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Landingpage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page" or a "lander", is a
single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result or
an online advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical
extension of the advertisement, search result or link.
Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or search engine
marketing campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal
of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales orleads. If the goal is to obtain a lead, the
landing page will include some method for the visitor to get into contact, usually a phone number, or
an inquiry form. If a sale is required, the landing page will usually have a link for the visitor to click,
which will then send them to a shopping cart or checkout area. By analyzing activity generated by
the linked URL, marketers can use click-through rates and conversion rate to determine the success
of an advertisement.[1]
The design of the landing page layout matters and this should be tested with
different ideas and page layout styles to see what converts and works better [2]
Contents
[hide]
 1Types of landing pages
o 1.1Reference landing page
o 1.2Transactional landing pages
o 1.3Origin of landing pages
 2See also
 3References
Types of landing pages[edit]
There are two types of landing pages: reference and transactional.
Reference landing page[edit]
A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text,
images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements.
Transactional landing pages[edit]
The purpose of the transactional landing page is to persuade a visitor to take action by completing a
transaction. This is accomplished by providing a form that needs to be filled out. The visitor
information is obtained in order to add the visitor’s email address to a mailing list as a prospect. An
email campaign can then be developed based on responses to transactional landing pages. The
goal is to capture as much information about the visitor as possible. The ultimate goal is to convert
the visitor into a customer.
Cross Promoting Techniques that Work
by Nial Robbins
Cross promotions are not a new idea. There are many ways to use cross promotions in your
internet business that can be an effective and cost efficient way to advertise.

Cross promotions are not a new idea. They have been used by businesses for a very long
time. For example, a real-estate company may promote a certain lawyer to close a sale, as
the lawyer will promote that agency in his firm. The system is somewhat similar to the
primitive barter system, where people traded items rather than using money. How can
anything primitive fit into the online world of Internet marketing? Very easily. Cross
promotions are, simply stated, a trade of advertising space. Instead of paying for
advertising space on a site, you would place their ad on your page and yours on theirs.
There are many ways to use cross promotions in your internet business that can be an
effective and cost efficient way to advertise.
One way is to use link exchanges. This is very effective when doing cross promotions with a
company that is similar to yours, however you should be sure and never link to a page that
is in direct competition with yours. One of the best things about link exchanges is that some
search engines are factoring in hits from the sites that are linked to your page to when
determining the ranking. Therefore linking to a more popular site, can not only increase
your advertising, and traffic, but also increase your search engine ranking.
When customers or potential customers subscribe to your ezine you can use this as an
opportunity to use cross promotions. On the same page that the customer subscribes to
your ezine, make available the opportunity to subscribe to another company's ezine. You
can even exchange ad space in ezines, and provide recommendations for those whom you
cross promote with. You might even want to exchange column space in one another's
ezines.
Short for Web-based seminar,a webinar is a presentation,lecture,workshop or seminar thatis transmitted over
the Web using video conferencing software.A key feature of a Webinar is its interactive elements:the ability to give,
receive and discuss information in real-time.
Using Webinar software participants can share audio,documents and applications with webinar attendees.This is
useful when the webinar hostis conducting an lecture or information session.While the presenter is speaking they
can share desktop applications and documents.
Contrastwith Webcast, in which the data transmission is one wayand does not allow interaction between the
presenter and the audience.
Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of social mediaoutlets and communities to
generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or event. Types of social media
involved include RSS feeds,social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites,
such asTwitter, and video and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization in that
the goal is to generate traffic and awareness for a website. In general, social media optimization
refers to optimizing a website and its content in terms of sharing across social media and networking
sites.

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm ( i
/ˈælɡərɪðəm/ AL-gə-ri-dhəm) is a self-
contained step-by-step set of operations to be performed. Algorithms exist that
perform calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.
The words 'algorithm' and 'algorism' come from the name al-Khwārizmī. Al-
Khwārizmī (Persian: ‫,خوارزمی‬ c. 780-850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer,geographer, and
scholar.
An algorithm is an effective method that can be expressed within a finite amount of space and
time[1]
and in a well-defined formal language[2]
for calculating afunction.[3]
Starting from an initial state
and initial input (perhaps empty),[4]
the instructions describe a computation that, when executed,
proceeds through a finite[5]
number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing
"output"[6]
and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not
necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate random
input.[7]
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of
getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural”
search results on search engines.
All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary
search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local
listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers
most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations
to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide
space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity,
typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the
Internet for other servers located in their data center, called colocation, also known as Housing in
Latin America or France.
The scope of web hosting services varies greatly. The most basic is web pageand small-scale file
hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files
are usually delivered to the Web "as is" or with minimal processing. Many Internet service
providers (ISPs) offer this service free to subscribers. Individuals and organizations may also obtain
Web page hosting from alternative service providers. Personal web site hosting is typically free,

advertisement-sponsored, or inexpensive. Business web site hosting often has a higher expense
depending upon the size and type of the site.
Single page hosting is generally sufficient for personal web pages. A complex site calls for a more
comprehensive package that provides database support and application development platforms
(e.g. ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Java EE,Perl/Plack, PHP or Ruby on Rails). These facilities allow
customers to write or install scripts for applications like forums and content management.
Also,Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is typically used for websites that wish to keep the data
transmitted more secure.
The host may also provide an interface or control panel for managing the Web server and installing
scripts, as well as other modules and service applications like e-mail. A web server that does not use
a control panel for managing the hosting account, is often referred to as a "headless" server. Some
hosts specialize in certain software or services (e.g. e-commerce, blogs, etc.).
RSS (Rich Site Summary; originally RDF Site Summary; often calledReally Simple Syndication)
uses a family of standard web feedformats[2]
to publish frequently updated information: blog entries,
news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed",[3]
or "channel") includes
full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name.
RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate data automatically. A standard XML file format ensures
compatibility with many different machines/programs. RSS feeds also benefit users who want to
receive timely updates from favourite websites or to aggregate data from many sites.
Subscribing to a website RSS removes the need for the user to manually check the website for new
content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The
browser can also be commanded to automatically download the new data for the user.
Software termed "RSS reader", "aggregator", or "feed reader", which can be web-based, desktop-
based, or mobile-device-based, presents RSS feed data to users. Users subscribe to feeds either by
entering a feed's URI into the reader or by clicking on the browser's feed icon. The RSS reader
checks the user's feeds regularly for new information and can automatically download it, if that
function is enabled. The reader also provides a user interface.
Contents
[hide]
 1History
 2Example
 3Variants
 4Modules
 5Interoperability

 6BitTorrent and RSS
 7RSS to email
 8RSS compared to Atom
 9Current usage
 10See also
 11References
 12External links
Facebook
Facebook doesn’t need any introduction. We typically publish every visual content from
business page and personal profile. But we tend to forgot that there tons of active groups
where your audience hangs out. E.g. the Facebook group ‘Double Your Email List’ has
4700 active users and can be great place for anyone who is in to email marketing.
With a little bit of search you can find out such communities and engage with rest of the
members. It will help you to share visual content to targeted audience and get inbound
traffic.
Google+
For obvious reasons, Google+ offers some serious SEO advantages be it Infographics,
product images or gifs. More number of Google +1s to your content directly results in better
search ranking. Moz has outlined the advantages of uploading content on Google+.

Just like Facebook, Google+ has pretty active communities for almost anything.
Twitter
Do you know that Tweets with visual content like images, gifs receive 150% more retweets.
You can upload any kind of visual content on Twitter which claims to have more than 284
million active users. To make sure your tweet doesn’t get lost in other tweets, tweet the
content multiple times at a different time sets. Also use proper hashtags so that it appears in
relevant searches.
Pinterest
Pinterest primarily thrives on visual content.
Lot of bloggers and content marketers have tasted huge success with Pinterest. Here is a
post on how to drive massive traffic to your blog from Pinterest.
Pinterest is suitable for product images, visual quotes and Infographics.
Here are few similar sites to Pinterest. Couple of them focussed on particular niches like
food, travel.
 Instagram
 Ello
 Flickr
 Reddit-pics
 Wanelo

 Weheartit
 Gentlemint
 Food Gawker
 I Wanna Nom
 VisualizeUs
 Reddit-funny
 Reddit-aww
YouTube
We all are sucker for videos. That’s why Youtube is second largest search engine after
Google which processes 3 billion searches every month.
You don’t have to create exclusive content for Youtube. Instead, you can re-purpose your
popular blog in to a video and upload it on Youtube.
Sounds rubbish? This guy makes $36k monthly in affiliate commission from just one
video How to create a blog in less than 4 minutes with Bluehost. It could have just been a
simple blog post which might have fetched hundred of dollars for him. Peanuts when
compared to what he earns from the video.
Few other popular video sites to submit your videos:
 Vine
 Vimeo
 Yahoo Screen
 Daily Motion
 Reddit Videos
 Vube
 Metacafe
 Break
Tumblr
Tumblr is 2014’s fastest growing social network with more than 50 million users. It is highly
popular blogging platform among youth. You can upload almost any kind of visual content
here.
Linkedin
With over 330 millions registered users, Linkedin is a great place to your get your visual
content like Infographics, visual quotes and slides in front of large audiences. Also Linkedin

boasts active communities for almost every business topic you can think of. So, you can
share your content on such communities as well.
Linkedin Publshing
Linkedin has launched a publishing platform where you can publish your content instead of
just sharing links. Gregory Ciotti of Helpscout has seen a great success with Linkedin
Publishing.
Make sure to request an invite so you can start publishing your visual content on Linkedin.
Slideshare
Great place to upload Slides, Infographics as well as blog posts re-purposed as slides.
Every month, more than 60 million unique visitors flock to the site to find new content. You
can even build a following of your potential audience just like Twitter. Every time you upload
a new slide, followers get notified via email.
Couple of more popular sites to upload your slides.
 Slideboom
 AuthorStream
Imgur
It is a home to world’s most viral images which are curated by its community.

Imgur enjoys more than 200 million visits every month. It is perfect place to upload product
images, albums, funny pics, gifs and memes.
Visually
Visually has a strong community of people who love Infographics. If you Infographic gets
featured by it’s staff, you can get anywhere between 1k to 7k views.
Here are other sites where you can submit your Infographics.
 Cool Infographics
 Infographic Archives
 Reddit-Infographics
 Reddit-Infographic
Reddit-memes
We all love memes and we love sharing them. Memes regularly make on the front page of
Reddit and can garner thousands of views. Social media marketers for B2C businesses
must explore creating memes. Because users are constantly on a lookout for funny and
interesting content to share. And what could be better than getting it from the brand they
love.
Few more sites to upload your memes.
 Reddit-meme
 Memecenter
 Quickmeme
Reddit Gifs

Gifs has became darling of the Reddit, Tumblr and now Twitter users. Subreddit Gifs alone
has more than 4 millions followers.
Few more sites to upload your Gifs.
 Reddit-Gif
 Giphy
Sites where you can share almost every type of visual content
Here are few more sites where you can share almost any kind of visual content or blog
posts.
 Stumbleupon
 Delicious
 Digg
 Kingged
 The Web Blend
 Zabox
 Slashdot
 Scoopit
 Metafilter
 Newsvine
 Folkd
 Fark
Sites to submit specific type of content
 Playbuzz: One of the best places to submit interactive quizzes which have been
made popular by Buzzfeed.
 Listly : Listly lets you create lists with rich content and showcase to its community.
You can even embed such lists on your blog or website.
 Storify: You can create a shareable stories from visual content and publish it.
- See more at: http://blog.viraltag.com/2014/11/27/58-places-promote-visual-content-
free/#sthash.11aMzuIV.2wFndqQ6.dpuf
STEP 1 – DEFINE AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY

All too often, companies dive into search engine marketing without a coherent strategy. Don’t fall into
this trap. Get off on the right foot by thoroughly defining your target audience(s), identifying their
needs and motivations and highlighting how your products can serve these needs. Next, review your
company’s position in the marketplace. Identify your top competitors and your company’s
competitive advantage. Finally, identify specific goals and benchmarks, such as search rankings,
Website traffic increases, sales lead volume and other ROI metrics, to allow you to measure the
success of your search engine marketing campaign. This strategy will form the foundation of your
campaign and put you on the path to search engine marketing success.
STEP 2 – CHOOSE THE BEST KEYWORDS
The most critical step in search engine marketing is to strategically select the most important
keyword phrases for your company. If you do not perform this step properly, your search engine
marketing campaign is destined for failure. When choosing the best keywords, it is critical to choose
phrases that are not only relevant to your business, but also ones that are searched most often by
your target customers. Begin by getting inside the heads of your customers and brainstorm about
potential terms your customers use when thinking about your products and capabilities. Ask your
salespeople and customer service people what phrases they think are most important. You may
even want to ask your best customers. Then, turn to keyword research tools provided by
Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Google Adwords to create a list of highly searched terms that
will drive targeted traffic to your Website.
STEP 3 – OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE’S CONTENT
Now that we know your most important keywords, let’s put them to work. You need to make sure
your Website content is optimized to take advantage of these important phrases. Begin with your
Website copy – the information people can read on your Website. Make sure you skillfully write your
Website copy to effectively market your company, while using your important keyword phrases in a
relevant fashion. Next, focus on your Website structure – the code under the hood of your Website
that search engines see when they visit your Website. Use your keyword phrases relevantly in page
title tags, heading tags, director names, file names, alt tags and meta tags. Please note: while the
‘keywords’ meta tag has been exploited over the years, the ‘description’ meta tag is very important.
This description will show up in the search results below your link, providing a great opportunity for
you to entice the searcher to visit your Website.
STEP 4 – GET YOUR SITE INDEXED BY THE TOP THREE
To be found online, you must make certain that all pages on your Website are fully indexed by the
top three search engines: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live Search. I recommend you start by

focusing on Google since it handles over 55% of all searches, and it makes the process easy for site
owners. While all search engines allow you to submit your Website directly for consideration, Google
also provides you with a backdoor to get your site indexed quicker. Google allows you to create a
Google Sitemap, which essentially serves as an ongoing invitation for Google to visit your site and a
roadmap detailing the pages it should index. To speed up the process of getting indexed by the
other engines, submit your Website to the DMOZ.org Open Directory Project. Once your Website is
accepted by DMOZ, Yahoo and Microsoft should have no problem indexing your Website.
STEP 5 – ATTRACT QUALITY LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE
Link building involves gaining links to your Website from other Websites that are frequented by your
targeted visitors. The more quality inbound links you have, the more popular your Website is in the
eyes of Google and other engines. And, these links can have a dramatic effect on your search
ranking. A good place to start your link building efforts is to make your Website content link-worthy.
Good content attracts links, so fill your Website with interesting and informative content such as a
library of best practices articles, a blog about developments and trends in your industry, etc. Next,
get your Website listed in online directories and portals. Look first to important online destinations
within your industry, then focus on general purpose directories like Yahoo Directory and
Business.com. You can also garner links from vendors, customers, business partners and trade
associations. Finally, you should leverage online public relations and distribute press releases and
articles online. By consistently applying these link building strategies, you will dramatically impact
your ranking on Google and boost your online popularity.
STEP 6 – MANAGE AN ROI-DRIVEN PAID SEARCH CAMPAIGN
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) in the sponsored links search results offers a compelling ROI-driven
marketing opportunity. Unlike traditional advertising, where you ‘pay for exposure’ regardless of the
results, with PPC you are not paying to be listed in the search results. You only pay if someone
clicks on your ad and visits your Website, providing a compelling ‘pay for performance’ mode of
advertising. To manage an ROI-driven paid search campaign, first, bid on the most relevant
keywords. Don’t pick terms based on popularity alone. Make sure your product offering will be of
interest to the searcher. Second, tie your bidding strategy to business results. Think cost-per-lead
and cost-per-sale, instead of just cost-per-click. In many cases a lower ad position will produce a
higher ROI. Finally, include a compelling ‘call to action’ in the ad and send traffic to a relevant
landing page tied to the ad. A compelling and relevant offer will help lift response and boost your
ROI.
STEP 7 – MEASURE SUCCESS

As with all marketing activities, you must measure success to see how well you performed in the
past, as well as identify actionable strategies to improve your results in the future. Since search
engine marketing is all about attracting targeted traffic, begin by leveraging Web analytics to monitor
traffic increases from search, as well as what search engines and phrases peoples are using to visit
your Website. To make sure the volume of targeted visitors continues to increase, you should also
monitor your position or ranking in the search results. On a regular basis, check your position in the
top three search engines for your most important keyword phrases to see how well you are trending
upward toward a top 10 ranking. Finally, to measure success of your pay-per-click advertising
efforts, harness the measurable nature of the Web to track the cost-per-visit, cost-per-lead, and cost-
per-sale for all of your pay-per-click ads.
The Top 20 Places Your
Business Needs to Be Listed
Online
896
Remember when you had to find a phone book and flip through
hundreds of pages in order to find a local business?
The use of Yellow Pages has declined over 50 percent in the last five
years. People now conduct quick searches on one of the many
popular online directories. Since Internet search is the primary tool to
finding businesses today, it’s vital to make sure your business is listed
on all applicable online directories.
To get you started, here’s a quick guide to the top 20 online directories
and links to their sign-up pages:
Google Places for Business

Listing your business on Google Places for Business should be at the
top of your priority list. Google outperforms every other search engine
by a long shot. In fact, Google receives nearly 6 billion searches per
day.
Advantages
 Registering for a business listing on Google is easy and free
 Business listings appear in Google Maps
 Happy customers can leave reviews on your Google+ page
Create your Google Places for Business listing.
Bing Places for Business
Bing is the second most visited search engine on the Internet. If
people aren’t searching on Google, chances are, they’re searching for
your business on Bing.
Advantages
 Quick, easy, and free to register
 Add multiple business locations at one time
 Include other content in your business listing like photos, videos, and more
Create your Bing Places for Business listing.
Yahoo! Local Listing
Yahoo is the Internet’s 3rd most popular search engine, bringing in
millions of searches per day.
Advantages

 Yahoo Local Basic listing is free
 Include photos, company description and more for $9.95/month
 Get maximum exposure and listed on 40+ other directory listings for $29.99/month
Create your Yahoo Local listing.
Yelp
Yelp is one of the best places on the Internet for consumers to find a
quality review. If you’re looking to tap into the word-of-mouth
advertising world, then Yelp is the perfect place to start.
Advantages
 Create deals for loyal customers right in your Yelp account
 Send messages to your customers, publicly or privately
 View business trends in Yelp’s reporting tool
Create your Yelp listing.
MerchantCircle
MerchantCircle is an online directory that helps small businesses
connect with local customers, and other local small businesses. They
offer free marketing tools to help you build your business.
Advantages
 Geographically localized to your target audience
 Ability to advertise to boost your listing

 Host a business blog on the site
Create your MerchantCircle listing.
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages is the online version of a modern day phone book.
Besides listing your business in an organized directory, Yellow Pages
also offers advertising, lead generation services, and online payment
options.
Advantages
 Well-organized interface
 Detailed ad performance data
 Receives millions of searches per day
Create your Yellow Pages listing.
White Pages
White Pages is the online equivalent of the white pages in a phone
book. It’s a great way to make your business contact information
available to over 200 million people.
Advantages
 List your business among 30 million other businesses
 Premium text message service for mobile marketing
 Sponsored advertisement opportunities available
Create your White Pages listing.

Superpages.com
Superpages.com is another online directory that is easy to navigate.
Superpages.com includes some unique features like cars for sale,
lottery results and helpful tips for finding business services.
Advantages
 Local weather listings right on the home page
 Facebook sign-in option
 Popular search categories listed on the home page
Create your Superpages listing.
Yellowbook
Yellowbook.com is a subsidiary of Hibu Business, and allows you to
create an easily searchable business listing on their network. Listings
come with access to a full profile that includes business information, a
link to your website, product descriptions and more.
Advantages
 Information distributed across yellowbook.com network and partner sites
 Display and video ads available
 Cool map feature included in every listing
Create your Yellowbook listing.
YellowBot

YellowBot is yet another online directory similar to the yellow pages in
a phone book. YellowBot provides basic contact and location
information about businesses, and allows online reviews from
customers.
Advantages
 Easily sign in with Windowslive, Google, Facebook, Yahoo or Twitter
 Premium Listing opportunity for easy account management
 Ability to add searchable tags to your listing
Create your YellowBot listing.
Manta
Manta is an online directory that receives over 30 million unique
visitors per month. According to Inc., it is one of the fastest growing
business sites on the Internet.
Advantages
 A fantastic way to increase your website traffic with paid business optimization packages
 Get set up within minutes
 Highlight your products and brands on your business profile
Create your Manta listing.
Citysearch
Citysearch is an excellent network for restaurants, bars, spas, hotels,
restaurants and more. It’s free to get a listing and easy to update your
profile once you’re listed in their search results. Citysearch also offers
city guides for the most popular cities in the United States.

Advantages
 Vast partner network including Expedia, Urbanspoon, MerchantCircle and more
 Profile includes a fun welcome message for viewers
 Customers access business listings through popular Citysearch mobile app
Create your Citysearch listing.
MapQuest
MapQuest is a web mapping service to help bring local customers
right to your business doorstep. This listing is great for businesses that
are trying to get customers to visit a physical location.
Advantages
 Detailed driving directions to your business are available
 Only $3/week
 One central dashboard to manage business listings across multiple sites (paid service)
Create your MapQuest listing.
Local.com
Local.com is a free business directory powered by Yext.com.
Local.com offers searchers detailed information about everything
going on in their city, including events, deals and information on
popular businesses.
Advantages
 Additional advertising options available
 Add a coupon to attract customers

 Resources available to make sure your business is listed correctly across the web
Create your Local.com listing.
Foursquare
Not only is Foursquare a popular business directory, it’s a popular
social networking site. Customers can check in and comment on your
business — ultimately leading more potential customers to your
business.
Advantages
 Connect your Twitter handle, so visitors can Tweet you
 Add a map so people can “check-in” to your business
 Popular mobile app available
Create your Foursquare listing.
DexKnows
DexKnows is a popular online directory that not only allows a business
listing, but provides a way for you to track how your customers engage
with your profile, thus allowing you to track your online reputation.
Advantages
 Identify places where you can advertise both online and in print
 Detailed lead information available through reporting tools
 Monitor your ratings and reviews
Create your DexKnows listing.

The Business Journals
The Business Journals is a local listing that has 4 levels of service
options— free, bronze, silver, and gold. Each service option displays
your listing in the directory, but the more you pay, the more
opportunities you have to receive targeted traffic to your website.
Advantages
 8 million monthly searchers
 Searchers have an average income of $97K+
 84% of searchers shop online
Create your Business Journals listing.
Angie’s List
Angie’s List is one of the most well respected online directories for
services, and is touted for its ability to provide accurate and reliable
reviews for readers. If you’re looking to establish an online reputation
through positive reviews, Angie’s list is a must.
Advantages
 Online reputation management services
 Ability to read and respond to reviews
 Access to additional helpful business tools
Create your Angie’s List listing.

Hotfrog
Hotfrog is a free online directory whose aim is to help get your website
listed in Google’s search results.
Advantages
 Registration takes less than 5 minutes
 Add as much detail to your profile as you would like for free
 Create coupons to incentivize your customers
Create your Hotfrog listing.
Kudzu
Kudzu is free and geared toward homeowners that are interested in
making renovations. If you offer any type of home improvement
services, make sure you list your business on Kudzu.
Advantages
 93% of Kudzu users are homeowners
 74% of those homeowners are interested in home renovation projects
 Enhanced profiles come with a dedicated account manager to help you boost your website in
search results
Create your Kudzu listing.
Need some help getting your business listed? Get a free scan of over
50 online directories, social sites, and search sites. See where your
business is listed, if it is listed correctly, and find other listings to
maximize your visibility.

This guide was created by Deluxe and republished
by VerticalResponse.
Want more marketing tips and tactics? Sign up for the free VR Buzz.
© 2014 – 2016, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.
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Budget constraints put local businesses in a tough position when it comes to marketing. The
situation gets worse with inbound tactics like SEO, where it’s difficult to determine ROI beforehand.
This was less of a problem two or three years ago, when cheap/predictable SEO was possible (even
if such spammy tactics inevitably posed a threat to brand reputation).
But times have changed. How Google works has changed. The major algorithm updates Panda and
Penguin have completely transformed the way that many perform SEO. Pulling significant traffic
from the search engines on a limited budget is almost a nightmare.
People such as Neil Patel are saying content marketing is the new SEO. If the mainstream SEO
opinion is to be believed, without a content marketing strategy in place, you might as well forget
about Google doing you any favors.
That’s what everybody seems to be saying, anyway.
Except, that’s not really true. There’s much more to do in SEO than content marketing. What follows
are other things that you can do as a local business to make the most of the search engines.
1. Pick an Alternative to Content

Before we dive into some SEO techniques that can help you get that much needed search traffic, we
need to address this question:
“Why would people link to/share/talk about my site?”
Everybody’s answer these days seems to be “compelling content.” We’re arguing that this isn’t a
necessity by any means. Still, Google is obviously looking for editorial links, and a website with just a
company backstory, a sales pitch, and driving directions isn’t going to earn many of those.
So what do you do instead of content?
You look at the most successful sites on the web, and you realize that most of them aren’t really
content sites either. They’re:
 Utilities
 Communities
 Games
So the goal isn’t really to create “compelling content.” It’s to give people something useful,
entertaining, interactive, or all of the above.
What kinds of problems do your target customers have to deal with? Is there a way you could build
an application that would help them solve that problem?
True, the resources involved in creating a web utility are certainly more extensive than the resources
involved in creating a single blog post. But the amount of resources it takes to build a blog into
something that attracts and retains business is often more than the resources necessary to do the
same with an online tool.
Do you have a loyal customer base? If so, would they be interested in joining an online community
devoted to their needs, or the inside jokes of a specific subculture?
If you’re better at getting people together and getting them to talk about things than you are at
creating “content,” building an online community like a forum might come easier for you than running
a blog. It’s also easier than ever from a technical standpoint with free, modern tools
like Discourse and Moot. Also, forums are actually more popular than blogs.
Creating interactions is more important than creating content. You don’t need “great content” to earn
editorial links. You just have to offer something of value to the web.
2. Skip the Exact Match Domain Name

SEO pros know this one inside and out by now. If you’re hoping your local business site is going to
rank because your domain name matches the keyword people will be searching for, it doesn’t work
that way anymore. In fact, Google had an update specifically to fight this issue.
Using a good brand name for your domain is smart for more traditional marketing reasons, but it
actually offers SEO benefits as well.
Here’s why.
Google analyzes search behavior as a way to determine which sites are authoritative. With millions
of people searching for “Amazon” every day, and clicking on the link to Amazon.com, Google knows
these people aren’t looking for info about a river in South America. If people search for a product
name along with the word Amazon, you can bet a huge portion of the search results will be product
listings on Amazon.com.
But what happens when you search for [ecommerce store]? Well, you get search results for places
like Shopify.
Here’s the thing. There are plenty of sites with the name “ecommerce” in the URL. Those sites aren’t
turning up on the front page of Google.
If you name your site after an already popular search phrase, Google will never be able to tell
whether additional searches for the phrase are attributed to your business, or to a growing general
interest in that phrase.
If, on the other hand, your domain name is uniquely branded, Google can attribute those searches to
an interest in your brand, and it will likely give you a boost in the search results for several other
queries as well, just like Shopify did in our little experiment.
You want to be Nike.com, not RunningShoes.biz.
On a related note, it’s a bad idea to use your city name without the domain. Not only does it take
users more time to type in the address, it also creates an obstacle to future growth if you ever decide
to sell online to a global audience, or expand into new locations.
3. Build an Intuitive, Responsive Website with Rich UI and UX
The average local website offers a sub-par user perspective. This is because most local businesses
fail to properly anticipate what people are looking for when they visit.
Here’s what I mean. Take a look at most local restaurant’s websites. Here’s what you’ll often see:

 A slideshow of happy people eating food, because slideshows are so chic.
 A long-winded history of the restaurant and it’s values.
 Upcoming events.
 Shameless calls to action on social networks.
 A photo gallery.
 Irritating Flash, PDFs, etc. that are inconvenient to work with.
And all of this is usually cluttered and above the fold. The user often gets “banner blindness” on the
entire homepage, because there are so many competing messages and most of them are
completely out of sync with the user’s intentions, which come down to:
 What kind of food is here?
 How much does it cost?
 How do I get there?
All of this is made worse by the fact that most of these sites look terrible on mobile phones, even
though finding local businesses is one of the main thingspeople use mobile internet for.
UI and UX are important for SEO. Here are a few of the reasons why:
 Responsive design is a must. You need the site to look good, and be easy to use, on mobile
devices, not just because mobile is set to overtake desktop, but because people often look
for local businesses while they are on the go.
 Split test your landing pages, starting with core concepts. You can measure the effectiveness
of your landing pages by offering a different coupon code for each.
 Run usability tests to determine what users want to use your site for, and how to make it
easiest for them to do it.
 Understand consumer psychology, and build it into the site.
All of these things are necessary in order to make the most of your site’s presence in the search
results. People who fail to find what they are looking for quickly and easily will simply look elsewhere,
making your presence in Google meaningless.
Here’s what you can usually expect users to be looking for:
 Prices and products.
 An address and phone number, plainly visible.
 A quick contact form.

Other things they might be looking for, but that should take up less visual space on the landing page,
include:
 Your blog, tool, community, or other primary source of “linkbait”.
 Video testimonials.
 Unfiltered consumer reviews (You can and should embed Google+ reviews on your site).
 Trust-building icons, memberships, certifications, “featured in” mentions, etc.
Finally, the lowest priority things will be the business story and history, a photo gallery, events, and
so on. It’s not that these are unimportant, it’s that they are not the primary things your users are
looking for, and they shouldn’t be allowed to obstruct their flow.
Usability and design are also the first things people notice when they visit a site. Ninety-four percent
of users point to design-related issues when they conclude that a site isn’t trustworthy.
And, of course, Google isn’t interested in ranking sites that people feel aren’t trustworthy.
4. Optimize the Most Important On-Page Factors
On-page SEO is still very important, and this is probably even truer for local businesses than for
general websites.
For starters, you’ll need to decide on which keywords to target. While it’s true that “long tail”
keywords are becoming more important, and that Hummingbird is allowing Google to interpret
queries better than before, keyword targeting is still a very important part of SEO.
While Google killed the old AdWords Keyword tool, the new Keyword Planner is still a good way to
discover keywords. Moz has a great guide explaining how you can use it to find keywords for local
search.
The most important thing to understand about keyword research in the wake of Hummingbird is this:
only the highest traffic keywords matter. Here’s what I mean by this. You can’t find a niche by
targeting a more obscure phrase if it means the same thing as a more common phrase.
Hummingbird simply replaces the low traffic query with the higher traffic query.
It used to be the case that if the front page of Google didn’t list any pages with the exact keyword
phrase, you were basically set. This isn’t the case anymore.
With that in mind, here are a few on-page things you’ll want to try to optimize (but never to the
detriment of user experience):

 Title: Use the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) principle here. Don’t try to jam it full of
keywords. Try to use the city name and keyword (or a variant of the keyword) if possible.
However, it’s important to keep CRO in mind, and choose a title that will entice people to
click through.
 Meta Description: The meta description isn’t used to rank pages. Don’t stuff this with
keywords. Use it as a call to action. The meta description should clarify the purpose of the
page, but leave enough mystery so that people will click through to see the page. It is a good
idea to include your city name in here, however, so that users know the result is relevant to
their location. Try to keep the description under 160 characters. Google will omit anything
after that.
 Heading Tags: Use a heading tag like a newspaper heading. You want this to read as
natural as possible and use it to pull users in. Don’t try to be too “clever” with the title,
however. Focus on making a value statement that users can relate to.
 Images: Use a relevant keyword as the alt attribute for your images.
 Interlinking: Make sure that every page on your site is accessible from at least one link
elsewhere on your site. Do not link together all of your pages from the sidebar (unless your
site is very small). This looks very manipulative and offers no clear hierarchy. Organize your
pages and links naturally so that the navigation is streamlined for visitors.
 Google+ Authorship: It’s important to implement Google+ authorship on your site so that
your image will appear next to the listing in the search results. This draws the user’s eye to
your listing, increasing the likelihood that they will click through. You can sign up for
authorship here.
 Schema markup: You can use Schema.org markup to add geographical information to your
site, to add star ratings to the search results, to identify events, etc.
 Page loading time: Slow loading time is one of the main reasons why visitors will abandon
your site, and it also has a negative impact on your visibility in the search results.
Straightening these things up will give you an advantage over most of your competitors.
5. Verify Your Business Listing in Google+
You absolutely must get your business verified in Google+ in order to make sure that you show up in
Google Maps properly, and to increase your chances of showing up in the search results. Social
Media Examiner can walk you through this process.
Take care to fill out your full profile, add photos, and make your Google+ listing almost as valuable
as your website. Google+ reviews will influence your visibility in local search results. A large number

of natural reviews can get you listed closer to the top of Google Maps results, even if other
businesses are closer to the searcher than you are.
This is also true for links pointing to your site, and your Google+ page, assuming the links are
editorially given.
6. Build Local Citations, and Ensure Consistency
Citations are huge when it comes to success with local SEO. A citation is when your business name,
address, and phone number (NAP) are listed on the web. Citations from authoritative places help
boost your visibility in Google Maps and local search results, and the more of these you have, the
better you can expect to perform. In this way, they serve a role similar to links.
It’s important to ensure that your listings are consistent. Inconsistent listings can hurt your visibility in
the search results, or even mess up your location in Google Maps.
It’s worth investing in a tool to help you build citations. Here are four worth investing in:
 Moz Local (formerly GetListed.org)
 Whitespark’s local citation finder
 Yext.com
 BrightLocal.com
7. Earn Natural Reviews
Reviews are nearly as important as citations when it comes to your rankings in local search results,
and they are clearly extremely important as far as converting skeptics into buyers. It’s important to
encourage your customers to publish reviews on Google+, as well as other business listings like
Yelp, SuperPages, Foursquare, UrbanSpoon, etc.
As mentioned earlier, you can embed Google+ reviews on your site as well. This can be helpful not
only as a way to send more people to your business, but as a way to encourage reviews.
Where possible, train your staff to remind consumers to leave a review on Google+ if they are
especially pleased with the service. It’s best to avoid requesting reviews at every possible
opportunity, since this can encourage negative reviews, and Google+ has rules against specialized
booths or kiosks that exist specifically to request reviews.
Don’t offer financial compensation for reviews in Google+.
8. Social Media

While you don’t necessarily need to fully invest yourself in all of these platforms, it’s a good idea to at
least set up profiles on not just Google+ but Facebook, Foursquare,Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest,
Tumblr, YouTube, Flickr, and Instagram.
As mentioned in the first section, communities can be a powerful way to drive business, and can
even be the main draw when it comes to linkbait. For this reason, it’s worth investing yourself
wholeheartedly in one of these social media platforms as a way to create that sense of community.
When it comes to social networks, visual updates are always best. Pure text updates are usually a
waste of time. The type of updates that tend to get shared and talked about on social networks is
also usually funny, inspiring, cute, practically useful, and “mind-blowing,” but more important than
anything else, it is interactive. The goal is to get a conversation going.
Conclusion
Content marketing is by no means a must if you want your local business to succeed online. By
switching the focus from content to usability and community, and understanding a few important
things about how local SEO works, you can beat competitors who invest heavily in content.
Hopefully you learned something helpful today, and I’d appreciate it if you passed this along to
somebody who could benefit from the knowledge. If you have anything to add, let me know in the
comments.
11 SEO Tactics You Need to Know in 2015
SEO 20 Feb 15 | Pratik Dholakiya
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 inShare
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As search engines continue to evolve, marketers must improve their skills to keep up. According
toreports 70 percent of the links search users click are from SEO. Also, inbound leads (i.e. SEO)
cost 61 percent less than outbound leads (i.e. cold calling).
SEO has a better return on investment (ROI) as well. “SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate,
while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7 percent close rate,”
according to the same report.

Now that you know SEO is the way to go, here are 11 SEO tactics that you need to know in 2015:
1. Creating Incredible Content That Earns Links
Even after all of the changes with the search engine algorithms, inbound SEO links are still the
biggest influence for search engines. This is unlikely to change. On the other hand, other methods of
link acquisition have changed. Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help
with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand
exposure.Creating incredible content that people will want to share is still the best way to earn
links.
2. Co-Citation Links
Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your
company is in a related niche. To get co-citation links, do a search for “best” or “top 10” items in your
niche.
Example: top 10 blue widgets
If you do this search and don’t find your business in the results, get in touch with the publisher and
ask that your company be added to the list. Be prepared to justify why your company should be
included and where appropriate, give them a summary to go along with a link.
3. Editorial Links
Editorial links can be some of the most powerful for SEO because they come from other publications
in your niche mentioning your company. They can also come from thought leadership guest posts
that you write and get published on third-party sites.
The easiest way to get editorial links is to create outstanding content that people will want to
share with their readers. Another way is to guest post on a high-quality site that is in your niche. Be
prepared to create incredible content that may be heavily scrutinized before publishing.
Interviews are another way to get editorial links.
As part of the interview, you should be allowed to cite your work in your responses. This can lead to
even more backlinks and traffic.
4. The Broken Link-Building Method

Here’s another white-hat link-building strategy that can be quite effective. In this case, you’re actually
helping publishers fix broken links, which can be helpful to their readers. However, this only works if
your content is good enough to replace the lost content.
To do the broken link-building method, you must find broken links on a site that is relevant to your
niche. You then contact the webmaster with the broken link and recommend your site as an
alternative to the broken link. To find out more, you can read the broken link-building Bible at the
Moz blog.
5. Link Reclamation
Link reclamation can help you get fresh links by finding broken links to your site and having the
publisher fix them.
Examples:
 Find brand mentions about your site and ask the publisher to add a link
 Find places where your content has been used without attribution (places where people
have used your post or infographics without giving you credit) and request a link from the
person
According to Kristi Hines with kristihines.com, “A lot of people think of link reclamation as just 301’ing
pages they have moved that still have a lot of great backlinks. But I like to think of reclamation as
more than that. I like to think of it as not just reclaiming, but claiming links you deserve.”
In order to make this automated, you can set up a Google Alert to email you whenever your
company’s brand is mentioned. You can then check that page to find out if they link to your site.
6. Link Outreach
Link outreach is a bit “old school” but can still be quite powerful. To do this, find a website that is
relevant to yours and get their contact information from the site. Send them an email or call and
politely ask them for link. This works better if the site has a slightly different business than yours but
may share a common audience.
7. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is nothing new, and companies have been researching their competitor’s links
for years. However, by looking at the competitor’s backlinks and manually reviewing which links are
worth having, you can then perform a link outreach and try to get a link from the same referring site.
8. Focus on ROI Instead of Keyword Rankings

While we all enjoy seeing the keywords rank well in the search engines, this doesn’t necessarily
mean your SEO campaign is successful. It’s possible to rank number one for many keywords that
have no real ROI. Instead, you should focus on metrics that bring conversions.
9. Create an SEO Strategy That Maps to an Audience
Over the past few years, we’ve lost most of the keyword data in Google Analytics and other tools.
This has required marketers to change from traditional methods of SEO to create new ways of
segmenting their audiences.
In order to do this we must find new keywords to focus on, new ways to approach neighboring
markets, and determine where our competition is succeeding with SEO and how you can do it better.
The days of stuffing keywords into bad content and having it rank are long gone. Now your content
needs to focus on your target persona and your keywords need to flow within the content. This is
why it’s so important that content and SEO be tied closely together.
10. Optimize for Yahoo, Bing, and Others
Search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo may slowly take a bigger piece of Google’s pie
in 2015. Yahoo is now the default search engine for Firefox. Safari had a deal with Google, which is
supposed to end in 2015, and Yahoo and Bing are both trying to become the default search engine
for the browser.
As other search engines become the default Web browsers instead of Google, it makes sense to
optimize for those search engines as well.
11. Mobile SEO
Mobile is becoming more popular every year. Every website should have a mobile marketing
strategy for 2015 and beyond.
“May [2014] turned out to be a banner month for mobile as it delivered on some huge milestones
which underscored just how impressive the medium’s ascendance has been in the past few years.
Mobile platforms – smartphones and tablets – combined to account for 60 percent of total digital
media time spent, up from 50 percent a year ago,” says comScore.
Mobile should be a core part of any SEO plan in 2015. However, you must be cautious as
configuration errors caused a 68 percent loss of traffic, according to BrightEdge.
Conclusion

Creating an SEO strategy can give your company and brand a boost in the search engines. Why not
improve your ROI today?
executing and scaling those techniques.
But you’re probably wondering:
“How do I find SEO strategies that actually work?”
Well today I’m going to make it easy for you.
All you need to do is carve out a few minutes of yourday and tackle one of the
21 white hat SEO techniques below.
1. Find Broken Link Building Opportunities on
Wikipedia
Broken link building has it all…
Scalable.
White hat.
Powerful.
There’s only one problem: finding broken links is a HUGE pain.
That is, unless you know about a little-known wrinkle in Wikipedia’s editing
system.
You see, when a Wikipedia editor stumbles on a dead link, they don’t delete
the link right away.
Instead, they add a footnote next to the link that says “dead link”:

This footnote gives other editors a chance to confirm that the link is actually
dead before removing it.
And that simple footnote makes finding broken links dead simple.
Here’s how:
First, use this simple search string:
site:wikipedia.org [keyword] + “dead link”
For example, if you were in the investing space you’d search for something like
this:

Next, visit a page in the search results that’s relevant to your site:

Hit ctrl + f and search for “dead link”:
Your browser will jump to any dead links in the references section:

Pro Tip: Wikipedia actually has a list of articles with dead links. This makes
finding dead links in Wikipedia even easier.
OK. So once you’ve found a dead link, now what?
Well you could re-create that dead resource on your site and replace the dead
link in Wikipedia with yours.
But that would only land you a single link (and a nofollow link at that).
Instead, I recommend tapping into The Moving Man Method.

This post will show you everything you need to know:
Now for our next SEO technique…
2. Discover Untapped Keywords on Reddit
Hit the play button to see how it’s done:

1:13
3. Update, Upgrade and Republish Old Blog Posts (This
Increased My Traffic by 111.37%)
Last year I get an email out of the blue:

Turns out Emil usedThe Skyscraper Technique to achieve these impressive
results.
Not only that, but Emil wanted to share his case study with the Backlinko
community.
That’s when I had an idea:
Instead of writing a new post for Emil’s case study, why don’t I add it to an
existing post?
So that’s what I did.
Specifically, I added Emil’s case study to this old post:

(I also updated the images and added some new tips)
The final result?
A new and improved version of the post:

To make sure the new post got the attention it deserved, I re-promoted it by
sending an email to the Backlinko community:

I also shared it on social media:

The result?
A 111.37% increase in organic traffic to that page.

Pretty cool, right?
4. Copy Adwords Ads to Make Killer Title and
Description Tags
It’s no secret that compelling title and description tags get more clicks in the
SERPS.
(In fact, REALLY good copy can actually steal traffic from the top 3 results)
Question is: How do you know what people want to click on?
That’s easy: look at that keyword’s Adwords ads.
You see, the Adwords ads that you see for competitive keywords are the result
of hundreds (if not thousands) of split tests.
Split tests to maximize clicks.

And you can use copy from these ads to turn yourtitle and description tags
into click magnets.
For example, let’s say you were going to publish a blog post optimized around
the keyword “glass water bottles”.
First, take a look at the Adwords ads for that keyword:
Keep an eye out for interesting copy from the ads that you can work into your
title and description. In our “glass water bottles” example, we have phrases
like:
 BPA-free
 Keep you hydrated
 Durable

 Reusable
Here’s how your title and description tags might look:
As you can see, these tags include words that areproven to generate clicks.
5. Find A+ Link Prospects on AllTop
What if there was an up-to-date list of blogs in your niche that you could use
to find quality link opportunities?
I have good news. There is.
And it’s called AllTop.
AllTop is a modern day directory that curates the best blogs in every industry
under the sun.
To find blogs in your niche, just go to the AllTop homepage and search for a
keyword:
Next, find a category that fits with your site’s topic:

And AllTop will show you their hand-picked list of quality blogs in that
category:

Now you have a long list of some of the best blogs in yourindustry. And these
bloggers are the exactpeople that you want to start building relationships with.
6. Use Benefit-Focused Content Curation
Let’s face it: Most content curation is pretty weak.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that I’ve read enough “top 100 posts
you need to read” lists for one lifetime.
So how can you make your content curation stand out?
By tapping into Benefit-Focused Content Curation.

Benefit-FocusedContent Curation is similar to most other types of curation,
with one huge difference: it focuses on the outcomes that your audience
wants.
I’m sure you’d like to see an example.
Here you go:
This is a guide I put together a while back called,Link Building: The Definitive
Guide.
This guide has generated over 116,000 visitorsfrom social media, forums,
blogs and search engines:

(I shouldpoint out that the guide’s design and promotion contributed to its
success. But it all started with how the content itself was organized)
What makes this guide’s curation unique is that it’s organized by benefits,
not topics.
For example, Chapter 2 is called “How to Get Top Notch Links Using Content
Marketing”:

Note that the title isn’t: “Chapter 2: Content Marketing”. And most of the
other chapters follow the same benefit-driven formula.
Why is this so important?
When someone sees a list of curated links they immediately ask themselves
“what’s in it for me?”.
And when you organize your content aroundoutcomes and benefits, that
answer becomes really, really obvious.

In other words, answering “what’s in it for me?” makes the perceived value of
your content MUCH higher than a list of 100 random resources.
7. Link Out to Authority Sites
With all the talk about Hummingbirds and Penguins it’s easy to forget about
an important Google algorithm update from 2003 called Hilltop.
Despite being over ten years old, Hilltop still plays a major role in today’s
search engine landscape.
Hilltop is essentially an on-page SEO signal way that tells Google whetheror
not a page is a “hub” of information.
So: How does Google know which pages are hubs?
It’s simple: Hubs are determined by the quality and relevancy of that
page’s outbound links.
This makes total sense if you think about it…
The pages you link out to tend to reflect the topic of your page.
And pages that link to helpful resources also tend to be higher-quality than
pages that only link to their own stuff.

In other words, pages that link out to awesome resources establish themselves
as hubs of helpful content in the eyes of Big G.
In fact, a recent industry study founda correlation between outboundlinks
and Google rankings.

Link to at least 3 quality, relevant resources in every piece of content that you
publish.
That will show Google that your page is a Hilltop Hub.
8. Send Juice to Pages Sitting on Page 2 or 3
I’m not sure how else to say this: If you’re on page 2 or 3 of Google’s search
results…youmight as well be on page 58.
So how can you give those pages a boost so they hit the first page?
Use one of my all-time favorite SEO techniques: throw some internal links
their way!

Here’s the 3-step process:
Step #1: Use Google Search Console to find keywords where you
rank on the 2nd or 3rd page.
To find them, log in to your Google Search Console account and click
on Search Traffic –> Search Analytics:
Make sure to check “position”. That way you’ll see the average ranking for
each keyword.

Then, sort the results by “Position”:

Next, look for keywords with an average position of 11-30.
If you’re getting clicks from a keyword on page 2 or 3, you can be pretty sure
that it’s a keyword with some decent search volume.

For example, this page from Backlinko is ranking #12 for the keyword “SEO
checklist”.
Even though I’m on the second page, I still get 24 clicks and 2,792 impressions
per month for that keyword:
Sure enough, according to the GKP, that keyword gets 720 monthly searches
with a suggested bid of almost $5.00
Step #2: Identify authoritative pages on your site.
You can easily find the pages on your site with the most juice to pass around
using ahrefs.
Just enter your homepage URL into the tool and click “Search”:
Then click on “Top Pages” in the right-hand sidebar:

That will show you the most authoritative pages on your site:

Step #3: Go to those pages and add internal links.
Finally, add internal links from those authoritative pages to the page that
needs a boost.
9. Add This One Word to Your Outreach Email…and
Increase Your Response Rate by 45
When someone sees an email pop into their inbox, two questions enter their
mind:
“Who is this person?” and “What do they want?”

The faster you answer these questions in your outreach emails, the better your
response rate will be.
But how can you do that?
It’s easy: Use the word “because” very early in youremail.
Believe it or not, the word “because” has surprisingly powerful effects on
human psychology.
Research by Dr. Scott Key of Northern Illinois University tested whether
people waiting in line to use a copy machine would let a stranger cut in front
of them.
When the stranger asked: “Can I use the copy machine before you?”, only 61%
people said “yes”.
But when the stranger asked: “Can I use the copy machine before you because
I’m in a rush?”, 89% said yes.

(That’s a 45% increase!)
Why such a huge difference?
It turns out that the word “because” makes a request — ANY request — seem
more legitimate.
In the world of outreach, legit messages get better responses.
(Just look at all those lame guest post pitches that flood yourinbox. If they
actually took the time to look legit, they’d perform a lot better)
Here’s an example blogger outreach pitch that leverages the word “because”
early on:

The person receiving that message knows why I’m emailing them after two
seconds of reading.
But more importantly, the word “because” cements my reason for reaching out
as more legit.
10. Write Mini Blog Posts for YouTube Descriptions
I don’t needto tell you that YouTube video results are dominating Google’s
first page.
And considering that Google owns the popular video site, it’s a trend that’s not
likely to change anytime soon.
Here’s the best part:
There’s a dead-simple technique that can get yourYouTube videos to rank for
competitive keywords in both YouTube and Google?
Well there is: write 200+ word video descriptions.
When most people upload a video to YouTube, they mindlessly toss a few
words into the description box:

That’s a HUGE mistake.
Rememberthat Google can’t watch or listen to your video content.
Instead, they rely on yourvideo’s text-based title and description to
determine what yourvideo is about.
And this extra text content can help you rank for your target keyword.
For example, check out the description for one of my recent YouTube videos:

That’s a high-quality, 200-word description.
And this description is one reason that my video rocketed to the first page of
YouTube for the keyword “link building”:

If you want to learn more about YouTube SEO, check out this step-by-step
guide.
11. Reverse Engineer the Results on Page 6
Fun fact: Reverse engineering pages 2-10 will often hook you up with top-
notch link opportunities…
…opportunities that you’d miss when you only reverse engineer Google’s first
page.
But you’re probably wondering: “Is there really anythinggood to
reverse engineer on page 6?”
The short answer: yes.
The idea that pages 3-10 are littered with low-quality sites is a myth.
In fact, a lot of the results on Google’s inner pages are made up of people that
started cool sites…

but eventually gave up when things didn’t work out the way they planned.
Here’s the thing: before they movedon to the next project, they published
some awesome resources.
Because these resources tend to be neglected, you can easily improve them
and steal their links usingThe Skyscraper Technique.
For example, I did a quick search for “weight loss tips”.
Sure enough, I foundthis heavily linked-to resource on the 6th page:
As you can probably see from the screenshot, this site has A LOT of room for
improvement.
However, because the authorof this page used to care about his site, he was
able to land links to his site from authority sites like Livesrong:

Think you could take the content from this old site and make it better?
I know you can
12. Embed Long Tail Keywords In Title Tags
Here’s the deal:
If you only include one keyword in your title tag you’re leaving A LOT of
search engine traffic on the table (And no, I’m not talking about keyword
stuffing).
I’ll explain: I recently published a post called “White Hat SEO Case Study:
How To Get a #1 Ranking“.

My target keyword for that post was, “white hat SEO”.
So I included the keyword “white hat SEO” in the post’s title.
But I didn’t stop there…
I realized that the keyword “SEO case study” alsogot a decent amount of
searches every month:

So I decided to embed that long tail keyword into the blog post title:
And I hit the #2 for spot for “SEO case study” in a few short weeks:

As you might expect, the keyword “SEO case study” is MUCH less competitive
than “white hat SEO”.
Because of that, I got traffic almost instantly from the keyword “SEO case
study”.
And as that page has accumulated links, it’s made its way onto the first page
for “white hat SEO” as well.

If I had only optimized for “white hat SEO”, I wouldn’t have received ANY
traffic until I hit the first page for that term.
Fortunately, my embedded long tail keyword “SEO case study” hookedme up
with traffic right away.
Bottom line:
Find long tails that you can embed into your titles.
You’ll get search engine traffic faster… and eventually rank the page for more
than one term.

13. Hack Wikipedia for Keyword and Topic Ideas
Want to find untapped keywords that your competition doesn’t know about?
Then stop using the Google Keyword Planner and use this SEO technique
instead.
Sure, The Keyword Planneris nice for monthly search volume info…but it’s
HORRIBLE at generating new keyword ideas.
Why?
Well, the Keyword Planner only gives you VERY close variations of the
keywords of your seedkeywords.
So if you enter a seed keyword like “weight loss”, it will spit out VERY similar
keywords, like this:
If you want to find keywords that are closely related to yourseed keyword —
but not straight-up variations — you need a human mind.
Or better yet, the thousands of human minds that contribute to Wikipedia.
Here’s how:

Head over to Wikipedia and enter a keyword (I’m going to use the keyword
“insurance” in this example):
Next, keep an eye out for sections on the Wikipedia entry that display closely
related keywords and topics.
These sections are… The “Contents”box:

You’ll usually come away with fistfuls of keyword and topic ideas from a single
Wikipedia entry.
If you want to find even more keyword ideas, click on an internal link.
Then simply follow the same process for thatWikipedia entry.
Rinse and repeat.
14. Use “Best of” Lists to Find Awesome Link Targets
This is one of my favorite SEO tips of all time.
If you do a lot of link building, you know that a list of high-quality, niche-
relevant blogs is like money in the bank.

What you may not realize is that bloggers in your niche create these lists
for you in the form of “best of” blog posts.
“Best of” blog posts are simply hand curated lists of the best blogs in a specific
industry.
How can you find these “best of” blog posts?
Use these search strings:
 “[keyword] blogs to follow”
 “best [keyword] posts 2016”
 “top [keyword] blogs to follow” + “2016”
For example, I just did a quick search for “fitness blogs to follow”:
I found this list of 25 awesome blogs in the fitness space after about ten
seconds of searching:

These 25 blogs are PERFECT places to reach out to the next time you want to
promote a piece of content or build a long-term relationship.
15. Publish Content With At Least 1,800Words
There’s no denying it: longer content CRUSHES short 300-word blog posts.

In fact, ourstudy of 1 million Google search resultsfoundthat the average
word count of a first page Google results was 1,890 words.
Why do long posts work? First off, long posts show Google that you’re
providing in-depth information for searchers.
But that’s not all:
In-depth content flips an important emotional switch that pushes people to
share online content:awe.
University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Jonah Berger foundthat content that elicited
awe made people 30% more likely to share it.
As you may expect, it’s REALLY hard to trigger a feeling of awe from a 350-
word article…
…but in-depth pieces work like a charm.

16. Remember the “First Link Priority Rule”
Here’s an SEO mistake I see A LOT of people make:
Let’s say you have two links pointing to a page on yoursite… and both of those
links are on same page.
Which anchor text does Google pay attention to? The first one? The second
one? Both?
According to the First Link Priority Rule, only the first link.
Why is this important?
Let’s say you have a navigation bar on your site, like this:
Because your navigation is at the top of the page, Google sees those links first.
Here’s where things get tricky:
Let’s say that you drop a link to your “Recipe Index” page in a blog post.
And that link has the anchor text: “healthy recipes”.

Unfortunately, the “healthy recipes” anchor text is ignored by Big G.
Google only counts the anchortext it saw first: “Recipe Index”.
Important Takeaway:
Use keyword-rich anchors in yoursite’s navigation.
As you just learned, the keyword-rich internal links below them don’t count.
17. Create Your Own Keywords
This is one of the best pieces of SEO advice you’re ever going to hear:
You always rank #1 for keywords that you create.
What am I talking about?

When you create something truly original — like a brand, product, or a step-
by-step system — you’re the only person optimizing for that term.
(After all, you made it up)
And if your creation becomes popular, you’ll suddenly find yourself ranking #1
for a high-volume keyword.
Let me show you an example:
A while back I published a post called: Link Building Case Study: How I
Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days.
Now I could have optimized my post arounda keyword like: “link building
strategy”.

Instead, I decided to create my own keyword: “The Skyscraper
Technique“.
Today, I get a steady stream of organic traffic from people searching for that
keyword that I created.
How can you do the same thing?
The next time that you write about a technique that you created — whether it’s
a diet tip, productivity hack or system for growing tomatoes — name it.
18. Find Undiscovered Keywords With This Little-
Known Tool.
If you’ve been in the SEO game for a while you know that a keyword tool is
only as good as the seed keywords you put into it.
In other words:
If you use the same seed keywords as your competition, you’re going to see the
same keywords they do.

Fortunately, there’s a little-known tool that helps you get around this
problem: SeedKeywords.com.
Here’s how to use it:
First, head over to Seed Keywords and create a scenario.
(A scenario is what someone would use to find yourbusiness online).
Hit “create my scenario” and you’ll get a special link.

Send this link to friends, family and target customers to see what keywords
they would use:
And you’ll get a list of outside-the-box seedkeywords that you can pop into the
Google Keyword Planner.

Now it’s time for ournext actionable SEO technique…
19. Use Expert Roundups to Generate Links and Social
Shares on Autopilot
You may have seen Expert Roundups — blog posts that collect insights from a
group of experts — blowing up around the web.
For example, here are some recent roundups from several different industries
that have done really well:

(Web development niche: 580 shares)

(Socializing niche: 911 shares)
You get the idea
Here’s why expert roundups are crushing it right now:
Expert roundups are one of the few pieces of content that have built-in
promotion.
Think about it:

The experts that you feature in yourroundup will naturally want to share your
content with their audience.
Which means that — if you get influential people to contribute — you’ll get
boatloads of traffic and social shares minutes after you hit “publish”.
Here’s how you can do the same thing:
Step #1:
Collect the top blogs and websites in your niche (you can find them using SEO
Technique #14 from this post:”Use Best of Lists to Find Awesome Link
Targets”).
Collect their name, blog, social media and contact information in a
spreadsheet:
Step # 2:
Come up with a topic in your niche that a group experts could shed some light
on.
Pro Tip:
A topic that yourtarget audience struggles with is ideal.
For example, in the automotive space there’s a lot of confusion about how to
find the right car.

Hundreds of factors — from price to safety to resale value — go into buying a
new car.
That’s a topic where a group of experts could add a ton of value.
Step #3:
Email the experts on your list.
Rememberthat the experts you reach out to are probably busy. So make sure
that you make it EXTREMELY easy for them to respond.
Here’s an email template that would work well in our car Expert Roundup
example:

Step #4:
Publish the roundup and email your contributors to let them know that it’s
live:

And watch the social shares and links roll in
20. Find Niche-Specific Link Building Opportunities
Using Flippa
There’s no doubt about it:
Google is putting more and more weight on the relevancy of the links pointing
to your site.
But where can you find link building opportunities that are specific to your
niche? Flippa.com.
Flippa is like eBay for websites.
And it’s one of the best places on the web to find untapped link building
opportunities.
Why?
Because people that sell their site on Flippa give away every detail about how
they built their site.

That means they’ll often show you their keywords, content strategy, (and of
course) link sources.
It’s like a downloadable marketing plan.
Here’s how to do it:
Head over to Flippa and click on Websites –>All:
Next, enter a keyword that describes yoursite’s broad niche (I’m going to use
travel in this example).
You also want to set the monthly users to at least 500 per month.

Here’s a good one:
The owner of this site actually gives a list of places where he landed editorial
links:

Not only does he show you where he got his links from…but HOW he was able
to get them:
(Many Flippa sellers are just as forthcoming)
Now you know that they acquired those quality links using PR.
That means you have a list of journalists that are open to covering sites in the
travel space.
Can you say jackpot?
21. Use Facebook Ads for Keyword Research
Click “play” to see how to do it (step-by-step):

1:01
Here’s The Next Step…
Are you ready to use the one of the 21 SEO techniques from this post?
If so, then leave a quick comment to let me know which strategy you’re going
to try first.
Maybe you want to create your own keywords. Or perhaps you’re ready to start
using the word “because” in youroutreach emails.
Either way, leave a quick comment to let me know what you think.

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