Unlike many of the old marketing channels that have enormous barriers to entry, every single business can use digital marketing to grow their business. Even better, the more you put into it, the more you get. If you’re just starting to explore digital marketing, start with our Beginners Guide to Online Marketing. It covers all the core topics that you’ll need to get going. If you only read one guide, I’d make it this one. When you’re ready to go deeper, we’ve put together hundreds of guides across the site, including the guides below that cover every aspect of digital marketing.
Marketing FoundationsDigital marketing changes fast but the fundamentals always stay the same. That’s why I always recommend getting a good understanding of marketing fundamentals first. Once you have completely internalized these core concepts, you’ll be able to quickly stay on top of the tactics as they evolve. It’ll also help you sort through the snake oil and find the advice that truly works. You’ll be reaping the rewards from these guides for years to come:
Marketing Tips and TricksIn digital marketing, the number of tips and tricks is quite vast. And with how fast online marketing channels evolve, it’s critical to stay on top of these. If all your competitors figure out a new tactic and you don’t, you’ll quickly get left behind. This is one area that you constantly want to review:
Marketing ChannelsOne of the most important marketing decisions you’ll make is which channel to focus on. I’ve personally worked with businesses that have made it to $1 million in revenue and above using every channel out there. No single channel is best, it’s all about finding the one that’s the best fit for you. What about going after multiple channels? Why not get the benefit of all of them? If you get big enough, yes, you’ll be in every channel eventually. But in my experience, businesses diversify across channels way too early. Especially with online channels, the level of competitive has gotten very high. It’s almost impossible to compete at the highest levels on SEO, social, and paid at the same time. Most marketing teams are only good at one channel which subsidizes the rest. Personally, I avoid diversifying across channels until I have a good enough brand that can give me an advantage as I scale into other channels. I’ll also start new channels when I’m starting to hit the limits of my first channel. We have entire sections devoted to SEO, social media, and paid marketing. You’ll find everything you ever wanted to know about those channels. These guides below will also help you with the channel that you decide to go after:
Marketing PsychologyMarketing psychology is one of the “first principles” in the field of digital marketing. Once you know all the principles and tricks of marketing psychology, every aspect of your marketing will improve. You’ll always know how to improve a campaign, strategy, and ad. This is one my favorite areas to go deep on:
Growth HackingMany of the biggest companies from the past few decades have utilized growth hacking to drive their explosive growth. Facebook, Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb, and countless others have built entire Growth Teams to accelerate growth at every step of their funnels. I consider growth hacking to be a subspecialty of digital marketing. Growth projects prioritize virality, finding ways to get users to drive growth, heavily focuses on the product itself, looks for exploits in other channels that can be scaled, and relies heavily on engineering along with design skills to ship projects. These guides will get you up to speed on how it all works:
Marketing DemographicsDigital marketing needs to be completely different depending on what generation that you’re targeting. This is one of those insights that seems obvious the first time that you hear it but has profound implications across your entire career. Your channel selection, brand values, products, and campaigns will all be completely different if you go after millennials compared to baby boomers for example. For B2C marketers, this is possibly the most important variable to keep in mind when building your overall marketing strategy. These guides will help you craft the right strategy for your target demographic:
Marketing CareersOne of the smartest decisions that I ever made was to skip the MBA and go straight into my marketing career. From the hands-on experience by leading marketing teams and all the marketing books, podcasts, and blog posts I’ve consumed over the years, I’ve basically given myself an MBA in marketing at a fraction of the cost. And I got paid along the way. To jump-start your own career, here’s a few of my favorite resources on marketing:
Small Business MarketingDigital marketing for small businesses takes on a different flavor. Mainly, budgets are pretty limited and the marketing needs to be a lot scrappier. There’s still plenty of ways to market your business. We go through all your options here:
Marketing ExamplesAll these tips are great but how does this really work in practice? What’s it really like? To see how all this works, we put together several case studies along with some lessons that we’ve learned from others:
via Blogger Digital Marketing
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Podcasts are growing in popularity. According to Edison Research, the podcast audience has grown to 90 million listeners a month, up 113% since 2014. An increase in listenership in this medium means you have a chance to spend advertising dollars, reaching new and current audiences in different ways. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you necessarily should. Spending part of your budget on a new method of advertising or convincing your boss that this is a good idea will more than likely cause you to pause. How do you know if spending money on podcast advertising is actually worth it? Will you see results? Even if other brands are seeing results, how do you know you will? In this post, we explain the reasons why podcast advertising is effective and help you determine whether it makes sense for you to spend your money on it. Why is Podcast Advertising Effective?Although it is currently difficult to track hard metrics for podcast advertising, there are still some compelling reasons why we believe podcast advertising is effective. Let’s dive into them below: There’s a Strong Host-to-Listener ConnectionIf you’ve ever gotten hooked on a podcast, it’s almost certainly in part because you felt a connection with the host. That’s because of what Glenn Rubenstein, the author of Podcast Advertising Works, calls “the voice inside your head.” According to Rubenstein, “If you spend even a short amount of time listening to the radio, an audiobook, or a podcast, you begin to make a connection to the voice you’re hearing. After you spend hours listening to that same voice on a daily or weekly basis, it feels just like you’re listening to a friend.” It makes sense. If you’re an avid podcast listener with a long commute, you could be spending up to 5-10 hours a week listening to the same podcast host. And who do you trust more than anyone? The people with whom you spend the most time and/or admire. When you trust someone, it’s likely you’ll value their recommendations more than anyone else’s. The idea behind this is the same as word-of-mouth marketing and influencer marketing, and it works with podcast advertising, too. When a host recommends a product, you’re more likely to remember it and purchase it. You can see the direct correlation between an affinity for the host and the purchase of products in a study done by Midroll, which found that 72% of people who have listened to a podcast for four or more years have made a purchase because of that podcast. Additionally, 63% of Midroll podcast listeners have bought a product they heard advertised on a podcast. Listeners are EngagedUnlike more passive forms of media like TV and radio, if done well, people will search for and subscribe to podcasts—coming back repeatedly for more. This is a unique opportunity to connect with your audience when they’re actively engaged and ready to hear your message. One of the reasons people are so engaged with podcasts is because they require your brain to create images of the story in your mind (unlike visual media, which provides those images for you). Emma Rodero, a communications professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, explains that “…like reading, listening to audio allows people to create their own versions of characters and scenes in the story.” She believes that listening, is more active, “since the brain has to process the information at the pace it is played.” Many of today’s podcasts also have staff, budget, and industry experience, and subsequently the ability to use sound effects and music in addition to just talking heads. The use of sound effects increases the level of mental imagery, causing listeners to pay more attention. People are also engaged with podcasts because they’re often listening to them when they’re by themselves—cooking, driving, walking the dog, or working out. When people are alone, they’re less distracted and more able to fully tune in. Additionally, wearing headphones while you listen creates an even more intimate experience. Add to this the fact that streaming audio is now easier than ever before, with newer models of cars becoming more connected with capabilities such as Bluetooth and USB cables. “Connected cars are a boon for the entire streaming audio industry, but they’re especially exciting for podcast makers, whose shows are perfectly suited to in-car listening,” Kevin Roose says, “Just as TV watchers can now choose Netflix or Amazon streams over surfing channels, radio listeners will soon have a bevy of on-demand options at their disposal.” You Can Accurately Target Your AudienceYour ability to target specific audiences through podcast advertising is one of the most compelling reasons to give this medium a shot. “I think that the great thing about podcasts is that there is literally one for everyone,” says Christine Merrill, Account Executive at Gimlet Media. “There are so many podcasts in the world, and there are so many different niches.” At Portent, we’ve seen this ourselves with podcast advertisements that we developed alongside our client MagellanTV, a documentary streaming service. MagellanTV has many different genres of documentaries available, which allowed us to drill down our targeting. We could have gone after any podcasts with available advertising slots—after all, most people are interested in documentaries. Instead, knowing that they have a specific niche in history and science, we started with podcasts that focused on the same subjects. In targeting those subject areas, we found that the podcast hosts were genuinely excited to work with MagellanTV because it was such a natural fit. In one instance, the host of a podcast we targeted accidentally doubled their time when talking about MagellanTV because they were so stoked about the streaming service (which they were able to try out before they recorded the ad). You Don’t Necessarily Need a Huge BudgetPodcasts are priced on CPMs (Cost Per Mille, or thousand listeners). A CPM pricing model makes sense—the more popular a show, the higher the price of the advertising slots. Initial prices may seem like a lot, but if you sponsor multiple episodes the pricing goes down, which is also better for brand awareness. Let’s look at a couple of examples. MagellanTV sponsored the History on Fire podcast, which gets ~150,000 downloads per episode, at a cost of $2,000 per episode. For one of our client’s who is in the development space, we placed ads with Developer Tea, which gets ~60,000 downloads per episode. We spent $1,500 per episode on ad spots. You may be thinking, but the audience size is so tiny, what’s the point? We’ve seen first-hand through our work that larger audiences don’t necessarily equal higher engagement. Hack the Entrepreneur, another podcast we worked with, gets ~14,000 downloads per episode, but we saw the highest time on site (10:39) and page views (106) from this ad. Within the same campaign, we placed ads with The $100 MBA. They average ~70,000 downloads per episode, but our time on site was only 4:17 and our page views were 52—about half of the engagement we saw with Hack the Entrepreneur. Don’t shy away from an opportunity just because it’s small. Think of it as you would keyword research. Even though some search terms have a smaller keyword volume, that doesn’t mean they’re not worth targeting; you can still go after long-tail keywords with smaller search volume if the user intent is there. How Do I Know If Podcast Advertising is Right for Me? Things to ConsiderAlthough podcast advertising is effective, that still doesn’t mean it’s right for every brand. Below, we’ll explain a few things to think about before you start setting aside a budget for podcast advertising. Challenges with Audience MetricsIf you’re pitching this to your boss, it’s likely they’re asking how you plan on measuring the ROI. With podcast advertising, the answer isn’t simple. Podcast advertising analytics is still very much in its early stages, so we don’t have quick and easy-to-read metrics like we’re used to. We also don’t have a direct way to track conversions. Some podcasts offer their own independent tracking, but there aren’t any consistent practices in place yet. There are, however, a few metrics we can start looking at now such as:
For a deeper dive into how you can track these metrics, check out Kat Shereko’s post, 4 Effective Metrics For Measuring Podcast Advertising. Although it is still challenging at this point, there is good news on the horizon. Apple Podcasts is investing in podcast performance insights and Spotify acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor, two data-driven podcast platforms. There isn’t an easy way to measure the efficacy of radio or TV advertising either, but advertisers continue to spend their dollars there. Don’t let the lack of current analytics stop you from experimenting with a possible new way to connect with your audience. We believe that podcast advertising analytics are going to get more sophisticated in the future as the medium continues to grow. Challenges with SchedulingYou need to be comfortable with planning ahead if you want to run a podcast advertising campaign. With the model we’ve been using at Portent, we start two months before we actually launch any promotions. Ultimately, this is dependent upon the popularity of the podcasts we’re working with. For podcasts with larger audiences, seeking out an ad placement spot on their calendar six months in advance may still not be enough time. We recently tried to place ads on the Syntax podcast for the same client we mentioned above that’s in the development space. Syntax has ~28,000 downloads per episode, but they were booking their ad placements out six months in advance, which didn’t give us enough time. Fizzle is another podcast that we worked with for the same campaign and client. Fizzle gets ~11,000 downloads per episode, and we were able to book with them two months in advance. How far in advance you need to book depends on the popularity of the podcast spots you’re going after. Overall, schedules and budgets vary greatly. You may even be able to haggle and get a spot at a lower price. Ultimately, we recommend researching what podcasts you’d potentially like to sponsor, reaching out to them, and seeing what they say. Once you start scheduling spots, you should stay organized by creating a calendar such as the one below: ![]() ![]() You can also get more information about pricing and effectiveness from this fantastic article on Ahrefs Podcast Advertising: $51,975 Spent. Here’s What We Learned. Types of Ad PlacementsIt’s important to determine what type of ad placements you want for your campaign. In podcast advertising, there are three different types of ads: pre-roll, interstitial or mid-roll, and post-roll. Pre-roll ads: occur at the beginning of an episode. We believe that mid-roll ads are the most effective because people are highly unlikely to stop what they’re doing and skip past the commercials. If the ad is at the beginning or the end, they may skip it entirely. Because of this, mid-roll ad placements are typically the most expensive. However, some podcasts will require you to use a combination of pre-roll and mid-roll ads. Having a mix of the two can work well. Pre-roll ads can give listeners that first exposure to your brand, followed by mid-rolls to explain what you’re offering and who you are. Running one mid-roll ad followed by multiple pre-roll ads can also work. Bonobos frequently runs a full-60-second mid-roll ad the first week and then follows up with a few weeks of pre-roll. This approach helps them keep their costs down while also repeatedly exposing the podcast audience to their brand since they know listeners usually listen to every episode. Advertising StylesIn addition to the different types of ad placements, there are different styles for interstitial or mid-roll ads. You’ll need to check with your podcast host to determine what type of ads they provide. Sponsor-produced ad: typically ends with a clear call to action and uses music, sound effects, or a voice-over artist. Host-read produced ad: delivered by the show host but is often produced and may include an interview with a sponsor’s customer(s). Host-read integrated ad: read by the show’s host organically during the recording of the show. If done well, the host-read integrated ad can be one of the most effective styles of podcast advertising because it feels so genuine. As we mentioned in the MagellanTV example, if you allow the host to use your product or service before they record the podcast ad, and it’s a good fit, they’ll be genuinely excited about sharing it with their audience. Is Podcasting Going to Be Effective For Your Brand? A ChecklistAlthough podcast advertising is successful for many brands, there’s still a lot to consider before you decide to bring the idea to your boss and spend your budget on it. We recommend asking yourself the following questions to determine whether or not you’re ready to give it a go:
What is your product/service? Are you clear about who you are as a brand?
Who are you planning on targeting through podcast advertisements? Does your target demographic listen to podcasts? What podcasts do they likely listen to?
Are you running an awareness campaign, or do you have an actual service or product for which you can give a discount or free trial?
Is the product or service ready for market? Is the price of the product competitive? Are you running any better offers, discounts, or lower prices elsewhere? Note: We do not advise this. If people do a quick Google search and find a better offer elsewhere, guess which one they will choose?
How much money do you have to spend? If you have a low budget, are there podcasts out there with lower prices, but highly targeted audiences that would fit your demographic? If you have a high budget, how much of it are you willing to allocate to podcast advertising?
When are you planning on launching your campaign? Give your budget and which podcasts you want to advertise on, do you realistically have enough time to launch? At the end of the day, authenticity is key when it comes to successful podcast advertising. If your product/service is market-ready and you can find podcasts that fit your niche, we recommend launching a few ads to test and see what works and what doesn’t. The post Is Podcast Advertising Effective? appeared first on Portent. via Blogger Is Podcast Advertising Effective? 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 OptimizationsThe 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 TacticsRegardless 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 PagesThe 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 TestingI 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 OptimizationWhile 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:
via Blogger Conversion Optimization If you’ve gone into Google Analytics lately to look at your website performance, you’ll notice a large chunk of traffic and conversions attributed to “Direct.” It’s tempting to think all those visitors came to your website because they either already know your brand, or saw some kind of offline advertising you did. But in this post, we’ll lay out a few reasons why that isn’t always the case, and what you can do to get a true understanding of your brand strength in Google Analytics. Some Background on “Direct” TrafficA very common misconception in digital marketing is that Direct traffic is registered when a user visits your website by typing your URL into their browser, or from bookmarking the site. This might have to do with Google’s definition of Direct source traffic, which is as “users that typed your URL directly into their browser, or who had bookmarked your site.” This is true, but not comprehensive. Direct traffic is actually:
That third grouping of traffic can create a black box for marketers. We hope to shed some light into that black box and provide you with a handful of metrics and reports to better show the strength of your brand through Direct traffic. Direct Traffic That isn’t Actually DirectWhen traffic arrives on your site that doesn’t fit any other Google Analytics channel and can’t be considered actual Direct traffic, we refer to it as “dark” traffic. Recently, Portent Analytics Architect Michael Wiegand did a study and found that an average of 17.6% of our clients’ traffic was dark. For example, if you’re getting Direct traffic to pages deep in your website, or to URLs that would be unnatural for someone to type into a browser, then that traffic is likely “dark” traffic. Depending on the page content and volume of landing page sessions, a bookmark may also not be likely. ![]() ![]() However, “dark” does not necessarily mean “bad” traffic. It simply means that Google Analytics cannot track where the user came from when they arrived on your site. The reality is that there is a growing number of reasons for this. Some examples of sources that GA sometimes cannot track are:
However, there are tools at your disposal to make corrections for some of these instances. If you know you are sending traffic to your site that is not within Google defined segments, you can build your own custom segment and capture some of that misattributed traffic. Another common source of Direct traffic comes from third-party booking sites, which can be fixed with cross-domain tracking. Mobile traffic also tends to generate more traffic than Desktop. Redirects from HTTP to HTTPS may also break the user path in a way that Google can’t track. Even the browser you use may contribute to what Source/Medium data is available to GA. These instances are where “Direct” becomes a catch-all for anything GA can’t attribute with a defined Source or Medium. Direct Traffic That is Actually DirectWhile those caveats might seem overwhelming, it’s not time to throw out your Direct traffic metric just yet. There is obviously a good portion of your Direct traffic that is truly Direct. Reviewing the landing pages of your Direct traffic is a good indication of what is legitimate. ![]() ![]() Traffic that lands directly on the homepage is likely real Direct traffic because that is what users are most likely to type into a browser. Direct traffic to other URLs with short page paths may also be legitimate traffic. In terms of visibility, this difference in Direct traffic to the homepage could be a good indication of how well-known your brand is to users on the internet. Big brands like Nordstrom will tend to see higher volumes of Direct traffic, where small start-ups don’t see the same level of brand recognition reflected in their Direct traffic. For example, we work with a large e-commerce retailer whose brand name is commonplace. Over the past quarter, 68% of their Direct traffic was to the homepage. For a smaller client brand, around 20% of Direct traffic went to their homepage. Direct Traffic as a Piece of the Brand Strength PuzzleNow that we have an understanding of the right components of Direct traffic to be looking for, how do we use it as an indicator of brand strength? To get a full picture of brand strength in GA, we recommend combining the following sources:
We’ve built this out in Google Analytics as a custom segment, free for your use. Download it and update the “Landing Page” and “Keyword” fields to capture information specific to your company. ![]() ![]() The next time you’re asked about brand strength, refer back to what we’ve laid out here to get an answer backed by your data. There are so many ways to gauge the strength of your brand but by using Google Analytics and understanding the appropriate indicators, you can be readily equipped to clearly answer that question. The post Is Direct Traffic an Indicator of Brand Strength? appeared first on Portent. via Blogger Is Direct Traffic an Indicator of Brand Strength? 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 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 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:
YouTubeYouTube 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 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 ChannelsThere’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. via Blogger Social Media Redesigning your website presents a significant risk from an SEO standpoint if not managed appropriately. What can be years of optimizations to your infrastructure, design, and content are going to be overwritten, and it’s hard to predict if the organic rankings you’ve earned are going to be swept away. ` If your redesign strategy includes taking SEO into account post-launch, you’ll probably end up in for a world of hurt. Here’s a look at organic traffic from a brand that came to us after launching a new beautifully designed site, wondering what happened to their SEO traffic. ![]() ![]() Don’t be that website. If your brand heavily relies on organic search to drive traffic, engagement, and conversion metrics, the risks from a redesign are real, and the impact can be devastating. But through careful consideration throughout the redesign process, you can account for potential pitfalls and mitigate your chances of a drop in organic search ranking and traffic post-launch. Follow along as I outline how we approach this at Portent. How to Approach SEO Strategy in your Next RedesignFor many websites, organic search is the channel that brings in the most traffic, and inherently, conversions- whether that be leads or transactions and revenue. Adding to that, organic traffic is the acquisition channel most at-risk through a significant website redesign. SEO isn’t a tactic to employ after the website launches to clean up loose ends. Approaching your redesign with SEO in mind from the very beginning of the project is vital to ensure your channel’s requirements are baked into the result. The key to preserving organic rankings through a redesign is two-fold: 1. Marketers must focus on minimizing risk pre-launch 2. Marketers must have a response plan to threats post-launch With that in mind, our approach to minimizing risk and building a response plan requires us to include an SEO-minded team member in the project from the very start, identify and address gaps in the marketing stack throughout the redesign process, and quantify the impact on organic KPIs post-launch. This approach lines up with three stages of the project:
Let’s explore each of these stages further. Get SEO Involved EarlyThe best way to handle potential SEO issues in a redesign project is to prevent them from existing in the first place. SEO for a website redesign starts long before the first line of code is written. Get your SEO team a seat at the table from the very first meeting. Their role on the project is to find solutions to infrastructure and content issues that may crop up. Providing a list of SEO requirements and expecting a designer or developer to take them into consideration isn’t enough. SEO must be hands-on throughout the process. Don’t wait for infrastructure decisions to be made for you. You may end up with a funky hosting plan, three subdomains, and two of them running on Wix. (We’ve seen it happen.) As an SEO, here are some of the questions to consider when kicking off a redesign process:
Find the GapsAs your new website starts coming together, you should ask yourself the question, “is this website more or less optimized than before?” To answer this, you need to conduct two SEO audits of the website’s infrastructure and content: pre-launch and post-launch. The goal of the pre-launch audit is to find all of the big problems that you can’t afford to launch with. Auditing a website that isn’t finished yet may seem premature, but it’s a great exercise; it allows you to correct any show-stopping bugs you may find. This audit is where your SEO team will do most of the work involved with a typical redesign:
The pre-launch audit should also communicate gaps between the two websites in a few key areas: Site speedDoes the new platform have fewer site speed optimizations? ContentDoes the new content satisfy queries better than before? Are the same Featured Snippets targeted? Site structureIs site navigation more or less descriptive than before? Do your important pages still have smart internal links? ConversionDo you expect the conversion rate to be higher or lower? Your post-launch audit should uncover any new bugs and make sure the website is being crawled and indexed correctly. Some important factors to review post-launch are:
Doing two thorough audits goes a long way toward minimizing risk. Any major threat to your rankings will be identified and hopefully addressed before launch, and everything else will be a known quantity. At this point, you should have a pretty good idea of which way your site’s performance will go. Measure the ImpactBefore you launch your new site, make sure your web analytics and rank tracking are recording reliable baseline data for your KPIs. Also, confirm the new website has your web analytics implemented correctly. You don’t want to launch with all of your conversion goals broken. I find these metrics and trends the most useful when gauging post-launch performance: Organic users by landing pageIf you didn’t change your URL structure, this report will be incredibly helpful in narrowing down performance gaps. Organic users by website sectionThis report will help you find problems with the design or internal linking structure for sections that aren’t doing well. Non-brand keyword rankingsFor each important landing page, add the non-brand keywords contributing the most traffic to a rank tracker. If any of these rankings take a dive after launch, you’ll know which topics you need to prioritize. Conversion rate by landing pageIf your sales copy or CTA links had a drastic change in the new design, this report would let you know which pages will need their offers reconsidered. Bounce rate and exit rate by website sectionIncreases in either after the launch might indicate usability problems with the new design for that section. Common SEO PitfallsThere are SEO problems so common to redesigns that I’ve seen one in nearly every launch I’ve cleaned up. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by making these mistakes: Unnecessarily changing the URL structureThe best way to map old URLs to new URLs is to not change them at all. Plus, you won’t break year-over-year reports in Google Analytics. Unless you have a good reason, don’t change your URLs in a redesign. Not redirecting URLs with backlinksIf you have to change your URLs for a new website, make sure you aren’t throwing your backlinks away. Redirect your old URLs to keep the link authority flowing into your site. Not checking robots.txt on launch dayIf your traffic flatlines after launching the new site, this is probably why. Make sure your robots.txt file is configured correctly. Using uncompressed imagesPlease don’t make your users download 4 MB of images on every page. Use the right image format and level of compression to keep your images crisp and as small as necessary. Introducing unnecessary subdomainsKeep your content in one place. Adding a subdomain to your site will split link authority and guarantee a migration project in the future. Always base a new website on a single platform that can do everything you need. Time to Go LiveEventually, it’s time to go live with your redesign. It can be a nervewracking time for every party involved, but at the end of the day, it’s going to happen. And while redesigning your website can have profound effects (both positive and negative) on site performance, there are ways to mitigate your risk through the process you take. Be sure to:
Sticking to this strategy can set yourself up to limit website problems that could devastate your organic traffic. The post Use This SEO Strategy for Your Next Website Redesign appeared first on Portent. via Blogger Use This SEO Strategy for Your Next Website Redesign Our favorite channel, by far, is content marketing. We don’t have to push people to become our customers, all we have to do is release amazing content and great prospects will come to us. For many us, getting into sales or paid marketing just as appealing as being able to help people while marketing our business. We get the best of both worlds. Not only do we grow our business, we provide a ton of value and solve problems for people along the way. It’s not all roses though, content marketing does have some downsides. The main one being how long it takes. To build an audience that loves our content, we have to invest a ton of time. To help you get results sooner rather than later, we’ve put together a huge collection of guides below that detail every step of content marketing. Content CreationCreating content is no joke. The first few pieces are always fun and exciting, then it turns into a grind. One of the most intelligent decisions you can make is how you approach content creation. Setting the right frequency, not getting burned out, using reliable templates, and getting the most from every piece of content makes it much more manageable over the long term. Before jumping in and getting burned out, go through these guides and put some thought into your long term content plan. How to Write 5 or More Articles a Week and Not Burn Out How to Create a Popular Infographic Does Infographic Marketing Still Work? A Data Driven Answer 8 Tactics to Increase Sales with Video Content EngagementWe all want engaging content. That’s the difference between a successful content marketing program and one that’s dragging along without getting results. If you spend the time to get really good at making each piece of content highly engaging, your entire program will light on fire. You’ll get endless shares, tons of word-of-mouth, and more links than you know what to do with. Engaging content is the cornerstone of any great content marketing strategy. The Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content 9 Tips to Create Highly Engaging Content How to Engage and Persuade People Through Storytelling 4 Ways to Make Your Content Gripping to Readers 30 Tips For Creating Content that Gets Shared and Discussed Metrics in Google Analytics To Help You Make Better Content How to Cut Your Bounce Rate in Half with Interactive Content The 8 Underused Components of Compelling Content How to Get 247% More People to Read Your Content Content Creation Tactics That Will Amp Your Content’s Reach Suck Your Readers In: 4 Types of Openings for Sticky Content Formatting Tactics That Will Double Average Time on Page Ideation / Topic DevelopmentAnother major sticking point for content marketing is the blank page. What happens when you completely run out of ideas? And how do we ensure that our ideas will resonate with our audience? Over the years, we’ve learned that it’s too expensive to simply produce a ton of content and hope for the best. These days, we use a number of processes and step-by-step formulas to quickly generate a ton of ideas that our audience loves. Feel free to use all of them yourself: 10 Tips To Help You Find Interesting Topics in Minutes 7 Ways to Find Better Content Ideas The Top 15 Ways to Come up with New Content Ideas Generate Clickable Ideas For Content Marketing InfographicsInfographics got really hot around the 2012-2015 period. It seemed like every infographic went crazy viral as soon as it was released. Granted, they don’t pop quite like they used to but a great infographic can still cut through all the other marketing clutter. Especially since most folks aren’t producing them anymore. 5 Ways to Get Your Infographic to Go Viral How to Enhance Your Content by Building Infographics ProductivityAlso take the time to dial in your personal productivity. With the volume of content that needs to get produced, any small productivity win pays huge dividends over time. The Best Time to Think and Write Creatively 18 Tools for Better Content Creation To Improve Writing Produce More Content in Less Time With These 6 Tactics Templates for Quick and Easy Content Creation 6 Unconventional Tips to Create Content Faster How to Double Your Writing Speed Without Lowering Quality QualityOne strategy has never failed me: when in doubt, improve quality. If you ever find yourself stuck with a struggling content marketing program, push on quality. Find a way to make it better than anything else that your competitors are doing. If you improve quality enough and maintain it for a long enough period, you will win. Discover Whether Your Audience Is Bored with Your Content 6 Teaching Techniques You Should Know 7 Tips to Take Your Content From “Meh” to Amazing Is Your Content Good Enough? 6 Questions to Find the Answer A Method for Finding Out Whether Your Content Sucks How to Take and Edit Photos Without Hiring a Professional Examples of Truly “Epic” Content: How Does Yours Stack Up? Scaling ContentOnce you’ve gotten a content marketing program to work, the next major hurdle is scaling it. Don’t take this step lightly, lots of folks stumble here. At this point, you’ve spent countless hours honing your content skills. You’ve gotten pretty darn good. But when you start getting contractors or employees to help, they’re not nearly as good. They’re also not as motivated as you were in the early days. And the folks that are really good? They’re either working on their own business or are too expensive. When you first start scaling your content team, go slow and perfect every part of your process. These guides will get you up to speed: 6 Skills All Great Writers Have (and How to Learn Them) The 15 Best Tools for Creating Content as a Team How to Do Curated Content RIGHT: A Step-by-Step Guide How to Create Content More Efficiently with Curation 11 Advanced Techniques for Repurposing Old Content How to Run Contests That Encourage User-Generated Content How to Leverage Crowdsourced Content to Grow Your Audience How to Grow Your Business by Doing Less Work with UGC VideoWith every year, video gets bigger and bigger. The best part is that it’s not nearly as competitive as other types of content for one simple reason: it takes a lot more effort to produce. Yes, video costs have come down tremendously over the years. All you need is an iPhone for great quality video. But the editing If a Picture Says 1000 Words, Then Video Is… Priceless How Text Drives More Traffic Than Video Content Written WordBlog posts, articles, PDFs, and emails all form the core of any content marketing strategy. Get good at these and you’ll always have a way to grow your business. A Guide to Writing a Compelling Article Introduction A Guide to Producing a 3,000-Word Article on Any Topic The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Scannable Content 12 Content-Writing Secrets of Professional Writers Learn To Write Content like a Pro Content MarketingCreating the content is one thing, spreading it is another. Yes, if your content is unbelievably good, it will spread on its own. But I wouldn’t recommend depending on this. I’d much rather plan for the worst and hope for the best. I do that by marketing my content and helping it spread. If I can kick start the content sharing process, then the quality of the content can carry it the rest of the way. Here’s all of our tips, ticks, and hacks to give content that little extra push. 8 Content Marketing Tricks Helped Dollar Shave Club Go Viral How to Use Content Marketing For a “Boring” Industry Create Content That Will Increase Your Traffic by Tomorrow 10 Tips to Make Content Marketing Work for Small Budgets A Guide on How To Create a Guide That’ll Drive 360k Visitors How to Create Content That Drives Sales 35 Content Marketing Lessons Learned 93 Content Marketing Tools You Need to Check Out in 2019 34 Content Marketing Tips Every Marketer Needs To Know Build Audience Connections with Content Marketing DistributionWhat about the nitty gritty of where to publish and feature your content? Should you repost content? Reshare it? What about sponsored promotions? We’ve broken down our recommendations on everything: Should You Repost Your Blog Content on Other Websites? Distribute Content Effectively Across Multiple Channels How to Combine Native Advertising with Content Marketing Leverage Basic Concepts of Sponsored Content to Boost Reach Amplify the Reach of Your Content Without Spending a Dime Create a Waterfall of Downloads for Your Ebook How to Repurpose Your Content Across Multiple Platforms Which Content Marketing Strategies Have the Biggest Impact StrategyThe best way to ensure results from your content marketing is by picking the right content strategy to begin with. There are quite a few strategies for content marketing, many of them work in different situations too. So take the time to research all the options and then pick the best one depending on your exact situation. How to Easily Add Gamification Techniques to Your Content 7 Ways to Ensure You Maximize Your ROI From Content Give Away Your Best Content, Your Business Will Grow by 290% How B2B Audiences Engage with Business Content Online How to Use Humor to Power up Your Content Marketing 6 Steps to Your First Content Marketing Plan The Future of Content: What It Will Look Like Create a Content Marketing System That Runs on Autopilot 7 Required Content Marketing Principles To Master 10 Quick Low Hanging Fruit of Content Marketing One Insanely Actionable Content Marketing Strategy How to Make Your Content Marketing Impossible to Copy How to Use Social Listening to Create Viral Content A Useful Framework To Produce Great Content, Every Time Should You Outsource Content Marketing? Is Your Content Marketing Profitable? Here Are 22 Metrics 3 Content Creation Strategies That Will Help You Prosper How to Influence Purchasing Decisions Get Your Boss to Invest More Money in Content Marketing This is Your Brain on Visualization 5 Simple Strategies For Monetizing Your Content How to Plan Your Content for Maximum Productivity via Blogger Content Marketing Fundamentally, you need to make money, or you don’t have a business. That’s actually the only true failure in business. No matter what happens, don’t run out of money. Every other mistake can be fixed. As simple as that sounds, there’s a reason why you can find over 90,000 business books on Amazon. Most of what we focus on here at Quick Sprout, is helping you grow your business and make money with digital marketing. This section covers more of the general business advice and expertise that we’ve compiled over the years. Everything from how to start a business to how to control your emotions. Regardless of your experience or role in business, there’s something here for you.
BUSINESS FOUNDATIONSLooking back on previous businesses and jobs that we’ve had, the biggest failures all stem from the same lesson. Get the fundamentals right and you can mess up just about everything else. Get the fundamentals wrong and it doesn’t really matter what you do. Have you heard the business saying “a rising tide floats all boats”? That saying refers to this exact lesson. Pick the right tide and everything works out. Pick the wrong one and you won’t get very far. Sounds obvious in theory but it takes a lot of experience and hard-won lessons to spot the subtle differences between a business with healthy fundamentals and a business that’s rotten to the core. Instead of learning these lessons the hard way yourself, learn from our mistakes. The following guides will show you everything you need to build a healthy foundation for your business: How to manipulate the law of supply and demand 101 Motivational Business Quotes 7 Lessons Learned From Running a Consulting Company 11 Business Philosophies to Live and Die By What I Learned from Fighting a 12-Month-Long Lawsuit 16 Tips for Naming Your Startup How a 23 year old turned $1500 into $128,000 in 1 year Why Most Business Partnerships Don’t Work Beginner’s Guide to Corporate Entities Do Business Like A Drug Dealer Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Write Business Plans How to Create a Company That Can Run without You How a Ferrari Made Me a Million Bucks 7 Business Principles That You Have to Follow How to Analyze Your Competition in Less Than 60 Seconds 7 Lessons Learned From Losing $739,135 In Bad Investments Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Startup Company Exercises That Will Help You Become a Better Entrepreneur Charge More for Your Products by Enhancing Perceived Value How to Monitor Your Competitors With These 10 Helpful Tools How a 21 Year-Old Created a 38.5 Million Dollar Business 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs 5 Ways Metrics Can Cause Bad Decisions How Spending $138,491.42 on Meals Made Me $992,000 53 Ways to Become a Better Entrepreneur 59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs 10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires Provide Better Customer Service by Implementing Live Chat How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500 How to Increase Profits by Analyzing Your Competition How to Increase Revenue Without Acquiring New Customers 9 Ways to Get Your Startup Funded How to Identify the Target Market of Your Startup Generate More Profits by Focusing on Your Pricing Strategy How to Write a Business Plan for Your Startup Keep Your Employees Happy While Pushing Them to Their Limits How to Turn a Failed Startup Launch into a Success Story How to Write a Great Value Proposition Business Card Ideas To Help You Stand Out BrandA great brand is like having a business super power. Everything gets easier. Every step of your funnel has a higher conversion rate, you get more traffic, customers stick with you longer, and it’s easier to recruit people to your team. A brand is one of the few aspects of business that impacts everything at once. Brands don’t just happen though, they need to be built deliberately. Then once you have a brand, you need to protect it. These guides will show you exactly how to build a brand for your business: How to Get Your Customers to Recommend Your Brand to Others 6 Branding Approaches You Won’t Learn in Business School How to Increase Your Brand Exposure with Public Relations How to Connect With Your Customers How to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business The A to Z Guide on Creating a Memorable Brand Manage Customer Testimonials For Brand Credibility How to Improve Your Customer Service By Getting Feedback A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Authenticity and Transparency Personal BrandPersonal brands, like business brands, have an enormous impact on your success. But the execution is a bit different for a personal brand. Some things matter much less (like logos) while other things matter a LOT more (like your wardrobe). We break down all the unique aspects of building a personal brand here: How To Create Your Personal Brand Vision How To Connect With Mentors To Build Your Personal Brand Be Yourself Because Everyone Else Is Taken How To Build Your Brand Through Outreach How To Define Your Target Audience How To Build Up Your Online And Offline Assets How To Get Free Press Coverage For Your Personal Brand How To Monitor Your Personal Brand The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand What Effect Does Swearing Have on Your Brand? How to Improve Your Online Reputation Why You Should Dress to Impress – The ROI of Fashion How to Become the World’s #1 Expert in Your Niche Personal Brand Building Hacks That Will Earn More Customers How to Launch Your Personal Brand if You Have No Credibility 7 Ways to Use Your Personal Brand to Find More Clients The Marketer’s Checklist for Establishing a Personal Brand Build a Million Dollar Business From Your Personal Brand 15 Things You Need in Place for Creating Your Personal Brand How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview A Process to Become an Influencer in Your Industry Daily Activities To Double the Size of Your Personal Brand A Guide to Using Live Video to Build Your Personal Brand MindsetWe’ve worked with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and hired hundreds of people in our careers. Do you want to know what separates those that succeed versus those that flounder for years on end? It’s mindset. Even if there’s an unlucky setback in the beginning, the folks with the right mindset always make it eventually. Sooner or later, they achieve their goals. But no amount of luck can overcome a poor mindset. Year after year goes by and these folks are still struggling with the same problems, never growing into their true potential. Any improvement that you put into your own mindset will have an immense impact on your goals. Why Being the Loudest Makes You the Weakest Why I’ll Never Live in a Rich Neighborhood… How Much Money Do You Really Need? Why Immigrants Are More Successful than You! What Should You Do if Someone Attacks You Online? Why Successful People Are Douchebags The 10 People Who Led Me to Success A day in the life of Neil Patel How to Be a Workaholic And Not Get Burned Out Tony Soprano’s Top 11 Tips for Success Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover 15 Little Life Experiments That Will Change Your Life The Two Reasons Why You Aren’t Making Over $100K a Year 10 Efficient Ways to Save Time So You Can Follow Your Dreams The Less You Know, The More Money You’ll Make Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful CareerWhether we’re entrepreneurs or working for someone else, it’s up to us to take control of our careers. There are reliable steps that anyone can take in order to have an amazing career. Focusing on the right areas, building a network, and attending conferences without wasting time will push you way ahead of your peers. These guides walk you through all of it: You’re the Reason Why You Don’t Have a Job Focus on what you’re good at, and nothing else! Why Consulting Is A Job Everyone Needs To Experience Got Screwed? Think twice before burning the bridge! Conferences can be a waste of time, they can also instantly uplevel your career. If you’re going to do them, do them right: Beginner’s Guide to Attending Conferences Is It Worth Speaking at Conferences? How to Speak in Public… Even If You Hate Public Speaking Also focus on building your network, it’ll increase the quality and quantity of opportunities that come your way: How I Got to Know Over 100 Millionaires and How You Can Too The 10 Secrets That Make Networking Easy, Fun and Effective How to Build Influential Relationships The Real Secret to Successful Networking SalesThe old saying that everything depends on sales may be a cliche but it’s true. Everything we do in our business is fundamentally a sales activity. Sell your co-founder on a strategy that you want to pursue, sell your team to get behind it, sell a potential partner on co-promoting a marketing campaign, sell someone on joining your team, sell you boss on how you want to accomplish a goal, sell a teammate on helping you with your project, sell a customer. Some of the selling is a monetary sale, a lot of it isn’t. No matter what role you have, sharpening your sales skills will accelerate your business and career. 7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them 10 Tips for a Killer Presentation Implement a Customer Referral Program That Drives Sales How to Upsell to Your Customers The Startup Guide to Building a Killer Sales Team 7 Ways to Gain Lifelong Customers after Making a Sale Sales 101: Change their mood, not their mind How to Leverage Your Brand’s Story to Drive Sales A Guide to Winning (Almost) Every Single Negotiation How to Generate Sales for a New Product Release 6 Effective Ways to Become a Better Sales Person Case Study: How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185% 8 Psychological Principles That’ll Double Your Sales What Interviewing 31 Sales People Taught Me About “Sales” How to Guide People’s Emotions to Drive Sales Want to be successful? Learn how to sell! Generate Recurring Sales by Implementing Subscriptions Boost Your Revenue Through Upselling and Cross Selling Increase Sales by Implementing a Customer Loyalty Program Increase Profits by Focusing on Customer Retention Strategies How to Increase Sales by Mastering the Art of Storytelling How to Boost Sales by Accommodating the Needs of Mobile Users Increase Sales by Personalizing the Customer Experience via Blogger Business 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. AUDITWe 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 FOUNDATIONSNext, 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 SEO vs. PPC: Which Should You Focus on First? A Step-by-Step Guide to Dominating Any Keyword You Choose Augmented Reality SEO: What to Expect in the Future The Psychology of Search Engine Optimization: 10 Things You Need to Know How to Get Search Traffic from Google’s Knowledge Graph 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 28 Browser Extensions That Make an SEO’s Life Easier The Best SEO Tools the Pros Really Use in 2019 How to Gain More Branded Search Volume to Your Website A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Content Audit The Ultimate Guide to Using Google Search Console as a Powerful SEO Tool 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 How to Build An SEO Plan From Scratch Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2019 WordPress SEO – Everything You Need To Know LINK BUILDINGNo 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 Advanced ScrapeBox 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 The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2019 How to Get Backlinks: The Complete Guide Types of Content That Attract The Most Backlinks ONSITE / TECHNICALLastly, 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 via Blogger SEO There is possible nothing else in marketing more magical than getting a paid marketing funnel to work. Think about it. You put $1 in and you get $2 out. At that point, you’re printing money for your business, getting bigger with every cycle of your paid marketing. Now the bad news, paid marketing is really difficult to make work. There’s a lot of serious players that are all trying to convert the same prospects. So ads get bid up quickly. It’s still possible to win but you want to take paid marketing seriously. First, go through our guide on PPC. That’ll give you a really strong foundation so you can compete with the paid marketing pros. Once you’re ready to go through some of the core tactics for paid marketing, read through our post 7 Ways to Get High Quality Paid Traffic with Rock-Bottom CPCs. For B2B marketers, definite go through our post on How to Generate Leads with PPC Campaigns for Your B2B Company. I’ve run B2B and B2C paid marketing campaigns and while there is a lot of overlap, there’s also some key differences that B2B companies need to watch out for. These guides will also be helpful when learning the basics: Google AdsGoogle Ads (formally Google AdWords) should be part of every ad budget. The best part of AdWords is that as long as there’s a few keywords that people use to find your product or service, it’s really easy to get in front of your ideal prospects. Since they’re searching for those keywords, they’re already aware of the problem and have decided to take some action to solve it by looking for solutions. Those are the prospects that you want to be in front of. For a small business, hopefully your niche isn’t too competitive. That means you’ll probably be able to run ads on Google Ads that aren’t too expensive. If you’re going after a really large market, keep in mind that other businesses have most likely bid up the ad placements really high. It could take some time before you’re able to compete with them directly on Google Ads. We have a number of guides on different parts of Google Ads to help get you up to speed:
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