Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for almost 3 years now.
I bought it on February 13, 2017, for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO.
Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for.
But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have.
So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO, make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are going do keyword research (in a good way).
On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations.
Here’s what’s new:
More keyword data
The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword.
Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming you find keywords with a high CPC, low SEO difficulty, and high search volume, it still doesn’t mean it is a good keyword to go after.
And there are a few reasons why…
Mobile searches aren’t worth as much – first off, if the keyword mainly gets searched from on mobile devices the conversion rate will be lower. It doesn’t mean mobile traffic is useless, it just typically means the keyword won’t be as valuable.
High search volume doesn’t guarantee lots of organic clicks – what happens if the keyword gets a ton of searches but no clicks? This sounds crazy, but it actually happens a lot. For example, when people search for “weather” in the United States, roughly 60% of the people don’t click any results.
Not all searchers are worth the same – some keywords get searched heavily by teenagers. Some keywords get searched heavily by people who are in their 30s or 40s. If the majority of the searches for a given keyword happen by a really young audience, chances are they won’t have a credit card and they won’t convert into a customer.
Because of all of this, I decided to change how the industry does keyword research.
Now when you type in a keyword like “marketing” into Ubersuggest, you’ll see this:
If you have been using Ubersuggest for the last year or so you may notice some differences… but if you haven’t let me break down what’s new.
First off, for any given keyword you will see what percentage of the searches are taking place from mobile devices or desktop devices.
For example, with the term “marketing” you can see that the majority of the searches are coming from desktop devices.
On the flip side, if you use Ubersuggest to look at the term “weather” you’ll notice that the majority of the searches happen on mobile devices.
And with any given keyword you can also see what percentage of the people even click on the SEO or paid results.
I love this bar chart because it tells me if I should even go after a specific keyword. Just because a term has tons of searches doesn’t mean you are going to get tons of clicks, even if you rank at the number 1 spot.
If you leverage paid ads, this bar chart is also helpful because it will give you a sense of how many people click on the paid ads as well.
Another chart that I’ve added is one that breaks down the age range of each searcher.
As you can see from the above image, Ubersuggest now shows what percentage of the searches take place between each age range.
This is really important if you know the persona of your ideal customer, as you only want to target keywords that your ideal buyer is searching for.
What’s also cool is this data is available for all countries within Ubersuggest and for almost all of the keywords within our database.
Now before you head off to Ubersuggest and test it out, there are a few more features that I’ve just released.
More backlink data
Over the last few months, I’ve gotten feedback that our link database isn’t as big as you would like, so we have been working on fixing this.
This chart will quickly show you if a site is growing in backlink and referring domain count over time or if they are declining.
On top of that, we are even showing the daily new and lost link count for a given site.
I know the new and lost link count chart looks a bit off, but keep in mind we started having Ubersuggest crawl more pages around the web faster and more frequently. Hence you are seeing a big spike in new and lost links.
But over the next 4 weeks, it should normalize, and you’ll see an accurate representation of new and lost links.
This will help you identify new link opportunities more easily. Especially because you can now clearly see where your competitors are focusing their link building efforts.
Better traffic estimations
Lastly in Ubersuggest, you can also enter in a URL and get data on any given domain.
From its estimated monthly search traffic to the number of keywords a domain ranks for to even its top pages based on link and traffic count.
We haven’t fully finished creating our new algorithm when it comes to traffic estimations, but the chart you’ll see now is much more accurate than the older one.
Even though this is a big improvement from our older charts, give it another 3 months and it should be extremely accurate.
When you are using the traffic analyzer report in Ubersuggest, keep in mind that this will give you a directional guide on how you are doing versus your competition.
I’ve made them in order to give you a leg up on your competition as the data in the tool is now something that most of you have never seen before.
And over the next two months, you’ll see some big launches in Ubersuggest. From a chrome extension to even more accurate traffic estimations to even an Alert system that will notify you when things are wrong with your site.
So, go to Ubersuggest and try out the new keyword features as well as traffic estimation and backlink features.
And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time.
So then, what should you do?
Well, what if I told you there were simple ways to get more organic traffic and, best of all, you don’t have to do one bit of SEO?
Seriously.
So, what is it? And how can you get more organic traffic?
Well, this story will help explain it…
The old days
When I first started my journey as an SEO, I got really good at one thing.
Getting rankings!
Now to be fair, this was back in 2003 when it wasn’t that hard to rank on Google (or any other search engine for that matter).
Stuff some keywords into your page, your meta tags, and build some spammy rich anchor text links and you were good to go.
You could literally see results in less than a month.
SEO wasn’t too complicated back then. So much so, that I even started an SEO agency and created a handful of sites.
I was starting to rank my sites at the top of Google but they didn’t make a dollar. Literally, not a single dollar.
In fact, I was actually losing money on them because I had to pay for the domain registration expenses and hosting.
So, one day I decided that I was tired of losing money and I was going to do something about it. I took the keywords that I was ranking for and started to type them into Google to see who was paying for ads for those terms.
I hit up each of those sites and tried to get a hold of the owner or the person in charge of marketing.
I asked them how much they were paying for ads and offered them the same exact traffic for a much lower price. I was able to do this because I already had sites that ranked for those keywords.
In other words, I offered to rent out my website for a monthly fee that was a fraction of what they were paying for paid ads.
Next thing you know I was collecting 5 figures in monthly checks and my “renters” were ecstatic because they were generating sales at a fraction of the costs compared to what they were spending on paid ads.
So, what’s the strategy?
Well, it’s simple. Back in the day, I used to rent out my websites… the whole site.
These days I’ve learned how to monetize my own site, so I don’t rent them out.
So why not rent a page on someone else’s site? From there, modify that page a bit to promote your products or services?
I know this sounds crazy, but it works. I have one person that just reaches out to site owners asking if we can rent out a page on their site. We do this for all industries and verticals… and when I look at how much we are spending versus how much income we are generating, it’s crazy.
Here are the stats for the last month:
Rental fees: $24,592
Outreach costs: $3,000
Legal costs: $580
Copywriting and monetization costs: $1,500
Total monthly cost: $29,672
Now guess what my monthly income was?
It was $79,283.58.
Not too bad.
Now your cost on this model won’t be as high as mine because you can do your own outreach, monetize the page you are renting on your own, and you probably don’t need a lawyer.
And don’t be afraid of how much I am spending in rental fees as you can get away with spending $0 in the first 30 days as I will show you exactly what to do.
Remember, it’s also not what you are spending, it’s about profit and what you are making. If it won’t cost you any money in the first 30 days and you can generate income, your risk is little to none.
Here are the exact steps you need to follow:
Step #1: Find the terms you want to rank for
If you already know the terms you want to rank for, great, you can skip this step.
If you don’t, I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in a few of your competitors’ URLs.
Head over to the top pages report and look at their top pages.
Now click on “view all” under the estimated visits column to see a list of keywords that each page ranks for.
I want you to create a list of all of the keywords that contain a high search volume and have a high CPC. Keywords with a high CPC usually mean that they convert well.
Keywords with a low CPC usually mean they don’t convert as well.
When you are making a list of keywords, you’ll need to make sure that you have a product or service that is related to each keyword. If you don’t then you won’t be able to monetize the traffic.
Step #2: Search for the term
It’s time to do some Google searches.
Look for all of the pages that rank in the top 10 for the term you ideally want to rank for.
Don’t waste your time with page 2.
What I want you to look for is:
Someone who isn’t your competitor. Your competition isn’t likely to rent out a page on their site to you.
A page that isn’t monetized. Not selling a product or service. (If the page has ads, don’t worry.)
A site owned by a smaller company… a publicly-traded company isn’t likely to do a deal. A venture-funded company isn’t likely to do a deal either (Crunchbase will tell you if they are venture-funded).
Step #3: Hit up the website
Typically, through their contact page, they should have their email addresses or phone number listed. If they have a contact form, you can get in touch that way as well.
If you can’t find their details, you can do a whois lookup to see if you can find their phone number.
What’ll you want to do is get them on the phone. DO NOT MAKE YOUR PITCH OVER EMAIL.
It just doesn’t work well over email.
If you can’t find their phone number, email them with a message that goes something like this…
Subject: [their website name]
Hey [insert first name],
Do you have time for a quick call this week?
We’ve been researching your business and we would like to potentially make you an offer.
Let me know what works for you.
Cheers,
[insert your name]
[insert your company]
[insert your phone number]
You want to keep the email short as I have found that it tends to generate more calls.
Once you get them on the phone, you can tell them a little bit about yourself. Once you do that, tell them that you noticed they have a page or multiple pages on their website that interest you.
Point out the URL and tell them how you are interested in giving them money each month to rent out the page and you wouldn’t change much of it… but you need some more information before you can make your offer.
At this point, you’ll want to find out how much traffic that page generates and the keywords it ranks for. They should have an idea by just looking at their Google Analytics (you’ll find most of these sites don’t use Google Search Console).
Once you have that, let them know that you will get in touch with them in the next few days after you run some numbers.
Go back, try to figure out what each click is worth based on a conservative conversion rate of .5%. In other words, .if 5% of that traffic converted into a customer, what would the traffic be worth to you after all expenses?
You’ll want to use a conservative number because you can’t modify the page too heavily or else you may lose rankings.
Once you have a rough idea of what the page is worth, get back on the phone with them and say you want to run tests for 30 days to get a more solid number on what you can pay them as you want to give them a fair offer.
Typically, most people don’t have an issue because they aren’t making money from the page in the first place.
Step #4: Monetize the page
If you are selling a product, the easiest way to monetize is to add links to the products you are selling.
For example, if you are selling a kitchen appliance like a toaster, you can add links from the article to your site.
The easiest way to monetize a blog post is to add links to products or services you are selling.
Don’t delete a lot of the content on the page you are modifying… adding isn’t too much of an issue but when you delete content sometimes you will lose rankings.
As for a service-based business, linking out to pages on your site where people can fill out their lead information is great.
Or you can just add lead capturing to the page you are renting out. Kind of like how HubSpot adds lead forms on their site.
I’ve actually found that they convert better than just linking out to your site.
When monetizing the page you are renting, keep in mind that you will need disclaimers to let people know that you are collecting their information for privacy purposes. You also should disclose you are renting out the page.
Once you are monetizing the page for a bit, you’ll have a rough idea of what it is worth and you can make an offer on what you’ll page.
I recommend doing a 12-month contract in which you can opt-out with a 30-day notice.
The reason you want a 12-month agreement is that you don’t want to have to keep renegotiating. I also include the 30-day opt-out notice in case they lose their rankings, you can opt-out.
And to clarify on the op-out clause, I have it so only I can opt-out and they are stuck in the agreement for a year.
Conclusion
SEO isn’t the only way you can get more organic traffic.
Being creative, such as renting pages that already rank is an easy solution. Best of all, you can get results instantly and it’s probably cheaper than doing SEO in the long run.
The only issue with this model is that it is really hard to scale.
If I were you, I would do both. I, of course, do SEO on my own site because it provides a big ROI. And, of course, if you can rent out the pages of everyone else who ranks for the terms you want to rank for, it can provide multiple streams of income from SEO.
The beauty of this is model is that you can take up more than one listing on page 1. In theory, you can take up all 10 if you can convince everyone to let you rent their ranking page.
So, what do you think of the idea? Are you going to try it out?
And it makes sense because every time a search engine or a social network changes their algorithm we jump as marketers.
We are conditioned to be very reactive. Whether it’s your boss who is pissed that your traffic dips or even yourself… everyone hates when sales and income drop because of something you can’t fully control.
And even when you try to be proactive, you are probably planning ahead from a 3-month period to a year max.
But that’s not how you win. You win by making bold bets that take time and can’t be done in a few months or a year… you win by doing what your competition isn’t willing to do.
So how do you come up with these bold bets?
You unplug!
Here’s how I come up with my ideas
Once a year I try to unplug. Just like right now, as I am writing this I don’t have cell reception and there is no WiFi.
I’m on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
No matter where I look, there are no neighbors. All you have is nature in its rawest form. Just like how lightning kept going on for hours.
By unplugging and just being one with nature, you truly realize what’s important.
See, we all have problems and issues… especially in business. But how bad are your problems? Do they even matter in the grand scheme of things?
Look, I’ll be honest with you. I am not a big nature person… I’m actually quite the opposite.
I live in a modern, cold feeling house in a heavily congested city. I’m so OCD that I have a full-time cleaner come just because I’m afraid of getting dirty (seriously).
Heck, I won’t even go through airport security without having booties in my briefcase, just in the rare chance they make me take off my shoes. There is no way I can have my socks touch that dirty ground.
Yes, I am crazy when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene.
But even me, I go to places that are full of nature and wild animals… or in my case, cows, bears, deer, snakes, mountain lions, etc… being there really helps put things into perspective.
Because when you aren’t surrounded by noise caused by us humans, it allows you to clearly focus and think about what’s important.
For me, spending 3 days a year usually does the trick.
It allows me to forget about the bullshit we all have to deal with on a daily basis and come up with ideas about what I need to do over the next 5 (or even 10) years to win.
I know that sounds like a really long time… and it is. But again, to win you need to think long term and make bold bets that your competition wouldn’t dare to copy.
I came up with that idea a few years ago by disconnecting (just like I described above).
Companies like Moz would constantly post their revenue stats and their competitors decided to also talk about their financials. So while being disconnected, I came up with an idea on how I could win and the first step was acquiring a tool like Ubersuggest.
And since then I’ve executed a few of the steps in my plan, but I still have a long way to go.
None-the-less, those steps have paid off. Just look at my traffic numbers.
So what I am going to do over the next 5 to 10 years?
I am going to turn SEO upside down again.
It hit me on this trip that we all have to go to sites like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or even Moz to get data.
But why is that?
It’s not natural in our workflow. Wouldn’t it just be easier to see this data as you browse the web?
Like when you search Google for any query sure you can use browser extensions like Keywords Everywhere to get some data or SEOquake or the Mozbar… but what you can’t get is that Ahrefs or SEMrush experience when you are just on a Google Search results page.
What will that look like? I have no clue yet, but I will figure that out over time.
Will that kill the traffic I generate to Ubersuggest over time?
Yes!!!!!!
But that is what needs to be done. I obsess about providing an amazing experience to my customers, even if that will kill off my existing business.
And no, that won’t take 5 years to do… I will probably do it over the next 6 months. I will first roll out a basic plugin like Keywords Everywhere and, eventually, I will add the functionally so you can get that type of Ubersuggest or Ahrefs experience right on Google or on your competitor’s site.
What will happen over the next 5 years though, is that I will be able to build something that gets you more traffic. Just like a light switch. Something that simple.
Why can’t we automate most of our marketing tasks? Why does SEO have to be manual when I can add a piece of JavaScript to a website and automate most of it? Why do I have to send out a blog post every time I release a new post or a push notification?
It should all be automated.
And no, I don’t mean in a templatized way. I manually send out emails every time I write a blog post because I know I can write custom copy that generates a 30% open rate and a high click rate.
But again, it should all be automated. And not just for English based sites, it should be done on a global level and work for every site in any language or country.
So how can you figure out what to focus on?
You may not be able to disconnect like me and spend the money that it costs to go to a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
And that’s fine… you don’t have to.
When I first started off, I didn’t have the resources or money, and I did just fine within my constraints.
For example, roughly 5 years ago I came up with the concept that I needed to go after global markets and compared to any of my competitors in the digital marketing realm, I’ve crushed all of them when it comes to global marketing.
Most of my competitors just translated their site or translated some of their content. Me on the other hand, I have 7 offices and teams in 18 different countries. And I’ll continue to expand so I can keep beating my competition when it comes to grabbing international attention.
But that idea didn’t come to me when I was in nature, being disconnected.
At that time, I was in my condo in the middle of Seattle and I disconnected my Internet for a few days.
Before I disconnected my Internet, I went and got food so I didn’t have to leave my house, and then I turned off all my gadgets… from my TV to phone and anything that was a distraction.
It worked well because now only 18.89% of my traffic is from the United States compared to 57% before I started to expand globally.
In other words, you can disconnect no matter where you are. You just literally have to disconnect your router, turn off your phone, and unplug your TV… it really is that simple.
If you do that for a few days, you’ll start realizing what is important and what isn’t. You’ll be able to strategize and start thinking more long term.
Conclusion
The key to winning long term isn’t by being reactive every time there is an algorithm update or even proactive and preparing for each algorithm update.
Because some of those things are simply out of your control.
Instead, you need to think long term and how you can disrupt your market to make a long-term bet that your competition isn’t willing to make.
Nike wasn’t built by SEO.
Airbnb wasn’t built through paid advertising.
American Express wasn’t built through social media marketing.
Tesla wasn’t built through content marketing.
Doing something disruptive or better than the competition is how you win.
Ubersuggest gets 1,668,233 visitors and 9,136,512 page views a month from people just coming directly. Not through SEO, marketing, or anything like that… I just focus on the future instead of being reactive.
That’s how I win.
Now, the real question is, how are you going to win?
If you don’t write often, you may feel otherwise, but just follow this and you’ll be good to go when it comes to writing. Or, you can just watch the video below.
But still, you write a blog post and then what do you do?
Well, I’ll tell you this… most people forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Most people write content but don’t do a great job of promoting it.
Here’s the thing: I figured out the perfect formula to promoting content.
Best of all, it’s not complex. Heck, it doesn’t even take 30 minutes. It’s so easy that I broke it down into 6 steps.
And just to give you an idea before we dive into the formula, it’s so effective here is the traffic to my latest blog post.
35,492 visits in a week isn’t too shabby. The post didn’t do exceptionally well and it didn’t tank. It was just an average post.
Now you probably won’t see the same results as me as I’ve been doing this for a long time, but your results will be much better than what you are currently getting. Hence, I used the number of 3,549 in the title as you should be able to drive 1/10th of what I am generating.
No matter how well written your content is, promoting it won’t be effective if no one likes your headline.
Now I know what you are thinking… I’ve already published my article, is it too late to change my headline?
Nope, you can always change your headline, just try not to change the URL of the article once it is already published. And if you decide to change the URL, use a 301 redirect.
There’s a really simple way to come up with headlines that work. Heck, it doesn’t even take more than a minute or two.
Just head over to Ubersuggest and type in the main keyword or phrase your article is about.
You’ll see a report that looks something like this:
Now I want you to click on “Content Ideas” in the left-hand navigation.
You should now see a report that looks like this:
This report shows you all of the blog posts around the web that contain your keyword or phrase within their title. And it breaks it down by social shares, backlinks, and search traffic.
You can use this to see what is working in your space.
Ideally, you want to look for headlines that have thousands of social shares (or hundreds if you aren’t in a popular industry), at least 10 backlinks, and more than 100 estimated visits. Just like the example below.
Making your headlines similar to ones that meet those 3 criteria will increase your odds of getting more traffic.
Step #2: Add 3 internal links
The easiest way to get your new content more love is to build links.
Yes, links are hard to build, but internal links are not… plus they are still effective.
I rank for competitive terms like “digital marketing”…
A lot of it has to do with internal links. I link to my main digital marketing page within my sidebar and within my content.
Every time you publish a new blog post, I want you to go into your older content that is relevant to your newly published blog post and add a link to it. Do this to 3 of your older blog posts.
This helps with indexing and it also helps your new content rank higher on Google.
Step 3: Share your content on the social web carefully
The problem with social media marketing is that people think they can just share their content on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and it will automatically do well.
Sadly, it won’t because billions of URLs have been shared already.
In other words, we just tend to ignore most of the links people share.
But there is a simple way to stand out and get thousands of visitors from the social web, just like I get.
So, what’s my secret?
Well, I will give you a hint. Just look at one of my most recent posts on LinkedIn:
And here is one from Facebook:
Do you notice a pattern?
I’m evoking curiosity. In other words, I am piquing your interest and if you want to know the “solution” you have to click through to my site.
With the LinkedIn post, I tell you that marketing is going to change next year. I also make a point to say how it is going to change in a way that nobody is talking about.
I do this because we all can assume marketing will change. But by saying it is in a way nobody is talking about, it evokes curiosity. And if you want to know how it will change you have no choice but to click through over to my site to read the rest.
With my Facebook post, I also evoke curiosity. I talk about a Google algorithm update, but I hint that I have an answer to leveraging Google’s latest algorithm update. And if you want to know what it is, you have to click through over to my site.
Whenever you post on the social web, evoke curiosity if you want people to head over to your site.
The easiest way to do this is that every time you share one of your articles on the social web, add a few sentences above the link that helps pique peoples’ interest.
Step #4: Message everyone you link out to
It’s common to link out to other sites within your blog posts.
Heck, sometimes I even link out to my competition.
If you don’t ever link out to other sites, you are making a big mistake. It helps with authority and trust.
If you are using stats and data within your article, you want to cite your sources. This brings credibility to you and it helps brand yourself as an expert which can help with Google’s medic update.
Now, when you link out to a site, go and search their email address. You can typically find their email address on their website.
Or if you can’t find their email address, look for a contact page on their site, you’ll typically see a form that you can fill out.
Whether you find an email address or contact form, I want you to message each and every single site you link out to with a message that goes like this:
Hi [insert their first name],
I just wanted to say, I love your content. Especially your article on [insert the name of the article you linked out to].
I linked to it from my latest blog post [insert URL of your blog post]. It would make my day if you checked it out and even shared it on your favorite social network if you enjoyed it.
Cheers,
[insert your name]
When I send out these emails, I am getting 50 to 60% of the people to respond and share my content. But of course, my blog is popular, so for me, it isn’t too hard. But it hasn’t always been that way, and I’ve been leveraging this tactic for ages.
On the flip side, I also use this tactic on a few of my blogs that are in other niches and don’t use my name (no one knows I own them) and I am seeing success rates around 20%.
Just make sure you don’t use this tactic to ask for a link back. Your success rate will be slim.
Step #5: Send an email blast
These last two tactics produce a large portion of my results, and you shouldn’t take them for granted, no matter how basic they may seem.
If you already haven’t, start collecting emails from your site. You can use free tools like Hello Bar to create popups or sliders.
Hello Bar will plug into whatever email provider you are currently using.
Once you are up and running, every time you release a new blog post, send out an email blast.
Here’s an example of one of my email blasts.
It’s so effective it generated 13,544 clicks.
I’ve found that you can drive good traffic from emails as long as you do the following:
Scrub your list – if someone doesn’t open your emails over the last 30 or 60 days, remove them from your list. It helps keep your emails in people’s inboxes.
Send text-based emails – if you look at the email I sent, I keep it simple. No images, nothing fancy, just text and a link back to my site. It’s that simple.
Evoke curiosity – just like how I explained with the social media posts, your emails won’t do well unless you evoke curiosity.
As you write more content you will get more traffic, which will cause your email list to grow. That will also cause you to get more traffic. 🙂
Step #6: Send a push notification
I don’t know why so few sites are leverage push notifications. It’s so effective I believe I will get more traffic from push notifications in 2020 than I will from email marketing.
To give you an idea, when I analyze my competitors in the marketing arena, only 3 out of 19 use push notifications.
In other industries, the percentage is far worse, which means there is more opportunity for you.
Here’s how push notifications work….
Someone comes to your site and through their browser, they get a message if they want to subscribe to your site.
A portion of your visitors will click “allow”. With NeilPatel.com, roughly 5.4% of visitors are currently clicking “allow”.
You can send push notifications and get subscribers using a free tool like Subscribers.com.
And then when you write a new blog post, you log into Subscribers.com and click on the “Create Notification” button. From there you will see a screen where you can enter the title and description of your latest post.
As you can see from the image above, you’ll notice that I use an “icon” image, a “large” image, and I show “custom buttons.”
Using those 3 elements is the key to getting the most traffic from push notifications. Here are some of my stats from using Subscribers.
I’m getting roughly 6,000 visits from every push notification I send. That’s not too bad.
And if you are curious about what a push notification looks like, here’s what people get when I send it out.
What’s cool about push notification is no matter what website someone is on, they will see a message similar to the one above, which will bring people back to your site.
No dealing with spam filters or messages not going through. Plus, if someone isn’t online when you send a push notification, the next time they use their web browser they will see your message.
Conclusion
Promoting your content doesn’t have to be hard.
You don’t need “advanced” tactics or anything that is out of the box. The basics work well, and I have been using the above formula for years… literally.
Now, I know there are other things you can do to promote your content, but let’s be realistic: we are all strapped for time. And I’ve found the ones I’ve mentioned above to produce the biggest bang for the buck.
So, what other simple ways do you promote your content?
The new year is right around the corner. And I know you are already prepared because you read this blog and tons of other marketing blogs, right?
But here is the thing: I also read most of the popular marketing blogs, follow all of the marketing YouTube channels, and listen to the same podcasts you do.
And I’ve noticed that very few people are talking about what’s really going to happen in 2020.
Sure, they will tell you things like voice search is going to account for over 50% of the search queries next year but all of that stuff has already been talked about.
And there are actually more interesting trends that will affect your marketing that no one is really talking about.
So, what are these trends? What’s going to happen in 2020?
Alright, here goes…
Trend #1: Companies who rely on Google Analytics will get beat by their competition
Heck, I love it so much I log in at least 3 or 4 times a day. And here is the kicker: I get so much traffic that my Google Analytics only updates once a day.
I really need to break that habit but that’s for another day.
You are probably wondering, what’s wrong with Google Analytics?
There actually isn’t much wrong with it. It’s a great tool, especially considering that it’s free.
But here is the thing… marketing has been changing. New channels are being constantly introduced, such as voice search.
And transactions no longer are as simple as someone coming and buying from you and that’s it.
These days there are things like upsells, down sells, repeat purchases, and even checkout bumps. On top of that, there are so many different ways you can generate revenue for your online business, such as partnerships, affiliate marketing, and even webinars.
This has caused companies to start using analytics solutions that tie into their database better, such as Amplitude. Or better yet, you are seeing a big push into business intelligence.
A central place where you can tie in all of your data and make better-informed decisions so you can optimize for your lifetime value instead of your short-term income.
In 2020, you will see more companies adopting business intelligence solutions… from paid ones to free ones like Google Data Studio.
If you haven’t checked out Data Studio, you’ll want to start now because it is easy to pass in all of your business and marketing data into one place. For example, you can pass in more granular data from your Facebook ad campaigns into Data Studio while that would be a bit difficult to do with Google Analytics.
Trend #2: Companies will optimize for voice search, but not for revenue
Optimizing for voice search is a great way to get your brand out more, but how is that going to convert into sales?
I haven’t seen too many solutions so far when it comes to capitalizing on your voice search traffic, but so far there is Jetson.ai.
If you aren’t familiar with Jetson.ai, it makes it so people can buy from your site using voice search. It doesn’t matter if it is Alexa or Google Home, they work with most of the popular devices.
What’s cool about Jetson.ai is that it can learn from each customer and customize the interactions.
For example, if I keep ordering the same toothpaste from a specific store using voice search, Jetson.ai keeps track of that so you can easily keep ordering the same product over and over again with little to no friction.
Heck, it’s easier than logging into your computer or pulling out your phone to make a purchase.
Trend #3: Your lists won’t convert as well, so you’ll have to look for alternative communication channels
Email, it’s something we all use in the corporate world.
But here is something interesting when it comes to marketing emails… I’m in a group with a bit over 109 email marketers across different industries in different parts of the world.
And can you guess what we are all noticing?
Our open rates are staying roughly the same and that’s largely because we all know how to clean and optimizing for deliverability.
But our click rates are going down.
So far as a group we have seen our click rates drop by 9.4% in 2019.
That’s crazy considering as a group we have over 146 million email addresses.
Now does this mean email is dead?
Of course not!!!
Email is here to stay and will be here for a very long time.
But what companies will have to do in 2020 is to leverage more communication channels.
Chatbots will take off drastically. Not necessarily the Intercom’s or Drift’s of the world but more so the solutions like ManyChat and MobileMonkey.
ManyChat and MobileMonkey leverage Facebook Messenger and as they connect it with Instagram and WhatsApp it will get even more popular.
In addition to chatbots, you’ll see more people leveraging tools that allow push notifications like Subscribers.
It’s so powerful, here is the impact I’ve been able to generate from push notifications so far using Subscribers.
You can wait till next year to lever chatbots and push notifications, but I’d recommend you start sooner than later. 😉
Trend #4: Moats will almost be non-existent, other than brands
You’ve probably heard the word “moat” before. If you haven’t, just think about water around a castle.
Back in the day, they had water all around the castle and they used a drawbridge to get in and out of the castle, so it would protect them from invaders.
With your business, you may have a moat. It could be a feature, your cost structure, a technological advantage, or even a marketing advantage.
Over the years, moats in the online world have slowly been disappearing.
It’s easy for anyone to copy these days. So, what’s separating you from your competition?
Something could work right now, but it won’t last forever…
But do you know what will still be a strong moat in 2020 and even a stronger one in the future?
It’s branding.
People buy Jordan shoes because they love Michael Jordan. His brand is stronger than ever even though he hasn’t played in the NBA for roughly 16 years.
His shoes are so popular, it’s helped him boost his net worth to over a billion dollars. Plus owning a basketball team doesn’t hurt either. 😉
But what’s interesting is he’s made more money after retirement than he did as a basketball player.
And it’s not just Jordan who built a strong brand… so have the Kardashians.
Just look at my agency NP Digital. It’s literally one of the fastest-growing ad agencies out there. And when I look at all of my competitors’ numbers, we are growing at a much faster pace because of my brand.
Yes, we have a great team, but again, that really isn’t a moat as a lot of agencies have great teams. It’s my brand that gave us a really fast kick start and continues to hopefully push us up.
You’ll want to build a brand in 2020. Whether it is personal or corporate, it’s the best moat you can build in marketing. Plus, it will help you with Google’s EAT.
Trend #5: Marketing will become a more even playing field, you’ll have no choice but to use automation
When I first started off as an entrepreneur, I turned to SEO because I couldn’t afford the big ad budgets as my competitors.
Heck, I couldn’t even afford to run any paid ads.
Over the years, the playing field has become more level.
There are credit card companies like Brex that make it easier for startups to get approved for larger limits and you may not have to pay them back right away.
There are financing companies that will give you cash to spend on marketing, so non-venture funded companies can more easily compete.
There are even companies like Lighter Capital that will give you loans without all of the headaches based on your existing revenue.
And to top it off, software solutions are now starting to integrate AI to give better recommendations. From Clickflow and RankScience to Distilled ODN… everyone is trying to use AI to make SEO and other forms of marketing.
Heck, BrightEdge can even automate your SEO (or at least a large portion of it). According to them, their automated SEO solution increases page views per visit by 60% as well as provides 21% more keywords on page one.
Keep in mind their clients are really big (their software starts in the thousands of dollars per month) so they would probably see better results than most companies, but still, you will start seeing many more software companies leverage AI.
Even with Ubersuggest, I’m working on creating AI that does the SEO for you so you no longer have to spend endless hours while, at the same time, saving you thousands of dollars.
In other words, the marketing playing field is getting more even. And if you want to do well, you are going to have to leverage AI and automation.
If everyone else is using it and you aren’t, you are going to get crushed because it will make changes faster and more accurately than a human. Again, it’s the only option you’ll have if you want to continually compete.
But don’t worry, there will be affordable/free solutions that exist, it’s just a matter of time. 😉
If everyone is leveraging the same AI marketing technology, how can you beat your competitors?
Well, it will come down to everything else… price, customer service, upselling, operations, sales… All of the small stuff is what’s going to help you win.
Trend #6: There will be no more silver bullets, we will all have to optimize for marginal gains
A lot of businesses were built off of one marketing channel.
Dropbox grew through referral marketing. Invite more friends, get more free space.
Facebook was built off your email address book. Facebook used to tap into it and invite all of your contacts to use Facebook on your behalf.
Companies like Quora and Yelp were built off of SEO. All of those rankings really help drive their businesses.
But you no longer can build a business through just one marketing channel. Good channels now get saturated extremely fast.
Even if they work and cause explosive growth, it will only last for a short while before your competitors jump on board and make it harder.
Marketing is now heading in the direction of being about “marginal gains.”
There’s a British cycling coach named Dave Brailsford. His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gains would add up to remarkable improvement.
And he’s right, that’s how you win a race.
The same will be with your marketing. There will be a big shift from people focusing on one channel and trying to find the “Holy Grail of marketing” to working on slightly improving each area of your marketing.
From split testing your title tags to get a few ranking improvements to adding checkout bumps to your order page so you can spend a little bit more on your paid ads to using Google Data Studio so you can better optimize for your lifetime value…
It’s all about the little things. That’s what is going to add up to winning.
That’s what you’ll have to shift your mindset to in order to win in 2020 and beyond.
Trend #7: Personalization is the new marketing
The problem with marketing as it exists today is that 95% of your visitors will never convert into a customer. And that’s if you are lucky.
Chances are you are more likely looking at 97% plus of your visitors never converting.
The big reason isn’t that your marketing sucks or that all of those visitors are junk and unqualified.
It’s that your message doesn’t fit every single one of your visitors.
But through personalization, you can convert more of your visitors into customers.
A basic example of this is Amazon. When you go to Amazon, they know your patterns and what you typically buy so they show you what they think you want to see in order to boost their conversions.
And it works! When I log into Amazon I see tons of household supplies because that is what I buy the most often. I never buy dog food (which is smart because I don’t have a dog) so I’ll never see ads for dog food.
Businesses are also trying to personalize each and every single experience both online and offline.
Companies like Amperity are trying to create a customer relationship engine so you can better serve each of your customers, whether it is online or offline.
Marketing is going to become a game of personalization. With ad costs and even general marketing costs rising, you have no choice but to figure out how to convert the 97% of your traffic that just never comes back.
You’ll see a big push for this in 2020.
Conclusion
I know a lot of the stuff I mentioned above isn’t talked about a lot and they aren’t popular marketing topics that everyone wants to hear… but it is the future.
These are trends that will come true, some already are, and you have to adapt for them.
Here’s the beautiful part, though. You just read this, and now have a chance to act on the information before your competition. So, make sure you go and do so.
I want to see you not only succeed but I want you to beat your competition. And I believe you can, whether you are a big company, or just starting off with very little to no money.
So, what do you think of the trends above? Do you see any marketing trends that will come true in 2020 that few people talk about?
Google announced that it has been rolling out a new update call Bert.
I know what you are thinking… does this update really matter? Should I even spend time learning about it?
Well, Bert will affect 1 in 10 search queries.
To give you an idea of how big of an update this is, it’s the biggest update since Google released RankBrain.
In other words, there is a really good chance that this impacts your site. And if it doesn’t, as your traffic grows, it will eventually affect your site.
But before we go into how this update affects SEOs and what you need to adjust (I will go into that later in this post), let’s first get into what this update is all about.
So, what is Bert?
Bert stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.
You are probably wondering, what the heck does that mean, right?
Google, in essence, has adjusted its algorithm to better understand natural language processing.
Just think of it this way: you could put a flight number into Google and they typically show you the flight status. Or a calculator may come up when you type in a math equation. Or if you put a stock symbol in, you’ll get a stock chart.
Or even a simpler example is: you can start typing into Google and its autocomplete feature can figure out what you are searching for before you even finishing typing it in.
But Google has already had all of that figured out before Bert. So let’s look at some examples of Bert in action.
Let’s say you search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need visa”.
Before Bert, the top result would be how US citizens can travel to Brazil without a visa. But look at the search query carefully… it’s slight, but it is a big difference.
The search wasn’t about US people going to Brazil, it was about people from Brazil traveling to the US.
The result after the Bert update is much more relevant.
Google is now taking into account prepositions like “for” or “to” that can have a lot of meanings to the search query.
Here’s another example… “do estheticians stand a lot at work”…
Google used to previously match terms. For example, their system used to think “stand” is the same as “stand-alone”.
Now they understand that the word “stand” has the context of physical demand. In other words, is the job exhausting… do you have to be on your feet a lot?
And one more, “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy” …
As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear that the new result is more relevant.
Same with this one on “math practice books for adults” …
Is that the only change?
It isn’t. Google also made changes to featured snippets.
For example, if you searched for “parking on a hill with no curb”, Google used to place too much emphasis on the word “curb” and not enough emphasis on the word “no”.
That’s a big difference… and you can see that in the results.
The new changes this algorithm update brings makes it much more relevant for searchers and it creates a better experience for you and me and everyone else who uses Google.
But how does it affect SEOs?
You need to change your SEO strategy
There are three types of queries people usually make when performing a search:
Informational
Navigational
Transactional
An informational query is like someone looking to lose weight. They aren’t sure how so they may search for “how to lose weight”.
And once they perform the search, they may find a solution such as different diets. From there they may search for a solution, using a navigational query such as “Atkins diet”.
Once someone figures out the exact solution, they then may perform a transactional search query, such as “the Atkins diet cookbook”.
From what we are seeing on our end is that Bert is mainly impacting top-of-the-funnel keywords, which are informational related keywords.
Now if you want to not only maintain your rankings but gobble up some of the rankings of your competition, a simple solution is to get very specific with your content.
Typically, when you create content, which is the easiest way to rank for informational related keywords, SEOs tell you to create super long content.
Yes, you may see that a lot of longer-form content ranks well on Google, but their algorithm doesn’t focus on word count, it focuses on quality.
The context of the tweet from Danny Sullivan, who is Google’s search liaison, is that he wants SEOs to focus on creating content that is fundamentally great, unique, useful, and compelling.
So when you use tools like Ubersuggest to find new topics to go after, you need to make sure your content is super-specific.
For example, if you have a business about fitness and you blog about “how to lose weight without taking pills”, your content shouldn’t focus on diet shakes or supplements or anything too similar to diet pills. Instead, it should discuss all of the alternative methods.
I know what you are thinking, shakes and supplements may not be diet pills and they aren’t the same keyword but expect Bert to get more sophisticated in the next year in which it will better understand what people are really looking for.
Additionally, you should stop focusing on keyword density.
Yes, a lot of SEOs have moved away from this, but I still get a handful of emails each day asking me about keyword density.
Keyword density will even be less important in the future as Google better understands the context of the content you are writing.
So, where’s the opportunity?
As I mentioned, it’s related to creating highly specific content around a topic.
It’s not necessarily about creating a really long page that talks about 50 different things that’s 10,000 words long. It’s more about answering a searcher’s question as quick as possible and providing as much value compared to the competition.
Just like when you search for “what is it like to be in the Olympics”, you’ll see a list of results that look something like this:
Although the first result has the title of “What it’s like to go to the Olympics”, the article doesn’t break down what it is like to go as an attendee, it breaks down what it is like to go as an athlete. Just like a searcher would expect based on the query.
Bert was clearly able to figure this out even though the title could have gone either way. And the article itself isn’t that long. The article itself only has 311 words.
If you want to do well when it comes to ranking for informational keywords, go very specific and answer the question better than your competitors. From videos and images to audio, do whatever needs to be done to create a better experience.
Now to be clear, this doesn’t mean that long-form content doesn’t work. It’s just that every SEO already focuses on long-form content. They are going after generic head terms that can be interpreted in 100 different ways and that’s why the content may be long and thorough.
In other words, focus more on long-tail terms.
You may think that is obvious but let’s look at the data.
It all starts with Ubersuggest. If you haven’t used it yet, you can type in a keyword like “marketing” and it will show you the search volume as well as give you thousands (if not millions) of keyword variations.
In the last 30 days, 4,721,534 keyword queries were performed on Ubersuggest by 694,284 marketers. Those 4,721,534 searches returned 1,674,841,398 keyword recommendations.
And sure, SEOs could be typing in head terms to find more long-tail phrases, but when we look at what keywords people are selecting within Ubersuggest and exporting, 84% of marketers are focusing on 1 or 2-word search terms.
Only 1.7% of marketers are focusing on search terms that are 5 or words longer.
Following the strategy of creating content around very specific long-tail phrases is so effective that sites like Quora are generating 60,428,999 visitors a month just from Google alone in the United States.
And a lot of their content isn’t super detailed with 10,000-word responses. They just focus on answering very specific questions that people have.
Conclusion
Even if your search traffic drops a bit from the latest update, it’s a good thing.
I know that sounds crazy, but think of it this way… if someone searched for “how to lose weight without diet pills” and they landed on your article about how diet pills are amazing, they are just going to hit the back button and go back to Google.
In other words, it is unlikely that the traffic converted into a conversion.
Sure, you may lose some traffic from this update, but the traffic was ruining your user metrics and increasing your bounce rate.
Plus, this is your opportunity to create content that is super-specific. If you lose traffic, look at the pages that dropped, the search queries that you aren’t ranking for anymore, and go and adjust your content or create new content that answers the questions people are looking for.
If you don’t know how to do this, just log into Search Console, click on “search results”, and click on the date button.
Then click on compare and select the dates where your traffic dropped and compare it to the previous periods. Then select “Queries” and sort by the biggest difference.
You’ll have to dig for the longer-term search queries as those are the easiest to fix. And if you are unsure about what to fix, just search for the terms on Google that dropped and look at the top-ranking competitors. Compare their page with yours as it will provide some insights.
