Thursday 28 February 2019

5 On-Site SEO Factors That Matter Most by @krisjonescom

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Here are five on-site SEO factors that you should always keep in mind when designing and auditing your website.

if you really want to manipulate Google statehood you don't have to build a bunch of backlinks anymore



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John Mueller Gives a Lesson on Competitor Research by @martinibuster

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Google's John Mueller gives insight into competitor research.

one of the biggest metrics Google is measuring is click through rate and it's also one of the easiest to manipulate



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Google Shares Guidance on Pagination for SEO by @martinibuster

if you were going to build some dirty Lane she were going to need some bodyguards or you might be fighting Penguins

Google's John Mueller explains the proper use of Pagination Elements for better SEO

if you really want to manipulate Google statehood you don't have to build a bunch of backlinks anymore



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Wednesday 27 February 2019

How to Calculate the ROI of Your SEO Campaigns Using Google Analytics by @AdamHeitzman

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Prove your worth by estimating the ROI of your SEO services. Here's how to do the math.

if you really want to manipulate Google statehood you don't have to build a bunch of backlinks anymore



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The Role of Psychology in SEO: Extended Symbiotic Intelligence by @andybetts1

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Here are seven areas of SEO where you can use psychology.

if you really want to manipulate Google statehood you don't have to build a bunch of backlinks anymore



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Best Social Media WordPress Plugin – (Review Updated for Winter of 2019)

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Social media has undoubtedly changed the way we live. It’s also changed the way we market ourselves, our businesses, and our websites.

If you have a website in 2019, you definitely want some type of social media integration.

You want your website visitors to engage with you on social media, and you want your social media followers to convert on your website. This won’t happen unless you make it as easy as possible.

Let me give you an example: You wrote and published a killer blog post. A reader loves your post and wants to share it with their friends on social media. How do they do this?

Without the proper tools, the person would have to copy your blog link, navigate to the social platform, login, and manually paste the link before sharing it. This process involves too many steps, multiple browsing screens, and too much room for error. The person may ultimately decide that it’s just not worth going through all of those steps to share your post. That decision may not even be conscious — they may get distracted and move on to something else, leaving your post unshared.

Social media WordPress plugins can make it easy for website visitors to share with just one click.

As a result, you’ll benefit from higher engagement rates on your social media profiles and your website alike. That’s just one example of why you need to install a social media plugin to your WordPress site. As we continue through this guide and review the best social media WordPress plugins, you’ll learn about the additional benefits.

Top features to look for in a social media WordPress plugin

Before we analyze specific plugins, I want to take a moment to identify some of the functionalities to keep your eye on when searching for a social media plugin:

Social icons — This shows your website visitors that you have social media pages. If they click on an icon, they’ll automatically be directed to the corresponding profile.

Social logins — Allow people to sign into customer profiles using their social media accounts. This makes it easier on your customers since they won’t have to create brand new usernames and passwords to access content on your website.

Social sharing icons — Website visitors can share content from your site to their social media profiles with just one click.

Social feeds — Showcase your social media feeds directly on your website. This feature gives your website visitors an idea of what to expect if they follow your profiles.

Social locking — Restrict your best content with a social locking tool. Content can be unlocked if a website visitor makes a specified action, such as following you or sharing content on social media.

Social comments — Enhance the conversation in your comments section by adding social media comments to your posts. This is a great way to drive engagement and get more blog comments.

Automated posting — Instead of manually posting your website content on social media, you can take advantage of plugins that do this for you.

Now that you know the top features of the best social media WordPress plugins, it’s time to check out the top options to consider.

1. Social Warfare

Social Warfare

Social Warfare is considered among the best social media WordPress plugins because it’s so simple. Other plugins have a reputation for slowing down your website, but that shouldn’t happen with Social Warfare.

This plugin is designed to increase shares by adding social sharing icons to your website. You can add buttons for the most popular social media networks, including:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest

If you upgrade to Social Warfare Pro, you’ll gain access to share buttons for other platforms like Reddit, WhatsApp, Buffer, Tumblr, Pocket, and more.

Social Warfare also lets you choose exactly where you want to place the sharing buttons. You can add them above your content, below your content, in both of these locations, or manually place them on your pages. This plugin offers floating share icons as well — as a user scrolls your site, the sharing buttons remain in view at all times.

Social Warfare allows you to track your results with UTM parameters. You can view analytics to see how well your sharing icons are performing so you can tweak them, if necessary.

2. Instagram Feed

Instagram Feed

As the name implies, the Instagram Feed WordPress plugin lets you share your Instagram content directly on your website. By adding your Instagram posts to your website, visitors will have a better idea of what type of content you share on that platform. And, they won’t have to search for your profile on Instagram. This is a great way to increase your Instagram followers. It’s also a great way to keep your site updated with the fresh images you’re posting on Instagram.

Setting up the plugin is easy. All you need to do is link your Instagram account and determine where you want the feed displayed on your website.

There is a premium version of this plugin that comes with features like:

  • Shoppable feeds
  • Ability to filter content based on hashtags
  • Popup lightboxes
  • Hashtag feeds
  • Advanced moderation for hiding or showcasing specific posts
  • Post comments for user feeds

For one website, you can purchase the pro license for $39. But if you just want the basic feed on your website, you can stick with the free version and save a few bucks.

3. Social Locker

Social Locker

Social Locker is definitely one of my favorite social media WordPress plugins. Personally, I love the whole concept behind how this plugin works.

Here’s the thing. Just adding social sharing icons to your website doesn’t necessarily give people a reason to follow you or share your content. You can increase those chances by installing this plugin.

That’s because Social Locker restricts your premium content. For example, let’s say you have an ebook on your website. As opposed to charging for downloads, you use social media engagement as a currency. If someone follows, likes, or shares content on your website, the ebook is unlocked.

Here’s an example of what this would look like from the perspective of a website visitor:

Social Locker Example

For those of you who normally charge for various types of content on your website and don’t want to give it away for free, you can use these social engagements to generate discounts for that content.

Maybe you have an online video tutorial that you normally charge to view. With Social Locker, you can choose to offer the video at a discount if a user shares your content.

This plugin helps you drive social media traffic while simultaneously gaining quality followers. It’s a great way to generate new leads and drive conversions with social media integration on your website.

4. Super Socializer

Super Socializer

Allowing your website visitors to create a customer profile benefits everyone — the user will receive more personalized content, and you’ll be able to learn more information about your customers so you can target them accordingly. It’s a win-win situation.

In order for this strategy to be effective, people need to create these profiles in the first place. That’s easier said than done.

Think about it for a minute: What steps does someone need to take to create a profile? At a minimum, they need to provide you with some personal information and create a username and password. People have so many accounts to keep track of on various websites. Is your site important enough to them to go through this?

You can increase your chances of getting more visitors to do this by integrating your sign up and login process with social media. Super Socializer is perfect for this.

Now users can create an account and login with just one click since they’re likely already signed in to their social media profiles. Plus, they won’t have to remember a new username and password.

Another benefit of this plugin is that you’ll get access to more information about your website visitors. You can target people accordingly based on their social media likes and habits. You can also enable social comments with Super Socializer. This is a great way to drive conversation and get more comments on your blog posts.

Overall, this plugin definitely has more advanced features and functionality that goes far beyond simple social sharing icons, although it does have those options as well. If you want an all in one plugin for social logins, social comments, and social sharing, Super Socializer is worth checking out.

5. Revive Old Post

Revive Old Post
What happens to your blog posts after you publish them? In a perfect world, they remain relevant in terms of SEO forever, but that doesn’t necessarily help you out on social media.

Here’s another question for you. How are you deciding what to share on your social platforms each day? It’s not always easy to come up with ideas for social media posts.

The Revive Old Post WordPress plugin by Revive Social provides a solution to both of these questions. This plugin automatically shares your previously published content on your social media platforms like:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest

Revive Old Post can share more than just your blog posts. It can also share pages, custom posts, and media from your website. The plugin will automatically fetch images from your content and attach them to the social media post.

You’ll have complete control over how each post is shared. Maybe you just want the title of your post or page. Some of you may want more, such as a hashtag or additional text.

Revive Old Post can be integrated with your Google Analytics profile. This is ideal for campaign tracking to see how well these links are performing. Overall, it’s a great way to automate your social media posting while simultaneously driving traffic to your website.

BONUS: Revive Network

Revive Social has another plugin, called the Revive Network. This plugin is designed specifically for Facebook and Twitter. It’s made for sharing content from other websites in your industry on social media. This is a great way to expand your professional network, in addition to sharing relevant information on your website. It’s great for those of you who don’t have an active blog or lots of content of your own.

6. Kiwi Social Share

Kiwi Social Share

Kiwi Social Share is designed for the average WordPress user. If you’re looking for a plugin that’s easy to install, setup, and won’t confuse you with too many complex features, you’ll definitely want to take a closer look at this option.

With Kiwi Social Share, you’ll be able to create custom icons for social media sharing on your website. You can customize the position of the icons, as well as enable a floating bar that’s always in view. Kiwi Social Share also gives you the option to change the size and shape of the sharing buttons.

It has a “click to tweet” function for specific phrases as well. So if you’re writing a blog and want to highlight one of your favorite quotes, users can share that quote via Twitter with a link back to your blog.

Kiwi Social Share doesn’t slow down your website and lets you create social sharing icons that are visually appealing to your visitors. Installing this plugin puts you in a great position to increase engagement on your website and gain more exposure on social media.

Conclusion

It’s obvious that your website and social media profiles need to be working together to generate optimal results. So what’s the best social media WordPress plugin? It depends on what you’re looking for.

Some of you might just want to add something simple, like social sharing icons to your blog posts or Instagram feeds to your landing pages. While others might be looking for features that are a bit more advanced, like restricting content based on social media actions.

Maybe you want an all-in-one plugin that also has features like social signups and logins.

Do you want to automate your social media posts with your previously published content? There’s a plugin for that too.

As you can see from this guide, there’s a social media WordPress plugin for everyone based on your specific needs. Now, share this post with a friend who needs it. Naturally, there are social buttons right here for you to do just that.

one of the biggest metrics Google is measuring is click through rate and it's also one of the easiest to manipulate



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Friday 22 February 2019

Google Advises Against Using Tag Manager to Implement Structured Data by @MattGSouthern

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Google's John Mueller advises SEOs not to implement structured data using Google Tag Manager.

how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page



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Shopify Review

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Are you about to build an ecommerce website?

Build it on Shopify.

I kind of wish the answer had more nuance to it, so I could write a more engaging review. But it really is that simple.

Ecommerce site = Shopify. End of story.

Out of all the decisions you need to make building your online store, the decision of which ecommerce tool to use is not a hard one.

If you want, you can stop reading this review and go sign up. You won’t miss out on much.

In-Depth Shopify Review and Methodology

To show you that I do know what I’m talking about, I have broken down all the core ecommerce site features and rated Shopify by each.

I’ve used a simple 5-point scoring system on each ecommerce feature below: 5 for “amazing,” 1 for “it sucks.”

I’m not a complete Shopify fanboy. There are a few areas where Shopify could do better. And one category Shopify completely fails. But these aren’t a big deal. The gaps are either minor or can be completely covered by other tools.

If you’re building an enterprise ecommerce site and evaluating new tools, it’s worth having the Magento and Shopify Plus (Shopify’s enterprise version) teams do a bake-off for your business. Otherwise, go sign up for Shopify and build your site there.

Big Brands Choose Shopify

Before jumping into the Shopify review and feature-by-feature ratings, who else uses Shopify?

Here are a few Shopify customers you might recognize:

You’re in good company — world-class brands and massive ecommerce sites have been built on Shopify.

Ease of Use: 5/5

Ridiculously easy.

Shopify is not only considered the easiest of the ecommerce tools, it’s also considered one of the easiest tools across all business apps. It’s true — lots of other business tools use Shopify as inspiration for how to build their apps.

If you’re looking for an ecommerce tool to get all those annoying tasks out of your way, Shopify is your best option.

Site Customization: 5/5

Shopify managed to do something that’s exceptionally rare in software: build a tool that’s both extremely easy to use and has all the flexibility that you’d ever need.

Most tools only achieve one of these. They’re either easy to use and limited, or they’re flexible and complicated.

As you grow your business, you’ll have the ability to evolve your store however you like. While you’ll most likely start with one of the pre-built themes, you can build a theme from scratch. At some point, you’ll need a theme that embodies your brand and has a unique feel. When you’re ready, find a ecommerce site design agency that has experience with Shopify. They’ll be able to build the entire thing for you.

When you’re ready for the big leagues and need a tool that has complete flexibility, Shopify has an enterprise version called Shopify Plus. So it’ll scale with you no matter how big you get.

Pricing: 4/5

Shopify charges you in four ways:

  • A monthly fee that starts at $29/month and goes to $299/month. The more expensive plans have extra features along with larger shipping discounts.
  • If you use Shopify as your online payment provider, you’ll be charged 2.9% + 30¢ to process the transaction. The fee comes down slightly each time you upgrade: it’s 2.4% + 30¢ on the advanced Shopify plan. There’s a similar fee for in-person payments that’s slightly lower.
  • If you use another payment provider, Shopify charges a percentage on top of the payment provider fee. Shopify’s fee starts at 2% and decreases to 0.5% on the advanced plan.
  • If you choose to use Shopify’s POS hardware, there’s a one-time fee of $656 for the entire package which includes an iPad stand, receipt printer, cash drawer, and card reader. Each of these can also be purchased individually. If you only want a basic card reader, you can get one for free with your Shopify account.

All of these prices are in sync with the rest of the industry. They’re exactly what you’d expect.

Some ecommerce site builders advertise the fact that they charge 0% transaction fees. This isn’t entirely true. Yes, they don’t charge anything. But you also have to set up your own payment provider and that payment provider will charge you a payment fee.

In other words, Shopify is your site builder and your payment provider. All payment providers charge a standard fee, including Shopify. That’s why Shopify charges you a monthly subscription and a payment processing fee.

The one fee that’s a little annoying is the fee to use other payment processes. This is the fee that starts at 2.0% on the lowest plan and comes down to 0.5% on the advanced plan. This fee applies to payments accepted through Paypal and Amazon Payments, among others.

I totally understand why Shopify charges a processing fee when they’re handling the payments. That’s completely normal for the industry. But the fee on top of other processing fees is a bit of an overreach in my opinion.

The vast majority of your payments will come in through Shopify Payments anyway so it’s a minor annoyance. This mainly impacts transactions that will come in through Paypal. You’ll have the Paypal processing fees and Shopify’s fees on each transaction.

That said, the extra cost is still worth all the extra value that you get from Shopify.

Shipping: 5/5

Shopify has removed all the friction from shipping. It’s as easy as it gets.

Shopify Review Shipping

Core integrations with all major shipping companies are built right into your store. You get discounted rates and you have multiple options for how to handle shipping during the checkout (flat rate shipping vs individual quotes).

Simply print shipping labels at your home or office for each order. That’s it.

Shopify Themes: 5/5

Shopify has dozens of themes to choose from. Some of them are paid, ranging from $140–180.

But there are a lot of amazing free themes, too. Even the free Shopify themes look like they were built by top-tier website designers.

When you build your site on Shopify, you’ll look through the theme store to find one you like. If you choose a paid theme, you get a professional-looking site for a nominal fee that will easily support your business until you’re large enough to have the budget for a customer-built theme that conveys your brand perfectly.

With the Shopify theme store and how easy it is to set up a site on Shopify, you can build your entire site on your own without needing a site designer and developer. Cutting those costs goes a long way for a new ecommerce site.

App Store: 5/5

The Shopify App Store is amazing.

Shopify App Store

You’ll find an app for just about every extra feature you could ever want for your store: email abandonment, Facebook Messenger, recurring billing — it’s all there.

This is what really sets Shopify apart from other ecommerce tools.

I know several CEOs of Shopify app businesses that are doing extremely well. They’ve built businesses with hundreds of employees.

What this means is that with a few clicks in the App Store, you can add an extremely advanced app on top of your Shopify store. It’s like buying an entirely new tool for your business that’s integrated perfectly with Shopify.

No other ecommerce tool has an app store with as many apps or as high quality as Shopify.

Expert Directory: 5/5

Sooner or later, you’re going to want some help with your site.

Maybe you want to tweak the layout of your product pages. Or maybe it’s time to do a complete brand revamp and you want your Shopify theme built from scratch.

Whatever it is, you’re covered.

Shopify has been the top ecommerce tool for long enough that there’s now an extensive network of professionals to help you with your site. Any ecommerce agency will have deep experience with Shopify at this point.

Shopify also has an entire directory of experts for you to search. Designers, developers, photographers, marketers, all categorized by city. It’s super easy to find the help that you need.

Marketplace Integrations: 5/5

There are a few ways to build an online store.

Quite a few ecommerce companies choose to focus exclusively on Amazon for example; they don’t have their own website at all.

But what if you want both?

Shopify has made this much easier than it used to be. Instead of having to build out all your product listings by hand multiple times — on your own website, Amazon, and eBay — Shopify will handle it for you. Build your products in Shopify first, then add integrations for Amazon and eBay:

Shopify Amazon Integration

Once you’ve connected Shopify to your Amazon and eBay accounts, Shopify will automatically add your products to those platforms.

It saves a ton of time.

Product SEO: 5/5

Out of the box, Shopify has great SEO for your product pages.

Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have to do a bunch of work to get your product pages to rank for any keyword that’s even somewhat competitive. But Shopify gives you everything that you could possibly expect from an ecommerce tool.

You’ll be able to optimize your product pages, photos, and descriptions for keywords just like you’d expect. All the standard “on-page SEO” items are right where you’d expect them to be. In other words, Shopify’s on-page and technical SEO won’t slow you down at all. It’s everything that you need to rank.

That doesn’t mean you’ll automatically rank for the keywords you want. You’ll still need to create a ton of great content to increase your site’s authority and do a bunch of link building. In my opinion, that’s outside the scope of an ecommerce tool.

Content and Blog SEO: 1/5

This is the one category where Shopify completely fails.

Yes, Shopify technically has a blog feature. They built it out just enough so they can say that they have it. In reality, there’s no real reason that you’d ever want to use Shopify for your blog. Shopify lacks the management features and SEO that you’ll need.

If I’m using a blog to grow my business and traffic, I get the blog on WordPress. End of story.

If you’re going to get serious about blogging, you need to use WordPress. It is possible to have Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. So you’ll use Shopify for your online store and WordPress for your blog.

I break all of this down in my guide on WordPress ecommerce.

Point of Sale (POS): 3/5

I don’t know anyone who uses Shopify as their POS system. Nor have I ever seen one in the wild as a customer.

I consider that a… bad sign.

Shopify POS

Nearly every POS I run into is Square, tailed by Clover and Revel. I’ve even seen Shopkeep a few times.

But I’ve never seen Shopify, not once.

Following my rule of using business tools for the one thing that they’re best at, if I needed a POS, I’d go get the best POS tool. For a small business, the most popular choice is Square. I’d only use the Shopify POS if the majority of my business was an online store, I occasionally did some in-person retail like at a farmer’s market, and I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible by using a single tool.

But if I had a brick-and-mortar location, I’d look into one of the dedicated POS tools instead of using the Shopify POS.

I give Shopify a rating of 3/5 since I consider their POS to be a neutral benefit. It’s a nice to have but not a huge benefit.

The Final Choice: Shopify vs BigCommerce vs Magento

For small and medium-size ecommerce business, the choice really comes down to options: Shopify or BigCommerce.

Shopify gives you the better tool and ecosystem. The tool itself is better, the apps are better, the agencies are better — all of it.

What this costs you is an extra fee on payment providers on top of what the payment providers charge. Now if you use Shopify payments, you skip all that entirely. The extra fee also comes down from 2% to 0.5% as you upgrade plans. So as soon as you start to feel the impact of the extra fee, you’ll upgrade and the fee will be lowered.

The extra payment fee is kind of annoying for folks who want to use another payment provider and give their customers as many options to pay as possible. But it’s a cost that’s worth enduring to get on the best ecommerce tool.

At the end of the day, this is an extremely easy choice for me. For any ecommerce store, I automatically pick Shopify to build my site and don’t think twice about it.

We put together an entire guide on how to create your store once you’re ready to build with Shopify.

Our recommendation only changes for true enterprise ecommerce businesses. If that’s you, check out Shopify Enterprise and Magento. Contact both companies and have them fight for your business.

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Thursday 21 February 2019

Tuesday 19 February 2019

Publishing Thousands of URLs at Once – Is It Risky for SEO? by @jennyhalasz

if you were going to build some dirty Lane she were going to need some bodyguards or you might be fighting Penguins

Could publishing thousands of new pages at the same time have any SEO risks or unintended consequences? Find out here.

how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page



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Why You Should Pair Programmatic Advertising with Paid Search by @ChandalN

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Here's why you should consider pairing programmatic advertising with your existing PPC, SEO, and other digital marketing strategies.

one of the biggest metrics Google is measuring is click through rate and it's also one of the easiest to manipulate



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How to Think About SEO

may Google puke with FCS networker

seo

Don’t you hate how it takes forever to get results when it comes to SEO?

Everyone says it takes 6 months to a year and even in some cases many years to see results.

Well, I have some bad news and some good news for you.

Let’s start with the bad news…

SEO is a long-term strategy. It’s not about doing it for a few months and forgetting about it. And if you stop focusing on it eventually your competitors will outrank you.

And now let’s get on to the good news.

You can get results in the short run. You may not get all of the results you want right away, and you may not rank for your ideal keywords, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get results within 90, 60, and even potentially 30 days.

So how do you get results within a few months?

Well first, let’s rewire your brain so you think about SEO in the correct way.

SEO isn’t just content and links

If you want to rank number 1 on Google, what do you need?

Well, the data shows you need to write lengthy content. Because the average web page that ranks on page 1 of Google contains 1,890 words.

word count

And of course, what’s content without links? Because the 2 most important factors that affect rankings according to the SEO industry are domain level links and page level links.

moz links

But here is the thing: SEO isn’t what it used to be. Until 2010, you used to be able to add keywords in your meta tags and you would get rankings within a few months.

And as the web got more crowded, you could then get results by doing the same old thing but you also had to build a few links. That worked really well between 2010 and 2013.

As more businesses popped up, everyone started focusing on content marketing. That was the hot thing. From 2013 to 2017, if you created tons of text-based content, got a few social shares, and picked up a few natural backlinks you could dominate Google.

But now, there are over a billion blogs if you include WordPress.com, Medium, and Tumblr.

That means Google has their choice when it comes to determining what sites to rank at the top.

In other words, just because you write lengthy content or build backlinks it doesn’t mean you are going to ranks. Millions of other sites do that as well.

And even if you got in early and your site is 10 years old, it’s no longer that easy to dominate the web.

Just look at sites like Wisegeek. They used to dominate the web as it’s a site with thousands of informative articles.

And now look at their traffic

wisegeek

According to Ubersuggest, they get roughly 49,211 visitors a month from Google within the United States. It may seem like a lot, but their traffic is continually going down.

When I met the founder years ago it was in the millions… but not anymore.

It doesn’t even matter that the site has 8,761,524 backlinks from 74,147 referring domains.

wisegeek links

Now you may make the argument that Wisegeek doesn’t have the best content. But I have tons of examples of sites with amazing content that have the same issues.

For example, Derek Halpern from Social Triggers creates great content. Just go check out some of his blog posts if you don’t believe me.

But let’s dive into his traffic stats

social triggers

According to Ubersuggest, he gets roughly 26,640 visitors a month from Google in the United States and he has 993,790 backlinks from 5,678 referring domains.

And he ranks for some great terms. Just look at the top pages he is ranking for with terms like “how to become more confident.”

social triggers top pages

But even Social Triggers has struggled to keep their traffic over time. It’s nothing to do with Derek, he’s a smart entrepreneur, but he decided to quit and focus on his new venture Truvani, which has been doing well.

In other words, content and links don’t guarantee success.

So, what’s the best way to get rankings these days?

You have to go after low hanging fruit.

Sure, you need content, you need links, and you need to optimize for the other 198 factors Google keeps track of the optimal amount of traffic. 

But it’s UNREALISTIC for you to do everything. Even if you hire an SEO agency to help you out.

And there is no way you can wait 12 months to get results from an SEO campaign.

Which means your only solution is going after the low hanging fruit.

Now I wish I could tell you the exact low hanging fruit to go after, but it varies for every site. What I can do is show some of the simple tactics that have worked for me and are easy to implement.

Strategy #1: Don’t put dates in your URL

I used to have dates in my URL because it was a default option from WordPress. I didn’t think twice about it. But the moment I removed the dates from my posts, my search traffic went up by 58%.

Best of all, it only took 30 days to get the boost in traffic. 🙂

Strategy #2: Link to the most popular posts in your sidebar

Have you noticed that I rank for terms like “online marketing” and “SEO”?

I’m currently number 2 for the term online marketing:

online marketing rankings

And number 5 for the term SEO:

seo rankings

Do you want to know a hack that helped me rank higher for those terms? Well, I’ll give you a hint… you’ll find it in my sidebar.

sidebar links

As you can see, I’ve linked to all of my major guides in my sidebar. It helps give them the juice they need so they can rank higher for terms like SEO and online marketing.

If you haven’t done this, you should consider trying it out as it will provide a quick win.

You won’t see the results in 30 days, but within a few months, you’ll notice that those pages will climb in the ranks.

Strategy #3: Land and expand

I’ve talked about this one a lot in the past, but only because it works really, really, really, well.

It’s also one of the main reasons I’ve made Ubersuggest into a robust SEO tool. Not just for you, but also because I use it for the land and expand strategy to grow my search traffic.

It’s how I get 2,105,896 visitors a month from just Google…

search traffic

So, what’s this land and expand SEO strategy I use?

You need to first log into Google Search Console.

Once you are logged in, click the “performance” link and you’ll see a list of keywords you are currently ranking for.

search console

Then click on the most popular term you rank for. Make sure that keyword isn’t your brand name.

Then click on “pages.” You’ll see the page that is ranking for that keyword.

search console pages

I want you to then head over to Ubersuggest and type in that keyword. Once the report loads click on “keyword ideas” in the sidebar. You’ll see a report that looks something like this:

ubersuggest keywords

You’ll see a long list of keywords that are variations of the main keyword that you already rank for. Most of those terms are pulled from Google Suggest.

If you take the popular phrases that are related to the main term you already rank for and integrate them into that page, you’ll notice within 30 to 60 days your search traffic will shoot up.

But when leveraging this strategy you need to make sure you adjust your content. You can’t just shove in more keywords, you have to rework your content so it makes sense and it flows naturally.

The reason this SEO strategy is my favorite tactic of all time is that content marketing is a hit or miss. Just because you write content and build links, it doesn’t guarantee success. But if you expand the pages that Google already loves, there is a high chance that you’ll get more traffic.

Strategy #4: Expand internationally

In many of my companies, I generate more revenue from outside of the United States than I do within the United States.

For that reason, plus it was a piece of advice I got from a Google employee, I’ve translated my site into multiple languages.

Just look at my traffic from Brazil…

brazil

And here is my traffic from Germany…

german

And the Spanish market…

spanish

What I learned from a Google employee is that they lack content in regions where English isn’t their primary language. So if you focus on these regions, you’ll quickly notice a quick traffic boost and your conversion rate from visitor to customer within those regions should also go up.

Strategy #5: 5-minute brand hack

Google loves brands. It really is the future of SEO. In addition, brands are more defensible.

As the EX-CEO of Google said:

Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.

In other words, if more people search for your brand name on Google, you’ll notice that your rankings will go up.

As more people typed in “Neil Patel” within Google, my traffic went from 185,980 a month:

feb traffic

to 454,382 visitors a month:

august traffic

That’s a huge increase considering I saw the increase in a 6-month time frame. And even though I pulled that off back in 2016, it works even better today.

Building a brand isn’t easy and it is a long-term approach. But I am going to give you a head start… one that only takes 5 minutes.

Before I break it down, it follows the rule of 7. Someone needs to see your brand 7 times before they build up loyalty to it. In other words, if you can keep getting people to come back to your site in the short run, you’ll start building a brand and you’ll find your brand queries increase in the long run.

Now here’s a screenshot of my stats so you can see it in the works:

push traffic

So far, I’ve gotten 42,316 people back to my site 174,281 times. That’s roughly 4 times, which means I have 3 more to go according to the rule of 7.

How did I do this?

I used a tool called Subscribers.

In which I send out a push notification every time I release a new blog post:

neil subscribers

Plus, it allows me to generate 4,000 plus visitors for every push I send. 🙂

subscriber stats

Strategy #6: Optimize your click-through-rate

You don’t have to write new content or build links to boost your rankings.

You can do something as simple as optimizing your click-through-rate.

Just think of it this way, if 1,000 people performed a Google search and everyone clicked on the second listing instead of the first listing, what does that tell Google?

It tells Google that the second listing should, in theory, be the first listing. And that’s what Google does… they take the listings people are clicking on and move it up to the top and move down the ones people don’t click on.

If you want step-by-step instructions to increasing your click-through-rate, follow hack #1.

It works really well and fast too. It’s how I boosted my search traffic for one of my main keywords by 1,289 visitors in 30 days.

social media marketing

Strategy 7: Update your old content

SEO and paid ads have something in common, in which if you stop doing it your traffic goes down.

Paid ads are a bit worse in which once you stop paying your traffic goes back down to where it was.

With SEO, once you stop you’ll see a slow decline over time.

Now, this strategy is so effective that I employ a full-time person to help me out with it and this is all they do.

Remember how I talked about there being over a billion blogs on the web now?

Well, I have one full-time person updating my old content to ensure it doesn’t get out of date.

Because Google has so many options to choose from when it comes to ranking sites for any keyword out there, they are going to rank sites that are fresher.

By updating your old content, not only do you ensure that you’ll maintain your traffic, but you’ll also get more traffic.

There isn’t any real strategy to this other than to go through your old pieces of content that get traffic and make sure they are up to date.

Sometimes you won’t have to make any changes, other times you may have to change a few sentences or links, and hopefully, not too often will you have to re-write a whole article.

And every blue moon you’ll need to delete a page or a post because it is irrelevant. For example, I’ve deleted my older blog posts that discuss social networks like MySpace that no one uses.

Conclusion

Yes, SEO does take time if you think about it the same way everyone else does.

But if you think about it from a strategical perspective, you’ll find new opportunities that can provide quick results.

You may not get all of the traffic you want tomorrow but going after the low hanging fruit will give the quickest results.

If you want help finding the low hanging fruit with your SEO campaign, you can always reach out to my ad agency and someone will help out. Or you can leave a comment below.

So, are you going to stop thinking of SEO as just link building and content and start thinking of ways to get quick wins?

how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page



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