The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 102. How Domain Authority and Ahrefs Grew Rebekah Parr's Blogging Business

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

We have Rebekah Parr, founder of the Two Mama Bears blog, on to discuss her blogging journey and the strategies that she has used to grow her blog. We talk more about the importance of EO and keyword research and Rebekah shares her experience with using Ahrefs for this. She shares the significance of domain authority and shares a hack for outranking higher authority websites. We talk more about the need for genuine content, tracking blog performance, and making data-informed decisions for your blog. Tune in to learn more from Rebekah’s journey!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsWe have a goal to reach 100,000 downloads by December 31 and we need your help! Share an episode you love with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! We would be so grateful!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode102

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Hey, everybody, and welcome back. Today, we are super excited to introduce you to Rebecca Parr. She is the founder of a blog called Two Mama Bears, and it was created for parents of babies and toddlers. As a mother of three little ones, she's constantly looking for the best products and tips, and whatever she finds, she shares on her blog. Today, she's going to be here to talk to you a little bit about her blogging journey, and so we are very excited to have her. Welcome, Rebecca. Thank you. I'm so excited. I love your podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Just to kick us off, why don't you just tell our audience a little bit more about yourself? So maybe how you got started with blogging, why you wanted to start a blog,

and how you got into the niche of sharing things for parents of babies and toddlers. Yeah. So in 2021 is when I started this blog, and it was a total hobby. I have always done writing in corporate environments and it pays the bills and it's fine, but I'm not super excited about what I was writing about. And I love writing. It's like my total outlet. I'm a journaler. I just need to write to process things. So in my head, I was like, I want to be able to write something for me, even if it's just a hobby and it never turns into something. I just want to be able to write what I want to write about for once. So that's how that started. And my sister actually started it. We did it together at the

beginning. That's why it's called Two Mama Bears. But she is a stay-at-home mom with three girls that she homeschools. And it just got... I think blogging is so much more work than you realize when you start. You think, oh, I'm just going to write this article. But then you realize there's research and there's web development and there's marketing and there's social media and SEO, obviously, like we're going to talk about today. And it's just... I knew that that's what was involved and she didn't. So I'm glad we started it together. And I'm glad it's been able to continue. But that's how it started just as a hobby. And then about a year in, I really started learning more about how to use SEO to really grow it.

And that's when it turned more into a business. And then in the last 6 months, it's really taken off. So yeah. I love that you shared that natural progression of, I just want to write to about a year and I realized that I wanted to focus more. And then in the last six months, it's really picked up. And I think that that's just a really common story with bloggers. I know my story sounds very similar to that too. I was personally resistant to learning keyword research and Jennifer was banging her head against a wall like, come on, Can you just do this? I promise you this will all be okay. Can you just do it?

And when I finally did, then I was able to see success there. And so we're going to talk about that today. And we're going to talk about the specific tool that you use that we have not ever brought on the podcast before. And something I want to say here is Rebecca actually reached out to us to come on the podcast. So if you are a podcast listener and you have something that you feel like you could share with our community, like Rebecca, reach out to us. Just go to our website, just like she did. I love that you reached out and said, I want to help others and teach about this. And that's what this community is all about. So I just want to say thank you for doing that. And thank you for coming on today to talk about Ahrefs. That's what we're going to talk about today.

And like almost everything I've learned is from other podcasters. So I feel like I owe it back. I've taken so much. It's about time to give something back. So that's what we always say about blogging. It's such a community in such a way that no other, I don't think, business is in that we like to all work together and build each other up because that just helps the business as a whole. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. So your blog

has grown significantly in the last year. Tell us a little bit about that story. How did that shift go from just writing content to then actually researching the content that you are going to start putting on your blog to make sure that all the time and energy that you were spending on it was actually going to be used to get the content out to more people. Yeah. So at the very beginning, it started with just writing stuff that I wanted to write, which is fine. But there were some articles that I look back on and I'm like, why did I ever think that I was ever going to rank on page one of Google for this best father-in-law gift ideas? There's no way I'm ever going to be on page one for a term like that. It's going to be

all New York Times, New York Post, Allure.com. There's just blogs and websites that I can't compete with because they have so much history and so many backlinks and domain authority is a big part of it, which we can talk about. But I didn't understand that concept. I just thought like, I'll just make it really lengthy and make sure that the right keywords are in there. And I didn't understand the competition aspect of it until I just kind of got lucky with one of the articles I posted. It was about a toy subscription company. And I started noticing some commissions coming in, which I was hopeful for, but I never really expected. I'm like, why is this one working so well and nothing else is? So it kind of was backtracking and looking at that. And I realized when I looked at everything that was on page one of Google and Ahrefs,

I saw that all of the domain authorities of the other blogs that were ranking on page one were either similar or less than mine. And I thought, well, that must be something. So I started with that. And then I started doing more keyword research on different topics and realized that really the key is finding keywords that have a decent, hopefully high, if you can, search volume. But the competition on page one, those websites have a similar or lower domain rating or domain authority than your site. And once I figured that out, now it's just really taken off.

Yeah. So you've basically stumbled across, I think as many of us do, the fact that once you can actually put out content that people are typing into their search bar in Google, then you have the opportunity to connect and then get eyeballs on the content that you're actually writing. And I think that can be a little bit of a hard shift to make. But once it starts to happen, then you're like, Oh, but this is the whole goal. If I'm just writing something, but nobody's seeing it, then that doesn't feel good. So once you actually start to gain that traction, I think is when you start to snowball and you're like, Okay, now, how can I go about finding more of these types of things and building on this type

of success? So you ended up choosing a tool called Ahrefs, which we mentioned. There's a lot of different keyword research tools out there. And I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today, you can apply to pretty much any of them, but you chose this one. How did you decide A, that you needed this tool? And what benefits does it bring to you? And why did you choose Ahrefs over some of the other options? So I was doing a lot of the keyword research stuff manually, which my strategy has so much to do with the domain authority of the other websites that are ranking on page one for whatever term I'm trying to write about.

And there are tools out there that are free where you can type in the website URL and it will tell you what the domain authority is. But doing that manually for the top five or six results on Google for every term that you're trying to research takes a ton of time. So that was a huge selling point to me of Ahrefs is you can type in a keyword, scroll down, and it shows you the results on page one of Google. And it has the word count of every article, the domain authority, what's their top organic keyword, all that information in one spot is such a time saver to me. And the domain authority at the domain level is not available in SEMrush. So a couple months into using Ahrefs, I'm like, this is just the one that I stumbled across. I don't know if it's really the

best. So I tried SEMrush at the same time. And the data is a little bit different, but generally the same. But I couldn't do that filter on the domain authority that I really rely on so much. So that's why I stuck with Ahrefs. But like you said, there are tons of tools that do similar things. Yeah. And it really comes down to what we always say. And it's like time versus money. And so you decided that I'm not going to spend so much time. I'm going to pay a little bit every month for a tool that's going to save me some time because I know I need to invest in my business in this way and being able to do keyword research. Yep. It was hard to invest in it because when I

first started doing it, the blog wasn't making very much money. And I'm like, but once I started, that has been the key to growing. And I don't even think about it anymore. Yeah. I'm glad that you said that because I do think that paying for a keyword research tool, whichever one somebody decides on, there is an investment piece there. And there can be investments for plugins and different things that we need on our blogs or email marketing or whatever. And now you said, I don't even think about it anymore because you've seen the benefit that it's provided your business. And so if you're listening to this and you're nervous about investing part of your profit, or it might not even be a profit yet. It might be a legitimate investment that you're taking out of your personal finances in order to fund this business. I think if you really go all in with what that is, and you learn to understand it, and you really understand the why behind why your business might need that, then you might end up just like Rebecca and Jennifer and I and say, well, my business wouldn't be what it is without it.

my business wouldn't be what it is without it. And there's specific things that we talk about with our students in the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp and things that are worth that. Not everything is something that you need to pay for. There's a lot of things that are out there that we could purchase. But we're really intentional about what we recommend as well. Having a keyword research tool is something that we feel very strongly about, especially with all that's going on with Google right now, and how much it's changing, and how much more we need to niche down and all of that. Having a keyword research tool is only going to serve you better in your business. So just like to give that kind of disclaimer there that we can get... I think you can kind of get lost in the forest a lot, in the weeds,

and think that you need all of these things and we lose sight of what we're actually meant to do as bloggers. But there are some things that we really do need. So I think it's just understanding what those things are. So you decided on Ahrefs. Yep. I want to go back a little bit. Can we talk about domain authority a little bit? And let's talk about what domain authority is. So domain authority is a number between zero and 100. That is kind of like the score of how much Google likes your website or how authoritative they think you are, I guess.

So zero would be like, I just bought my domain and I just set up posting and I haven't written anything yet. Usually once you start writing a few articles, you'll get up to 10, 15, 20. And then domain authority of 90 would be like probably New York Times or YouTube or Amazon, those types of websites. So the Two Mama Bears domain authority has been going back and forth between 28 to 30. And so that's just where I'm at. So if I'm trying to write an article, I am really trying to make sure that the entire first page of Google isn't websites that have domain authorities of 60, 70, 80. Because I'm going to spend all this time and effort writing this article,

and no one's ever going to see it. Because how many people go to the fourth or fifth page of Google? Like no one's ever going to see it because how many people go to the fourth or fifth page of Google? Like no one. So there's one hack that I have found where you can outrank people with higher domain authorities than you. And it's specifically for like best type posts or like list posts, product review. So like 10 best sunglasses or whatever the term might be. If you actually buy everything on that list and take pictures of everything and have personal experience with every single item that you're talking about, you cannot rank those bigger websites because they don't do that. And Google really cares about personal experience, especially since the EAT algorithm update. So that's a hack for you, but it costs money to do that.

So, yes. I so appreciate you sharing all of that because I don't think we've dove into that very much. We've definitely talked about domain authority, but I don't think we've had somebody with the experience who has targeted that

as they're doing their keyword research. And they're really looking at that in terms of what they will write for their website, and then been able to see the results of that. So I think that is so extremely helpful. And I think the other thing is, I think it should be an encouragement for newer bloggers. It's not so much about what your domain authority is. It's just what it is relative to what you want to write about. So making sure that you're not trying to compete basically out of your league, and you can start to rank and then over time, that's going to continue to improve as you do start to rank. Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's like the number one thing that I look for when doing

keyword research is that. Yeah. Yeah, I like that you've given that perspective and shared that because I think that's just another way that people can do keyword research. There's all these different ways that people go about it and things that they look at. And I think it's really encouraging because we can find what works best for us in our business, not only our business, but also our niche. So different niches you might find are more successful doing things or doing some things or not other things. And I think that that is where we as bloggers become the business owners and we put on that research cap. For some of us, it's not always our strength. I'm talking about myself here. But knowing that we get to play around. We get to play around in this and that it doesn't come naturally to everybody. So I just admitted that. It doesn't come super naturally to me. It comes much more naturally

to Jennifer than it does me. But it doesn't mean that I can't learn and it doesn't mean that I haven't learned. So I want to make sure I say that too. I think you just have to do it. And the only way that you were ever going to learn is when we just do the thing. And we can stay kind of like frozen or we can stay in this identity of, well, I'm not a tech person, and I don't know how to do keyword research. And so therefore, I'm never going to have a blog that's going to be successful. Or you can say, okay, I'm just going to look at domain authority, or I'm just going to look at volume, or I'm just going to look at this or that. And I'm just going to focus on this area.

And I'm going to see what that gives me. And just build that confidence. I think that keyword research and SEO is about building confidence. And because as you've said, Rebecca, this is a hack that you figured out on your own. And then you're like, Hold on. Whoa, this works. So it gave you confidence to continue doing it. And I think that just across the board, I think that's what blogging is, is kind of betting on yourself and telling yourself like you absolutely can do this. You might have to think outside the box sometimes, but you can do it. It is totally possible. You have listeners that haven't started a blog,

but that are thinking about doing it. Yes. For those people, if you're still trying to pick like what niche you want to be in, I would do all the keyword research before you start and look at, okay, this is a topic I want to write about. And I started doing keyword research and realized there's not that many phrases. Like the baby niche is so hard to rank in

because it's so competitive. There's so many websites, any baby product you can think of, you can't hardly rank for it on Google because everybody else has reviewed it that are huge sites. So that you might be like, I'm not going to write about babies. Or you might be like, I'm going to write about cocktail recipes. And then you start doing research and you realize, I can actually do a ton of articles and be able to rank right off the bat, even though I have no experience or history on my domain. So that will save you a lot of time if you do that before you start your blog. That is really, really good advice. And I think it's thinking about yourself

as a business owner from the start. Yeah. Yes. And that's something that we really, really do. I understand that there are a lot of people who start blogging who are like, Oh, I think this will be fun. And this is going to be something I can do on the site or whatever. But there are a lot of people who start who are like, I want this to be my business. I want to have a business. And that really is who we are wanting to help the most is the people who want to do this as a business and give them the tools that they need in order to be successful at this. An incredible business to be in. It's like the sky's the limit, really. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not happy about their latest update, but that's for sure. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, it's really, it's finding that balance because you want to write about something that is of interest to you that you have, like you said, some authority or some knowledge or expertise on that's important for Google to be able to recognize. You also want to find things that people are searching for. So you have to find that balance. So say you already have, you know, kind of a niche in mind, or you're already blogging a little bit. kind of a niche in mind or you're already blogging a little bit, how do you specifically come up with ideas for keywords to even know what to write about?

I think people struggle with that. They're like, okay, how do I even come up with the initial idea? How do I know if I go into my keyword research tool and I'm going to type something in, I'm just staring at the screen. I don't know what to type. What do I put in there? How do you come up with the ideas for that in the first place? I have 5 ideas. 5 ways that I do it. So the first one is kind of nasty, but it's seeing what your competitors are ranking for. So in Ahrefs, there's this tool that shows you your organic competitors and it's based on keyword overlap. So this is if you already have a blog and you already have posts up, you can see exactly who you're competing with currently. And you can go onto their website through Site Explorer and Ahrefs. And you can see what are their top keywords that they're ranking

for. And you might go through and say, Oh, like that one sticks out to me because I have experience with that. And I could write that. So then you'll start researching on that keyword and see, can I actually compete on this one? I've never even heard of that brand before. Let me go see if I should purchase the product and write a review on it. So that's one way that I get ideas. And if you haven't started a blog yet, I'm sure you have other websites that you follow or different Facebook pages that could be inspiring. You can find other websites and just do it that way. It doesn't have to be a competitor based on a blog that you have now. So that's one.

Another way is if you already have a niche picked out, you can start with a very general, broad term. So one example would be like, I'm going to have a makeup blog and I'm going to type in concealer. So you can go into Ahrefs and you can type in on the keyword explorer concealer. And then there's an option to see every keyword that Ahrefs has data on that has the word concealer in it. So then I'm going to look at that entire list and I'm going to filter it down so that the domain authorities within the top five slots are either same as mine or less. So that I know, okay, these are all keywords that are more likely I'd be able to compete with.

And I'm going to see if any stick out to me. So I did that in Ahrefs just for this example. And so for concealer, if I were starting a blog, my first post would be NARS concealer dupe, because there's a great search volume on that term and there is no competition on page one at all. So you can build out a whole content calendar before you even start your blog, just doing this research in very broad categories. If you get too specific, sometimes there's no search data, especially in Ahrefs, because they can't crawl the whole web every day. But if you just back it up one step at a time, you'll finally get to a place where you have a huge list of keywords to go off. And you're like, okay, where do I even start? There's so many ideas. So that's probably the one that I use

the most is I just, there's a category that pops into my head. I'm like, okay, is there something to this? Is there something I can find in Ahrefs that I can actually compete on? The third way would be, I just have a random idea. And this happened about a year ago where I'm like making these school lunches for my kids. I'm like, you know, I really just want to be able to go into Google and type in like bento box lunch ideas and have like a bunch of pictures of different ideas with recipes. And when I did that, just the stuff that was coming up was kind of complicated. And I just didn't think my picky eating kids would eat any of it. And so I went into Ahrefs and I'm like,

is there something here? And there was. And I wrote it. And now it's the most popular blog on my whole website. So sometimes you just get an idea, especially for me, because I'm writing about kids stuff, because my whole life right now is kids. As I'm going through my day, I come across things or there's an ad on TikTok for this new product. I'm like, I wonder if I could write a review on that thing. And you can just double check if that idea that you think is good is actually worth spending your time on. The fourth way is Google Trends. It's trends.google.com. This one can be tricky because you do have to have like a seed keyword to type in to get you going. But you can just do the same thing with a very general topic. So the same example, type in makeup or concealer and see

if there's anything trending right now. The thing with trending keywords is there's probably not going to be any data in Ahrefs yet. And that's fine because if it's a new product, no one's written about it yet. And I jump on that so fast. If there's a product in my niche, especially if I've already written on other products by that same brand, I'm buying it as soon as I hear about it. And I'm writing a review because I want to beat anyone else. And I'm crossing my fingers that the search volume is going to end up being okay. So Google Trends is another good place and that's free. So if you have no HRFs, no keyword tool, Google Trends could be a good place to start. And then the last way is there's another free tool

called Answer the Public. I think Neil Patel owns this one. And it's the same thing. You can type in a general topic that has anything to do with your niche. You can type in gardening, canning, makeup, cocktail recipes, slow cooker recipe, whatever. And it's gonna give you every question

that anyone on Google would have about that thing. And a lot of times this tool helps with like the FAQ section of a blog post. Sometimes the questions are too specific to be their own post, but you can take ones that stick out to you and double check them in Ahrefs. Is there any search volume for this? Or if it's zero, like obviously you're not going to write a whole article on it. But maybe there's a question, you're like, I would love to write a post on that. I have so much to say about it. And you can post it into Ahrefs and double-check your work and be like, okay, I didn't even have this idea to begin with. Answer the public just gave me the idea. Now I'm going to go check and

see if it's worth writing about in Ahrefs. Those are the 5 main ways that I come up with ideas. And my content calendar could be like 5 years long right now because you just never run out of ideas. There's so many things to write about. It's just the list is never ending. I think that's really encouraging. Hey, I just wanted to pop in real quick and say thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We are coming up on our two-year anniversary in January of 2024, which is really, really exciting. But we need your help with something. I have set a huge goal to hit 100,000 downloads by December 31st. And we are inching in on that goal each and every

day. But there still needs to be more downloads. And so I'm just going to ask for your help here, just shamelessly plugging the podcast. If you would take one minute right here right now, as long as you're not driving, and if you would just leave the podcast a rating and review, you would just leave the podcast a rating and review. It would be so instrumental to the success of this podcast. Not only that, we thank you so much for taking the time to do it. We know you're busy. We know that you'll have the choice of literally thousands of podcasts to choose from. And we are honored that you chose ours. And so thank you so much for just helping us spread the word about the Ultimate Blog Podcast. And thanks for taking time to listen to today's episode. It really does mean so much to us. And we hope that you are learning a lot from us and that we are helping you along your blogging

journey. Thanks again for leaving the rating and review. It means the world to us. I think that's the beauty of it is that once you get yourself over that hurdle of keyword research is going to limit me, you find out no, keyword research expands your world in so many places you never imagined. You'll never be able to write all of the articles that you want to write once you start doing keyword research and actually make a list. Yeah. Longer than I could ever possibly. Yeah. Longer than I could ever possibly. Yeah. Yeah. Which that's another thing you can do is I, I use monday.com, but there's lots of project management tools you could use. And I put in all my keyword ideas and I copy the search volume, like the number,

how many people are searching this every month on average. And I sort it. So I'm just going down my article list. I mean, sometimes I'll switch it a little bit just so I'm not writing about the same. I don't want every week to be an affiliate blog post. But I just sort it and I go through from top to bottom what's going to give me the best bang for my buck, hopefully. And we just keep adding because as new things come out, new questions, new things go viral on the internet, your list will just keep growing. That was going to be my next question is volume. So when you're looking at the keywords, it's going to give you information about your competition, but it's also going to give you volume. And that's probably one of the number one questions we get from our new bloggers is,

how do I know what volume? Is there a magic number of searches per month that I should target when I'm choosing my keywords? Yeah, it's a great question. And every SEO person will give you a different answer. So there's one, I don't remember his name or even what podcast it was, but he was like, I only go into Ahrefs and I only look for keywords that are 40 or less because Ahrefs usually underestimates and it's just for one keyword. I mean, a blog post is going to rank for dozens, if not hundreds of keywords. So just because this one term that you might be focused on says 10 to 20 searches a month and you're like, that's nothing, you're going to rank for more than just that one. So as long as you can get on page one of Google, or even position one, you're going to get more than you expect from it. And usually those keywords, there's no competition, because other bloggers are like, I'm not gonna waste my time with that one. There's no

search volume. So those can be a great place to start, especially for new bloggers, because it's like, people don't even think about it. I usually look for at least 200 or 250 with the same thought that if I rank, I'm gonna be ranking for more than just this one keyword. But a good way to think about it is like, I'm in Mediavine and they pay based on 1,000 page views. So you can kind of calculate, if I can guess how many page views

this article is gonna get, I can have an idea of like how much revenue it would generate in a year. So like my, what I make for 1, many page views this article is going to get, I can have an idea of how much revenue it would generate in a year. So what I make for 1000 page views is about $50, which might be high. I know some niches are way less. So if I'm going for a keyword that has 800 potential, and I'm like, maybe I can get 500 views out of that every month. Just guessing, you never know until you post it and you look at it. Then I'm like, okay, that brings in $25 a month. I'm going to go for it. So that's, you can kind of backtrack that way, but I doubt you're going to find any keywords with like a search volume higher than a thousand or 2000. If you're

looking for domain authorities of less than 30-ish, because stuff over that, those big companies are swiping that up as quick as they can. Yeah. So for the sake of this too, I think what might be helpful is for the majority of your content, do you mostly do reviews on different products? Yeah. But I'm trying to change that because this last Google update, it's... Everybody's blog seems to be affected differently. But for mine, I'm losing my positions a little bit for commercial terms. So I used to rank really well for the product name and the product name plus review. Now I'm still ranking

for the review term, but that product name is dropping. And so I think Google is trying to more show here's where you can buy that thing rather than here's a review of that thing. And so the affiliate blog posts are really like my bread and butter, but that income from that has gone down like 80% in the last month. So I'm focused more now on trying to diversify Pinterest. You guys just had an episode on that. Really focused on Pinterest. And then also just doing more educational content with the focus on getting Mediavine income from that from display ads.

So trying to get a little bit from everywhere. I think that the Google update has affected a lot. I agree with you. But I like your attitude about it and that you're pivoting. That's something that we encourage a lot is we, as a blogger, we have to be willing to pivot. And there are a lot of us that were affected by the Google update. We can stay stuck in that or we can say, Okay, well, what next? How do I

improve this? Or how do I stay relevant? And I think that what you're doing is really smart. And we can't put all of our eggs in one basket. And that's an important piece. We can't put it all in Google or all in Pinterest or all in social. But having a blog means that it can come from all different kinds of sources, which is really the beauty of blogging, is that you can have all these different communities that can all come to this one home base.

We often say, your blog is your home base. And that's what we mean by that. Because if you have no other strategy besides Google, then when something like an algorithm shift happens, then it can feel a little like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? I think it's smart to just do that. And so maybe somebody listening doesn't have a keyword strategy at all. They haven't been doing any of that. They might just have a Pinterest strategy or maybe they are having people come over from Instagram. And I think the important thing to say here is that all these people are important, however they're coming. And to really be creating content that is answering the question that they need. And you're providing reviews for products that people are genuinely interested

in learning about. And that's important. And we want to hear the real take on things. And so knowing how to stay relevant in that space, I think is important because those reviews are needed. We don't always just want an ad. Totally. I don't even write a review anymore if I haven't bought the product, especially since the EEAT update, the experience part of it. If you haven't bought the product, I mean, why would you even want to write a product review if you never tried the thing? Good question. Yeah. Well, a lot of people just want to make money, which I get.

I think as users that they can see through that though, if you as a user go into Google and you're trying to find information about something you're thinking about buying, like, I want to buy a new vacuum. So I'm like, like researching this a little bit. I'd rather hear from somebody who's showing me how they actually like another mom who used it to clean up messes in her home versus like some big website who just obviously threw it up for an affiliate link. Yeah, yeah, totally. You want to be able to trust that. So I think if we put ourselves in the shoes of the readers that we're trying to reach, like, what are they going to feel good about? What are they going to trust? What do they really want to know? And I think you find that balance between the keywords and then really being genuine and authentic in that content that you're creating. Completely. Totally agree. All right. I would like to now talk about how to assess the success that you're having with your strategy.

So you're finding your keywords, you're making your list, you know what you want to write about based on the volumes. But I think the next thing that people kind of forget about is, okay, now I don't want to just throw this out there and maybe some of it sticks, maybe some traffic starts coming from some mysterious place. I don't know. What do you put into place to make sure you're understanding what's working and what's not when it comes to creating these posts based on these keywords.

So the number one thing that I do every single day as I look at Search Console Insights, which is not the whole Google Search Console mega thing, the performance area, they have this, it's not new anymore, but it's called Insights. You can just Google it and it'll take it to your website as long as you logged into Google. And it shows you all of the content that you've published in the last 28 days, the new stuff. It shows you how the new stuff is doing. And then it shows you your top articles on your entire website and how many views those are getting a month.

And if they're trending, you can click into those and see what all of the keywords that they're ranking for are. And it's not like... I feel like a true data analyst would be like, no, that's not detailed enough. But for me, it's just enough information to show me, okay, this is the content that's doing the best. These are the keywords that are doing well. I'm starting to notice a theme maybe. And that can help me continue going. So that's the first thing. On that page, it also tells you at the bottom, if you're getting any referring links, like backlinks, which can help you. You might be like, where's all this

traffic coming from? Oh, there was this Reddit post or something that somebody linked over, which can help you figure out where to go next. Or maybe you're going to go into that Reddit post and comment to somebody and say, hey, thanks for sharing it. So that's an idea. The next thing that is helpful is this is specific to Ahrefs, but maybe some of the other tools have it. It's called rank tracker. And you put in there all of the keywords that you're hoping to rank for, and it starts tracking it for you over time. So I get an email every week. And it tells me of all these keywords that I put in there, these have increased in position, And here's how many have decreased

in position. And I'll look at that and see if I can spot any trends. So especially since the helpful content update, I'm like running all of these reports, especially in search console to figure out which posts are getting less clicks this month than they did last month. And what keywords are dropping? And what are those keywords have in common and so i figured out it's the commercial search terms so now i'm going to pivot i'm not changing totally my strategy i'm definitely going to be focused more on educational content instead of review content because it's just screwing up my whole site right now and it's like i have all my eggs in this product review basket and if google changes again, which they're doing another core update right now,

God bless their souls. Or something else. So that's pretty much what I do. And then if there's any articles that I'm like, I was researching it and I got super excited. I'm like, I think this one's going to do really well. I will just specifically go back and look at that one every so often just to see, is this living up to what I thought it would? Which is just a cool feeling when you look at something that's like, ah, that was so popular and I thought it was going to be and my whole strategy worked. So I think the most important takeaway from everything that you just said is that this is about more than just writing content and putting it out there, but it's knowing how your content

is performing. And you don't have to have some huge strategy or know a ton about research, but just take a few small pieces, track those things, see how they're doing to know if what you're doing is effective or not. Is it working or not? And I think that especially if somebody's in these beginning stages, or maybe you've had a blog for a year and it is just not growing, keeping track of some of these statistics, I think could be really, really beneficial for you to not feel like you're just spinning your wheels and you're never going to get anywhere or your traffic's never going to grow. But to be able to be very objective and say, okay, just like you were. The update went out.

You saw right away, okay, my reviews aren't doing as well. So now I'm shifting to more educational content. You knew because you had the statistics to prove that. You knew to go right away. You're not now wasting time trying to figure it out. That was just there for you. And so I think that that is really helpful advice for anybody who is

creating content is to know, is your content actually performing? Is it actually working for you? And if it's not, then what are some shifts and changes that you can do to make sure it is worth your time to do? Because writing a blog post is not like a 30-minute deal. It takes a couple hours. I feel like when you look at especially the Search Insights report, and you can see what your top posts are, that can help you build out your keyword research and calendar too. Because if one topic is doing well, the more articles you have on that same topic helps build your topical authority. And then Google starts saying, Oh, she wrote this article about bourbon. And now she's she wrote this article about bourbon.

And now she's got three more articles about bourbon. The next one she writes about bourbon, I'm going to probably put that higher because it's clear she has knowledge in this area. So if you have an article that's like your number one, write two or three more on the same topic and it'll probably do better than you think. You've given such great advice and you've given it in a really authentic way, which I love. So thank you for just sharing your experience just a couple of years in with blogging. And I commend you for your success. I think that's awesome. And thanks for sharing it with others and giving back because that's how this community continues to grow. That's how our industry becomes stronger and stronger is when we show up together and say, Hey, this is working for me. This might work for you too. And it's just

like taking these little nuggets all the time and asking ourselves, how can I apply this to something in my own blogging business and what might happen if I do that? So thanks for sharing everything today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. If you would let our listeners know, please, Rebecca, where they can connect with you. My blog is twomamabears.com and I'm working real hard on my TikTok. So if you search at Two Mama Bears, my videos usually are terrible,

but when I posted two days ago, it just got a million views. So I'm so excited. So it's amazing how hard motherhood is sometimes. Awesome. Well, congrats on all your success and thanks for taking time to share with our community today. We really appreciate you. Thanks for doing this. Love your podcast. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.