Get Read to Get Ranked


Years ago when I first started doing email newsletters, each new client had questions about writing the introduction to their very first issue. Eventually, I prepared a tip sheet for new clients and also posted the info on my blog thinking it might be useful to others. That was in 2012.

Three years later I realized 2 things: the advice I was giving needed to be refined/updated and this was the top-performing post on my blog (by far!) so others were indeed finding it useful. I published a refreshed version with a similar subject line. That was in 2015.

Now you can see that these two posts account for a huge chunk of the traffic:

all-time stats 2010-2019

And you can see what that organic traffic is searching:

all-time stats as of 2010-2019

These readers didn't come to my blog because I did something magic to get Google to rank the posts. People came (and still come) because it's a topic they're interested in and the information is useful. (If you search 'write newsletter introduction', you should find me on page 1 right after the paid ads.)

People are what has caused Google to show my posts when they search. Google likes our content when real people like our content. It's not the other way around.

Getting people to like your content requires two things: writing (or otherwise creating) the content and then getting it in front of people who will find it interesting or useful.

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