Today I’m going to explain the importance of keyword research when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization) and also officially ‘announce’ my latest software application that will be released real soon.
First of all, let’s talk about keywords and why they are so important.
They’re important because keywords are what people type into search engines such as Google in order to find specific content, products and services.
Keywords are used with direct intent by your hottest prospects – People who are looking for solutions ‘right there and then’.
That’s why platforms such as Google and YouTube still provide the hottest, most valuable leads compared to social media sites such as TikTok and Facebook. It’s because your prospects are actively ‘searching’ for something rather than seeing an ad pushed in front of them.
Search engine traffic is by far the hottest traffic you can get, and this is why you should be trying to rank your websites and content as highly as you possibly can.
The First Task Before Creating Website Content
The very first task before creating any kind of website or blog content is to evaluate keywords.
To find keywords and search queries that people are typing into Google, but that aren’t also been heavily targeted by your competition.
Believe me – there is an almost limitless number of keywords / search queries that are typed into Google everyday. Many of these keywords have strong competition who are also trying to rank content for those keywords – whilst many other keywords have hardly any competition.
The question is, how do you find the best keywords to target?
Keywords that have weak competition and that you could rank for on Googles 1st page.
Well, I have a very specific method for finding such keywords but it’s a long drawn out ‘manual’ process.
It works. It’s effective. And it allows me to find ‘easy’ keywords that can deliver visitors to my websites… but it’s tedious and takes time.
Well, until now at least.
A while back I decided to automate this entire ‘keyword research’ process, so I sat down at my computer and spent many hours EVERY day building a brand-new software.
This software is now complete and I will be releasing it very soon (this month!).
So, I’d like to officially announce my latest ‘SEO’ software creation – “Keyword Phoenix”.
Keyword Phoenix will allow you to quickly analyze the competition for ANY keyword.
It will give you a birds-eye view of the top ranked websites / pages that are already ranking for the keywords that you want to target.
It will identify their strengths and weaknesses, and you’ll know EXACTLY what you’ll need to do to rank YOUR content, blog post or page on page 1 of Google.
It will reveal HARD keywords, that you should avoid – as well as reveal easy keywords that you can rank for on page 1 with ease.
Remember, the more page 1 rankings you can achieve on Google, the more visitors you’ll receive to your website or blog.
More visitors also equates to more leads, sales and income.
I’m thinking of releasing Keyword Phoenix to my customers and subscribers first (you) on either 25th or 26th May. Although I will be giving you a SNEAK PEAK before that date.
If you’d like to get more page 1 Google rankings, and are interested in getting access to my new software, please drop me a comment below.
If I get enough comments and interest I will put together a GREAT deal for you!
In todays blog post I wanted to share a powerful ranking factor that is prominent in 2022 yet is often overlooked.
This is specifically for ranking videos in Googles search results, so if you create video content – this blog post is for you.
First of all, you’ve probably noticed that videos do not always appear in the search results for some keywords.
This is because of TWO reasons:
Not all keyword search queries are best suited for video content, hence why standard web results take up the first page.
Google doesn’t identify any particular ‘YouTube’ video to be a suitable video that answers the searchers ‘query’.
As many of you will know, I’m BIG on YouTube video optimization and I have a very effective system for optimizing a videos title, description and tags so that it ranks the video higher in the search results. Particularly in YouTubes search results.
In fact – I developed an entire software app called TubeSerp that allows you to do that.
With that being said – to rank on the 1st page of Google, and particularly for ‘competitive keywords’ – we need to do more.
Google is starting to pay more attention to the actual video content itself, and not just video optimization and user engagement.
They’re analyzing the actual ‘spoken words’ that are used within a video. YES – the voiceover.
Google are revealing this themselves within their search results.
Here’s a few examples of what I’m referring to:
In the screenshot above you’ll see that Google has shown my video and right underneath the ‘supersized’ video thumbnail, it has displayed a snippet of my voiceover.
This has been taken from the ‘subtitles’ that they have automatically generated from my video.
As you can see, the part of the voiceover they have analyzed and displayed under my video, matches the search query very well.
This shows they are paying close attention to the actual content of the video before deciding WHO should see it.
Here’s another example:
In the example above they have timestamped 10 ‘key moments’ that they think the searcher may be interested in.
They have categorically analyzed my video and identified various sections of content.
This illustrates just how important it is to create great video content in 2022 and to delve deeply into your topic, to answer the searchers ‘query’ as precisely as possible. The more effort you put into your videos, the better results you’ll see.
So, Here’s Some Tips For You
When recording your own videos or voiceovers – speak clearly. Pace yourself and ensure your speech is as clear and precise as can be. This way YouTube (Google) will be able to effectively convert your audio into subtitles – that they can understand.
Whatever keyword(s) you target, be sure to comprehensively answer the searchers query. Be very precise and cover as much information as you can about that specific topic / query.
Be sure to mention your main keyword ‘naturally’ in your video. Ideally early on, and once or twice more throughout.
If you’re adding background music over your video or voiceover, make it subtle and non-intrusive. Lower volumes and ‘calm’ soundtracks make it easier for YouTube (Google) to extract your subtitles, and make it more enjoyable for your viewers…. and Yes, Google will know this!
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and got some value from it.
As always I’d love to hear your comments – So feel free to drop a comment below!
To your success
Andy Black
P.s. – They’ll be some news about my ‘BRAND NEW’ upcoming software real soon – So stay tuned!
In todays blog post we’re going to take a look at backlinks, and how to find the BEST places to get backlinks from so that you can rank your website higher in Google.
But first of all – What websites provide us with the best backlinks?
The answer is quite simple, and makes a lot of sense. The best websites to get a backlink from are the websites that are already ranking at the top of Google for the keyword(s) that you want to rank for.
I guess it’s not rocket science, right?
Google are ranking those websites because they deem them the most valuable in terms of content and authority for “those” keywords. Therefore, we’re utilizing Googles OWN algorithm to help us find the best websites.
So, getting a backlink from those top ranked websites / pages will not only provide you with the most relevant, juiciest backlinks, but also with backlinks that can send you actual traffic – which is what backlinks are supposed to be about – sending people from one website or page to another.
How to find out which websites offer backlinks
There is one particular problem though, and that is that many of these top ranked websites won’t ‘freely’ offer backlinks.
So, what can we do about it.
We can do the next best thing by using this same ‘concept’ but narrowing the search results down to find websites that do offer backlinks.
This way we’re still using Google’s ranking algorithm to tell us which are the best, most relevant websites – but this time we’re filtering their results so that they will only show us websites that we can publish a backlink on.
Here’s how to do it
Let’s say we want to rank a website for the keyword “boiler installation”. This could even be a localized keyword such as “boiler installation newcastle”.
We can search Google to find websites that are relevant to ‘boiler installation’ but that also allows either ‘business directory listings’ or ‘guest posts’.
Although there are MANY different search phrases you can use, I’m going to reveal just a couple of examples for the sake of this post.
Here’s one.
This particular search will return many different websites that are related to ‘boiler installation’ but that also allows you to add a business listing.
Many of these listings are FREE and often provide you with a DOFOLLOW backlink, not to mention ‘citations’ – both of which can help you to rank higher in Google.
Here’s another example, but this time to find ‘guest post’ opportunities.
As you can see, these websites allow you to submit guest posts and in return, you’ll gain authority, and also a backlink (and direct traffic).
It really is that simple! You just need to be creative with your ‘search phrases’ and invest some time in obtaining these quality backlinks.
Google will reward you by ranking your website higher and sending you more visitors.
This is also a great service to offer to local businesses or clients.
I have actually developed a NEW “Local SEO Software” that will help you to find these types of backlinks (plus more).
But more on that later – Hopefully in the coming weeks! It’ll be released soon.
A Quick Heads Up….
I have ALSO been developing a brand-new SEO software that I plan to release later next month (May). I’m super excited about this!
Stay tuned as I’ll be offering my customers, subscribers and blog readers a fantastic deal (and early access to it).
In todays blog post we’re going to explore one of the most important SEO factors in 2022 – and that’s topical authority.
But What is Topical Authority and Why Does it Matter?
In a nutshell “topical authority” is where you can position yourself (your blog or website) as an authority on a specific topic to Google.
When you achieve that you’ll find that your website traffic explodes and that your future content and posts rank much higher and faster.
But of course, there’s more to it than that.
Not only do you have to provide answers to almost EVERY question asked on the internet about your topic, you also have to structure your content the right way, and also interlink your content so that it increases the user experience for your visitors, and allows them to dig deeper into the topic – keeping them on your website for longer.
First of all – Let me backtrack and try and explain a little further on what topical authority is.
Let’s say there are TWO different websites.
The first website is about internet marketing and on this website there is a great post about “Email Marketing” that contains lots of valuable information.
However, on this website there are also posts about video marketing, social media, affiliate marketing, and so on.
The second website is all about “Email Marketing” and it only contains information on all things closely related to email marketing. For example, let’s say there are posts on open rates, deliverability, soft / hard bounces, email segmentation, email automation rules, list cleaning, spam complaints etc.
Which of those websites would likely be seen as an authority on the topic of email marketing?
The second one, right?
That’s what topical authority is – It’s about focusing on a single topic (in a fairly broad sense) rather than multiple topics.
All of your information needs to be related to the one ‘core’ topic. In the example given above, this would of course be “email marketing”.
When Google see’s this, it will place your website higher in their search results and send more visitors to your website.
It’ll essentially rank most of your posts and pages higher for their respective keywords (and relational keywords).
Interlinking and Content Clusters
There are two important aspects of topical authority that you need to understand. These are interlinking your content and posts, and ‘content clusters’.
Let me give you an example to try and explain a little better.
Let’s say that you want to create a post on your website about ’email deliverability’ and that you want to rank that post for the keyword “email deliverability best practices”.
This is What You Would Need to Do
You would need to have a website or blog that is themed around the topic of “email marketing”.
You would create a high quality, well structured, informative “pillar” post tightly related to “email deliverability best practices”.
You would create a number of shorter posts that provide additional information on the various factors that help people to get better deliverability for their marketing emails. Posts about “list cleaning”, “email authentication”, “hard bounces”, “spam complaints” etc.
You would then link to these shorter posts from your main pillar post allowing your visitors to delve deeper and get a more in-depth answer to their question.
By doing the above you’re essentially creating a “Content Cluster” and this is what Google LOVES in 2022.
It helps to provide their searchers with a competent, substantial answer to their question – and massively increases their user experience.
At the end of the day, that’s Googles job! So they will always favour websites that can provide their users with the best answers, and best user experience.
Answer As Many Questions As Possible Within Your Content
In order to achieve topical authority with your website or blog it’s important that is answers as many questions on your topic as possible. That’s how your website WILL become an authority within Googles eyes.
There’s many sources where you can find content ideas based on what people search for. Two of which are the Google search page itself, and also a free website called answerthepublic.com.
Getting Content Ideas from Google
If you head over to Google and enter a search term that is closely related to what you want to rank for, you’ll see TWO different areas that will contain ideas.
The first one is the “People also ask” section that will present you with related searches / questions that people type into Google.
You can click on the little down-arrow icons to the right of each question, and Google will show you additional questions. Repeat this a few times to collate a good number of topical content ideas for your content cluster.
The second area of the Google search page is the “Related searches” section towards the bottom of the search page. These are also the same as the suggestions presented in the search bar (Google Suggest). *See below.
Optionally, a website called answerthepublic.com will generate some lovely ‘content maps’ for you based on any keyword.
This is a great way to plan out your content for an entire website, or even a ‘content cluster’.
It presents you with a number of different maps which can be viewed either visually or in a standard ‘data format’. *See below.
Of course, gaining topical authority for your niche requires you to create LOTS of quality, unique content. I’d highly recommend a software called Copywriterr to do this as it will automatically write content for you on any topic – and as it uses A.I. and machine learning it’s almost limitless with regards to what it can write.
It’ll certainly save you countless hours / days of writing, or save you a ton of money as you won’t need to outsource your content writing.
If you enjoyed this post and got some value from it… and would like to see more posts like this – Leave me a comment below and tell me.
In todays blog post we’re going to delve into “niche selection” and how to identify opportunities when they present themselves.
So, you’ve probably heard the word ‘saturation’ banded around a lot when it comes to business – especially ‘online’ business.
Choosing a niche to sell something in usually depends on how saturated it is.
However, if a niche is not saturated, it often means it may not have a ‘sizeable’ audience that is interested in it.
Where there is demand, there is supply. That’s just the nature of it.
Therefore, finding a niche with a large audience that has little competition is not just hard, it is near enough impossible.
On top of that, if you do not have a large budget, or USP – You’ll have no chance of breaking through and making an impact.
So Andy, What’s the Solution?
The solution is a simple one, although you’ll need to have your eyes peeled and your ear to the ground if you’re to apply this strategy.
The trick is to identify possible ‘niches’ before the masses do.
Let me give you an example so you can better understand what I mean.
Let’s take a look at the ‘car / automobile industry’ and think about all the different products and services that have become available since the invention of ‘cars’.
First let’s look at some of the services that people have built businesses around:
Valeting and Car Wash
Mechanic Workshops
Body Repair Shops
Car Parts and Accessories Retailers
Tyre Fitting
Breakdown and Recovery
Alloy Wheel Refurbishment
Engine Tuning and Modifications
Track Days
Taxi Services
Car Hire Companies
Car Insurance
I’m sure there’s plenty more too.
Let’s look at some of the products that have been brought to market due to the existence of cars:
Aftermarket Tyres
Aftermarket Exhausts
Tuning Products
Car Air Freshners
Car Covers
Specialist Cleaning Products
Car Touch Up Paints
Custom Tyre Valves
Car Key Fobs
You get the idea, right?
All of these products and services are available around the world, and only exist because CARS exist.
Another example of this is the Nintendo Wii. Shortly after it’s release on 19th November 2006, a ton of aftermarket products and accessories were brought to market. Wii Boxing Gloves, Wii Golf Clubs, and Wii Steering Wheels just to name a few.
The fact of the matter is, a new ‘broad appeal’ gaming console was released to the masses that caught the attention of a huge, international audience – and some ‘fast thinking’ entrepreneurs acted quickly and piggybacked the frenzy.
Clever, right?
Take a look at mobile phones – Which was very similar.
There’s an insane number of ‘mobile repair shops’ around the world, in almost every town and city.
There’s aftermarket products such as chargers, cables, and phone cases.
Entire businesses have been built around them – And if they got in early, they had a great chance of succeeding.
What You Need to Do
You need to pay close attention to new innovations, technologies, and products that “may” be getting released.
New ‘things’ that don’t already exist, but are about to hit the market and become available to the masses.
Once you identify a possible niche, product or trend that is about to breakout – Take a closer look at it and see if there’s a product that could piggyback it and be complimentary to it.
See if there is a service that can be offered around it. Similar to the examples further up this post.
Opportunity is around us all the time. We just need to ‘see’ it and take action before the herd follows suit.
Would you believe that many people think that growing a business is complicated. The truth of the matter is, it really isn’t.
No matter what type of business you have, there are 4 components that will help you to grow your business and generate more money.
These 4 components are relevant to both ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses and online businesses – but for the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to veer towards ‘online business’ in relation to any examples I use.
Let’s take a closer look at the 4 components
#1: More Visitors / Increase Your Audience
This is quite an obvious one but it is one of the biggest. Get more visitors to your offers, or tap into a bigger audience.
The more people you can reach, the more sales you will make. It’s basic math.
Most businesses barely scratch the surface when it comes to reaching their target audience. In 2022 there are lots of ways to broaden your search and reach your target customers. There’s social media, search engines, YouTube, Reddit, and paid traffic sources.
That’s just to mention a few!
Before you can improve other areas of your ‘sales process’ you first need to get your products and services in front of your target audience – So be sure to reach as many people as you can.
#2: More Products or Services
Many businesses focus on bringing in NEW customers which is great. However, they often forget that their existing customers are far more likely to buy from them, than ‘cold’ prospects are.
Once a person or company invests in one of your products or services they are a customer. There’s a level of trust, loyalty and rapport that has been built, and therefore they’re more likely to buy from you again in the future.
With this in mind, CREATE new ‘additional’ products and services that you can market to your existing customer base, to grow your business further and generate more sales.
#3: Convert More Sales
This is one of the most important components yet it is the one that gets overlooked the most.
It’s important to convert as many of your visitors / prospects as possible, so that they become paying customers.
In sales and marketing terms, this is called ‘sales conversion’.
There are many things that you can do to increase the ratio of people that buy your products and services.
After a prospect enters your sales funnel you can send them a content driven ‘marketing’ email sequence that pitches your products or services.
You can include strategically placed ‘buttons’ and links within your websites, blogs and marketing pages.
You can setup ‘tripwire’ offers, upgrades and so much more.
Improving your sales conversion is all about ‘leaving no stone unturned’ and making sure you optimize your entire process and capitalize on every opportunity to present an offer, or close a sale.
#4: Increase Your Prices
This one is by far the quickest way to generate more money – and that’s to increase your prices.
However, this requires serious thought and consideration.
Are your prices due an increase? Have you been stacking up the value and improving your products or services? Have your competitors increased their prices?
Maybe you are passed the ‘startup’ phase, have honed your skills, have some customers and are ready for the next phase?
You can often increase your prices without seeing any drop in sales. If you can justify it, then increase your prices slightly and enjoy an instant pay rise.
Business Doesn’t Have to Be Hard
The basics of business really isn’t that complicated. Making simple adjustments can have a huge impact on your business, sales and income.
If you have a business, take a look at some of these key areas and see where you can make improvements.
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant’s relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.
Here are some of the ways in which e-mail marketing can help your business:
Email is an easy way to communicate directly with your customers and prospects – just compose an e-mail and send it! Unlike social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter where you have no control over who sees your posts and when they see them. E-mail marketing enables you to add thousands of subscribers with ease – you can grow your list as big as you want! Unlike direct mail which can be extremely costly.
Email marketing is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. The key is to use the right email marketing software for your company and its goals. The software or service should provide the features and flexibility to suite your needs, and of course be within your budget.
With email marketing, you can build relationships with potential customers or clients, as well as your existing customer base. You can encourage customer loyalty and reward customer referrals. You can promote new products or services as well as events, special offers and more. It’s a cost-effective way to spread the word about your business.
What is Email Automation
One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is applying email automation to your business.
Email Marketing Automation is a technology that allows you to send pre-written emails to your subscribers automatically.
Email sequences are a series of emails, which are sent out from one day to another and allow you to build a long lasting relationship with your subscribers.
By sending out email sequences that provide value to your subscribers, you will be able to turn them into paying customers.
An email sequence is basically a pre-planned series of emails that are sent to your audience at set times. There are many different types of sequences, but they all have the same end goal — to help you build relationships with your audience and sell your products or services.
For example:
You could send a monthly newsletter instead of writing an individual one for each person that signs up.
You could use a “Welcome Email Sequence ” to welcome new subscribers to your list and get them familiar with your business.
You could set automatic reminders to go out if someone doesn’t buy after you offer them a product or service.
The possibilities are endless! You can automate just about anything with email marketing automation. It’s one of my favorite ways to communicate with my audience because I don’t have to manually write every single email — saving me tons of time!
Email marketing automation is when you use software to add, remove and manage people on your lists, create email sequences, and send emails to different segments of your list. It’s commonly used to nurture leads and retain customers.
What is Email Bounce Rate and How Can it Affect Your Email Campaign Results
It’s not a good idea to use email marketing if your email bounce rate is higher than 10%. If you are thinking about how to reduce your email bounce rate, then you first need to understand what email bounce rate is and how it is calculated.
So let’s dive in.
Email bounce rate is the number of emails that were undelivered to the subscriber because of a technical reason such as an invalid email address. The bounced emails can be either hard bounces or soft bounces.
A hard bounce means that the email address does not exist and it cannot be delivered. A soft bounce, on the other hand, indicates that the message has been bounced back for temporary reasons like server issues, a full mailbox etc.
So how do you calculate your email bounce rate? It’s simple: divide the number of bounced emails by the total number of delivered emails (bounced emails + delivered emails).
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of email addresses from your list that are “bouncing back ” emails you send. The email is sent, but it bounces back to your sender address because the recipient’s email address is invalid or has issues.
Besides being a good way to lose customers and damage your reputation, a high bounce rate is also bad for your deliverability. It’s one of the factors spam filters use to determine whether or not to deliver your emails. So it’s important that you keep an eye on it.
So, when it comes to hard bounces and soft bounces, hard bounces are more damaging.
Hard bounces are permanent failures—emails that will never be delivered. If you’re consistently sending emails to these addresses, you could get flagged as a spammer, which will hurt your sender reputation and make it harder for people who do want your emails to get them in their inboxes. These addresses should be removed from your list so they don’t continue to hurt your deliverability rates.
What Are Email Open Rates and How Can they Affect My Email Deliverability
Email open rates are an important metric, they help you know how your list is engaging with your messages. However, they’re often misunderstood and can be misleading. So, let’s take a look at what email open rates are, how they’re calculated and give you some tips on increasing your open rate.
Your email open rate is one of the most important metrics for judging the success of your email marketing campaign. It’s also a favorite of marketers and business owners alike. The email open rate tells you exactly how many people saw your message and decided to take action by opening it.
But how exactly is the open rate calculated? And what does it really tell you?
You probably already know your email open rate. It’s typically reported as part of your email service provider’s analytics, and it’s one of the most important metrics you can track.
But knowing what an open rate is, and how to interpret it, isn’t always so easy.
It helps to start with the basics: what is an ‘open’?
As already stated, the email open rate is one of the most important email marketing metrics. It tells you how effective your subject line was in encouraging subscribers to open your email.
If you think about it, the subject line is the first impression that an email makes on a subscriber, and they will decide whether or not to open it based on this alone. The subject line is also the first piece of information that email clients display when listing messages in inboxes, so it’s vital for getting your emails noticed.
Remember, with subject lines you only have a certain number of words to grab your audiences attention, and create some curiosity – So do not rush this small but important task when creating your email campaigns.
What is Email CTR – Also known as ‘Click Through Rate’
Email click-through rate (CTR) is the number of subscribers who click on a link in your email divided by the total number of subscribers. CTR is an important metric because it communicates how relevant your content is to your audience.
How to calculate email CTR
To get your click-through rate, you divide the total number of clicks on a particular link by the total number of emails sent to that list minus bounces and unsubscribes. This can be calculated with the following formula:
(Total clicks on the link / (Total emails delivered – Total bounces – Total unsubscribes)) x 100 = Click-through Rate
Anytime you send an email campaign, you’ll want to check your click-through rate to see how well that particular message resonated with your audience. The higher your click through rate, the more successful your content was at getting people to take action.
Email is one of the most effective marketing channels at our disposal, but it is not without its challenges. One of the most common email marketing questions we hear from marketers is: “What is a good click-through rate?” or “What is a good open rate?” As with any question that starts with the word “good,” it’s not an easy one to answer.
The answer depends on a lot of factors: type of email sent, company size, industry, and other demographic data points.
One tip to get a higher ‘click through rate’ is to include your clickable link higher up in your email copy. Also, for longer emails, include more than one link.
One thing is certain, email marketing should be a priority within your business and be a part of your overall marketing strategy.
It’s a Friday! And before I log off for the weekend, I want to share with you 7 different types of website that you can get FREE, organic traffic from.
When you run or own an online business, blog or website of any kind, website traffic is the lifeblood that will help it to succeed.
Without visitors, you’re doomed!
So, Let’s Dive Right In
I’m going to categorize EACH type of website, explain what they are, and how you can benefit from them. As well as give you at least ONE good example website.
Search Engines
This is an obvious one. Search engines often act as a point of entry to the internet for many people. If someone is looking for something specific, they will enter their search query into the search engine, and will be presented with the most relevant results, based on their query.
The great part about search engines is they will bring a highly targeted audience to your website. People who are actually looking for your content, products or services.
The downside with regards to search engines is it can take a lot of work, and time to appear in the search results for your chosen keywords.
The biggest search engine is Google which has around 4.3 billion users, and the 2nd largest ‘traditional’ search engine is Bing which has over 1 billion visits per month.
Video Websites
This is my personal favourite type of website, and what I focus most of my efforts on these days when it comes to building an audience and driving traffic.
Being able to create videos that you can instantly publish and that reach a HUGE targeted audience is amazing when it comes to building an online business.
Although there are a number of video platforms such as DailyMotion, the biggest video website by far is of course YouTube.
YouTube is owned by Google and has over 2 billion active users. It’s also very quick and easy to start getting your video content seen by a highly targeted audience, and to start driving traffic to your websites, blogs, or offers.
Unlike some of the other types of websites that I’ll be mentioning below, you can self promote all you like with YouTube – which makes it very easy to build an email list or drive sales directly from YouTube.
It’s like having your very own soap box with a huge crowd around you, listing to what you have to say.
Social News Websites
Social news websites are great places to tap into various size groups of people based on interest. People read and share news or information on almost any topic – as well as comment and engage with other users.
The biggest social news website that I would recommend is Reddit, which has 430 million monthly active users (statistics from 2019).
For many people it’s a fast way to drive traffic, depending on your topic, niche or industry. However, every “Sub-Reddit” within the website has their own set of rules, and it is often hard to ‘self-promote’.
If you want to promote on Reddit in 2022 you have to be creative.
Social Bookmarking Websites
You may have heard the term “Social Bookmarking” and remember it from the old days of online marketing. However, the truth is, for many it is still a great way to drive traffic and sales.
Probably the best social bookmarking website in 2022 is Pinterest which allows users to visually share, and discover new interests by posting (also known as ‘pinning’) images or videos to their boards, or other users boards (for example – a collection of ‘pins,’ usually within a common theme or topic) and also browsing what other Pinterest users have pinned.
Pinterest has around 459 million monthly active users.
Question and Answer Websites
Question and Answer websites have proven to be very popular, and it’s a great way to build authority within your niche or industry.
Although you can register on these websites and ask questions, which other people will answer – You’re also able to share your expertise and knowledge by answering other users questions.
With most of these websites you’re able to include a ‘bio’ where you can tell people about yourself, and often share links to your websites and offers.
When you become an authority on these websites, the traffic can soon come flooding in!
One of the biggest question and answer websites in 2022 is Quora.
Quora has around 300 million monthly active users, and is a great place to find people who need solutions to their problems. So register today and start ‘answering questions’!
PDF Sharing Websites
This type of website has become a bit of a dying breed in recent years and they aren’t as popular as they once were. However, they can still provide a source of relevant traffic – which are warmed up by the time they land on your OWN website or offer.
PDF websites are exactly that – a site where you can upload PDF documents. The most popular being ‘eBooks’ and ‘Reports’.
If you create an ebook that is focused on a particular topic and includes high quality, useful information – You can upload it to these websites, optimize the listing and make your eBook available to the world.
By the time people read your eBook they have just found and downloaded, they’re primed to click through to your website to learn more about you, and what you have to offer.
One of the better known PDF sharing websites is SlideShare, that has around 100 million users – although I’m not 100% sure what year that statistic is from.
Social Media
Social media may be last in this list, but it’s not last in relation to audience size and traffic.
In fact, social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok have billions of users. The majority of people today have at least one social media account.
However, unless you’re using their internal ‘ad platforms’ to pay for traffic you have to manually build up your audience on these websites.
These are often referred to as ‘Friends’, ‘Followers’, or ‘Fans’.
Similar to having ‘Subscribers’ on YouTube, the more followers and fans you have on your social media accounts, the more people you can reach when you publish a message.
Social media is content driven, so the better your content is, the more it will get shared, and the more followers and fans you’ll gain.
I hope you got some value from this post, and I’d love to hear about any other websites you use to drive traffic.
Feel free to drop them in the comments section below.
On another note: I’m going to be sharing some pretty cool ‘SEO’ related stuff with you in the 2nd half of this month, so stay tuned for that – and keep an eye out for my emails.
If you have followed me for a reasonable amount of time, or bought any of my products, you’ll be well aware that I’m an advocate of ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’ (aka L.S.I.) when it comes to SEO and ranking content.
Or, what I prefer to call it… Semantic Optimization.
The phrase ‘Content is King’ has been banded around for a long time now, and with good reason. When it comes to SEO practices – ‘content’ and ‘semantic optimization’ go together like ‘peas and carrots’.
Whether it’s an article, post title, H tags, alt tags, or even anchor text in backlinks – They can all be semantically optimized to help increase the Google ranking of the page (or post).
So, What is Semantic Optimization?
Ok, first I’m going to give you a definition that was published by SearchEngineJournal.com, and it goes like this…
Latent semantic indexing (also referred to as Latent Semantic Analysis) is a method of analyzing a set of documents in order to discover statistical co-occurrences of words that appear together which then give insights into the topics of those words and documents
However, there is an easier way to explain this using a simple ‘practical’ concept.
Want to play a little game?
So, let’s pretend for a minute that YOU’RE Google, and you’re crawling (reading) a blog post to determine what it is about.
Imagine that after crawling this blog post you have identified the following words…
fluffy
cute
playful
claws
saucer
milk
kindle
Just by reading that short list of words, what do you think that blog post might be about? What comes to mind?
Take a guess!
I’d imagine most people would guess something like ‘Kittens’, right? Is that what you guessed?
That’s exactly what Google does every time it finds and crawls a new web page or blog post.
It crawls the content and analyzes all the wording on the page (and in the headings and tags) to try and determine what the page is about.
You can’t just include your target keyword within your content and expect Google to agree with you that your content is ABOUT YOUR KEYWORD.
You have to really delve into the topic of your keyword and dig deep, and make sure you answer the users search query and provide real value.
Let’s look at another short list of words, and see if you can guess what the topic is about.
I won’t even include the ‘obvious’ word in this list!
foundation
lay
laid
mortar
feather
level
chisel
straight
gaps
mixture
Can you guess what this one is? The topic is ‘brick laying’. (The obvious word I left out the list was of course ‘brick’)
Here’s something that you need to think about when you create a blog post or piece of content around a specific keyword. Every keyword has a set of semantic words (LSI words) that are highly relevant and relational to it.
With this in mind, when you include your target keyword (that you’d like to rank for) in your post title and in your ‘article’, it doesn’t mean you will rank for it in the search results.
Google analyzes ALL the words used within a webpage or blog post and then builds a semantic theme. It will then use that semantic theme to determine what keywords the page should appear for in its search results.
Google is clever!
So, What’s the Solution
The solution is to write a really good piece of content that answers the search query, and goes deep. Go into detail to answer the question.
It’s about writing for the reader. Writing for your audience.
AFTER doing that you can then go over your content and analyze the words you have used.
How I Power Up My Content to Rank Higher
If I write an article or piece of content I run it through the SEO feature of my RewriterApp software to strengthen the article up so it ranks higher in Google.
How it Works
My RewriterApp feature extracts all the top ranking webpages for your target keyword. These are the webpages that Google is already ranking at the top of their search results. It then extracts all of the LSI words from those pages and creates a ‘weighted’ data set so it knows which are the most important / relevant words in that set.
You can then paste your article / content into the software and it will then calculate an SEO Score based on that ‘data set’ and let you know how it can be improved.
You can add some more LSI words to your article, and increase the score.
Then simply publish your new ‘revised’ article for improved rankings and to get more traffic from Google.
How to Use Latent Semantic Indexing With YouTube
That’s right, you can apply this same SEO concept to your YouTube videos too. You do this by applying these same principles to the video title, description and tags.
This can have a tremendous impact on your rankings in YouTube, as it’ll allow you to rank for specific keywords in the YouTube ‘search results’.
If you’re interested in using the power of semantic optimization for your websites, content or videos then feel free to check out my TWO software apps below.
It’s no secret that having an email list is one of the best assets you can have when owning a business.
An email list gives you the ability to reach out to your audience whenever you like.
Whether you’re delivering some training, sharing useful content, or selling a product to them – They’re just one click away when you have an email list.
However, the bigger your list grows, the more problems that can arise in terms if deliverability.
And when I say ‘deliverability’, I mean … landing your emails in their email inbox, and not their spam folder.
Emails that land in the spam folder, rarely get seen.
So, in this blog post I’m going to reveal 9 tips that you can apply to give your emails the best possible chance of landing in front of your subscribers, and not in their trash folder.
Let’s get started!
Tip #1. Authenticate Your Email Domain
If you’re using a 3rd party service to send your emails then be sure to setup the correct text records for the domain you’re using.
These records are called DKIM records, SPF records, and DMARC records.
I won’t go into detail about what these do, but they will help your emails to stay out of the spam folder.
The 3rd party service that you’re using to send out your emails will be able to provide you with these records, and your domain registrar or hosting provider will be able to help you set these up.
Tip #2. Subject Lines
Subject lines are important as it is the first part of your email your subscriber will see when you send out an email campaign.
They need to create curiosity and interest, and they have the sole purpose of convincing your subscribers to open and read your email.
However, using ‘bad or spammy’ words in your subject line is one of the quickest ways to land your emails in the spam folder.
There’s a FREE online service that you can use to ensure your subject lines are safe to use.
It’s an email subject line tester, and you simply enter in your chosen subject line and it will provide you with a score.
You want to aim for at least 90-100.
It will also give you an explanation of your score further down the page and notify you if any particular area of your subject line needs changing.
Tip #3. Do NOT Include Exclamation Marks or ALL UPPERCASE Words
Don’t use any exclamation marks within your email content or use capitalized words.
I have tested this thoroughly, and emails are far more likely to end up in the spam folder if you include either of these. So don’t use any if possible.
Tip #4. Test Your Email Campaign Before Sending to Your List of Subscribers
Use a FREE online service called GMass before sending out any email campaigns or newsletters.
This is an easy process to carry out. Simply head over to GMass (You can find this service HERE).
Create a small email list using all of the email addresses that they provide you with at the top of the page.
Then simply send your email campaign to this small list of contacts – and enter your ‘reply-to’ email address into the field below.
Once your email is received by each of these contacts it will reveal which inbox they landed in.
Which will be either the primary tab, promotions tab, or spam folder.
If you’re not happy with the results – You may want to tweak your subject line and email copy.
It’s also a good way to determine if your deliverability is starting to slide. Which leads me onto the next tip.
Tip #5. Google Postmaster
Google Postmaster is another FREE online service that you can use to get a better understanding of how Google is viewing your emails.
There are a number of different areas that you can check such as…
The spam rate. If you see frequent spam rates above 0.1% then that can indicate a problem.
IP reputation. This is the reputation of the IP address where your emails are being sent from. If you see GREEN on this screen, then that is good.
Domain reputation. This is how Google view the domain in which you’re sending emails from. This is your ‘reply-to’ email address.
The higher the reputation, the less chance that your emails will land in the spam folder.
There’s other metrics you can check too.
To find Google Postmaster simply log into Google and then go HERE. Add and verify your domain and you’re good to go.
Tip #6. Do NOT Email Inactive Leads
If a subscriber hasn’t opened an email in 120 days, do not email them. Constantly sending emails to people who do not open your emails, can impact your deliverability.
After all – If they’re not interested in reading your emails – Why bother emailing them, right?
Once they have been inactive for a long period of time, remove them from your mailing list.
This is called ‘list maintenance’ and can actually save you money.
Tip #7. Clean Your Email List
If you’re importing a list of subscribers then be sure to clean the list first using a list cleaning service.
These services generally aren’t free, however, they can save you a lot of headaches later on.
These services will remove spam traps and invalid or expired email addresses.
It’s also a good idea to export your ‘soft bounces’ from time to time and run them through one of these services – to remove any bad emails.
One particular service that I use is clearalist.com. However, there are plenty available that you can choose from – Based on your list size and budget.
Tip #8. Cloak Affiliate Links
If you’re promoting a product as an affiliate within your emails then be sure to cloak your affiliate link first.
Including direct affiliate links can sometimes get flagged as spam emails by ‘ISPs’ also known as ‘Internet Service Providers’.
So either cloak your affiliate link, use a re-direct, or use some kind of bridge page.
Finally – Tip #9. Don’t Include Too Many Links in Your Emails
Less is better – Just be sure to strategically place them where it makes sense – for example, after a call to action.
I hope that you got some value from this blog post.
If you have any good tips regarding email deliverability, feel free to drop a comment below to help others.
To your success
Andy Black
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