Each month the independent research team at topseos.com investigates the best performing affiliate marketing agencies and ranks them based on …
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… engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing (SMM), content marketing pay-per-click advertising (PPC), affiliate marketing, and email marketing.
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Performance Marketing Insights: London 2015 - The View of Day Two … mobile commerce and the synergy between display and affiliate marketing …
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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 30, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ – Affiliate programs are … and they take many different approaches to paying affiliate members. … has provided potential affiliates with a slew of online marketing materials, yet …
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It reaches new customers through a group of marketing channels, including affiliate marketing online, print advertising, tradeshows, email marketing, …
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The word “blog” sounds dull to me.
There is no resonating romance, and trying to attach passion to it is a struggle. I see visions of over-sharers wrestling with technology to publish the mundane details of their everyday lives… but maybe that’s Facebook.
“Blog” originated as slang for “web log.” Those two words were mauled and mangled and out popped “blog”. Try and explain that to a blogger at a dinner party – you just have to love the magic of language, grammar and words. Always evolving.
So why should you blog?
Three motivations are the most obvious.
The truth lies hidden somewhere in between.
Still…Why should you?
A successful career and life is based upon being “on purpose.” We all bring our own magic and uniqueness into the world. Your goal in life is to discover what that is, embrace it and share it.
Your blog can be the digital platform where it’s revealed.
To start a blog and continue to create and publish you will need to find the inspiration for the words and ideas.
Inspiration does not emerge from a vacuum. No matter how you twist and turn in a digital and media-rich world powered by Instagram photos and videos, the blog is still driven by words and writing.
Stephen King sums up where the inspiration starts…
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Here are 9 reasons why blogging will make a big impact on your career and life if you are prepared to start the journey to create and publish:
Sitting down and distilling your ideas and insights into structured sentences and paragraphs is an art. Wrangling and wrestling those words into shape will produce clarity from the cloud. Make it a practice every day, and magic happens.
Creating is one thing, but publishing is another. Being willing to put your ideas “out there” takes bravery and a willingness to be vulnerable. Doubts may stop you. These include:
Overcome your fears and publish your creation. Rewards will come.
A blog amplified by social networks with simple-to-use interfaces is the intersection of humanity and technology. It is an extension and amplification of our uniqueness, creativity and content to 7 billion people.
The low-friction sharing will amplify who you are to a world that is waiting to hear your voice.
Tribes are no longer local but global connections of shared interests and passions. Blogs that are powered by Twitter feeds and online communities allow us to connect to those global tribes… in real time.
Connection with global communities provides insights and networks that can accelerate your learning process, opportunity and success.
You change them and they change you.
Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking highlights a new opportunity. The introvert now has a voice. It is estimated that 50% of us fit into that category. If you feel that is you then your blog can be your platform to speak to the world, let your personality shine and be heard.
Blogs are online magazines, books and resources all rolled into one.
A portal for expression, learning and publishing, they validate our creative content by quantifying attention through retweets, comments and sharing.
In the age of print, making mistakes was expensive and time-consuming. With your online publishing platform you can experiment in real time with no financial risk.
The low friction of the social web allows content creators to bypass the old gatekeepers of editors and publishers. What took years or decades to achieve that important attention can be done in weeks and months.
Opportunity in the past was often limited to “local.” Today your online platform isn’t restricted by geography. The world is now your playpen.
The consistent and persistent effort of online creation and publishing is a powerful journey in self-discovery and growth. It will be a career enhancer and a life changer. That willingness to be vulnerable, to make mistakes but keep creating will change you.
It is only through the door of risk that growth can enter.
You just have to start.
Disclaimer: I’m compensated by University of Phoenix for this blog. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
The post 9 Reasons Why A Blog is Important for Your Career and Life appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Michael Iranyi, Director of Marketing Services at William Hill said: “Participating in the Berlin Affiliate Conference was a great experience. The event …
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Sessions today included deep dives into customer relationship management, influencer marketing, geolocation, and a volley of affiliate-focused topics.
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NAPLES, FL–(Marketwired - October 30, 2015) - The independent authority on online marketing, topseos.com, has named Experience Advertising the …
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Outside of travel, Momentum Ventures has also had success in the online streaming, affiliate marketing, and advertisement serving spaces.
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In June, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) released an an advisory bulletin regarding online gambling affiliate marketers.
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For an affiliate marketer, deciding where your commission should go is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Perhaps the key questions to be …
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Stock.com has lost its CMO and Director of Affiliate Marketing as both Sydney Ifergan and Fernanda Carrascal have left the group.
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Posted by Dan-Petrovic
We tend to put a lot of effort into writing great content these days. But what’s the point of all that hard work if hardly anybody actually reads it through to the end?
In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, Dan Petrovic illustrates a new approach to writing for the web to increase reader engagement, and offers some tools and tips to help along the way.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
G'day, Moz fans, Dan Petrovic from DEJAN here. Today we’re talking about how to write for the web.
This year we did an interesting study involving 500 people. We asked them how do they read online. We found that the amount of people who actually read everything word-for-word is 16%. Amazingly, this is exactly the same statistic, the same percentage that Nielsen came up with in 1997. It’s been nearly two decades, and we still haven’t learned how to write for the Web.
I don’t know about you guys, but I find this to be a huge opportunity, something we can do with our blogs and with our content to change and improve how we write in order to provide better user experience and better performance for our content. Essentially, what happens is four out of five people that visit your page will not actually read everything you wrote. The question you have to ask yourself is: Why am I even writing if people are not reading?
I went a little bit further with my study, and I asked those same people: Why is it that you don’t read? How is it that there are such low numbers for the people who actually read? The answer was, “Well, I just skip stuff.” “I don’t have time for reading.” “I mainly scan,” or, “I read everything.” That was 80 out of 500 people. The rest said, “I just read the headline and move on,” which was amazing to hear.
Further study showed that people are after quick answers. They don’t want to be on a page too long. They sometimes lose interest halfway through reading the piece of content. They find the bad design to be a deterrent. They find the subject matter to be too complex or poorly written. Sometimes they feel that the writing lacks credibility and trust.
I thought, okay, there’s a bunch of people who don’t like to read a lot, and there’s a bunch of people who do like to read a lot. How do I write for the web to satisfy both ends?
Here was my dilemma. If I write less, the effort for reading my content is very low. It satisfies a lot of people, but it doesn’t provide the depth of content that some people expect and it doesn’t allow me to go into storytelling. Storytelling is very powerful, often. If I write more, the effort will be very high. Some people will be very satisfied, but a lot of people will just bounce off. It’ll provide the depth of content and enable storytelling.
Actually, I ended up finding out something I didn’t know about, which was how journalists write. This is a very old practice called “inverted pyramid.”
The rules are, you start off with a primary piece of information. You give answers straight up. Right after that you go into the secondary, supporting information that elaborates on any claims made in the first two paragraphs. Right after that we go into the deep content.
I thought about this, and I realized why this was written in such a way: because people used to read printed stuff, newspapers. They would go read the most important thing, and if they drop off at this point, it’s not so bad because they know actually what happened in the first paragraph. The deep content is for those who have time.
But guess what? We write for the web now. So what happens is we have all this technology to change things and to embed things. We don’t really have to wait for our users to go all the way to the bottom to read deep information. I thought, “How can I take this deep information and make it available right here and right there to give those interested extra elaboration on a concept while they’re reading something?”
This is when I decided I’ll dive deeper into the whole thing. Here’s my list. This is what I promised myself to do. I will minimize interruption for my readers. I will give them quick answers straight in the first paragraph. I will support easy scanning of my content. I will support trust by providing citations and references. I will provide in-depth content to those who want to see it. I will enable interactivity, personalization, and contextual relevance to the piece of content people want to retrieve in that particular time.
I took one of my big articles and I did a scroll test on it. This was the cutoff point where people read everything. At this point it drops to 95, 80, 85. You keep losing audience as your article grows in size. Eventually you end up at about 20% of people who visit your page towards the bottom of your article.
My first step was to jump on the Hemingway app—a very good online app where you can put in your content and it tells you basically all the unnecessary things you’ve actually put in your words—to actually take them out because they don’t really need to be there. I did that. I sized down my article, but it still wasn’t going to do the trick.
This is where I came up with an idea of hypotext. What I did, I created a little plugin for WordPress that enables people to go through my article, click on a particular piece, kind of like a link.
Instead of going to a new website, which does interrupt their reading experience, a block of text opens within the paragraph of text they’re reading and gives them that information. They can click if they like, or if they don’t want to look up this information, they don’t have to. It’s kind of like links, but injected right in the context of what they’re currently reading.
This was a nerve-wracking exercise for me. I did 500 revisions of this article until I got it right. What used to be a 5,000-word article turned into a 400-word article, which can then be expanded to its original 5,000-word form. People said, “That’s great. You have a nice hypothesis, nice theory, but does this really work?”
So I decided to put everything I did to a test. An old article, which takes about 29 minutes to read, was attracting people to the page, but they were spending 6 minutes on average—which is great, but not enough. I wanted people to spend way more time. If I put the effort into writing, I wanted them to digest that content properly. The bounce rate was quite high, meaning they were quite tired with my content, and they just wanted to move on and not explore anything else on my website.
After implementing the compressed version of my original article, giving them a choice of what they will read and when, I expanded the average time on page to 12 minutes, which is extraordinary. My bounce rate was reduced to 60%, which meant that people kept browsing for more of my content.
We did a test with a content page, and the results were like this:
Basically, the engagement metrics on the new page were significantly higher than on the old when implemented in this way.
On a commercial landing page, we had a situation like this:
We only had a small increase in engagement. It was about 6%. Still very happy with the results. But what really, really surprised me was on my commercial landing page—where I want people to actually convert and submit an inquiry—the difference was huge.
It was about a 120% increase in the inquiries in comparison to the control group when I implemented this type of information. I removed the clutter and I enabled people to focus on making the inquiry.
I want you all to think about how you write for the web, what is a good web reading experience, and how content on the web should be, because I think it’s time to align how we write and how we read on the web. Thank you.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
There are a few things to note here. First, for an example of an implementation of hypotext, take a look at this post on user behavior data.
Next, keep in mind that Google does devalue the hidden content, disagreeing with its usability. You can read more about this on the DEJAN blog—there are further tips on the dangers of hidden content and how you can combat them there.
One solution is to reverse how hypotext works in an article. Rather than defaulting to the shorter piece, you can start by showing the full text and offer a “5-minute-read” link (example here) for those inclined to skim or not interested in the deep content.
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for listening!
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The digital battle is on!
Content competition is fierce. One billion websites, two billion plus social media users and 3 billion plus mobile owners. So you need to break through the clutter not only on desktop but on smart phones. But build it and they will come is not an option.
Content marketing is two words.
So you not only have to create great content. But you have to build distribution networks for that content and then hustle it to the world on social, email and search engines. It needs persistent focused effort. That’s marketing.
You can pay for it and pull out the credit card and start advertising on Facebook and Google. This is the fast way to put content in front of potential readers, viewers and customers. This is possible if you have the money but not the time.
But if you want to earn it rather than pay for it then you have a lot to do. This includes doing all of the following.
This is the work of years. But to make it even harder Facebook has changed the game in social. It has made the “earned attention” harder. It’s organic reach is approaching zero.
But there is one social network that doesn’t choke your posts and make them invisible through filtering to your followers.
Twitter.
Twitter is used by many top influencers to display their content and ideas. How do they use Twitter?
They have taken the time and put in the effort to build their social distribution.
Then they make sure that they are tweeting often.
To find content I use the Popsters tool.
This is a great social app that allows you to find their top content on Twitter. It is a cool tool that allows me to find the top content not only on Twitter but Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Using this tool I have discovered what type of content gets shared the most and has the highest engagement.
Here are 7 of the top influencers on social media according to Forbes and some of their top tweets.
Kim is a Twitter powerhouse and has over 400,000 Twitter followers. Kim is a prolific tweeter and uses images often and well. If you want to see Twitter “best practice” follow Kim. She is a great example to model your Twitter tactics on!
Kim blogs at KimGarst.com.
Mark wrote the book on Twitter. The Tao of Twitter. He is a prolific author and international speaker. You can find him at his blog Businessesgrow.com
Joe is one of the brains behind Content Marketing Institute and knows how content works. This is one of his top ten tweets.
It is interesting to see that this one is not a visual tweet but Joe doesn’t post as many images as some of the other influencers.
Jay’s online portal and authority site is at Convince and Convert. Jay and his team are “Digital marketing advisers”
He is also a speaker and author on social media and other things digital.
Pam is a constant tweeter and a top influencer. She runs a digital agency with the fun name “Marketing Nut“.
Here is one of her top tweets. She loves using visuals!
Jeffrey Hayzlett is a top selling author and international speaker and blogs at Hayzlett.com. Of course one of his top tweets is an image of his book “Think Big. Act Bigger” which I am in the middle of reading.
Michael is a top influencer, blogger and digital marketer that covers social and content and top digital topics on his blog B2B Marketing Insider. This image he uses below which highlights some of the top influencers on Twitter reveals a great tactic to drive attention and traffic with Twitter.
Do a shout out!
I decided to see what my top tweets were and here is one of them I found on Popsters.
Here is one of my top tweets. It is a mini infographic. I have found this type of visual to be one of the best tactics to achieve a lot of retweets.
So if you want to see what your top tweets and content on Twitter, Facebook and some of the other social media networks are in your niche try out Popsters.
The post How 7 Top Influencers Share Great Content on Twitter appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Ebates is a profitable, high growth e-commerce company based in San Francisco. We offer a casual but fast paced environment where creativity and …
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Posted by rMaynes1
You are exposed to an average of 362 online display ads a day. How close are you to buying anything when you see those ads?
Online display ads have been around for over 20 years. They’re nothing new. But over the past 2 decades, the content, format, and messaging of display ads have changed dramatically—because they have had to!
The click-through rate of that first banner ad in 1994 was 44%. CTRs have steadily declined, and were sitting at around 0.1% in 2012 for standard display ads (video and rich media excluded), according to DoubleClick. Advertisers had to do something to ensure that their ads were seen, and engaged with—ads had to be a useful resource, and not an annoying nuisance.
It’s important, however, that the focus is not firmly fixed on CTRs. Yes, online display ads have largely been considered a tool for direct response advertising, but more recently, advertisers are understanding the importance of reaching the right person, in the right mindset, with an ad that can be seen. This ad may not be clicked on, but does that mean it wasn’t noticed and remembered? Advertisers are increasingly opting to pay for performance as opposed to clicks and/or impressions. Advertisers want their ad to drive action that leads to purchase—and that isn’t always in the form of a click.
Mediative recently conducted and released a research study that looks at how display ads can drive purchase behaviour. If someone is browsing the web and sees an ad, can it influence a purchase decision? Are searchers more responsive to display ads at different stages in the buying cycle? What actions do people take after seeing an ad that captures their interest? Ultimately, Mediative wanted to know how indicative of purchase behaviour a click on an ad was, and if clicks on display ads even matter anymore when it comes to driving purchase behaviour and measuring campaign success. The results from an online survey are quite interesting.
In fact, display ads are 39% more likely to influence web users when they are researching a potential purchase versus when they have no intent to buy.
Have different ad creatives with different messaging that will appeal to the researcher and the purchaser of your product or service separately. Combined with targeted impressions, advertisers are more likely to reach and engage their target audience when they are most receptive to the particular messaging in the ad.
Here are a few examples of Dell display ads and different creatives that have been used:
This creative is focusing on particular features of the product that might appeal more to researchers.
This ad injects the notion of “limited time” to get a deal, which might cause people who are on the fence to act faster—but it doesn’t mention pricing or discounts.
These creatives introduce price discounts and special offers which will appeal to those in the market to buy.
40% of people took an action (clicked the ad, contacted the advertiser, searched online for more information, etc.) from seeing an ad because it was relevant to a need or want, or relevant to something they were doing at the time.
Use audience data or lookalike modeling in display campaigns to ensure ads will be targeted to searchers who have a higher likelihood of being interested in the product or service. Retargeting ads to people based on their past activity or searches is valuable at this stage, as potential customers can be reached all over the web while they comparison shop.
An established Canadian charitable organization ran an awareness campaign in Q2 2015 using retargeting, first and third party data lookalike modeling, and contextual targeting to help drive existing, and new users to their website. The goal was to drive donations, while reducing the effective cost per action of the campaign. This combination helped drive granularity in the targeting, enabling the most efficient spending possible. The result was a 689% decrease in eCPA—$76 versus the goal of $600.
53% of people said they were likely to search online for the product featured in the ad (the same as those who said they would click on the ad). Searching for more information online is just as likely as clicking the ad after it captures attention, just not as quickly as a click (74% would click on the ad immediately or within an hour, 52% would search online immediately or within an hour).
It is critical not to measure the success of a display campaign by clicks alone. Advertisers can get caught up in CTRs, but it’s important to remember that ads will drive other behaviours in people, not just a click. Website visits, search metrics, etc. must all be taken into consideration.
A leading manufacturer of PCs, laptops, tablets, and accessories wanted to increase sales in Q2 of 2014, with full transparency on the performance and delivery of the campaign. The campaign was run against specific custom audience data focusing on people of technological, educational, and business interest, and was optimized using various tactics. The result? The campaign achieved a post-view ROI revenue (revenue from target audiences who were presented with ad impressions, yet did not necessarily click through at that time) that was 30x the amount of post-click revenue.
33% of respondents reported making a purchase as a direct result of seeing an ad online. Of those, 61% clicked and 44% searched (multiple selections were allowed), which led to a purchase.
Revise the metrics you measure. Measuring “post-view conversions” will take into account the fact that people may see an ad, but act later—the ad triggers an action, whether it be a search, a visit, or a purchase—but not immediately, and it is not directly measurable.
If your target audience is older, multiple exposures of an ad might be necessary in order to increase the likelihood of capturing their attention. Integrated campaigns could be more effective, where offline campaigns run in parallel with online campaigns to maximize message exposure.
More women took an online action that led to a purchase in the last 30 days, whereas more men took an offline action that led to a purchase.
Ensure you know as much about your target audience as possible. What is their age, their average income? What sites do they like to visit? What are their interests? The more you know about who you are trying to reach, the more likely you will be to reach them at the right times when they will be most responsive to your advertising messages.
Lower earners (students, part-time workers, etc.) are more influenced by ads when ready to buy, so will likely engage more with ads offering discounts. Consider income differences when you are trying to reach people at different stages in the buying cycle.
We were surprised that the results of the survey indicated that discounts or promotions in ads did not have more of an impact on people—but it’s likely that the ads with coupons were irrelevant to the searcher’s needs or wants, therefore would have no impact. We asked people what their reasons were behind taking action after seeing an online ad. 40% of respondents took an action from seeing an ad for a more purchase-related reason than simply being interested—they took the action because the ad was relevant to a need or want, or relevant to something they were doing at the time.
Use discounts strategically. Utilizing data in campaigns can ensure ads reach people with a high intent to buy and a high likelihood of being interested in your product or service. Turn interest into desire with coupons and/or discounts—it will have more of an impact if directly tied to something the searcher is already considering.
In conclusion, to be successful, advertisers need to ensure their ads are providing value to online web users—to be noticed, remembered, and engaged with, relevancy of the ad is key. Serving relevant ads that are related to a searcher’s current need or want are far more likely to capture attention than a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Advertisers will be rewarded for their attention to personalization with more interaction with ads and a higher likelihood of a purchase. Analyzing lower funnel metrics, such as post-view conversions, rather than simply concentrating on the CTR will allow advertisers to have a far better understanding of how their ads are performing, and the potential number of consumers that have been influenced.
Rebecca Maynes, Manager of Content Marketing and Research with Mediative, was the major contributor on this whitepaper. The full research study is available for free download at Mediative.com.
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Unique… Helpful… Engaging.
These are the words that describe epic content marketing – but too many people are getting it wrong.
We can debate all day long about what makes for good content. But the one thing many would-be content marketers stumble on is coming up with an idea that hasn’t been rehashed or done to death.
There’s no point marketing content, if you can’t make it high quality and unique.
In the rush to have something to say, many businesses latch onto half-brained ideas and try to ride it out. The result is a jumbled mess that doesn’t make any sense, and only serves to frustrate their audience.
Storytelling seems to be a buzzword these days when it comes to content creation, but there’s much more to it than you think.
And I’m not here to tell you how to incorporate storytelling into your content, because that’s a topic that’s been done over and over.
However, what I can do is tell you how to avoid the trap of overdone ideas by using classic storytelling techniques. Helping you consistently create refreshing and amazing pieces of content.
Here’s how some classic storytelling techniques will help improve your content marketing.
The foremost storytelling technique I always keep in mind is the hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell.
In short, the hero’s journey is a classic sequence of actions that can be found in almost every story. Basically it’s a broad template which contends that every epic myth can be broken down into 12 distinct plot points.
As a content marketer you have to ask yourself, who is the hero of this story?
Most of you would have said yourself. Which is understandable, everyone naturally views themselves as the hero of the story.
But the key to creating consistently amazing pieces of content is to remember that you aren’t the hero in this story.
The hero is your audience.
Your role as a content marketer is not to be the hero, but the mentor.
The mentor is the character that every hero meets when they’re stuck. They provide all the necessary wisdom and advice that the hero needs in order to continue on their journey. Think Obi-Wan in Star Wars, Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings, or for a more contemporary example Jeff Bullas and this very article.
Every piece of content you craft has to be framed with the intention that it is the mentor dispensing valuable advice in order to aid the hero along their journey.
If you keep that in mind you’ll always be consistently creating content that is both valuable and useful to your audience.
In screenwriting there is a model that divides a narrative into three distinct parts, or acts: the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Solution.
Like the hero’s journey the three-act structure is a basic template for most fictional narratives. It helps writers structure their narratives in a way that’s easy to understand.
Here’s an example of the three-act Structure in Star Wars.
But I don’t use the three-act structure as a way to model my content. Instead I use it as a way to help me generate new ideas.
You can use this to generate new ideas about any topic.
I’ll show you just how I used it to pitch Jeff Bullas a few ideas for a guest post. I personally like writing it all out in my notebook, but you can easily do yours differently.
Classically the setup is where all the major characters are introduced, the world they live in, and all the conflict that will move the story forward.
In our case we already know who our characters are and the world they live in: the audience is the hero, and we’re the mentor. The conflict is fairly straightforward, the hero wants to know a piece of information that only the mentor can provide.
A key piece of advice when it comes to storytelling is this: you find the conflict, you find the story.
My process is to find a general topic of information that my hero wants to know more about.
When pitching Jeff I chose the topic of storytelling and content marketing.
Next up is to turn the hero’s problem into a goal, or declarative statement. What do they want to achieve by learning this piece of information?
As you can see the goal of my hero is, “I want to write an epic article about storytelling”.
There you have your Setup.
In fiction writing the confrontation is when the stakes are raised because the hero encounters even more problems.
In my process I begin to break down the components of the hero’s goal. This is the most important step, because you have to thoroughly understand what questions your audience want answered.
What are the details they would need to know in order to achieve their goal? What questions would they ask?
I often use Quora as a way to keep in the loop about which questions are being commonly asked in my niche.
Although the easiest way is usually just asking: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
Try and break down at least three different questions or problems that the hero will encounter.
As you can see with this other example I already have three different topics to write about. But those topics are just a little too generic, so I’ll break them down even further to generate more ideas!
The final act is when all the narrative’s conflicts are resolved. All information and conflicts introduced in the first two acts are resolved in order to, theoretically, create a satisfying ending.
For my process what I do is come up with solutions to the questions raised in the previous section. I always aim for at least two different solutions to every question.
In the end what you’ll end up with is a handful of different topics you can easily write about!
When it came to pitching Jeff I was able to come up with a handful solutions to my hero’s questions. Eventually I settled on three different topics I particularly liked and pitched those to Jeff.
By using this process you’ll be able to consistently generate new ideas for content that are filled with actionable advice. Too many people try to solve every problem in one go, and what you’re usually left with is a very general article that doesn’t answer any specific questions and ends up a boring read.
Instead just focus on one idea and be as in-depth as possible when it comes to that single idea.
What you’ll find is that you’ll never be stumped for ideas again!
Every writing student has heard this at one point, to learn how to show, not tell. The principle is that you shouldn’t just spoon-feed information to the audience. Instead writers are encouraged to think of different ways to showcase a piece of information.
The most straightforward way is to pick a topic and write an article about it. But there are so many ways to present a single piece of information.
For example, on this topic of storytelling techniques I could have, just as easily, created an instructional video, or an infographic instead of an article.
Or I could have held an event or workshop and directly taught my method to a group of people.
Using the content multiplier framework in Dan Norris’s book Content Machine I’m able to find different ways to present my information.
As a content creator you have to think of the different ways your audience absorbs information.
This is a great way to significantly increase the different types of content you can produce, and all from one idea!
Your audience is the hero of the story, you’re the wise mentor helping them on their journey
Focus on the challenges your audience faces, and how you can help them overcome them
There is always more than one way to present a single piece of information
Often the hardest part of content creation isn’t writing it out, it’s coming up with an original idea in the first place.
But what you’ll find is that by using these classic storytelling techniques, not only will you overcome writer’s block – you’ll also be able to constantly generate an awesome piece of content your audience will love!
Guest Author: Jonathan Chan is the Content Crafter at Foundr Magazine, a magazine for young entrepreneurs. He can often be found writing and reading anything and everything to do with entrepreneurship and the startup world. That or spending too much time pretending to be the next MMA star. Check out more of his writing over at the Foundr Blog.
The post How to Use the 3-Act Structure To Improve Your Content Marketing appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Keep it simple so that the user has a pleasant experience and flows through the process easily,“ said Outdoor Sportsman Group Affiliate Marketing …
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… a technology enthusiast recently announced the launch of two brand new electronics affiliate websites, RLC Marketing and Peak Electronics Mall.
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If you’re a webmaster, you probably received one of those infamous “Googlebot cannot access CSS and JS files on example.com” warning letters that Google sent out to seemingly every SEO and webmaster. This was a brand new alert from Google, although we have been hearing from the search engine about the need to ensure all resources are unblocked—including both JavaScript and CSS.
There was definite confusion around these letters, supported by some of the reporting in Google Search Console. Here’s what you need to know about Google’s desire to see these resources unblocked and how you can easily unblock them to take advantage of the associated ranking boosts.
One of the biggest complaints about the warning emails lay in the fact that many felt there was no reason for Google to see these files. This was especially true because it was flagging files that, traditionally, webmasters blocked—such as files within the WordPress admin area and Wordpress plugin folders.
Here’s the letter in question that many received from Google. It definitely raised plenty of questions and concerns:
Of course, whenever Google does anything that could devalue rankings, the SEO industry tends to freak out. And the confusing message in the warning didn’t help the situation.
Google needs to render these files for a couple of key reasons. The most visible and well known is the mobile-friendly algorithm. Google needs to be able to render the page completely, including the JavaScript and CSS, to ensure that the page is mobile-friendly and to apply both the mobile-friendly tag in the search results and the associated ranking boost for mobile search results. Unblocking these resources was one of the things that Google was publicly recommending to webmasters to get the mobile-friendly boost for those pages.
However, there are other parts of the algorithm that rely on using it, as well. The page layout algorithm, the algorithm that looks at where content is placed on the page in relation to the advertisements, is one such example. If Google determines a webpage is mostly ads above the fold, with the actual content below the fold, it can devalue the rankings for those pages. But with the wizardry of CSS, webmasters can easily make it appear that the content is front and center, while the ads are the most visible part of the page above the fold.
And while it’s an old school trick and not very effective, people still use CSS and JavaScript in order to hide things like keyword stuffing and links—including, in the case of a hacked site, to hide it from the actual website owner. Googlebot crawling the CSS and JavaScript can determine if it is being used spammily.
Google also has hundreds of other signals in their search algo, and it is very likely that a few of those use data garnered from CSS and JavaScript in some fashion as well. And as Google changes things, there is always the possibility that Google will use it for future signals, as well.
While many SEOs had their first introduction to the perils of blocking JavaScript and CSS when they received the email from Google, Matt Cutts was actually talking about it three-and-a-half years ago in a Google Webmaster Help video.
Then, last year, Google made a significant change to their webmaster guidelines by adding it to their technical guidelines:
Disallowing crawling of Javascript or CSS files in your site’s robots.txt directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content and can result in suboptimal rankings.
It still got very little attention at the time, especially since most people believed they weren’t blocking anything.
However, one major issue was that some popular SEO Wordpress plugins were blocking some JavaScript and CSS. Since most Wordpress users weren’t aware this was happening, it came as a surprise to learn that they were, in fact, blocking resources.
It also began showing up in a new “Blocked Resources” section of Google Search Console in the month preceding the mobile-friendly algo launch.
In usual Google fashion, they didn’t give specific numbers about how many webmasters received these blocked resources warnings. But Gary Illyes from Google did confirm that they were sent out to 18.7% of those that were sent out for the mobile-friendly warnings earlier this year:
@jenstar about 18.7% of that sent for mobile issues a few months back
— Gary Illyes (@methode) July 29, 2015
The email that Google sent to webmasters alerting them to the issue of blocked CSS and JavaScript was confusing. It left many webmasters unsure of what exactly was being blocked and what was blocking it, particularly because they were receiving warnings for JavaScript and CSS hosted on other third-party sites.
If you received one of the warning letters, the suggestion for how to find blocked resources was to use the Fetch tool in Google Search Console. While this might be fine for checking the homepage, for sites with more than a handful of pages, this can get tedious quite quickly. Luckily, there’s an easier way than Google’s suggested method.
There’s a full walkthrough here, but for those familiar with Google Search Console, you’ll find a section called “Blocked Resources” under the “Google Index” which will tell you what JavaScript and CSS is blocked and what pages they’re found in.
You also should make sure that you check for blocked resources after any major redesign or when launching a new site, as it isn’t entirely clear if Google is still actively sending out these emails to alert webmasters of the problem.
There’s been some concern about those who use specialized scripts on internal pages and don’t necessarily want to unblock them for security reasons. John Mueller from Google said that they are looking primarily at the homepage—both desktop and mobile—to see what JavaScript and CSS are blocked.
So at least for now, while it is certainly a best practice to unblock CSS and JavaScript from all pages, at the very least you want to make it a priority for the homepage, ensuring nothing on that page is blocked. After that, you can work your way through other pages, paying special attention to pages that have unique JavaScript or CSS.
Another reason many sites give for not wanting to unblock their CSS and JavaScript is because they don’t want them to be indexed by Google. But neither of those files are file types that Google will index, according to their long list of supported file types for indexation.
It is also worth remembering to check both the www and the non-www for blocked resources in Google Search Console. This is something that is often overlooked by those webmasters that only to tend to look at the version they prefer to use for the site.
Also, because the blocked resources data shown in Search Console is based on when Googlebot last crawled each page, you could find additional blocked resources when checking them both. This is especially true for for sites that may be older or not updated as frequently, and not crawled daily (like a more popular site is).
Likewise, if you have both a mobile version and a desktop version, you’ll want to ensure that both are not blocking any resources. It’s especially important for the mobile version, since it impacts whether each page gets the mobile-friendly tag and ranking boost in the mobile search results.
And if you serve different pages based on language and location, you’ll want to check each of those as well. Don’t just check the “main” version and assume it’s all good across the entire site. It’s not uncommon to discover surprises in other variations of the same site. At the very least, check the homepage for each language and location.
If you use one of the “SEO for Wordpress”-type plugins for a Wordpress-based site, chances are you’re blocking Javascript and CSS due to that plugin. It used to be one of the “out-of-the-box” default settings for some to block everything in the /wp-admin/ folder.
When the mobile-friendly algo came into play, because those admin pages were not being individually indexed, the majority of Wordpress users left that robots block intact. But this new Google warning does require all Wordpress-related JavaScript and CSS be unblocked, and Google will show it as an error if you block the JavaScript and CSS.
Yoast, creator of the popular Yoast SEO plugin (formerly Wordpress SEO), also recommends unblocking all the JavaScript and CSS in Wordpress, including the /wp-admin/ folder.
One of the ironies of this was that Google was flagging third-party JavaScript, meaning JavaScript hosted on a third-party site that was called from each webpage. And yes, this includes Google’s own Google AdSense JavaScript.
Initially, Google suggested that website owners contact those third-party sites to ask them to unblock the JavaScript being used, so that Googlebot could crawl it. However, not many webmasters were doing this; they felt it wasn’t their job, especially when they had no control over what a third-party sites blocks from crawling.
Google later said that they were not concerned about third-party resources because of that lack of control webmasters have. So while it might come up on the blocked resources list, they are truly looking for URLs for both JavaScript and CSS that the website owner can control through their own robots.txt.
John Mueller revealed more recently that they were planning to reach out to some of the more frequently cited third-party sites in order to see if they could unblock the JavaScript. While we don’t know which sites they intend to contact, it was something they planned to do; I suspect they’ll successfully see some of them unblocked. Again, while this isn’t so much a webmaster problem, it’ll be nice to have some of those sites no longer flagged in the reports.
For most users, it’s just a case of checking the robots.txt and ensuring you’re allowing all JavaScript and CSS files to be crawled. For Yoast SEO users, you can edit your robots.txt file directly in the admin area of Wordpress.
Gary Illyes from Google also shared some detailed robots.txt changes on Stack Overflow. You can add these directives to your robots.txt file in order to allow Googlebot to crawl all Javascript and CSS.
To be doubly sure you’re unblocking all JavaScript and CSS, you can add the following to your robots.txt file, provided you don’t have any directories being blocked in it already:
User-Agent: Googlebot Allow: .js Allow: .cssIf you have a more specialized robots.txt file, where you’re blocking entire directories, it can be a bit more complicated.
In these cases, you also need to allow the .js and.css for each of the directories you have blocked.
For example:
User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /deep/ Allow: /deep/*.js Allow: /deep/*.css
Repeat this for each directory you are blocking in robots.txt.
This allows Googlebot to crawl those files, while disallowing other crawlers (if you’ve blocked them). However, the chances are good that the kind of bots you’re most concerned about being allowed to crawl various JavaScript and CSS files aren’t the ones that honor robots.txt files.
You can change the User-Agent to *, which would allow all crawlers to crawl it. Bing does have its own version of the mobile-friendly algo, which requires crawling of JavaScript and CSS, although they haven’t sent out warnings about it.
If you want to rank as well as you possibly can, unblocking JavaScript and CSS is one of the easiest SEO changes you can make to your site. This is especially important for those with a significant amount of mobile traffic, since the mobile ranking algorithm does require they both be unblocked to get that mobile-friendly ranking boost.
Yes, you can continue blocking Google bot from crawling either of them, but your rankings will suffer if you do so. And in a world where every position gained counts, it doesn’t make sense to sacrifice rankings in order to keep those files private.
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Instagram started out as an image-sharing app with only a tiny workforce.
It found a sweet spot in modern society that combined vanity, social networks and a shift toward visual media.
And then one day Mr. Zuckerberg decided to pay a billion dollars to acquire it.
Soon it was a tool for many; famous celebrities, politicians, marketers, and even some top-notch businesses.
Today, Instagram ranks 7th on the list of the Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites with over 100 million unique monthly users and over 300 million active users posting photos and videos every day.
Apart from the 15-second video sharing option, we’re all excited about the new feature Instagram plans on releasing by the end of this year: targeted advertisements that show up on user’s photo feeds.
Paid ads, means more chance to make money.
If you’re interested in monetizing your Instagram account, here are 9 ways to turn those pictures into profits.
Successful marketing on social media is almost directly proportional to having a long list of followers.
Whether the followership was obtained before your marketing efforts or after is beside the point – you just need a significant amount of followers! The more you have, the more you are “seen” and the greater your chances are of turning leads to sales.
There are several ways you can grow your followers on Instagram. Some of the most effective ways have been highlighted by Melyssa Griffin, tactics such as; liking photos in your niche, socializing, asking people to follow you, running contests, and more.
Also don’t forget to follow and post on several hashtags in your niche.
Product links and links to your blog are crucial when it comes to making money on Instagram!
Every single image, video, or whatever else you share must include CTA’s (in this case links to your blog or wherever they could purchase the item).
Also make sure you place an item number or tag that could make their purchase easier.
Instagram currently doesn’t allow clickable site links, so for now the users will just have to do with re-writing the link in their browser window.
Despite the new features, Instagram is, and always has been about sharing beautiful images.
Nothing will entice your prospects or monetize your account more than high quality, beautiful images.
Show your followers what your brand is about with images that appeal to their visual senses. Show off your products, tell them your brand story, create graphically altered images and get creative.
If you’re a gym service for example, you could show off pictures of hot hunks doing their work-outs. If you’re a yoghurt selling service, share images of your product and perhaps other ways you could use that yoghurt in recipes.
Check out how Starbucks does this with amazing graphics, artistic pictures of Starbuck cups, and their latest coffee creations.
Always be sure to share photos of your latest products. For example, you could be writing a new book. Take a cool snap of the cover and share it with a release date.
If a picture is worth a thousand words – then what is a video (which is comprised of practically thousands of pictures) worth? You do the maths!
Thanks to Instagram’s latest feature (and competition with lead rival, Vine) there is a 15-second video sharing option that you get creative with.
Come up with a personal message for your fans and tell them why you think they should try out your new product. Or perhaps, you could share a 15-second fast-paced process of how you build your creations.
There’s no limit to how creative you can get with video building!
Check out top brands on Instagram and Vine for some video sharing inspiration.
Many fans and followers are willing to endorse your brand only for a little recognition – and of course a post about them on your profile. This is a great way to engage your followers as well as outsource original, quality content.
Give your followers a chance to submit their photos with your product, share their “experience” in a video, or anything they like. The best submissions could get discounts on your products, a small reward, or perhaps just a little recognition through your brand name.
Here’s a great example of Starbucks latest “Hello Fall” video contributed by an artistic fan after they introduced the Fall cup.
Get people to like your images and follow you because you’re running a cool campaign or an event.
Offer exclusive deals for a short period of time and keep updating your users on how time is running out (urgency works!).
Sharing special promotions or coupons is another way to get your followers involved in a contest and turn those leads into sales. Ask them to double-tap or tag a friend to get their name in the draw box.
One of the best advantages of running contests and campaigns on Instagram is that you can create separate hashtags and keep all contributions in one place.
Buffalo Wings and Rings Jordan contest
Get happy clients to upload pictures or videos of themselves using your product.
There’s nothing more convincing than a handful of images, videos, or testimonials that provide social proof.
If you know a celebrity like Kim Kardashian, you’re one lucky duck!
But, of course not everyone has direct access to the Kardashians, much less their Instagram profile.
However, there are other people who have big followings on Instagram that are much more accessible. For example, if you’re selling women apparel look for popular online influencers such as fashion bloggers, entrepreneurs, or social media gurus that have a large fan following.
Plenty of blogger models are willing to share what brands they wear and why purchasing from a specific brand would be a good idea. This is a great way to generate referral traffic through links to your blog as well as your branded Instagram hashtags.
Use an app to do a bulk of the work for you!
The number of tools out there for boosting your Instagram marketing is overwhelming.
But here are some of the best:
Guest Author: Alison Stone works at Dissertation cube where she provides dissertation writing help to students. In her spare time she writes blogs for students starting their career and for those who are still in jobs. Find her on Google+.
The post 9 Ways to Make Money On Instagram appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Last year PerformanceIN polled advertisers concerned with just one area of the performance landscape: affiliate marketing. Numerous revelations …
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Posted by Bill.Sebald
A process can easily become a habit. A habit may not change without awareness or intervention.
Before it becomes a habit, a process should be adjusted to change along with new goals, constant learning, experimentation, and so on.
Considering your time in analytics, are you engaging in a process, or in an outdated habit?
That’s a real question that digital marketing practitioners should ask themselves. Inherently, marketers tend to be buried with work, reusing templates to speed up results. But many agencies lean on those templates a little too much, in my opinion.
Templates should never be written in stone.
If your company is pumping out canned reports, you’re not alone. I do the business development for our company and regularly ask prospects to explain or share the reports they’ve received in the past. Sometimes it’s truly discouraging, outdated, wasteful, and the reason businesses search for new SEO vendors.
Look—I’m all for scalability. It’s a huge help. But some things can’t be scaled and still be successful, especially in today’s SEO climate—or, frankly, marketing in general. Much of what was scalable in SEO prior to 2011 is now penalty-bait. Today’s analytics tools and platforms can slice and dice data faster than anything Ron Popeil ever sold, but the human element will always be necessary if you want your marketing to dominate.
I like to tell stories. I’m real fun in the pub. What I’ve always loved about marketing is the challenge to not only find a story, but have that story change something for the better. I like adding my layer based on real data and experimenting.
Analytics work is all about finding the story. It’s detective work. It’s equal parts Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and Indiana Jones. If you’re lucky, the story jumps out with very little digging. However, it’s more likely you’ll be going on some expeditions. It’s common to start with a hunch or random click through reports, but you need to always be looking for the story.
A great place to start is through client conversations. We schedule at least one monthly call with our clients, where it’s truly a discussion session. We get conversations going to pull intel out of the key stakeholders. Case in point: Recently, we discovered through an open discussion that one of our clients had great success with an earlier email campaign targeted to business owners. There was specific information customers positively responded to, which was helpful in recent content development on their website. It’s amazing what you can learn by asking questions and simply listening to responses.
We should be true consultants, not report monkeys. Dive into the discussions started and enjoy the ride. I guarantee you’ll take note of a few ripe areas to review next time you log into your Google Analytics account.
Most SEO engagements are designed around a block of purchased hours. Hopefully the client understands they’re not only buying your time to complete SEO tasks, but also your expertise and analysis. If someone on your team were to say, “I don’t have time to do analysis because all my tasks used up their budget this month,” then you really need to question the value of the chosen tasks. Were they picked based on front-loaded analysis, or were they simply tasks pulled out of guesswork?
A few weeks ago I pushed a quick Survey Monkey survey out on Twitter and Linkedin. Thanks to a few retweets, 94 people responded (please consider the following results more directional than scientific—I’m well aware it’s a shallow survey pool). I asked two questions:
The responses:
While some do make a habit of logging into analytics once or more times a day, more do not. Is it required to check under the hood every day? Personally, I believe it is—but your answer may vary on that one. If something went south overnight, I want to be aware before my client tells me. After all, that’s one of the things I’m paid for. I like the idea of being active—not reactive.
More notable is that most respondents didn’t feel they get enough time in analytics. That should absolutely change.
There was also a field for respondents to elaborate on their selections. There were several comments that jumped out at me:
“In house, day to day tasks and random projects prevent me from taking the deep dives in analytics that I feel are valuable.”
“It’s challenging to keep up with the changes and enhancements made in Google Analytics in particular, amongst other responsibilities and initiatives.”
“Too many things are on my plate for me to spend the time I know I should be spending in Google Analytics.”
“Finding the actionable info in Analytics always takes more time that expected—never enough time to crunch the numbers!”
“I log in to ‘spot check’ things but rarely do I get to delve into the data for long enough to suss out the issues and opportunities presented by the data.”
These results suggest that many marketers are not spending enough time with analytics. And possibly not because they don’t see the value, but simply because they don’t have time. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you (Jim Rohn)” is apropos here—you must make time. You need to get on top of all the people filling your plate. It’s not easy, but it needs to be done.
Get on top of those filling your plate. Kind of like professional crowd surfing.
Dashboards are fantastic, but I rarely see them set up in analytics platforms. One of the best ways to get a quick glimpse of your key metrics are with dashboards. All good analytics platforms provide the ability to make custom dashboards. Get into work, grab a coffee, fire up the computer, click your dashboard bookmark. (I recommend that order!) Google Analytics, which most of us probably use, provides some decent options with their dashboards, though limited compared to enterprise analytics platforms.
However, this basic dashboard is the minimum you should review in analytics. We’ll get deeper soon.
Building these widgets are quite easy (I recently created a tutorial on my site). There are also websites that provide dashboards you can import into Google Analytics. Dashboard Junkie is a fun one. Here are some others from Econsultancy and Google themselves.
It’s not just analytics platforms that offer dashboards. There are several other vendors in the SEO space that port in analytics data and mesh with their own data—from Moz Analytics to SearchMetrics to Conductor to many, many others.
SEMrush has a unique data set that marketers should routinely review. While your traffic data in analytics will be truer, if you’re targeting pages you may be interested in monitoring keyword rank counts:
Are backlinks a target? Maybe you’d find Cognitive SEO’s dashboard valuable:
RankRanger is another SaaS we use. It’s become way more than just our daily rank tracking software. The data you can port in creates excellent snapshots and graphs, and strong dashboards:
It also offers other graphing functionality to make pretty useful views:
While some of the bigger platforms, like SearchMetrics and Conductor, make it easier to get a lot of information within one login, I’m still finding myself logging into several programs to get the most useful data possible. C’est la vie.
Remember, dashboards are simply the “quick and dirty” window into your site. They help spotlight drastic changes, and make your website’s general traction more visible. Certainly valuable for when your CMO corners you by the Keurig machine. It’s a state of the union, but doesn’t focus on subsections that may need attention.
Agencies and consultants tend to create SEO reports for their clients as a standard practice, though sometimes these reports become extremely boilerplate. Boilerplate reports essentially force you to look under the same rocks month after month. How can you get a bigger view of the world if you never leave your comfortable neighborhood? A new routine needs to be created by generating new reports and correlations, finding trends that were hidden, and using all the tools at your disposal (from Analytics to link tools to competitive tools).
Your analytics app is not a toy—it’s the lifeblood of your website.
A quick way to look at chunks of the site is by identifying a footprint in the URL and searching with that. For example, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages or Landing Pages. Then, in the search bar right below the graph, search for the footprint. For example, take http://ift.tt/1S7JyaK as a real URL. if you want to see everything in the blog, enter */blog/ into the search bar. This is especially useful in getting the temperature of an eCommerce category.
So often in SEO we spend our time analyzing what’s not working or posing as a barrier. This report helps us take a look at what is performing (by leads or sales generated) and the customer behavior, channels, and demographic information that goes along with that. Then we can identify opportunities to make use of our success and improve our overall inbound strategy.
Below is a deeper dive into the conversions “Lead Generation” segment, although these same reports can just as aptly be applied to transactions. Ultimately, there are a lot of ways to slice and dice the analysis, so you’ll have to know what makes sense for your client, but here are three different reports from this segment that provided useful insights that will enhance our strategy.
There’s more to the story than last click. In Analytics, go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted conversions. Many clients have difficulty understanding the concept of attribution. This report seems to provide the best introduction to the world of attribution. Last click isn’t going to be replaced anytime soon, but we can start to educate and optimize for other parts of the funnel.
Granted, this is not a post about favorite reports. But this is a post about why digging through analytics can open up huge opportunities. So, it’s real-life example time from Greenlane’s own experience!
The client is a big fashion brand. They’ve been a popular brick-and-mortar retail destination since the early 80s, but only went online in 1996. This is the type of company that builds links based on their brand ambassadors and trendy styles. SEO wasn’t the mainstream channel it is today, so it’s likely they had some serious architecture changes since the 90s, right?
For this company, analytics data can only be traced back about seven years. We thought, “Let’s take a look at what drove traffic in their early years. Let’s see if there were any trends that drove volume and sales where they may be slipping today. If they had authority then, and are slipping now, it might be easier to recoup that authority versus building from scratch.”
The good news—this brand had been able to essentially maintain the authority they launched with, as there were not any real noticeable gaps between search data then and search data today. But, in the digging, we uncovered a gem. We found a lot of URLs that used to draw traffic that are not on their tree today. After digging furthur, we found a redesign occurred in the late 90s. SEO wasn’t factored in, creating a ton of 404s. These 404s were not even being charted in Google Webmaster Tools, yet they are still being linked to today from external sites (remember, GWT is still quite directional in terms of the data they provide). Better yet, we pulled links from OSE and Majestic, and saw that thousands of forgotten links existed.
This is an easy campaign—create a 301 redirect matrix for those dead pages and bring those old backlinks to life.
But we kept wondering what pages were out there before the days where analytics was implemented. Using the Wayback Machine, we found that even more redesigns had occurred in the first few years of the site’s life. We didn’t have data for these pages, so we had to get creative. Using Screaming Frog, we crawled the Wayback Machine to pull out URLs we didn’t know existed. We fed them into the link tools, and sure enough, there were links there, too.
Most eCommerce sites have pagination issues. It’s a given. A seasoned SEO knows immediately to look for these issues. SEOs use rel=”next” and “prev” to help Google understand the relationships. But does Google always behave the way we think they should? Golly, no!
Example 2 is a company that sells barware online. They have a lot of products, and tend to show only “page 1” of a given category. Yet, the analytics showed instances where Google preferred to show the view all page. These were long “view all” pages, which, after comparing to the “page 1” pages, showed a much lower bounce rate and higher conversions. Google seemed to prefer them in several cases anyway, so a quick change to default to “view all” started showing very positive returns in three months.
I have to change some details of this story because of NDAs, but once upon a time there was a jewelry company that sold artisan products. They were fond of creating certain kinds of keepsakes based on what sold well in their retail stores. Online, though, they weren’t performing very well selling these same products. The website was fairly new and hadn’t quite earned the footing they thought their brand should have, but that wasn’t the terminal answer we wanted to give them. Instead, we wanted to focus on areas they could compete with, while building up the entire site and turning their offline brand into an online brand.
Conversion rates, search metrics, and even PPC data showed a small but consistent win on a niche product that didn’t perform nearly as well in the brick-and-mortar stores. It wasn’t a target for us or the CEO. Yet online, there was obvious interest. Not only that, with low effort, this series of products was poised to score big in natural search due to low competition. The estimated search volume (per Google Keyword Planner) wasn’t extraordinary by any stretch, but it led to traffic that spent considerable dollars on these products. So much so, in fact, that this product became a focus point of the website. Sometimes, mining through rocks can uncover gold (jewelry pun intended).
My biggest hope is that your takeaway after reading this piece is a candid look at your role as an SEO or digital marketer. You’re a person with a “unique set of skills,” being called upon to perform works of brilliance. Being busy does create pressure; that pressure can sometimes force you to look for shortcuts or “phone it in.” If you really want to find the purest joy in what you’ve chosen as a career, I believe it’s from the stories embedded within the data. Go get ’em, Sherlock!
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