Hey what’s up everybody? Welcome to Module 5. In the last module you learned all about UX Signals. What they are. Why they’re important. And exactly how to optimize for them. Including specific tactics and strategies for reducing bounce rate, improving Dwell Time and matching your content for search intent.
And in this module, Module 5, I’m going to show you how to scale up everything that you learned in Modules 1 through 4. Specifically, you’re going to learn how to scale the two most critical steps in the SEO That Works system, producing world-class content. And building links. Specifically, this lesson is all about scaling up content production. Let’s dive right in. A few years ago, I had a problem. You see, in the early days of Backlinko, my traffic was all going up super quickly. In fact, it basically doubled every few months. And that was largely thanks to first page rankings for medium tail keywords like “high quality backlinks” and “on page SEO”.
But as time went on, my traffic growth started to stall. At some level, this is normal. For example, let’s say you’re getting 100 visitors per month. Well, if you can get that to 200, you just doubled your traffic. Even though in absolute terms you’re only bringing in another 100 monthly visitors. But let’s say that you’re getting 10,000 visitors to your site every month. Well, doubling that number means bringing in an extra 10k visitors per month. Which is no joke.
So there I was, getting about 200k visitors per month. A good amount of traffic for sure. The thing was, my traffic went from growing super fast, to growing slowly to completely stagnant. At first, I was confused. The strategies, techniques and systems that got me this far shouldn’t just stop working after a while. Well, after poring over my Google Analytics, and my own internal processes, I eventually realized what was happening.
Yes, the strategies that I used to go from zero to 200k visitors per month still worked. That’s why my traffic never declined. But I ultimately hit a wall. And I realized that to go from 200k to 500k to 1 million monthly visitors and beyond, I didn’t need new strategies. I just needed to scale up what I was already doing. So over the next few months I experimented with a number of different ways to scale up content production.
And I eventually developed a system that helped me 4x Backlinko’s content output. Without sacrificing quality. With that, let’s get right into the steps. Step one is to audit your existing content process. This is something that I put off doing for years. And it really hurt me. You see, whether you know it or not, you already have a process for writing, editing, tweaking and publishing content.
In some cases, this process might be you doing every single step. Or it may involve a team. Either way, it’s basically impossible to publish anything decent without these steps happening. And in my case, this process was basically broken. Specifically, I was in charge of every single step. I’d come up with Linkreator-friendly topics. Then find medium tail keywords. Outline each Power Page. Write each Power Page. Edit the content. Take screenshots.
Write and schedule the newsletter announcement. And more.In short, my process was basically me doing everything. Plus, the process wasn’t organized or documented anywhere. It was all in my head. But as soon as I audited every step, I instantly saw areas that could be improved. Or completely outsourced to someone that specializes in that area.
Which leads us to step two, document every step. Now that you’ve audited your existing process, it’s time to break it all down into very small steps. The exact steps will depend on your own content production process. And will sometimes even change depending on the Power Page that you create.
For example, our process for a Go-To Guidebook like this is a little bit different than an Expanded List Post. Specifically, our Go-To Guidebooks have custom illustrations that other content doesn’t. That said, the process itself is really similar for everything that we publish. At a high level here’s what our content production process looks like.
Linkreator topic research, keyword research, choosing a Content Framework, outlining content, writing content, editing content, taking screenshots, creating visuals and design assets, assembling content, quality control and publishing content.
Again, you want to break your process into tiny steps. That way, you can literally look at your process on a single sheet of paper. Step three is to assign people to every step. Now that you’ve documented your process, you want to have someone “in charge” of every step of that process. If you’re just starting out, you might be in charge of every step for now.
And that’s totally fine. Like I mentioned earlier, that was the case with me for the first few years of Backlinko. And it worked really well. But eventually, you’ll probably want to get help with certain areas. And having the documented process that you created in the last step will come in handy here. For example, like I mentioned, my early process was essentially me doing every single step. But I realized early on that I was good at writing.
But I wasn’t especially talented when it came to taking or touching up screenshots. And as soon as I got someone to help with that, it saved me hours on every Power Page. Plus, I hired a pro graphic designer to take and design screenshots. Which meant our screenshots actually came out much better. Over time, I’ve gradually assigned different tasks to different members of the Backlinko team.
Which has saved me countless hours. But it’s also resulted in higher quality content overall. For example, in this early post from Backlinko I designed this little banner thingy myself. Plus, I took all of the screenshots. Not horrible. But not amazing either. Flash forward to today, and our banners look like this. And our screenshots look like this. That’s the power of getting expert help. Now: in your case, maybe things are the complete opposite. You’re great at design.
But writing isn’t a strength. In that case, you probably want to find a pro writer to write your content. Or at least edit your work. Needless to say, hiring a freelance writer isn’t as easy as hiring random people off of Upwork. Because hiring freelance writers is a little bit more involved, I cover this more in-depth later in this lesson. Step number four is to create an organized editorial calendar.
Note how I say “organized”. This is a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. In the early days of Backlinko, our content schedule lived in my head. Which was totally fine when I was doing everything myself. But once I started to get help with content? This “system” was a total nightmare. I’d literally get emails from team members asking: “When does this post come out again?”.
Because there was no single source for them to check. That’s when I decided to slap together a content spreadsheet thing called “Backlinko content ideas”. It was basically a spreadsheet that I already had with content ideas. This time, with dates. For a short period of time, this actually worked. But it still wasn’t organized enough. Not even close. Eventually, I worked with the Backlinko team to create something that was more organized. And even documented some of the steps that needed to be done before we could hit “publish” (like edit the post).
That editorial calendar worked to a certain point. But it was basically impossible to truly scale with what we had. You see, I learned that an organized editorial calendar is the key to scaling up your content production. Without a well-designed calendar, it’s going to be impossible to coordinate everything the right way. So, why is an organized editorial calendar so important?
It’s not the schedule itself. After all, you can easily create a schedule on a Google Sheet. Which is what I did for most of Backlinko’s life. Instead, the main benefit of an editorial calendar is that it makes coordination super easy. Specifically, it gives your team a single source of truth on what’s done, in progress and already done. Which significantly reduces back and forth.
For example, here’s what our current setup looks like. See how every part of the process is listed out? That’s key. That way, it’s super clear what needs to be done for a piece of content to go live. Plus, anyone can check out the calendar to see who is doing what. Which completely eliminates emails like: “what’s the status on that design?” or “Who is going to edit this post?”.
Instead of a million emails, everyone has a single source of truth they can refer to. All you need to do here is create spreadsheet or table with the tasks that you documented in Step #2 laid out. Then, make sure that people on your team assign themselves tasks that they’re working on. And mark them as done as they’re finished.That’s really it. This is actually a really simple thing to set up.
But it makes a huge difference. In fact, besides hiring people to help me with content, this organized editorial calendar is the main thing that helped us scale up Backlinko’s content production. Our last step, a completely optional step, is to hire a freelancer to write content for you. Believe it or not, but I still write essentially every word of content on the Backlinko blog myself.
There are exceptions here or there, like when I got help with this hub. But when I get help with writing, I’m always super transparent about it. And I recommend you do the same. Anyway, this step is optional because you don’t necessarily need to hire someone to help you write. If writing is a strength. Or if you have lots of first-hand knowledge to share.
You may want to still write everything. But get help with other steps in the process, like editing. But if you do decide to hire a freelance writer, here are the 3 keys to finding GREAT writers. Key number one is to find people with first-hand experience on that topic. I think you’ll agree with me when I say that 99.9% of all content published online is complete trash.
And there’s a simple reason for that: the people behind that content have no idea what they’re talking about. In fact, most freelancers write content like this: they open up a Google Doc. Search for the keyword in Google. Open up a bunch of tabs. And regurgitate what’s already out there. No wonder most content is generic BS. Well, if you’ve ever wondered why content from certain sites is so compelling, the answer usually isn’t that they’re fantastic writers.
It’s that they write about stuff that they know. Specifically, topics that the author has first-hand experience with. Backlinko is a great example of what I’m talking about. Imagine if I outsourced this Power Page to a random freelancer. Do you think the content would be half as good? Of course not. This content draws on my years of doing SEO professionally. Or how about this post? As you can see, this isn’t just the same content from other websites written in different words. It’s original content in the real sense of the word. So: how do you find writers with first-hand experience? Well, you can go to upwork. But that’s kind of a crapshoot.
Instead, I recommend hiring bloggers directly. Specifically, search for keywords that describe the topics that you’re going to write about. And look for bloggers that put out really high-quality stuff. For example, let’s say that you’re going to publish a bunch of Power Pages about gardening. Well, you’d search for “gardening tips” or “best gardening blogs” to bubble up blogs in that space. Then, reach out to any that seem like they might be down for a freelance writing assignment. I’ll have an example script that you can use in the worksheet. Second key is to start with a sample.
When I first started hiring freelance writers back in the day, I made the same mistake over and over again. I’d hire someone to write a 2,000 word post. Wait a week. Then, get an absolute piece of junk sent my way. And I’d have to start the entire process over again. Today, when I need to hire a writer for one of my projects (like Exploding Topics), I hire multiple promising candidates at once. And ask each one to submit a 250 word sample.
In my experience, you can usually tell within the first line if someone is up to the task. And 250 words is plenty to figure out if they’re going to be a good fit. So when you hire 3-5 people at once, you’ll usually have 1 or 2 solid writers in the mix. And you can choose between the two right then. Which is MUCH faster than repeating the “hire, wait, and try again” approach 5 times.
Third key is to send lots of writing examples. “Good writing” is super subjective. And it actually depends a lot on the project and topic that you’re covering. For example, a piece of content about life insurance is probably going to read a lot differently than about how to get more followers on Instagram. Which is why I recommend sending LOTS of examples of content that you like to each candidate before they submit their sample to you. These can be from other blogs in your niche.
Or sites in completely different industries. Either way, I recommend sending each candidate at least two samples of writing that you like. That way, there’s no guesswork in terms of the exact style you’re looking for. And with that, this lesson is complete. To quickly recap, you learned that scaling up content isn’t actually all that hard.
Once you have every step documented, it’s as simple as figuring out who does what. And setting up a calendar to make sure that everyone is on the same page. And looking ahead to the next lesson in this module, Lesson 2, you’re going to learn how to scale up another key part of the SEO That Works system, link building. But for now, download the worksheet for this lesson. And I’ll see you in the next video.
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