The Exact Blueprint That Ranked My Sites #1 on Google

In this chapter, I'm sharing the unexpected journey of creating my SEO course, driven by a joke that turned serious, and how I turned my entrepreneurial experience, especially in demand-driven product development, into lessons for you to build successful startups using SEO research as your foundational tool.

In this chapter, I’ll walk you through my approach to researching niches and keywords, creating standout content, building website authority through backlinks, and maintaining top search rankings, all based on my personal success strategies rather than typical expert methods.

In this chapter, I delve into the critical role of research in SEO, guiding you through SEO fundamentals, niche discovery for new projects, and keyword research for existing ventures to equip you with the tools to find that golden niche and avoid wasted effort.

In this chapter, I'll kick off by explaining SEO fundamentals, focusing on key types of keywords and understanding user intent.

In this chapter, I'll break down the difference between short tail and long tail keywords, highlighting the competitive nature and higher volume of short tail keywords versus the lower competition and easier ranking potential of long tail keywords for a strategic content approach.

In this chapter, I dive into the importance of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) in keyword research, explaining how related terms can boost your searchability and help you rank higher by targeting less competitive yet highly searched keywords.

When doing keyword research, it's crucial to understand user intent—whether users are seeking information, comparing options, ready to buy, or navigating to specific pages—so you can tailor your content accordingly.

I've covered the basics of SEO, and now I'll guide you through key SEO metrics, focusing on keyword difficulty, domain authority, search volume, and cost per click, all crucial for effective keyword research.

We’re diving into keyword research now, and I'll guide you on choosing between paid tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Mangools, or free options like Google Keyword Planner, though I personally recommend investing in a paid tool like Ahrefs to get the most out of your SEO efforts.

This chapter's all about diving into keyword research using Ahrefs to uncover new business opportunities—I'll walk you through my process of finding and validating high-potential niches by filtering easy-to-rank keywords with high search volumes and exploring tools and generator queries, sharing my screen for a hands-on, chaotic, and fun look into my method.

In this chapter, I'll show you the step-by-step process of how I identify and validate opportunities for a keyword like "AI tattoo generator," and explore additional relevant keywords to build a larger content strategy, driving traffic and potentially monetizing it.

In this chapter, I'll dive into assessing competition using Ahrefs to analyze domain and page authority, identify backlink opportunities, and explore lucrative keywords for AI tattoo generators, setting the stage for strategically developing a website.

After doing keyword research, I focus on building a website sitemap, choosing a main keyword like "AI tattoo generator," and planning content around short and long-tail keywords using programmatic SEO to attract visitors and monetize by offering paid tool features they find valuable.

In this chapter, I'm diving into when to abandon ideas based on Ahrefs and search data, illustrating with examples like a failed venture to sell ComfyUI workflows due to low search interest, and the overly competitive car insurance niche, guiding you on identifying viable market opportunities and when not to pursue them.

In this chapter, I'm diving into how to do keyword research for existing businesses, showing you how to find new keywords, identify content gaps, and ultimately improve your Google search presence using tools like Ahrefs while examining competitors' strategies to enhance your SEO game.

In this chapter, I show you how to use the top pages feature in a site's explorer to uncover potential keyword opportunities your competitors are capitalizing on, avoiding keyword cannibalism, and finding gaps like low-competition keywords that we can leverage to drive traffic and enhance our site's visibility.

In this chapter, I'm walking you through using competitive analysis to uncover keyword gaps where we're not ranking, enabling us to easily discover new content opportunities and perform deeper keyword research as we did in the previous chapter.

In this chapter, I'm diving into finding keyword opportunities by exploring main keywords like "profile picture maker," filtering out branded terms, and discovering untapped regions like using "DP" for Instagram, a term used more in Asia, to help boost rankings and differentiate my content strategy.

In this chapter, I’ll teach you how to create content for SEO by diving into programmatic SEO, free tools, content pages, landing pages, articles, and content rings, plus offer some on-page SEO optimization tips using successful case studies.

Programmatic SEO (PSEO) leverages programming to create scalable SEO content, and in this chapter, I'll break down the six crucial steps to effectively implement PSEO, share how I applied these strategies to my own products like Tattoos AI, Landingfolio, and Hedgehog Pro, and guide you on integrating promotional content to boost your product visibility.

In this chapter, I'll walk you through how I leveraged programmatic SEO and user-generated content to build and monetize Tattoo's AI—a site powered by an AI tattoo generator to categorize and display tattoo ideas automatically, all making it earn $4,000 monthly on autopilot.

In this chapter, I dive into how I successfully implemented a programmatic SEO strategy for my first website, Landingfolio, by leveraging automated content curation and categorization to rank high on Google and generate significant traffic, which I later monetized.

In this chapter, I dive into a failed programmatic SEO strategy I implemented for Headshot Pro, exploring our attempt to rank for "headshots near me" using automated content creation and why it ultimately flopped due to its lack of depth and value.

In this chapter, I teach how you, as a developer, can leverage free tools to create SEO content, gain backlinks, solve user problems, and rank high in Google, using examples like Profile Picture AI and Headshot Pro for a successful implementation.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to leverage free tools to rank for keywords and upsell your paid product, using the example of creating a free profile picture generator that attracts users while promoting the premium version.

In this chapter, I’ll reveal how we leveraged a LinkedIn profile generator to attract a broader audience and upsell them into HedgeUp Pro by tapping into a related niche and using strategic cross-promotions.

In this chapter, I'll break down the three essential components of creating a successful free tool: improving user experience, crafting a clear title and meta description, and adding detailed content to rank high on Google.

In this chapter, I explore content pages, which are a blend of blog posts and landing pages, showing you how to leverage them effectively for informational user intent to rank better on Google.

I've learned that crafting comparison pages is a clever strategy to rank high on Google, especially for competitive keywords like "Ahrefs vs. SEMrush," allowing you to showcase product differences and sway potential customers towards your tools over competitors', who might use affiliate links to drive preference.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to create user success stories and reviews content pages to rank high on keywords like "review" and "examples," and why this helps establish trust and authority for your site.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to boost your website's search rankings by creating niche-specific content hubs, essentially focused groups of pages targeting specific industries or types of services within your niche to improve SEO without cluttering your homepage with unrelated keywords.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to harness keyword opportunities by creating content pages filled with use cases, case studies, and tutorials to showcase your product and potentially boost trial sign-ups, using strategies like SEMrush's example marketplace.

If you're running a SaaS and want to integrate with platforms like Wix or Shopify, it's smart to create content directories targeting specific integration keywords to improve ranking and attract more users.

I've been sharing my favorite content strategies for SEO, and now I'm giving a quick overview of how and when to use landing pages, articles, and content rings in your strategy.

In this chapter, I'll show you how to effectively use landing pages for transactional user intent, guiding you to rank higher and convert searches into purchases without wasting time on unnecessary content types like blogs.

In this chapter, I share my experience and advice against using AI-generated content for SEO, emphasizing the importance of hiring skilled copywriters to create valuable, engaging content that genuinely addresses user intent, instead of relying on shortcuts that may harm your ranking.

In this chapter, I share my content range strategy, which involves creating multiple standalone websites with free tools to generate backlinks and boost the domain authority of my main business site, while cautioning against overdoing it to avoid penalties from Google.

In this chapter, I dive into the don'ts of content creation to avoid Google's banhammer, including steering clear of AI content spam, managing your crawl budget wisely, avoiding keyword stuffing, dodging duplicated content, preventing keyword cannibalization, and ensuring your content isn't too thin to be valuable.

I won't bore you with endless on-page optimization tips—just focus on internal linking, optimizing meta titles and descriptions, prioritizing page speed, and using canonicals to boost your SEO game.

In this chapter, I'm diving deep into the significance of backlinks for authority in SEO, explaining why links from high domain authority sites are crucial, and highlighting strategies to secure valuable backlinks and enhance your site's credibility in both the current search engine landscape and the evolving AI realm.

In this chapter, I'm going to break down 10 successful link building strategies I've used for my products, and I'll show you exactly how they work so you can replicate them for your own success.

If you want links to your website, make sure it's high-quality and user-friendly; this chapter's all about how a good product and user experience make link-building a breeze.

In this chapter, I'm teaching you the sneaky strategy of link stealing to boost your product's ranking by identifying where your biggest competitor, like Canva, is getting backlinks and persuading those sites to link to you instead by showcasing your superior product or even offering a little incentive.

In this chapter, I reveal how affiliate programs can be an effective strategy for building strong backlinks by incentivizing others to promote your product, using tools like Rewardful to simplify the process, and strategically targeting competitor affiliates to offer better commissions and drive high-quality traffic to your site, while managing potential spammy links via Google's disavow feature.

Why grind for backlinks when you can just buy someone's years of work by purchasing their site? Here's how I did it for ProfilePicture.ai and scored a ton of backlinks to boost my own site's authority.

In this chapter, I'm diving into using HARO and Help a B2B Writer Out as a time-consuming yet ultra-effective strategy to score those coveted high-quality domain authority backlinks, despite the low success rate due to AI-induced spam, and how personal touches like Loom videos can make all the difference.

If you're thrilled with a tool, you can leverage it as a win-win by offering to write a positive case study in exchange for a backlink, as I did with Rewardful, helping both parties build credibility and attract more users.

In this chapter, I explain how to use content rings by creating free tools that link back to your website, leveraging them for strong backlinks and quick indexing by Google.

In this chapter, I dive into the somewhat tedious yet highly effective method of manual outreach for backlink acquisition, sharing our experiences and successes with pitching to high-authority sites like CNET and A16Z, while emphasizing the importance of personalized, thoughtful engagement to build valuable backlinks without spamming.

In this chapter, I share how I leverage my 130,000 Twitter followers to generate backlinks, why outreach to reporters isn't always effective, and strategies to collaborate with influencers and others' audiences to boost product visibility and backlink success.

In this chapter, I'll share various link-building strategies I've used to boost our companies' authority, including methods like creating linkable assets, broken link building, the skyscraper technique, guest posting, podcasting, and link swapping, offering a range of tactics to improve your backlink profile effectively.

In this chapter, I dive into backlink strategies you should steer clear of, emphasizing that low-quality link buying, over-optimized anchor tags, spamming URLs, engaging with private blog networks, and submitting to irrelevant websites can seriously harm your SEO by leading to a Google penalty you might never recover from.

You've got your keywords, content, and backlinks sorted—now brace yourself for the hardest part: patience! I'll explain why waiting for your content to rank on Google can take months, and share what you should do to maintain and defend your top positions from this point on.

In this chapter, I talk about navigating Google updates and the volatility of keyword rankings, emphasizing the importance of creating user-focused content rather than relying solely on SEO tactics, as Google core updates can drastically alter website rankings overnight.

In this chapter, I'll explain how staying on top of Google and user intent shifts is crucial for SEO maintenance, showing how we had to adapt our content strategy to reclaim top rankings after experiencing unexpected de-ranking due to changes in what users and Google preferred.

In this chapter, I walk you through the crucial monthly task of tracking and outpacing your competitors' backlink acquisition using Ahrefs to maintain SEO dominance and secure higher domain authority.

In this chapter, I'm advising you to focus on monitoring your actions rather than results, by consistently completing specific tasks like content creation, keyword ranking, page optimization, link building, and competitor analysis, while also keeping track of important metrics with dashboards and reviews to ensure your SEO maintenance strategy is on point.

This chapter covers the essential steps to kickstart a business, from finding the right keywords and niche to creating engaging content and building authority through backlinks, emphasizing the importance of aligning with user intent and continuously optimizing to stay ahead of competitors.