Ubersuggest Chrome Extension: The Ultimate Link Build Tool

Over the next few months, you are going to see a lot of updates in Ubersuggest, including new features.

But before I dive into what I’m going to release soon, let’s first talk about the new Chrome extension.

If you haven’t installed it, make sure you go and do so now

No more Neil’s face

The biggest complaint we got about the extension was “my face” being in the search results.

You know, that speech bubble that looked something like this…

So, I removed it.

I know you don’t like it based on the reviews, so I tried to leave it in as long as possible because it’s branding.

Indirectly it keeps me and my agency top of mine so hopefully, it would eventually drive business.

Link building

You may have noticed that there is a little “U” symbol within your browser bar once you install the extension.

If you don’t see it, just click on the extension icon…

And then click pin next to Ubersuggest…

Now whenever you visit a site (other than Google) you can click on the “U” to see data.

But what’s new is we have added link data. So when you click on “Backlinks” you’ll see link data on any given site.

You can see the domain score (our version of authority), the number of backlinks, referring domains and organic monthly traffic a website receives.

You’ll even see a chart of link growth (or decline) over time.

And as you scroll down you’ll even see more metrics…

The chart above breaks down how many new and lost links you are getting on a daily basis.

And beneath that you’ll see a list of links pointing to any given site. You can then search for a specific link using the search box or you can use the filtering options.

Keyword gaps

I know that I mentioned a while ago that I am releasing a feature that show competitive domains and gives you an overview of the keywords your competition ranks for that you don’t.

That way you can find more opportunities to go after if you want more traffic.

That’s still coming out soon. We are roughly a month or so away from releasing it. 🙂

But that’s not all

The biggest thing my team and I have been working on is data quality.

From fresher link index to even a bigger link index.

Or when you put in a URL it would be great to have even more accurate traffic estimations.

By the end of the year you’ll see drastic improvement in this. It’s our biggest focus.

And then comes a faster application

The last thing on our roadmap this year is speed improvement.

We have so much data in Ubersuggest that sometimes reports take longer to load than you would like.

We have been refactoring our code, which should fix this soon. So now reports will load faster, which is really important if you use Ubersuggest on a mobile device.

Conclusion

I hope you try out the new Ubersuggest extension. It’s easy to use and it offers more free data than any other Chrome extension.

In addition to the link feature, there will also be some other Chrome extension features that we are adding soon, but I have to save something as a surprise. 😉

Plus, there will also be a few other features that you’ll also see in the Ubersuggest app that is coming out this year that I didn’t mention above either.

So, what else would you like to see in Ubersuggest?

The post Ubersuggest Chrome Extension: The Ultimate Link Build Tool appeared first on Neil Patel.

Ubersuggest Chrome Extension 2.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool

Please note: Once you install the extension, all you have to do is go to Google and perform a search. That is where you’ll see data.

I promised that I would release a new version of the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension today, and now it’s out.

You can go here to install it.

If you are wondering what’s new… well, let’s just say the changes have made keyword research much better and a lot easier. And on top of that, later in this post, I’ll even give you a sneak peek at the new changes that we are making to the extension that will be released within 30 days.

So, what’s new?

Who says keyword research should be limited to Google?

What most people don’t know is that YouTube is the second most popular search engine and has been exploding.

On top of that, Amazon is the largest e-commerce site in the world and SEOs are doing Amazon SEO and Amazon ads… so why not have access to keyword research there, too?

Now, when you go to YouTube and perform a search you’ll see data on suggested keywords as you perform a search.

And if you want more details on any given keyword you searched for, just click “view all” next to the search bar and you’ll see something like this:

It breaks down search volume over the last 12 months as well as shows you if a keyword has any seasonal trends.

You can also see how competitive a keyword is to rank for, its cost per click data, how many people even click on any of the listings, and even the age range of the people who search for that term.

Also, what’s interesting is that you can see data on whether a keyword is searched more on mobile or desktop devices and the breakdown. This is important because mobile searches tend to not convert as well… so ideally you want to go after keywords that have more desktop searches when possible.

Now on the right side of any YouTube search listings page, you will also see more keyword suggestions.

It’s pretty similar to what the extension already shows on Google… this is more so our version for YouTube.

But with Amazon, we didn’t want to impact your user experience too much, so we decided to provide keyword data in the most unobtrusive way possible…

Anytime you perform a search on Amazon, you’ll see keyword data on the suggestions.

So now anytime you want to do keyword research for social media or e-commerce, you can easily do so with the Ubersuggest Chrome extension.

But wait, there is more…

There is also one other important change made to the extension that you may have already noticed if you use Google on a regular basis.

When you search on Google, there is now traffic estimations under each URL.

This traffic estimation is for organic search traffic and it is done on a domain level. Eventually, we will tweak it to be page-based and even show you the other keywords each page ranks for… but for now, we are providing you with organic traffic estimates for each domain.

And if you are more of a visual person, in the right-hand sidebar you can also see the traffic estimation for any result in the top 10.

So if you want to know traffic data in addition to keyword suggestions when you perform a Google search, make sure you install the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.

But the best is still to come…

My goal is to make major releases to Ubersuggest every month if possible… every other month if all doesn’t go as planned.

The next big one is introducing competitor analysis features within the extension.

Right now if you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within your Chrome browser you see something like this:

Now, that’s not really useful.

So, within the next 30 days when you click on the “Ubersuggest” logo within Chrome, I am thinking of showing something like this:

For any domain you’ll be able to see the following metrics:

  1. Domain metrics – you’ll see a quick overview of each domain. From the number of organic keywords a site ranks for to their estimated organic traffic, domain score, and even number of backlinks.
  2. Historical traffic – you’ll see an organic traffic chart of the last 6 months to any given site.
  3. Top pages by country – want to know the most popular pages on your competitor’s site? This table will show you just that.
  4. Top keywords by country – you’ll also be able to see the most popular keywords that drive traffic to that site.

Conclusion

If you already have the Ubersuggest Chrome extension installed, you may need to reinstall it because we now show you data on YouTube and Amazon. That means you’ll have to grant Ubersuggest permission to show you data on those two sites.

If you don’t have the extension installed, you can do so by going here.

Let me know what you think about the new extension, the upcoming releases, and if you want me to add any other features. 🙂

The post Ubersuggest Chrome Extension 2.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool appeared first on Neil Patel.

Ubersuggest Chrome Extension

Please note: Once you install the extension all you have to do is go to Google and perform a search. That is where you’ll see data.

It’s been a long time coming. And now, it is finally here.

Today, I want to introduce you to the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension.

From being in the SEO industry for over 21 years now, I know that it would be more convenient to do your SEO research while you are browsing the web or searching Google than constantly having to come back to Ubersuggest.

That’s why I created this Chrome extension.

So, what’s inside the Chrome extension?

Well, the easiest way to know what’s included (it’s free), is to just go and install it and test it out.

But here’s what’s included…

Keyword overview

When you are searching Google, you’ll see an overview within the search bar.

You’ll see the monthly search volume and the cost per click for that keyword.

When you click the “view all” link, you’ll see a detailed overview for that keyword.

The graph breaks down the total monthly search volume. What’s cool about the chart is that it shows you both the monthly mobile searches and desktop searches.

And above the graph, you’ll get metrics on how hard that keyword is to rank for (SEO Difficulty) and how competitive that keyword is from a paid advertising (Paid Difficulty) standpoint.

Under the graph, you’ll also see 2 bar graphs. The first one breaks down whether or not people are clicking on the SEO results, paid results, or not clicking anywhere at all.

The second one shows data on the age range of all of the searchers.

Link overview

Above the organic results, you’ll see a speech bubble that breaks the average authority of the sites that are ranking (domain score) and the average number of referring domains the top 10 results have (backlinks).

If you want a more detailed overview, you’ll see a graph in the sidebar that breaks down how many referring links each of the top 10 listings have.

Keep in mind the link metrics are based on referring domains. So, if a website has 100 links from the same domain name, it will only count as 1. Because what really matters when it comes to SEO is how many unique, relevant sites you can get to link to you as opposed to having the same site linking to you over and over again.

Even more keyword data

In the sidebar, you’ll also find even more keyword data.

You’ll see a list of other popular keywords that are similar. You’ll also get metrics on each keyword… from how often it is searched (volume), to what it would cost to bid on that keyword (CPC), to how difficult the keyword is from an SEO standpoint (SD).

And if you scroll to the very bottom of the screen, you’ll see a list of related keywords that Google provides.

Again, you’ll be provided with data like search volume, cost per click, and SEO difficulty data.

URL metrics

Whenever you perform a search on Google, you, of course, see a list of websites that rank for that keyword.

As you can see, under URL you see the authority of the website (domain score), how many Pinterest and Facebook shares the URL has, and how many unique domains are linking to that result.

What’s cool is you can click on the “down arrow” next to the link count and see the exact list of sites linking as well as their domain score and anchor text they used for the link.

Pick your country and language

The last feature in the extension is that you can change your location and language.

All you have to do is click the “Settings” link in the sidebar.

You’ll see a long list of languages and countries that you can choose from.

No matter what version of Google you are using, such as Google.com.br or even Google.co.in, you’ll see SEO data whenever you perform a search.

Conclusion

I have some more big changes coming to the extension in the near future but I would love to hear what you think about it so far.

And if you have any feature requests, just leave a comment below. That way we can prioritize what we add to the extension next.

So go checkout the Ubersuggest extension and give it a try.

What do you think of the extension? What other features would you like me to add?

The post Ubersuggest Chrome Extension appeared first on Neil Patel.

Ubersuggest is Now More Free

Please read the whole post as I have a few surprises for everyone and it affects all member types.

A month or so ago, I blogged about the future of Ubersuggest and how there will still be free plans along with paid ones.

But as you probably noticed, the free plan wasn’t as generous as you were hoping for.

And with Coronavirus growing at a rapid pace and affecting so many people and businesses, I thought I would do my part and help small businesses out.

Because if I help you grow a bit more without spending money, hopefully, you won’t have to lay off any people and, ideally, you will even be able to hire a few more people.

So today, I have made Ubersuggest “more free” and over the next week, it will become even more free.

What does that mean? Let me break it down for you…

You’ll have full access to historical data

First off, anytime you want to view graphs on historical data, you no longer have to pay.

For example, if you want to see how popular a keyword was over the last 12 months, all you have to do is type it in and you’ll see the data.

If you aren’t logged in, you only see 3 months’ worth of data (this is to help stop scrapers and reduce server expenses), but once you log in, which again is free, you’ll see historical data.

The same goes for traffic estimates. Anytime you look up a competitor, you’ll be able to see their search traffic over the last 12 months as well as how many keywords each site is ranking for during that time period.

As for backlinks, there is a historical link graph and a new
and lost link graph.

Currently, it is blocked off for only paid members, but in the next 7 days I WILL BE OPENING IT UP FOR FREE.

Sorry for the delay, but it takes my developers a bit of time to make this change.

So, within the next week, this will also be available for
free.

You also have access to more keywords

Have you performed keyword research recently?

If you haven’t tried, look up a domain and go to the “keywords” navigation item…

Once you land on that report, you will see a really long
list of keywords. 🙂

If you aren’t logged in, you’ll be asked to do so, and this is also free. The reason being is this helps stops scrapers and reduces server costs.

The same goes for the keyword ideas report. This report
gives you more keyword suggestions once you enter in a keyword.

In the navigation menu bar, click on “keyword ideas.”

Enter in a keyword and you’ll be given a list of other
related terms.

Again, you may be asked to log in, which is free, but that is to reduce scrapers on our end to save on server costs.

More content ideas and top pages

Over the next 7 days, we are also going to make the content
ideas report and the top pages a bit more generous.

We will probably provide four times more results for free on these two reports.

So when you are looking for ideas for your next blog post, you’ll see more recommendations.

Or if you are looking up a competitor to see which pages drive them the most traffic, you’ll want to go to the “top pages” report. In the navigation, click on “top pages.”

At the moment, you can see some for free, but again in the next week, you will be able to see roughly four times more without having to pay for it.

The changes with the content ideas report and the top pages may be rolled out sooner but by next Tuesday at the latest, they will be ready.

There’s also more good news

My goal with Ubersuggest isn’t to make money. It is honestly
to break even as my costs are so high. It’s well over $200,000 a month. 🙁

These changes will probably make it take 12 months for me to break even instead of 6 months… but hey, that’s life. It’s the least I can do with all of the businesses out there struggling due to the Coronavirus and all of the people getting sick.

As paid members, you will still get access to more data, be able to create more projects, and crawl more pages to find SEO errors.

But I am going to sweeten the deal for you over the next 30
days as I am adding some stuff that is going to really help you grow your
traffic.

Here’s what I am thinking:

  1. Bi-weekly training – every month, my team and I will be holding 2 group calls to help you grow your traffic. The first call will go over an SEO tactic that you need to implement and I will break down how you can do so. The second monthly call will be a QA where anyone can ask me and my team questions and we will answer them. And if you are wondering if I am going to be on the calls, I will. With my busy schedule, I probably will miss some, but I will be on many of the calls training you myself.
  2. Weekly action plan – I’m currently working on an SEO action plan. As a paid member, I will be giving you 12 things to implement (one each week for 12 weeks) to grow your SEO traffic. If you implement them, you’ll get more traffic. I know many of you are busy business owners, so I am trying to make things easy and help you get the most traffic with the least amount of work.
  3. On-demand help and support – we are adding live chat to Ubersuggest and the NeilPatel.com site. That way you can talk with my team of SEO experts, ask any questions related to your site or marketing, and we will help you. That way you can get customized one-on-one advice. This is what you’ll really need to grow.
  4. Ultimate SEO course – I’m working on an SEO course that teaches you everything about SEO. It’s looking like it will be over 20 hours of video training material as well as worksheets, cheat sheets, and templates for you to use to make it easier for you to get results.
  5. Private Facebook group – we have a pretty decent size community, so why not leverage it to help each other grow? We will be creating a private Facebook group or Slack group (not sure which one), were we all help each other grow our traffic.

You’ll start seeing this stuff rolled out within 30 days as well as the Chrome extension which is in the final round of testing.

I also have some cool new features that we are close to
adding that I know you will be excited for. 😉

Conclusion

Over the next 30 days, if you are a paid member, you’ll be
getting even more.

And if you are strapped for cash, no worries. I am making the free plan even more generous, as you can see above. Just give Ubersuggest a try and you’ll see it is already “more free.”

My goal has never been to make money with this tool. It’s to help small and medium business owners succeed.

I know times are tough right now but try to stay safe by staying indoors more often and practicing social distancing.

So, what do you think about the new Ubersuggest Free plan?

The post Ubersuggest is Now More Free appeared first on Neil Patel.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Your SEO Traffic Using Ubersuggest

There are a lot of tools out there and a ton of SEO reports.

But when you use them, what happens?

You get lost, right?

Don’t worry, that’s normal (sadly). And maybe one day I will
be able to fix that.

But for now, the next best thing I can do is teach you how to grow your SEO traffic using Ubersuggest. This way, you know exactly what to do, even if you have never done any SEO.

Here we go…

Step #1: Create a project

Head over to the Ubersuggest dashboard and
register for a free account.

Once you do that, I want you to click on “Add Your First Project.”

Next, add your URL and the name of your website.

Then pick the main country or city that you do business in. If you are a national business, then type in the country you are in. If you are a local business, type in your city and click “Next.”

If you do business in multiple countries or cities, you can type them in one at a time and select each country or city.

Assuming you have your site connected to Google Search Console, you’ll see a list of keywords that you can automatically track on the left-hand side. Aside from tracking any of those, you can track others as well. Just type in the keywords you want to track in the box and hit the “Enter” key.

After hitting the “Next” button, you will be taken to your dashboard. It may take a minute but your dashboard will look something like this:

Click on the “Tracked Keywords” box and load your website profile.

What’s cool about this report is that you can see your rankings
over time both on mobile and desktop devices. This is important because Google
has a mobile index, which means your rankings are probably slightly different
on mobile devices than desktop.

If you want to see how you are ranking on Google’s mobile index, you just have to click the “Mobile” icon.

The report is self-explanatory. It shows your rankings over time for any keyword you are tracking. You can always add more keywords and even switch between locations.

For example, as of writing this blog post, I rank number 4 on desktop devices for the term “SEO” in the United States. In the United Kingdom, though, I rank number 16. Looks like I need to work on that. 😉

What’s cool about this report is you can drill down on any
keyword and track your rankings over time. For example, here’s what my site
looks like now…

The purpose of this report is to track your SEO progress. If you are heading in the right direction, your rankings should be going up over time.

Sure, some weeks your rankings will be up and other weeks it
will be down, but over time you should see them climb.

Step #2: Fixing your SEO errors

Once you have created your first project, it’s time to improve your rankings.

Let’s first start off by going to the “Site Audit” report. In the navigation, click on the “Site Audit” button.

Once you are there, type in your URL and click the “Search” button.

It can take a few minutes to run the report, but once it is
done it will look something like this.

Your goal is to optimize your site for as high as an SEO score as possible. Ideally, you want to be reaching for 90 or higher.

Keep in mind that as you add more pages to your site and it gets bigger, it will be increasingly harder to achieve a 90+ score. So, for sites that have more than a few hundred pages, shoot for a score that is at least 80.

As you can see above, I’m getting close to the 80 mark, so I’ll have to get my team to go in and fix some of my errors and warnings.

When looking at this report, you’ll want to fix your critical errors first, then your warnings if you have time. Eventually, you want to consider fixing the recommendations as well.

Click on “Critical Errors” if you have any. If not, click on the Warnings” option. You’ll see a report that looks something like this:

Your errors are probably going to be different than mine, but your report will look similar.

Click through on the first issue on the report and work your way down. The report sorts the results based on impact. The ones at the top should be fixed first as they will have the highest chance of making an impact on your traffic.

If you aren’t sure of what to do or how to fix the issue, just click on the “What Is This” and “How Do I Fix It” prompts.

Again, you will want to do this for all of your critical
errors and warnings.

Once you do that, go back to the “Site Audit” report and scroll down to where you see your site speed results.

Your goal should be to get an “Excellent” ranking for both mobile and desktop devices. If you are struggling to do this, check out Pagespeed Insights by Google as it will give you a detailed explanation of what to fix.

If you are like me, you probably will need someone to help
you out with this. You can always find a developer from Upwork and pay them 50 to 100 dollars to fix
your issues.

After you fix your errors, you’ll want to double-check to make sure you did them right. Click on the “Recrawl Website” button to have Ubersuggest recrawl your site and double-check that the errors were fixed correctly.

It will take a bit for Ubersuggest to recrawl your website
as it is going through all of your code again.

Step #3: Competitor analysis

By now you have probably heard the saying that “content is king.”

In theory, the more content you have, the more keywords you will have on your site and the higher the chance that you’ll rank on Google for more terms.

Of course, the content needs to be of high quality and people have to be interested in that topic. If you write about stuff that no one wants to read about, then you won’t get any traffic.

Now, I want you to go to the “Traffic Analyzer Overview” report.

Put in a competitor’s URL and you will see a report that
looks something like this.

This report shows the estimated monthly visitors your competition is receiving from search engines, how many keywords they are ranking for on page 1 of Google, their top pages, every major keyword they rank for, and the estimated traffic each keyword drives to their site.

I want you to go to the “Top Pages” section and click the button that says “View The Pages That Drive Traffic To This Domain.”

You’ll be taken to the “Top Pages” report.

Here, you will see a list of pages that your competition has on their site. The ones at top are their most popular pages and as you go down the list you’ll find pages that get less and less traffic.

Now I want you to click “View All” under “Estimated Visits” for the top page on your competition’s site.

These are the keywords that the page ranks for.

And you’ll also want to click “View All” under links to see who links to your competition.

Save that list by exporting the results (just click the export button) or by copying them.

I want you to repeat this process for the top 10 to 20 pages for each of your main competitors. It will give you an idea of the keywords that they are going after that drive them traffic.

Next, I want you to click on the “Keywords” navigation link under the “Traffic Analyzer” heading.

You’ll see a list of all of the keywords your competitor ranks for and how much traffic they are getting for those keywords.

This list will give you an idea of the keywords that your
competition is targeting.

Now, by combining the data you saw from the “Top Pages” report and the data you got from the “Keywords” report, you’ll now have a good understanding of the type of keywords that are driving your competition traffic.

I want you to take some of those keywords and come up with
your own blog post ideas.

Step #4: Come up with blog post ideas

You can come up with ideas to blog on using a few simple
reports in Ubersuggest.

The first is the “Content Ideas” report. In the navigation bar, click on the “Content Ideas” button.

I want you to type in one of the keywords your competition
is ranking for that you also want to rank for.

For example, I rank for “SEO tips.” If you want to rank for that term, you would type that into the content ideas report and hit the “Search” button.

You’ll then see a list of blog posts that have done well on that topic based on social shares, backlinks, and estimated visits.

It takes some digging to find good topics because ideally, a post should have all 3: social shares, backlinks, and estimated visits.

When you find a good one, click “View All” under “Estimated Visits” to see the keywords that the post ranks for.

If you write a similar post, you’ll want to make sure you include these keywords.

And you’ll want to click “View All” under links to see who links to your competition. Keep track of this as you will use it later. You can do this by copying the list or by clicking on the export button.

You can also get more ideas by going to the keyword ideas report. So, in the navigation bar, click on the “Keyword Ideas” button.

From there, type in keywords related to what your competition ranks for and you will see a list of long-tail suggestions that are similar.

You can also click on the “Related” link in that report to see a bigger list of related keywords.

And you can click on “Questions,” “Prepositions,” and “Comparisons” to see even more keyword and blog post ideas.

Typically, the more search volume a keyword has the more
traffic you’ll get when you write about it.

Now that you have a list of keywords and topic ideas, it’s time for you to write and publish your content.

If you are new to writing blog posts, watch the video below. It breaks down my writing process.

Step #5: Promotion

I wish SEO was as simple as fixing errors and writing content based on popular keywords but it isn’t.

Remember how I had you create a list of sites that link to your competition?

You know, the ones you got from the “Top Pages” and “Content Ideas” reports.

I want you to start emailing each of the sites linking to your competition and ask them to link to you. See if someone else is linking to your competition. If they are, it shows you that they don’t mind linking to sites in your space. This means that there is a good chance you can convince them to link to you as well.

You’ll have to browse around their site to find their email. But once you do, send off a personal message explaining why your content will provide value to their readers and how it is different/better than what they are currently linking to.

In addition to that, I want you to go to the “Backlinks” report. In the navigation bar, click on the “Backlinks” option.

In this report, I want you to type in your competitor’s domain. You’ll see a report that looks like this:

You’ll be able to see their total link count, link growth over time, and, most importantly, a list of sites linking to your competition.

Now type in a URL of a blog post that your competition has written and that you know is popular (do this in the search bar). Next to it, in the search bar, change the drop-down to “URL” and click the “Search” button.

Once the report is done loading, you’ll see a new list of links pointing to that specific URL on your competition’s site.

I want you to do the same thing. Reach out to all of those
URLs and ask for a link as well.

When doing this, you’ll find that a lot of people will ignore you but you need to think of it as sales. You need to follow up and try to convince people. The more links you get, the higher your rankings will climb in the long run.

Even if you only convince 5 people out of 100 that you
email, it is still not bad as something is better than nothing.

Conclusion

My goal with Ubersuggest wasn’t to create too many reports, but instead, make the tool easy to use so you can generate more search traffic.

And as your rankings and traffic climb, you’ll see within your Ubersuggest dashboard how things are going.

What’s beautiful about this is that it will crawl your site automatically once you create a project. This way, when new SEO errors appear, Ubersuggest will notify you.

So, are you ready to improve your SEO traffic? Go to Ubersuggest and create a project.

The post A Step-by-Step Guide to Growing Your SEO Traffic Using Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.

The Future of Ubersuggest

* Please read the whole post, I have some good news at the bottom, but it won’t make sense unless you read the whole post.

Do you know why I got into SEO?

Not many people know this, but I grew up in middle-class America, and I wanted a better life for me and my parents.

When I was 16 years old, I worked at a theme park called Knotts Berry Farm where I picked up trash, cleaned restrooms, and swept up vomit every single day.

I didn’t mind it because that’s life and I needed the money.

At 16, I realized I was too young to get a high paying job, so I did the next best thing… I started a business.

But making $5.75 an hour picking up trash wasn’t enough to market my business, though. The only solution that I could think of was SEO because if you put in the time and effort you can get the traffic for free.

It’s also the main reason I fell in love with it… it
gives the little guy a chance to compete with the big guys
.

And over the years I wanted to pay it forward and help out all of the entrepreneurs and small companies so they can do the same… succeed without having to spend a lot of money.

So, what did I do?

Well over the years, I’ve produced a ton of free content, videos, and guides that help entrepreneurs and marketers of all sizes succeed.

And in February 2017, I decided to take it to the next level by acquiring Ubersuggest for $120,000.

When I first bought it, I had the dream of creating an SEO tool that could compete with the big players that charged $100+ a month, but of course, offer it for free.

The developers that I had at that time estimated that I could do this for $30,000 to $45,000 a month. That was perfect as I had no issue losing that much money each month.

But as we got rolling and kept adding in more features, our
expenses continually climbed. Just look at what I spent in the last month…

I spent $89,930 on hosting so far in January with an estimated spend of $128,680 for February. But again, let’s stick with January…

My back-end development bill from Tryolabs was $47,885 for January.

My data feed from SEO Power Suite, Data For SEO, and Shared Count totaled $75,253 for January.

And of course, my front-end developers as well as my dev-ops team Netlabs, which ran me $22,700.

Then if you add on miscellaneous costs, such as support, design, and project management, I was out another $11,450.

All in all, I spent $247,218 during the month of January 2020.

Keep in mind that my costs are continually rising. As the tool gets more popular, it costs me more.

One of the big reasons for the server expenses is scrapers.

Believe it or not, a lot of companies are scraping our data and continually rotating up IPs and creating fake accounts, which increases our server expenses. Especially when you consider that they are researching vague SEO terms or domains that aren’t cached in our system.

Don’t feel bad for me

Now the purpose of this post wasn’t to make you feel bad or guilty (unless you are scraping me). I just wanted to be transparent about my situation.

Originally, I was hoping that I could convert a portion of the Ubersuggest customer base into agency clients but as we continually move upstream and work with bigger brands, the conversion rate from an Ubersuggest visitor to a paying consulting customer has been low.

As that didn’t work out the way I wanted, which I learned around 11 months ago, it became harder and harder for me to eat the costs as they continually grew and I didn’t have a way to pay for them other than to dip into my own savings.

So, I started searching for solutions, such as turning
Ubersuggest into a non-profit and raise money from foundations to help support
the cost. I tried that for 5 months and I didn’t gain much traction.

I also tried to see if I could get sponsors for the tool who would help cover the costs, but that didn’t work out well either. Instead, many of them offered to buy the company for millions of dollars (some in the 8 figures) but I didn’t want to sell it as I knew their goal would be to turn it into another $100-a-month tool, which didn’t sit well with me.

After running out of options, I had no choice but to make some changes to Ubersuggest (don’t worry it is not closing down). But you can guess what the changes are.

But don’t worry

First and foremost, my goal is still to give as much away for free as I can. Within Ubersuggest, you will still be able to do a lot for free…

Creating projects

You will always be able to create projects and track your rankings. And just like before you always have been limited on the number of keywords you can track and that, of course, is due to costs.

Keyword research

Within the app, you will still be able to see keyword research data.

You’ll see a chart with the latest few months’ traffic volume, data on mobile versus desktop search volume, demographic data, and even keyword recommendations.

And you can, of course, continually find new keywords to target.

Sure, some of the data is blocked, but did you know that
only 14.3% of people used to register for a free account to unlock that data.

In other words, most of you never even registered because the application shows you enough for free without needing to log in.

Content ideas

Similar to before, you can also see popular blog post suggestions for any given keyword.

You’ll also be able to see the top keywords a blog post
ranks for and the backlinks pointing to that URL.

Again, keep in mind the majority of you only looked at the
top 10 results as 14.3% of you registered for a free account to unlock more
data.

Traffic Analyzer

You will still be able to look up any domain and get stats
on it.

Historical data is blocked, but you can see the last few
months which is enough for most of you.

You’ll also be able to see the top pages for any domain and the keywords that page ranks for as well as backlinks.

The same goes for the keywords any domain ranks for.

Some of the data is blocked, but just like before only 14.3%
of you registered to view that data. Which means 85.7% of you are happy with
the free data.

SEO Analyzer

Not much has changed here, you can still analyze over 100 pages on your site and figure out which errors you have.

Here’s an interesting fact: Did you know the average site that goes through Ubersuggest only has 48 pages?

The median number of pages a site has in our system was similar at 43 pages.

And of course, there is the backlinks report, which now
shows new and lost links as well as historical link growth.

Similar to what I mentioned above, very few people really cared to see the blocked off information as only 14.3% of you registered.

My dream

My goal in life is to help people generate more traffic. And I believe Ubersuggest can get better results and give you a fighting chance.

I also want to continually make the tool better. For example, why can’t SEO be automated? If you can have self-driving cars, there is no reason why you can’t automate SEO through artificial intelligence and machine learning.

But with the rising expenses, I was left with 2 options… either shut the tool down (which isn’t an option for me) or figure out a way to cover my expenses.

In the long run, I can’t keep sustaining the loss of $247,218 a month forever, especially when that number is climbing (that’s roughly 3 million dollars a year).

My team and I came up with an interesting concept that we think is fair and hopefully, you won’t be upset about it.

Remember how I said only 14.3% of people register to view more data but 85.7% never register as they were happy with the free data?

Well, nothing will change for 85.7% of you.

As for the 14.3% who register to create projects and track keywords, you can still do that for free. But if you want to add more projects or track a lot more keywords, you can upgrade to a paid plan.

The same goes for keyword research. If you want to view even more data, you can pay for the blocked data. Or if you want to analyze thousands of pages on your site through the site audit, you can also upgrade.

Don’t worry though, I am still following my original
mission.

I promise to always keep Ubersuggest affordable (and mainly free). I decided to take the Netflix/Amazon approach and try to make the cost super affordable (as my goal is to only break-even).

On top of that, I made it a 7-day free trial.

You’ll also find that the pricing varies per country as my costs vary per country. In regions like India and Brazil when someone registers, creates a project and tracks keywords, my expenses are substantially lower than if someone from the United States registers and creates projects and tracks keywords.

The same goes for labor. My support team in India and other regions costs substantially less than the team in the United States or the United Kingdom.

If you also pay annually, you’ll get 2 months free so you can save even more money.

And as I mentioned above, I want to stick to the original mission, which is to help people generate more traffic without having to spend a lot of money.

There will always be a very generous free plan and I am hoping that I can break even by charging for a portion of the application.

What’s next?

Ubersuggest is going to continually get better.

To make things up to you, over the next month or two I am going to release a Chrome extension that will give you tons of insights for free. And of course, if you want a little bit more you can pay.

Here’s what the free extension will look like…

Whenever you perform a Google search you will be able to see
the volume for any search term in any major country. And if you click the “view
all” link you will see more data on that keyword.

You’ll also see the average domain score for any given
ranking page and the number of links you need to rank in the top 10.

As you scroll down and go through each of the ranking
results, you’ll see the domain score for each URL, social shares, and the
backlinks pointing to that search result.

You can even drill down and see the top links pointing to
each URL.

Now if you head over to the sidebar, you’ll see a list of
related keywords as well as data on the top 10 keyword recommendations.

If you scroll a bit more, you’ll see a graph that shows how many backlinks each result has so that way you can see how many backlinks again you roughly need to rank in the top 10.

At the very bottom of the search results, you’ll see data on related keywords.

As time goes on not only will you have the extension, but I
will continually add more and more features for free.

Conclusion

I’m sorry that I have to start covering my costs, but I hope
you understand at the same time.

From my projections, it will take me roughly 6 months to break even, so I am going to be out a decent amount of money over the next 6 months… but that’s life.

I am not looking to recuperate my original investment and I don’t mind that being a loss, but once I break even on a monthly basis I will continue to either open up more stuff for free or consider lowering the monthly pricing if possible.

Again, I am really sorry, but I hope you understand that it isn’t sustainable for me to spend $247,218 a month indefinitely.

I am open to hearing your thoughts or ideas. I also want to let you know I appreciate everything you have done to support Ubersuggest and my site.

The post The Future of Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.

Ubersuggest 7.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool

Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for
almost 3 years now.

I bought it on February 13, 2017, for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO.

Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for.

But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have.

So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO,
make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are
going do keyword research (in a good way).

On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations.

Here’s what’s new:

More keyword data

The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword.

Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming you find keywords with a high CPC, low SEO difficulty, and high search volume, it still doesn’t mean it is a good keyword to go after.

And there are a few reasons why…

  • Mobile searches aren’t worth as much – first off, if the keyword mainly gets searched from on mobile devices the conversion rate will be lower. It doesn’t mean mobile traffic is useless, it just typically means the keyword won’t be as valuable.
  • High search volume doesn’t guarantee lots of organic clicks – what happens if the keyword gets a ton of searches but no clicks? This sounds crazy, but it actually happens a lot. For example, when people search for “weather” in the United States, roughly 60% of the people don’t click any results.
  • Not all searchers are worth the same – some keywords get searched heavily by teenagers. Some keywords get searched heavily by people who are in their 30s or 40s. If the majority of the searches for a given keyword happen by a really young audience, chances are they won’t have a credit card and they won’t convert into a customer.

Because of all of this, I decided to change how the industry
does keyword research.

Now when you type in a keyword like “marketing” into
Ubersuggest, you’ll see this:

If you have been using Ubersuggest for the last year or so you may notice some differences… but if you haven’t let me break down what’s new.

First off, for any given keyword you will see what percentage of the searches are taking place from mobile devices or desktop devices.

For example, with the term “marketing” you can see that the majority of the searches are coming from desktop devices.

On the flip side, if you use Ubersuggest to look at the term “weather” you’ll notice that the majority of the searches happen on mobile devices.

And with any given keyword you can also see what percentage of the people even click on the SEO or paid results.

I love this bar chart because it tells me if I should even go after a specific keyword. Just because a term has tons of searches doesn’t mean you are going to get tons of clicks, even if you rank at the number 1 spot.

If you leverage paid ads, this bar chart is also helpful because it will give you a sense of how many people click on the paid ads as well.

Another chart that I’ve added is one that breaks down the age range of each searcher.

As you can see from the above image, Ubersuggest now shows what percentage of the searches take place between each age range.

This is really important if you know the persona of your ideal customer, as you only want to target keywords that your ideal buyer is searching for.

What’s also cool is this data is available for all countries
within Ubersuggest and for almost all of the keywords within our database.

Now before you head off to Ubersuggest and test it out, there are a few more features that I’ve just released.

More backlink data

Over the last few months, I’ve gotten feedback that our link database isn’t as big as you would like, so we have been working on fixing this.

First off, whenever you do a backlink search in Ubersuggest, you’ll start seeing stats on historical backlink data.

This chart will quickly show you if a site is growing in
backlink and referring domain count over time or if they are declining.

On top of that, we are even showing the daily new and lost link count for a given site.

I know the new and lost link count chart looks a bit off,
but keep in mind we started having Ubersuggest crawl more pages around the web
faster and more frequently. Hence you are seeing a big spike in new and lost
links.

But over the next 4 weeks, it should normalize, and you’ll see an accurate representation of new and lost links.

This will help you identify new link opportunities more
easily. Especially because you can now clearly see where your competitors are
focusing their link building efforts.

Better traffic estimations

Lastly in Ubersuggest, you can also enter in a URL and get data on any given domain.

From its estimated monthly search traffic to the number of keywords a domain ranks for to even its top pages based on link and traffic count.

We haven’t fully finished creating our new algorithm when it comes to traffic estimations, but the chart you’ll see now is much more accurate than the older one.

Even though this is a big improvement from our older charts, give it another 3 months and it should be extremely accurate.

When you are using the traffic analyzer report in Ubersuggest, keep in mind that this will give you a directional guide on how you are doing versus your competition.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy the new changes to Ubersuggest.

I’ve made them in order to give you a leg up on your competition as the data in the tool is now something that most of you have never seen before.

And over the next two months, you’ll see some big launches in Ubersuggest. From a chrome extension to even more accurate traffic estimations to even an Alert system that will notify you when things are wrong with your site.

So, go to Ubersuggest and try out the new keyword features as well as traffic estimation and backlink features.

What do you think about the
new features?

The post Ubersuggest 7.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool appeared first on Neil Patel.

Ubersuggest 4.0: The Ultimate Content Marketing Tool The mea…

Ubersuggest 4.0: The Ultimate Content Marketing Tool
The means you place for a keyword phrase is by producing material around it. I recognize material isn’t king any longer and also that’s due to the fact that there are over 1 billion blog sites on the internet. By revealing you the search phrases a blog site message rankings for, you’ll understand what search phrases to concentrate on when composing the web content.

The means you place for a keyword phrase is by producing material around it. I recognize web content isn’t king any longer as well as that’s since there are over 1 billion blog sites on the internet. As I pointed out previously, material isn’t king. By revealing you the keyword phrases a blog site message rankings for, you’ll recognize what key phrases to concentrate on when composing the web content. The last point you desire to do is develop material that individuals do not care regarding analysis.

The post Ubersuggest 4.0: The Ultimate Content Marketing Tool
The mea…
appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.

I Need Your Help With Ubersuggest

It’s been more than a year since I launched the “new”
Ubersuggest.

And over the last 12 months, I have made a lot of progress.

Just as a quick recap: Ubersuggest went from a basic keyword research tool to now containing backlink data, rank tracking, content ideas, site audit reports, and many more features.

If you haven’t played with Ubersuggest in the past few months, give it a try. Type in a URL or a keyword and click around.

The reason I am asking you to give it a try is that I need your help to determine what I should develop next so I can help you improve your traffic and rankings even more.

But before we get into that, let me first tell you what I am releasing in the next few months.

Upcoming features

So, let’s break it down by section as I am making a lot of
small changes that should not only improve the data, but also the usability of
the product.

Funny enough, there will be changes to every section of the
tool.

Keyword research

Over the next month, the keyword overview is going to change in which I will start to tell you demographic data. You’ll see what percentage of the searches are done by males or females as well as the average age range of a searcher.

You’ll also see what portion of the clicks for any given keyword go to SEO results, ads, or result in no clicks.

I am also going to break searches down by mobile versus
desktop.

More accurate data

Another big change that is happening, and this one won’t be
visual, is all of the data will become much more accurate.

From traffic estimations for a domain, to even keywords,
you’ll start seeing a more accurate database.

For example, when I look at all of the keywords
neilpatel.com ranks for, a lot of them are junk keywords that don’t drive much
traffic.

Sure, the report still provides value as a lot of the keywords are good and can provide good SEO insights, but with more accurate data it should make your job easier.

New backlinking data

Another feature that I am excited about is the new backlink charts.

I’m adding historical link data over time as well as a
snapshot of daily new and lost links.

In addition to that, you’ll start seeing more data on anchor text or link distribution.

Alerts

A huge problem with Ubersuggest is that you have to continually come back to get value. In the next month or so, you will start seeing email alerts that will tell you what’s happening with your site and what you should fix.

The overall purpose is for you to not have to come to
Ubersuggest to figure out what you need to fix.

Usability fixes

The biggest problem with Ubersuggest is people don’t know
what to do with the data or how to improve their rankings.

This will be fixed in the upcoming months.

From an education center and demos to tutorials and more, we are creating a guided path so you can see better gains in your search traffic.

Alright, so now that you know what I am working on, I now need your help to figure out what I should do next.

Where do you want me to take Ubersuggest?

I have a few options for you, but I am not sure what you
want me to do with the tool.

Sure, I know you want more free features and I will do that,
but what’s going to provide you with the biggest gains?

Here are some options…

  1. Automated SEO – would you like me to focus my efforts on automating your SEO? All you would have to do is add a javascript to your site like Google Analytics and it would automate 40 to 50% of your SEO tasks. It would even adjust your code for you automatically no matter what CMS you use. Again, it would ONLY automate 50% or so of your tasks, I can’t automate all 100%… yet.
  2. Ad management – do you want an easy to use ad management system? From Facebook and Google to even smaller sites like Quora, there are tons of ad opportunities. I could create an easy to use system that helps you find all of the ad opportunities and optimize/manage them for you in an automated way.
  3. Free email marketing – I know there are tools like Mailchimp that are great, but what if I made it so you can send an unlimited amount of emails to an unlimited number of contacts for free?
  4. Chrome extension – what if I took extensions out there from tools like Moz, Ahrefs, Keywords Everywhere, and SEMrush and combined the best features and made it free?
  5. Or do you have any better ideas? I am open to anything.

Conclusion

I can take Ubersuggest in many different directions. There isn’t really a right or wrong approach and, wherever I take it, I will make sure that the product is still really easy to use.

The question is, what do you want me to focus on first?

That’s all that matters in the grand scheme of things because I am building this for you.

So, if you can, leave a comment below letting me know where you want me to take Ubersuggest. It can be one of the options above, or if you have a better idea, I am open to that as well.

The post I Need Your Help With Ubersuggest appeared first on Neil Patel.