If distraction prevents you from reaching the goals you truly want to achieve, this episode is for you. I spoke with Nir Eyal, international best-selling author of a new book called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. We talked about the simple yet powerful changes you can make to control your mind and use your time more effectively. You’ll also find lots of bonus content on the blog.
If distraction prevents you from reaching the goals you truly want to achieve, this episode is for you. I spoke with Nir Eyal, international best-selling author of a new book called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. We talked about the simple yet powerful changes you can make to control your mind and use your time more effectively. You’ll also find lots of bonus content on the blog.
If you have ever left a comment on NeilPatel.com, you’ll notice that there is no URL field.
Why?
Well, a few years ago, blog commenting exploded. I was literally getting thousands of spam comments a day from people just leaving a comment for the purpose of link building instead of providing value to the community.
Sure, there are spam plugins like Akismet, but it doesn’t catch everything.
Now, most blog comments contain the nofollow attribute in which they tell Google not to follow the link or drive any “SEO value” to that URL.
But still, people still leave blog comments for the purpose of link building.
So, over the past 7 months, I’ve been running an interesting experiment to answer the age-old question…
Do backlinks from blog comments actually help rankings?
Experiment rules
First off, for this experiment, we used “domain score,” which is similar to domain authority.
If you want to know your domain score, the backlinks report in Ubersuggest will tell you what it is.
With this experiment, I sent out an email to a part of my list looking for participants and had 794 websites apply.
From there, I set the following criteria:
English-only sites – It’s easier to rank on many of Google’s international search engines even without building links. I removed non-English speaking sites as I didn’t want to skew the results.
Low-authority sites – I removed any website with a domain score greater than 20 and any site with more than 20 backlinks. The reason being is when a site has a lot of authority, they tend to rank easily for new keywords, even if they don’t build any new links.
No subdomains – I didn’t want a WordPress.com site, a Blogspot site, or even a Tumblr site. Again, this would skew the results so I removed them.
After eliminating the sites that didn’t meet the above criteria, I was left with 314 sites.
Of those 314 sites, many dropped off because they didn’t complete the required work on their part (which was to write a blog post), so I was left with 183 sites at the end that participated.
How the experiment worked
Similar to my previous link building experiment and my on-page SEO experiment, I had these websites write a 1,800 to 2,000-word blog post on whatever subject that was relevant to their site.
The websites had 2 weeks to publish their content and then after 30 days, I looked up their URL in Ubersuggest to see how many keywords each URL ranked for in the top 100 spots, top 50, spots, and top 10 spots.
As I have mentioned in the past, Ubersuggest has a big database of keywords. We are currently tracking 1,459,103,429 keywords.
Now, most of these keywords are barely searched but a decent amount of them get hundreds, if not thousands, of searches per month. A much smaller percentage of keywords generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of searches per month.
In other words, the majority of the keywords people are searching for are long-tail phrases.
We then spent a month building links and then waited another 3 months to see what happened to each site’s rankings.
But here’s the thing: We didn’t build the same type of links to all sites. Instead, we broke the 183 sites into 4 groups (roughly 46 sites per group).
Here were the groups:
Control – we didn’t build any links to these sites, we just wanted to see what happened to their rankings over time with no focus on link building.
Nofollow high domain score blog comment links – with this group, we built 10 links through blog comments. The links pointed to the newly written post and they were from blogs that had a domain score of 50 or higher and they all contained a nofollow attribute.
Dofollow high domain score blog comment links – with this group, we built 5 links through blog comments. The links pointed to the new post and were dofollow from blogs with a domain score of 40 or higher. (I reduced the domain score criteria for this category and the link quantity as we struggled to find a large number of high authority blogs that pass link juice in the comment section.)
Dofollow low domain score blog comment links – with this group, we built 10 links through blog comments. Each link pointed back to the article and it was from a blog that contains a domain score of at least 20 but no higher than 39. (I was able to build more links here as there are many more low domain score blogs than high domain score ones.)
Keep in mind with the link building for groups 2, 3 and 4,
there was no specific anchor text agenda. Because the links were built through
blog comments, it was too hard to control the anchor text as we didn’t want to
be spammy.
And each comment left on the blog contained at least 75
words as we wanted to ensure that each comment provided value and the core
purpose wasn’t just link building.
Alright, so let’s dive into the results.
Control group
Do you really need links to rank on Google? Well, the chart below says a lot…
As you can see over time, you will naturally grow your search rankings even if you don’t build any links.
Of course, if your content is amazing and you do on-page SEO, you’ll rank higher, but still not growing your link count doesn’t mean you will rank for anything out there… instead, you will still rank for long-tail terms that aren’t too competitive.
Nofollow high domain score blog comment links
Now the results from this group were interesting…
As you can see, the sites in this group had better results than the control group even though the links were nofollowed.
Keep in mind, though, that it could be many variables that caused this, such as the content quality may have been better.
Overall, the sites did perform better than the control group but not by a substantial amount.
Dofollow high domain score blog comment links
Google is sophisticated, they are able to know if a link is from user-generated content (such as blog comments), so I assumed even though the links where dofollow they still wouldn’t have much (if any) impact.
But, shockingly, sites in this group had the largest gains.
As you can see from the chart above, links from high authority sites, even if it is through user-generated content, help with rankings. They just have to be dofollow.
Dofollow low domain score blog comment links
With this last group, we were able to build more dofollow links because we focused on sites with lower authority.
And as you can see from the chart above, it did help with rankings more than building nofollow links but it didn’t help nearly as much as getting links from blogs with higher domain scores.
We built 10 links instead of 5, but the quantity didn’t help
as much as having high domain score links. This group increased their rankings
by 337% versus 828% that group 3 experienced even though they had half the
links.
Again, we still saw gains, just not as large as the previous group.
Conclusion
Who would have thought that building links through blog
comments still helps?
Now, if you are going to use this tactic, you’ll want to focus on blogs that have dofollow comments.
If you aren’t sure how to find them, you can perform a Google search for the following:
“title=”CommentLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE – this will showcase blogs that have CommentLuv enabled which means they pass link juice.
“dofollow blogs” – you find a lot of blog articles listing out blogs that have dofollow links. Some of them look like this but you will have to double-check each site as many are nofollow even though bloggers claim they are dofollow.
Followlist – this is a directory of blogs that have dofollow links.
When building links, focus on higher domain scores as it has a bigger impact on rankings.
In addition to that, you’ll only want to leave a comment if you can provide value. Don’t stress the anchor text, focus on the quality of your comment as you don’t want to be a spammer.
Posting spammy links will just cause your comment to be
removed.
Lastly, don’t just leave a valuable comment for the sake of generating a link. Make sure it is on relevant blogs as well. And if that means the blog doesn’t have as high of a domain score that’s fine because the data above shows that even low domain score links still help (just not as much).
So, have you thought about leaving more comments on other blogs? It’s a great way to get your brand out there, generate referral traffic, and boost your rankings.
In November 2018, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Pages. This launch provided a new way for consumers to discover and vet their favorite businesses — and for businesses, organizations, and institutions to connect with their audiences.
A lot happens on LinkedIn. People post updates, professionals seek new jobs, salespeople pitch prospective customers, and LinkedIn members of all kinds connect, chat, and build relationships. With almost 600 million members, this level of activity comes as no surprise.
LinkedIn Company Pages provide a unique way for your organization to stand out from the noise — important noise, but noisy nonetheless. We developed this guide to help you get started.
LinkedIn Company Pages were developed to give your company a home base and reach your audience on the network. If you haven’t built a LinkedIn Page for your business yet, you’re missing out on new connections, followers, employees, and customers.
Before we talk about how to build your own LinkedIn Company Page, let’s discuss the benefits of the network.
Why LinkedIn?
When compared to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, LinkedIn may not seem like the most intriguing, exciting social media network. But it’s still important — especially because 62% of people trust a brand’s social media accounts and activity more than its advertising.
Creating a LinkedIn presence for your company only expands your brand trust and awareness. Here are a few reasons to invest time in building a LinkedIn Company Page.
1. Share company updates and news.
LinkedIn, like any other social network, features a content stream on which people share and discuss important articles and updates. This is a perfect place to post your company updates and news for customers, employees, investors, and fans to review and share.
2. Post open jobs and connect with potential employees.
LinkedIn is a professional social network, meaning users benefit from work and career-related updates, connections, and interactions. LinkedIn members are primed to discover and discuss job opportunities, including the ones at your company. If you have any open roles, LinkedIn is the perfect place to share them. In fact, LinkedIn provides Career Pages — a space separate from your Company Page that’s dedicated to open jobs, recruiting, and employer branding.
3. Build a community.
Every social network boasts its own ability to foster a sense of community, and LinkedIn is no exception, including LinkedIn. Your LinkedIn Company Page is a place to build a community of LinkedIn members who are interested in your business, updates, and jobs. Here, they can connect and collaborate on their shared interest in your company.
4. Grow and keep your brand’s image consistent on social media.
If you’re active on other social networks, having a presence on LinkedIn can help you grow your audience elsewhere. Most social networks allow you to link to and from your LinkedIn page to boost recognition and increase your number of followers. Additionally, some of your audience may only be active on LinkedIn, so creating a Page would give you a chance to connect with new potential customers and employees.
5. Improve your discoverability on search engines.
LinkedIn Company Pages rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) like any other website or social network. Creating a Page gives your company another opportunity to be discovered by those searching for your products, services, or brand.
LinkedIn Company Pages vs. LinkedIn Groups
Another popular feature on LinkedIn is LinkedIn Groups, where like-minded people digitally gather to discuss common topics, industries, or — in some cases — companies. Many users get these two features confused.
LinkedIn Company Pages are the equivalent to your website on LinkedIn; you create it on behalf of your company, and it belongs to you (as a business owner and/or marketer). You’re responsible for updating your Page and posting new content and updates. Other LinkedIn members can follow your Page and engage with your content.
On the other hand, LinkedIn Groups are collaborative networks that can be created and engaged with by any LinkedIn member. Some groups are private while Open Groups can be read or joined by anyone. Now, a company can create a LinkedIn Group for certain internal teams or subgroups, but LinkedIn Groups can’t necessarily replace LinkedIn Company Pages.
How to Create a Company Page on LinkedIn
Whether you already have a LinkedIn account or are new to the platform, creating a LinkedIn Company Page is easy. Follow these steps to get started.
1. Create a new LinkedIn Page.
Head to LinkedIn and visit the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions site. Hover over the LinkedIn Pages option in the top menu and click Create a LinkedIn Page.
If you’re already signed into LinkedIn, tap the Work drop-down menu in the top right corner and click Create a LinkedIn Page+ from the very bottom.
2. Choose your company size and type.
Choose the size of your business from the first two options. (Notice the other two options to create a Showcase Page or create a LinkedIn Page for an educational institution, both of which you aren’t required to provide this information.)
For the purpose of this guide, I’m going to choose Small Business.
3. Fill out your company details.
Next, fill out the details of your business. Only some of the details are required, but I recommend fully completing this step (as we’ll discuss in the best practices section below).
Let’s walk through the form fields.
Name: Enter your entire company name to improve discoverability and searchability.
LinkedIn public URL: As you fill out your Name, LinkedIn will automatically input your URL to match. Ideally, your URL will be your company name; this keeps your online identities consistent. For example, HubSpot’s LinkedIn Page URL is www.linkedin.com/company/hubspot/. If your company name isn’t available, choose a URL that’s similar and still identifiable, such as one of your social media handles and/or a shortened version of your brand name.
Website: Enter your company’s website. Although not required, this information is critical as it connects LinkedIn followers to your company website.
Industry: Choose this from the drop-down menu. This information helps LinkedIn categorize your company for Page visitors.
Company size: Choose your company size from the ranges provided.
Company type: Choose your company type from the options provided.
Logo: Upload a high-quality logo that matches the logo on your other social media accounts. This is important so new followers can recognize your brand and Page. It must be 300 x 300px.
Tagline: In 120 characters, briefly describe what your company does. Consider using the same tagline from your other social media accounts. You can change this information later.
When finished, check the checkbox at the bottom and click Create Page.
4. Complete your LinkedIn Page.
The final step should show you the Admin View of your LinkedIn Company Page. This is essentially the behind-the-scenes dashboard from which you can make changes to your Page.
If you’re building your Page from scratch, you’ll see that LinkedIn provides a helpful checklist of actions to complete. These tasks will also unlock new features such as Content Suggestions and Invite to Follow that can help grow your Page.
Let’s walk through the important tasks to complete in this step.
Description: Add an About Us section that describes your company. It should be longer than your tagline. This is the place to include relevant keywords and phrases that can help people discover your Page on LinkedIn and through search engines. This section can be up to 2,000 words. LinkedIn also allows you to create taglines and descriptions in multiple languages.
Location: Add at least one location for your company. You can add multiple locations and name each one. Consider at least adding your headquarters or central company location.
Cover photo: Add a cover photo that will engage and entice visitors to check out your Page. Many brands upload another orientation of their logo or their latest marketing or advertising campaign graphics. This photo must be 1,128 x 191px.
Hashtags: Although relatively uncommon on LinkedIn, hashtags on your Page provide a unique way to connect with followers and engage with posts. Add up to three hashtags that are related to your company, industry, and audience. They will be added as Community Hashtags to your Page.
You can also add a company phone number, the year your company was founded, and any LinkedIn Groups you want to show on your Page.
Voila! Your LinkedIn Company Page is now created and ready to share. Continue poking around your Page to complete all fields and features. The following section of LinkedIn Page best practices will help you use your Page to connect and grow.
Follow these six tips and techniques to optimize your LinkedIn Company Page.
1. Complete all the Page details.
According to LinkedIn, fully completed LinkedIn Company Pages get 30% more views. Take the time to fill out every Page detail, even those that aren’t required.
The more details you provide about your company, the easier it will be for people (a.k.a. potential customers) to discover and connect with you. It will also serve to educate those who are interested in working for or investing in your company.
2. Add important Page admins.
Maintaining a LinkedIn Company Page can be a lot of work, especially if your team is already manning multiple social networks and accounts. Once you create your Page, don’t forget to add more Page admins to give other people permissions.
Do add new Page admins, click Admin tools > Page admins in the top right corner of your Company Page.
The following box will allow you to manage all your Page administrators. As you can see, there are five types of admins you can add to your Page. LinkedIn explains them in detail here.
You must be connected to your Page admins in order to add them. To do so, simply type in the person’s name, choose them, and click Save changes.
3. Keep your images up-to-date.
Your Page logo and cover photo are very important; they visually introduce and engage anyone who visits your Page. Keep these images up-to-date with your latest branding and marketing materials.
Not only is this critical for presenting a unified social presence, but it ensures your LinkedIn Company Page also matches your website, blog, and other digital marketing materials. Doing so will boost brand awareness and help new customers, employees, and fans discover your brand on LinkedIn.
4. Share content and engage with your followers.
Like any social network, you can’t expect to simply create your account and be finished. Building your LinkedIn Page is only half the battle; you must also consistently post content to successfully engage, inform, and market to your audience.
Consider posting updates to your products and services, job openings, trends or news that involve your brand, and behind-the-scenes content featuring employee life, product development, or other unique content.
LinkedIn also provides a handy Content Suggestions tool to help you discover topics and content your audience is already engaging with on the network. Tap Content Suggestions along the top menu of your Page, and update the filters as they apply to your audience.
Tap View content suggestions, and you’ll see a content stream based on your chosen topic and audience parameters. You can edit the filters further in the left menu, and you can add or take away content topics along the top. This tool shows you the engagement rates of popular or trending content and makes it easy to share this content with your audience.
As always, don’t forget to engage with your audience, too. Like, comment on, and share things posted by your followers and connections. This will remind them there are humans behind your brand’s LinkedIn Company Page.
5. Customize your call-to-action.
On your LinkedIn Company Page, under your logo and next to the Follow + button, you’ll find a call-to-action (CTA). Mine says Visit website.
LinkedIn allows you to customize this CTA to better engage your followers and audience. To do this, tap the pencil icon next to your CTA. Make sure the Custom button option is turned on.
Choose a button name from the drop-down menu and enter a URL. Use this setting to direct followers to your website, landing pages, event registrations, and more.
6. Engage your employees.
Your employees are some of your best brand advocates. This is especially true on LinkedIn, where employees have an average of 10x more first-degree connections than a company has followers.
As you develop your Company Page, encourage your employees to follow and engage with it. Also, ask each employee to list your company as an employer, as this will link their profile to your Page and vice versa. This is a helpful resource when growing a new Page audience of customers and potential employees.
Connect with Your LinkedIn Company Page
Over 60% of consumers trust a brand’s social media over its advertising. Your LinkedIn Company Page contributes to this statistic, and, in turn, helps bolster your brand awareness, trust, and social activity. Use this guide to develop your LinkedIn Company Page and start engaging with new customers, employees, investors, and followers.
(If you’re looking for additional resources, LinkedIn also provides their own handy Playbook for optimizing your Company Page.)
Want more business from Instagram? Looking for a proven process to follow? In this article, you’ll learn three steps to attract and engage your Instagram audience, and convert them into leads and customers. #1: Attracting the Right Audience on Instagram At the top of the funnel, your job is simple: You need to grow your […]
If distraction prevents you from reaching the goals you truly want to achieve, this episode is for you. I spoke with Nir Eyal, international best-selling author of a new book called Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. We talked about the simple yet powerful changes you can make to control your mind and use your time more effectively. You’ll also find lots of bonus content on the blog.
Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.
Talk about buying power!
Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest.
Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.
And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.
We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!
Here’s what we learned…
How people are using Pinterest
According to one survey, “47 percent of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.”
Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.
Pinterest lives in a unique space on the internet where users are discovering content related to themselves and their aspirations rather than focusing on others, and this has turned it into a powerful platform for users to make purchasing decisions and discover new brands and products.
Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.
How to leverage Pinterest for sales: 5 tips from the Pinterest team
There are some really simple ways that you can start leveraging Pinterest to reach new audiences and optimize your pins and profile for sales. Some of these tips might be easy to implement immediately while others might play into later strategies, let’s dive in!
1. Brand your pins
A whopping 97 percent of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the Pinterest team. For brands, this presents an opportunity to stand out and gain brand recognition through the platform.
Pinterest recommends adding a small logo in one of the four corners of your pin, this can be done really easily in a tool like Canva. You can play around with the design, of course, and add your logo wherever it feels best. In this example from Quip, they went with top centered to fit with the rest of the text on their image.
2. Create mobile-first content
As with most sites, mobile is extremely important on Pinterest. Eighty-five percent of Pinners are using the mobile app, so it’s important that your content appeals to them while they’re on their phones and appears properly in their feeds. If you’re linking back to your own content, it’s also important that the page that you’re sending users to is mobile friendly as well.
A tip from Pinterest here is to tailor your font size to phone rendering to make sure your fonts are legible on small screens and to design for a vertical aspect ratio. The ideal dimensions are 600 pixels x 900 pixels.
3. Create a similar look and feel
Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.
According to Pinterest, the best practice is to make sure your pins and your website have a similar look and feel, and that doing this pays off. In an analysis from Pinterest, they found that “Pins that went to landing pages with similar imagery had a 13 percent higher online sales lift.”
This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest.
And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.
4. Time your campaigns
A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about?
Luckily in the case of Pinterest, they release annual ‘Seasonal Insights,’ which helps take away some of the guesswork. A report that contains more than a dozen specific moments that take place throughout the year.
For example, their 2019 report shared that users start sharing holiday content in June all the way through December and that content related to the Summer starts getting pinned at the beginning of February. They also have monthly trends reports. Here’s their latest for December 2019 trends on Pinterest, it shares specific trends like the search term ‘peach green tea’ is up 320 percent YoY!
These are great free resources that you can leverage to start timing seasonal campaigns around when people are starting to make specific seasonal purchasing decisions. I would never have thought that people start looking at holiday content in June but that’s super-specific information that can go a long way to help with timely campaigns.
5. Set up your shop
One of the main ways for Pinterest to help generate sales is for the products you are selling to be easily available through Pinterest. Luckily, the platform makes this really easy for brands to set up and feature prominently on their profiles.
The shop tab is just what it sounds like, a place where users can go to see all of the products your brand is selling. On the flip side, brands can leverage that tab to share pins that link directly to their sales pages for the specific product.
Pinterest makes this whole process quite easy, they even have a method for importing new products through Pinterest Catalogs. All you have to do is have your data source approved and then as you add new products to your website, they get automagically added to Pinterest as well.
We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments!
If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there.
