This blog post ranks at the bottom
of page 1 where no one clicks. And I'm going to try and move it
from here to here… in just one day. And to prove that you don't need advanced
SEO skills or tactics, I'm going to limit myself to just the SEO basics. So here's the plan. Step 1. Find the root cause of why we're in position 7. Step 2. Plan the best way to rank
ahead of our competitors… fast. Step 3: Implement the action items. Step 4. Ping Google for an assist. And Step 5. Rank #1 for "blogging tips". We've only got one shot at this, so let's
get started with step 1 and figure out why we're not ranking at the top. So, when a page isn't ranking high, it's usually
because there's an issue with the content itself or the page just doesn't have enough quality
backlinks compared to the other top result. If it's a content issue, we're a-ok. Google just thinks the other pages are a better
match for people searching "blogging tips". But if we have a backlinks issue, it's game
over, because we're racing against time. So after about five minutes researching
in our SEO tool, it was obvious why we weren't ranking at the top of Google. Yes! It's not a links issue. Check this out! See here, the top 2 pages have well under 100
websites linking to them, and us down here, we have over 200! And these are just raw numbers. But if you look at the pages that are actually
linking to us, they're from other blog posts on perfectly legit sites. So yeah, from a quick glance,
it's definitely a content issue. And I know exactly which SEO
technique we'll need to rank #1. But first, we need to figure out what Google
wants to see and who we're up against. And this will help us form
the perfect plan to follow. So let's Google for "blogging tips". Ooooo… and this is good. This quick answer box is
called a featured snippet. And technically anyone in
the top 10 can rank for it fast. And because we're in position 7, there's
potential to steal it without actually moving up in the regular blue link results. Now, to get the featured snippet, you basically
just need to look at where Google is pulling the information from on the top page. And then you'll note the format they use, and either
match it or somehow find a way to "one up" it. But this is where things get kind
of cloudy because, to be frank, featured snippet optimization is a lot
about guessing and maybe some luck. So here's the situation. Google is showing a list based
on this page's table of contents. And each item is a jump link which takes
visitors to the respective blogging tip. And our page is doing the exact same thing, but
one obvious thing that the top page does better is that they clearly communicate
what their tips actually mean. Ours… not so much. Alright, so we have two options here. Option A is that we can use the SEO tactic
that I was originally thinking of. And basically, all we'd need to do is to rewrite
our content to make it better for searchers and we could also optimize
for that featured snippet. But I am very tempted by option B. And that's to just rewrite the names of our
blogging tips in the headings and table of contents, so it's easier for people
and search engines to understand. And maybe, just maybe, we could jump to #1. The clear choice here was option A. But doing more research, rewriting our content,
uploading it and having Google actually cooperate with us in step 4 was a big bet
to make with no guarantees. So option B was definitely interesting
– speed ranking in under an hour. But the idea was based around
nothing more than a guess. Was I going to take a Hail Mary in
the first hour of this challenge? I have to find out if option B will work. So off to work I went to implement
my action plan… But then something unexpected happened
that had the potential to sabotage my chances at hitting #1. Uhhh… so, an hour has already passed
and I've basically done nothing. So, if this idea flops, I'm not sure
if I'll have time for a plan B. I had severely underestimated
the amount of work involved. And then it hit me - I was doing this all wrong. So I realized that I could have done
this with ChatGPT in like 15 seconds. And so I used this prompt. "I'll give you our blog content, and I want you to
rephrase the main tips which are heading tags so it's clear, direct, and easy
to understand at a glance." Then I pasted in our post and boom… tips 1 - 24 donezo! And these are way clearer
than what we have in our post. So all there was left to do was log
into WordPress, make the changes, and hit the Update button. We were just under two hours in and I
was ready to ping Google for an assist. So, when you update your content, the fastest
way to get Google to check out your new content is to send a request for indexing
in Google Search Console. Thing is - it's nothing more than a request. There's zero guarantee that anything
will happen instantly or even at all. So I've just submitted the URL for indexing,
and we still have like 22 hours left, so I think that we'll be good. I'm going to check the results after lunch. But as I was eating a frigging delicious small-town
burrito, I couldn't think of anything else but hitting the top spot. So I pulled out my phone, Googled for blogging
tips, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing… Hold on, let me record this. We're ranking #1 right under
the People Also Ask box. And literally three hours ago,
we were in position 7. This is crazy! I was on top of the world. I gave our waiter a 100% tip, gave him a high-five,
and went straight back to the office only to find out… Our desktop rankings haven't budged,
and it makes me think that our mobile rankings aren't going to stick either. I wanted… no, needed that featured
snippet – but it was so far out of reach. And to make things worse, as I was enjoying my
very expensive burrito, I got a call from the Mrs only to find out that I had to leave in five hours. So now with only five real working hours
left, I had no choice but to change plans. Alright, so somehow, we have to do a full
content refresh in record time and there's just so much work to be done. So here's my plan. Step 1. Figure out exactly what Google
and searchers want to see when searching for "blogging tips." Step 2. Speed-write the best article for
searchers based on the research from step 1. Step 3. Ask Google for another assist. Step 4. Find out if our post deserves to rank #1. We haven't got a second to waste, so
we've got to go back to where we began: a search for "blogging tips." So when I'm trying to figure out what
Google and searchers want to see, I'm looking at three main things. First, I'm going to look at the titles
of the top-ranking pages. So what kind of pages have they created? Is there a specific format they follow? Is there a specific audience they're targeting? Or is there a specific angle they've all taken? So, from the looks of it, all top pages are blog
posts in a listicle format, and they're all targeting "beginner bloggers", but we already know this. Which is why you gotta look at the second
thing which is called SERP features. And SERP features are everything else
that's not a regular blue link result. So we already know that there's a featured snippet,
and we definitely-definitely want to optimize for this. But check out this question box here,
which is often called "People Also Ask." If the box is true to its name, then that means
that people who search for "blogging tips" are also searching for these queries. And this one, this one right here, is very-very
interesting: "how can I get better at blogging". So, we already know these people are beginner
bloggers, but I think we've uncovered why they search for "blogging tips." They don't have the goal of making more money,
they don't necessarily even care to get more traffic, they just want to get better at blogging. Now, the final thing I'm looking for are commonalities
between my competitors' articles and important things I might have missed. And the best way to do this is to just read
their articles and compare it with yours, which is what I'm going to do right now. This is taking forever. To be honest, I didn't really see anything in our
competitors' content that was particularly better or worse than ours. And I actually have no idea where to start. Even if I start writing now, I don't
know if I'm going to make it in time. A big part of me wanted to give
up to avoid potential failure. I even thought about starting over with another
page and to just do it right the first time through. But then the most meta thing happened,
and there's nothing that would have quite prepared me for it. This video popped out on my home feed:
"The Real Reason You're Not Ranking in Google". The video had an entire section
on fixing content-related issues. And after seven minutes of absorbing pure wisdom,
I knew exactly what I had to do to rank our post #1. So I wasted a bunch of time trying to do
this manually and completely forgot that there's this report in Ahrefs called "Also Talk About"
which is showing us topics that the top 10 pages for blogging tips are talking about. So all I have to do is skim through this report and
compare it with our post to see what we're missing. But doing this manually would have
been yet another time suck and so 2022. So I opened up ChatGPT and gave it this prompt: "I'm going to give you two things.
#1. A blog post on the topic "blogging tips". And #2. a list of keywords that
are related to the topic. I need you to tell me which keywords,
entities, or subtopics I've missed in my content based on the keyword list." And when I hit the return key,
I couldn't believe my eyes! We barely talked about social media. We don't talk about a content strategy at all. We barely touch on email marketing and
don't even mention an editorial calendar which is like blogging 101. And check out this tip: AI! I've literally used ChatGPT twice today to
significantly speed up some of my work. And I don't think any of the top-ranking pages
mention anything about AI or ChatGPT, so it's a unique and fresh angle we can add to our post. And these parts right here remind me that
we've barely talked about any actual writing tips. Now I knew exactly what I had
to add to our content. And I also knew that I had to cut out points
that weren't right for our beginner blogging audience that had the goal of
becoming a better blogger. It was time to speed write the best
article I could in record time. I literally wrote so fast that smoke
was coming out of my keyboard. And a few hours later… we
had our final product. Done! I have my doubts if this will work, but
all we can do now is hit the Publish button. Now, before I run, we have to
ping Google for the assist. So I'll search for the URL in Search
Console, and hit request indexing. And done! All we can do now is hope that Google acts
on our second indexing request and ranks us ahead of our competitors. So, hopefully by tomorrow morning
we'll be in position 1. And with the blink of an eye… it was morning. I already checked first thing and we
still owned position 1 on mobile. But what I really wanted was that
featured snippet on desktop. With only a couple of hours left to the 24-hour
mark, it was the moment of truth... We didn't get it. Wix is still 1 and we are now technically
in position 6, which is better than 7, but obviously not the result we were going for. To be honest, it kind of feels crummy,
but at least we got mobile position #1 with our content refresh, and I bet you
on desktop somewhere else it ranks #1… It ranks… somewhere else… that's it! Google's search results are location-dependent. So I opened up my VPN with just one hour
remaining, I had to find a location in the US where we were ranking #1. Boston.. Nope Connecticut... Nope New York… The only thing holding me back were pictures
of bridges that I selected with 100% accuracy… I had done it. Yessss, we've got New York! And after checking 20 some odd locations,
we had confirmed sightings of an Ahrefs featured snippet in New York, Nebraska,
and Raleigh, North Carolina. And exactly five days later our post owned the
featured snippet from the capital of all 50 US states. All it took was a basic SEO
technique and a delicious burrito.
