IFTTT SEO v2: April 2019

Tuesday 30 April 2019

Conversion Optimization

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

Conversion optimization gives you more customers with the traffic and marketing budget you already have.

Even better, once you find these conversion wins, you get to benefit from those wins day in and day out.

These are permanent increases to your business.

Start with our Beginners Guide to Conversion Optimization which breaks all this down in detail.

To simplify everything, we put together an extremely detailed guide on How To Double Your Conversions in 30 Days. It’s a step-by-step process for making an immediate improvement to your conversion rates.

Before jumping into all the conversion tactics, we recommend getting a strong foundation with how conversion optimization works. By knowing how customer personas and conversion funnels work, you’ll know which conversion tricks to use for your business:

Website Optimizations

The first step of any conversion optimization program is to optimize your website. There’s tons of improvements that you can ship today. There’s no need for intense A/B testing programs or complex tactics, we always start with the basics.

A thorough polish of your website can easily boost conversion rates 30-50%. That’s a permanent lift from a one-time project.

One of the pitfalls that I’ve fallen into the past: holding back on obvious improvements until I had an A/B testing program that could verify everything. I wish that I had launched improvements a lot earlier instead of waiting. These days, I pursue good-enough instead of perfect.

To help guide you through all the best practices that are worth shipping right away, we put together these guides:

Tips and Tactics

Regardless of what you’re optimizing, there’s an endless number of tips and tactics for getting an extra boost in your conversion rates. When you’re ready to start going after the smaller wins to squeeze every last bit out of your traffic, these guides will give you plenty of ideas to use:

Landing Pages

The right landing page can make or break a funnel.

I’ve seen landing pages improve conversion by over 400% with the right offer and design. That’s right, I’ve quadrupled lead and signup flow by finding a stronger offer for my landing page. Think of it this way: if you were previously paying $10 for a lead, that kind of win would reduce your lead cost to $2.50. Getting 4X the lead volume with the same marketing budget would catapult your business to the next level.

I’m not going to lie, there’s a bit of luck in finding these kinds of wins. But there’s always a lot of things you can do in order to stack the odds in your favor.

We’ve put together all our best practices for landing pages:

A/B Testing

I personally love A/B testing. There’s something about getting hard data on what truly works that I’ve always found to be addictive.

A quick warning: only start A/B testing once you have a ton of data to work with. Even though I’ve built A/B testing teams for multiple businesses, I rarely A/B test these days. There’s just too many other major wins to pursue first. I’m more focused on getting the core funnel to a healthy place before running any A/B tests.

Once traffic is flooding your site and you’re scaling nicely, consider an A/B testing program for that little extra boost. These guides show you how:

Traffic Optimization

While most of our conversion optimization work happens on our site, there are also optimization wins to help with our traffic. Whether it’s SEO or paid traffic, you’ll want to optimize your entire funnel. Use these guides to get started:

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 Deal with a New Client That’s Violating Google’s Guidelines by @brodieseo

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Got a new client on board that is violating Google's guidelines? Here's what you can do.

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How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget

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

seo

There’s a formula to SEO and as long as you follow it, you’ll get rankings.

So, what’s this formula?

Well, you write amazing content, optimize your code, create a great user experience, and you mix in some backlinks.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, the formula isn’t too complicated, but it does require hard work and patience.

Now what makes SEO challenging isn’t the formula, or the time, or the patience. It has more to do with how you beat people who have more money than you because, in theory, they can do more of everything, which should cause them to outrank you.

But you know what? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I love SEO because it’s the one channel where you can beat big companies even if you can’t outspend them.

How? Well, let’s go over that.

Let’s first start with the two mental shifts you’ll have to make.

Mental shift #1: Speed is everything

What most people won’t tell you is big companies need to spend more to get the same results that you can for pennies on the dollar. They have way too many employees and layers in their organization to move fast and nimble.

In other words, everything moves slowly.

So, what do they do? They spend money in hopes that it makes them move faster. But the reality is, spending more doesn’t necessarily get them faster results.

If you want to beat them, the first thing you’ll have to do is focus on execution. If you can’t move fast, you won’t win.

This is your biggest advantage.

The reason I have gotten to where I am today is due to my execution speed. And now that we keep growing in size, things are moving slower.

For example, because my business has continually been growing, we now prioritize based on what makes us the most revenue and I bet you SEO isn’t as high on that priority list as it used to be. Not just for me, but for all companies my size and bigger.

You have to remember, we have multiple offices, hundreds of employees… we have to focus on what pays the bills.

So how do we compensate? We spend more money in hopes that it fixes it. Just like how I write less content these days, and I spend money on things like Ubersuggest and Backlinks in hopes that it helps.

But that won’t fix everything.

The point is, if you can move fast, it will give you a huge advantage.

Mental shift #2: Scrappiness beats money

Alright, let’s recap the formula to SEO…

Content + SEO friendly code + user experience + backlinks = rankings.

I know Google has over 200 ranking factors, but the formula above encompasses the majority of it.

Now you are probably thinking that if you want to write content or build links you have to spend money, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

With my previous marketing blog, Quick Sprout, I grew it by partnering with other writers.

I wasn’t as well known in the marketing world back then, but I hit up people like Brian Dean and co-authored guides like this one on link building with him.

That guide is over 20,000 words. And Brian did the majority of the work and for free.

I also did something similar with Ritika Puri and we created a guide on marketing psychology.

And every time I partnered with other writers and marketers to create these in-depth guides my traffic skyrocketed.

The first time I published one, my traffic went up by 117% in 2 months.

quicksprout traffic

Now, that’s something that you can still do to this day to see great results.

Another way you can boost your SEO traffic is to get people to contribute content to your site for free.

I did this with the KISSmetrics blog before I acquired it. During its peak, it generated 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.

kissmetrics traffic

We grew the KISSmetrics traffic through one simple approach… we hit up tons of writers in our space and asked them to contribute articles.

At first, we had to pay a few because the blog wasn’t known and we barely had any visitors. But once we paid a handful of well-known writers who were guest contributors on competing sites, we now had a great foundation.

We still didn’t have much traffic, but having those writers publish content was enough to convince other writers to submit content for free.

It’s a simple approach that still works to this day.

There are many ways you can be scrappy, you just have to think outside the box. Don’t think you need tons of money to solve your marketing problems. Being scrappy in most cases is more effective.

Now that we’ve covered the two mental shifts you need to make, let’s focus on the 4 quick wins that will yield the biggest results in the least amount of time.

Yes, many of these “quick wins” are well known, but less than 1% of SEOs focus on them. I know this because I have an ad agency that works with large Fortune 100 companies… and it doesn’t stop there, most companies no matter what size they are, don’t focus on these quick wins.

Quick win #1: Land and expand

They say the more content you create the more traffic you will get.

Do you want to know what the big issue with this strategy is?

Writing more content doesn’t guarantee more traffic.

Content marketing has changed. Writing no longer guarantees you more traffic because there are over 1 billion blogs.

With people cranking out so much content on a daily basis, Google now has the choice of what content to rank and what not to rank.

Similar to me, your top 10 pages are going to make up a lot of your traffic… and probably more than me.

The top 10 pages on my site make up 29.23% of my traffic. That’s crazy considering I have 5,171 blog posts.

With your site, your top 10 pages will probably make up over 40% of your traffic as you probably don’t have as much content as me.

So instead of spending the majority of your time writing new content, why not get more traffic out of the content you have.

I call this the land and expand method. In other words, you already have pages that are getting search traffic and rank on Google, might as well adjust them so you can 2 or 3 times more search traffic to those pages.

Best of all, this method gets results within 1 month for most sites and within 2 months if your site doesn’t have as much authority.

If you want to leverage this technique, follow “step 2” in this article where I break down how to land and expand step by step.

Quick win #2: Optimize for revenue, not traffic

Your goal is to increase your search traffic, right?

Well, if you are reading this blog it is. 😉

But as you get more search traffic, what’s happened to your revenue?

Actually, let’s rephrase the question… as my traffic climbed, can you guess what happened to my revenue?

search traffic neil patel

That traffic according to SEMrush is worth $1.2 million.

traffic cost

But here is the thing: as my search traffic grew by 123%, my revenue only grew by 12.5%… not a good deal.

Yes, you want to optimize your site for Google so you can rank higher. But what’s the point if it doesn’t increase your revenue?

You need to look at the pages on your site that are responsible for revenue generation activities and first optimize those so they rank higher on Google. You can do this by setting up goal tracking within Google Analytics.

Once you set up goal tracking, you’ll now know what pages to focus your attention on so that those extra visitors you in bring will turn into revenue. You can then take that extra revenue and reinvest it in your marketing initiatives.

Quick win #3: Optimize for clicks, not rankings

Question for you…

If everyone did a Google search and clicked on the second results instead of the first result, what do you think will happen?

Well, it would tell Google that people prefer the second listing and it would move that ranking to the number 1 spot.

To prove this theory, Rand Fishkin told all of his Twitter followers to search for the phrase “best grilled steak” and click on the 4th listing instead of the 1st.

best grilled steak

And within 70 minutes the 4th listing jumped up to the top spot.

steak rankings

It was so effective that the listing Rand Fishkin told everyone to clicked on skyrocketed to the top of Google for the phrase “grilled steak”.

google rankings

If you want to boost your rankings, it isn’t just about the content you are creating or the links you are building. If people don’t want to click on your listing, you’ll find that your rankings will continually tank.

And if people click on yours more than the competitors, than your rankings will skyrocket even if you don’t build as many links.

So how do you increase your click-through-rate?

Well you don’t want to tell your friends to click on your listing as that is a temporary effect and your rankings will only climb for a short period of time. You want to optimize your title tag and meta description to encourage people to click on your listings over the competition.

This will cause your rankings to climb slower, but they will stick once you reach the top.

I won’t bore you with the details in this article on optimizing click-through-rates as I have already blogged on it… just head over to this post and follow hack number 1. 😉

Quick win #4: Update your old content

Have you noticed over time that your rankings fluctuate? No matter how good you are at SEO and no matter how much money you have, there is no guarantee you’ll be at the top spot.

Do you want to know why your rankings drop?

Most people assume that it’s a penalty. But Google is very friendly (believe it or not), and their goal isn’t to penalize sites. Their goal is to rank the best sites at the top.

You know… the sites that users love the most.

Just think of it this way, if Google hypothetically penalized BMW for building backlinks and removed them from the index, what do you think would happen when people search for “BMW”?

People would be pissed that BMW isn’t showing up.

And they wouldn’t be pissed at BMW, they would be pissed at Google and they may not use Google again.

Google’s goal isn’t to penalize your site or be mean to you or tank your rankings. Their goal is simple… always put the site that is best for the end user at the top.

When your rankings tank, it’s typically because someone else created a page that provides a better experience for the term you were ranking for.

The way you fix this, maintain your rankings, and even climb higher is to continually update your old content.

If you have content that is old, outdated, or if your rankings drop, read this. It breaks down what to do step by step, and it will help you outrank your competition because I bet they aren’t updating their old content.

This is so effective I currently have 3 full-time people updating my old content.

You don’t have to get as crazy as me, but you should update your old content.

Conclusion

Money isn’t stopping you from beating your competition. The only thing standing in your way is you.

That’s ok though. We can fix that.

With a few mindset shifts and some quick wins, things are about to change.

I’ve never let my competition get in my way. I don’t care if they have more money than me or that they have been at this longer.

If I started my journey cleaning restrooms and picking up trash and eventually got here… you can too.

There is nothing really stopping you from winning.

So what do you think, are you ready to beat your competition?

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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Meet Cocolyze, the SEO Tool That REALLY Simplifies Your Work by @cocolyze

the best old-school spam linking tool there is today

Check out this new SEO tool which offers a comprehensive dashboard with rank tracking, backlink audit, and competitor analysis features.

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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Monday 29 April 2019

Social Media

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Before jumping into specific channels, it’s best to look at social media as a whole. While all the social media channels have their quirks and differences, there’s also a lot of overlap in how you approach them.

Should you even be using social media at all?

When does it make sense to make social media part of your marketing strategy?

How do these channels fit into the rest of your market funnel?

What are the trends sweeping across all social media channels?

I recommend getting a solid grounding in how social media works, then going through the different channel options to pick the one’s that are right for you.

Facebook

Facebook has definitely gone through a period of ups and downs over the years. For a long time, lots of businesses invested heavily into building their pages and audiences. Then Facebook completely changed how those posts end up in the newsfeed. The organic reach got so limited that Facebook became a “pay-to-play” social network by default.

You can still lead with a content and value-based social media strategy but it’s really difficult to get traction with paying to post your Facebook posts. Every Facebook strategy needs a dedicated budget to promote posts.

Even with the extra hurdle, Facebook is still the heavy-hitting social media channel. You can reach anyone on earth and Facebook’s targeting is extraordinarily detailed. You can get anyone and everyone that you want. Facebook is still the starting point for any social media push.

Instagram

Instagram has become THE social media network. It’s easy to generate content for, has solid engagement, and still has a true flywheel that you can build over time. As you build your audience, you can still depend on being able to reach them with every post unlike Facebook which became “pay-to-play.”

For any B2C brand, a thriving Instagram account is absolutely essential. I wouldn’t waste any more time before getting started:

YouTube

YouTube has gained a ton of momentum in the last few years. The search volume is almost as big as Google and the user engagement is off the charts.

The one major downside is how much effort and money that great video content requires. There’s certainly shortcuts and corners to cut in the beginning, but it’s always going to require more effort than some of the other social networks.

That said, YouTube is worth the effort. Use these guides to ramp up quickly:

Surprisingly, LinkedIn has become one of the hot social media networks lately. The engagement on LinkedIn posts are off the charts, easily outpacing Twitter profiles and Facebook pages.

If you’re B2B, I strongly recommend that you make LinkedIn a core part of your social media strategy. It’s too hot to pass up right now.

Pinterest doesn’t get nearly as much attention in digital marketing circles as it should. Yes, the Pinterest audience is overwhelmingly female. You should strongly consider making Pinterest a priority if your target market skews towards females and you have a highly visual product.

Check out our Pinterest guides to get started:

Twitter

Twitter used to be one of the heavy-hitting social networks. If you wanted a serious social media strategy, you had to have an engaging and active Twitter account.

These days, Twitter isn’t considered a required channel for a social media strategy. The half-life of tweets are exceptionally short, it’s really difficult to get them to go viral, and a lot of people have decided to avoid Twitter because it’s too difficult to use. While it can still be worth pursuing, it’s definitely no longer a requirement.

If you think it could be a good fit, these guides break it all down:

Other Channels

There’s always a new up and coming social media channel to start looking into. If you’re looking to push into channels that most teams haven’t spent much time on, start with Reddit and Snapchat.

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

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11 Ways Get Maximum Efficiency from Your SEO Team’s Efforts by @stoneyd

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Want to get the most out of your SEO team? Here are 11 steps to maximizing your team's efficiency.

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How to Improve Ecommerce SEO with User Generated Content [Webinar] by @lorenbaker

the best old-school spam linking tool there is today

Want to effectively sell your ecommerce brand on search and stand out from the competition? Then don't miss this webinar.

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

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How Negative SEO Shaped Disavow Tool by @martinibuster

may Google puke with FCS networker

he origin of the disavow tool can impact how you should think about it now.

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 26 April 2019

Holiday SEO & Marketing Strategy: Win More Traffic, Rankings & Sales by @wburton27

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Here are six key things to consider in your holiday marketing strategy.

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

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Thursday 25 April 2019

The Importance of Diversification in SEO Strategy by @AndrewDennis33

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Here are some different ways you can diversify your SEO efforts to earn visibility and organic traffic.

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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Wednesday 24 April 2019

SEO

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

Google is still the place to find answers to questions.

Search engines have changed over the years, and the barrier to entry has gotten a lot higher. When we started, all it took was a ton of content in order to get search traffic.

The game has changed.

Not only do you need a ton of content, it needs to be incredibly high quality, your on-site SEO and architecture needs to be polished, and you need enough backlinks to compete. You really do need all of it.

But the rewards are still well-worth the effort.

Across all the sites that we’ve built and managed, no traffic source compares to SEO in quality, consistency, and volume. Once you have it, it’s a persistent flood of traffic for your business.

Our playbook is below.

AUDIT

We always start with an audit on every site we touch. Whenever we skip this step, we always regret it later. The last thing you want is to spin up an entire SEO program, poor a ton of time and money into it, and then lose a bunch of rankings later because of core site problems.

Complete your site audit first so there aren’t any problems lurking just out of sight.

How to Score Your Website’s SEO in 10 Minutes or Less

How To Perform an SEO Audit – FREE $5000 Template Included

FOUNDATIONS

Next, go through the foundational elements of SEO.

You’ll find a lot of SEO “experts” claiming quick hacks or tricks to get higher rankings. Be careful with that stuff. It might work today but it seldom works for long.

Whenever starting an SEO program, we spend the bulk of our time focusing on the foundations.

The Proven Method to Ranking on the First Page of Google For Any Long-tail Keyword

The Secret to Learning SEO

SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Focus on First?

A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Any Keyword You Choose

The Psychology of Search Engine Optimization: 10 Things You Need to Know

How to Get Search Traffic from Google’s Knowledge Graph

How Google Works

Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2019

What SEO Used to Be Versus What SEO Is Now

How to Get Extra Organic Search Traffic with Google’s “Related Questions”

How to Create Content That Drives Lots of Organic Traffic

Quantify Your Results: The 14 Most Important SEO Metrics

10 Ways to Get More Traffic, Attention and Higher Rankings Through Social Sharing

5 Practical Steps To Improving Your Website’s Domain Authority

Augmented Reality SEO: What to Expect in the Future

How to Gain More Branded Search Volume to Your Website

A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit

The Step-by-Step Guide to Fixing Any Google Penalty

Don’t Get Fooled: 17 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Company

How Content Marketing Affects Search Engine Rankings

The Complete Guide to Keyword Research For SEO

How To Structure The Perfect Search Engine Optimized Page

How to Avoid a Google Penalty in 2019

What Matters To Google: Ranking Factors in 2019

A Guide For SEO’s In The Agency World

SEO Mistakes To Avoid in 2019

How to Build An SEO Plan From Scratch

Definitely read up on the best SEO tools, these will save you countless hours and instantly uplevel your SEO game:

The Ultimate Guide to Using Google Search Console as a Powerful SEO Tool

28 Browser Extensions That Make an SEO’s Life Easier

The Best SEO Tools the Pros Really Use in 2019

WordPress SEO – Everything You Need To Know

LINK BUILDING

No matter how good your content is, sooner or later, you’re going to need to build links.

Links turn an “okay” SEO strategy into an “industry dominating” SEO strategy. All the most hardcore SEO teams have a very deliberate and focused effort on link building.

Once you’ve mastered the basics and have a healthy site, it’s time to start link building.

A Step by Step Guide to Modern Broken Link Building

The Beginner’s Guide to Optimizing for Bing Search

A Thirty-Day Plan for Gaining 100 Authoritative and Relevant Backlinks to Your New Website

7 Reasons Your Outreach Emails Aren’t Getting Responses and How to Fix That

How to Combine PR with SEO for the Biggest Success

Why Link Building Is NOT the Future of SEO

4 Ways to Boost the Conversion Rates of Your Link Building

7 Ways to Make Your Brand and Content More Likable

How I Built 826 Backlinks to a Single Article in 8 Weeks

How to Create a Link-Building Strategy from Scratch

How to Leverage Link Blending and Stage 2 Link Building to Maximize Your Rankings

Here’s the Process to Help You Consistently Build 7 Backlinks a Week

7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid

What Is a “Good Link Profile” and How Do You Get One?

The Link Builder’s Guide to Email Outreach

How Many Links Should You Build to Your Website?

The Ultimate Guide to Content Link Building

7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts

Why And How To Build an Online Brand Through Guest Blogging

.Edu and .Gov Link Building Guide

Submission Backlinks Guide

Advanced ScrapeBox Link Building Guide

Grey Hat Link Building Guide

The Guide to Link Building Techniques

A Guide to Turning Images Into Links

The Quest For The Perfect Link

Relationship-Based Link Building Guide

A New Era of Link Building

The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2019

How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide

Types of Content That Attract The Most Backlinks

ONSITE / TECHNICAL

Lastly, you’ll want to get your onsite and technical SEO in tip-top shape. Most of these items are smaller details but they can make the difference when pursuing those last few rankings.

After you’re on top of all the other parts of SEO, work through all the technical details. That’ll keep you ahead of your competitors and give you that extra edge.

You Can Use 404s to Boost Your SEO. Here’s How.

Here’s How to Perfectly Optimize Your Infographic for SEO

How to Create an SEO Friendly Infinite Scrolling Page

Does URL Structure Even Matter? A Data Driven Answer

How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings

How to Retain at Least 95% of Your Organic Traffic After a Site Redesign

Demystifying SEO: How to Skyrocket Your Traffic Through Schema Markup

How to Decrease Your Bounce Rate

4 Steps to Making Your Search Listings Stand Out on Google

The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Your Next Post

The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO

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8 SEO Job Interview Questions That Cut Through the BS by @RyanJones

may Google puke with FCS networker

Here are some important interview questions to ask when hiring SEOs.

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

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Tuesday 23 April 2019

Pull Strategies for Getting More Visitors

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

So, you want to get new visitors to your site?

There are three fundamental ways to get traffic. No more. No less. You can pull people in, push people in, or you can use the product to get people in. These are the 3 p’s of getting traffic. What’s the difference in these methods? I’m glad you asked.

Pull
The first way to get visitors to your site is to pull them in. This is where you give them a reason to come to you. You entice them, incentivize them, and draw them to you. This book is an example of the pull methodology. You were drawn to us. We didn’t have to go find you online, but rather, you found us.

Push
As the name implies, this is a bit more aggressive than pulling. Instead of enticing people, you just go get them and push them onto your site. Someone may be wanting to watch a YouTube video, but not until they see your ad. They may want to do a Google search, but not until they see your paid result. You go out and find where they are online and you push them towards your product.

Product
The third way that traffic can end up on your site is through the product itself. If you’ve ever invited your friends to a new social network, then you understand how a product can be used to get new traffic. Everyone that uses the product gets more people to use the product.

Pull and push tactics are examples of growth hacking which hinge on the redefinition of distribution. If you know how people flow online then you can accurately entice them or strong arm them onto your site, but if you don’t understand where people congregate and what causes them to travel to other places (digitally), then you can’t effectively push or pull them on onto your site. The third P (product) doesn’t rely on a redefinition of distribution (like pull and push), but it relies on the redefinition of what a product is. Like we said in the first chapter, now products can play a role in their own customer acquisition, which is a very radical concept in the history of the world.

It is important to realize that all three P’s work really well in the right context, when executed by the right person. As you were reading about the differences you probably assumed that one method was better than the other, but they all have their place in the growth hacker’s arsenal. Many products actually employ a combination of push, pull, and product methodologies. This isn’t the time to get on a soapbox for a certain camp. Growth hackers are about growth, not just a certain kind of narrowly defined growth for a priori reasons.

The Fundamentals of a Pull Strategy

A great pull strategy is based on two fundamentals:

The cost of these tactics are usually measured in time or personnel, but you are not directly paying to get visitors.
These tactics revolve around providing something of value that entices people to visit your site. If you stop providing value then you’ll stop pulling them in.

Blogging

One of the tried and true ways of getting traffic to your product is through blogging or guest blogging. Blog posts are suited perfectly to send you traffic for a number of reasons.

Blog posts are keyword rich, and are easily indexed by Google, which aides an overall SEO strategy.
Blog posts have a compounding effect. The more you write, the more total chances you’ll have of pulling people towards your product over time.
Blogs are usually based around specific niches, so if you are guest blogging then you can tap into large swaths of your market with a single post.
Blogs are usually disseminated through RSS readers, so there is an inbuilt mechanism to deliver your thoughts to others.
Blog posts are great at educating people, and people that are informed about your product are more likely to move through your funnel.
Blog posts can position you as a thought leader, and people would rather use a product that has been created by an expert rather than a nobody.
Blog owners are always looking for new guests post, which makes this low hanging fruit in many cases.

Blogging is a no brainer. The only decision you have to make is whether to start your own blog or guest blog for others. The main reason to guest blog is that you don’t have to create the audience. You only have to create the post. Trust me, it’s easier to create a post than to gather the people together that are willing to read it. However, the main benefit to starting your own blog is your ability to have full control. If you build your own audience you have more flexibility over the content. You might choose to get more aggressive in the future with sending traffic to your product from the blog, but if someone else owns all your content then you don’t have this possibility. Neither answer is wrong as long as you choose for strategic reasons. Remember, you can always do both. Maybe you start by guest blogging but then transition to your own blog.

Whichever route you choose you must not make your blog posts an extended pitch for your product. You’re gently pulling people in, not begging them to visit your site. If you get too overt about your intentions it will turn people away. With a little creativity you can easily get click throughs without making your post feel like an ad. Always start a new post with a bio that links to your product (no one will begrudge you this), and try to link to your product once within the post, but only when it’s relevant to what you’re saying.

Also, the blog posts that get read and shared are the ones that tap into something emotional, trendy, educational, enjoyable, or surprising (amongst others). Take note of the kinds of posts that get your attention, and then reverse engineer them to inform your own writing.

Podcasting

Podcasting is another great pull tactic because audio has inherent inbound qualities. When you hear someone speak then you are given a window into their mind that is different, and sometimes even better, than reading their thoughts. Like blogs, podcasts have inbuilt distribution mechanisms (podcast listening apps), but there are differences between blogging and podcasting when viewed through the lens of getting traffic:

Podcasts are not easily indexed by search engines.
It’s easy to click a link in a blog post, but it’s hard to visit a site that is mentioned in a podcast.
Podcasts are fewer in number, and tend to have smaller audiences.

It is highly unlikely that a podcast will be a viable channel for traffic, unless you think very creatively about it. Here are some twists that you could try:

Whatever you do, go niche. You probably don’t have the production experience or the budget to compete with general interests podcasts. Instead, select a very narrow niche, and dominate it.
Don’t start a podcast with a goal of doing an episode every week. Rather, set a goal of 10 episodes total and make it more like an educational course on a certain topic that your market would love to learn. With beautiful album art and a great audio intro, people will find you in the podcast directories and get curious. Never promise more episodes, and tell them upfront in the first episode what your intention is.
Go on a few podcasts as a guest, and then use those episodes as a part of a drip email campaign in order to inform your email list about your product further, via audio, to increase conversions. Note: the same thing can be done with blog posts also.

Of course, it is possible to go the traditional route by creating a podcast that publishes new episodes every week, but there is something you must know. Podcasts require a lot of time to do well, and low quality offerings will not gain enough traffic to matter. Therefore, get creative and think like a growth hacker, not like a podcaster. Use their medium, but not their methods.

Ebooks, Guides, and Whitepapers

Part of creating an effective pull strategy is to use the unique makeup of your team to inform which tactics you try. Some people love the idea of doing little things on a very regular basis (like blogging, or maybe podcasting). Others would rather invest large chunks of energy at spread out intervals, and produce things that are a bit more monumental. This is a valid tactic, and large written documents have a number of advantages in terms of getting traffic:

Ebooks, guides, and whitepapers have a certain draw to them. It’s somewhat easy to ignore a new blog post, but when there is a new hefty document on a niche subject you care about, it’s hard to ignore.
Ebooks, guides, and whitepapers have a high perceived value, and you can ask for an email address in exchange for downloading them. It feels like a fair trade, and it helps you build an email list that you will eventually work through your funnel.
Ebook, guides, and whitepapers spread through social media very effectively when they are executed well.
As an author (even a self-published one) you are a thought leader of sorts, and people will want to use the product you’ve created.
Ebook, guides, and whitepapers can be written to specifically educate people about your product. Informed visitors are more likely to become members and users.

MailChimp has a number of guides which they publish for all the reasons listed above.

Infographics

Infographics can entice people to your product because they simultaneously display expertise and aesthetic taste. Visualizations are powerful tools, and they are spread using social media extremely easily. Adam Breckler, of Visual.ly, provides the following advice when creating an infographic:

Select a Good Topic

Pick something that is clever, exciting, noteworthy, or that stands out for some other reason. Just don’t be boring or irrelevant.

Find the Right Data

People sometimes assume that they have to create the data themselves, but often a simple Google search will uncover data sets that have already been compiled.

Analyze the Data

Look at the data that you have with journalistic integrity. Don’t bend the data to suit your needs.

Build the Narrative

Brainstorm what story the data should tell. You need to transform the numbers into a coherent narrative, and not just present them as a collection of facts.

Come Up With a Design Concept

Now it’s time to consider ways to tell your narrative visually.

Polish and Refine the Design

Put on the finishing touches and make sure everything is as high quality as it needs to be to gain the public’s attention.

Distribute the Infographic

You can distribute it using your own audience (email list, social media, etc.), or you can use services like Visual.ly which is a marketplace for browsing inforgraphics.

Everlane produced a couple of controversial infographics that created a firestorm online. Their infographics showed the typical markups that department stores charge for t-shirts. Since Everlane sells similar quality shirts at lower prices it’s easy to see how this infographic brought them the right kind of visitors.

Everlane Infographic Example

Webinars

The offline world has seminars, but the online world has webinars. These are very successful channels at bringing in new visitors for a few reasons:

Webinars are usually live, so people are forced to put them in their schedule, and view it as an event. A YouTube video can be watched anytime, but people must “attend” a webinar. When something is in their calendar they tend to take it seriously, and they take the information shared during the webinar seriously.
Webinars usually have limited seats, and this faux scarcity makes people feel like the content is exclusive and important. If you are important in someone’s mind then they are likely to move through your funnel more efficiently.
Webinars allow for interaction, and if someone gets to interact with you then they will have a connection to you and your product that will carry over into activity on your product.
Webinars educate people, and the more you give away in terms of educational value the more visitors will reciprocate in different ways.
A webinar can end with a special promotion of some kind for your product and this can drive traffic to your product.
A webinar can be done in conjunction with another company so that you can benefit from their audience learning about your product for maybe the first time.

Unbounce hosts something called “unwebinars.” Above is one they did with Joanna Wiebe in order to benefit from her expertise and her audience.

Unbounce Webinar Example

Speaking at Conferences

Conferences may feel like a very non-growth-hacker way to get traffic, but that’s just because you’re not thinking of it creatively enough. A conference presentation may pull in a few more visitors to your product, but not many, and the amount of preparation required is very high. However, a conference presentation creates a number of by-products which can be used to pull in visitors more effectively.

Slide Deck

If you’re presenting at a conference then you probably have a slide deck. This deck can be uploaded to slideshare.com and now you have a left over piece of collateral that can easily be shared, and it will bring people into you product for the foreseeable future. Sildeshare.com is a social network in it’s own right, and you would do well to invest in it.

Video/Audio

Many conferences will record your presentation, and this will allow you to put it on your company blog, upload it to YouTube, place it in email signatures, or use it during a drip email campaign.

Besides the by-products of a presentation, here are some other things to keep in mind:

Instant Retweets

I once spoke at a conference, and I ended my presentation by telling the audience that if they retweeted my last tweet that I would give them a discount to my product. I created a social media tornado in a matter of seconds.

Persuasion

Why did Steve Jobs do presentations? Because they’re are powerful. If you have the gift of gab, and can command an audience, then sometimes a few moments on stage can create a number of traffic sources for your product. Remember, growth hackers are right-brained and left-brained. Sometimes the ROI is fuzzy, but that doesn’t mean it is non-existent.

Rand Fishkin, the former CEO of Moz, has over 60 slideshares, and they have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, creating countless new visitors for his product at Moz.com.

Moz Conferences Example

SEO

In a sense, all the tactics we’ve covered so far are incredible from an SEO point of view. As you create content of various kinds (blogs, podcasts, ebooks, whitepapers, guides, infographics, webinars, slide decks, video/audio presentations) then the search engines are going to realize that you are an authority on your topic of choice, and you’ll rank high for certain keywords. However, there are really two kinds of SEO strategies. I call them content and code.

Content
By virtue of creating content, even if you don’t know how SEO works, you will be optimizing for it. Just keep producing and you’ll be using SEO to your advantage even if you don’t know what an algorithm is.

Coder
There are also things you can do at the code level which enable a solid SEO strategy. Are your links seo optimized with keywords? Are H1 tags properly labeled. Do you use Schema.org tags for specific kinds of content? Do you have an up-to-date site map?

If you can use both content and code to your advantage then this is obviously the best case scenario. However, even if you can’t do both, you should do at least one or the other. Search engines are still the primary way we navigate the internet, and to ignore this simple truth is very unwise. SEO is important, and for many businesses it’s the primary way they gain traffic at the top of their funnel.

Social Media

One of the ways to gain traffic at the top of your funnel is through social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.). There are actually so many spammy ways to do this that first I feel the need to tell you what not to do.

Don’t follow and unfollow people on a social network just to get their attention if you don’t intend to actually have some kind of relationship with them.
Don’t buy followers of any kind. They aren’t your market. They can’t amplify your message. They are a waste of money.
Don’t bother people. Ask yourself what kind of pings you would like to receive if you were in their shoes.

Here are some tips to help you bring in traffic to the top of your funnel using social media:

Engage with people who might actually use your product. Know your demographic.
Provide value at every chance. Answer questions. Give advice. Help them in some way. Don’t just take, but also be a giver.
Become a hub of interesting content, whether you produce it or not. If you gain a reputation as a great curator of content then people will pay attention to your posts and tweets simply because of your track record (even though you actually didn’t produce anything yourself).
Social media is a marathon, not a sprint. Social media usually will not give you massive traffic instantly. In fact, you should actually underestimate what follower counts and like counts represent. Even if someone with 100k followers retweets you it probably won’t give you much new traffic unless your demographics are perfectly aligned (but even then I’d be skeptical).
Social media is as much about customer support as anything else. Surprisingly, this can be a tool for new traffic. As people watch your stellar customer support happening in public then they will be more apt to try your product themselves.
Use social media to amplify all the content you created in tactics 1-8. Social media works great in conjunction with other tactics.
Like everything, creativity can open up new possibilities. Skittles once made their entire homepage a Twitter feed of a search for the word Skittles. They received countless mentions of Skittles on Twitter that day, and the internet collectively paid attention to their ingenious ploy.

Contests

Contests are an awesome way to drive new traffic to your product. A lot of people are actually unaware of how well contests work. Ever heard of AppSumo? Want to know how they grew an email list to over 700k emails? They started with contests. Ever heard of AirBNB? Want to know what they started doing this week to drive new traffic to their product? They started promoting a contest. Contests are good for small companies and big companies alike, so here are a few of things to remember as you create a contest:

Give away prizes that are meaningful to your audience. Every contest shouldn’t include a free iPad. Give them something that represents you. As an example, if you are AirBNB then give away free housing (which they are). This is important because if you are capturing their email address as a part of the giveaway then you don’t want a junk list that doesn’t represent your demographic. Just giving away iPads will give you an unqualified list, and you will have difficulty moving them through your funnel.
Giveaway experiences, not just goods and services. What do you think someone will remember more, an iPad or a trip to some awesome destination to see their favorite band? They might cost about the same, but the impact could be drastically different.
As an example, if you work for Uber, then giveaway a ride with some celebrity in an Uber cab. Now that’s an experience.
Have prizes for at least first, second, and third place. People want to feel like they have a chance of winning, and if you only have a grand prize then they might not play along.
Give them more entries to win the contest based on how much they give you in exchange. For an email address they get one entry. If they share a friend’s email address with you they get two more entries. For a retweet they might get three more entries. You get the point. Help them increase their chances of winning the more they grow your list and promote your product.
Run the contest long enough to gain some traction. Consider running it for a month. Anything less and you might not get enough entries to make the ROI work.
Make a big deal when you announce the winner and use this occasion as another event that generates noise online, and potentially traffic.

AppSumo ran a ton of contests over the years. They found something that worked so why should they stop? Also, notice how experiential their prize is.

AppSumo Context Example

App Marketplace

One of the channels for gaining new visitors which has arisen in the past few years is marketplaces. The Apple App Store is a marketplace. The Google Play Store is a marketplace. There are actually two kinds of app marketplaces, and they are different.

B2C App Marketplaces

If your company made an app for a consumer then you’ll probably be in a B2C app store like the Apple App Store. Here are some things to keep in mind if you are trying to get new users through this method:

Reviews matter immensely. Do whatever is necessary to not get bad reviews in the first place, and try to get people to change their reviews after they’ve left a bad one.
Screenshots are a window into your app so make them perfect. If you don’t visually entice people you can’t pull them in.
Think about your app’s name carefully. Will it be easy to search for and easy to find.
You cannot rely on the marketplaces alone for new traffic. There are simply too many apps now and you are a needle in a haystack. You must use the other tactics in this book also.

B2B App Marketplaces

If your product can be used for businesses then you might consider this relatively new kind of marketplace. Companies like Salesforce or Mailchimp now have their own marketplace for apps that integrate with their product. Here are some helpful tips concerning B2B app marketplaces.

These marketplaces are less crowded so they are easier to stand out in.
B2B marketplaces are apt to promote your product on their blog, in an email blast, or other ways, if you just ask them.
Sometimes B2B marketplaces will even pay you to build an integration with their product. Shopify recently had a fund that they used for this very purpose.
As with consumer marketplaces, reviews and screenshots matter, so don’t skimp on these.
You can include a “coming soon” in your description on these marketplaces which will list upcoming products that you will also integrate with. This is a great way to be found more easily on the B2B search engine since you will have a number of products listed in your description as keywords (this was one of the tactics that Wishery used, and they were eventually purchased).

The AppExchange is Salesforce’s B2B app marketplace.

Salesforce AppExchange

Deal Sites

In the aftermath of Groupon’s rise (and slow demise) there have been a number of deal sites created in their wake. For many niches there is a deal site which has a substantial email list and is willing to promote your product. The arrangement with these companies is usually pretty straight forward. You provide a discount to their audience, and in exchange they provide you with distribution. This is a quick way to get traffic, and given how easy it is to set up this kind of relationship it’s worth trying. Another unexpected side benefit of these deal sites is the number of people who will purchase your product at full price even though they came from the deal site. The internet is a strange place and this will happen more than you would guess.

Mighty Deals is a niche deal site that serves designers. It would be worth it to see if you can find a deal site for your niche.

Mighty Deals

Leverage Other Peoples Audience (LOPA)

Although this is built into many of the tactics already covered I still wanted to talk about LOPA explicitly. Basically, building an audience is incredibly hard. So if you can find any way to leverage someone else’s audience then you will be taking advantage of a traffic shortcut. Guest blogging is a form of LOPA. Guest podcasting is a form of LOPA. Even marketplaces are a form of LOPA. Here are some other ways that you can take advantage of LOPA:

Create a giveaway for a specific blog that has your demographic as their audience.
Reach out to group leaders on Meetup.com that run communities that could use your product, and ask them if they’d tell their group about you.
Offer free accounts to thought leaders in your industry and if they have a great experience they will share it with their audience.
There are literally too many possibilities of LOPA to even begin listing them all. If you are creative enough you will always have new opportunities for LOPA.

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