A tongue-in-cheek guide for those who wish to dominate the web.
Ultimate Guides are all the rage these days. The goal: write a blog post of great value and excellent SEO to attract links and shares from Search Engines and Social Media. The method: overwhelm people with so much information that they feel you MUST know what you’re talking about and should come back to read it later, though most will not. That make for an ultimate Ultimate Guide.
So, here I present to your the Ultimate Guide to writing your Ultimate Guide to overwhelm and over-inform your audience online.
7 Steps to Writing an Ultimate Guide
Table of Contents
- Step 1: Provide a Table of Contents
- Step 2: Provide Many Many Links
- Step 3: Provide Instructive Visuals
- Step 4: Provide Memes to Break Up the Seriousness
- Step 5: Remind Readers of Your Authority
- Step 6: Get That Email Address
- Step 7: Upgrade Your Hosting Account
- (Bonus) Step 8: Provide a Bonus Step/li>
Step 1: Provide a Table of Contents
The table of contents serves two distinct purposes—to provide quick access to various sections of your post, and to act as a warning to those who have loaded your post that there is no way they have enough time to read this article right now. Building a table of contents easy if you know how to use anchors in your text. It’s an even more enjoyable experience if you have a smooth scroll script in place on your site to allow people to bounce up and down the page determining which section they actually want to read.
Step 2: Provide Many Many Links
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Now, the SEO benefit of linking to the most obvious resources on the internet is questionable, but you will definitely be able to slow down your reader’s browser as the cntrl+click open 20 more browser tabs for posts and tutorials they need to read after referencing your guide. And slow browsers means lower bounce rates…right?
Step 3: Provide Instructive Visuals
It’s not enough to tell people to go check out Google Analytics—instead you need to provide a screenshot of Google Analytics open on a Mac in order to convince folks that you too can visit the copious links you have provided in your Ultimate Guide. Be sure to stuff keywords into those alt and title tags when placing your images as well!
Step 4: Provide Memes to Break Up the Seriousness
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You are providing a serious amount of information, your readers are dedicating serious time to studying your content, and their scroll fingers are getting tired. Why not break up the seriousness with a light-hearted meme to let you readers know that you too got bored in the process of creating your Ultimate Guide. A well-placed meme will make your readers forget all about your post and start googling that other meme they realize they don’t understand yet.
Step 5: Remind Readers of Your Authority
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Now that readers have clicked back over to your Ultimate Guide from their Facebook profile, you’ll need to hook them again with a reminder of the importance of this information and you can do so by name-dropping, stat quoting, overstating your experience, and promising unrealistic benefits to following your advice. Keep in mind, every Ultimate Guide is different, but obviously its the only way for you to get those 10,000 new leads you need to power your multi-million dollar affiliate side business.
Seth Godin is a name to quote while claiming to take your business from $1 to $1,000,000 overnight.
Step 6: Get That Email Address
Now that you have shown your readers how trustworthy you are, it’s time to launch a modal popover with no X to click demanding their email address. Ask a leading question like “Do you want to learn the secrets to not looking like an idiot online?” And then force them to either submit their address with the Yes click or make them click on a statement like “No, I’m comfortable looking like and idiot online thank you very much.” You’re sure to add one more email address to your new drip marketing campaign hoping to convert 1 out of every 10,000 new subscribers to purchase your $10 ebook. Success!
Step 7: Upgrade Your Hosting Account
Now that you have cracked into the first page of Google for your targeted search term and your social shares are through the roof, your $3/mo hosting isn’t going to cut it anymore. Chances are you’ve already spent 10 hours on the phone with them as they recommend all of the ways you could optimize your WordPress website or heck, pay them to. You’ll now need to upgrade to something a little more powerful.
(Bonus) Step 8: Provide a Bonus Step
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Long, list-oriented articles like your Ultimate Guide are way more likely to be shared if you offer 3, 5, 7, 10, or 42 Steps. If you happen to have more than that, be sure to mark it as bonus so you don’t ruin your social media title opportunities.
Now that you have written your Ultimate Guide, I’m sure your business will take off with new inquiries from folks wanting more free time from you. If you can figure out how to convert those readers into paying customers, congratulations! At the very least, you learned an awful lot about your topic and can consistently send inquiries on that topic to your Ultimate Guide you published.
