Stephen Esketzis | The Traffic Machine System – From Zero to 3 Million Visitors

Step 1: Identify your target audience.

• From the moment you’ve pinpointed your target audience, you may start brainstorming what contents you need to post on your site that will attract your prospects.
• 80% of the result will come from great content and links so pinpointing your target audience is vital in distinguishing what contents your site should have.
• Become the authority of your space and outline the specific categories of content you think your target audience would like to consume.

Step 2: Determine your main pillars.

• Generate 4-5 different categories or main topics under your niche.
• These categories will serve as the main pillars of your media content site.
• These should be closely related to the interest of your target audience and with your business as well.
• The contents you’ll produce should fall under the categories you’ve identified.

Step 3: Find out who’s in your market and what they are talking about.

• Once you’ve cleared and finalized your categories, it is time to do intensive keyword research.
• The richest source will be your competitors as they most likely already published tons of content that is relevant to your prospects.
  • Make a list of your top 20 competitors. The number will depend on how specific your niche is.
  • Find the main sites on your market. Pick some that have good SEO work and some that don’t.
  • Plug the sites you found on tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs. This will show you the keywords the sites are ranking for.
  • Pick the keywords that you think are relevant and put them in a keyword research document.
    • What keywords your competitors are ranking for?
    • How much volume do they have?
    • Are they high cost per click keywords?

• • Once you’ve got the keywords, categorize them under your main pillars accordingly.

• Your keyword research document will serve as your “plan of attack” for when you create your content.
• Plan what keywords you’ll use at the beginning according to their monthly searches.
  • Let’s say your business runs on a broad market with so many competitors, you may choose to use keywords that are 10,000 keyword searches a month and build your foundation.
  • From there, once you start seeing traffic from 3 to 5 months, start looking for higher ranking keywords (can be around 1,500 – 5,000 keyword searches per month).
  • Repeat the process and look for a new batch of higher-ranking keywords than your previous one.
  • Your keyword usage priority will really matter depending on the size of the industry your business is in.

Step 4: Write your content.

• Stephen suggests that you find help in executing your roadmap.
  • Outsource and hire talented writers who can write according to your criteria.
  • Provide your writers with instructions on how you’d want your articles to be written.
    • Article topic
    • Number of words
    • Main headline
    • Subheadline
    • Focus keywords
    • Other preferences (such as writing tone)
    • Competitor’s article links

• As for the number of articles you should produce on your site, you can start slow and publish around 2 articles every week.
  • There are two types of content:
    • Evergreen content – may discuss a topic that can still be useful after some time. Evergreen articles will most likely compound over time.
    • Trending content – may be about current events and will be out of topic after a short amount of time.

• • Longer articles (2,000-3,000 words) produce better results.

• From that point, once you’ve seen progress, you may choose to increase the number of articles you publish or keep it the same.
• Be sure to include at least one YouTube video embedded in your article. This will give you a significant increase in your site’s ranking.
• Insert images throughout your article as well.
• As you progress (within 3 to 4 months), you will be able to tell which articles rank well.
  • Determine the well-ranked article and upgrade them.
  • You may include additional downloadable content in exchange for capturing your prospect’s contact information.

• Stephen suggests that you update your content after some time, so you retain your rank when people search for your keyword.

Step 5: Start your link-building.

• This step is about outreaching to the sites that linked your competitor’s article.
  • Determine your competitor’s article that ranked high on SEMrush and Ahref tests.
  • Reach out to the sites that linked to those articles.
  • Have these sites add your link alongside your competitor’s link.
  • This process initiates right after publishing an article.

• Try various outreach messages to see which one works best for you but be direct on your initial contact.
  • Discuss your intent to have your link posted on their site.
  • Mention the benefits to the webmaster.

• As the number of cold emails you send increases, prepare a template so you can save more time.
• While there will be people who will accept your request, there are also people who will refuse, and this is totally common.
• Be careful in sending another email to those who’ve already refused your initial request as this can escalate.
• You may also do a broken link-building where you search for an article that links to content that’s already deleted.
  • You may now request to replace the link with yours.

System Notes

• Build your system first and make sure it’s successful. Optimize the processes. Outsource and automate.