Hope SEO is writing and publishing long-form content, hoping it ranks and brings organic traffic.
This is widely preached by people selling niche site courses, pitching it as an easy way to make money. You know what I’m talking about: Project 24 and the like. For every one person who follows their methodology and becomes their case study poster child, making thousands per month, hundreds and thousands end up making dozens of dollars or less.
I’m not saying that can’t work, I’m just saying it won’t work for most of us.
Me included.
I’ve been practicing hope SEO since I started, occasionally buying or building backlinks, but mostly just hitting publish and waiting.
And for every one of those new sites that were started and ranked, dozens didn’t do a damn thing. Terrible win-loss record.
It’s time to get proactive with this shit.
If you’re averse to building backlinks, there are other ways to go about it through actual content marketing.
I’m not talking about the bogus-ass automated sharing on social media, either.
I mean strategic.
When was the last time you hit publish on a piece meant to be published on Reddit because you knew it was a controversial take? Or built an email list that would do it for you? Not build an email list to sell shit to, but build an email list of ride-or-dies that would argue online on your behalf.
That’s what I’m getting nasty with.
I’m talking about creating a piece around your collected data and providing insights no one else has done before.
I’m talking about creating a complex calculator only available in a convoluted spreadsheet that needs permissions and unnecessary access to your Google Drive.
I’m talking about those wildly specific Buzzfeed quizzes that had people spending the first 45 minutes of their workday on every damn day.
Lastly, I’m talking about creating content so good people are typing your URL into their browser because they can’t wait to see what you say next.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Get out of the mindset of keyword research, writing to a specific and arbitrary word count, hitting publish, and waiting patiently. Get proactive with getting people to your website.
Or die.