Thursday, August 30, 2018

How to Launch Your E-Commerce Empire for $100 (or Less)

No, it’s not a clickbait title and yes, starting with $100 can get you an actual running store.

In this article I’ll go through every step you need to take to get your store up and running and explain the costs involved.

Granted, to keep the costs down you’ll do all the heavy lifting but hey, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy so let’s dive right in…

1. The Product

It might feel odd for some that I would go about explaining how to launch a $100 store and start with the product but truth is, the site, domain, logo everything needs to be tailored to fit the product you are trying to sell. The success or failure of your business will rely on your ability to select the correct product and the right market so don’t skip over this step.

Here’s a quick way to validate your idea: Go to Google Trends and type in a word that describes your product, eg: “phone case” or “headlights”. You’ll see in a graph below how much interest there is in a particular region like the US. Keep in mind you can also see the results of Worldwide searches but if you are going to target a particular region I’d advise you look there. Look for trends going up or have a steady above 40 interest. That’s what you are looking for.

A couple of years ago I launched a business selling baby and toddler related toys, clothes, etc. When I looked at Google Trends I remember doing around 40 different searches and seeing what my audience was looking for to get a proper understanding of what my target audience looks for and what types of products I need to add to the store.

A second, yet just as important step here is to look for what your competition does, how they address their customers and look for negative feedback from their users. See what they do wrong and aim to improve on those aspects specifically.

Cost: $0

2. The Domain

So you found your product and market. Good for you. Now you need to get the domain that will bring in your flock of loyal customers and though it might sound irrelevant, the domain can really hurt you if you don’t get the right one.

So what makes a good domain name?

Good question. It’s hard to decide if you want to get something brandable or get some keywords in the domain name. If you end up using keywords in the domain name you’d give your viewers a clear idea of they’ll be getting when seeing your store but what if you want to pivot? What if you find out 6 months in, that the store is selling more than just whatever your keyword in the domain is. If your aim is to build a strong brand, then by all means, put your brand name in the domain.

In regards to the TLD (Top-level domain) you choose, get a “.com” if your audience is worldwide, and go local if you are targeting a specific country. It’s as simple as that.

Other than that, keep your domain name short, be unique and unless you have no other choice, avoid hyphens.

As far as providers go I usually stick to Godaddy.com or namecheap.com, both are great services with good service and solid support.

Cost: $10

3. The Platform (Self-Hosted Solution vs SaaS)

I could probably talk for the next hour on why you should pick one CMS or another, why you can go serverless or use a traditional hosting or even if you should go for a SaaS option or not, but I won’t go into that much detail. Instead, I’ll touch briefly on each subject and only talk about the main “players” in each category.

We’ve seen, the past few years, an explosion of E-commerce SaaS options, some better than others yet the fact that almost every week you hear about a new SaaS in this segment makes me think there’s still room for innovation.

What are the benefits of having a SaaS? Basically, you get to launch your store exponentially faster. You basically signup, add your products, set up payments and delivery options and you are good to go.

Before I get swarmed by angry mobs yelling at me for not talking about their favorite e-commerce platform provider, I want to point out that I’ll limit this article to only two SaaS platforms, that I think, are different enough to give you a wider perspective on how far you can actually go choosing an e-commerce SaaS.

SaaS

Number 1: the king of e-commerce SaaS: Shopify, an easy to use platform that will make sense for most people needing a simple shop with no need for a whole lot of customization. There’s a ton of support for it, themes, plugins and customizing your shop is really easy.

Number 2: a newer player in the SaaS space, yet special: Blugento, a simple to use SaaS, similar to Shopify in this regards, the difference being that behind the curtains, there a fully functioning Magento platform doing the heavy lifting. (I’ll talk about Magento as a self-hosted platform below.) The main benefit of Blugento is the scalability of the store, something lacking from all other providers and an aspect that’s incredibly important.

Self-hosted solutions are dime a dozen and they differ from one another by a number of differences but perhaps the most important one is the community surrounding it. This is a crucial factor for you and your store. Since you are reading a “$100 e-commerce site” article you probably can’t rely on a big team of in-house developers that you can breed, educate, and have lying around until that inevitable time when your site will go down.

And it will. It will crash in the most unexpected way at the most inconvenient time…

Cost: around $50/month

Self-Hosted CMS

…that’s why I’m going to only talk about the two biggest platforms, Magento and WooCommerce. They are both immensely popular with crazy big communities around them, testing, developing and pushing the platform to the limits.

Number 1: Magento has been around since 2008 and it quickly became a favorite amongst developers even if, at the time, there were bigger and more popular e-commerce CMS. Magento is not going to be for everyone, hosting costs are going to be higher, development is more complicated but in return, you get a versatile store with a lot of room for customization and it scales gracefully so when your business grows, your store can grow with it handling hundreds of thousands of products without a problem.

Number 2: WooCommerce is on the other side of the spectrum, easy to install, development is easy and you get a ton of free plugins and themes. Since it runs on top of WordPress development is cheap and it’s relatively easy to find developers to work on the store adding extra features. Compared to Magento, the management of inventory and orders is faster and easier but after about 50K products added to your store, you’ll have to think about upgrading to something like Magento.

Both self-hosted options described above will need a hosting company before they can see the light of day. I personally recommend going with hostgator.com or siteground.com but there are a ton of great choices out there.

Installing either platform is easy as both hosting providers offer tools for installing Magento or WordPress through a simple point and click wizard. No more messing with the console, creating databases and editing confusing PHP files.

Cost: $0 for the platforms, between $10 – $25 / month for hosting

Serverless

I’d be remiss not to mention serverless in this discussion as this is something that has been talked a lot about in the recent months and we’ve seen big names in E-commerce move their operations to the cloud, companies like Zalora.

Zalora moved everything to AWS, website, mobile apps, warehouse operations, everything is running off of EC2, S3, Lambda, and RedShift. They are the biggest retailer in Asia with over 20 million users and yet, their entire infrastructure development team is composed of 3 people, which for anyone understanding the difficulties running such a large website can say it’s amazing!

This is done through AWS Lambda, a service launched by Amazon that lets you upload small pieces of code that work as microservices, called functions—hence the term Functions as a Service or FaaS. They basically do a very specific task that your website triggers, returning a simple result. The technology behind it promises to allow developers to build websites and apps without having to worry about the backend or the infrastructure, all while keeping the costs at an all-time low.

There are three big reasons for switching to a serverless framework: cost, development speed and scalability. There are companies saving tens of thousands of dollars a month after switching to serverless and an average of 77% faster delivery speed of the products. Check out this case study on how serverless saves money in comparison to traditional hosting solutions.

Poor website performance is now measured in terms of lost customers and revenues

– Tom Lounibos, CEO, SOASTA

4. Branding

If I’d were to say branding is important I’d be grossly understating it. I will say that a solid logo and branding will make up the foundation of your successful store. So how can you build one that reflects your company’s image while still looking professional? Well, the easy way would be to throw money at it, but we don’t roll like that, so we’ll be doing this ourselves.

The first place to start is to look for inspiration and you do this by going through design and branding websites looking at the current trends, tutorials and any tips or tricks that will help you in this endeavor. My suggestion would be to start with sites like hipsthetic.com or designoholic.com and then try to expand your search to Pinterest.

Alright, you now have an idea of what you need but you aren’t going to pay a couple of hundred dollars per month for Photoshop because that will blow the entire budget we’ve set for ourselves. So what we do is we sign up with Canva.com. It’s free and it will get you started quite fast. After watching a 1-minute tutorial you’ll be ready to start creating your first logo.

Don’t stop at one. Make two or three and show them to a couple of friends to get feedback. After picking the winner get back to Canva.com and make a few more: one that has transparency; one that is all black; and one that is all white. You can use the color one for your website and the rest you’ll use to watermark catalog images (I don’t really recommend using watermarks on product images but if you absolutely have to, place them in a corner somewhere) business cards, social media posts, etc. You get the point.

Cost $0

5. First Marketing Steps

Alright, we almost made it. There’s only one little step ahead of us. And by little I actually mean the most important thing you’ll end up doing for your business.

SEO

Let’s start with something basic: on page SEO, sounds easy enough, right? Well, not exactly. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to SEO and I won’t have time to go into much detail but I will let you with this awesome infographic that will teach you pretty much all you need.

Social Media

You probably know this by now, SM is a tool that you can leverage to get in front of the right customers. Start posting on a regular basis but be careful not to alienate your readers with overzealous posts promoting products. I recommend people use the 8 + 2 rule. You provide 8 pieces of useful content, regardless if it’s on your site or not. Content like tutorials, tips and tricks, peer reviews, etc. Don’t be afraid to test the water with this strategy, find out what your users like and with that type of content they interact and start sharing.

Content Marketing

This will be your bread and butter for the next few months. It’s crucial to have a blog where you can share your experiences and knowledge with your peers. As part of the content marketing efforts, you’ll have to do guest posts. Find like minded people who own blogs and start pitching ideas for guest posts. Most blog owners are fairly easy to reach and communicate with so I highly advise you do this. Guest blogging on small blogs is a great way to reach new audiences but perhaps even better than that would be to go on Medium.com. It’s a great platform to publish content, with a ton of viewers, so I’d strongly suggest you try it out.

6. Advertising

So if my math is correct after getting set up with your website domain and host you’d be left with $30 to $40. I’d advise you drop a few dollars in Facebook ads. It’s easy to do, you don’t need to spend money on a consultant and Facebook has a bunch of tutorials on this. What I’d suggest you do is select the best products you have in your store and create a carousel. Have at least 4 products in there. Select a small audience with the demographic that fits your niche and place a $5 limit on the ad spending. You’ll have around a week to tweak the ad and if you have the right combination of audience and product, chances are you’ll have made your first sell by now.

The Grand Total

If you do the math, going with a self-hosted solution will cost around $50 to host ( for a 5 or 6 month period), add to that $ 10 for the domain and you get to $ 60. You’ll have to host it yourself, do all the maintenance and configuration but you get to have about 6 months to make up your investment.

Going with a SaaS will cost around $60 but you will be done and ready to go in a couple of days which is great if you don’t want to spend time learning to code or set up a CMS. The downside here is that your $50 will cover only that first month which adds to the pressure of making a few sells (which shouldn’t be a problem).

 

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Wednesday, August 29, 2018

5 Ways to Cleanse Your Design Palate

Much is made of the need for inspiration in design work. While most of a designer’s job is sweating the details, we all still need that little spark to get us going. We need (or at least enjoy having) that one initial idea or concept to get us started on the path to design greatness.

And so we binge. We read articles that show off cool things other people have designed, watch videos of new and innovative products being unveiled, and generally seek that spark. The only problem with this process is that in our haste to be inspired, our good ideas can sometimes be obscured by everything else that’s already in our brains.

Unless things have gone very wrong, our thoughts generally don’t happen in a vacuum. Our minds are filled to the brim with our daily tasks, our relationships, and most importantly in this article, everything we already know about design. It’s like eating foods of drastically different flavors, one after the other: the flavor of the first dish will affect the flavor of the second. Jumping from one design project to the next will affect how the second one plays out.

People who eat for fun and profit use palate cleansers to help them more easily distinguish between flavors. We can use this same principle in the world of design to clear our heads a bit, and allow new ideas to fully reveal themselves.

Neutral Flavors

The most common type of palate cleanser is the one with the most neutral flavor possible, which is used to sort of reset the taste buds. Think “white bread”.

In design, this idea might translate as getting back to basics. Go browse a corporate website or two. Look at stuff that’s simple and calming, but which also reinforces the most basic of design principles. Give your mind a nearly-blank canvas on which to project its wilder ideas.

Now I say nearly-blank, because even white bread has a flavor, even if it’s not much of one. This approach is not about completely emptying your mind so much as just mentally going back over your fundamentals.

Bitter Flavors

Others take the exact opposite approach to cleansing their palate by assaulting the senses until they withdraw as a means of self defense. In some sushi restaurants, they’ll give you some ginger for pretty much this exact purpose. Other people just use really dark beer.

In some ways, brutalist design has served this function. Others have gone far beyond brutalism, however, by building the ugliest pages they could*, complete with all the worst bits and bobs the late ’90s had to offer. Staring at these sites is enough to make nearly anyone’s mind blank itself out for a bit. If nothing else, browsing sites like that will make you thankful for what we have now.

* Screenshot intentionally not provided. Click at your own risk.

Stop Eating

Sometimes, the best way is to simply let your taste buds and your stomach rest. The same goes for your brain. I will never stop extolling the virtues of time off. I know I’ve mentioned it in at least one or two other articles here on WDD, but it needs to be reiterated ad nauseum in this age of the workaholic.

Rest. Your. Brain. Think about literally anything else for a while. A rested brain can be the difference between repeatedly running into walls, and having everything finally click into place.

Absorption

When you’re eating spicy food, milk and sometimes bread are recommended as palate cleansers. This is not for their neutral flavor, but because they actually absorb the spicy chemicals a bit, literally taking them off your tongue.

(Incidentally, this is a great tip for when you buy quesadillas from a little old lady in Mexico, and she doesn’t tell you that the salsa is made with habanero peppers. So keep that in mind.)

In a design context, one of the best ways to sponge stuff out of your brain is to get another brain involved. The same way talking out our emotional problems can give immense relief, talking about your design work to someone can help leave some space for new ideas. It doesn’t even have to be a real brain. Programmers sometimes use rubber ducks in a similar way to help them troubleshoot code. I’m not joking, it’s a thing.

Meditation

This section is where the food analogy fails me, I’m afraid. That’s because I want to talk about meditation, and meditation isn’t just doing something else, or “not eating”. It’s sort of a very intentional way of doing nothing.** Yeah, I’m going to massively oversimplify things in this section.

Whether you use transcendental meditation (focusing on one very specific thing), or Zen meditation (refusing to focus on anything, which is far easier for my ADD-addled brain), or some other form, meditative rituals can do a lot to open up space for new ideas. Unlike taking significant time off, meditation can be done just about any time, and with practice, just about anywhere.

You don’t need to meditate for long to get some benefit from it either. A few minutes of breathing deeply in a quiet state of mind can be enough to quiet the incessant input from the world around you, and from your own thoughts. You’re not looking for nirvana, after all. You just need a little bit of empty space in your brain, and that’s a lot easier to achieve.

** The closest analogue to intentionally not eating is fasting. Though the practice does have spiritual significance in many cultures, I don’t think the analogy works here.

 

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Tuesday, August 28, 2018

How I Boosted My Rankings Without Creating Content or Building Links

seo hacks

I know what you are thinking, this isn’t impossible.

Because the more content you have and the more links you have, the higher your rankings will be.

Although that is true, it doesn’t mean that content marketing and link building are the only ways to increase your rankings.

It doesn’t matter what update Google rolls out, I’ve found that there are a few hacks that consistently work to boost your rankings without creating more content or building more links.

So, are you ready to find out what they are?

What does Google want to rank at the top?

Before I get into the exact “hacks” and tactics that can boost your rankings, I want to first help you change the way you think about SEO.

Do you think Google really cares about on-page SEO and link building?

Sure, it matters to some extent, but that’s not what Google cares about the most.

Google wants to rank websites that people love. If they ranked websites that you hated, then you would slowly stop using Google.

And if people stopped using Google, then there would be fewer people to click on their ads, which means they would make less money.

That’s why Google cares about what you think and they ideally want to rank the websites that you love.

Now let’s dive into some hacks that will make people love your site, which will boost your rankings.

And don’t worry… I am not going to give you some fluffy tactics, I have data to back up everything. 😉

Hack #1: Optimize your click-through-rate

Let me ask you this:

If 10,000 people performed a Google search for the term “SEO” and clicked on the number 2 listing instead of the number 1 listing, what would that tell Google?

It would tell them that the number 2 listing is more relevant and that Google should move that listing to the number 1 spot.

Rand Fishkin ran an experiment where he told all of his Twitter followers to perform a Google search for the term “best grilled steak” and to click on the first listing, hit the back button, and then click on the 4th listing.

best grilled steak

Within 70 minutes the 4th listing jumped into the top spot.

best grilled steak 1

And that page even started to rank at the top of page 1 for the term “grilled steak”.

grilled steak

The ranking eventually slipped back down because people didn’t really feel that the listing was that great compared to some of the other listings.

Instead, it only climbed because Rand has a loyal following and everyone helped trick Google to believe that it was more relevant (at least in the short term).

But this should give you a sense that Google cares what you think. So much so that they will adjust rankings in real time because they don’t want to show you pages that you feel are irrelevant (no matter how many backlinks the page has or how well its on-page code is optimized).

And Rand wasn’t the only person who tested out this theory. It’s been done a countless number of times and each time it produced similar results.

You want people to click on your listing more than the other ones out there. It’s that simple.

If you can generate more clicks (in a legitimate way) than the listings above you, eventually you’ll notice your rankings climb without having to write more content or build more links.

So, how do you get more clicks?

Well, you have to adjust your title tag and meta description tag to be more appealing.

Anytime you perform a Google search, you see a list of results. And each result has a title, URL, and description:

title description

The link part is the title (also known as the title tag), then there is the URL (which is green in color), and lastly, there is the description (black text… that is also known as the meta description).

If you are running a WordPress blog, you can easily modify your title tag and meta description using the Yoast SEO plugin.

There are a few ways you can generate more clicks on your listing over the competition:

  • Include keywords – people tend to click on listings that include the keyword or phrase they just searched for. Make sure you are using the right keywords within your title and description (I will get to this in a bit). This may sound basic, but when your web pages rank for thousands of terms, which one do you include in your 60-character title tag?
  • Evoke curiosity – titles that are super appealing tend to generate clicks. For example, if the keyword you were going after is “green tea,” a good title would be “11 Proven Benefits of Green Tea (#6 Will Shock You)”. I know it may seem a bit long, but it works because a lot of people will wonder what number 6 will be.
  • Copy magazines – anytime you see a magazine, you’ll notice that they have appealing titles and headlines on the cover. A lot of their titles contain “how to” or are list oriented. Look at magazines for inspiration.

Improving your search listings isn’t rocket science. Where most people mess up is that they pick the wrong keywords or they are terrible at writing copy. Remember, humans are reading your title tag and meta description tag, so they need to be appealing.

If you are struggling writing appealing copy, read my ultimate guide to copywriting.

Now let’s go over the exact steps you need to take to get more clicks.

The first step is to use Google Search Console.

Log into Google Search Console, then click on “Search Traffic” and then click on “Search Analytics”:

google nav

You’ll see a page that looks something like this:

search console

Scroll back up to the top and click on the “pages” radio button and “CTR” checkbox:

pages nav

You’ll see a list of results sorted by your most popular URLs and their respective click-through-rate (also known as CTR):

search console ctr

Look for pages that have high traffic but a CTR of less than 5%.

Click on one of the listings with a CTR of less than 5% and then click on the “queries” radio button:

search console queries

You’ll then want to look for the keywords with the highest amount of “clicks” and the lowest CTR.

low ctr

Those are the keywords you want to focus on in your title tag and meta description.

Remember, your title tag is limited to roughly 60 characters, which means you won’t be able to fit more than 2 or 3 keywords.

So, you want to pick the keywords that typically have the most clicks. They should also have a low CTR because you selected pages with a CTR rate lower than 5%.

By adjusting your title tag and meta description to include the right keywords and by evoking curiosity, you’ll be able to increase your clicks. This will get you more search traffic in the short run and boost your rankings over time.

Here are 3 tests that worked well for me when I adjusted my title tag:

marketing digital

I noticed I was getting a lot of traffic for the term “marketing digital” from countries outside of North America on one of my posts.

So, I adjusted my title tag from saying “digital marketing” to “marketing digital” which took my CTR from 3.36% to 4.45%. It also increased my search traffic by 1,289 visitors a month.

social media marketing

With the key phrase “social media marketing,” I adjusted my title tag based on an idea I got from a magazine. My CTR went from 2.38% to 2.84%. In total, that increased my traffic by 932 visitors a month.

With my social media marketing title tag, I added the phrase “step-by-step guide.”

This lets people know it is a how-to related post and it is action oriented. I also added the word “social media” a few times within the meta description.

google adwords

And with the query “Google AdWords,” I noticed that Google announced that they are switching their ad platform name from Google AdWords to Google Ads, so I did the opposite and focused more on the term “Google AdWords” because very few people knew about the name switch.

This helped drive an extra 1,355 visitors per month.

I’ve also had instances where the changes I’ve made had hurt my Google traffic.

So, whenever you adjust your title tag and meta description, mark that date down and look at the data within Google Search Console after 30 or so days to see if it hurt or helped.

If it hurt, revert it back and wait another 30 days. It can hurt your rankings if you continuously test. So when you have a losing variation, no matter what, wait 30 days as it will stabilize your rankings.

If the change helped boost your CTR and rankings, then you are off to a good start.

Now that you’ve optimized your click-through-rate, it’s time for you to optimize your user experience.

Hack #2: Show people what they want when they want it

If you go back to the experiment Rand Fishkin ran above, you’ll notice he told people to click the “back” button.

You don’t want people going to your site and clicking the back button… it will hurt your rankings.

People tend to click the back button because they don’t like what they see. If you can optimize your website for the optimal user experience, people will be less likely to click the back button.

I do this through 2 simple steps.

The first is to use Qualaroo and survey people. By asking people (right when they are on your website) a simple question of “how can I improve this page,” you’ll get tons of ideas.

You can even use Qualaroo to find out why people are visiting your website, which again will help you understand the type of people visiting your site. This will allow you to tailor your experience to them.

qualaroo

I ran a Qualaroo survey on my main blog page. The biggest feedback I got from you was that it was hard to find the exact content you were looking for.

And I know why too. It’s because I have marketing related content on everything. From ecommerce to SEO to content marketing…

I decided to try something out where when you land on the blog page, you can select the type of content that piques your interest and then all of the content gets tailored to your needs.

I also ran a Crazy Egg test to ensure that you like the change I made. Based on the Crazy Egg heatmap below, you can see that it was successful.

crazy egg heatmap

The bounce rate on my blog page dropped by 21% as well. 🙂

I then looked at the Crazy Egg scrollmap to see which elements/areas of the page have the most attention. This helped me determine where I should place the content filtering option.

crazy egg scroll

The Crazy Egg scrollmap of my blog page shows that the content filtering option generates 70% of the page’s attention.

Placing the filtering in a place where there is a lot of attention ensures that I am giving you what you need in a place that is easy to find.

After you optimize your user experience, you want to focus on building a brand.

I recommend that you look at the pages on your site with high bounce rates and consider running this process in order to improve the user experience. When selecting the pages, make sure you are also picking pages that have decent traffic.

Hack #3: Build a brand

If you build a brand like Facebook or Amazon or any of the popular site, you’ll rank higher.

Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, once said:

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

I ran an experiment, which helped build up my brand and my search traffic skyrocketed (unintentionally).

My traffic went from 240,839 unique visitors per month in June 2016:

june traffic

To 454,382 unique visitors per month by August 2016:

august traffic

Once I realized the power of branding, I started a podcast called Marketing School, and I started to publish videos on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn multiple times per week.

This has led me to generate 40,412 brand queries per month:

search console brands

I’m even getting 3,806 brand queries per month on YouTube alone:

youtube searches

But as you know, producing good content doesn’t guarantee that your brand will grow.

Even if you build tools like me and release them for free (like what I did with Ubersuggest), it still won’t guarantee success.

But the one thing I have learned that works is the rule of 7.

When someone hears your message 7 times or sees it 7 times, they are more likely to resonate, build a connection, and continually come back.

So how do you get people to come back to your site?

The simplest solution that I’ve found to work is a free tool called Subscribers.

It leverages browser notifications to get people to “subscribe” to your website. It’s better than email because it is browser-based, which means people don’t have to give you their name or email address.

And then every time you want to get people to come back to your website, you simply send them a notification.

Look at how I’ve gotten over 42,316 people back to my site 174,281 times. That’s roughly 4 times per person.

push traffic

Based on the rule of 7, I only have 3 more times to go. 😉

The way I use Subscribers is that I send out a notification blast every time I release a blog post.

The push looks something like this:

neil test sub

And instantly I’m able to get people back to my site:

subscribe stats

When you start using Subscribers you won’t see results right away. It takes time to build up your subscriber base, but it happens pretty fast.

Typically, you’ll generate a browser notification subscriber three times faster than an email subscriber.

Conclusion

If you only focus on things like on-page SEO, link building, or even blogging, you won’t dominate Google.

Why?

Because that is what everyone else focuses on. You have to do more if you want to beat the competition.

By doing what’s best for the user, you’ll have a better chance of beating everyone else.

Just look at me, I do what every other SEO does plus more. Sometimes this causes my traffic to dip in the short run, but in the long run, it generally climbs.

traffic overview

From creating compelling copy so people want to click on your listing, to optimizing your user experience, to building a brand… you have to go beyond the SEO basics.

SEO has become extremely competitive. 5 years ago, it was much easier to rank at the top of Google.

If you use the 3 hacks above, here’s how long it will typically take to notice results.

  • Optimizing title tags – assuming you run successful tests, you can see small results in 30 to 60 days. Over time the results get even better.
  • Improving user experience – making your user experience better will instantly improve your metrics such as bounce rate, pageviews per visitor, time on site, and conversion rate. As for search rankings, it does help, but not instantly. Typically, it takes about 4 to 6 months to see results from this.
  • Brand building – sadly it takes years. Sure, tools like Subscribers will instantly grow your traffic, but it won’t impact your search rankings right away. You have no choice but to build a brand.

So which one of these hacks are you going to test out first?

The post How I Boosted My Rankings Without Creating Content or Building Links appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Beyond Blogging: Guest Slots & Thought Leadership

Including high quality blogs and other forms of useful, interesting content is a great way to boost SEO and encourage repeat visits to a website. However, with everyone playing the same game, getting visitors flowing to a new site can still be touch and go — even if you do everything right.

Increasingly, targeted advertising on Google and social media helps bring new eyes to every lovingly crafted website, and companies relying purely on SEO struggle. The drawback is that this puts a business’ hard-earned cash straight into the pocket of the Internet giants. That’s why they’re worth billions while small businesses struggle.

There is a way, however, to get free advertising and introduce thousands of new surfers to your site: by guest blogging, you can showcase yourself — and by extension your company — and usually get a backlink to boot. This is not the game it once was, though, and you’ll need serious dedication and guts to succeed.

Is Guest Blogging Still Worth It?

Strangely, given its obvious advantages, guest blogging has gone somewhat out of fashion in recent years. This is because, like everything which works in the SEO game, it has been abused. In response to the increasingly common practice of paying popular sites to host spammy blogs laden with SEO-friendly links to a business’ site, Google decided to crack down.

In a 2014 post entitled ‘the decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO’, Google’s then head of web spam team Matt Cutts announced a major shift in approach to links gathered through such dodgy practices.

Cutts didn’t hold back on his criticism of spam guest blogging. His post started:

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

This now notorious post, and a subsequent warning from Google on content-syndicating practices in 2017, served to dissuade many good bloggers from guesting, while only partly deterring the spammers. Word got out that guest blogging was bad, and could actually hurt your ranking. Soon, the Internet was rife with people declaring the death of the guest post, or asking whether it was still a worthwhile practice.

The answer from experts is a resounding yes: but you have to do it right.

More Than Just SEO

Entrepreneur and online marketing expert Neil Patel says guest blogging remains the absolute best inbound marketing strategy for online businesses. Not only does it offer free advertising, he argues, but also confers authority on the writer which will be lacking if he or she only ever publishes on their own site:

Data from Social Marketing Writing found that “62.96% of people perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible. You want authority, qualified traffic, relevant links, motivated leads and sales in your business. Well, guest blogging can give you all of these and so much more.

But he goes on to say: “However, not all guest posts are created equal and they don’t all yield equal results. You have to go about it in the right way and you have to choose your targets carefully.

One of the reasons why some brands fail at guest blogging is because they don’t understand how to effectively produce the right content.”

The only thing about guest blogging that has really changed since Google’s crackdown is that it is no longer really a pure SEO game. For the purposes of ranking, running your own regular, prolific and reasonably high quality blog is now the better option. As for guest blogging, it is better to think of it as free advertising… only more effective.

Writing a guest blog is a chance to showcase yourself to a new audience; and to appear knowledgeable and trustworthy in your area of expertise and business. You therefore need two things: a site with a good readership, and something interesting or knowledgeable to say.

Which Sites to Guest Blog on?

Finding suitable sites to guest-post on will depend on the niche you or your client are targeting. Google’s crackdown on spam links and low-grade content has led to a number of metrics that try to rank a sites’ worthiness, such as Moz’s Domain Authority system. Partly because of this, it is fashionable at the moment to write for huge websites like Forbes or Inc whenever possible, as these boast the highest scores on these scales. However, these sites have become so large that actually getting your article noticed can be a challenge in itself, while the increasing admittance of user-generated content may eventually diminish their worth as trusted authority sites.

remember that a backlink is not just an SEO tool, potential clients may actually follow it!

Perhaps a better bet is to consider industry and trade publications that directly cater to your client base. These publications can often be easy to break into as editors are often short of good copy, and they have the advantage of being quality, human-edited publications that readers trust. Readerships may be smaller, but they are also more likely to be your clients: remember that a backlink is not just an SEO tool, potential clients may actually follow it! To approach these sites a human touch is required and you will want to contact editors personally, with an individually crafted note and even — gulp — a phone call.

Finding things to say on specialist sites can be tricky. Personally, I recommend channeling your opinions True, everyone has an opinion. But on the other hand, yours is unique. If you can pinpoint the issues which are of interest to your client base and provide an insightful angle on them based on your specific knowledge, then you should have a solid pitch to make to relevant websites in your clients’ niche. In fact, good expert comment and opinion is arguably the most high-value content in any publication.

On the other hand, the drawback of relying on opinion is that it tends to have a short shelf life. As with blogging, therefore, it may be a good idea to also write an occasional ‘how to guide’, which aims to be the definitive answer to a practical question or need which you can solve. These long-form guides are worth putting serious effort into writing, as the aim is for them to remain popular and useful for years to come — thus attracting a constant flow of traffic and attention your way.

Bear in mind that it is often best not to mention your own business at all, as this is unpopular with publishers and will cause readers to raise their ‘advertising shields’. Editors understand that you do want some payment in kind, and will usually offer a link next to your byline, or in an author bio. Content yourself with this reward, because you are getting much more besides.

They Call it ‘Thought Leadership’

Offering expert opinion and guidance takes you into the realms of what marketeers call ‘thought leadership’. Don’t let this term put you off, it is actually misleading. All it boils down to is presenting yourself as an expert in an area of interest relevant to your client base.

If that seems like it’s spiraled well beyond guest-blogging, it’s because in the old sense it has. Simply publishing text on obscure sites for the sole purpose of garnering a link is now at best useless, and possibly counterproductive.

But producing quality copy for the purposes of informing readers and showcasing yourself is as useful as ever. The best guest bloggers always understood this, and were effectively practicing thought leadership without having necessarily heard the term. They simply understood that having relevant people know their name was even better than a backlink.

 

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Monday, August 27, 2018

3 Essential Design Trends, September 2018

While this tends to be the time of year when things start to slow a bit in the design world, there are still trends that are worth paying attention to as you plan future projects. One element that stands out quite distinctly is the use of the color purple in projects.

This trend deserves a mention of its own (see No. 3) but also note the use of the color in examples from other projects in the other featured trends as well.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

1. Elaborate Illustrations

There’s just something about an elaborate illustration that draws the eye into a design. There’s a need to see all of the details and understand the intricacy of each line. Whether it’s a “designer thing” or not, illustrations are an interesting way to draw users into a website design.

The more elaborate the illustration, the more custom and unique it can feel as well. This is an effective way to create a one-of-a-kind project. And there are so many different ways to do it.

Growcase uses icon-style illustrations to draw users into the portfolio. Emit Ayouni has a distinct style with each of the creations that makes users want to scroll and explore.

Ester Digital uses a sketch-style illustration and builds on it with subtle animation and additional parts as the user scrolls. Again, the feel here is complete customization – the perfect vibe for a creative agency.

ICO Syndicate also features an illustration with animated elements, but it is right on the homepage. The illustration features clean lines and simple coloring but there is so much to look at. Each little scene is part of a bigger picture that engages. (Try not to watch the purple balls drop and move throughout the drawing.)

2. Distinct Panels

When talking about website projects, do you catch yourself referring to things in “screens?”

This concept is becoming more common and the designs reflect it. More websites feature distinct panels that fit on the screen or come pretty close. These screens help contain and organize bits of content as well as provide a methodology for stacking and reorganizing content on different screen sizes. These panels make it all look seamless to the user.

Adaptable uses a series of panels that alternative between full width and split screen. Note that you get a glimpse of the next set of panels from the current location.

Van Cutsem uses panels to create content hierarchy.

Blindspotting uses panels to highlight different information for an upcoming movie. There’s a mix of full screen panels and smaller stacks as well and content that features still images and video.

3. The Color Purple

Extravagance, regality, creativity, wisdom, dignity, mystery and independence.

These are all words that describe the color purple. People often have a distinct emotional connection to this hue – they either love it or hate it. Because of this, it’s not a widely used color in a lot of design projects.

Designers tend to stay away from colors that some people just don’t like. But there is a certain something to projects that feature purple elements as the examples below show.

With the right messaging and content, using the color purple can be a powerful design tool that helps communicate just the right thing. When using purple — whether as a background, accent or foreground element — make sure to think about how the color communicates in relationship to what the design should say overall. Do the messages match? If so, then purple might be just the right design trend for your projects.

Each of these websites uses the trend exceptionally well:

Colorz uses a purple circle to help users “peek” into the background. The element is really just a focal point to draw users into the messaging.

Crescosa features a split screen with a purple side that contains an oversized navigation element. (There’s also a cool floating purple rock or gem in the center of the screen to help draw attention across the design.) Again, the color is used to create a focal point and help users understand how to interact with the design.

Verity features a deep purple background with animated lights. The image looks like the night sky (a common use for purple imagery and backgrounds). What works about purple and this design is the connection between imagery, color and copy. The headline “The magic is real” mirrors the emotional connection you would expect from purple. It’s a perfect fit.

Conclusion

The websites featured above are a great examples of how many design trends work with each other. Many of the most successful trends aren’t wide-scale use of elements or design techniques but subtle strokes. Click through the examples and you’ll see quite quickly how many of these design feature multiple trends without being overwhelming or “too trendy.”

What trends are you loving (or hating) right now? I’d love to see some of the websites that you are fascinated with. Drop me a link on Twitter; I’d love to hear from you.

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