If you want your blog to grow organically, you have to play the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) game. The better your understanding of SEO is, the more likely you are to find a larger audience.

In this article, I’ll teach you my five-step process to identifying which keywords are worth pursuing. Let’s get to it!

Step 1: Research Potential Keywords Using Ubersuggest

There are a lot of tools you can use for keyword research. As far as sheer volume data goes, my top pick is Google Keyword Planner. However, Keyword Planner is not the only good option.

These days, I’ve become a huge fan of Neil Patels’ Ubersuggest tool. It’s a user-friendly keyword-research service that you can use for free (with some limits) and it enables you to navigate keyword suggestions using multiple categories.

For example, if you look up the search term “paella” (which I love), Ubersuggest returns over 500 keyword ideas:

As you can see, keyword ideas are separated into SUGGESTIONS, RELATED, QUESTIONS, PREPOSITIONS, AND COMPARISONS. Usually, long-tail keywords are the easiest for newer blogs to rank for since there’s less competition. If you take a peek into the QUESTIONS, PREPOSITIONS, and COMPARISONS tabs, you’ll find plenty of viable long-tail options:

More importantly, Ubersuggest includes some of the most reliable difficulty scores in the field, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

For now, here’s what I want you to do with any potential keyword ideas you have:

1. Look up long-tail variants using the filters I mentioned above (QUESTIONS, PREPOSITIONS, and COMPARISONS).
2. Make a list of any relevant suggestions with search volumes of ten or above.
3. Separate the keyword suggestions with the highest search volumes (numbers in the hundreds).

At this stage, you want to put together two lists of potential keywords. One list will include options with high-search volumes and the second will cover the rest. 

For the best results, you want to focus on the list of options with decent search volume and use the others as secondary keywords throughout your content. However, we still have a lot of filtering to do, which brings us to difficulty scores.

Step 2: Analyze Keyword Difficulty Scores

Most keyword research tools include what we call difficulty scores for each suggestion they give you (unless they don’t have enough data). In a nutshell, that score is a number from one to ten that tells you how hard it is to rank for that specific keyword.

For a new blog, your ideal difficulty score should be between 0-20. That range tells you a specific keyword can be vert easy to rank for. However, keywords with those scores tend to have very small search volumes (hence the low level of competition):

Since you may not find many keyword opportunities worth pursuing within that range, you need to aim higher. A happy medium, for me, is within the 20-50 difficulty score range.

That range tells you a specific keyword has traffic and that there’s competition, but not so high that you can’t beat them. Scores higher than 50, on the other hand, are extremely difficult to rank for with a new website that doesn’t have much authority.

Now that you know how difficulty scores work, let’s prune the list of keywords you put together during step number one. Go ahead and remove any results with difficulty scores over 50.

To make your life easier, I suggest you put together all this information in a spreadsheet. We’re going to keep adding more data, so an organized approach will make your life easier.

Step 3: See What Your Competitors Are Doing

The true challenge when it comes to ranking for a keyword is doing a better job than your competitors. To do that, you need to do some research.

That means taking the keywords you’ve put together so far, one by one, running Google searches and analyzing the results. For example, let’s say you want to target the keyword “jambalaya vs paella” (sorry if this is making you hungry). Here are the top results:

Most of the top results are simple breakdowns of the differences between both recipes. However, once you open them, here’s a breakdown of those top three results:

1. A simple blog post with a recipe and little to no formatting (which is a big no-no).
2. We have a forum thread with a couple dozen responses.
3. A full-blown post including subheadings, lists, full recipe instructions, and even a video.

Out of all those results, only the third one would be hard to ‘beat’ since it’s very comprehensive. To do so, you’d need to write a more thorough piece with better formatting, pictures, and keyword use.

Despite that outlier, that quick research shows it would be easy to rank for the “jambalaya vs paella” search term. Getting the first spot would take more effort, but it’s a keyword that can give you an easy win.

This research should also give you insight into what type of content to write for each keyword. Go ahead and add that information to your list next to each search term, so you know what type of ideas to build around it.

Step 4: Look Up Related Keywords That You Can Use

There’s another nugget of information we can take from Google search results when it comes to potential keywords. If you look up any search term you’re interested in and scroll to the bottom of the results, you’ll see this:

Most keyword research tools will give you related search term information. However, Google search results filter that data down to the most relevant terms.

What I like to do is take those related keywords and determine which ones I can use within the content I want to write about. For this example, our best bet would be to write a thorough tutorial on how to cook jambalaya and paella and the differences between both recipes (bonus points if you include their stories as well).

With that in mind, we can throw out two of the related search terms you see above:

1. Jambalaya vs gumbo
2. Gumbo recipe

Those two are not relevant to our imaginary audience, so including them wouldn’t be necessary. Now, take the remaining keywords and add them to your spreadsheet. Here’s what a single entry in your list should look like:

That right there is all the information you need to start putting together a content calendar that targets the keywords with the best chance to get you traffic in the short-term.

What order to tackle that content in depends on you. I’d recommend starting with the keywords that have a good difficulty score and search volume ratio. However, those tend to be unicorns and you want to publish content often, so you can proceed in any order you want.

Conclusion

Keyword research goes well beyond being able to look up popular search terms. You need to be able to identify which opportunities are worth pursuing, what terms can give you the best short-term returns, and how to beat your competitors when it comes to content.

I’m not going to lie, that’s all a lot of work. However, if you put a few hours aside every month or two, it’s perfectly possible to plan a content calendar that will yield you the best results possible. Here’s how to get started:

1. Research potential keywords using Ubersuggest.
2. Analyze keyword difficulty scores. 
3. See what your competitors are doing.
4. Look up related keywords that you can use.

Do you have any questions about how to determine which keywords are worth pursuing? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below.

The post How to Find High-Value Keywords For Your Blog appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.

If you don’t have the time to customize a blog or a website from scratch, you can benefit from using WordPress. Some services do all the heavy lifting for you, including installing the templates and tools you need to start working right away.

In this article, we’re going to introduce you to a service that lets you set up a fully working WordPress blog or freelance portfolio in minutes and takes care of maintenance for you. Let’s talk about our new Propel Site service!

Why Use Propel Site for Your Portfolio or Blog

When it comes to websites, most people look for the cheapest hosting service they can find. After all, if you don’t have much experience running a blog or setting up a portfolio, you don’t want to spend too much money on getting everything ready.

Here’s the problem, though – not all hosting services offer the same quality of service. With ‘cheap’ hosting plans (around $5-10 or less per month) you usually get a shared service with few extras. That can work if you choose a good provider and you know your way around WordPress, but for first-time users, it can be a headache.

Propel Site, on the other hand, is what we call a managed WordPress hosting service. To illustrate what that means, here’s how the process of launching a new website with Propel Site works:

1. You choose a ready-to-go WordPress template or design for your site.
2. You choose what kind of plan you want to use.
3. You sit back while we put together your website.
4. When the site is ready, you get to use several pre-built pages depending on your needs, which you can quickly and fully customize.
5. Propel Site takes care of website maintenance for you (backups, updates, site optimization, and more).

The goal of managed WordPress hosting is to provide you with a more hands-off service. Propel Site takes care of working out all the kinks from website setup to maintenance so you can focus on writing blog posts and updating your portfolio.

How to Create a Blog or a Freelance Writer’s Portfolio Using Propel Site (4 Steps)

Propel Site is different from other WordPress web hosts in that you can start designing your site before you even sign up. Let’s talk about how that works!

Step 1: Choose a Blog or Portfolio Blueprint

Usually, you don’t get to choose and install a WordPress theme until after your site is up. Using Propel Site, you can pick from a broad selection of themes perfect for blogs and portfolios before you even sign up so you know what you’ll be getting:

All the themes we use include a selection of pre-built pages that fit most websites. With those pre-built pages, you can jump right in with customization such as changing colors, adding images, and uploading your logo. Then, you’re in a business!

Another plus of being able to select themes upfront is that you can look for reviews and comparisons before you sign up for anything. All of the themes you can choose from are premium options and they’re included with your subscription.

Once you find the perfect theme for your freelance site, mouse over it and click on the option that says Launch Site.

Step 2: Select a Service Plan

Unlike other hosting providers, Propel Site keeps it simple when it comes to selecting a plan. You can choose between a monthly or a yearly payment schedule, but in either case, you get the same features and performance:

On top of the features we’d already mentioned, you also get access to premium Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins, a visual builder, caching, and lead generation tools. All of those plugins come ready to go as soon as your website is up.

Go ahead and select the payment schedule you prefer, then click on the LAUNCH SITE NOW button.

Step 3: Complete Your Website Setup

Now comes the ‘boring’ part of website setup. You’ll need to fill out a simple contact information form and select a payment method:

Propel Site supports all major credit and debit card providers and it processes purchases using Stripe, so you can use your preferred method.

Step 4: Customize Your WordPress Blog or Portfolio

As soon as your website is ready, you’ll be able to log into WordPress and get access to your dashboard. From here, you can tweak every aspect of your site using the Block Editor and the WordPress customizer:

Remember that with Propel Site, you get a website with several pre-built pages set up for you. That means instead of starting from scratch, you can customize the pages you need in a matter of minutes. Once they’re ready, you can get to work on your website’s content!

Conclusion

If you’re a DIY-kind of person and you have experience using WordPress, then you can choose any web host or platform you want. However, if you’re working on your first blog or you don’t have the technical skills to create an online portfolio, a service such as Propel Site can make your life a lot easier.

As most managed WordPress hosting providers do, Propel Site costs a bit more than cheap shared plans. For that price, though, you get a white-glove hosting service that sets up a WordPress website for you and takes care of maintenance tasks. Plus, you get access to WordPress experts that can help you with any questions you might have.

Do you have any questions about how to use Propel Site? Ask away in the comments section below!

The post How to Create a Blog or a Freelance Writer’s Portfolio Using Propel Site appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.

Think about your blog as a library. It needs to be inviting, easy to move through, and contain all the resources your readers are looking for. To tick all those boxes, you need a user-friendly WordPress blog.

In this article, we’re going to discuss precisely what ‘user-friendly’ means. Then we’ll go over five tips to help you create a WordPress blog that’s a joy to use. Let’s get to it!

What Makes for a User-Friendly Blog?

‘User-friendly’ is a hard concept to define. It’s a term that we use to describe the experience of using a website or an app. If it’s too hard to interact with or navigate, then we can say the User Experience (UX) is terrible.

A negative user experience can have a significant impact on your blog’s success. If visitors don’t enjoy using your blog, they’re much less likely to come back or even take the time to read your content.

That means all the effort you put into your blog posts can amount to nothing if the website itself isn’t user-friendly. To give you an example, our own website is designed to be as easy to use as possible:

If you can’t find the content you need or you think our blog is too hard to use, let us know! In the meantime, let’s break down how to make your blog more user friendly.

5 Tips to Design a User-Friendly WordPress Blog

Starting a blog using WordPress is easy. Ensuring it’s user friendly isn’t all that complicated either, as long as you keep the following five tips in mind.

1. Choose a Responsive Theme Without Too Much Clutter

Unless you’re publishing multiple articles per day or selling products online, there’s no reason for your blog to feature a cluttered homepage. Ideally, you’ll choose a WordPress theme with a ‘clean’ design that enables visitors to find the content they need.

You don’t even have to pay for a premium theme either. There are a lot of free WordPress themes for blogs that offer fantastic user experiences. My two personal favorites are Neve and Astra:

Changing themes tends to be quite a chore the more your website grows. Ideally, you’ll stick with the same theme for as long as it offers all the features you need, so choose wisely!

2. Simplify Your Navigation Menu and Calls to Action

The two primary ways that readers move throughout your blog are your navigation menu and Calls to Action (CTA). In every situation, your menu needs to be easily accessible, links should be readable, and clicking on them should be simple:

The same applies for CTAs, particularly on mobile devices. On smaller screens, interacting with links and buttons can be more cumbersome. An easy solution to that problem is to increase their size a little and to test pages using your own mobile devices.

3. Use Fonts that Are Easy to Read

There are a lot of ways to use custom fonts with WordPress. However, when it comes to fonts, it’s essential that you stick with options that are easy to understand.

Take these two typefaces, for example, both from Google Fonts:

Although it’s easy to read both, the font to the right will look better in almost every situation, regardless of its size. ‘Handwritten’ designs, on the other hand, are not the best option for blogs since they can annoying pretty fast.

My recommendation is – if you want to experiment with fonts, keep the funky options for logos and other graphic elements. For your blog posts and headings, stick with safe options that are easy to read.

4. Craft Blog Posts For Skimmers

One sad fact of the modern internet is that in most cases, people don’t read articles or any type of page in full. Instead, they ‘skim’ or jump straight to the sections or content they want to see, ignoring everything else.

That is one of the reasons most blogs make it a point to structure their content using plenty of subheadings, images, lists, tables, and images. All those elements make for a more engaging reading experience, but they also make blog posts more skimmable.

On top of that, proper formatting also has an impact on your blog’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By following best practices, you both make your content easier to read and to find through search engines.

5. Optimize Your Blog’s Loading Times

No one likes a slow website and most people are a lot less patient than you might imagine. Studies show that if your blog takes over two seconds to load, you begin losing a lot of potential visitors who decide to look elsewhere for what they want.

If you’ve never tested your blog’s loading times, there are plenty of ways to do it. For example, you can use GTmetrix. All you have to do is enter the URL and the service will tell you how long it takes to load that page:

For your blog, we recommend testing the homepage. That should be a good indicator of how optimized your website is in general. If your results are below two seconds, you’re well ahead of the pack. 

On the other hand, if your numbers aren’t that good, there are plenty of things you can do to optimize your blog’s performance. Those include:

• Compressing images before or as you upload them to WordPress.
• Using a better web hosting service (we recommend Bluehost).
• Choosing a well-optimized WordPress theme (both Neve and Astra are excellent in this regard).

Those are just some starting tips, but there’s plenty more to unpack when it comes to website optimization. If you want to make your blog as user friendly as possible, I recommend you keep a close eye on its loading times.

Conclusion

The concept of a ‘user-friendly’ website is hard to pin down. There are a million little things you can do to make sure your blog is more fun to use. Little by little, those changes make for a better user experience. When you combine that with amazing blog posts, you have a winning hand.

If you’re not sure how to design a user-friendly WordPress blog, here’s where to start:

1. Choose a responsive theme without too much clutter.
2. Make sure your navigation menu and CTAs are easy to interact with.
3. Use fonts that are easy to read.
4. Craft blog posts for skimmers.
5. Optimize your blog’s loading times.

Do you have any questions about how to improve the user experience on your WordPress blog? Let’s go over them in the comments section below!

The post How to Design a User-Friendly WordPress Blog appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.

Some examples of highly-contested niches include finance and (surprisingly) psychedelics. Those are two examples that are contested for very different reasons. In either case, you’ll need a lot of experience to get the best jobs within those two fields.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the five hardest freelance writing niches to break into. I’ll also provide you with some tips for the fields I have experience working in, so let’s get to it!

1. Finance Writing

Breaking into finance writing is difficult for several reasons. For one, people don’t want to take financial advice from someone without a career or experience in the field.

If you’re an investment banker turned freelance writer, then you’re in the clear. You’re about as rare as a unicorn, so finding writing jobs with that impressive resume should be easy.

For regular mortals like us, finance a niche is a little harder. You can find job openings, but the requirements are usually a bit out there:

Your best bet, if you want to become a finance writer is to launch a blog of your own that doubles as a portfolio. If you have a blog full of financial writing samples, that’s going to be impressive enough to get you in the door for a lot of jobs.

Quick note: If you’re looking for jobs in cryptocurrency writing, it’s important to understand there aren’t all that many paying publications. Even those that do hire freelance writers often don’t offer the best rates.

2. Health and Fitness

The bar for health and fitness is lower than with finance. Few people expect to have doctors on staff writing articles about health tips and citing dozens of studies to back them up.

The downside of that lower bar is there is a lot of competition for health and fitness writing. In fact, those are perhaps the two most contested niches in the internet.

If you want to be taken seriously, there are two things you can do to boost your hireability as a health and fitness freelance writer:

1. Cultivate a social media following. If you have a strong social media presence running health and/or fitness accounts, that can serve as your calling card for writing jobs.
2. Look for guest post placements. A lot of health and fitness blogs are always open to guest posts and they offer a great way to start working on your portfolio.

Building a reputation as a writer in health and fitness is difficult, but it’s also one of the fields that offers the most work. A lot of publications in this nice pay their contributors very well, but once again – you need to bring a lot to the table.

For new writers, you can follow both of the recommendations above while looking for entry level jobs in the field. Those jobs may not pay too much, but they can provide you with some pieces to add to your portfolio.

3. Psychedelics

For some strange reason, there are a lot of writers that advertise their services for projects about psychedelics. To be fair, it’s an incredibly interesting niche, but it’s also one with very little hiring potential.

Although the legal drug industry is flourishing in a lot of countries around the world, there’s not yet a lot of demand for content marketing within the field.

Content marketing can be anything from top-ten lists to guides on where to buy psychedelics, and more. Those types of articles are the bread and butter for freelance writers and if there isn’t enough demand within a field, it’s impossible to make a decent living in it.

For now, if you love to write about psychedelics, keep that as a hobby. Look into starting your own blog just for fun and if the field continues to grow, at some point, you’ll be perfectly positioned to benefit from it.

4. Gaming

Gaming is another example of a field where making a living as a freelance writer is nearly impossible. Although there’s a lot of demand, most big gaming publications tend to stick with in-house writers.

The reason why it’s so hard to break into writing about games is because there are a lot of people willing to do it for free. Those that do get paid tend to follow more traditional career paths to end up there.

If you want to build a reputation for writing about video games, your best bet is to start with guest posting for big publications. Keep in mind, though – this niche lends itself more to a hobby than to a career.

5. Tech Writing

Tech writing is perhaps one of the most lucrative and contested fields in the market. However, it stands out because there are so many sub-niches to try your hand at that getting started may not be as daunting.

Some examples of popular tech niches for freelance writers include:

• E-commerce
• WordPress
• Software reviews and comparisons
• Software documentation

Although most writing jobs in this category require a technical background, they tend to be much more relaxed in terms of requirements. Unlike with legal or finance writing, few people will ask to see your credentials for a tech job.

What you will need is a portfolio with pieces that show you have some level of expertise in whichever area you want to break into. Armed with that and a little persistence, you should have little difficulty finding well-paying jobs.

Conclusion

If you want to make a career as a freelance writer in a highly competitive niche, you better bring a lot of previous experience to the table. That’s the ‘easiest’ way to break into a field such as finance, law, or health as a freelance writer.

If you don’t have a background in those fields, you’ll need to get there step by step. That means taking low-level jobs, publishing your own content, and developing a portfolio that’s strong enough to help you stand out.

What do you think is the most contested niche in freelance writing? Share your experiences in the comments section below!

The post What Are the Most Contested Fields for Freelance Writers? appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.

That fear of losing traffic pushes a lot of clients to be very proactive about checking for plagiarism in your content. As a freelance writer, it might even seem like a good idea to use a plagiarism checker yourself to make sure your content doesn’t raise any red flags.

In my experience, though, plagiarism checkers are a waste of time. Today, we’re going to talk about why that is and how they work. Let’s get to it!

What Are Plagiarism Checkers?

Plagiarism checkers are ‘simple’ tools that look for duplicates of your content across the web. You can do that yourself using a search engine, of course, but plagiarism checkers enable you to compare entire pages of content with complex formatting.

The goal of plagiarism checkers is simple – they help you weed out instances of duplicate content so you can avoid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) penalties. If you happen to work with a freelance writer with a penchant for stealing content, these tools can also help you uncover them.

On paper, plagiarism checkers sound like a pretty good deal. However, in practice, they don’t always provide the best results.

How Plagiarism Checkers Work

There are a lot of tools you can use to check for plagiarized content on the web. One of the most popular options happens to be a built-in checker within the Grammarly grammar checker (one of my favorite editing tools).

That plagiarism checker can take full articles and look up instances of duplicate content across the web in a matter of seconds. For example, here’s what comes up when I used that tool to analyze this very article:

As you can see, the checker flagged one line from the introduction and found that same wording in a Reddit article about religion. The phrase itself is about as generic as they come:

“Today, we’re going to talk about why that …”

If you look up that exact phrase in Google using double-quotes (so it finds instances of that wording), you get 92,700 results:

Naturally, I did not plagiarize over 90,000 sources to come up with that phrase. The plagiarism checker did its work, but the results are, of course, completely bogus.

Anyone with common sense can see that, but in some cases, you’ll run into clients that don’t care at all. If they see a line getting flagged by their plagiarism checker, they’ll come at you.

Why You Shouldn’t Pay for a Plagiarism Checker as a Freelancer

The two main reasons why it doesn’t make sense to pay for a plagiarism checker as a freelance writer are as follows:

1. They tend to be very innacurate
2. You know you didn’t plagiarize any content because you’re the freaking writer

If you’re thinking about spending money on a plagiarism checker service, don’t. Instead, focus on other tools or services that can make your job as a freelance writer easier. Use a grammar checker, buy a better chair, or get a nice plant to liven up your work desk. Those are all much better investments.

The real problem is that you may run into clients that use plagiarism checkers and don’t pay attention to what the results tell them. In my experience, some clients will see a generic phrase getting flagged and dump entire pages of content over it.

If you’re smart, you’ll dump those problem clients and focus on finding better freelance opportunities. They’re out there, so don’t waste your time with blogs or customers that don’t pay you decent rates or that have unreasonable requirements.

Conclusion

Although plagiarism checkers can be relatively cheap, they’re an unnecessary tool for most freelance writers. Even the best plagiarism checkers tend to return a lot of erroneous results, which can result in disputes with clients.

If a client insists on running your content through a plagiarism checker, that’s their prerogative. However, you shouldn’t waste your money on using one since you know the content you write is original. There are a lot of other tools that can make your life easier as a freelance writer, plenty of which are free, so focus on those.

Do you have any questions about plagiarism checkers? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

Image credit: Pixabay.

The post Why You Shouldn’t Use a Plagiarism Checker as a Freelance Writer appeared first on Leaving Work Behind.