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How to Simplify Your SEO And Quickly Boost Your Google Traffic



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resource pages increase google rankingsIn my last post here on the Cafe, I laid out  a simple strategy for getting more blog traffic from Google Analytics.

The basic idea was that you can get greater returns on your time by finding the traffic sources that currently work for you and leveraging them for greater results.

And while the post got a fantastic response (over 65 comments and growing at the time of writing this), nearly every comment had the same question:

“Google is sending most of my traffic. How can I possibly leverage more traffic out of the Big G?”

The message was clear: many of you guys and gals still feel like search engine traffic is a mystery force – that you are at the uncontrollable whim of Google.

Today we’re going to change that mindset by skipping the theory and demonstrating a simple, concrete tactic you can steal right now to improve your Google rankings and leverage more traffic from search engines.

I want to show you that there is something you, as a blogger, can do to to directly influence your Google rank, but first we have to understand why controlling search engine traffic seems so hard right now.

Why Even Basic SEO Is Against Your Blog

Even on a good day, Search Engine Optimization is about as straight forward as reading tea leaves or gazing into a crystal ball.

That’s not your only problem though – heck, it’s not even your biggest problem.

No, your biggest problem is that SEO simply isn’t built for blogs.

If you’ve ever wondered why controlling search traffic seems harder for bloggers, it’s because it is.

Basic SEO practices tells us that if we want a page to show up higher in Google search results, and therefore get more traffic, we have to “optimize” that page for a chosen keyword.

Then we need to get outside links to point back to that page, using that chosen keyword as anchor text.

And that’s a complex enough system to follow for anyone, but as a blogger you have to face one very hard question: Which post gets to rank?

If your desired keyword is “model making“, and every post you write is about “model making“, which one of your dozens of posts should you try to rank for the keyword “model making“?

Which one gets the backlinks?

Which one gets the Tweets?

Which ones get lost in the archives never to be seen again?

All those similar posts are weakening your potential Google rankings by spreading out reader attention, backlink potential, and keywords.

Google is hesitant to rank you for your desired keywords, because it simply doesn’t understand which of your many posts are the most relevant.

Increase Google Rankings With Resource Pages

Where many bloggers get confused – and where your blogging train might be leaving the tracks – is in the difference between content geared toward search engine visitors (people who find you through Google) and content geared toward repeat visitors (people who come back as subscribers and fans).

Repeat visitors want fresh, new content.

Search engine visitors want a one-stop resource that answers their question.

It’s the battle between “more is better” versus “quality over quantity“.

Since our goal is improve our Google ranking, and therefore traffic, our strategy is clear: give Google a centralized page that it can rank for large, competitive keywords.

We need what I call a Compendium or Resource Page.

Compendium Pages are blog pages that are meant to organize your posts for specific keywords into centralized, easily rankable, resources.

Think of them like categories, only pickier.

Let’s try an example to illustrate:

We’re trying to rank #1 in Google for the keyword “model making“.

However, we have too many posts about the subject to choose just one and we want to get traffic to all of them.

To get around this, you could create a Compendium Page (just a new blog page) and call it something like “Model Making 101“.

Then we would provide an introduction to the topic, followed by a list of links to your best model making posts, organized as if it were a beginner’s guide to the subject.

It might look something like this:

Model Making 101

Model making is awesome because . . .

  1. Basic Tools For Model Making
  2. The 5 Best Classes For Model Making Beginners
  3. Model Making Exercise To Hone Your Skills

Also, take a look at Ana’s resource pages:

Think about what this does for your blog:

Google gets one page it can rank for big keywords

Instead of bombarding poor Google with backlinks that all use the same keyword as anchor text, but point to different posts, you give them a more focused backlink strategy that is much easier to organize and will compete much better for crowded search terms.

Google visitors get funneled deeper into your content

Search engine visitors are picky creatures because they don’t find your blog by just “surfing.”

They typed in a specific search and they want a specific answer to it.

With a compendium page, instead of immediately hitting the “Back” button, if they don’t find exactly what they’re looking for, their attention is captured by headlines that might be more relevant or specific to their needs.

Other visitors get instant primers into your topic

Visitors from Twitter or Facebook will get an instantly useable, endlessly sharable resource, and a quick introduction into the kind of content they’ll get by subscribing to your blog.

You get a simplified backlinking strategy

Instead of constantly striving to build links and drive traffic to any of the dozens or hundreds of posts you have, you get to focus your efforts and promotional strategies onto one page that funnels visitors toward your other posts.

It also frees you up to optimize your  smaller posts for long-tail keywords without splitting your focus.

Other bloggers are more likely to link back to your resource

Bloggers aren’t very likely to link to someone’s individual posts these days.

They will, however, happily link out to resources that are insanely useful for their readers.

Your Compendium Pages become excellent link bait that attracts organic backlinks and massive social sharing.

But the best part of this strategy is that surprisingly few bloggers are utilizing it yet.

A few of the bigger players have caught on and are starting to take advantage, but now is an opportunity for smaller blogs to stake big claims in competitive search results.

So what now?

Now go brainstorm your top keywords that you can turn into Compendium Pages.

Aim for 4-5 pages, with around 10 links per page to start – you can always tweak it from there – then start building backlinks to your new resources.

Not only will this method simplify your SEO world considerably, but it’s also the fastest way to take control of your search engine traffic.

I’ve tried to layout the Compendium Page strategy as briefly and clearly as I can in this post.

However, if you’re not quite clear on how to build one yourself, or if you just learn better visually, you can watch a video I put together that gives you a demonstration of this strategy.

Daniel Roach


traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 74 comments }

Keith Davis April 29, 2012 at 10:29 am

Hi Daniel / Anna
Like most good ideas, once you’ve read about it you think… now why didn’t I think of that.

Simplify your SEO with compendium pages is a fabulous concept, which I shall be putting in to action ASAP.

Guess the art is deciding on those compendium pages.

Yoast had the idea of turning your most popular posts into pages and leaving them for the engines to find, but I prefer your compendium page model.

As Anna says over on twitter “did you miss this one?” I did but so glad I’ve found it now,

Daniel Roach March 16, 2012 at 9:10 am

Hey David, thanks for the comment. The main reason the homepage isn’t the resource page is because most people use their homepage as a “what’s new” type of section where all their newest content shows up. That means it’s probably not well optimized for your chosen keyword.

The other reason is that your homepage is usually what other people link to when they talk about your site so most people don’t have to worry too much about linking to it themselves.

Splitting the compendium page off on its own means you ge the opportunity to have the best of both world – a healthy, linkable homepage AND a keyword optimized landing page.

-Daniel

Geoff Vincent March 15, 2012 at 10:55 am

Excellent blog. One of the best, most practical, things to do to improve SEO that I’ve read in months. I implemented my “digest” today and most curious to see results. Thanks

Kathy March 8, 2012 at 1:23 pm

Daniel – the concept makes total sense to me. Should the compendium page be one of your tabs, if your theme has tabs? The keywords I would use for my compendium (Work for a Startup 101) is already a category, which shows in my header too. Would you recommend not showing that category in the header? Or just using both; a tab with Work for a Startup 101 and the smaller category link below the header that says the same (without the 101)
thanks for your time!!
Kathy

Daniel Roach March 16, 2012 at 9:07 am

Personally, yes, I would recommend not showing your category in the header. Instead I would have the compendium page linked in either the header tab or the sidebar. The reason being that most visitors won’t dig that far down into your category pages so you’ll have more of a chance to influence them and hopefully convince them to subscribe if you funnel them to a compendium page instead. That’s my two cents :)

-Daniel

Clara March 8, 2012 at 11:06 am

Love the resource page idea and decided to use it from the start for my new blog. Makes sense and gives me a little bit more control as to organization.

Alexis March 8, 2012 at 8:38 am

I have 3 resource pages on my site and your post got me to do a little digging. They don’t get enormously more traffic then other posts. BUT their bounce rate is like 6%. So 94% of people who hit my resource pages stick around to read something else. My site-wide bounce rate is closer to 70%. I had no idea!

Now I’m off to create a few more ;)

Daniel Roach March 8, 2012 at 9:53 am

Those are good numbers! And in my experience that sounds about right. My resources pages have never been the highest trafficked pages. Usually the homepage comes first and then a few very popular single posts. They do, however, usually get the most search engine traffic.

But either way, I’m glad to see you’re getting some good results out this. Thanks for leaving the comment and sharing your numbers!

-Daniel

Fernando March 9, 2012 at 12:05 am

What a killer post, Daniel.

I’ll definitely start thinking about how to put this into practice on my blog.

+10

Daniel March 7, 2012 at 4:40 pm

That’s some very interesting food for thought, Daniel.

On first read(Hey! there’s a lot of text there) I did not quite get how this would be any different than a sort of page with related post links(per topic) .
Though, upon having a second read through, I think I am getting the gist.
It looks like a way to prevent associated keywords(posts) from losing their value over a prolonged period, due to how blogs index their posts chronologically. I will go and have a look at your video, so as to get a better picture of it in action.

Daniel Roach March 8, 2012 at 9:48 am

That’s it exactly! And you’re right about probably needing more than one read through. I tried to keep it as short as I could and still explain it – that’s the biggest reason I included the video at the end.

There’s been some confusion, but hopefully others will read your comment, and Astro’s below, because you guys have collectively explained it better than I could.

-Daniel

Astro Gremlin March 7, 2012 at 10:13 am

Daniel, one of the best hand puppet-free explanations I’ve ever comprehended! When you say the links are for humans, it all becomes clear. One thing I’ve tried is starting with a high ranking page, connecting it to a linear sequence of linked articles. Don’t know if it works, but worth a try to get search engine traffic going along a path somewhere. I get the real beauty part: you only have to concentrate on building the rank of the Compendium page: focused effort for the blogger, less confusion for the search engines.

Daniel Roach March 8, 2012 at 9:45 am

Now you’re with me, Astro! :)

-Daniel

Anne March 7, 2012 at 4:51 am

I started blogging on Blogger, and because there aren’t the same page/tag/category options exactly like WP, I did exactly this with my posts. I fall behind sometimes because I don’t always remember to add my new posts to these pages, however, I’ve got a lot of these done on my blogs.

It feels good to know I’ve been doing this for ages. I think it makes perfect sense.
I do have one question about this strategy on WP. Would the articles be counted as duplicates when the stupid googlebots arrive if you use this strategy? I suppose they’re only links, so maybe not.

I actually chuckled that you referred to google as ‘poor’

Daniel Roach March 7, 2012 at 7:57 am

Got to feel a little bad for Google – they try, bless ‘em. :)

In Wordpress the links won’t count toward duplicate content, but you may want to think about whether to make them “nofollow” or “follow” to get the most out of your link juice. Personally I leave them set to “follow” because, well, I can’t see a reason not to.

Glad to hear you’ve been getting some good use out of this tactic, Anne, and thanks for taking the time to comment.

-Daniel

Astro Gremlin March 7, 2012 at 12:15 am

Daniel, thank you for this idea. I would like to try it. If I get the idea (and I usually do better when things are explained with hand puppets :) ), it’s to build links to a Compendium page with some connecting text but designed to collect links to my related articles. Linkbacks, including anchor text links, to the Compendium page are going to bring home the luv juice to share with the hive. Is that the idea? Was curious if a table of contents or a menu does anything like this?

Man, this page keeps moving me to the next article and tells me I haven’t spent enough time reading the post!

Daniel Roach March 7, 2012 at 7:53 am

That’s the basic gist, Astro. The only thing I would change is that the point of Compendium Pages isn’t to get more link love to the posts that you list. It’s a way of driving traffic to those posts by only having to rank that one Compendium Page. The posts included in the links are for readers, not for the Google bots.

In that way it’s more like a Table of Contents than a menu of related posts because you won’t list every single post you have in that category. Instead you choose those that are the absolute best and organize them for the reader so that they flow from one to the next.

I have no hand puppets (yet!) but did that explanation help?

-Daniel

Geoff March 6, 2012 at 5:14 am

Interesting idea, Daniel, one I’d never really thought about. Do you currently have a Resource page on your own site?

Daniel Roach March 6, 2012 at 11:51 pm

My newest blog, Blog to Business, doesn’t use this strategy yet. It’s still just a baby so there’s not a high enough volume of posts to warrant Compendium Pages just yet. I have used them before on previous projects to great effect.

-Daniel

Andrea Hypno March 6, 2012 at 12:54 am

Very interesting article. An advice I will definitely follow, also as you said it’s easier to do this than continuously add links to new posts. It would also be interesting to know how to rank well on other search engines than Google, just in case Google throws you out of the index or people begins using more privacy oriented search engines like DuckDuckGo. :)

Daniel Roach March 6, 2012 at 11:58 pm

Thanks for the comment, Andrea. Nobody really ever talks about ranking in other search engines do they? Partly it’s because other search engines just aren’t used with anywhere near the frequency of Google, chasing them normally takes more effort than the payoff is worth. Mainly though I think people don’t talk much about it because the steps to ranking in other search engines are so similar to ranking in Google. Basic SEO remains the same even if search engine algorithms differ on the details.

That said, this might be a good subject for my next post here on the Cafe :)

-Daniel

Andrea Hypno March 7, 2012 at 10:31 am

Then I’ll wait for it, but I guess you’re right, SEO is SEO at the end. :)

Robert March 5, 2012 at 9:38 am

Daniel, that’s quite an interesting strategy and it makes completely sense. In order to rank well for those resource pages, how much unique content is actually required. Is it enough to have a short introduction of let’s say 100 words and a list of links to various pages that talk about the subject of the resouce page?

Daniel Roach March 5, 2012 at 10:40 am

If there’s a set number, I simply don’t know it. I will say it should probably be more than 100. Right now Copyblogger is kicking serious behind with their Compendium Pages and those seem to have between 300 – 500 words per page, plus all the links.

As a short answer I would say try to make it a useful page in and of itself, on top of all the links provided.

-Daniel

Ken Pickard March 5, 2012 at 9:23 am

Daniel / Anna,

Very interesting post. I have done something similar in a post that linked out to several other posts…like a table of contents if you will. this process you described takes it a little further and validates what I had assumed.

Thank you for the great information.

Ken Pickard
The Network Dad

Daniel Roach March 5, 2012 at 9:56 am

Glad you liked it, Ken, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

-Daniel

Eddie Gear March 5, 2012 at 4:50 am

Daniel, this is an extensive post on link building. I am not sure if I understood this correct. Are you telling me that I need to build back links to each page with different keywords.

for example

google.com being the page you want me to build back links with keywords like search engine, no 1 search engine and so on.. Is that correct.

Daniel Roach March 5, 2012 at 9:55 am

That’s sort of correct, Eddie. And I’m getting the impression that maybe I didn’t explain this part of the strategy too well.

The idea is that your Compendium Page can be a good catch-all for your larger, more popular keywords.

Let’s take Traffic Generation Cafe for example. Ana writes about many different topics all related to web traffic: social media traffic, seo traffic, article marketing, content marketing. Since each one of those keywords is very popular and very competitive, she can’t really optimize her home page for all of them at once. She could link to Category pages but many people choose not to have the search bot crawl those and their content constantly changes anyway, so it’s not so good an idea. Also since she might have 50 posts about improving SEO, she would have a hard time linking to, and properly ranking, each and every one.

The idea here would be to build Compendium Pages around each of the main, competitive keywords to help make a new centralized mini-homepage to link back to.

So Ana mike take SEO Traffic as her keyword and build a Compendium Page around it. Then take, say, 10-15 of the best SEO posts, organized so they flow properly together, and link to them within the page. From there, yes, she would start sending a majority of her Search Engine Optimization related keywords there, particularly keywords that are too similar to warrant their own posts: seo improvement, improve seo, search optimization, search engine optimization, diy search engine optimization, seo for beginners, etc. etc.

It give her a good way to concentrate large, competitive keywords into one centralized, highly optimized place, instead of spread out randomly across 50 less organized posts.

. . . I hope I answered your question in there somewhere, Eddie . . .

-Daniel

Travis March 4, 2012 at 11:45 am

Instead of creating a resource page for the keywords in my blog, I sort of did the opposite by creating a separate page for each of my keywords that includes the keyword in the title/heading and has a few paragraphs about the keyword.
For example my website is about web design & web hosting so I created two pages under services and link to these two pages throughout my blog posts. I don’t specifically write my posts to target any keywords, as they turn out not very interesting. Instead I use a automatic linking plugin to automatically create internal links from these keywords to my keyword pages (ie. web design).
I know that alot of bloggers use the automatic linking, but my question is, since I have set up my blog like this, would it help at all to create a resources page if my blog posts are not exactly keywords I am targeting? Thanks for the great read

Daniel Roach March 5, 2012 at 10:07 am

If I understand the situation (and that’s a nice looking site you have there) I would say the Compendium strategy could help you rank those posts that weren’t necessarily written for a particular keyword (because I agree with you, that type of post is usually boring).

You could create a page around, for example, “custom Wordpress templates”. Then take the best posts related to that keyword – though not necessarily written for it – and create a page that is optimized for that keyword.

Truth be told though, Travis, this post might not be for you. Looking at your site I see where you could use this tactic, but it isn’t necessary for such a sales oriented site. I mean let’s face it, we want people hiring you, not just reading all your blog posts :)

-Daniel

Adam James March 4, 2012 at 4:14 am

Daniel, thanks for this post it was a great read.

On my blog right now each post is geared towards slightly different keywords so resource pages like this haven’t really entered into the equation but I’m launching a new site in the near future where resource pages like you mentioned would come in very handy and provide a great hub for visitors from search engines who are visiting my site looking for resources.

Daniel Roach March 4, 2012 at 8:16 pm

Thanks, Adam, I’m glad you liked it.

Your point is a really good one, that I probably should have mentioned in the post. Compendium Pages aren’t a really good plan for blogs that have few posts, such as new blogs, or blogs that have a high variety of topics discussed. They work best when organizing lots of posts, centered around a few specific topics.

If you were talking about your Wordpress Plugin site though, I think there are some definite ways to use this strategy. I don’t know that they’d meet your personal goals, but they are there.

Thanks again though for leaving a comment :)

-Daniel

Karo Itoje March 3, 2012 at 3:52 am

Daniel you hit the kill on the head with these lines:

“No, your biggest problem is that SEO simply isn’t built for blogs.”

“Basic SEO practices tells us that if we want a page to show up higher in Google search results, and therefore get more traffic, we have to “optimize” that page for a chosen keyword.”

Blogs were never meant to be used to make money or anything serious. Blogs discuss content such as ‘what’s new now’ whereas proper SEO expects you to to be focused, and organized.

Here’s how to prepare for and write keyword focused content that really gets ranked and bring you consistent free targeted traffic.

If your blog overall topic (let’s use my topic for example) is ‘Blogging for Beginners’, it doesn’t mean all the topics you write on will be targeting the keyword ‘blogging for beginners’.

You need an overall blog topic, which is your content target for your blog. Mine is ‘Blogging for beginners’. And this was taking into consideration when I was buying my domain name and titling my site.

Then I wrote my home page targeting ‘Blogging for beginners’. But every other pages on my site targets different keywords of their own but that falls under the topic ‘blogging for beginners’.

How do I find these keywords to write on?

I throw my overall topic keyword ‘blogging for beginners’ into an advance keyword research tool including Google Adword tool and it brings back for me many related keywords for Blogging for beginners that are actual searched keywords that I can each create content for.

Examples of keywords under ‘Blogging for beginners’ which are actual search for keywords are:

Blogging for dummies
How to start a blog
how to write a blog
blog optimization
blogging advice
And so on…

Of all the related profitable keywords I get (judging with number of times the keyword is searched for vs. number of competition for it) , I select the ones that have high searches that I will then use to form what is referred to in blogging as ‘Categories’ .

I then arrange all the other related keywords I find into the categories I have selected. I do all this in an excel document. It’s like building your site content structure before actually setting up the site.

So once that is done, when it’s time to start writing I just pick a keyword at a time and write on it.

If I pick ‘how to start a blog’, I write the article and optimize it for the keyword ‘how to start a blog’. And I thrown in related keywords such as ‘start a blog’, ‘starting a blog’ and so on.

These other keywords are also actually searched for. But since they mean the same thing as the primary keyword for the page, you use them as second, third keywords. Not re-writing a related content for them.

This eventually gives you a chance to not just rank for the primary keyword for the page, in this case ‘how to start a blog’, but the other keywords too. As you work on your site and it grows, eventually you’ll have that single page bringing several search traffic through the keyword you wrote it for and other related keywords.

Since how to start a blog is an actual keyword-focused content page on my site the page presently gets found at the search engines for keywords such as:

How to start a blog (primary page keyword presently on page 5 of Google)
how to start a blog to make money
how to start a blog and make money
starting a blog
start blogging for money
And so on…

I do this for the 100 plus keywords I found for overall keyword (and everyday I look for more keywords to form my content).

So at the end of the day my site is competing for hundreds of well search keywords at the search engines. It will take time for many of them to make it to the first page of Google, but before they get there I have their related low competition keywords bringing search traffic to that page. And eventually the site will be found for tens of thousands of keywords.

This is how to plan blog content structure in other to have an optimized well laid out content and easy navigation that the search engines can easily crawl and index, even your inner pages.

Your categories link to home page. And some related keyword pages. The posts in your categories which is your third in the content structure (home page first structure, categories second and then third tier structure page which are attached to the categories).

So you see Daniel you don’t continue to write on a single topic and question yourself which to rank later. If you really want to optimize your pages and rank for many search keywords and multiply your traffic using SEO, each post you write targets a different actual search keyword that you will optimize the page to rank for. Moreover continuing to write almost similar content on your site is not really offering value.

This is one of the changes I am teaching at my website. If you don’t already guess, though I write about blogging, my primary website is not a blog. However, I teach my readers how to create a theme based keyword focused site using a blog and suggests a website for some who would like to re-consider.

Blogs where not designed for SEO. But it doesn’t mean you can’t use them properly for it. While a website can better be used to create a theme content based site that will continue to grow in traffic and income without necessarily updating it too regularly as a blog demands, a blog can also be used to achieve same goal.

Daniel Roach March 3, 2012 at 11:48 pm

Karo, I appreciate you taking the time to type out this response, but finding the keywords and writing for them wasn’t exactly the point of building Compendium Pages.

You say we shouldn’t continue to write about a single topic, but that’s what blogging is. Here at Traffic Generation Cafe, for example, Anna has covered Search Engine Optimization many times before, all in new and different ways that added value for her readers.

But each of those posts was written about improving SEO and very similar keywords, meaning it would be harder for her to rank each one individually. That’s not to mention that it’s hard to build backlinks and traffic to the hundreds of posts she has written. Averaging three posts a week, it simply isn’t practical to expect every post to optimized for a desired keyword.

Keyword research is basic and essential, but one page per major keyword is a static website, not a blog. Compendium Pages allow you to get the best of both worlds — keyword optimized static pages that link deeper into various, valuable blog posts.

-Daniel

Karo Itoje March 4, 2012 at 7:05 pm

Yes Daniel you can write more than once on a topic when it’s necessary. Like I have two articles on my site that discusses blog commenting.

After writing on the keyword in the past, recently I had an experience that made it necessary for me to add more points to the topic. But even at that instead of just repeating the previous keyword, I used a similar keyword.

Article one keyword – blog commenting
Article two keyword – blog commenting marketing strategy
And these are actual search keywords.

Any of the articles can rank for any of the keyword. Just as both articles can rank for both of the keywords.

Another scenario is running a series. When I run a series on my site I find individual keywords that fit with the content of each series and use it as the page’s keyword while linking it to previous and next series. But of course in the case where I can’t find any keyword fitting the topic to use I simply use same keyword and add part 2 or 3 and so on.

Really how many compendium pages can you set up? There are blogs with up to 500 posts. Can you set up 50 compendium pages out of that 500?

But work with keywords, say you have 500 posts, and 100 of them is each optimized for a particular keyword and the rest weren’t as optimized. There’s a chance that out of those 100 optimized pages, 20 will rank on the first page of Google or close to for their individual keywords. And even when up to 20 don’t rank, the pages will often get found for smaller related keywords.

I know blogs can never really be optimized as much as static websites. Since Blogs needs to be regularly updated. And if you’re writing each post based on a keyword, you’ll run out of keywords to write on.

And I also understand that most times people blog about what’s new in an industry that doesn’t really have actual search keywords.

But at least bloggers can make the effort. I am not saying what is not possible because I use a static site. I only use static site for a niche I intend to focus on, but others I work with Wordpress building niche sites. And exactly how I find my keywords and target one per page. And then throw in related keywords to the primary one I am targeting for the page, is the same thing I do when working with niche sites using Wordpress.

So it can be done. This is what to do.

When you want to write an article, make the effort to use a keyword research tool to try and find actual searched for keywords related to what you want to write about. When you can’t find any then you can go ahead and name the page what you think fits. But make the effort first. This way you’ll have a reasonable number of pages optimized for the search engines that will be bringing you decent traffic.

And Daniel you don’t have to put extra effort into building backlinks for every page.

Now this is what I started doing recently. I set up some automatic social bookmarking updates. So as I publish my posts I get some backlinks to the post automatically.

Then I go to onlywire.com and bookmark to some few sites. Then I ping the article’s url immediately.

And then go to Google and type in the keyword for the page I just created. And then add really helpful comment to 10 blogs (this really take several hours from me). As I publish my comment I copy the URL. So at the end of the day I add all 10 comments URL together and create an RSS for them. Then submit the RSS url to RSS directories.

And finally I ping the RSS URL (I ping once everyday).

For my next post I intend to try using Powerpoint download sites to also promote the article. I do all these and that’s all.

Build some backlinks and promote each post immediately you publish them. Then you don’t have to set a day aside to build backlinks to the pages individual.

Ana teaches us some of these things. I even started promoting my articles like that after reading a post here. And I wish I started doing that earlier.

When you make the effort you’ll see extra search traffic result which will be targeted. If most bloggers try this they won’t have to be promoting everywhere. Not that I am suggesting that people don’t do all the marketing they can. But if you don’t make as much effort as possible to get decent free targeted search traffic, your blog’s source of traffic will depend mostly on your direct effort and referrals.

I don’t know about others online business goals but mine is to be able to build a striving passive income. Search traffic allows you that. You can afford to take your hand off your site for a few days or even more and your traffic will keep climbing. Like I said I only recently started promoting my pages as I explained above. I think I have done that with 3 of my last posts.

Formally I just work with keywords, optimize and publish and that’s it. I don’t build backlinks to individual pages except some inter-linking and once a while when I do article marketing and guest posting I link to related articles. But the pages still get found for related keywords in the search engines.

Jens P. Berget March 2, 2012 at 3:44 pm

Hi Daniel,

Creating compendium posts is a very interesting advice. I have never thought that I could do this for the search engines. Your strategy seems to be easy to understand and do.

Thanks a lot.

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 10:30 pm

Hey, Jens, glad you liked the post! It is an easy strategy, that’s one of the reasons I like it. It’s a simple but effective way to organize your content and simplify your SEO, and not enough bloggers are utilizing it.

-Daniel

Lenia March 2, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Hi Ana and Daniel.
Daniel thank you for this interesting tip. I have never thought that way. Off course i don’t have a lot of experience in SEO so your idea helps me obtain a deep knowledge.

As a beginner in the SEO world what I usually do is to link through an anchor text (which is one of my keywords) to my blog home page. I guess this action is not as good as the tip you suggest….but why?
Could you please help me understand better why we cannot just point to our blog home page?

On the other hand, if we don’t focus only on one keyword but we write different articles with different keywords….what we are supposed to do? Create many different compendium pages?

Thank you for this article and the video, you explain the idea very well!

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 10:26 pm

Hey Lenia,

I’m going to start off my answer by saying that I am not an SEO expert so my answer comes from a working knowledge over the years and hopefully any resident experts will correct my explanation if I tell you something a little off. That said…

Only linking to your homepage brings a few drawbacks. A) Google likes to see that your internal posts are getting links. B) Your homepage can’t be optimized for every keyword you want to rank for. C) Your older posts have a shorter lifespan because they’ll be buried and most visitors simply won’t get to read them – and that’s a ton of wasted effort and wasted content.

Using Compendium Pages is similar to building multiple homepages – one homepage for each big keyword you want to rank for. So to answer your second question, yes, you will probably build multiple Compendium Pages and I recommend that you build one page for each of your big, primary keywords. Smaller, long-tail, or less popular keywords don’t really need a page of their own.

In the model making example from this post you might have one page called “Model Making 101,” one page called “Easy Airplane Models,” and another called “Guide to Painting Your Models.” Each one of those would include a short introduction about the topic and links to your best posts about each of those keywords, organized as if they were the table of contents for a book on that keyword.

Most blogs will probably end up with about 3-5 Compendium Pages. Then you can build links to those pages the same way you did to your blog homepage, only now you’re links will be more effective because each keyword is pointing to an optimized page on that subject, instead of your general homepage. Google will like it better, and so will the visitors that find you in the search engines.

Hope that helps explain a little better. If you have any other questions feel free to leave another comment or shoot me an email and I’d be happy to help out.

-Daniel

Bellaisa March 2, 2012 at 12:37 pm

Thank You! I’ve been trying to figure out how to best backlink to my pages, and you just answered my question on a huge scale. I now have a plan instead of a whole bunch of thoughts going on in my head. I was thinking about linking to my tag pages, but this makes much more sense to me and I can tailor the page to fit the keyword much better. Talk about the right time, the right place. Thanks again.

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 9:57 pm

You’re welcome! Thanks for the comment. I’m glad you liked the post and hope it helps simplify some things for you. :)

-Daniel

Jeffrey March 2, 2012 at 10:28 am

This is a great idea! I really like it for getting people deeper into your content in a more meaningful way.

One thing I would add is that these compendium pages should contain some content on them, not just links. Having the content will be helpful for ranking in Google and can also give a more natural flow to the page. The examples that you have seem to do a decent job of that.

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 11:35 am

I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Jeffery!

You’re absolutely right, that’s why step one always has to be providing that introduction. I mean you can add the content in other ways, but an introduction to the posts always seemed to flow more naturally to me.

-Daniel

Tessa March 2, 2012 at 4:27 am

It is bad to rely only on traffic from Google, I found several other options here.

I think creating compendium pages helps to reduce the bounce rate. Because the visitors found more than one option which satisfy their need.

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 8:20 am

Yep, as we’ve said lower down in this comment thread relying on any traffic source 100% is a mistake, Google or not.

But you’re right, Tessa, compendium pages not only help you get more traffic by simplifying the SEO, they help get more out of that traffic by lowering bounce rates and increasing engagement.

-Daniel

Chloe B March 2, 2012 at 4:08 am

A compendium or resource page? Couldn’t that also be classed as an archive page or a news page? I had never dreamed of optimizing that page, but when you think about all of that content being readily accessible from a landing point of view, there should be a lot less bounce. Luv it!! ThanksAna :)

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 8:28 am

Compendium pages or Resource pages – call them what you will. But they are separate from Archive pages and News pages because they have significant differences.

1. They are manually organized. You choose the links and the order they’re included in, instead of having Wordpress lump everything similar together for you.

2. Compendium pages aren’t for was new or updated, but for what’s best and timeless of your content. I like to think of them as a table of contents that organizes my best posts so a reader can flow through them more like a book.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, Chloe, I really appreciate it.

-Daniel

Kostas March 2, 2012 at 1:51 am

I agree with Leo, referral traffic is by far better than search engines traffic and converts much easier, of course as Ana said Google can bring traffic without actually having to “promote” your posts everyday since if you rank well for a popular key phrase, traffic will keep coming without having to do anything.

About the method Daniel shared with us I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet it’s certainly a great way to get traffic not only from search engines but from referrals too since as Daniel said the possibilities that a blogger will share a resource page are much higher than a regular post…

I only have one question is it better to use a blog page or a static page as a resource page?

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 4:45 am

The only difference I’ve found between different types of pages is that it’s best if you can remove the sidebars and eliminate distractin. I use the Premise plugin by Copyblogger to create a landing page, but you can use a standard blog page just fine.

As for search versus referral traffic, I don’t think anyone really disagreed with Leo, it’s just that, like he said himself, it depends greatly on your business and marketing goals. And let’s face it, being number one in Google for a high converting keyword is pretty darn close to a trusted referral.

I’m with Ana on this one. Referrals are fantastic and we should all work to get more of them, but I’m going to focus my efforts in the time between referrals on building traffic sources that are more stable, controllable and predictable to ensure my business survives regardless of what other authority figures decide to do (and that includes Google).

I’m glad you liked the post, Kostas, I hope you get some great results from this technique. Thanks for the comment!

-Daniel

Clara March 1, 2012 at 8:04 pm

I like the idea but it’s going to take a bit of work on my part. Most of my pages are redirects and I’ve excluded them from the sitemap.

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 4:47 am

Hope you get it worked out, Clara. Any particular reason you set your pages up that way?

-Daniel

Clara March 3, 2012 at 11:23 pm

It was 2006 when I set it up. I knew nothing about WP.

Janus March 1, 2012 at 6:48 pm

Hi Daniel,

I think this is an excellent strategy. I have an index page on my blog to help visitors find relevant posts. But I think by having a compendium or resource page makes better sense especially when your blog has lots of content on different topics.

This strategy makes everything that we care about much easier: the search engines rank our posts better, our visitors find relevant content and go deeper, other bloggers share our content, and backlink building is much simplified.

Thanks for sharing this strategy!

Daniel Roach March 2, 2012 at 8:22 am

That’s why I love it! Everybody wins! :)

Lilibeth March 1, 2012 at 11:47 am

Never heard of this strategy before, I will add it to my weekend to do list.

I suppose you would also update the list regularly to keep it ‘fresh’ for Google

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 11:53 am

Ideally, yes, it would be something you add to and curate from time to time, but in my experience that isn’t as necessary as you might think, particularly if you can get some back links and popularity to it and make the page an authority. It seems that as long as people are still enjoying the content on your compendium page and finding it relevant, Google doesn’t much mind if it doesn’t change. The updates tend to be more for keeping it useful to customers.

Thanks for the comment, Lilibeth.

–Daniel

Ryan Hanley March 1, 2012 at 10:41 am

I absolutely love this idea… I am in the process of building a few pages like this but all based on generating new email subscribers.

The concept is very strong.

Thanks for this breakout. Powerful stuff here.

Ryan H.

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 1:19 pm

Glad you enjoyed it, Ryan. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!

-Daniel

Steve March 1, 2012 at 9:31 am

Daniel,

These ideas of compenium pages is a great one. I have done this a couple of times and it has worked quite well. You explained this concept very well and have given me some ideas!

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 11:36 am

Glad you got some new ideas out of it, Steve. It does work like a charm :) Thanks for the comment.

-Daniel

Leo Dimilo March 1, 2012 at 9:28 am

That’s actually an interesting approach to SEO. Another way for blogs (although not opportune by any means) is to use tags and tag pages when you have a ton of pages that are cannibalizing the keywords. For instance, let’s say you are doing a review series on a product and the series is meant to boost your authority to the top level review.

By tagging the pages and then linking to the tagged pages, you are able to keep everything in one place which helps the visitor find all the information about a certain keyword and helps Google understand how to group things together.

Just an FYI (since you mentioned anchor text) Here is a snippet from a searchengineland article that talks about anchor text and its future effects on search-

“Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.”

(source: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078)

Ana Hoffman March 1, 2012 at 1:05 pm

Thanks for the additional resource, Leo; as the post said “SEO mind races…”

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 1:22 pm

I echo Ana on this one: Thanks for adding that info, Leo. I missed that article, but that is super, super interesting!

-Daniel

Peggy Baron March 1, 2012 at 8:17 am

Hey Daniel,

I really like this idea of compendium pages since it makes both Google and real people happy. Plus, as you say, you have a better chance of having other bloggers link to this page.

It also sets you up as authority and even gets your newer followers to go back and read past posts, which in my book also means increased sales in affiliate products mentioned in some of those past posts. :)

Thanks,
Peggy

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 11:38 am

You got it! I love solutions like this too because I feel like everybody wins. It’s good for me, it’s good for my readers, it’s good for Google, and I don’t have to feel like I’m gaming the system just to get new people in the door. And you’re right about increased sales because readers are spending more time in your content, getting exposed to, and educated about, your offers. Glad you liked the post, Peggy!

-Daniel

Dave Lucas March 1, 2012 at 8:09 am

Great advice, Ana!
I’d like to see more articles on how to make it “without Google” — I’ve seen a few bloggers tackle the “life after AdSense” issues – but few tips on how to concentrate on obtaining the bulk of traffic from sources other than Google.

For example, my blog has long been listed on yahoo and now on Bing, and I have good placements on both search engines. But I looked at my stats for last week. Over 70% incoming traffic arrives via Google. I had ONE arrival via yahoo and 7 via Bing. In an entire week! So, I conclude the people visiting my blog aren’t using anything but Google?

And, in light of the recent publicity over Google’s recording of websearch histories, I wonder if that 70% will now diminish, and some of the other search engines experience a jump?

What do you think about that, Ana (and Ana’s readers) ???

Adam R March 1, 2012 at 10:31 am

Dave, if you think about it both Chrome and Firefox have Google integrated into their browsers already so most user just use the built in features.

Personally, I don’t touch explorer or bing and completely forgot yahoo had a search engine.

Daniel Roach March 1, 2012 at 11:48 am

It’s a good point, Dave, the only problem is that not many bloggers make it without Google. That’s why no one ever writes about it. In my previous guest post, which I referenced at the top of this page, the comments were crystal clear – Google sends the majority of blogging traffic, like it or not.

I’m all for diversifying traffic sources and not just relying on one source, but what I’ve seen online is that making it without Google, means having enough fans to support you. John Chow did it a few years back when Google dropped him from the ranks, but it wasn’t Twitter or Facebook that kept him going (and eventually got him reinstated) it was the fans he had built up over the years that knew and liked him.

Truthfully, I’ve never known or heard of a blogger that willfully blocked Google and still succeeded — but I would love to.

-Daniel

Leo Dimilo March 1, 2012 at 1:54 pm

If I may….

It really depends on your marketing model. If you have a lead generation model, then you don’t necessarily need google or any search engine. You just need to find a way to generate that traffic to your page and have an offer worthy enough for them to take a chance on you.

I think a lot of people try to idolize Search engines for something other than just another ad medium. All ad mediums have “costs”. For the blogger, marketer or business it is really just about factoring in those costs for visitor acquisition.

Sometimes search works. But to place all your hopes that search will be your main traffic medium forever (which, for whatever reason, is what people think) is discounting the fact that changes in the algo happen often and have been known to wipe away any ground made.

In the end, acquisition should be the blogger or business’ main focus. Any ad medium that can deliver quality traffic will do.

Ana Hoffman March 1, 2012 at 2:03 pm

The reason I am so fond of the SE traffic is the fact that it could be considered the most leveraged free traffic source I know of.

Most of the other sources take continuous effort to keep churning traffic; otherwise, that traffic source will die out.

Leo Dimilo March 1, 2012 at 2:13 pm

I kind of agree. But kind of don’t. Actually the best traffic is referred traffic from someone that the person trusts. Is it practical to employ? Depends on who you know, how much they respect you and what they are willing to do for you.

If someone like Pat Flynn recommended you to his “following” in a post in which he talked about how great your newsletter was, then all preconceived initial misgivings would be diminished and the likelihood of you converting them over would be much higher than say, someone coming from search who didn’t know your website from any of the other listings.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that search is bad. What I am saying is that there are plenty of examples of marketers that have been able to kill it without search being much of a factor, especially when YOU are the brand.

The key, in my opinion, is to broaden levels of engagement. You know what I mean. I would imagine that if you placed a blog post about a new product and then measured it against a e-blast with the same product, your e-blast would do much better than your blog post in terms of conversion rates in spite of the fact that your post may get 2, 3, or even 5x the page views.

Ana Hoffman March 1, 2012 at 4:20 pm

I agree with you, Leo – referral traffic is BEST.

However, I wasn’t talking about best; just the most leveraged one, i.e. the most predictable of one. Not saying reliable, but at least I have some control over it.

I can’t rely on Pat Flynn mentioning me.

I can’t rely on my readers loving my posts and linking to them.

I certainly can’t rely on social media in any way, shape, or form.

However, I CAN conclude that if I rank highly for specific keywords, I’ll be getting traffic as long as I am able to stay at the top.

Karo Itoje March 3, 2012 at 2:34 am

Hello Leo,

I just want to quickly point out that though I get what you mean but it takes some real effort to get referral traffic from authority sites. Getting referral traffic from some sites might be easy but from the sites that command authority, not so much. I mean the blogger personally recommending something about your site or your product.

So even when it can convert, it’s not something you can rely on.

Moreover, you really don’t want to build your business chasing traffic everyday. Else it becomes like the 9-5 job many of us are running from.

One strong benefit of doing business online is passive income. The ability to be able to get visitors even while you’re sleeping or off on vacation and have them taking your most wanted response, which could be buying an affiliate product, your own product, clicking an ad or joining your list. All this with no chase from you.

Do good search engine optimization. Complement it with guest posting and blog commenting and you can get really targeted traffic that will achieve your bottom line.

Refferal traffic coming to your site from a good comment you make. Or a blogger mentioning you. And the searcher who has a problem and looking for a solution finding your site.

Some might think some searchers come to read free content. But if your free content is really good and then you’re asking the person who came looking for that information to pay some few dollars to get a product that further provides answers to his or her problem, I am sure a good number will if you’re doing everything right.

Ana Hoffman March 1, 2012 at 12:14 pm

I have to agree with the previous answers, Dave.

Ideally, I could care less if Google or social media disappears one day and we don’t have to worry about it.

However, I have a feeling it’s not going to happen any time soon.

So while my readers are using those venues, we’ll have to use them as well.

As far as Google privacy goes, I don’t think anything is going to change. For now, it’s something to talk about and express our outrage and all, but in a few days the dust will settle and we’ll go back to allowing Google to collect a dossier on us – nothing they haven’t already been doing for years.

The only way I know how to keep on going without any support from Google is guest posting.

As a matter of fact, that’s how Danny Iny did it.

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