How to Build Links Using Google Alerts

Link building is hard. But did you know that Google makes it easier for you?

Seriously… they do make it easier because they provide you with free tools.

No, I’m not talking about the ones you already use like Google Search Console and Google Analytics…

They actually have tons of other tools. Some you may have heard of, but I bet you don’t use them.

And today I am going to show you how you can build links using Google Alerts.

What is Google Alerts?

As the saying goes, if it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist.

Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Their database contains hundreds of billions of web pages and is over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size.

Because of their massive size, they are able to crawl web pages more frequently than any SEO tool including my own, Ubersuggest. This is precisely why you want to start using Google Alerts to build links.

So, what is Google Alerts?

As I mentioned above, they have a bigger database of web pages than any other link building or SEO tool. So, you’ll want to use their database to find easy link opportunities and ideally without wasting time digging through billions or even thousands of web pages.

Google Alerts allows you to create notifications on any subject, topic, or keyword.

So, when a new web page talks about anything that could be an easy link opportunity, you’ll get notified in an email.

Just like this one…

So, let’s set it all up step by step so you can get some backlinks.

How to set up Google Alerts

First, I want you to go here.

You’ll see a screen that looks like this (make sure you sign in at the top right).

I want you to type in your domain name without the www or the https part.

In my case, I would type in: neilpatel.com

You may see an alert preview like the one above, but if you have a newer site you probably won’t see any results, which is fine.

Then I want you to click on the “Show Options” link next to the “Create Alert” button.

Your settings should match mine:

• How often – at most once a day
• Sources – Blogs, Web (select those 2 options, you don’t want news as an option as it tends to create more irrelevant results and we’ve found that it is harder to get news sites to link back to you)
• Language – English (or the language you are targeting)
• Region – any region (or you can select the country you are targeting although I recommend picking “any region”)
• How many – all results
• Deliver to – should be your email.

And then click “Create Alert.”

Up to once a day, you’ll get an email with a list of pages that mentions your website or domain.

I want you to repeat the process and create an alert for the following items:

• Your domain – you should have just done this.
• Brand name – in my case I would create an alert for “Neil Patel.”
• Product names – if you are selling any services or products you can create an alert around that. In my case, I would create an alert for “Ubersuggest.”
• Industry terms – create alerts for anything related to your industry. When people are talking about your space, it is an easy link opportunity. In my case, I would create alerts for the terms: digital marketing, online marketing, and SEO.
• Your email address – create an alert anytime someone gives out your email. Again, another easy link opportunity.

Here’s what mine looks like:

You’ll also notice for all of my two-word phrases I have quotation marks around them.

For example, I would not create an alert for: Neil Patel

But, I would create an alert for: “Neil Patel”

The reason being is that alerts for two-word phrases without quotes aren’t as relevant. For example, here are some alerts from the term: online marketing.

When I use quotes, here are the results.

See the difference?

Getting links

Now that you have alerts set up, it is time to get links.

Keep in mind that when you get an alert email, someone could have already linked to you. So, not every alert will be a link building opportunity, but many will be.

Typically, more than half will be opportunities.

Depending on the alert type, some will be easier than others. So, let’s go over how to convert each opportunity into a link.

Your domain

You’ll find that a good portion of the mentions of your domain will contain a link back to your site.

For those, you don’t have to do anything as you’ve already got a link. 🙂

For the ones that aren’t linking to you, I want you to send the following email to the webmaster…

Subject: Did you make a mistake?

Hey [insert first name],

First off, I just wanted to say thanks for mentioning [insert your domain] in this article [insert a link to the URL that mentions your domain].

I know you are busy so I will just cut to the chase.

Would you mind hotlinking my domain to my website? I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that extra traffic really helps small companies like mine.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.

Brand name

When it comes to brand names, it is a 50/50 shot. Roughly half the people will link to you when they mention your brand and the other half won’t.

For the ones that didn’t, send them this email:

Subject: You forgot to do this

Hey [insert first name],

I’m flattered.

Thank you for mentioning [insert your brand name] in your article on [insert the title of their article].

[insert the URL of their article]

You really made my day with that.

Again, thank you!

I feel bad doing this because you already mentioned us, but it would mean the world to me if you also linked our name to our site.

Would you mind doing that?

Sorry to bug you.

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.

Product names

With product names, usually 70% to 80% of the websites will be linking back to you and the rest not. For the ones that don’t, send them an email similar to this:

Subject: Did you mean to do this?

Hey [insert their first name],

I just wanted to take a minute to tell you how much I appreciate that you mentioned [insert your brand name] here [insert the URL of the webpage that mentions your product].

Seriously, thank you!

Now, I feel bad doing this, but would you mind hotlinking [insert your product name] to this page on our website where people can find the product [insert the URL on your site that covers the product]?

Sorry to bug you.

And again, thank you for mentioning us. It really means a lot.

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.

Your email address

Now this one is rare as most people won’t be publishing your email address.

And when they do, they usually aren’t linking to you.

If you try to get them to link the email address, you will find it hard. But what’s easier is to get them to remove your email address and link to your contact page instead.

Here’s the email template I use for this.

Subject: Privacy issue

Hey [insert their first name],

I noticed you mentioned our email address, [insert your email address], on this page [insert the page they mentioned your email on].

Would you mind mentioning and linking to our contact page instead [insert your contact page URL]?

For privacy reasons, I would rather have people get in touch with us through that page instead of our email.

Thanks for your time.

[insert your name]

You also notice that in this template I didn’t include the PS at the bottom. The PS typically helps boost your success ratio, but when it comes to this email, you want to be a bit more firm as it is related to your privacy.

You ideally want the link and fewer people sharing your email because then you’ll have to deal with a ton of spam messages.

Industry terms

In almost all cases, alerts that contain industry terms won’t be linking to you. And this group will also be the largest number of results you get with each alert email.

You’ll have to go through each alert and look at the context of the web page.

If they are talking about something that you have already covered on your website and did more in-depth than they have, there is a good chance you can convince them to link to you.

For example, if there is an article about SEO and they mention how you need to build links, but they don’t go into how to build links, I would email the site owner pointing to this article as it breaks down how to build links.

Here is the type of email I would send:

Subject: Some feedback for you

Hey [insert their first name],

Love your article on [insert the topic of their article] [insert the URL of their article].

I just have one piece of feedback for you (hope you don’t get offended), but you mention [insert the subject they mention that you go more in-depth on within your own site], but you didn’t go too in-depth on it.

I think if you adjusted that it would provide a lot more value to your readers.

Or if you don’t have the time to, I already have an article on it here [insert the URL on your site where you go in-depth on that topic] that you could just link to.

Let me know your thoughts.

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.

How do I get in touch?

Now that you know what kind of emails to send depending on the alert you receive, you’ll have to, of course, get in touch with the site owner.

So how do you find their email address?

Well, the simplest way is to go to their contact page and see if their email is there or if they have a contact form.

You can also check out their terms of service or privacy policy.

Another option is to use tools like Hunter. Just type in a domain name into Hunter and you’ll see a list of people you can contact.

Their free plan allows 50 requests per month, which should be enough to get you started.

Conclusion

Google Alerts is an easy way to build links so I would start with that.

What’s beautiful about it is that you’ll get notified of opportunities. This will save you a lot of time.

And if you find yourself with a bit of extra time, I recommend one more strategy to build links.

Go here and put in your competition’s URL.

Once you hit “search” you’ll see a report that looks something like this:

These are all of the websites linking to your competition. What’s interesting about this list is that it is sorted.

The results at the top have more authority, in which they typically boost SEO rankings more than the ones at the bottom of the list.

You’ll want to go through the list, click on each site, and see if it makes sense to reach out to that website and ask them to link to you.

Typically, if you have similar content to your competition that is more thorough, it’s possible to convince someone to link to you. You’ll have to send them emails like the one below…

Hey [insert their first name],

Question for you…

How do you think it makes you look to your readers when you link to another site that doesn’t really help them?

It kind of makes you look bad and maybe even lose a little bit of trust with your readers, right?

In this article [insert the URL on their site], you link out to [insert the competition’s URL].

The article you are linking to doesn’t cover [insert the areas the competition missed].

I actually have an article [insert your article URL] that covers [insert what you cover that the competition doesn’t and why it benefits readers more].

If you aren’t interested in linking to us no worries. I just know that you care about your readers and you want to do the best for them.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

PS: Let me know if I can do anything for you.

If you follow the steps above, you’ll start building links.

It isn’t that hard and you can do it. You just have to be willing to put in the time and not get discouraged if you send out a handful of emails and no one links back to you.

Just think of your email as a sales pitch and it may not be perfect the first time… so you may have to modify and adjust it.

If you have any questions on the steps or are confused about anything, just leave a comment below.

The post How to Build Links Using Google Alerts appeared first on Neil Patel.

Welcome to Ecommerce Unlocked: Your Free Ecommerce Marketing Course

E-commerce is booming.

There are currently 24 million e-commerce sites and counting. And with only 12% of sales taking place online, you can expect there to be massive growth in the years to come.

So if you want to create an online business, one of the best ones to create is an e-commerce store.

But how do you market it? How do you grow your traffic? And, most importantly, how do you get sales?

Sure you can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you out, but what do you do if you need step-by-step instructions from the very beginning… especially if you have little-to-no marketing experience?

Introducing E-Commerce Unlocked

Over the next 4 weeks, I am going to teach you how to market an e-commerce website. From SEO to paid ads to even CRO… I am going to cover all aspects of e-commerce marketing.

And of course, all for free. 😉

E-Commerce Unlocked is similar to my free SEO training course, SEO Unlocked.

But unlike SEO Unlocked, which is a 7-week course, I thought it would be more efficient to get you the training you need in just 4 weeks.

So, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, I will release new videos to teach you how to get more traffic and sales to an e-commerce site.

And just like SEO Unlocked, E-Commerce Unlocked will contain worksheets, cheat sheets, PDFs, spreadsheets, and everything else you need.

Here’s the first lesson, which you can watch below:

Make sure you go here to download the worksheets that go along with it.

So what exactly will I learn?

As I mentioned above, it is a 4-week course. Here is an overview of what will be broken down in each week and in each lesson:

Week #1

Lesson #1: Getting Started

• Foundation methodology
• Strategies you’re going to learn
• Strategies & mindset

Lesson #2: Sales Channels

• History of e-commerce the timeline
• What is working in the e-commerce space
• Introduction to sales channels
• Understanding sales channels

Lesson #3: Marketing Channels

• Multi-channel marketing
• Which market and sales channels work
• Building visibility and brand
• Current & future movers and shakers in the e-commerce industry

Week #2

Lesson #1: Conversion Rate Optimization

• Introduction
• Product pages made to convert buyers
• Experience
• Using reviews
• Urgency and scarcity
• Abandoned carts and follow up
• Increase your AOV (Average Order Value)
• Exit intent – capture lost traffic
• Split testing with Crazy Egg
• Increasing conversions on your e-commerce store
• Email marketing campaigns for your site
• Action tasks for optimizing your website for conversions

Lesson #2: SEO & Content Production

• Setting up your Google organic feed
• Rank your product listing pages
• E-commerce content marketing workflow
• Technical SEO for e-commerce
• Making your content & transaction pages
• E-commerce topical clusters
• Content examples to look at

Lesson #3: Content Promotion

• Link building for e-commerce
• Building links to content, PDPs, & PLPs
• Social media and social proof leveraging
• Social media platforms in the long-term
• Strategy for content promotion

Week #3

Lesson #1: Amazon

• Keyword research for Google & Amazon rankings (and the differences)
• Data sources
• How to write good copy, product descriptions, ads, and come up with different marketing “angles” for Amazon
• Amazon promotions & lightning
• Optimize your listings
• Using Facebook Messenger & Manychat
• Amazon PPC
• Sell more to your existing customers

Lesson #2: Sales Channels

• Getting higher rankings on marketplaces
• Walmart – how to get set up and what to expect
• eBay – how to get set up and what to expect
• Etsy – how to get set up and what to expect
• Wish – how to get set up and what to expect
• Facebook Commerce – how to win
• Getting traction on each platform & what to do to win in each platform

Lesson #3: Marketing Types

• E-commerce Marketing for (B2B) vs (B2C)
• Sales process for B2B e-commerce vs B2C
• Picking the one that’s right for you – do both or pick one?

Week #4

Lesson #1: PLA Campaigns

• Setting everything up
• Google dynamic remarketing
• Google product listing ads (Google Shopping Ads) introduction + setting up
• Your PLA campaigns
• Bing product listing ads + setting up
• Facebook dynamic product ads + setting up DPA’s correctly
• PLA + DPA summary

Lesson #2: Additional Marketing Channels

• Instagram ads
• YouTube PPC – world’s 2nd largest search engine work to get you sales
• Etsy PPC – what’s working on Etsy
• Email marketing campaigns must have campaigns for e-commerce
• Automate your customer emails and gather reviews much faster

Lesson #3: Additional Channels

• Working with influencers
• Push notification – lists & messaging
• Understanding your metrics (COGS, ROAS, ROI to see what SKUs to scale with)
• Case studies
• Summary

How can I follow along during the 4 weeks?

You’ll see videos released every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.

The videos are roughly 10 to 15 minutes in length on average so it shouldn’t take you more than an hour per week to follow along, including the completion of the homework assignments and worksheets.

To make things easier, the worksheets and homework assignments will be somewhat pre-filled so you will know what to do every step of the way.

No matter what, make sure you complete each assignment. Watching the videos is not enough.

Sure, the videos will teach you theories and strategies, but you also need to learn how to execute and implement. That’s why I want you to complete the worksheet and homework assignments.

In total, I’m asking you to commit an hour each week. If you are new to marketing, maybe an hour and a half, which should be doable. 🙂

Once you complete the 4 weeks (12 videos), you’ll know how to market any e-commerce website and even how to sell products online on sites like Amazon.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss a lesson (because I won’t be blogging about each lesson), make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel as I will be uploading the lessons there.

Once you click the link above, you’ll see a subscription box popup on YouTube. All you have to do is click the “SUBSCRIBE” button.

Once you click “Subscribe,” you’ll notice a bell image next to the subscribe button, make sure you click on that as well.

When you click on the bell, you’ll be given a few options.

Click on the “All” option. Next to the “subscribed” button, you should see a new bell notification :

This makes it so YouTube notifies you when I release a new E-commerce Unlocked lesson.

Conclusion

E-commerce is a booming field. Just look at Amazon, they are bigger than any traditional retailer.

Having the skillset of knowing how to market an e-commerce site can never be a bad thing.

And who knows, maybe you’ll do it full time as either a consultant or through running your own e-commerce site.

If you are new to marketing, don’t worry about being overwhelemed. I am going to teach you the main tactics that drive the majority of the results. And I will break them down in a simple step-by-step formula.

You’ll also be provided with the worksheets and tools you need, so you all you have to do is bring yourself and be willing to commit an hour to an hour and a half each week.

So, are you ready to learn e-commerce marketing?

PS: Leave a comment below letting me know what course you would like me to create next. I already did one on SEO, and now I am doing one on e-commerce marketing. Would you like one on content marketing, paid ads, Instagram…? It can be anything, just let me know in the comments.

The post Welcome to Ecommerce Unlocked: Your Free Ecommerce Marketing Course appeared first on Neil Patel.

The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time

When I first got into the world of SEO, you could literally optimize your site for any term and rank at the top of Google within a month or two.

But of course, that was ages ago.

Now with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, it takes more time and effort to get results.

But what happens if you don’t have the luxury of time? Or you don’t have the financial resources to put in the effort that is truly needed.

What should you do?

Just forget about SEO?

Of course not. Today, I want to call out 11 tools that will help you get an edge over your competition. But unlike most lists, I am going to get very specific on the feature I want you to use within each tool to make your life easier and help you get results faster with less effort.

Let’s dive right in.

Tool #1: Ubersuggest Projects

You probably already know about Ubersuggest, but do you really have time to spend hours and hours each week to do your SEO?

Chances are you don’t.

So how do you improve your traffic with the least amount of effort?

You set up a project in Ubersuggest.

As you can see, it shows your SEO traffic over time. It will let you know if your rankings are going up or down, your link growth, and your SEO issues.

With so many things going on in marketing, you don’t have time to manually check your rankings or if things are going up or down or even what you need to fix.

Ubersuggest will do it for you all automatically and even notify you of what needs to happen through email. That way you don’t have to constantly check your SEO. Ubersuggest will do it all automatically.

More so, you’ll get notified of what you need to focus on each week to maximize your traffic.

All you have do is head to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.”

It’s as simple as adding in your URL.

Then select the locations you do business in and want traffic from.

Then add in the keywords you currently rank for or want to go after.

And of course, set up your traffic preferences.

And then you’ll be good to go.

Then when things go great, you’ll be notified. And when things are going wrong, you’ll also be notified. Ubersuggest will even tell you what to fix.

That way you get the maximum results in the least amount of time.

Tool #2: Google Analytics Alerts

You have Google Analytics set up on your site, but how often do you log in?

And when you do log in, do you know what to focus on or what to look at?

And if you do, do you know what to do with that data?

Google Analytics is a great tool, but you don’t want to waste hours and hours looking at reports. Instead, you want to spend your time doing and getting results.

But if you set up alerts in Google Analytics, you can save tons of time.

If you watch from the 6:33 mark, it will show you how to set up alerts. I added the whole video as it will teach you how to set up Google Analytics in general in case you don’t have goal tracking set it place.

Once you set up alerts, you’ll again get notified when anything good or bad happens. I usually have alerts set up for only when things go bad, so I know when I need to focus on fixing my marketing.

Tool #3: Trello

You’re probably thinking how the heck is Trello a marketing tool. It really isn’t, but it is a good project management tool.

And with your SEO, you may have a team helping you out and Trello will help streamline the process, make you more efficient, and get your results faster.

I keep my Trello board simple by breaking it into 3 sections.

• To do – what needs to be done over time.
• Prioritized – what I need to be done now (tasks at the top are the most important)
• Done – tasks that need to be double-checked to ensure they were done right.

It’s that simple. That way you don’t have to micromanage your team.

Some people have more complex Trello boards, but something simple like I have worked too.

If you want to create a Trello board for your content marketing, assuming you want to write lots of content (such as 10 posts a week), this process works well.

The columns I use for content writers are:

• Topics – this is where writers add topics they want to write about.
• Outline review – writers submit their outline before they write for approval.
• Draft – writers submit their rough draft.
• Draft review – editors review each draft.
• Uploaded, prepared, and ready to review – this is where the editor adds the post to your CMS (like WordPress).
• Scheduled – this is where you schedule the content to go live.
• Done – the content is now live.

We’ve found it effective if you are managing dozens of writers at once.

Tool #4: Content Decay Tool

Can you guess how many articles I write each week?

1.

Seriously, that’s it. 1 article a week which is roughly 4 to 5 per month (depending on how many weeks in the month).

And can you guess how many articles my team and I update each week?

21.

That’s roughly 90 a month.

Just think about it… why would I have a team of 3 people updating 90 articles per month when I only write 1 a week.

It’s because updating old content is an easier way to get more SEO traffic than it is to create new content.

But what content should you update?

The content decay tool will tell you that.

It breaks down in order which articles you should update first, second, third… based on what will generate you the most traffic.

If you are wondering what is involved with updating content, just think of it this way:

• Is there anything outdated within your post – if so, either update the outdated information and make it relevant again. If you can’t, then delete that part from your article.
• Can you use media to improve the experience – do you need to embed videos, add more pictures, maybe even add an infographic? Use media to better tell your story and message.
• Are you including the right keywords – a simple way to get more traffic is to integrate other popular related keywords within your article. Whatever your article is about, insert it into Ubersuggest and head to the “Keyword Ideas” report in the left-hand navigation.
• Is there anything missing – try to poke holes within your content. What could you have done to make it better? What do your competitors talk about that you forgot to mention? What questions didn’t you answer that the reader might have? By asking yourself these simple questions, you’ll be able to make it better.

Tool #5: Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

If you haven’t installed the Ubersuggest Chrome extension, make sure you do so.

I’m not going to bore you with all of the features of the extension… instead, I am going to give you one thing that will save you time.

You know when you Google for information to learn more on any subject?

Chances are, sometimes you are Googling to learn something related to your space. And when you do, you’ll find that your site usually won’t be at the top of those search results.

And that’s ok.

But when you do a search, you’ll notice “monthly searches” in the Google search bar.

This shows you how often that keyword is searched.

So anytime you are looking up anything in your space, pay attention to that number. If you see a keyword with over 5,000 searches, it may be worth targeting.

And as you scroll down and start going through the sites that rank at the top, you’ll notice metrics under each site.

If you notice a web page with thousands of social shares and hundreds of links, it should reaffirm that you probably want to go after that term. And the listing that has thousands of social shares and hundreds of links is a good benchmark of a page that is high in quality and what people in your space prefer.

Ideally, you want to create something better than that one, as that is the main way you beat them over time.

Tool #6: Hello Bar

SEO is very different than paid traffic.

With paid traffic, you can drive people to a landing page with very little content, which makes it easier to generate sales or leads.

With SEO, Google prefers to rank content-rich sites.

But when someone lands on a page full of educational-based content, they are less likely to convert into a customer.

There’s a simple fix… Hello Bar.

Hello Bar has a lot of features, but I just want you to use the top bar like I do on NeilPatel.com.

And as you scroll it moves along with you.

That one little thing allows me to improve my conversion rate from my SEO traffic.

You can easily adjust what you show with a few simple clicks within Hello Bar or you can even show people different messages based on where they are coming from.

Although SEO traffic doesn’t convert as well as paid traffic, it is much cheaper in the long run and does have a better overall ROI. And that one little Hello Bar will improve your numbers.

It’s responsible for 9.4% of revenue from NeilPatel.com.

Every little bit adds up.

Tool #7: Mozcast

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes a year.

Are you really going to keep up to date with all of them?

If you followed the first tool and set up a project in Ubersuggest, you’ll get notified when your rankings go down.

And if you set up alerts in Google Analytics (tool number 2) you’ll also get notified when your traffic drops drastically.

What you’ll find is that it’s overwhelming to keep up with all of Google’s updates and it could be confusing to figure out what you need to fix to get your traffic back.

This report on Moz keeps track of all of the algorithm updates and gives you an overview of what has changed or what the update is about. On top of that, you’ll want to check out the Mozcast if you get a notification of ranking or traffic drops as this tool confirms if other people are also seeing changes from a Google update.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t announce each update, hence you’ll want to cross-reference what you are seeing with the Mozcast.

That way you don’t have to spend hours researching each update.

Tool #8: Detailed

Link building is a pain. There are so many link tools like this one… but let’s not kid ourselves… you just don’t have the time to spend 10 to 20 hours a week doing link building.

So, each minute you spend, you have to make sure it counts.

There’s a tool called Detailed that breaks down the best links for every industry.

All you have to do is select an industry and a site and it shows you all of the good links that are going to your competition.

You can then focus your efforts on reaching out to those sites to get links.

Sure, you will still need to have amazing content or a good product or service in order to convince those sites to link to you, but hey, if you don’t have any of that it’s going to be hard to do well in the first place.

So, don’t waste your time trying to search for links when Detailed will give you a list of hundreds of amazing sites to get links from within your space.

Tool #9: Site Speed Audit

Speed impacts rankings.

Google doesn’t want to rank slow websites anymore.

It doesn’t matter that technology has become better and you can now purchase satellite Internet. Not every location has blazing fast Internet.

For that reason, Google has an Accelerated Mobile Pages framework that helps with mobile load time.

But that’s not enough, you also need your website to load fast.

So, go here and put in your URL.

You’ll then be taken to a report that looks like this:

What’ll you want to focus on is site speed. That Ubersuggest report pulls from Google Lighthouse.

So, send that to your developer and tell them to get you in the green mark for both mobile and desktop load times.

As your speed goes up, so will your SEO rankings and traffic over time.

Tool #10: Supermetrics

Are you tired of having your data everywhere?

Why would you want to log into four of five different apps to get your SEO and marketing data when you could log into one.

And no, I am not talking about Google Analytics. I am talking about Google Data Studio.

If you haven’t used it yet, sign up for it… it’s free.

Google Data Studio is a business intelligence tool that will show you all of your data in one place.

So how do you get all of your SEO data into Google Data Studio? You use Supermetrics.

It passes all of your SEO data from different sources into Data Studio, so you no longer have to log into multiple tools, including Google Analytics.

My favorite feature in Supermetrics is you can automate your marketing reporting, so you no longer have to create your reports manually.

Tool #11: VidIQ

Google is the most popular search engine.

But do you know what the second most popular search engine is?

It’s not Bing… it’s actually YouTube, which Google actually owns.

If you haven’t done YouTube SEO yet, you should reconsider. Just look at how much search traffic I get from YouTube each month.

This article will break down how to do YouTube SEO if you want to learn how it works.

But to make things easier, install this Chrome extension.

Whenever you perform a search on YouTube it will show you what’s popular, what keywords are being searched that are related to each video, and which tags people are using to get more SEO traffic.

I wanted to end this post with VidIQ because it’s not competitive.

See, unlike traditional SEO, it doesn’t take months to see results. YouTube SEO is the opposite in which it isn’t as competitive (yet) and you can rank at the top within 24 to 48 hours of releasing a video (seriously!).

Conclusion

They say SEO is hard and time-consuming. And I am not going to lie, you won’t get results unless you put in some effort.

But who says it has to be as time-consuming?

By using some of the tools I mentioned above you’ll save time. It really is that simple.

I know there is a lot and it can be overwhelming. So if you don’t have time to use all of the tools it is fine… just start at the top and work your way down (I put them in order based on what will save you the most time).

What other ways do you save time on your SEO?

The post The SEO Tool Kit: 11 Tools That’ll Save You Time appeared first on Neil Patel.

The 4 Ps of Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (With Examples)

The 4 Ps of marketing…

You’ve probably heard about them from a friend, a textbook, or even at school.

I know it sounds like a boring topic that’s common sense, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

And no, it’s not just for large companies… the smaller you are, the more important for you it is to leverage the 4 Ps.

So before we dive into it, let’s first break down what they are…

What are the 4 Ps of marketing?

The 4 Ps of marketing is a famous concept that summarizes the 4 basic pillars of any marketing strategy: product, price, place, and promotion.

It sounds simple and it really is (the harder part is implementing it, which we will get into later).

The idea behind the theory is that if you implement them, you will generate more sales. But sadly nothing is that easy. :/

The origin of the concept, also known as marketing mix, goes back to 1960 when McCarthy introduced it in his book Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach.

I know that’s ages ago, but it is just as valid today.

Let’s dive into each P…

Product

The product is what the company sells.

It might be a product like a soft drink in the beverage industry or dresses in a clothing store. Or these days it may even be software like Ubersuggest.

It could also be services, such as consulting or a paid speaking gig or even a therapy session.

In short, the product is everything that is made available to the consumer.

In the 4 Ps strategy, defining this means understanding what your offer needs in order to stand apart from competitors and win over customers.

In other words, what makes your product so great or unique? Because if you don’t stand out it’s going to be hard to thrive.

For example, you may know about my product Ubersuggest, but you probably already know about a handful of my competitors?

So what’s the big thing that makes my product stand out from everyone else?

I don’t focus on features… I don’t have 100s of reports… instead, I focus on usability. My goal is to make Ubersuggest really easy to use, especially if you are new to marketing.

On the flip side, my competitors focus on ad agencies and really advanced marketers. I built something for a different target market, even though I am in a crowded market place.

How to create an amazing product that your customers love

I want you to do something simple… go to Hotjar, signup for a free account, and run a poll. Just like the one below.

I’ve been running polls for a while now, but if you are starting off I would ask open-ended questions like:

• What’s the biggest problem I can help you solve? (This will give you an idea on what your product needs to do)
• What’s your favorite marketing product and why? (You’ll want to replace the word “marketing” with whatever industry you are in… this question gives you an idea about who your competition is and what they are doing right)
• Why did you come here today? (This will tell you why people come to your site and what they are looking for)
• How can we make our product better? (This is great if you already have a product up as you will get real feedback)
• What don’t you like about COMPETITOR ABC? (Replace competitor ABC with your competition’s name… this question tells you where there is an opportunity)

I want you to pay special attention to the last question. It really helps you identify how you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

Now, before you go and build a product (or make yours better if you already have one), don’t invest too much time and money without getting feedback.

For example, if I were to add a new feature to Ubersuggest, I wouldn’t just build it. I would get it designed, show you first, get feedback, and then adjust from there.

That way I won’t waste months’ worth of time building a product you don’t want to use.

Price

Price is simple, it refers to how many you charge for your product (or service).

And although it’s simple to understand, it’s really hard to come up with the “right” price. The one that doesn’t just drive the most amount of sales but also drives the most profit.

The real question is, how do you want to be perceived?

Amazon wants to be the place where you can get the best-valued products from A to Z. And of course, delivered at a fast pace so it’s convenient for you.

My buddies’ company, Imperia Caviar offers high-end caviar at low prices. He’s able to get the same caviar that big brands charge thousands of dollars.

You would think that by having a cheap price he is cheapening his brand, but instead, he is bringing transparency to the market and educating people on how caviar isn’t really expensive… it’s actually just a marketing ploy.

I take a similar approach to Ubersuggest. I don’t think marketing software and education should be so expensive. So I give a lot away for free or super cheap.

Do you think that has cheapened my brand or hurt it? Well, let’s look at the data:

I guess not. 🙂

But on the flip side, would Ferrari be Ferrari if their cars were selling for $10,000? Probably not.

How to pick the right price for your product

By no means am I a pricing expert so I don’t want to tell you what to price your product at. But I will tell you to read the Price Intelligently blog. Those guys know to price like the back of their hand and they have dozens of articles that will teach you exactly how to price your product.

It’s important to think about pricing, especially if you are in a crowded space. My rule of thumb is: If you are in a new space or already a leader, you can charge a premium amount.

On the flip side, if your space is saturated and you are late to the market, you’ll want to consider having a cheaper price (if not the cheapest price).

Some questions you should ask yourself are:

• What would be the lowest price you are willing to sell your product?
• What would be the highest price that consumers would be willing to pay?
• How sensitive to price are your customers?
• What prices do current leaders in your niche charge?
• How does your price compare to the competition?

Place

“Place” is another word for location.

As they say in marketing, it’s all about the… location, location, location.

I once ran a tech conference in Los Angeles called Twiistup.

It was a cool event with LA vibes and celebrities. I didn’t create the event, I bought it out years ago.

But you know what? It failed.

It wasn’t because the event wasn’t good, it was more so that I moved it to a terrible location.

I moved it from Santa Monica, which is the heart of the Los Angeles tech scene, to the valley, which is an hour drive from where all the tech companies are located.

In other words… location, location, location.

You have to pick a location where your customers are. Don’t expect them to come to you, you have to go to them.

How to pick the right place

The web is this virtual world. And although the location (place) may seem irrelevant, it really isn’t.

Just think of it this way… if I put my company all over Tiktok, what do you think would happen?

Well, I wouldn’t generate any new clients for my ad agency because none of my ideal customers are on Tiktok.

Do you think a bunch of 16 to 24-year-olds are looking for marketing services? If we offered services where we helped you get more social followers, sure… but we don’t offer that.

Think of the platforms and places your ideal customers are and be there.

That could be a specific site like Google or even an offline venue like conferences. Don’t try to bring your customers to you, go to where your customers are… it’s much easier.

Here are some simple questions to ask yourself so you can find the right place.

• Where is your customer?
• Which outlets (online and offline) sell your product?
• Which distribution channels are currently working for you?
• Do you sell directly to businesses or consumers?
• Do you sell directly to your end customer or do you have to go through middlemen?
• Where are your competitors?

The customer should always be at the center of your decision, but it’s important to also include aspects of the other Ps that we discussed.

Promotion

My favorite P… and the one I tend to blog about the most.

Promotion!

Once you’ve optimized the previous 3 Ps, it’s time to promote your offer.

And to be clear, when I talk about promotion I am not just talking about getting your brand out there… I am talking about generating revenue.

What’s the point of promotion if you can’t drive sales?

But with all of the channels out there on the web, which ones do you start with first?

Well, I want you to go here and put in your competitor’s URL.

If they are big, you’ll see data on how much traffic they are generating… which keywords they rank for on Google… the sites that link to them and talk about them… and even how many social shares they are generating.

If they are small, you won’t see any data. You’ll have to put in a bigger competitor.

Another site that you should use is Similar Web. Put in your competitor’s URL and you’ll see tons of data on how they promote themselves.

What’s cool about the web today, versus when I first got into online marketing, is that there are tons of tools that make your life easy. So use them to your advantage. 😉

How do you promote well?

I want you to start off by asking yourself the following questions:

• Which channels does your audience use the most to consume information?
• What kind of message tends to be more effective when promoting your solutions?
• What is the ideal period for promoting your product?
• Is there any concern about seasonality?
• How do your competitors plan and carry out their promotion?

Again, you can use the tools I mentioned above to get a jump start. Another thing I would highly recommend is that you look at Facebook’s ad library.

It will show you the ads that your competition runs and, more importantly, the messaging that they use.

Now, I won’t bore you to death about promotion tips as I already have tons of blog posts on that. But I would start off with these:

• Online marketing
• SEO
• Social media
• Google ads
• Facebook ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Content marketing
• Email

Conclusion

The 4 Ps of marketing may seem boring, but they are essential.

Without them, how are you going to differentiate yourself from the competition? It really is important to stand out.

No one cares for another me-too company. We all want something unique, special… something we resonate with.

And how do you get that? You leverage the 4 Ps.

How are you leveraging the 4 Ps of marketing?

The post The 4 Ps of Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (With Examples) appeared first on Neil Patel.

Google’s New Algorithm: Page Experience

Don’t worry… your traffic hasn’t gone down (or up) because of the Page Experience algorithm update hasn’t rolled out yet.

But it will in 2021 according to Google.

Due to the coronavirus, they decided to give us all a heads up on the future algorithm update and what it entails… that way you can adjust your website so your traffic doesn’t tank.

So, what’s the Page Experience update and how can you prepare for it?

Page Experience

In Google’s own words, here is what it means…

The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.

In other words, they are looking for how usable your website is.

Here’s an example of what they don’t want…

As you can see from the graphic above, the user was trying to click on “No, go back”, but because an install bar popup up at the top, it pushed the whole page down and caused the user to accidentally click on “Yes, place my order.”

The purpose of this update is to make sure that sites that rank at the top aren’t creating experiences that users hate.

The simplest way to think about this update is that user-friendly sites will rank higher than sites that aren’t user friendly.

But this change is the start of a big shift in SEO.

Why is this update so important?

What sites do you think that Google wants to rank at the top?

Take a guess…

Maybe sites with the best backlinks?

Or sites with the buttoned up on page code?

It’s actually none of those.

Google wants to rank the sites at the top that users love the most.

Here’s what I mean…

When you want to buy athletic shoes, what brand comes to mind?

If I had to guess, I bet you’ll say Nike.

And if you were to get a credit card… I bet Visa, American Express, or Mastercard will come to mind.

This is why brand queries (the number of users who search for your brand name on Google and click on your website) impact rankings, which I’ve broken down as one of the most important SEO lessons I learned.

Just look at how the Neil Patel brand has grown over time… the graph below shows the number of people searching for my name over time:

And here is my SEO traffic over time:

As your brand grows so will your SEO traffic.

But that is old news, that’s been part of Google’s algorithm for years now.

Here is the thing though, most sites don’t have large brands and Google knows that. So, if you don’t have one, you can still rank.

At my ad agency, when we look at our clients and their growth over time, only 4% have large well-known brands. The other 96% are still seeing traffic growth.

What Google is doing is adapting its algorithm to more closely align with the mission of showing the sites first that users love the most.

And yes, brand queries are one of the ways they can do this, but user experience is another metric.

Over the next few years, I bet you will see many algorithm updates focusing on user experience.

So how do you optimize your user experience?

It’s starts with each page

If you look at the original article Google posted about the future algorithm change, they emphasize “page experience” or “website experience.”

It doesn’t mean that your whole website shouldn’t have a good user experience, but instead, I bet they are going to focus on their algorithm from a page-level basis.

Because if you have a few pages on your websites that have a poor experience, but the rest are good, it wouldn’t make sense for Google to reduce the rankings of your whole site, especially if many of your pages provide a much better experience than your competition.

Here’s how you optimize your user experience:

Step #1: Optimize your speed and reduce 400 errors

The faster your website loads, the better experience you’ll have.

Go to this page and enter in your URL.

You’ll then see a report that looks like this:

You’ll notice two important aspects of that report that impact user experience that I’ve highlighted in the screenshot above.

In the health checkbox, you’ll want to make sure there are no broken pages. Broken pages create bad experiences.

In the site speed box, you’ll see the load time of your site. The faster your site loads the better. Try to get your website load time for both desktop and mobile under 3 seconds.

Ideally you should be in the 1-second range if possible.

Step #2: Compare your experience to your competitions’

You may think you have an amazing user experience, but how does it stake up to your competition?

So go here and type in your biggest competitor.

I want you to go into the navigation and click on “Top Pages.”

You should see a report like this:

The Top Pages report shows the most popular pages on your competition’s site from an SEO perspective. The pages at the top are the ones with the most SEO traffic, which means they are doing something right.

I want you to go through their top 50 pages. Seriously, their top 50 pages, and look at the user experience of each of those pages.

What is it that they are doing? How does their content quality compare to yours? What are the differences between their website compared to yours?

For each page that ranks, I also want you to click on “View All” under the “Est. Visits” heading. This will show you all of the keywords each page ranks for.

When evaluating your competition’s user experience, keep in mind how they are delighting people who search for any of those keywords. This will give you an idea of what you need to do as well.

But your goal shouldn’t be to match your competition, it should be to beat your competition.

Step #3: Analyze your design

Remember the graphic I showed above of what Google doesn’t want? Where the user tried to click on “No, go back” instead of “Yes, place my order” due to design issues.

In most cases you won’t have that issue, but you will have other usability issues.

The way you find usability issues is through heatmaps. Just like this one:

What you can do to find usability issues is run a Crazy Egg test on your site.

Once you log into Crazy Egg, you’ll see a dashboard that looks like this:

On the top right, I want you to click on “Create New” and select “Snapshot.”

Then select “Multiple Snapshots.”

From there, you’ll want to add at least 3 popular URLs on your site. Over time you’ll want to do this with all of your popular pages.

Then you’ll see settings like the image below, you don’t need to do anything here. Just click “Next.”

You’ll then be able to review everything. If it looks good, you can click the “Create Snapshots” button in the bottom right.

Last but not least, you’ll have to install your tracking script.

So, click on “Install Tracking Script.”

Select the option that works for you and then you are off and to the races. For example, for NeilPatel.com I use WordPress so I would select the WordPress option.

Once you are setup, it will take at least a day to see results, if not a bit longer. It depends on your traffic.

If you get thousands of visitors to your site each day you’ll see results within a few hours.

After you set up your test and it has been a few days, log back into Crazy Egg and click on Snapshots in the sidebar.

Once you are there you will see a list of snapshots you have created.

Click on any of your snapshots and you’ll see a heatmap of how people are engaging with your web page.

What’s cool about snapshots is they show you every single click, or even scroll that people take. Just look at this example from the NeilPatel.com site.

As you can see, people are clicking on those images above the text. But there is an issue… can you guess what it is?

If you click those images, nothing happens. But for all of those people to click on those images, it means that they believe they are clickable and that something should happen when they click on them.

An easy fix for me is to make them clickable and when a user clicks maybe I would take them to a page that goes into detail on each of those features. Or maybe I could expand upon each feature right there on that page.

Once you make the fixes to your page, you will want to re-run a new Crazy Egg snapshot on the same page to see if the changes helped improve the user experience.

Step #4: Install the Ubersuggest Chrome extension

If you haven’t already, install the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.

Here’s why…

When you do a Google search, you’ll see data on each ranking URL.

When you are naturally using Google throughout your day and searching for keywords related to your industry, I want you to look at 2 main metrics in Ubersuggest:

1. Domain score – the higher the number, the more authority a website has.
2. Links – the more links a website has, usually the higher it will rank.

So, when you are doing searches, look for sites that have a lower domain score and fewer backlinks than the competition, but yet still rank high.

Chances are, they rank high because of things like user experience. Maybe their text is more appealing than the competition, maybe their bounce rate is lower… it could be a wide variety of reasons, but these are the sites you want to look at and analyze.

In the image above, you see that the result from the AMA ranks higher than Hubspot yet they have fewer links and a lower domain score. So, if you were trying to rank for that keyword, you would want to spend more time analyzing AMA because they are doing something right.

Conclusion

User experience is going to be more and more important over time.

If you love a site and everyone else loves that site, Google will eventually want to make sure that the site ranks high.

On the flip side, if everyone feels a website has a terrible user experience, then Google won’t rank that website as high in the long run.

Just like any algorithm update Google does, expect to see multiple revisions over time. As they learn, they adapt to make their algorithms more effective over time.

But what is unique about this update is you have advanced notice, which is nice. So, take the opportunity and fix any usability issues you may have.

What other ways can you make your website more usable?

The post Google’s New Algorithm: Page Experience appeared first on Neil Patel.