I write for people, usually about aviation | I help you show up better on Google | Former Airport Manager | USAF Vet
Kansas
Joined April 2021
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Getting back to my real job of writing content for businesses in aviation and aerospace. That first hour when a jet breaks is critical and has a huge impact on the overall outcome of the AOG event.
John McCoy retweeted
Just a friendly reminder for all of you business owner-types who want to drive traffic on social media:
SEO drives 1,000% MORE TRAFFIC than organic social media.
However, we are often drawn to social media because it is easy to track clicks, analytics, etc., from the social media dashboard. Clicks are good, right?
96.55% of all indexed pages get zero love (i.e., search traffic) from Google. I have seen this play out for most of my clients. They drive good traffic overall, but under the microscope, a small handful of pages do all the heavy lifting.
So, organic search is absolutely still the way forward, and if I am being honest, it is a grind. It costs a lot. It takes a long time. It isn't easy. But when it hits, it hits hard and pays dividends for years (more on that in a little bit).
If you need a ghostwriter, I can do that. But let me tell you, for future gains, invest in your web content. It matters that much.
Day 6
My friend Wade sums it up best: "Repetitions over everything." He also says you can write your way out of a bad situation. Writing is a powerful tool, and content really does form the backbone of whatever endeavor you pursue. Still, no content strategy or content machine is perfect. This is up to all of us individually, and we have to figure it out, sometimes on our own.
In this case, repetitions truly are the only answer. You have to put in the reps to figure out the viability of your product, your market, or whether you have a market. You also have to figure out whether this is just something that's cathartic to you and is your own pet project. You won't know any of these things until you've put in a whole lot of repetitions. I didn't feel like I was really becoming a writer until I hit about 1 to 1.5 million words.
That sounds like a lot, but it's not, especially over a career. My advice for everyone is simple: put in the reps. Your content is probably going to stink. It may end up meandering into places it wasn't supposed to go, or it'll wander into places you needed it to go, but you just didn't know it at the time. Whatever you do, don't be in the 99% class of consumers. Be in the 1% that produces. There is no downside to it.
John McCoy retweeted
I probably should say nothing, but…I was late to work today. As I’m trying to give you an honest view of what it’s like to be a pilot, I’ll share my embarrassment:
The short version is that traffic was significantly worse than I forecasted. While that works as an excuse, it’s nevertheless a personal failure & I must accept responsibility. This is extremely embarrassing to me.
Part of what I think makes me a decent pilot is that I’m always where I am supposed to be, when I’m supposed to be there, looking like I belong there. In fact, I’m usually very early…I usually get to my base more than an hour before I have to be there, just in case. I am downstairs at the hotel, ready for the crew van about 20 min early. I started thinking maybe an hour early at the start of a trip was excessive, so I made an attempt to adjust it down today.
This was a blunder. I always use Google to navigate, even though I know the route, in case there are closures or crashes or whatever & a reroute will be faster. Even with reroutes, I’m always really early.
When I started driving this morning & told Google to navigate to work, it said there was much heavier than usual traffic & that I would be late. I was taken by surprise. I was a little late once before, but then the flight got delayed for weather so it ended up being OK. I thought maybe as I drove, Google would update & I’d get closer to on time, and it did update some, but not close enough. So, after driving for a while hoping Google was wrong & about 1+20 before I was supposed to be there, I called scheduling to let them know I’d be late.
I’ve never had this happen before, so I didn’t expect their reaction: they pulled me off the trip. They would find someone else. And they did; the flight was delayed less than an hour, but departed. I actually think the flight would have been less delayed if they had kept me on it, but that’s not up to me & they must do what is needed to protect the operation to the best of their judgement. It’s why I called them so early – I wanted to give them the biggest possible window to get that jet off the gate as close to on-time as possible. At that point, the best thing I can do is give them as much notice as possible, be humble & shut up.
I don’t know how much trouble I’m in. I won’t lose my job, but I am expected to report for the beginning of a trip at a certain time, regardless of circumstance, and I didn’t meet that expectation. There was paperwork I had to fill out, and the Chief Pilot will call me. I’m certainly not getting paid, and I kind of needed the money…the party was more than I budgeted for.
Other than the time I was saved by weather around 7 years ago, this is a first for me. It distresses me.
Both the crew & the passengers expect an on-time departure. 160+ people most days. That’s not always possible, due to weather or ATC or whatever, but today it was because of me. I failed & it cost a lot of people their time.
I think this post is my way of trying to apologize, to acknowledge responsibility & agree that it’s unacceptable. I took a chance to try & not be there so early, it backfired & I don’t take that lightly. I will of course recover & vow to never let it happen again, but my passengers & crew were let down & I am the one who let them down.
That’s stings. I am genuinely sorry.
A long while back, I had a client who was absolutely convinced that the only correct length for a blog post was 2,000 words. You're the boss, man. So I wrote 2,000-word articles, no exceptions.
Well, as it turns out, this was not rooted in any verifiable truth whatsoever. And that's fine; it won't really hurt to write them longer. It's just going to cost a lot more without any real gains.
According to Ahrefs (thanks for the killer graphics!)
ALT A scatter plot shows the correlation between word count and average referring domains, with a positive trend up to 1,000 words.
Day 5
Fall is the best season of the year, and nothing can convince me otherwise. Yes, I know winter comes next, and I don't think anyone's a huge winter fan. Maybe people who live in places where you can actually do real winter activities, and also complete psychopaths. For the rest of us, it's just a season you have to get through to get to the other side.
But fall is incredible. The weather is nice: it's rainy, overcast, and cool, so you can open the windows most of the fall. There's Thanksgiving, pie, chili, and cinnamon rolls.
Of course, I was born in the fall, so I'm probably predisposed to favoring it over other seasons. Every year that comes and goes reinforces my belief that it's the best season.
Getting your deadlift up to 405 will do far more for your life in a positive way than pissing and moaning about election results, which does nothing.
With that said, I'm going to be totally transparent: it's really hard to get back into the grind after a long layoff. My layoff is nearing 2 years now, with very sporadic lifting. It started when my youngest was born, and I figured it'd be about 6 weeks or so before I got into it. That was nearly 20 months ago.
I can't promise anything because life is busy, and time gets away from all of us. I do want to include all of you on my journey back to getting into a regular routine and seeing where my weights go. It's an important part of my life that is exponentially more important than the results of any elections or any other item I have no control over.
I love lifting weights because you can always control the outcome. You can't make that 5 lb jump, so you take it down to 2.5 lb. You can't make a 2.5 lb jump, so you bust out the fractional weights and do 1 lb. You can do 0.5 lb, but you're always moving forward. You're always going up, and you control all of it.
This will do FAR more for your life and the lens you look at it through.
Day 4
There's something about writing these off the cuff and unscripted. All my other posts follow a set rhythm and function much the same way. I plan them out, do keyword research, and see what other people are writing, what hits, and what doesn't, but this is fun. I get to do this because I want to.
My friend and comrade in arms, Wade Skalsky, has a maxim: all creatives need their own personal creative outlet. It's what they do for the sake of creating, not for the sake of making revenue. I agree with that. Unfortunately, that thing almost always takes a back seat to paying the mortgage, buying groceries, and paying off braces.
But we creative types need it. We need something to nurture and create on. Otherwise, we cease being creative people. After all, you can only talk about your skill set so many times.
Selling anything on Facebook is a great reminder that poor people are the absolute worst to deal with and work with.
The most demanding and least yielding demographic on the planet
Good morning, all. The sun chose to rise and shine another day. The clouds are breaking and shaking off some of the morning gloom. Get out and crush it today.
I think you all should know that you can just start talking about stuff on the Internet and if you do it enough, you can just turn it into your job. It’s pretty cool.
One of the biggest mistakes a previous client of mine made was a fundemental misunderstanding of search intent and what to do with it.
This isn't to say the idea was wrong, per se, and I didn't argue with it because, at the end of the day, I'll do whatever the client wants. But I will say it wasn't consistent with how search intent works.
Before drafting dozens (or hundreds) of articles on a given topic, and around the time we start keyword research, we need to discuss intent.
What is the purpose of this specific article, or this batch of articles? Is it worth building a pillar for deep topics, or for many interrelated topics or products?
And what is the endgame for these pieces of content?
One thing I noticed is that all the new content was transactional. That's fine...but if you look at the blog's history, the best-performing pieces weren't transactional. They were largely informational or commercial, and they brought in a lot of traffic. But then, it all went to transactional for the next year-plus. These never really took off because they were so specific and niche, aiming for search terms that maybe only had ~10 clicks per month.
The moral of the story is that you need to understand your audience. Yes, you want transactional posts to work, but if that is your entire brand strategy, it probably won't work the way you want it to.
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Hey there! I am John McCoy, a professional aviation & aerospace writer. If you liked what you read here, let's talk about my services. I ghostwrite for founders and execs, write SEO content, and write emails and newsletters; I also handle content strategy and content management. If you are in the aviation or aerospace industry and need these services, my DMs are open.
