Looking for a guaranteed Google first page ranking?
Is that even possible?
Before I answer. Aren’t guarantees nice?
They remove all risk from the investment. Give you an out if things are turning south. And you’re in the driver’s seat of a win, or at least you don’t lose, situation.
Get excited because when you execute to a tee, you can (pretty much) guarantee a first page, maybe first overall, Google ranking.
Why Invest In Google Rankings
Do you want to grow your business? Or at least be more profitable than you were last year?
If money means anything to you as a business owner or marketer, then listen closely.
Yes Facebook ads are extremely effective. But they have a downside.
We see this scenario every month: The high cost-per-click and cost-per-conversion is sometimes too expensive for the clients budget.
And over time, PPC ads only get more expensive. For example, some Google ads that cost $9 a click in 2005 now cost $70 a click in 2020.
So then we start looking for other solutions to drive the same number of leads and sales, at a fraction of the cost.
On this search, we often land on SEO. The art and science of ranking near the top of Google to attract your target audience to your site.
And when you consider the fact that only 0.78% of Google searches click on 2nd page results, then you’ll see why the game is to rank your site on the 1st page of Google. Why? Well, there’s no clicks and traffic if you’re off the first page.
Once you rank at the top of organic search results, you turn on a sales machine with Google sending new prospects and customers to you daily, non-stop.
When shopping for a product, given a choice between two options, the prospect is most likely to choose the company they’ve heard of. Common sense, right?
This brand awareness turns into brand equity. As broken down in this Apple brand equity report, brand awareness can do wonders for your profit and loss statement.
Having a brand name people recognize is a major asset. After all, trust is one of the core factors in a prospect’s mind before buying.
Now combine that idea with the fact that once you figure out how to get to the top of Google without paying for ads, brand awareness soars. Your business name and URL is in the face of thousands of people every day across your city, country, maybe the world.
Over time, this brand awareness snowballs into massive ROI. A known brand will receive more:
Sales
Profit and revenue
Social media followers
Email subscribers
User-generated content
Press mentions
Influencer shoutouts
Employee applications and talent
Opportunities to win over new audiences
2. Organic Traffic
To successfully market your business, you almost always need to invest significant money or time into the execution.
Spend $10,000 per month in ad spend or 100 hours per month, it comes at a cost. Be it ecommerce marketing, professional services, or brick and mortar, the reality is the same.
That is, unless Google is sending you thousands of visitors to your site for free. This is called organic traffic. Traffic you don’t pay for, but earn thanks to a highly search engine optimized website.
Consider this.
Let’s say 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 prospects are visiting your site organically every month. Knowing the average conversion rate is around 2.5%, that’s 25, 250, or 2,500 new customers monthly, on repeat.
And then imagine these customers come back as repeat buyers, while you continue to add 25, 250, or 2,500 new customers monthly.
You’d quickly turn into a 7- to 9-figure brand thanks to one traffic channel: SEO.
3. Increase Revenue
Using the example above, when organic traffic floods your business website, record-breaking revenue and profit numbers are always around the corner.
This is why the ROI of SEO is insanely high. You can generate hundreds of thousands to millions in revenue, without spending any money to acquire it.
Even if you’re paying sales reps, the cost to acquire a new customer drops significantly when you’re generating new leads for free.
For example, we worked with a catering company to accomplish the following using SEO:
4,673 ecommerce sales from organic traffic
Rank on the 1st page of google for 4 buy now keywords
Helped them grow to become a $600,000 per year business
We strive to rank our customers first overall for their specific products or services. By doing so, we match the maximum number of buy-now prospects with our customer’s offerings.
That’s all it requires to build a sales machine.
Tactics To Guarantee Google First Page Rankings
For customers and ourselves, we have hundreds of keywords ranking 1st overall, and thousands in the top 10 of Google rankings.
Here’s a screenshot to prove it.
Use the following pro tips to get your business website ranking on Google’s first page, ideally first overall. Then those one million page views can be all yours.
1. Keyword Research
Consider keyword research your blueprint for the house build. When you do it strategically, you’ll see results faster and won’t have to waste time redoing construction and renovations.
Same theory holds true for keyword research.
The Robben Media general rule of thumb when doing keyword research is:
Lock in on keywords that genuinely provide value to your customers
Go for keywords with a monthly search volume of at least 500 (if you’re a retailer who only sells in one location then a search volume of 100 works)
Look for ones with a keyword difficulty of 20 or lower if you’re new to this, 40 or lower if you have some SEO going for you, and 40+ when your website has done years of SEO work
We use Ahrefs to find this keyword information. SEMrush is another option you may consider.
Put on the mindset of your ideal customers and ask, “What would I search to find your specific businesses’ products or services?”
Those are the keyword phrases you want to target. Go make a spreadsheet of 20 of these keywords.
Then look to the next step below.
2. Content Creation
Once you have a list of 20 keywords you want to rank for, it’s time to create an individual website page for each keyword.
For each individual keyword, you want to publish one 2,000+ word blog post. This gives the reader and Google indexing enough content to move you to the top of search results.
In each of these content pieces, the aim is to create an “ultimate guide” of information so your prospect never has to click back and view other search results.
You want to completely satisfy their search. Go over the top in value add. Make it the best content on the internet.
When you execute like this, you’ll receive more social shares, bookmark saves, time on page, and (eventually) organic traffic from Google.
Last but not least, the best written articles receive the lion’s share of backlinks. In my experience ranking customer sites and my own, the quality and quantity of backlinks decides Google rankings more than anything else.
3. Backlinks
What’s a backlink? It’s when another website links to your website page. Google can be viewed as a voting ballot. Whichever page receives the most and best backlinks, rises to the top.
And as we know by now, top of Google means the most organic traffic, and revenue growth. Put simply: “get backlinks, get traffic, get sales”.
But did you know that 66% of pages receive no backlinks? This goes to show the opportunity for your Google rankings and traffic to skyrocket is there. To be frank, most website owners don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to SEO.
Ok, you’re all in on backlinks. Next up, how do you generate them? It’s more of an art that a scientific method.
Create a roundup post, email bloggers for quotes, publish the piece, send it to them and ask for a backlink
Make friends with journalists and reporters, then offer to provide insight on trending news if they need it
Find broken links on other related websites, and offer your link as a substitute for the broken link
Additional SEO Resources
Looking to get 1 million visitors to your website? We’ve done it and are now showing others how to do it themselves with our free SEO course.
The course includes five training lessons allowing you to do a major overhaul of your own website’s search engine optimization.
This could be the best business decision you make all year. Just imagine thousands of interested prospects flooding your website to buy from you. Pretty amazing, right?
Conclusion
Now technically, the answer to the question, “Can you guarantee Google first page results?” is no. Guaranteeing anything is difficult.
But with an unconquerable will and the desire to commit to a first page Google ranking, then yes you’ll accomplish your goals.
Be the difference maker. Or you can hire a SEO company like Robben Media to execute for you. We can clean up your site, do strategic keyword research, and acquire backlinks so your domain authority increases. In turn, Google will rank your site higher, you’ll receive more organic traffic, and sales will grow.
Wondering how to get to the top of Google without paying?
It’s your lucky day.
We know how disappointing it can be to execute flawless website design or set up an online store, just to hear crickets and get zero traffic.
We are here to tell you it gets better. Follow the secrets to getting a top ranking without draining your bank account like there’s a leak at the bottom.
After executing these tips, you’ll start to see your rankings climb to the first page.
Utilize Search Engine Optimization (SEO)and Link Building
There are two ways to rank at the top of Google: paid advertising and SEO.
Since our goal is not to spend money, we’ll focus on SEO.
SEO is when you optimize your site’s content with the right target keywords to organically appear on Google’s search results for said keywords. SEO is not just about Google, it’s about optimizing your content for all search engines.
A Denver immigration law firm, for example, would want to rank on Google’s first page for “immigration lawyer Denver” to acquire new customers in need of their services. To accomplish this, they want a solid SEO plan to attract clients to their business website.
There are a variety of components that go into an effective SEO plan:
Having a comprehensive SEO plan can take a lot of time and effort. But without fail, this all pays off in the end when your website traffic (and revenue) soars.
Our goal is to help you get your website ranked on Google without spending money.
1. Go After Low Competition Keywords
It can be tempting to try and compete with broad keywords that you know will be searched a million times per day. Don’t fall for this trap. Targeting low competition keywords can help your website reach the top of Google searches.
Many of the industry leaders are going after these keywords for their SEO plans. You’ll find better success when you target less competitive keywords, especially in the beginning.
Say you own an ecommerce nail polish brand. You don’t want to try and compete for the keyword “nail polish”. Companies across the world are fighting for those same search results.
Instead, you will want to add a unique wrinkle to better stand out. This could be attempting to rank for the keyword “animal print nail polish”. Notice how this keyword is much more specific, has two extra keywords, and is still a popular search to drive traffic and sales. That’s how you do effective ecommerce marketing — work smarter, not harder.
When all said and done, finding the right keywords can be a trial and error process.
But the more you practice and start recognizing what works for your business, the sooner you’ll fall in love with the results.
2. Optimizing for Both Local and Non-Local Searches
Optimizing for Both Local and Non-Local Searches is essential for how to get your Google listing higher. Understanding your audience and their geographical location is crucial for effective SEO. If your business primarily serves a local community, it’s important to focus on local SEO strategies. This includes optimizing your Google My Business listings and incorporating local keywords into your content. For instance, if you run a bakery in Boston, you might want to include keywords like “Boston bakery” or “best pastries in Boston” in your content.
However, if you want to reach a wider audience or if your services aren’t tied to a specific location, you’ll need to optimize for “Google search without a location”. This involves focusing on broader keywords and creating content that appeals to users regardless of their location. Tools like Google Trends or Keyword Planner can be invaluable for finding both local and non-local keywords that are relevant to your business.
Creating location-specific landing pages can boost local SEO, while broader, topic-focused pages can help attract a non-local audience. Online reviews and ratings also play a significant role in local SEO, so encourage your customers to leave reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp. Lastly, don’t forget about the power of social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can help you reach both local and global audiences, even when users are conducting a Google search without a location.
3. Write Quality Content
Having quality content is the bare minimum cost of admission for driving organic traffic. But winning doesn’t come from bare minimum.
Raise your standards. Write the best content on the internet for each piece of content you publish. Write quality content and ensure your title tag is optimized for better visibility.
Producing relevant information for what others are looking for.
Having an accessible website that takes one click to navigate.
Understanding the search intent of your target audience is crucial for writing quality content.
Since you want to rank on the first page, you need to be complying with Google’s guidelines for what quality content looks like.
A tool called Google Search Console helps ensure your page is up to par. Google Search Console generates reports on search traffic performance so you can gauge how well your website is performing.
Once you get your report, Google will offer you suggestions to improve your website to boost your rankings.
One thing you absolutely need to avoid is using deceptive technology to “trick” Google into ranking you higher. Google will figure out what you’re doing and will prevent your site from ever reaching a top rank. Even worse, you may get suspended or banned from appearing.
Besides producing relevant content, you also need to be constantly updating your content. You can repurpose your outdated content to add new, unique twists that keep it valuable to users.
At the end of the day, you should always be valuing quality content over quantity. Spending extra time to ensure your content fits Google’s expectations will pay off in the long run. Writing quality content is key to getting your website noticed on Google.
4. The Importance of an Optimized Meta Description for SEO
A meta description is a short snippet that describes the content of a web page. It appears under the page title in search engine results and plays a significant role in SEO. A well-written meta description can entice users to click on your page, thereby increasing your click-through rate and potentially improving your search engine ranking.
When writing meta descriptions, it’s important to use action-oriented language, include your target keyword, and ensure the description accurately reflects the content on the page. This can significantly improve your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Meta descriptions also play a role when your content is shared on social media. The meta description is often used as the description of the page, so it’s important to make it compelling. However, be wary of common mistakes such as duplicating meta descriptions across multiple pages or exceeding the recommended length. These can negatively impact your SEO efforts.
5. Acquire Backlinks
A backlink Robben Media received from reviewtrackers.com.
What’s the most important Google ranking factor? Backlinks. Acquiring backlinks from reputable sources can significantly improve your Google rankings.
A backlink is when another site that is not your own links to your site.
This acts as a vote of confidence from another site to yours, letting Google know that you are more credible than sites with less backlinks. (Speaking of confidence, check out these 13 confidence building activities.)
Be patient. Receiving backlinks takes time between the reaching out, writing guest posts, and doing roundups.
This is one of the reasons that producing quality and unique content is so important. Publishing posts with information that no one has seen before will increase your chances of someone linking to your page.
Now the authority of the page linking to you does matter:
Pages with more domain authority can increase your chances with ranking. It is not easy to get a well-established site to backlink your page.
Relation matters; sites that are in your industry or are related to your business will increase your rankings.
Google checks how many times a site has linked to you before. If you get links from a variety of different sites that have never linked to you before, you will be in good shape.
There is another way to increase your backlinks. Guest blogging can be a great way to get your name out and build your industry authority.
Find a business that is similar to you and ask if you can write a blog for their site.
You can also link from one page of your site to another to provide readers with more information about the topics you’re writing about. This helps too.
Need help driving credible links to your website? Check out our link building service.
*6. Partner With An SEO Company (paid option)
No, this is not a bait and switch. You can accomplish insane results to the tune of millions of organic views without paying any SEO company.
(Or you can do a profit-sharing agreement with an SEO company where you only pay them off the profits generated. Boom. Still in the guidelines now.)
Partnering with an SEO company, like us, can help you get the results you want in a timely manner.
Getting Google to send you tons of traffic can be extremely time consuming. You have to stay up to date with all the new trends and the latest algorithm updates.
The best part about partnering with an expert is that you can decide how much you want them to do and how much you want to do on your own.
You can use an SEO company to:
Start you in the right direction and help you come up with an SEO plan
Conduct keyword research and manage your SEO efforts to ensure you will get your desired results
Deliver a list of blog post topics for you to write
Allow them to completely run a campaign to deliver ROI for your business
Ensure your core pages are receiving backlinks from websites with domain authority
Regardless of what you decide, you will learn a lot and have momentum to skyrocket your rankings.
Conclusion
Ranking first on Google takes time—just like anything worthwhile.
If you’re wondering ‘how do I rank on Google?’, following these steps will help you achieve your goal.
Though my guarantee is your rankings and traffic will improve if you stay committed. Work smart, and we’ve shown today how you can get a top spot on Google without spending a dollar. If you’re wondering ‘how do I rank on Google?’, following these steps will help you achieve your goal.
However, if your time is better spent elsewhere, partner with our SEO team to climb atop the rankings as you sit back and relax. We’ll do the hard work for you.
Do it yourself or work with us. Whatever you decide, it’s time you find out what all the hype is about. What would ranking on the first page of Google do for your business?
What’s the difference between sites at the top of Google and everyone else desperate for traffic? Those who track SEO metrics separate themselves from the pack.
Up to this point, we’ve taught you everything you need to drive an insane amount of traffic to your site. But there’s one last step: measuring our SEO performance.
In this lesson, we’ve filtered through every SEO metric imaginable and narrowed it down to seven focus points. Not only that, you’ll also get two tools to measure what’s important. Discover the connection between website traffic and revenue generation with this guide on Transforming Site Traffic into Profit.
This will help you track what content is producing traffic, so you can then improve it for better results.
What Are SEO Metrics?
Since search results often take time to produce results, tracking metrics is a way to ensure you’re on the right path toward gaining traffic before the big pay off of fresh leads and sales arrive.
Like we defined what is SEO, we need to define what’s a metric.
Defining A SEO Metric
You may ask, “What’s a SEO metric?” A metric is a standard of measurement that’s crystal clear.
When talking SEO metrics, these are knowing exactly how many people visited your site in the past month, where did they specifically come from, and what pages did they visit, etc.
It’s concrete data you can use to improve upon going forward. Because without metrics, you may find yourself trying to fix something that’s already working and then screw it up. Or you may miss a giant opportunity because you’re unaware of it.
As an SEO agency, we use data to relay performance to customers, get organized internally, and be inspired to reach new goals.
Are you ready? It’s time to reveal these seven SEO metrics.
SEO Performance Metrics That Matter
1. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is first on the list because it’s the truest evaluator of your website’s SEO success.
This is the total traffic sent directly to your site from organic searches on Google and other search engines.
The reason you spend all this time learning SEO and trying to rank keywords on the first page of Google is to see this organic traffic number go to the moon!
Now overall traffic is important too. But this figure can be quickly manipulated with expensive advertising campaigns or a lucky viral post. So your SEO efforts will be reflected best in your organic traffic numbers.
To view organic traffic, simply sign into Google Analytics, and click:
Acquisition
Overview
Organic Search
This dashboard shows organic traffic. If interested, you can select a different date to see organic performance.
We recommend you view organic traffic monthly to ensure you’re making progress.
2. Keyword Rankings
Here’s an obvious one. If the process is to research keywords to rank for and then write content on these keywords, wouldn’t it also make sense to track your Google keyword rankings?
I pay to use Ahrefs Rank Tracker for this. But if you’re on a tight budget, manually track the keyword rankings in a spreadsheet like Google Sheets.
Tracking this SEO metric shows you where you’re dominating in top 10 results. More importantly, it tells you what pages to add content and acquire links because you’re extremely close in the 10-20 range.
Plus, it’s a freaking blast to search for a keyword phrase and see your page ranks 1st across the entire internet. That’s a special feeling.
3. Backlinks
Thank God for tools like Ahrefs Backlink Checker or it’d be impossible to track every link to your domain. This tool gives you the total of both backlinks and referring domains.
The difference is you can have three backlinks from the same site but that would only be one referring domain.
Tracking backlinks and seeing your totals grow should motivate you to write unbelievable content and reach out to ask for links when it adds value.
Remember, it’s about high-value links more than getting as many links as possible. Getting a link from a .edu site with a 90 domain authority will go way farther than 15 links from spammy sites.
4. Domain Authority
Google takes into consideration each page’s domain authority (DA) when ranking websites. By receiving more backlinks and referring domains, DA improves. This is scored on a 0 to 100 scale.
Curious about your website’s authority? Use this tool, or Ahrefs, to check your domain authority every month or quarter.
If you’re doing SEO strategy correctly, your domain authority will have a consistent upward trajectory over time.
5. Traffic Source
Knowing where your traffic is coming from is helpful because you get two major opportunities here.
You can double down on what’s working. Or you can keep the strong traffic sources going consistently and spend more time on weaker sources.
To find your traffic sources, in Google Analytics, navigate to:
Acquisition
Overview
Again, you can’t improve what you don’t know. Knowing the source of each traffic stream is extremely useful when acted upon.
6. Top Pages
This goes hand in hand with knowing the traffic source. When you know where people are coming from and the pages they’re landing on most, you can spend extra time improving the content to make it truly your best work.
Add additional images or videos to better compliment the page. Or, see how you can increase email sign ups or sales with a well placed call-to-action button.
By adding content to the page and improving its quality, more visitors will see value in your site and click around to other pages, or share it with their social network.
Plus, you can analyze why this page is getting the most traffic and duplicate its fundamentals to other pages.
7. Conversions
This metric is more complex than the rest. In the beginning it’s not the most important SEO metric. But over time, as your focus switches from generating traffic to monetizing, true conversions become the #1 metric.
Be careful to know the definition of a conversion. Many people count a conversion as someone opting-in to your newsletter, attending a webinar, downloading a free report, calling you, or submitting a contact form.
But are these truly conversions? No, because the customer hasn’t spent a dollar with you yet. These are leads, not sales.
A true conversion is when you get on a call or have a meeting, and they pay the invoice.
Conversion means a buyer exchanged money. That’s the name of the game in business.
SEO Tracking Tools
Wondering how you’re ever going to track these seven metrics? Don’t worry. Use the two tools below and you’ll have it all covered.
1. Google Analytics
What better source to get data than straight from the horse’s mouth?
Google offers an awesome tool called Google Analytics. It’s totally free and available to anyone that adds the tracking code to their website.
Instantly you’ll start to see more metrics than you know what to do with, and that’s ok. You have this guide to reference.
From the list of seven above, I use Google Analytics to track:
Organic traffic
Traffic source
If you were only allowed one SEO performance tool on the planet, Google Analytics is your best option. Fortunately, we can combine this helpful tool with another one.
2. Ahrefs
Pop quiz: What are the two main factors to climbing the Google rankings? Content and backlinks. Ahrefs is my favorite tool for analyzing backlinks.
Once you sign up, you’ll get immediate access to your domain rating and number of backlinks. Even better, enter your keywords to track your rankings and the number of backlinks it approximately takes to surpass your competitors.
Used strategically, this information is gold for driving traffic and bringing in revenue.
We use Ahrefs to track:
Keyword rankings
Domain authority
Backlinks
Top landing pages
Sure there’s a variety of additional SEO tracking tools out there. But there’s more power in simplicity. Stick to these two tools before you risk spending more time tracking results than you do driving traffic.
Metrics To Ignore
Like in life, some things really matter more than others. The same applies to SEO.
While these metrics can serve a purpose, you’re better off ignoring the following list until you’re at a point where you feel maxed out. Then you can look to squeeze a tiny bit more out of your search traffic.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a pretty pointless metric that website owners get tormented by for no reason.
A bounce is when someone views one page on your site and then clicks off your site. At first, this seems like they hated your content. But that can be very misleading.
For blogs, maybe you answered their question so thoroughly that they have no other questions about the topic. They know exactly what to do next, so they leave your site after viewing one page.
See the problem?
The bounce would say that’s a failure. But in reality, it’s mission complete and you gained a loyal fan of your brand because you answered their question perfectly. Next week, they come back to your site, subscribe to your newsletter, and schedule a sales call.
Your bounce rate doesn’t tell the full story when it comes to the value of your site to others. So don’t let it bother you.
And if you want to improve it, try ending your posts by instructing the reader to click a link to go to a related post about the topic. This alone will cut down on a ton of bounces.
Time On Site
Time on site tracks how much time visitors spend on your site. I’m not a big fan of this one either.
Remember the main goal of SEO is to make money. We do that by driving traffic. We generate traffic by ranking high on Google.
Meaning the point of SEO isn’t for vanity metrics like on site time. And that certainly doesn’t pay the bills.
Let’s go into another scenario. Say someone visits your store for 10 seconds, sees everything they desire, and makes a purchase. Your time on site is bad at 10 seconds, but your profits trump that by a mile.
There’s no recommended on site time and it will also vary depending on the site you have: ecommerce, content, landing page, etc. Do yourself a favor and ignore this one.
Weekly Changes
If you’re anything like me, you want progress and you want it now. But Google doesn’t operate that way.
Publishing content and gaining backlinks will take weeks if not months to improve your search results. That’s just the way it is.
Put in the work. Be patient. And check your traffic stats monthly rather than weekly. Daily is foolish.
However, if you’ve seen a drastic decrease over the last few months and it’s a pattern, that’s problematic enough to worth looking into. See if Google can’t read your site or penalized you by running an Index Coverage Status report.
Social Traffic
Social traffic is the traffic coming to your site from platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Google Analytics will show you this figure in their Acquisition Overview.
While I’m all for free traffic, I don’t value this in a SEO report nor spend time tracking it. Why? Because it’s highly volatile and random.
You’ll see wildly different traffic numbers month by month based on a variety of random factors like social algorithms, third party’s engagement with your post (retweets, comments, and upvotes), time of posting, etc.
This traffic reflects more about how many social media followers you have than your SEO performance. It’s not a solid indicator of ranking higher on Google.
Remember, if everything is progressing well for you and you have the extra time or cash to pay for a SEO strategist, feel free to dive into additional data. But for the majority, focusing on the seven metrics we defined above is all you need to get to millions of views. I promise you.
Conclusion
When you track SEO metrics like we outlined above, you should feel like a seasoned traffic professional, because you are.
Rookies hope and pray for Google results. Veterans use data to will their way to first rage rankings.
And if you’re not already tracking data like organic traffic and backlinks, there’s no better time to start than today.
What’s the most important SEO metric in your opinion?
Without knowing what keywords to target, you’ll be writing content that drives zero traffic to your site.
You’ll waste an extraordinary amount of time, then believe SEO doesn’t work and throw in the towel.
Trust me, after driving millions of views, I know for a fact that content marketing works in driving traffic, leads, and sales. And I also know that SEO ROI is rather easy when you know what you’re doing.
Read this guide to clearly understand SEO keyword research, and then put what you know into practice.
The Right Keywords
Growing businesses get more organic traffic than stagnating or declining companies.
Makes sense, right? Thriving businesses get sales from free organic traffic, while their competitors get nothing out of online marketing or are forced to overspend in advertising.
What these growing businesses do differently is not only understand their customers better than their competition, they also have their finger on what keywords their customers search.
In other words, they know the “right keywords” to target for organic search.
A right keyword for your website is one that helps your customers, has a high search volume, and it’s not too difficult to rank on Google’s first page.
Let’s break down the three components you’ll want in every keyword.
1. Helps Your Customers
Remember in the intro when I said keyword research isn’t too complex? Here’s the basis of it: Find keywords that focus on giving value to your audience.
What’s helpful to your audience? Anything that addresses their pain points, needs, and desires.
To get you started, think about:
What does your ideal customer search to find your company? (Exclude when they search for your company name.)
What is your niche’s problem? What words do they use to describe their current situation?
What is your customer’s desired transformation?
What’s a goal your customer wants to achieve in the next 30 days? In the next 12 months?
What are the other positive effects your niche receives from buying from you?
Write all of these answers down.
(Now if you don’t know what your potential buyers need, start talking to and researching your customers immediately. Odds are you’re going to be out of business soon, and SEO won’t matter, if you’re out of touch with what your market wants.)
Then, using the list you just created, make content around relieving their pain, assisting their needs, and helping them reach their desires.
For example, I’m in the marketing business. Our customers—business owners—always want more money and time savings. Knowing that, we’ve written blog posts on in-depth topics like 20 unique ways to get backlinks to drive more organic traffic and sales.
Deeply knowing your customer makes you more money, and it helps you create better content too.
Lead by helping prospects and customers, and your bank account will flourish. Call it goodwill, karma, or whatever you want, it makes dollars and cents.
Once you have a general idea of helpful topics for your customers, let’s move onto the second component of a great keyword.
2. High Traffic Volume
Content marketing is a strategic game of chess, not checkers.
The game goes like this: Target keywords with the highest traffic volume at the lowest possible competition, and ignore the other keywords.
How tactical you are in choosing these keywords will determine the amount of inbound traffic your website receives.
If you create content around keywords that have a minimum monthly search volume of 500 or more, you’ll be successful. If you’re doing regional keywords, like “Chicago dentist” or sell higher-ticket items, then you can lower the monthly search volume to 100. Robben Media is going after a few regional keywords at 80 searches per month, though that’s a special circumstance and not our standard.
Without these traffic volume standards, the alternative is this. You write the best guide of all time and get ranked first on Google. Great! But it doesn’t matter because no one searches for this keyword and you send zero traffic to your site.
I’m here to save you from that sad reality.
That’s where keyword research comes in so you can know the monthly search volume, before ever deciding to write and potentially throw your time away.
This training on how to find monthly search volume is coming soon down the page.
For now, there’s a final, third ingredient for picking the best keywords.
3. Realistic Keyword Difficulty
Who do you trust? People who have proven they’re reliable in the past.
I trust my mom because she’s been good to me my entire life. My dog has never bitten me, so I trust putting my face in his face.
Google operates a similar way by ranking websites on their online trustworthiness, which comes in the form of backlinks. A backlink is when one website ranks to another, which Google considers a vote in favor of the website receiving the link.
Here’s an example of how this plays out.
You’re a newer website with 11 backlinks to the page you want to rank, and you’re competing for a heavily competitive keyword with The New York Times, Harvard, and McKinsey.
Why’s it so tough for you to rank for that keyword? Because each of those sites have thousands of backlinks propelling them to the top.
Publish an article way better than these sites, and it won’t matter. Google will give their content all the traffic, since you haven’t established the backlinks required to rank.
To avoid this insurmountable situation, you want to find keywords that are less competitive. A lower keyword difficulty means the content ranking first has room for improvement and there aren’t many backlinks required to rank in the top 10.
Keyword difficulty is the term used to estimate what it takes to rank on Google’s first page— using a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the most difficult.
When you’re doing research, give yourself the best chance to succeed by going after keywords with a realistic difficulty. A good rule of thumb is the following:
Brand new sites should initially target a keyword difficulty of 20 or lower.
Sites bringing in organic traffic and have published content for 6-12 months can target keyword difficulty of 40 or lower.
As you build traffic and backlinks for years, go after keyword difficulty of 50, 75 and higher.
Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you should prefer keywords that are neither too competitive nor not competitive enough, but have just the right competition.
(P.S. Two sections down, we’ll tell you about a tool that shows keyword difficulty.)
Umbrella Keywords And Long Tail Keywords
One last note.
There are two types of keywords: umbrella keywords and long tail keywords.
An umbrella keyword is a high-level, broad keyword (usually 1-2 words). These are your money-making keywords, but they often have a high keyword difficulty.
Umbrella keywords look like:
Health insurance
Rental car
Catering services
Mortgage company
Now long tail keywords are much longer in nature (3-4+ word phrases) and often include the umbrella keyword in the phrase.
A company that sells health insurance, for example, would define one of its umbrella keywords as health insurance. The long tail keywords that include the umbrella keyword would look like:
Most affordable health insurance
How to get health insurance
When does health insurance open enrollment begin
Health insurance for 30 year olds
Penalty for not having health insurance
It’s a very smart strategy to publish new content for long tail keywords on your site, then link back to your main umbrella keyword page. This way you’re helping yourself rank for a less difficult keyword, while still helping your site rank for the main umbrella keyword.
To see what I mean, the long tail keyword “most affordable health insurance” includes the keyword “health insurance” in it.
You have to love a 2-for-1 special.
How To Perform SEO Keyword Research
Good work so far!
Now, to ensure you have a list of keywords with enough traffic volume that are also reasonable to rank for, follow these exact steps.
Step 1: Make A Keyword Spreadsheet
Benjamin Franklin may as well have been talking about keywords when he said this gem,
For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.
The path to SEO victory isn’t sexy… unless you find data sexy. But the rewards are 1,000,000% worth it. So let’s begin.
First, you need to create an organized spreadsheet to track your keywords.
We’ve done the hard work for you. Copy Robben Media’s keyword spreadsheet following these steps:
Name the file and put it in a folder you’ll remember, then click OK.
This spreadsheet is now the home base of your entire keyword strategy. Keep this open throughout this lesson. We’re going to continue using it to map out a plan.
Step 2: Choose Umbrella Keywords
Remember, an umbrella keyword is your broad, high-level keyword that you supremely want to rank for on Google. These are the keywords that bring in the money.
To find your umbrella keyword, think about:
What do you sell?
How do customers describe what you sell? And what would they specifically search on Google to find you and buy?
What do customers need to know about what you sell?
To pain the picture clearer, some umbrella keywords Robben Media wants to rank for include:
SEO agency
PPC agency
Website design company
The idea behind this is, if a business wants to work with a SEO agency, and we rank for that keyword, then they’ll click to our site, see we’re credible, and schedule a sales call.
Write these 5 umbrella keywords in your spreadsheet on the first tab labeled 1. Umbrella Keywords. Here’s an example of how that would look.
Step 3: Use Ahrefs For Keyword Research
It’s time to call in the big guns.
Ahrefs is the best tool for keyword research. I discovered this software years ago and haven’t gone away from it ever since. (I even mentioned my love for it in this SaaS marketing guide.)
We’re going to use this to finish off our two remaining steps.
Once signed into Ahrefs, you’re going to click Keywords explorer in the menu, then enter your umbrella keywords you found in Step 2.
When I did this exercise, I entered the keywords “SEO agency”, “PPC agency”, and “website design company”. Then click to get results.
On this new page, Ahrefs shows you the Keyword Difficulty and Volume. (The volume is the keyword’s search volume per month in your country.)
Next, you’ll want to click on each keyword listed. Here’s what appears when I click on “website design company”.
With all this data loaded, scroll down to the section Keyword ideas by search volume > Having same terms, then click View all.
In my case, this will show me 2,119 different keywords related to our umbrella keyword. Insane, right!?
Once you’re at the screen below with the massive list of keywords, you’re ready to move onto Step 4.
(Now if you don’t have an account, here’s what I recommend. Sign up for Ahref’s 7-day trial for $7, and then compile 100 to 200 solid keywords until the trial ends in a week. Rack up enough keywords on in your spreadsheet before the trial expires and you won’t need to pay for the monthly subscription. If paying a little more than $100 a month isn’t a big deal, sign up for the basic monthly package.)
Step 4: Select Your Long Tail Keywords
With this massive keyword list in front of you, you may be overwhelmed. It’s time to filter out the keywords that don’t match our three requirements:
Helpful to customers
Volume over 500 (go down to a volume of 100 or lower if it’s a regional keyword like “Chicago dentist”)
Reasonable keyword difficulty (lower the standard if it’s a regional keyword)
How you filter this giant list is by clicking the down arrow next to KD (signaling Keyword Difficulty) and the down arrow next to Volume.
In this case, let’s assume you have a new site. You’re going to follow our guidelines that new sites go after keywords with a difficulty of 20 or lower. Enter 20 in the max form and click Apply.
Then if you’re still overwhelmed by the keyword list, set a volume minimum of 500. If it’s a regional keyword or you sell high-ticket items or services, then you can set the minimum volume to 100 or lower.
Now, going back to the spreadsheet you created in Step 1, find the tab labeled 2. Long Tail Keywords. Then start filling in the three columns—keyword, monthly volume, keyword difficulty—using the information you’ve gathered from Ahrefs.
Your Google Sheet will start to look like this as you move the data manually from Ahrefs.
Conclusion
If there’s any secret sauce to driving major traffic to your website, SEO keyword research is it. And now you have that!
You understand keywords and how to find the ones that are going to drive the most traffic and sales to your site. Get pumped, you’re in the driver’s seat from this point forward.
So if you haven’t done this exercise already and you’ve only been reading, go through this guide again, make a spreadsheet, and discover the right keywords for your site.
In our next lesson, we’ll show you how to write content to rank at the top of Google for these keywords.
Execute this and your traffic, profits, and business will grow exponentially!
By implementing these tactics into your marketing strategy, your page views, leads, and sales will all hockey stick.
Why Is Website Traffic Important?
Before we talk about how to generate a flood of traffic, we first need to be on the same page.
Every time someone visits your website, an opportunity is created.
This opportunity could be:
Creating a positive first impression that establishes brand loyalty for years to come
Persuading a visitor to make a purchase off your site
Getting someone to sign up for your email newsletter for future updates
Having a fan share your site with their family and friends
The more traffic you get, the more chances your business has to win.
And those are just the short-term benefits of website traffic. This can be a long-term game as well.
High traffic numbers will grow your business. This will allow you to have the flexibility to create new product lines, hire more employees, and enter new markets.
We weren’t kidding when we said your website is a vital part of your business.
Now in terms of the traffic, you want to aim for quality over quantity. Quality traffic will drive purchases and repeat visits to your site. Quantity without the quality will leave you disappointed and poor.
In other words, the amount of traffic you have doesn’t matter if it isn’t converting and increasing your profits.
Now that you know the power of quality website traffic, let’s talk about how to generate it at scale.
39 Website Traffic Sources To Level Up
Before we talk about specific sources, there are six categories that sources fall under:
Search traffic comes from a search on a search engine, like Google
Social traffic comes from a post on a social media platform, like Facebook
Paid traffic comes from a paid advertisement, like a YouTube ad
Email traffic comes from an email campaign
Referral traffic comes from another website that shared your URL
Direct traffic comes from a user typing your domain into a browser
All of these categories have specific techniques that generate traffic.
Now, to the list!
1. Social Ads
Social ads are any paid advertising that you publish on social media.
The goal of paid advertising is to get users to your website to make a purchase.
Each platform does their paid advertising differently. So you will need to create your posts to comply with the individual platforms.
For example, your Instagram posts should have a high quality picture paired with a compelling copy to encourage users to click on the link to your website. And videos do extremely well for our Facebook advertising agency customers.
Paid advertising is a major source of your website traffic. You’ll want to spend considerable time on this to achieve best in class results.
2. Display Ads
Display ads are another form of paid advertising.
You can find these as a banner at the top or side of a website, app, and video page.
Take this article on Forbes. Verizon is advertising on both the top and right side of the article.
Clicking on either will take a user to a landing page on their website. From there, the user can decide to stay on that page and make a purchase, or explore their website further for other deals.
Display ads will attract the viewers of the website you advertise them on.
If you want to diversify your traffic in front of a targeted readership, display ads won’t let you down.
3. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising means the advertiser (you) will pay the publisher (the ad provider) every time the ad is clicked.
You are paying to generate traffic in hopes that the traffic converts and you end up ROI positive.
This is a great way to track the amount of traffic you generate because it correlates to how much you’ve paid for the ad.
Then you can reverse engineer your average lifetime customer value by your PPC cost to see how many clicks you’d need to make a profit, or break even. When running PPC campaigns, look into callout extensions — they’re very underrated!
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the skill of utilizing keywords to organically reach top results on search engines. When a user types in a specific keyword on Google, for example, your post will show up first if you have the most optimized page on the internet for that keyword. Users most often click on the top result and this brings them to a sales opportunity on your site. SEO can take some time to master, and understanding the relationship between website traffic and revenue is crucial. For more insights, check out this article on Maximizing Revenue through Website Traffic. We want to see you succeed, and that’s why we offer SEO services to rank you at the top of Google and acquire new customers. I’d honestly put our company up against any competitor in this service.
5. Social Sharing
Social sharing is an extremely valuable source of traffic. We recognize this and include share options on all of the content we produce.
When someone shares a blog post to their Facebook audience, this immediately expands your reach to their friends and family. All it takes to score big is for one fan to spread your content to a thousand of their friends who also give you their money.
You can also encourage readers to share your posts by adding a call-to-action at the conclusion of each piece of content. Never sleep on the power of social shares.
6. Business Listings
Every business should have listings on websites related to their niche.
First, creating a profile on these platforms and verifying the information add credibility to your business. Second, many users rely on these types of websites to find recommendations of places to visit.
Plus, your business won’t seem legitimate if you don’t have a verified business listing with an updated address, URL, and phone number.
Once you do this, you will see more traffic visiting your website by one listing or another.
7. Online Reviews
You might not think of online reviews as a source of traffic.
But you would be surprised at how much sway online reviews have over a user’s decision to visit a website.
Get this: 72% of consumers said they had to read a positive review before they take any action with a business. Positive reviews are like two axes in the hole.
Never forget that people trust what others have to say, and having satisfied customers to back you up is a critical source that generates traffic.
8. Producing Quality Content
Any content you produce needs to be exceptional quality, or you’re wasting your audience’s and your own time.
Your posts should be well-written, photos should be high resolution, and videos should be crystal clear.
Having A+ content proves to the viewer that you go the extra mile to give them value with everything you do.
This move encourages them to visit your website and see what else you have to offer. Then, when they’re on the fence about purchasing, they’ll remember your excellent content and make the purchase decision in your favor.
9. Social Media
Social media can be extremely unpredictable with constantly changing algorithms.
Though we’ve found posting consistently can lower some of the unpredictability.
Posting as often as possible, while maintaining quality, is the way to do it.
Once you figure out how to get your posts seen, compel users to visit your website in your captions.
From then on, social media will become a source that steadily generates traffic.
10. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is when you write a blog post for someone else’s website.
You should jump at any opportunity to guest blog—especially if they are also in your industry.
When you guest blog, write a post that is relevant to what you do and knocks the reader over in value.
This will direct some of the website readers to check out your site.
Why is this method so effective? Guest blogging expands your reach to an audience that is already interested in what you have to offer. We often place backlinks for our SEO customers using guest blogging.
11. Email
You need to have a set plan for your emails to make sure you’re consistently interacting with your subscribers.
The audience of your emails is going to be different than those who conduct searches on Google.
People on your email have already interacted with your website and are familiar with what you have to offer.
Letting them know about new products or offering them an exclusive offer is a new way to get them to return to your website.
Each email should include a link to your website to remind your subscribers how to find you.
12. Branding
Building brand awareness is a huge component of the direct traffic category.
People knowing your brand gets them directly to your website.
Having a well-known brand establishes you as a major player in your industry.
Many people are loyal to the brands they know.
In fact, 59% of shoppers prefer to buy new products from the brand they trust over brand they are unfamiliar with.
The more people that know who you are means the more people that will visit your website.
13. Influencers
Influencer marketing will diversify the traffic that goes to your website.
Influencers don’t have to be celebrities. They are simply anyone that has a wide reach on social media.
Partnering with influencers to share your content will expose your brand to all of their followers.
The influencer you partner with should have some relevance to what you do. If their followers have absolutely no interest in your business, then you won’t generate anything from your efforts.
14. Google Adsense Auto Ads
Google Adsense is a service offered by Google that helps you publish ads.
They have added a new feature called auto ads that uses machine learning to figure out where to place each ad to see the best results.
This feature lets advertisers choose the best ads to display and the best location.
Auto ads also finds unused ad space to ensure that your ad will be seen.
You can use this feature to guarantee traffic growth and save yourself time compared to manual ad placements.
15. Clicks and Click Through Rates
Clicks are what actually get users to your website.
You want to monitor your click through rates to make sure that the clicks to your website are meaningful.
Click through rates measure how many people see a link and decide to click it.
You can use this to make sure that the traffic generated to your website is quality.
You can increase your click through rates by writing better copy that kills readers in its use of curiosity.
Edit your website titles and meta descriptions, social media posts, and emails for maximum click-interest and you’ll see your page views increase.
16. Referrals
Referral traffic comes from others linking to your website in their posts.
This can be on their social media, blog posts, website, etc.
You can use referrals to expand your reach. In fact, 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a referral.
This audience will likely trust the brand that referred you to lead them to credible businesses.
Users will be directed to your website and can explore around as they please.
How do you drive referrals? Start by being a good person in your industry and asking people, “How can I help you?”
Then you’ll see your referral traffic kaboom. This is the law of reciprocity.
17. Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is a form of direct traffic.
Some people prefer to share information via instant messaging. Audiences certainly feel more at ease in this informal setting.
This can be through Facebook Messenger, What’s App, or any other similar instant messaging platform
Users can share your brand name or a link to your website through instant messaging.
From there, the receiver can visit your website and see why the sender values your brand so much. You can add a chatbot to your Facebook page, and lead visitors to your site for a more intensive answer to their questions. Many companies do this well using a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page.
18. Campaigns
Consider running a social media campaign to advertise your products.
These campaigns differ from normal social media posts because they typically run for a set amount of time and advertise a specific product.
For each post of the campaign, it is crucial that you share some way to get to your website. It is likely that this will be a link to a landing page related to the campaign.
Your landing page should be beautifully designed so the user is encouraged to visit the rest of your website to see what you have to offer.
The longer you can get users to stay on your website the better.
19. Word of Mouth
Not all of your traffic comes from online sources.
Word of mouth is still a key source of traffic.
Did you know that consumers are 92% more likely to trust their peers over advertising when it comes to purchasing decisions?
When someone recommends your brand to a friend or co-worker, they are going to visit your website over your competitors.
This is why customer service is extremely important. You want to encourage your customers to recommend you to their circle of influence.
Also, don’t be afraid to talk your business up in person when people ask, “What do you do?” Tell them to view your site for more information. You never know what can come of it, or who they know.
20. Chatbots
A chatbot is an addition to your website and social media that serves to assist customers with their needs.
You can set up a business chatbot to direct customers to specific pages on your website that will answer their questions.
Chatbots operate 24/7/365. People who missed your customer service team will still be sent to your website. These chatbots should be loaded with different website pages to answer questions related to said pages.
21. Website Design
Traffic is one thing. Getting users to stay on your website is where the real challenge lies.
Having an exceptional website design is how to get users to stay and explore your site. Then a one page view visit turns into a seven. That adds up.
A good website should be sleek, simple and user friendly when your mission is to generate sales.
We offer website design services to ensure that you will retain your visitors and increase revenue.
The ultimate benefit is that it shows users exactly how to get to your website.
25. Free Guides
Similar to webinars, free PDF guides are a tool you can use to show users that you will be a positive addition to their life.
This guide should be relevant to your industry so readers know what you have to offer.
It can be beneficial to offer this guide electronically so you can include a call-to-action that takes readers to your website.
Readers won’t be able to see what they could gain from you if they have no way of reaching your website.
Here’s an example of one of our guides.
26. Join Online Groups
Twitter is a hub for conversation with people in related industries.
These conversations are usually structured where one account will lead the discussion and anyone is welcome to join in with their own input.
Joining in on these conversations will help you build relationships with others in your industry. You can use these relationships to promote each other’s content.
Offering valuable input in these conversations increases your brand awareness.
You can put a link to your website in your profile so users involved in the conversation know where to get more information about you.
27. A Compelling Call To Action
Having a compelling call to action is what will get a user from your content to your website.
A call to action is the click that will generate more traffic to your website.
You want the click, but where you should focus is writing engaging content that convinces the user to visit your site.
The call to action is simply the gateway that gets users to where they need to go to take action. Make it a curiosity-driven gateway with strong promises to improve your odds of success.
28. Google Ads
While we’re hesitant to run Google Ads for traffic, it’s far better to run them to product or service landing pages.
For keywords that are used a lot in your content, you can bid on them to get a top ranking spot whenever they are searched.
That is how paid Google ads work.
These posts will show up at the very top of the first page results. These go above organic search results.
You will want to do some keyword research before bidding so you know what people are searching for and what will not have much competition.
29. Repurposed Content
Publishing your content doesn’t mean that you can no longer use it.
You put a lot of hard work into your content, go reuse it every chance you get.
You can take content in one of your older blog posts to host a webinar or create an infographic.
This content is also still valuable to your viewers who don’t follow you on every platform. By repurposing your content in a different format, you can generate double the traffic you would have if you just left it.
30. Case Studies
Use case studies to persuade users that you will produce positive results.
Your customers will be given the opportunity to tell visitors why they should choose you to do business.
Take one of our case studies for example. You can find results from our partnerships with various customers. Not only that but you can see direct quotes from our satisfied customers.
Case studies will keep visitors on your website because they prove that you can provide value to them.
31. Podcasting
Podcasting is a platform where you can reach an entirely new audience than with your regular posts.
Stats show 51% of the US population has listened to a podcast. To me, that shows there’s an untapped market.
Listening to content can be much more convenient for people that don’t have time in their days to stay up to date in your industry.
By sharing your content in a podcast, you can reach people that may not have time to read your normal posts.
If your episodes are compelling, listeners will share your profile on their social media accounts and with their peers, recommend listeners visit your site at the end of each podcast episode, and link to your website in the podcast show notes.
32. Quora
We love Quora. This is an online platform where users ask and answer questions.
You can show off your industry expertise by simply answering questions.
You need to be careful on sites like these because you can’t outright advertise your business. People won’t think that you genuinely want to serve them.
The best way to get traffic to your website through Quora is to link to specific posts that relate to your answer. This way you are offering a more in-depth look at the question, while still giving value first.
33. Create Professional Infographics
Infographics are visual interpretations of data and statistics.
You can repurpose some of your content when you are creating an infographic to truly build up your topic authority.
Applications like Canva and Adobe Illustrator are tools you can use to create professional looking infographics.
Many content generators find infographics valuable to explain complex data. Others in your industry may use your infographic in their own posts, linking back to your website to give credit.
Reddit is a platform that includes a variety of online forums.
In these forums, users discuss various topics and engage in conversation.
These conversations should be similar to Quora. You can’t outright advertise your business or else you will get shunned from the platform.
You need to naturally include ways to get to your website in these conversations. Otherwise, it will feel like you’re intruding in the conversation.
If the conversation turns a topic that you have written a post about, you can link it in your response for other users to refer to for more information.
35. Slideshare
Slideshare is a platform that offers you another way to repurpose your content. It is a feature of LinkedIn, and your LinkedIn profile will be associated with your slides. (Speaking of, here’s a LinkedIn lead generation strategy if you’re looking to grow your business there.)
The objective is to take your best content and transform it into an attractive slide deck.
Slideshare allows users to post slide decks for all to use and share.
Marketers love it, as slides on this platform go viral all the time.
If you go viral, your site will be drowning in traffic.
36. Retargeted Ads
Paid ads are not a one and done deal.
You can actually get a lot more out of retargeting ads than cold ads.
Showing your paid ads to people who visited your website will remind them that they should go back to your website.
That’s how you level up your ROI on ad spend.
37. Invite Others to Guest Blog
Guest blogging works two ways.
You can ask others in your industry to write posts for your site and then ask them to share the link when it’s published.
To gain momentum with this, create as many meaningful relationships with others in your industry as possible. There are many opportunities to promote each other’s content and increase both of your audience.
Having someone else write for you can switch up your content so users get different perspectives on topics.
When you have someone write a post for you, encourage them to share it on their own website and social media.
Their users will visit your page to read the post that your guest wrote.
They will likely be curious what makes you different than your guest and explore the rest of your website.
38. Reach Out to Industry Leaders
You can and should link to other websites in your blog posts.
When you do this, email the author of the post and tell them that you included them in yours.
Make sure to let them know that you find their content valuable. You should also politely ask if they would share your post to their followers.
Industry leaders typically have a large following so if they share your post, you will be reaching a wide audience of people that are interested in what you do and visiting your site.
39. Video Marketing
Wonder what’s the craze about video content? Besides tech giants like Facebook wanting to compete with YouTube, information retention is higher for visual material than text-based material.
If what you’re sharing is extremely important, a video might be the best choice to share it.
Videos grab your attention. You want to stand out when a user is scrolling through their feed and a video will get them to stop and pay attention.
Creating the video so it is professionally produced and has a compelling story line will be what gets users to visit your website.
Plus, Google owns YouTube and is known to promote YouTube videos at the top of Google search results. That’s a nice kicker.
Conclusion
You’ve seen there are an infinite amount of website traffic sources.
That’s not the issue.
The real question is what are you going to do with these traffic sources?
At this time of year, and any time of year really, it’s best to evaluate your plan to generate this traffic, build your brand, and drive new business.
What got you here, won’t get you to your next goals. So double down on what you’ve been doing or add a few of these website traffic sources if you’re serious about building a business.
What other sources do you know of that generate traffic to your website?
Did you know that 76% of people who perform a local search contact a business within 24 hours? Not only is that crazy, what’s more insane is 28% of those searches result in a sale.
With 154.4 million people using this search tool, learning how to rank higher on Google Maps can be the most profitable investment you make all year.
It’s time to start increasing your local presence to get hot customers putting your inventory out of stock.
What Is Google Maps?
Google Maps is a service offered by Google that’s primarily used to give directions to users.
By simply typing in the name of the business they are looking for, or a type of business like “gas station” or “restaurant”, people get turn-by-turn directions to their destination.
Google Maps is more than a navigation tool, however. Big business can be won from ranking at the top of these results. It’s high competition for this very reason.
With its own algorithm that determines search result rankings, Google will showcase a 3-pack of three local companies that match the search.
Let’s learn more about the 3-Pack.
What Is The Maps 3-Pack?
After a keyword is searched on Google, three local businesses will show up in the Maps section, and are named the 3-Pack. The rest of the results only appear when a user clicks “More places”, which is shown below.
With Google giving special treatment to these three companies, it’s clear that they’re being shown off as the three best options in the searcher’s local area.
And when you realize that every search is a potential prospect, then these top three businesses are getting the super majority of calls and sales by ranking first, second, or third on Google Maps.
Because the competition is fierce, your online presence has to be flawless to have a chance of ranking in the Google Maps 3-Pack.
How Does Google Maps Differ From Search?
For one, a Google search produces 10 organic results and only three map results, if any map results (sometimes the 3-Pack doesn’t show at all), per search.
That’s more than three times the amount of search results compared to map results.
Because of this, business owners need to put a little extra effort into ranking first in Google Maps.
Then there’s the fact that Google Maps considers your business location when displaying results more so than Google Search.
Local customers are only going to see businesses in a near vicinity of them in Maps. Whereas Search offers a variety of options – mostly based on content relevance and backlinks – although some businesses could be a few hours or time zones away from you.
Another difference is the Google Maps listings show the number and ratings of customer reviews, and Search does not.
While there are subtle differences, optimizing your site is largely the same for both. So the good news is, each advancement you make in Google Maps only helps you in Google Search, and vice versa.
What A Top Ranking Does For Business Growth
Businesses who invest their resources into ranking high on Google Maps never regret it.
The payoff looks like this. Before you were desperately waiting for the phone to ring. Now you’re having a hard time answering every call because you’re getting bombarded with new sales opportunities.
You’re used to getting hassled on prices. Then you’re getting asked how much inventory do you have because the customer wants to buy 50 products before the weekend.
This in turn allows you to grow your business by leaps and bounds after having the cash flow to:
Invest in a better POS system
Hire more employees
Expand to another location
Pay yourself more profits
Advertise to accumulate even more market share
Redecorate your space
Now you can see why we spend so much time improving our ranks on search engines. The results are too good to pass up on.
Let’s talk about how to rank higher on Google Maps.
Rank Higher In Google Maps
Do the following to help your business climb to the top in your local city’s search rankings.
1. Create A Google My Business Page
Before you can even think about Google Maps, you need to complete a Google My Business Page.
At this point, having a Google My Business profile really isn’t optional. Because nothing is more frustrating than when you search for a business name and a profile does not show up.
This forces potential customers to dig for information and you’ve pissed them off.
Instead, creating a Google My Business profile will help you create the easiest experience for your consumers.
Google also likes it when you use their services. Creating a Google My Business page is only smart in your efforts to rank higher in search. It will also provide Google Maps with the information they need to know about your business.
To do this effectively, you need to make sure that your profile is completed with the most updated information about your business. We have created a guide to make sure that you fully complete your profile.
According to Google, here is what you need to do when you create your profile:
Enter complete data: businesses with the most relevant results have a better chance at getting in the 3-pack. Having accurate and updated information will benefit your business and get you the rank you want.
Verify location(s): Claiming your business on Google will give you the power to manage it. Claiming your business essentially means that you take ownership of your Google My Business profile.
Manage and respond to reviews: interacting with customers, both negative and positive, will improve your business visibility.
2. Build Citations
For your business to thrive in any sense, you need to always be expanding your reach.
People can’t engage with you if they don’t know you exist.
Building citations will help expand the reach of your business and increase your ranking on Google Maps.
A citation is essentially a record that gets shared around the internet of your business name, address, phone number and URL.
Besides your Google listing, citations are another way that Google is able to verify your location.
To gain authority, distribute your citation to as many places as possible. Here’s a local business directories list to get started.
Also make sure that the places you distribute your citations to actually make sense for your business.
Directories that are specific to your area or niche are good examples to focus on. Don’t be weird and get your software company a citation on a local manual labor site. (Click here for better ways to advertise your SaaS startup.)
3. Check Your Google My Business Category
When you create a Google My Business profile, you are given an option to select a category that best describes your business.
You have the option to choose a primary category and multiple additional categories. Do both!
Your primary category should be the one that best represents your business.
If you’re struggling to find the best category to choose, some research can help. Google search the business names of your local competition one by one, then look on the right panel to see what category they’ve selected.
Once choosing your primary category, then add additional categories that represent what your business does to a lesser degree.
Google Maps will weigh your categories when pulling for search results. Best to give yourself all the opportunities you can.
4. Optimize Your Homepage
If you don’t have a website, then you’re not serving your customers as well as competitor’s with one. Google sees that and won’t rank you as high.
Also, the algorithm sees how you typically rank with local searches on Google Search and uses that to determine where you should rank on Google Maps.
Title Tag: When you publish your website, your homepage has a meta tag that defines the home page. This tag should include your business name, your location and your business category. Including these elements will increase your chances of ranking high on Google Maps.
Description: Your homepage also has a meta description (like what there is for blog posts) that describes your homepage. This description should include the same information that was included in your title tag.
The content of your homepage: Your homepage should also include your business name, location and category. Not only does this help with your ranking on Google Maps but it also serves as information for people who are unfamiliar with your business
To rank in the 3-Pack and have customers love your brand, you need to optimize your website. If you aren’t sure how to do this, our website designers can help.
5. Increase Social Signals
Google sees social signals as an indicator that your business has a wide reach and is well known by others. Social signals are the likes, shares, comments, etc. your website generates.
When people know who you are and engage with your business online, Google sees your business as one they should be recommending to their users.
On top of this, you should add links to your website home page or new content on your social media profiles. This will return more traffic and increase your social signals. website.
Any ad you run is also considered when Google looks at your social signals. Start running ads and use CTA psychology to drive new hits to your site.
6. Guest Posts
Backlinks from other sites are the number one ranking factor for any rankings, local or global.
Writing a guest post, still to this day, is a surefire way to acquire backlinks from other sites to your company site. Guest posts are still one of our top tips for how to get backlinks.
Pro tip: Do some research on websites that are relevant to your industry and your location. Reach out to this website to pitch a topic that is beneficial to them—you have to provide value or they’ll see right through your attempt— and if accepted, write fantastic copy that encourages engagement.
When you write the post, you control the backlinks and can add a regional qualifier, like a city name, to your main keyword phrase. That’s like steroids to your Google Maps rankings!
Read this to truly get the secret on how to rank on Google for specific keywords.
7. Get More Reviews
Getting in the 3-Pack is only half the battle.
Staying there and being the most appealing of the three businesses is what really matters.
You can be in the top three but if no one chooses to look at your business, then it doesn’t really matter that you were there in the first place.
Since Google Maps considers click through rates as a ranking factor, if clicks are going to the other two in the 3-Pack, you’re going to soon lose your spot.
To combat that and be more appealing to searchers, increase the total and quality of your Google reviews. Each business in the 3-Pack will have a name, hours of operation, address. But the reviews will vary and are your opportunity to separate from the group.
Reviews are so important that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Surprising to many business owners, Google believes you do not have a complete GMB profile if you don’t have pictures uploaded.
For your customers, it’s hard to trust the validity of a business if there are no pictures for any reference.
Not only do you need pictures, you should get your photos professionally done.
Posting low-quality photos on your Google My Business is almost as bad as having no photos at all. Low-quality photos do you no justice.
When you get the photos done, have the photographer take pictures of what your business looks like during normal operating hours.
The more authentic the pictures are to what the experience for the customer will actually be like, the better.
Users can scroll through the pictures on your profile to determine if they want to choose to go to your business or another business.
Make your photos so good that the user doesn’t want to even consider the other 2 businesses that came up in the search.
9. Embed Your Google Map On Your Website
Next, put your Google My Business in your website footer or contact page. This is an easy task so there is no reason to not embed your map on your website.
Doing this improves your local SEO and helps users find your business, especially important if you’re a retail or B2C business.
Before you embed your Google Maps make sure that your profile is complete on Google My Business. You’ll want your address to be the same on Google My Business as it is on your website for consistency.
To embed your Google Map on your website:
Search for your business in Google Maps.
With your page up, click the share option and embed a map.
Paste the link to where you want the map to be on your website—for most, we recommend the contact page.
10. Check For Google Map Criteria
Google Map has three criteria that they that they use to determine local rankings.
The first criteria is relevance.
Having complete and detailed business information on your profile is vital.
Google uses this information to match you with as many relevant searches as possible.
Having complete information that is consistent everywhere you have information about your business will limit any guessing that Google has to do to figure out when to display your business with a search.
The second factor is distance.
This is not something you have a lot of control over because you can’t completely uproot a business to fit a specific search.
Google considers how far you are from what is searched because they want to provide results that are accessible to the user.
If you don’t have an accurate location, then you might not show up in any searches at all or the searches you show up in will not actually be relevant.
The final criteria is prominence.
How well known your business is effects where you’re ranked.
Remember when we talked about how reviews matter? This is where that comes in.
Businesses with no reviews are not going to get a high ranking because Google won’t see them as a prominent business.
Keeping up with your reach and SEO efforts is going to be what helps you increase your prominence and improves your ranking.
Check these three criteria if you aren’t ranking where you think you should be.
Conclusion
Google Maps is a tricky beast to conquer. But we promise the work is worth the reward.
We have found success with these suggestions for our customers and ourselves. That’s why we’re confident you too will succeed when you stick to it.
If you don’t have the time to execute this, consider working with our SEO experts who will happily improve your Google rankings for you.
What have you found is most successful in improving your local search rankings?
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
There is no singular strategy that has worked best for driving an increase in traffic, in our experience at least. What has worked best has been integrating our SEO strategy with our PPC activities.
Delivering high-quality, keyword-focused content across our site – in terms of both landing pages and blogs – will always be an important part of improving rankings. Now that only 50% of searches results in a click on Google, this is more important than ever, as you are more likely to get that click if you are at the top of results.
However, if people aren’t aware of your brand, they are less likely to click on your site, even if it is high-ranking. Searchers are much more likely to visit a brand they recognize, which is where PPC comes in.
Targeting your PPC on keywords you are working on as part of your SEO strategy can help bring traffic to your site but also raise brand awareness. If searchers start to recognize your brand from your search ads, there is a greater chance that they will head to your site from organic search.
This integration – as well as the constant refinement and re-targeting of both your SEO and PPC strategies – should help you grow your traffic over time. Although you should also be making use of other channels, such as email and social media, to ensure you are targeting your audience wherever they are.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
I boost Facebook posts, usually promoting blog posts that I believe are super valuable to my audience– not just some sales page.
Spend $1 per day on these posts for 7 days each to determine which ones are winners. Boost 3 per week, so that you’re spending $100 a month testing and driving site traffic at the same time.
Over time, you’ll see a pattern of what turns into customers. And then you can put more money on these winning posts, spending money profitably– not needing to continue to post on social and web over and over again– while getting no traffic and no sales from that effort.
PRO TIP– organize your content into a Topic Wheel so that your website is not some separate platform from your social, email, and other channels.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
We focus on ranking in the top three results of Google for long tail keywords our prospective customers search. And doing so has been an absolute game changer.
For example, our rankings and traffic has soared, and we’ve gained many local customers, by targeting keywords that are local and describe our services.
By asking more specific and direct questions, such as “What are our ideal customers specifically searching and what information do they desire?,” we discover specific keywords. This gives us the framework to create the best content on the internet. Where a more vague question “What do we need to do to get more traffic?” leaves you reaching for short-term gimmicks and ultimately landing where you started.
Invest in understanding your website’s traffic potential and start ranking first for “ready to buy” keywords your customers are searching. Then you’ll have more traffic, and more people wanting to work with you, than you can handle.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
I would say content marketing but with a twist.
Ranking on Google’s top positions is becoming harder and harder every day. And this is because there are a lot of ranking factors that are not under your direct control. The competition in Google is made up of mega-brands like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. So, can small brands and businesses stand a chance in front of these giants?
Yes, but you need to have a puncher’s chance against these huge authority sites. Off-page factors like links are not in our direct control. And even if they were, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the link amount a big brand is getting.
The solution stands in the ranking factors that we can control, such as content. With Google focusing more on semantic search, the content remains a huge ranking factor. And, unlike backlinks, for instance, content is in your full control.
The twist here is to write well-optimized content for both the users and for the search engines but highly, highly based on the user search intent.
Before you begin writing, figure out the reason why people conduct a specific search. Why are they searching? What are they trying to achieve through their search? Are they trying to figure out the answer to a question or do they want to reach a specific website?
If the keywords you want to rank for have clear and consistent intent behind them, you can tailor your content format and structure to be the best possible match for that intent. Search intent should dictate the type of content you create.
That nuance is important because relying on SEO as your only lead generation channel is tough. You need other lead sources because there can be a level of volatility when it comes to organic search performance. I recommend stacking Google and social media ads (like Facebook) to get some early traction while your SEO campaign is picking up steam.
Then continue to optimize your transactional page for maximum conversions.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
Crowdsourced content has been very effective in driving traffic to my site. Specifically, creating roundups like this post where you reach out to experts or influencers in a given niche and get them to provide insights around a topic that is highly relevant to your audience. I’ve ranked dozens of articles and driven hundreds of thousands of readers to my personal and client websites using roundups.
For roundups to work, you need to have:
The right topic – what topics will your audience care about?
The right question – what questions can you ask that makes it easy for experts to answer, but still gets them to provide valuable insights?
The right experts – which experts can provide value, have a large audience, and a proven track record of sharing content?
The right structure – how do you organize the content so that it is easy for readers to extract value from the content?
There is a lot that can be unpackaged there. If you want to dive deeper into my process, check out this in-depth guide I read on the Digital Marketer blog. It goes through each of the items in greater detail.
If you plan, publish and promote a quality roundup, you can not only rank for a lot of keywords, but also get people with larger audiences to share your content/brand with their audience. Authority by association!
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
The most effective thing I did to drive traffic to my site was uncovering an assignment of over 1,000 patents from IBM to Google, which I found on the USPTO Website one day.
I went through those, and found all of the ones that involved search and search engines, and wrote a blog post about the assignment, and about 15 patents that I thought were most interesting among them.
My post was linked to from some major sources such as the New York Times magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, CNN, and many other media sources (more than a few thousand) for a period of about 2-3 weeks. So providing newsworthy information that a lot of people might be interested in and find value in sharing, can capture a lot of attention.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
There are three things that have worked for us for site promotion (2 are free, 1 is paid):
1. Communities – Find communities (FB groups, LinkedIn groups, sites like Hacker News, Product Hunt, Indie hackers, newsletters etc.) where your target audience already hangs out, establish a presence and relationship there and promote your best articles/resources very carefully and tactfully there. This is not a quick win method (minus maybe product hunt). It requires time to build genuine connections and relationships.
2. SEO: This is tried and true but people are scared of it or don’t think it will work for them. Focus not on head keywords (more difficult to get) but rather focus on long tail keywords that are genuine pain points of your target audience, this will let you rank faster for them and get visitors that are in need of what you are offering at the exact moment they are searching for it. Also SEO is evergreen traffic, it’s not one shot. It also gets easier over time. The more you rank, the more people link to you, which further helps rankings.
3. Paid: For orgs with some marketing budget, consider spending a few hundred dollars a month promoting your key content resources to targeted audiences on Facebook. We’ve seen click costs as low as $0.15. So you can drive a few thousand visitors from a few hundred dollars. FB let’s you target really specifically as well which is nice. This can get good initial exposure from the right people.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
I know you will get different answers than mine. But my most effective tactic has been: Playing the long game. Being an authentic marketing professional offering real, actionable insight to those seeking answers. That, paired with working a strategy that built website authority over time.
To give more detail, I’ve used a multiple-prong approach:
Blogging from my own website – Answering key questions
Using social media to share that information to the world
Participating in groups & online forums to bring brand/website awareness, as well as more eyeballs to my content
Collaborated with other quality professionals to share niche content
Partnerships with some content providers to bring information of key interest to my blog subscribers
Of course, I use tools to strengthen some of those processes. Additionally, I optimize EVERY blog post on my site.
At first, I struggled to be found online. That is normal. But playing the long game has paid off, as now my blog posts and articles are found quite often via Google Search. Those that contact my business quite often report finding me in that way. Which is the reason I blog and guest post.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
Community building has been the biggest driver of our growth.
The best part about community is that it often facilitates its own growth, creates its own rules, and informs many product decisions.
If you’re starting a community, it’s important to set the culture of the community early. That starts with being very careful who you bring into the community early. Every new person shapes the culture and thus it’s important to curate the early members wisely.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
Be a resource, not a pitch person. Create useful content that your target audience wants.
Useful content is never promotional, instead, it answers your audience’s questions. Be sure to amplify the content on social media and optimize it for search engines.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
The tactic that has proven to be the most successful in driving traffic to my site has been cold email.
I send highly targeted and relevant cold emails to businesses and influencers that I’ve sourced from Instagram.
For influencer campaigns, I send cold emails at scale and get them to fill out a Typeform. I’ve collected tens of thousands of responses via Typeform over the past few years.
For client acquisition for my agency, I’ve acquired dozens of clients via cold email outreach. As mentioned, I source business data via Instagram and send them personalized emails letting them know about the value I can provide for them.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
Having a give first mentality is key to attracting website traffic. One of the best tactics is utilizing your blog to recognize others for their contribution in or around your industry.
Are you a startup? Recognize the startups in a top 5 list for cities you are expanding to.
New competitor or adjacent business come up with a new approach? Recognize them in a way that compliments the growth of your mutual industry.
Giving recognition attracts visitors interested in you and also exposes new visitors to your brand.
What tactic has performed the best for promoting your website?
To answer this question, you first have to know WHY you’re sending people to your website and WHO is your ideal client.
Anyone can get a bunch of people to follow a link and land on your website, but very few people consider this question and develop a strategy that actually gets the attention, visits or traffic required to help you reach this very specific person.
Now, as strange as it may seem for someone who’s been heavily (and successfully) involved in the digital marketing scene since 2007, my main focus this year has been increasing my offline activity to improve my online results.
I got away from my desk… I networked… I joined associations… I met, talked and developed professional relationships with actual human beings… face to face.
It was kinda weird, but very worthwhile.
It meant that a new kind of person was visiting my website: someone who actually knew me personally and was far more likely to turn into my ideal client.
I also did a ton of free branding content for social media with – get ready for this – no call to action.
The result?
More higher quality site visitors who CAME LOOKING FOR ME.
These were guys who were already warmed up by liking my helpful content on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc and WANTED to give me their hard earned money to help them with their marketing needs.
Of course I also ran a lot of Facebook ads for various promotions, but the above strategies were by far the most effective for me this year, even though they are the hardest to track.
So, to all my fellow desk jockeys, remember there’s a big world out there and it can pay off to go into it from time to time :)
Conclusion
How epic was that?
For next steps, I encourage you to try three methods from above to start. After a few months, evaluate what’s working and what’s not using SEO metrics. Then, experiment the next three tactics until you exhaust this list.
When doing this, the goal is to continue doing what’s working and stopping what’s yielding zero results.
Sticking to this strategy is exactly how to promote your website and grow your business… and there’s nothing better than that!
What’s your favorite method for driving website traffic?
When you’re wondering how to get consulting clients, blogging is the one activity that never fails.
Hubspot agrees with me. Their research found that 71.4% of people say blogs affect their purchasing decisions “somewhat” or “very much.”
And my experience backs this up. Blogging has helped me get millions of page views, sell three Amazon bestsellers, and grow a startup.
With this young company, I was able to attract new consulting clients and build social proof via blogging.
How did this work so well?
It’s the classic belief that, “When I publish quality content into the world that actually helps people with their problems, by reciprocity they will help me accomplish my goals of growing my business.”
To be clear, by blogging, I mean written, audio, or videos. Any and all can get the job done.
Start blogging professionally and I guarantee you’ll generate more sales leads and new clients.
Here’s why I’m so confident blogging will help you get clients easily who value your consulting services.
Why Blog? 3 Biggest Benefits
So what does blogging accomplish for your business? Blogging gets more people to
Know about you
Trust and like you
Buy from you
Those are some of the three most powerful reasons to do anything in business, and it’s what makes putting out content special. Call it a triple threat.
Technology and processes are amazing—I’m a big believer—but these will never replace the strength of a quality human relationship built on shared value and trust.
And all relationships start from some form of communication.
So getting content in front of your people makes them like you and appreciate your knowledge. This likability builds trust, and if someone trusts you then you’re already halfway there when it comes to closing the sale.
Plus, blogging is free. It takes nothing more besides your time and some creativity to get organic traffic coming to your site from Google. When you run an ads campaign or hire a PPC agency, the results can be incredible, but they’re never free.
Though like most things in life, there’s the wrong and right way to blog.
Business Blogging Checklist
Writing in-depth guides about new ideas, techniques, and strategies your prospects can use to better their lives will turn them into raving fans of your brand.
They’ll follow you on all social channels. Recommend you to other people. And over time, if you continue to feed them value, buy everything you sell.
I can’t tell you how many people, who found me from my blog content, bought my first book, then my second and third, then worked with my advertising company.
Anyway, to get to that point, you first need to communicate effectively.
As I share in an article I wrote recently on how to write a blog post: in any piece of content, you want to ensure you have a healthy dose of the following elements.
Personal stories
Social proof
Content people care about
A clickbait headline
How To Get Consulting Clients
1. Share Personal Stories
People find other people interesting. It’s as simple as that. Tell your war stories, triumphs, failures, and learning moments in your blog posts.
You’ll find your prospects identify with you better and when you get on a sales call, they may bring up one of your stories as the reason why they scheduled a call with you.
When trying to build trust, nothing is as powerful as a personal story that gives the audience insight into who you are, why you think the way you think, and gives them opportunities to identify common interests with you.
I look for opportunities to share relatable stories as often as possible. Then, I’m not surprised when I’m in a meeting or phone call and they break the ice mentioning a funny story that they thought of from my content.
Plus, my entire LinkedIn is filled with stories and looks different than most people’s for a reason. I want viewers of my profile to know me, not just my job titles.
Tie in stories and emotions to create a stronger bond with your prospects before you transition to credibility and logic.
2. Build Social Proof
It makes sense why social proof is important. No one wants to be scammed or waste money on a fraud consultant.
Knowing that, you can’t be so humble that you never mention your accomplishments or you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot.
In a noisy online business world, you actually need to self-promote every success story of your clients, ask them to promote you, and do what it takes to look like an expert in your field.
So where’s the place to build social proof? You guessed it, your blog.
Ironically, we’ll blog about a client who hired our SEO agency to attract new SEO agency clients.
Start writing individual blog posts on a difficult challenge that you accomplished and the average person hasn’t. Feel free to name drop important people or share impressive details in your personal stories. And the more client testimonials and quotes you have, the better you can drop these in your content.
For example, we helped a client go from zero to thousands of monthly page views. So I wrote a blog post listing how we did it.
Now are you more likely to listen to what I have to say if you’re trying to get traffic to your site? I believe so.
3. Create Content People Care About
It’s an awful feeling to spend hours on a piece of content, then check analytics and see that 13 people read it.
I’ve found that most people who struggle to build an audience are focused on the wrong audience.
They write what they think is interesting, without ever considering their audience might not have the same opinion as them.
So by getting outside what you think people care about, you’ll open yourself up to using data to see what topics really interest them.
The way you’re going to do use, and a tool I swear by when doing any SEO efforts, is Ubersuggest.
On Ubersuggest, you enter a main keyword for your niche. And then you’ll see a list of the top 100 Google SERPS (article URLS) on the right.
This screenshot shows what’s trending online for the keyword “online business coach”.
Viewing these blog posts on the right, you can see what content really strikes a chord with your audience and how those blog posts were written.
Don’t copy these blogs, but see what posts are hot and one up them with an even more valuable post than the one people are enjoying.
Only then will you know for a fact that your niche cares about the content you’re publishing.
4. Write Clickbait Headlines
Everyone hates clickbait. I love it.
Because you can’t help people and accomplish all your goals with boring headlines that no one clicks on.
Honestly I have no problem with clickbait headlines, as long as the content delivers. Sure, get my attention, and keep it. I’m only upset if the headline gets me to click but the content is average to terrible.
Think about it. You’re actually hurting your audience and yourself if you write subtle headlines that don’t pack a punch.
Don’t hate the game, play the game to improve the reach of your content and customer acquisition.
Reach New Audiences With Guest Blogging
Another profitable activity is guest blogging.
Here are the main benefits of blogging on another’s website:
Increases brand awareness
Builds social proof and credibility
Drives traffic
Generates new customers
Offers a networking opportunity for future collaborations
Establishes trust to a new set of people
Guest blogging is an extremely underrated yet effective tactic to break into new audiences who would love your company, if they only knew about it. (Not to mention, guest posting is incredible for building backlinks.)
By far my favorite motive for guest blogging is it helps me establish trust.
Trust can make selling extremely easy or difficult, depending if you have it or not.
That’s why a smart way to attract new clients is to get what I call “shared trust” from another individual your audience respects.
When you publish a guest post, 20 readers who are wanting to go more in-depth about the strategies you recommended will think, “Wow that’s really helpful. Who is this person? Let me click to their site and see what they’re about.”
And with an amazing landing page that converts, they will often get on a sales call or purchase directly from the guest post link.
You no longer have to fight being credible and trustworthy because you received the shared trust of having an article published on a blog they religiously read.
Then you get a big sales month thanks to the small effort of a well-written guest post.
For example, The Wall Street Journal has millions of readers and huge brand awareness. Most of their readership hasn’t heard of me—Brian Robben.
Though I received “shared trust” when they wrote an article that featured pictures, quotes, and demographics about me.
This feature puts my name in the same sentence as The Wall Street Journal, a business known for business, credibility, and tradition.
Now when new audiences search “Brian Robben” on Google and finds the article, or my social media followers see the content, they’re pre-framed to see me in a more credible light.
You may not be able to get a feature in the WSJ yet, but you can publish guest posts on sites in your niche to build trust.
How to land guest posts
The way you secure these guest posts is by searching for something like “Guest bloggers [insert your niche]”.
Other example Google searches include:
Write for us business
Guest bloggers business
Guest blogging consulting
Guest blogging marketing
Guest posting entrepreneurship
Contribute business coaching
So if you’re in the consulting niche, you’d find a list of business websites that offer guest blogging.
Then you’d reach out by direct message or email and say something along the lines of,
Hi [name],
I’m a fan of your blog and you have some of the best content in the [insert niche] community.
I’m sure you’re extremely busy, so I wanted to help take one task off your to-do list by writing a guest post for your audience on the topic [insert the guest post title].
Here are some previous writing samples in case you want to review my ability.
[Previous writing sample link 1]
[Previous writing sample link 2]
Let me know your thoughts about it.
All the best,
[Your name]
Now why would the blog owner offer guest posts?
In essence, they get the quality post for their audience and the time savings of not having to create new content. And you both get the start of a new relationship that may lead to many mutually beneficial opportunities that come in the future.
Remember, give to receive and you’ll get amazing results while still feeling good about it.
As they say, your network is your net worth.
Blogging Resources To Be A Professional
Why waste mind space when you can use digital tools to stay organized? I live by my online tools.
Here are the blogging resources I use:
Content calendar – Use a content calendar to get organized on your monthly content, how often you’ll post, to make sure you’re not forgetting any key topics, and plan promotional content around educational content. Marking down national holidays is another trick to mix cultural relevance into your content. Best to balance ambition and a manageable schedule when deciding how often you’re going to publish new material.
Google Drive – I use Google Drive to have a main umbrella folder called “Blog” and then inside that, I have folders like “Published” and “Unpublished” for blog content. And inside the “Unpublished” folder, I have a bunch of different blog post titles that I move to the “Published” folder when I’m done.
Unsplash – Blogs without images are tough to get through. Adding images from Unsplash, free images by the way, will improve the readability of your content.
Canva – If you want to be extra with your images and put text over them, then Canva is the easy to use tool for you. It’s also helpful for creating social media graphics and cover photos to share your published post.
Mailchimp – Following up with readers about new blog posts and sales offers is key. But the degree of difficulty in following up goes through the roof if you don’t have their email. Use Mailchimp to build an email list by adding an opt-in box on your blog and then send emails to your list with this same tool.
Yoast – The Yoast SEO plugin is the best out there for spreading your blog posts across search engines like Google. What I appreciate most about Yoast is it will tell you how to improve the SEO of your blog post before you publish it. Read this article if you’re wondering what is SEO?
Sumo – You’ll be surprised how many times a reader enjoys your content and wants to share it on their Facebook, LinkedIn, or in an email. Give them the chance with Sumo and its other tools to better market your business. (Shown below.)
If you don’t have a website, of course you’ll need that first before you do anything else. I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to start a WordPress blog that’s easy to follow.
The end goal is you’re extremely organized and focused on delivering value to your audience and spreading that value to as many people as you can possibly reach through SEO, social sharing, and an email list.
Pair Blogging With Paid Ads
Blogging is like an investment account. The more you invest, the greater the compound interest, and the better the results over a 10 year period.
That being said, blogging results can seem like a snail compared to the instant gratification of paid ads.
You can spend $10 to advertise your blog post and reach thousands of people the next day. That’s the scalability that comes with a Facebook ad campaign.
So if you have money in your business account saved for marketing, I’d encourage you to write an A+ blog post that blows your audience away in value, make an offer at the end for them to buy your services, and then promote it with a Facebook ad budget.
Reaching masses of prospects in this capacity can take your 6-figure business to 7-figures, or 7-figure business to 8-figures.
Conclusion
The challenges will come. When resistance hits you, remember why you started blogging at these times—you want people to know your business, to like and trust you, and to buy from you.
Remembering my why is how I put out content for over 5 years, and continue to do so. My wish is this why provides the same motivation to you.
What’s your answer when someone asks you how to get consulting clients?
