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Is a billboard an affordable marketing tool for a design firm or copywriter? Don’t laugh it off. I spoke with Bart Bradshaw, host of the Built to Stay podcast, who educated me all about the latest in outdoor advertising. It’s not as expensive as you think and depending on your niche, it could definitely make you stand out. Listen to our companion interview on choosing a niche.
The days of one-size-fits-all email marketing are long gone. To get better results, you need to send targeted, personalized emails.
By delivering hyper-relevant content to those who are most interested in it, your subscribers will open, click, and purchase more.
In this post, you’ll learn how to use tags to create more targeted segments (or groups) of subscribers and increase your engagement.
Tags are simple words or short phrases you use to categorize and group your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, or other shared attributes.
They allow you to segment your audience, send targeted one-time broadcast emails, and trigger targeted, automated campaigns. This leads to better subscriber engagement, improved chances of hitting the inbox instead of the spam folder, and higher conversions.
Start getting more personal with your subscribers and try these 23 easy ways to tag your subscribers in AWeber.
The easiest way to tag a subscriber is when they opt in to your email list using a sign up form.
With AWeber, you can create unlimited sign up forms, and you can apply different tags to subscribers when they fill out different forms. This way, you’ll know exactly which form a subscriber used to sign up.
For example, if you offer a 7-day email course, weekly newsletter, and downloadable checklist as lead magnets, you can have three separate sign up forms that apply unique tags to your subscribers. This lets you see quickly which lead magnets they signed up for. Iff they opt in to all of them, all three tags get applied!
Related: How to tag an AWeber sign up form
Let’s say you want to know a bit more about your subscribers at the time they sign up, such as what topics they’re interested in, or their experience level in a particular skill you teach.
You can collect this additional information, beyond just their name and email address, using custom fields on your AWeber sign up form, and you can associate a tag with each custom choice.
This allows you to segment your subscribers from the time they join your list, and create personalized experiences for each of them.
Related: How to tag a custom field in an AWeber sign up form
Do you attend in-person events? Using the AWeber Atom App, you can create a sign up form on your mobile device to collect subscribers’ information in person, and use tags to remind you which event you met them at.
And if you attend multiple events, you can change which tags your Atom App sign up form applies. That way, you know where you met each particular subscriber.
You can even set up an automated welcome Campaign ahead of time that would go out to each new subscriber you met at that event.
Related: How to tag someone with the AWeber Atom App
Perhaps you have a list of new subscribers you’re migrating to AWeber. (Side note: We offer free migration support. Contact our experts to learn more!) You can easily import your list along with any existing tags or apply new tags.
You can also update existing subscribers’ tags when importing a list into AWeber. This will add any new tags in your import file to your existing subscribers.
Related: How to tag subscribers when importing into AWeber
You can use a landing page provider like Unbouce or Growtheme to invite your audience to subscribe to your email list, and tag them so you can send them the perfect email campaign based on the page or form they completed.
Although AWeber enables you to create sign up forms in your account, you can also integrate your AWeber account with other sign up form providers, such as OptinMonster, Hello Bar, MailMunch or ConvertFlow. These providers support AWeber tags, allowing you to tag your new subscribers in your AWeber account.
Have a digital or physical product? Providers like Shopify, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, 3dcart, and DirectPay allow you to easily add your customers into your AWeber account and tag them so you know who purchased from you.
AWeber’s Shopify integration even allows you to apply unique tags for each product your subscribers purchase.
Related: Watch this demo to learn more about AWeber’s Shopify integration
With AWeber’s Shopify integration, you can tag a subscriber who left items in their cart and didn’t purchase them. You can send them an automated email to encourage them to finish their purchase.
You can apply a generic tag when someone abandons any purchase , or you can apply unique tags based on the product that someone abandons.
Related: How to set up cart abandonment with Shopify
Quizzes are a great way to provide a fun, interactive, and educational experience for your audience. Tools like Interact and Quiz Cat allow you to create engaging quizzes and tag your subscribers in AWeber who complete your quiz.
Webinars are a great way to engage your audience directly and provide educational content to your subscribers. Tools like EasyWebinar allow you to add your webinar registrants directly to AWeber, and tag them based on the webinar they signed up for.
Then, you can automate reminder emails and follow up with your registrants after the webinar to share the recording and special offers.
Using a tool like Call Loop allows you to invite your audience to text a number to join your email list. Using the Call Loop integration with AWeber, you can add these individuals automatically to your email list, and tag them.
Contests are a great way to engage your community and grow your email list. Using tools like Gleam or ViralSweep, you can automatically add contest participants to your AWeber email list, and tag them based on the contest they joined.
Do you offer quotes, online calculators, polls or chatbots as part of your business? Tools like Outgrow allow you to add your interested prospects automatically to your AWeber account, and tag them accordingly, so you know exactly who they are and what they expressed interest in.
Do you use a CRM to manage client relationships? With tools like Agile CRM, you can automatically add your client and prospect contacts to your AWeber account, tag them with specific categories, and automate emails to keep your contacts engaged.
One way to tag subscribers is when they begin a campaign. This is helpful if you want to easily identify subscribers who are currently going through a Campaign so you don’t send them your regular broadcast emails as well.
Once they complete the Campaign, you can automatically remove that tag.
Related: How to use tags at the beginning of a Campaign
Another way to tag subscribers in a campaign is at the end of the series. This allows you to link campaigns together.
For example, you may have multiple welcome campaigns for different sign up forms, and you may want them all to flow into a general nurture campaign after each welcome campaign is complete. Simply apply the same tag at the end of each campaign, and then set the general nurture Campaign to start on that tag.
Related: How to use tags at the end of a Campaign
Let’s say you have a welcome campaign where your first two emails welcome your new subscribers and introduce them to you and your business.
Then, for the rest of the campaign, you’re trying to sell them on your products or services. You can apply a tag before the sales emails begin so you know which subscribers are being actively sold to. With this data, you can assess the effectiveness of your offers and improve the sales copy.
Related: How to use tags in the middle of a Campaign
Tags can also be used to record specific actions your subscribers take within your campaign. For example, you can tag subscribers when they open specific messages in your campaign.
This helps you identify subscribers who expressed an interest in the topic of the email by opening it.
Related: How to add a tag when someone opens a message in a Campaign
Similarly, you can tag subscribers when they click specific links within the messages of your campaigns. This is helpful when you’re trying to learn more about your subscriber’s preferences.
For example, in our blog welcome campaign, we ask what our subscribers are interested in learning, and we provide links within that email. Each link has a different tag, and it allows our subscribers to self-select their interests so we can better target them with relevant content.
Related: How to add a tag when someone clicks a link in a Campaign
You can also tag subscribers when they open one-time, broadcast emails. Similar to tagging subscribers who open your Campaign messages, this helps you identify who is interested in the topic of the email enough to want to open it.
Related: How to tag someone who opens a broadcast
If you’re promoting an upcoming webinar in a broadcast email, you can tag anyone who clicks the registration link and send them an automated email with the link to join the webinar. This improves the subscriber experience by eliminating the need to fill out another form to sign up for the webinar.
Related: How to tag someone who clicks a link in a broadcast
In addition to automatically tagging subscribers, there are times when you may want to manually apply tags to individual subscribers.
Let’s say you meet someone at an event and they agree to join your email list, but you don’t have a sign up form handy. You can add them to your list manually, and apply a tag that indicates where you met them. You can also apply another tag that adds them to an automated email campaign.
Related: How to manually tag an individual subscriber
Let’s say you want to launch a new automated email campaign to subscribers who are already on your list. You can create the campaign and set it to launch for subscribers with a certain tag. Then, identify which subscribers you’d like to add to the campaign, and apply a tag to them all at once.
Or, let’s say you’re launching a new course and want to promote it to subscribers who have expressed interest in the course topic in the past. You can search for those subscribers and bulk apply a tag to them. henThen, create a segment of subscribers with this tag and send a one-time email to them that promotes your new course.
Related: How to manually tag a group of subscribers
Using tags to organize your subscribers enables you to provide a more personalized experience for your subscribers and increase your engagement.
Not an AWeber customer yet? Start your free 30-day trial today and try AWeber’s tags today.
The post 23 Ways to Tag and Segment Your Subscribers in AWeber appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.
Shortly after the announcement that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were “stepping away” as senior members of the Royal Family, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum also made news by removing Harry and Megan from a wax display of the Royal family.
But, the famous wax museum’s publicity stunt isn’t the only example of a brand that’s leveraged a news event to gain awareness or viral attention. In fact, this tactic has been used by marketers throughout the 2000s. It’s often called “newsjacking.”
Newsjacking is when a brand or firm mentions or creates a campaign centered around a major, well-discussed news item. It’s slightly different from a publicity stunt in that the news item is leveraged in marketing while a stunt might acknowledge news within a public venue or place of business.
Why do brands choose to newsjack rather than creating a totally original storyline for their campaigns? It’s simply because this strategy helps them get discovered by adding or piggybacking off of larger conversations happening online.
In the early 2010s, we frequently saw newsjacking attempts during big, televised events like the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards. But, as marketers more frequently use social media and online channels, we’re seeing brands identify newsy topics faster and newsjack through a variety of content.
If you’re looking to leverage news, trends, or current events to amp up your marketing strategy, you might be wondering, “How do I get started?” or “How can I do this tastefully?”
If so, one great way to learn how to newsjack is to watch how other brands have done it.
To help you get inspired, here are five examples of brands that successfully took on newsjacking in 2019, and some takeaways that you can keep in mind in 2020.
In December 2019, the workout bike company Peloton released a critically panned commercial that begins with a husband giving his wife a Peloton for Christmas. As the commercial continues to the optimistic sounds of the song, “There She Goes,” the wife, coined as “Peloton Wife” on social media, films herself working out every day for a year. At the end of the ad, she shares the video with her husband — seemingly the following Christmas.
Here’s the commercial, which is titled “The Gift That Gives Back”:
The commercial was heavily criticized and mocked throughout social media because it enforced dated gender norms and goes against body positivity because many people believe that a husband buying a wife a workout device insinuates that she’s out of shape.
After the Peloton ad — and it’s instant criticisms — circulated the internet, actor and Aviation American Gin owner Ryan Reynolds immediately cast Monica Ruiz, a.k.a. “Peloton Wife,” in a commercial written to feel like a sequel to the Peloton ad. In the commercial, humorously titled “The Gift That Doesn’t Give Back,” Ruiz sits at a bar, staring blankly into the camera. She emotionlessly sips on and complements the smooth taste of Aviation Gin as her supportive friends offer her more gin and make comments like, “You look great, by the way.”
While the ad doesn’t directly mention the workout bike company, Reynolds says Aviation Gin’s commercial was a direct response to Peloton. In fact, Reynolds initially tweeted the ad with the caption, “Exercise bike not included,” and later explained that he hired the Ruiz just a “few hours” after the original ad launched.
“I’ve been there as an actor, where you do something that doesn’t quite work . We got ahold of her and within 36 hours, we shot, chopped, and put out this commercial,” Reynolds explained on The Tonight Show.
Shortly after its launch, Aviation Gin’s commercial went viral, receiving over 6.2 million YouTube views and 42 thousand retweets on Twitter. It’s also been noted by a number of publications including MarketingLand and AdWeek.
This newsjacking was successful for a number of reasons. First, the brand quickly responded to a news item with a creative idea. Additionally, the campaign was subtle, professional, and didn’t directly acknowledge Peloton. With just a few words and visuals, it told a deeper story which was almost more hilarious than if it had directly acknowledged the workout bike company.
After a legal battle with an Irish fast-food chain called Supermac’s, McDonalds lost its exclusive Big Mac trademark. While the fast-food giant could still keep using the Big Mac title for its sandwich in Europe, the ruling noted that any other company could also use the term “Big Mac” on its menus or marketing assets.
Burger King took full advantage of its competitor’s legal slip by launching a handful of marketing content discussing its own Big Mac-like products.
For example, Burger King released European menus that promoted its own “Big Mac-ish” sandwiches, as seen below. It also offered a limited-time flame-grilled Big Mac that it claimed was bigger and tastier than the McDonald’s menu item.
Below is the Burger King menu which highlights its Big Mac-ish items and the Big Mac copy.
Source: Marketing-Interactive.com
This is a great example of how one company can take advantage of news relating to its competitor in a funny, but professional way.
Throughout President Donald Trump’s time in office, the administration has tightened border policies while continuing to construct a metal wall at the U.S. Mexico border. This has continued to fuel debates about whether the United States, a country that was historically founded by immigrants, should have such tight border policies and a wall.
This debate reached a major pique when the Trump administration’s request for wall funding resulted in the longest government shutdown ever, running from December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019.
AeroMexico, an airline that offers routes specifically to Mexico, paid close attention to these debates and took note of the fact that millions of Americans “did not want to travel to Mexico.”
Rather than pivoting their strategy or adding routes to other locations, AeroMexico went to a rural United States town, DNA-tested residents who were in favor of the border wall, and offered them flight discounts based on the percentage of Mexican descent that was revealed on their DNA tests.
AeroMexico then followed up with a commercial showing each person giving their views on immigration laws, Mexico, and the wall.
During the commercial, which showed AeroMexico interviewing the residents, a cameraman asks each of them, “Would you consider going to Mexico?” Their discomfort with the idea of traveling south becomes apparent when they answer with statements like, “No way!” and “Let those folks stay on their side of the border.”
It then showed their surpised facial expressions when they all found out about their Mexican heritage. Lastly, the commercial notes how most of them were interested in taking the discounted flight to Mexico once they were offered it.
“Many Americans don’t like Mexico. But … according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mexican immigration goes as far as the 1800s, settling in on the south — meaning that a big percentage of descendants in the U.S.A. don’t even know it yet,” noted AeroMexico’s Clio award submission.
“Without a significant budget, our strategy was to take advantage of the media coverage that President Trump’s government shutdown had. Therefore, we focused all of our PR resources on spreading our video on social media,” the submission added.
According to the Clio submission, the campaign went viral, receiving more than 1.6 billion impressions. It also resulted in a 33.7% increase in ticket sales between the U.S. and Mexico.
This campaign and commercial is a great example of how a company entered a political debate and made a point in a clever way. It also shows that they are proud of their business and those of the Mexican heritage because they’re willing to offer giant discounts, even to immigration critics, with Mexican descent.
The commercial and campaign were so fascinating and thought-provoking that it even won a 2019 Clio Award.
In 2018 and 2019, the #MeToo movement led to a number of high-powered, and sometimes well-trusted, men getting accused or charged for sexual assault and harassment. High-level men who incurred allegations included film executive Harvey Weinstein and ex-Good Morning America co-host Matt Lauer.
This movement was marked by the #MeToo social media trend, started by activist and Weinstein accuser Alyssa Milano. The trend encouraged women to spread awareness of how common sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault was by sharing stories along with the #MeToo hashtag.
Gillette, which has always positioned its shaving products as, “The Best a Man Can Get,” wanted to reposition its take on masculinity in light of the #MeToo movement. To do this, they aired an intense Super Bowl commercial that digs into toxic masculinity and the negative stereotypes related to manhood.
The commercial begins with visuals of men looking in the mirror, with soundbites of news reports related to bullying, toxic masculinity, and the #MeToo movement. When the ad cuts to an old Gillette commercial showing a strong man, a narrator asks, “Is this really the best a man can get?” as a young boy breaks through a screen showing the old Gillette commercial while running from bigger male bullies.
The commercial goes on to show different aspects of toxic masculinity, such as texts from male bullies saying phrases like “FREAK!”, a male executive touching a woman’s shoulder in a meeting and stating, “What I think she’s trying to say is…”, and young children fighting as their father’s say, “Boys will be boys.”
Suddenly, the narration says, “Something finally changed — and there will be no going back,” as the ad cuts to clips of news coverage following the #MeToo movement.
The ad culminates by showing clips of men being good influences by stopping boys from fighting, standing up to bullies, and actual footage of a father telling his infant daughter that she is strong.
“We believe in the best in men. To say the right thing, to act the right way. Some already are in ways big and small. But ‘some’ is not enough. Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow,” the ad concludes.
While the commercial highlighted a controversial item and allowed the company to take a progressive stance on it, it still came with some mixed reviews due to its sensitive nature. Although it has both positive and negative reviews, it’s important to include on this list so that marketers can learn both the positive and impacts of newsjacking strategies.
Many who saw the ad felt that Gillette was desperately leaning into a sensitive movement to benefit its own brand.
“Part of the Gillette’s motive for running the ad may be that there is recent research suggesting that millennials give more credit to brands using corporate social responsibility appeals,” noted a Forbes post. “In this case, it appears Gillette will learn a lesson about what not to do as pertains to corporate responsibility efforts.”
Meanwhile, some still identified how it was a solid step forward in marketing.
For example, a Wired post noted that the ad was an “undeniable sign of progress” despite its backlash.
“Once again, the country seems divided. This time, it’s not a border wall or a health care proposal driving the animus, but an online ad for a men’s razor, because, of course,” the Wired article states. “But underneath the controversy lies something much more important: signs of real change.”
All in all, it’s important to look at both the pros and cons of this example. Although Gillette’s commercial was high quality, made valid points, and stirred emotions from viewers, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a large company still aiming to succeed in a society that is much different than when its company began decades ago.
In the fall of 2019, social media users were buzzing about a bizarre plan to raid Area 51, a highly classified government base which conspiracy theorists say is the home of testing extraterrestrials.
Oreo went to Twitter and simply joked, “What flavors do you think they’re hiding in #Area51?” Thousands of users, and even other brands, replied and shared the tweet.
This is a great example of a brand that affordably, and quickly, referenced newsy or trendy topics to gain engagement, likeability, and brand awareness on a social network. Not to mention, Oreo instantly got people to discuss great Oreo flavors on Twitter.
While other brands on this list have embraced newsjacking with high-budget campaigns or commercials, Oreo shows that the strategy doesn’t have to get too complex, time-consuming, or costly for marketers.
With fast-paced social media and online news published every second, there are more and more opportunities where marketers can embrace newsjacking.
But, before you attempt to newsjack, take time to consider the news item and make sure that your strategy will be tasteful or informative, rather than offensive. For example, if you make a funny reference about a bizarre trend like the Area 51 raids, you might be seen as funny or memorable. However, if you post an insensitive campaign or comment about a controversial topic — such as immigration, you might be seen as out of touch.
As you craft a creative newsjacking strategy, be sure to run it by other members of your marketing team and get your feedback to ensure that your content doesn’t flop.
To learn more about how to cleverly embrace newsjacking, check out this blog post.
Kirk Williams of Zato Marketing says Smart Shopping campaigns are worth testing when you understand how they work.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Wondering how to get more exposure for your brand on TikTok? Have you considered a TikTok challenge? In this article, you’ll learn how to use TikTok challenges for your business. What Is a TikTok Challenge? TikTok is quickly becoming the social media platform of the moment, with recent statistics showing the app has now been downloaded […]
The post How to Use TikTok Challenges for Business appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.
One thing we’ve heard over and over is that logging into social media analytics tools can leave marketers feeling a little lost. Sure you can see the reach and engagement of your posts but how is this really impacting your business?
Social media tools have been great at giving us social media metrics. But they terribly lack at providing us with a comprehensive view of the business. Unless you are running social ads, chances are you find it hard to know how your marketing efforts have influenced sales.
For direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that invest in social media, the need to understand how social media and sales relate to each other is crucial. Marketers at these brands need to know how their social media strategy is helping the business. To them, social media is not just about getting likes and comments…
but how their social media posts are driving the business forward.
That’s why we are thrilled to introduce the first version of our Shopify integration today. You can now have your social and Shopify data in one single tool and create modern, visual reports with more data about your business.
(Can’t wait to get started? Start an Analyze Premium trial to try the integration right away!)
Our customers use our platform of products to build their brand and connect with their customers online. Analyze, our new analytics product, aims to help you realize the full potential of your brand.
To achieve the best version of your brand, we want to give you:
Currently, social media marketing can feel isolated from the business. You spend time creating content, find the best time to post, and respond to questions on your posts. At the end of the day, you can only report on follower growth, reach, and engagement.
Only if you had more data about your marketing efforts and the business!
When we look at 1,300 top DTC brands, we learned that 87.4 percent of them use Shopify to sell their products.
Shopify provides data that marketers and small business owners often lack in social media tools — sales data. We realized it’s a source of data that could give you a more complete picture of your brand:
Social + sales
“We usually cross reference metrics from Shopify and our social media analytics.”
When we asked our customers how they figure out whether what they are doing on social is worth it, we heard several versions of the quote above. That’s when we realized our customers have a problem we could solve.
With the new Shopify integration, you’ll have your social media and Shopify data in a single place — Analyze. For this first version, we focus on a few key metrics you need and put them in the same dashboard as your social media data.
At the top of your Shopify tab, you can get a quick health check-in on your business. This is built for you to get a sense of your business health at a glance.
One of the metrics you’ll get is your average customer lifetime value. This is an important metric to know because to have a profitable business, you generally want to spend less money on acquiring new customers and retaining them than they spend on your products.
You’ll also get data to help you understand where your sales are coming from and what products are selling well.
Which channel drives the most number of customers or the highest sales?
Which channel brings in the most valuable customers?
Which are my top products, and where are the sales coming from?
This additional data from Shopify in Analyze will give you a better picture of your business than having only social media data.
To make it easier for your reporting, you can add the tables to your reports in Analyze, download them as PDF, and share them with your team. Just like any other tables and charts in Analyze.
For a long time, marketers have struggled to show the impact of social media on the bottom line. Much of this data is not available in social media tools that marketers use to plan, optimize, and report their campaigns. It just felt off that marketers can plan and measure their social media campaigns in one tool but have to find another, often much more complicated, tool to know that the campaigns are selling products.
Now you can report how much sales your social media marketing strategy has generated for the business — using a single tool.
(These numbers do not include orders from customers who saw your social media posts and went to Google to search for your website and buy products. That is much harder to track right now. But you now know, at the minimum, how much sales came directly from your social media profiles and the actual impact is much higher.)
You no longer need to jump between tools to draw the connection between your social media efforts and your sales.
Hannah Pilpel, social project manager at MADE.COM, discovered that customers from organic social have a higher average order value than the site average. You can now see this for your business, too.
Having more data and analytics is essential for realizing the full potential of your brand. It gives you insights to act on and improve your marketing campaigns so that you can grow your brand and your business.
This is just the first version of our Shopify integration, and we are keen to explore more ways to make it more valuable to you. For example, here are some of the areas we have been thinking about:
For now, with your social media and Shopify data together in Analyze, you can already have a better understanding of your marketing and brand.
Give yourself an advantage today.
Wondering how to get more exposure for your brand on TikTok? Have you considered a TikTok challenge? In this article, you’ll learn how to use TikTok challenges for your business. What Is a TikTok Challenge? TikTok is quickly becoming the social media platform of the moment, with recent statistics showing the app has now been downloaded […]
The post How to Use TikTok Challenges for Business appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.
Kirk Williams of Zato Marketing says Smart Shopping campaigns are worth testing when you understand how they work.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Is a billboard an affordable marketing tool for a design firm or copywriter? Don’t laugh it off. I spoke with Bart Bradshaw, host of the Built to Stay podcast, who educated me all about the latest in outdoor advertising. It’s not as expensive as you think and depending on your niche, it could definitely make you stand out. Listen to our companion interview on choosing a niche.
There are a lot of tools out there and a ton of SEO reports.
But when you use them, what happens?
You get lost, right?
Don’t worry, that’s normal (sadly). And maybe one day I will
be able to fix that.
But for now, the next best thing I can do is teach you how to grow your SEO traffic using Ubersuggest. This way, you know exactly what to do, even if you have never done any SEO.
Here we go…
Head over to the Ubersuggest dashboard and
register for a free account.
Once you do that, I want you to click on “Add Your First Project.”
Next, add your URL and the name of your website.
Then pick the main country or city that you do business in. If you are a national business, then type in the country you are in. If you are a local business, type in your city and click “Next.”
If you do business in multiple countries or cities, you can type them in one at a time and select each country or city.
Assuming you have your site connected to Google Search Console, you’ll see a list of keywords that you can automatically track on the left-hand side. Aside from tracking any of those, you can track others as well. Just type in the keywords you want to track in the box and hit the “Enter” key.
After hitting the “Next” button, you will be taken to your dashboard. It may take a minute but your dashboard will look something like this:
Click on the “Tracked Keywords” box and load your website profile.
What’s cool about this report is that you can see your rankings
over time both on mobile and desktop devices. This is important because Google
has a mobile index, which means your rankings are probably slightly different
on mobile devices than desktop.
If you want to see how you are ranking on Google’s mobile index, you just have to click the “Mobile” icon.
The report is self-explanatory. It shows your rankings over time for any keyword you are tracking. You can always add more keywords and even switch between locations.
For example, as of writing this blog post, I rank number 4 on desktop devices for the term “SEO” in the United States. In the United Kingdom, though, I rank number 16. Looks like I need to work on that. 😉
What’s cool about this report is you can drill down on any
keyword and track your rankings over time. For example, here’s what my site
looks like now…
The purpose of this report is to track your SEO progress. If you are heading in the right direction, your rankings should be going up over time.
Sure, some weeks your rankings will be up and other weeks it
will be down, but over time you should see them climb.
Once you have created your first project, it’s time to improve your rankings.
Let’s first start off by going to the “Site Audit” report. In the navigation, click on the “Site Audit” button.
Once you are there, type in your URL and click the “Search” button.
It can take a few minutes to run the report, but once it is
done it will look something like this.
Your goal is to optimize your site for as high as an SEO score as possible. Ideally, you want to be reaching for 90 or higher.
Keep in mind that as you add more pages to your site and it gets bigger, it will be increasingly harder to achieve a 90+ score. So, for sites that have more than a few hundred pages, shoot for a score that is at least 80.
As you can see above, I’m getting close to the 80 mark, so I’ll have to get my team to go in and fix some of my errors and warnings.
When looking at this report, you’ll want to fix your critical errors first, then your warnings if you have time. Eventually, you want to consider fixing the recommendations as well.
Click on “Critical Errors” if you have any. If not, click on the Warnings” option. You’ll see a report that looks something like this:
Your errors are probably going to be different than mine, but your report will look similar.
Click through on the first issue on the report and work your way down. The report sorts the results based on impact. The ones at the top should be fixed first as they will have the highest chance of making an impact on your traffic.
If you aren’t sure of what to do or how to fix the issue, just click on the “What Is This” and “How Do I Fix It” prompts.
Again, you will want to do this for all of your critical
errors and warnings.
Once you do that, go back to the “Site Audit” report and scroll down to where you see your site speed results.
Your goal should be to get an “Excellent” ranking for both mobile and desktop devices. If you are struggling to do this, check out Pagespeed Insights by Google as it will give you a detailed explanation of what to fix.
If you are like me, you probably will need someone to help
you out with this. You can always find a developer from Upwork and pay them 50 to 100 dollars to fix
your issues.
After you fix your errors, you’ll want to double-check to make sure you did them right. Click on the “Recrawl Website” button to have Ubersuggest recrawl your site and double-check that the errors were fixed correctly.
It will take a bit for Ubersuggest to recrawl your website
as it is going through all of your code again.
By now you have probably heard the saying that “content is king.”
In theory, the more content you have, the more keywords you will have on your site and the higher the chance that you’ll rank on Google for more terms.
Of course, the content needs to be of high quality and people have to be interested in that topic. If you write about stuff that no one wants to read about, then you won’t get any traffic.
Now, I want you to go to the “Traffic Analyzer Overview” report.
Put in a competitor’s URL and you will see a report that
looks something like this.
This report shows the estimated monthly visitors your competition is receiving from search engines, how many keywords they are ranking for on page 1 of Google, their top pages, every major keyword they rank for, and the estimated traffic each keyword drives to their site.
I want you to go to the “Top Pages” section and click the button that says “View The Pages That Drive Traffic To This Domain.”
You’ll be taken to the “Top Pages” report.
Here, you will see a list of pages that your competition has on their site. The ones at top are their most popular pages and as you go down the list you’ll find pages that get less and less traffic.
Now I want you to click “View All” under “Estimated Visits” for the top page on your competition’s site.
These are the keywords that the page ranks for.
And you’ll also want to click “View All” under links to see who links to your competition.
Save that list by exporting the results (just click the export button) or by copying them.
I want you to repeat this process for the top 10 to 20 pages for each of your main competitors. It will give you an idea of the keywords that they are going after that drive them traffic.
Next, I want you to click on the “Keywords” navigation link under the “Traffic Analyzer” heading.
You’ll see a list of all of the keywords your competitor ranks for and how much traffic they are getting for those keywords.
This list will give you an idea of the keywords that your
competition is targeting.
Now, by combining the data you saw from the “Top Pages” report and the data you got from the “Keywords” report, you’ll now have a good understanding of the type of keywords that are driving your competition traffic.
I want you to take some of those keywords and come up with
your own blog post ideas.
You can come up with ideas to blog on using a few simple
reports in Ubersuggest.
The first is the “Content Ideas” report. In the navigation bar, click on the “Content Ideas” button.
I want you to type in one of the keywords your competition
is ranking for that you also want to rank for.
For example, I rank for “SEO tips.” If you want to rank for that term, you would type that into the content ideas report and hit the “Search” button.
You’ll then see a list of blog posts that have done well on that topic based on social shares, backlinks, and estimated visits.
It takes some digging to find good topics because ideally, a post should have all 3: social shares, backlinks, and estimated visits.
When you find a good one, click “View All” under “Estimated Visits” to see the keywords that the post ranks for.
If you write a similar post, you’ll want to make sure you include these keywords.
And you’ll want to click “View All” under links to see who links to your competition. Keep track of this as you will use it later. You can do this by copying the list or by clicking on the export button.
You can also get more ideas by going to the keyword ideas report. So, in the navigation bar, click on the “Keyword Ideas” button.
From there, type in keywords related to what your competition ranks for and you will see a list of long-tail suggestions that are similar.
You can also click on the “Related” link in that report to see a bigger list of related keywords.
And you can click on “Questions,” “Prepositions,” and “Comparisons” to see even more keyword and blog post ideas.
Typically, the more search volume a keyword has the more
traffic you’ll get when you write about it.
Now that you have a list of keywords and topic ideas, it’s time for you to write and publish your content.
If you are new to writing blog posts, watch the video below. It breaks down my writing process.
I wish SEO was as simple as fixing errors and writing content based on popular keywords but it isn’t.
Remember how I had you create a list of sites that link to your competition?
You know, the ones you got from the “Top Pages” and “Content Ideas” reports.
I want you to start emailing each of the sites linking to your competition and ask them to link to you. See if someone else is linking to your competition. If they are, it shows you that they don’t mind linking to sites in your space. This means that there is a good chance you can convince them to link to you as well.
You’ll have to browse around their site to find their email. But once you do, send off a personal message explaining why your content will provide value to their readers and how it is different/better than what they are currently linking to.
In addition to that, I want you to go to the “Backlinks” report. In the navigation bar, click on the “Backlinks” option.
In this report, I want you to type in your competitor’s domain. You’ll see a report that looks like this:
You’ll be able to see their total link count, link growth over time, and, most importantly, a list of sites linking to your competition.
Now type in a URL of a blog post that your competition has written and that you know is popular (do this in the search bar). Next to it, in the search bar, change the drop-down to “URL” and click the “Search” button.
Once the report is done loading, you’ll see a new list of links pointing to that specific URL on your competition’s site.
I want you to do the same thing. Reach out to all of those
URLs and ask for a link as well.
When doing this, you’ll find that a lot of people will ignore you but you need to think of it as sales. You need to follow up and try to convince people. The more links you get, the higher your rankings will climb in the long run.
Even if you only convince 5 people out of 100 that you
email, it is still not bad as something is better than nothing.
My goal with Ubersuggest wasn’t to create too many reports, but instead, make the tool easy to use so you can generate more search traffic.
And as your rankings and traffic climb, you’ll see within your Ubersuggest dashboard how things are going.
What’s beautiful about this is that it will crawl your site automatically once you create a project. This way, when new SEO errors appear, Ubersuggest will notify you.
So, are you ready to improve your SEO traffic? Go to Ubersuggest and create a project.
The post A Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Your SEO Traffic Using Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.