It used to be so simple. A billboard here. A radio or television commercial there. Perhaps a print ad or two thrown in for good measure. That was your marketing strategy, and it worked. Want to watch the latest episode of The Dukes of Hazzard? You had to sit through that commercial for cereal. Enjoying an article in the new issue of HBR? You at least glanced at the ad for the new Volkswagen as you flipped the pages. Marketing messages were everywhere as they are today, but one thing has fundamentally shifted in favor of the consumer: they now have the ability to tune them out, skip them entirely, or block them completely. DVR allows viewers to fast-forward through commercials. Podcast and YouTube ads can be skipped immediately or after a few seconds. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are commercial-free. Good old-fashioned terrestrial radio is on life support. And let's not forget about AdBlock and similar services. A tiny extension or a standalone browser dedicated to better user experience like Brave lets you stop them in their tracks. These tools either block or filter advertising content from websites, pages, and apps. Consider:
We've entered the Age of Ad Blocking. And banner blindness. And instant gratification. Patience may be a virtue, but it seems to be in dwindling supply. Ain't nobody got time for commercials and ads. (Unless it's the Super Bowl). And if you think the solution is using an adblock wall – restricting or prohibiting access to content until users turn it off – think again: 74% will simply leave your site. It might seem a catch-22. You need ads to market your products and/or monetize your website. You need to attract visitors to click those ads. But those same visitors claim to despise ads. Look at the reasons why people use ad blockers for some quick insight. According to PageFair: And according to MarketingSherpa: And according to Hubspot: You'll notice quite a bit of overlap. People don't like sketchy ads, intrusive ads, ads that negatively affect page performance, ads that are irrelevant, ads that are annoying, and more. What takeaways can you glean from that? It's a straightforward list of what not to do with your advertising and messaging. So, is marketing dead? Far from it. Despite the seemingly overwhelming odds, marketers are still able to get their message across in an ad-blocking world. How? By adapting to the changing landscape. If the old ways don't work, you have to find innovative new ways. Intrusive ads that interrupt the user experience are out. Honest, timely, and relevant “ads” are in. Say hello the rise of Digital Advertising 3.0. Influencer MarketingIn the simplest terms, an influencer is a content creator or personality with a relatively large following on a given platform. Their popularity or expertise gives them a great deal of clout with their fans. But they need not be celebrities in the traditional sense of the word. Individuals like Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber have tens of millions of followers, but that doesn't automatically make them a good fit for you and your brand. In fact, research has shown that influencers with fewer than 1000 followers – often called micro-influencers – saw likes 8% of the time, and comments 0.5% of the time on their posts and shares. Celebrities with 10+ million fans? Those numbers plummet to 1.6% and 0.04% respectively. Influencer marketing is a partnership with an influencer to review, promote, or link to your content, brand, and products. It's widely used and considered one of the most cost-effective and powerful strategies used today. Interest in it grew 90x between 2013 and 2016, and doubled again in the first nine months of 2017. 2018 looks to be no different. And because there is no “ad” in a sense, nothing is blocked or filtered. This puts your message in front of as many eyes as possible, and if you've done your homework beforehand in finding the right influencer, it's a targeted audience. If you haven't tried it yet, there's no time like the present. A few things to remember:
Done right, influencer marketing bypasses ad-blockers and delivers marketing that people actually want to see. Teenagers on YouTube, for example, trust the opinion and recommendations of influencers more than celebrities. They relate better to them, and believe the influencer understands them as well or better than their friends. Native AdvertisingTraditional online ads try and stand out from the background. They might use a different font or color. They might flash, or wiggle, or bounce. They might autoplay a video or audio clip. They want you to notice them. And that's their downfall: traditional display ads are very easy for blockers to identify and filter. That's where native advertising comes in. Native ads mimic the digital environment in which they appear. They try and blend in. They don't want to interrupt the user experience in any way, and ideally, they don't even want you to notice it's an ad at all. In fact, they might only be discernible as an ad by the Sponsored or Promoted tag most sites place on them. Click a native ad, and it usually leads to a page that looks and feels like a regular blog post or article. It can easily be shared. But it still has a message. The post includes or features the brand, product, or service being promoted in some way. It often has a call-to-action such as signing up to receive a special report or newsletter. You've encountered native ads in your daily web browsing, even if you don't realize it. They're very popular on news and aggregate sites: Scroll down the top stories on Yahoo, and you might not even notice the “Sponsored” tag on the post about an investment opportunity. It looks like any other article (with perhaps a bit of a clickbait headline). Click on it, and you're taken to a landing page that looks like a blog post. It mentions that Jeff Bezos – the richest man in the world – is pouring millions into a new tech innovation. Others are following his lead. What is it? Just enter your email and download the free report. The post is a native ad for The Motley Fool to collect leads for their financial services. And it works because there's nothing to block. Users choose to click it. Google search ads are another powerful example of native ads at work. For any given search query, you'll be presented with thousands of organic results…and a few paid ones, too. These are identified by the Ad tag, but otherwise look exactly like a regular search result. Facebook in-feed ads are considered the most lucrative type. As you're scrolling through your account feed, you'll encounter them all the time, but they blend in with posts from your friends, family, and pages you follow. Some are a bit more obvious, like this ad for ChinesePod, an online platform to learn Mandarin. It's definitely an ad, but because it appears in your feed rather than your sidebar – and includes like, shares, and comments – it takes on the appearance of a regular post. Others appear decidedly un-ad like, like this one promoting the new Netflix film The Cloverfield Paradox. You'll notice the Sponsored tag if you look for it, otherwise it just seems like someone posted the trailer for a cool new sci-fi movie. From the stats at the bottom, we can see hundreds of thousands have watched it, thousands have liked it, and hundreds have shared and commented on it. In essence, it's an ad that's not an ad. And that's the most powerful and effective type of ad you can create. With this “ad”, Netflix has generated interest, excitement, and buzz for its latest big budget release. Yahoo's recent Perception Study found 4 key components to a native ad that produces a positive impression:
Native ads can generate a click-through rate (CTR) 4x higher than non-native display ads, and they're predicted to generate 74% of ad revenue by 2021. Want to experiment with Google search ads? Go through Google. Facebook in-feed ads? Contact Facebook. For various news and aggregate sites, you'll need to work with a native ads network such as Native Ads, Outbrain, Taboola, or Nativo. And if you want some inspiration, check out a few spectacular native ad examples. Native ads are not a fix-all. You still need to find the right platform(s) for your target market, and deliver relevant and timely “ads”. Social AdsYou don't need me to tell you just how popular social media is today. We spend more time on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others than we do on any other type. It's our favorite online activity. There are over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook, 800 million on Instagram, 500 million on LinkedIn, 330 million on Twitter, and 178 million on Snapchat. Worldwide, there are 3.03 billion active social media users (compared to 3.82 billion internet users). That's a massive potential reach and audience. So it makes sense that social ads are taking over. Everyone spends time there. And it's relatively easy to blend in and make your ads appear less like ads and more like shares, posts, and tweets. Every social media platform now offers the ability to advertise and market in some way. Facebook makes the majority of its revenue – the vast majority – via selling ads space to businesses. In 2017, it earned $39.94 billion in ad revenue, up 49% from the $26.85 billion it made in 2016. The story is the same for Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. Ad revenue is big, big bucks. But as an SMB, you don't have to spend millions, or even thousands, to get in on that action. On Facebook, you can work with sponsored posts, in-feed video or image ads, or more traditional banner ads. Instagram? Sponsored posts, Stories, or video ads. Twitter? Promoted tweets and hashtags. YouTube? Video and banner ads. LinkedIn ads? The #1 rated platform by marketers for B2B leads. You're spoiled for choice. Where does your market hang out online? And let's not forget Snapchat. Its growth may have slowed recently, but it's still a tremendously popular platform for tweens, teens, and millennials. It provides traditional ads, Stories, geofilters, and lenses to spread awareness, increase engagement, and have fun. It may not seem so at first glance, but Snapchat and business can be a match made in heaven. Social ads don't strike social users as ads at all. They're part of the experience. It's marketing in a more organic, natural, and unobtrusive way. The hardest part is choosing the right platform and the right ad type to reach and resonate with your customers, not deciding whether you should try it in the first place. Global social ad spend doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016, and is expected to have grown another 26% in 2017. Big bucks. Big results. And nary an ad-blocker to be seen, because the ads are part of the platform experience itself. That's winning the advertising game the 2018 way. In-App AdsYou've no doubt noticed the proliferation of in-app ads over the past few years. Any time you download and install a free app, you're most likely going to be subjected to at least a few ads. It's only fair, right? Apps are big business. As the saying goes, there's an app for that. Gaming, entertainment, finance, travel, reviews, meditation, exercise, and on and on. You need something, anything? An app exists to help you with it. And in 2018, in-app ads are the fuel that drives the mobile app engine. As you can see in the graphic above, video ads, display ads, and native ads account for 56% of app revenue sources. Developers need to make a living, too. But it is a very fine line. If you've ever encountered an in-app ad, you've also likely been annoyed by one. There's only so much space on a smartphone or tablet screen. Losing any to an ad can be irritating and frustrating. So what's the secret sauce? Many marketers and developers are seeing positive results with rewarded video ads. App users are offered a choice: watch a brief video ad in exchange for an in-app reward (a free upgrade, additional life, downloadable template, exclusive content, etc), or skip it. No coercion. No aggressive sell. It's entirely up to the individual whether they watch or not. But those that do agree are actually seeing your ad. Typically 30 seconds or less, the videos play while the user patiently waits and watches. It's a captive and willing audience for marketers. Services like AdColony and Unity can connect advertisers and publishers in the app world to the benefit of both…and the app users themselves. That's a triple win. Everyone's happy. As with any type of advertising, actively work to improve it over time. Monitor. Tweak. Manage. Improve. Content MarketingPerhaps the original ad-blocker killer, content marketing is still going strong. Even without the existence of blockers, it would still be a crucial cog in your digital marketing efforts. Providing valuable, targeted, and useful content for free is a great way to spread awareness of your brand, increase engagement, build authority and expertise, and generate both goodwill and leads. Creating and sharing blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, and more is the ultimate method for winning in the digital arena. It's not salesy. It's not pushy, or aggressive, or in-your-face. But pound for pound, content marketing delivers like no other. According to the Content Marketing Institute:
Content marketing is a long game. It's not based on clicks or conversions, per se. Use it to engage, connect, and build relationships that you can leverage into sales and revenue down the road. When it comes to business in 2018, just getting known is more than half the battle. And because the ad is the content itself, blockers won't block, filters won't filter, and your audience is being advertised to without realizing it. They get something valuable from you, and you get to deliver your message to them. If you market online at all, content marketing should be a cornerstone of your strategy whether you're concerned about ad-blockers or not. I could go on in great detail about other methods to slay the ad-blocker beast, but I'm sure what we've already covered is more than enough to get you started. Suffice to say, there are other channels to explore:
Keep looking, and you'll find plenty of additional tips, tricks, and channels to beat the blockers. ConclusionIf you're only pushing ads the traditional ways – popups, banners, sidebars – you're doing it wrong. Advertising is changing. Evolving. Understand why people are blocking to better understand how to win them back. The idea isn't to sneak past the blockers anymore, but rather to make them unnecessary. People are using them because of performance – some studies suggest ad-blockers can reclaim 24 hours annually by making sites load faster – privacy, and security concerns. Keep that in mind when designing and launching your ad campaigns. They don't like repetitive display ads. They don't like retargeting ads that follow them around. They don't like popups, before-content ads, and banners. In the United States, 54% of ad-blocker users feel ads are annoying and/or irrelevant, 48% believe there are just too many ads, and 47% feel that they take up too much screen space. The good news? 83% of respondents in a Hubspot survey agreed that not all ads are bad, but they want the ability to block the obnoxious ones. The solution? Make sure your ads are not the obnoxious ones. Pay attention to what they hate, and create accordingly. How have you adapted to the ad-blocking age? What methods have you used to get your message across? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.
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How long does it take you to write marketing emails? If you're anything like me, you put lots of thought, effort, and time into each and every word in the message. That's what it takes to write actionable email newsletters. Your message is full of great content. You might even have some discounts, coupons, or other promotional offers there as well. Maybe you're promoting a new product, service, or trying to drive traffic to a landing page. Regardless of the goal of your marketing emails, all of your campaigns have one thing in common: subscribers need to open them to see your message. Sounds simple, right? But all too often I see marketers come up with a subject line in two seconds and send out the message. The subject line is the first thing the recipient sees when they get your email. Just how important is it? Well, 35% of people open emails based solely on the subject line. Furthermore, 69% of people mark messages as spam based on the subject line. Basically, your subject line will make or break the success of your marketing campaigns. To increase your open rates, you've got to come up with subject lines that stimulate interactivity, which I identified as one of my top marketing trends of 2018. But you can't use the same subject line over and over. That gets boring, and your subscribers will catch on. That's why I created this list of the top 7 subject lines that increase open rates. Now you have a reference guide for every message you send. Let's dive in. 1. Personalized subject linesAdding a personal touch to your subject lines can help increase open rates. In fact, the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM) identified these as the top benefits of personalized emails: As you can see from their data, increase in open rates was the first benefit of personalized subject lines. Personalized subjects can have a larger impact on your campaign as well. You'll also get more clicks, fewer unsubscribes, higher customer satisfaction, and more sales. What kind of information can you use to personalize a subject line? You can use your customer's:
If you're on the fence about what's appropriate to use, start off by addressing the recipients by their first name in the subject. See how much of an impact that has on your open rates. How much of a difference will it make? Well, research shows that personalized email messages improve clicks by 14% and increase conversions by 10%. Studies also show that personalized promotional emails result in 29% higher open rates. The reason why this strategy works is because it helps you establish a more intimate connection with your subscribers. They'll see that the content was created specifically for them as opposed to a mass audience. I'm much more likely to open a message that says “Hey Neil!” than the one that begins with “Dear Valued Customer.” The first one makes it seem like I personally know the sender. Give this method a try next time you're sending out an email. 2. Subjects that create a sense of urgencyAre you familiar with the concept of FOMO? It stands for the “fear of missing out” on something. Social media websites today make FOMO more prevalent. Take a look at these numbers: FOMO has become such a problem for people that it's impacting the way they live their lives. You can stimulate this powerful emotion in your email subject lines. How can you create a sense of urgency? Offer a sale with an expiration date. If someone is on your subscriber list, they've probably bought something from your company in the past. Even if they haven't, they're interested enough to probably buy something soon. While your coupon might be available in the body of the message, you need to make it obvious in the subject line. Let's compare two hypothetical subject lines. Which one do you think is more effective?
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I promise you that the second example will get more opens than the first one. That's because the deadline of “ends tonight” gives people a reason to act fast. If they don't open the message now, they'll fear they will be missing out on a great deal-FOMO. Another way to generate urgency is by alluding to a limited quantity of something remaining. Here's a great example from GetResponse: GetResponse is an email marketing software. So it's no surprise they have a great email subject line to promote their services. The idea is to get people to act fast. If your subject line says the deal is valid until the end of the month, the recipient has no reason to open it now. They may never open it. But that can change if you generate urgency. 3. Breaking news subject linesYour content needs to be highly relevant. If your company isn't in the news reporting or media industries, you'll have to get creative here. Here's what I mean. You don't need to send emails reporting a local robbery or car accident. But you can link recent news to your business. For example, let's say you have an ecommerce company that sells clothing. You've got your email subscribers segmented by location based on their zip codes. It's February, and a winter snowstorm is approaching the states in New England. You could send an email with a breaking news subject line about the storm and say that you're selling winter coats, hats, and gloves at a discounted rate. MailChimp conducted a study in which they analyzed 24 billion emails. These subject lines had roughly 22,000 unique words. Their data showed that people opened messages with keywords that were related to breaking news. If you can't think of ways to link recent news to your email campaigns, create some news of your own. Share recent news about your company. Talk about things like:
And make them sound like news headlines in your subject lines. 4. Subject lines that tell a storyYou can get more sales by mastering the art of storytelling. But you can also increase your email open rates with the same tactic. Everyone loves to hear a good story. That's why we read books, watch movies, and sit for hours watching our favorite television shows on Netflix. The stories keep us captivated. You should tell stories in your emails to capture the attention of your subscribers. Then you can include CTAs within the story or have the general theme of your story prompt an action. But the key here is to use the subject line as a teaser for the story. If you're trying to drive traffic to a new post you wrote, consider using its title as your subject line-if it tells a story. Here's an example of an old post I wrote about spending money on clothes and being able to generate a profit: That's a headline that grabs a reader's attention. If I wanted to promote this post via email, I could use its title as the subject line. Both of those numbers, spent and earned, are too high for people to ignore. They might ask themselves, “How could you make that much money just by spending money on clothes?” Then they would click to read the story or, in this case, open your email. 5. Stimulate curiosity with a subject linePeople are curious by nature. Refer back to our last example about storytelling. The reason why someone would want to click on that message is because they are curious. Your subject line should try to pique the curiosity of your subscribers. Don't give it all away in the subject line. Instead, hint at something that they'll find out if they open your message. Rather than saying, “here's 30% off your next purchase,” you can create a mystery sale instead. If you just tell the subscriber their discount, they don't have a reason to open the message unless they are ready to use it. Here's an example from Forever 21 of an email that employs this technique: Apply the same concept to your subject line. It doesn't have to be applied to sales only. You can hint at a mystery event or maybe even a special guest on your next podcast. Just make sure you're not giving away all the information in the subject line. Here's another example. Let's say you're in the food industry. You want to send out an email about the most popular foods in America. Potatoes are the most commonly consumed vegetable in the United States. But you wouldn't write that in your subject line. Instead, you would write something like, “What's America's favorite vegetable? We've got the answer.” This subject makes the recipient wonder, whereas just stating the answer gives them no reason to actually open the message. 6. Short subject linesNo matter what type of content your subject line contains, it needs to be short. Avoid using really long sentences and unnecessary characters. To optimize the length of your subject lines, I recommend writing out several drafts before deciding on one. Then you can pick and choose pieces of each draft so you can make your message as short as possible. How long is too long? Studies show that email subjects lines that have between 1 and 20 characters have the highest open rates. As you can see, this statement holds true across the board, regardless of the type of email you may want to send. It's possible that if the subject line is too long, the recipient may not be able to see all of the words. Studies show 55% of emails get opened on a mobile device. Take this into consideration when you're crafting a subject line. While it may look fine on your computer, it may look different on a smaller screen. Here's an example to show you what I'm talking about: While most businesses realize that their emails need to be optimized for mobile devices, they forget about the subject lines. Overall, if your subject line is short, you'll get higher open rates. 7. Subject lines with free stuffIt's OK to give things away. Some companies avoid this because they think it's not profitable, which I completely understand. Look, I'm not saying you need to give away your most expensive products. But it doesn't hurt to give away a gift with a purchase every now and then. This is especially true if you're using an email campaign to promote the free offer. Why? Take a look at these numbers: Email marketing campaigns generate a 4,300% return on your investment. That's because it's not expensive to send emails. You're likely only paying a marginal monthly or annual fee for your software. Plus you get many benefits, e.g., an increase in sales, more website traffic, and new leads. So it's OK to use this platform to promote a free offer. Include the word “FREE” in your subject line to get more subscribers to open your messages. ConclusionYour email campaigns might be great, but if you can't get people to open the messages, they are pointless. I know how much time you spend writing your emails, so you need to put just as much effort into the subject lines. Personalize your subject lines, or introduce a story or news. Stimulate curiosity. Make the reader want to find out more information by clicking the message. Give away stuff, and tell people about it in your subject line. No matter which tactic you use, try to keep your subject lines short. Make sure they can be read on mobile devices. If you follow these tips, you'll get significantly higher open rates. What types of subject lines are you using to get subscribers to open your messages? Most of my blog posts are long. I shoot for over 3,000 words in almost all of them. Sometimes, I'll even go over 10,000 words. Because over the years, I've seen that those bring in the most traffic. This isn't new or unique. Many people have found success in going long. But here's the thing that most people miss: Just because something is long doesn't mean it's going to rank well. Length is often a correlation, not a causation. Many times, there are other factors that you need to get right, first. Without those, it doesn't matter how long you'll go. You'll always struggle. Especially when you apply this to Skyscraper content. These are often tens of thousands of words long. They take weeks to plan, publish, and promote. And unfortunately, they're not foolproof. Skyscraper content can and will fail. I'll show you why in this article, along with a few tips to help your next one avoid the same fate. How Skyscrapers workI've been doing SEO for over a decade now. Republishing old content has always been around in one form or another. You'd analyze SERP competition for different keywords, spot some weaknesses, and then launch new resources that were better, longer, and more in-depth. However, Brian Dean gets the credit for revamping and formalizing this process into Skyscraper content. The process is pretty straightforward, really. Here are the three official steps:
Brian then shows a few examples of where this has worked beautifully. His Ranking Factors post, for example, saw massive success in only a few weeks: Organic traffic from search engines also doubled within a few weeks: Now, I have used this tons of time since its debut to great effect. I can vouch for its validity. But I also have something most people don't. There are reasons that almost all of my Skyscraper guides work. While many others struggle or fail. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as one, two, three. There is some context missing from this equation that I'll share with you. And the first is your brand. Problem #1. You lack branding and authorityI've launched several multi-million dollar businesses. The blog has been a large part of the success for each. But do you want to know a secret? None of them has been an overnight success. Blogs, like businesses, take a long time to build up. That's especially true if you're in a competitive niche. That's why I tell people it takes two years for content marketing to pay off. Most people don't have that kind of time to wait. I totally get it. But in that case, they're just better off using AdWords to instantly drive leads. Because content marketing is only getting harder and harder. Search engines have evolved a lot over the past two decades. However, the underlying principles haven't really changed all that much. Skyscrapers often fail because people are neglecting to take all of this into account. That's why I love this tweet from Ross Hudgens:
Basically, he's saying that content isn't ranked based on quality alone. Instead, it often comes down to who's publishing it. Unfortunately, the website's brand and authority often takes precedence over an individual post. That means you could make the best resource in the world on your subject. But if you go up against even mediocre stuff from Walmart or Starbucks, you're toast. A large company's underlying brand strength and domain authority will almost always outperform your site. No matter how good your Skyscraper is. That's why I say it takes two years for content marketing to work. Not because you can't publish or get content indexed quickly. That can happen within a few hours. However, it's realistically going to take years to build up enough recognition and authority for you to start competing for queries that matter. Keywords in your industry follow the 80/20 rule. There are a handful that often send the most leads and sales. The problem is that they're also probably really competitive. So you're not going to rank for them within a few years. You can't just rank for those terms, though, to succeed. You also need to get people to click. That means you have to give them a reason to select you over all those other brands they already recognize. And that's not easy. The Halo Effect is a bias that clouds people's judgment. If someone is attractive, for example, people think they're also more knowledgeable. This same bias plays out online as brand bias. People naturally gravitate towards brands they recognize in the search engines. They think their content is better or more trustworthy. Even when it isn't. Larry Kim ran an experiment last year that showed how brand bias affects conversion rates. Repeat visitors to a website “convert 2-3x higher than first-time visitors.” That's why you build a sales funnel with your ad campaigns. Trying to get people to convert immediately, when they don't know you, is a losing proposition. It would be incredibly expensive based on those conversion rates above. Instead, your first goal is simply to develop recognition. Then, you rely on remarketing campaigns to ultimately convert them when ready. Only after they've developed that brand recognition. If you wanted to compare your website against another, you'd pull up their link profile. This will show you different off-site authority metrics. So you can quickly see whether you're in the same ballpark or not. “Domain authority” is a good, high-level measurement to simplify things. But you'd want to dig into the details, like the number of unique root domains, to get a full picture. Let's compare three random tire companies to see how this works:
All else being equal, Tire Rack is the dominant competitor here. They have almost twice as many followed linking root domains and linking C blocks as the next competitor. That means if you're thinking about building a Skyscraper for something related to “discount tire costs,” you better watch out for them! Because there's no way you're probably going to outrank them. No matter how good your “discount tire cost” calculator is. So what do you do in this situation? Don't keep doubling-down on Skyscrapers, according to Ross. Instead, tells you to go back to building up domain authority, first.
Let's take this back to Brian Dean's original post. Again, this method works and I have a ton of respect for Brian. But what he left out of that three-step sequence was a critical factor: Authority. The Backlinko website has over 100,000 backlinks from 10,000+ different websites! That means Brian can do things you can't. He can get away with stuff you can't. It might take you weeks or months of work to scratch the surface of a search query. Meanwhile, Brian can publish a post and have it above yours within hours. The same applies to a lot of my domains. We can publish something on Kissmetrics, NeilPatel.com, or Crazy Egg, and have it dominate the SERPs within days. Not just because it's the best resource on that topic. Don't worry, it will be. ;) But also because the overall brand recognition and authority of these websites has been built up over years and years and years. That's the first hurdle to clear when executing a Skyscraper. Unfortunately, there are still a few others. Starting with the page-level targeting that you're going after now. Problem #2. Page-level keyword targeting is offAuthority scores aren't just applied to your domain and entire website. They can also apply to your individual pages, too. It works almost exactly like the process we just saw. However, now it's focused on your page vs. a competitor's page. Let's take a look at two page's trying to rank for the same term: Generally speaking, the website with the stronger domain and page authority will win. Not always, of course. But most of the time. So let's see how these two compare: See? Again, it's not even close. Brian's page authority is just too much for Searchmetrics. So right out of the gates, it doesn't look good for them. It's going to take a ton of work to try and double the sites linking to their page, for example. But that's not the only issue at play when you analyze individual webpages. All along, Google wants to give users the best answer to their query. Now, what does that mean? How do you define 'best'? Typically, it's based on search intent. In other words, Google is trying to figure out what you're looking for. They're trying to interpret the query - even if you don't use the exact words. And many cases, companies trying to compete for those keywords miss the mark. So the content they're producing doesn't actually line up with what people are searching for. Let me show you a perfect example. Here are the first few results you get after searching for “best analytics software.” The first three are paid ads. So they're paying to show up there. The last one is actually the first organic result. Now, here's the problem: The first three paid ads are all getting it wrong! If someone searches for “best” anything, chances are, they're looking for a comparison. They're trying to weigh up alternatives between different choices. What they don't want to see is just a bunch of tools calling themselves the best. That's why those companies are paying to show up on this query, while G2 Crowd is getting the exposure for free. They're the only one who's actually answering the search query correctly. You don't just want to rank for a certain keyword. You want to get clicks! And if your page content is targeting the wrong keyword, your chances of both ranking or getting clicks falls off a cliff. There is also recent data that suggests your SERP click-through rate (CTR) can influence rankings. SEOs will always show you a SERP click distribution graph like this, that displays how most clicks go towards the first few positions on a SERP. However, as you can tell, that's an old example. Consumer behavior has changed. We're more willing to scroll or hunt for the right result. So the distribution from the first position to the tenth is more balanced today. Recently, we've started picking up details that Google is watching CTR as a quality measure.
In other words, they're using click rates as a form of feedback. If your result does a better job answering search intent, it will get more clicks. And now we're seeing that if you get more clicks, you might also get a better ranking. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Larry Kim ran another test and found that there is a correlation between CTR and rankings: The data suggests both good and bad news. The good news is that you might be able to compete against the big boys on a SERP if you do a better job answering search intent and getting clicks. The bads news is that if your content doesn't do a good job targeting search queries from the start, it's going to be an uphill battle from here on out. So first and foremost, make sure you're answering that search query! Start by understanding what people are really searching for, and why. Sort your search queries by funnel stage to make sure you understand what they want. That means if someone searches for “best analytics software,” you shouldn't send them to a landing page bragging about yourself. If they wanted to see that, they would have searched for you by name! In this scenario, they want to see a comparison of different tools: G2 Crowd does this beautifully. First, they show you a helpful grid that instantly organizes different options by a few select criteria. Next on the page, they offer to give you a personalized recommendation for the exact option you're looking for: Last but not least, they're going to give you in-depth comparisons across a bunch of different tools. You can even read real reviews from other customers to see if each meets your demands. Not only do you need page authority that will compete with the others around you. But you also need to make sure that the content you have will actually line up with what searchers want. Otherwise, they won't click. And if they don't click, you won't rank. Two hurdles down, with one last one to go. Your website strength and page-level targeting need to be on point. But if you have any hopes of getting that new Skyscraper to rank, you need to do this one thing. Problem #3. There wasn't enough promotionMost people are so focused on content creation that they neglect content promotion. They spend weeks on creating the content or designing the image assets. They hit publish, and then nothing. Sure, they might send out a few tweets. But the content marketing world is too saturated. So nobody sees them. This last step is absolutely critical. Especially if you're struggling at all on the first two issues. If you're going up against big brands who're doing a good job targeting the search query, you're going to need to put promotion on steroids. Where to start? The first trick I like to use is content syndication. Let's say your Skyscraper has text, images, and even video. There are websites out there starving for awesome content. You can repurpose some of yours and send it off to these sites. Business2Community, for example, has a regular contributor platform. When accepted, you can submit new content and get it live often within 24 hours. Sites like this sometimes even let you submit an RSS feed directly. So no need to manually upload your post each time it's ready to promote. You can also summarize key findings on LinkedIn, hoping to take advantage of the Pulse network effects. They'll often pick up the most viewed content and show it to a much broader audience. So you can drive views to LinkedIn from assets you own, like an email list. Or you can even use ads to help raise awareness. Then, you'll get the added bonus when that content 'goes viral' and gets shared out to the broader Pulse network. Just like a blog post, you drop in CTAs to the original Skyscraper content to drive people back to your site. You can also take those image or video assets and re-purpose them, too. For example, Visual.ly will allow you to submit new infographics into their directory. Once again, you're playing the angles. Get featured or trend on the homepage and your views will shoot up dramatically. It can also help you drive visitors back to your site. The next step is to look for high-authority sites to promote your work. My favorite technique is to start using search operators to get a quick lay of the land. For example, let's say you want to writing guest posts. Simply plug in your niche, like “marketing,” along with the following queries:
Here's what that should look like: Easy, right? You know what makes this even more powerful? Look for lists of lists. Smart people out there have already done all the hard work for you. They've already compiled the “best marketing blogs” or whatever niche you might be in. This time, just add “blogs” to your query to start finding the appropriate lists of lists. There's only one caveat, though. Check out the date stamps on the highlighted results below: Lists of lists are awesome because all of the information has been compiled for you. The problem is that they're often out of date. Some of the results above are from 2013 or 2014. Unfortunately, a lot has changed since then. That's like a decade in online marketing time. So you need to make one final tweak before you can rely on this data. Click on “Tools” over on the far right-hand side. Then, click “Past Year”: Now the results or rankings should be up-to-date. Of course, not every website that accepts guest content will have a “write for us” page. Their editor might be open to the idea if your resource is good enough. So it's going to take a little extra leg work to get your asset in their hands. This is where scaled outreach comes into play. First, you need to gather email addresses. Finding emails can be incredibly frustrating and time consuming. That's why I like to use a web scraper to do the work for me. For example, the Email Extractor is a simple Chrome extension. Once installed, you can go to a website and click on the extension to start pulling data: It will automatically scan the website's pages, looking for anything that resembles an email address. Even better, you can submit a list of domains up to 1000. So perform a 'list of lists' search from earlier. Then, copy the data into a spreadsheet and submit to the Email Extractor. All of the emails they find can be added back to your cloud account. This process used to take days when doing it manually. Now, it takes a few minutes. When ready, you'll upload those emails into an outreach tool like Mailshake. This tool will let you run several different campaigns at one time. That means you can have one going for guest posts, another for infographic submissions, and so on. Scaling outreach like this is tricky. It's tempting to use the same copy-and-paste template for every single site. However, even a little customization can go a long way. I like to segment out those sites under each campaign. For example, under your Guest Post campaign, you can create an “A,” “B,” and “C” segments. I'll often use the Domain Authority to help group related sites. You might be able to use a copy-and-paste template for your “B” or “C” sites. But then you'd use a more personalized approach for the “A” ones. Then, Mailshake will give you reply data after each send. That way, you can see if your approach is working. You can even A/B test different email templates, sending times, and more. The point is that success isn't an accident or a fluke. You continually test and refine new ideas until you hit the targets you want. ConclusionLong content tends to perform better in the search engines. But that doesn't mean longer content, like Skyscrapers, will always succeed. In fact, many times they'll fail. And you'll have no idea why. First and foremost, work to develop the necessary brand recognition and authority. This alone will make everything else much easier. Next, double-check your keyword targeting to make sure your page content answers the query it's going after. Finally, make promotion a habit. You should have a systematic way to repurpose on different sites. And for conducting outreach to get access to new sites, too. Unfortunately, Skyscraper success isn't as a simple one, two, three-step program. It is possible, however, if you follow these steps. Have you ever had a Skyscraper fail? Why do you think it fell short, and what did you learn from it? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. People always ask me the same question about AdWords: “What's a 'good' cost per click?” And my response back to them is always the same: “Why do you care?” See, most people have AdWords wrong. They obsess over the costs. They know that more and more competitors are advertising on the platform, which drives up prices. So they're zeroed-in on how much they're going to have to spend. But that's the wrong approach. They shouldn't be asking that question. Instead, they should be concerned with what they're going to get back in return. I know this sounds counterintuitive. However, I almost never worry about the Cost Per Click for keywords. In fact, I almost ignore them. I'm going to show you why CPC's don't matter in many cases. I'll show you how worrying about keyword costs can mislead you time and time again. And then I'll also unveil what you should be analyzing to make sure you're not leaving tons of money on the table. Why Cost Per Clicks don't matter (and what you should analyze, instead)Each year, companies analyze the most expensive keywords in the country. These are typically competitive phrases in law or insurance. They might top $50 for just a single click. The insane thing to remember is that almost none of those clicks will turn into customers immediately. Instead, they'll usually opt-into a form, first. That means you might have to front the bill for 50 or 100 clicks before someone ever converts. So already, we're talking thousands of dollars for a single customer. Almost all of these studies focus on AdWords' Cost Per Click. It makes sense when you think about it. That's the primary unit of measurement they use. It's what ultimately determines how much you need to spend. WordStream, for example, always releases an annual update on Cost Per Click benchmarks across industries. The businesses I own are all software-related. But we work with clients across different industries. So it's always interesting to look at these cost breakdowns. Average ecommerce CPC's might only be around a dollar, while law might run up to around six dollars. To be honest, though, I don't obsess over costs, alone. The first reason comes down to what the study says at the top: Averages. Average CPCs don't really mean all that much. Popular, generic terms aren't usually all that expensive. Only a tiny percentage of the people who ever click on those will convert. Whereas, a more commercial long-tail keyword will be incredibly expensive. Just compare the difference in costs between “tax” and “file back taxes”: See? It's not even close. That makes it hard to use a standard, “industry average benchmark” for any in-depth analysis. However, there's another reason why I don't like to just look at costs. And the reason is because you're often forgetting the other side of the equation. Conversions can ultimately have a much bigger impact than costs. Now, let's check out those industry average conversions from the same study: Ok, now we're getting a little closer. If you remember, the industry average CPC for ecommerce was only around a dollar. In fact, it was one of cheapest CPC's on the entire list. But if you now look at the average conversion rates, you'll see why. Their conversion rates are also among the lowest at only around a percent or two. Already, you can see part of the issue. What does it matter if CPCs are 'inexpensive' if the conversions are equally low? That's why you often want to look at the Cost Per Action (or Acquisition) when putting together advertising estimates. This is the effective price you pay to generate a lead, for instance. It's a performance ratio. It starts to take into account things like costs vs. conversions to help you determine a much better figure: ROI. The industry average Cost Per Action for ecommerce lines up with education on the search network. So from an ROI standpoint, there's almost no difference. This is why CPC becomes almost meaningless. Yes, it's important to a point because it drives things like your Cost Per Action. However, what's ultimately more important is the revenue you can generate. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about Google AdWords, Facebook, or even Twitter ads. The message is still the same. Digital Marketer once ran a Twitter Lead Gen campaign, testing the effective Cost Per Action (or Lead). One campaign was able to see a $7.81 cost per lead. They then ran the same study with the same ad and audience targeting. But this time, they optimized the campaigns to increase conversions. It generated a $1.38 Cost Per Lead, which came out to a five time lead increase on the same ad budget. They were able to 5X conversions simply by focusing on conversions and Cost Per Lead. They didn't even have to touch the CPC. You can see this time and time again. Jacob Baadsgaard of Disruptive Advertising confirms that the best PPC metrics are revenue-focused. They track lead data all the way through to closed sales. Then, and only then, will they make a decision about which ad campaign is best. It's not that costs don't matter. They do, of course. But they only matter in context to how much revenue you can generate from it. Here's a very simple example to illustrate. Let's say you run two ad campaigns side-by-side. The Cost Per Click for the second campaign is twice as much as the first. But because the conversion rate is 2% instead of 1%, you're able to double revenue. Would you pay twice as high a Cost Per Click to generate twice as much revenue? Of course you would! And this is after reducing revenue by your ad costs. So it's already accounting for the higher ad budget. At the end of the day, you're still doubling revenue. It's totally worth it! Obsessing over CPC doesn't just leave money on the table. It can also make you waste a ton of what you're already spending. Here are a few examples. Obsessing over CPCs can make you pull the plug too early (or too late)There are many things that separate big companies from small ones. But here's one of the biggest: Big companies spend more on advertising than small ones do. Gartner Research study found that bigger companies spend around 13% of revenue on advertising and marketing, while smaller ones only spend around 10%. Sarah Brady found that those numbers leap dramatically in some industries, like tech. Salesforce, the world's biggest CRM company, spends up to 49% on marketing and advertising! Crazy, right? Not only do bigger companies spend a bigger percentage of revenue on ads. But that also amounts to a much bigger number at the end of the day. The question is why? Why don't small companies spend more on advertising? In my experience, I find that they're often too risk averse. They don't have the same access to capital. So they tend to obsess over costs, as opposed to revenues. The classic scenario is when a business owner spends a few hundred bucks on new Facebook ads, only to conclude that they “don't work” five days later. They see that ad spend number continue to rise. And they don't see the number of leads start to flow to justify it. So they pull the plug too early. In almost all cases, they just need to let the campaigns run longer. Jennifer Shaheen found that campaigns should run at least 45 days before stopping. And that makes sense when you think about it. Look at it this way. How many sales do you need to break even? Let's hypothetically say two or three. So what are the chances that those two or three sales land in the first few days? Pretty slim! It's the law of averages at work. You need a big sample size before numbers start to meet projections. It's going to take a few weeks, at least, to get statistically significant numbers. Otherwise, you're just guessing. And all of this assumes that you know the 'right' ad campaign variables ahead of time. Which, in all likelihood, you don't. Not because you're not smart. But because it takes awhile to figure these things out! Here's the other thing that's happening. Many times, they actually need to increase ad spend. Yes, you heard me right. Listen: The only reason to advertise in the first place is to make money. It's not to save money on advertising. That means you need to get to statistical significance as quickly as possible. For example, go check out a few CPC ranges for keywords you're about to bid on. I like to use SpyFu to get a lot of this data: The average CPC for “analytics software” is estimated to be around $11. Ok, not bad I guess. Let's use that as the upper limit. We can create automated rules in the Facebook Business Manager. If you're having a hard time hitting those numbers, you can set a rule to actually increase CPCs. That will make sure I get better placement over the competition and as many conversions as possible. Here's how that might look inside AdEspresso: But of course, this approach isn't ideal. Because you still might leave a lot of money on the table. If your CPCs start edging up, the campaigns will back off or stop. And then your lead flow will stop, too. That's why I like using CPAs as targets if possible, instead of CPCs. Start by watching CPA instead of CPCCost Per Action is a better performance than Cost Per Click. It's not as good as Revenue, though. And therein lies the problem. CPAs can still be subjective. Is a 'high' CPA bad? Maybe, maybe not. If your CPA is over $100 in ecommerce, that might be bad. But almost every single campaign CPA will be over $100 in law, for example. So it's not bad at all. It still gives us a much better metric to control ad campaign performance, though. You can still figure out an upper range that starts to make ad campaigns unprofitable. You'll base this on your average sale per customer. (More on this later.) For starters, you can set automated rules to increase or decrease the total budget based on your CPA. Inside AdWords, you can go to “Bulk Actions” and create new “Rules” for these ranges: Under “Change budgets,” you can set an automated rule to either increase or decrease budgets based on cost per conversion numbers. This is telling AdWords to automatically increase your daily budget 25% if the CPA is within a certain dollar range. You can do this same exact strategy inside Facebook, too. You'll set a rule to increase, decrease, or stop a campaign if the CPA hits a certain threshold. Managing ad campaigns by CPA can net you more customers and revenue. But there's still one big section we're forgetting. Keyword pricing or competitive pressure aren't the only factors to worry about. Many times, your customer base could be going through their own issues. And you can't often do anything directly to change it. That's why focusing on revenue is always the best approach. Now, increase the revenue-side of the equation to overcome outside factorsSpearmint Love was one of my favorite success stories over the past year. They went from a baby blog to growing revenue over 991% year over year. And they did it almost exclusively through Facebook and Instagram ads. The craziest part is that it almost didn't happen. They were growing like a weed, until… everything just stopped. Results were declining across the board and they couldn't figure out why. Until, one day while on a walk, it dawned on one of the co-founders. Parents will buy baby clothes until that baby grows up. In other words, their customers were kind of 'moving on' from the company. The ad campaign decline had nothing to do with costs or his ad campaigns per se. It had everything to do with their customer base. How on Earth do you solve this problem? By focusing on increasing revenue - not touching costs. If the CPA is 'too high' to make your numbers work, start by increasing average order values. Upsells are easy, for example, when you bundle similar products. Think about the last time you flew somewhere. Chances are, you bought a travel-sized product at a store before going through TSA. That way, they wouldn't throw your good stuff away at the Security line. But that product probably only cost a few bucks, right? Check out what Jack Black does here, bundling several travel products together. You arguably need all of these products if you're flying somewhere. But instead of only charging you a few bucks each, they're charging you $35 for the whole pack! Simply bundling similar products allows them to charge 10x more. Which means you can afford a much higher initial advertising cost now, too. You can also cross-sell products to try and raise the average order value. For example, right underneath this travel bundle, Jack Black offers a few related products to take with you: One interesting thing to note is the price of all three items. They're all slightly less than the initial $35 purchase. Why? They're using price anchoring effect to make these additional products seem less expensive. In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely showed how price anchoring can get people to pay more for similar products. The Economist included a middle pricing tier for a print-only subscription. It was the same exact price as the 'big' plan for both the print and web editions. In this scenario, most people chose the combined third option because it seemed like the best deal. Removing the middle plan on a subsequent test, however, led people to overwhelmingly pick the cheap option, instead. Price anchoring changes someone's perception of cost vs. value. That's why you should lead with the more expensive option. Then, showcase a few related products to cross-sell that are slightly less expensive. Spearmint Love also expanded their product line to increase average order values. They came out with decor piece, like hundred-dollar baby lamps. The age of a child mattered less in this type of purchase. So it kept the company relevant longer in their eyes of their customers. After increasing average order values, you should increase the lifetime value of each customer. One technique is a vintage analysis, which shows you which customer cohorts are worth the most already. This way, you can identify trends or patterns. You can see what the most lucrative customers are doing. And then take those lessons to apply across everyone else. Getting customers to repurchase down the line can have a massive impact on your ad campaigns. Constantly acquiring new customers is expensive. You have to spend a lot more to get them to buy. Increasing repurchases from your existing customers has a massive impact on your bottom line. Let's revisit that initial ad model to see why. Keep in mind this is a simplistic example. But I think it still does a decent job showing how this works. The first campaign has a higher initial cost. So you're barely breaking even. This is what most companies are scared of. They worry about spending more money on keywords. And as a result, they put blinders on. They completely neglect optimizing conversions, average order values, or repurchases. So yes, they might bring in a few sales. But the higher costs deplete their ad budget before long. The end result is a wash. The second campaign has a higher average order value. In this case, you're not even getting more conversions. All you're doing is bundling a product, for example. And already, you're back in the black. Not bad. However, the third campaign? Not only are the average order values higher, but you're getting more repeat purchases, too. You're basically generating more purchases from the same number of customers. Many times, you don't even have to spend a single dollar to get them. All you have to do is send out an email campaign. These loyal customers don't take a lot of extra persuading. More sales, without increasing ad costs, skyrockets revenue. You make several times the other few campaigns. And best of all, you didn't sweat a single CPC. You willingly paid at the top-end of the budget range to maximize your opportunities. Then, you doubled-down on the other side of the equation. Increasing conversions and revenue spent can act like a lever to double or triple ad campaign ROI. ConclusionThere's only one reason to spend money on ads at the end of the day. Your goal is to make money. You want to bring in more money than you spend. That changes everything. Because you shouldn't be out for the best deal. Chasing the keywords with the lowest CPC is a losing proposition. If anything, you should be spending more money. You should actually search out the highest CPC's there are in your industry. Why? Many times, they offer the most potential. You want to maximize the most sales per dollar spent. So you know all those “industry benchmark CPC” numbers? Don't worry about them. Instead, start by focusing on the CPA. That's the number it costs for you to acquire each new customer. It's not perfect by any stretch. But it's a better number to optimize around than CPC. From there, try to dig into revenue numbers. Can you bundle a few products to raise the average order value? Can you cross-sell recommended products and use price anchoring to lower their perceived cost? Then, figure out how you can keep customers around longer. That might mean introducing new, related product lines. Or it might mean introducing 'consumable' products that people need to repurchase again and again and again. The point is to drive up the lifetime value of each customer as high as possible. Because if you can do that, almost any costs will do. There will be so much revenue generated per customer that you can afford to spend almost anything to get them in the first place. How have you boosted ad campaign performance by focusing on conversions instead of costs? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. Not everyone wants to buy what you're selling. For your startup company to be successful, you need to identify your target market. This is one of the first steps of launching a startup company. But it's much easier said than done. If you don't have a clear target audience in mind, your marketing campaigns are going to cost you a fortune. You'll also have low conversion rates, and your customer acquisition costs will be through the roof. Marketing to everyone and anyone is simply a waste of effort, time, and money. Instead, focus your branding and marketing strategies on a specific group of people who genuinely have a need, want, or interest in your company. Cash in the bank is obviously important for every business, but for startup companies, it's their lifeline. If your marketing campaigns are unsuccessful, your startup is going to bleed money. Take a look at the top reasons why startups fail: Let's just focus on the top two reasons. Reason #1: 42% of startups failed because there wasn't a market for their offering. That's why identifying your market needs to be one of the first steps. If you discover there isn't a market for what your startup has to offer, you can go back to the drawing board and try something else before you invest too much time and money. Reason #2: 29% of startups failed because they ran out of money. Spending your valuable marketing budget on the wrong target audience could cause your company to go out of business. With limited cash in the bank, you may not be able to recover from this. But don't worry. I'll explain what you need to do to identify your target market, which will position your startup company for success. Start with broad assumptions, and slowly narrow your focusDon't start with a really narrow audience right away. Instead, begin with larger groups that you assume may be interested in your brand. From here, you can slowly start getting more specific. Use a few of these simple and general segments to get started:
You can also use these broad groups to eliminate people who aren't in your target market. For example, let's take a look at some products from the Texas Beard Company: They sell things such as beard oil, brushes, balms, combs, and any accessory you would need for a healthy beard. So if you had a startup company like this, right away you could eliminate women from your target audience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying women won't buy these products. It's definitely possible women could make a purchase from this brand as a gift for a man in their lives. But you wouldn't make them part of your target audience. What else can you assume about men who are looking for beard products? Take their age into consideration. It's safe to assume that neither teenagers nor too many senior citizens would be buying these products. As a result, you would eliminate males under the age of 20 and over the age of 60 from your target audience. Now, what else can you assume about the people who may be interested in your products? They either have a beard or want to grow a beard. In the example we just used, you've already narrowed your target market to men between the ages of 20 and 60 who have beards. As we continue through this process, we'll narrow the target audience even more, but for now, this is a great place to start. Analyze your competitionIt's rare for people to come up with a product or service that doesn't already exist. While the idea for your startup may be somewhat unique, you'll still be a part of an existing industry. Other people are already doing what you're trying to do. You've got to find out how to position your company within your industry: To do this properly, you'll need to conduct research on your competition. Figure out what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Who are your competitors targeting? Look at their advertisements, visit their website, join their email subscription lists… You can attempt to go after the same target market or focus on a group your competition may be overlooking. Look at the graphic above as a reference. Are you going to target a niche audience or sell products for the masses? Will your brand have high quality products/services at a premium price or are you planning to target consumers who are more cost-sensitive? It will be easier to answer these questions after you research the competition. Analyzing your competition can help you increase profits even after your startup launches. Competitive analysis can also show you how consumers behave in this industry: Ideally, you want to build long-lasting relationships with your customers. But this idea can vary based on your products, services, brand, and industry. You need to adjust your target market accordingly. For example, let's say your startup company sells cars or similar products. A customer today may not be ready to buy another vehicle for another decade. In this case, you can't rely on loyal and repeat customers. Instead, you'll have to focus on customer acquisition strategies. Find out how your competition is able to continually market to different customers and whether their campaigns are successful. Talk to peopleWhile making assumptions and analyzing your competition are logical places to start, those strategies will only get you so far. If you really want to focus on the ideal target market for your startup company, you need to put in much more work. You need to speak to consumers. See if your assumptions are right. Conduct one-on-one interviews, and use focus groups to test your assumptions. For example, let's say your brand's general target market is women between the ages of 25 and 40. It's a huge percentage of the population. You'll have to come up with other ways to segment that target market into smaller groups who are genuinely interested in your brand. Here's a way for you to segment your target market: Focus groups and interviews can give you more information about potential consumers for your company. Your focus groups should have 10 to 12 participants. Show these people different products, services, or marketing campaigns your startup is planning to use. See how receptive they are to what you're showing them. Find out more information about the people who have a positive reaction. If you're only interviewing women between the ages of 25 and 40, what other similarities do they have? For example, you might find out that all the women who liked your products were married. You could also discover that women of a certain social class or annual household income were more receptive to your brand than others. Make sure you find out as much information as possible about everyone in your focus groups. Use the market segmentation graphic above as a reference. Have all of your participants fill out a questionnaire before the interview or focus group starts. But realize you won't find out everything you need after just one session or interview. This market research phase is an ongoing process. The more people you can talk to, the more accurate your data will be. As a result, it will be easier for you to identify your target market. Create customer personasNow that you have a better understanding of your target market, create customer personas to learn even more about their buying behavior. A customer persona will ultimately help you market to this audience after you've identified them. Here's what a customer persona looks like: Make the persona specific to your company. You can tell the example above is for a business selling shoes. This customer persona has trouble finding shoes that fit her because she has narrow feet. Now, your startup company may sell shoes to both men and women. But each persona needs to be unique. Your general target market in this segment may be:
Your customer persona has to be more specific. Notice that the example shows a woman who is:
Do you see the difference? The results of your interviews and focus groups can help you create these customer personas. Not all of your customers are shopping for the same reason. The purpose of the customer persona is to figure out the psychological and behavioral shopping approaches to consumers within your target market. If you identify that a large portion of your target market has a similar occupation or lives in the same part of the country, you can adjust your marketing campaigns accordingly. Use surveysOnce your startup launches and you start getting sales, you can use customer surveys to find out more information about your target audience. These surveys can help show your customers how much you care about them: You want to find out more information about your customers so that you can improve their shopping experience. But you'll also use those survey results to identify your market. Find out who they are and what they are using your products or services for. Get information related to their:
Earlier I told you to start by making assumptions about your potential target market. But now that you have actual customers, there's no reason for you to assume. You've got actual people who were drawn to your startup company. This is your target market. Now you need to figure out exactly who they are so you can target other people in this segment. Take advantage of analytics and other resourcesI'm going to assume your startup company has a website. If it doesn't, I hope you're in the process of building one ASAP. Who is visiting your website? The traffic to your site can be a good indicator of your target audience. Google Analytics can show you who is visiting your website: This is an example of demographic data you would be able to get from these analytics. The traffic from this sample is mostly males between the ages of 18 and 34. Google takes these analytics one step further and displays other information such as:
The reports are generated and grouped by demographic information. It helps you identify which users on your website are the most valuable. That's how you can determine your target market. Conclusion (be ready to make changes)As you can see, identifying your target market is a long process. When you first get started, you'll need to make general assumptions about your prospective customers, since you don't have any concrete data yet. Slowly start to narrow down that market based on your brand, products, services, and industry. Use competitor analysis tools to see who is getting targeted by other businesses in your industry. Are you going to take the same approach? Or will you focus on a different segment? Talk to people. Interviews and focus groups are a great way to help you narrow down your target market. Customer personas allow you to focus on specific customers with unique needs. Once your company starts getting sales, try to survey your existing customers to find out more information about them. You can also use online analytics tools to see who is visiting your website. Just be ready to make changes. Your initial assumptions about your target market may have been wrong. That's okay. As long as you're able to adjust your marketing campaigns based on new information, your startup company will survive and thrive. What's the target market for your startup company? Contributor Amy Bishop explains that improving quality score shouldn't be a goal in itself, but solely a means to achieve your business goals. How to tell when it's worth focusing on and when it's not.
The post Optimizing for quality score is a best practice, except when it's not. Here's why.... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. It seems like most companies redesign their website every year or so. New trends gain steam, so they want to be more 'contemporary' or 'flat.' Or new color schemes are en vogue. So every site you visit looks Asana-bright. Everyone now wants to update their site on the same regular basis. I love experimenting with new color schemes and trends, too. Except for one tiny thing. I hate redesigns. Design updates are good. They allow you to incrementally make improvements to make sure your site is up-to-date. But full-scale redesigns? Where you completely overhaul the site architecture and page content? You should avoid those like the plague. I know that sounds surprising. But I'm going to share a few examples of how and where website redesigns go bad. Especially when it comes to destroying all of the hard-earned SEO rankings you've built up over time. Here's how to avoid sabotaging your own SEO rankings with your redesign. Site architecture changes cause you to lose linksThere are hundreds of rankings factors for SEO. But backlinks still reign supreme. External links have been considered 'votes' since the beginning of (internet) time. Their quantity, diversity, and authority pass the most influence to raise your position in the SERPs. Internal links don't count for as much value. However, they do have a direct influence over someone's website experience. I'll explain. In 2011, Google Panda was released. It was one of the first reported cases where Google confirmed the use of qualitative factors. They used a survey with questions like:
And they had people individually rate different websites. Fast forward a few years, and Google also started taking user behavior into account. They don't just want to rank websites based on links or content length. They also want to look at the overall experience of that website. They want to make sure that people find what they're looking for. So the better experience visitors have, the more credit the site will get. What's one way to ruin an otherwise nice experience? Broken links that derail someone's path through your site. When most companies redesign websites, they start messing with the site architecture. They create new pages and ditch old ones. Or they take content from one page and add it to another. Then, they switch up their menus and navigation schemes. It seems harmless on the surface. The new experience might even be superior to the old one. But what they don't realize is that they're often creating a TON of problems for SEO. For starters, site architecture changes can ruin hub pages you've worked hard to build. These are like clusters of related pages on your site. And they can help increase your perceived authority on those topics. Page-level changes also create broken internal links throughout the site. You know the drill. You try to click on a new page to find related information, only to be met by a 404 error. One or two isn't a big issue. Redesigns, however, often create a ton of them all at one time. For example, let's say you're redesigning a hotel or ecommerce website. Chances are, you're using a detailed parent-child structure to organize pages. That means you might have “Rooms” at the top, followed by the individual types of rooms underneath. The problem is that these structures often change over time. Maybe you come out with new products or services. Maybe you migrate old rooms into new ones. One seemingly small change can often create a ripple effect throughout your site. It might make perfect sense to move your featured rooms up a level or two. However, any changes to your URL structures don''t create one or two broken links. It can literally create hundreds to thousands. Take blogs for example. Let's say you've worked hard over the years to create hundreds or thousands of blog posts. But when it comes time to move over to a new CMS during a site redesign, someone wants to remove the date strings from the URLs. Heck, all it takes is literally a single click inside WordPress to update Permalink Settings. So yes, it seems harmless. I've actually seen this mistake time and time again. Poor, unsuspecting business owners who have their entire websites practically break. Tens of thousands of page URLs break overnight. And you know what happens to their rankings? They drop like a rock. Fortunately, Google Search Console can help you spot broken links under the Crawl Report. My favorite tool for technical SEO audits is Screaming Frog. It will crawl every page on your site, uncovering tons of on-site SEO issues. For example, you can start by looking for the “Client Error (4XX)” report under Response Codes. Most of these will be 404 errors, when the status is reported as “Not Found.” So far, we've been focusing almost exclusively on broken internal links. But that's not the only way redesign changes can affect your site links. Think about it this way. Older, high-authority pages or posts tend to acquire the most backlinks. The highest value links are also the hardest to get. These include editorial links, for example, that come from journalists or other influencers. That also means you can't control them. So when your page or post URL changes, you will lose all of those external links, too. This, again, happens all the time. Permalink updates, moving the blog from a subfolder to subdomain, or even just new product pages replacing old ones can force you to lose all those backlinks. The best solution? Don't change old page URLs! At least, not if you can help it. Otherwise, another way to side-step this problem is through setting up 301 redirects. These are 'permanent' redirects, telling search engines that the new page has now replaced the old one. The Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin for WordPress is one of the most popular options. It's also incredibly easy to use. All you have to do is drop in the old “Request” URL and then direct it to the new “Destination” one. The only caveat is that redirects like these should be used sparingly. What you don't want to see, is something like this: Loading up on too many 301 redirects can cause other unintended consequences. It means the site architecture has changed dramatically. Here's why too many redirects can also affect your SEO rankings. Too many 301 redirects can cause slow page speeds“301” redirects have long been considered the best for SEO. They indicate a 'permanent' change, as opposed to a 'temporary' one like a 302 gives off. Either way, SEOs still feared that redirects would somehow limit the amount of PageRank that flowed through to the site. Even Google's own Matt Cutts once indicated some loss. But in 2016, Google webmaster analyst, Gary Illyes, confirmed that all 3XX links pass full value: Another Googler, John Mueller, confirmed the same findings. Why does this all matter? Because redirects are often now used to update websites to HTTPS. So some SEOs think this is Google's way to help make sure people adopt it. Last year, Google Chrome users started seeing new security warnings. Previously, up to 70% of users would ignore website security warnings. So Google rolled out new 'Not Secure' messages for sites that don't set-up SSL certificates. Moving from HTTP to HTTPS isn't as simple as you might think, though. For example, you can just flip a switch inside Google Search Console to pick the 'preferred domain' of your site. That way, you avoid potential canonicalization issues of your site recognized as two: a “www” and “non-www” option. As discussed, any URL changes can cause you to lose links. Architecture changes can break internal links. But you can also lose out on 'link equity' if sites link to HTTP and not the new HTTPS-version of your site. Again, why are we harping on redirects? Because too many can slow down your site's performance. And page speed has been officially confirmed as a ranking factor. Kinsta ran a test on WordPress to see how redirects affect page speed. First, they used Pingdom to run a page speed report with no redirect. The page loaded in around 1.06 seconds. That's a good score! Next, they ran the test again. But this time, through a redirected URL. And check out how it affected page load time: Crazy, right?! A redirect increased page load time by 58%. That's just a single page redirect, too. Multiply this across dozens of redirects and you can see the problem. Even worse, is when multiple redirects occur right after another. This often happens if you've updated a page more than once. As in, multiple redesigns over the years. One URL redirects to another, which redirects to another. And page speed slows to a crawl. My favorite tool for diagnosing redirects is the redirect mapper tool from Patrick Sexton. All you have to do is drop in your URL: Hit “Go,” and you'll instantly get feedback on different 301 redirects set up over the years: Again, fewer is better. Google, themselves, literally says to eliminate as many as possible. Which could be a problem if you've updated content during redesigns. Here's why. Updated content messes with keyword targeting and page optimizationWhy would you ever setup two redirects for a single page? That doesn't make sense, right? Of course not. At least, not intentionally. Yet, it still happens all the time. Here's why. Five years ago, you sold one product or service. Three years ago, it changed. And this year, it's changing again. In other words, the purpose behind the page evolves over time. So all of the content on the page changes, too. It even happens with Skyscraper content. You take a lot of old posts that are underperforming, and redirect them to a new one. Instead of relying too much on redirects, they should simply 'refresh' those old posts. Adding new content and images can boost SEO traffic by 111%. Multiple redirects in a row cause performance issues. However, continually changing page content also messes with your keyword targeting and on-site optimization. Here's how. Let's go back to a hotel example. Initially, maybe they only have one two room types. But after a renovation, those are expanded. The original website architecture might just list those first few rooms on the same page. But now, there's too many. So you change the “Rooms” page to a category page, which lists out ones underneath it. The problem is that now your “Rooms” page also has zero content. It just serves as a drop-down now: If that “Rooms” page was ranking previously, it isn't anymore. Now, you have thin content issues, for starters. This is when there's less than ~300 words on individual pages of your site: Page length matters because Backlinko's analysis showed that “the average first-page result on Google contains 1,890 words.” 50% of search queries also contain four words. That means someone is typing in a long-tail keyword to find something specific on that page. It's hard to give people the information they're craving if you've literally removed all (or most) of the content. Content changes during site redesigns also wreck havoc on page metadata. One of three things usually happens in this case:
Once again, Screaming Frog can help you diagnose these issues. Drop in your URL and search for the meta description option. I like to start here, because it usually indicates a bigger problem at play. For example, check out the following example. I've blurred the site's name to protect the innocent. Two problems are happening here. Second, there's a ton of pages missing a meta description entirely. Meta descriptions technically don't help you rank. They do, however, help you increase your SERP click-through rates (CTR). And new data suggests that CTR can often affect rankings directly. If a page doesn't have a meta description, search engines will often pull content directly from the page. But in most cases, it's random text that gets truncated because it exceeds length requirements. So it's not ideal. And people won't click. Here's another common problem to look for: We're looking at different restaurant pages on one website. However, they all share the same exact meta description. Once again, this is a red flag. The duplicate metadata cannibalizes the chances of your primary page ranking well for this term. And these inconsistencies typically indicate a larger problem at play. Most firms that specialize in design will not touch the page's metadata. SEO isn't a high priority for them. They might not have the specialists on staff. So this is what happens. You get websites shipped that look fantastic, but don't perform. Pages have the same copied metadata. Or worse, title tags and descriptions are missing completely. And at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how your website performs - not how it looks. Redesigns screw up 'user flow's that are already workingMy biggest problem with website redesigns is that they often screw up what's already working. If your business is up-and-running, chances are you already have purchases rolling in each day. Redesigns that change site architecture or page content often screw this up. You're completely jeopardizing revenue. And ultimately, your website's ability to generate revenue is its most important aspect. Changing all of that, without knowing if the new design is going to convert as well as the old design, is a huge gamble. Results might increase. But you don't know for sure. That's exactly the problem. Think about it this way. A website's macro-conversion, like a purchase, is made up of micro-conversions. To get a sale, you first have to get people to your site. Then get them to visit certain pages. Then possibly opt-into something before they had over payment. These 'user flows' are already playing out across your website. Changing the sequence of these steps can have massive ramifications on the end goal. This is the point behind conversion optimization that most people miss. They think 'conversion optimization' means to change a button color or headline. But in reality, changing how people flow through your site can often have a bigger impact on purchases. One study, for example, found that optimizing an ecommerce checkout flow could result in an additional $87,175/month. That ~3% conversion increase could add another 23.94% to their top line. Micro-conversions also extend to the internal links on your pages. These are like the beginning to a new path through your site. Changing these links doesn't seem like that big of a deal. However, now you can see, that it could have a big impact on how people purchase your products or services. How do you avoid this? Again, updating your site design is a good thing. But do it incrementally so you can test the effects on each page. For example, here's how my Quick Sprout blog looked a few days ago: Now, compare that to how it looked a few years ago. You can do this yourself using the Wayback Machine. Pretty similar, right? Sure, it looks more 'clean' and 'polished' now. The design is still relevant for today. However, I did not want to change what was already working. That's how I like to run website redesigns. I'll tweak element-by-element or page-by-page. Then, I'll use something like Crazy Egg to run tests after each change. If numbers go down, I'll revert back to the old design. Even if it seems a little 'outdated.' But if numbers go up, I'll start carrying those new design updates over to my other pages. That way, you should never, ever lose SEO rankings as a result of a website redesign. Or, more importantly, you won't lose revenue, either. ConclusionWebsite design updates should happen regularly. Design trends change pretty frequently. And you want to make sure your website properly reflects your brand. What you don't want to do, however, is sabotaging everything else that's working. Large-scale site redesigns can often create tons of problems. Site architecture changes can lead to performance issues. Content changes ruin your keyword targeting. And changing micro-conversions can drag down your macro-conversions. The way your website looks is important. But only to a certain point. The more important issue at play is whether revenue is increasing or decreasing. Website redesigns can easily screw up your SEO. That causes rankings to fluctuate and traffic to decrease. Declining traffic, then, brings down revenue with it. Avoid this trickle-down issue by not changing what's already working. If you're going to update something, do it on small elements, first. That way, you can test the impact in isolation. You can see if it's going to increase or decrease results on a small scale. Then, you can pull back to the old design if it's not working without losing too much traffic or revenue. And if it is working, you can start applying those proven updates to the rest of your site. Websites aren't just fashion statements. More often than not, functionality and performance should outweigh the appearance. Have you ever experienced traffic drops right after a new website redesign? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. Where is your website traffic coming from? If you're relying on people to find you through a Google search, search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be at the top of your priority list. You won't be able to generate leads for your business if nobody can find you. Did you know 93% of experiences on the Internet start with a search engine? What happens after someone makes a search? The top result on Google has a 33% chance of getting clicked. That means if you're not number one on the page, you just missed out on a third of potential traffic. What's even more astonishing is that 75% people won't even click on the second page of the search results. The reason why other websites are ranking higher than you on Google is because they are making a conscious effort to improve their SEO. Fortunately, it's not too late for you to get started. There are certain things you can do to increase your chances of getting ranked higher on Google searches. I've identified the top 14 ways to improve your SEO ranking. Here they are. 1. Improve your page loading speedYour page loading time is important for a few reasons. First of all, if your load speed is too slow, Google will recognize this, and it will harm your ranking. But a slow website will also impact the way your website visitors engage with your pages. As a result, those negative interactions will hurt your ranking too. Look at how abandonment rates increase for websites with long page loading times: How slow is too slow? Research shows 40% of visitors will abandon websites if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. What's even more shocking is that 80% of those visitors won't return to that website. This is terrible for your SEO ranking because it ultimately kills traffic to your site. But on the flip side, if your page loads fast, people will keep coming back. Google's algorithm will recognize your website's popularity and adjust your search ranking accordingly. If you want to test the speed of your website, there are online services such as Pingdom available for free. This will allow you to test your website from different locations all over the world. 2. Produce high quality contentHow often do you update your website? If you haven't touched it since the day you built it, you probably don't have a great SEO ranking right now. To drive more traffic to your website and increase its popularity, you need to give visitors a reason to keep coming back. Your content needs to be high quality, recent, and relevant. Another factor that impacts your SEO ranking is so-called dwell time. This relates to how much time people spend on your website per visit. If your site has fresh, exciting, or newsworthy information, it will keep visitors on your page longer and improve your dwell time. Websites that provide highly informative content typically have long dwell times. Here's something else to consider. Google Chrome controls nearly 45% of the Internet browser market share, making it the most popular browser in the world. That number will continue to rise as Chrome was also the most downloaded browser of 2017: When users bookmark your website from a Google Chrome browser, it can help your SEO ranking. High quality and relevant content will increase the chances of your website being bookmarked by visitors. 3. Optimize your imagesPictures and other images are great for your website. But you need to make sure they are optimized properly if you want these images to improve your SEO ranking. I'm referring to factors such as the file format and size. Huge images can slow your page loading time, which, as I've said, hurts your ranking. Resize or compress your images to optimize them. You can also use your images to sneak in keywords by naming them accordingly. For example, let's say you have a website that sells toiletries or other bath products. Instead of naming an image something like “shampoo1,” you could name it “best shampoo for long hair.” You can also strategically use keywords in the title of your image as well as the caption or description. 4. Break up your content with header tagsHeadings are another way to help improve the user experience on your website. They break up the content and make it easier to read or skim. Plus, headers make everything look more appealing, which is always beneficial. If your website is just a wall of text, it's going to discourage people from spending a long time on it. As a result, your SEO ranking will suffer. If you're running your site on WordPress, you can easily change the header tags. I use header tags for all my websites and blog posts. If you're not utilizing this tool, I highly recommend you start ASAP. 5. Start bloggingBlogging is great for your business. It's an outstanding tool for lead generation and helps you engage with visitors to your website. But what most people don't realize is blogging also improves SEO rankings. Here's why. As I have already mentioned, producing fresh, updated, and relevant content can drive people to your website and give them a reason to stay on your pages for a while. Well, blogs are the perfect channel for you to accomplish this. If you can establish a large group of faithful readers, you can get lots of traffic to your site on a daily basis. Plus, you can incorporate other things I talked about so far into your posts as well, such as images and header tags. Other elements, such as links, increased readability, and keywords, can also be incorporated into these posts. I will talk about them shortly. All of this positively impacts your search engine ranking. 6. Use outbound linksThere are certain things you can do to increase the credibility of your website. Sure, you can make claims, but it looks much better if you back them up. All of your data claims should be linked to trustworthy and authoritative sources. As you can see from what you've read so far today, I do this myself. But here's another example that illustrates what I'm talking about from a blog post I wrote about generating leads on Twitter: All my facts are citations from authority sources. And I made sure to use outbound hyperlinks to those websites. You should not only link to authority sites but also make sure all the information is recent. Notice that the graph I used in the example above is from 2017. Outbound links to resources from 2009 are irrelevant and won't be as effective for your SEO ranking. You should also include internal links. These links will direct visitors to other pages on your website. I used this technique in the first sentence of this section. If you scroll back up and click on the link, you'll get redirected to another Quick Sprout blog post. 7. Add more than textThe content on your website shouldn't be only written words. As I said earlier, pictures are great too, but there's more you can add to improve your SEO ranking. Consider adding other multimedia elements such as videos, slideshows, or audio to your site. All of this can help improve the user experience. Why? For starters, consumers want to see more videos: It's much easier to watch something than read about it. But there's a direct correlation between videos and other multimedia sources on your website, and it's SEO ranking. These features can dramatically improve the amount of time someone spends on your website. Depending on the length of your videos, people could be on your page for several minutes. If that happens, it will definitely boost your search ranking. 8. Make sure your site is readableKeep your audience in mind when you're writing content on your website. If you want people to visit your site and spend time there, speak in terms they can understand. Don't try to sound like a doctor or a lawyer (even if you are one). Your content should be written in a way the majority of people can understand. Not sure if your content is readable? You can use online resources to help. One of my personal favorites is Readable.io. Tools like this can help you identify words that might be too long or difficult for people to comprehend. 9. Fix any broken linksIf you're using authority websites for hyperlinks, you shouldn't have to worry about the links breaking. But it can still happen. Broken links can crush your SEO ranking. Plus, it doesn't look good when a link you provide to your visitors brings them to an invalid website. You can use tools like Dead Link Checker to search for links with errors on your website: You can use this to check your entire website or specific pages. If you sign up, you can also set up your account to get checked automatically. Anytime a link goes dead, you'll be contacted right away so you can replace it. You can also use this resource to monitor other websites relevant to your industry. How can that help your SEO? Well, if a link goes dead on another website, you can notify the webmaster of that page and ask them to replace the dead link with a link to your website instead. You're doing them a favor by letting them know about a problem with their site, so they might be willing to do you a favor in return. This will drive more traffic to your website. Outbound links from other websites to your page will help improve your SEO ranking too. 10. Optimize your site for mobile devicesAs I'm sure you know, mobile use is on the rise. It's rising so fast that it's actually overtaken computers and laptop devices. In fact, over 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices. Obviously, Google recognizes this and ranks sites accordingly. Your website needs to be optimized for mobile users. There's no way around this. If your site isn't optimized, it'll hinder the user experience, adversely affecting your ranking. 11. Properly format your pageTake your time when you're coming up with a layout for your website. It needs to be neat, clear, organized, and uncluttered. Consider things like your font size and typography. Use colored text, bold font, and italics sparingly. Things such as bullet points and checklists make it easy for visitors to scan through your content. Take a look at this example from Square: It's super clean. They've got a simple picture and reasonable amount of text. The way the text is formatted makes it easy for people to read, especially with the bullet points. As you can see, Square also included different header tags and subheadings on their page. If your website is cluttered with too many pictures, advertisements, colors, and blocks of text, it can appear untrustworthy. Your site architecture and navigation also fall into this category. A clean format and design will improve your SEO ranking. 12. Provide appropriate contact informationSpeaking of appearing untrustworthy, have you ever struggled to find the contact information of a business on a website? I know I have. This should never happen. All your contact information should be clear and in plain sight for people to find. The worst thing that could happen is for people to start reporting your website just because you forgot to include your phone number, email address, and location. This will crush your SEO. 13. Encourage sharing on social mediaEvery business and website needs to be active on social media. That's pretty much common knowledge. But what's not as well known is that you can get your SEO ranking improved if people share links to your website on social media. Here's an example from a pest control website case study in which they ran a campaign specifically designed to increase social sharing: The infographic was shared 1,117 times in just two weeks. During those same two weeks, the website's organic search traffic rose by 15%. As a result, their SEO ranking improved as well. And that was just over a couple of weeks. Imagine the results you'll see if you encourage social sharing as a regular part of your SEO campaigns. One of the best ways to do this is by including social sharing icons on all your content. You should also share links on your social media pages. When that information appears on people's timelines, all it takes is just one click for them to share it. 14. Use keywordsTake a look at the components of the Google ranking algorithm: Keywords play a major role in this formula. You want to include words people will search for throughout your content. But do it sparingly. If you go overboard saturating your website with keywords, Google will pick up on this, and it will have an adverse effect on your ranking. Keywords should fit naturally into sentences. Include them in your header tags and even in image captions. You should also use long-tail keywords, which are three or four word phrases that could be found in a search. For example, someone probably won't just search for the word “phone” when they're looking for something. But they may type in the phrase “best phone for texting” as an alternative. If your keywords match their search, your website will have a greater chance of getting ranked higher. ConclusionSearch engine optimization isn't just a fad that's going to phase out soon. It's something your website needs to concentrate on right now and in the future as well. If you're just starting to focus on SEO, you're a little bit behind, but it's definitely not too late to implement the strategies I just talked about. Don't get overwhelmed. I'm not expecting you to make 14 drastic changes to your website overnight. Start with a few, and move on to the others. Monitor your results. Checking your traffic and search ranking will help validate your SEO strategy. Soon enough, you'll be making your way toward the top search results on Google. Who knows, you might even be able to claim that number one spot. What have you done so far to improve your website's Google search ranking? SEO isn't very technical. But it becomes technical because so many marketers and content creators are using the latest “hack” to increase their rankings. The more information there is, the more differing opinions you hear, the more complicated it becomes. But at the end of the day, it boils down to a couple things:
The more quality sites you have pointing to yours, the more credible Google will view your site. Backlinks maybe aren't as important as they once were, but they're still valuable. This blog post will cover #2. You need to satisfy users. That covers a lot of things, but there's one that's often overlooked. So here's the best, most overlooked SEO factor that I can give you. Drumroll please… Make sure users don't go back to the search pageWhat do I mean by that? Here it is in practice: When a person lands on your page from a search engine, you don't want them to go back to the search page and click on a different result. Rand Fishkin refers to this as pogo-sticking. He says:
While you will likely have to stay on the first website for a few moments, if Google notices that you go back to the SERP and click on another site and don't go back, that means that that site was more useful for you. People search Google for a reason. They either want to find a website (i.e. branded searches) or they have a question that needs to be answered. That's Google's job. They answer questions for people. People are becoming increasingly used to asking a machine a question and getting an answer. Siri, Alexa, and Google Home provide answers for people. They don't even need to search to find answers. You know why Wikipedia ranks so well? Because each article has thousands of words, and it answers the question that the searcher was looking for. And it's continuously updated with new information. It continues to rank well because people know that Wikipedia has lots of great information, so it becomes a preferred result of many searchers. They'll seek out Wikipedia over other sites. This comes down to answering questions and satisfying users. Making users never want to click the back buttonThat's your goal. To make sure a user who visits your site from a search never thinks about clicking the back button. So, how do you do that? Well, for branded searches it's pretty easy. If someone searches for your company name, your company will be the 1st result and they'll visit your site. The question is answered; there isn't a worry about them clicking the back button. If you have a blog or any online publication it becomes much more difficult. Those 9 other sites on the SERP are your competition, and they think that they can deliver a better answer to users. Here are some examples of well-ranked sites that answer users questions without getting in the way. Rotten TomatoesIf you want to know if critics and an audience liked a movie, you go to Rotten Tomatoes. There isn't any other place that can consistently answer that question. I've heard the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri is good. So, I Googled it: Was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri Good? Rotten Tomatoes was the first result. I clicked and they gave me an answer: My question is answered – looks like it's a good movie! Putting this information at the top of the page with the yellow background helps visitors find the information they need quickly. There no need to scroll through a long page to find the answer. Yahoo! AnswersIs Yahoo Answers a bit stale? Yes. But it continues to ranks well because it answers users questions. Let's try a query. Recently I had a “knocking” noise coming from my refrigerator. So, hesitant to call a repairman, I decided to Google it: what is causing knocking noise in my refrigerator? Yahoo Answers was one of the first results. I clicked on the result, and they delivered the answer: A simple answer that makes sense. Thanks, Yahoo Answers. Check out when that question was answered. A decade ago! Yet it's still a favorite result from searchers. You can remember hundreds or thousands of times where you've searched for something and wound up finding your answer on Yahoo Answers. The only issue Yahoo! Answers has is that it isn't authoritative. For example, an unqualified person can answer a medical question and if it's rated as the answer then that is what users will see. It becomes Google's job to put these results much lower than they would have been and place a site like Mayo Clinic higher, which they (usually) do. wikiHowJust think of how many times you've had to Google something that starts with…”how to…” The brillance of wikiHow is that they set out to answer every question that begins with “how to…” and they do a good job of it. I recently had to put a suit on that came with cufflinks. In a moment of embarrassment, I didn't know exactly how to put cufflinks on. I didn't want to look like a fool and ask one of my buddies to help me put my cufflinks on. So I Googled it and landed on Wikihow. And they provided me with this wonderful answer (with pictures): Think about how much time that took someone to write that article. They started with a blank page and wrote detailed step-by-step instructions that were crisp and to the point. Then they added pictures and gifs to help the visual learners. It probably took at least a few hours, but now they outrank everyone, including YouTube. Tips to help youSo how do you create content that satisfies users? Here are a few of my tips: Make it Easy For The People That ScanMost people won't read your entire article when they are looking for an answer to a simple question. They'll scan and find their answer and move on. You need to help these “scanners” find their answer. It starts with putting the answers and important parts in the headers. KISSmetrics has a blog post that discusses the best time to send a newsletter. People that are coming to that page are looking for an answer. So the answers are placed in the headers: Take a look at the blog post to see the full list of tips. If you were coming from google looking for the best time to send a newsletter, you'd quickly find your answer. Why would you hit the back button? If you have a blog post like this, then you should put the answers in the headers. Use lightboxes and bold words to emphasizeYou can also bold words and use large font to highlight the parts you want to get across. This blog post from CoSchedule uses an unobtrusive box to show readers their tips: Dummies.com puts tips in a box as well, making it easy to find the most important information: Quora is a great Q&A platform, but sometimes people don't want to search through dozens of answers on Quora in order to get their answer. So Quora has an “Answer Wiki”: Here are all the answers from the Quora community, organized into one section. Is there a better travel hacks page on the web? All the information you'll need is on one page. Provide summariesOften times people searching just want a quick answer. They don't want to read a 3000-word article to answer their question. This is why summaries placed at the top of your article can be helpful. Examine.com answers a common question at the top of the page: There's your answer. No searching a web page or hitting Command + F to find an answer. It sits right at the top, immediately below the question. If I wanted more information, I'd scroll and read the entire article. In a similar fashion, ScienceDaily puts a summary at the top of each article: Business Insider is reducing news stories to bullet points: It's important to remember that word count and detailed articles still matter. Yes, Business Insider uses bullet points, but they also have an entire news article. Don't skimp on quality or use bullet points because it's easier for you. It's about making it easier for visitors. Again, it's about satisfying users. They won't click pogo-stick (hit the back button) and they'll be sure to visit your site again. Use Videos and GIFs for Instructional ContentIf your content contains a lot of how-tos and tactical information, it may be useful to spend some time creating videos. I've done that with Quicksprout University: The university has hundreds of videos, along with the transcript of each video. When a visitor lands on this page, they know what to do. Watch the video, read the description, and the transcript can help them reference certain parts of the video. Mechanics of Sport contains great how-to content for learning how to ski and snowboard. Just check out their page and video for instructions on putting skis on: There are four sections to this page:
Take a look at that page and ask yourself, “if I wanted to know how to put skis on, is there a page that could answer the question better than this?” You should be asking yourself the same question when you're creating how-to content. Look at the entire body of work and ask yourself if there's any site that answered the question or gave the instructions better. If there is, you still have work to do. Don't use elements that make visitors want to leaveSometimes marketers will get in the way. They'll shoot themselves in the foot by adding too much to a page, and it ends up making visitors click the back button and never coming back. That's why it's important to not add things that make visitors leave. Here are some things you'll want to avoid:
If visitors must leave, try to get some information from themOverlays work based on mouse movement. If the software detects that your mouse is moving up towards the top of the screen, with the intention of closing the tab or clicking the back button, the overlay will appear. Here it is in action: These are becoming more common around the web, and yes they are annoying, but they are also very effective. Your goal is to get something from each visitor; the most common first step is the visitor's name and email address. And overlays can deliver that. They're great for building your email list. My thinking is this: if visitors are going to leave my site, I at least want some information from them. The overlay is the best tool for that. I'd recommend experimenting with an overlay. Over the long term, the best option is to hire a developer to create one for you. That way you aren't paying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars every month to keep it running. If you can't start with a developer, or prefer to use a tool, I'd recommend Hello Bar or Sleeknote. Just remember not to use interstitials or popups on mobile devices – or you'll get an SEO penalty. Want more SEO tips? I've got 3 more in this video: ConclusionSEO can get complicated pretty quickly. There are so-called experts around the web promising easy ways to increasing rankings using a simple hack. Or worse, trying to sell you their service and promising you the first spot on Google. Yet through all this noise, we often forget the fundamentals – satisfying users. As content creators, we need to provide users with great content that helps people find what they're looking for. That's an answer, a how-to, or something thought provoking. The goal is to get users to stay and consume our content. To make sure they don't click the back button. About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. People think SEO is all about traffic. But I'm here to tell you that's not the case. Yes, if you do it correctly, SEO should bring in lots of traffic. Ultimately, though, SEO is about revenue. It's about driving in new customers to buy stuff. And that's why most people do keyword research wrong. Here's the common mistake I always see. People do two things when researching new keywords:
That's a good start, of course. But it's often not enough. The problem is that it leaves a giant, black hole in your SEO strategy where it matters most: The bottom line. Only comparing volume and competition leads you to make questionable decisions. In this scenario, you typically select the highest searched keyword that you can compete for. It's like a popularity contest. Keywords are chosen for their ability to drive traffic, not for their ability to convert. That's the problem we're going to fix today, in this article. I'm going to show you how to side-step this common mistake. You'll see the 'missing ingredient' from your keyword research. And you'll discover how to not just get traffic, but more leads and customers, too.
But first, we need to relate keyword research back to something you're already familiar with: The Buyer's journey. Why your content and keywords should align with buyer's journey stagesA recent study found that “55% of consumers visit stores before buying online.” Wait a second. What? People visit physical stores and then buy online? That's odd. You're used to seeing the reverse. People will research stuff online before buying. The study goes on to confirm that “more than half (56%) of 18-24 year-old shoppers say they buy products sight unseen.” The theory behind such a high rate of physical inspections comes back to the product. The more “high-touch” it is, the more common it is that someone wants to see it or feel it in person, first. That makes sense when you consider it. You might buy socks on Amazon, without ever looking at them. But if you're going to throw down a few hundred bucks on a new jacket, you're going to want to make sure it fits properly. What this means for companies, though, is that we live in an omnichannel world. People not only research things online extensively before buying. They now also will research stuff offline, buy online, and vice versa. Google calls this early research period the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT). Their data shows that almost all consumers today will research extensively before buying. And what's happening, is that they're slowing moving through the stages of the buyer's journey. Here's a perfect example of what visitors are experiencing when they get sick: A healthy person is never going to buy cough medicine. Why would they? They don't have a need for it just yet. Only when their throat starts to hurt, do they realize they have a problem. Next, they'll take a look at all the various alternatives they could buy. And that's no easy feat, because we're literally surrounded by medication. Now, we know what customers are doing before buying (more or less). Our goal is to construct a conversion funnel that lines up with each step. Consumers own the shopping experience. They're going to shop how they want, when they want. No amount of advertising or campaigns we run will change that. So don't fight it. Instead, adjust and respond accordingly. Bringing this back to SEO, it means you need to create pages on your site for each step. This is the content mapping process. You take each customer persona, and figure out what they would want to see in the Awareness, Consideration, and Decision steps. The reason we're spending so much time here is because most website I see are lopsided. They either have too much Awareness content, like blog posts. And not enough Decision-stage stuff that will convert they people they've brought in. B2B companies often suffer from the reverse. They have too much Decision-stage content that only talks about their company, their products, or their services. Why's that a problem? Because it means they can't optimize for Awareness keywords to bring in enough search volume. See what I mean? Keyword research and optimization is completely dependent on your site content. You can't optimize an About page for a big, popular keyword like “content marketing.” I mean, you can. But it won't rank anytime soon. That's why one of the first things I do when starting work with any B2B company, for example, is to build out their content assets, first. They need content targeting each funnel stage: Before we can optimize each to bring in leads and customers. I know. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. But search engines are too sophisticated today. You can't fool them. At least, not for very long. When companies come to me, suffering from lots of traffic but low deal flow, I like to use the following trick. Treat SEO like PPC. Yes, you heard me. I want you to take a PPC-based approach to keyword research. How to find keywords by funnel stagePPC only focuses on keywords that convert. You don't care about traffic or clicks or impressions or any other vanity metric. Literally, the only thing that matters, are the 'money keywords' that drive leads or sale. Tiny variations on a word suddenly matter. One word substitution in a phrase becomes a big deal. So I want you to organize SEO keywords by match types. Just like you'd do with a PPC campaign: At the top of the funnel, people are simply looking around at various TVs. In the middle, they're looking for pricing information. And at the bottom, they're ready to purchase. But more importantly, do you see the specific words they're using at each point?
That's what we want to focus on here. People use specific words that indicate which stage of the funnel they're in. That's how you identify them. And that's how we'll take them to optimize content in a few seconds. Here's a good starting point from the HubSpot's Inbound Conference: People in the Awareness stage often use “issue or opportunity” terms. That makes perfect sense when you think about it. People are just beginning to realize their problem. Think about how you found this very post you're reading right now. Why'd you click on this one and not one of the hundreds of others that crossed your stream today? Because you identified with the problem. The Consideration stage is when people start looking for solutions. They start looking for “tools,” “suppliers,” or “services” that can remove this pain point from their life. Here, they're comparing alternatives. There might be five different software options that solve their pain point. So they're gathering data on which one is right for them. Finally, “reviews,” “benchmarks,” or “tests” can help someone make the ultimate Decision. Of course, real life is a little more complicated and nuanced. But try to keep it simple. These three 'buckets' are fine for including in your keyword research. Now, when you're going to start researching keywords, you're not just looking for volume and competition. Instead, you're starting with funnel stage. You're deliberately looking at keywords under Awareness, for example. Then, you can drill down into the volume and competition for each. So you're only ultimately comparing queries in the same funnel stage. For example, pull up Ubersuggest and type in your search queries. Mine is “keyword research.” :) Ubersuggest will do exactly what is says: suggest new potential variations based on the original keyword. So you'll get a massive list of potential options, all with their estimated volume, CPC, and competition measures. But first, we need to make this data relevant. Scroll down to the very bottom of the tool and hit “Export.” Exporting the data into a CSV file will allow you to start adding more context to each keyword. For starters, you'd want to start assigning a Funnel Stage from the three options we've covered above. Now, you can add one more column for the important piece: The landing page. Keyword research is nothing without pages to optimize. So let's look at examples for each step of the funnel to see how you can complete this process. Step #1. Top of the Funnel“Las Vegas” gets over a million searches each month. Crazy, right? Just getting a tiny slice of that would get you tons of traffic. But you know what? Most of that traffic would be completely useless if you were selling products or services. (Ad revenue might be a different story.) The reason is because “Las Vegas” is just too general. You don't understand the search intent behind that query. Which means you probably can't figure out how to optimize a page on your site for it. People looking for this could be looking for the weather, for example. They're not exactly ready to buy show tickets or a hotel room just yet. Not only that, but you're also most likely competing against the big boys with huge budgets. I like to look at the top few PPC results to get an idea of how smart advertisers are targeting different keywords. And “Las Vegas” shows some tough companies: That's why most people suggest a long-tail approach to top-of-the-funnel keywords. You can target a ton of less competition queries that are also experiencing the problem you're describing. Take “UX mistakes,” for example. No, people won't Google this and convert immediately. But you can easily target keywords like this with blog content: You're getting them into your website initially, so that you can send them into other resources or retarget them with ads down the line.
Here's how I like to generate new top-of-the-funnel keywords. Write down all of the pain points customers experience. Follow that up with the benefits of your product or service. Take these potential topics and start building out your categories for your blog. Now, for each one, see if you can attach the following top-of-the-funnel keyword modifiers:
Plug these variations into Ubersuggest. It will spit out dozens of new awareness keywords, perfect for new blog post topics. Now, see if you can find a few related 'clusters' of these keywords. If you have a really popular one, that can serve as the 'hub' for the specific variations underneath. Hub pages can be really long, in-depth resources, like my guides that span several different topics: Each of these guides can internally link to relevant blog posts that cover similar topics. And you're building out a 'web' of relevant terms for Google to index. Beyond just bringing in traffic, guides can also help you start turning strangers into leads. Here's how. Step #2. Middle of the funnelPeople in the consideration stage are now looking for options. They're looking for solutions to the pain they just realized. Now, they've skipped over generic terms like “Las Vegas.” And are now looking for something specific, like “Las Vegas hotel rooms.” Here, your objective changes. You want to go from pages that will attract eyeballs to ones that will get people to stick like glue. And that affects everything you do. For example, someone who's interested in a blog post around some pain point isn't going to spend three hours on your site. The time and energy someone's willing to invest needs to rise proportionately, first. Once you do get that 'buy in,' you can use in-depth resources like guides to keep them reading or coming back. Remember what we learned earlier? Consumers will often research at least ten different resources prior to purchasing. So do you want those ten steps to be on your site, or someone else's? Now, let's repeat the process we took in the last step. Isolate those same key product or service benefits. But this time, apply the following variations:
People in this stage are comparing alternatives. You don't just want to 'tell' them about your features. You want to literally show them. For example, head on over to the Crazy Egg recordings feature page. Keep in mind that this is just one feature of several. But we've gone through a ton of time (and money) trying to make it tell the best story. We want to literally show people what the product does for them. What does this have to do with keyword research? Everything! You want to transition someone's interest in the middle of the funnel. They're looking for answers. The keywords people use to find this page will bring with it a certain expectation. They're expecting to find something specific when they type in “ux design features.” If the content on the page doesn't line up with their expectation, they hit the back button. And then you know what happens to your rankings? They fall like a rock. See, SEO isn't just about keywords. It's about optimizing for someone's experience. Ultimately, the best experience doesn't just influence rankings. It also dictates whether someone is going to take the next step to make a decision. Or if they're going to hit the back button on their browser to look for someone else. Step #3. Bottom of the funnelYou've scoped out a few hotels for your upcoming trip to Vegas. What do you do next? You're going to look for price comparisons for the actual weekend in question. Now, you're getting into crunch time. You want to make a decision. But only after weighing all the options. This is where you often start seeing branded queries pop up, for example. You're going to start punching in dates. Soon-to-be consumers in the Decision stage will also use queries like the following:
If you're looking for the “best CRMs” in the last step, in this one, you're pricing each one of them out. You're looking at the 'next steps' involved. Kalia Strong includes a few other excellent modifiers to start regularly including in your bottom of the funnel keyword research, too. At this point, someone is trying to decide if they should move forward. And if so, should they move forward with you? Again, connect that back to your site content now. Let's say I'm interested in HubSpot. But I know from some initial research that it can get pricey. So what do I search for when I'm trying to weigh my options? Check out the very first paid result for this example: (Now do you see why we think more like a PPC-er when doing SEO?) SharpSpring has helpfully put together a product comparison for me, available for download, of course. Of course, SharpSpring is a HubSpot alternative. They're positioning themselves against HubSpot. So this page is optimized with “comparing HubSpot SharpSpring.” SharpSpring's URL structure gives away their “alternatives” SEO strategy. They're building out multiple pages just like this to bring in people who're ready to make a decision. Dig around on their site for a few seconds and you'll see these comparison pages pop up again: And again: Obviously, these pages won't get a ton of organic traffic by themselves. But that's the beauty of this strategy. They don't need to! All of the keywords you've targeted earlier in the process were designed to bring in people. They will get people interested. These pages are built with one thing in mind: convert. Then, each page can have it's own relevant search query assigned:
That's the chicken and egg problem illustrated. On the one hand, you need to change how you're segmenting keywords by funnel stage. You want to bring in people at each step. Or transition ones from the step before. BUT, you often can't do that until you have the appropriate pages that also target each funnel stage. Otherwise, you're trying to optimize pages with irrelevant search queries. Ones with mismatching search intent. So even if you did get clicks and visits, they won't line up with visitor expectations. Which means instead of buying, they're going to bounce. And go buy from someone else. ConclusionTraditional keyword research often fails. It fails because people only consider volume and competition. If they can reasonably compete for a term, they'll go after the one with the best traffic metrics. But traffic doesn't mean much without buyers. And too often, the most popular keywords only bring in traffic. They bring in people who're looking for information around their problems. However, these people are weeks or months away from acting to solve that problem. That's where the buyer's journey becomes relevant. You need to first consider funnel stages, and how to help people at each one. Only then should you dig deeper into comparing search volume and competition. Because then you're comparing apples to apples. You need to make sure two keywords are directly related, first, before you can reasonably select one over the other. Then, you can tack on different modifying words to bring up tons of related topics. And this is where SEO starts. Because you need to be armed with enough related searches, to then go out and build (or modify) the appropriate pages. Without content and site pages targeting each step, those keywords aren't going to do you any good. Not only do the keywords need to target the appropriate search intent, but so do your pages. That means if someone is looking for “best CRM,” they're not looking for you to brag about being the “best CRM.” They're looking for a comparison of CRM alternatives so that they can choose who the 'best' is. So it's two sides of the same coin. To convert more visitors, you need better search terms. But to dominate those search terms, you need better pages, too. What are your top converting keywords and what do those pages have in common? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. |
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