When it comes to anything done on the Internet, Google is king. It's the most popular search engine in the world, with a global market share of 89%. Each day, 3.5 billion searches are performed on Google. That's more than 1.2 trillion searches annually. With so many people using Google to search for information online, it's more important than ever for businesses to understand the Google algorithm. That knowledge will help them use SEO tactics to drive ecommerce sales. But Google is much more than just a search engine. The Google Play Store is the official app store for all Android devices. It's developed, owned, and operated by Google. Understanding the app store and how it works will help you improve the ranking of your business mobile app. While you may know how important Google is for searches, you might not be aware of everything else it has to offer. Google has tons of free tools available for people to take advantage of. As a business owner, you can use these resources to improve your marketing efforts. I've narrowed down the top 15 free Google tools your business can use for marketing. Here they are. 1. Google DriveSome of you might already be familiar with Google Drive. Maybe you're using it in your personal life. But you can use Google Drive to help you with your business as well. It's a great way to safely store all your marketing content in the cloud. You can stay organized and know you can access all your documents and pictures from anywhere. This is much more effective than storing important files directly on your device or an external hard drive. Unlike hardware that can be lost or destroyed, Google Drive is immune to accidental damages, fires, floods, and theft. One of my favorite parts about Google Drive is the ability to access my content from anywhere, as long as there is Internet. You can download the mobile app to manage your files on the go as well. In addition to using Google Drive for storage, I use Google Docs and Google Sheets to work on content directly. In fact, I'm writing this blog post in Google Docs. That way, my progress gets saved and stored automatically. I'm sure at one point or another, you've lost work you were doing in Microsoft Word or Excel. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking that software. I'm just saying I've never had an issue when working or saving content in Google Drive. I use it to store photos as well. If I come across an interesting or informative photo I plan to use on one of my websites, YouTube channel, or blog posts, I save it to the respective file in my drive. If you are sharing content and collaborating with your team, you can share files with specific users. Set parameters giving them the ability to view, share, or edit the content. The first 15GB of Google Drive storage are free. You can upgrade to 100GB for just $1.99 per month. I can't imagine you'll need much more than that. 2. Google AlertsJust as the name implies, Google Alerts will notify you about anything you create an alert for. For example, let's say you want to know anytime someone mentions your business online. Set up an alert, and you'll be emailed as soon as something gets published. Then, you can act if you see negative information posted about your brand on the web. This is a great way for you to monitor and improve your online reputation. But you can set up alerts for anything you want. It could be your name or the names of your top competitors. Without these alerts, you'd have to manually search for this type of content on a daily basis, which is unreasonable and an inefficient use of your valuable time. Google alerts even offers suggestions based on what's trending, covering a variety of topics such as:
You can monitor certain categories based on your industry. 3. YouTubeBack in 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. There are more than 1.5 billion YouTube users across the world. It's the most popular social media site in the world for teenagers. In fact, 96% of teens in the US are active on YouTube, which is important if your business is targeting Generation Z. But no matter what type of business you have, what industry you're in, or whom you're targeting, you need to be active on YouTube. Here's a look at my YouTube channel: There are seemingly endless opportunities for your video content on YouTube. For starters, your content can be found organically by users searching directly from this platform. But once you upload a video to YouTube, you can repurpose it across the rest of your distribution channels. Embed videos on your website. Share them in your blog content. Email them to your subscriber lists. You can even post these videos on your social media profiles. YouTube makes it easy for you to do this directly from the platform. For those of you who don't have a YouTube profile, I highly suggest making this a priority for your business and video content strategy. 4. Google AnalyticsGoogle Analytics is the ultimate tool for understanding your website traffic. You can learn more about your website visitors. Google Analytics will show you the demographics of anyone who navigates to your site. This will give you a much better understanding of your target audience and whether your marketing efforts are appealing to the right group of people. Find out the locations of these users and what language they speak. Discover what technology they're using. Google Analytics will show you the operating systems and web browsers they use. This tool will even tell you what percentage of your traffic is coming from mobile devices. You'll also learn the source of your traffic. You'll be able to see whether people came from a website, social media network, or search engine. You'll also see the keywords they searched for. Google Analytics will give you a clear understanding of your top content and help you determine whether your traffic is converting. If you're not taking advantage of Google Analytics, your marketing efforts aren't being fully optimized. 5. Google Webmaster ToolsGoogle Webmaster Tools will help you figure out how healthy your website is for search engine discovery. By now, I'm assuming you know the importance of SEO and that optimizing your site accordingly will have a major impact on how you get ranked in search results. There is always some sort of mystery behind the way Google ranks certain factors and rewards sites based on its algorithm. But there's no need to be left in the dark anymore. What's a better way to find out whether your site is optimized for Google searches than with a Google tool? With Google Webmaster Tools, you can set alerts for anything that prevents your website from being discovered in searches. Analyze your search traffic to discover how people are finding you right now. This tool will help you fix what's wrong with your site if you access the top issues list. You'll have access to testing tools and support documentation. Google Webmaster Tools has guides and online courses that show you exactly what needs to be done to make an SEO-friendly website. 6. Google TranslateHave you ever received an email from a customer in a foreign language? You don't need to hire a language expert or pay for expensive software to decipher what it says. Google Translate makes it easy for you to understand them. This works well for any blog comments, social media messages, or even customer reviews you see in another language. Simply copy and paste the text into this tool to get it translated to English. You don't even have to know what language they're speaking to get an accurate translation. Google will automatically detect the language and take care of that for you. This tool makes it easy for you to reply to your customers as well. Just type what you want to say in English, and copy the translation for your reply. Google Translate isn't just limited to short blocks of text. It can translate long documents or a website address. Depending on your business and target market, you may not encounter foreign messages very often. But it's nice to have this available whenever the situation arises. 7. Google Keyword PlannerGoogle Keyword Planner is part of Google Ads, but it's worth mentioning on its own. This tool will help you find keywords and phrases related to your business. Discover relevant keywords and get suggestions for bid estimates based on how competitive certain keywords are. Figure out how often specific keywords get searched for, and set a budget based on any keywords you're bidding on. Google Keyword Planner will help you with long-tail keywords as well. These types of keywords won't have as high of a search volume, but they're much less competitive. Plus, these leads will be more qualified and therefore more likely to convert. 8. Google My BusinessYou can set up a free Google listing through Google My Business. When a customer searches for businesses on Google or Google Maps, your free listing will show up as a result. When they click on your business, you want all the information to be as accurate as possible. All of this can be controlled with this tool. The listing will have your phone number, website, address, and store hours. Failure to claim your listing might result in having inaccurate information displayed about your business online. You obviously want to avoid this. You can even promote your latest offers through this business listing as well. Customers will be able to review your business on your Google listing. You can engage with those reviews by responding to the comments. Thank each customer for leaving a review, and appropriately respond to anyone who may have had a negative experience. You'll also have access to information about how people found your business listing online: from a direct search or organic searches. 9. Google CalendarGoogle Calendar is another great tool to keep you organized. Times have changed. The days of relying on a giant calendar on your desk are over. As business owners and marketers, we're constantly on the go. With so many things to keep track of, it's easy to overlook something important. Google Calendar makes it easy for you to add events and manage your daily schedule. Share your calendar with other Google accounts to make sure your team is on the same page with important marketing deadlines. Set reminders and alerts to ensure you don't forget about anything on your schedule. 10. Google InsightsFor your marketing efforts to be successful, your website needs to operate and perform at a high level. Google Insights will help you make sure that's happening properly. This tool analyzes the content of your web pages. You'll get information about the page loading speed. Other tools can also help you determine your page loading speed and whether it's optimal or needs work. But what separates Google Insights from the other tools is the report it generates. Google will suggest how you can make your web pages load faster. This is crucial from a marketing perspective. You just got someone to click on a link or navigate to your site as a result of one of your campaigns. Don't lose them because your page loads too slowly. 11. Google Content ExperimentsGoogle Content Experiments is part of Google Analytics. As the name implies, it allows you to run experiments on different types of content. This is a great tool for your marketing campaigns. You can run different variations of the same ad or promotion and get a report to see which one has the highest performance. Then you can use the top ad for future campaigns and make adjustments to the ones that didn't perform as well. You start each experiment by selecting a goal. This helps the tool adjust the metrics accordingly based on what you want to accomplish. The tool gives you the option to test up to ten variations of a specific landing page, so you'll be certain that your final experiment results are as accurate as possible. 12. Google TrendsAs a marketer, you need to keep your finger on the pulse. You've got to stay informed about what's happening in the world around you. Watch local and global news. Stay up to date on pop culture. If you know what's happening, you can come up with appropriate marketing strategies based on these trends. But it can be difficult to do this when you're busy at work every day. Google Trends will make this process much easier for you. See the hottest searched topics locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Search for a specific topic, such as your industry, to see how popular it is over a certain time period. If you know what people are searching for, it will be easier for your brand to stay relevant. You can use pop culture trends or global news to create a targeted ad or promotion on social media that will gain lots of attention. 13. Google AdSenseGoogle AdSense is free to use. In fact, you'll get paid to participate. Unlike the other advertising tools on this list, Google AdSense lets you run ads from other businesses on your own website. Google makes sure that the ads meet a certain quality standard and that they're relevant to your audience. If you don't like an ad displayed on your site, it's no problem. Simply block any ads you don't want to appear, and customize the type and location on your site that works best for your needs. To get the most money for your ad space, Google AdSense will ensure that only the highest bids go live on your site so you can make as much money as possible. It's a nice way to make some extra cash while you focus on your other marketing strategies. 14. Google BloggerYou can use Google Blogger to build your personal or business blog. If you've been reading my content for a while now, you know how much emphasis I put on the benefits of blogging. Those of you who are not taking advantage of this effective marketing tactic need to start right away. Google Blogger gives you a free domain to host your blog. While the majority of you will want your blog to be directly on your website, this is an option for newer businesses or for those trying to establish a personal brand that's separate from your existing company. You can use this new domain to promote your company website. It's easy to integrate your new blog with Google AdSense, which I just talked about. Like I said, for the most part, you'll want to have a blog on your company website. But Google Blogger shouldn't be dismissed. It's worth a spot on this list. 15. Google VoiceGoogle Voice gives you the option to stay in touch with your customers from any screen. You can send and receive calls or texts from your phone, desktop, or tablet. Unlike a cell phone number or landline for your business, Google Voice is free. Google Voice also allows you to select a virtual number from nearly any area code, which is great if you're targeting clients from a specific location. Your leads will be more likely to trust a local number than just some random out of area caller. The virtual number can be connected to any mobile device or landline. It's easy to handle incoming calls from different locations. Anyone with access can answer the phone. If you have team members in different areas, they all have the option to respond to an incoming call. Ultimately, Google Voice is great for enhancing your customer service and communication. If you're not satisfied with your current phone situation, it's worth looking into this tool. ConclusionGoogle is more than just the global search engine king. It has a wide range of free tools available to business owners who want to make improvements to their marketing efforts. Not all of these tools are for everyone. Some of you may not need all 15 of these. But regardless of your situation, I recommend referring to this list and checking out tools that fit your needs. There is no risk in trying them out. After all, they're free to use. Which free Google tools is your company using to improve its marketing efforts?
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Everyone's saying it… video is the future of content marketing! But is it really? Similar to you, I noticed that trend over a year ago, and I decided to listen to everyone who told me to focus on videos instead of just text-based content. But, as you know, opinions don't really matter in marketing. If the data shows something is working you should do more of it. And if the data shows the opposite, then you need to reconsider what you are doing. So, was YouTube really worth it for me? Neil, you're on YouTube?If you haven't already seen my YouTube videos, you can check them out here (they are the same videos I also put on my blog). And if you have seen my videos, you'll notice that I have a ton of them. I started posting on YouTube a bit more than a year and a half ago and have already uploaded 347 videos so far. That's a lot of content! The videos all vary in length. I have videos that are as short as 2 minutes, and I have others that are over 30 minutes. The topics of video content also vary from covering strategy to tactics to answering your questions to even sharing tidbits from my personal life. I've even shared some of my speeches on YouTube as well. So, is YouTube worth it? Well, before I get into that, let me share some of my stats. My YouTube channelSince inception, my YouTube channel has generated 7,627,060 views. I know the above screenshot shows I've been a member of YouTube since August 18, 2011, but I uploaded my first real video on May 11, 2017… and it was about generating more Twitter traffic. Before that period, I did upload 2 other videos, but they were uploaded for ad purposes. I was using them to drive registrations to a webinar (which didn't work as well as I had hoped). Although my total YouTube view count is at 7.6 million, on a monthly basis my view count ranges between 600,000 to 700,000 organic views. Over the past 30 days, I have generated 724,464 views, which resulted in 2,003,272 minutes of watch time. To give you some perspective, it would take you roughly 3.8 years to watch over 2 million minutes worth of video. And that's assuming you're watching for 24 hours each day and not taking breaks. That's a lot of watch time! And here is an overview of how I generated those views. As you can see, the majority of my YouTube views comes from “search.” That means people are searching on YouTube. After that, the suggested and browse are driving a large portion of the views. And then it is external, which are the views I am driving from NeilPatel.com. It's kind of crazy how I am driving 101,683 views a month just from my own site. If you are creating funny videos, news-oriented videos, lifestyle videos, or documentary style videos like Gary V., the majority of your YouTube traffic will come from “suggested” and “browse” in which your videos are going to be recommended a lot in the sidebar of YouTube. On the other hand, if the majority of your content is educational, kind of like mine, you'll get the majority of your traffic from YouTube search. What's YouTube search like?No matter what kind of videos you create, you can always generate traffic from YouTube search, similar to how I am. The amount of traffic just varies on the type of videos you create… educational videos tend to generate the most from YouTube search. Let's dive into my search traffic: As you can see, I rank for terms like SEO, digital marketing, social media marketing, etc. But the second most popular term I'm generating traffic for is my name, Neil Patel. And no, it's not because I have built up a brand in the marketing space. It's because I have so many videos on YouTube, I have organically started to build a brand on YouTube. As you can see, I only generated 91 views from people searching for my name in May 2017 (that's when I uploaded my first video). And now I can generate roughly 5,500 to 6,000 views per month just from that one search term alone. All I did to grow my brand queries was to upload more content that I felt my target audience wanted to watch. Overall, YouTube search traffic is high-quality traffic, and it's much easier to rank and generate those views than on traditional Google search. Best of all, you can rank well on YouTube within a matter of days… even hours! You heard me right, you can rank well on YouTube in a matter of days. If you have a brand new profile and you are just starting to upload videos, you may not rank as high as you want right away, but you should see results fairly quickly and over time (like weeks and months, not years) you can easily climb to the top. Remember, YouTube isn't competitive like Google and their algorithm is different. If you want the most traffic, you just have to follow these 26 steps. It sounds like a lot, but it isn't. Most of them are short and easy to implement. Whether you follow each of those 26 steps or not, make sure you at least follow the 6 principles below as they make the biggest impact:
Now that you got the basics down and you've seen all of my stats, let's go over if YouTube is really worth it. Is YouTube worth it?I wish I could give you an easy yes or no answer, but that isn't the case. It really depends what your goals are. Don't worry, though, I am not going to give you a lame response… instead, I am going to go over each scenario and tell you if you should go after YouTube (or not) based on your goals. I will also share my own experience. Advertising incomeIt's not easy to get millions of views per month. Depending on what vertical you are in, some monetize better than others when it comes to ads. But the one thing that I am certain about is that unless you have tons of views (like well into the millions), the ad income isn't that great. According to SocialBlade, I could generate an estimated monthly ad income of $173 to $2,800. Based on the vertical I'm in, it would be toward the middle to upper end of that number, but still, it's not that great. $2,800 a month in ad income wouldn't even cover my costs to produce and edit the videos I put out on a monthly basis. So, if you are looking to monetize purely through YouTube ads, I wouldn't recommend it. It's not that lucrative unless you can keep your production costs down and you are in a category where you can get millions of views each month. Sponsorship dealsI know there are famous YouTube stars who make a killing off of sponsorships and endorsement deals. If you are looking to make money from YouTube in this fashion, I wouldn't count on it. It's tough, and unless you have generated millions of views each month, you probably won't get any sponsorships. Selling productsWhether it is informational products or physical products, YouTube works extremely well. Based on the data I have from other YouTubers, I would generate around $35,000 a month from YouTube on the low end and $50,000 on the higher end if I pushed people to a webinar and then sold a $997 informational product. That's not too shabby. I don't do this with my YouTube channel, but it works well. My buddy Adam does this with his YouTube profile and kills it. He makes a generous 6 figures a year just from promoting informational products from his YouTube videos. He typically sells his products for a few hundred dollars as he is in the consumer space. I know Tai Lopez does well from this strategy too and so do 20 or so other marketers that I personally know. In other words, if you want to leverage YouTube to sell products, you should consider doing so. It's not too competitive to generate the traffic and there is a ton of money for each visitor you attract. Building a brandThis is what I primarily use YouTube for. And for this purpose, it has worked well for me. I get countless emails from people telling me that they found me on YouTube or how they love the content I am producing. For me, it's not an ego thing, but I want to build a bigger brand. The bigger my brand, the easier it is for my agency to close consulting deals. Assuming you put out good video content, you'll find that people will subscribe to your channel, follow you, engage with you, and get to know you better. If you are selling anything in the future, having this extra brand exposure doesn't hurt. If your goal is to build a personal brand, YouTube is great. It doesn't help as much with corporate brands, but the investment is well worth it from a personal branding perspective. If you are starting out from scratch (not just on YouTube but in general), I would recommend you focus on a corporate brand instead (YouTube won't be as effective here), but if you are knee deep in it like I am, just keep pushing forward on your personal brand. So, for personal brand building, YouTube is worth it. For corporate brand building, not so much. From YouTube alone, the extra brand exposure has helped my agency close a bit more than $320,000 in revenue (not profit) that I know for sure as the clients told me that they found me on YouTube first. Lead generationHere's where I have generated my biggest ROI… consulting leads. Although I don't directly collect leads from YouTube, a lot of my clients have seen my YouTube videos. 2 of my clients first found me on YouTube (hence the $320,000 figure above), and countless more have seen my YouTube videos. If you want to collect leads, YouTube is a great channel. I just wouldn't collect leads from day 1. First focus on building your audience and then drive people to a landing page after 5 or 6 months of being on YouTube. The reason for the delay in collecting leads is that it will help you build up your channel authority, so once you do drive people away from YouTube, you will be able to maintain your traffic versus seeing a drop. The cool part about lead generation is that it works well for both B2B and B2C. With B2B, you will collect fewer leads, but each one will be worth more. With B2C, you will generate more leads, but each one will be worth less. B2B vs B2CSpeaking of B2B and B2C, YouTube works well for both spaces. It doesn't matter what industry you are in, YouTube will generally work. I know I mentioned above that YouTube doesn't work as well with corporate brands as it does with personal ones, but that doesn't mean YouTube won't work. It just means personal brands see a better result. ConclusionOverall, YouTube is worth it. You just have to find the right monetization strategy for yourself. Some people, like my buddy Adam, use YouTube to sell info products while also monetizing through ads. Ads don't make him as much money, but when you add up everything together the revenue number is nice. And you will probably be in a similar boat in which you'll make money from YouTube in multiple ways. For example, I use YouTube to build a brand and collect leads. The last piece of advice I have for you is to use videos on multiple platforms. This will drastically increase your return on your investment. With me, I upload videos to Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Everyone talks about YouTube (even me), but I've done better from uploading videos on LinkedIn from a revenue standpoint than YouTube. It's not because LinkedIn is more popular, it's just that they are more generous with giving you more video views than YouTube because their algorithm currently heavily favors video content. So, are you going to jump on the YouTube bandwagon? The post Is YouTube Worth It? 7.6 Million Views Later, Here's What I Learned appeared first on Neil Patel. To survive in today's competitive digital landscape, businesses need to focus on their content strategies now more than ever. You need to understand how your target audience consumes content and figure out what they're looking for. It's not effective to produce random content at a high rate if it's not valuable. Everything you publish across all your distribution channels needs to benefit your audience, or it won't be successful. In addition to producing high quality content, you also want to make sure it's SEO-friendly. The key factor of your content production needs to be relevancy: 78% of consumers say relevant content increases their intent to buy. Your content must be relevant to your brand and relevant to your audience while still appealing to Google. Blindly producing content without a strategy won't help you. You need to keep up with the latest trends and see how other brands approach content marketing and SEO. Today, and in the future, marketers must have a content strategy compatible with the way people discover new content. Creating content that doesn't drive results is expensive and inefficient. That's why you need to get familiar with topic clusters. Surprisingly, many business owners and marketers I've spoken to recently don't know anything about this. That was my inspiration for writing this guide. This is the perfect opportunity for you to gain a competitive advantage. You can learn how to implement topic clusters today and use this tactic moving forward before your competitors have a chance to catch on. As a result, you'll be able to produce high quality engaging content. This will help you improve your SEO strategy, drive more traffic to your site, and increase conversion rates. I'll explain everything you need to know about topic clusters and how they are revolutionizing the marketing industry. What are topic clusters?Before we proceed, let's start with the basics. You may have heard that topic clusters are the future of content marketing and SEO strategies, but that doesn't explain what they are. Truthfully, this isn't a very complex topic. If you guessed what a topic cluster is just based on its name, you probably wouldn't be far off. The idea here is you want to create a deeper penetration of certain subjects relevant to your brand, audience, and search engines. Start with one basic topic, then branch off to similar ones. You'll create content about all of them, with the main area of focus as the nucleus. Here's a visual representation of a topic cluster template: Clusters can be broken down into two segments. The image above refers to them as core topics and subtopics. However, they are also commonly referred to as pillar content and cluster content. Your pillar topics will be broad. The clusters will be more descriptive. For example, let's say your company sells workout supplements. You can create a topic cluster using “workout routines” as the pillar. Clusters related to this pillar would be:
Each cluster takes a keyword and transforms it into a long-tail keyword. When you publish such content on your website, you'll be able to generate lots of internal links, ultimately improving your SEO ranking. The pillar will link to each cluster, and each cluster will link back to the pillar with internal hyperlinks. Here's another example of a topic cluster using “GDPR Compliance” as the pillar: As you can see, each cluster includes the pillar. All of these subtopics are more specific segments of the broad subject. That's how your audience will search for topics online. These topic clusters will increase your site visibility in search engine results. Optimize your website architectureThe application of your topic clusters will be related to your site architecture. You need to make sure this structure is optimized for SEO purposes. Whether you realize it or not, how you design your architecture can determine whether your site is SEO-friendly or not. You need to think about the user experience. Make it as easy as possible for website visitors to navigate your site and find what they're looking for in as few steps as possible. If your site is structured properly, you won't have as many bounce rates, and your dwell time will be improved as well. As a result, your search ranking will increase. Let me show you what I mean. If you Google Quick Sprout, here is how it appears in the search results: Check out the section I highlighted above. These are called sitelinks. Sitelinks are subpages of a website that appear in Google SERPs. This will help a user navigate to a more relevant portion of a site, directly from the search engine. These sitelinks create fewer steps in the conversion funnel. Users can click one of these hyperlinks instead of having to navigate to your homepage first. Sitelinks are great for SEO purposes. However, you can't contact Google and choose which site links get displayed unless you're running paid campaigns with Google AdWords. For organic search results, Google's algorithm decides what to display. Your site structure will have a major impact on this. You need to establish a logical hierarchy of pages and links on your site. Topic clusters will drastically improve these efforts. Let's look at an example. Here's a basic outline of the HubSpot's website: From its homepage, you can navigate to its blog. Once you reach the blog, you can navigate to three different topics:
All the blog posts fall into those three categories. It's a typical architecture with a hierarchy that makes sense, but it can be improved with topic clusters. Now, let's take a look at what this looks like with topic clusters: This format follows the same template you saw earlier. Each cluster has a pillar and related cluster content. Now, when people search for long-tail keywords related to these subjects, the site's content will be more likely seen as sitelinks in the SERPs. Some of you may already have content published for your topic cluster strategy, but it's not organized properly in terms of your site architecture. You need to make the proper adjustments so that the flow follows the format of the second HubSpot image above as opposed to the first one. Choosing the right topicsNow that you understand the basics, it's time for you to start building topic clusters. But before you can start producing content, you need to choose the right pillars that will drive results. Where do you start? Everything should begin with your target audience. Look at your current and prospective customers, and ask yourself questions such as:
If you don't already know the answers to these questions, it's very helpful to start outlining a customer persona to give you a better understanding of your target audience. If you need further assistance with this part of the process, I have a complete guide on how to develop a customer persona that improves conversion rates. Another way to come up with topics is to analyze your existing content. What have you already published that has the most engagement? Your site visitors are clearly interested in it the most. To determine your top-performing content, look at metrics such as traffic, page views, etc. and see what has been shared the most by your audience. You can also look at which pages on your site have the highest search ranking. Topic clusters can help improve those rankings even more. I recommend making a list of at least five main topics to start with. Those pillars will be enough for you to produce tons of content once you branch off into clusters for each one. Conduct keyword researchNow that you have your pillars established, it's time for you to come up with clusters. The best way for you to approach this is by conducting keyword research. Don't just guess what long-tail keywords are related to your pillars. Find out exactly what people are searching for. Many different tools and resources can help you with this task. Here's an example of how you can conduct basic keyword research with Wordtracker, which is free to use: Let's say your business is in the financial industry. You reviewed your website and saw that content relating to bad credit had the highest performance metrics. You plan to use “bad credit” as a pillar. Once you enter that term into this tool, filter the search for SEO purposes and look at the results. Everything on this list would be viable to use for your topic clusters:
Don't be afraid to create longer titles for your clusters. Just look at the average keyword length distribution based on a study of over 1.4 billion keywords: Over 64% of searches contain at least four keywords. Producing topic clusters related to these keywords will not only improve your SEO ranking but also help ensure your traffic comes from qualified leads. Create content based on these themesYour keyword research is complete. Your pillars and subtopics have been defined for the clusters. Now it's time to create the supporting content. You have many different options to choose from. I recommend using a diverse approach to creating highly relevant content. Create landing pages that would be available in the learning center or resources section of your site. Something like this could be used as a hub for pillar content. You'll use that to link to supporting clusters. Write blog posts. Produce videos. Build infographics. All of these will help you create more relevant content geared toward the specific needs of your target audience. If you can't do this effectively, your audience won't find your content useful. This will defeat the whole purpose of your strategy. That's why I've emphasized the importance of high quality content throughout this post. Build your pillar pagesOnce all your content has been produced, it's time to publish everything. Start by building your pillar pages. This will be the main spot where you'll link to the supporting clusters. Take a look at this example from Typeform: This landing page follows everything I talked about so far in terms of linking, keywords, site structure, and relevant content. Brand awareness is the pillar. Each topic cluster on the right side of the screen links to a more specific subtopic of brand awareness. The landing page is very simple, which is perfect. In fact, websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. Don't feel you need to design a complex pillar page. A simple approach will be very effective. Distribute your contentAs you now know, your topic clusters will help SEO. However, that doesn't mean you should be publishing content without doing anything else with it. You need to focus on your distribution strategy. You can approach it in several different ways: You should be taking advantage of all three different types of media. This will help you distribute your content effectively across multiple channels. ConclusionDigital marketing is constantly evolving. Your business needs to keep up with these changes if you want to be successful. Looking toward the future, it's important for you to start improving your SEO strategy today. One of the best ways to do this is with topic clusters. First, you need to find the most popular topics relevant to what your audience is searching for. Then, you need to conduct keyword research to determine your cluster subtopics. After you produce and publish your content, you need to make sure your site architecture is formatted for SEO purposes and sitelinks. Once this process is complete, distribute all your content across as many different channels as possible. Topic clusters aren't re-inventing content marketing, but they are revolutionizing the way marketers create new content. What types of topic clusters is your business using to improve your content strategy? How successful are your marketing campaigns? Believe it or not, this seemingly simple question puzzles many marketers and business owners I work with. You're running ads, and customers are buying what you're selling, so your marketing efforts must be working, right? Not necessarily. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this means your strategies have failed. In fact, some of your campaigns may be working great. But you can't make any assumptions. The only way to know for sure whether your campaigns are working is to measure the results. By tracking certain metrics, you'll also be able to save some money. You don't want to dump money into campaigns that aren't working. Here's the problem. Sometimes it's difficult to directly tie one promotion to a sale. That's why you need to track several metrics and infer based on the results. This statement holds true for all marketers, regardless of your industry or the size of your business. It doesn't matter if you're running expensive campaigns or using tactics to market your company on a budget. You need to track the results. As I'm sure you know, there are dozens of business metrics you could be tracking. But not all of these will benefit your marketing strategy. That was my inspiration for this guide. I narrowed down the top 11 metrics every marketing manager needs to track to be successful. Use this guide as a reference to measure the success of your marketing campaigns moving forward. Based on the results, you'll be able to tell what's working and which strategies need improvement. 1. Average order valueThe average order value, or AOV, is one of the first things you need to prioritize as a marketing manager. This metric will help you figure out how to get your existing customers to spend more money each time they shop. It's arguably the most important number to track when trying to understand consumer spending habits. The average order value formula is quite simple: Just divide your total revenue by the total number of transactions. You don't need to look at it every day or after each campaign. AOV is a metric that you need to keep an eye on over time. If it rises at certain times, you could potentially connect it to campaigns run during that time. But if it falls, you're obviously doing something you want to avoid. These issues need to be addressed. In my consulting work, I see many businesses using only their number of transactions to gauge success. Is it great to make 100 sales in a day? It depends. I'd rather make 50 sales for $2,500 than 100 sales for $1,000. Or even better, 100 sales for $6,000. Do you see the difference? That's where average order value comes into play. You want to try to get as much money as possible from your existing customers. To do this, you'll want to encourage them to add more items to their carts or buy other products of higher values. Both of these will increase your AOV. 2. Customer lifetime valueThe concept behind customer lifetime value is simple. This metric will tell you the amount of money a customer will spend before leaving your business. Here is the formula to calculate it: Customers who stay with your business for a long time become more profitable. As a marketer, you need to make sure the lifetime value of your customers is as high as possible. The best way to do this is by focusing on customer retention as opposed to customer acquisition, which I'll talk about in greater detail shortly. Yes, you want new customers. But it's easier to market to people already familiar with your brand, products, and services. Research shows that your existing customers will spend 67% more than new customers. This will also increase your average order value, which I just talked about. Keep in mind customer lifetime value when thinking about your acquisition strategies as well. All too often I see businesses make the mistake of shying away from certain strategies because they don't seem profitable. But that's only because they're using the AOV to make this decision. If the AOV is less than the acquisition cost, they won't use that acquisition strategy. However, they're not accounting for how much that customer will spend over time. That's why this metric is so important to track. Plus, you can also learn how to use lifetime value to create a Facebook audience that actually converts. 3. Sales conversionsThis connects to a point I made earlier. How can you tell if the number of sales you have each day, week, or month is sufficient? To a certain extent, the number of transactions isn't that important. What's much more telling when measuring the success of your marketing efforts is your sales conversion rates. To calculate this, divide the number of sales by the number of visitors to your website. Here's a look at the average sales conversion rates for ecommerce shops. Based on this information, 3.3% is adequate. But who wants to be average? By regularly tracking your sales conversion rate, you'll be able to determine how much of your traffic is actually converting. Having low conversions does not mean your marketing efforts are at fault. If people are navigating to your site at a high rate, something else could be preventing them from converting. That's when you need to analyze your web design. Websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. You'll never get a 100% sales conversion rate. But you should always try to increase this number. These people are already on your website. Sometimes they are just a click or two away from buying. It's your job to make sure that happens. 4. Cart abandonment ratesCalculating cart abandonment rate is simple. Divide the number of transactions by the number of carts created. You want this metric to be as low as possible. As I just pointed out, when someone adds something to a shopping cart, they are only a step or two away from converting. You need to identify what stopped them from finalizing the purchase. These are the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment during the checkout process: Similar to sales conversions, your cart abandonment rate may not be a marketing issue. There could be a problem with your site. But you don't want to let your marketing efforts go to waste. Change your promotions if you have to. As you can see, high extra costs ranked first on the list of reasons for cart abandonment. Don't charge your customers for shipping, and highlight that in your marketing campaigns. You're doing a great job of getting people to visit your site and add items to their carts. Now you just need them to convert. 5. Revenue by reference sourceSo, you've got lots of website traffic. But where is it coming from? By tracking the revenue by referral source, you'll be able to determine which channels are the most profitable for your business. This is important for both B2C and B2B companies. Here's a look at the top channels for leads and revenue on the B2B side: You might be getting tons of traffic from one source, but if you're not making money from those leads, you need to reevaluate your strategy. On the flip side, maybe traffic from a certain source is not high, but the revenue from that channel is the highest. You need to figure out how to get more traffic from your marketing channels yielding the highest revenue. At the same time, you must learn how to increase conversions and the AOV from your distribution channels resulting in the most traffic to your site. 6. Social media engagementI'm sure social media is a huge part of your company's marketing strategy, as it should be. You're posting content on all your social channels each day. That's great. But how effective are those posts? Again, the only way to find out is to measure the results. These are the top metrics used to measure success on social media: The information you get from tracking these metrics will be extremely beneficial to your marketing strategy. You need to analyze the difference between your top performing content and the posts with lower engagement. Figure out why certain posts do better than others. For example, you may find out your videos get more comments and shares than your photos. Obviously, you'd want to run more video campaigns on social media once you know that. 7. Email open ratesYour email open rates should be easy to track. I doubt you'll have to do any manual calculations for this metric. Whichever software you're using for email marketing should automatically do this for you. That said, don't just look at these numbers. Analyze them. Are your open rates fluctuating? Do they stay consistent? Find out what you need to do for your open rates to improve. These are the top reasons why people open emails: If your open rates are low, I recommend reading my guide on how to increase open rates with your subject lines. You spend much time building your email list and segmenting your subscribers accordingly. Then, you send various email campaigns to each group of subscribers. Don't let those efforts go to waste. Your message is useless if nobody reads it. That's why you need to track your open rates for every campaign and compare those percentages over time. 8. CTA click-through ratesCustomers can't spend money unless they click on your CTA. It's necessary to track the click-through rates of all these buttons. It doesn't matter what landing page the button leads to or what channel it's on, you have to track it. Your ads, emails, website, and social media campaigns will all have CTAs. Compare these rates to each other. Which buttons have the highest CTR? Based on these metrics, you can hypothesize which wording or types of offers people are more likely to click on. Then, you can run A/B campaigns to check your theory: test CTAs' wording, color, size, placement, etc. This strategy will give you the most optimal results for your CTA buttons. 9. Customer acquisition costEarlier, I briefly talked about customer acquisition when discussing customer lifetime value. You need to know your acquisition cost, or you might run the risk of going broke. Here's the simple formula for you to follow: If your acquisition costs are too high, you'll need to change your marketing strategy or potentially even raise your prices. But a price increase could have its potential pitfalls as well. Customer acquisition cost is crucial for all businesses, but it's especially important for startup companies. Those of you with a newer company know what it's like to have to manage a tight budget. Simply put, if your acquisition costs get too high, you'll run out of money before you have enough customers to give you a sustainable income. That's why investors always want to know your acquisition costs before they'll consider giving you a dime. Lower acquisition costs will result in a higher ROI for your marketing efforts and make it easier for your brand to grow exponentially over time. 10. Keywords that drive trafficMarketing managers need to prioritize SEO. You can't just rely on traffic coming from your distribution channels and people navigating directly to your website. Your company needs to be visible and have a high ranking through organic search results as well. That's why you need to track metrics for keywords related to your brand. Then you'll be able to use SEO tactics to drive ecommerce sales. Find out which keywords are performing the best and which keywords are the most competitive. Once you start using these words and phrases, you'll need to track the success of them as well. This information will be useful for your on-page optimization efforts as well as your PPC campaigns. You don't want to pay for keywords that aren't driving traffic and sales. 11. ROI of influencer campaignsInfluencer marketing is growing in popularity. If you haven't tried this strategy yet, I highly recommend it. But you need to approach this tactic like every other marketing campaign. If it's not profitable, you need to abandon it. Don't just blindly throw money at influencers without knowing whether those efforts are working. Track the ROI of each campaign. Take a look at how much businesses are spending on their influencer marketing programs: Furthermore, 39% of marketers said they planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2018. And 90% of these marketers say they use engagement metrics to determine the success of their influencer campaigns. I talked about the importance of tracking engagement earlier. Basically, you need to find out whether the money spent on influencers is generating a return on your investment. One of the best ways to do this is by giving each influencer a unique promo code. It will make it easier for you to track which influencers are driving the most sales. You need to cut ties with influencers who aren't profitable and continue working with the ones driving traffic and revenue to your site. But the only way to determine this is by tracking the ROI of each campaign. ConclusionNobody said being a marketing manager would be easy. Anyone could just throw together a campaign and run it. Successful businesses track metrics to ensure their marketing campaigns are profitable. If you're not doing this, you're throwing away money. If you haven't been tracking metrics related to your marketing campaigns, it's certainly not too late to start. Don't get overwhelmed. Start going through the list I've outlined above. Some of these metrics will be specific to individual campaigns, while others should be tracked over time to help you identify patterns. I'm confident your marketing efforts will improve and you'll see higher profits once you start tracking these 11 metrics. What metrics are you using to track the success of your marketing campaigns? Artificial intelligence has created a lot of buzz lately, and for good reasons. Whether your company has adapted or not, this technology has already penetrated our world. Marketers are using AI to improve their businesses. I know what some of you are thinking. Sure, some companies use AI, but you don't need to yet, right? Wrong. I see this mentality far too often when I'm working with business owners. The reality is machine learning is reshaping marketing. Think about the marketing strategies you were using ten or even five years ago. I'm willing to bet they have changed over the years. Well, those strategies will continue to change and evolve based on new technology. AI is the next big wave. If you do some research on AI in marketing, you'll see lots of information geared toward companies targeting mass consumer audiences. But what about the B2B industries? AI is penetrating the B2B world as well. In fact, 80% of B2B marketing executives believe artificial intelligence will revolutionize the industry by 2020. But this new technology comes with its fair share of challenges. Even though the majority of these marketing executives know how much of an impact AI will have on their industries, only 26% of respondents say they are confident in their abilities to use AI for marketing. That was my inspiration for this guide. Artificial intelligence is a broad term with many different aspects. I've already shown you the marketing skills you need to survive in the age of AI. Now, I'll explain what B2B marketers are expecting from AI as we close out 2018 and enter 2019. You can find ways to leverage AI by applying the same strategies in your own business. Anticipate prospective customersArtificial intelligence makes it much easier for businesses to collect data. As we continue through this guide, you'll see multiple examples of how this information can be put to use. With B2B marketing, it's not always easy to find new customers. That's because your target market is much more specific than that of most B2C companies. Even if you've identified the types of businesses you want to target, you may not always be able to find them. Plus, if you find a potential client, they may not be currently in the market for your products, services, or solutions. Maybe they already have existing relationships with another vendor they're unwilling to break, or their budget could be too tight to afford what you're offering. I'm sure every phone call you make and every door you knock on doesn't land you a customer overnight. I am sure you can relate to this struggle as a B2B marketer. That's where AI comes into play. By using data to find patterns, AI software can help you create a predictive analysis model. These predictions can help you anticipate prospective customers. As a result, your marketing efforts will be much more efficient. Using these prediction models will increase your chances of getting a potential customer to convert because you'll be aiming at qualified leads. These are B2B consumers who have a need for what you're offering and have the ability to pay for it as well. If you want to take advantage of it, you should check out Zilliant. What separates Zilliant from other AI solutions is this software is specifically designed for B2B marketers. Distinguish visitors from buyersI'm sure you're closely monitoring your website traffic. But you can't assume that everyone who lands on your website is a customer or prospective customer. AI will help you tell the difference between actual customers and people who are just visiting your site. You can target those people accordingly. By anticipating prospective customers, which I previously discussed, you can tell whether a site visitor has buying potential or if they are navigating to your site for another reason. AI software can monitor browsing behavior to tell you which category each unique visitor falls into. If someone, who is not a B2B buyer, visits your site after finding you from an organic search, you don't want to waste your marketing efforts targeting that person. If you're running banner ads on third-party sites by using cookies to target anyone who ever visited your site, those impressions are a waste of money if they're seen by an irrelevant audience. On the other hand, you can't assume that those who didn't convert on your website are not qualified leads. Other factors could have prevented a visitor from converting. Take a look at the top pain points in the B2B ecommerce shopping process: With artificial intelligence software monitoring browsing behaviors and patterns, you'll be able to tell whether consumers with buying power are converting. If you discover that only a low percentage of actual buyers are spending money, you could conclude certain changes need to be made on your website. Clearly, the right people are finding your business and navigating to your site. Those are the people you want to target moving forward. Increase ROII'm sure you're all familiar with this old business expression:
Artificial intelligence software isn't free. So yes, you'll need to dig into your pockets if you want to leverage these strategies. If you are looking to save some money, consider reviewing my top tactics for marketing your company on a budget. How much will AI implementation cost you? It depends. The price will vary based on factors such as the application, scope, and complexity. But some types of machine learning can cost upward of $100k to $300k. You'll be able to find solutions for less, but the bottom line is you'll likely be paying a premium for this type of technology integration. It should come as no surprise that 48% of business owners aren't interested in marketing solutions driven by AI because of the high costs. This is the number one reason why marketers are hesitant to adapt. But you need to look at the big picture here. Spending money now can help you save much more in the long run. Here's a look at the marketing applications with the highest profit potential from AI solutions: Think about your current budget and expenses for these different categories and strategies. How much are you spending on each one yearly? If AI can help you reduce those costs by a significant percentage, the software will potentially pay for itself within just a few years or maybe even less. After that, you'll see a much higher ROI on these campaigns because the software you're using will make it more efficient. I already gave some examples of this when I talked about targeting customers based on predictive analysis. With the help of AI, IBM was able to reduce its average cost per click by 31%. In some instances, the cost reduction was as high as 71%. Don't be discouraged by the initial costs of AI implementation. Your B2B company will end up benefiting from a higher ROI in the long run. Improve lead generationWhere are your leads coming from? As I previously discussed, generating new leads isn't always easy for B2B companies. Some of your current lead generation strategies may not be working as well as you would like them to. You're not alone. Improving lead generation efforts is the number one goal for B2B marketers in the coming year: If you fall into this category as well, you can expect AI solutions to improve your efforts. As I said before, AI helps collect data and monitor habits. The same way that Netflix recommends shows based on what you've already watched, AI can help recommend new leads. Or even better, it can help recommend your business to those leads. If you're starting from scratch, you'll need to create a customer profile for your B2B clientele. The more detailed you make this profile, the more accurate your leads will be. For example, you'll want to use the following parameters:
The criteria for this B2B customer profile are essentially limitless. AI solutions will use these parameters to select potential leads out of a larger pool of candidates. By pre-qualifying your leads, you will increase your chances of turning them into customers. Enhance the buyer's journeyEven though the majority of what I've talked about so far involves getting new customers, that's not the only way B2B companies are using AI. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help your company enhance the customer experience during each stage of the customer lifecycle: As you can see from the graphic above, there are ways to implement this software throughout the entire buying process, including the post-conversion phase. AI can help you reach customers by improving your content strategy. Ad targeting, predictive analysis, re-targeting, and lead scoring can turn an indecisive consumer or a customer, who has only made one purchase, into a repeat customer. Artificial intelligence can also help you implement a dynamic pricing model. You can generate more profits by focusing on your pricing strategy. By improving your personalization tactics, AI can turn a repeat customer into a loyal customer, but I'll discuss that in greater detail shortly. Chatbots will help enhance the customer buying process. They can easily get their questions answered when browsing online. And marketing automation will keep loyal customers buying and spending more money while knowing when and how to target lapsed customers. More accurate personalized campaignsAs I just said, AI can help improve personalization throughout each stage of the buyer's journey. Are you currently running personalized campaigns? You should be. Studies show 68% of B2B marketers are personalizing their content: Artificial intelligence will streamline this process and make it much easier for you to appeal to current and prospective customers. Here's what I mean. Let's use your email marketing strategy as an example. Right now, you're probably segmenting your clients based on different factors such as location, industry, and size of the company. This is a great start and will definitely give you better results than non-personalized campaigns. But you can take this process one step further with AI. By monitoring the browsing behavior of the clients on your email list, you can send them enhanced personalized content that fits their needs. Just segmenting your clients into lists based on factors such as geographic location won't tell you who is browsing for products and services valued at $50,000 compared to $5,000. AI solutions can help you tell these customers apart so they can be targeted accordingly. Artificial intelligence can personalize the web browsing as well as mobile app usage experience of your customers. Generate high profits from top accountsAs I just finished explaining, you can use AI to help you identify the difference between customers based on how much they spend. Every customer is important, but, obviously, you can't treat a customer who spends $200k annually the same as a customer who spends $3,000. This is crucial for your profit margins. Prioritizing your top accounts is one of the best ways to increase revenue without acquiring new customers. In fact, 60% of B2B marketers say gaining better insights from client accounts is the top benefit of using AI for marketing. To get higher profits from your top spending customers, AI can help you improve your account-based marketing funnel: As you can see from this image, that funnel differs from a traditional lead generation funnel. I already explained how AI can help you identify those high-value accounts. But this technology can assist you with the other stages of the funnel as well. You'll use personalization tactics, previously covered, to nurture and engage with those clients. By enhancing the buyer's journey with AI, you will make it easier for yourself to get those customers to continue converting and spending more money. As a result, you'll establish long-term relationships with those top accounts. ConclusionIt's no secret marketers are leveraging artificial intelligence to improve their businesses. This statement holds true for B2B companies as well. As a B2B marketer, you need to recognize this and adapt accordingly. AI can help you identify prospective customers and distinguish between buyers and website visitors. It will improve your lead generation strategy and increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns. Artificial intelligence will improve the buyer's journey throughout each stage of the customer lifecycle. Ultimately, this will give your B2B clients a more personalized shopping experience. Eventually, you can leverage AI to increase the profits from your top customers. If you are not using AI, it's not too late to jump on board. Even if you're already using this technology to some extent, you can use this guide to help you take your strategies to the next level. What expectations does your B2B company have for artificial intelligence in the coming year? Have you heard the saying, “content is king?” Well, of course, you have. But creating more content won't necessarily get you more search traffic. You've heard people like me mention stats like the average piece of content that ranks on page one of Google contains 1,890 words. But that doesn't mean writing in-depth content that is 1,890 words will automatically get you more search traffic. It just means that the average web page on page 1 contains that many words. I bet you are going through the scenario below…
Don't worry, I know what you are going through, and I will tell you the solution. But first, let's go over how content marketing is changing. Over 440 million blogs existThe latest stat I could find on the web is that there are currently 440 million blogs. But if you consider Medium and Tumblr (and other similar sites), that number is surely over a billion because just Tumblr alone has over 400 million blogs. So, what does that mean for you? Because there are so many blogs, it's going to be hard to drive awareness. There are roughly 7.5 billion people on this earth and the number of blogs is growing faster than the population. So, if you assume there are roughly 1 billion blogs, that means there is one blog for every 7 and a half people. That's way too many blogs! So why should someone read yours instead of the others? Why doesn't content marketing work as well as it used to?Because there are so many blogs, you have tons of competition. Whatever you are thinking of blogging about, the chances are there is already someone (or tons of people!) already blogging about it. Seriously! Even if you are planning to write about news and current events, the chances are some other blog is going to beat you to the story… even if it is by an hour (or a few minutes). With there only being so many popular keywords that people search for, there are now more websites competing to reach the top of the rankings. Currently, Ubersuggest is tracking 619,718,788 keywords globally. During the last 30 days, only 24,593,402 of them generated over 10,000 searches. And no matter what popular term you are going after, you are going to have a lot of competition. For example, I rank on page 1 for the term “SEO” (at least in the United States). But I am competing with a lot of sites… 581 million to be exact! If you want to go after one of those 24,593,402 keywords, you are going to face a lot of competition. Sure, you can also get a lot of traffic from long-tail phrases, but even those are getting more competitive over time. How does your content strategy need to change?As I mentioned above, whatever you are writing about, chances are someone is already writing about it. When I started my first blog, Pronet Advertising (which no longer exists), the first post I wrote was called, “Winning the Search Engine Marketing War.” It was 412 words long, contained no images, and had no links. But that was way back in 2005 and content marketing was much different back then. If I published it today, it would do terrible. Back then I didn't have a personal brand, no one knew who I was, and the post still did pretty well. Heck, the standard social channels like Facebook weren't even being used by marketers. Do you want to know why it did well? Because it was new. Back then, people never read a post about winning the search engine marketing war. It was fresh and people wanted to know more. The fact that it was short didn't matter. Now, when you publish new content, there is a good chance that people have already read something similar. Because of that, why would they want to link to your piece or even share it? Even worse, only 8 out of 10 people read headlines but only 2 out of 10 will click through. That means people feel your content isn't interesting or that they already know a lot about the subject matter of your content. In other words, if you don't write something new and amazing, it won't do well. It doesn't matter if you made your content 1,890 words, bought some social shares, or weaseled your way into a few backlinks… no one will care if it isn't something original and unique. Just look at the search phrase “SEO tips.” There are 3,630,000 web pages competing for that term. And almost everyone who ranks for that term is writing about the same old stuff. The only difference is how many tips they are including in their article. How do you write new content that's fresh?You need to share life experiences. Your life is unique. If you can tie your personal experiences into your content, you'll do much better. If I look at my most popular posts on NeilPatel.com over the last 12 months, here they are in order:
Do you notice a pattern? They aren't generic posts like “10 ways to double your search traffic” or “how to rank on Google”… each post contains something new… which you already know. But what else? If you look at all of those posts, I wrote them more recently. They don't rank as high on Google compared to some of the posts I wrote earlier this year (or in previous years), yet they are still the most popular ones because they are unique. Whether it is data that people haven't seen before or something based on a personal experience that people can learn from, the articles that are unique and can only be written by you will perform the best. In other words, you have to be original to get loved. Not just by Google, but by people. So how do you write unique content that contains data and has personalized stories? Here are some ideas: BuzzsumoIf you put in a keyword related to your industry, it will show you all of the popular posts. Avoid writing another “copycat” article. If you have a unique perspective on any one of those topics and it is something that the industry hasn't seen, there is a good chance it will do well. But it can't be another copycat article that talks about the same old things that have been talked about a thousand times before. My favorite part about Buzzsumo is that it will show you what's popular during certain time frames. You can adjust your search to the last month, year, 5 years, or any time range to see how people's preferences have changed over time. By using this feature, you will get a better understanding of where the market is moving and how you need to adapt. Google TrendsThis simple tool shows you what's hot right now. Literally at this very second. You can even filter the real-time trends per industry. Or you can see what's been popular for the day as well as the number of searches performed. And, of course, you can use Google Trends for any country. The above screenshots are for the United States. If you have a unique perspective on any of these trends or data, you should consider riding the wave and creating a blog post as soon as possible. Beware, a lot of people use this tactic and the majority of the traffic will be taken up by popular news sites. But if you have a personal experience or data related to the trend or topic then you can do really well. SurveyMonkeyIf you already have some readers, the easiest way to come up with unique topic ideas that they will love is to just ask them for advice. For example, why not create a free survey using SurveyMonkey and ask your readers questions like “what would you like me to blog about” or “what would you like to learn” or “what's the biggest problem I can help you solve?” Asking questions like these ones should give you great ideas. When surveying, make sure you get over 30 responses. The more the better because you can use their text analysis feature to see what the majority of your readers are interested in. Problogger Job BoardIf you are interested in using data and research within your posts to make them unique, consider hiring someone from the Problogger Job Board. That's what I do. If you already have data, you can find someone on Problogger to help crunch everything and give you golden nuggets for your post. Or if you don't, they can gather research from all over the web and come up with something unique. I found some researchers that are amazing at what they do. They hit up the tool companies within my space, ask them for data, and then come up with interesting insights that deliver value to my readers. In exchange, the tool companies get free press, which helps them and, in most cases, they will also share and promote your post. A good example of this is the post I wrote on Hummingbird. It has a ton of unique data points, and I mentioned the companies that helped me gather the data. But other people have generic content and do well…Yes, there are tons of blogs with generic content that rank well. But here is the thing, their content is either old, in which they were one of the firsts to cover the topic, or they have high authority. When high authority sites like Huffington Post and Entrepreneur write generic content, it ranks because they already have lots of brand queries, backlinks, and social shares. If you have over 20,000 brand queries per month (you can see how many you have in Google Search Console)… …and you have also have a domain authority of over 60, you'll see some results if you write generic content. I still don't recommend going the generic route (a lesson I have learned from my own personal experience), but if that's what you want then make sure you at least meet those rough guidelines. At least that is what I found you need for the most competitive industries going after the English market. If you don't have the authority or any brand queries, you can still do well with generic “copycat” content, but you would have to focus on international regions. There is way too much content for Google to choose from in English. But that's not the case in Hindi or Portuguese. If you are open to expanding internationally, follow the tips in this post as it will help you pick the right regions to tackle first. ConclusionI hope I didn't discourage you from leveraging content marketing. It's still an amazing tactic that has helped me generate 1,864,246 unique visitors a month. Sure, I've been doing this for some years now, but NeilPatel.com is one of the newer search blogs compared to sites like Moz or Search Engine Land yet I was still able to do well. This is especially true over the last year where I saw most of my growth. And the big strategy I shifted towards was to start writing personalized content… content that contains my life experiences and stories that can't be copied or created anywhere else. Even if you are new to your industry, you can still reference other people's experiences or tie in lessons you learned from your past as some of those things are still relevant today. If you can't do that, resort to using data. People love reading about new trends and strategies as long as you have new data to back up your claims. So, are you going to write fresh, new content versus regurgitating the same old information again? The post The Future of Content Marketing: It's Not What You Think appeared first on Neil Patel. Quicksprout is reader-supported. That means we use affiliate links. When you click, we sometimes earn a commission. Learn more. A high quality web hosting provider needs to have three things:
InMotion and SiteGround, our two top picks, are both excellent options. We think most small businesses will be really happy with what they have to offer. DreamHost, Bluehost, and HostGator are also very popular and generally well regarded - there are just enough little issues that keep them from being our overwhelming favorites. We also looked at GoDaddy. We recommend avoiding hosting your small business's websites on GoDaddy. You can absolutely do better.
Our top picks for small business web hostingInMotion Hosting
InMotion is an all-around provider with a solid reputation: the Subaru of web hosts. It has a lot of plans to choose from across the traditional range of hosting options - shared, managed WordPress, VPS, and dedicated servers - and it prioritizes fast loading times with SSD storage, PHP 7, custom server caching, and two US-based servers. We also appreciate its rigorous security protocol: servers have custom firewalls and DDoS protection, it includes malware protection, and SSL certificates are free on all plans. Where InMotion especially stands out is in its customer support, which caters to all levels of users. Its knowledge center is recognized as one of the best in the business, with thousands of help articles, FAQs, forums, training videos, and guides to help even the most entry-level administrator feel in control. You'll see InMotion support staff respond to specific questions in each article's comments section, and there's even a community support subsection, where one-off questions are answered by InMotion super users. The US-based customer service team is available 24/7 across live chat and email and phone, and InMotion offers a whopping 90-day money-back guarantee - one of the longest available.
We think most small businesses will be happy on one of InMotion's Business shared hosting plans, which include a free domain; unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email; and one-click installation of more than 400 apps. When you're ready to upgrade, InMotion has a straightforward approach. As you move up the food chain, you won't get upsold on additional features or slicker tools. You'll just get more power - 2X the performance with each upgrade. What other hosts consider add-ons, InMotion offers even on its lowest-tier plans, including automatic backups and one free restore every four months, plus three free website/database migrations. The only extra perk the highest-tier shared hosting plan offers is an uptime guarantee: for every month InMotion's server performance dips below an average 99.999% uptime, you're eligible for a free month of hosting. InMotion is initially slightly more expensive than competing web hosts. Its shared hosting plans start at $6–7/month and managed WordPress hosting starts at $7–8/month. But InMotion is one of the only web hosts that doesn't offer promo pricing, where a plan jumps up in price after your first contract. Long-term, there's a good chance InMotion will be more cost efficient. SiteGround
If InMotion is Subaru, SiteGround is Tesla: cutting-edge, powerful, and enormously well-respected. Its accolades are impossible to ignore: it's one of WordPress's three recommended web hosts and is the go-to for Reddit users, plus it has twice as many five-star reviews than any other provider on WhoIsHostingThis. SiteGround is widely considered to a technology leader, especially when it comes to shared hosting - it's often among the first hosts to provide access to developing tech to its customers. At this point, SSD drives, custom caching, CDN technology, NGINX, and PHP 7 are included to maximize speed on all levels of plans. SiteGround's commitment to security is also no joke, with CHROOT account isolation, custom AI to counter brute-force attacks, and an in-house DevOps team to code proactive patches. InMotion's customer support is tough to beat, but SiteGround gives it a real run for its money. Customer support is available 24/7 across all channels - phone, chat, and email - and its knowledge base is rich and well-organized. SiteGround is probably the most transparent web host around regarding uptime: it has a 99.9% annual uptime guarantee (or you get a month of hosting free) and posts both its annual average and the previous month's uptime right on its site.
As one of WordPress's recommended web hosts, it might come as no surprise that managed WordPress is built straight into all of SiteGround's shared hosting plans - it's not considered an upgrade, like it is with InMotion. If you're a WordPress user, this is undeniably a perk: core updates are automatic, all plans are WP-CLI enabled for easier management, and security is tailored to counter WordPress-specific vulnerabilities. This isn't to say that you can't get those things on a standard shared hosting plan with InMotion - they're just going to take more manual labor. With SiteGround, upgrading your shared hosting plan gets you access to more: more power, yes, but also more tools and functionality. SiteGround is particularly well-known for its highest-tier shared hosting plan, GoGeek. On GoGeek, premium site caching will increase your site's speed, you can make site-wide backups on demand (plus free restores), and you have access to pre-installed Git and WordPress staging. Pretty cool stuff, although potentially more than your small business needs. SiteGround is designed to meet the needs of customers who are straddling the line of small business. It leaps from shared hosting straight to an $80/month cloud hosting solution or a $279/month dedicated server, skipping over the more traditional VPS stepping stone. And while SiteGround's promo pricing is extremely reasonable, starting at $4/month, it triples at the end of your first contract. Yowch. 3 other web hosts for small businesses to considerDreamHostAnother WordPress recommended web host, DreamHost also integrates managed WordPress hosting into is core shared hosting packages (as well as its super-speedy, cloud-based WordPress hosting plan called DreamPress). DreamHost stands out for having a completely customized back end instead of the universal cPanel most other Linux-based hosts use. Think of it like Apple versus Android: DreamHost customers love it, but it's not a compatible solution should you ever switch hosts. DreamHost's sleek custom control panel menu (left) compared to InMotion's cPanel (right). Dreamhost is a sleek web host with a traditional upgrade path: shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting to VPS to cloud hosting or a dedicated server. Customer service is a little less traditional: email support is available 24/7, but live chat is only on during business hours, and you actually have to pay about $10 to get technical support over the phone. That said, the free trial period is the longest in the business - 97 days. Shared hosting plans start at $3/month, and since Dreamhost doesn't do promo pricing, it won't jump after your first contract is up. BluehostThe third and final WordPress-recommended host, Bluehost is a hugely popular option that builds in managed WordPress hosting to all its shared hosting plans. Its knowledge base is kind of a disaster - we recommend going straight to the search bar; browsing is pretty much pointless - and even though customer support is available 24/7 across phone, live chat, and email, it's been under fire in recent years. Poor customer support is one of the biggest reasons Bluehost has only one star on Trustpilot, and less than half of customers rate it five-stars on WhoIsHostingThis. Bluehost's knowledge base is frustrating to browse or get answers fast. Shared hosting with Bluehost starts at $4/month for your initial contract. Bluehost is a standout for offering five(!)-year contracts, which could lock you into some really low prices. HostgatorAnother big name in small business web hosting, and it's a bit of a mixed bag. We were surprised at how thorough Hostgator's self-serve knowledge base is (despite a certain mid-90s design aesthetic) but disappointed it doesn't offer any sort of email support - just phone and live chat. Hostgator tends to rank highly on tech publications like PCMag, but customer reviews are pretty dreadful: it has only one star on Trustpilot. If you're interested in trying HostGator, we recommend taking full advantage of the 45-day money-back guarantee. HostGator's support center is surprisingly robust and useful, despite its outdated appearance. HostGator does offer Windows hosting in addition to Linux, as well as a variety of options to upgrade, including cloud hosting, VPS hosting, managed WordPress, and a dedicated server. Shared hosting plans start at $3/month. A web host to avoidGoDaddyYou can do better. Even though it offers Windows operating system and a wide range of plans across shared, managed WordPress, VPS, cloud, and dedicated servers, too many features (SSL certificates, SSD storage, site backups and restores) are only included in higher-tier plans or as add-ons. If that isn't enough, its customer support is lacking, with no email and limited hours on live chat, plus a poorly organized knowledge base. The user reviews are also telling: two stars on Trustpilot and only 27% of users rate it 5 stars on WhoIsHostingThis. How to find the best web hosting for small businessesCustomer supportSmall business owners don't always get the luxury of an IT department (or even a web administrator) on staff. Often, your web host's customer support - and the self-service help articles, tutorials, and blogs it provides - act as the stand-in. That's why we make technical support one of the highest priorities for small businesses. It's like health insurance: it doesn't matter how robust a plan is if you can't settle a claim.
* DreamHost customers can request a callback from technical support, but will be charged $10 Money-back guaranteeMost web hosts offer some sort of free trial period. We recommend using this time to really dig into your host's customer support - its knowledge center and especially support staff across all channels. DreamHost and InMotion both offer industry-leading money-back periods at 97 and 90 days respectively. Most other hosts give you around one month. 24/7 supportEvery web host claims it, but each delivers 24/7 support in its own way. InMotion, SiteGround, and Bluehost all offer 24/7 phone, live chat, and email support. By comparison, GoDaddy offers 24/7 phone, but limits live chat to business hours and has no email support at all. ReputationThere can be a discrepancy between reputation and rankings, and while neither can reliably predict your future experience with a web host, they provide insight on where to pay close attention during your trial period. Take, for example, HostGator. Technology publications tend to rank its products highly: it earns a score of 4.5 out of 5 on both CNET and PCMag. But it has 1 star on Trustpilot and only 37 percent of nearly 600 users give it 5 stars on WhoIsHostingThis - and nearly all of negative comments are directed at customer service. Knowledge centerA quality knowledge center is expansive, informative, and intuitively organized. InMotion's best-in-class support center includes everything from entry-level courses on the basics (cPanel, WordPress, email) to advanced product guides, a thriving user community, and InMotion moderators answering questions in each article's comments section. Bluehost's help center is comparatively a black hole of clicking around and searching to see if you stumble across an article with the information you need. Web host specsEvery web host is likely to offer way more than what your website needs to run well. The key is making sure that it has the right stuff (it doesn't really matter that DreamHost doesn't support Drupal unless you use Drupal on your site). Most web hosts offer several tiers of plans across each type of hosting - shared, VPS, etc. As you ratchet up the tiers, your host can accommodate bigger, more complex websites. Higher tiers usually unlock access to premium features and tools, and often come with more add-on services included for free.
*SiteGround and Hostgator both offer unmetered bandwidth, but provide recommended traffic thresholds StorageThe size of your website - how many gigabytes of content and programs it contains - determines how much room on a server your site takes up. Some web hosts put a cap on website storage, especially on lower-tier plans: SiteGround's lowest tier maxes out user storage at 10GB; Bluehost's cap is 100GB. Other plans advertise “unlimited” or “unmetered” storage and bandwidth - there's no hard cap on what your site is allowed to use.
BandwidthBandwidth is how much of the server's information pipeline your website is using to send and receive data to your visitors. Most web hosts provide unmetered bandwidth, but like with storage, you can't hog so much that the other users on your shared server are getting poor site performance. Traffic is the easiest way to predict bandwidth, which is why some hosts offer approximate visitor thresholds. SiteGround's shared hosting plans are designed to accommodate 10,000–100,000 monthly visitors, depending on the plan, while all of HostGator's shared plans can support between 7,000–8,000 visitors per day (or about 200,000–250,000 visitors per month). Number of websitesIf you're launching more than one website on the same web hosting plan, it's important to remember that storage and bandwidth are measured all together - not per site. For example, SiteGround's middle-tier plan, GrowBig, can host an unlimited number websites, but offers 20GB of storage and can accommodate around 25,000 monthly visitors total. If you have 10 sites hosted on a GrowBig plan, and the videos you post on site number two always go viral, that site may use up the bandwidth allotted for your other nine sites too. Supported technologyMake sure the programs, features, and apps you're using (or plan to use) are compatible with your host. The vast majority of websites are built on WordPress, and virtually every web host will work seamlessly. But what if your site uses Magento? Is any of your site coded in Perl or Python? Double check that your host is compatible with what you want to use, and dig into the knowledge base and customer support around those things, too. If a host advertises its compatible with Joomla, it's not much use if there is no documentation or experienced staff to help you out when you hit a snag. The other thing to double check is which operating system your site uses. Linux is the most common, but if your site runs on Windows OS, it will be a no-go. InMotion, SiteGround, DreamHost, and Bluehost are Linux-only. HostGator and GoDaddy have both Linux and Windows servers. Room to growThe cheapest web hosting is shared hosting. That's where lots of small businesses start out before upgrading to VPS hosting, cloud hosting, or a dedicated server. Some hosts include a managed WordPress hosting option as well, which may be considered an upgrade and hosted on VPS or cloud servers. Others, including SiteGround and InMotion, keep their managed WordPress plans on shared servers. You'll know you're ready to upgrade when your website is utilizing too much storage or bandwidth on your current plan - your host usually gives you a couple of days heads-up via email when this happens. More robust plans can accommodate bigger, more heavily trafficked sites. They also include access to more technical features. No web host wants to put a ceiling on your website's growth
*Includes managed WordPress hosting in shared hosting plan Other web hosting features small businesses should know and look for
Recap: The best web hosts for small business
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