In 2018, I promised you I would release a better version of Ubersuggest for free, and I did that.
But there was one big issue: Ubersuggest only worked on a keyword level. When you put in a keyword, you get a list of more keyword ideas and content ideas.
The traffic analyzer is broken down into 3 main sections: overview, top pages, and keywords.
The overview looks like this:
The first section breaks some basic stats and a graph of the domain’s search traffic.
As you can see from the screenshot above, you’ll see how many keywords a domain ranks for, the total estimated search traffic from that region, the number of paid keywords a site is bidding on, and how much they are spending on Google Ads.
In addition to that, you’ll see a traffic graph that shows estimated search traffic a site receives over time.
And of course, a domain level overview won’t be complete without data such as backlinks, referring domains, the number of .edu and .gov links, and how much the organic traffic is worth if you had to pay for it.
Now, before you head over to Ubersuggest and type in a domain, there is one thing you need to keep in mind… Ubersuggest treats subdomains as a separate site. So if you enter in store.nike.com you will get different results than if you typed in nike.com. By typing in nike.com, you would NOT see any of the data from their store unless you typed in store.nike.com.
We did this on purpose as it allows you to analyze sites more thoroughly.
Also, within the traffic analyzer, you’ll see bar graphs that contain the overall positioning of the keywords you rank for over time.
The chart above shows how many keywords a domain ranks for that are in the top 3 positions in Google, the top 10 positions, the top 50 positions, and the top 100 positions.
You already know no one clicks beyond page one, but over time you’ll want to see your site climbing the ranks. Hence, we track how many keywords are ranking in the first 100 positions.
Now let’s get into my favorite feature of the traffic analyzer.
Top SEO Pages
The second part of the traffic analyzer is a list of the most popular pages for a given domain.
For each page, you are given the title, URL, the number of visits a page receives from Google on a monthly basis, and the number of times the URL has been shared on the social web.
My favorite part about the top SEO pages report is when you click on “view all” you’ll see a list of keywords a page ranks for.
This one report will not only list out each keyword a webpage ranks for, but the position, estimated visits, cost per click data if you paid for that keyword, and how difficult it would be to rank for it.
What I love about this report is that I can put in a competing URL and see what’s working really well for my competition and then copy them. Or even better, create a more in-depth page than my competition.
Plus, if you have clients who are global, you can click on the flag at the top and see the top pages for any domain in all of the major countries.
For example, here are my most popular pages in Brazil.
Top Keywords
The last section in the new Ubersuggest is top keywords.
Whether you put in your own domain or competitors, you’ll be able to see all of the organic keywords and paid keywords a site is going after.
When you click on the “paid” button you’ll see the list of paid keywords as well.
And just like the keyword research reports within Ubersuggest, you’ll have data on URLs, paid difficulty and SEO difficulty.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy the new version of Ubersuggest. I know there are still some bugs in which the reports don’t load as fast as you want (Top SEO Pages can take up to 20 seconds to load) and you may have to clear your cache to see the new features, but hopefully, you enjoy the updates.
There are also some issues with duplicate keywords and misspellings. The engineering team is continually looking to fix this.
We do know there are many issues with duplicate keywords and misspellings in our Japan database, but we are working on fixing this as soon as possible.
So overall, I know it’s not perfect, but what do you think so far?
And if you haven’t tried it, head over to Ubersuggest and type in a domain.
PS: If you find any bugs, please email carlos@neilpatel.com
When I started my journey as an entrepreneur, I made a huge mistake. And sadly, it took me years to figure out what I was doing wrong.
The issue with this mistake is that it isn’t obvious. Not just entrepreneurs, but people, in general, make it for the majority of their lives.
Can you guess what that mistake is?
I was a people pleaser. I kept saying “yes.” Especially when it came to business.
The moment I stopped saying yes, things started to change. I started to make more money, my customers were happier, people stopped trying to walk all over me, and my team members were happier with me.
I know what you are thinking… this sounds crazy, right?By telling people what they don’t want to hear everything miraculously gets better?
Sounds too good to be true…
Well, here’s how it works.
Why do you say “yes?”
Well, the reason you say yes is probably the same reason I also said yes.
You want to please people.
And if you keep saying yes, believe it or not, it won’t make them happy. In fact, it will make them more upset.
Of course, there is a time and place to say yes to people, but not always. Sometimes people ask for things that are unrealistic.
A lot of the time it is asking for a drastic discount on your product or service… a discount that will make you lose money.
Or sometimes a boss may ask you to complete a task within a very tight deadline that you know isn’t possible.
Now think about it this way: when you say yes just to please people it will make things worse.
For example, when it comes to reducing the price or your service so much that you’ll lose money, it won’t motivate you to help out your client. And even more important, you won’t be able to spend the time and energy your client will need because you’re losing money.
This means that not only will you regret your decision, but they will be upset with you because of the poor performance.
Same goes with your boss. If he or she asks you to meet a tight deadline that isn’t possible, and you agree to it and miss the deadline, they are going to be upset with you.
In other words, saying yes when you shouldn’t might make people happy with you temporarily, but in the long run, they are going to be disappointed and, in many cases, angry with you.
So, what should you say instead of yes?
No!
It really is that simple. All you have to do is say no.
Of course, you’ll have to explain why, but it’s a very powerful word that won’t make people upset with you as long as you use it right.
For example, with my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital, people ask for discounts all of the time.
Can you guess what my sales team says?
No!
But they say it nicely and usually tell potential customers….
We can’t go down in price. We charge this much because we know what it takes to provide results, and if we went down in price, we won’t be able to provide you with the service you are expecting.
I know it may make you feel a bit uncomfortable to be this direct but you need to. It will do wonders for you and your business.
Even when your boss asks you to complete a task that isn’t realistic, you should say something like…
I want to help you get the task done, and I don’t mind working extra hours, but it won’t be feasible for me to meet your deadline. The reason being is because of X, Y, and Z. If it is more important to complete this task than the current tasks I am working on, I can always push them back if you are open to it. Or if we can reduce the scope of the project, I may be able to get it done within Y timeframe.
When it comes to your boss, you’ll want to be creative.
Instead of just saying “no” you’ll want to come up with possible solutions. Your boss may not like any of the solutions but being proactive and thinking outside of the box at least shows your boss that you are trying to do what’s best for the company.
Now let me forewarn you when it comes to saying no to your boss…
If you are truly right, there is no issue with saying no. But if you are lazy and a slow worker and other people can get the task done within the time they are proposing, then things aren’t going to work out for you.
In other words, don’t just use the word no because you are lazy and don’t want to do extra work. Use it when it really makes sense.
How does this help with sales?
Have you ever heard the saying… “play hard to get.”
To give you an example of this, I was once in a meeting in New York where someone offered me a job.
It didn’t make sense for me to take the job as I have a business that I love. So I said no.
Their response was…
Well, you don’t even know what I am going to offer you… so just hear me out.
They then made me an offer of a million-dollar salary.
I kindly responded with, I appreciate the offer, but I am still going to decline.
And you know what they said next?
They offered me $2,000,000.
I said no, but I offered to help find them someone for free who might be a good fit.
Long story short, they weren’t happy with my response and they offered me all the way up to a $4,500,000 annual base salary plus bonuses.
And of course, I still said no.
You’re probably not going to have the same experience as me (at least not yet if you are starting out), but when you start saying no you’ll have similar experiences.
People will more likely work with you and pay your price if you hold your ground.
See, here’s the big issue with saying yes in sales when people are asking for more or want to pay less:
The moment you say yes, the first thing that goes through their mind is “what else can I get?” And they’ll keep asking more and it won’t stop.
Then you’ll find yourself with a deal that doesn’t make sense for you.
So, do yourself a favor and start saying no, especially when it comes to sales.
Why should you tell your customers no?
Similar to sales, once people join as a customer it’s a slippery slope to keep telling them yes.
The moment your clients sees you move an inch, they’ll take a mile.
So, when they start asking for you to do things out the scope, you should say no. Even when they are small things as it will lead to bigger asks in the future.
Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t keep your clients happy. You should provide the product or service they paid for. And every once in a while, if you want to go above and beyond for them… you should. But it should be you making that decision and not them asking for you to make it.
Just for a moment, think about what I just said…
If you want to go above and beyond for your customer or client when they aren’t expecting, that’s fine and it will make you look good. But if your customer is asking for you to go above and beyond, it will set a bad precedent.
Why it’s ok to tell your co-workers no
Out of all of them, this is the trickiest one because you don’t want to create a bad work environment and have people hate you.
But if people are having you do stuff that isn’t the best for the business and it doesn’t logically make sense, there is nothing wrong with saying no.
I will warn you though, just saying “no” and providing no explanation or alternative solutions will cause problems for you.
As long as your explanations are reasonable and logical you’ll be fine. Also, the reasons need to be best for the business as well. In addition, you’ll need to provide alternative solutions… this is the key as it shows you are a team player and proactive.
You’ll want to make sure that you are thinking things through before you give your response.
People will respect your decision if it makes sense… maybe not right then and there, but in the long run, they will.
On the flip side, if you keep telling your co-workers no when they are right, or your boss no because you are lazy, you’ll probably get fired. Especially if you don’t give them alternative solutions.
So, you’ll need to be careful with this.
Conclusion
Stop saying yes to everything. All it will do is make your life miserable.
I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true.
Over the next week, I want you to try something…
When someone asks you for something that is unreasonable, just say no. You should provide an explanation and potentially even provide an alternative solution.
Yes, this sounds crazy, but it works. Just like anything else, it takes practice and you’ll get better at it over time.
Digital marketing is going to change drastically in 2019. And sadly, you aren’t going to like a lot of the changes.
And no, I don’t mean change from a competition standpoint. You already know that each year marketing gets more expensive and more competitive. That’s just a given.
Just look at the graph above: that’s Google’s annual revenue. As you can see, during the last recession, Google made more and more money. They didn’t even have a down year.
One of the big reasons we are seeing digital marketing change so much is because of the adoption of new technologies. But also because the web is getting saturated… there are 1,805,260,010 websites on the web.
That means there is 1 website for every 4 people in this world. That’s crazy!
So, let’s dive into it… here’s how digital marketing is going to change this year.
Drastic Change #1: SEO won’t look the same
I’m starting with this one because I know you are going to hate this. SEO is moving to voice search.
I know you don’t like this because every time I blog about voice search, no one really reads the article. It’s one of those topics that SEOs just wish didn’t exist.
Why?
Well, being on page 1 doesn’t matter when it comes to voice search. Either Google pulls from your website or they don’t.
And secondly, conversions from voice search will be lower because people won’t be going to your website. Google will just be giving them the answer. At least, until we can figure out how to solve this as marketers.
But instead of looking at voice search as a bad thing, just think of it this way, no one cares to read articles about it, which means most SEOs won’t be prepared for it.
This is your chance to get ahead of your competition and gobble up that traffic before the market shifts into using voice.
Here are some articles that will teach you how to maximize your voice search traffic:
Although it sounds like a lot, it isn’t. In 2017 there were 13 updates and in 2016 there were 11. In other words, Google has been averaging 12 updates per year if you combined the confirmed updates with the “unconfirmed” ones.
But let’s look at the older updates…
On July 17, 2015, Google released Panda 4.2. I know you may have hated the Panda update, but it wasn’t too bad. All Google did doing was get rid of spammy sites with low-quality content.
They didn’t want to rank sites that had thousands of 300-word blog posts with duplicate content.
Could you blame them for that?
And what about the change Google made on September 27, 2016, the Penguin 4.0 update?
If you built spammy links, they no longer would just penalize you, in most cases, they would devalue those links instead.
That means if you did something shady like buy a ton of backlinks and get caught, those links would just be de-valued instead of causing your whole site to get banned.
Now if you look at the latest algorithm updates, they are getting more complex and harder to beat. And it’s because technology is evolving so fast.
Google no longer has to just look at metrics like content and backlink count to figure out if a site ranks well. They can look at user metrics, such as:
Are users spending more time on your site than the other ranked sites on Google?
Are people bouncing off your site and heading back to the Google listing page?
Are your brand queries increasing over time? Or do people not see you as a brand?
Do people find your site more appealing… in other words, is your click-through-rate higher?
If you want to beat Google, you have to shift your mindset. It’s not about understanding Google, it’s about understanding users.
Google has one goal: to rank sites that users love the most at the top. That causes people to come back, keep using Google, and increase their overall revenue.
If you can put yourself in your users’ shoes, you’ll be better suited to do that.
The first step in doing this is to realize that when someone performs a search for any keyword, they aren’t just “performing a search,” they are looking for a solution to their problem.
By understanding the intent of their search, you’ll be more likely and able to solve their problems. You can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you with it as it will show you long tail phrases (problems people are trying to solve for).
Once you do that, you’ll be able to create the best experience, the best product, or even service that people deserve.
This is how you make your site continually rank well in the long run even as they make their algorithm more complex.
Drastic Change #3: You can’t build a company off of 1 channel
You familiar with Dropbox?
Of course, you are, it’s a multi-billion-dollar company… and you probably have it installed on your computer.
When they first came out, they tried to acquire users through Google AdWords. Can you guess how much it cost them to acquire a customer?
It ranged between $200 and $300.
Do you know how much Dropbox costs?
$60 a year.
The math doesn’t work out. Why would you spend $200 to acquire a user who only pays $60?
Even when someone pays you $60, it’s not all profit. Because of that, Dropbox had to grow using growth hacking.
Dropbox gives you more free space the more users you invite. That’s a great example of growth hacking. And it’s how they grew into a multi-billion-dollar company.
Nowadays, if you created a similar invite flow within your company, it won’t work that well. You can no longer build a company using one channel like how Dropbox grew.
And do you remember how Facebook grew?
When you signed up, they would tap into your email address book and send out an email to every single one of your contacts inviting them to use Facebook, even if you didn’t want them to.
That one channel helped Facebook grow into the multi-hundred-billion-dollar company that we know today.
Nowadays, if you get an email saying your friend is inviting you to join a new site or social network, you’ll probably just ignore it.
Again, you no longer can build a big business leveraging only one marketing channel.
So, what does that mean for you?
First of all, popular marketing channels that are profitable get saturated fast and you are going to have a lot of competitors.
Due to that, you have to leverage all channels. From content marketing and paid ads to social media marketing and SEO to email marketing… you have to leverage all channels out there.
It’s your only option to doing well in the long run.
One channel won’t make your business anymore. But if you combine them all, you can still grow your business.
And hey, if something happens to one channel like an algorithm change, at least your business won’t go down too much because you are diversified.
No matter how much you love one form of marketing, never rely on it. Adopt an omnichannel approach.
Drastic Change #4: Blogging won’t work too well
I got into this a little bit at the top… the web is saturated. There are just way too many sites.
Sure, most of those 1.8 billion sites aren’t being updated and a lot are dormant.
When I started my first blog in 2005, there weren’t as many people online creating sites or producing content. There also weren’t as many people using Google.
Nevertheless, Google loved content. Everyone was saying how content is king because if you produce high-quality articles Google would rank them due to one simple fact… they lacked content in their index.
But as time went by, Google no longer had a shortage of content. I would even go as far to say that there is too much content for them to choose from.
For that reason, they can be pickier if they want to rank your website or not. It’s not just about backlinks or optimizing your on-page code, it’s about providing what’s best for the end user.
That means Google is going to rank fresh content that isn’t regurgitated.
If you want to take the route of just writing dozens of articles each way and trying to rank for everything under the sun, you can. It’s still possible, but it will take more time and it will be harder as there is more competition.
More so, the way content marketing is changing in 2019, and we saw a little of this in 2018, is that you need to update your content.
No longer can your strategy be to write a lot of content. You are going to have to plan on updating your content on a regular basis.
For example, I have one person who works for me full time going through my old blog posts to update them. Also, I now only have time to write once piece of content each week. There is no way I can go through my blog and update over a thousand blog posts.
You’re going to have to do the same if you want to maintain your search traffic. If you are established and have an old blog, spend half your time updating your old content. If you are a new blog, you don’t really need to spend more than 5% of your time updating your old content.
Drastic Change #5: You’ll need to focus on new search engines and new content types
We can all agree that text-based content is saturated.
If you don’t agree with me, just scroll back up to Drastic Change #4 😉
We all know it takes forever to rank on Google. If you aren’t willing to give it a year, you shouldn’t spend much time doing traditional SEO.
What if I told you there was another form of SEO in which you can see results very, very fast?
So fast, that within 30 days (or even a few days!) you can rank at the top. And, better yet, those rankings mean you will get traffic.
Just look at my search traffic from this different kind of search engine:
Can you guess that what search engine this is?
YouTube!
I generate 198,380 views every month from YouTube search. And those people watch my content for an average of 559,237 minutes a month.
I’m generating over 388 days of watch time each month just from YouTube search. That’s crazy!
YouTube isn’t nearly as competitive as Google. Nor is optimizing for the iTunes store if you have a podcast.
Don’t just focus your efforts on Google.
Focus your efforts on less-saturated forms of content like video and audio while optimizing for less common search engines like YouTube and iTunes.
If you don’t have a big marketing budget no worries. These channels aren’t as expensive or competitive yet. You also don’t need a studio to film or record. You can just bust out your iPhone and start recording yourself.
Believe it or not, a lot of people prefer that over studio quality content as it is more authentic.
Drastic Change #6: Budgets will start shifting into conversion rate optimization
At the beginning of this post, I broke down Google’s yearly revenue.
As you can see it has continually increased even during recessionary periods.
Sure, some of it has to do with more people coming online. But also, the cost per click is rising.
Same with Facebook Ads. I literally know hundreds of affiliates who used to make over a million dollars a year in income because Facebook Ads were so affordable.
But in June/July 2017, Facebook crossed a point where they had more advertisers than inventory… at least in the United States.
Over time, that trend continued into other countries, which mean Facebook Ad costs drastically increased.
Just look at the graph below. As you can see, companies spend the majority of their budget on Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
Now let’s look at what channel produces the highest ROI. Can you guess what it is?
SEO, right?
Although the chart shows SEO produces the biggest ROI, in reality, it is the second runner up.
What’s hard to see because it is classified as “other” in the chart and it is grouped with other marketing channels, is conversion rate optimization. And that channel produced the biggest ROI by far. It beat SEO by leaps and bounds.
It was just hard to see that because not enough companies spend money on conversion rate optimization. And when they do, it is a very small portion of their budget.
In 2019, start running A/B tests. Whether you use Crazy Egg or any other solution out there, don’t forget to include it in your marketing arsenal.
Drastic Change #7: Marketers will learn what funnels are
You may have heard of marketing funnels or sales funnels, but I bet you aren’t using them.
And no, a funnel isn’t something as simple an email sequence.
Because ads are getting more expensive, you’ll find yourself doing things like running more A/B tests (as I mentioned above), but it will only help so much.
As your competition also starts running A/B tests, you’ll find that ad prices will go up again.
So, what should you do?
You are going to have to upsell and downsell your visitors. I learned this tactic from Ryan Deiss years ago and he was spot on.
The best way to generate revenue isn’t to get more customers, it’s to get more money out of your existing customers.
Sure, your customer base is only going to spend so much. But if you offer upsells and downsells you can see increases in revenue from 10% to 30%. And some cases you’ll even double your revenue.
The key points with upselling and downselling are as follows:
Offer at least 2 or 3 upsells (or downsells).
If people don’t take the offer, considering offering the same offer again with monthly installments.
The best offers are speed and automation. In other words, if you can help people get results faster or in an automated way, they are much more likely to take it. People are lazy and impatient, hence speed and automation always win when it comes to upsells.
At this point you are probably wondering how to do all of this upselling or downselling, right?
You have to build a marketing funnel. The good news is, you don’t have to hire a developer, you can use solutions like Click Funnels and Samcart.
They are easy to use, and you can get started in minutes.
Conclusion
Expect 2019 to be a crazy year. What worked once, won’t work in 2019.
Technology is more sophisticated and with things like machine learning and artificial intelligence knocking at the door, we are going to be on a crazy rollercoaster.
Don’t be afraid, though!
If you take the concepts above and start working on them now, you are going to be in for a much smoother ride with fewer downs and more ups.
Someone who is a marketer… maybe even an entrepreneur.
As you may already know, I’ve co-founded a handful of companies. I’ve received a handful of awards from people like President Obama and the United Nations. And I am a New York Times bestselling author. The list keeps going on and on.
In other words, most people see me as successful.
But what if I told you that behind that success is a bunch of failures?
Sure, overall, I’m up, and my successes have more than made up for my failures. But just like everyone else, I have failed many times.
And many of the failures were so big that they cost me a lot of money
In other words, I’ve screwed up a lot. But what helped me do so well was that I was able to learn from my mistakes and avoided making the same ones over and over again.
Today, I thought I would do something a bit different. I want to share with you the biggest marketing mistakes I have made. Hopefully, you will learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes as me.
Here we go…
Mistake #1: Spending $400,000 on Facebook fan page likes
I used to have the philosophy with social networks that the best thing you could do was build up your following.
If you have more followers, then whenever you have a message that you want to put out there then, hopefully, thousands of people will see it.
But you know what’s common with all social networks… not just the ones Facebook owns?
They all have a pattern or restricting your reach. And by doing that, it leaves you no choice but to spend money on ads.
But me, being a smart aleck, I thought I would outsmart Facebook by continually growing my fan page. That way after I built up a good user base, I wouldn’t have to spend money on ads.
Boy was I silly.
I am not saying you shouldn’t spend money on ads, but with any social network, you should avoid spending money to build up a community. Just think of it this way…
Why would you spend money to build up a community when you can’t control if they will see your message?
This is one of the biggest and silliest marketing mistakes I have ever made. History has proven that social networks continually change their algorithms and restrict your reach, yet I still blew money trying to build up a community.
The two big lessons I want you to take away from this first mistake are:
Have a direct ROI – If you are going to spend any money on ads, make sure it is cash flow positive. Trying to get an indirect ROI on your ad dollars is silly unless you are willing to experiment and potentially lose a lot of money.
Be cautious, not slow – Every major marketing channel has algorithms. Start off small and as long as the numbers work out, scale up as fast as possible.
Mistake #2: Picking too small of a niche
In business, we call it total addressable market (TAM)… you want to go after a big TAM.
It’s really hard to own 100% of a market no matter how small or big it is. It’s much easier to own 1% of a market. So you should go after a huge market so your 1% is worth something meaningful.
In marketing, everyone talks about how you need to pick a niche. But here is what people don’t tell you… it takes almost the same amount of effort to market a business in a small niche as it does to market a business in a much bigger market.
So, why not go after a big market as it will help you make more money?
With one of my earlier startups, Crazy Egg, we created a heatmap solution that helps show you where people clicked on your site.
Eventually, we added mouse tracking, A/B testing, and a handful of other features.
But we should have done that years before. If we had done it sooner, the company would have easily been double the size, just like how Optimizely generates over 100 million a year in revenue.
What’s crazy is that there isn’t much more work to expand our marketing to include keywords like A/B testing from an organic or even paid perspective. It also isn’t hard for us to write blog posts on these new areas.
Sadly, this mistake is one I’ve made one too many times. I kid you not, my net worth would have an extra 0 at the end if I just chose big enough markets from day 1.
Now there are a few ways to figure out if the market you are going after is large enough:
Google Trends – type in the space you want to go after. Look for verticals that are bigger than “digital marketing” as a rule of thumb.
CrunchBase – look to see if there are any venture funded competitors. If someone has raised over 10 million dollars, the chances are it is a big enough market.
Publicly traded companies – if you have any competitors that are public, look at their market cap. The bigger the number, the better. Keep in mind that most publicly traded companies offer multiple products and services, so this number is usually inflated.
Mistake #3: Not all search traffic is the same
NeilPatel.com isn’t my first blog. Technically it’s my third.
And because it was the last marketing blog I created I was able to do things a bit differently because I was able to learn from my previous blogging experiences (I had more money).
The way I grew NeilPatel.com was simple… type in a competitor URL into SEMrush, see what their top pages where, and then write better versions of it.
Once I did that, I would then go to tools like Ubersuggest, find popular keywords that I wasn’t going after, and then create content focusing on all of those terms.
That strategy has helped me get over 3 million monthly visitors of which 1.8 million of them are unique.
But what’s wrong with that strategy?
Well, first of all, not all traffic is equal. But that wasn’t my mistake because I was smart enough to look for keywords that had a high cost per click, as that is a leading indicator that the keyword is more valuable.
The big mistake I made was not focusing on regions. When doing keyword research and competitive analysis using tools like SEMrush I focused on creating content that would generate traffic from the right keywords… but I never looked at regions.
I am Indian, and I love India. But traffic from India doesn’t generate me anywhere near the amount of revenue as traffic from the United States.
Now here are my traffic stats per region:
As you can see, the United States is my most popular region, but it is not the majority. Over time it has gotten better as now when I do keyword research, I focus all of my effort on the United States.
Even when I find popular articles written by my competitors, I plug them into Ahrefs, and I look at the traffic stats per region before deciding on whether or not I want to create something similar.
Mistake #4: Traffic doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t convert
I raised over 17 million dollars and we were off to a fast start. We even had some Fortune 500 companies who were interested in potentially acquiring us early on.
When we started, our traffic was up and to the right.
And then came a competitor, Mixpanel, who copied a lot of our features and didn’t know marketing as well as me. Just look at their traffic stats:
Considering that we had almost 3 times more traffic than them, how much do you think KISSmetrics was worth during our peak?
Let me give you a hint… Mixpanel’s last valuation that they announced was $865 million!
So, what do you think? Maybe we were worth double them… or at least the same valuation.
Nope. Guess again.
We weren’t even worth 10% of their value.
That’s when I realized that the real formula to marketing isn’t just who is getting the most eyeballs, it’s about focusing on monetization.
Don’t just focus your efforts on traffic acquisition, focus on conversion optimization. It’s the area I didn’t spend enough time on early on.
And here are the channels producing the biggest ROI.
Do you see what’s wrong?
SEO produces a higher ROI than paid advertising for most businesses, yet very little budget gets allocated to it.
And what you don’t see in the chart, as it is classified in “other,” is conversion optimization produced the biggest return, yet very few companies spend money on it.
Mistake #5: Not monetizing early enough
Speaking of monetization, I also make this mistake too often.
I love giving everything away for free and then when it comes time to monetize, my numbers don’t look as good as they should.
It’s not that I don’t know how to monetize. It’s more so that I’ve trained my users to expect everything for free.
The moment you switch things up, the numbers never look as great.
I learned this lesson from Ramit Sethi. When I launched my first ebook course on Quick Sprout, I couldn’t generate more than $30,000 a month. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good money, but not when you are generating over 200,000 unique visitors a month.
On the flip side, I monetized NeilPatel.com much earlier than Quick Sprout and, of course, I got better at marketing and entrepreneurship at the same time.
But when I released an ebook/training course (I no longer sell it), I was able to generate $650,000 a month from just 450,000 visitors during my peak.
As the course got older, my monthly revenue dropped but it stayed around $381,722.
The point I am trying to make is don’t wait too long before you monetize.
There is nothing wrong with charging for a product or a service. But if you wait too long before you start charging, people will have this notion that it will be free forever and they won’t be as likely to convert in the future no matter how good you are at marketing.
Mistake #6: Taking people for granted
I have a skill set that I have always been good at. Can you guess what it is?
It’s making websites popular. 😉
Just because I know how to make a website popular (and I can even convert those visitors into customers) doesn’t mean I am going to be successful.
I’ve always tried to run my companies lean in which I never wanted to have more than 50 employees.
Over the years, I’ve more than surpassed that number and I have hundreds of people working for me. But I should have done that much sooner.
Without people, you won’t grow that fast no matter how much of a scalable business you have.
You need great operators and managers if you want to see fast growth.
For example, my business partner, Mike Kamo, doesn’t know marketing as well as me. I have more experience as an entrepreneur and I’m more book smart.
Yet every time he takes my traffic and monetizes it, he generates more revenue from the same traffic than I do. And again, I know more about marketing and business than him.
But because he is great at hiring and building up people, he is able to generate more revenue from the same amount of traffic.
For example, he hired Nick Roshon as our VP Sales, who is amazing. In December, which is one of the worst months for us due to holidays, Nick’s team closed $1,585,093 million in revenue.
Not too shabby for a 30-day period!
And even Nick knows, without his team, he wouldn’t have had a good December. It’s all about the people and you shouldn’t ever forget that.
If you want to grow fast you need to hire people. Hire people who are process oriented and know operations well. Don’t be afraid of headcount… remember teams build great businesses, not individuals.
Just look at Elon Musk, he’s one of the most brilliant people of our times, but without his team, Tesla and SpaceX wouldn’t be as big as they are today.
Mistake #7: Control your own destiny
As an SEO, I have ranked for some of the most competitive terms on the Internet. And I am not just talking page 1… I’m talking the number the #1 spot on page 1.
Some of the terms I have ranked for over the years are online gambling, online poker, web hosting, credit cards, and auto insurance to name just a few.
Those are super competitive terms!
All of the sites that ranked for those terms generated me a nice amount of money from ads and lead generation.
But do you know what? It didn’t last forever.
Eventually, those sites stopped ranking for one reason or another and my income went down to 0.
Sure, some of the ranking drops I deserved because I used black hat techniques to get there, but over time I learned to only use white hat tactics and to think long term. I still lost revenue, however, due to circumstances out of my control.
With some of those sites, I was pulling in over $100,000 a month in affiliate income.
And sadly, I’ve had similar issues with Facebook Ads and even Google AdWords.
I was making a killing and for no reason I got my ads pulled because Facebook thought they were politically related when they had nothing to do with politics.
In other words, sometimes things go wrong even when you do all of the right things. And there is little you can do about it.
This has taught me to have an omnichannel approach to marketing. Sure, you know me as an SEO, but I do a lot more than SEO.
Just look at NeilPatel.com, I have text-based content, video content, a podcast, and even free tools.
I never rely on 1 traffic channel anymore.
Even the people I surround myself with are skilled at other marketing channels than just SEO. My head of paid, Chris, is amazing at Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. Funny enough, he is an ex-Facebook employee.
The point I am making is you are going to have ups and downs with your marketing. But if you want your business to be a bit steadier, diversify your marketing. Don’t just stick to one channel. Heck, I even recommend doing things like releasing free tools so you aren’t reliant on any channels.
And now my free tool generates 213,967 unique visitors a month.
Conclusion
Just like I did, you are going to make mistakes. All entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, make mistakes.
This is fine. Don’t worry about it.
But what separates the great entrepreneurs from the mediocre ones is that they learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same ones over and over again.
You have a list of some of my big marketing mistakes above. Learn from them and avoid making the same ones as me.
Have you made any big marketing or entrepreneurial mistakes?
You were excited to launch your brand-new site until you realized no one is coming to it.
So, you head to all of the marketing blogs to learn how to fix this, but for the life of you, your traffic won’t go up no matter which tactic you leverage.
What you’re feeling right now is very common. Not only have I experienced it, but when I was starting out, I even took the small life savings that I made from cleaning restrooms and sweeping up trash to pay a marketing firm to help me out.
And can you guess what happened?
They took my money and provided no results.
See, what most marketers aren’t telling you is that there are two main reasons why you aren’t getting traffic to your brand-new site (other than the fact that you don’t have much money to spend on ads):
Marketing is a long-term game – almost all of the tactics marketers, including me, talk about are long-term tactics. They take 6 months or even longer to see any results.
Your execution needs to be flawless – if you don’t implement the tactics correctly, you won’t see results.
Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t see short-term results or sales. More so you have to change up your strategy.
So, I thought I would do something a bit different today. I am going to break down what you should be doing during the first 12 weeks after launching your site.
I’ll be sharing a tactic for you to follow each week and, if you follow it, you’ll notice that your traffic will start going up right away. From there, you’ll start to see sales coming in.
Before I dive into the 12 tactics, note that you won’t have to spend much money, if any at all. I am also not going to give you advice that is extremely time-consuming, like writing blog posts, as you’ll also be running your business at the same time.
And of course, the tactics work for both B2B and B2C sites. It doesn’t matter if you are an ecommerce site or a SaaS company. Follow the steps below exactly.
Week #1: Respond to comments on other people’s blog without spamming
When he launched his competing site to TechCrunch, no one knew about him and no one cared to listen to him as he was based in Scotland instead of Silicon Valley.
But do you think that stopped him? Of course not!
So, what did he do? He went out there and commented on every competing tech blog. And not only did he comment, but he always tried to be the first commenter.
See, when you leave a comment on a blog, most ask you to put in your name, URL, and comment.
Assuming you are leaving valuable comments and nothing spammy, you’ll notice that you’ll get referral traffic in your Google Analytics.
This will be because a very small percentage of people are clicking on your name when you leave a comment.
And considering some of the most popular blogs on the web receive millions of visitors each week, it’s not that hard to drive a fraction of a percent of their traffic back to your site.
The key with this strategy is to be one of the first commenters as that ensures your comment is at the top. The other key, of course, is that your comment must add value.
For example, if you own a marketing related product or service, marketing blogs would be a great place to comment. But what do you think will happen if you leave this kind of standard comment:
Nice post! Keep up the good work!
Nothing. On the flip side, if you put in some effort to write something that benefited the reader, you’ll have a chance at getting some traffic.
An example could be something like this…
Neil, I love the actionable tips on generating traffic for a brand-new site within the first 3 months of launching it. But I know you didn’t discuss much if any about SEO.
I know SEO is a long-term strategy, but people should get a head start right away or else it will take that much longer to get loved by Google.
One thing that I recommend every site to start off with is simple keyword research. You can use any free keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner and type in your competitor URL. Google Keyword Planner will then suggest keywords and even show you the cost per click.
By going after keywords that aren’t competitive and have a higher cost per click, you’ll find that you can generate search traffic at a much faster pace and these keywords will drive sales. As keywords with a high cost per click tend to mean that they convert.
Do you see what I mean by writing thoughtful comments that help people?
This tactic works!
Jared, who runs Skincare by Alana, still leverages this tactic today. When he and his wife launched their ecommerce store they commented on other popular blogs and social sites when it came to all things skin related.
This helped them generate 931 visitors during their first week and 12 sales.
I know it’s not a lot, but you have to start somewhere and grow from there.
I also have leveraged this tactic for years. Instead of focusing just on blogs, I commented on relevant social sites too.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I’ve generated over 1.9 million views on my Quora responses.
You’ll notice that in my response I also link out to my own site which drives traffic back to me.
Yes, the response looks very long, and you may think I put in tons of work, but I literally copied and pasted a blog post I had already written and added it to Quora.
Google doesn’t penalize for duplicate content. 😉
If you are going to use this strategy during week one, try to leave at least 10 solid comments per day. I would try to leave 20 as it shouldn’t take you more than two hours per day… assuming you haven’t done this before.
I can typically leave 15 comments in less than 50 minutes. So, throughout the first week try to speed things up and spend no more than an hour on this tactic per day.
Week #2: Be helpful on Twitter and you’ll get tweets
Before I go into week 2, keep in mind you’ll still want to maintain the tactics I share in the previous week.
By week 12, you’ll want to be following all 12 tactics each week.
Of course, you won’t be able to put in the same number of hours into each tactic and that’s fine, but you can still do them a bit. For example, you can still leave 5 comments a day instead of leaving 20.
So, let’s dive into week 2, which is all about Twitter.
This tactic I learned from my brother-in-law Hiten Shah. He used to leverage this tactic for every one of our startups… Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and he now leverages it for his newest company FYI.
If you look at Hiten, he built up his personal brand and influence in the tech space because of Twitter. Sure, people like me may have a bigger brand or more Twitter followers, but he has much, much, much more authority on Twitter than I do.
As you can see influential people on Twitter are tweeting about Hiten’s latest company.
He even tweets and connects with well-known entrepreneurs like the founder of HubSpot and Drift because of Twitter.
So how is Hiten getting all of these people to show him some Twitter love? Well, he has a 3-step formula…
Help people
Help people
Help people
And no, I am not joking, that is his formula. He doesn’t care to promote his business, he just helps people.
Let’s look at his Twitter profile to dive deeper into his strategy.
If you look at the tweets above, you’ll notice that Hiten continually pushes out advice on his Twitter profile. He rarely mentions his own company, but instead just tries to help people.
And when people ask questions or need help, he constantly responds to people’s tweets.
Not everyone takes his advice, but his mentality is to just be helpful no matter what. Just look at how he responds to people’s tweets.
Lastly, he retweets stuff that he likes. Whether you are an influencer or an average joe, he doesn’t care. He just wants to share the best information out there.
This is why so many people tweet about his product FYI. It’s because he is super helpful, so people naturally want to help him out without him even asking them to.
Now I know this strategy that Hiten uses seems like it is going to take forever to get results, and it does. But there is a hack that he uses to get immediate results.
Every day you should search Twitter for people talking about your competitor. When people have questions about your competitors’ products or services (or they have complaints), try and help them.
Don’t pitch them on your company, just try and help them.
What you’ll find is people will be shocked that you are helping a competitor. And if you are this kind and helpful, then what kind of service would they get if they took their business to you…
In other words, being helpful wins you goodwill and it will cause people to switch from your competitor over to you.
And if you go above and beyond like Hiten, people who haven’t even used your product or service will help promote you. Just like how one of his followers tweeted about FYI and he hasn’t even used it yet.
His strategy to help, help, and help some more has made Twitter one of FYI’s biggest traffic source. It accounts for roughly 25% of their weekly traffic.
When you are starting out you probably haven’t created an affiliate program yet in which pay other marketers every time they drive you a sale or a lead.
You can always use software like Hasoffers to set one up or go through a network. There are literally hundreds of options and with a few quick Google searches, you can find one which is the right fit for you.
Now, what most people will tell you is that no one is going to promote your affiliate offer because it is unproven and new.
Although it’s true that your offer is unproven, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
During your third week, I want you to copy the strategy ConvertKit used when they first launched.
The strategy I am about to break down helped them grow from a few thousand dollars a month in revenue to over a million a month.
What ConvertKit did was they went to all of their competitors’ sites and looked to see which ones had an affiliate program. One of those competitors happens to be Aweber.
Then once they had a list of competitors with affiliate programs, they performed a Google search for “competitor name vs.” An example would be “Aweber vs”…
From there they would email each of those site owners asking them to include ConvertKit in the article or even write a unique article about ConvertKit. Just like this one.
Just think of it this way, if someone is willing to be an affiliate for one company, they won’t mind throwing in a few extra competitors. All it does is give them the potential to make more money.
When leveraging this tactic, consider sending out 10 emails a day. It shouldn’t take long and people typically don’t mind adjusting their web pages to add in another link that could potentially earn them extra money.
Now compared to most tactics, this one will drive the least amount of visitors.
But the traffic will be very qualified and more likely to convert as you are going after “versus” articles. When someone types in “Company X VS Company Y” into Google, they are researching which solution is ideal for them. These posts rank well and they tend to drive sales.
Week #4: Hire guest writers
Now the strategy I am about to break down for you in week 4 is my favorite strategy.
This is what I used in my last startup KISSmetrics to grow our blog traffic to over a million visitors a month.
If you head to the KISSmetrics site you’ll notice that it now redirects to NeilPatel.com as I bought the site.
So how much traffic did the KISSmetrics blog get from this strategy?
As you can see from the image above, we peaked at 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.
Our strategy was simple… hire writers who had a social following.
Are you a marketing expert? Do you know marketing like the back of your hand?
That’s great because I have an opportunity for you.
KISSmetrics is a leader in the web analytics space and we are looking to work with expert writers who know marketing and analytics.
We’re currently looking to expand our team of writers with passionate enthusiasts for digital marketing and with expertise and passion for writing. We are hiring individuals for each of the following categories:
SEO
Content marketing
Social media
Web analytics
Conversion optimization
Paid advertising
Web design
Branding
Email marketing
Please go to our blog for examples of content we’re looking to create. [insert URL of your blog]
We would like to build a long-term relationship with you that is on a project basis. Initially, we will have you submit a list of topic ideas you would love to blog on, then we will pick one, have you outline it… and of course, you’ll then be off to the races.
The articles will be anywhere from 1,000 words to 3,000. Our goal isn’t to enforce a word count, we are more interested in high-quality content.
We’re looking for someone who is:
Looking for a long-term working relationship
Has 1 year of working experience as a writer
Has a good level of knowledge of digital marketing
Is willing to research and learn more about marketing
Has great grammar and spelling skills as well as proficiency in English
Likes working with deadlines and structure
Has a social following and doesn’t mind promoting the content you are writing as it will be published under your name
How to apply
Send an email to [insert your email] with – Applying For Writer Position in the subject line. Your email should include:
A bit about you as well as links to your social profiles
Why you’re a good fit for this position
Links to 2 -3 articles you have written
Your rate per 500 words.
The way we scaled up to over a million visitors a month was by publishing 5 blog posts a week. And every time a writer wrote a blog post for us, they didn’t mind promoting it to their social following as their name was on the article.
Once we got over 50,000 visitors a month, we noticed that we started to get inbound inquires of people willing to write for us for free. So eventually we slowly transitioned to a model where people wrote for us for free and we didn’t need to hire or pay writers.
You’ll notice that this will happen with your blog as it gets more popular.
What’s great about this strategy is the more writers you get, the more people that will find out about your company as each writer has different people following them on the social web.
Week #5: Create a podcast and interview guests
Have you listened to my podcast Marketing School? If you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out.
My co-host Eric Siu and I give marketing advice each day in under 5 minutes.
But don’t worry, the strategy I want you to implement isn’t to copy Marketing School or even listen to it (although I would be honored if you did listen to it).
Instead, it’s to copy my co-host, Eric Siu. He has another popular podcast called Growth Everywhere where he interviews someone new each and every single week.
You don’t have to do a weekly podcast, but I want you to interview someone in your space at least once a month.
And instead of making a separate site for your podcast, just pop it onto your main site.
Now when you publish each of these interviews, ask the guest to share it with their audience. From their social profiles to posting it on their own blog to even emailing their own list.
Although Eric has built a brand in the marketing space, he wasn’t well known when he started Growth Everywhere.
Just look at his stats from leveraging this tactic:
Eric’s generating over 15,300 unique visitors a month. That’s a lot of traffic considering Eric hasn’t even tried to grow the traffic to Growth Everywhere.
Best of all, you can generate similar results to Eric. But the key to doing this is interviewing people within your space so that way the traffic that comes to your site is relevant and over time those visitors will convert into customers.
If you don’t know how to start a podcast, watch this:
You could buy fancy equipment, but I would just use whatever’s built into your computer until you start seeing results from this tactic.
And if you really want to make your podcast popular, check this out.
Week #6: Become a rising star
Do you want to be a rising star? Well of course you do… who doesn’t?
Now you probably wondering, what the heck is a “rising star?”
Well, let me first start off with, Facebook groups.
Whatever industry you are in, whoever your ideal customers are… you can find them in a Facebook group.
Look for niche groups on Facebook related to the product or service you are selling. You want to join these groups as long as they have over 1,000 members.
You may also find groups that have over a million members. You’ll want to avoid these groups.
Focus on groups that are between 1,000 members and 17,000 members. Those groups are big enough to where you can generate traffic and small enough where you’ll be noticed.
What you’ll want to do is join a handful of groups and post 4 to 5 times in the group during your first month.
Assuming you are creating posts that are engaging in which people are responding and interacting with you, then you’ll get a rising star badge.
That means people are interacting with your posts. So then when you mention your product or service, you’ll find that not only will people see it, but they are going to head on over to your site.
The key with posting to Facebook groups is to create a high amount of comments and replies. If you just link out to your site you’ll get very few clicks and you will look like a spammer. Posting links and nothing more will get you banned from the group.
But if you link out within context or answer someone’s question with a link to your site or share something from your site that will help group members, you are much more likely to get clicks.
But if the content isn’t engaging and people don’t care to leave comments, you won’t see much traffic from your Facebook group.
I have a private Facebook group with 2,616 members.
When you post something that is engaging, you’ll get featured as a “top recent post” and I’ve found with my 2,616 members I can generate 119 to 184 visitors when I post something that is super engaging that links to my site.
But instead of creating a group as I did, just join other popular groups. You’ll save a ton of time.
Week #7: Co-publish content
Have you ever thought about co-publishing content with other site owners? Even if you don’t have a huge audience, people will still love co-publishing content with you.
Why you may ask?
Well, they may have the audience, but they may be too busy to continually create new content.
Just look at me… I co-published so many guides with other writers.
And…
And…
These writers got tons of exposure and did the majority of the work.
Over time, these guides have generated well over a million visitors. But I know they are time-consuming to create, and I’m not asking you to create guides.
Instead, you can co-publish blog posts together, record a webinar together, create a white paper, or anything else that you feel could be a good fit.
A good example of this is how my team co-published content together with a company called Hotmart in Brazil.
They wrote about Ubersuggest. They even co-published a video about SEO and, of course, my team mentioned Ubersuggest.
That helped make Brazil the most popular country when it comes to usage for Ubersuggest.
If you are going to try and co-publish content with others, make sure you are willing to do the majority of the work.
Hit up other sites within your space and make your offer. Let them know how they won’t have to do much work and, of course, mention what they’ll get out of it.
When you co-publish content, you can’t just talk about your company, you also have to talk about theirs.
It’s a chatbot tool that a lot of people in sales and marketing use.
What I love about Drift is their Product Hunt strategy. Every time they release a new feature, they push it hard on Product Hunt.
You probably don’t have a ton of new feature releases as you have a brand new site but every time you have one you should consider pushing it out on Product Hunt or even a Sub-Reddit.
But for now, why can’t you launch your site on Product Hunt or on a Sub-Reddit?
Sure you site maybe live for a few weeks, but you haven’t announced it to the world yet. 🙂
Product Hunt is super effective when it comes to traffic generation. When FYI launched via Product Hunt they got over 1,000 votes. It was so successful, the HubSpot co-founder even offered them funding.
I did something similar with Ubersuggest. Every time I release a new feature, I announce it on Product Hunt. So far it has driven me 12,319 visitors.
The key with doing well on Product Hunt is:
Get as many votes right when you release it… ideally within the first hour (so ask your friends and co-workers to vote)
Participate in the community before you submit your own site. Ideally, you want someone else to submit, but if you don’t know any active Product Hunt users, participate for a bit before you submit your own site.
Make sure you respond to every single comment as this helps with engagement.
Submit your site very early in the morning Pacific Standard Time. Product Hunt resets every night, so consider submitting it around 4 am Pacific Standard Time.
I know self-promotion might be a bit difficult for you when you are starting off but you need to embrace it. There is nothing wrong with pushing your own company… if you don’t, no one else will.
Week #9: The gram
Honestly, what do you think of Instagram?
Well, whether you like it or hate it, it is one of the most popular social networks out there. And influencer marketing is becoming one of the most effective promotion channels.
Anytime a Kardashian talks about a product, it flies right off the shelves.
That’s how companies like FitTea came out of nowhere and grew to 7 figures in revenue overnight.
I know what you are thinking: It’s going to be too expensive to pay Kim Kardashian to talk about your business. And you are right, it will be too expensive.
Heck, anyone who has over a million followers will try and charge you too much. Anyone with over 100,000 will also probably charge you too much.
Instead, I want you to look for micro-influencers who have at least 10,000 followers. Find people within your vertical who aren’t too popular but whose followers would be your ideal customer.
Now I want you to reach out to these influencers and offer them a bit of money to promote your product or service.
When it comes to making your offer, don’t pay them money for a post because it will be too expensive, pay them to create an Instagram story.
See, the moment someone hits 10,000 followers, Instagram enables the “swipe up” feature. This means they can tell their followers to swipe up to head over to any website. And in this case, they will be telling their followers to swipe up and head over to your website.
You’ll find that influencers will create a story for pennies on the dollar as it expires within 24 hours.
Typically, if someone has 10,000 to 20,000 followers, I am able to pay them a few hundred bucks for 3 stories over a 2 week period.
I prefer this over a post because this drives traffic to your site and you can track the number of sales you are generating from each campaign.
You can also leverage sites like Influence to find influencers.
A friend of mine, Timothy Sykes, does this often. He goes crazy and pays influencers with over a million followers to do this because he has been able to make each campaign profitable.
Typically, you find that 1% to 2% of the person’s followers will swipe up and head to your site, assuming the story is good. With this strategy, you won’t get a ton of visitors, but the visitors you do get are more likely to convert into customers as they’ve already been pitched during the story.
Week #10: Wikipedia
Have you ever thought about Wikipedia as a traffic source? I know I didn’t until I attended a marketing conference years ago and heard someone from Comedy Central speak.
This marketer was breaking down how Comedy Central gets millions of visitors a month, which isn’t shocking because it’s a popular television channel.
But what was shocking is how they broke down how they generate over 100,000 visitors a month from Wikipedia.
You heard me right, they get well over 100,000 visitors a month just from Wikipedia.
How’s that possible?
Well, they go in and modify Wikipedia articles and mention Comedy Central whenever it is relevant.
But before you go off and modify hundreds of Wikipedia articles, know that you won’t get the same result as Comedy Central.
It’s more realistic for you to generate a few hundred visitors a month… and maybe even work your way up to a few thousand visitors a month over time.
The key with editing Wikipedia articles is to first adjust tons of pages that aren’t about your website. It’s not just about linking to your site, it’s more so about providing value to the community.
So, during this week, I want you to adjust 12 to 15 articles. Once you do that you can then adjust any relevant ones to your business and include your own company when it makes sense.
Again you won’t get a ton of traffic from this, but you can easily get a few hundred visitors.
By now you should have some traffic coming to your site. It may not be a lot, but if you followed all of the steps above, your visitors should be highly qualified.
And now I want you to leverage those visitors to get you a speaking spot at a virtual summit.
Search Google for a virtual summit in your industry. You should be able to easily find one.
It doesn’t matter if they are charging people to attend the virtual summit or if they are giving tickets away for free. Offer yourself to speak and promote the event.
You’ll be shocked at how many people will say yes if you are willing to promote their event.
Remember, unlike a physical conference it doesn’t cost them much to add hundreds of speakers and keep the summit going for an extra day or two.
When speaking, be sure you can promote your company during your speech and you’ll notice that you’ll be able to generate some visitors and sales. But that’s not why I want you to speak at the virtual summit.
Instead, I want you to ask the host of the summit to share the attendee list with you. Assuming they have the right terms of service and privacy policies this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
You’ll also have to make sure they aren’t breaking any GDPR rules.
What you’ll find is this is a common practice with most virtual events in which the speakers will promote the event and the virtual summit will share the attendee list with the speakers.
This will give you a list of super qualified people that you can promote your blog posts to or even your product and services.
Week #12: Scripts and tools
You know I love SEO and it’s an amazing long-term strategy. But to do well with SEO you need backlinks.
The more relevant sites linking to you, the better off you are going to be.
And as you get more backlinks, in the short run it will provide referral traffic. In the long run, it will cause your search traffic to skyrocket.
Just to show you how powerful referral traffic is, just look at my referral traffic:
Over time, all of those sites linking to you will start driving thousands of visitors.
So, what’s the best way to get more backlinks?
Well, you don’t want to buy them. And manual link building takes a long time and isn’t as effective as it used to be.
Instead, what you should do is release free tools, like how I released the SEO Analyzer years ago. And over time, it’s naturally produced 2,369 backlinks from 450 referring domains.
Now, I know what you are thinking: building a free tool is expensive and time-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. You can buy existing tools and put them on your website for pennies on the dollar. And over time, they will naturally get backlinks without you needing to do anything more.
For example, if you have a real estate website, you can always add a mortgage calculator to your website. And can you guess how much it would cost for you to add one to your site?
$13. That’s right, it only costs 13 bucks! How crazy is that!?
There’s a site called Code Canyon where you can buy tools for almost any industry.
You can use these tools as your own and put them on your site with a few clicks of a button.
Just head over to Code Canyon and perform some searches. You’ll quickly find some tools that can work for you.
Keep in mind that these tools won’t be 100% perfect compared to building your own tool. But that’s ok, you have to start somewhere. Plus, people will still link to your tool even if it isn’t perfect.
Conclusion
I know some of the tactics I mentioned above won’t drive you thousands of visitors right away but they can drive you hundreds. And hundreds of visitors is a great place to start!
And when you combine them over time, it will help you get thousands of visitors. You just have to be willing to perform all of the steps in each week… no matter how silly the tactic may appear.
More importantly, the tactics I broke down above will drive you visitors that convert into customers and leads. All you have to do is take the next 12 weeks and follow them.
It may seem like a lot of work at first, but you’ll get faster at them as time goes on.
So, what do you think about the tactics above? Are you already using them?
