How to Write a Kick-Ass Blog Post
Time commitment: 1 hour, 12 minutes
What you’ll learn:
I’m sharing the secrets that have helped me land clients and writing positions for companies like Search Engine Journal, Sprout Social, Adobe, AT&T, and more.
Whether you’re a beginner or have been creating blog content for a long time, I’ll be sharing a number of resources and processes that can be useful to create quality content, efficiently. I’ll go through the complete process of writing a truly kick-ass blog post, which includes:
- Topic development
- Research
- Outlining
- Finding legal to use images
- Formatting for the web
- Drafting/editing
- Using SEO best practices in your content
- Blog promotion tactics
SEO for Bloggers & Solopreneurs
Time commitment: 51 minutes
What you’ll learn:
WTF is SEO? As a follow up to my popular “How to Start a Kick-Ass Blog Post” Skillshare class, I dive deeper into the fundamentals of onsite SEO, touching on things like technical SEO and backlinks and what you can do to be effective with SEO—even as a beginner.
During this class, I’ll teach you about how to find the best keywords for your audience, how to use popular keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner (free) and Ahrefs (paid), and how to implement keywords and other onsite SEO best practices when creating content. Finally, I’ll share my recommendations for tools to audit your efforts and ensure that you rank in search!
Mastering Keyword Research (Even if SEO Makes You Feel Lost)
Time commitment: 1 hour, 8 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Keyword research is one of the most important foundational elements of SEO. SEO Content Strategist Maddy Osman shares her detailed approach to keyword research, which includes an emphasis on data and human intuition working in tandem with each other.
In this keyword research-focused class, you’ll learn:
- The basics regarding how keyword research impacts efforts with onsite SEO, backlink building, and technical SEO (website structure).
- Multiple different approaches to finding keywords, even if you’re struggling to find the right terminology to start your search.
- The importance of relevance and intent and how to create a content calendar that addresses searchers at various stages in the buyer’s journey.
- How to validate keyword ideas based on search volume and keyword difficulty.
- How to rank for more than one primary keyword by incorporating semantic keywords.
- How to effectively use keywords in content to properly signal Google.
- Various tools for doing keyword research, tracking rankings, and spying on the competition (including free and paid options).
- …and so much more!
How To Get Backlinks (Without Being Annoying)
Time commitment: 45 minutes
What you’ll learn:
As the result of building a high-authority website for my business, The Blogsmith, I’ve unintentionally become the recipient of dozens of backlink requests each week — many that are so annoying and self-serving that I never bother to respond.
After going through hundreds of backlink requests (and making dozens of my own), I’m sharing the secrets for what makes a successful backlink request and several tactics to get backlinks that you can personalize for your own use. After going through this class, you’ll have an actionable framework for earning backlinks as part of a bigger SEO strategy — even if you’re a complete beginner!
In this class, you’ll learn:
- Why backlinks are so important for SEO
- 11 tactics to build high-quality backlinks (from easy opportunities to advanced ideas)
- How to build relationships to increase success with your backlink requests
- How to customize my backlink request template for your needs
Technical SEO: Google Ranking Signals You Can't Ignore
Time commitment: 52 minutes
What you’ll learn:
SEO success comes from the combined efforts of three pillars:
- A solid content strategy (onpage SEO and keyword research)
- A solid backlink strategy (from relevant, high-authority websites in your niche)
- Proper website technical structure
This class will walk you through the most important technical SEO considerations, including:
- Mobile-responsiveness
- Page speed
- HTTPS
- Menu usability
A Complete Blog Post Publishing & Promotion Checklist
Time commitment: 45 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Do you ever feel like you’re missing something important when you press “publish” on a new blog post? Most good content writers know that there’s so much more to it than just the copy, itself — especially if you work with multiple different clients (and different style guides). You don’t actually have a content strategy if you’re haphazardly publishing new content without a solid plan for getting the word out to your audience.
I’ll take you through my own blog post publishing and promotion checklist during this session, with insights into proper onpage SEO. You’ll leave with an actionable plan for taking your content to the next level — and making content work for your business.
What you’ll learn in this class:
- Easy onpage SEO best practices to keep in mind when formatting content on WordPress.
- What you must do before hitting “publish” on a new blog post.
- Various considerations for where to promote your content, including several ideas you may not have considered before.
- How to incorporate a blog post publishing/promotional checklist into your editorial calendar.
How to Write a Kick-Ass Blog Outline
Time commitment: 53 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Blogging without a process is an unnecessary waste of time and energy. Save yourself the anguish by starting with an outline. How to Write a Kick-Ass Blog Outline shares my best advice regarding:
- Why to bother with outlining
- Sourcing visual content assets
- Finding credible sources
- Self-editing
- …and more!
How to Negotiate a Six-Figure Freelance Salary
Time commitment: 1 hour, 25 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Are you having trouble making a living wage as a freelancer? Perhaps you need a bit of a mindset shift—and a little bit of process to back it up. In this Skillshare class, I speak from my own experience as a successful six-figure freelancer—as well as a stint in sales with Groupon, where I worked my way from inbound sales to cold calling!
In this class, we’ll touch on:
- Working back from the number you want to make to calculator your rate
- Developing an elevator pitch (with an opportunity for you to get feedback on yours)
- How to use your first meeting with a prospect to uncover pain points to later sell to
- Negotiation tactics, including handling common freelance rate objections
- Which freelance job opportunities to avoid and how to prove your worth
- …and so much more!
How to Grow Your Business with Virtual Assistants
Time commitment: 46 minutes
What you’ll learn:
My business grew to six figures as a direct result of hiring virtual assistants to help me chip away at projects, do research, and help with various administrative tasks. While watching this class, you’ll learn:
- Reasons why the costs associated with hiring a virtual assistant provide a good ROI
- How virtual assistants should be classified in terms of employment for tax purposes
- Where virtual assistants hang out online
- Tasks to delegate to your virtual assistant
- The basics of delegation
- Useful tools & resources to work together
How to Build a Winning Pinterest SEO Strategy
Time commitment: 57 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Google and Pinterest are similar in more ways than you’d expect:
- They both get billions of search queries each month
- They both offer analytics tools that can help you understand users
- They’re both keyword driven
This means that typical SEO practices—like keyword research and “on page” optimization also apply on Pinterest—with just slight differences from similar processes on Google. This class will walk you through my Pinterest SEO strategy, which has resulted in 358k monthly viewers for my ecommerce business, Tanks that Get Around.
Writing Product Descriptions that Sell
Time commitment: 33 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Don’t settle for the swipe copy a manufacturer sends you or a few haphazard sentences you wrote just to get the job done. Engaging product descriptions involve so much more than text—they incorporate SEO best practices, multimedia (not just static images!), and provide customers with answers to the questions they need in order to convert. Join Maddy Osman, SEO Content Strategist from The Blogsmith, in a session focused on creating engaging eCommerce product descriptions that actually convert.
Tweet Like a CEO: Building Thought Leadership on Social Media
Time commitment: 47 minutes
What you’ll learn:
“Thought leadership” is a big concept that can feel overwhelming. With the right process in place, you too can become a thought leader in your industry! This class will cover the principals behind why it’s worth the effort, how to lead from the top of an organization, how to choose your ideal social platform, why you might need a bit of a digital makeover, how to make friends in high places (influencer outreach), creating shareable content, and how to effectively harness content curation. Whether you’re an executive at a company or a freelancer hustling to build your own empire, there are plenty of actionable takeaways!
What makes me qualified to teach this class? I have bylines with many high quality industry publications (GoDaddy, Sprout Social, Search Engine Journal, etc.), 11k+ followers on Twitter, 4k+ on Instagram, and 2.5k+ on LinkedIn. It’s all based on my own personal experience!
Intro to WordPress for Bloggers
Time commitment: 1 hour, 7 minutes
What you’ll learn:
If you’re an intermediate/advanced user of WordPress, this is not the class for you.
If you’re considering using WordPress for your blog or business and are super new to the technology, you’re the person who I created this class for.
We’ll walk through:
- Why WordPress?
- Basic WordPress terminology
- Basics regarding editing appearance
- Top plugins to add functionality to your WordPress website
- Basics regarding editing appearance
It would be helpful to have a WordPress website in order to follow along but isn’t necessary.
Increase Your Website Conversions With Simple UX Audits
Time commitment: 60 minutes
What you’ll learn:
Even though it’s not always easy to measure, there’s a distinct relationship between a good user experience and good SEO.
With over 15 years of web development experience and a more recent focus in SEO content marketing, I understand the important relationships between various website elements and how they contribute to the user experience. Taking what I know about both, I’ve created a framework for user testing websites, apps, and products that’s been used to provide useful feedback for hundreds of satisfied customers.
In this class, I’m sharing a step-by-step process for designing user tests that produce useful feedback that can increase conversions. Use it to hire user testers to improve your website or to develop a paid user testing service offering for clients. I’ll also take you behind the scenes of my own process of offering user testing as a service and how I structure packages and what deliverables look like.
Work with The Blogsmith to jumpstart your business’ growth through content and UX enhancement.
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