The last couple of years have made a few things very clear. If you have a business online, you need to make it your business to be mobile-first. Second, your mobile experience needs to be smooth and frictionless if you want it to translate into dollars. Lastly, smartphone users are super fickle and despite downloading over 113 billion apps in 2018, users still regularly use only about 9 apps per day. So, you need to be on mobile. You need to be awesome on mobile. And people are probably not going to download and use your app regularly. What do you do then? Build something that combines the slick, user-friendly interface of a mobile app without actually creating an app. Yes, I’m talking about progressive web apps or PWAs. In the simplest possible words, a PWA is a mobile-friendly website that behaves like an app but doesn’t need to be downloaded to be used. Users have the option to save a PWA to their phone and launch it just like an app, but it’s totally optional. There are a whole host of perks that PWAs bring with them while overcoming the inherent disadvantages of building and maintaining a mobile site and a mobile app simultaneously. Let’s take a deeper dive to see how you can get the most out of PWAs. Speed, thy name is PWAThis is undoubtedly one of the most exciting features of PWAs. Businesses can target users who might be on a slow data connection or even those who are offline with a PWA by using mobile development best practices like caching content ahead of time, compression, and more. Why should you care about site speed? Because it directly impacts your SEO and your conversion rate. In January 2018, Google formally announced what many SEO experts suspected for a while that mobile speed would be a key factor in organic search rankings for websites. With that came the mad rush to mobile optimize websites, improve page load times, improve navigation, and the works. In the case of PWAs, pages load instantly due to pre-caching and allow users a quick and simple user experience. A definite SEO win. Research has shown over time that there is a correlation between site speed and conversion rates. A drop in site speed usually leads to a corresponding drop in conversion rates and vice versa. Source: Think with Google Source: One North Websites can enjoy vastly improved conversion rates with the faster page load times that PWAs offer. Cosmetics giant Lancome switched to a PWA in 2017 and saw a significant improvement in both speed and conversion rates. They experienced an 84% drop in time until the page is interactive and a 17% growth in conversion rates. Better engagementGoogle dictates the fundamental requirements that a website needs to fulfill to qualify as a progressive web app. A smooth user experience including easy navigation, timely push notifications, cross-browser compatibility, responsive pages across all devices are a few important requirements that also lead to a growth in engagement. PWAs mimic real mobile apps by allowing users to install them on their devices. With the app now on their mobile phones, the chances of interaction and engagement become exponentially higher, as experienced by Forbes magazine when they launched their own PWA. Users were notified every time new content was available via push notifications. With lightning-fast page load times, quick transitions and light page design, Forbes’ PWA managed to achieve the following:
In the case of a publishing site like Forbes, high engagement equals high conversions, all thanks to their new PWA. We know that website engagement metrics like session duration, click-through rates, and bounce rates have a direct impact on search rankings. As Larry Kim demonstrates here, time on site has a definite correlation with your organic search rankings. The higher the session duration, the higher your likely ranking on Google. Source: Medium You can say hello to page one on Google, all thanks to PWAs and their superior website engagement rates. It’s all about the URLsProgressive web apps truly embrace SEO best practices in every sense of the term. From clear and concise meta descriptions to adding Schema.org data for better indexing and parsing of site data by search bots; a search-optimized website is more likely to make the PWA cut than others. PWAs don’t require different “mobile.site.com” types of URLs to offer a great experience on mobile devices. They’re automatically configured to provide a consistent experience, no matter what the device. Another bonus is that PWAs are necessarily HTTPS enabled. Not only does this bump up your site on organic search results but also reassures users about the security on your site leading to lower bounce rates, higher click rates, and likely higher conversion rates. Each page comes with its own unique URL, making even deeply embedded pages easily crawlable and discoverable by search engines. Unique URLs for each page also makes sharing pages on social media and other sites much easier, not to mention more transparently trackable. With pre-caching in place using service workers, all URLs on PWAs load even when your device is offline, empowering users who operate on older devices or poor network connections. In closingAs users evolve and express their preferences more clearly, it is up to businesses to ensure that they pick up on these signals and adapt to stay relevant to their target audience. Today’s user is telling us that they expect a fast and frictionless journey on their mobile devices, without being forced to download an app for this superior user experience. Time to pick up on those cues and invest in PWAs that combine ease of the mobile web with the speed and user-friendliness of a mobile app. Two for the price of one is what you get with PWAs. So when are you going to build yours? Rohan Ayyar is Regional Marketing Manager at SEMrush. He can be found on Twitter @searchrook. The post Progressive web apps (PWAs) for SEO: Benefits, stats, examples appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/02/how-progressive-web-apps-pwas-for-seo-benefits-stats-examples/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184601438285
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Power words are like a “cheat code” for giving your writing an emotional punch. Sprinkle in a few, and you can instantly transform your writing from dull and boring to sizzling with personality. And the best part: You can use them anywhere. If you’re writing an article or essay, you can use power words to hook readers. If you’re creating a marketing piece, you can use power words to boost your conversion rate. Even in your personal life, using power words can make you seem strong or powerful. It’s strange that a certain type of word can have such a profound effect, but they do, and here’s why: Emotion. The more emotion your writing makes readers feel, the more engaged they will be. Power words are a shortcut to sparking that emotion. And in this post, you’ll learn how to use them like a kung fu master. Specifically:
Let’s jump in. What are Power Words?Power words are persuasive, emotional words that trigger a positive or negative response. They can make us feel scared, encouraged, aroused, angry, greedy, safe, or curious. Authors, copywriters, and content marketers use “power words” to spice up their content and compel audiences to take action. Clear as mud? Let’s deconstruct an example from the great Winston Churchill. All the power words are underlined:
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Inspiring, right? Well, there was a lot on the line. Under attack from Germany, Britain was fighting for its survival, and somehow, someway, Churchill had to find a way to inspire his countrymen to greatness. He chose words. Or, to be more accurate, power words. Each underlined word makes the audience feel something. In this case, Churchill intermixes words that cause fear, such as “struggle,” “tyranny,” and “terror,” with words that cause hope, such as “strength,” “God,” and “victory.” The last, in particular, is repeated over and over, practically drilling the emotion into the minds of the audience. It’s no accident. Power Words = Emotional Words Packed with PersuasionSmart speakers, as well as their speechwriters, sprinkle their speeches with carefully-chosen power words drenched in sensory details, drawing the audience from one emotion to another as skillfully as any novelist or screenwriter. And it goes beyond speakers and storytellers. Emails, resumes, blog posts, sales copy, and proposals are all designed to influence the reader in some way. You want to pass along information, yes, but you also want the reader to feel a certain way about that information. Maybe you want to impress them, get them excited, make them cautious, get them angry, encourage them to keep going, or any number of emotions. The better a job you do at making them feel, the more influential you are, and the better your chances of getting what you want. So… Looking for a quick way to give your writing more punch? Maybe add a little personality or pizzazz — that extra little “oomph” that makes your reader pay attention? Want to bring your ideas to life, to make them take up residence in the mind of the reader, lurking in the background, tugging, pulling, and cajoling their emotions until they think and feel exactly as you want? Then you need to infuse your content with power words. The 7 Different Types of Power Words
We’ve organized our power words into seven different types, which all accomplish the same goal: They inspire emotion in your reader. Let’s go over each type and see why they work. 1. Fear Power WordsLet’s do a little experiment. Just for a moment, stop reading this post, turn on the television, and go to a major news channel. Watch it for five minutes, listening for the words below. Chances are, you’ll hear dozens of them. Here’s why: Fear is without a doubt the most powerful emotion for grabbing and keeping an audience’s attention. To make sure you don’t change the channel, news networks load up with fear words, making you worry you might miss something important. Granted, you can overdo it, but in my opinion, most writers don’t use these types of words nearly enough. They really do connect with people. How to Crank Up Emotion with Fear WordsHere’s an example of a blog post headline here at Smart Blogger that utilizes three different fear words: Open it and you’re greeted by this fear-packed introduction:
I was in agony.
Waves of pain unimaginable shot down my spine, causing every muscle in my body to contract as if I’d been shocked with 20,000 volts of electricity. My back arched up at an unnatural angle. My arms and legs began to shake. One moment, I was on a webinar talking to a few hundred people about traffic, walking them through exactly how to start a blog and make it popular. The next, everything went dark. I was still conscious, but just barely. Pretty effective, right? If you’d like to sprinkle fear power words into your writing, here are a bunch to get you started:
2. Encouragement Power WordsLet’s face it. When they’re reading, most people aren’t exactly bouncing off the walls with energy and enthusiasm. They’re probably bored, maybe a little depressed, and almost definitely tired. And they’re looking for something, anything, that’ll wake them up and make them feel better. The good news? Your writing can do that for them. How to Crank Up Emotion with Encouragement WordsHere’s an example email from Mirasee: With two encouraging words — life-changing and magic — in one subject, it’s an email that stands out in most inboxes. Want to give your readers a pep talk and get them charged up again? Want to encourage them? Use these power words:
3. Lust Power WordsLike it or not, lust is one of the core human emotions. Just look at the men’s and women’s magazines in the checkout aisle, and you’ll see what I mean. Nearly every headline on the cover is either blatantly or indirectly about sex. And it works, not just for men’s and women’s magazines, but for anything. As a writer, you can use words that inspire lust to make almost anything intriguing. How to Crank Up Emotion with Lust WordsSee if you can spot the lust words in this headline from Cosmopolitan: Okay, the orange underlines probably give it away, but my hunch is you didn’t need them. Power words like captivating and love jump off the page. And if you use them properly, they can stir all sorts of emotions in your readers’ heads. Here’s a lascivious list to get you started:
4. Anger Power WordsAs writers, sometimes our job is to anger people. Not for the fun of it, mind you, but because someone is doing something wrong, and the community needs to take action to correct it. The problem is, with wrongdoing, most people are pretty apathetic — they’ll wait until the situation becomes entirely intolerable to do anything, and by then, it’s often too late. So, we have to fan the flames. How to Crank Up Emotion with Anger WordsThe authors of this Forbes headline don’t pull any punches: I didn’t realize some people get angry over business jargon, but apparently it’s a thing. And this headline, undoubtedly, had such people frothing at the mouth. If you want to connect with people’s anger and slowly but surely work them into a frenzy, use the power words below. Just be careful who you target. Lawyers can eat you alive if you pick on the wrong person. ?
5. Greed Power WordsThe legendary copywriter Gary Halbert once said, “If you want people to buy something, stomp on their greed glands until they bleed.” Graphic, yes, but also true. Skim through good sales copy, and you’ll find a lot of these power words. Many of them are so overused they’ve become cliché, but that doesn’t stop them from working. The truth is, nearly every human being on the planet is interested in either saving or making money. How to Crank Up Emotion with Greed WordsIts explicit and implicit use of greed words makes this popular book from Dave Ramsey a great example: “Money” is hard to miss — it’s probably the ultimate greed word and it’s sitting there in capital letters. But a title like “Total Money Makeover” also implies another greed word (even though it doesn’t directly state it): money-saving. (It also gets bonus points for using the safety power word “proven”, which we’ll discuss in a moment.) If you want to stomp on your readers’ greed glands, use these power words:
6. Safety Power WordsGreed isn’t the only emotion you want buyers to feel. You also want to make them feel safe. They need to trust both you and your product or service. They need to have confidence you’ll deliver. They need to believe they’ll get results. Of course, building that kind of trust starts with having a quality brand and reputation, but the words you use to describe yourself and your product or service also matter. How to Crank Up Emotion with Safety WordsOn the landing page for one of our Smart Blogger courses, we use power words to make sure our customers feel safe: In addition to “legitimate” and “guaranteed” in the screenshot above, our landing page is sprinkled with numerous safety words:
They work for us, and they can work for you. Help your customers feel safe by using as many of these power words as possible:
7. Forbidden Power WordsRemember when you were a kid, and someone told you NOT to do something? From that point on, you could think about little else, right? The truth is, we’re all fascinated by the mysterious and forbidden. It’s like it’s programmed into our very nature. So why not tap into that programming? How to Crank Up Emotion with Forbidden WordsThis Ahrefs article tempts you with its headline: What’s the “secret”? Only one way to find out. Whenever you want to create curiosity, sprinkle these power words throughout your writing, and readers won’t be able to help being intrigued:
Now that we’ve looked at the different types of power words (and gone over a few quick examples), let’s go over all the different places you can use them: Power Words in Action: 14 Places Where Strong Words Can Help You
1. Using Power Words in HeadlinesAny blogger who’s been in the game for a while knows the headline is the most important part of writing your blog post. Its purpose, after all, is to entice the reader to read the rest of your content. If your headline fails to get attention, potential readers will ignore it when it shows up in their social media feed. And just one or two power words in your headline is usually enough to make it stand out. Just look at this headline from BuzzFeed: The word “Unveiled” makes it feel like a secret is being exposed, and the word “Breathtaking” makes you curious to see what the photo looks like. Here’s another example from BoredPanda: People generally love anything adorable, so this headline will easily catch attention. (The fact that it refers to snakes will only make people more curious.) The headline then drives it home by using the powerful verb “Conquer.” Here’s one from BrightSide: While one or two power words are often enough, this headline proves you can use more when it fits. This headline has four powerful words, but they feel natural in the headline, which keeps it from feeling like over-the-top clickbait. Last one: This headline from our How to Make Money Writing: 5 Ways to Get Paid to Write in 2019 post incorporates two greed words: “money” and “get paid.” It’s one of our most-popular posts, and its headline’s use of power words is a big reason why. 2. Using Power Words in SubheadsToo many writers overlook the value of subheads, which is a mistake. Once people click on your headline, most will scan the post first to see if it looks worthy of their attention. Adding some power words to your subheads is a good way to make your post look like an interesting read. For example, here are three subheads from our post on E-book mistakes: See how the power words in these subheads grab your attention and make you want to read the text that follows? Adding one or two power words to your subheads will compel readers to stick around longer, which will increase your dwell time — a big deal in Google’s eyes. 3. Using Power Words in Email Subject LinesHaving an email list is of little use if only a handful of readers bother to open your emails. And these days, most people’s inboxes are flooded, so they’re selective in which emails they open. You can stand out in their inbox and raise your open rates by including power words in your subject lines. Just look at this one from Ramit Sethi: If this subject line would’ve read “The rules of learning,” do you think it would be as appealing? The word “unspoken” is what makes it interesting. Here’s another one from Cal Fussman: Both “Triumph” and “Tragedy” are powerful words full of emotion. And finally, here’s a good example from AppSumo: The phrase “Unleash the power” makes you feel this email is hiding something incredibly powerful inside. See how that works? When you send out emails to your list, try to add a power word to your subject line so it stands out in readers’ inboxes. 4. Using Power Words in Opt-In BoxesAs a blogger, one of your main goals is to grow a large and engaged readership, and the best way to do it is by converting readers into subscribers. That means — unless you’re using a blogging platform like Medium which doesn’t allow them — you should have opt-in forms scattered across your website. You can place them on your homepage, at the end of your posts, in your sidebar, in a popup, or anywhere else. But no matter where you place them, your opt-in boxes must catch people’s eye and make them want to share their email address with you. Because they won’t just give it away to just anyone. (Remember, their inboxes are already flooded, so they’re not necessarily eager to get even more emails.) Fortunately, you can use power words to make your offer more enticing. As an example, here’s an old popup from Cosmopolitan: This popup had power words everywhere, but it avoided feeling like overkill. I bet it converted like crazy. Here’s a slightly more subtle example from Betty Means Business: It’s understated, but still quite effective. Again, you don’t have to overdo it with the power words on these. A little can go a long way. Here’s one final example from Renegade Planner: In short: If you’re not using power words in your opt-in boxes, you’re missing out. Big time. 5. Using Power Words on Your HomepageYour homepage is the face of your website and it’s usually one of the most visited pages. Many people who visit your website will see this page first, so you want it to make a good first impression. Some people use their homepage to promote their email list, others use it to promote one of their products, and others use it as a red carpet — welcoming new visitors and explaining what their site is all about. In any case, your homepage is a good spot to add a few power words, as it can determine whether people stay (and take the action you want them to take) or leave (never to return). Look at this value proposition on the homepage for Nerd Fitness: “Nerds,” “Misfits,” and “Mutants” are unusual power words that work well for the audience Nerd Fitness is targeting. These words immediately separate it from all the other fitness blogs out there. But they push it even further with “Strong,” “Healthy,” and “Permanently.” Here’s another value proposition from MainStreetHost’s homepage: It’s quite minimal, isn’t it? They just wrote down three power words and follow it up with a service they provide. Of course, you don’t have to limit your use of power words to the top of your homepage. You can use it in other parts of the homepage too, as Ramit Sethi does here in his list of what you’ll get when you sign up for his email list: Go look at your homepage now and see if you can find any areas you can spruce up with some power words. 6. Using Power Words in Business Names/Blog NamesHaving a forgettable name is poison to your website’s growth. So when you start a blog, you want to make sure you have a name people can easily recall. If you haven’t chosen your blog name yet (or if you’re thinking about rebranding), you should use a power word to give it some punch. It’ll make you stand out from all the boring, forgettable brands out there. Just take a look at the collection of blog names below and see how well they’ve incorporated power words: 7. Using Power Words in Product NamesJust like you can use power words to spruce up your blog name, you can also use them to make your product names pack more of a punch. It can make the difference between your potential customers thinking, “Ooh, this product sounds cool!” and them thinking, “Meh.” Just check out this subscription product from Nerd Fitness: It has such a powerful name that you’d almost want to sign up without learning anything else about it. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a community of rising heroes? Here’s another good example from Pat Flynn: It’s a powerful name for his podcasting course that instantly informs you of the benefit. So if you’re about to launch a product (or if you’ve launched a product with a tepid name), consider giving it a power word to make it pack a punch. 8. Using Power Words on Sales PagesYou can also use power words to spruce up your sales pages and make them more effective at selling your products or services. They will grab people’s attention when they arrive on the page, they will keep their attention as they scroll down, and they’ll help seduce readers before they reach your “buy” button. Just look at this headline on Ramit Sethi’s sales page for his product 50 Proven Email Scripts (which also has a power word in its name): And as you scroll down, you see he keeps using power words throughout his sales page. His headline is followed by emotion-packed subheads: And he even uses power words in his guarantee: 9. Using Power Words in TestimonialsPower words are also tremendously effective in testimonials. Of course, I’m not suggesting you change people’s testimonials to include power words. But you can certainly select the ones that already use them to great effect. Just look at this example from Betty Means Business: Or look at this one from Farideh’s blog: And here’s another example from Renegade Planner: All these testimonials will lend extra credibility and excitement due to their power words and phrases. 10. Using Power Words in Bullet ListsMany sales pages include a list of benefits of the product they’re selling. Many opt-in forms include a list of reasons you should sign up to their email list. You can use power words in these lists to inspire more excitement in your reader as they read through them. Here’s one example from Ramit Sethi’s sales page for his How to Talk to Anyone course: And here’s another example from an opt-in form on Restart Your Style: Without these power words, these list wouldn’t convince nearly as many readers to buy or subscribe. 11. Using Power Words in Button CopyYep, you can use power words in your button copy too — even if you only have a few words you can fit in there. One of the most common power words used in buttons is “Free” (as in the example below): But you can be more creative with buttons than you might think. Takes this button from the sales page for the book The Renegade Diet: “Immediate,”,“Money Back,” and “Guarantee” are all incredibly powerful words, and the author manages to squeeze them all into one button. Here’s an example from Tim Ferris: He could’ve used “Send Me the List” as most people would do, but “Unlock” makes it sound a lot more intriguing — like you’re getting access to something that’s been kept hidden away. Now take a look at the buttons on your site. Do you see any opportunities to spruce them up with a power word? 12. Using Power Words in Author BiosYour author bio is another extremely important part of your marketing. When you guest post for another blog (or write an article as a freelancer), your author bio has the difficult job of making readers want to know more about you so they click through to your site. That means your author bio needs to spark attention and interest. And you usually only get three sentences, so you need to carefully consider the words you use. As an example, here’s the author bio from Henneke Duistermaat in her post on overcoming writer’s block: Henneke’s author bio is full of power words. It shows her uniqueness and makes her stand out from other copywriters. You can tell she has carefully picked each word for maximum impact. Here’s another example from Sarah Peterson’s post on blog ads: She opens strong immediately by mentioning her guides are insanely useful. And just the name of her report alone is full of power words: “Free,” “Reveal,” and “Begging.” Makes you want to get your hands on that report, doesn’t it? 13. Using Power Words on YouTube VideosIf you’re publishing videos on YouTube and you want to get more views, you should use power words in your titles. All the biggest YouTube channels do this. They understand most of their views will come from their subscribers finding them in their feeds, and from people finding them in the sidebar of other videos. In both cases, you’re competing with many other videos for their attention. If you want your video to stand out and be the one they choose to watch, your title has to be captivating. See how Philip DeFranco does it below: “Disgusting,” “Punishment,” and “Controversy” are all attention-grabbing words (and that’s besides the attention-grabbing names of Brock Turner, Star Wars, and Kim Kardashian). Note also how he has capitalized “Disgusting.” It’s another smart trick many YouTube channels use to stand out more in YouTube’s lists of video suggestions. Style vlogger Aaron Marino often does it as well: By capitalizing the power words “Don’ts” and “Stupid,” his title catches a lot more attention (as you can see for yourself by the millions of views it’s received). 14. Using Power Words in Book TitlesIf you’re interested in writing your own book, adding power words to your titles will help it sell better. With all the competition in the book market these days, you need a title that grabs people’s attention and makes them want to peek inside. Here are a few quick grabs from Amazon’s list of bestsellers in the self-help niche: I’m sure you’ve seen this title before. You might say Stephen Covey’s use of power words in his title has been highly effective. (See what I did there?) Here’s another: Mark Manson’s bestselling title is packed with power. The power word “Subtle” juxtaposes well with the F-bomb in the title, and his use of “Counterintuitive” will spark some interest as well. One more: Lastly, Jen Sincero’s encouraging book title makes you want to flip it open and read it in one go. The use of “Badass” alone will make it stand out in the self-development section, but her use of “Greatness” and “Awesome” in the subtitle truly seals the deal. 600+ Power Words and Phrases to Start Using ImmediatelyWe’re not done just yet. Before we wrap things up, here are the 7 types of power words in one ginormous list. It’s an ever-growing, definitive resource for anyone looking to boost the emotion of their writing with powerful words. Bookmark it, print it, and share it with the writers in your life:
Go Ahead and Tell Me. What Powerful Words Did I Miss?They’re known by many names… Emotion words. Good words. Strong words. Powerful words, creative words, fancy words, sensory words, trigger words, smart words, feeling words, descriptive words, impactful words, and even — yes, seriously — awesome words. But whatever you call them; smart, attractive people such as yourself use “power words” every day to pack their writing with emotion. Yes, this is an enormous list, but with so many power words available, nobody can possibly catch them all on the first pass. What are some other words that seem to have that extra little spark of emotion inside them? Leave your answer in the comments, and as time goes by, I’ll come back periodically and update the list. Eventually, I hope to have over 1,000 words here, separated and organized by category, making this the definitive resource for power words on the web. Thanks in advance for commenting and sharing the post with your friends!
About the Author: Jon Morrow has asked repeatedly to be called “His Royal Awesomeness” but no one listens to him. So, he settles for CEO of Smart Blogger. Poor man. ?
The post 600+ Power Words That’ll Pack Your Writing with Emotion appeared first on Smart Blogger. from https://smartblogger.com/power-words/ In the realm of digital marketing, brand ownership means everything. It’s safe to say that nearly all search advertisers see the vast majority of their traffic and revenue come from their branded initiatives. Put simply, branded (search engine marketing) SEM is something advertisers need to fully own and focus on optimizing. With that being said, one of the biggest challenges within the brand space is optimizing spend as efficiently and effectively as possible, in relation to CPC (cost per click) levels. Knowing that branded campaigns are so important for paid search, many advertisers opt to max out their keyword CPC bids. This means that the CPC headroom, or monetary gap between your max CPC bid and your keyword’s average CPC, will be much larger than needed. In their minds, this ensures that they are capturing the maximum amount of traffic without sacrificing brand real estate. Although the theory behind that approach is technically accurate, these individuals are not being nearly as efficient with client spend. These campaign managers also allow Google and Bing’s algorithms a greater opportunity for charging extra money. Typically, SEM advertisers fall into this trap for a good reason, because they want to ensure that they are eliminating competition on their client’s branded space. But, we believe that minimizing the headroom between the max CPC bid and the average CPC over time will allow these advertisers to ultimately cut the spend levels without the sacrifice of user volume or traffic. What we did to prove this theoryWe ran a couple of tests to see how traffic was affected. Initially, we cut our bids in half, but we immediately saw traffic drop off as a result. Then we took a different approach and thought about what would happen if we tried shaving our bids down incrementally on a daily basis? This would allow us to keep a close eye on traffic and impression share, and bid back up if we ever fell below a certain volume threshold. Ultimately, we found that if you play this long-term dance with the search engine, the theory holds true. You can reduce your average CPC, maintain consistent traffic levels, and ultimately lower your keyword bids. ImplementationBefore launching a bid walk down test, it’s important to audit your account for potential risks and to estimate the expected impact. Here are several preliminary checks that we recommend:
Now for the exciting part. Let’s begin decreasing bids to reduce the average CPC. Keep in mind that this process may take several months, but the long-term benefits can help advertisers gain up to 40% cost savings, which can have a significant impact on profitability and frees up budget for acquiring new customers. Here are the steps: 1. Benchmark position & share metricsLooking at the past 30 days, determine your average impression share and absolute top impressions share (as called as the new measure for the average position). For most advertisers, these metrics hover between 90-99%. 2. Launch engine bidding rulesNow that we have our benchmark share of voice metrics, we can launch two engine rules to help automate the bid walk down process. Google/Bing react poorly to major shifts, so we are going to set rules that only change our keyword bid incrementally up or down per day.
It is imperative to set both rules to run each morning. So long as your core term is maintaining adequate search impression volume, the bid down rule will make incremental adjustments daily. Once your impression share falls below your set threshold, the bid up rule will increase your bid every day until you have regained share. We set the impression share rules plus or minus a small percentage from their actuals so that the rules have more room to make changes. For a more conservative approach, set these rule thresholds to an exact percentage over the past 30 days. Over time, you should expect to see your max CPC get closer to your average CPC, which will reduce overall cost without losing any volume. Advertisers with high auction pressure should check their core keyword daily (auction insights, impression share metrics, and live search results) to ensure that competitors are not outbidding your brand. To conclude, as an advertiser, it is imperative to recognize the volatility of the search engine landscape. There are a lot of moving parts with branded real estate, some easy to control, and some not. This process will help you capitalize on greater opportunities without leaving anything up to chance. Lowering brand CPC’s isn’t an overnight process by any means. But if you are willing to take a gradual approach towards efficiency, you will save your client significant money without the sacrifice of impression share on your keywords. Steven Oleksak is Senior SEM Manager and Nicolas Ross is an SEM Coordinator at PMG Advertising Agency. The post Tips to lower brand CPC for greater profitability appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/05/01/lower-brand-cpc/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184575797905 Publishing original content to your website is, of course, critical for building your audience and boosting your SEO. The benefits of unique and original content are twofold:
However, when content is duplicated either accidentally or on purpose, search engines will not be duped and may penalize a site with lower search rankings accordingly. Unfortunately, many businesses often publish repeated content without being aware that they’re doing so. This is why auditing your site with a duplicate content checker is so valuable in helping sites to recognize and replace such content as necessary. This article will help you better understand what is considered duplicate content, and steps you can take to make sure it doesn’t hamper your SEO efforts. How does Google define “duplicate content”?Duplicate content is described by Google as content “within or across domains that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar”. Content fitting this description can be repeated either on more than one page within your site, or across different websites. Common places where this duplicate content might be hiding include duplicated copy across landing pages or blog posts, or harder-to-detect areas such as meta descriptions that are repeated in a webpage’s code. Duplicate content can be produced erroneously in a number of ways, from simply reposting existing content by mistake to allowing the same page content to be accessible via multiple URLs. When visitors come to your page and begin reading what seems to be newly posted content only to realize they’ve read it before, that experience can reduce their trust in your site and likeliness that they’ll seek out your content in the future. Search engines have an equally confusing experience when faced with multiple pages with similar or identical content and often respond to the challenge by assigning lower search rankings across the board. At the same time, there are sites that intentionally duplicate content for malicious purposes, scraping content from other sites that don’t belong to them or duplicating content known to deliver successful SEO in an attempt to game search engine algorithms. However, most commonly, duplicated content is simply published by mistake. There are also scenarios where republishing existing content is acceptable, such as guest blogs, syndicated content, intentional variations on the copy, and more. These techniques should only be used in tandem with best practices that help search engines understand that this content is being republished on purpose (described below). Source: Alexa.com SEO Audit An automated duplicate content checker tool can quickly and easily help you determine where such content exists on your site, even if hidden in the site code. Such tools should display each URL and meta description containing duplicate content so that you can methodically perform the work of addressing these issues. While the most obvious practice is to either remove repeated content or add original copy as a replacement, there are several other approaches you might find valuable. How to check for duplicate content1. Using the rel=canonical <link> tagThese tags can tell search engines which specific URL should be viewed as the master copy of a page, thus solving any duplicate content confusion from the search engines’ standpoint. 2. Using 301 redirectsThese offer a simple and search engine-friendly method of sending visitors to the correct URL when a duplicate page needs to be removed. 3. Using the “noindex” meta tagsThese will simply tell search engines not to index pages, which can be advantageous in certain circumstances. 4. Using Google’s URL Parameters toolThis tool helps you tell Google not to crawl pages with specific parameters. This might be a good solution if your site uses parameters as a way to deliver content to the visitor that is mostly the same content with minor changes (i.e. headline changes, color changes, etc). This tool makes it simple to let Google know that your duplicated content is intentional and should not be considered for SEO purposes. Source: Alexa.com SEO Audit By actively checking your site for duplicated content and addressing any issues satisfactorily, you can improve not only the search rankings of your site’s pages but also make sure that your site visitors are directed to fresh content that keeps them coming back for more. Got any effective tips of how you deal with on-site content duplication? Share them in the comments. Kim Kosaka is Director of Marketing at Alexa.com. Further reading:
The post How to check for duplicate content to improve your site’s SEO appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/30/improving-seo-check-duplicate-content/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184554252735 After testing the Search Console for more than a year, Google announced its release from beta last year. In the previous year, maybe more, Google slowly rolled out the beta eventually doing a full open beta invite to all Search Console users and migrating their features from the old to the new version. From the new UI to the new features, the tool is currently performing at its best. But it’s difficult to keep up with Google Search Console updates, let alone integrate them into your search marketing mix. However, because SEO is ever evolving, these updates always come at a good time. The following is a guide on the newest features you might not have heard of yet, and how to make use of them to improve your search marketing. 1. Improved UI
The main source of confusion surrounding the new version of the Search Console has been how Google is handling the transition. For starters, not all features have been moved directly into the new version. All features and the reports they provide are being evaluated so they can be modified and presented to handle the modern challenges facing the SEO manager. Google even published a guide to explain the differences between the two versions. Overall, the tool has been redesigned to provide a premium-level UI. As a marketer, this benefits you in one major way: without the clutter, you’re able to remain more focused and organized. You can look at reports that matter the most, and even those you don’t have to spend too much time on because they’ve been made briefer. Monitoring and navigation are also more time-efficient. These may not seem like a direct boost to your SEO efforts, but with this improved UI, you can get more work done in less time. This freed up time can then be channeled to other search marketing strategies. 2. Test live for URL inspectionThe URL Inspection tool got an important update that allows real-time testing of your URL. With the “Test Live” feature, Google allows you to run live tests against your URL and gives a report based on what it sees in real time not just the last time that URL was indexed. Google says this is useful “for debugging and fixing issues in a page or confirming whether a reported issue still exists in a page. If the issue is fixed on the live version of the page, you can ask Google to recrawl and index the page.” The URL Inspection tool is fairly new. It’s a useful tool as it gives you a chance to fix issues on your page. So Google doesn’t just notice what’s wrong with your page — it also tells you, allows you to fix it, and reindexes the page. URL Inspection has other features: Coverage and Mobile Usability. i. Coverage – This has three sub-categories:
ii. Mobile Usability: It shows if your page is mobile friendly or not. This helps you optimize your site for mobile. Overall, URL Inspection is a handy feature for easily identifying issues with your site. Afterward, you can then send a report to Google to help in debugging and fixing the identified issues. The feature is also useful for checking performance and making sure your site is SEO-optimized and your pages, indexed. 3. Manual actions reportFrom the menu bar, you can see the “Manual actions” tab. This is where you find the new Manual Actions report that shows you the various issues found on your web page. As you’d expect, the report is brief and only shows the most important information. It can even be viewed as part of the report summary on the Overview page. If any issues are found, you can optimize it and request a review from Google. The major errors that can be found and fixed from here are mobile usability issues and crawl error. This feature helps you, as a search marketer, to minimize the amount of time you take to review your website performance. It’s one more step to improving your website speed and overall performance because issues are quickly detected and fixed. And of course, it’s no news that speed is one of the key attributes of an SEO-friendly website. 4. Performance reportThe “Performance” report feature was the first to be launched in the beta version of the Search Console so it’s been around for more than a year. It replaces Search Analytics and comes in a new and improved UI. Compared to Search Analytics, the main strength of the new report is in the amount of search traffic data. Instead of 3 months, the Performance report incorporates 16 months of data. This data includes click, CTR, impression, and average ranking metrics at all levels (device, page, query, and country).
You can use this data to optimize your website, improve mobile SEO, evaluate your keywords, check content performance and more. All these activities help improve your SEO. 5. Index coverage reportIndex Coverage was launched alongside the Performance report. It’s an evolution of the previous Index Status and Crawl Errors reports. Providing site-level insights, the Index Coverage report flags problems with pages submitted in a sitemap and provides trends on the indexed pages, those that can be indexed. By allowing you to see the indexing and crawling issues from Google’s perspective, the report pinpoints the problems limiting your ability to rank high on the SERP. ConclusionThe Google Search Console will continue to be one of the best free SEO tools out there. Every new feature adds to it a new ability to help marketers better manage their SERP appearances. If you care about where and how you appear on search engines, these and any future updates, including how to use them, will be of much interest to you. Joseph is the Founder and CEO of Digitage. He can be found on Twitter @josephchukwube. The post How to take advantage of the latest updates to Google Search Console appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/29/how-to-take-advantage-of-the-latest-updates-to-google-search-console/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184529795455 Venngage is a free infographic maker that has catered to more than 21,000 businesses. In this article, we explore how they grew their organic traffic from about 275,000 visitors per month in November 2017 to about 900,000 today — more than tripling in 17 months. I spoke with Nadya Khoja, Chief Growth Officer at Venngage, about their process. Venngage gets most of their leads from content and organic search. The percentage varies from month to month in the range of 58% to 65%. In Nov 2017, Venngage enjoyed 275,000 visitors a month from organic search traffic. Today (16 months later) it’s 900,000. Nadya Khoja (their Chief Growth Officer) extrapolated from their current trend that by December of 2019 (in nine months) they will enjoy three million organic search visitors per month. In 2015, when Nadya started with Venngage, they saw 300 to 400 registrations a week. By March of 2018, this was up to 25,000 a week. Today it’s 45,000. While Nadya had the advantage of not starting from zero, that is impressive growth per any reasonable metric. How did they do it? RecipeThere are a lot of pieces to this puzzle. I’ll do my best to explain them, and how they tie together. There is no correct order to things per se, so what is below is my perspective on how best to tell this story. The single most important ingredient: Hypothesize, test, analyze, adjustThis critical ingredient is surprisingly not an ingredient, but rather a methodology. I’m tempted to call it “the scientific method”, as that’s an accurate description, but perhaps it’s more accurate to call it the methodology written up in the books “The Lean Startup” (which Nadya has read) and “Running Lean” (which Nadya has not read). This single most important ingredient is the methodology of the hypothesize, test, analyze, and adjust. What got them to this methodology was a desire to de-risk SEO. The growth in traffic and leads was managed through a series of small and quick iterations, each one of which either passed or failed. Ones that passed were done more. Ones that failed were abandoned. This concept of hypothesizing, testing, analyzing, and adjusting is used both for SEO changes and for changes to their products. The second most important ingredientThis ingredient is shared knowledge. Venngage marketing developed “The Playbook”, which everyone in marketing contributes to. “The Playbook” was created both as a reference with which to bring new team members up to speed quickly, as well as a running history of what has been tested and how it went. The importance of these first two ingredients cannot be overstated. From here on, I am revealing things they learned through trial and error. You have the advantage to learn from their successes and failures. They figured this stuff out the hard way. One hypothesis and one test at a time. Their north star metricsThey have two north star metrics. The first one seems fairly obvious. “How many infographics are completed within a given time period?” The second one occurred to them later and is as important, if not more so. It is “how long does it take to complete an infographic?” The first metric, of course, tells them how attractive their product is. The second tells them how easy (or hard) their product is to use. Together these are the primary metrics that drive everything Venngage does. The 50/50 focus splitAs a result of both the company and the marketing department having a focus on customer acquisition and customer retention, every person in marketing spends half their time working on improving the first north star metric, and the other half spend their time working on improving the second. Marketing driving product designThose north star metrics have led to Venngage developing what I call marketing driven product design. Everywhere I ever worked has claimed they did this. The way Venngage does this exceeds anything ever done at a company I’ve worked for. “How do I be good?”This part of Nadya’s story reminds me of the start of a promo video I once saw for MasterClass.com. It’s such a good segue to this part of the story that I cropped out all but the good part to include in this article. When Steve Martin shed light on an important marketing question I’ve encountered a number of companiesthrough the years who thought of marketing as “generating leads” and “selling it”, rather than “how do we learn what our customers want?”, or “how do we make our product easier to use?” SquadsThe company is structured into cross-functional squads, a cross-functional squad being people from various departments within Venngage, all working to improve a company-wide metric. For example, one of the aspects of their infographic product is templates. A template is a starting point for building an infographic. As templates are their largest customer acquisition channel, they created a “Template Squad”, whose job is to work on their two north star metrics for their templates. The squad consists of developers, designers, UI/UX people, and the squad leader, who is someone in marketing. Personally, I love this marketing focus, as it de-focuses marketing and causes marketing to be something that permeates everything the company does. There is another squad devoted to internationalization, which as you can infer, is responsible to improve their two north star metrics with users in countries around the world. Iterative developmentEach template squad member is tasked with improving their two north star metrics. Ideas on how to do this come from squad members with various backgrounds and ideas. Each idea is translated into a testable hypothesis. Modifications are done weekly. As you can image, Venngage is heavy into analytics, as without detailed and sophisticated analytics, they don’t know which experiments worked and which didn’t. Examples of ideas that worked are:
Measuring inputsI personally think this is really important. To obtain outputs, they measured inputs. When the goal was to increase registrations, they identified the things they had to do to increase registrations, then measured how much of that they did every week. Everyone does SEOIn the same way that marketing is something that does not stand alone, but rather permeates everything Venngage does, SEO does not stand alone. It permeates everything marketing does. Since organic search traffic is the number one source of leads, they ensure everyone in marketing knows the basics of technical SEO and understands the importance of this never being neglected. Beliefs and valuesWhile I understand the importance of beliefs and values in human psychology, it was refreshing to see this being proactively addressed within an organization in the context of improving their north star metrics. They win and lose togetherWinning and losing together is a core belief at Venngage. Nadya states it minimizes blame and finger-pointing. When they win, they all win. When they lose, they all lose. It doesn’t matter who played what part. To use a sports analogy, a good assist helps to score a goal. A bad assist, well, that’s an opportunity to learn. SEO is a team effortWhile it is technically possible for a single person to do SEO, the volume of tasks required these days makes it impractical. SEO requires quality content, technical SEO, and building of backlinks through content promotion, guest posting, and the others. Venngage is a great example of effectively distributing SEO responsibilities through the marketing department. To illustrate the importance of the various pieces fitting together, consider that while content is king, technical SEO is what gets content found, but when people find crappy content, it doesn’t convert. You can’t manage what you don’t measureThis requires no elaboration. But what you measure mattersThis probably does justify some elaboration. We’ve all been in organizations that measured stupid stuff. By narrowing down to their two north star metrics, then focusing their efforts to improving those metrics, they’ve aligned everyone’s activity towards things that matter. The magic of incremental improvementsThis is the Japanese concept of Kaizen put into play for the development and marketing of a software product. Done slightly differently, this concept helped Britain dominate competitive cycling at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Customer acquisition is not enoughVenngage developed their second north star metric after deciding that acquiring new customers was not, in and of itself, any form of the Holy Grail. They realized that if their product was hard to use, fewer people would use it. They decided a good general metric of how easy the product is to use was to measure how long people take to build an infographic. If people took “too long”, they spoke to them about why. This led them to change the product in ways to make it easier to use. Link building is relationship buildingAs a reader of Search Engine Watch, you know link building is critical and central to SEO. In the same way that everyone in Venngage marketing must know the basics of technical SEO, everyone in Venngage marketing must build links. They do so via outreach to promote their content. As people earn links from the content promotion outreach, they record those links in a shared spreadsheet. While this next bit is related to link building, everyone in Venngage marketing has traffic goals as well. This too is tracked in a simple and reasonable way. Various marketers own different “areas” or “channels”. These channels are broken down into specific traffic acquisition metrics. As new hires get more familiar with how things work at Venngage, they are guided into traffic acquisition channels which they want to work on. Learning experience, over timeMy attempt here is to provide a chronology of what they learned in what order. It may help you avoid some of the mistakes they made. Cheating works until it doesn’tUnderstanding the importance of links to search ranking, they thought it would be a good idea to implement their infographics with embedded backlinks. Each implemented infographic contained a forced backlink to the Venngage website. They identified a set of anchor text they thought would be beneficial to them and rotated through them for these forced backlinks. And it worked, for a while. Until they realized they had invited a Google penalty. This took a bit to clean up. The lessons learned:
Blog posts brought in users who activatedAt some point, their analytics helped them realize that users who activated from blog posts where ideal users for them. So they set a goal to increase activations from blog posts, which led to the decision to test if breaking up templates into categories and individual pages with only one template made sense. It did. Website design mattersChanging the website from one big template page to thousands of smaller ones helped, and not just because it greatly increased the number of URLs indexed by Google. It also greatly improved the user experience. It made it easier for their audience to find templates relevant to them, without having to look at templates that weren’t. Lesson learned: UI/UX matters for both users and SEO. Hybrid content attractsHybrid content is where an article talks about two main things. For example, talking about Hogwarts houses sorting within the context of an infographic. This type of content brings in some number of Harry Potter fans, some of whom have an interest in creating infographics. The key to success is tying these two different topics together well. Content is tuneableBy converting one huge templates page into thousands of small template pages, they realized that a template or set of templates that appeal to one audience segment would not necessarily appeal to others. This caused them to start to tune templates towards audience segments in pursuit of more long tail organic search traffic. How did they figure out what users wanted in terms of better content? They used a combination of keyword research and talking with users and prospects. Some content doesn’t make the cutAfter they caught onto the benefits of tuning content to attract different audience segments, they looked for content on their site that no one seemed to care about. They deleted it. While it decreased the amount of content on their site, it increased their overall content quality. Traffic spikes are not always good newsWhen they initially started creating forced backlinks in their infographics, they could see their traffic increase. They saw some spikes. Their general thought was more traffic is good. When they experienced the Google penalty, they realized how wrong they were. Some traffic spikes are bad news. Others are good news. When your website traffic shows a sudden change, even if you’re experiencing a spike in organic search traffic, you must dig into the details and find out the root cause. Lesson learned: There is a thing as bad traffic. Some traffic warns you of a problem. Links from product embeds aren’t all badThey just needed to make the embedded links optional. To allow the customer to decide if they do or do not deserve a backlink. While this did not cause any change to their levels of organic search traffic, it was necessary to resolve the Google penalty. Boring worksIncremental continuous improvement seems repetitive and boring. A one percent tweak here, a two percent tweak there, but over time, you’ve tripled your organic search traffic and your lead flow. It’s necessarily fun, but it delivers results. Lesson learned: What I’ll call “infrastructure” is boring, and it matters. Both for your product and your SEO. Figure out what to measureThe idea of measuring the amount of time required to complete an infographic did not occur to them on day one. This idea came up when they were looking for a metric to indicate to them how easy (or difficult) their product was to use. Once they decided this metric possibly made sense, they determined their baseline, then through an iterative process, making improvements to the product to make this a little faster. As they did so, the feedback from the users was positive, so they doubled down on this effort. Lesson learned: What you measure matters. Teach your coworkers wellThey created “The Playbook”, which is a compendium of the combined knowledge they’ve accumulated over time. The playbook is written by them, for them. Marketing employees are required to add chapters to the playbook as they learn new skills and methods. Its primary purpose is to bring new team members up to speed quickly, and it also serves as a historical record of what did and did not work. One important aspect of continuous improvement is for new people to avoid suggesting experiments that previously failed. Additionally (and I love this), every month everyone in marketing gives Nadya an outline of what they’re learning and what they’re improving on. Their marketing stackWhile their marketing stack is not essential to understanding their processes, I find it useful to understand what software tools a marketing organization uses, and for what. So here is theirs. This is not a list of what they’ve used and abandoned over time, but rather a list of what they use now.
In closingTo me, what Nadya has done at Venngage is a case study in how to do SEO right, and most of doing it right are not technical SEO work.
Venngage has surely lead by example and all the guidelines and pointers shared above can surely help your organization implement its search for increased sales. Kevin Carney is the Founder and CEO of the boutique link building agency Organic Growth. The post SEO case study: How Venngage turned search into their primary lead source appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/26/venngage-turns-seo-into-sales/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184462431610 DuckDuckGo could be your new default search engine if you want to focus on privacy and security. What it’s like using it nowadays? You might have heard of DuckDuckGo in the past. Our first long post about it was back in 2016 with Rebecca Sentance trying out the new search engine for a week. Three years later, many things have changed. More users are losing trust in big tech companies and privacy and security are more important than ever. How does DuckDuckGo fit in this change? And how is the experience of switching into a new search engine nowadays? DuckDuckGo in numbersOver the last few months, DuckDuckGo has seen increased media coverage. Its growing stats among a growing conversation around online privacy make it more relevant than ever. There are more than 30 million searches happening on DuckDuckGo every day. Its data indicates a constant growth. It’s currently the fourth largest search engine in the U.S. counting more than 1 billion searches every month all over the world. Google is holding the reins of the market share with 88.5% of it, Bing is following with 6.12%, Yahoo! is third with 4.11% and DuckDuckGo is forthwith 0.99% of the market share. It clearly has a long way to go to stand out as a serious competitor in the market share. However, it has already paved the way in a new kind of search engine that is serious about security and privacy. In fact, its mission is to set a new standard of trust online. The search engine that doesn’t track youOne of the first things you notice when visiting DuckDuckGo, except for the search box, is the subheading “the search engine that doesn’t track you”. DuckDuckGo was built as an alternative to Google and the big search engines that use tracking data to improve personalization. DuckDuckGo reassures its users that they don’t store their personal information. They don’t collect or share personal data. They are not storing your search history, which means that they are not able to sell this data to advertisers. Moreover, there’s no tracking in the private browsing mode, which sounds encouraging for everyone who is interested in a search engine that won’t track every single search. What’s interesting is that DuckDuckGo wants to prove that they take privacy seriously. A click on their menu button at the homepage on ‘privacy simplified’ allows you to:
Just recently, Google announced an expanded number of default search engines for users including DuckDuckGo for the first time. This was certainly a small win for the DuckDuckGo and also for people who want to focus on private searches. It’s not surprising that more users are interested in learning more about their online privacy. [Screenshot from DuckDuckGo’s traffic page.] A closer look at DuckDuckGo’s stats indicates this growing interest in security and privacy. DuckDuckGo reached 10 million searches in one day back in 2015. It managed to reach 20 million searches in October 2018. In April 2019 it counts 38 million searches. Making the most of DuckDuckGoI’ve decided to try out DuckDuckGo after many years of using Google. The focus on online privacy along with the growing number of people switching to DuckDuckGo made it an intriguing choice. The first impression seemed familiar. Simplicity and a minimal interface made the transition easy. The fact that your searches are not personalized means that everyone can access the same results in a similar search. This seems to be a relief in the common pattern of the online filter bubbles that we’re used to be part of. Another relief was the lack of endless ads before the actual search results. I’ve been used to the series of ads before the actual search results and the science of PPC from a professional perspective, but it was still a nice experience to find the direct results of my query. There was only one ad at the top of the search results, which I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a similar limit to my Google results. In addition to these, you can also save time from your searches by making the most of DuckDuckGo’s bangs. Bangs are shortcuts that allow you to search results on other sites. If you want to search for “SEO” on Search Engine Watch and you’re actually on DuckDuckGo’s homepage, all you need to do is to type ‘!searchenginewatch seo’ There are currently more than 12k bangs so you can search any of the big sites without visiting them in a different tab. Finding the best search results — not everything is perfectI must admit that the lack of personalization has its pros and cons. It is obviously reassuring to feel that you’re in control of your own data. However, you should also be prepared for the additional queries you might need to find the best results. Forget queries like “cinemas near me” and “what’s playing” The search results will be the same for everyone all over the world without detailed queries that could possibly help you get more personalized results. Moreover, the actual search cannot compete with Google’s sophisticated search. After years of serving as the biggest search engine, there is a learning of semantics that leads to way better results compared to all other search engines. This shouldn’t be a surprise and it should be clear when you’re jumping into DuckDuckGo that not everything will be the same. There will also be an initial phase of learning the ropes of a new search experience, which is expected in every new tool and site. Are these reasons enough to abandon DuckDuckGo? Not yet. It’s good to understand that it won’t replace Google anytime soon but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve a chance, especially if you’re serious about your online privacy when searching. I’ll personally give it a go knowing that if I can’t find a specific result, I can still use Google. I also enjoy their curated stories around privacy on their Twitter feed so it was an easy decision to follow them and stay up-to-date. The choice is yoursThe online world is changing. And we’re facing with numerous dilemmas when it comes to staying loyal to the big tech companies. As more data breaches and scandals show up, it’s up to us to decide whether we want to keep personalization or not. There’s no right or wrong answer. Google is certainly enjoying the success of the big search giant with a large index and search features that keep us hooked with along the numerous services we use on a daily basis. However, it’s refreshing to feel that we still have alternative options. Whether we use them or not, it’s up to us. What’s important is to be conscious of your decision and your online privacy. The more informed we are, the better our online experience. The post What’s it like using DuckDuckGo in 2019? appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/25/whats-it-like-using-duckduckgo-in-2019/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184436577610 Ever dreamed of lying on the beach while earning tons of passive income? I did. I wanted to build my own business that generated thousands of dollars while I slept, partied, and traveled around the world. So, in 2015, my friends and I created a niche website to teach beginners how to breakdance. Sadly, we never made enough money to quit our jobs and move to paradise. But here’s the thing… Though we weren’t successful, the experience taught me a lot about how to build a niche website, market it, and monetize it. And combined with the knowledge I’ve gained working at Ahrefs, I now know the keys to success. In this post, I’m going to show you what I’ve learned: What I did right, what I did wrong, and what I would do differently if I created a new niche site today. We’ll start with a quick definition, followed by a few examples… What is a Niche Website?A niche website is a website that caters to a small segment of a large market by focusing on a common, specific interest. My website, BreakDance Decoded, was a niche website. It specifically targeted breakdancers, which is a small part of the much larger “dance” market. Other examples of niche sites are Mr. Money Mustache (focusing on saving and budgeting in the personal finance market) and Kopywriting Kourse (focusing on copywriting in the marketing/business market). There’s a common misconception that a niche website is a small site. This isn’t true. “Niche” refers to the segment of the market, not the size of the website. A site can be niche and still have thousands of pages covering a variety of topics related to the niche. Nerd Fitness is a niche website that writes about fitness for nerds. Even though it’s only targeting a specific type of persona, the site has hundreds of blog posts ranking for important keywords in Google. In general, a niche website is an information website. It either produces or sells information that solve problems (e.g. courses, ebooks, etc.). It may eventually pivot to other monetization models like e-commerce, but the core engine behind the site is information. Now that you know what a niche site is, let’s take a look at how you create one: How to Create a Niche Website in 2019 (Step-By-Step)1. Choose Your NicheFor many aspiring bloggers, niche selection is one of the most challenging dilemmas they face when starting a blog. They either have too many ideas, or — worse — they have no idea what kind of site they should build. It doesn’t help that there’s lots of contradictory advice out there: some people suggest you start with your passion, while others say you should choose a niche that’s profitable. How I Chose My NichePersonally, I started with my passion. Not counting my job, breakdancing was the activity I spent the most time doing. So, setting up a niche site that would educate people about breakdancing was a no-brainer for me. If you’re completely new to building a site and you just want to learn how things work, I would recommend you start with your passion. Why? Because growing a website is hard work. But if you’re creating content on a topic you’re passionate about, you’ll be able to find the motivation to persist on those days you feel like quitting. (And trust me, those days will be frequent.) How I Would Choose My Niche TodayToday, I would choose a profitable niche. What’s that? It’s a niche with a large audience that buys things. And that’s what you want: A market where people are buying, buying, and buying. While it was fun to write about breakdancing, it was a tough market to crack. When we started, there weren’t any other niche sites about breakdancing. Our competing sites were mostly e-commerce stores selling apparel for breakdancers. In hindsight, that should have been a warning sign. If there are no competitors in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you should be concerned. Competitors = Viable Market Competition is healthy. It’s a sign the market is worth entering. It’s a sign there’s money to be made. We should have listened. To help you avoid the mistake we made, here are a couple tips to help you find profitable niches: Tip #1: Brainstorm + Snooping AroundSit down and brainstorm some niches you’re interested in pursuing. Then, do a quick Google search to see if there are any sites dedicated to them. You can search for “best [niche] blogs” to get started (e.g. “best breakdancing blogs”). And once you’ve found a few potential competitors in your niche, “snoop” around their site and see how they’re monetizing. If they have a variety of products, it could be a good niche. For example, let’s say I am interested in the paleo niche. A quick Google search for the “best paleo blogs” brings me to this site: Looking around, I can see Diane monetizes her site in a variety of ways:
Seems like a good niche! Tip #2: Browse Affiliate MarketplacesAlternatively, you can also look into affiliate networks like ClickBank and Amazon Associates. These are middlemen networks that connect bloggers and niche site owners with companies offering affiliate marketing opportunities. You have an audience, they have a product. Perfect match! Affiliate networks are ideal because:
Just go through them until you find products you’re interested in. Here’s an example: Right now, I’m learning Russian. So, I might be interested in starting a niche site about the Russian language. And lo and behold, ClickBank has a category for the Russian language. Cool! Unfortunately, there is only one product for sale in this category. That isn’t promising. If it was a profitable niche, there would probably be more options. However, when I click on “Languages”, I see lots of courses. And if I follow tip #1, searching for “best language hacking blogs” brings back a strong list of competitors, such as Fluent in 3 Months. So, “Russian” might be too niche. But “language” learning could be a niche worth pursuing. Key Takeaways
Further Reading
2. Setup Your SiteDone with niche selection? Great. Now it’s time to setup your site. There are four things you need when you first get started:
Now, don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy. I wasn’t great when I started too. I’ll be running through what each of them are, so you can get started fast. How I Setup My Site (and How I Would Do it Differently Today)See this? This is a domain. Think of your domain as the address to your house. A lot of beginners get stuck on this phase. They procrastinate, hoping to find a perfect domain name. The hard truth? There’s no such thing. For us, we wanted a domain that was memorable but self-explanatory. We wanted people to understand what the site was about immediately. That meant we needed the word “breakdance” in our domain. After brainstorming a few ideas, and consulting the thesaurus, we settled on breakdancedecoded.com. Don’t spend all your time deciding on the domain. Just make sure it is:
If you’re stuck, you can use a tool like Domain Name Brain to give you some ideas: Once you’re done deciding the name, check if it is available in a domain registrar like NameCheap (affiliate link) or Hover. Next: A Hosting ProviderTo have a house, you need to have the architecture to hold it. Your host is that architecture. A hosting provider allows your website to be accessible on the Internet. Since we weren’t technically-savvy, we followed a friend’s instruction and got our hosting from WPEngine. In hindsight, that wasn’t a good decision. WPEngine is great, but it is pretty costly for a beginner site that won’t get that much traffic. If you’re starting out, you probably won’t be getting very much traffic. So, it’s better to get a cheaper host. There are plenty of hosting providers out there. Take a look around. Smart Blogger recommends SiteGround (affiliate link), so they’re one option to consider. Editor’s Note:I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jon’s in-depth guide on web hosting. Before you choose a hosting provider, be sure to check out WordPress Hosting: A Brutally Honest Guide That’ll Save You Money. Content Management System (CMS)A content management system is an online tool that enables you to create and manage your content (e.g. blog posts). WordPress is the most popular CMS, but there are other alternatives too. Since we were using WPEngine, we turned to WordPress as our blogging platform. As you’ll see later on, the biggest traffic channel for a niche site will likely be Google. As such, you should choose a CMS that is SEO-friendly. Most search engine optimization (SEO) experts recommend WordPress, and it’s the CMS I recommend too. Editor’s Note:The steps for installing WordPress will depend on your hosting provide and your particular situation. But don’t worry. Chances are excellent our massive, step-by-guide on How to Install WordPress in 5 Minutes or Less will be able to walk you through the tricky parts. Once you’re done with the installation, you’ll need a theme. A theme is a template that defines the appearance of your site. (Think of it like the design of your house). For our theme, we chose Genesis. Genesis isn’t the best-looking theme around, but at the time we were looking for efficiency and ease of use. (Plus, we weren’t that great with design.) We also figured that we could upgrade to a better theme later on, if we got more successful. With its simplicity, Genesis was a great theme for us. If you’re more design-savvy, feel free to pick another theme. Smart Blogger recommends Elegant Themes (affiliate link), but you can also browse through the selections in ThemeForest. Once you’re done, install these two free plugins: If you want more WordPress plugins to install, check out this list of time savers. Key Takeaways
Further Reading
3. Do Topic ResearchYour foundation is set. It’s time to start getting traffic to your site. How I Did My Topic ResearchNow, at this point, most bloggers make the same mistake: They write about whatever tickles their fancy. I know because I did the same thing. I brainstormed topics I thought would resonate with my audience, and then I wrote about them. The only reason I got away with it was because I was a breakdancer writing to other breakdancers. I knew the topics that would interest my audience because I was a part of that audience. But if you’re working in a niche that is unfamiliar to you, you can’t just write about anything you want. Those topics won’t resonate and you won’t build an audience. Worse: Your content won’t rank in Google, which means no traffic will come to your site. How I Would Do My Topic Research TodayFor most niche sites, the best way to get traffic is SEO. SEO is an acquisition channel that will grow passively. As long as you are ranking well for the keywords you’re targeting, you will get passive traffic. Compare that with other channels. You could experiment with paid ads (for example, Facebook ads), but as soon as you stop the campaign or run out of money, your traffic dries up immediately. The same goes for social media. You have to either build up a large audience (difficult) or bank on viral hits (also difficult). And as soon as you stop tweeting and sharing, whatever traffic you were getting will disappear. Search engine traffic doesn’t stop. It keeps going. Even when you’re sleeping. If you want search traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for. In other words: You need to create content for topics with search traffic potential. In SEO parlance, this is known as keyword research. Here are a few ways you can do it: Use a Keyword Research ToolThe easiest way to get started is to use a keyword research tool. Enter any seed keywords related to your niche into a keyword research tool, and it will generate hundreds of different ideas you can target. For example, here’s a free keyword tool called AnswerThePublic: AnswerThePublic generates ideas for you based on different categories: questions, prepositions, comparisons, alphabeticals, etc. There are plenty of other free tools out there, like:
Take your pick. One of the most important metrics SEOs look at when doing keyword research is search volume. Essentially, search volume is the amount of searches per month for a keyword. The problem with a free tool is that, while it’s free, it usually has either missing or incomplete data. As such, you might want to consider using a professional keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer (affiliate link). You can access it using the Ahrefs’ $7 for 7-days trial. Enter a seed keyword into Keywords Explorer, and it will generate thousands of keyword ideas, plus all sorts of relevant SEO metrics: Here’s a quick explanation of everything you’re seeing in the above screenshot:
Lurk in CommunitiesThere are communities for every imaginable topic out there. Love the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? There’s a subreddit for that. Enjoy discovering new products? Well, that’s how ProductHunt was formed. You name it, they have it. People gather in these communities to ask questions, discuss trending news, get recommendations, and so on. Translation: these communities offer a wealth of topics for your niche site. When we started, we hung out a lot on r/bboy, a subreddit for breakdancers. This was where we got our initial list of topics: You can do the same too. Do a search and find all the communities related to your niche. You can find them in places like:
And much more. To find out if these topics have search traffic potential, you can install the Chrome/Firefox extension Keywords Everywhere on your browser. You can also enter these topics into Keywords Explorer. Ahrefs will show you all the SEO metrics, plus suggest a better topic for you to target (“Parent Topic”). Figure Out What Your Competitors are Ranking forYour competitors have done the hard work for you. They’ve been blogging and ranking in Google. Your job? Borrow generously. Find out what’s working for them, and then replicate those topic ideas. Most sites feature their best-performing posts on their blogs, usually in a sidebar: You can easily see which keywords they’re optimizing for. For example, the post 595 Power Words That’ll Instantly Make You a Better Writer is obviously optimizing for the keyword “power words.” If you’re unsure, you can click through to the post. If they’re SEO-savvy, they would have optimized their URLs for the target keyword. Of course, the best way is to use a tool like Site Explorer. Enter your competitor’s domain into the tool and go to the “Top Pages” report, where you’ll see all the pages sending them the most search traffic: Key Takeaways
Further Reading
4. Create Your ContentJon Morrow is right:
If you want to rank in Google, build an audience and compete with others, you have to create epic content. You have to publish the best article ever written about those topics with search traffic potential. The posts have to be detailed. They have to be in-depth. They have to answer every single question about that topic. How I Created My ContentWhen we began our niche site, we were already huge fans of the detailed, long-form articles published by Smart Blogger and Backlinko. So, we sought to emulate them. We even published a 17,000-word article on how to get started with breakdancing. It was our most successful article, but it took us almost a month to write. You might be wondering:
Answer: you don’t. Publishing every day is a fool’s game. What you should do is to focus on quality, not quantity. If you have to publish less, so be it. Don’t sacrifice the depth of your article on some arbitrary content schedule. (For us, it was impossible to stick to a schedule, as we had full-time jobs.) You want to be known for the quality of your work — not how quickly you pump out new articles. That being said, what does it mean to create great content? When we started, all we knew was we needed to create something in-depth. We weren’t writers and had no blogging experience. In short, we had no way to measure and define “great content.” We just went with our instincts. Today, things are different. After reading and writing so many pieces of content, I can see which articles can be classified as great, and which can’t. How I Would Create My Content TodayI no longer need to rely on my instincts. I know what “great content” is and what it must embody. It needs the following three characteristics: Characteristic #1: QualityQuality is subjective, of course. How then do you know you’ve created something worth shouting about? In my experience, quality consists of three factors:
If the content you produce meets these three factors, it’s great content. Characteristic #2: UniquenessThere are thousands, if not millions, of articles published on similar topics each and every day. Why would someone choose your article over the others? The best way I’ve found to create unique content is to write from personal experience.
Pro Tip: This is how Smart Blogger became such a powerhouse in the blogging world. When Jon writes about blogging, it comes from his years of experience. When a guest author is invited to write about a topic, they’re chosen because they have had experience in those areas.
Characteristic #3: AuthorityDo you want to learn astrophysics from a Caltech physicist, or your next-door neighbor? Of course, it’s the Caltech physicist. (Unless, you once lived next to Richard Feynman.) Your readers are the same way. No matter the topic, they want to learn from an authoritative source. If you’re the expert, great! Carry on. But what if you aren’t? Get the experts to help you. Be the journalist. The scribe. There are plenty of experts with great knowledge, but insufficient ability to communicate that knowledge. You can be the go-between. Interview them. Curate their thoughts, research and expertise. You can even invite the expert to write an article for you. For example: Tim Ferriss. Tim doesn’t have expertise in every topic in the world, but he touches lots of topics. He does this by inviting experts to contribute to his books.
Pro Tip: This is also the reason why Smart Blogger succeeded when many failed. If Jon doesn’t have experience in something (e.g. Kindle Publishing), he doesn’t write the article. Instead, he invites someone with experience to do it.
If you read our epic guide to breakdancing, you’d see it checked all three aspects we just covered:
Key Takeaways
Further Reading
5. Promote Your ContentDo you want to know the greatest lie in the content marketing world? It’s this adage:
Nothing can be further from the truth. Think about it. According to the latest stats, there are 4 million blog posts published every single day. That’s a lot of noise. That also means there is an extremely low chance that somebody will randomly stumble upon your site. If you want traffic, you have to be proactive. You have to promote your content. You have to build links. How I Promoted My ContentWe focused on three promotion techniques: Technique #1: The “Eager Sneezers” TechniqueIn a post published in 2015, Bryan Harris shared how he started an email list from scratch and got 205 subscribers in 48 hours. The technique he used? “Eager Sneezers.” Ignoring the fancy name, it’s essentially reaching out to your friends and inviting them to join your email list. Bryan’s biggest takeaway was your friends want to help you (so let them). We used a variation of this idea to get our early traction. After publishing a post on breakdance music, we reached out to multiple friends to help share it. Fortunately, as we were breakdancers ourselves, we had a number of breakdancer friends who were more than happy to help: Technique #2: Community Content PromotionRemember the communities you joined earlier (where you were “lurking” for ideas)? They’re great for content promotion too. Here’s one example of what we did: Now, this is not an excuse for you to strut into someone else’s community and start spamming links to your content. Online communities exist for people to have meaningful conversations about a particular topic. Link spam defeats that purpose. Plus, you’ll likely get booted out of the group. The only reason I was able to promote my content in a group like this was because I was already an active member. I was participating in discussions, asking questions, and commenting. I knew what kind of content the community would appreciate, which was why I was able to share it. So, before you start dropping links to your content in a group, make sure you are active and understand the group’s rules. Technique #3: Outreach to People You’ve Mentioned in Your ContentIf you’ve written an epic piece of content, you’ve likely linked out to sources or quoted experts. Let them know! For example: In our post, we listed 157 songs a breakdancer must listen to. This meant 157 different people we could email. So, we did. And it resulted in one of the featured artists sharing our post on Facebook: How I Would Promote My Content TodayAccording to a survey of 1,117 bloggers, higher-income bloggers put more emphasis on promoting their content than lower-income bloggers. Translation: if you want to succeed, you have to keep on promoting your content. If I were to create a new niche website, I would add these content promotion strategies into my toolkit. Strategy #1: Outreach to People Who Published Articles on the Same TopicSince they’ve written on that topic before, there is a higher probability they’ll be interested in seeing your post. To find these people, simply enter the topic of your article (remember to try variations!) into Google. Collect the list of articles that appear in the SERPs. Then find their email address and reach out. Alternatively, you can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, a search engine for web content. Enter the topic into Content Explorer, do some filtering (like “English only”), and export the list. You now have a huge list of sites to reach out to. All that’s left is to write the email. Here are a few tips to help you write a compelling email:
You can also read this in-depth guide about blogger outreach. Strategy #2: Guest BloggingGuest blogging is a tactic where you write a post for another website (instead of yours). In exchange for your “free” article, the owner gives you:
Those are just the immediate benefits. Guest blogging also allows you to build relationships with influencers, or even grow your email list. The biggest challenge with guest blogging is finding blogs willing to accept your guest posts. To increase your chances of being accepted, look for sites that are already accepting guest posts. You can find these sites via Google search operators. Here are a few examples:
These sites usually have a “write for us” page, so all you have to do is to follow their instructions. You can also look for these opportunities in Content Explorer. The reasoning: if a blog has written about a topic before, there is an increased probability they would cover it again. Enter any word/phrase from your niche into Content Explorer. Check the “one article per domain” box to get a list of unique domains you can potentially write for: Some of these sites may not have an obvious “write for us” page. But, most blogs will accept a guest post if your pitch is good enough. Key Takeaways
6. Grow Your Email ListStudy the best sites in any niche, and you’ll notice one thing: They all build an email list. An email list is powerful because you can do almost anything with it. You could:
The possibilities are virtually endless. How I Built My Email ListBecause we were observing these huge sites, we understood the power of the email list very early on. In fact, we obsessed over collecting as many emails as possible. We tested all kinds of strategies on the site. Welcome Mats: Content Upgrades: We even turned our homepage into an email collection machine: How I Would Build My Email List TodayIn hindsight, we were too aggressive with our email collection. We were so concerned with the number of emails on our list, the quality of our list suffered. We should have focused on user experience and only placed email sign-up forms where relevant. Over the years, Jon and the rest of the Smart Blogger team have written tons of guides on email list building, so I won’t delve too deeply into this topic. You can check out the different resources here:
Key Takeaways
7. Experiment with MonetizationWhat’s the purpose of a niche site? To make money! As you start gaining traction on your site, and gaining a few subscribers, you can start to look into monetization. How I Monetized My SiteAt BreakDance Decoded, we experimented with a few different strategies. Strategy #1: PatreonPatreon is a membership platform where fans can “fund” content creators. You can create separate tiers on Patreon to reward different levels of loyalty. Back then, Patreon was a relatively new-ish platform. We saw that a few legitimate artists and creators were generating significant amounts of money on the platform, so we gave it a shot. This was our Patreon page: No matter how hard we marketed ourselves, the best we did was $50 per month on Patreon. That’s not to say Patreon doesn’t work. There are plenty of successful Patreon artists, like Kurzgesagt, who has over 12,000 patrons supporting his work: Your results may vary. Strategy #2: YouTube AdSenseIn addition to our website, we were also running a YouTube channel. So, we decided to see if we could make enough money from YouTube. Yes, we dreamed of being the next PewDiePie. These were our results: It was decent, but it wasn’t enough for a “passive income” source. Plus, our niche was too “specific”, so we probably didn’t generate enough views to make financial sense. Strategy #3: CoachingOne of Jon’s recommendations was to sell video or phone coaching as a quick way to monetize your site. We took it seriously. We sent an email to our list, telling them we were available for personal breakdance coaching. At the time, this was a relatively new concept to the niche, so we weren’t sure if it would work out. Surprisingly, someone took us up on it. Strategy #4: Online CoursesBy 2025, the e-learning industry will grow to about $325 billion in size. This probably explains why most popular blogs monetize via online courses. However, our biggest concern (back then) with an online course was the time and effort it took to create a great one. Plus, we weren’t sure if there were any demand for an online breakdance course. The notion of spending considerable time, effort, and money into creating a course no one wanted didn’t sound appealing. But after testing all the different strategies listed earlier, creating an online course seemed to be the most viable option. So, we decided to launch a MVP (Minimum Viable Product). We sent a survey to our email list, asking them for their #1 challenge. From there, we came up with a hook we thought would interest our audience:
While we waited for feedback, we created an outline for a potential 9-week course. Using the email hook and the outline, we crafted a 5-day email sequence modeled after Ramit Sethi’s successful launches. Not knowing what to charge, we decided on an arbitrary sales price of $37. For the test to be successful, we told ourselves that we needed at least 10 sales. As we weren’t technically savvy, we had no idea how to collect orders online. We also didn’t have money to invest in a shopping cart software. So, we kept it simple: We created a PayPal link. Then we activated the 5-day campaign by sending our subscribers a launch email. To our surprise, we actually managed to sign up 12 students. Our test was successful! The only issue? We now had to actually create the course. Once again, instead of investing in some complicated course software to launch it, we decided to do it the easy way: Facebook had just launched its “Live” feature and was heavily promoting it. We decided to use it. We created a closed Facebook group, sent an email to our 12 students, and invited them to join the group: Then we filmed each lesson by using Facebook’s Live feature. Besides some technical issues (like audio), we received rave reviews for our course. Takeaway: Don’t let perfectionism stop you from launching. People buy courses for the information, not the software you use or how perfect it looks. What I Would Do Differently TodayI wouldn’t change a thing. Online courses worked for me then, and it’s the monetization strategy I would use today. That said… Your results may vary. It’s a good idea to play around with different monetization methods to see what works best for you. Even if you find a cash cow, always be looking at different ways you can diversify your income stream. Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble. Nomadic Matt has a blog that receives 1 million visitors each month, but as shared in his interview on Noah Kagan Presents, if he had continued with the same business model he had when he started (i.e. selling links), his business would have been dead in the water by now. Key Takeaways
Further Reading
Are You Ready to Create a Profitable Niche Website?This wasn’t a case study about how successful I am or how many Lamborghinis I now own. It’s the opposite. My site wasn’t successful by any means. Instead of sipping mojitos at the beach, I’m still working out of an office. But that’s because I didn’t know then what I know now. Now I know better. Now I know what to do. And now so do you. It is possible to build a niche website and monetize it. So what are you waiting for? Paradise is waiting.
About the Author: Si Quan Ong works in marketing and customer success for Ahrefs, the SEO toolset that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors and dominate your niche. If not evident by now, he also breakdances on the side, and has a dream to visit 100 countries. Follow him on Twitter to learn more about his misadventures.
The post How to Build a Niche Website (Step-by-Step Case Study) appeared first on Smart Blogger. from https://smartblogger.com/niche-website/ Tough competition on the ecommerce market makes retailers continuously search for new ideas to improve web stores’ UX. Optimizing the product page is one of the key areas in this quest for enhancements. We reviewed the best practices of ecommerce leaders and success stories of smaller merchants, and came up with three hacks that make any product page convert more visitors into customers. 1. Optimize product descriptionsA good product description is a top factor influencing customers’ desire to purchase. The problem is customers want to get answers to their questions, but they don’t want to read a lot. Average web-surfers give a web page no more than 15 seconds to capture their attention. If a product description fails to meet this deadline, it fails to convert. Customers think about different aspects of a product: Some are interested in materials, some are more concerned about durability. To make a product page convert well, you have to strike a balance between being informative and brief. Here are the best practices in product description derived from the success of market leaders:
The screenshot below shows how Oliver implements these principles on their product pages. They hide the detailed information about product features, materials and delivery options in expandable sections. Mulberry went a step further and combined tabs for Description, Details, Material, and Size Charts with pop-ups for Delivery and Returns. The result? All types of customers get excessive information about the product without reloads and scrolling. The case of The Sims 3 manufacturers also proved that clarity and order drive conversion. They tested six versions of the “game launcher,” all of which had particular benefits, simpler design, and lesser information. As a result, conversion increased up to 128%. 2. Give people more images to describe itemsHuman beings are very good at processing visual information, much better than at reading. This means pictures and colors on product pages create the first impression of items and thus are even more important than descriptions.
3. Dialog with customersDo online retailers have fewer opportunities to talk to their customers than brick-and-mortar do? Not really. Though communication between web stores and shoppers doesn’t happen face to face, merchants can still say everything customers want to hear and ask for everything they need to know. Add an FAQ and tips to the description to clarify any doubts. An FAQ has several benefits as it:
Apart from a full-fledged FAQ, you can try short tips as RollerSkateNation.com did. Their sincere advice was not oriented on increasing sales directly. In fact, it showed customers how to replace roller states for kids less frequently by buying larger items and wearing double socks. Customers felt taken care of and increased purchases by 69%. The position of the tips and the FAQ section is also important. In the above case study, RollerSkateNation managed to further boost revenue by 99% by placing their hint below the product description. Customers had enough time to process key details and then got really useful advice as a surprise. Use reviews to build trust. When it comes to making a purchase decision, reviews are almost as important as product descriptions and prices. Most shoppers look for reviews and, at best, they can read credible feedback right on the product page. This way customers don’t have to leave the web store and are less likely to choose another vendor. The case study of Express Watches proves that a well-designed Reviews section can increase conversion by 59%.What does this “well-designed” mean? The product page should let shoppers sort and rate reviews, add images and stars. To show even more credibility, you can pick some reviews and put them forward as testimonials. And for sure be careful with negative reviews. Try to express your professionalism and care. In fact, a well-processed negative review can be even more convincing than a dozen positive ones. Ask customers how to improve conversion. Small details, like words and button colors, influence the success of product pages. Though A/B tests make attempts to polish the web store less risky, don’t be shy to ask customers directly about their impression. For example, Amazon introduced a new feedback feature that shows how shoppers rate the size of the item. By the way, this is a great CX feature per se that allows customers to quickly understand which size to take without exploring the size guide. But now pay extra attention to their poll about the utility of the feature. Why not ask customers if you can do it? What’s next?However good best practices are, they work well nine times out of ten. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that your case isn’t the tenth one. Trust seals normally improve conversion as they make the website look trustworthy. But Icouponblog managed to increase their conversion by 400% by removing a security badge. What does this mean for you? The theory is worth reading, but real results appear only after you test and try. Devote enough time to validate your ideas, and you will definitely find the way to a high-converting product page. Maria Marinina is a Digital Marketing Manager at Iflexion. The post Three ideas to create a high-converting product page appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/24/3-ideas-to-create-a-high-converting-product-page/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184415384890 If content is queen, and the critical role SEO plays a role of bridging the two to drive growth, then there’s no question as to whether or not keyword research is important. However, connecting the dots to create content that ranks well can be difficult. What makes it so difficult? How do you go from a target keyword phrase and write an article that is unique, comprehensive, encompasses all the major on-page SEO elements, touches the reader, and isn’t structured like the “oh-so-familiar” generic SEO template? There’s no one size fits all approach! However, there is a simple way to support any member of your editorial, creative writing, or content team in shaping up what they need in order to write SEO-friendly content, and that’s an SEO content brief. Key benefits of a content brief:
So the rest of this article will cover how we actually get there & we’ll use this very article as an example:
Any good editor will tell you great content comes from having a solid content calendar with topics planned in advance for review and release at a regular cadence. To support topical analysis and themes as SEOs we need to start with keyword research. Start with keyword research: Topic, audience, and objectivesThe purpose of this guide isn’t to teach you how to do keyword research. It’s to set you up for success in taking the step beyond that and developing it into a content brief. Your primary keywords serve as your topic themes, but they are also the beginning makings of your content brief, so try to ensure you:
How does all this help in supporting a content brief?You and your team can get answers to the key questions mentioned below.
Now with keywords as our guide to overall topical themes, we can focus on the next step, topical expansion. Topical expansion: Define key points and gather questionsWriters need more than keywords, they require insight into the pain points of the reader, key areas of the topic to address and most of all, what questions the content should answer. This too will go into your content brief. We’re in luck as SEOs because there is no shortage of tools that allow us to gather this information around a topic. For example, let’s say this article focuses on “SEO writing”. There are a number of ways to expand on this topic.
You’ve taken note of what to write about, and how to cover the topic fully. But how do we begin to determine what type of content and how in-depth it should be? Content and SERP analysis: Specifying content type and formatOkay, so we’re almost done. We can’t tell writers to write unique content if we can’t specify what makes it unique. Reviewing the competition and what’s being displayed consistently in the SERP is a quick way to assess what’s likely to work. You’ll want to look at the top ten results for your primary topic and collect the following:
Content brief development: Let’s make beautiful content togetherNow you’re ready to prepare your SEO content brief which should include the following:
[Note: If/when using internally, consider making part of the content request process, or a template for the editorial staff. When using externally be sure to include where the content will be displayed, format/output, specialty editorial guidance.] Template and toolsWant to take a shortcut? Feel free to download and copy my SEO content brief template, it’s a Google doc. Other content brief templates/resources:
If you want to streamline the process as a whole, MarketMuse provides a platform that manages the keyword research, topic expansion, provides the questions, and manages the entire workflow. It even allows you to request a brief, all in one place. I only suggest this for larger organizations looking to scale as there is an investment involved. You’d likely also have to do some work to integrate into your existing processes. Jori Ford is Sr. Director of Content & SEO at G2Crowd. She can also be found on Twitter @chicagoseopro. The post SEO writing guide: From keyword to content brief appeared first on Search Engine Watch. from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/04/16/seo-writing-guide-from-keyword-to-content-brief/ from https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/184390734480 |