I’m sure you’ve thought the exact same thing:

Finding a profitable niche is hard.

In the beginning you have lots of good ideas. But, there’s always that little bit of doubt in the back of your mind, isn’t there?

You know, the one that says, “…but, is this going to make me any money?”

And it eats away like a cancer at your ideas.

Meaning you probably never get around to starting that side hustle, or blog, or affiliate site you’d always talked about doing. But what if there was a way to prove a niche was profitable before you started?

That way you could minimize your risk and maximize your results, and make an informed decision on getting started.

Well in this article I want to show you exactly how you can do that in just a few simple steps using the SERPed tool. So if you want to find profitable niches and make the right online business decisions, read on…

What You’ll Learn…

• The truth about choosing a niche
• How to find precise traffic stats and what it’s worth
• A one-click solution to analyzing keyword difficulty
• How to decide if a niche will give you the right return on investment

To complete this tutorial you’ll need access to the SERPed SEO suite of tools. You can apply for access right here.

A Quick Note on Choosing Your Niche

Most internet marketing sites will tell you that you can’t (or shouldn’t) choose a niche that you’re not an active part of every day. But, you know what?

You can.

Great business ideas come from identifying a problem and trying to solve it. And, if you identify a problem, and can come up with a site that provides a solution, then you go for it.

I find it hard to believe that your local mattress salesman has a ‘passion’ for mattresses. Or that your local greengrocer has a ‘passion’ for cauliflower. So why must the same apply on the internet?

What’s important is that you learn as you go and eventually hire people to help you where you need it.

Okay, that being said, let’s move onto the first step to identifying your profitable niche…

Step #1: Perform A Quick Google Trends Search

Google Trends is a great tool that shows you the current interest around a topic (and where that interest comes from). Which means in a few searches you can decide whether a niche is even worth exploring.

For example, I know Colin (the big dog here at SERPed) needs to improve his French, so let’s explore this niche and see if I can create a niche site that will benefit him.

If I put Learn French into my local Google Trends it comes up with this page of results:

So I can see that while there is interest it has been decreasing over time, at least in the UK. But does that mean the niche isn’t profitable? Not quite.

Because if you scroll down the page you can see where learn French is profitable.

This give you some vital information about how to target your niche site. For example, based on this data alone, I could target a site at:

• Helping Canadians learn French
• How to learn French in the UAE
• Where to find learn French in Kenya
• The Irish Guide to learning French

Just to spin a few creative variations off the top of my head. So maybe if I had an initial idea to turn this into a UK site, maybe I should think about retargeting with a .ca or a .ie extension.

However in this step we’ve found that learning French has potential to be profitable. But now it’s time to swap over to SERPed and do some deeper research into the niche.

Step #2: Look For Related Keywords

The next step is to view what people are searching for around that keyword, and how many searches they’re getting per month.

This step will indicate how many potential people this site will reach per month.

In the SERPed tool head over to the Ultimate Research tool which you can find under tools > keyword research > ultimate research.

Here you’ll be able to find out a lot about the niche itself, gather lots of related keywords, and decide if the time invested is going to be worth the outcome.

Once in the tool select the short keyword, like “learn French” and select the database you want to look for. I’m going to continue with the UK right now.

That’ll take you to a page with all the related results to the keyword you’ve searched. You’ll get a lot of keywords here, so it’s best to apply a filter to make sure it’s niched down as much as possible.

You can do this by selecting, Include > Keywords > Equal To > [Keyword]. For example I wanted to make sure I only got French results here, so my specific target became that:

And as you can see from the top result there are a lot of searches for this keyword, although as Google Trends said, it’s decreasing:

But there is quite a high traffic value there (more than $1 per person). And there are a lot of related searches that really boost up the amount of searches per month.

With the top 10 alone we’re looking at 30,000+ searches a month here before we get to the long tails in the next section.

What I also find works here is if you take a few of the keywords and run them through Amazon or Google to see if there are any products you can be an affiliate for (or use an Amazon Affiliate link).

Like these products on Amazon:

Or like Rocket Languages French that I found, which also has a lucrative Clickbank Affiliate scheme:

With the results here I can see that learn French isn’t going to make me a huge profit through affiliates right away. But there is potential there for volume of products to create a relatively good income.

There’s also extras that I could offer: advertising for teachers and schools, custom affiliates with language learning schools or products to name just a few.

So this niche is shaping up pretty well for me so far. But, again, let’s take it one step deeper.

Step #3: Look For The Long Tail Keywords

Short keywords show you whether a niche has potential. But, long tail, specific keywords make up around 70% of searches. And the longer and more specific they are the more likely they are to convert.

SERPed has the ability to let you drill down as many keywords as you want while providing accurate information at the push of a button. Meaning you can find profitable keywords with a precise level of searches.

This step really gives you an idea about what products you’re going to be able to sell more specifically and lets you forecast a little on your income.

Let’s go to the root keyword of Learn French and drill down. You can do that by going to the cog wheel button, clicking, and selecting the Get LongTail Keywords button:

Then choose the database and make sure all of the information is correct:

That’ll then show you hundreds of results that relate to that keyword, which you’re able to sort by the metrics that matter to you.

Because I’m worried about the level of traffic this Learn French site will get (because it’s evidently going to be a volume niche) I’ve sorted by monthly searches.

Here you can already see the basis of a lot of content ideas, as well as potential affiliate products. For example, ‘Learn French podcast’ or ‘learn French by podcast’ could shape into:

• [X] Podcasts You Need To Learn French
• How I Learned [X] In French Using [Y] Podcast
• Can You Learn French With A Podcast? Today I Review [X]

There are some cool affiliate options, too. Like this one from Radiolingua French:

Again not earth shattering but enough to say there is money in the niche (especially if people are willing to fork out money on courses).

What is also great is that if you click on a keyword you’ll be given an instant analysis of what ranks where and how competitive that keyword is, while still on that results page:

This is a moderate keyword so it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to rank for it, but I need to ask the question of if it’s worth my time and effort to do so.

But with the ease of this tool you’re able to assess lots of keywords before you even try and put any effort into them. And letting you focus on keywords you can get results with at the start of the life of your site.

What Do You Learn With This Process?

This is a pretty simple process to follow, but it allows you to make a lot of informed decisions before you invest your time and money into your niche site.

So, what have I learned from this process, and what should you learn if you follow it too?

• Learn French isn’t a ‘trending’ niche but it maintains a high level of interest
• I’ll get best results from targeting Canada, African nations or Ireland
• But there is still a lot to be gained from the UK audience
• There are affiliate products across the board; but I’ll need volume to make a lot of money
• There are a wide range of keyword difficulties but many with profit are easy to rank for

That allows me to make an informed decision on whether or not to start this niche site.

Right now I know it’d be a good side niche site, but I wouldn’t make it my entire focus. If I wanted a complete niche site that makes my entire income I’d need to look at expanding to learning more languages. But I could definitely make $500-$1000 a month here for not a lot of work.

When you run this test you’re able to make similar judgements about the niche you want to get into.

But what you’re really looking for is:

• How much traffic does this niche get?
• What is that traffic worth?
• How good are my affiliate options?
• Do I need volume, or can I make a lot of money from just one sale?
• How competitive are the keywords?
• Will I get the right return on my time (or money) investment?

And if you tick all of those boxes and find you’re onto a profitable niche, you’re even able to use SERPed to buy a domain there and then to buy the right domain that fits the keywords you’re targeting.

Don’t forget! To get access to all of this data you’ll need access to the SERPed tool. You can apply for membership right here.

The post Struggling To Find Your Profitable Niche? Here’s The 3-Step Secret To Find One. appeared first on Serped.com.

Imagine knowing every piece of the puzzle.

Imagine being able to know, step-by-step, what you need to do to start your digital marketing agency. Get your first clients. And, attract the talent you need. How great would that be?

I know how it feels to sit there at the bottom of the mountain. You have no mentor. No guide. And, honestly, no idea what you're doing. You just turn up every day and hope to god you get one step closer to, well…wherever it is you're going.

It's scary as hell.

But it doesn't need to be. It is possible to take your digital marketing agency from where you are now – just you, sat in that chair, looking at this screen – to six or even seven figure heights.

You just need to know the pillars of success. Those simple and easy steps that will take your agency to new heights. And, that's exactly what I'm going to show you in this article.

What You'll Learn

By the end of this article you'll have learned::

• The Complete A-Z Guide Of Starting Your SEO Agency
• Tried And Tested Pillars From Current Industry Professionals
• How To Start Your Agency From The Second You Close Your Browser
• No BS Information To Help You Break Your Limiting Beliefs

And, if you click the link below, you can get a complete checklist of these steps. Allowing you to follow all of these steps in real time and move at your own pace.

Actionable Goals

First, let's talk about who do you want to be?

In order to be the resounding success that we both know you can be, you're going to need clear goals to work towards. Because, as the advertising legend Paul Arden once said, “Without a goal, it's hard to score”.

And there's a lot that's been said about goal setting. Hell, throw the term into Google and you can enjoy 8,590,000 plus results on the topic. But there's one element that SEO's always forget to do and that's this:

You need to reverse engineer where you want to be. Let me explain…

Let's say you've started an agency – we'll call it SERPed Heroes for now – what's the finish line for you?

• How much money do you want to make?
• How many clients do you want to have?
• What type of clients do you want to work with?
• How many employees do you want to have?

Once you know your end goal you can work backwards and create goals that fit your chosen pathway. Also, check out these employee onboarding checklists to help your HR efforts.

For example, if SERPed Heroes wanted in five years:

• To Make $500,000 a year
• Work with 20-25 clients
• Work with clients in the Health Sector
• Have 10-12 Employees

You could look at how to reverse engineer that into goals and actionable steps.

And once you have your end result, it pays to set your business goals using SMART. Because, as boring and unoriginal as it sounds, it works at all levels. If you've never set a SMART Goal, here's how it should look:

• Specific: Be clear about what you want to do. Replace vague terms like, “be the best in the industry” with “Generate $500,000 in sales from health sector clients”.

• Measurable: This is answering the question, “How will I know when I've achieved it?”.

• Aspirational: This is normally Achievable, but as research from Locke and Latham found, having aspirational goals here is far more beneficial. Try adding 20-25% onto what you think you can achieve, and you'll find you're hitting goals faster than ever.

• Realistic: By the same token, know what's in your reach. Landing $500,000 worth of work probably won't happen in your first year. But, over five years, why the heck not?

• Time Bound: Set a clear, specific, time frame to achieve your goal in. This can be short, medium or long term, depending on the goal you're setting.

So, based on the reverse engineering you read about a minute ago, here's how a SMART goal for SERPed Heroes might look:

To land one client in the Health Sector that pays $2000 – $3000 per month by the end of the fourth quarter.

You can then start to break that down into specific, actionable, steps, which we'll look at more in-depth later.

Get More From This Step

This awesome video from Entrepreneur shows you exactly how to do what you've just learned in this step.

Build Your Brand Identity

Okay, you've just looked at what you want to achieve, now let's look at who you want to be.

There are lots of reasons you need to have a clear brand identity. In fact, most of them are well known cliches like, “People buy from people they like”. But there's one often overlooked, but incredibly important, reason that ties them altogether.

As Lois Geller once put it in an article for Forbes, “A brand is a promise”.

It's a promise you have to keep every single time someone uses your service. For example, SERPed Heroes would promise to…

“Create Search Content for the Health Sector that: adds value to users, generates income and is managed in house to save you time”

From this promise you could start to create a solid brand identity that suggests this promise to your clients. You can create:

• Logo's
• Slogans
• Tone of Voice
• Downloadable Content
• Services and Products

That's all based around this promise. Want a real world example? Take a look at Search Engine Land. What's their promise?

The deliver the latest SEO news and how-tos in short articles that are easy to read. That's what you expect from them every single time you visit. So if that's what you're interested in, you'll keep coming back as long as they're keeping it.

Don't get too caught up in your brand identity, either. It's important, but at the start you need to be responsive to what people want. Maybe there is an aspect of your brand that people resonate more with. Pay attention to the data and adjust accordingly.

Get More From This Step

Check out this video from Dan Martell. He takes you through some simple steps on what branding is, and how to stand out in your marketplace.

Capital, Do You Need It?

Starting an agency feels like it should be expensive, doesn't it?

That if you're going to get this business off the ground you're going to need a lot of investors and money. After all, you need to spend money to make money, right?

Wrong.

Firstly, check your ego. A lot of the time you want money because you don't want to swap your time for free. You want to get paid for everything you're doing. So, if that's the reason you think you need extra capital, you definitely don't.

Secondly, six figure businesses have been known to start for as low as $62.50. And, a lot of agencies start off as just a single person, like Mike Ramsey's Nifty Marketing, and end up as million dollar agencies.

He started off by taking clients on a Freelance rate, then growing his agency from there. One step at a time. Until he reached where he could hire someone. That's those goals, and actionable steps, coming in.

There are ways you can cut costs, too.

For example, you don't need every SEO tool under the sun. You could spend $2000 – $3000 a month in recurring costs just from these tools. Half of which, you'll never even use. Instead choose one or two tools that do everything you need them to do.

There's also the problem that having investors and partners detracts from your ownership of the agency.

The more people that are putting money in, or are sharing your company, takes away from what you actually own. You'll find the most successful agencies are the ones who knuckle down, go independant and turn themselves into a success on their own.

Get More From This Step

This post from Start Up Bro's documents how you can start a business for under $100, with advice from experts in lots of different fields. It's worth a read if you really need to bootstrap to start.

Click here to read it

Develop A Business Plan (But Not How You'd Think)

Business Plans are hard to make in the world today. Damn, just take a look at how often Google updates itself, as well as all the channels you use to market yourself.

A five year business plan which used to be easy to implement in the 80's. 90's and early 2000's is almost impossible nowadays. As I type this, for example, millions of people are sending Snapchat's that didn't even exist five years ago.

So why the hell would you be able to predict, and plan, what you're going to do with your Agency every minute, of every day, for the next five years?

Don't even bother.

Instead, once you have your reverse engineered goal, you should look at actionable steps that can help you achieve those goals for this year and into next year (at a push).

Let's head back to the SERPed Heroes goal before, Obtain One Health Sector Client, here's how that could break down into actionable steps:

• Goal: Obtain One Health Sector Client
• Attend Five Local Health Sector Conferences
• Find (Or Create) 10 Health Sector Connections
• Create Downloadable Health SEO Content
• Find A Health Sector Endorsement
• Create Health Sector Portfolio Piece

This is suddenly more achievable, more realistic and it does something else important…

It stays flexible and is easy to adjust to what happens along the way. Which, as you saw earlier, is important in today's SEO environment.

You need to know what you want to achieve – that's the business plan – but you need to remain open, and not rigid, against change.

Get More From This Step

I'd recommend you go out and pick up a copy of the book, Rework, by the founders of 37Signals It's one of the most forward-thinking books on starting your agency.

Expertise – Who Do You Need?

Let me tell you about one thing that kills lots of Agencies…

One person trying to do everything. Why does it kill them?

Simple. You're just not good at everything. Don't fight it, it's a good thing.

If you're the SEO Guy you're probably not that savvy with sales techniques, business management, finding clients or networking with people at conferences.

If you're the Business Guy you're probably not good at keeping up to date with Google Updates, Backlinking Strategies, understanding what SERP's are or knowing that a Panda update isn't the local Zoo adding more animals.

You may have some skills that crossover, but being good at all of these is beyond you. Especially in practical application.

Before you launch into becoming an Agency you need to find out what your – or your current team's – strengths and weaknesses are. Then decide if you need to hire someone, or bring someone in as a partner, accordingly.

If your head is full or Algorithms, maybe you're going to need to pull your MBA Student Buddy in to come and help you set up.

If you want to start an Agency and don't care about learning in the trenches SEO, you're going to have to find someone who is.

This is a highly personal subject, so I won't tell you what to do or who you are, it's up to you to be honest and find where you're strongest and weakest and build accordingly.

Get More From This Step

Self awareness is one of the key components for success. Because once you know who you are, you know who you can hire to cover your weaknesses.

This video from Gary Vaynerchuck hit's the nail on the head:

Find Your Value

If you've ever listened to an old school marketer they'll tell you that you need a Unique Selling Point (USP) to differentiate yourself. But that terminology can he hard to get your head around. So here's how you should look at it instead…

Where can you add value to someone that your competitors can't?

This can be anything that sets you apart. Do you:

• Create content only for a specific niche?
• Do you generate reports differently?
• Do you have a tried and tested strategy (with results)?
• Are you exclusive to clients over a certain budget?
• Do you focus on X, Y or Z that nobody else cares about?

Knowing this – and how it resonates with your potential clients – can help set you apart and make customers more attracted to you in the long run.

Get More From This Step

Fizzle wrote an evergreen guide to finding your Unique Selling Point. It's stood the test of time and is super easy to wrap your head around.

Click here to read it

Generate Unique Content

You're at risk of becoming just another SEO Agency.

As I type this, in a coffee shop in Manchester, England, I'm within walking distance of at least 10 different digital marketing agencies. And these are just the ones I know about. So, on top of adding a different level of value, you also need to separate yourself from the competition.

The best way to do this is content.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of SEO Blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages trying to get themselves heard. But most of them are creating the same content over and over and over again. What can you do differently?

• Do you run experiments on your blog?
• Do you expose claims from other SEOs?
• Do you have a YouTube Channel where you try challenges?
• Do you interview people about the SEO challenges?
• Do you hack the strategies of Google's top ranking competitors?
• Do you find back-doors where small businesses can outrank the Fortune 500?

The Skyscraper method may be effective. But, it's the strategy everyone is using right now.

If you want to make a splash and get your Agency noticed you need to do the opposite of what your competition is doing right now.

Get More From This Step

Okay, there's a little bit of extra reading here. Check out these articles to help you create better, more unique (or at least, successful) content:

How To Create Unique Content To Build Your Blog's Authority by ProBlogger

Why Most “How To's” Suck (And How To Write Great Ones) by SmartBlogger

How To Use Udemy To Create Dozens Of Content Ideas by Nichehacks

Have An Epic Portfolio

Actions have, and always will, speak louder than words.

If people see that you've worked with, and delivered results for, a brand that they know and trust, they're more likely to buy from you. Because if they trusted you enough to work with you, why shouldn't they?

Now if you don't have a portfolio yet, don't worry. That's easily remedied. You can simply try and do some free work for people (and build some good relationships while you're at it) to get these. Or, you can compile a list of previous projects your staff have worked on in the past as a placeholder until you've got some agency work under your belt.

A portfolio is now considered a minimum requirement for an agency to have. So, it's essential you get one in place. A good portfolio is made up of:

• Headlines and shorts snippets
• Further, in depth, result case studies
• Testimonials from clients
• Future goals and targets for that client

Showing people that not only you can deliver the results, but you will continue to deliver them to people continuously.

Get More From This Step

Your portfolio is unique to your agency. Your brand, your style of work, it all needs to become part of the portfolio.

This next guide is designer for people looking to be hired and what should be in their creative portfolio. It's aimed at freelancers, but the lessons carry across to agencies looking for clients too.

Click here to read it

Invest In Yourself

You read about Capital earlier and whether you need it or not. But you should always have a budget for self development.

You already know that you can't be good at everything. However there are parts of your business you need to get better at if you're just starting out.

It could be brushing up on your SEO skills; it could be learning how to generate leads; it could be sales; it could be people management or whatever it is that goes with your business.

You can find courses on almost everything on Udemy, or you can take a stroll down to your local bookstore. But having a budget to invest in yourself, or your team, is paramount to grow further.

Get More From This Step

Hongkiat put together an great list of Udemy courses for Budding Entrepreneurs.  You don't have to take them, but one can't hurt, right?

Click here to read it.

Join The Local Community

Working in the Internet Industry it's normal to focus all of your: networking, lead generation and content efforts on the online world. But by doing that you're missing out on the easiest way to build your business at the start.

Because, while you're searching for hard to access leads on the Internet, you're driving past hundreds of easy to access leads on your way to work. And, just because they're local businesses, doesn't mean they don't have a big budget.

For example, if I was started SERPed Heroes right now, I'd:

• Find local businesses in my Area
• Contact all of them
• If they didn't respond I'd go to their offices and schedule a meeting
• Attend local business meet ups
• Find conferences, events and forums happening in the local community
• Ask everyone I know if they, or anyone they know, needed SEO Services

Now the important note to make here is that you need to join the community and do some of the above:

• Provide value (this is easy locally, you'll be in the minority as an SEO)
• Show your different content
• Help people with their problems

Don't go straight into the sell. Don't be there to make money. Be there to get to know people, talk to them and become a long term part of that community. That's when you'll start to see real sales.

Keep It Simple For Your Clients

For all the years I've worked in SEO, I've learnt one incredibly valuable lesson:

Your clients don't give a crap about SEO.

At least, they don't care – even a little bit – about the technical Jargon that you love to use. Because it doesn't mean anything to them. So, don't try and sound smart or intimidating by using it.

You may not think it, but this is a technique a lot of SEO's employ to get clients.

Instead here's what they do give a crap about:

• Results
• Cash
• ROI
• More Traffic
• More Customers
• Less Worry

So find a way to explain it to them in terms that they do understand. Want an idea? Here's an exercise you can do right now…

Go to Google, choose a niche, and find a company on the back of the results. Like this:

I found this site, Health+Care, which is a medical conference in the UK.

Now with the company you've found, and I'm going to do it with you, I want you to figure out what their dream situation would be. If everything in their life would go to plan, what would happen?

For Health+Care that may look something like this:

To have a completely sold out conference of the UK's best health professionals. They'd have completely subscribed exhibition lists and attract the most important speakers from around the world, as well as the attention of pharmaceutical companies.

And, once you have that, you can flip it on it's head; what's the worst situation they could find themselves in?

That might look like a little like this:

To host an event that is undersubscribed, costs more money to run than it makes, doesn't get any media or professional attention. Not having enough funds to run another conference, and going out of business.

Remember, stop what you're doing and make these notes for the page you've found right now. Because once you know these dreams and fears you can begin to frame your SEO – both for sales pitches and for showing results – in a way they understand.

• “By getting more backlinks we can increase how many people see your event”
• “By guest posting here we can target people more accurately”
• “When we target these keywords we put you in front of people who will want to advertise at your event”

Now they're methods a business owner can get behind.

Get More From This Step

Learning to separate features and benefits is a key skill to learn. So, there are two tools you need for this step.

The first is this post from Copyblogger that asks, “Does your content pass the forehead slap test?”, and shows you how to extract benefits from features.

Click here to read it

The second I'd recommend is to buy this book from Andy Maslen called, Write To Sell. It's the best book on copywriting I've ever read and makes all of your writing much better. It taught me everything I know about keeping it simple.

Look For Ways To Save Money

There are certain parts of running an Agency that, on the surface, feel costly:

• Marketing
• Advertising and Exposure
• Finding Clients
• Providing Customer Service

Sometimes it feels like you're looking down the barrel of a big dollar shaped shotgun, doesn't it? Yet, with the right mindset, you can find ways to do all of this cheaply.

Look at using sites like UpWork to build a team of Customer Service reps that can work for $5-7 dollars an hour. Or, look for different hacks and methods to get Facebook Ads down to 1c per click (or like these guys who got $0.0005 per engagement).

And, as the old saying goes, Marketing is like sex (only losers pay for it). Find ways to build word of mouth, marketing that you can rely on. Offer unique sales points, add a value that nobody else can, or provide a service that people will scream about. It doesn't have to cost you anything, but it can drive you a tonne of business in the long run.

Get More From This Step

Entrepreneur put together an awesome resource of 50 ways to save money in your business. Bookmark it and look for how you can take a chainsaw to your business expenditure.

Click here to read it

Make Connections In Person

Earlier in this article you learned about getting involved in the local community. This point looks at the topic in a much broader sense…

When I broke into the SEO field I was given a timeless piece of advice that has never failed me. And, I want to share it with you:

Meet all of your potential clients in person.

That's right, meet every single one of them in person. Because that's how you start to forge relationships that last.

In an online industry that sounds against the grain. You should be able to just send out emails, catch people on social media – or through Facebook Ads – and drive a tonne of clients your way. But, that's not the way it works, at least not until you're an established SEO agency with a track record.

That involves:

• Going to conferences
• Going to events
• Attending parties for their favourite charity
• Playing Golf with some Darren who you met at a networking event
• Going and sitting in their office and showing them what SEO is
• Having a Skype session where they can see you on their screen

This is the most overlooked method of getting new clients in our entire industry. Many SEO agencies fail on this pillar alone.

Because when someone can look you in the eye, feel like they know you and get to like you, they want to spend money with you over someone they don't know.

You and I both know all of these businesses you interact with – either in the next six months or the next six years – will need SEO services. You just have to be the person the person that was friends with them before they realised it.

Get More From This Step

Kieth Ferrazzi wrote possibly the best book on networking when he penned, Never Eat Alone. It's easy to read and really easy to implement.

Nurture Them

Don't treat that point like the hard sell though. Once they say they don't need your services, don't fall off the face of the earth, like when a guy or girl at the bar tells you they're not interested right now.

Keep in touch. Check in. Ask the questions. Find out how their kids soccer practice is going. Take an interest in them as a friend.

Just because they don't need your services doesn't mean that they don't know someone who does. Who better to refer than their new SEO friend?

Get More From This Step

Hubspot put together a great guide on lead nurturing and keeping people in your funnel.

Click here to read it

One-Step Marketing Principle

Want to know why people are skeptical about your SEO agency?

It's because there are thousands of horror stories on the internet about how an agency took a company, spammed the hell out of them, took their money and left them to deal with the ruins of what was their website.

The number one way to stand out in SEO right now – and this is the best marketing principle you can employ – is to show you care about your customers.

That has to show through in your content. In your tweets and facebook updates and emails to clients and anything they can possibly come into contact with.

The intimidation of SEO algorithms doesn't work any more. The black hat approach to getting clients has overstayed it's welcome. The way to create an SEO agency now is to create one that cares.

Get More From This Step

Help Scout wrote a phenomenal post on how to get your customers to fall in love with you, and how you can demonstrate just how much you care, right here:

Click here to read it

Positivity In Adversity

Okay I'm going to change the pace just a little and hit some of the wishy washy, real life, stuff right here…

The road to a 6 figure agency is long and hard.

There's no overnight success. No short cuts. No hitting and hoping. Just hard work, late nights, blood, sweat and tears.

But you have to keep a positive attitude throughout it all. If you're starting an agency, you have a vision of what it is that you want to achieve. And, you have to keep that positive mental image of it for as long as possible.

As one of my mentors once told me, “Why get frustrated with no's? They're just stepping stones to your next yes”.

Who knows, your biggest hit could be just one more rejection letter away?

Get More From This Step

Let's get inspirational, shall we? Here's a list of 16 extraordinary success stories who failed spectacularly before they made it to the top:

Click here to read it

Quote The Right Price (For You)

Pricing is often the most asked question I get from start-Up Agencies. You've probably thought it yourself:

“How do you set prices that make me money but don't scare away potential clients?”

Let's be clear here…

Pricing shows how you value yourself to your clients. And, nothing is more valuable than yours (or your employees) time.

If you're starting from the ground up as a one person agency, it can feel more comfortable to charge $40-$60 an hour, or to take on clients for $300-$400 a month, because you can still make a great living doing it that way.

But, if you want more from your business, you can't stay that way.

Take a look at the Nifty Marketing example again, when he upped his prices to a minimum $100 per hour, he noticed he started generating more interest, attracting better clients, making more money and growing faster. Because he started attracting the right people for his agency.

Instead of looking it as pricing clients out you need to look at it as pricing the wrong clients out. Because if you keep taking jobs at the lower rate, you'll find yourself overworked and underpaid compared to where you want to be.

Get More From This Step

Check out this episode of The Fizzle Show where they talk about how to price anything for your business:

Recognise (And Plan For) When You'll Need Employees

There will come a point where you need employees. If you're committed to your goals and your business, you will outgrow the ability to do work just on your own. A six-figure one man band might be a good dream, but it's highly unlikely you'll do that and keep any quality of life.

But the key to making sure your business survives the need for employees is to scale how, and when, you hire them. This will vary from agency to agency, and the type of service you offer, but I find a good way to survive these transitions is to work in these steps:

• Just You: Start out as just you, knuckle down, and complete as much work as possible.
• Freelancers: When you build up enough, look to outsource work to Freelance SEO's. It could be specific tasks for a project, or full projects for themselves that you take a percentage of.
• Part-Time Employee: You either do this as a freelancer, or in-house. Take someone on a permanent contract for x,y or z requirements each week. This way you get used to paying out a salary, while not having too many overheads.
• One Full Time Employee: Once you're making enough money, take on a full time employee to alleviate your workload. And, to allow you to bring in more custom because you can effectively do double the work.

You could, theoretically, stop here and become a successful six figure agency. At least at the lower end of the six figure world. But, if you want to keep growing to get towards those top figures, you'll find there's a point where you need to take on even more employees.

It's possible to plan out when you'll need employees by your earnings, too. Which would look a little something like:

• Just You: $30,000 – $50,000 a year
• Freelancers: $50,000 – $80,000 a year
• Part Time Employees: $80,000 – $100,000 a year
• Full Time Employees: $100,000+

This will change from agency to agency, and the amount of work you feel people can handle, but putting it in these terms let's you have a rough idea of when you'll need to start looking at taking someone on the books, and how much you can allow for it.

But, as with everything in SEO, timing and precision are key here. Don't start with employees from day one; and make sure you don't go too long without taking someone on board.

Get More From This Step

For some additional reading, you can check out this guide from HubSpot on, When Should Your Agency Hire Its Next Employee?

Click here to read it

Study The Art Of Sales

Sales is the bottom line for you. I'm yet to meet a successful agency owner that couldn't sell their services.

But, sales is hard and scary and tricky…I get it. That leaves you two options to work with:

• You can hire someone to sell for you
• You can learn to sell for yourself

Like all things in business you can either spend time doing something, or spend money getting someone to do it. The choice is yours.

Now become a salesperson isn't an overnight strategy. It takes time, and practice, and dealing with rejection. But you have to know how to do it.

Think of all of the components of sales and break them down:

• Communication: How good are your communication skills?
• Product knowledge: How well do you know what you do?
• Emotion: How well do you transfer emotion from what you do, to what they want?
• Relationships: How well do you create, and nurture, relationships with people?

These are just a handful of the components. And, as I spoke about way back at the start of the article, it comes down to being self aware enough to know what you can (and can't) do.

Get More From This Step

This is by far the best video I've found online about sales. It comes from seasoned professionals, and it's actionable straight away.

Track All Of Your Results

Everything your agency does, at any point, track it.

Firstly, understanding the data allows you to adjust and grow your business based on what works. Being able to develop a strategy is of an importance I really can't stress enough.

Secondly, it can become the portfolio piece that lands you a new client. There's nothing worse when you're pitching than not being able to demonstrate your value with real results.

Get More From This Step

The best data tracking and management software I know about is Platform.ly. They're waiting-list only, but once you're in, you can automate all of this stage.

Understand The Boring Stuff

There are some back of house bits of business you really need to understand, too. Here's the top three you need to learn…

Reporting Tools

Although clients may not be that interesting in the ins and outs of your practices (at least at a technical level), you have a duty as an agency to deliver reports of what it is you're doing and the results you're getting. You'll also want to track all of these things internally, too.

I'd recommend starting with Microsoft Office Software to begin with, like Excel, because you can add your own branding and keep all of your files saved permanently for backup. Google Docs is a good second option, but you run the risk of things getting messy and disorganised quickly.

Bookkeeping

You don't need to be a fully chartered accountant to do this. But, you need to keep tabs on what you make, what you spend and where all of your money is going.

It helps to use invoicing software like FreshBooks or Hiveage to keep track of your invoicing. While a simple spreadsheet of your monthly incomings and outgoings can work wonders to making sure you know where all your money is at all times.

And, you know, it always pays to not run up a tab on the company credit card either.

Budgeting And Forecasting

This is the final step, but it's one of the most important. Knowing how your business is going to grow over the next year, both in how you want it to grow and how it looks like it will grow, are big factors in your success.

There will come hard times, and there will be good times. Knowing when each of them is going to happen is important to managing your time, money and finances. This is also the ‘measureable' part of the SMART Goals you set right back at the start of this article.

Get More From This Step

Here's three separate articles on how to get better acquainted with each of these topics:

Top Reporting Software by Capterra

How To Bookkeep by WikiHow

12 Best Tools For Budgeting by Inc.

Very Early On, Decide What's Important

Do you know how many conversations I've had with people about the importance of letterheads and signatures?

Stop it.

Stop it now.

From the beginning decide what's important for your business. Decide what is going to get you the biggest return on investment and grow your Agency.

Once you have paying clients you can worry about your logo and a mascot for your blog.

Get More From This Step

Check out this article from Brian Tracy that gives you the five key questions you need to ask to set your business priorities.

Click here to read it

Watch What Your Clients Respond To

Pay attention to your client's behaviours – both potential and current – and see what works well when you interact with them, and what falls on deaf ears.

Found a particular email, pitch, phone call or product is getting the most attention? Adjust and act on it.

Don't worry about vanity metrics – like traffic and likes on Facebook – instead look at what converts and drill down to get even more from it.

Get More From This Step

This little known article on LinkedIn is a real gem for understanding client behaviour. Especially as it pertains to sales. Double win.

Click here to read it

eXplore New Techniques

I'm allowed one that doesn't fit exactly, right?

Always looks for new ways to market and grow yourself. Innovate. Try new techniques and use new tools to see what gets results for you and your clients.

• Create a Periscope Q&A
• Build an SEO-Geek Snapchat Feed
• Create and brand an SEO Technique
• Design a coffee-break podcast about small business SEO

Do something to get you out of the old SEO mould and innovate on the old things you've done. Just because nobody is doing it now doesn't mean it should be done.

Get More From This Step

This is one of my favourite concepts from Seth Godin called, The Purple Cow. If you're not familiar with it, watch this video:

You Should Be Proud Of What You Don't Do

Be proud of what your agency doesn't do as well as what you do, do.

If you try and offer everything you'll find yourself at the careers office with all of the other Agency owners who tried to be a people pleaser.

Don't take on clients in a specific industry? Be proud of it.

Refuse to work for less than $50 an hour? Be proud of it.

Don't work on Sundays? Be proud of it.

Get More Out Of This Step

Just read this post. Go ahead and read it.

Click here to read it

Zone Out On What Your Competitors Are Doing

What you don't do is as endearing to a potential client as what you can do.

Instead of worrying about what someone else is doing, focus on what you should be doing.

This is your agency.

This is your chance to make your mark.

Stop worrying what everyone else is doing and think about what you need to do to get better.

Get More From This Step

Watch this episode of the #AskGaryVee show from about 1:00 inwards until he stops talking about ignoring your competition. It's a brilliant twist on the old strategy. And, one I personally employ.

That's All, Folks…

Phew! Here you are. You made it right to the end.

Now, it's over to you! How are you going to get started on your agency? Our suggestion would be with a subscription to SERPed.net – your all in one suite of tools

The post The Foolproof 26 Step Formula To Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency appeared first on Serped.com.

I can almost guarantee you want more traffic from Google, don’t you?

Especially when you have a brand new site and organic search traffic can be hard to come by. You know, those people who happen upon your site through searches.

But, it doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, getting Google to pay attention to your site and start ranking you straight away can be one of the easiest parts of SEO.

And, if you get it right, you can build a solid platform for future SEO that no algorithm change or unexpected update can ever take away from you.

All you have to do is index your site, the right way. And that’s what I’m about to show you…

What You’ll Learn<

In this article you’ll learn…

• What Is Indexing (And When Do You Need To Do It)?
• How To Index Your Site Today
• What The Heck A Site Map Is
• The Steps You Need To Take (In Simple English)

All while watching me index my own site, One Day Guides, as you go.

It’s simple, easy to do and can set you up well for great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results in the future.

Let’s get started, shall we?

What Is Indexing?

Okay, this section needs to be split into two sections:

1. What is an index?
2. What is indexing?

Let me tackle them in that order, so you get the biggest picture. However, if you already know what both of these are, click here [link] to jump ahead to the first step.

What Is An Index?

An index on the internet is exactly the same as it was in your school textbooks, too.

It’s a list of names, information, pages and references that shows you where to find the correct information you need. It’s more specific than a contents page, and helps you find the specifics of what you’re looking for much more quickly.

If you ever studied at College or University and had to use referencing for a thesis, you know what I’m talking about here. Now this is important to know because you need to bust a common misconception about the internet.

When you search on Google (or Bing or Yahoo! Or whichever you choose to use) you’re not searching the internet. You’re searching their index of the internet.

That is to say that they take your page from the internet, store the relevant information from it, and put it into their huge database of the internet. That, at time of writing, contains 4.76 billion pages.

That’s a hell of a lot of information, right?

So the ranking factors and every other piece of SEO terminology you hear is all about how you can rank well in Google’s Index and not on the internet.
When you search a term then, like How To Make Brown Rice:

The results that you see are the pages from Google’s index that are most relevant, based on all of those ranking factors:

This index is also why sites from the dark internet, where people can buy drugs and guns and other illegal products, don’t show up in your search engine searches. Because, Google has control over what goes in and what shows up.

This may not be the most exciting Traffic generating topic you’ll read about, but knowing Google is an index makes understanding what indexing much easier.

What Is Indexing?

Indexing, then, is getting your content to appear in Google’s Index.

Google is pretty on the ball with this. If you have a site, within a few days you’re probably going to show up in Google. But, just because you show up, doesn’t mean you’re going to show up correctly, or be well optimised for it.

That’s where indexing comes in.

By indexing your site – as I’ll show you how in this article – you’ll be able to indicate to Google that your site is active, and the sort of content you’re going to be producing. And, by making it easier for Google’s spiders to crawl the site, means your chances of showing up higher will be much greater.

If you’re ready, let’s look at how you can index your site and kick-start your SEO off right.

Step #1: Are You In Google?

The first question you need to ask is, “Do you even need to index your site?”

If you’ve been slowly putting content on your site for the last few weeks or months, there’s a chance that Google has already indexed you. In which case it’s just a case of following some of the next steps to make sure you’re indexed properly.

But, to find out if you’re indexed, you just need to perform a simple Google search.

Head to Google – it doesn’t matter which extension your on, be it .com, .de, .co.uk, .fr or wherever your country is – and perform the following search:

You can just replace my One Day Guides name with your own domain. For example:

• Site:serped.net
• Site:copyblogger.com
• Site:amazon.com

My site has been around for a few weeks, so mine shows up indexed, like so:

If yours doesn’t show up then it’s not been indexed at all. If it does, it’s been indexed to some extent, like mine has.

Either way it’s time to verify yourself with Google.

Step #2: Get On Google’s Radar

Okay, this step is a little tricky. So I’m going to hand you over to Google themselves for this stage. But, you don’t need to leave the page, here’s their guide in Image format so you can stay with me…

Once you’re verified, you can move on to the next step.

Step #3: Create Your XML Sitemap

Earlier I mentioned that Google uses Spiders to crawl through pages to find the relevant information for a search. They’re what go and find the pages, like the ones in the brown rice search earlier.

Now, what Google sends these spiders to is your sitemap. This shows the layout of your site, and all the pages connected to it, so the spiders can work their way through and find that relevant page with juicy content to solve your problems.

That looks a little something like this:

The problem is, though, is your site doesn’t come pre-packed with a sitemap. Instead you have to create one. And then you have to submit it to Google.

That’s not as hard as it sounds so don’t worry. Here are a few ways you can do it…

If You Have A WordPress Site

If you’re on WordPress, go ahead and download the free YoastSEO Plugin. Not only is this a great SEO tool anyway (you’ll need it in the future) it’s also going to create your sitemap for you.

Once downloaded and installed, head over to the Yoast Plugin section on your WordPress Dashboard, and select the XML Sitemap section:

Here you can access your site map and see everything for yourself (my sitemap above was created by Yoast through this method).

If You Don’t Have A WordPress Site…

You can still do it completely for free. Head over to this site, XML Sitemaps, and you can create one for up to 500 pages.

Just follow the steps on screen (at least up to number three) and then come with me to the next mini-step within this step.

Uploading Your Sitemap

So by now you should have verified your site with Google and created your sitemap. Now, it’s time to get it online.

Head back to Google Search Console and select your property (site):

On the next page, select add/test sitemap and add the following text after your domain name:

That’s system/feeds/sitemap if you want to copy and paste it. Hit submit and you should be all good to go.

Now, onto the more fun stuff…

Step #4: Add A Blog With Content

Blogs are wonderful for your search engine results.

They mean you constantly add content – showing Google your site is still alive – as well as being able to connect to hundreds if not thousands of people all over the world.

You can solve people in your industry’s problems. Create content that’s engaging and fun to read. As well a find yourself climbing through the rankings in Google.

Adding a blog is pretty unique to your site. Unless you started it through WordPress, so I’d recommend contacting your service provider to make sure you did it correctly.

If you have a WordPress site, here’s a simple blog post showing you how to add the blog for yourself.

Step #5: Comment On Industry Specific Blogs

Blog Comments are a great way to build traffic back to your site.

For example, as I wrote for Nichehacks here, you can build a consistent (but small) stream of targeted traffic through Blog Comments without much effort at all. And, because these links are only indicators to Google and not ranking factors, they don’t count as spam.

If you’re commenting on industry specific blogs, Google can tell that your (at the moment quite empty) site is involved in a specific topic or group of topics. And, you can build traffic back to your site, further showing Google you’re here to play ball.

For example, if I head over to the site of the industry leader in my niche, Nomadic Matt, I can leave a comment on there (see above) that points right back to my site. And, got me a really high value hit:

You may know who your business competitors are. Or, who the big names in your niche are. If not, now’s the time do some research.

The number one way I recommend you do this is to head to Feedly, set up a free account, and look for people who are posting about your industry:

Go ahead and click on an article – I chose this one from Matt Long – and then leave a value-adding comment.

Repeat this a few times, over a few days if there’s not enough fresh content right now, and you’ll be well on your way to getting your site some attention, as well as cementing a place in the index.

Step #6: Add Internal Links To Your Content

Internal Links – hyperlinks that go from one page on your site to another page on your site – are often overlooked by SEO’s. But, not only are they a ranking factor, they also make your website easier to crawl (and easier to index).

If you have content on your blog already (or content ready to go on your blog) find ways to link them together. It can be using a keyword or relevant phrase, or it can be at the bottom using a phrase like:

PS: Did you read last week’s post about snorkelling? Check it out here!

But if (and when) you’ve got a few blog posts, go out of your way to find these opportunities. Like here, I was able to link a guide about Porto to a guide about Spain that I wrote because they had one common factor – my girlfriend was mentioned in there…

You can optimise all of this – and I’ll come to that in a later post – but for now, you only need to worry about just linking some pages up so it makes sense to Google.

Step #7: Link Back From Your Social Profiles

If you ask any Search Engine Optimization professional they’ll scream back in your face that social media links don’t count for link building.

And, well, they don’t. But that’s not why you’re going to use Social Media here. But Google still knows these links are there and will help show that your site is active and means business.

Whatever social media profiles you have associated with your business:

• Facebook fan pages
• Twitter feed
• Instagram feed
• LinkedIn profile
• Pinterest profile

Be sure to include a link back to your site from there. Like I’ve done here:

And here:

And, you guessed it, here:

And, according to Harsh Agrawal at Shout Me Loud, if you verify your profile on Pinterest you get a real followed link that counts towards your Google rankings too, which is worth bearing in mind.

Wrapping It All Up…

Phew! Okay, that may not be the most exciting SEO article you’ve ever read, but it’s by far one of the most important. So let’s recap anything you need to do to get these basics right on the first try:

• Find out if you’re on Google: you might already have a presence you don’t know about.

• Get yourself verified: Google knowing you’re a legitimate site, run by a human, is really important (as silly as that sounds). So get yourself verified on the search console.

• Create your sitemap: By using Yoast if you’re on WordPress or XML Generator if you’re not. Then, upload it through the search console.

• Add a blog: if you don’t already have a blog, get one on your site and start creating content.

• Comment on industry blogs: Build a little traffic and get yourself some indicating links by commenting on your competitors, or other industry specific blogs.

• Add internal links to your own content: Don’t worry if it’s a blog post or another page, find ways to link them together for some of your own link juice and to make your site much more easily scannable.

• Link back from your social accounts: Simple, get all of your social pages pointing to your site. You’re proud of your business anyway, aren’t you?

Next Steps to faster indexing:

We focused this article on getting your main site and new posts/content indexed. The next issue is indexing your backlinks. For that, we highly recommend ‘Link Indexer Pro‘ inside the SERPed.net Suite of tools. Normally closed to the public, you can access SERPed.net if you don't yet have an account, via this backdoor link here.

And that’s it, the simplest, most white-hat way to get your blog indexed today! Questions or comments? Let me know below…

The post The White Hat Guide To Indexing Your New Site appeared first on Serped.com.

You've probably read a lot about pitching for digital services, right?

Hell, just a quick search of How To Pitch For SEO Clients brings up 373,000 different search results. And, it's been covered by some of the best in the business. You have an almost endless supply of client pitch articles. So, why the hell am I writing this one?

Because on a regular basis I still receive cold SEO sales pitches like this:

Which either leads me to believe that a) you're not reading the information that's out there, b) you're not applying the information that's out there or, and the worst, c) the information out there is failing you.

And, for all three of those reasons, I've decided to write this article for you to learn how to pitch to a prospective client that works better than your typical elevator pitch. To give you a new, different angle on pitching, and a more practical guide that you can implement now.

More to the point this article is no bullshit, I'm not going to pull any punches. Because if you do it like the client pitch above, your pitches suck and here's exactly why…

The Harsh Truth About How To Pitch A Client

If you're in SEO, or have a digital marketing agency, you're in sales.

I'm yet to meet a single SEO who is successful who couldn't sell his or her product or service to a potential customer.

And, I know, it might not be what excites you about your business. Perhaps you're enthralled by the nitty, gritty, in-the-trenches technical stuff. Or, maybe you're in love with seeing the results happen right before your eyes. But sales is an essential part of your business. And, you might not always have the resources to hire someone to do it for you.

So it's time for you to learn how to do an effective marketing pitch. You need to know what it takes, until you can hire a salesperson, to get clients under your belt and write sales pitches that people want to read, and reply to.

The 7 Deadly Mistakes You Make In Your Pitches

01: Your Focus

Look, I don't want to lecture you. But the problem with almost all SEO client pitches is that they're focused on you and your marketing services. What do I mean?

You tell prospective clients about:

• How good your business is
• What your business does
• How much you can charge me for your services
• The features of your digital marketing services

None of which is exciting, or interesting, to a potential buyer reading your client pitch. Especially not if you cold email, from a contact form, without any interaction beforehand (more on that later). I don't give a crap about your SEO service, or how good you think you are, or how different you think you are from the rest.

I care that you prove to me that you're different. I care about you showing me what you can do for me, not, as your pitch would suggest, I can do for you (or your bank account).

In short: you're not providing me with value.

02: You Make Stupid Claims

Okay, I'm going to apologise right now for my energy on this particular section, but this rant needs to be had. When you pitch you make some god awful, plain stupid, claims. Take a look at this line from the pitch I mentioned earlier:

“Here are a few reasons we are not your normal SEO agency.

Our Search Engine Optimization and Marketing services are designed for success”

Yeah, no shit. The fact that you started an SEO service implies that you were built for success. You didn't start the service, and try selling it to business owners, to be a shitty SEO, did you? Also, are other SEO agencies not designed for success? I must have missed the meeting where everyone else agreed to engineer for failure in their business goals.

These claims are a waste of time, and energy, for both your ideal client and you.

03: You Go Straight For The Wallet

Asking for money, before you've sold to me, is a sure fire way to get me to close your email. Same goes for any client. For example, there are just 58 words in the example pitch before they try to charge me $1500 a month. Which means that all I know by this point is that they are an SEO company, and they want to charge me a lot of money each month for something.

That's like sitting down in a restaurant and the waiter saying, “Give me $70 and we'll bring you some food” without ever showing you a menu, telling you what food you'll be getting, or if you even like that food.

You can't pitch me a price until I know what it is that I'm buying.

That's why sales pages never tell you what it'll cost until right at the end. They make you an offer – based on the value (and desire) they've just created – and you're more inclined to purchase.

04: You’re Ambiguous

SEO is a concept that people don't tend to understand. Or, at least, can't manage for themselves for a long period of time. But that doesn't mean you can't be specific in what you say.

All too often pitches sound like:

05: You Focus On Features…

I touched on this earlier, but it's a point you really need to understand.

The features – the parts that sound sexy to you – of your business don't excite me. As a potential client, who probably doesn't understand SEO that well, there's no room to tell me about what makes up your business.

Here's an example from a different pitch I was sent:

“I'm able to achieve results like this by using many white hat SEO methods including web 2.0 creation, article creation and submission, creating articles and backlinks on wiki pages, social bookmarks, forum profiles and blog commenting.”

These are what an SEO should be doing, sure. But your potential client may have no idea what they are. In fact, I can almost guarantee they have no idea what they do, or why you would be doing them. So you can't sell them on these features because they mean nothing.

Instead – as we'll cover in the next section – your digital marketing strategies have to focus on what these features can do for the other person; they create an effective pitch.

06:…And Information I Don’t Care About

I keep referring to this example pitch, but that's because it's rich with information on what you shouldn't do. Here's, by far, the most pointless line I've read in a pitch for a long time:

“We are an extremely low turn-over business and our costs go up significantly if we loose clients within the first year so we have a large incentive to keep you happy and keep you on-board long-term”

So what? I don't care about your business's turnover, gross profit or anything else. You should have a desire to keep me on board because you love what you do, and you want to provide me with results. Not because I'm going to make it easier for you to go on vacation next summer.

07: Typos

Finally, and let's make this abundantly clear in a sexy little sound bite:

Typos cost clients.

If you don't take the time to proofread, or spell-check, your emails, you're not going to get any attention. If you can't do it in your sales email, what leads me to believe you're going to take care in the work you do with me?

Okay, That’s The Hard Bit Over…

You still with me? I hope so. That's the hard, real-truth bit over. Don't worry, it all gets better from here on out as you let your creative juices flow. So, let's look at what it takes to create a real, successful pitch that ideal clients and business owners want to listen to.

Don’t Go In Cold…

My biggest tip – and one I learned the hard way, trust me – is to not go in cold when you're trying to pitch. As Gary Vaynerchuk points out, constantly, you live in a world where you're only a tweet away from the people you want to connect with.

If you find a site, or person, that you want to pitch to, go the extra mile by connecting with them first. Try to build a relationship so that they at least know your name when it pops up in their inbox.

This is particularly effective if you know who you're trying to pitch to (not go for a beer know them, but know their name – more on that in the next point) and can get their personal feed.

A simple way to do this is to check their feed and look at the last 10-15 tweets they posted. Then, start a conversation. It's really that simple.

Now, to be clear, I don't want you to start a conversation about SEO. Start an actual conversation like you want to become friends with them. Have a bit of banter, chat and get into their heads as a name they'll remember.

If they have a blog, you could even do this with blog comments too. The more your name shows up, the more likely they'll be to open your email when it lands in their inbox.

I originally wrote this paragraph saying that this step isn't really essential. But, in fact, it is. You can land contracts on a cold pitch. I've done it. But it's much harder work than going in with a relationship established. So where you can, build that relationship with someone.

The Most Important Checklist Before You Write

There are a few extra elements I suggest you put together before you even think about writing your pitch to business clients. They'll make pitching easier, allow you to craft more effective emails and boost your response rate.

This list should be personalised to each potential client. And, some of the concepts are covered below, so don't worry about filling in this checklist before you carry on with the rest of this post.

• Have you made contact with this person at least three times before? (Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog Comments etc.)
• Do you have the correct email address to pitch to?
• Do you have the person you're pitching to's name?
• Do you know who their competitors are?
• Do you have a valid, tangible reason they need SEO?
• Do you have social proof of your SEO results?
• Do you understand the benefits of your service to the person you're pitching?

By having all of these in order, especially before you pitch, you can begin to create an easy cold email template to create sales pitches from.

#1: How To Write The Perfect Pitch Introduction

The introduction to your pitch is an area you need to focus on. Why? Because that's where you're going to grab people's attention and get them to listen to what you've got to say. This is your foot in the door.

Be Personal

The first step here is to be personal. Like, extremely personal. I know if an email lands in my inbox that says, “Hey James” in the snippet I'll actually open it. (If it doesn't I feel like you're being lazy, because the name of my site is JamesWritesThings and my name is actually in the title).

The same goes for most of my friends in business circles, too. By adding their name in the email subject or in the snippet, you'll boost the rate of people opening – and responding – almost instantly.

Making an email personal takes a lot of hustle though. Because the name isn't always apparent though. Especially if you're pitching to a business or company. So, what can you do if the name doesn't stand out to you?

I'd recommend looking around their site for an about, or background page, like this one below. It may not have everything you need, but there are clues there that you can find, like the social networks they're in:

Failing that, give them a search on LinkedIn and look for their main business page. They may have a list of employees there. If not, look at the Others Also Viewed section on the sidebar. Jackpot, we found a full name.

If you still can't find someone's name, try finding active social network accounts or social media profiles connected to their business page using a software like ClearVoice.

This might seem like a lot of work. It is. Tough shit. But finding someone's name can make all the difference to getting your email read and giving it an interactive element.

If you want to make sure your pitches work, use SERPed to evaluate your leads' websites so you can offer personalized feedback. Having detailed ideas about how to improve your customers' business helps you getting their business.

Get To The Point

This doesn't mean you should go straight for the wallet. What I mean here is that nobody wants your life story. You don't need to write an excerpt from your autobiography, you just need to explain why you're writing. Why, in their busy schedule, they should stop and read your cold SEO sales pitch.

How you get to the point is completely personal, but this has two benefits for you:

• It shows respect for the person receiving the email
• It keeps the responses you get targeted and more likely to buy

For example, when writing your email if it looks like this:

The person reading this client pitch knows exactly why you're getting in touch. You're a freelance SEO, and you want to know how they feel about the way they're performing in Google. They know you're not here for charity, and if they don't care about Google, they can decide almost instantly to not respond to your personal pitch.

The Open-Ended Question

Notice how the question in that last picture of an effective marketing pitch is open-ended? It doesn't require a Yes or No answer, it needs someone to think about their response. This creates a more emotional connection, and attaches the reader to your personal pitch somewhat.

Now, this example pitch is for a smaller, local business. But if you're an agency the same principle applies, the question may just change slightly. They may not know – or care – how they're performing. But, they may know that they're not happy with their current SEO service, so you may want to change to, “How do you feel about your current SEO service?”.

#2: Start Providing Value After The Introduction

That's the intro taken care of. Now it's time for you to start adding real value. This is where you have to start focusing outwards and on the client, not on what you do for a living. Let me show you…

Find Your Benefits

As you read earlier, nobody cares about your features. They care about what your product or service can do for them. Like how you don't care about what goes into your coffee, you care about the fact it's going to make you more alert and taste nice. But the big question here is how do you turn your features into benefits?The most simple way to do this is to write down all of the facts about your service, and create a bridge between those facts and how they impact your clients. For example:

In the space between I want you to imagine, if you will, that the words, which allows you to, are written. That's what takes you straight to the benefits of your features or facts. Your list will be completely unique so I suggest you spend some time working on this. Because, the bigger the list, the more you can tailor them to the potential client you're pitching.

That last point is the most important. Because, they're going to respond even more to that. For example, I saw that Debonair Languages were hiring on LinkedIn, so I put a benefit in there that directly links to that.

Have A Tangible Reason For Pitching

It's a big waste of time pitching people who don't need SEO services, or aren't in as much need as someone else might be. So putting in some leg work before you even pitch them is a great idea. Like performing an audit (you can do that in SERPed by the way).

This also gives you a reason to pitch them that can get their attention. For example, if their site isn't optimised for mobile – another SERPed tool shameless plug here – you can let them know that's going to be an issue.

But, also, having something like a PDF report to attach to your email can make a world of difference. Because you've provided them with value. You're telling them, “Hey, no matter whether you buy from me or not, there are some issues you need to fix!”.

Sometimes, you're going to need to do this. You need to show them now how you can help them, but why they actually need your help.

Find Their Competitors

This is something I learned from a mentor long ago. And, it's stood me in great stead with pitching ever since. By finding who someone's competitor is, you can put yourself in a position of leverage and knowledge.

By doing a little research I was able to find out just who Debonair Languages are in competition with. And, that they were making a few mistakes too. So there was room for Debonair to capitalise and become more competitive, if not overtake them, with a few consistent changes.

Now this may be a bit of a sexy copywriting magic but it really plays to emotions. If the recipient is an opportunist they'll see somewhere they can pounce. If they're a pessimist they'll be hit with the fear that they're losing out to the competition.

And – here's a bonus – you could find someone else worth pitching to if this one all falls through and turn them into current clients. Win, win, win, right?

#3: Provide Social Proof

You know what businessmen hate? Talk.

They cannot stand people who just run their mouth and don't provide data about what they can do. Without social proof from loyal customers, everything else is just words. It needs to be in your pitch.

For example, here some (fictional) social proof that I've created for this pitch:

Yours needs to be, well… not fictional. But it definitely needs to be there. Create some case studies and show what your work can do.

Now, I hear you saying, “But I don't want to guarantee something I might not deliver”, after all you can't really guarantee anything in SEO can you?

Well, look at it differently. You're not guaranteeing results, you're guaranteeing that you're not a cowboy looking to make a quick buck. You're showing that people have trusted you with their site, and their results in organic traffic (and, sometimes, foot traffic), and you've followed through.

#4: Sign Off Confidently

You have to be prepared that some people won't get back to you. But, don't let them know that. Instead sign off like you're going to hear from them no matter what.

The most simple, effective way I know to do that is like this:Don't drain their time. Don't ask them to contact you. Let them know that you're available and that, if they want to, they should get in touch with you.

Don't drain their time. Don't ask them to contact you. Let them know that you're available and that, if they want to, they should get in touch with you.

#5: But, What About The Subject Line?

This is important, but don't over think it. I've found that asking questions is the best way to get people to open. Here are a few to choose from:

• Freelance SEO opportunities?
• How do you feel about your Google Rankings?
• Did you know your site is missing this?

People are used to spammy email headlines so try being direct, honest and straight to the point in your client pitch.

Time To Pitch!

Okay, it's over to you. Time to take these ideas for your cold SEO sales pitch and make them your own for your digital marketing service.

Questions, comments or anything to say? Let me know in the comments…

If you'd like to create an effective SEO strategy about how to do cold calling, and pitch to clients, use SERPed to get the SEO details you need: keywords to target, the right domain to buy, and more.

The post How To Pitch For New Clients (And Actually Get Responses) appeared first on Serped.com.

You're missing out on an absolute goldmine. 

When you drive to work. When you go to pick up your lunch. When you take the kids to soccer. When you head out on the town for a couple of drinks. You're not paying attention to thousands of potential leads. What am I talking about?

Local SEO Clients of course.

It's so easy to get caught up looking all over the Internet for an SEO client, but there are so many people on your doorstep who are just dying to get their hands on your SEO expertise. And the best bit? Nobody else is pitching to them.

Here's the easiest ways to find local SEO clients and unlock the potential of that goldmine that you're sitting on…

01: In Your Blood…

Okay, slightly dramatic. But there are hundreds of potential SEO leads connected to you through your friends and family. The people you hold dearest could also hold the key to finding your next client.

As Keith Ferrazzi points out in his book Never Eat Alone, you should look at your network like a garden. In your mind it probably feels like you just have a few potted plants on a windowsill. You know, those people you’re directly connected to.

But in actual fact you have a whole jungle of people you’re connected to. Because for every connection you have, that person has connections, and then that person has connections. Just speaking to five people that you know could connect you to at least 50, if not more.

Here’s a fact for you; my first ever corporate client came from this exact text message to my cousin:

“Hey Mark, you know how your mate Liam runs that training company? Do you think he’d be interested in me working on his marketing?”

That lead to me getting a meeting with Liam, who then fell in love with what I was offering. As did his friend who ran the business in the connecting office and I landed myself two long term contracts.

Think of all the people – not just in your family, but in your life – that you can connect with:

• Relatives
• Friends
• Colleagues (or ex-colleagues)
• Barbers/Hairdressers
• Dentist
• Doctors

There is always someone in your community you can connect with.

In fact I once heard a great story about a Dentist in a small town in England. He told his Hairdresser about his business, gave her a free teeth whitening because she gave ‘such a great haircut’ and always tipped her a little extra. You know what happened? She told all of her clients about his practice and the nice thing he’d done, and he had more referral clients than he knew what to do with.

You spend countless hours looking for clients in the furthest, darkest corners of the internet. Why not take a break from the screen and get involved in the community?

02: Local Business Directories

Directory is a word that you instantly associate with Spam, right? That’s okay, it’s just an in-built reflex all SEO’s have. But outside of getting links actual businesses use them for real networking and listing opportunities, making it perfect for finding local SEO clients.

You’ll find that your region – be it a county, a city a municipality or anything else – will have a business forum or group. A place where businesses can come together online and share ideas, connect and work in a community.

You can find this one of these searches (or a variation of):

• Area + business forum
• Area + business community
• Area + business directory

If I search that for my local area (Northern Englishmen, unite!) I get this result:

And a journey through the top link brings me to this juicy directory of people:

The beauty here is that you have access to their site already. So you can highlight problems and create a tailored value proposition for them and their site. Or, you can take a much more networked approach and send an email like:

“Hey Darren,

I saw you’re part of the Salford Business Forum, I’m working on my membership right now! I just wanted to let you that if you have any questions about Internet Marketing or using Google for your business I’m here to give you answers.

I’m also offering a free site audit to all members so you can find out where you can improve, because I know it’s sometimes a hard topic to get your head around.

Look forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,

James”

I mentioned in that email about membership. And, sometimes, it doesn’t hurt to become a member of these groups. You can gain a more open access to people and create a bigger, stronger network of people to boost what we spoke about in the first section.

03: Trade Shows

There’s a trend in start up agencies that I’ve never quite been able to get my head around.

You only seem to look for online only  SEO clients. You know, those companies that make all their profits online through sales or services. But there’s a whole world of people who conduct their business in the real world that still need SEO results.

And, you’re missing out on them.

Take a look at this list of the world’s most profitable industries in 2016 from Forbes:

For almost all of these industries the work is done offline. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need an online presence. They still want to be found, and generate leads, on search engines.

This is where trade shows really come into their own. You can find a show for one of these industries and attend it. All you have to do is network and position yourself in a place where you can generate SEO leads.

For example, let’s say you attend a trade show for Manufacturing. You can position yourself as an SEO Agency who is looking to understand the marketing barriers that companies in the SEO industry have:

• Is search traffic important to their business?
• Do they struggle to generate leads organically?
• Do they have issues with visibility?

By having these conversations, and offering solutions, you can generate leads and build your network through simple conversations and interactions. Making it one of the best ways to get SEO clients. You don’t really need more than a notebook; and you actually learn what clients in this industry want too.

Don’t be scared to go offline by telling yourself that they don’t need SEO or that owners in that niche don’t want it. There is always an opportunity to get people on board.

04: With Your Clients And Employees

Referrals are a really simple way to generate SEO client leads and build your authority. Because, you don’t have to have a big reputation to get clients in.

Think of it this way:

You might like Starbucks coffee. Heck, you might love it. But when someone recommends that little coffee shop down the road to you, you still want to go and check it out because it’s got a seal of approval.

The same happens for you. They might know about big agencies, but when they hear from a trusted friend or colleague that your work is the shit, they’ll be more interested to want a slice of it.

Here’s what Arsen Rabinovich of TopHatRank had to say about using referrals to build his agency:

“We get referrals from current and past customers, and other industry professionals (designers, developers, PR agencies, branding firms). These referrals have always been a big part of our customer acquisition model, and the best part is that you don't have to be a very well known SEO agency to generate them. You do, however, need to be awesome at what you do!”

This strategy is really simple to set up, too. You just have to have some existing clients who know other people. Then provide them with an incentive if they get people to sign up, like a free service for a month or two.

You can also use the same system with your employees, too. When I used to work in the Gym’s as a youngster we would get £50 for every friends or family that we signed up for a membership. A similar system can work within any kind of business, and for your agency.

All of this prospecting doesn’t require any extra effort from you either. Winner!

05: Connect With Design Agencies

This might seem a little against the grain but hear me out.

When a client comes to a Design Agency they’re normally instigating a new marketing campaign. They want a new look, a new feel or to change their strategy in some way. This is the perfect opportunity to start offering your SEO services in collaboration.

My good friend, Scott Jones, runs a design agency called Illustrate. In conversations with him clients ask for SEO work alongside their design’s all the time. After all with a new site comes a whole new need for copywriting on the site.

Partnerships with these agencies is the perfect way to share this love and send business your way. And, you can send design work their way. It’s a win for you, a win for them and a win for the client.

Wrapping It Up: The Golden Rule Of Local SEO

If you take nothing from this article let it be this:

The most important part of getting Local SEO Clients is to get involved in your local community.

Be a face. Be a personality. Network and talk to people on a human level. Don't hard sell all the time. Create connections and add value and show you care about the success of the businesses in the area.

The rest, well, that's up to you to decide.

Let me know your experiences with Local SEO Clients in the comments…

The post 5 Sensational Places To Find Your Next Local SEO Clients appeared first on Serped.com.

I'm sure you'll agree with me when I say:

It's always exciting to see new research into Google.

There's something about being given an extra level of clarity that's just, well…addictive.

It's easy to get swept up in this excitement, and addiction, and lose sight of the bigger picture. It's easy to take this new research as fact and make it into your new law. Hell, it happens in every niche around the world. But there's something important you need to remember:

Unless it comes from Google, it's not fact.

And, it all needs to be questioned. Which is exactly what we've done for you with Brian Dean's 1 Million Search Result Analysis.

Understanding What We’ve Done…

Brian’s research is really thorough on this topic. I mean, one millions results is nothing to be sniffed at.

But, as with all data from third-parties that aren’t Google, there’s still no saying whether it’s 100% accurate or not. Although, the results do line up with popular belief about search.

In this article, then, we’ll explore:

• What the results mean for you as an SEO
• What actionable steps you can take to implement it
• Whether it’s essential for you to actually act on any individual step

If that sounds good to you, read on and learn how to maximise this data, for the best results you can get…

Result #1: “The Number of Referring Domains Has a Very Strong Influence on Rankings”

“Backlinks remain an extremely important Google ranking factor. We found the number of domains linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor.”

In an SEO climate where the question, ‘Is backlinking dead?’ is constantly thrown around, it’s good to see that all of your link building efforts will actually pay off. Because, as Brian pointed out in his research, it was the biggest correlating factor.

Now, looking at this through a no-hat lense, that means that getting links through any and all means available to you should be your first port of call for any site. Old, new or otherwise.

That means:

• Guest Blogging
• Paid Links
• Private Blog Networks

Are all still fair game and beneficial for your site. Regardless of what Matt Cutts says on the topic.

But that doesn’t mean that any link back to your site is going to pay dividends for your search rankings. As Rand Fishkin of Moz points out, “Backlinks that scale easily and that don't also add value for searchers have been dying for a long time.” And, they’ll continue to kill your site if you keep building them.

So while you should be focusing on getting as many links back as possible, that doesn’t mean you should get any link that’s possible. Because your brothers Bait and Tackle website just isn’t relevant to your clients car rental business. In fact, there’s also the argument that low-authority but relevant links are better than slightly higher authority, but irrelevant links.

The key tip here, then, is to focus on:

• Building a diverse set of inbound links
• Getting them from relevant sites even if they’re lower authority than you’d like
• Where your competitors are getting links from and building them from those sources

Result #2: “Authoritative Domains Tend to Rank Higher in Google’s Search Results”

“Our data also shows that a site’s overall link authority (as measured by Ahrefs Domain Rating) strongly correlates with higher rankings.”

This result doesn’t just prove that domain authority is important for you, it also proves that Google is bias against you. Let me explain…

Think about walking into a shopping mall when you go on vacation. What do you look for? The shops you know and trust, or the ones that you don’t? The latter, always. Because you want to know that you’re buying from a reputable source. The same with choosing food in the food court, you look for somewhere you know won’t give you food poisoning.

Google seems to work in the same way. If you search for, say, Digital Photo Frames, the top results are the biggest retailers that sell them. And, the same goes for any product you search:

Because Google wants to be seen to be providing you with not only the most relevant, but the most trustworthy content in your eyes, too. Which means they’ll often rank shit content from a big brand ahead of the quality content from your small business.

Let’s take a look at this search for ‘How to build your social media following’. The number one result comes from Forbes:

Where the content is really light , and, frankly, pretty useless as a number one ranking; ‘Follow like minded people’ isn’t exactly a wake up call for changing your social media strategy, is it?

While much deeper on this fourth page is this post from Wishpond that outlines 60 actionable ways to increase your social media following, with examples and guides:

Buffer, the dedicated social media blog only comes in at number four, which is completely absurd too.

But this also proves Brian’s theory that, “the domain that your page lives on is more important than the page itself”. So building your overall site authority is key to getting higher rankings, and ranking first, if you’re in competition with the big vendors (of content, products et al.) might not ever be an option.

Result #3: “Publishing Comprehensive, In-Depth Topical Content May Improve Rankings”

“We discovered that content rated as “topically relevant” (via MarketMuse), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. Therefore, publishing focused content that covers a single topic may help with rankings.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, while the data is convincing, it’s inconclusive .

It’s true that since the Hummingbird update Google can ‘understand’ your content much better. And, semantic search has brought about a new way of looking at what makes content ‘topical’.

But, as the graph itself shows – and as the examples he used in the article show – as long as you have domain authority and relevant backlinks, you can still rank on the first page with less in-depth topical content.

There’s also the fact that topicality, like relevance, can mean many different things to different people.

Now, I’m not a big Matt Cutt’s proponent, I don’t find everything he says to be trustworthy. But something that does seem to ring true – as marketing principle as much as anything else – is when he said:

“If marketers focused more on relevant content with the user in mind, or focusing more on the reader in general, work as an SEOer becomes that much easier”

Meaning that the content you create should match the content your audience has become accustomed to. It’d be odd, for example, if Buzzfeed started churning out 1,800 epics every week, when you were just looking for a quick laugh about your home town.

So, while there may be correlation here, I don’t think it’s causation. And if you keep working on building accessible, easy to crawl content that is relevant and linked to by authorities, this factor won’t matter too much.

Result #4: “Long-Form Ranks Higher in Google’s Search Results Than Short-Form Content”

“Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.”

The long form vs short form copy debate is one that has waged war on the Marketing and Advertising worlds for years.

It used to be that before the internet age anything over 500 words was long form copy. In fact, even just recently, I’ve had conversations with exec’s who think 800 words is still too long for a blog post.

And, as Copyhackers point out, Seth Godin outranks God with super short content:

Now, let me take off my copywriters hat and look at this from an SEO point of view.

Long Content does perform well. It’s always performed well. But, what counts as long content?

Boost Blog Traffic, OkDork and Matthew Woodward all create long content regularly. But it’s often in excess of 3000-4000 words. While sites like Buffer create content that’s 1,250-1500 words, and occasionally up near that 1,800 word mark.

But then there are also sites, like BuzzFeed and Jeff Goins and Chris Guillebeau who create content between 200-1000 words and still rank highly as well.

That would suggest that there has to be a good mix of them. And, it would be interesting to see what the Median and Mode numbers of the content were as well. So as to get a bigger, clearer picture than just the average.

However this result is going to tell people that they need to focus on 1,800 words or above for their content, which I don’t think is true. The lesson here is something different:

You need to create the longest, relevant content to your audience.

For example, look at the self help site Tiny Buddha. Their articles are between 800-1,500 words, as per their submission guidelines.

Now, they don’t need to write 3000 word epics, because that’s too long for their audience. Nobody in their audience wants to read a blog post of that length, on any of these topics. They want a quicker, insightful boost of motivation and to then head off back into their work.

But a blog like the Canva Design School one looks for an absolute minimum of 2,000 words for the authors.

So the Tiny Buddha 1,500 word post would still be short form content to them, and any competitor sites in the same niche.

The point I’m making, which I hope is abundantly clear, is that long and short form comes down to your audience. Especially as Google doesn’t actually have an opinion on long or short form content, at all.

If you’re creating relevant, linkable content that boosts your position as an authority in your niche – and is the best you can possibly produce – that fits your audience and your niche, you get to decide what long and short form content is. But always go for the longest you can.

After all, I doubt there are many Dog Walkers writing 1,800 word blog posts or on site content, but they’re still ranking for their terms, aren’t they?

Result #5: “HTTPS Is Moderately Correlated With Higher Rankings”

“HTTPS had a reasonably strong correlation with first page Google rankings. This wasn’t surprising as Google has confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal.”

As Brian pointed out, there’s a huge push from Google themselves for people to HTTPS domains. And, while it may not be the biggest ranking factor now, it’s definitely going to be one in the future, consider Google official endorsed it as a ‘signal’.

But, this begs the question for you, “Do I need to make the switch to HTTPS?”, which I’m going to answer for you now:

Yes.

The big worry here is that, because moving to HTTPS is like switching to a completely new domain, it’s going to negatively impact your SEO. That, for all intents and purposes, you’ll lose the SEO you have in place. But, as Google themselves have said:

“Over time, we may decide to strengthen [HTTPS as a ranking signal] because we’d like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web”

So at some point it’s probably going to negatively affect your SEO. At least right now you have the power to control what happens. And, yes, it will be time and labour intensive. And you’ll have to get someone to reach to get every link pointing at your site updates and changed. But, the words, “Suck it up!” come to mind. It’s better to do it now than have rankings stripped from you after an algorithm update.

And, if you’re outsourcing this work, it’ll be cheaper now while it’s not in demand.

Google has their own guidelines on this here. But, you should read this article from Branded3 for a more layman's-term outline of these considerations, too.

Result #6: There is No Correlation Between Schema Markup and Rankings

“Despite the buzz around Schema, our data shows that use of Schema markup doesn’t correlate with higher rankings”

While Brian might not have found any benefits of using Schema Markup, there are other studies that suggest that it does.

For example, as SearchMetrics discovered, sites with Schema Markup rank four places higher than those without it. As well as the fact it’s been alluded to on many occasions. And, they can be quoted as saying:

“Structured data markup” is a standard way to annotate your content so machines can understand it. W hen your web pages include structured data markup, Google (and other search engines) can use that data to index your content better, present it more prominently in search results , and surface it in new experiences like voice answers, maps, and Google Now.”

And, as Bill Slawski of SEO By The Sea noted, Google have been filing patents on how they can reduce duplicate content by using Schema markups. Which means that while Schema Markups may not help you get onto the first page, they’re probably going to become a much bigger ranking factor in the future.

One of the big problems I encounter with SEO – especially those I come into contact with using SERPed – is that they focus on the here and now. What will get you rankings today? Instead of looking at SEO, and ranking sustainability as a whole process.

Schema Markups:

• Make pages easier to crawl
• Improve semantic search
• Add (perceived) relevance and topicality to your pages

So don’t write them off based on this data. I’d recommend that you keep using them, or start incorporating them now, because while this data shows that they won’t boost your rankings right now, they won’t hurt them either.

Result #7: Shorter URLs Tend to Rank Better than Long URLs

“I typically recommended that people use short URLs for the sake of better on-page SEO”

There’s nothing to contest here, really.

Shorter URLs outperform longer URLs, it’s pretty simple. And this probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you as an SEO. Because they’re easier to interpret and understand by Google.

Now, Brian’s article offers a tutorial on how to shorten your links in a WordPress site, so I won’t repeat it. But what if you’re not on a WordPress site , and you use a competitor like Joomla!, Drupal or Jekyll? Luckily, I’ve got you covered here:

• How To Create A Short URL In Joomla!
• How To Create A Short URL In Jekyll (Here And Here)

But, sadly, I couldn’t find a comprehensive link shortening strategy for Drupal. The only thing on offer is creating links like Bit.ly does, but aren’t permanent to your page.

Result #8: Content With At Least One Image Ranks Higher Than Content That Lacks an Image

“Content with at least one image significantly outperformed content without any images. However, we didn’t find that adding additional images influenced rankings.”

From a pure SEO point of view, I’d agree with this statistic. That you need at least one image, well formatted, to get a ranking boost. But don’t let this statistic hold you to just one image. Because having images can do so much more for your content.

For example, Canva and BuzzSumo research found using an image every 75-100 words can have a big increase in your social shares:

And there’s the fact that image captions will get read 300% more than any of your body copy. So, if you’re trying to keep people on page and reduce bounce rates – which appear to be directly correlated with rankings, regardless of what Matt Cutts says – they’re worth adding throughout your posts.

If you’re creating longer copy – as suggested in the a point above – adding more images makes the content less intimidating and easier to read or understand. So, more people can take the value from your content and link back to it.

Result #9: Using An (Exact) Keyword in Your Page’s Title Tag Has a Small Correlation With Rankings

“Despite Google’s many Penguin updates, exact match anchor text appears to have a strong influence on rankings“

Every year Google edges closer to Semantic Search and away from the, “Hey, is this keyword on that page?” mindset of years gone by. And, while keywords will always be important, it’s the way you use them that will change as time goes on.

As shown here, the exact match keyword in your title is nowhere near as important as it was five or six years ago. Now, Brian says here:

“Including your target keyword in your title tag may help with rankings for that keyword. However, because of Semantic Search, the impact doesn’t appear to be nearly as great as it once was.”

While I agree with the sentiment, I think it needs to be said that you should drop keywords from your title tags at your own risk. I’d suggest that you just make a shift to long-tail keywords if you’re not already. Meaning, the need to put in high traffic keywords has decreased, but the need to drive organic traffic through keywords in general hasn’t.

Result #10 + #11: More Total Backlinks (From Authorities) = Better Rankings

“We found that pages with the highest number total backlinks tended to rank best in Google.”

Okay, this doesn’t need much explanation from me. This is one of those unwritten rules of SEO that we all kind of go, “Well, duh!” to. But it’s nice to have a little more confirmation of the fact.

But, remember, your links need to be quality, relevant and (preferably) from authorities in your niche. That doesn’t give you a free pass to go and start spamming again.

As is shown by the correlation between link/domain authority and higher rankings:

If you want to know how to build some stellar links you can check out our articles on the subject here and here.

Result #12: Low Bounce Rates Correlate With Higher Google Rankings

“We discovered that websites with low average bounce rates are strongly correlated with higher rankings.”

I wanted to act a little surprised with this result, but I really can’t. While there has never been an official correlation with bounce rates and rankings, I’m going to go out on a limb and just say that’s one of Matt Cutts’ lies.

Bounce rates have to have some impact on rankings, it just makes sense.

Let’s look at the higher levels of personalisation that come with every important update. Having bounce rates to indicate whether your site is right for a person or not was always going to impact whether you show up in their rankings. And, SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum, does it?

Now, not everyone who visits your site is going to find what they want. So, you’re never going to achieve perfection in this, either. But it’s definitely a great indicator. Meaning if you do want to compete at the top, you’re going to need to focus on this a whole lot.

That's All, Folks…

Phew.

Okay, you made it through all of that article. Hats off to you!

But now I wan't to know – what do you make of Brian Dean's results? 

Let me know in the comments…

The post What Brian Dean’s 1 Million Search Result Ranking Means For You appeared first on Serped.com.

Starting a digital marketing agency can be confusing, can't it?

There just aren't any good resources out there to show you how to do it. You're stuck between the rock of outdated advice, and the hard place of short posts without any depth. And, it's damn frustrating.

You want an actionable, in-depth, piece of content from someone in the know. Is that too hard to ask?Nope. Not anymore.

In this article you're going to learn 21 steps every start up digital marketing agency needs to take, at some point, to get on the road from zero to six figures.

Now, there is no cookie cutter way to start an agency, and this article doesn't try to give you that. Instead this is all the steps you must take, but they need to be done in your wa, according to your type of business. They need that bit of magic only you possess to turn them from words on a page and into tangible income.

But if you're ready to turn your agency dream into a financial reality, read on:

The Basics…

These first few steps are your foundation and platform. Everything you need on how to start a digital marketing agency on, and secure your success further down the line. This is the advice you need, but a lot of work down the line.

#1: Get Positive…

Okay, I'm going to get the wishy washy, feel good, stuff out of the way to begin with. And while it might feel a little like fluffy content, let me tell you why it's not:

The road to a 6 figure digital marketing agency is long and hard.

There's no overnight success. No short cuts. No hitting and hoping. Just hard work, late nights, blood, sweat and tears.

But you have to keep a positive attitude throughout it all. If you're starting an agency, you have a vision of what it is that you want to achieve. And, you have to keep that positive mental image of it for as long as possible.

As one of my mentors once told me, “Why get frustrated with no's? They're just stepping stones to your next yes”.

Who knows, your potential clients could be just one more rejection letter away? Being a digital marketing service provider is not easy, but there are some key steps we'll show you that can make your journey less turbulent.

#2: Set Clear Goals

In order to be the resounding success that we both know you can be, you're going to need clear goals to work towards. Because, as the advertising legend Paul Arden once said, “Without a goal, it's hard to score”.

The fact you're here, and looking to starting an agency, suggests one of your goals is money, and that sweet six-figure agency status. But your goals and selling propositions can be anything else that excites you or drives you forward.

In all honesty, you should be taking what Google executives call Moonshots. Where you don't look at goals in terms of attainable, you look at them as aspirational. Where you set yourself something above, and beyond, what you think you can achieve.

But on a more actionable level, it pays to set your business goals using SMART. Because, as boring and unoriginal as it sounds, it works at all levels. If you've never set a SMART Goal, here's how it should look:

• Specific: Be clear about what you want to do. Replace vague terms like, “be the best in the industry” with “Generate $100,000 in sales from retail companies”.

• Measureable: This is answering the question, “How will I know when I've achieved it?”.

• Aspirational: This is normally Achievable , but as research from Locke and Latham found, having aspirational goals here is far more beneficial. Try adding 20-25% onto what you think you can achieve, and you'll find you're hitting goals faster than ever.

• Realistic: By the same token, know what's in your reach. Landing $1,000,000 worth of work probably won't happen in your first year. But, over five years, why the heck not?

• Time Bound: Set a clear, specific, time frame to achieve your goal in. This can be short, medium or long term, depending on the goal you're setting.

So, if you were going to start an agency today, your SMART Goals might look like:

• Get $200,000 worth of SEO contracts from retail clients in six months
• Have a team of 10 workers on $30,000 a year each by March
• Build to 10 clients at an average of $10,000 a month in one year's time

While you might not know your exact goals right now it's important to take the time to figure this out. They'll give you a lot more focus and direction, and help you maintain that positive attitude, even at the toughest times.

#3: Find Your Focus

Goals allow you to focus your time and effort. But, this level of focus is about who you're going to focus those time and efforts with. This step is where you get to know your audience, your potential clients, who they are and what makes them tick.
A great brand – as you'll read about next – delivers a specific set of ideas to a specific type of person that could be a part of potential customers. And, it's your job to decide who you're trying to appeal to.
Now when you're at the beginning of the road, it's tempting to try and appeal to everybody. Because you want money in your bank account and clients under your belt. Feeling that way is totally normal, so don't worry about it. Just don't give in to it.
Try and answer these questions to give yourself a little more focus and clarity on what it is that you're trying to build, and who for:

• What is your niche? Who is it that you want to work with, and why? Is it small independent businesses, Fortune 500 companies, fashion brands? Knowing this will help you narrow down where you go looking for contracts.

• Who do you want to appeal to? Are you here for the geeks, the wizards, the whizz-kids, the hardened professionals or the new kids on the block? This will help you find the people you'll associate with, and how you'll begin to build a loveable brand.

• What makes you unique? There are thousands of agencies out there, so what is it that makes you different? What do you (or will you) value, care about or do differently to others?

Analysing who you are, and what you bring to the table – whether that makes you a digital content agency, advertising or otherwise – is a key step in building a profitable brand. As SumAll CEO, Dane Atkinson said to Business Insider, ‘learn to say no'. Say no to things that don't fit your focus, or your goals, and you'll be a success in much less time.

Finding your focus includes finding the right keywords to target in your content. You'll find SERPed.net has great tools to help you with this, including a keyword analyzer and, keyword clusters, and more.

#4: Build Relationships

If you really want to start selling digital marketing services, you're going to need to reach out to your target market and offer help and value through your online presence.
Maybe you see a company who is ranking poorly for a search term they shouldn't be. Or, you see someone talking about being penalised on social media ads or Google Ads campaigns. And, perhaps someone has asked a Quora question you just know the answer to (which is great for your content marketing). These can all be ways of offering help, providing value, and getting a foot in the door for potential clients – while positioning them at the top of your sales funnel.
These conversations are how you build leads for your potential clients. How you get yourself an appointment to pitch to the marketing department. And, how you grow yourself to become a successful business in digital marketing services.
Think of all the industries you want to work in, where your audience spend their time, and look for people you'd like to work with, and create a list or a spreadsheet of them all. Then reach out to them.
Don't try to sell to them straight away, just look for ways you can offer value or connect with them.

#5: Create A Clear Brand Identity

There are lots of reasons you need to have a clear brand identity. In fact, most of them are well known cliches like, “People buy from people they like”. But there's one often overlooked, but incredibly important, reason that ties them altogether.
As Lois Geller once put it in an article for Forbes, “A brand is a promise”.
It's a promise to deliver a service that people can trust. One that they like. One that associates with them. One that they know will deliver them results each and every time. There will be people that don't like your brand as well, but screw them. That's the sign of a good brand.

When you're branding you need to decide:

• What your promise is: What do you and your audience value? What does your brand stand for? Pick your fight and run with it.

• What your voice is: This is by far the most important one for me, especially for a digital agency. Who does your tone of voice appeal to? The way you'd speak to a young technology startup is different to how you'd speak to an established retail chain. Establish who it is you're talking to, and how you want to speak to them.There are two great articles on tone of voice here, and here.

Once you have that, you have a foundation to start building your logo, slogan, domain name and everything else that makes a brand tangible.

#6: Don't Imitate, Innovate

The greatest risk in the world is not taking any risks at all. And, if you're going to be a successful agency, you need to get used to taking risks and putting your neck on the line. Don't be afraid to overhaul, change or challenge anything in your niche.

There's also a lot to be said for running with ideas you're scared of. That pitch, or that idea, that you love…but you're scared your client won't like. It's these ideas that often end up being the most successful and leaving the biggest impact on people.

Instead of trying to blend in and see what other agencies are doing, and how you can mimic it, look for ways you can innovate. Take what they've done and build on it. Or, turn it completely on it's head and give it your own spin.

There are people out there who will love your ideas, and what you're trying to achieve. With the right focus and goals, you'll have no trouble finding them, either.

Getting It Off The Ground…

Okay, once you've nailed the basics of starting a digital marketing company, it's time to turn this from wonderful idea into tangible agency. These steps all take time, but they're going to form the backbone of your business. And, there's a couple of money saving tips here, too, to make sure you get off to a good start financially.

#7: Get Yourself Online

Okay, I'm not going to teach you to suck eggs here. You're in internet marketing, and you know you have to have a website to start generating income and grow your online presence. But, what you don't have to do is break the bank. Make sure you're set on your marketing budget.

The first thing you think about when you think of your site is how it looks. Is the design sexy enough? Are my buttons shiny enough? Do my images leap off the page? And, that's because it feels like design is important. That's why designers can charge over the odds for even the most simple, template built websites.

What's truly important – and a realisation that will save you a lot of money – is that you value function first. Heck, some of the most popular million dollar websites, are ugly as hell. But they generate income because they're simple and easy to use.

When you're starting out, then, focus on getting the essentials locked down – your own domain and branding – then worry about the design later. Agencies have started on free WordPress themes and gone on to be giant successes, so there's no reason yours can't as well.

#8: Create A Killer Portfolio

Actions have, and always will, speak louder than words. Which is why having a strong, result driven portfolio is paramount for generating new business and honing in your digital marketing skills.

If people see that you've worked with, and delivered results for, a brand that they know and trust, they're more likely to buy from you. Because if they trusted you enough to work with you, why shouldn't they? 

Now if you don't have a portfolio yet, don't worry. That's easily remedied. You can simply try and do some free work for people (and build some good relationships while you're at it) to get these through a small client base. Or, you can compile a list of previous projects your staff have worked on in the past as a placeholder until you've got some agency work under your belt.

A portfolio is now considered a minimum requirement for an agency to have. So, it's essential you get one in place. A good portfolio is made up of:

• Headlines and shorts snippets
• Further, in depth, result case studies
• Testimonials from clients
• Future goals and targets for that client

Showing people that not only you can deliver the results, but you will continue to deliver them to people continuously.

#9: Decide If You Really Need Extra Capital

Starting a digital agency feels like it should be expensive. That you're going to need to lots of cash, investors and pre-saved money to get everything off the ground. But, if you're thrifty, you can start an agency quite cheaply.

Six figure businesses have been known to start for as low as $62.50. And, a lot of agencies start off as just a single person, like Mike Ramsey's Nifty Marketing, and end up as million dollar agencies. The key is to understand what is essential for you as a start up, and what isn't.

For example, you don't need every SEO tool under the sun. You could spend $2000 – $3000 a month in recurring costs just from these tools. Half of which, you'll never even use. Instead choose one or two tools that do everything you need them to do (or you can use SERPed that does everything).

There's also the problem that having investors and partners detracts from your ownership of your online business. The more people that are putting money in, or are sharing your company, takes away from what you actually own. You'll find the most successful agencies are the ones who knuckle down, go independent, build client relationships and turn themselves into a success on their own.

#10: Take The (Cheaper) Road Less Travelled

Staying with the topic of being thrifty and saving money, let's talk about some of the actions you're going to need to take along the road:

• Marketing
• Advertising and Exposure
• Finding Clients
• Providing Customer Service

Sometimes, and this is something a lot of it feels like you're looking down the barrel of a big dollar shaped shotgun, doesn't it? Yet, with the right mindset, you can find ways to do all of this cheaply, while improving your digital marketing skills.

Look at using sites like UpWork to build a team of Customer Service reps that can work for a hourly rate of $5-7 dollars. Or, look for different hacks and methods to get Facebook Ads down to 1c per click (or like these guys who got $0.0005 per engagement). You could always ask other online marketing companies how they get their workers, too. Email marketing is another valuable strategy to reach out to your target audience and improve client relationships, as part of your content strategy.

And, as the old saying goes, Marketing is like sex (only losers pay for it). Find ways to build word of mouth, marketing that you can rely on. Offer unique sales points, add a value that nobody else can, or solve an issue your target audience has, that people will scream about. It doesn't have to cost you anything, but it can drive you a tonne of new customers to your digital marketing business in the long run.

#11: Plan Out When You'll Need Employees

I'll be really honest here.

There will come a point where your digital marketing business will need employees. If you're committed to your goals and your business model, you will outgrow the ability to do work just on your own. A six-figure one man band might be a good dream, but it's highly unlikely you'll do that and keep any quality of life. The digital marketing industry is tough for solopreneurs.

But the key to making sure your business survives the need for full time employees is to scale how, and when, you hire them. This will vary from agency to agency, and the type of service you offer, (like social media marketing, social media management, SEO, Google Adwords, content creation, content writing and so on) but I find a good way to survive these transitions is to work in these steps:

• Just You: Start out as just you, knuckle down, and complete as much work as possible.

• Freelancers: When you build up enough, look to outsource work to Freelance SEO's. It could be specific tasks for a project, or full projects for themselves that you take a percentage of.

• Part-Time Employee: You either do this as a freelancer, or in-house. Take someone on a permanent contract for x,y or z requirements each week. This way you get used to paying out a salary, while not having too many overheads.

• One Full Time Employee: Once you're making enough money, take on a full time employee to alleviate your workload. And, to allow you to bring in more custom because you can effectively do double the work.

You could, theoretically, stop here and become a successful six figure agency. At least at the lower end of the six figure world. But, if you want to keep growing to get towards those top figures, you'll find there's a point where you need to take on even more employees.

It's possible to plan out when you'll need employees by your earnings, too. Which would look a little something like:

• Just You: $30,000 – $50,000 a year

• Freelancers: $50,000 – $80,000 a year

• Part Time Employees: $80,000 – $100,000 a year

• Full Time Employees: $100,000+

This will change from agency to agency, and the amount of work you feel people can handle, but putting it in these terms let's you have a rough idea of when you'll need to start looking at taking someone on the books, and how much you can allow for it.

But, as with everything in SEO, timing and precision are key here. Don't start with employees from day one; and make sure you don't go too long without taking someone on board.

#12: Brush Up On Your SEO Skills…

You don't need to be an absolute SEO pro to start a digital agency. In fact, you don't really need to know…anything, about it to start an Agency (cue lots of SEO's getting really angry right now). Because you always have the option to learn on the go, and build your expertise over time.

The nature of the beast in our realm is that SEO is always changing, growing and evolving. And one small update from Google can turn even the most ardent marketer into a blubbering beginner all over again.

Make sure you learn the basics and have an understanding of why doing x, y or z will deliver a result. Then, you can learn the rest of the techniques as you go.

For example, Lucian Harhata started an entire agency knowing only what ALT Tags were, and built it up from there.

#13: And Find Ways To Explain Them To Your Clients

For all the years I've worked in SEO, I've learnt one incredibly valuable lesson:
Your clients don't give a crap about SEO.
They give a crap about results. They give a crap about cash flow. They give a crap about ROI, and traffic and having more customers. But they don't have the time or the desire to care about what a meta-tag is, how you've increased their trust flow or that you've begun disavowing links.

What they do care about is understanding what you're doing, and how it benefits them, in the least mentally draining and accessible way possible. So, find ways to explain to your type of clients what you're doing (or going to do) and what they're going to get out of it.

Instead of saying, “we updated all of your image alt-tags to fit keywords and search terms”, tell them “We've made all of your images searchable and easy to find in Google”.

This makes everything you're doing understandable, and easy to process. While if you're using results and methods to pitch for new clients, you'll have a much higher converting, jargon-free way of getting people to sign up.

You'll have to find your own, unique way of doing this that fits your brand, and the types of clients you've got. But you can't go wrong focusing on visuals and benefits.

#15: Get Social…

One of the key steps for agencies, since the social-age boom in 2008, is to have social media management channels in place. But these business tools aren't just there for you to be like, “Oh hey, we know how to use Twitter!”. Instead they're there for:

• Marketing: It's free, it's easy and it's word of mouth. You can share anything from offers, to blog posts and any other materials that might drive people your way.

• Customer Engagement: You can deal with (and be seen to be dealing with) complaints. See what people are saying about your service. And, just become a more human brand to anyone who finds you online.

• Lead Generation: It might not be the most successful tactic for finding new clients, but they are definitely out there. Having a strong social media presence improves your chances of finding them, too.

Don't worry about canvassing all the social media channels, though. Focus one just one (or two, if you've hired staff) to focus on. You'll get more traffic, engagement and leads from one really strong profile, than two mediocre ones.

#16: Optimise Everything You Create

You're in the SEO business, so this should be your bread and butter. But it's worth giving you the reminder.

Anything you create, whether it's a page on UpWork, a directory listing, a guest blog post, videos or anything else , make sure it's optimised to be found on search. Find what you want to rank for and make sure you build it into all of your content. Even if it only brings in a couple of views, or leads, or a month, it's better to have it than not have it.

The Back-Of-House Essentials

The stuff you'd rather put off, but in it's own way holds all of your business together. They aren't exciting, but they're necessary.

#17: Set Your Prices (And Your Worth)

Pricing shows how you value yourself to your clients. And, nothing is more valuable than yours (or your employees) time.

If you're starting from the ground up as a one person agency, it can feel more comfortable to charge $40-$60 an hour, or to take on clients for $300-$400 a month, because you can still make a great living doing it that way. But, to achieve six figures, you need to look at it from a different angle.

Taking a look at the Nifty Marketing example again, when he upped his prices to a minimum $100 per hour, he noticed he started generating more interest, attracting better clients, making more money and growing faster. Because he started attracting the right people for his digital marketing service provider.

So, don't worry about pricing people out. Worry about charging the price you think is right for your service, and the clients you want to attract to your advertising agency.

#18: Put Your Reporting Tools In Place

Although clients may not be that interested in the ins and outs of your practices (at least at a technical level), you have a duty as an agency to deliver reports of what it is you're doing and the results you're getting. You'll also want to track all of these things internally, too.

I'd recommend starting with Microsoft Office Software to begin with, like Excel, because you can add your own branding and keep all of your files saved permanently for backup. Google Docs is a good second option for a business tool, but you run the risk of things getting messy and disorganised quickly.

#19: Develop Bookkeeping Skills

You don't need to be a fully chartered accountant to do this. But, you need to keep tabs on what you make, what you spend and where all of your money is going.
It helps to use invoicing software like FreshBooks, QuickBooks or Hiveage to keep track of your invoicing.

While a simple spreadsheet of your monthly incomings and outgoings can work wonders to making sure you know where all your money is at all times.
And, you know, it always pays to not run up a tab on the company credit card either.

#20: Budget And Forecast

This is the final step, but it's one of the most important. Knowing how your business is going to grow over the next year, both in how you want it to grow and how it looks like it will grow, are big factors in your success.

There will come hard times, and there will be good times. Knowing when each of them is going to happen is important to managing your time, money and finances. This is also the ‘measureable' part of the SMART Goals you set right back at the start of this article.

That's All, Folks…

There you have it, the complete quick start guide on how to start a digital marketing company from zero to a six figure, in no time at all.

Is there anything you'd add, take away, or that you've been stuck with on your own journey? Let me know in the comments…

The post 20 Steps To Starting Your Own 6-Figure Digital Marketing Agency Today appeared first on Serped.com.

You've been neglecting them, haven't you?

The images in your content.

While you know they're important (you do know, don't you?), you never really give them the attention they deserve.

And that's a shame:

Because you're missing out on a huge SEO opportunity.

Perhaps you just don't know how to optimize an image. Or, maybe you just cant be bothered to do it. Either way, you're doing yourself a disservice.

And, be honest, you'd love to have any boost to traffic you can get your hands on, right?

In this article, you're going to learn how to turn that dormant visual content into a booming search traffic magnet.

If you're ready, read on…

What Makes Good Visual Content SEO?

Good question.

From my research into this, it has four main components that all come with their own SEO benefits. Which is to say, some of the help search directly from the image. While others will help your overall site SEO.

• Descriptive Alt Text Tags: This is what Google sees.

• Humanized Title Tags: This is what people see.

• Trustworthy Outbound Links: The more trust this page can generate, the better.

• Clear Captions: To add that value, shareable component your audience wants.

In order to get epic results from your visual content you need a combination of all of these. And, luckily for you, that’s what you’re going to learn today.

But, Wait…Why Should You Care?

That’s simple.

Visual content is fast becoming the most important type of content you can create. Because the impact it has on your audiences – whether you’re an SEO, a Blogger or a Niche Site Owner – is powerful.

For example, Canva and BuzzSumo’s research found that blog posts with an image every 75-100 words got at least 40 more social shares than any other blog posts.

Then, there’s the fact that it can get you up to 94% more page views. And while infographics aren’t the novelty that they used to be, they can still generate hundreds of backlinks for you.

Which helps you obtain the perfect blend of:

• Traffic
• Trust
• Time on page

That you need to boost your rankings, audience engagement and the end result of creating content – sales and awareness.

Still with me? Awesome. Let’s look at how you can make the most of your SEO and turn it into a search traffic magnet then…

How To Create Magnetic Alt Text

Alt Text – also known as Alternative Text – is the part of the image the Google can see.

Because, even though you might think of Google and all seeing, all knowing and all powerful…it can’t see images. Go figure.

So, with this Alt Text, it’s relying on you to paint a piece of beautiful scenery it can enjoy. And explain why it’s relevant to your page. Like a text-to-speech version of your favourite book, but for Google crawlers.

Not using Alt Text is one of the most common SEO mistakes I see.

It’s prime real estate and so many SEO’s, blogger and niche site owners just don’t take advantage of it.

Most of the time it’s because you have no idea what to put there. Or, because it’s easier to leave your image as ‘DCI009087’ and ‘Screenshot 01-10-2015’ tags. But now you’ve read this, that’s no longer an excuse.

So what should you be putting here to boost your rankings?

Well, here’s a simple mnemonic to help you remember.

You need to keep it REAL:

R – Relevant

E – Easy to read

A – Around 10 words

L – Long Tail Keywords

For example if you were to use this picture of a Tattoo in a blog post for a client:

You would use a tag like this (keywords in red):

fresh-heart-shape-tattoo-at-rain-city-tattoo-parlour-manchester.jpg

james-johnson-tattoo-artist-sailor-style-piece.jpg

Why long tail keywords? Because they’re more natural and authentic, usually, when it comes to description.

If you were to save that tattoo image as:

manchester-tattoo.jpg

sailor-tattoo.jpg

It wouldn’t provide an accurate account of what the image is. And crawlers would look more at this like keyword stuffing. Which is, well…bad. Really bad.

Action Step

Before you move on to the next section open up a new tab with one of your pages that contains an image. It could be anything from a Press Release to a Landing Page.

Choose one of the images (or more if you have time).

Update the Alt Text to fit the REAL system.

The Alt-ernative To Alt Text

If you’ve got an infographic or image that you think goes a little beyond the scope of a 10 word alt text tag, don’t panic. There’s a way around that.

You can simply describe – or transcribe – the contents embedded in your image after the image itself. Because the crawlers will fly right past the image and too this juicy text.

For example, in this post about visual content from HubSpot, they’ve used a beautiful infographic to illustrate their point.

But before the infographic they added an introduction:

And after the infographics they’ve cleverly put the key information into Click To Tweet tags making them super easy for crawlers to find.

So while I’d recommend always changing your Alt Text from the default title, if you’re really struggling this is a great workaround.

What You Really Need To Know About Title Tags

Title tags are for your readers. Because it’s what they see when they hover their mouse over an image:

Now you might be thinking…why does this matter? Most people won’t hover over your image.

Well if you have an eCommerce, shop, sales or list post page, there’s a good chance they might. And this is the perfect opportunity to create a call to action.

It could be as simple as giving instruction, like this on the JD Sports Footwear pages:

Or an easy way to describe the link, like Matthew Woodward uses on the adverts on his site:

The results here may not be huge in an SEO respect. But the engagement, user experience and trust points you can build here are incredible.

SEO isn’t just about the ranking. It’s about how good the site is when they come through from the ranking, too. And this little tool can play a large role in that.

Wait, Couldn’t You Just Put A Keyword In The Title Tags?

In a word…

No.

You could if your site was dominated by images instead of text. Because that might make a small indent into your rankings if you did it with a couple of images here and there.

But on the whole I’m going to hazard a guess that you don’t use enough images on your site to get away with this. So doing this would count as over optimization and hinder you in the long run.

Focus on the call to actions instead.

Build Your Trust Flow By Correcting This One Costly Mistake

Trust is one of the hottest topics at Google right now. And, with good reason:

People want to find sites that can trust.

Nobody likes putting in a search term and ending up at a spammy site that’s about a trustworthy as a back street dentist. Unless, of course, they’re searching for a backstreet dentist.

Now trust is mostly build by trustworthy links pointing back to your site. That’s the most powerful method for it at least. And creating original visual content can lead to those links. But, there is another way you can do it before your content even goes live. How?

By citing and referencing the trustworthy sites you gathered all of your information from. Because showing you link to these sites shows you give a crap about your niche.

Okay, I just heard your eyes roll and think…”But, I already do that!”

And I’m sure you do. But you’re doing it wrong.

Take a look at this snippet of the Infographic I mentioned before from HubSpot:

Now, tell me what’s wrong with it?

Yep, that’s right, the links are inside the image. Where Google has no idea that they exist. And none of your readers can actually access them to see the information either.

Which means you’ve lost a lot of trustworthy link points. Plus, spreading link love is a great way to connect with other sites in your niche too.

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t include references in your images. If they go viral, for instance, you’re going to want them in there. But when it comes to using them on your site, add the references after.

This problem doesn’t just apply to infographics either. It goes for:

• Screenshots
• Product images
• Quote images
• Videos

And pretty much another other piece of visual content that could be referenced, or be taken, from somewhere else.

It could be as simple as including a link from the site you referenced it from before you use the image:

Either way it’s important to get the link out there to the site it came from. It builds trust, relationships and brand awareness.

Action Step

Choose one piece of content you’ve got with images that contain links. Or, a screenshot that isn’t referenced.

Add an outbound link to the original source or the homepage of that site.

Hit save and enjoy a little extra trust.

The (Forgotten) Power Of Image Captions

Do you remember being a kid and thumbing through magazines in waiting rooms? And, how you’d never actually read the magazines. You’d just look for the interesting pictures and read the captions underneath them?

Well it turns out that’s followed you into adulthood too:

Because image captions are 300% more likely to be read than any of your body copy.

So when you’re using images on your pages, you need to take advantage of this. Because your job at a copywriter – SEO or not – is to get people to read and engage in your content. So it can drive the end result for your client, or yourself.

And this simple tool can be exactly what you need to keep people on your page longer and decrease your bounce rates.

Now you don’t need to be too fancy here. But you do need to start thinking of your captions as mini headlines and subheaders, because they’re that important.

You can take the news approach and describe what’s in the image, like this one from the Guardian:

Or you can use them to sell the benefits of your products, which Nerd Fitness has down to a tee:

Yes, the benefits of captions aren’t entirely SEO based. But if you’re going to be using images you should definitely be trying to get the most out of them.

Action Step

For your next piece of content – no matter what it is – write captions for all of the images you use.

Then track your:

Bounce rates

On page time

Conversions

And see how they improve. I’d put money on the fact that they’ll all improve.

Conclusion

There you have it, your ultimate guide on how to maximise the SEO of your images. Let’s recap what you’ve learned:

1. Create Alt Tags that are REAL for best results
2. Create strong call to actions as your Title Tags
3. Build your trust flow by including outbound links outside of your images
4. Write compelling captions to increase on page times and decrease bounce rates

Now, it’s over to you.

Let me know your results in the comments…

The post How To Turn Your Forgotten Visual Content Into A Search Traffic Magnet appeared first on Serped.com.