Get A Rough Estimate Of Potential SEO Traffic

In Short: Forecast SEO REVENUE Potential & Not Just Traffic Volume

Don’t just blindly choose keywords based on the generic volume numbers you extract from any old SEO Tool, spend some time to estimate your potential conversions into leads, how many leads turn into sales, how much revenue gained per sale and if it’s a recurring revenue project then how long do people usually stick around.

Want Me To Do A Keyword Forecast For You? Okay, But It’ll Cost you $5
(No Seriously. Give me a keyword, conversion rate, lead to sale rate, revenue per sale and I’ll uncover a decent sized set of related keywords and provide you with a forecast of potential SEO revenue.

Get A Keyword Forecast For Five Bucks

Step By Step Process To Calculate SEO ROI

  • Do this process for each unique product(product type if they’re all super similar) or service
  • Calculate at what rate is of your traffic that turns into leads by filling out a form (Conversion rate)
  • Calculate how many leads turn into sales (Lead to Sale Rate)
  • Define how much revenue you make per sale. (Revenue per sale)
  • Optional: If this is a recurring service, multiply the revenue by the average lifespan of the client (how many times you will get to charge them)
  • Gather the list of relevant keywords that are most likely actually purchase the product or service
  • Get the total volume of those keywords
  • Multiply that volume by a PLAUSIBLE organic click through rate, this study by Advanced Web Rankings is pretty good.
  • Take your potential traffic number and multiply it by the conversion rate, lead to sale rate and revenue per sale. This will provide you with a realistic potential SEO Return on Investment and a solid number you can show your boss or client.

Organic Traffic Estimator: An SEO Forecasting Process

Process for attempting to evaluate traffic potential , I have taken the following, general approach:

  • I identify current device% breakout between mobile and desktop via analytics data
  • I use Rand/Jumpshots study of click death by device type (this may be controversial to some people, but I’ve noticed it models our actual data pretty decently)
  • desktop/mobile search volume from your tool of choice (e.g. SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.)
  • averaged CTR for top five positions (generally what we’re shooting for re: rankings), pulled from top X keywords in GSC

So, for example:
I want to project what my outcomes may be if I rank in top 5 for any given set of terms, thereby projecting what my opportunity is if I try to invest. This can be used in conjunction with other metrics, such as average difficulty for a corpus of keywords, etc. to make decisions on re: do you invest your time in them or not.
Here are the things I work through –
Calculating target ranking position (target ranking position = top 5) average – I recommend doing this for desktop and mobile to use the relative CTR for each later on:

  • I pulled the top keywords from GSC into sheets for the last 6 months (capped out the pull at around 50k terms gathered)
  • I rounded the position data to nearest whole position and applied groupings to them (position 1, top 3, first page, etc.) for future analysis
  • I used averageif on CTR for all top 10 positions (averageif pos = 1, averageif pos =2, etc.)
  • Then, I average the top 5 position averages, giving me a relative average for if I ranked in the top 5 positions
  • this % gets used in final equation

Find device breakout for current audience:

  • from your analytics of record (Omniture, GA, etc.), find out the device breakout by mobile vs desktop
  • these % get used in final equation

Leverage click data from Rand/Jumpshot study:

  • While a recent study – and one which people may scoff at, or ignore – I find being mindful of loss-of-click to be an important element; if you trust the click potential data from Ahrefs or SEMrush, you could use that info on the keyword level instead of using this broad study
  • let’s say we don’t use Ahrefs or SEMrush click estimates though, I would use the 39% clicks on mobile (61% no clicks was the number referenced in the study), and 65% clicks on desktop (34.5% no clicks was number referenced in study) in my final equation

Get desktop AND mobile data for keywords, as available:

  • for each term I’m going to include in my corpus for this analysis, I will try to get both the desktop data as well as the mobile data; if mobile data is not available (or vice versa), then I will use whatever is available
  • the keyword data could be for existing rankings (current marketshare/footprint), and/or for new terms we want to go after (gap footprint) – these can be used to support different questions (e.g. should we invest in optimizing current content and what would outcomes potentially be if so)
  • data needed = search volume and current ranking position (if pulling for current footprint)

Based on all this data, we can now calculate traffic potential.
traffic potential = ((mobile sv*0.39)*mobile traffic %)*avg T5 mobile CTR + ((desktop sv*0.65)*desktop traffic %)*avg T5 desktop CTR
This equation is applied to every keyword we currently rank for, not in the top 5 (e.g. position 6-100). This should give us insights into answering the question of “if we improve our ranking position for this corpus of keywords, what might the traffic estimate look like”.
You can then use this in comparison/conjunction with other metrics, like average difficulty for a topical category (e.g. risk reward based on comp to traffic opp), etc.

Actionable Recommendation

 My recommendation for this is to not look at/forecast on a per-term basis, but instead to do it in groups or as a whole (e.g. all terms that make up a certain topical niche, or all terms that reflect the current footprint for a site). By grouping things together, you get a better understanding of topical opportunity and risk/rewards (when looking at KW difficulty, revenue opps, etc).

Simple, Effective Link Building

Let’s boil this down to ridiculusly simple concepts, then I’ll outline an effective process that both generates amazing, usable content for your site while also giving you allies who will be incentivized & motivated to link to your website.

TLDR

  1. Make a list of parralel/related/”sibling” businesses w contact info
  2. Make up 1-3 Questions
  3. Outreach
  4. Curate all responses into a blog post
  5. Curate individual responses into graphics
  6. Send post and graphic back to respondents suggesting a “citation”
  7. Get links

How do you get a link?

In the simplest terms, to get a link a person with access to the website decides to edit their page and add hyperlink to their page. It really is a human, editorial decision.

Who Do You Need To Reach?

Who then do you need to convince of your site’s value? Well, obviously the person with access to the site?

So that could be the marketing person in-house, or with an agency or the owner of the business.

Why would they take the time to do that?!

Well, they would need to feel either obligated in some way or enticed to add the link to your website. They would need to feel that your content is sufficiently relevant and useful in the context of a page on their site that it would benefit them and their visitors.

However, this is KEY, they can NOT be in direct competition with you. Why would they link to an enemy! However, also need to have a relevant on page reason to link to you.

That’s why PARRALLEL businesses need to be your target market for links. You need to find businesses who are selling to the same audience, that are NOT direct competitors

E.G. A Realtor’s parrallel businesses would be loan officers, title agents, movers, designers, painters, landscapers, etc.

How do you make a proposition they can’t refuse?

Ego.

Self-interest.

You need to GIVE THEM VALUE FIRST. You must offer the link TO them first.

The best way to do this is to find questions that impact your customers/visitors and their visitors and then you get the answers to these questions from your target website owner.

You’re A Genius

People like to be acknowledged. So asking them for their expert opinion on a topic they know, in exchange for a link from you is a winning proposition.

Just be sure to NOT ASK TOO MUCH. 1-3 short questions AT MOST.

Shop Around For Experts

Build a spreadsheet of parrallel business types. Then get the ACTUAL businesses and their contact information. Send them outreach emails. Get a decent amount of replies.

Never Win Once When You Can Win Twice: Killer Content

Here’s the best part. If you do your job in selecting the question you’re asking, then you’re helping your customer and your potential customer by having these answers.

What happens when you have relevant questions and answers for issues solved by your product or service? You capture search traffic from online searchers looking for solutions to their problems(AKA Quality Content).

What About The Links You Promised?!

Here’s where you get savvy. Use something like Pablo by Buffer or Photoshop to turn each respondant’s answers into a neat graphic. Then you send THAT back to them with your published URL.

Thanks so much for your super helpful replies to my questions! Here’s the article, (I linked to your site here!). I thought you’d like to share your answers on your own site on your relevant page (URL) or on socials ;). A citation is not required but appreciated.

You don’t even have to say “LINK TO MEEEEEE”. They’ll feel obligated this way. They’ll feel enticed! Afterall what could be more relevant to their page than their own answers?

This only works if…

You do it. The hardest part of link building is DOING IT. You gotta stop stragegizing. You have to start sending emails. Curate responses. Publish the post and do the follow up. If you do, I swear you can build links for boring industries like toilet partitions or steel door manufacturers.

Some Good Advice From Twitter

Posting this to the Twittersphere netted some good input from @darth_na, who is a worthwhile follow!

This process of “ego bait” based link building can work well with round-ups like how I’ve approach this tactic but it’s not the only way. You could alsoapproach outreach by literally asking the businesses what are their most frequest questions and generate a professional/industry FAQs or approach them as and ask for their “insider tips on their industry”.

You also don’t HAVE to ask them for a link right away, you can wait a few weeks. Just send the graphic, and if they put it up make a calendar note to followup and ask for a link.

Last, but not least, there are ways to connect into totally different markets. You could make your post specific to a region! This would allow you to hit all kinds of different businesses.

Example Of A Link Building Campaign For A Roofer

Let’s say that you’re building links for a local roofing client. First examine what services and products your client is putting onto the market and who are their ideal customers.

Find a “Nexus of Interest”

In this example, the ideal customer is a home owner. Ergo, the “nexus of interest” for you to explore is “the home”. Who else provides related and sibling services for home owners?

Let’s brainstorm! Houses can get moldy, so there’s mold abatement. Houses need to be painted eventually, so there’s house painting. Houses can get bugs, so there’ bug treatment companies. There’s dozens and dozens of services and products for the home!

Make a spreadsheet.

Generate Your Questions For The “Interviews”

Next you need 1-3 questions on a topic that is at home on your roofing related site, but isn’t hardcore related just to roofs. Remember you want to spread a wide net, but don’t be ridiculous.

  • What’s the home maintenance task that most homeowners regret overlooking?
  • Is there a cost-saving tip that you should know when you’re buying your first home?
  • What’s the most surprising or unusual home improvement you’ve seen?

Making A List, Checking it Twice

Now I recommend that you add to your related, sibling business spreadsheet all of the contact information you can derive from their sites. Grab multiple email addresses and even phone numbers. you’d be surprised how easy it is to build links with phone calls.

Curate Those Responses Into A Blog post

Yea. Do that.

Turn Individual Reponses Into Graphics

Ta-daaaaa

Build a relationship

Don’t treat this as a single, transactional situation. Interact with the editor, seo or marketer on the other end of the process and you can gain some additional opportunities for referrals or even guest author a full article on their site in the future; Here’s a good resource to help on that score if it happens.

16 Elements of Great Content: How to Create Better Blog Posts

How To Create Worthwhile SEO Content

The reason I’m writing this post is as an example for a customer, who has great writing skills already but wants to incorporate some best practices to help that content surface for as many searches as possible to generate traffic for his business.

How Do I Effectively Create Content For My Website That Will Rank?


Using an engaging writing style while presenting each relevant subtopic supported with a direct answer and various types of content will generally generate content that ranks well. Thoroughly explore the topic and address the major concerns people might be searching and provide thoughtful, well written answers along with relevant images and supporting content. 

Add relevant images to create compelling content that ranks.

Here’s a short list of ways to ensure you capture “rich snippets” and create deeply relevant content:

  • Use the “People Also Ask Function” to find common questions and actually provide a full answer to them in your post
  • Include relevant images with appropriate matching file names and meta data
  • Present additional information in tables, numbered lists and bulleted lists.
  • Be sure to link out and cite additional resources frequently

How Long Does My Content Need To Be To Rank In Search

There’s no specific length required for your content to rank for a specific keyword or phrase search. However, you should keep in mind that the most useful and complete content does seem to corrolate with additional rankings and traffic.

Aim for comprehensive content, don't just make useless longform content.

But that does not mean that the LONGEST content is what’s going to rank for your search, but the most COMPLETE articles tend to address all the facets of the topic, and therefore tend to capture more rankings and traffic.

How To Make Your Website User Friendly: A Checklist

Now that the majority of us are happy to conduct our business online rather than visit a shop or office in person, it is now more important than ever that every company has a website. But just having a website isn’t good enough – it has to be very user friendly.

Everyone has access to the internet these days, and it is really crucial that whoever lands on your site is able to use it without any issues at all. Even people who rarely use the internet and normally have trouble getting to grips with technology need to be able to figure out your site. If users have a hard time getting to grips with it, they will quickly move on and navigate to one of your competitor’s websites.

Do you think that your website is as user-friendly as it can be? Here’s a checklist to help you figure it out.

Add Contact Information

Your website should completely remove the need for any customers or clients to pick up the phone and ask you any questions.

All of the answers to their questions should be easy to find on the site. This includes your contact information. Your address, phone number, and email address should be easy to find so that your customers can easily get in touch with you in a variety of ways.

Make It Easy To Navigate

How is the navigation on the site? Each one of your pages needs to be easy to find so that all the information on them is accessible.

There are two ways you can do this. Firstly, you should create sitemap so that all of your various pages are mapped out clearly.

As well as that, it’s worth adding a clearly visible drop-down menu that links to all of the pages.

Make Sure It’s Mobile Responsive

These days, most of us now use our mobile phones to view pages on the internet. Because most of your web traffic will be mobile, it’s necessary that your website is now mobile responsive.

If it isn’t, it will be very slow to load on mobile and tablet devices, and it could also mess with the navigation.

So, if the site can’t be viewed or navigated on mobiles, then you could lose quite a bit of web traffic.

Link To Social Media

Lots of web users like to follow their favorite companies on social media so that they keep up to date with all of their latest news and any deals that they release.

So, to encourage anyone who lands on your site to find your social media profiles, you need to clearly link to each profile on your website.

Most CRMs and website builders will let you add social media buttons which make the links easy to spot.

Check For Bugs

There are various bugs that could end up on the website if you aren’t careful.

Thankfully, full checks should help you find them so that you know which issues you need to iron out. For instance, dead links, poor performance, and bad functionality should all be prevented.

All you need to do to test the website is to use it. Note down any issues and problems that you come across and pass this list onto the website design team so that they can work on them.

It’s better that you find the bugs before your customers do!

Add A Search Feature

It can be really annoying when you visit a website looking for some specific information but come away without having found it.

This isn’t the fault of the user; most of the time, it’s the company to blame as they might have hidden the information.

If your website is quite dense with information, it will be worth adding a search function so that anyone who lands on your site can quickly find what they are looking for.

Cover It With Your Branding

As soon as someone lands on your website, they need to instantly know that it belongs to your company or is part of your personal brand. This is especially important if there are companies out there with similar names to you.

It’s important that you eliminate any potential confusion by covering the website with your logo and branding, so that everyone who lands on it knows that it represents your company.

Once you know that you have all of the above features and functions on your websites, you can be happy knowing that it is highly user-friendly.

Don’t forget to keep on reviewing the usability as it can sometimes get worse if you don’t keep on working on it.

Video Killed The Radio Star, But It Will Breathe Life Into Your SEO

The world is changing. We can see that everywhere we look. Even within the relatively new confines of online content consumption, the world is changing at a staggering place. The way in which we (and by we I mean the general public, including your customers) consume our media has undergone a sharp change, and as a business it behoves you to rise to meet them.

There was a time when blog posts were all you needed. They were a great way to not only give your SEO a little organic boost, but they also helped to give your brand a voice. They imbued your business with a sense of personality that made it all the more appealing.

They also established you, the face of the business, as a reputable and knowledgeable leader; someone who knows their onions and can be trusted with their ongoing custom.

But the times have changed, and it seems as though the busier we get, the less time we have for long form content. We know for a fact that people are consuming more media on the go through their smartphones and mobile devices than at static computers.

They’re catching their hit of content in tiny bite sized chunk on the train to work or on their coffee break.

This means that video is the best way to reach customers in 2018 and is fast becoming one of the fastest growing digital marketing trends of 2018. Thus, it’s necessary for you to make sure that your outsourced IT support provider has the facilities for you to make, edit and upload video content without clogging your business’ bandwidth. Here’s why…

Video is efficient

A gifted writer can hook and engage readers, sure. They can weave data seamlessly into prose and get information across to a reader artfully… Absolutely. But video is simply a more efficient form of communication.

A picture is, after all, worth a thousand words. Video can get dense information across quickly in an easily digestible format.

When you’re trying to reach busy decision makers who don’t have the time to read through larges chunks of text, video is the way to go.

Video is sharable

The beauty of video content is that not only is it easy to consume, it’s easy to share on social media platforms. There’s also evidence to suggest that video posts on social media get more engagement than long form written content. They garger more likes, more shares and more comments. This in turn means

Video performance metrics are easy to understand and actionable

Any entrepreneur worth their salt knows that keeping a close eye on your metrics is an essential part of any content marketing strategy. The great thing about video metrics is that they are transparent, easy to interpret and easy to action.

Shares, comments and clicks speak for themselves but you can also calculate an average of how long users remain engaged with the video for. It can help you to identify if a video is too long or that a particular element of your video isn’t working for audiences if they switch off at a certain point.

Video may have killed the radio star, but there’s no reason why it can’t breathe new life into your SEO.

So You Want To Grow Your Online Business? Here’s How It’s Done

Running a successful business is a great achievement. And these days, more and more people are doing just that thanks to the Internet boom.

Getting a business up and running, and making a profit has never been easier! But what happens once you are ready to grow and develop your company so it becomes even more of a success?

Well, that’s when things start to get slightly harder. In fact, many online companies get it terrible wrong when they try to expand. And mistakes at this stage can always prove fatal. To help you grow your business and increase your profits, here are my top tips.

Aim To Increase Sales To Existing Customers

It is much easier trying to persuade your existing customers to buy more rather than trying to find completely new ones. This also works out a lot cheaper for you as well, as you don’t have to work on expanding your marketing strategies too much.

Instead, just offer some more products that you know your current customers will love. If you aren’t too sure what you should be offering, go with products or services that are similar to the ones that you currently offer and don’t forget to check in with your customer service team to find out what “pain points” they hear about from customers. Solving more of your current client’s problems is more managable than trying to solve problems for people who are not yet aware of your business.

Don’t forget the value of keeping your “Churn rate” under control, the number of people you lose every month vs the number of recurring clients you keep. Many business who are trying to expand also offer reward schemes to loyal customers. This ensures that they keep on coming back for more!

Take Over Another Business

The easiest way to increase your profits and sales is to simply buy out and take over another Internet company. Maybe you know a fellow online entrepreneur who wants to sell their business for a profit? Or perhaps you have heard that someone simply wants a change of career and is ready to sell their part of an online business?

Whatever the reason, if you have the capital to buy the business, taking over the company and merging it with your own shouldn’t be too difficult. For more advice, you can see TUPE guidelines for employers on different websites.

Don’t Be Scared To Hire A Contractor

If you have never grown a business from scratch before, it can be a fairly daunting task. And that is why many online entrepreneurs prefer to hire specialist consultants to help them increase the size of their company.

Hiring someone as a contractor is also a great way to free up your cash flow. This is because your expenses will be slightly altered. Your consultant will know exactly what you need to do in order to start bringing in large numbers of sales and profits!

Increase Your Online Presence

As an online business, I am sure you will have a strong online presence already. But this needs to be taken up a notch now that you are ready to expand. So you need to actually commit time and energy to your organic marketing strategy to make sure that your business starts to get noticed by even more people.

Don’t forget that there are skilled SEO consultants who can help shape youre strategies. Share current and shareable content on social media. Start blogging so your website’s SEO improves. These are just some of the ways you can take your business from strength to strength online.

How to Use Email Marketing to Boost your Business

So. Now that you’ve been reading my blog and cracked SEO to drive traffic to your website, you need to think about how to retain your customers.

Having a great website and products are key parts to the equation but how do you communicate with your potential customers?

I reached out to Erik who is the CEO of MageMail. He also mentors startups with programs such as MassChallenge and Techstars. He geeks out and writes about innovation, ecommerce, emerging tech, leadership, and SaaS here is what he had to contribute:

The humble email!

With 4 billion accounts (and counting), marketers have started to realize the full
potential of email marketing. After all, 90% of internet users in the United States
frequently check their emails, more than social media and no other e-marketing tool can directly land in the inbox of subscribers.

To put it all together we created this useful ‘Email Marketing Cheat Sheet’ full of tips on how to build and implement an effect email strategy for your business.

  • Personalization – Why should you make your emails personal and how to
    segment your lists.
  • Trigger emails – How you can set them up and respond to the actions of
    subscribers or customers. Avoid the spam folder too.
  • Recovery – Using email marketing to re-engage with inactive customers and
    reduce your abandoned cart rates.
  • Mobile friendly -.Some studies indicate that over 50% of emails are viewed
    for the first time on mobile devices. So it’s more important than ever to format
    your emails correctly.
  • Testing – Why testing is critical to the success of your email strategy and how
    to carry out effective tests.

Email Marketing Cheat Sheet Infographic

Email Marketing Cheat Sheet

As we can see, there are a number of innovative ways we can use emails to ram
home the advantage of an efficient SEO strategy. The ROI of $44 for every $1 spent
is higher than any other form of communication including social media.
Here is what a well-organized, personalized email program can do for your business.

  • Reach – Where else can you send to a potential database of 4 billion
    accounts?
  • Subscribers – Most of the time, people sign up to your list because they
    want to hear from you
  • Conversion – On ROI, no other medium beats the email. For engagement
    and establishing trust with customers, email comes out on top too
  • Segmenting your list will give you the ability to personalize emails to by keeping the content relevant to them. You can do this by interest, age and location among many other metrics.

After 45 years, (incredibly, the first ever email was sent in 1971!) the email is still
going strong. Following these tips will help you grow your business. Good luck, star fighter!

Add Conversion Rate Improvement to Your SEO

The world of internet marketing, search engine optimisation and sales is littered with jargon, rules and “best practices”. When we get mired in these expectations we might miss out on our ACTUAL goal of producing revenue and get stuck in the dreary world of digital beaurocracy.

Endless action & rule following without reward is the heart of beaurocracy.

This means you need to know what success for you means. It’s different for each business & industry.
That’s why the field of conversion rate optimisation is so vital to making SEO worthwhile.

What does CRO mean? What do you need to know about it? How do you do it? These and many more questions are answered in this ultimate guide to conversion rate optimization and SEO.

What is conversion rate optimisation and should you care?

The aim of search engine optimisation is to get visitors to your site but what happens then? A conversion occurs when a visitor to your website takes an action that you want them to take. If there is no option to take an action, you cannot achieve a conversion. The action needs to suit the purpose of your business or enterprise and you get a benefit from it.  Some examples are:

  • Signing up for a newsletter
  • Signing up for a course
  • Downloading an app
  • Making a purchase

This is the outcome that you can measure. It only has two options. They either do it or they don’t.

When you optimise your conversion rate you take steps to make that action more likely to happen. However, it is not always easy to work out how to do that. It is likely to require a structured and systematic approach to the process.

You are also likely to need to improve the performance of your website and this can mean re-examining all of your IT set-up and accessing appropriate IT support for business. A successful website has to be underpinned by efficient IT support that will identify potential problems before they even happen in your organisation.

This puts you in the best position to use your analytics and feedback to improve your conversion rates. It is important that your conversion goals are defined by your enterprise’s unique objectives and needs.

Attracting more traffic to your site may be part of your overall marketing strategy but taking the traffic you already have and making the most of it is what conversion rates are all about.

If you are serious about improving your conversion rate optimization you will not rely on guesswork and gut feelings. It will be based on data and innovation.

The Jargon you need to know

A Call to Action (CTA) is nothing to do with the military. It is an element that invites the visitor to do something. If they pop onto your site, read your content and then disappear then they have not been of much use to you. You need to get the most out of every visitor. At the very least, you want them to share your content so a call to action would be text saying ‘Please share’ or ‘Sharing is caring’ and a button that they can use to quickly and easily share a link to your content on social media.

Other versions would be a ‘Buy Now’ button which takes them to your sales page or a ‘Sign Up’ button taking them to a form where they can enter their email details.

You may have read about conversion funnels in marketing articles. This refers to the pathway that a user takes as they travel from being a visitor to your site (the start of the funnel) to becoming a paying customer (the end of the funnel). The purchase that they make is the conversion. A typical description of a conversion funnel would be Home page > search results page > product page > checkout.

If your SEO is working, you will be getting a lot of visitors to your site but the best way of getting them into your conversion funnel is not always easy to determine. You could use a method that is referred to as A/B or split testing. You try out two versions of your conversion funnel methods to see which works best. This could be different coloured buttons, different calls to action or different images.

Data and conversion rates

There is inevitably some math associated with this process but it is not complicated. You can collect all the data you need by setting up Google Analytics which only takes a few minutes and there are plenty of tutorials to teach you how to use it effectively.

To calculate your conversion rate all you have to do is divide the number of conversions (the number who purchased/subscribed/signed up) by the total number of visitors to your site.

However, that is not the whole picture. You need to establish how your SEO is influencing what people are doing on your site. Is it bringing in visitors who want to be there? Do they like what they see when they get there? Are they staying for a while or they clicking off you site immediately? The figures that you gain from your analysis can inform your SEO strategy going forward.

There are a few key parameters that you need to measure. The first is the bounce rate. This is the percentage of people who leave your site after viewing just one page (the one they landed on). If your bounce rate is high, this is a problem. Perhaps the visitors are not finding what they are looking for or don’t like what they find. You need to rethink your SEO strategy so that you can attract a different type of visitor.

It is also important to be aware of your exit rate for each page on your site. This is the percentage of people who leave after viewing that page. Therefore, if a page has a very high exit rate it may be an indication that it needs some work!

You can learn a lot from the data on how much time visitors spend on your site. This tells you if they are actually reading your content or if they are leaving very quickly. The more time they spend, the more opportunity you have to get them to convert.

It is useful to take a look at the average page views which is one of the engagement metrics that you can use to inform your SEO strategy. It tells you how many pages the average visitor looked at before they left. More page views can mean more engagement and that is good. It means that they are clicking on internal links and entering the conversion funnel. However, you need to be mindful that it can also mean that there is a lack of clarity and direction on your site so they are clicking all over the place because they don’t know how to make a purchase. This is obviously a bad thing!

Why is conversion rate optimisation important?

Firstly, there is never any reason to be complacent. You can never sit back and think that your SEO and CRO are working perfectly because your competitors will not be doing that! You need to keep things under review. You need to constantly look for new ideas and innovations in your SEO strategy and in making the conversion process as easy as you can.

Another reason is to do with money. If you are relying on paid advertising, this is going to get more expensive and more competitive as the web becomes more and more crowded. Spending more and more money to attract more and more visitors is not the answer. You need to do extra with the visitors that you get. You must identify and sort out glitches in your conversion funnel so that the process is seamless.

SEO is not about getting any kind of visitor, it is about getting the right kind of visitor. In the same way, CRO is also about getting the ‘right’ kind of converters. Ideally, you want customers who love your product, come back and buy more and tell everyone how amazing you are!

On the plus side, CRO does not cost you anything. It dovetails with your SEO strategy and makes the most of the traffic that you already have. It increases the return on your SEO investment and is a highly cost-effective strategy. If you look at the math of the situation, a great CRO strategy lowers your customer acquisition costs and this maximizes your profits.

The end result is that you have more money to spend on additional acquisition strategies. Only now, they can be highly targeted at the visitors that you know are most likely to convert.

Ultimately, this has the knock-on effect of making you more attractive to affiliates and partners and this is essential to bloggers for whom this is their main income stream. You will earn more and your affiliates will earn more and so everyone is happy.

CRO gives you the edge over your competitors. Your visitors are more likely to find what they are looking for on your site and are therefore less likely to go hunting for it elsewhere.

So, it is not hard to make your SEO work with your CRO to give your business the best chance of success. Make your call to action clear, your conversion funnel seamless and protect your visitor’s security and you will have a winning formula.

Bloggers Do Deserve To Get Paid

Bloggers DO deserve to get paid.

It’s weird. My talented wife is listening to the audio book of Zelda Fitzgerald’s autobiography and it struck me. There was a power in the written word, and that power enabled those dedicated to the crafting of words a life of luxury.

The question that came to mind after thinking about that topic. Can writing and publishing your words on a blog in an age of content creation still craft you a life of (even modest) luxury?

There’s this idea that blogging is a fantastic way for stay at home parents to make a living. Not only that, it’s a job where no two days are ever the same. You write your opinions, give people tips and advice, review items and sometimes you can turn to your blog to vent after having a bad day. Other people may relate to your post and offer some moral support.

So. After some digging, asking around, and analysis I have come to the conclusion that while content is being produced at a prodigious rate, there is just as much a growing trend of information consumption!

How Can I Tell You You Can Make Money Online & NOT Sound Like A Scam?

This is work. It’s hard. It’s not overnight. It’s LONG-TERM. If you’re not going to stick to your guns you will fail.

Still want tostart monetizing your blog?

“Money, please!”

Then you’ve come to the right place. Here are a handful of ideas that, with patience, turn your blog into a full time career.

Assuming you already have a blog, the first thing you need to do is check out your social media accounts. They’re the tentacles of your octopus, the infantry to your armor, the scouts to your invading army.

You need to use them and post regularly. Want a primer on how to use social media, try my OPEN approach. Promote your blog posts on each account, and make sure for Pinterest that you’re making eye pleasing pins. Following algorithm rules for each social media platform will make the world of difference

This will be your strategy:Create good content. No. Really. GOOD content. There’s no point trying to get people to your blog if the content is no good to them. Offering advice and how-tos are typically very popular blog posts.

Make sure you have an eye catching title. Try and make it unusual so that people will click out of curiosity.

SEO –  When you’re adding tags and categories to your blog post, make sure you’re using a set keyword. This way, you’re more likely to have Google index your pages. This means you will appear higher in Google.

Create a call to action at the end of your blog post. This will encourage users to either keep an eye on your social media accounts or return to your blog.

Monetization

To monetize your blog is a little harder, but totally doable. The first thing you should do is get Google Adsense running on your blog. You earn a small amount from each visit and slightly more each time someone clicks through an advert. Unless you’re getting thousands of views a day you probably won’t see loads of profit from it, but it’s a great place to start.

Another way to make money from your blog is via affiliate links. This is when you display a link to a product, and if someone clicks through your link and buys that product, you will receive commission on this. Most bloggers choose this because they can pick products that relate to their blog and encourage people to visit the site.

A great way of making money is through sponsored posts. Companies will pay you to display something of theirs that will link back to their website. These are usually pre-written blog posts, but can be widgets or maybe even just a link that they want you to include.

You should also create a page that prospective clients can visit to find out how they would go about hiring you to work for them.

If you follow these tips, you’ll begin to notice your income rise. The harder you work at it, the more you will earn. The best thing is, there are no limits on how much you can earn!