Here are nine of the best local listings management tools and all-in-one local SEO software solutions available today.
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Monday 31 December 2018
9 Essential Local SEO & Listings Management Tools by @MaddyOsman
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How to Completely Optimize Your Google My Business Listing by @searchmastergen
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Learn how to optimize your Google My Business listing to boost your local SEO strategy.
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Friday 28 December 2018
Where & How to Get the Right Reviews for Your Business by @DholakiyaPratik
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Here are the top review platforms you should use and some local SEO tips on how to best leverage them.
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Why NAP & User Experience Are Crucial to Local SEO by @TaylorDanRW
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Learn why Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) data consistency and user experience are both essential to local SEO success.
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5 SEO Factors to Monitor in 2019 by @martinibuster
Five SEO factors may improve your SEO strategy for 2019.
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Thursday 27 December 2018
9 Types of Content That Will Help Your Local SEO by @annaleacrowe
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Here are nine examples of content you can create that can help you rank for competitive local search terms.
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What Is a Local Link & How to Find More Local Link Opportunities by @sllewuy
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This article will help you figure out how to get your local link building campaign started.
how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page
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Wednesday 26 December 2018
Top 25 Local Search Ranking Signals You Need to Know by @_kevinrowe
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Optimizing for these factors can help increase your local search visibility and help more customers find you.
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What Is Local SEO & Why Local Search Is Important by @BrianHarnish
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Want a local audience to find your business online? Here's how to make local SEO work for you.
how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page
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Friday 21 December 2018
How to Write Blog Posts Faster Without Sacrificing Quality
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I write a ton of blog posts.
By the end of 2018, I’ll have published over 150 posts on Quick Sprout alone. Once you factor in the posts on my other websites and my guest posts, that number roughly doubles.
People ask me all the time how I manage to produce such a large amount of quality content.
With all my in-depth and informative guides backed up with good research, people assume it takes me 10 hours to write one post. That’s not the case.
It takes me significantly less than half of that time to do so.
Blogging is like anything else. The more you do something, the better you get at it.
That said, there is definitely a formula behind producing effective blog content.
As a business owner, you recognize the benefits of blogging in terms of SEO, driving traffic to your website, and increasing conversions.
This graph clearly shows there is a direct correlation between publishing frequency and website traffic. That’s why you can scale lead generation through blogging.
You know you want to publish more content. But there are only so many hours in the day, and you have a business to run.
It’s a common problem I see in my consulting work.
As a result, businesses usually resort to one of two solutions. They either don’t blog as often as they should be, or they rush through writing to meet a certain benchmark. But neither of these approaches are effective.
You need to learn how to write more posts faster without sacrificing the quality of your work.
Use this guide as a blueprint for producing quality content for your blogs. Here’s what you need to do.
Have your blog topics ready
When you sit down to write a post, you shouldn’t be asking yourself what you’ll be writing about that day. This is not an efficient use of your time.
I like to have lists of topics ready for me to choose from.
Spend 30 minutes to an hour once a month coming up with a long list of titles, depending on your publishing frequency.
I usually have lists with 20 or 30 topics at a minimum. Once I start running low, I go through this process again.
Coming up with this many subjects is easier than you think.
I recommend looking at some of your competitors’ sites to see what they’re blogging about. You can use their posts as an inspiration for your own.
You’ll have a big advantage here. Since their content is already published, you can make your posts even better and more informative than theirs.
Take advantage of online tools that will help you come up with new titles to write about, such as the blog ideas generator from HubSpot:
Write posts that tell a story about a personal experience.
Look through comments on social media and your previously published posts for inspiration for new ones. Turn other content you’ve already created into a post. Here are some examples of content you can repurpose:
- YouTube videos
- podcasts
- ebooks
- webinars
- slideshows
There are tons of opportunities here.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a list of blog topics, refer to my guide on the best ways to come up with new content ideas.
When you do this work ahead of time, you’ll make your writing process much easier. Rather than wasting 15 minutes on brainstorming, you can pull a topic from your list and get straight to work.
Always start with an outline
Starting to write with a blank page, trying to go from beginning to end without a plan, will hurt your quality and productivity.
All too often I see new writers skip the outline process because they think it’s extra work. But the outline will save you time in the long run.
Your outline will give you an idea of the flow of your post.
At a minimum, you should have all your subheaders determined with some notes for each section. But you don’t have to stop there.
The more detailed your outline is, the faster you’ll be able to write.
I like to jot down my thoughts in short bullet points for each section. I can expand on those notes when I’m writing the final copy.
Outlining will also make it easier for you to reach your desired word count. Here’s a look at the average content length for the top results of a Google search:
As you can see from this graph, longer posts have higher rankings. On average, all the top ten posts are over 2,000 words.
You should have a word length range for each post you write.
Obviously, this won’t be exact every time. By nature, some posts will be longer than others, depending on the subject matter.
But let’s say you want all your posts to be a minimum of 2,000 words.
If you’ve got eight subheadings in your outline, you know that each section needs to be roughly 250 words to meet that 2,000-word minimum.
This is a highly effective way to write quality content. It will prevent you from rambling, repeating yourself, and filling the post with useless information.
If you’re starting with a blank page and no outline, you’ll have no sense of how long each section should be or how many sections you should have in the first place.
Using an outline will help you not only write faster but also produce better quality and longer blog posts, which will be great for SEO purposes.
Finish writing in one sitting
Blogging effectively is all about time management. I do not recommend multi-tasking when writing.
Writing posts will require your complete focus and attention.
Put your phone on silent. Don’t check your emails. Stop taking breaks for snacks or lunch in the middle of your post.
Just sit down and write.
It might be taking some of you longer than necessary to write posts because you’re getting distracted by other things.
Here’s a look at the average time people take to write a blog post to give you a better idea of how long it should take you:
In just four years, it’s taking bloggers roughly an hour longer to write each post.
You can aim to spend 3.5 hours writing a post, but you can write even faster than that. However, I don’t want you to over-focus on the time right now.
When you start looking at the clock instead of focusing on your work, the quality of your work begins to suffer. Here’s why.
When you hit the three-hour mark with only 70% of the post done, you might start thinking the post needs to be finished within the next 30 minutes. Under such pressure, the quality of your content might start to go down.
So what if some posts take you a little bit longer? It’s not the end of the world.
I write very efficiently, but every once in a while, it takes me upward of four or more hours to write a post.
Am I happy when this happens? I can’t say I’m thrilled. But I refuse to let my quality suffer.
Other times, I’ll knock out a post in 2.5 hours, so it balances out.
You also need to make sure you’re in the mood to write. Find a time of day that works best for you.
People differ in their preferences for writing. I know bloggers who write first thing in the morning while they’re still in bed, others who write at their offices, and still others who write late at night.
No matter when you write, make sure you’re in the right mindset.
If your mind is elsewhere and you can’t focus, pick another time to write. Put it off until you’re mentally able to concentrate to complete the post in one sitting.
Writing a post over the course of several days typically adds at least 20 minutes to each sitting.
Write while everything is fresh in your mind. The words will flow better, and it will be easier for you to work faster.
Conduct relevant research
Adding statistics and relevant data to your content will drastically improve its quality. It gives your audience proof you know what you are talking about.
Plus, citing and linking to authority websites is great for SEO purposes.
However, I see many bloggers shy away from this tactic because they think research is too time-consuming. That’s not the right way to think.
Sure, it may require a little extra work, but it’s not that difficult to conduct a quick Google search.
Including research in your blog gives you something to talk about. You’d be surprised how much easier it is to write about a subject when you have something to reference.
Let me give you an example.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent blog post I wrote about how blockchain is changing the digital marketing industry:
By taking the time to conduct some research, I was able to find an image and statistic, which are both highlighted above.
These two pieces of information allowed me to write an entire section.
When you have a reference to help you make a point, you’ll find the words to describe it. A statistic from a recent study may just be one sentence, but you can write paragraphs before and after that one piece of information explaining it and talking about its application.
If you’re familiar with my content, you know I use research and images in all my posts.
Even if this is the first time you’re reading one of my blogs, you can see I’ve used research throughout this post to illustrate my points.
Edit your own work
You don’t need an editor to review your posts.
You can do it on your own.
In fact, studies show that the majority of bloggers don’t use editors for content published on their websites.
Using editors is another example of something I see people do because they think it will save them time. But ultimately, it ends up being inefficient.
If you send your work to an editor, you need to rely on their schedule to get the post finished.
When I write something, I want to make sure it’s done.
You don’t want your posts sitting in limbo waiting to be edited and then sent back for feedback and other revisions. By the time you get those notes back, the topic is no longer fresh in your mind.
Instead of using an editor, put your posts through editing software, such as Grammarly.
You don’t need to make all the recommended changes. Just see whether there are any glaring errors that need to be fixed.
After that, read your post out loud to yourself.
This is the best way to catch any other mistakes before you publish your content. You’ll be able to tell whether something sounds funny and needs to be rewritten.
Depending on the length of your content, editing should take no longer than 10 or 20 minutes.
If you’re using an editor or spending much longer than this, you need to look at how you can improve the efficiency of your editing process.
Conclusion
It shouldn’t be taking you all day to write a blog post. At the same time, you don’t want to write so fast that the quality of your content suffers.
Fortunately, there are ways for you to write quality content at a reasonable speed.
Make sure you have a list of blog topics to choose from so you’re not wasting time figuring out what to talk about when you sit down to write.
Outline your posts before you start writing.
Blogging requires your full attention. Try to write when you can complete a post in one sitting.
Add research, statistics, and images to your posts. This will improve the quality and give you something to talk about.
Don’t use an editor. This will prolong the process. You can do this yourself.
If you follow the tips I’ve covered in this guide, you’ll be able to write high quality blog posts faster than ever before.
By the way, for those of you who are curious, I finished writing this post in less than three hours.
How long does it typically take you to write a high quality blog post?
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Do Exact Match Domains Still Work Anymore? by @wburton27
Exact match domains (EMDs) were once incredibly valuable for SEO and end users. But do they still work today?
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4 Ideas to Combine Email Marketing & SEO for Stellar Results by @infobrandz
Here are four ways to combine email marketing and SEO to help you reach your digital marketing goals
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Wednesday 19 December 2018
What Is Edge SEO & Why You Should Adopt It by @TaylorDanRW
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Learn what edge SEO is, how – and why – you should implement it, and its technical implications.
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5 Ways Email Marketing Can Help Your SEO Efforts by @bsmarketer
Here are five ways that email marketing and SEO can help boost your rankings and search visibility.
how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page
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Tuesday 18 December 2018
My Secret Playbook: 28 Hacks Guaranteed to Grow Your Traffic and Sales
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Are you tired of algorithm updates?
Well, who isn’t?
From Facebook to Google, marketing is continually changing and getting harder. Even if you are willing to give these platforms money, it still doesn’t guarantee success.
You can experiment, run tests, but digital marketing isn’t as easy as it used to be. Years ago, when I started as an online entrepreneur, companies used to raise money to hire engineers and build infrastructure.
But nowadays, technology has become easy to build and companies like Amazon Web Services save you millions on infrastructure costs.
So, these days companies raise money for one main thing… can you guess what it is?
Marketing!
It’s become so much easier and cheaper to build companies that the majority of the money is spent on customer acquisition.
This is why marketing has become so competitive. But that shouldn’t stop you from succeeding, it just means you need to get creative in this ultra-competitive landscape.
So, to start you off… here are 28 digital marketing hacks that I still use and still work in today’s marketing landscape.
Hack #1: Video remarketing
The highest converting marketing tactic I have ever leveraged is to remarket everyone who visits my checkout page but does not convert. I then show them a video of what it would be like to be a customer… these videos appear on Facebook and YouTube.
For every dollar I spend, I typically am able to get a 17-20x return on my ad spend. If you are going to take away one thing from this post, start using this tactic.
Whether you are in B2B or B2C, this tactic works extremely well. Just keep your video to under 5 minutes in length.
Hack #2: Do the opposite
Most remarketing campaigns don’t work well because you are driving people back to the same page that they didn’t convert in the first place. So instead of doing that, when you are remarketing users, send them to a page that has the opposite pitch.
For example, if your original sales pitch was logical, try a landing page that leverages emotions instead of logic.
Just think of it this way, that person didn’t buy from you the first time for a reason. You need to show them something different if you want them to convert into a customer.
Hack #3: 2-step checkouts beat one step
From my experience, I am usually able to get a 9 to 11% lift by making my checkout pages 2 steps.
Whether it is an e-commerce site or a B2B lead generation site, 2 steps typically beat out 1 step.
It’s counter-intuitive but once someone gives you their name and email, they are more likely to give you the rest of their information because they’ve already started the process. You can also email everyone who didn’t complete the registration process and convert some of those people.
If you have a strong brand like Nike or Amazon, this doesn’t matter as much. But if you don’t, which is more likely your case, use a 2-step checkout page. Whether it is a lead generation page or an e-commerce checkout page, use a 2-step.
Hack #4: Don’t forget sidebar links
Within your blog, link to your cornerstone content within your sidebar on every page. And I literally mean every page of your blog.
You don’t have to make the links rich in anchor text… but this one little thing will give more juice to your cornerstone content.
And within a year of doing this, those pages will shoot up to the top of Google for competitive terms. This is how I rank for terms like “Google AdWords” on page 1.
Hack #5: Blend in keywords from Google Suggest
If you are already ranking for popular terms, take them and put them into Ubersuggest.
It will provide a list of long-tail phrases that people search for. Integrate those keywords (at least the ones that are related) into the same page that ranks for the main head phrase.
This one little hack will increase the traffic to your most popular pages within 30 to 60 days.
Just be careful when using this tactic because you can’t keyword stuff. You need to adjust the content to also be relevant to the long-tail phrases if you want this hack to work.
Hack #6: Don’t stop with email
Email marketing is something that most blogs and sites leverage. If you add in push notifications and you add in chatbots, however, you’ll double up the traffic you were getting from email.
In other words, if emails drive you 1,000 visitors a month, push and chatbots combined should also drive you at least another 1,000 visitors a month.
You also find that push notifications and chatbot notifications generate higher click-through rates than email, but they also receive substantially more unsubscribes.
So, the next time you are sending out an email, don’t forget to also send out that same message to your push notification and chatbot list.
Hack #7: Brand queries is the fastest way to increase rankings
No matter which industry you are going after, the more people that type in your brand name into Google and click on your site, the faster your rankings will climb.
And not just your rankings for brand related terms, more so for all of your terms.
If you want to boost your brand queries, you have to do crazy PR stunts. Companies like PRserve do them on a performance basis.
You can also monitor if the PR stunts are working by typing your brand name into Google Trends. This one trick helped me rank on page 1 for the term “online marketing.”
If you are successful with this strategy, you should see results within 2 or 3 months.
Hack #8: YouTube only cares about the first 24 hours
If you want to do well on YouTube, your video needs to do well in the first 24 hours. It’s the opposite of traditional SEO. On YouTube, you’ll rank right away and get tons of traffic if you can make sure the first 24 hours are successful.
Every time you release a video, promote it to your email list, push notification list, and messenger bot list. It’s a great way to ensure your video does well.
Hack #9: Facebook loves comments
One of the largest parts about Facebook’s algorithm is how many comments you generate. The more comments you generate the more views your videos will get and the more reach your status updates and posts will get.
Asking people to leave a simple comment helps more than a like or share.
For example, in a video, I may ask the question of… “Do you use voice search? If you do, leave a comment with yes and if you don’t, leave a comment with no.” It doesn’t matter what people type as their comment, but this is the easiest way to ensure you get 2 to 3 times more reach from Facebook’s algorithm.
I’ve tested this a handful of times and the key is to make it easy for your fans to leave a comment. If you ask them to type up a sentence or a paragraph, you’ll get fewer comments.
Hack #10: Adding the year to your title tag increases CTR
If a lot of your traffic is generating from your blog, the easiest way to boost your rankings is by getting a better click-through-rate than all of the other listings.
Adding the year in your title tag lets people know your content is up to date and relevant and typically it helps get more clicks than anything else.
For example, the title “The Complete List of SEO Tools (Updated in 2018)” would do better than “The Complete List of SEO Tools”.
Another example that worked well was, “How to Start a Blog in 2019.” That generated way more clicks as people want to know how to start a blog in today’s competitive environment.
On the flip side, if you add a year to your title tag and your content is old and outdated, you will get a lot of bounce backs, which means your rankings will go down. So be careful when using this hack.
Hack #11: Don’t put dates in your URL
A lot of bloggers and site owners put dates in their URL in hopes that news sites will crawl them.
Don’t do this!
I removed the dates in my URLs and my search traffic went up 58%. It was the easiest and dumbest marketing win I ever got. When I removed the date in my URLs, it took 30 days to see the results.
And if you leverage this hack, make sure you use 301 redirects and you update all of your internal links to the new URL.
Hack #12: Subdirectories over subdomains
People love using subdomains, but Google passes more juice to subfolders. When I changed blog.crazyegg.com to crazyegg.com/blog, I saw an instant 11% increase in search traffic.
Now, it didn’t happen overnight, but it was close enough… I saw the results within 7 days. Same when I moved the blog on TimothySykes.com into a subfolder.
If you are going to use this hack, you also need to change your internal links to the new URL and, of course, 301 redirect the old URLs to the new ones.
Hack #13: Hreflang works better with subdomains
I know above I said subdirectories work better than subdomains, but that is not true when you are translating your content into different languages.
For example, if you are expanding your website into Portuguese for Brazil you are better off creating URL structure that is br.yourdomain.com than youdomain.com/br/.
I need to fix this on NeilPatel.com still, but when I tested this on 2 other sites that focused on the global market, one saw a 17% increase in international search traffic within 3 months and the other saw a 23% increase in international search traffic within 3 months.
Hack #14: Start with the Link Intersect
Links still matter when it comes to SEO. And it will for a very long time because it is becoming harder to build them.
The easiest way to build them is by using the Link Intersect feature by Ahrefs. What this Ahrefs feature does is it shows you everyone who links to your competitors but not you.
If someone is linking to 3 or 4 of your competitors, this tells you that they don’t mind linking out and there is a good chance you can get them to link to you.
Hack #15: It’s easier to build up a personal brand
From social profiles to blog traffic, people relate more to personal brands than they relate to corporate brands.
If you want more followers on your social profiles and you want to quickly grow your traffic fast, make everything around a personal brand.
But keep in mind, a personal brand is harder to sell and grow into a multi-billion dollar company.
Hack #16: The best way to get podcast listeners is through an exit popup
If you want more listeners for your podcast, the best way is to add an exit popup to your mobile site.
And on your mobile exit popup, ask people to subscribe to your podcast. Don’t use the same exit popup for all mobile devices, you should be sending people who use iPhones to the iTunes Store and people using Android to their version of the iTunes store.
Keep in mind that showing an exit popup on mobile devices is irritating, so wait at least 30 seconds before you show mobile users an exit popup.
Hack #17: LinkedIn prefers video
If you want to get the most attention from LinkedIn, upload videos instead of text-based content. Videos on LinkedIn get 2 to 3 times more engagement than text.
So, if you want more traffic from LinkedIn, upload videos.
And if you want more traffic from any social network, look to see what type of content they are lacking. If you provide them with that type of content, you’ll notice that your traffic will go up.
Hack #18: Journies and courses convert better than ebooks
Typically, most people offer ebooks in exchange for an email. And although it is more effective to give away an ebook in exchange for an email address than it is to ask people to opt into your newsletter, it still isn’t the best strategy.
If you offer a 30-day course or if you offer a journey, you’ll generate more email subscribers.
A good example of a 30-day course is, “30-Day Free Course: Double Your Traffic in 30 Days.” A good example of a journey is, “Follow My Journey to $100,000, I Am Learning a Lot and So Will You.”
Hack #19: Buying sites is cheaper than buying traffic
If you know certain pay-per-click terms convert extremely well, why not just buy a site that already ranks for all of those terms.
That’s what I did when I recently spent $500,000. I bought a website that already has traffic.
If you buy a site that already has the traffic, keep in mind that the traffic won’t convert as well as paid traffic.
With paid traffic, you are able to control your landing page more, limit the amount of text, and optimize for conversions. Nonetheless, it is still worth buying sites who already have your audience.
Hack #20: Quizzes collect more leads than lead forms
Most people collect leads by asking people to fill out lead forms. It’s not as effective as collecting leads through quizzes.
Here is a good example of this.
When I converted my lead form pages into a quiz, I increased my lead count by 281%.
If you don’t know how to create a lead generation quiz, you can always use tools like Lead Quizzes.
Hack #21: Tools generate more traffic than content marketing
The upfront cost is higher, but the long-term cost is significantly less.
For example, when I created the SEO Analyzer I put in around $25,000 in money and another $1,800 each month for hosting, but it consistently brings in 73,201 visitors a month.
Ubersuggest costs me more, but it brings in 492,394 visitors a month.
In general, tools are easier to maintain and are more affordable in the long run for how many visitors they generate.
Hack #22: Send paid traffic to content first
Marketing is like dating. You can’t expect to send cold traffic to a product or service and expect people to buy a high-ticket item.
You’ll find that paid advertising is much more effective and affordable for selling high ticket items if you send people to an educational piece of content such as a blog post. And then remarketing those visitors and then driving them to your product or service.
In the long run, this is cheaper if you are selling products for above $500 and it is more effective as paid ads to content are cheaper than paid ads to landing pages.
Hack #23: Facebook Info and Ads
Are you struggling to run Facebook Ads that convert and are profitable when you know your competitors are crushing it on Facebook? Well, struggle no more.
Go to your competitor’s fan page and in the left navigation bar click on “info and ads.” This will show you all of the ads that your competition is currently running.
Now when you create Facebook ads, start off by running similar ads to your competition. This will give you the best shot at success.
Hack #24: Respond to comments with a question
As I broke down in hack number 9, Facebook loves comments.
Another simple hack, which works for Facebook and every other social network, is to respond to comments answering their question and of course also asking another question.
This keeps the momentum going and it causes a portion of the people who left a comment to come back and leave another comment.
By doing this on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, you will find yourself getting more reach for every single thing you share on each of those networks.
I know this hack sounds dumb, but it works really well and no one leverages it.
Hack #25: Don’t forget about the AMP framework
No one talks about Google’s AMP framework, but it is a simple way to get more mobile traffic.
If you are targeting traffic from the United States or even most parts of Europe like the UK or Germany, the AMP framework won’t give you a lift in traffic.
But if you are also targeting international markets where their infrastructure isn’t as great, AMP framework will give you a boost in search traffic.
For example, when I rolled out the AMP pages in Brazil, I got a 28% increase in mobile search traffic.
For markets where their infrastructure isn’t as developed and people rely on mobile devices, enabling the AMP framework will typically give you a 20 to 30% boost in mobile search traffic for those regions.
Hack #26: Webinars are the best way to sell ebooks and courses
If you want to monetize your blog, the best way is usually selling ebooks and courses. But driving people to a sales page to sell an ebook isn’t too effective.
Instead, if you create a webinar and then sell a $497 or $997 ebook/course, it is much more effective.
It’s so effective, in fact, that I am able to get 3.6 sales for every 100 webinar registrations. This video will teach you how to do it step-by-step.
Hack #27: Order bumps don’t hurt conversions, they help increase revenue
On your checkout page, you don’t just want people to buy, you want them to spend more money.
The easiest way to generate more revenue from each customer, without reducing your conversion rate, is order bumps.
As long as you make your order bump a really good deal, it can typically add $5 to $15 to every purchase on average.
If you don’t have an order bump, you should create one right away.
Hack #28: Share your content over and over again
You spend all of this time writing content, but then you spend very little time promoting it.
What most people do is write content and then share it on all of their social profiles. A few people send out email blasts notifying people about their content, which you should also do.
But if you want to double your social traffic, what I do is share the same piece of content 6 times throughout the next 12 months. In other words, retweet that content 6 times. Share the same post on LinkedIn a few times over the next 12 months.
As for Facebook, sharing the same URL over and over again doesn’t work, but the other social networks are fine with this.
This one simple hack has doubled the amount of traffic I get from social sites on a monthly basis. Best of all, no one really complains as the majority of your social connects won’t see the content the first time you post it.
Conclusion
I know some of the hacks I mentioned above seem simple, but they work. And if I had to bet you a dollar, you don’t do most of those “simple” hacks.
No matter what vertical you are marketing in, it’s competitive. You aren’t going to find one hack that’ll drastically increase your traffic. You’ll find that you need to do a lot of little things.
But don’t take them for granted because all of those little things add up to a massive amount of traffic over time.
What other hacks do you leverage to increase traffic and sales?
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How to Use On-SERP SEO to Increase Brand Awareness & CTR by @-
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Want to own as much SERP real estate as possible? Here are seven ways to boost your Page 1 presence.
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Why Prioritization Is Critical to SEO Success by @AndrewDennis33
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Learn how and why proper prioritization within three key areas will set your SEO campaign up for success.
how I went to number one on Google for a competitive term by just getting people to click my page
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Monday 17 December 2018
12 Tips to Help You Thrive in Voice, Visual & Vertical Search by @andybetts1
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These technical SEO and content marketing tips will help you connect with your audience across voice, visual, and vertical search.
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An SEO’s Letter to Santa: All I Want for Christmas This Year by @tonynwright
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Dear Santa, I’ve been pretty good this year. So can you help me out by bringing all 15 items on my SEO wish list?
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Friday 14 December 2018
The Best Dropshipping Companies
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Dropshipping is when you sell a product that’s shipped directly from the manufacturer to your customer. It is never held by you in a warehouse or a spare bedroom, and you’re not responsible for the packaging or shipping. Your dropship partner takes care of all that.
Sounds dreamy, right? No warehouse rent to pay, no upfront investment in purchasing inventory, and no shipping work on your end. Those are the perks.
But those are also the drawbacks. You don’t have the inventory in your warehouse, so you don’t have control of a customer ordering something that’s out of stock. There’s no shipping work on your end, so you can’t control the shipping speed, or the packaging. Long ship times = canceled orders. Weird packaging = bad reviews. And, you’ll still need upfront money for advertising, building your website, and all the other steps you’ll need to take to start your business.
And, because you’re basically outsourcing those storing and shipping tasks to your dropshipper, you may not have as great of margins that you would if you took that all in house.
In this guide, we’ll round up some of the best known dropshippers and some lessons from top dropshippers, including what to consider before you get started.
Like any business partnership, before you get involved you need to do your research on who you’re working with, what it’s going to cost you, and what you’re expecting to get out of it.
What’s the best dropshipper?
Trying to find the best dropshipping company is a little bit beside the point. It’s like asking for the best eBay seller or the best store on Etsy.
There are things that make dropshippers great, and they’re a lot of the same things that make an eBay or Etsy seller great: They’re super communicative and have fast shipping. The product arrives as promised. It looks like the listing and it arrives in one piece in packaging that looks nice and not chewed up by an alligator.
Just like an eBay seller, the best dropshipper for you is the one selling what you’re interested in buying. They will reliably, communicatively, and quickly shipping the product you’re after at the price that’ll be profitable for you — that’s your best.
Dropshipping suppliers, databases, and tools
It can be hard to break into dropshipping because most dropshipping businesses don’t like to share their items or their suppliers. The thinking is: you’ll just replicate their shop and eat into their market.
Many dropshippers use a Shopify store and an automation app like Oberlo or Spocket. This is a quick way to get set up in minutes.
Shopify dropshipping apps and tools
- Oberlo is a plugin service that works with Shopify stores. You’ll browse the Oberlo directory (which includes suppliers verified by Oberlo) to find inventory you’d like to sell in your store. You’ll be able to see how many pageviews, sales, and star-rankings each item and seller has. Once you make a sale, you’ll use Oberlo to order the item to be shipped to your customer. Oberlo has a forever-free plan, though you’ll need to pay for a Shopify subscription, too. Oberlo has 4.7 out of 5 stars from 2,258 reviews in the Shopify app store.
- Spocket is a database app of dropship items that you can sort by country and simply upload into your Shopify store. Spocket makes it easy to find US and EU items that’ll ship within your country rather than from China, cutting down on slow ship speeds. The Basic plan (25 products with unlimited orders) is forever free, and upgrading to Pro is $39 / month for 250 products and branded invoicing. The Empire plan unlocks unlimited products for $99 / month. The app has 4.8 out of 5 stars from 1,008 reviews in the Shopify app store.
- Dropified is a Shopify app for populating your store with items and automate your orders on AliExpress, including customer shipping address. There’s no Dropified marketplace, but rather a browser plugin that’ll let you pull from anywhere on the web. You can set up margin parameters and rules for changing the price points in your store. There’s a free 14-day trial; after that it’s $47/month for the Builder plan. The app has 4.8 out of 5 stars from 98 reviews in the Shopify app store.
- Dropwow is like Oberlo or Spocket, but has more negative reviews. The tool claims to automate your orders and help you locate dropshippers located in the US and elsewhere. However, with only 3.8 out of 5 stars from 108 reviewers on the Shopify app store, and a monthly subscription of $29/month, we don’t recommend it.
Dropshipping databases and software solutions
- SaleHoo – A $67 yearly membership grants you access to this database of wholesalers and dropshippers. There are currently 8,000+ suppliers on the site, and they’re all screened by Salehoo before they’re added to the directory. There’s a 60-day free trial period, and the customer service gets high marks: 9.6 out of 10 with 239 reviews on TrustPilot.
- Doba – This 2 million product database doesn’t just bring a number of suppliers into one marketplace — you’ll also place your customer orders within Doda as well. That being said, it’s not cheap and we’ve read a number of negative reviews, many of which mention that the prices aren’t low enough to profit. Doba has a 14-day free trial, so you can log in and run the numbers to see if a membership (which ranges from $29–249/month) is right for you.
- Wholesale2B has a variety of plans: sell its products on eBay, Amazon, on a Wholesale2B site, or your own WooCommerce / Shopify / Magento / BigCommerce site. Any one of these options costs about $20–30/monthmonth. Handle the orders yourself by becoming a registered reseller with each supplier or pay Wholesale2B a 3% fee to handle that for you.
- Worldwide Brands – For $299, you can get a lifetime subscription to this database of wholesalers and dropshippers.
- Wholesale Central – This free directory lists suppliers you can work with individually to order products from. There’s nothing fancy about it — it’s like a phone book — but has useful information to use as you do your research.
- Sunrise Wholesale Merchandise – A $99 yearly fee gets you access to Sunrise’s selection of goods. It’s a bit smaller than other databases, but there the shipping times are pretty quick: typically 5–7 days. Packages arrive to your customers with a receipt from “Customer Service” that’s not branded.
- Megagoods – A California-based warehouse and will dropship your goods under your packaging and branding, typically in less time than it’d take to ship from an overseas supplier. Check the added fees to make sure that your margins are good.
- Inventory Source – An automation tool that allows you to either sync the suppliers products with your page (inventory automation) or to sync the entire customer purchase flow so that your orders are automatically placed with your supplier (full automation). Inventory automation is $50/month and full automation is $150/month.
- Dropship News – This free online directory of suppliers is worth sifting through. We found some great US-based suppliers. Most of each supplier’s dropshipping information is on their profile, which saves you some clicking around.
- National Dropshippers – This site is free for the first 7 days, but its products are hard to find and search for, and the returns and shipping policies aren’t favorable. You can give a try to see if there’s a product that’s only available here, but if you can find it elsewhere you’ll probably be better off going with the alternative.
- DropshipDirect.com – This site makes some enticing claims: 100,000 items in its inventory, a SaaS-approach to data, and quick shipping from its Michigan warehouses. However, the sign-up form is in private mode and the company seems to be on a year-long hiatus. We’ll keep an eye on Dropship Direct and report back.
Online marketplaces
- AliExpress is a Alibaba’s online retailer. It’s based in China, but doesn’t sell products to anyone in mainland China. The site has lots of user reviews and analytics that are super useful during the product research phase.
- DHgate – There are over a million Chinese suppliers on DHGate. Best practice for buying off DHgate: check user ratings and feedback. Just like you would when buying something off of eBay, be wary of anything that could be a knock-off or imitation, and be prepared for slow shipping and nuances like new-with-box items arriving with their boxes unassembled.
4 Steps to start your dropshipping company
1. Find items to sell
Find your niche.
There’s lots of chatter on the internet about finding your dropshipping niche, but this is just a trendy buzzword for product-market fit: are there people who want to buy your product? From you?
If not, you won’t have a successful business.
You’ll have the most success dropshipping a product if there’s an audience that wants to buy it and doesn’t have an easy way to access it. That’s where you come in.
Some ways to find your niche: brainstorm rabid fan groups or audiences with a common need or interest (dog lovers, anime fans, parents who love to dress up their kids in matching outfits, sailors, very tall people, people who love 90s throwback tees). These are purchase-ready populations looking to love and buy things that they’re interested in.
See what’s trending on Facebook.
Doing a quick search of a phrase like “Get yours here” or “Buy now” and look at the videos featuring items for sale that are getting traction. This can give you a sense of which products are interesting people on Facebook right now. Look for a high number of views in a short period of time, then search for the item at a dropship supplier like Oberlo or AliExpress. Consider the price-point of the item in the video and the assets you can create for it. Can you replicate — or improve on — the current trending video? If so, you may have an item worth dropshipping.
Don’t sell anything dangerous or copyrighted.
If you’re a beginner, don’t start with something that goes in or on a person’s body. If you do not know the quality and source of the ingredients, and something goes wrong, do you have coverage for that liability?
Also, if there’s a celebrity or character from a movie franchise on the item, it could get you in trouble. Steer clear of mice with big round ears.
Look at seller’s reviews and order a test product.
How long has the seller been selling? What feedback have they been getting. When you order a test product, does it meet your expectations? What do you need to tell your customers so they’ll be happy when they receive the product?
Consider dropshipping only some items.
Just because you’re dropshipping some things doesn’t mean you need to dropship everything. Perhaps it makes sense to use dropshipping for large, bulky, high-priced niche items.
Say, for example, you have an online store that sells nautical gear. You may want to personally store and ship some items, but dropship the anchors. For items like this, your customers may also be more accommodating to longer shipping times since it’s a large and more considered purchase. Same goes for home goods: perhaps you keep small items in stock, but dropship the couches. You can increase your inventory breadth very simply this way.
Go directly to a supplier and build a dropshipping relationship with them.
This is a killer plan: there’s guaranteed to be less competition. You’re basically creating a new audience for an under-marketed product that’s not getting seen by a ready-to-buy audience. If you use a database, every single other subscriber is using that same database.
2. Nail the basics
Invest in a good domain name.
We buy all our domain names from Namecheap. (You can read our full review on the best domain registrars.) They come with free privacy protection. Skip all of the upsells — you don’t need them.
Set up your website.
If you go with Shopify, you’ll be up in minutes. Lots of dropshippers recommend the Shopify Brooklyn theme with a good font choice. You can also use another ecommerce option. Here’s our review on the best ecommerce platforms, if you’re interested in exploring.
Get a professional logo.
You can get one for a reasonable price (and no design expertise) with 99Designs.
Use a professional email address.
It should be a sensible start (help@, support@) with your own domain name. We recommend getting G Suite for $5 a month per user. There’s nothing to trust about emailing a customer service that’s at yahoo.com or gmail.com.
Give your customer strong trust signals.
You can do this with high quality photos and unique item copy, a real and robust About Us page, and thoughtfully using things like discounted prices and pop-ups.
Ask yourself: Would I buy from this store? Would I feel comfortable suggesting it to a friend or family member? You’ll need some trust logos and some FAQs at minimum.
Set shipping time expectations.
Most dropshipped items aren’t going to get to the customer very quickly — and in world where Amazon Prime has set the standard at two days, that means dropshipments of 30 days feel extremely slow. If you don’t prepare your customers they’ll be very unhappy. We’ve seen very straightforward copy, like: All our items ship directly from our suppliers in China. Shipments are processed the day of your order and arrive in 25–30 days.
Make sure your orders go through.
Bundle credit card orders so your bank doesn’t cancel your numerous orders. Let your bank know what types of orders and in what quantities you’ll be placing, so they’re not flagged as fraudulent. There is no pain so rich as having to reorder orders you’ve placed. (You do have a business credit card, right?)
Prepare for returns and cancellations.
How will you deal with unhappy customers? What’s your return policy and how will you chargeback customer payments? Will returned items be shipped to you, or to your distributor? How will that work? Like with anything in business, it’s important to set it all up from day one like it’ll be a huge success.
Set aside money to pay taxes.
If you’re using Shopify as your payment gateway, once you get to a certain sales threshold, Shopify will automatically report your sales to the government. You’ll want to make sure you have money available to pay applicable taxes. We also recommend getting an accountant and a lawyer (we’ve heard good things about UpCounsel and LegalZoom) and setting up Quicken.
3. Differentiate yourself
Make your store listings and ads unique.
Remember, if you can quickly and easily set up a dropshipping order for a specific product, it’s likely another store will be able to do the same. You will need to find an edge: why would someone order from you, or find your store selling the product, and not your competitor?
Take your own pictures. Write your own copy. Shoot unique social videos. Really put thought into how to best convey the product and why a person would want it: What problems does it solve? Can it make them feel joy?
Import user reviews.
If you’re using AliExpress, you can import the user reviews. No one likes being the first to buy something.
Consider offering free shipping.
Do all orders have free shipping or only when a certain order spend is hit? What threshold or minimum spend works best?
Market your store.
Make sure people know about your store. This can be through word of mouth, social media ads, viral memes, influencer programs, SEO, a newsletter. You’re going to need visitors to make sales.
4. Iterate iterate iterate
Use ads to test and gather data.
We’re assuming that you’ll be buying ads. If you do, buy and use the data to test what’s working. What gets traction? Double down on it. What doesn’t? Trash it. This may lead you to changing your products, your ad style, your audience. Following the early traction means you head toward what’s working and away from what’s not.
Analyze your sales.
What’s selling well? What’s not selling at all? Is there any common theme in the items? Replicate what you can. Stop what’s not working.
Dropshipping vocabulary
Arbitrage – The simultaneous buying and selling of an item to take advantage of a difference in price for the same asset. Say there’s a board game for sale at Walmart for $20, but the lowest price on Amazon is $45. Arbitrage is listing the game for sale on Amazon and buying the Walmart game. For every sale you make on Amazon, you take advantage of a $25 price difference. If your arbitrage is online to online, with free shipping, the math suggests you could simply sell on one site, buy and ship from the other, and pocket all the profit. This does not take into account any hiccups: returns, merchandise not accurate, merchandise no longer in stock, price changes in either market, etc.
Dropshipping (DS) – The supply chain system in which a seller does not keep items in stock, but rather transfers orders directly to a manufacturer, supplier, or wholesaler who ships the item directly to the consumer.
Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) – Some sellers set a floor to how low you can advertise or display your product for sale. This is not the same as the price you can sell it for. So, the MAP price does not take into account coupon codes or sales, or other tricks like offering a gift card with a purchase, offering rebates, or doing things like showing an even lower price in the cart.
Dropshipping examples and press
You may have seen the posts we’ve seen — the ones about people starting dropshipping businesses and raking in the sales. We’re talking five-figures in a single day, six-figures every month. What is this magic sauce, we wonder.
The magic sauce is the same sauce as any other business: it’s a math equation based on margins. How big are your margins? How big is your customer base? What’s the conversion rate? How stiff is the competition?
Welcome to a little-known corner of the e-commerce world, where small entrepreneurs use social-media ads and hip virtual storefronts to entice people into buying products listed on online marketplaces such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s AliExpress.
The process often involves online storefronts transferring customer details to an AliExpress seller, which ships the goods directly to the customer; the storefront bills the customer. Called dropshipping, it is a twist on a fulfillment technique that major online retailers also use to send goods directly from their manufacturers to the customer.
The entrepreneur profits by charging a high markup, betting shoppers are unlikely to stumble upon the less-expensive goods on a marketplace site. AliExpress is the most popular such marketplace, but some entrepreneurs order from sellers on other marketplace sites like Amazon.
—“The Mystery of the $70 Hoodie That’s All Over Facebook,” Wall Street Journal
The mystery of the $70 hoodie is also not a mystery: it’s a one-time sale that’s not going to turn into repeat business. It’s a simple equation:
high price + low product quality + poor customer experience ? repeat business
Dropshipping seemed cool because it made starting an eCommerce seem easy: I didn’t need to buy products in advance; I didn’t need to have space to hold them, and it didn’t require extra time and effort to ship the orders myself. Dropshipping does have disadvantages, but it really appealed to me, so I continued my online search.
There are numerous ready-to-use eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce or Squarespace. Most of them start at around $20 per month, which seemed like a good deal for a first-time entrepreneur like myself.
It took me two days to set up the store the way that I wanted it to look. Shopify is totally non-programmer friendly. All you need to do is open an account, select a look for your store, and that’s it – you’re ready to sell.
When I set up my store, I had no definite idea of what I should sell. I wasn’t sure if I should pick a product I was passionate about or just a random product I was able to find in dropshipping databases like WholesaleDirect.com or the like.
“This Guy Made $12K In One Month While Working Full-Time,” Huffington Post
“This guy” is Justin Wong, and he made his business work by studying Instagram marketing, set up affiliate partnerships with influencers, and matched his product with his marketing technique. And, he’s not confused about the pros and cons of that marketing strategy: when the posts age on a influencers feed, his sales go down.
My name is Jacky Chou. With my partner, Albert Liu (albeliu on Reddit), we launched a home decor dropshipping site that went from negative 3k to 250k a month in 8 months at 30-40% margins. We’re both first generation Asian-Canadians who moved from Vancouver to Berlin to work in marketing.
We started our dropshipping store as a ‘practice what you preach’ case study, as we’re both working as digital marketing consultants (Albert as a freelance Facebook consultant and I’m a founder of an SEO agency, Indexsy).
— “We made 250k USD last month with our dropshipping side hustle. Oberlo / Shopify reached out to us to do a success story. AMA!,” Reddit
Further reading
- Buzzfeed News “Small American Businesses Are Struggling Against A Flood Of Chinese Fakes”
- Wall Street Journal “‘Drop Shipping’ Looks Set to Go Mainstream as More Retailers Get on Board”
- Racked “The Fake News of E-Commerce”
- Vox “Why an ad for bootleg Hallmark socks is one of the most ubiquitous of the holiday season”
- Inc. “Why Weebly’s CEO Is Saying No to the Hottest Trend in E-Commerce”
- Entrepreneur “Why It’s Nearly Impossible To Stop This Amazon and eBay Scheme”
- The Atlantic “The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed”
- Reply All “The World’s Most Expensive Free Watch”
- Inc. “How to Earn Money While You Sleep: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Drop-Ship Side Hustle”
- Vox “Here’s why Trump threatened to pull out of a 144-year-old postal treaty”
- Today.com “‘Drop-shippers’ reveal the hard work behind the legitimate work-from-home model”
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The Top 7 Things I’ve Learned About SEO This Year by @Stevenvvessum
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2018 has been an eventful year for the SEO industry. Here are the top 7 developments that are worth emphasizing.
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The Top 7 Things I’ve Learned About SEO This Year by @Stevenvvessum
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2018 has been an eventful year for the SEO industry. Here are the top 7 developments that are worth emphasizing.
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Thursday 13 December 2018
How to Buy a Domain Name
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Your domain name is very important. It would be a mistake to gloss over the process of coming up with a name. If you take your project seriously, then you need to start off on the right foot with your name. After all, it’s going to be with you for the lifetime of whatever business or project you intend to use the domain for.
Many of the guides on how to buy a domain name or how to build a website tend to gloss over this process as well. It is often assumed that the best approach is to just register whatever domain name is available and call it a day. I think this is a big mistake.
There’s nothing wrong with registering a domain name that is available, as long as you’ve thought it through and are intentional about it. In fact, I would encourage that. The issue is that in many cases, people don’t even realize that there are other options. Getting your hands on the optimal name is more doable than you might think.
In this guide, I want to walk you through my process for buying a domain name, starting with how I go about coming up with a name in the first place.
Understand the Cost of a Domain Name
First and foremost, I suggest that you do put some budget behind your domain name — especially if it’s for your business. If your budget is tight, then you’ll be more limited in what you can do.
There are two options when it comes to getting your domain name
- Register a name that isn’t already currently registered.
- Acquire a name that is already registered from the person or company that owns it.
Regardless of which option you go with, you’ll still need to pay the annual registration fee of $7–$15/year on average.
The cost of acquiring a domain name will vary widely: You can easily spend 4–5 figures on a name. In some cases you can find a good one for hundreds of dollars. Some domain names aren’t for sale at all, while others have sold for millions of dollars.
Brainstorm Concepts and Ideas
Before you even think about buying a domain name, you’ll need to do some ground work.
Get creative, because it’s time to do some brainstorming.
Your domain name is going to be used for something. Maybe a business, or a campaign, or maybe just a blog. And you probably already have some ideas around what it’ll be called, so you’ve already started the process.
Create a Concept List
I like to call this a concept list. It’s the list before your final name list. It isn’t necessarily names, but for now, just concepts.
Take your project and write down of all the words, descriptors, phrases, ideas, mantras, etc. that come to mind. Come up with as many words as possible. Use a thesaurus to help.
I personally find a mind map useful for this process.
Create a List of Potential Names
Once you have a thorough concept list, you can develop a more refined list of potential names. Start by listing all the names that you like. Since you might not have an unlimited budget, make sure you dig deep here. You can’t be too picky yet, because that will end up limiting your options. Write everything down that you think might work.
Narrow Down The List According to Viability
You can narrow your list down quickly just by typing in the .com for each name that you like. Type it into your browser and see what is there.
- If there is an established website built on the domain name, cross that off your list. It is very unlikely to be a viable option.
- If nothing comes up at all, then keep it on your list. That could mean that the domain name isn’t registered yet, which is great!
- If a landing page with ads comes up, that means the domain name is parked. It is owned by someone already, but might be an acquisition target. Keep this on your list.
- If the domain name is for sale, then that is the best case scenario. That’s exactly what we are looking for. Keep it on your list, and take note of the listed price if there is a listed price.
I find that my best domain names are generally ones that are for sale (as opposed to unregistered). I recommend browsing through the following websites to get more ideas. You might get lucky and find something you like just by browsing. If you do, add those to your list as well.
BrandBucket — They put together more creative, brandable domain names and then sell them. I’ve found a lot of names here that I would not have thought of on my own.
BuyDomains.com — They have a huge selection of domain names for sale. They have transparent pricing and offer a seamless experience. This is always my starting point, and preferred approach to acquiring a domain name.
Sedo.com — Probably the biggest selection of domain names and the most well known place to acquire a name.
BuyDomains.com and Uniregistry are the biggest players in selling domains. More times than not, if a domain name is for sale when I type it into my browser, it is one of those two companies that is behind the sale. I find them to be the most reasonable. HugeDomains.com is another one that I have bought from.
Once you have the narrowed down list. The next step is to dig even deeper to determine what your final options will be.
Choose Your Name
You’re ready to go through the process of choosing your domain name.
Some high level rules:
- Don’t worry about SEO or keywords. That doesn’t matter.
- Avoid hyphens.
- Stick with a .com only. If you are in the UK, Australia, etc. then of course a .co.uk, .au, etc. is also good.
- The shorter the better, generally speaking.
Quick checklist for your domain name options
- Do you feel good about the name? Do you like it? Are you confident when you say it? Does it feel good when you write it down? When you read it?
- Is it brandable? Is it unique, easy to remember and meaningful? Is it easy to read and spell?
- Does it pass the google test? Google the name. Ideally there are not any other organizations that pop up. If there are, you at least want to make sure they are not in the same industry, or even in a closely related industry.
- If it passes the Google test, you are probably good to go, but just in case, you also want to check for trademarks.
A Note on Social Handles
In a perfect world, you’d pick a domain name whose social handles are also available. This isn’t a perfect world. My take on this is that it’s hard enough to get a good domain name. Don’t make it even harder or nearly impossible by also adding this criteria. When it comes to picking up the social handles, you’ll have options. You can get creative, or even potentially acquire the handles from the current owners.
It’s a good idea to consider social handles when making your final decision, but don’t let that alone stop you from picking the right name.
The Starter Domain Approach
An approach that I am a fan of is to use the starter domain approach. The idea here, is that you can start with a domain name with the intention to move to another one down the road.
Let’s say you identify a domain name that you really like, but it is out of range for your budget. For example, when I was coming up with a name for my latest company, I really liked GoodLife.com. Someone else owns it, and isn’t necessarily looking to sell it. If I wanted to buy it, I would have to offer a lot of money — a lot more than I was ready to pay. If I wanted to take the starter domain approach, I could have gone with the name Good Life Media, and acquired GoodLifeMedia.com which is for sale for $24,500. (That price must have gone up, because it wasn’t that high when I was actually considering this as an option.)
Anyway, I could start with GoodLifeMedia.com and eventually try to acquire GoodLife.com. It would be very easy to rebrand from Good Life Media, to Good Life. Internally, we would just go by “Good Life.” The day that we eventually acquire GoodLife.com would be a huge milestone and would create a built-in company goal that we could go after as a team.
If you want a real life example, The Wirecutter just recently rebranded to WireCutter.
Considerations for the starter domain approach
- Make sure it will translate cleanly. The two names have to be very closely related, and you could ideally even use the desired name everywhere outside of the actual domain name, including in your logo.
- Remember that there is no guarantee your desired target domain name will be there when you are ready.
- I recommend getting into discussions with the broker or domain owner of your desired name as soon as possible. Even if you know there isn’t any chance you can afford it today. They don’t need to know that. This is actually a huge advantage for you, because it is common that over time the owner will drop the price as they realize their high price isn’t going to happen.
Acquire And/Or Register Your Domain Name
At this point you should have a narrowed down list of viable options for your domain name. The next step is to own it.
Each of your options should fall into one of three categories.
- The domain name is available and unregistered.
- The domain name seems to be acquirable, but it is not clear.
- The domain name is clearly for sale.
What to Do If the Domain Name is Unregistered
In this case, all you need to do is go to NameCheap and register the domain name. You’ll find out for sure if that is an option or not once you type it into the search bar on NameCheap.
Our domain isn’t for sale…
But www.mathsoeasy.com is for sale — for less than $1,500.
You’ll go through a straightforward process here. Don’t buy any of the add ons or worry about web hosting or any of that yet. You want to use NameCheap to simply register your domain name. That’s it. They are the best domain registrar, and I use them exclusively. I do not use them for anything else, because there are other companies that I use for the rest of my web needs.
After you finish registering the domain name, that’s it. You are officially the proud owner of your new domain name. All you have to do moving forward, is be sure to renew the domain name each year. If you fail to renew it, then someone else will be able to replace you as the owner.
What to Do If the Domain Name Seems Acquirable
If the domain name seems acquirable, but it isn’t clear — you have two options. Either you can try to figure out who owns the domain name yourself and reach out to them. Or, you can hire a broker to do it for you.
If you hire a domain broker, there isn’t much risk. Typically, the only way you will have to pay a fee is if you buy the domain name. The downside is that you do have to pay a fee if you buy the domain name.
Sedo is a good place to start if you want to hire a domain broker.
In the case of doing it yourself, you can start with a WHOIS search to try to figure out who owns the domain name. Googling the domain name and seeing if it is tied to any social media profiles or other websites is also a good approach.
More times than not, I will fail at finding out who owns the domain name myself. It is common for people to use privacy features that hide their contact information. Most domain registrars offer this for free, so people tend to do it by default.
The benefit of a domain broker is that they have a huge network. They almost always know who owns what, and if they don’t, they have ways of figuring it out. Back to my GoodLife.com example. There is no way I ever would have figured out who owns that domain name if I didn’t have a broker to figure it out for me. Of course, I still do not know who owns that domain name, but at least I have a broker who does.
Another benefit of a broker is that you do not have to deal with the awkwardness of negotiating price. You have a middle man who can be the bad guy for you.
What to Do If the Domain Name Is Clearly for Sale
Domain names that might be acquirable, as outlined above, can be challenging. I much prefer to focus on names that are clearly for sale. These are easy.
If the name is already for sale, then the process is straightforward. The only thing you really need to think about is negotiating price.
Negotiating Price
There is often opportunity to negotiate price. Depending on who you are dealing with, there could be some room to get the price down.
I don’t recommend pushing too hard or overthinking this. That might just lead to wasting time and potentially losing out on the name. However, there is no harm in giving it a shot and doing some level of negotiating.
After The Acquisition
Once you acquire the domain name, the next step is to transfer to your domain registrar. Again, I recommend NameCheap. You can see the process for transferring your domain name here. It also helps to understand how domains work.
Regardless of how you acquire your domain name, the final step is to see it sitting inside of your NameCheap account. That is when it’s official!
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