Lead Gen Service Sites Onboarding & Training Resource Guide
Thanks for joining our writing team. Please review all the information below.
1. Writing Style and Blog Formatting
There are 5 primary components to what makes a great article:
- Is the article concise?
- Is the writing authoritative?
- Is the article factual?
- Is the writing relatable?
- Does the article have proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling?
Keep it simple. Our readers simply want quick answers. They're not visiting the site for a creative writing or vocabulary demonstration.
Use facts and data to help establish an authoritative voice. Over time, you will become an expert on the subject matter, so let that expertise shine through. Back it up with lots of reputable sources and links.
Speak plainly and be relatable to the readers. Never try to appear smarter, nor should you dumb your writing down. Speak human to human. And keep in mind, many of our readers do not speak English fluently and have a varied education levels. What you write should be relatable to all.
Lastly, nothing kills authority like bad grammar, punctuation, and spelling. We use ProWritingAid (Ask Ippei or Joe for an account). Proofread your articles and read each section aloud to yourself.
Writing in Our Style: The Day You Became a Better Writer (via Dilbert Blog)
Our writing philosophy can be best summarized by the following excerpt from the Dilbert Blog...
I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.
Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.
Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”
Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.
Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.
Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)
That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.
Brian Dean has also shaped our philosophy and style. Read this article next.
What to Do When You Get a Keyword (Avoid Duplicate Content- Checks and Balances)
2. Writing for the Google Algorithm: Modern SEO
Just like curious end-users, Google wants to prioritize the most direct, concise, and reputable content in their search results. Their algorithm is getting extremely good at filtering out fluff content, too.
Consider the Google Algorithm as an impatient reader with big questions and superior standards for web content. Follow the rules below and your articles will surely rank.
![271887448_464700718364568_6838649927313884534_n](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/271887448_464700718364568_6838649927313884534_n.png)
REQUIRED READING- Technical Topical SEO Article: Holistic SEO
As you write, one way to stand out better to Google is to make sure you’re incorporating specific entities. Instead of saying “he went to college” say “He graduated from Yale in 2020.”
This requires more research, but the more specific entities we can cover per sentence / per paragraph, the more Google will favor our articles as being more authority than the competition.
The example below does a good job of covering specific entities. City, College Name, Company Name, Course Name, Podcast Name, etc
![unnamed](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/unnamed.png)
These entities will come from Marketmuse (software covered below), Keywords Everywhere (which you should download into your browser) and Google suggestions. This is one of the most important steps because Google is telling us different combination of searches from real users, so if our article covers them, our 1 article could rank for multiple search queries. HUGE impact on traffic.
![google keywords google keywords](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image-4.png)
Your article can rank for multiple keywords. Especially if you see relevant keywords in the "Keywords Everywhere Tool" (if you don't have this plugin please let Erin know, Ippei will pay for your credits).
![Z](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Z.png)
For instance, for the article "Top ways to make money with craigslist" we notice right away in Related Keywords that people are also searching for things like “make money fast”, “make money today” and “make money without selling.”
These are all relevant to the main topic, and these are all things that will give different answers. We need to include these in our article because these have search volume, which means our article can rank for multiple terms.
Notice how this article is ranking at the very top even though it has virtually the same title as ours. It’s ranking because he included the words "without selling anything" plus a section about it in his article.
![unnamed](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/unnamed.png)
We want to include keywords especially when they are longtail like "how to make money on craigslist without selling anything". This type of longtail is not going to have huge competition because it's so specific, which means we can rank for it with an article just by including it in our content. It doesn't have to be our title.
Whereas ‘craigslist jobs’ we will naturally talk about, but its such a broad topic that we will never rank for it with this current article. Rather, we want to find more specific search query that's much closer to the specific topic that our article is going to be about.
Before you begin mining for questions, please first mine for all the related keywords that you have found that we will try to rank for with this one article.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The next part of crafting your article is finding questions that you can use. You will need to include questions from Marketmuse, the People Also Ask section of Google, and 3-5 self-generated questions.
Organizing Questions Within Your Article
Having more specific questions from People Ask or Market Muse allows you to gather topical relevant information. We can include this in key places of our article. This allows us to write less fluff. Less fluff the better.
So always think about neatly organizing useful answers in our article so that it is easy to consume for the reader. You should be able to go to any part of the article and learn something useful.
We want to use more useful information to make our article more easy to read as well, not more difficult to read. This will require that we take the time to organize the answers in a proper order so that concepts are not all over the place. (Follow the search intent pyramid). There is a purposeful natural flow to the information presented within the article. Keep this in mind.
To write an acceptable answer to a question, simply google the question and read up on the first 5-6 articles.
![unnamed (1)](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/unnamed-1.png)
Then, formulate your answer. Your answer should be clearer and more detailed than all other answers. Do this by combining some of the key points from the different answers together. Create sentences that have more entities.
For example, “This XYZ event took place” isn’t as good as “This XYZ event took place on XYZ date at XYZ location with 40,500 people in attendance as well as XYZ celebrities came to perform.”
This is what Semantic SEO is about. Google understands the English Language. It knows that when you're talking about an event, there are other attributes associated specifically with events like date, location, how many people attended, what the event was called, what took place at the event, etc.
It is a way for Google to understand (using more than just backlinks), that this article has more information on all these different topics covered versus other articles with less information or "attributes" describing various entities within the article. In other words, if you're a true expert on the topic your sentences will have more information / attributes than a novice.
More on Questions
Answer all People Ask, Market Muse, and Self-Generated questions first with the best possible answer in the content brief before you begin writing.
Goal of this is to become clearer on the relevant topics that you should cover in the article (because Google is telling you exactly what to cover). We want to think about this as we write but particularly when we research People Ask questions that we include in our articles.
If you focus on making your answers better than what's currently listed on Google, creating a content brief with answers FIRST is a more concrete way to ensure that the article we are producing is of higher quality than the competition.
First, we're covering more relevant topics in 1 article than the competition because these questions are coming from different articles.
Second, we focus on answering the question in a better way, with more entities and facts than competitors. We are making sure our article is not only covering more topics, but each topic we're covering in a better way, a deeper way.
It is important to do the best job possible the first time we write our articles, instead of having the mindset of just getting it done. You must take the time & effort to make your articles significantly better than the competition or it will not rank.
Producing top quality content is the most important thing. In fact, when a website produces higher quality content, it impacts other pieces of content connected to that article and makes that content rank higher. The same is true in the reverse. If anyone begins producing low quality content on the website, it will negatively impact other articles. So, it’s majorly important that we're all on the same page when it comes to our writing philosophy and any changes we discuss on Slack.
Here's how to counteract this dilution problem:For every article, try to come up with bare minimum 3 "Self-Generated Questions" at the very bottom of your article, after any Market Muse Questions. If you can come up with more than 3 please do so. These are questions that you come up with and you answer.
You have to use critical thinking here. Think to yourself "If I was researching this topic, what kind of other questions would I have?"
This is another key rank higher. Questions in People Also Ask are generated automatically by Google's bots. So, if we can come up with our own questions that's not listed yet, Google will look at our content more and more as unique original source.
For example, these are self-generated questions that might fit in Jen’s article:
What are free lead generation softwares I can use?
What's the best email lead generation software?
When you create the brand new question for "Self-Generate Questions" it still has to make sense. If you're not sure at all, try typing in this new question you came up with in Google. Does Google show you the question in their suggested search?
In this case, we see it already has a related search, so this is a relevant question that people ask. Plus, another great question popped up that’s very relevant to our article (red box).
![unnamed (2)](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/unnamed-2.png)
Answer the Public is another good source to mine more ideas for questions.
Now it doesn't always have to come up with suggested search.
For instance, if you search for "What is the price of XYZ course?" it won't come up in suggested search because that XYZ course is brand new and it's not being searched that much.
So, as long as you can understand and make the readers understand that this question makes sense in regards to the main topic, then its fine.
Stick to 3-5 self-generated questions, depending on the other questions you answered. If a lot of the other questions were not on the main topic, then maybe you create more that cover the main topic..
The idea here is to create unique original content about the main topic so that our article is focused on the main topic. This unique content acts as a buffer from other questions so that the content doesn't get too diluted.
Could you simply change a People Also Ask or MarketMuse question to fit the main topic?
Like, What is most important in lead generation? turns into "What is most important in lead generation software?"
Or, instead of "What are lead generation methods?" Include a subheading under each software "XSoftware's Lead Generation Method" and explain how that specific tool generates leads
Or, How do you find lead generation clients? Turns to "How do you find lead generation clients through XSoftware?" (again, maybe as a subheading under the main descriptions)
The answer is Yes- but it may differ depending on certain cases.
For instance, when you change "What is most important in lead generation?" to "What is most important in lead generation software?" the context changes dramatically, because what's important in a software is going to change dramatically with each software.
Users would probably never ask the question "What is most important in XYZ software?" It’s far more likely that users would ask what a software does. A better question here is "Why is XYZ software important to have in a lead generation business?"
Same with "XYZ Software's Lead Generation Method?" This doesn’t quite fully make sense as a question because not 1 software actually does lead generation. They all help in the lead generation business, but the software itself does not do lead generation.
A better approach is to keep those main questions, What is most important in lead generation? And then answer it with some software entity in our answer, like “The most important thing in lead generation is to ensure you rank highly in the search engine so you get as much leads as possible, software like Ahrefs really help determine the competition in the SERP and help you understand how to outrank them. Also it’s important to track your leads with software like Callsling so the client knows exactly how many leads you're responsible for so they can justify paying you what you're worth."
And:
What are lead generation methods? The two main lead generation methods are ranking high in Google's SERP or creating paid ads on platforms like Adwords, Facebook, Instagram. Software is key to sift through the leads and filter out low quality leads. For example, Callsling allows you to block robot & sales calls. When using the paid ads lead generation method, you have to keep track of ROI on adspend by using softwares like XYZ."
In general, the idea of changing the People Ask Question by adding the main topic to the question, can completely change the context of the question. This is fine, but this new question now should be reserved for the "Self-Generated Question" section because it is now a completely new question.
We still want to answer the exact question in People Ask because that's still Google determining important questions to the main topic based on analyzing a bunch of articles. Answer those same questions in a bit more relevant way by adding the main topic entities in our answer.
Think of it like looking at the question through "Main Keyword Goggles".
How can we answer these questions through the lens of the specific keyword?
How Should You Format Your Links?
We want our anchor text to be as specific as possible to the article it links to. Usually, this means you'll use the keyword of the article itself. Here are some anchor text examples.
3. Writing for Search Intent in 2024 (Summary of Above)
Traditional SEO (and academic papers) encourage you to write by building background knowledge on the topic FIRST, and making your final conclusion LAST, in order to entice the reader to stay on the page LONGER. THIS DOES NOT WORK FOR 2022 and BEYOND.
![2](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2.jpg)
![1](https://ippei.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1.jpg)
Modern SEO (writing for search intent) encourages you to write by addressing the main topic/keyword wholly FIRST, supporting your point with high-level related topics, building a firm foundation of broader information, and referring back to your intro LAST. All of this supporting information holds up the answers you present in your intro, much like the stones holding up the top of a pyramid.
The key to this is speaking to your audience, understanding them, and what they mean by their search.
A note on "Broader Information" and "Very Broad Information": Always think critically about the search intent. If it’s a broad search like "How to start selling on Amazon FBA" then there's a lot of different topics related to the Amazon FBA business that you have to cover. However if the search is "Is Amazon FBA profitable?" then you have to figure that the person is already aware of what the business is, and they just want to know the profitability of the business so the topics we cover should be around that specifically like the cost, profit margins, what influences profitability, etc…
Even if Market Muse or People Ask has questions that are very general like “What is Amazon FBA?” because it is the main entity, we have to use critical thinking to understand that we shouldn’t be extensively covering those broad topics on this article because the search intent is so specific.
There are times where it does make sense to cover topics that are bit more broad because we decide it is useful information for the reader to provide the right context, but in general we should strive to have 80% of the topics and headings within our article to be supporting the search query & search intent, and we have to be disciplined to not get carried away writing content that is too broad & not so helpful for the search intent.
Because this will dilute our article which ultimately makes it harder for the reader to sift through our article and get the relevant information they’re seeking. This also unnecessarily increases our word count and decreases productivity because these articles will now take longer to complete. If you go to any part of the article randomly, you should be able to spot out fairly quickly some useful information related to the search intent. This shows that the article is concise and highly relevant to the search query.
One caveat though that should be mentioned is that, "increasing word count" is not a bad thing if that content is still highly relevant to the search intent and you're covering things in a deeper way than the competition or providing new connections to new entities to make our article stronger, bringing something new to the table, a unique angle... This is an example where increasing word count is fine, because this is what we must do to out rank the current page 1 articles and show Google that our article contains better, more unique source of information
4. Snapps
Watch the tutorials for Snapps here. There should be at least 500 words per page. When you start putting content in, hit republish every time.
5. What is Local Lead Generation?
Local Lead Generation is a business model, developed and refined by Ippei Kanehara and Dan Klein, that aims to bring customers to local businesses.
This is done by, first, building a website (aimed at a local business niche, like roofing, plumbing, HVAC, cement, etc.), then boosting that site to the top of Google's local rankings.
Once the site ranks on Google, it will generate leads which are then funneled to a local business for a monthly fee.
Ippei and Dan offer an online high-ticket course that has over 7000 students actively enrolled.
The following video presents the challenges of common business models we write about, compared to lead generation.
6. Building City Pages
Use this site and this site as inspiration.
Link out to entities like schools etc. Start by picking 5 schools/colleges linked 10 apartments linked on each city page.
7. Job Expectations
1. Write well researched, high-quality articles with no plagiarism hits and no AI use. We simply want to deliver the best and most useful content possible.
2. The goal is to get you to a point where you are consistently producing 2-3 articles a week, per 30-40 working hours. We will provide additional work to those who are interested and capable of producing sustained quality content. Note: It is ok to go over 40 hours if you so choose.)
3. Be responsive and available during your working hours. Check your messages frequently and respond in a timely fashion.
4. Become an expert on the topics you're assigned. Take the time to research.
5. Be open to feedback and assessment
6. Track your projects with a unique task in time-doctor. Keep your cluster sheet up to date.
7. Give us feedback. Have interesting insights, content, or ideas? Please share them in chat.
8. Utilize more than just your writing skills. Let us know if you have any unique skills (like graphic design, video editing, advanced SEO, data analysis, etc.). Many of our writers have gone on to do much more than just writing!
Your onboarding schedule will go as follows:
Week One: Trial Week. Looking for at least 1 article from you, go over all assigned training documents
Week Two: Trial Week. Looking for at least 1 article from you, go over all assigned training documents
Week Three: Full Hire. The focus here will be tightening up writing style and strategies. Expectation: at least 1 article.
Week Four: Tightening up writing style and strategies. Expectation: at least 1 article.
Week Five: You've done it!! Expectation from now on: at least 2 articles/week.
8. Time Doctor
TimeDoctor is what we use to track your working hours and productivity.
You'll receive an email from us to set up your TD account. If you haven't received it yet, please reach out to either Ippei or Joe.
To log time, just hit the play button in the top right corner.
It's super important, however, to create a unique task for every article you write. Watch the video below to learn how to do this.
When Do I Get Paid?
Ippei does payroll by the end of the first week of each month - and you are paid for the previous month. He typically pays through PayPal, so please provide him with your associated email.
9. Software and Plugins
We use a few different programs and plugins. Some are essential.
MarketMuse
To assist with SEO, we use software called MarketMuse. Ippei will give you access.
Click here to watch the training screencast.
Watch the following MarketMuse tutorial when you've made some progress on your first article.
TimeDoctor
Used for tracking time. You'll receive an email to register your account.
Course Downloads (Torrent)
If you are reviewing a course, sometimes we'll have you download the content as a torrent. If you have a torrent program, feel free to keep using it. But here are our recommended torrent applications.
Windows (qBittorrent)
Mac (Transmission)
LastPass
LastPass is a password manager - and it makes it really easy for us to share our accounts with you.
Sign up for Last Pass
10. Reference Inspiration & Ideas
Research Tips (YouTube) - Meeting Recap
Deep Research (Finding Stats, Facts, and Images)
Short Form Ippei.com articles:
Technical Topical SEO article: Oncrawl
Techical Predictive SEO: Oncrawl
Content Marketing: Grow and Convert
Copyright - Ippei