time, time is the one thing you can’t get back. As a business owner or working with owner of the business, you can risk money, you can risk all kinds of things, but your time is your most precious thing.

 

Invest your time where you’re almost certain you’ll get a positive

result. But what if there was a way to create content that never fails? What if there was a way to create articles, or podcasts, or YouTube videos that always get results, not only today but for years in the future? What if you could plant a seed, and it would produce crops for the next decade, the next two decades? Because, that totally is possible. I’ve done it many times.

 

The obligatory about me, so you know how I am, and how I have come to know what I know – and more importantly, why it makes sense to listen to and implement the things I am going to share with you.

I’m Jon Morrow. CEO of Smart Blogger and I helped to run Copyblogger and Kissmetrics. I’ve started Smart Blogger in 2011, 200 million plus pages, 50 million revenue, and my latest project, Unstoppable, I launched it, published one post and just in the first two weeks it got 300,000 visitors with no budget. That’s no money on advertising, nothing. That’s entirely organic. And that’s starting from scratch on a new brand. That was just in the last year. I’m still doing these things today and what I’m going to share with you is exactly what I do.

Just to show you what this looks like when you win, some of these things are crazy. So, the image above is a page we worked on at Kiss Metrics and I can’t take credit for all of this. By the way, I worked on it with a team of people. I was the editor-in-chief of Kissmetrics for a while, working with Neil Patel and Kidman Shaw, two brilliant guys. And this post on Facebook marketing is outranking Facebook’s page. Okay. So, this is something if you go Google Facebook marketing you’ll see this come up. You can make crazy things like this happen.

The image above is what I did for Smart Blogger, about “How to Make  Money Writing.” It ranks number one, it’s ranked number one for a long time now.

Here’s  an example for “Copywriting.” Copy Blogger now ranks number two  for copywriting. We’re ranked by Wikipedia. I’d like to think if I still worked for Copy Blogger we would be number one. So this is their fault for not keeping their own, right. And so, yes, that’s just a selection of things that are possible.

Here’s what we’re going to cover today. I’m going to show you a little- known PDF published by Google that tells you exactly how to rank number one. We’re going to talk about, how to you create content so good your competitors can’t beat it no matter how hard they try. And I’m going to give

you the exact promotion techniques I used to get 76,000 Facebook shares for a single piece of content without spending a penny on ads. Does that sound exciting?

 

How to Rank #1 – The Inside Scoop from Google

 

Let’s start with how to rank number one. There is a huge amount of complexity about SEO. But what I want to try to do today is simplify things to

 

the most important things for you to know. Because I think most people make SEO way, way, way, too complicated. I actually think it’s very simple. The way Google looks at SEO has not changed significantly. There were overriding principles in the last decade. I don’t think they will change in the next decade. And if you understand the basics here, there are just a few things that if you understand, you pretty much don’t have to worry about everything else.

Let’s go through the inside scoop from Google. Google actually tells you what to do. Who would you rather follow? The advice of some SEO

consultant, or Google telling you, ‘’If you want to rank number one here’s  what you do.’’ Right. And what if they were actually telling you the truth?   That if you do those things then you will rank number one, because that’s exactly what’s happening. This is a legal document, and I will give you the direct link at the end of this article. This image above shows page 24 of the PDF published by Google. It’s a hundred and something pages. Most people haven’t ever heard a clue about this.

 

Google goes in detail with what they want, what they don’t want. They could probably use a better copywriter to explain, to deliver it more clearly. But this, they want to rank the highest quality pages. And here is their definition of, “highest quality.” That it has a very high level of expertise, it’s highly authoritative, and highly trustworthy. For the purpose of the page, they use the acronym E-A-T. Expertise, Authority, Trust. For the publisher and the

 

individual author, here’s one important thing to know about Google. They track your trustworthiness both as a website, and for the individual writers of your site.

If someone who has high trust in the eyes of Google, like me, for instance.

I publish an article and you take someone who is brand new, who’s never published an article before, and they publish the exact same article, Microsoft will outrank theirs just because I’ve a history. Google trusts me. So, the trustworthiness of your individual authors matters. This is why outsourcing your content to the Philippines can be a problem because Google wants your authors to be trust-worthy as well.

 

They want a satisfying amount of high quality content, which is very vague, but what that means is they like long stuff. It’s got to be

comprehensive. It’s got to be very satisfying when you go to the page. And  it’s got to have author information, website information, contact info, that’s very basic stuff. Google views that as a sign of trustworthiness. If you don’t have a phone number or an e-mail address, Google is like, ‘’Who are you?’’ It actually matters. And the big winner at the bottom had very positive website reputation.

 

Your reputation as a website and as an author is everything. It’s everything and I’m going to show you how to build that reputation and do it really quickly, here before we’re done. Here’s what they don’t like. Here’s what not to do, content written by nobodies. So, when it comes to outsourcing, people are asking me all the time, ‘’How do I find someone to write content  for me for cheap?’’ And they want to go to Fivver, or they want to go to Upwork, and they want to pay Fivver, $10 an article to crank out articles. I

can already tell you if you do that, you’re going to have a hard time ranking that content. When it comes to SEO, you’re better going to find an expert, and paying $500 for someone with a positive reputation to write that article for you because it will have a much easier time ranking. This kind of thing matters.

Another thing Google doesn’t want you to do is to try to game the system. If ever you have someone that tries to, re-do this magic process, and Google ranks us number one because we found this secret way of building all these links or work, pumping out tons of content really fast, any time you hear any language that’s not around the quality of the content and the reputation

 

of the website, any time you hear anything of those two things, it’s trying to game the system and Google will figure it out and punish you. They always have, and they always will.

Another one is poor user experience. This is like all kinds of things. And Google is really particular about this. The speed of your website, it’s a big factor. If you have a slow site, you’re going to struggle. It’s a big ranking   factor. Another thing is, pop-ups, navigation. If people are struggling to get around your website, if they’re not easily going through and finding what they want, Google knows.

Google doesn’t like is impatient site owners.

If you are impatient and you want your site to rank fast, Google doesn’t really trust you. The big thing to know is real SEO takes time. I typically don’t expect any results for 6 to 12 months on a site. Is it possible to do it faster?

Absolutely. But they really are skeptical. If you start doing that kind of work, you’re not going to see results quickly. This is something that you do on an ongoing basis over the long term. And they also don’t like anything that might reflect badly on them.

 

Another way to think about this, and these are general principles that are never going to change, by the way. When Google ranks you number one, they are endorsing you implicitly as the best content on that topic. If you do anything on your website that might come back to reflect badly on them endorsing you, then you will not be ranked number one. So, one way to think about that is imagine that Google actually had a human being looking at all of the websites and saying, ‘’Which ones would we feel most comfortable with endorsing as the best content on this topic?’’ That’s not actually happening.

There usually aren’t humans involved, but it’s a good way to think about it. Do you deserve to be endorsed as the best? If you do, chances are you’ve got the shot. If you don’t, then over the long-term, probably not.

Here is the simplified formula. If you really want to make it easy, and this is definitely over-simplified, but this is the 80% that have produced the majority of the results. And this is what I do, by the way. So, create the best content on your topic. Whenever you’re creating content that you

want to rank in the search engines, the way you do it is by looking at all of the other content that’s been created on that topic and creating something better. It’s that simple.

Now, we’ll talk about why and how to create content that’s better, but that’s the big thing. The other thing is, get the influential people in your space talking about it, sharing it on social media, ranking it in their own posts. That’s what Google wants to see. And then, once you get the winner, once you get something that it’s really, really, good and other influential people are talking about it, you’re probably climbing on the rankings, you’re on page 2 or 3 of Google. That’s when you get an SEO, that’s when you get someone who’s really good at all the technical aspects of SEO to come in and optimize your page.

 

There are a thousand different things that you can optimize, and they can figure all that out for you. And it’s literally like, $25 an hour on Fivver, to hire someone to do that, or on Upwork. It’s not complicated.

 

That formula that I gave you has never changed. That’s what I’ve been  doing for the past 10 years. And it’s probably not going to change because this the overriding thought process of Google, is that they want the best content that’s trusted by influential people to rank. That is what they want to accomplish. The algorithm may change. They may adjust it, but this is their

goal. This is what they are trying to do. So, if this is what you create, then you will get ranked and you will stay ranked.

Framework for Creating Unbeatable Content

 

Let’s talk about content. And what I’m going to give you here

is a framework for creating unbeatable content. I’ve never revealed this full framework at the conference before. You guys will be the first ones seeing this. It’s the one that I use internally, at our companies, and companies I consult with. And this is how we think about creating the best content.

Here’s the question you want to answer: “How can I create content better than anything on Page 1?” That’s the question. So, if you’re getting your content team together, if you’re thinking about ranking for a competitive term, the question is, how can it be better? Now, the smart question that you naturally have to ask is, how do you define better? Right? And so, that’s what I’m going to teach you how to do, because it’s not just better in your eyes, it’s actually better in the eyes of the reader.

How can you make your content better in the eyes of readers? And   there are five ways to do it. I call them the five Ds. It makes a little easier to remember and I’m going to give them to you in the order of power. And then we’re going to go through them and I’m going to show you a few examples   of these.

 

The first one is depth. The easiest way to get started is just to write something that’s more comprehensive on your topic than anything else. Not really complicated. Not especially difficult. This is one that’s easy to outsource. Not cheap to outsource, but possible to outsource. And it’s just a six, seven-thousand-word post on the topic that goes in detail, or longer. If you’re like Neil Patel, some of the kid’s content that he’s done this with 30,000 words, that’s like half a book. That’s an example of going in depth.

Another one is having unique data. Unique data that you’re publishing that

 

other people will be interested in. The next one is design, and this refers

to both the beauty of your page, and the user experience. Drama. And by drama I’m referring to drama in the theater sense of emotion, story. And the last one is distinctions.

Now, you can stack all of these on top of each other as well, and the more of these you get, the better off you are. And I put them in that  order of power. A page with incredible distinctions, will outrank a page with incredible depth, if that makes sense. And by distinctions, what I mean is, you’re revealing new information that no one has ever heard before, new insights. That you are literally taking that topic forward to somewhere where it’s never gone.

 

That is very difficult to do. It’s something that only a true expert can do. If you can do that though, that’s the kind of content that Google wants more than anything else, is content with unique distinctions. And if you do that, you can be number one. It’s literally writing things that have never been published before. That’s hard, but it’s possible.

So, here are some examples.

Depth

 

Here’s a post Neil Patel recently published. Neil is great at depth, by the way. He recognizes that this is a cheat. Right now, and so, what you do is you just copy what to go along. So, this is his post on content marketing, Content marketing made simple. It’s 10,572 words. That’s a massive post.

So, if you’re going with depth, one way to do it is to look through and just see what’s the longest content on this topic, and then go double or triple, whatever that is, if it warrants it. And there’s no fluff in this post, by the way. It’s 10,000 words of really strong content. Now that’s a lot of work.

When you do a post like this, you’re not sitting down and writing it in two hours. You’re not going to get this from someone on Fivver, but it is possible to outsource to someone who’s a really good researcher, who is willing to put in the work, and go read everything already published, and then synthesize it into something that you can publish where you have all the info in one place.

Data

So the next one is data. Decimal. And decimal is a really good one to watch.

But I think he does a good job with decimals, he does a good job with  this. So, we analyzed 100 million headlines. Here is what we learned, new research. So, this is the idea of doing research. It’s not, usually, we did this survey and asked these five questions and here’s what people said.

 

It’s usually some kind of sophisticated data analysis that you’re probably having a researcher do. When we publish this kind of content, we have professional researchers that go through and do the research first. Then they hand off their insights to a writer that goes and writes the post. You have a team of people working on this type of content. If you have unique content like that, by the way, unique data, it gets tons of likes and shares.

Design

Here’s an example of design. There are lots of examples of this. Goldman Sachs did this one. It ranks on the first page for Millennials, which as you can guess, gets a lot of search traffic. And I gave you the address, up at the top there as well. But it’s this huge, long page. This entire page, it’s basically a huge infographic. It’s enormous.

 

It has video content embedded, interactive content embedded. They probably spent $20,000 plus, I would guess, on the design of this page. There’s not a whole lot of incredible, unique information there, but their design is incredible. You can do this and that will help you rank.

Drama

Another example is drama. And this is the one that I utilized the most in this post that I wrote. This is the one that got 76,000 shares and got 300,000 visitors just in the first two weeks. And what I’ll do is I’ll read you one line, the end of the post just to show you what I’m talking about. And here I’m talking about content that makes you feel something. Very little content does this.

Here’s the conclusion to the post so you can see what I’m talking about.

Sooner or later, we all reach a point in life where trials become unbearable.

Determination turns to despair, self-confidence becomes self-pity, and our hope for a better tomorrow dwindles and dies, replaced by a grim certainty that our life is over. But it’s not. We simply need someone to remind us that triumph over adversity isn’t about being the strongest, or the smartest, the perfect human being who can overcome anything life throws at them. On the contrary, the greatest victories are won by the weakest people living in the darkest times, facing monsters that make even the starkest heroes cower and run. And yet, they prevail. Not through riches or genius, or even luck, but by setting their job, bracing their feet, and weathering the storm. They don’t defeat misfortune, they outlast it. Clinging stubbornly to their spot, absorbing blow after blow, roaring their defiance into the wind until their lips crack, and their voice breaks and yet still they find the strength to whisper, ‘’I will never ever give up.’’

You can be one of them those people, I know you can. And so, I came here to tell you, today you might feel too poor or sick, or unlucky to reach for your dreams, but you’re not. Today you might feel too tired or depressed, or sad, to even try, but you’re not. Today you might feel like an outcast, forgotten by your friends or family, or anyone who might help you. But again, you are not. You’re still breathing my friend. That’s all it takes to stage your comeback. So, say it with me now. Would you? ‘’I will never ever give up.’’ Say it, believe it, and then recognize the journey you’ve begun, the journey to becoming totally unstoppable.

That’s the end of that post. This is the one that I specialize in more than anything else. I’ve had people tell me, ‘’John, I was reading your post in the checkout line at the grocery store, and I broke down weeping and I couldn’t get out my credit card. And everyone thought I was crazy.’’ So, whenever you can, what I’m talking about with drama, is where people cannot help having

a physical reaction. They want to applaud. They want to cry. They want to laugh. They are so angry. They’re shaking. All right.

It’s a skill to produce that kind of emotion. But if you do, it’s a powerful thing that makes you very hard to compete with.

Distinctions

And then the last one. Distinctions is again, saying something that no one has ever said before. A good example of this, this is a post that I published that ranks for, ‘how to make money blogging.’ It gets something like, I don’t know, 30,000, 40,000 visitors a month. And climbing on this post and its insights from how I took a blog from zero to $100,000 a month in revenue.

That post reveals things that I’ve learned, that every other post on this topic is regurgitated, really blunt, totally un-unique information. So, this is totally unique information you can’t find on any other post. That makes it easy to rank. I’ve never even asked anyone to link to this and it’s on page one. So,  it was effortless. All I did was click publish and this happened. That’s what happens with content that has truly unique distinctions.

 

Influence – Tips I Use to Get My Content in Front o Millions

 

Let’s talk about influence. These are ways to promote your content. So again, the three steps, best content talked about by the most influential people.

And then you optimize your winners. Those are the three steps. This is the second step. Highly influential people talking about you.

 

Here’s the overriding question you want to answer: “Who does Google already trust that I can get to link to me?” And if you’re wondering, how do I know who they already trust? Just go to Google and search for stuff related to your area. Whoever is ranked on the first page, they trust. It’s that easy. Those are the people that you want sharing your content, that you want linking to your content. And the more of them you can get talking about you, the better off you are.

 

Let’s talk about how to do that. Here is a formula and these are just some things to think about.

The Influence Formula

 

Start with Tragic Anonymity

 

Chances are most of you are getting started, and what you do when you’re already very successful is definitely different than what you do when you’re getting started. What you want to go for? I see a lot of people saying, ‘’You know, no one will pay attention to me. I don’t get how to get the influential people talking about me. How do I even get through to them?’’

 

Here’s what you want to aim for when you are in that stage. You want to be so good that you know you deserve to have all of them talking about you. You know you deserve to be on page one but you’re not. And it pisses you off that it’s a tragedy that you know that the people who are ranking above you in the search engines don’t deserve it. That’s what you want to shoot for.

 

Follow Your Obsessions

 

Then next is follow your obsessions. People are always talking about following your passions. I think that’s horrible advice. I’m passionate about cheesecake, but I probably shouldn’t be writing about cheesecake. Right. On the other hand, I’m obsessed with content, attention, helping people, entrepreneurship, improving as a human being. Those are things that I’m totally obsessed with. I think about them every day, I talk about them every day. So those are the things I’ll write about.

 

Get Taken Advantage of

You want to get taken advantage of. And what I mean by this is, if when you start relationships with influential people, and even influential people are really great at creating a feeling of indebtedness. And so, here’s what I mean. A great example is just why was a presenter at Traffic and Conversion Summit 2018.

 

So, Ryan Deiss is a good friend of mine. And I’ve been hanging out with him in Austin. And so, Ryan gives me free advice on what to do with my business. He invites me to be his special guest at war room, which is their mastermind. Every time I talk to Ryan, he’s given me something. And then one day he says, ‘’John, will you fly across the country and speak at Traffic

and Conversion Summit?’’ And I’m like, ‘’Yeah, I guess so.’’ I’m like a recluse. I don’t speak at a lot of conferences, but I took so much advantage of Ryan, and everything that he was giving me that I could not say no to him when he asked me to come out here.

So, a lot of people are worried about getting taken advantage of. I actually think whenever you feel like you’re being taken advantage of, realize that the other person is now becoming indebted to you. That means you can ask for favors later.

Feed Other People’s Content Machine

 

Another one is feed other people’s content machine. The bigger a brand gets, the more content they need. Whether it’s articles, videos, podcast guests, whatever it is. I was a speaker at Traffic and Convergence Summit. What did Ryan need me to do? Feed his content machine. Right. So, this is the one thing you can provide influential people that they will never say

no to, is become a part of feeding their content machine in all of its various

forms.

 

Ask Aggressively

 

And then, the last step is once you’ve built your connections and influence, ask aggressively for shares, for help. This is the one thing in all my years,

at our other company we have like 23,000 students, I’ve had maybe two or

three students, who they asked me for so many things, so insistently, that I

 

got pissed off at them and told them to stop. Those are three of my most

successful students. There is a correlation there.

 

When I was getting started, the people I knew who were influential, who had

large followings, who could connect me with other people, I asked them

for favors every week, every week. If someone doesn’t bite or try to run away when they see you coming, you’re not being aggressive enough. Most people are not nearly insistent enough about promoting what they do.

And think about it this way, this has to be your mindset. You produce the best content on your topic. Then, why are you ashamed to ask other people to share it? If it’s truly the best, if it truly deserves to rank number one, your request is very simple. Say, ‘’I’m following up with you for the third time because, listen, I really believe in what I published. I spent hundreds of hours on this. I think it’s going to kill more people than anything ever published on this topic and I just have to do everything I can to get the word out. Could you just read it and let me know if you feel the same way? If you do, please share this, help me get the word out. ’ That’s your pitch. And if it really is the best, they’ll say yes.

People are always talking about outreach, success rate. So, sending e-mails, out code the influencers, and the industry average is like 20%. If you do everything I talked about here guys, my success rate is 100%. No one ever says no.

 

And the reason why is because it’s the best, unquestionably, the best content

on the topic. And I’ve already done all of these things. I’ve made them feel indebted to me. I’ve fed their content machine. How are they going to say no  if it’s the best and they owe me? So, it never happens. They always say yes.

All right.

 

The big thing here is, the more powerful your network, the easier this is.

That’s how I got this to 76,000 shares. By the way, the only thing I did is

I posted it on my Facebook page and I’d already built so many connections that Tim Ferriss, Ryan Dyce, a whole bunch of people shared this post. So, if you build your network that way, that’s how you make a post really take off.

 

Jon’s Predictions for the Future of Search Rankings

 

Let me close this up with three predictions.

 

Content in the future is going to become the ultimate moat. Warren Buffett talks about building a moat around your business that other people cannot cross. If you rank number one, that’s a kind of moat, and it’s going to be harder and harder for your competitors to beat you.

The other one is that teams of professionals are the future. Most of the best content these days is being produced by teams of researchers, writers, experts, designers.

And the last one is that creating that content is very expensive. And so, it’s likely going to be with big brands who are going to dominate search. So, become one of those big brands as quickly as possible.