Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf is doing well after undergoing a planned surgical procedure “in the heart area,” the palace said Monday.
The surgery “went according to plan and the King is doing well,” the royal household said. “The king thanks for all the support and the warmth shown to him and feels grateful for Swedish healthcare.”
The official announcement did not elaborate on the nature of the surgery. The king is not known to have had surgery for a any serious ailment before.
After the surgery, the 76-year-monarch will take a rest period, meaning that his planned commitments this month and in early March will be pushed back to later this spring.
The king ascended the throne on Sept. 15, 1973 and is the longest reigning monarch in Sweden. Later this year, the king will celebrate his 50 years on the throne.
The royal family is hugely popular in Sweden. The monarchy enjoys widespread support despite the egalitarianism that otherwise characterizes society in the Nordic country.
Competitive intelligence is the ethical collection and analysis of your competitors’ information, best practices, and overall organization.
The phrase “spying” tends to have a negative association but it’s really one of the best ways to figure out what the sites ranking above you are doing that’s working.
When you’re working on competitive intelligence, it’s important to collect as much information about them as possible.
But how do you do it?
Ubersuggest is a research tool that not only helps you with SEO, but helps you find out what your competitors are doing and how to beat them.
How to Spy on Your Competition Using Ubersuggest
Spying is a great and perfectly moral way to see what the competition is doing to get ahead of you in the SERPs. It’s important to understand that the first five organic results amount to 67.6 percent of all clicks. If you’re not in the top five, you can’t expect a lot of traffic.
You’ll want to start by making a list of competitors to model after. Keep in mind they don’t always have to be in your niche but you want to find sites that are ranking higher than you for the keywords you want.
To find your competition, do a manual search or use a tool like Ubersuggest to search for your target, highest-value keywords, and see who is ranking at the top of the SERPs.
Once you’ve got your list, you’re ready to start sleuthing.
1. Search From Ubersuggest Home Page
One of the easiest ways to get started spying on your competitors using Ubersuggest is through the homepage. First, simply enter your competitor’s main domain URL in Ubersuggest.
When you’ve done that, you’ll want to look for the following metrics and take note of them:
Organic keywords – This is the number of keywords that a domain ranks for. It’s important because if they’re outranking you, they’re likely ranking for more keywords than you.
You can use this data to find keyword gaps and see what keywords your competition ranks for that you don’t. Perhaps they found a really low competition keyword that you’re not going after.
You could then create a piece of content around that keyword and rank relatively easily.
Organic monthly traffic – Take notice of how much traffic your competition gets and compare it to your site.
You can use view your competitors’ traffic as a way of seeing where and when things fluctuate. Google updates its algorithm frequently, which contributes to constant traffic fluctuations. USe your competitor’s traffic trends as a benchmark for your own KPIs.
Domain score – The overall domain score from 0-100 is critically important to the success of a website. Sites with a higher domain score don’t necessarily need to work as hard at producing quality content because Google tends to favor whatever it is they put together since the site is already trusted.
Backlinks – Backlinks are another highly important piece of the SEO puzzle. A backlink occurs when someone links to your site from their page. The more backlinks you have to a piece of content, the more Google looks at it with favor.
Use Ubersuggest’s backlink checker to dig into the backlinks your competition is getting, and go after the same or similar links as part of your backlink strategy.
2. Track Competitors From Within Your Own Project
Once you’ve created a project in Ubersuggest for your website, you’ll want to go to your dashboard.
On the very bottom of the dashboard there is a bar labeled, “my competitors.” Here you can find opportunities to track what your competitors are doing and figure out information about their keywords, keyword gap, traffic, and backlinks.
Common keywords are keywords that both you and your competitor rank for. You can use this to figure out which keywords they’re outranking on, so you can start looking at their content to see what updates you can make to yours.
As for keyword gaps, you can use this to figure out what new pieces of content you should create around low-hanging fruit keywords that they’re already ranking for.
3. Create a Competitor Project
One great feature of Ubersuggest is that it doesn’t limit what websites you can add as a project, this makes it easy to spy on your competition. Here’s how you’ll do it:
1. Head back to the dashboard and create a new project for each individual competitor website.
2. Add all the keywords that suggest you track (these are keywords your competitor is already ranking for… can it get much easier than that?) and feel free to add any others that you might be interested in or curious about.
3. Add other competitors to the project to see how they’re measuring up against each other.
4. Go through the list of “Top SEO Opportunities” on the competitor project dashboard to learn from what they’re doing wrong and find opportunities where you can improve your site in places where they’re underperforming.
5. Scroll down the dashboard to get a view of how they’re performing with backlinks. You can even click through on the link in the dashboard to get details on who’s linking back to them to find websites to target with backlink requests.
Even putting in a small percentage of this effort can make a huge difference on your overall SEO.
4. Track Their Keywords
You can also create a keyword list to start tracking the top keywords your competitors are fighting for. This is one of my favorite strategies.
Save keywords into lists using Ubersuggest so you can come back to them later.
Organize keywords into meaningful lists
See aggregate data for each list
Save your keyword research
Easily continue from where you left off
When choosing keywords to track, here are some tips:
Track keywords that you’re not tracking but your competitors are
Track keywords that include their name or location
Track keywords that include specialty services/products that you don’t offer
Example: If you’re a coffee shop and your competitor offers a specialty latte and it has search volume, track it as a keyword.
The big question is, why? Why track all this information and will it really make a difference?
Let’s face it, there are over 200 ranking factors that Google uses to determine who ranks where. There’s no way we can get everything right.
Keyword research is one of the things we can control–and we can do it well with the proper procedures and steps.
You could also spend days, weeks, and months researching keywords on your own trying to figure out what you want to rank for. The result could be, nothing.
Instead, see what people are already ranking for. Piggyback on what others are doing right.
This is the fast track.
Of course, don’t expect to hit a home run every time, that won’t happen. You’ll win some and lose some, but you’ll be able to do it much faster by tracking competitor keywords instead of coming up with everything on your own.
5. Research Their Backlinks
Ubersuggest has a Backlinks Opportunity report as well. This tool allows you to enter your own website and multiple competitor websites to see where they’re getting their backlinks from.
This can help you in the following ways: 1. Get insights into what content is popular for your competitors that you may be able to write about from a different perspective (or you may already have content written about).
2. Quickly create a targeted list of websites to go after to share your own valuable content with (if they liked your competitor’s content, there’s a good chance they’ll also like yours).
3. Prioritize who you want to reach out to based on the referring domain’s Domain Authority and relevance to your business.
Let’s break down each of these points to help understand why they’re important.
Figuring out what pieces of competitor content is popular can help you create something shareable, something that people want to link to.
The reality is, you can reach out to anyone you want but if the content you’re sharing with them isn’t amazing, they’re not going to want to link to it.
From there you can create a targeted list of websites to go after with outreach. This is especially true if you’re researching competitors in the same niche.
With the number one result in Google averaging about 3.8 times more backlinks than the rest of the positions on page one, it’s safe to say that backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors.
6. Download the Chrome Extension
Being able to have information at your fingertips is important and with the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension, you can. By downloading the extension, you can see keyword insights directly in the Google search results, YouTube, and Amazon.
Downloading it is simple and you’ll receive all the data right on the Google search results page. Information like domain authority, keywords, and monthly traffic will all display right underneath the title tag of the website.
You’ll also get traffic volume data and keyword difficulty information about the keyword you searched and related keywords.
BONUS TIP: Find Your Competitor’s Mistakes and Avoid or Leverage Them to Your Advantage
One great way to get ahead of the competition is to figure out what they’re doing wrong and how you can capitalize on it. Take a look at the competitor’s Site Audit Report and check the health of their website.
You can look through various SEO issues to see what’s going on with their site and how you can capitalize on their shortcomings.
Maybe their site is a bit slow? You could ensure that your site runs fast so that it can’t be used against you.
Maybe they’re lacking proper meta descriptions and title tags on some of their content? You can create a competing piece of content and ensure it gets proper metadata.
Tips: 1. Find the websites that are giving your competitors backlinks and reach out to those sites with your own valuable content for them to link to.
2. Find the pages that have the most traffic on your competitor’s website to see if you have a similar webpage that competes. If you don’t create one! If you do, optimize it more with targeted keywords.
3. Are you fighting for the same keywords? Try and differentiate yourself by finding the missed opportunities. Look for long-tail keywords or keywords with lower search volume and lower search difficulty ratings.
Conclusion
Competitive intelligence helps you figure out what your competition is doing right and what you’re doing wrong, it’s really as simple as that.
If you can find out what they’re doing and how they’re succeeding, you can use that as a springboard for your success. To do so, you need a great competitive research tool.
Using Ubersuggest for keyword research provides versatility and simplicity to the SEO process. You need a tool that helps you do a lot of things without complicating it.
A/B testing is brilliant. It lets you compare two or more versions of the same page element, paid ad, or another variable to see which one performs the best. In other words, it’s a key way to improve your content, increase user engagement, and boost conversion rates across your site. What’s not to like?
Additionally, with A/B testing, the results are clear and speak for themselves. For example, if you test two versions of a newsletter, it’ll be obvious from the results which version “worked” best based on the numbers.
How do you know why either version A or B performed best, though, and how do you gain deeper insight into your campaign performance?
This is where secondary goals can help you out. Let me show you why secondary goals matter in A/B testing, and how you can use them in your own marketing development.
Primary Vs. Secondary Goals in A/B Testing
Before we get started, let’s be clear on what’s meant by “primary” and “secondary” goals in A/B testing.
A primary goal is, quite simply, your main objective. It’s the priority goal of your campaign or the goal you’re hoping to achieve when you run an A/B test.
For example, say you’re a personal trainer. You have a notice on your landing page, encouraging people to sign up for a free sample week or taster session. Maybe it looks something like this from My Soul Sanctuary:
Your primary goal might be identifying how many people click through to complete this form because you’re trying to increase your sign-up numbers.
Secondary goals, on the other hand, give you more insight into user behavior and how people interact with your website. They help you reach your primary goal by providing a detailed insight into your A/B test results.
For example, the personal trainer might also want to know how many people share their content on social media, or sign up for their newsletter while on their website:
Knowing the answers to these questions offers additional insight into how well the content is performing—rather than tracking submission form sign-ups alone.
If you want to increase conversions, grow your business, and improve your ROI, you need to track primary and secondary goals. Otherwise, you only have half the data you need to market your business effectively.
7 Secondary Goals to Track in GA for A/B Testing
Ready to track some secondary goals? To help you get started, here are seven metrics I suggest you measure as part of your A/B testing.
1. Add-to-Cart Actions
Tracking the “add-to-cart” metric allows you to identify how often customers add items to their cart and which pages get the most traction. Knowing how many times the “add-to-cart” action is triggered lets you split your audience into two categories:
those who view a product page but don’t add the item to their cart
You can use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to track cart actions. GA has detailed instructions for how to do this. Once you’re set up, you can run some different A/B tests. For example, you might test if more people proceed to checkout if there is a discount advertised for the product, and so on.
2. Interaction With Site Features
It sounds obvious, but it’s useful to track how often people interact with certain website features. Otherwise, it’s hard to tell whether your website offers visitors the great user experience they’re looking for.
From an A/B testing perspective, you might track features such as how many times users click CTA buttons, how many users engage with your live chat, and how many people click on your email address to contact you.
The exact features you track vary depending on your business goals. For example, Betterment, an investing website, has multiple different features, such as quizzes and investment calculators worth tracking:
In the above example, you might be inclined to track if the calculator performs better if it’s placed higher on the page, or if different colors mean more clicks.
3. Rage Clicking on Page Features
If you’re unfamiliar with rage clicking, it’s basically when someone repeatedly clicks on a page element, but nothing happens. This typically occurs because a page element looks clickable even if when it’s not, or because a link on your page isn’t working.
With Google Analytics, you can track, for example, if there’s a single page generating a high amount of rage clicks. Or, you can see if there’s a certain type of page element which generates a lot of rage clicks e.g., a button, line of text, or image.
Rage clicking can frustrate your audience to the point where they lose trust in your business and leave your website, so it’s crucial to track the cause of these events. Again, you can track rage clicks in GA through Google Tag Manager by inserting the appropriate tags into the HTML where you want to start tracking.
4. Highlighting Page Text
Why does it matter if people highlight a portion of text on your page? Well, there are two reasons.
First, they might be highlighting the text so they can take action on it. For example, if lots of people highlight and copy your phone number, then maybe it needs a hyperlink.
On the other hand, people may highlight text to copy it into Google and search for related content. In which case, there’s a chance your website isn’t providing the answers they’re looking for. This last scenario is bad from a marketing perspective, obviously.
How do you track a secondary goal like this? Well, in the first scenario, you might run an A/B test to see if more people call you if you hyperlink your phone number. Compare the results in GA to check if it’s worth keeping the hyperlink or not.
5. Newsletter Sign-ups
Newsletters are a great way to expand your audience reach and deliver high-quality, informative content straight to your subscribers’ inboxes. First, though, you need people to sign up for your newsletter (which isn’t always easy.)
If you’re low on newsletter subscribers, there are a few variables you can play with during A/B testing. For example, you might track if people are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter during the checkout process or if a brighter, more colorful banner on your landing page results in more subscribers.
Newsletters and similar content like free guides and e-books can really help you build brand trust, so this definitely isn’t a secondary goal you should ignore. In fact, every marketer should have it near the top of their priority list.
6. Category and Subcategory Pageviews
Category and subcategory pageviews are equally important.
Your category page contains a list of related pages on your site, so it’s easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
Subcategory pages branch off from category pages and allow you to provide more structure to a customer’s web experience.
What should you be tracking on these pages? Well, you might track how many people click on certain subcategory pages, your bounce rate for various pages, and whether there’s a subcategory with very low engagement levels.
Then, you can play with optimizing the names of each page, changing the order of the categories, or making the subcategories clearer and more condensed. GA allows you to track both category and subcategory events, so make full use of the available features.
7. Social Media Sharing Buttons
It’s awesome when people share your content. Not only does it mean you’re resonating with your target audience, but it means they’re introducing other people to your brand. In other words, social media shares count as free marketing, which is always a bonus.
From an A/B testing perspective, you might want to track how many people are sharing your page content, and if there’s any platform outperforming the others. Perhaps no one shares your blogs, but you discover your videos are shared frequently, or maybe more people share your content on Instagram than elsewhere.
GA can help here to an extent, but it’d be worth checking out the analytics tools on your social media platforms, too.
How to Measure Your Secondary Goals for A/B Testing
OK, so you have some goals in mind. Now, you need a means of measuring these goals to see if you’re actually reaching your objectives.
First, you need to establish your baseline measurements. You need to know how your website and all its features are performing right now so you can set an appropriate end goal.
If you don’t already have your baseline measurements, go back and collate some data, and then you’ll be ready to track your progress.
Do you have a baseline? Great. Now let’s consider how Google Optimize can help you measure those all-important secondary goals.
Google Optimize is a GA extension. It allows you to run experiments and track different outcomes, and you can measure the results via Google Analytics. If you don’t already have a Google Optimize account, head to optimize.google.com and click the “Get Started” button.
After creating your profile, link it to your GA account. Google has some comprehensive instructions for this, so check them out if you get stuck.
Once you’re all set up, create an experiment within Google Optimize by heading to the “Experiments” page and clicking the “Create Experiment” option:
Add your variables, configure your specific objectives, and let your experiment run. Once the experiment concludes, track your results by clicking the “Reporting” tab from the experiment’s page. Repeat the process if you want to try new variants.
To be clear, you’re not restricted to Google Optimize, though. You can also use data from sources like GA and even Facebook Analytics to build a comprehensive understanding of how your secondary goals are performing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Secondary Goals for A/B Testing
A/B testing can seem a little daunting, so here’s a quick recap of the main points I’ve covered to highlight the role of secondary goals in your A/B testing strategy.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing, or split testing, allows marketers to test two versions of the same variable, such as paid ads or page elements, to identify which version performs better. The idea is to run both versions simultaneously to see which one has the highest impact.
What’s the difference between primary and secondary goals in A/B testing?
In A/B testing, the primary goals relate to the performance of each variable. In other words, primary goals allow you to track how tweaking a variable impacts visitors’ behavior.
Secondary goals, or metrics, give you further insight into how your visitors behave while they are on your website. Secondary goals matter because they help you improve the overall user experience on your site which, in turn, increases your conversions in the long run.
Which secondary goals should you track for A/B testing?
The secondary goals you should track vary depending on your unique goals. However, metrics you should focus on include newsletter signups, add-to-cart actions, and interactions with other site or page features. You might also track conversion rates, depending on your primary goal.
How do you measure secondary goals for A/B testing?
First, measure current performance so you have a benchmark to test against. Then, use analytics tools such as Google Optimize to measure each goal. Compile your results and devise a strategy based on your findings.
A/B testing, or split testing, allows marketers to test two versions of the same variable, such as paid ads or page elements, to identify which version performs better. The idea is to run both versions simultaneously to see which one has the highest impact.
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Secondary Goals: Conclusion
When you perform A/B testing, don’t limit yourself to tracking primary goals and metrics. Instead, make sure you’re measuring those all-important secondary goals to gain crucial insight into how your website’s performing and whether the user experience is optimal.
The best part? You don’t need a host of complicated tools to measure secondary metrics. Simply track your analytics data in GA, or check out one or two other measuring tools to build a more comprehensive picture of your performance.
Are you tracking your A/B secondary goals? Which measuring tool do you find most effective?
If you pay attention to business news—and even some national news—you’ve likely heard that 2021 inflation is coming. Or maybe that we’ll be spared until 2022.
But that’s wrong. 2021 inflation is already here.
Wait, what?
Is Inflation Coming Soon?
Economic predictions are, of course, never guaranteed. But per the New York Times, “there’s enough evidence to believe that a further upturn in inflation is coming.” But inflation isn’t all bad. Once the stock market calms down, an inflationary period is often the best time to buy stocks.
Per Inflation Calculator, the trouble started in March of this year. In January and February, inflation was at 1.4 and 1.7%, respectively. Then in March, it crept up to 2.6%. In April, it was already 4.2%.
Then in May, it hit 5.0%. And now, through August, it hasn’t gone below 5.0%.
That’s more than a little troubling.
But What Exactly is 2021 Inflation?
Or, inflation in any year?
Per Investopedia, inflation is “the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. A quantitative estimate of the rate at which the decline in purchasing power occurs can be reflected in the increase of an average price level of a basket of selected goods and services in an economy over some period of time. The rise in the general level of prices, often expressed as a percentage, means that a unit of currency effectively buys less than it did in prior periods.”
In plain language, inflation is best understood through an example. In 1970, the standard cost of a new car was a little over $3,500. Yet in 1980, the average cost was $7,000. And in 2010, it was a little over $29,000. While the Covid-19 pandemic reduced prices, it didn’t reduce them even to 2010 levels. In 50 years, the average price of a new car went up close to ten times!
What Does the Federal Reserve Do?
If and when inflation strikes, the Federal Reserve will most likely raise short-term interest rates. The reason is to make it more attractive for banks to lend money. During an inflationary period, lenders will demand higher interest rates as compensation for the decrease in purchasing power of the money they are paid in the future. The Federal government will also sell off US securities. This takes money out of banks. And since the banks have less to lend, it forces the banks to raise interest rates.
Why Are We Experiencing 2021 Inflation Right Now?
What we’ve got right now is a near-perfect storm of circumstances, and it’s incubating the 2021 inflation we’re seeing.
Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020? Remember that container ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal? The former was due to hoarding. And the latter caused some disruptions, but those were supposed to be done.
Not so fast. If you’ve had to have any work done on your home in the past year, you’ve experienced how slow and difficult it is to get lumber. This basic, vital commodity can still be obtained—but it takes longer. And delays cost money. Because those costs are passed on to the consumer, prices rise. Hence, 2021 inflation.
Reason #2: COVID-19
Well, of course. The pandemic doesn’t cause inflation by itself. But our country (as of the day writing this blog post) is missing over 600,000 people from the workforce.
When labor is scarce, it helps to raise salaries. This is because workers have gotten into a better bargaining position.
When there aren’t a lot of jobs and too few and too many workers to fill them, then the employer is in the catbird seat. They can set wages, and often those wages can be low. But the opposite is true right now. With businesses awash in jobs, but not enough people to fill them, potential employees are starting to dictate terms.
And their terms include higher salaries.
Health Care Workers, a Special Case
In addition to people trying to dictate better terms, we also have an issue with healthcare workers. Every day in the news, you see stories of health care workers who are just plain fed up. It could be that they’ve seen far too many COVID patients die, or they are angry at people who aren’t vaccinated, or they refuse to be vaccinated themselves. In any of these circumstances, this means that they just plain don’t want to work. They are ready to throw in the towel and leave.
And what is especially interesting about this is that nursing in particular was only until recently considered to be a recession-proof profession. Hospitals, nursing homes and more could barely fill job openings.
But now they really can’t fill job openings.
Retail and Hospitality Workers: Another Special Case
For people who normally make either minimum wage, or make some of their money in tips, the pandemic and its resultant pauses in our lives has led a lot of them to reconsider their career choices. People are also considering that if they need to enforce a mask requirement, then they may have few to no tools with which to do that. These people are tired of being abused, particularly for a very low salary.
So they want more money. And they’re tired of working three jobs to be able to feed their families and make rent. They’re just plain tired.
Reason #3: People Restarting Their Lives
In addition to hospitality and health care workers, there are a number of other people who don’t necessarily fit into those buckets. But during shutdowns in particular, they reassessed their lives. And some of them realized that they didn’t want to do what they had been doing. There’s nothing wrong with this. People change their careers all the time. But what we’re seeing right now is a wholesale change in hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Because, at times, those people are used to higher salaries, they are trying to demand them even if they need to start over at the bottom.
Social media and the regular mainstream media don’t help. If they tell people that they can get more money to do any kind of work, then job seekers will start demanding higher salaries, and continue to do so. No one will want to demand a lower salary, of course.
As a corollary to people changing their lives, there are also people who may have thought that they wanted to perhaps change things. But they weren’t ready to jump in headfirst. As a result, they’ve created side hustles of various kinds. With eBay, Etsy, Upwork, and various other sites where you can sell or offer your services online, people are spreading their wings and trying to do something different.
A businessperson might decide that because they make incredible muffins, that they should go into the bakery business. But chances are the bakery business is not very easy to succeed in. So instead of quitting their day job, they bake muffins on the side, and ship them. They can do so without an office, and can quit pretty much whenever they need to.
Higher Starting Wages and Decreased Supply Equals 2021 Inflation
Prices are going up. Whether it’s because of shortages, or potential workers demanding higher salaries, either way, prices are rising. Hence, 2021 inflation.
How Does 2021 Inflation Change How You Run Your Business?
The first obvious reason is that the cost of supplies is increasing. There are parts of this country where gasoline costs over $5 per gallon. And shortages of other supplies, such as lumber (mentioned above), means that everything takes longer to do. If you would normally complete, say, ten jobs in a week, but you can only complete eight now, then you will have to pass your added costs onto the consumer. And since you still need to pay rent, feed your family, and perhaps make payroll, you’ll raise prices.
If you raise prices, then other people will as well. And around and around we go.
The Inflationary Cycle
Inflation will cut into your profit margin unless you raise your prices.
If your business customers raise their prices, that perpetuates a cycle of price increases. Government clients may start to rack up municipal debt. Individual customers might buy less, and they may even take their business elsewhere. But since inflation hits everyone, chances are they won’t find a safe haven with lower prices at your competitors’.
How Can Your Business Ride Out Inflation?
You will need business capital. This is the money or wealth needed to produce goods and services. All businesses have to buy assets and maintain their operations. Business capital comes in two main forms: debt and equity. Getting capital for business financing should be your concern.
Business financing is the act of leveraging debt, retained earnings, and/or equity. Its purpose is to get funds for business activities, making purchases, or investing. With lower retained earnings and perhaps less equity, it’s a good time to leverage debt. One way you can do so is to request a credit line increase, particularly if you’ve been a good credit customer and have paid your business’s bills on time.
Building and improving your business credit is a great way to help your business ride out inflation. Buying on credit means you can wait a bit (although not forever) to pay for goods and services. If prices go down, particularly during a grace period where you don’t have to pay, you’ll do better. But better terms will only come to your business if your business credit is good.
It’s already here, but it may get worse. And, no matter what, it’ll come back when it’s finally gone. So here are some ways to get your business ready.
Your money won’t go as far. So before inflation hits harder, it should be a good idea to invest in new equipment if you need it. This may mean leveraging accounts receivable or using merchant cash advances to get capital now so you can act before inflation skyrockets.
It may also mean equipment financing and/or equipment sale and leaseback. So you can spread payments out over time.
And build business credit. Because if prices are going to rise, you want to buy from starter and other reporting vendors before that happens.
Getting Through 2021 Inflation Now, and Coming Out Better on the Other Side: Takeaways
As prices continue to rise, and demands for goods, services, and workers goes unfulfilled, inflation has the potential to worsen before it gets better. Act now. Secure larger ticket items your business needs before they become more expensive. If you need to hire, see if you can offer non-salary incentives to help break the cycle, such as offering more vacation time to new employees. And work to build your business credit before you need it, to better weather 2021 inflation and beyond. Good business credit is an asset that won’t lose its value, no matter what the economy does.
And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time.
So
then, what should you do?
Well, what if I told you there were simple ways to get more organic traffic and, best of all, you don’t have to do one bit of SEO?
Seriously.
So,
what is it? And how can you get more organic traffic?
Well,
this story will help explain it…
The
old days
When
I first started my journey as an SEO, I got really good at one thing.
Getting
rankings!
Now to be fair, this was back in 2003 when it wasn’t that hard to rank on Google (or any other search engine for that matter).
Stuff some keywords into your page, your meta tags, and build some spammy rich anchor text links and you were good to go.
You
could literally see results in less than a month.
SEO wasn’t too complicated back then. So much so, that I even started an SEO agency and created a handful of sites.
I was starting to rank my sites at the top of Google but they didn’t make a dollar. Literally, not a single dollar.
In fact, I was actually losing money on them because I had to pay for the domain registration expenses and hosting.
So, one day I decided that I was tired of losing money and I was going to do something about it. I took the keywords that I was ranking for and started to type them into Google to see who was paying for ads for those terms.
I hit up each of those sites and tried to get a hold of the owner or the person in charge of marketing.
I asked them how much they were paying for ads and offered them the same exact traffic for a much lower price. I was able to do this because I already had sites that ranked for those keywords.
In other words, I offered to rent out my website for a monthly fee that was a fraction of what they were paying for paid ads.
Next thing you know I was collecting 5 figures in monthly checks and my “renters” were ecstatic because they were generating sales at a fraction of the costs compared to what they were spending on paid ads.
So, what’s the strategy?
Well, it’s simple. Back in the day, I used to rent out my websites… the whole site.
These
days I’ve learned how to monetize my own site, so I don’t rent them out.
So why not rent a page on someone else’s site? From there, modify that page a bit to promote your products or services?
I
know this sounds crazy, but it works. I have one person that just reaches out
to site owners asking if we can rent out a page on their site. We do this for
all industries and verticals… and when I look at how much we are spending
versus how much income we are generating, it’s crazy.
Here are the stats for the last month:
Rental
fees: $24,592
Outreach costs: $3,000
Legal
costs: $580
Copywriting
and monetization costs: $1,500
Total
monthly cost: $29,672
Now
guess what my monthly income was?
It
was $79,283.58.
Not
too bad.
Now
your cost on this model won’t be as high as mine because you can do your own
outreach, monetize the page you are renting on your own, and you probably don’t
need a lawyer.
And don’t be afraid of how much I am spending in rental fees as you can get away with spending $0 in the first 30 days as I will show you exactly what to do.
Remember, it’s also not what you are spending, it’s about profit and what you are making. If it won’t cost you any money in the first 30 days and you can generate income, your risk is little to none.
Here
are the exact steps you need to follow:
Step
#1: Find the terms you want to rank for
If
you already know the terms you want to rank for, great, you can skip this step.
If you don’t, I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in a few of your competitors’ URLs.
Head
over to the top pages report and look at their top pages.
Now
click on “view all” under the estimated visits column to see a list of
keywords that each page ranks for.
I want you to create a list of all of the keywords that contain a high search volume and have a high CPC. Keywords with a high CPC usually mean that they convert well.
Keywords
with a low CPC usually mean they don’t convert as well.
When
you are making a list of keywords, you’ll need to make sure that you have a
product or service that is related to each keyword. If you don’t then you won’t
be able to monetize the traffic.
Step
#2: Search for the term
It’s
time to do some Google searches.
Look
for all of the pages that rank in the top 10 for the term you ideally want to
rank for.
Don’t
waste your time with page 2.
What
I want you to look for is:
Someone who isn’t your competitor. Your competition isn’t likely to rent out a page on their site to you.
A page that isn’t monetized. Not selling a product or service. (If the page has ads, don’t worry.)
A site owned by a smaller company… a publicly-traded company isn’t likely to do a deal. A venture-funded company isn’t likely to do a deal either (Crunchbase will tell you if they are venture-funded).
Step
#3: Hit up the website
Typically, through their contact page, they should have their email addresses or phone number listed. If they have a contact form, you can get in touch that way as well.
If
you can’t find their details, you can do a whois
lookup to see if you can find their phone number.
What’ll
you want to do is get them on the phone. DO NOT MAKE YOUR PITCH OVER EMAIL.
It
just doesn’t work well over email.
If
you can’t find their phone number, email them with a message that goes
something like this…
Subject: [their website name]
Hey [insert first name],
Do you have time for a quick call this week?
We’ve been researching your business and we would like to potentially make you an offer.
Let me know what works for you.
Cheers,
[insert your name]
[insert your company]
[insert your phone number]
You
want to keep the email short as I have found that it tends to generate more
calls.
Once you get them on the phone, you can tell them a little bit about yourself. Once you do that, tell them that you noticed they have a page or multiple pages on their website that interest you.
Point
out the URL and tell them how you are interested in giving them money each
month to rent out the page and you wouldn’t change much of it… but you need
some more information before you can make your offer.
At this point, you’ll want to find out how much traffic that page generates and the keywords it ranks for. They should have an idea by just looking at their Google Analytics (you’ll find most of these sites don’t use Google Search Console).
Once
you have that, let them know that you will get in touch with them in the next
few days after you run some numbers.
Go back, try to figure out what each click is worth based on a conservative conversion rate of .5%. In other words, .if 5% of that traffic converted into a customer, what would the traffic be worth to you after all expenses?
You’ll
want to use a conservative number because you can’t modify the page too
heavily or else you may lose rankings.
Once
you have a rough idea of what the page is worth, get back on the phone with
them and say you want to run tests for 30 days to get a more solid number on
what you can pay them as you want to give them a fair offer.
Typically,
most people don’t have an issue because they aren’t making money from the page
in the first place.
Step
#4: Monetize the page
If
you are selling a product, the easiest way to monetize is to add links to the
products you are selling.
For
example, if you are selling a kitchen appliance like a toaster, you can add
links from the article to your site.
The easiest way to monetize a blog post is to add links to products or services you are selling.
Don’t delete a lot of the content on the page you are modifying… adding isn’t too much of an issue but when you delete content sometimes you will lose rankings.
As
for a service-based business, linking out to pages on your site where people
can fill out their lead information is great.
Or you can just add lead capturing to the page you are renting out. Kind of like how HubSpot adds lead forms on their site.
I’ve actually found that they convert better than just linking out to your site.
When monetizing the page you are renting, keep in mind that you will need disclaimers to let people know that you are collecting their information for privacy purposes. You also should disclose you are renting out the page and nofollow the links.
Once you are monetizing the page for a bit, you’ll have a rough idea of what it is worth and you can make an offer on what you’ll page.
I recommend doing a 12-month contract in which you can opt-out
with a 30-day notice.
The reason you want a 12-month agreement is that you don’t want to have to keep renegotiating. I also include the 30-day opt-out notice in case they lose their rankings, you can opt-out.
And to clarify on the op-out clause, I have it so only I can opt-out and they are stuck in the agreement for a year.
Conclusion
SEO isn’t the only way you can get more organic traffic.
Being creative, such as renting pages that already rank is an easy solution. Best of all, you can get results instantly and it’s probably cheaper than doing SEO in the long run.
The only issue with this model is that it is really hard to
scale.
If I were you, I would do both. I, of course, do SEO on my own site because it provides a big ROI. And, of course, if you can rent out the pages of everyone else who ranks for the terms you want to rank for, it can provide multiple streams of income from SEO.
The beauty of this is model is that you can take up more than one listing on page 1. In theory, you can take up all 10 if you can convince everyone to let you rent their ranking page.
So, what do you think of the idea? Are you going to try it out?
You all know SEO is a long-term game… at least when it comes to Google. And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time. So then, what should you do? Well, what if …
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