220: SEO for Bloggers: How to Get More Free Traffic to Your Website


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Joseph Hogue is a Marine Corps veteran, a former investment analyst, an author, a blogger, a freelancer, and an all-around super smart dude.

We met through FinCon and hit it off right away. Maybe because we have the same haircut??

He blogs at MyWorkFromHomeMoney.com (and several other sites) and his latest book is called Google SEO for Bloggers: Easy Search Engine Optimization and Website Marketing for Google Love.

Joseph runs a number of blogs, and through smart keyword research, great content, and some techniques he uses to attract lots of high authority backlinks, Joseph has seen his traffic, and more importantly his revenue increase quickly in the last two years.

Note: if you don’t have a blog yet, my free video course will help you get started.

Search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t need to be difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. Joseph uses a simple process to find keywords with “buyer intent”, optimizes his content with on-page SEO, and uses some innovative, but simple techniques to generate powerful backlinks that Google will love and in turn boost your posts in the search results.

Tune in to hear Joseph’s SEO tips, techniques, and hacks. He shares examples of his own link building techniques, loads of useful tools to help you gain that competitive advantage over others in your niche, and ultimately ways you can increase your blog revenue.

Free Bonus: Download Joseph’s Top SEO Tips and Hacks

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Learn:

  • How you can increase your traffic by using a few “simple” SEO prinicples.
  • How Joseph gains a competitive advantage over other bloggers with his SEO techniques.
  • The SEO process Joseph uses before hitting “publish” on each new blog post.
  • How Joseph 3x’d his traffic by republishing old posts.
  • The 3-step keyword research process Joseph uses that takes no more than 10-15 minutes.
  • His three top link building techniques that generate dozens of high authority links.
  • How to make and share infographics to attract backlinks.
  • How contextual links to specific pages can increase traffic to your money pages.
  • Joseph’s #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.

Links:

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Nick Loper

About the Author

Nick Loper is a side hustle expert who loves helping people earn more money and start businesses they care about. He hosts the award-winning Side Hustle Show, where he's interviewed over 500 successful entrepreneurs, and is the bestselling author of Buy Buttons, The Side Hustle, and $1,000 100 Ways.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Forbes, TIME, Newsweek, Business Insider, MSN, Yahoo Finance, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Bankrate, Hubspot, Ahrefs, Shopify, Investopedia, VICE, Vox, Mashable, ChooseFI, Bigger Pockets, The Penny Hoarder, GoBankingRates, and more.

13 thoughts on “220: SEO for Bloggers: How to Get More Free Traffic to Your Website”

  1. Was a great podcast and lots of good content shared – thank you Joseph & Nick!

    Now, I’m not some cynic – really, I’m not! But I typed all the blogs mentioned on Amazon that belong to Joseph into SEM Rush, and didn’t think that the results were over the top.

    PeerFinance101
    My Stock Market Basics
    My Work from Home Money
    Crowd101
    PeerLoansOnline

    Again – I’m not THAT person, trying to cause a stir – I really got some ideas from the interview! Maybe I missed something. Possibly I missed that Joseph has only started using this focus on SEO more recently and that the growth (percentage wise) on some of these sites is impressive, rather than being impressive in absolute numbers?

    I was just a little surprised, as I expected that the great content, freely shared would have come from someone with experience in building much bigger traffic sites, however, as I said – it’s still good if looked at outside of absolute results.

    Any comments appreciated – genuinely interested. Great interview, guys!

    Reply
  2. My understanding is that the measure of ones success online should never be based simply on the volume of traffic or the number of people following you on social media – it is about targeted traffic that purchases from you. If Jospeh’s sites are well targeted and are making him an income that makes his efforts worthwhile, I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss his success or his methods Steve.

    I found this interview to be super helpful. SEO is something that many of us only take a half hearted approach to. It can be overwhelming. Each time I hear more about it I’m inclined to do more. Thanks for sharing your steps and favourite tools Joseph and Nick for asking such great questions.

    Reply
    • What a strange comment, Linda. Nowhere in my comment did I, “dismiss his success or his methods…”

      I found it to be super helpful too, and said as much; and I know what you’re saying about targeted traffic as well.

      But I’m talking about the interview. The focus here was on SEO for traffic. I do not think I’m being unreasonably curious when I mention that his sites are getting something like 2k visits per month (some much less – I’ll have to double check).

      To be honest, there seems to be a disconnect, in my humble opinion, between the quality of content offered in the interview and what I see as the results of that.
      As an appreciated listener of Nick’s podcast I’m quite entitled to, ‘interrogate’ the interviewee, in a friendly and well-meaning manner.

      What I find interesting is that most interviewees tend to monitor the comments of the ‘show notes’ of the podcast episode that interviewed them.

      I’d like for nothing more than for Joseph to chime in here. It’s a little interesting that he hasn’t already.

      Nick – your thoughts? Am I out of line? If so, I’ll happily retract my comments.

      Reply
      • I dunno.
        Side topic:
        Nick – have you researched anything re: the difference between the different tools?

        Plugging the sites into similarweb vs semrush yield TOTALLY different results.

        Take crowd101.com as an example.
        Similarweb says 15k visits in Feb, SEM says 333 visits! Just a slight discrepancy!

        I plugged the initial lot through SEM Rush, which yielded much lower results than similar web.

        Perhaps Joseph is getting great traffic – awesome! And, apologies!

        But this leads to an interesting topic on its own: what on earth is the go with these tools?

        Reply
  3. Interesting, but I would draw the line about the scholarships, giving a scholarship with the motive of doing it for .edu backlinks. A bit too sleazy.

    Reply
    • And also for getting free (or very discounted) content from students.

      He also pretty clearly thought of it as a “scheme.”

      That whole section made him seem like an “I’ll do anything” type versus an “I provide high quality content and then maximize ways to draw traffic” type.

      Reply
    • OK maybe Joe got a bad edit, but I saw this as a win-win. When I was in college I would have gladly taken a $500 scholarship. If I found out about through my school’s blog, and the blog linked to his site for the entry requirements, I don’t see the problem there. There’s a business motivation behind giving the money, sure, (there almost always is) but I wouldn’t call it sleazy.

      Reply
      • I could be wrong, but I don’t think most scholarships are offered with a business motive behind them. Possibly for exposure for service to the community but to purposely do it for SEO juice, I don’t think so. But, I could be wrong. Thanks

        Reply
  4. Great podcast, and a great interview. Thanks Joe + Nick!

    I also think the scholarship idea is a win-win-win. You can donate to a cause that you care about, help out another, and (possibly) land a few back links.

    Before you crucify Joe, please understand he’s not the first one to do this. The guys on Moz were promoting this idea back in 2015 and have a great writeup about it on their site.

    Keep up the good work guys!

    Reply
  5. Hey Joseph,
    I have gone through the article. must say the above information are very informative and useful. Keep writing, so that others can get useful information.

    Reply
  6. hi Nick and Joseph, I so thoroughly enjoyed this podcast and I heard every word during the commute and came back to the site to get more information and disappointed to see some comments here.

    In this world, no one is doing much without any profit, everyone has to feed their families you see and reach their goals. I absolutely love the idea of scholarships, beyond anything you are actually helping out a kid with your hard-earned money, how cool is that. Imagine when you were a kid and you got this opportunity.

    I had to rewind his episode so many times to absorb all the great tips he is giving it for FREE as Nick does and a tiny few do and we are so grateful to have found these great people. I am on to buying the book is why I was here to get the link :-). Happy blogging!

    Reply

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