Hey, if you're creating any content online, doesn't matter if it's on a blog, or a podcast, or a video channel, or maybe even on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, you need to focus on having a great About or Bio section. 

It's really important you nail this down because a lot of people go to that to understand whether or not they should continue to follow and consume your content. 

So, we're gonna work through five different factors to make sure that you include on your About page exactly what it needs to to get people to follow and subscribe to you. And if you haven't done this yet, you know, it's about time. It's About page time. It's about--just stick around, you're gonna learn some stuff. 

Alright, number one, the first thing you need to have is an amazing hook. What is a hook? 

A hook is a way to really capture a person's attention right then and there so that they'll be intrigued to keep reading down that page. If you don't have that great hook, you have all this amazing stuff after that, if you don't have the hook they could leave and never come back. Alright, so there are lots of ways to hook an audience. 

The first way, questions, ask questions where the answer will be (laughs) where the answer will be a yes. Meaning, like, are you somebody who blank? 

Do you typically feel blank when you blank? So, really understanding the pains and problems of your audience in a way that, when they answer these questions in their head, they're gonna be like, yeah that's me. Uh-huh, yep, I do that, okay. This might be a page that'll actually help me. So, asking questions, a great thing to do to start off your About page. 

Next, and this isn't really for social media, because you don't have a lot of room usually. But if you are on your website and you wanna have a great hook you can tell a story. So tell a great story right from the start. Something that really resonates with that person. Again, making it relatable based on the pains and problems that they have. 

You wanna show that you understand exactly what this person is going through because, like Jay Abraham says, if you can define the problem better than your target customer, they're gonna automatically assume that you have the solution. And you can do that by asking questions and having them say yes, or you can do it by telling a story where their story and your story have a matching intersection. 

Now, don't ramble or go too long with a story. You wanna get to the point really quick where a person can understand oh, that's just like me. So don't ramble on and go too long, but telling a story's great, 'cause we as humans are just fine-tuned to really pay attention when a person's telling us a story. Alright number three, you can create what's called an open loop. 

So, this is really handy because people don't like it when things aren't finished or complete. Now, that's not to say you're never gonna finish or complete this open loop. I'll give you an example in just a second. 

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But it is to say, okay a person gonna be interested and intrigued, their curiosity meter's gonna go up, and they're gonna be like alright I need to find out what's going on here. You can say things like well hey I've discovered an amazing way to do X, Y, and Z. Before I give you all the information about how to do that, make sure you keep reading, because I wanna tell you a little bit more about what you can get here. 

Now there's a lot of other ways to create hooks and also ways to combine these kinds of things together to really reel a person in and have them continue to read on, and subscribe, and follow what you do, but as long as you have a hook, then that's a great start. So let's keep going with the next part of your About page or Bio. 

Alright, so the next section that you wanna make sure you include, let me erase this really quick, is you need to make sure you understand, and the person who's there understands the benefits. Benefits, not the features. Not here's what you're gonna get, but more so the why, 'cause this is what real people want. The benefit is what a person will get if they stick around. 

And the best piece of advice I can give you is to focus on the transformation. I love this word transformation, I use it whenever I create any sort of content, blog post, podcast episodes, videos, I wanna understand okay, where's the person at, but then how can I help them? The transformation is that thing on the other end of what it is you're offering. The outcome, if you will. Now in terms of the transformation, it's just really important to note for the person who's on that page, or reading that bio, well, what are they gonna get as a result of sticking around? And then by starting with the benefit, then you can add the features one after that. 

Hey, I'm gonna show you how to make more money, save more time, and help more people, too. And this is how I'm gonna do it. So, we're kinda flipping the switch. A lot of people typically add the features first and then go into the benefits. But I love to just share the benefits first, because then a person understands well, okay I'm gonna get this outcome. I don't really care how I get it. 

Well, obviously you do, but then you go into the how after that. So it's kind of the Simon, right? 

Like start with why and then kind of pull out from there into the what and where. And, finally, another really important factor related to the benefits and the features, is making sure that you share for this person what makes you, and the way you teach these things differently. 

There's a lot of people that likely want to provide, and do provide the same outcome and transformation to people. How are you gonna do it differently? That's really important to note as well. Alright, next up, and this is really important, you wanna make sure that you show people some sort of proof. In sales, in trying to get anybody to subscribe, the proof is a really important factor in having a person understand that yeah, okay, I can trust this person. 

The proof used in this fashion, because likely a person hasn't really gotten into your stuff yet at this point, the proof is kind of just part of the first impression that a person might have on your stuff. If they come across your stuff and they see that you've been featured on certain publications, if you have these accolades, if you have, you know, awards as a result of what you've done, then they're gonna be more likely to dig deeper. Now those forms of proof are important, and they are helpful to share with others, but you can take this a step further by showing proof, if you have any, of how you've already helped other people, too. 

So, on your About page and even in your Bio, you could perhaps pinpoint certain people, or groups, or companies that you've worked with that you've helped. Now there are lots of different ways to show proof. You can show proof in the form of videos, videos are probably the most powerful form of testimonials, or if you have any other people share kind of how you've helped them, that's great. If you're a speaker, perhaps, it's great to have other conferences, talk about how well you did on stage, that sort of thing. The videos are great. 

Written testimonials are good as well, but I think to take that one step further I would also include images. Anything to break up the text on that page, again if it's on your website, makes a big difference. And people can see you, people can see how you do what you do, or what you've done for others. And that's really important. 

Alright next up we have, and this is one thing that I have really understood that works really well for me, because I know I have a good one, and that is a personal story. 

Now you might have told a story already like we talked about earlier, but this is where you get a little bit deeper about how you got to this point. Why are you the person who's writing this website? What is your mission? 

And I know, for example, I have a great personal story that really resonates with people getting laid off, starting a business, being successful after getting laid off, and falling through a state of depression. It really resonates with people, and a lot of people connect with that, but more than just the story and the outcome that comes along with it, that's relatable. 

More so it just has a person on the other end realize that you are a real person, too. And the thing is people wanna do business with other people, not websites, not profiles, not even companies. But people wanna do business with other people. When you can show your personal story, something that's completely unique to you, it's gonna help you stand out from everybody else out there who's just making noise along with you. If I were to offer one side tip, one piece of advice, it's to really nail this down, practice it, share it on stage, write it a number of times, really hone in on how you can best tell your personal story. 

Because that's gonna be an amazing tool for you to build a relationship much quicker. Alright next let's talk about something really important that's tactical. It's gonna help you actually grow your business from your About page or your Bio, and that is an opt-in form. Or it could be a link if it's on, like, social media. 

When a person's reading about you and they've gotten to the end of this thing and they're like yes, I like this person, this person's speaking to me, I want more. This is the perfect opportunity to include an opt-in box on your website, on your About page and a lot of people don't do this. I actually picked up this tip from Derek Halpern from Social Triggers who actually just emailed me one day and he said, Pat, you should have an opt-in box on your About page. I guarantee you it'll increase your subscribership. 

So, I didn't have one, I put one on, I did have an email opt-in in the side-bar of my website at the time, but not directly at the bottom. A clear CTA, call to action, to get more email subscribers. And by just simply adding it in there, I increased my email subscription rate by 477% on that page alone. 

So, it does work and there are lots of different ways to do it. You can offer a lead magnet or some incentive to go along with it, which I would recommend. People don't want more emails, so don't just say like subscribe and get more emails, or subscribe for my newsletter. 

That typically won't go over as well as if you had something that relates to them and their problems, and pains, and struggles, that you can offer to them for exchange for that email address. Now out of all these things probably the best thing I could do, to sum up, what makes a successful About page is to make sure that you don't make it actually about you the entire time. Yes, your personal story will be in there and all those kinds of things, your testimonials, and all those things are in there, right? But it's mainly about the person reading the page and how you can best serve them. So, I wanna put the ball in your court. 

I wanna ask you how are you doing in each of these five realms on your About page on your website or perhaps the bios that you have here on YouTube or any other places that you have information about you online? If you cover these five things in there, especially the call to action at the end, it's gonna help you grow your business, help more people, and build a stronger relationship with those people who can then dive deeper into the content that you have to offer and help them with. 

So, if you're up to the task, number one, hook me up with a thumbs up. But number two, also leave in the comments section below which one of these things was missing or maybe underutilized with what you have going on? 

Maybe it's all five, maybe you haven't even started an About page yet, in which case now you have a structure to make sure it's gonna be great, but of the five things which one do you feel that you just needed a little more work on? I think a lotta people are gonna enjoy hearing that well, they're not alone in this process. 

So thank you guys so much for listening and watching this. I hope you just crush it with your About page, 'cause it's truly gonna help you moving forward. Especially when it comes to building those important relationships with your audience because relationships are everything. 

So make sure you subscribe to the channel below hashtag team Techy Hydra for the win. I appreciate you guys, and again, if you haven't subscribed yet do so below, hit that notification bell so you know when new videos come out and I'll see you in the next one, cheers.

Should you go for a free blog that's a question that I'll try to answer on this episode.

Hey, we're ready what's up Abhishek here and I have these really really great questions thanks for from one of you guys that you know I think it's a great question which is should I go for a free blog.

Free blog

When I'm starting out should I go for a free website when I'm starting out what I do not have a website should I go for a free blog a free platform and you know free platform free blogs they are really enticing they're really you know they cut your eye because you know if you go to wix.com weebly.com wordpress.com blog or Blogspot Tumblr those are free platforms that will allow you to set up a free blog in minutes and you know there are a bunch of people that I know successful entrepreneurs that they've started with their own free blog like Seth Godin.

For example, he started on TypePad which is another free blog and I think it's already it's still on TypePad by the way which is great.

Now the question that you need to answer is what I'll be using the blog for will it be to promote your ideas will it be some marketing strategy will it be your life and blood of your business will it be for your company what do you want one what do you want to do on the blog do you want to just spread ideas like Seth Godin does you want to capture emails do you want to do retargeting campaigns or maybe all of the above.

Alright so those questions are really important when you're setting up your first blow and should you go for a free blog because here's the deal free blogs are convenient they are easy to set up they do not cost a dime but there's a coast hidden costs a hidden fee associated with that which is which are rather limitations you will be really really limited in the number of things that you can do with a blog so for a sample if you go right now to Symantec Mansouri calm or Hernan Vasquez calm or rather blog or nan Vasquez calm those are self-hosted blogs.

What does that mean that means that we have our own domains we're having on hosting and we have our own wordpress.org installations, okay and that's like if you're trying to get real ninja and real really advanced with your marketing techniques with all of the little pop-ups and the capture pages and the capture boxes and you know the culture actions and the videos that you can implement and all of that kind of things which are really cool it's super hard to achieve that on a free blog.

Okay because on a free blog you do not have access to hosting you do not have access to a ton of things that make a blog a real professional blog okay so my suggestion would be if you're starting out and you want to start blogging and you want to get and kind of start playing with the look and feel.

For example, WordPress goes ahead and makes a worker's comp look okay to make something like your name war purse calm start blogging in there start you know posting in there but and here's a big but not a big bag with a double team a big part this is big.

But if you want to upgrade do not try to upgrade from WordPress itself okay they will offer you get your own domain they will offer you get your own hosting do not do that because you will be limited for life-like literally because if you have like earn a Vasquez calm and I have it in WordPress there are a bunch of things that I cannot do.

So the minute that you want to upgrade to something like more professional to something that has your own domain that something that will allow you more freedom with what you can do and cannot do just migrate to new hosting and start you know you can migrate you can actually migrate all of your content so it's not lost but just start blogging on our own platform you can install your own WordPress installation on your own hosting account and you can start from there.

Okay so again if you're starting out if you're newly or you haven't blogged before or you have a website but you're not entirely sure if you could be blogging like once a week just go ahead you know and start with your own WordPress com Tumblr blogger Wix Weebly but have in mind that at some point you will need to progress from that and you will need to have your own hosted solution.

You do not do it on your own you can hire somebody to do it but just have that in mind okay so that there are no surprises after the fact okay there are a bunch of things that these companies will tell you that you can do that you cannot actually do because those are limited okay and they're free what can what do you expect all right so get the credit card out of your ass and start paying for things I'm just kidding.

But anyways guys I just wanted to touch base on that real quick because that's a recurring question that I have been having and you have any other pressing questions you know those questions that cannot you know they don't leave you to sleep like should I get a WordPress blog or not Oh what do I do if that's your case, not these pairs just drop them in the comment below take them out of your mind into the power of the Internet the YouTube power and I'll try to answer them to the best of the extent of my experience.

Alright guys, so I hope you lo love these videos if you do drop me a comment drop me alive like subscribe and you can also join the Facebook group and I'm going to leave all of those links on the description below.

Thank you guys for reading.

What's up, everyone. Today you're gonna learn about country code, top-level domains, or ccTLDs. Internationalization is basically what this is. 

We're gonna talk about everything that's important around country-specific domains, whether or not you should buy them, what the implications are for localized and internationalized rankings in Google and other search engines. 

Stay for the whole post. We're gonna get deep into the details on international SEO here. 

I'm Abhishek with techyhydra.com, let's get going. 

Okay, so country code top-level domains, or ccTLDs, so talking about international SEO here in a moment, but just a quick reminder before we get going on that. Thinking about the technical stuff around SEO and country-code top-level domains, we're gonna dive deep into SEO, but SEO is only one piece of a more comprehensive digital marketing strategy, so while it's super important and I'm a huge fan of it and I love it, don't neglect all of your other digital marketing channels. SEO is just one component. 

Then within SEO county code top-level domains are just one component of that. This is just one thing among many that you should be doing from an SEO perspective and SEO is one thing among many that you should be doing from a digital marketing perspective. Do keep that in mind as we dive in. Okay. Country code top-level domains. 

A country code top-level domain or ccTLD, this is just an internationalized version of what you might be familiar with. It depends on where you're from, where you grew up, or where you may have lived, but this differs from country to country and it's colloquially different as well. 

I'm from the US. I grew up in the US and for most of my life, I've heard nothing but .com. In Germany, very common is .de. In Australia, very common is .com, .Au, or .Au. Mexico .mx. China .cn. A country code top-level domain is just the domain extension.

 It generally has a country connotation or a regional connotation. It's essentially a domain that I can decide it signifies it's from a particular place. Websites that are ending in .de are designed for German users. Let's get into the weeds here. Country code top-level domains are the most powerful way to rank a domain or rank a page in a certain country. 

There are other ways to do it. 

I could technically get a page on our website, clickminded.com ranking in Germany. I would have to do a lot and talk about sort of how I would do that, but the fastest, most powerful way to do this is to get the country code top-level domain of the country in question and use that. In general, apples to apples, if you have two pages and they're exactly the same and one is on a .com and one is on a .de, the one that's on a .de is generally more inclined to rank better in the Google German version or in Google.de. Keep that in mind. Google assumes that all of the content on a country code top-level domain is designed for that country is gonna buy us rankings toward that country, but keep in mind this is unrelated to language. 

This is country-specific. Documents on a .de domain or on a .fr domain, or a .com, .Au domain, those documents are designed for Germany and France and Australia but they're not actually language-specific. These are country specifications. Stay away from country code top-level domains if you're targeting global traffic. They're a huge headache. One massive problem I saw very popular in San Francisco when I first moved there in 2011, as people were getting .it version of a site, which is the Italian domain. They were either doing IT services or they made up some cute clever name for their start-up and they were ending it in .it and then they were super confused as to why they weren't ranking in search results for the United States. It's because it's a massive signal to Google that this content is designed for Italians. They were doing great on Google.it, but not on Google.com. 

Watch out for this. 

A lot of people try and get cute with their domain names, and it hurts them a lot. It's also colloquially difficult for a lot of people to understand a lot of these domain name extensions. Wherever you are, whatever is kind of colloquially popular, just use that. It makes it way easier. One test I like to use, I call it the mom test. When you pick your domain name, you call your mom, you say your domain name one time over the phone, and if your mom is able to go to a browser, input that domain name, and get to your page without any clarification from you at all, it's a good domain name. If not, it's a bad domain name. 

The other version of this test is the crowded bar test. If you said your domain name one time in a crowded bar to someone, could they remember and visit it the next day. If you fail either of these tests, it's a bad domain name. Keep that in mind. The exception here is what is called GccTLDs, Global country code top-level domains where Google basically came out and said, "Okay, yes .de is for Germany and yes .fr is for France, but it looks like most people are buying certain domain extensions and they're not really targeting those places." .IO is for the Indian Ocean, but every single one is a start-up or an app. They basically said .io actually is gonna be global. .CO originally for Columbia, the same things, it's becoming very popular. 

A lot of people are using that kind of for their startup. .TV ... There's a list of a bunch of others, we'll list those in the resources down below. The basic idea here, though, is that if you're not a Global country code top-level domain, you're going to be biased toward whatever country that you actually are, so keep that in mind. Okay, let's go through a little list of how to think of this, depending on who you are and kind of what your business is and who you work for. There are a bunch of different questions you should ask yourself before investing in country code top-level domains or before investing in internationalization strategy. 

First of all, do you operate in a certain country and you have no plans of expanding beyond that? 

Are you a French coffee shop chain, maybe you have one or two retail locations and maybe you want to go to three or four, but you'll never expand beyond France. Fine. Get the .fr, totally fine, no issues there at all. Go for that country code top-level domain. Do you operate in multiple countries? Maybe you're in the US, in Canada, maybe over in the UK, or maybe you're in France and you'll also go to Germany, I would recommend still picking on a domain, but using country codes subfolders. It's what we did at PayPal. I managed search engine optimization for two years at PayPal.com and everything still happened on the .com, but the localized versions of the actual web application were on country code subfolders. 

All of our Mexican content was on /MX. All of our Spanish content was on /es. All of our French content was on /fr. Basically, we had the localized versions of each country-specific site in a subfolder and all of our internationalized links and the content all that would live there. But we only had one domain. This was technically much easier to manage. Every time you're adding an incremental domain, it's tough. It's technical. You gotta do a lot of stuff. You have to manage registrations and crawl budgets, Google search console, analytics, cross-domain tracking. There's so much there. If you're just getting started expanding, picking one domain and using a country-specific country code subfolder is actually an okay way to do it. That's how we did it at PayPal. 

The big dog one is this. Are you everywhere? Do you have multiple offices everywhere? Do you have content in multiple languages? Are you a massive operation? Then you can go ahead and buy country code top-level domains. I really wanna warn against this. You wanna be careful. PayPal was even big enough that they ... It didn't make sense to them, it's actually technical reasons why it didn't make sense to them ... A story for another day. 

The point here is massive companies are still in situations where they only use one domain and they use a country code subfolder. Don't think you need to do this but you can. At Airbnb, I managed search engine optimization there, we had 26-27 different country code top-level domains. There's some very complicated intricate engineering on the back end around making localized copies of each domain. A lot of management in order to do all that. 

Lots of different versions search console and analytics. Do keep that in mind. But, it's a fantastic ranking signal. All of our content was translated by local translators and on that country code specific version of the domain, it's great for search engines. It's great for users. It's extremely expensive and very difficult to maintain. Do keep that in mind. If you're not gonna expand at all ... Just to summarize ... If you're not gonna expand at all, stick with the country that you're in. If you're expanding a little bit or you're a start-up that just wants to deal with a lot of the technical overhead, pick one domain and build up country-specific versions on the subfolder. If you're a massive operation and you're willing to invest in all of the behind the scenes infrastructure you need to keep multiple versions of the domain up, then go ahead and buy the multiple country code top-level domains. 

That's it. That's all there really is to country-code top-level domains or ccTLDs. 

I hope that was useful. If was helpful and if you learned something today, go ahead and click subscribe down below for even more digital marketing tactics and tips from us. If you're on YouTube, we would love a comment. 

What'd you think of this? Are you back and forth between whether or not you should pick up your country code top-level domain? Would love to hear from you. I read every single one. 

Finally, if you want a super-comprehensive SEO checklist from us that includes internationalization and all the technical stuff you need for country code top-level domains, go ahead and click that link below to techyhydra.com to get your free SEO checklist right now. 

Thanks a lot.

• There are over 1.94 billion websites on the internet. 
• There are over a billion blogs on the internet. 
• That's roughly one blog for every seven people in this world. 
• There are over four million blog posts that are being published each and every single day.

Hi, everyone, I'm Abhishek. And today, I'm going to answer the question of is blogging still worth it? 

Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel. If you're on YouTube, click the alert notification. This way, whenever I go live whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, you'll get notified. 

Now, the short answer to this question is no. The long answer to the question is yes. 

Now, don't just shut off this video and stop blogging if you have a blog. In the traditional sense, blogging is not worth it, of just creating text-based content, cranking out a ton, and expecting it to do wonders for you. 

Here's what you need to do if you want to still thrive in the blogging world today and in the future. Number one, don't just focus on text-based content. 

Traditionally, blogs were just text-based content and that's what people would publish. And they would just say, here's my website, here's a blog post, and that's it. And that's great, but you know what? Now, text-based content isn't everything. 

We all use something called a mobile phone. This mobile phone, people are using it to watch videos, listen to podcasts. So when you're blogging, don't just blog text-based content. Create video-based content. Create audio-based content. Publish that on your blog. 

Also, publish it on other channels as well. And that's the second thing that I wanted to get into. Blogging is no longer about just putting content on your site. That content should sit everywhere. You may be wondering, Neil, but Google penalizes for duplicate content. 

No, that's a myth. Google does not penalize for duplicate content. They've stated it publicly, so you don't have to worry about that. So take that blog text-based content that you have, also repost it on Facebook. 

Also, repost it on LinkedIn. Right? 

You want to put it wherever you can. Heck, I would even create a medium.com account, and repost it on Medium as well. Take your videos, put it on YouTube, put it on LinkedIn, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram TV. Have you noticed wherever you're watching this video, go to any other social network, look me up, you'll see the same video. 

Why? 

Because I post the same content everywhere. Some people use YouTube, some people use Facebook. People are spread on all these social platforms. I want to capture them everywhere. The third thing that you need to know is blogging on how it used to be, in which you just create text-based content, you rank, you drive that traffic to a product or service, collect leads, you do well. Blogging doesn't work that way anymore. Blogging is very expensive. And here's what I mean. Let's say you get these rankings. Then Google comes around, they release a Google update. Have you noticed that the people that get hit the most with these updates and don't rank as high, are the sites that aren't updating their content? Look at Wikipedia. Whatever you search for, I bet you they're probably on page one. Why, because Wikipedia is constantly updating that same article over and over again. Yes, maybe they're not doing it, but the community is. 

The same will go with your website. If you update your content over and over again, keep it fresh, up to date with the latest and greatest, you're going to do better. But if you don't, you'll notice that your rankings will continually slip over time. Maybe not your main page or the parent pages, but your pages that are going after long-tail phrases, those are the ones that'll continually slip if you're not updating your content on a regular basis. 

To give you an idea, currently, I have three people employed full time, all they do is update my old text-based content. If you do all of that, you'll also find that blogging still doesn't produce as big of an ROI as it did four, five, six years ago. And why is this? It's because no matter where people are and what they're using, it's harder to convert them, especially on these mobile devices. 

Harder to convert them off of YouTube than it is from your own domain. Harder to convert them from Facebook than your own domain, because Facebook wants to keep people on there so they make more ad revenue. So this is the last tip, and this will end up making blogging worth it for you to continually do. You got to continually collect emails and push subscribers. So you can use tools like subscribers.com or Hello Bar or Mailchimp. Use whatever you want. If you continually get these people to come back to your site, get them to subscribe. 

That'll give you a shot at selling those people over time. If you don't sell them over time, it won't do as well for you. If you expect people to just watch a YouTube video or a Facebook video, and buy from you right away, it's not going to happen. 

That's why it's very important to build that audience through email, push when they come to your site, and get them to keep continually come back, so that way you can convert them over time. If you make those changes and you adapt, blogging is still worth it. 

If you don't and you just want to focus on writing a text-based content, never update it, write me-too content, and the same stuff that everyone else is going to write on, you're not going to do that well. 

But when you change to that fresh new perspective, that's when you'll notice you're still going to get an ROI from blogging. If you need help with your content marketing, generating a better ROI, and getting more traffic, check out my ad agency, Abhishek Digital.

 And if you have any questions, leave a comment below. If you enjoy the video, share it, like it, tell other people about it, and subscribe to the channel Techy Hydra. 

Thank you very much.