What's the ROI on long-form blogging?
I really enjoy writing long-form blog posts and some of them have been very valuable resources for my blog. But they take a ton of time to write -- and read. Investing a ton of time into a well researched post that may not stick is daunting. Has anyone used long-form blogging to effectively build an audience?
So basically, log form blogging is worth it!
But you just have to focus on one big rules: spend more time promoting your content than writing it.
For my last product, ScrapingNinja, me and my partner recently wrote 2 very long blog post about scraping.
One very thorough guide of about 2000 words (https://www.scrapingninja.co/blog/web-scraping-without-getting-blocked)
And one Python tutorial of around 3200 words
(https://www.scrapingninja.co/blog/web-scraping-101-with-python)
It took us many hours, but what took even longer was marketing them, we basically crossposted them on several blogging platforms, included our own personal blogs.
We talk about those post everywhere on facebook, linkedIn, Twitter and Reddit.
Ultimately those 2 blog posts alone, brought 20k visitors to ScrapingNinja and did 40k visits if we account for all the blogging platform we post them on.
If you want to do this, do not forget to correctly set your canonical URL so your SEO doesn't get hit for duplicated contents.
Also, while it is ok to put multiple CTA in your blog post that is on you companies blog if you crosspost it on dev.to just leave one at the bottom. Those platforms are not meant for content marketing and you might be received coldly if your CTA is too obnoxious.
However, if your content is really valuable, it will really help you build an audience.
Thanks! Did most of your traffic come from SEO, or from your social media / other marketing activities?
Did you select those topics based on keyword research, conversations with your audience, your expertise on the topic, or something else?
For now, most traffic is coming from social media, but we are beginning to see an SEO boost.
We did the same thing with our last company, PricingBot, and with only 3 good blog post we were able to rank 2-3 on the keyword we liked in about 6 months.
We only selected topics based on our expertise, we knew that to make a really successful blog post the content had to be valuable and has to be something that not anybody can write.
The best way to do this is to just explain what you know about a topic that other people don't.
I don't know what is your area of expertise, and how long you've been into it, but just the fact that you are on indie hackers means that you might know things about building product in your domain that others might not.
Thanks, seems like using social media to drive traffic while waiting for SEO to kick in is a good strategy. That's impressive you were able to rank with just 2-3 posts and encouraging that you chose the topics based on your expertise rather than keyword research
My field is biotech, I've worked in it my whole career. I write posts that help scientists understand the business of biotech, and help business people understand the science. My most successful posts have been data driven analyses of the biotech VC landscape. There isn't a ton of search traffic for these keywords and not many active online communities, so marketing is tough
What did you do to set the canonical url?
Yes, our blog and associated case studies are a primary driver of traffic and leads for our business. As a matter of fact, taking it even further, over the past couple years we began publishing traditional books which have done well in gaining long-term fans.
There is no single “ROI” metric you can point to on long-form blogging. Some niches are so competitive you will never get a single visit. Others are perhaps not competitive, so you will get many visits, but at the same time no significant revenue.
Expect to spend a couple years to build your audience, at a minimum.
It can have a fantastic ROI. That said, there are no sure things. You need to produce genuinely useful and interesting posts.
For long-term success, here are some things I’ve tried to keep in mind when doing this in the past:
Look at the traffic of any popular blog that has any form of evergreen content and you’ll find that just a handful of posts generate the vast majority of visitors. This is why attracting organic traffic is so important, and long-form content can work wonders here.
Ok, I’m rambling now. This is way too big of a subject. :)
Thanks, this is super helpful.
Do you have any tips on picking titles? For some topics I can use keyword research, but for others with less organic traffic I don't know how to pick good ones, other than by guessing :).
There are tons of articles out there about writing great headlines, etc. For example:
Those go way more into detail than I can do here in a forum post. :)
One thing to keep in mind is that you may want to craft different headlines (and descriptions) for different channels. This isn't strictly necessary, but can be helpful if you want to optimize click-through rates.
Why? Because someone googling for a solution to a problem they're having is going to be attracted by a certain type of headline, while someone browsing Twitter is going to need something else to catch their attention.
Here's how you can do this:
Google for how to craft titles for SEO vs social media. They really do work differently. Much of it is just seeing what approaches work and that make sense to you, your brand, and your content strategy.
In the beginning, though, you're probably best off just picking a single, great title and running with that. Just focus on writing great content that delivers value.
A bit of research is also good if you want better odds. What content is successful in your niche and how is it presented? Learning from what others are doing can be super useful, and this knowledge can also help you craft content that stands out.
For seeing what is popular on social media you can use tools like Buzzsumo, and several SEO tools have similar functionality (for example the content explorer in Ahrefs). Google Trends can be useful. And of course Google itself. :)
Google the question(s) you'd like your blog post to answer and see what the top organic results are. How are they titled? What's the content in them? (If it's something you really want to go after, check out something called the Skyscraper Technique, https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique , although now I'm veering into SEO.)
Content marketing and blogging is an evolving field, but mostly it comes down to basics:
I wish you the best of luck! Crafting good content can take time, but keep in mind that you're building something that will (hopefully) benefit you for years to come.
Thanks for the value-add comments, really helpful -- am grateful. The tip about twitter meta cards and opengraph was really nice and practical -- implemented it already!
I feel like my content is useful and interesting, and have a few pages that rank in top 5 without doing any link building, but I fear that I'm losing traffic because of my titles. And also not promoting enough in general -- need to get on twitter / linkedin!
That sounds promising. If you don't mind sharing an example here, I can have a look to see if there's any low-hanging fruit that might help you rank better.
Thanks for the help! One example is a post I just published today. The post translates a synthetic biology paper into layman's terms:
https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/synbio-laymans-terms.html
I wrote this because a lot of non-biotech people ask how to learn biotech, and one good way is to read scientific papers. However most papers are jargon-heavy and assume the reader has a lot of background knowledge in biotech. This post makes it easier for non-biologists to understand papers.
I really don't love the title, but am not sure what to title a post like this
The most relevant keywords are probably related to "how to learn synthetic biology" but they aren't particularly high traffic.
Another post that people really like but was not written with SEO in mind is this one on how to value drugs and biotech companies:
https://www.baybridgebio.com/drug_valuation.html
Cool. It's getting a bit late here (I'm in Spain at the moment, where it's past 10 p.m. :) ) but I'll look at this tomorrow, ok?
Of course, any help is most appreciated
Okay, here we go. I lack domain expertise in the biotech sector, so forgive me if I make some weird copy suggestions. :) Also, I'm going to be all over the place. It's late and I should be asleep, haha.
Some of your articles are quite long. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but maybe consider adding a hyperlinked ToC to the post (either to the side, when the screen size allows, just simply at the top always.)
I don't see any major problems with these titles, to be honest, considering they are so technical. This isn't exactly Buzzfeed.
Especially for the drug valuation post I think it's not bad at all, and it has nice charts. Everyone loves nice charts. :) Consider making those shareable, btw.
Speaking of that post, its current title is "Valuing drugs and biotech companies". It's not bad, but maybe frame it more clearly as a how-to:
If the embedded calculator is very popular, maybe separate it out into its own page and have it as a tool (with charts, etc) with this post (or a variation of it) linked for deeper understanding? Good industry-focused tools are great, but if it's hidden way down into a big article and also doesn't benefit from its own page (relevant page title, description, etc) it might be less discoverable. Just a hunch, feel free to ignore me. :) Maybe I'm just not a fan of all the scrolling.
Your current title of the other post you shared is "A synthetic biology paper, in layman's terms". (I'm clearly not even a layman, browsing through that article, btw, haha.) Some other options could be:
But maybe your audience prefers more dry, academia-style titles. I really am not familiar with the industry.
Side note on the UX: Maybe, since it's a post that's supposed to teach by example, maybe insert small highlighted explanations when you come to important terms (a paragraph or so).
An aside, those footnotes... Not user friendly. This is the web, not a printed article. :) At least make them clickable. For example, see how the footnotes work on blogs like Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2019/07/gates_biggest_mistake
You may also want to more clearly explain your approach in the beginning of the article. For example, why did you choose a specific paper instead of having a more general angle of attack? Set expectations, invite the reader. Your first paragraph needs to really pull the reader in.
This last point is actually important. Your title is super important, but your first paragraph needs to really pull the reader in. It needs just as much love as the headline. From the articles I looked at, this is an area you might want to spend a bit more time on. Here's a great article about writing good ledes:
http://blog.bleacherreport.com/2011/04/14/br-101-how-to-write-a-good-lede/
Ok, enough about titles and ledes. :) A few more things to consider if your goal is to grow your organic traffic:
Be aware that Google now ranks pages "mobile first". You have some performance issues there (on your whole site), mostly related to JS. For example your home page:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.baybridgebio.com%2Findex.html
Performance is increasingly important for SEO, so it's well worth looking into that.
You probably want to add the social meta tags stuff to your home page as well, and basically every page that can potentially be shared. If crafting social sharing images for them all is a PITA, consider creating a branded "template" which you can then customize slightly for each page.
I'd also do some serious keyword and content research for your industry, if you haven't already done that. It's not all about search volume, either. Think about search intent.
For SEO research, Ubersuggest is free and gives pretty good results as far as I can tell. Maybe scope out where some of your competitors are getting traffic from today, and which articles are getting buzzed about.
And don't forget the outreach and PR. I get the impression your company is on the cutting edge, so it could pay for you to reach out to relevant journalists and bloggers in the field, making yourselves available, and making sure whatever interesting tools and data you have is accessible to them. You want them to think of you as a resource, and you want to make their jobs easy.
All that said, it looks to me that you're well on your way to producing a lot of quality content, and your search traffic is on an upward trend if Ahrefs isn't lying to me.
I think maybe you just need to start refining some of what you have. Take a step back and see how to make it better.
For example, look at Google Search Console for any site issues, which pages are getting traffic for what kind of searches, click-through rates on various search results (and consequent tweaking of page titles and meta descriptions to improve poor CTRs), and so on.
I see also that you are collecting emails. Maybe ask those subscribers what they like, what they would like to see more of, how they found you, etc.
And as I said earlier, fix those JS issues. :) They are hurting your search rankings.
Cheers!
EDIT: To add one more detail you probably want to think about. Readability. On my 15-inch Macbook Pro, your blog has something like 110–115 characters per line. This makes your articles more difficult to read. I usually try to stay between 60–80 characters (less on mobile, though), which makes it easier for the eye to jump to the next line and keep track of position. It's an interesting subject with many considerations. This article is good:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/balancing-line-length-font-size-responsive-web-design/
The reading experience becomes part of your user experience, which of course matters.
@aaavl2821 Ahahahaha, we've literally hit the nesting limit of the Indie Hackers forum it seems, because I can't reply to your reply. :) So, replying here.
Glad I could help! I hope it pays off. Just keep in mind that SEO takes time. Some results can come quickly (weeks), but normally one needs to think in terms of months (and more scarily, sometimes even years).
One thing you can do to speed things up a tiny bit is to manually trigger Google to visit a page you've changed (or a new page you've added). This way you don't have to wait for the next time Google comes around. You can do this in Google Search Console.
Maybe also look at Bing's equivalent, Bing Webmaster Tools. Can't hurt, even though Google tends to dominate search. Which reminds me, I should do this for my own site!
Just be methodical and keep measuring what works and you'll do well, I think. The benefits tend to accumulate. The more traffic you get, the more leverage you have to play with.
And thank you for the kind words. Much appreciated! :)
Wow, super high value, actionable post, thank you! Just tried a couple of those changes and have the rest on my to do list.
I have had a bit of an uptick in organic visits, although numbers are still super low. If I get meaningful traffic will def blog about it and shout you out! Until then I'll def pass along your name to anyone i know looking for content / SEO help, you have a new fan!
Great landing page for sitesanity btw!
Extremely high...
...if you're creating content that people are searching for and will want to share. It's definitely a long-term game though. Building backlinks and creating the content are both time-consuming but can have big benefits.
My design course is literally just a landing page, the course (video and text), and nothing else. It ranks #1 on Google for a couple (pretty niche) terms without me doing any sort of marketing except for the launch.
Backlinko is one of the most popular SEO blogs online, and Brian Dean's posts are usually huge.
How do niche terms convert? Do you have any process on how to write niche blog posts?
Honestly, I don't even have GA installed on the site, so can't really say what the conversion rate is. I'd expect overall it's higher conversion and lower traffic than more general terms because people have specific intent. However, I know I get a couple new email signups every day, so it's working well enough for me.
My process was basically that I was getting enough replies to my email list around a certain topic (user interface motion/animation) that I knew it was something people wanted to learn more about.
Very high
Would you mind sharing your experience with long form blogging?