THE SECRET TO RAPID BLOG

GROWTH

MODULE 1 LESSON 2
TRANSCRIPTION
MODULE 1 LESSON 2 TRANSCRIPTION THE SECRET TO RAPID BLOG GROWTH

TRANSC R I P T I O N

The Secret to Rapid Blog Growth

Welcome to the second lesson of module one.

Let me kick off this lesson with a quick story.

When I first launched the Backlinko blog, I followed all the advice that I read about blogging to a T and
almost everything I read said the same exact thing: “If you want to grow your blog, you need to publish
a new post every week. Publishing on a consistent basis is the secret to building an audience.”.

So that’s what I did. I pushed out a new blog post every single week. Some weeks I didn’t have anything
good to publish, but I put something out there anyway.

For example, I remember one week I had no idea what to write about, so I published this Q and A post.
It wasn’t a great post, in fact, I actually deleted it a few months later, but I felt like I needed to publish
something. After all, that’s what all the so-called blogging experts said I was supposed to do.

Now, in some ways, the advice to publish content on a regular basis did work. Take a look at my traffic
numbers from the early days of Backlinko. Yes, my traffic was technically growing, but it was super
slow, too slow to make all the effort worthwhile.

I remember at the time being super frustrated. I was putting a ton of work into my blog and all I was
getting in return was a few extra visitors.

Then one day, everything changed. I was working on a big blog post, a list of Google’s potential and
confirmed ranking factors.

I was about halfway done when I looked up from my laptop and I realized that published day was
tomorrow and I still had a ton of work left. There was no way I was going to finish the post in time.

Honestly, I wasn’t really sure what to do. On one hand, I felt really tied to my once a week publishing
schedule. On the other hand, I knew this post was going to take a lot of extra time to make something
truly great.

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In the end, I decided to skip my usual Thursday publish date. It honestly felt really weird not to publish
something on Thursday, but I had a gut feeling it was the right move.

Well, Thursday came and went and no one even noticed that it didn’t publish a new post and my traffic
stayed pretty much the same. Hmm. Interesting.

And the next week might huge post was ready. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out and I was
glad that I took the extra time to make it great.

Now, things didn’t happen overnight and it took work to get the word out. But at the end of the day,
that single post completely changed the course of my blog.

That post was and is like a magnet for links, social shares and traffic. To date that single post has
brought in over 600,000 visitors and it’s been linked to literally thousands of times.

And my Google ranking factors post taught me a valuable lesson about blogging. Most people say
that the secrets to growing a blog is to publish content on a consistent basis, but that’s a myth.

The real secret to getting lots of traffic to your blog is to publish less often, but publish amazing stuff
every single time.

And once I learned that lesson, my blog’s growth went from barely noticeable to insanely fast.

Now, why did I share this story with you? It’s not to show you how smart I am. Actually the complete
opposite.

I shared this with you to show you what’s possible when you grow your blog the right way.

You may nothave an email list or an audience. You might not even have a blog yet and that’s totally fine.

The takeaway lesson I want you to get is this. If you want people to visit, talk about and share your blog,
you need to put out amazing stuff, which is exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this course
step by step.

And what’s one of the easiest ways to put out amazing content? Publishing an RLL.

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RLL stands for “Ridiculously Long List” and it’s one of the best shortcuts out there to help you quickly
grow your blog.

I already showed you my Google ranking factors post. That post is an RLL. In total the post contains
over 200 items, which helps us stand out from most other list posts that only contain about 20 to 25.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons that a RLL works. It helps your blog instantly stand out.

You probably seen the stat that there are 2 million blog posts published every day. 2 million!

So if you just publish the same old “15 weight loss tips” or “20 ways to save money on car insurance”
type of stuff, it’s going to be impossible for you to stand out.

Fortunately, a ridiculously long list helps you solve this whole, “How do I stand out?” problem.

How?

Because your RLL covers a lot of material on a single page, more material than any other blog in your
niche, and because your content is so thorough, it helps you and your blog stand out.

Now, it’s one thing to have your blog stand out, but you also want people to share content on social
media and link to it from their blog.

And a RLL can help with that too.

According to this study I did with BuzzSumo, longer content like an RLL get significantly more social
shares than shorter posts. This same study also found that list post get more shares than any other
content format and an RLL combines these two proven approaches into a single package and I’ve seen
this research play out in the real world time and time again with dozens of different blogs and all sorts
of different industries.

For example, take a look at this massive list of a hundred plus ways to conserve water.

Is conserving water a topic that excites a lot of people? Probably not. Despite being on a pretty dry
topic, that post has racked up tons of shares and links.

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How about another example, this list of a hundred paleo diet recipes.

This is an absolutely insane list of recipes on a single page and because it’s so thorough, it’s been
shared like crazy.

Besides helping your blog stand out an RLL is great for getting you and your blog instantcredibility.

Think about it. With an RLL, you’re listing out pretty much everything there is to know about a topic
in a single post.

You’re also deciding what should and shouldn’t be included on your list, so even though your list is
insanely long, there’s an element of curation involved.

And all of this requires a certain level of expertise and when people see an RLL on your site, they’ll say:
“This is an incredible resource! It must have taken a real expert to put this together!”.

For example, after I published my Google ranking factors posts, I noticed that more and more people
started to refer to me as an SEO expert. They thought that because I had curated this list of Google
ranking factors that I cracked the code on Google’s top secret algorithm. I wish...

Of course you can’t just publish Ridiculously Long List over and over again on your blog.

There are lots of other blog post formats and templates that work well too and I’ll cover those in
Module 2.

But for now, let me show you the exact first steps to help you create your first Ridiculously Long List.

First, find a topic for your Ridiculously Long List.

Next, outline your posts, then fill in the blanks.

Finally, publish and promote.

Of course, this is an oversimplified version of this process.

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There are a lot of details and nuances that can make or break this strategy.

That’s why in the next two lessons, we’re going to deep dive into each of these steps and I’ll show you
exactly how to create a Ridiculously Long List.

So let’s dive right in with step number one of this process - Find a topic for your RLL.

Your ridiculously long lists can technically be about anything, but the thing is as you’re about to see,
creating an RLL takes some work.

So you want to make sure that you do everything you can to prime your RLL for success before you
hit publish.

And choosing the right topic is a big part of that.

Specifically, you want your RLL topic to check off these three boxes:

• Is this a topic that people care about?

Let’s break each of these down.

First, you want to make sure that you have a topic that people actually care about. To be clear. This
doesn’t mean that you need to pick a controversial topic. In fact, I usually recommend staying away
from that stuff. It’s not worth the hassle.

As long as people are interested in your topic, you’re good to go. It doesn’t have to be some sort of hot
button, controversial topic.

For example, remember that ways to save water lists that I mentioned earlier. There’s nothing remotely
controversial there, but it’s a topic that people care about so it did well.

How about another example? Here’s a ridiculously long list from my site - SEO tools, the complete list.

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Is “SEO tools” a topic that people lose sleep over? No, but people do care about it. In fact, one of the most
common questions that I used to get was: “What SEO tools do you use and recommend?”, which showed
me that people cared about SEO tools and it inspired me to create a Ridiculously Long List on that topic.

Next, you should check to see if you’re going to be able to list out at least a hundred items on your
potential topic.

I have more details on this in the worksheet, but for now, just keep in mind that a hundred items
is pretty much the minimum for an RLL. So if you don’t think you can confidently hit a hundred items,
it’s probably best to go with a different topic.

For example, in the case of my tools posts, I knew that there were hundreds of marketing tools and
software on the market, so I was pretty confident that I could hit that hundred mark without breaking
a sweat.

But let’s say your topic is something like “smartphones”. Is it realistic to list out a hundred different
types of smartphones? Nope. So you’re better off going with a topic like “the best iPhone apps”. That
topic is much easier to create a Ridiculously Long List around.

Finally, you want to see if there are any other RLLs out there on your topic.

In the case of my SEO tools posts, they were plenty of tool lists on other blogs, but they usually only
listed about 20 to 30 tools. None of them even got close to a hundred so I knew that my RLL would really
stand out.

So what should you do if you see a really high quality RLL out there on your exact topic? Honestly, you
probably want to go with a different topic. It’s going to be really hard to create something that com-
pletely overshadows and dominates an RLL that already exists.

For example, a few years ago, someone created their own list of Google ranking factors. In many ways,
this RLL is way better than mine. It’s more comprehensive, more up to date and added a cool filtering
system that my posts didn’t have.

So even though this guy post is clearly better than mine, it didn’t do that great.

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It got a few shares after it first came out, but things quickly died down and last I checked according
to Ahrefs, my post has 13 times more backlinks than his, and if this person put this same level of effort
into an original topic, I could almost guarantee that he would have seen much better results.

With that, let’s take one last look at the SEO tools post that I mentioned earlier.

All in all, this post did amazingly well. It brought in a huge spike of traffic on day one and for all
the reasons I mentioned earlier, lots of people continue to share my RLL on Twitter, Facebook
and LinkedIn.

All of these social shares along with Google rankings are like a pipeline of targeted traffic to my blog.

In fact, this single post brought in 10,553 visitors last month and a good chunk of its success was due
to the fact that it made sure that the topic checked all three boxes before I wrote a single word.

In fact, when I look back at it, my Google ranking factors post and my SEO tools post were the two
pieces of content that built my blog to where it is today and they’re both RLLs.

And now it’s time for you to find a topic for your Ridiculously Long List and to get started with that,
download the worksheet below this video.

The worksheet will help you brainstorm topics for your RLL. It’ll also help you pick the right topic
for you.

Then in the next lesson, I’ll show you exactly how to plan, outline, and write your RLL.

So if you’ve ever struggled with starting or finishing a blog post, you’ll love how simple an RLL can be.

But for now, go ahead and download the worksheet for this lesson and I’ll see you in the next video.