Become Searchable Content (turn yourself into keywords)
You are a brand and your life is an epic story just waiting to be shared. You can become searchable content. You have experiences, passions, knowledge and expertise. You have a unique story.
So this is my guide on how I turn my life into keywords and grow my brand through personal blogging.
It’s creative. It’s entrepreneurial. It’s exciting!
But at the end of the day, it’s just fun. This is your very public journal.
Now let’s do this!
Why Be Searchable?
Your online presence is the new resume.
We all accept the value of having a strong social media brand. But what about searchable content (like blogs)?
I still do social media — it’s an important channel — but I also love creating searchable content for my brand. Here’s why:
Build your personal brand through SEO
Monetize your life — blogs make money
Learn in-demand skills
Do more of what you love
Search-content lasts for years
Build SEO authority and niche credibility
Boost your self-awareness
It’s a creative outlet
Meet awesome people and build your network
Document your life — write your legacy
Explore more:
➤ Blogging vs. Vlogging vs. Social Media
Become Searchable Content (how to turn yourself into keywords)
1. Define Your Core Pillars
Step one is to get clear about who you are (or who you aim to be).
You need to know your brand identity.
In my view, we all have core life pillars. These are your passions, lifestyle, beliefs, expertise and experiences.
Before turning yourself into keywords and becoming searchable content, you first need to identify these pillars — you must know thyself.
For example, I have four core life pillars that represent my brand identify:
Travel
Music and art
Creative entrepreneurship
A carefree lifestyle
These niches represent most of my life, goals and content. It’s how I live my life everyday and it’s what I write about (here and on my other blogs).
So, what are you personal brand pillars?
2. Choose One Pillar
“If you want to start writing about your life, it helps to stay focused by choosing just one pillar.”
This was my greatest struggle when I first started.
I have multiple passions that are pretty unrelated. But when I started my first site, I tried to cover all of these topics all in one place. It was hard and I struggled to build real topical authority, compelling offers or an engaged audience.
So you can do a multi-niche site, but just be careful about going too broad too soon. Instead, start with one pillar at a time, and branch things out slowly.
And if you’re like me (your pillars are too different to be in the same blog), you may want to implement a multibranding approach for better organization, SEO and branding.
So, what’s your main life pillar you want to start creating content for?
3. Turn Your Pillar Into Keywords
“Your life pillar is your niche and it’s full of potential topics. And those topics have tons of sub-topics, all searched for with keywords.”
Keywords are the specific search queries people type into search engines. And Google alone processes are over 8.5 billion searches every single day.
So rest assured there’s an audience for you. You just need to identify the right keywords and then create content for them.
A good starting point is to think about what your personal keywords are. These are specific phrases that represent your brand identity and major themes for your pillar.
For example, some of mine include multi-brand, blogging, creator and creative entrepreneurship. My goal is to create ranking content for these themes.
I want to find pillar keywords that have good search volume but low-competition.
You can learn more about my exact strategy for finding awesome keyword opportunities in the link below (the Explore more link), but here’s the basic process:
Use forums and social media. Research and find initial topic ideas for your niche using community threads and social platforms.
Type topic ideas into Google. Use the ideas you find as seed keywords and type them into the Google search bar.
Use Google autosuggest. Explore different long-tail searches that Google recommends as extensions to your seed keyword.
Analyze the Google results. Review the results to double check the keyword’s search intent and its relevance for your brand.
Add data. Check the search volume and competition data with a free keyword research tool (I use Semrush or Ahrefs).
Explore more:
➤ How I Find Good Keywords
4. Create Optimized Content
“Optimized content is content that looks good, is easy to read and ranks well in Google.”
After you’ve researched and identified keyword opportunities, it’s time to create your searchable content.
So what should you write about first? And in what order should you cover your topics?
Creating a content strategy helps a lot here.
It’s important to publish articles in a way that makes sense — like a logical flow that readers will follow, where one article naturally links to another. This will create topic clusters of relevant posts and ensures you cover things in full (which builds trust and topical authority).
So after you’ve organized your keywords and created a loose plan, it’s time to write.
Here’s how I write optimized articles:
Formatting. Organize your main points with proper H2, H3 and H4 headings (although, I rarely use H4s).
SEO. Include your focus keyword in your title, intro, meta description and URL slug.
UX. Make things scannable. Use bullet lists, bolded text and compressed images — create blank space and avoid long paragraphs.
Use experience. Write from personal experience. This builds authority, trust and authenticity (plus, it helps you rank better in Google).
5. Monetize Yourself
Time to monetize yourself — woo!
Once you start building authority and getting decent traffic to your personal blog, you can start making money.
But just remember, this takes time — especially if you’re new to blogging.
So think in years (not months) and have fun with it.
But when you are ready to pull some money levers, here are some ways to make money from your life’s content:
Services (coaching, consulting, etc.)
Ads (like Ezoic or Google AdSense)
Sponsored posts
Affiliate marketing
Selling products (prints, ebooks, courses, merchandise, etc.)
Later ✌️
Your life can be turned into keywords. And those keywords can be turned into searchable content.
Having an online presence is one of the most valuable assets in modern life. And creating long-form content (via blogging) is an overlooked strategy to grow your personal brand.
It’s as simple as defining your core pillars, choosing one to start with, turning topics into keywords and writing rank-worthy content for those topics.
A blog is an asset and a legacy that creates SEO authority and credibility.
Plus, it’s just fun.
So, are you ready to turn your life into keywords?
