This post contains affiliate links. All opinions are my own.
I have been a blogger for over 12 years! I have been with many social media companies since the beginning and I have seen all the changes that are not beneficial for bloggers.
I knew SEO was important and I would do my best to add the keywords to my blog posts, use them in my alt descriptions and use the free version of Yoast to make sure everything was good.
But that didn’t work…
So I read books and joined expensive SEO courses and they were helpful but not the best option. They taught me how to use Ahrefs and other SEO tools.
There was a crazy formula I had to use to see if I could actually rank for those words and then I had to do a lot of research to make my post as good as the post that ranked in the top 5.
I had always felt that these tools were not made for bloggers and it wasn’t the easiest way to use SEO in my blog posts.
One of the SEO Classes I took was by Brandon Gaille. He has a free podcast that is loaded with tips. I wanted to learn more so I joined his class. It really did help but I think it was hard because it was so much work to see what I could rank for.
As part of this class you got to be in his Facebook group and he was always available to answer any questions.
He’s a blogger and he’s really good at it! His podcast is called the Blog Millionaire…so he knows what he’s talking about. He writes his blog posts after doing a lot of SEO research and it pays off!
He created an SEO tool that has changed the way I blog! RankIQ is made for bloggers! There are libraries for so many niches with keywords that you can search and see the traffic and how hard or easy it will be to rank for. Or you can just add your keyword and see if it’s a keyword you can rank for.
Once you find the keyword you run a report. You get 15 per month and this report helps you write the post the right way the first time!
It helps you create the perfect title and lets you know all the words you need to include in that post to make it as good or better than the blog posts that are getting traffic!
How it helps me:
When I work with a client I look for some keywords that I can write about related to their product and write then post so it will eventually rank on Google.
I am updating old posts like crazy! I have 12 years of blog posts and many of them are ugly and written horribly! I mostly rank for food blog posts. And I am not nearly as big as many of the big food blogs. But with this tool, I have found some long tail keywords that I can rank for! The best part is…I have many recipes that would fit for these keywords, I just need to update the blog post to use the words people are searching for.
For example, I had a recipe post that is very common. There is no way I would get traffic from it. But after adding the keyword “without brown sugar” this has moved my blog post from no one will ever find it on Google to the #3 spot on Google in about 3 months.
It helps me only buy content that I know can rank on Google.
I used to buy recipes and DIY because they looked good or I thought people might search for it. But now when I see recipes and things for sale, I pull up RankIQ and see if it’s worth the price to purchase it.
Today I bought a Thanksgiving printable that has 22,602 searches per year and I can rank for it. I’m sure most of that traffic will be in November but it will totally be worth the spike in traffic during a really good time of year!
I have tried a lot of things to get more traffic to my blog. I spent a lot of money on Pinterest class that was awesome and helpful..but now Pinterest is horrible and I do not spend any time on that platform as a blogger or a consumer. I put all my time and resources into SEO – and it’s working! More than half of my traffic is now search traffic.
RankIQ is so affordable! It’s just $50 per month. You can check out the keyword library, save them for later and run 15 reports per month that will help you optimize your posts to help them rank!
Plus you have direct access to Brandon to ask him any question and read through all the advice and tips in his private Facebook group!
I have heard that this price will eventually go up to $100 per month but if you have it at $50 per month it will stay that price.
I have paid over $100 per month for an SEO tool and it wasn’t as helpful as RankIQ.
Ahrefs runs a report for me and shows me how my blog posts show up in searches.
This report is from August 1, 2021
New keywords from July 1 – August 1 2021:
- 36 new keywords in Top 3 positions!
- 90 new keywords in 4–10 positions
- 1,137 new keywords in 11–50 positions
A post I wrote in July 2 is in position #27
A post I updated on May 14 is in position #13
A post I wrote on May 9 is in position # 9
A post I wrote on May 27 is in position #7
Head to RankIQ and watch the tutorial and check it out! Just try it for a month and see how easy it is to use!
I need more time to just write and update old posts. My goal this month is to update some holiday posts!
