MODULE 2 LESSON 8 – TRANSCRIPTION - The Detailed Checklist

What’s up everybody! Welcome to the final lesson of Module 2. This Module was all about showing you how to create your first Power Page. In Module 1 you identified your Linkreators. Uncovered topics that they already link to. And found a Medium Tail Keywords related to that topic. And in this Module you got access to proven Content Frameworks that you can use to outline, write and publish your Power Page. 

In the previous lesson, Lesson 7, you learned all about the Crowdsourced Manual, a Content Framework that allows you to not just write content FOR Linkreators. But WITH Linkreators. And in this lesson I’m going to show you how to publish content using a content framework called The Detailed Checklist. Let’s dive right in. 

When it comes to certain topics, a Go-To Guidebook makes perfect sense. Specifically, topics where there’s a lot of information floating around in different places. But there’s no single place that people can go to learn about that topic. For example, a few years back I realized many different sites were writing about voice search. But the information was scattered all over the place. 

One site would cover how voice search is growing. And another site would talk about how you can optimize for it. Which meant that you literally had to read 10 different posts just to learn about the topic. Voice search also happened to be a Linkreator-friendly topic. So it was a no brainer that I’d turn this into a Go-To Guidebook. 

And like I mentioned in an earlier lesson, this Go-To Guidebook did super well. The thing is, Go-To Guidebooks are great. They’re one of my favorite Content Frameworks. But they don’t always work for every single topic under the sun. I’ll explain. You see, sometimes a topic is one where people are looking for general information. Voice search is a perfect example of this. People looking for things related to voice search are wondering things like: What is voice search exactly? 

What’s the current trend of voice search usage? How does Google Home and Amazon Alexa rank voice search results? Which is why I covered those exact things in my Go-To Guidebook. Yes, my voice search Go-To Guidebook listed out a few steps and strategies. But that wasn’t really the main point. 

The main point was to have a single point of reference for people that wanted to learn about the topic of voice search. A topic like “SEO audits” is completely different. With that topic people want actionable information. And they want a clear outcome that they’ll get from not just learning about the topic. But executing the steps. Well, that’s exactly what the Detailed Checklist is designed to do. 

Unlike a Go-To Guidebook, there really isn’t a whole lot of background info. Instead, it’s all about the steps. For example, here’s a Detailed Checklist from Backlinko. As you can see, it doesn’t really have any general info. It’s 100% steps. In other words: it’s a checklist. And that’s one of the reasons that the page ranks in the top 3 of Google for my target keyword. How about another example? 

This detailed checklist from Backlinko is again 100% focused on actionable steps. That single piece of content has racked up hundreds of backlinks. And the page brings in thousands of visitors from Google every month. So yeah, there’s nothing wrong with Go-To Guidebooks. I’d say that they work well for most topics. But you will come across a topic that’s more geared towards specific steps. 

And a specific outcome. And that’s where The Detailed Checklist Content Framework comes into play. With that, let’s dive right into the steps. Step one is to identify the main benefit. In other words: what does someone interested in this topic want to accomplish? For example, take a topic like “SEO audit”. Obviously, the person wants steps to help them execute an audit. But that’s not their main goal. 

In this case, there’s an underlying reason that someone wants an SEO audit checklist: to improve their rankings in Google. Or let’s say your topic is: choosing a travel credit card. Obviously, someone interested in this topic wants to learn more about travel credit cards. But the deeper need is to find the PERFECT card for them. So yeah, this might seem like I’m being captain obvious here. 

But for your Power Page to stand out, it’s important to have a good feel for the main benefit that someone wants from your checklist. That way, you can engineer your content around that single benefit.
Your second step is to basically reverse engineer the benefit that you just identified. Specifically, you want to figure out the 15-20 steps that someone will need to reach the benefit you spotted in step one. For example, in the case of an SEO audit, someone will need to find indexing issues, delete or combine duplicate content, check to see if their content is optimized for on-page SEO and more. 

Or let’s say you’re creating a checklist to help someone find the best travel credit card for them. In that case, some of your steps would be figuring out their ideal credit limit, seeing how fast they would rack up points and whether their travel patterns conflict with blackout restrictions. Stuff like that. If you’re experienced on your checklist’s topic, this should be an absolute breeze to do. 

But I do have one quick piece of advice for you as you outline your steps: focus 100% highly actionable steps. Remember, this is a checklist. It’s meant to be super actionable. So you may need to not include certain important steps for the simple reason that they’ll take too long. For example, let’s say you’re creating a Detailed Checklist about starting a business. Well, getting a logo made might be a helpful step in the process. But it can take days to execute. 

So you’d want to skip that step. And replace it with something more actionable, like researching 5 similar products on Amazon. For example, in this Detailed Checklist Power Page from Backlinko, the steps are all things that people can do right then and there. Needless to say, there are TONS of things you can do as part of an SEO site audit that are helpful (like auditing hundreds of pages of old content). 

The problem is that those steps take a ton of time. So they’re not really a good fit for a checklist. Once you have 15-20 steps jotted down, it’s time to create your Detailed Checklist Power Page. First up, you have your title. Your Detailed Checklist title is super simple. All you need to do is make sure to include the number of steps and the word “checklist”. 

Here’s an example. Then, it’s time for your intro. Your intro just needs to let people know that they’ve landed on a detailed checklist. And that you’re going to show them how to achieve the benefit that you identified in step one. Next, you want to include a table of contents right after your intro. Your content is probably going to be super long. And a table of contents at the top of the page makes it easier for people to jump to whatever step that they want to get started with first. 

Then, it’s time to list out and describe each step. This part is pretty straightforward. Just give people all the information, resources, tools and links that they need for that specific step. Here’s an example. Overall, this is actually similar to the details that you include in the Expanded List Post. But the steps in your Detailed Checklist are usually a little bit simpler than strategies in an ELP. 

So you may not need quite as much detail. For example, in this ELP I had to really get into the weeds with each strategy. But most of the steps in my Detailed Checklist were much more straightforward. Which meant a lot of the steps were pretty short. Finally, it’s time for your conclusion. All you need to do here is let people know that you’re around for questions. 

Most checklists are pretty technical by nature. So it’s good to remind people that you’re there to help them out if they’re stuck. And when you finish writing your conclusion, you’re done! To recap, in this lesson you learned that the Go-To Guidebook Content Framework is great for certain topics. Specifically, topics where people want to learn general info. But you’ll also come across topics where people want to achieve a specific outcome. 

And that’s where the Detailed Checklist Content Framework comes into play. Like with every lesson in this program, I have a worksheet for you below the video. Also, this is the last lesson in Module 2. Congrats on completing it! You now have a content toolbox that you can use every time you need to publish content that generates traffic and ranks on the first page of Google. And in the next Module, Module 3, we’re going to switch gears. That’s where you’ll learn, step-by-step, how to promote and build links to your content. See you then.