Planning A Website Project ~ How to Create a Blog Google Loves and Never Run Out of Content Ideas
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Sometimes the hardest part of getting started on a blogging project is knowing where to start. There are so many options, and possibilities, it’s very easy to get caught up in the little details, get overwhelmed, freak out and do nothing (oh or is that just me lol).
If you’re going to create a profitable blog, whether it’s for affiliate marketing, niche sites, authority sites, or even to get more leads for your network marketing company, you’re going to need a plan!
I must say… the planning stage of any website is my absolute FAVORITE part. Here’s how how I handle planning a website project.
Planning a Website Project
1. Get a HUGE piece of paper and your colored markers. (yeah, I’m old school like that)
You could also use a mind map program if you want, but paper is really fun.
2. Identify your target market ~ the more specific you can be the better.
Busy moms vs. stay at home moms with multiple kids who need to earn an extra income ~ is better.
3. Identify 4 to 7 very general topics your target market would want information about.
for example… If I’m targeting stay at home moms who want to earn extra income ~ I might choose, cooking, budgeting, kiddos, online business, self improvement.
4. Break those general topics (now your categories) into more specific topics. (I like to have 3 to 5 more specific topics)
cooking = 5 ingredient meals, crockpot cooking, menu planning
5. From those more specific topics (now your subcategories) you’re going to come up with specific ideas ~ which will be your posts.
5 ingredient meals = several recipes made of only 5 ingredients
crockpot cooking = tips to use a crockpost, saving money using a crockpot, recipes for crockpot cooking
menu planning = weekly meal plan, tips on meal planning, monthly meal planning, weekly meal planning
Once you’ve come up with these specific post ideas you can use your keyword tool to find the specific words/phrases people are using to look for that topic. ie… your targeted keywords
6. Create a posting schedule.
There are blog posting calendars around… I generally use Charlie Gilkey’s planners for my posting schedule. There is also the wp editorial calendar plugin which many find wonderful.
Once you’ve gone through this process you will have tons of content ideas in front of you. If you started with 7 large categories, and came up with 5 subcategories, and then came up with only 5 specific topics for each you’d already have 175 post ideas. What’s really great about it, is the content is completely and utterly directed toward your target market. Doing this work up front helps you really stay targeted, focused and on track to provide content your target market will love.
Now you just have to write them.
You have a couple options here as well. You could just bust them out. Write them all, schedule them to publish regularly and move on to sharing and connecting. You could also set up a publishing schedule for yourself and write a new post on each of your publishing days. Once you’re post is written and published then jump on to the sharing and connecting for that post.
Gone are the days where one page sites targeting single keywords are going to work… you’re going to have to be in it for the long haul, and prepared to write LOTS of content.
Here’s the cool thing though… you’ll end up ranking for a BUNCH of keywords you never expected or could have dreamed of and those seriously unexpected long tails can bring in quite a bit of traffic.
If you’re still struggling to create a profitable blog take a look at the one that’s changed my entire business. I went from struggling with the tech stuff to being extremely profitable… all because I made this one little change.
I’d love to hear how your website project turns out… leave me a note in the comments.
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