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Digital Marketing: Strategies & Tactics To Grow Your Website

Digital marketing is an incredible way to grow your website. While it shares many concepts from traditional & offline marketing, the strategies, tactics, and tools are usually faster, more personalized, more scalable, and more affordable.

Read more about my posts on advertising & paid marketing, analytics & optimization, search engine optimization & content strategy, social media & email marketing, and many FAQs & explainers below!

How To See YouTube Tags for Competitor / Keyword Research

Nate Shivar Updated October 23, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To See YouTube Tags for Competitor _ Keyword Research

You can see YouTube Tags in the in-line Javascript in the source code of the video.

On any given video, you can right-click on the page and choose to “View Source”

YouTube View Source

Once you have the page source open, just CTRL-F for the “keywords” meta tag – and get the tags that the author used.

YouTube Tags

To view tags on mobile, you will have to sub in view-source:https://m.youtube.com/

in your mobile browser. Then CTRL-F.

YouTube on Mobile

This is all a bit more confusing than before.

Before 2018, YouTube placed the tags in the  <meta name=”keywords” content=”[keywords]”> field within the view-source code for any video.

YouTube Tags

Whether you are researching YouTube for your own content or you are trying to optimize your own YouTube videos – competitor tags can provide a ton of insight. It’s like free keyword research.

If you want to see them directly in videos like pre-2018, check out this YouTube extension for Chrome.

[Read more…] about How To See YouTube Tags for Competitor / Keyword Research

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

Most Popular Micropolitan Areas (Small Cities) for Startups According to the US Census

Nate Shivar Updated September 23, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Most Popular Micropolitan Areas (Small Cities) for Startups According to the US Census

ShivarWeb has a lot of DIYers and freelancers not living in the biggest, richest cities of the world. In fact, I originally started this business in Athens, Georgia, USA – not in larger Atlanta. As a fun post, I thought I’d dig into some data for my non-metro area readers.

The benefits of big metro areas for new businesses are well-known, but so are the costs in money, time, and health. In the era of remote work, you can get a lot of the benefits of the city anywhere with an Internet connection, except one – being physically around other new business-owners.

With that in mind, I decided to look at the Census Bureau’s data on cities to see if there were any places in America that hit a sweet spot between being small & self-contained and being a popular place to start a new business.

Micropolitan areas are populated areas that have too much population to qualify as a rural area, and too few commuting ties to a larger city to qualify as part of a larger metropolitan area. They are between 10,000 to 50,000 people and quite a distance from a large city.

In other words – micropolitan areas are true small cities.

There are 536 micropolitan areas in America with a core city of between 10,000 and 50,000 people plus the population of the surrounding area.

Here are the Top 20 Most Popular Micropolitan Areas for New Small Businesses in America based on US Census data from 2015-2016 (most recently available). You can view the full list of 536 areas here.

[Read more…] about Most Popular Micropolitan Areas (Small Cities) for Startups According to the US Census

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Marketing FAQs & Explainers

13+ More Effective Ways To Use Keyword Planner for SEO

Nate Shivar Updated May 22, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

13+ More Effective Ways To Use Keyword Planner for SEO

Google Keyword Planner is a fundamental tool for planning SEO and content marketing campaigns. It’s the only place to get search data such as keyword ideas, trends and search volume directly from Google.

[Read more…] about 13+ More Effective Ways To Use Keyword Planner for SEO

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Plan An Inbound Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Nate Shivar Updated May 20, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Plan An Inbound Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

I get a lot of hyper-specific eCommerce marketing questions, e.g. “should I advertise on Reddit?” or “how do I hire someone to do link building?” or “I just chose my eCommerce store platform and want to try OutBrain or maybe Snapchat or Instagram to get started.” They are great in a way – I’m a huge fan of experimentation and improvement.

[Read more…] about How To Plan An Inbound Marketing Strategy For Ecommerce

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

Hacking Google Display Planner for SEO & Content Marketing

Nate Shivar Updated May 18, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Hacking Google Display Planner for SEO & Content Marketing

Google built both the Keyword Planner and Display Planner for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) research – not for SEO & Content Marketing

And yet, Keyword Planner is a fundamental tool for all SEOs. Keyword Planner provides a wealth of data directly from Google that you cannot get anywhere else. In a way SEOs love Keyword Planner as much as PPCers.

But what about Display Planner – the other research tool in Google Ads?

If you are building an organic / SEO campaign – you probably think of Display Planner like it’s a desolate, uninteresting land of PPC terms like “viewable CPM, “impressions” and “IAB ad sizes” – all meant for PPCers who run those awful banner ads.

In fact, it’s so focused on PPC campaigns, that you can no longer access it directly. You have to launch a “campaign” to access the data.

That’s all true. But like Keyword Planner, Display Planner has a ton of useful data when you hack it for SEO & content campaigns. Here’s how.

[Read more…] about Hacking Google Display Planner for SEO & Content Marketing

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Use Pinterest for SEO & Content Marketing

Nate Shivar Updated May 13, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use Pinterest for SEO & Content Marketing

Pinterest has been the rapidly growing, “good” social network for several years now. But like Reddit, it has just enough quirks that many small business marketers have not fully embraced it.

What makes Pinterest very interesting to me is that, like YouTube, it has this hybrid role.

Pinterest is known as a social network, but it’s increasingly also a search engine and bookmarking service.

This 3 play opens up many unique opportunities for a creative content marketer.

It has a lot of potential to benefit your marketing efforts – here are the lessons I’ve learned helping clients use Pinterest for SEO and content marketing efforts. [Read more…] about How To Use Pinterest for SEO & Content Marketing

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Use Amazon for SEO & Content Marketing

Nate Shivar Updated May 13, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use Amazon for SEO & Content Marketing

Amazon is the world’s largest online store. They sell more than the next 12 largest online stores…combined.

If you run an online store, it’s senseless to view Amazon as a competitor (even though they are).

[Read more…] about How To Use Amazon for SEO & Content Marketing

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Improve Your Online Advertising Campaigns

Nate Shivar Updated May 9, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Improve Your Online Advertising Campaigns

Online advertising is an incredibly effective way to promote your business and attract a wide array of customers. Unlike organic marketing strategies, you can get started right now.

And unlike traditional advertising like TV, radio or billboards, you can advertise effectively through 100% self-service platforms. You can target any audience in any country through diverse platforms at any time.

[Read more…] about How To Improve Your Online Advertising Campaigns

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Advertising & Paid Marketing

How To Search & Scrape Targeted Usernames for Twitter Tailored Audiences

Nate Shivar Updated May 9, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Search & Scrape Targeted Usernames for Twitter Tailored Audiences

You may have heard about the power of creating your own personalized advertising audience (ie, based on actual individuals – not audience segments). Twitter calls it “Tailored Audiences.” Facebook calls it “Custom Audiences.” Google calls it “Customer Match.”

Whatever platform you use, you’re trying to craft the perfect message for the perfect audience for a specific goal.

Most marketers know they should create audiences based on the visitors to their own website – aka, “retargeting.” Some know you can create “look-a-like” audiences with your website visitors.

But what if you could create a custom/tailored audience out of any group of individuals – quickly?**

**Editor’s Note – This post was originally written in 2015 before the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the political controversies of 2016. The tutorial below is in a gray ethical zone. I’m leaving it up and keeping the screenshots up to date, because it can be used for good within terms of service. But you can also be super-sketch with it. Just be cool and try to make the Internet a better place.

Either way, here’s how to use a set of tools to create almost any custom/tailored audience you can think of. [Read more…] about How To Search & Scrape Targeted Usernames for Twitter Tailored Audiences

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Advertising & Paid Marketing

How To Write A Title Tag For SEO

Nate Shivar Updated May 9, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Write A Title Tag For SEO

Writing an effective title tag for SEO & branding should be the first on-page SEO website improvement you make after you map your site’s keywords.

The humble title tag is still the primary element on your site that search engines use to understand the content of a page. The title tag is also the element from your website that actually shows up in search results & your customers’ bookmarks & social posts by default. It’s what your potential visitors click on to navigate to your site.

And yet, writing a custom title tag for SEO is all too often ignored, skipped over, or not given enough time.

There’s no formula to writing a title tag for SEO – but there are plenty of parameters and best practices. Here’s how you can craft an effective title tag to explain your relevance to the Googlebot while still enticing clicks from potential customers. [Read more…] about How To Write A Title Tag For SEO

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

Creating a PR Campaign by Yourself in 6 Steps

Nate Shivar Updated May 8, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Plan a DIY PR Campaign in 6 Steps(2)

Getting mentioned in a publication (aka PR) has tons of benefits from referral traffic to branding to long-term organic traffic growth. It’s a lever that can provide marketing returns well beyond your investment.

But “getting press” can be daunting. And plenty of agencies will help re-inforce that feeling.

There’s a role for PR professionals. But you don’t need to spend a lot of money on an agency to get press. Creating a PR campaign is not easy. It’s difficult, but it’s not magic either. In fact, the formula is fairly straightforward.

  1. Write a pitch
  2. Send it to a writer
  3. They like your story & publish it

But in those simple steps bury some details. To run a successful DIY PR campaign, you’ll need to understand the process and create your own plan. That’s the goal with this post.

Let’s get started. [Read more…] about Creating a PR Campaign by Yourself in 6 Steps

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

Alternative PPC Ad Networks To Find New Audiences for Advertisers

Nate Shivar Updated May 7, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Alternative PPC Ad Networks To Find New Audiences for Advertisers

When you are exploring how to advertise online – Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the two primary options. They have the biggest marketshare, the biggest audiences and the best self-service ad platforms.

In fact, the two together control 59% of online advertising.

But one way to keep improving your online advertising campaigns is to keep finding new advertising networks with different formats, different audiences and different pricing structures.

There are tons of reasons to at least try out new networks – but also a few drawbacks. So before we look at different ad networks – let’s briefly look at the advantages and disadvantages of using ad networks that aren’t Google/Facebook.

[Read more…] about Alternative PPC Ad Networks To Find New Audiences for Advertisers

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Advertising & Paid Marketing

How To Decide Which Keywords To Use: Keyword Research for Beginners

Nate Shivar Updated May 6, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Decide Which Keywords To Use_ Keyword Research for Beginners

Keyword research is possibly the most important part of search engine optimization. How you decide to use & target keywords helps guide how your content is written, how you approach your audience, and how you approach your content strategy.

Many non-specialists in search engine optimization are just familiar enough with keyword research to be dangerous. In other words, they know enough to start or stumble into either total success or total failure).

[Read more…] about How To Decide Which Keywords To Use: Keyword Research for Beginners

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Write A Meta Description For SEO & More Visitors

Nate Shivar Updated May 5, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Write A Meta Description For SEO & More Visitors

Imagine a friend has picked out 2 books that might interest you. They both have the same cover. They both have basically the same title. But Book A has a blurb about the book on the back cover while Book B has a random grouping of words.

Which one would you choose to read? Probably the one with a blurb on the back of the book. After all, you know for sure what is going to be inside, and what kind of tone and content to really expect. It’s not that Book B would be any less relevant, it’s just that you’re sure about Book A.

Meta descriptions are the lowly, ignored marketing tool that make a difference, but all too often gets ignored. And even though they are not a direct ranking factor in any search engine, here’s how to use meta descriptions for search engine optimization (SEO) to increase qualified visitors coming from search engines. [Read more…] about How To Write A Meta Description For SEO & More Visitors

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Use Reddit For SEO & Content Marketing Research

Nate Shivar Updated April 30, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use Reddit For SEO & Content Marketing Research

Usually when marketers think Reddit – they think massive promotion, reach, and influence. Reddit is the most influential social news aggregators in the world. It drives headlines, traffic, and new ideas further and more rapidly than any social network.

*Editor’s Note – I originally published this post in 2014. Since then, not only has Reddit grown and changed, but marketer’s tools for Reddit has grown and changed. But the approach is the same as it ever was. I’ve revised & re-published this post in 2019 with new resources, screenshots, and corrected information.

Simply using Reddit for promotion can be worse than a waste of time, it can actively damage your brand and reputation. Unless you are willing to put in the time and investment to learn etiquette, and become a legitimate member of a community (aka subreddit), you should not use Reddit to organically promote your content.**

**Editor’s Note – and no, I am not that naive to think that you can’t succeed with a shortcut approach. Reddit is quite the cesspool of purchased accounts, corporate campaigns, and even state-sponsored disinformation campaigns that are all still quite active despite Reddit’s efforts. The people who take shortcuts can and do win in the short-run. But this post is for those who do care about the long-term health of their brand, Reddit, and the Internet at large.

The Reddit community does take a better eye towards buying ads to promote your content. There are good and bad ways to advertise on Reddit – and it’s something you should certainly consider. But Reddit ads usually don’t give you the same promotional effect (even excluding monetary costs) as organic submissions.

Using Reddit to promote your content marketing & SEO efforts is going to take either a lot of time or some money – neither of which many marketers have.

To reiterate – if you don’t have time or money to market on Reddit well – please do not promote there. Be cool and respectful.

But that doesn’t mean Reddit is useless for marketing. Here are 3 ways to use Reddit for better SEO & content marketing without submitting or paying for submissions – all involving the goldmine of research that is Reddit.

[Read more…] about How To Use Reddit For SEO & Content Marketing Research

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

How To Plan A Local Business Marketing Strategy (for free!)

Nate Shivar Updated April 30, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Plan A Local Business Marketing Strategy (for free!)

I get a lot of hyper-specific local marketing questions, e.g. “Should I get more links?” “How do I rank #1 on Google in my area?” or “I just launched website and want to try Twitter ads.” They are great in a way – I’m a huge fan of experimentation.

But most local store owners haven’t developed an effective inbound* marketing strategy at all. They miss the forest (how everything works together) for the trees (specific tactics) so to speak.

*Inbound = the industry jargon for marketing that focuses on being where your customers are so that they buy from you “naturally.” Inbound contrasts with outbound marketing, which focuses on finding, interrupting and cold pitching potential customers.

The exciting opportunity about local marketing is that even in major metros – few businesses have a consistent idea about what they are doing.

And unfortunately, the local agencies they hire either have no idea what they are doing either…or they remain focused on a single (billable) tactic.

So – if you are a local business owner and can take the time to develop a single comprehensive marketing strategy (don’t worry – it’s not as complicated as it sounds), you can take all in a winner-take-all-world of digital marketing for not that much money.

I’m going to outline the the exact inbound marketing strategy for local business that I recommend to every reader and client I’ve ever worked with (example case study). I’m focusing on local but 80% of this applies to every business (I even wrote a similar post for eCommerce here).

This post is 4400 words. It’s meant for reference as you tackle each part. The 5 step short version of the strategy is –

  1. Decide exactly who you are selling to (e.g., “hotel managers in the Charlotte metro region” or “high-income women in Buckhead, Atlanta” or “people stranded in a grocery store parking lot around Los Angeles”).
  2. Build a website with Analytics enabled with pages that address problems & services your target market will need.
  3. Systematically claim & build out local profiles that your target market is likely to look at.
  4. Launch small ad campaigns on Google Ads and Facebook Ads to get data & feedback on your site.
  5. Systematically build out new content & new promotional channels based on what you are good at & your market wants.
[Read more…] about How To Plan A Local Business Marketing Strategy (for free!)

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How to Advertise On LinkedIn Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated April 14, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

LinkedIn has always been the odd-duck out among big social networks. Unlike Facebook, Twitter and others – it is a primarily paid platform. But it does have an advertising product.

I listed it within my alternative PPC networks post, and have run a few campaigns on it myself. I’ve never had huge success, but have had clients with sustainable success. Here’s the what, why & how of advertising on LinkedIn.

Having over 450 million business professionals, LinkedIn provides a very interesting platform for advertisers. But, it’s myriad of different targeting options, tools, and ad types can make getting started to seem like a daunting task. We’re going to take a look at each facet of their advertising program so we can better understand how to create and target effective campaigns.

[Read more…] about How to Advertise On LinkedIn Effectively

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Advertising & Paid Marketing

Using Giveaways for Marketing: My Results, Ideas & Guide

Nate Shivar Updated April 13, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Using Giveaways for Marketing_ My Results, Ideas & Guide

Using giveaways for marketing is a tried and tested idea both on and offline. Raffles, lotteries, and giveaways are as old as the Bible. But in the age of social media, giveaways have become the next supposed silver bullet for marketing. Entire companies such as Rafflecopter, Gleam.io, and KingSumo have started to help companies make the most of their giveaways. Even Amazon is in on the game.

The formula for running a giveaway online is pretty straightforward. You pay a certain amount for a prize. Offer a chance to win it for free by entering their email. Incentivize people to get more entries by sharing it. The extra sharing creates a viral factor that gets you more email addresses and entrants than you would have with pay per click ads or more 1 to 1 organic promotion.

You then award the prize, and start email marketing to all your new subscribers. If the cost of the prize is less than you would have spent acquiring them via pay per click or other channels, then it’s a marketing success!

There’s plenty of examples of giveaways that appear successful. They’ve become nearly ubiquitous with Amazon even integrating them into shopping pages. They happen daily in every industry – everything from copywriting to industrial tools. Giveaways seem like marketing best practice.

But are giveaways worth it? What does it take to run one? And what’s the best way to use giveaways for marketing? That’s what this guide is for – let’s dive in.

[Read more…] about Using Giveaways for Marketing: My Results, Ideas & Guide

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

How To Use Google Books for SEO & Content Marketing

Nate Shivar Updated April 12, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use Google Books for SEO & Content Marketing

Google has scanned more than 30 million titles for its Google Books project, and will scan more than 130+ million in coming years.

That is a ton of content. More importantly, that’s a ton of high quality, unique, expert content. For any other giant treasure trove of content (and links!) – SEOs and website owners are all over it. I know I’ve written guides to using content treasure troves like Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, Display Planner, Pinterest, Slideshare, Amazon, YouTube, and others for SEO & content marketing before. Surely there has to be a way to use Google Books for SEO and content marketing, right?

The problem with books, though, is that they are…books. And before Google Books, books were hard to search through. And even with Google Books, they are still hard to scrape & search relative to HTML.

But Google has made it easy enough that, with a few tricks, Google Books can be an invaluable tool for your SEO and content marketing strategy. Here’s how to use Google Books for SEO (specifically link building & keyword research) and content marketing. [Read more…] about How To Use Google Books for SEO & Content Marketing

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

8+ Tips On Using YouTube For Your Website Marketing & SEO

Nate Shivar Updated April 8, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Using YouTube Website Marketing SEO

YouTube is well-known as one of the world’s largest social networks, the world’s 2nd largest search engine (by queries processed) and the world’s largest videos hosting platform.

However, most YouTube marketing advice is about optimizing for YouTube. There are plenty of guides to setting up your channel and optimizing your videos. There are podcast episodes and long-form guides to YouTube SEO and YouTube Analytics. But what about optimizing your YouTube presence to benefit your actual website?

Whenever you are marketing on a platform, you have to avoid the practice of “digital sharecropping” – where your active presence benefits the platform’s business more than your business.

Whether YouTube is a priority, a small side project, or you’re just using it to host videos right now, here’s how you can use YouTube to directly benefit your website’s marketing and SEO efforts. [Read more…] about 8+ Tips On Using YouTube For Your Website Marketing & SEO

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Use URL Builder: UTM Parameter Tagging Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated March 27, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use URL Builder_ UTM Parameter Tagging Effectively

So you’ve decided to create some custom marketing campaigns. That’s great! Before you roll out your email newsletters and social media ads, let’s talk about a tool that will help you immensely: the URL builder.

The URL Builder is a tool provided by Google that helps you add parameters to your custom campaigns, so Google Analytics can sort the data. It’s a quick and easy way to generate URLs by using the “plug and chug” method.

UTM Example

Google Analytics UTM

But in order to understand how to effectively use the URL Builder, you first have to understand campaign tagging itself. [Read more…] about How To Use URL Builder: UTM Parameter Tagging Effectively

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Analytics & Optimization

How To Advertise On Reddit: My Experience & 9 Ideas for Advertising on Reddit

Nate Shivar Updated March 22, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Advertise on Reddit

Reddit has generated 8 billion page views from nearly 234 million unique monthly visitors. It has thousands of targeted communities organized around every conceivable topic. It’s the largest, most influential and most engaged community/platform/website on the entire Internet. It’s the self-proclaimed Front Page of The Internet – and the home of the Internet’s tastemakers with the people most likely to talk and voice opinions.

[Read more…] about How To Advertise On Reddit: My Experience & 9 Ideas for Advertising on Reddit

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Advertising & Paid Marketing

Broken Link Building Guide: 6+ Tactics for Better Prospecting, Outreach & Links

Nate Shivar Updated March 21, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Broken Link Building Guide_ 6+ Tactics for Better Prospecting, Outreach & Links

Getting quality links to point to your site are a key part of ranking in organic search – and will be for the foreseeable future. But getting links for links sake will often do more harm than good.

Real, quality links that represent real people endorsing your website requires some legit marketing, hours invested in planning & outreach plus a bit of risk – something not a lot of businesses or agencies can afford.

Aside – Seasoned SEO? Skip down to the ideas here.

Broken link building is a link building strategy that aims to at least reduce the risk of lost investment. The general idea is straightforward:

  • Find links on a website to pages that no longer exist
  • Point out the dead links to the website owner
  • Have a similar or complementary page that can replace the broken URL

It’s a win all around. You get an editorially placed link, the website owner saves some time researching replacements, and the website’s users are no longer frustrated by 404 pages.

Broken link building reduces the risk of creating an unwanted content asset or page since you are replacing dead pages that already succeeded in getting links.

However, it can still be time-intensive to find the dead links & do smart, thoughtful, non-spammy outreach. Here’s how to prospect & do outreach much more efficiently & effectively.

[Read more…] about Broken Link Building Guide: 6+ Tactics for Better Prospecting, Outreach & Links

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Use WordPress Category & Tag Pages for SEO

Nate Shivar Updated March 20, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use WordPress Category & Tag Pages for SEO

One amazing, but underestimated, feature of WordPress are Category and Tag pages. Whenever you write a new post, you have the option to add that post to a category or tag the post.

When you add you post to the category/tag, WordPress creates an archive of all the posts in that category or with that tag. You can find them under Posts –> Tag or Posts –> Category on the WordPress Dashboard.

These category and tag pages are blank and are simply a list of posts by default. For people browsing your site, they can be useful if you’re consistent with your categorization & tagging…but for anyone not familiar with your site, they can be pretty useless.

In fact, if you have lots of random categories and tags – it can create a low quality/duplicate content issue & appear spammy to search engines. In my post on how to use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin, I recommended NOINDEX, FOLLOW category & tag pages to prevent any SEO-related penalties (ie, that tells search engines to click through to your posts, but not to serve them in search results).

But category & tag pages can be so much more for both your readers & search engines. And really, they just need some unique content explaining the category or tag. Here’s why you should build out your category & tag pages – and exactly how to use WordPress category & tag pages for SEO…

[Read more…] about How To Use WordPress Category & Tag Pages for SEO

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How To Judge Keyword Difficulty (aka “Can I Rank for [Keyword]?”)

Nate Shivar Updated March 16, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Judge Keyword Difficulty (aka “Can I Rank for [Keyword]_”)

Like I mentioned in How To Decide Which Keywords To Use: Keyword Research for Beginners – a key part of keyword research is judging keyword difficulty.

[Read more…] about How To Judge Keyword Difficulty (aka “Can I Rank for [Keyword]?”)

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15+ Ideas for Using Search Performance More Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated February 28, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

15+ Ideas for Using Search Analytics More Effectively

Search Performance (formerly ‘Search Analytics’) is one of the most useful tools in Google Search Console’s suite of tools. It provides a lot of data about how your website is performing in Google’s organic search results.

But like any data source – it is useless…unless you know how to put the data into action. Even though the best ways to use Search Console are specific to your website, there is a myriad of ways to put the data into action.

As of 2019, Google moved an all-new Google Search Console out of Beta. You can get access at search.google.com. It is different on multiple levels from the old Webmaster Tools / Search Console. I’ve reworked all the screenshots below to reflect the current Search Console (which also renamed the Search Analytics Report to the ‘Performance’ tab.

Search Performance

Either way, here are 15+ ways that I like to use Search Console to solve SEO problems. Hopefully, you’ll be find something to use or build on to put your own data into action. [Read more…] about 15+ Ideas for Using Search Performance More Effectively

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How To Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency: Dos, Don’ts & Processes

Nate Shivar Updated February 20, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency_ Dos, Don'ts & Processes

Search engine optimization is a process of making your website as relevant (ie, detailed and descriptive website content) & trustworthy (links from relevant and trustworthy websites) as possible so that search engines rank your site when people are searching for relevant keywords.

Hiring someone to help with marketing – specifically an SEO marketing campaign – can, unfortunately, be tough & confusing. But here are the Do’s & Don’ts along with processes I recommend when hiring an SEO consultant or agency:

[Read more…] about How To Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency: Dos, Don’ts & Processes

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How To Create & Automate More Image Link Building Opportunities

Nate Shivar Updated January 31, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Whether you are trying to increase referral traffic or organic traffic, links from other websites matter. But it’s also hard to generate links from lots of good websites passively or “at scale.”

Plenty of writers in the industry have written about how well building links with images can work.

The caveat is having link-worthy images in the first place. Website owners read these tactics and think – “my business doesn’t have any images to use for link-building! That’s a ton of work!”

But here’s the thing – you don’t need to create separate marketing assets for a separate SEO campaign. The key is to take marketing assets that you already have and efficiently re-purpose them for SEO and referral links.

And here’s how to create & automate more image link opportunities using images your business is creating anyway for social media, internal use or offline use.

[Read more…] about How To Create & Automate More Image Link Building Opportunities

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How To Use Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated January 24, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Use Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) Effectively

Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) is Google’s suite of tools, data & diagnostics to “help you have a healthy, Google-friendly site.”

It’s the only place to get search engine optimization information about your website directly from Google.

Side note – Bing has a separate but similar tool suite at Bing Webmaster Tools.

Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) is free. Any website can use it. But, simply installing it will not improve your SEO, or your organic traffic. It’s a toolset – which means you have to understand how to use Google Search Console effectively to make any difference on your website.

In 2018, Google has launched an all-new Google Search Console. It’s out of Beta and open to the public. If you are used to the old Webmaster Tools, much of the data & structure might be familiar. Many pieces were removed, but overall your access to data is much improved. There is way more data that is way more accessible than the old Webmaster Tools.

That said, it is still bit daunting to understand. This tutorial will go through what each feature is, what you should be using it for, and some ideas on being creative with it.

[Read more…] about How To Use Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) Effectively

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Why Your Keyword Rank Doesn’t Matter…and what actually does

Nate Shivar Updated January 21, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Why Your Keyword Rank Doesn't Matter...and what actually does

This post was originally published in 2012 – and the three trends that I said “killed” keyword rankings then have now been overshadowed by even larger trends. I’m going to update you on what has changed and what actually matters to you now.

In 2018, organic traffic & search engine optimization is a completely different world. Google’s Search Results Pages (SERPs) look different. Google Search has more features. More people are searching on mobile than desktop.

*Aside – throughout this piece, I will use “Google” in place of “search engine.” Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines matter, but Google has consistently driven the trends that I discuss – in addition to owning most of the marketshare.

And yet – “where does my website rank in Google” still feels like the right question to ask.

That’s because your keyword ranking does matter as a tool more than ever. But it matters less as a metric than it has since the late 2000s. [Read more…] about Why Your Keyword Rank Doesn’t Matter…and what actually does

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How To Pay $560 for 5 Website Visits (ie, How to Buy a Print Ad)

Nate Shivar Updated January 15, 2019 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Buy Print Ad

My marketing philosophy is to do something very different, really well, for a specific audience. It’s the “Blue Ocean Strategy” in business school jargon.

There’s no sense in ruthlessly competing over a small bit of marketing space when there’s plenty of room if you simply specialize and do something a bit differently.

This website is in the digital marketing “space” where every single one of my competitors uses Google Ads & Facebook Ads to attract visitors – which makes total sense.

However, instead of bidding on those networks (and spending hours optimizing & competing with PPC specialists), I’ve tried experimenting with other channels like advertising on Reddit, doing content discovery on Outbrain – and old school SEO off-page ideas.

But what about advertising in print? Like – a magazine. People obviously still read them – plenty are still in business. And it may very well be the case that since so much time and focus for websites is spent on online advertising – print might be a good idea. It’s counter-intuitive & very ironic for a digital marketing blog, but I figured I’d have a go at it even though I had no idea what I was doing.

Print Ad Featured Image

I thought learning the process might be worthwhile…and even if my cost per visitor was really high – I’d get a really cool blog post & lots of lessons out of it. Besides, surely a print ad would drive some visitors (I thought). Here’s my experiment on how to buy a print ad, what to consider to make it a success, and what to really look at when allocating budget between print ads vs. online ads.

[Read more…] about How To Pay $560 for 5 Website Visits (ie, How to Buy a Print Ad)

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LinkedIn Company / Business Page Best Practices w/ Examples

Nate Shivar Updated January 11, 2019 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

LinkedIn Company _ Business Page Best Practices w_ Examples

A LinkedIn Company (or business) page is an excellent way to keep people informed about your company, brands, products and services and job opportunities. Creating a page for your business is fairly straightforward. But, like any platform, you’ll be much more effective if you dig into the manual, apply best practices, add your own creative touches, analyze then improve.

[Read more…] about LinkedIn Company / Business Page Best Practices w/ Examples

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How To Find Trending Topics for Social Optimized Content

Nate Shivar Updated December 7, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Find Trending Topics for Social Optimized Content

What’s hot? What’s are the trending topics getting shared? Creating content around trending content can build entire businesses and feeds the content-social-sharing mill that is the Internet.

I’ve written about how to find pre-qualified “evergreen” content ideas for search. In other words, how to research and find content ideas that you know will work well for organic traffic.

Finding prequalified content ideas around trending topics is a bit trickier – there’s much more noise. But it can be done, BuzzFeed certainly doesn’t guess at ideas. They have tools that help them identify and bubble up winners.

If you are a website owner trying to go viral and get ahead on a trend, you may not have a proprietary listening tool, but you can certainly do plenty of deep research to find the next trending topic to cover.

You may have seen Twitter Trends and you may stalk BuzzFeed Trending but here are several free (or mostly free) tools & sources for trending topic ideas.

[Read more…] about How To Find Trending Topics for Social Optimized Content

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How to Understand & Use Pinterest Analytics

Nate Shivar Updated October 24, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How to Understand & Use Pinterest Analytics

You already know social media analytics can be a powerful tool in your marketing toolkit. Not only can they tell you about how your content performs on social (like Twitter & YouTube)… but the data can also give you tons of insight into your target audience and new potential business opportunities. Pinterest is no different.

Pinterest Analytics is a powerful social media tool that allows you to see what people Pin from your profile and website, as well as what your audience enjoys to pin outside of your own content.

[Read more…] about How to Understand & Use Pinterest Analytics

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Google Correlate: How To Use It For Marketing, SEO & Content

Nate Shivar Updated August 14, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

Google Correlate_ How To Use It For Marketing, SEO & Content

Google Correlate is a tool that Google rolled out in 2011. It’s a close cousin to Google Trends – well, it’s actually Google Trends in reverse (and just as powerful).

Google has announced that it will shut down Correlate on December 15th 2019 due to low usage. Be sure to get your data while you can! I’ll leave this post up because I think the approach is useful – even if you have to “hack” new tools (like Trends & Ahrefs) to get similar-ish data that Google Correlate provides.

Since it’s launch it has received some buzz and become a useful tool among academics, but it’s never become a part of the standard toolset among marketers the way Google Trends has.

There are a lot of reasons for that. Google hasn’t publicized Correlate the way it has the general Trends toolset. Correlate even has features that sporadically break. But I think the slow adoption is because marketers don’t realize the potential of Google Correlate – or even how it works.

According to Google, it is –

a tool on Google Trends which enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide (e.g., a data set of event counts over time) or a query that you enter.

In other words, the pattern generates the keywords rather than the keywords generating the pattern. So you do have to think in reverse.

Before we go into specific use cases for Google Correlate – a couple notes on caveats.

First, Google Correlate does not pull absolute search volume. Just like Trends, it is based on the share of total volume. All terms are relative to each other. You still need to use Keyword Planner or another keyword research tool to find search volume.

Second, correlation does not equal causation. Just because terms correlate with each other does not mean they share a causal relationship. There’s a lot of noise in the Correlate data, but plenty of hidden gems too. You’ll have to use your best judgment.

Here are five ways to use Google Correlate and integrate it into your marketing research toolset.

[Read more…] about Google Correlate: How To Use It For Marketing, SEO & Content

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How To Advertise on Yelp Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated July 18, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Advertise on Yelp Effectively (1)

Word of mouth has always been one of the most powerful tools businesses have at their disposal to increase conversions and generate leads. But, since word of mouth is as much a phenomena as it is an actual method for driving sales to your business, it’s rather difficult to achieve at scale. You can’t just make people spread the word.

Now, it’s not uncommon for you to develop a loyal following that’s eager to share your business, especially if you offer quality services or products. Unfortunately, this advocacy can only take you as far as that person’s network.

Enter Yelp. Yelp is basically a word of mouth megaphone online. Your business’ page on Yelp provides essential information about your business, including real reviews from your customers.

Now, what people are saying about your business can extend far beyond their network, and everyone viewing your page on Yelp will be able to see what your customers are saying about you.

This is an exceptionally powerful tool for you to leverage. But, succeeding as an advertiser on Yelp isn’t quite as simple as claiming your business page and paying for ads. Before jumping in, there are several things you’ll need to consider.

Today, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about Yelp, how it relates to your business and the different ways you may be able to use Yelp as a tool to drive new business through your doors. [Read more…] about How To Advertise on Yelp Effectively

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How To Advertise on Snapchat Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated July 18, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Advertise on Snapchat Effectively (1)

The digital marketing landscape is evolving quicker than ever before. While print and more traditional mediums still have their place, those who want to take their platforms to the next level need to embrace the new digital landscape. And no platforms are more influential to your business than the social media, including Snapchat.

Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter are common social media vehicles to advertise. However, because Snapchat is so new, many businesses don’t know how or don’t want to leverage the platform to their advantage. And I think that’s a great mistake on their end.

By explicitly targeting specific demographics and meaningfully engaging with them, Snapchat offers a variety of tangible benefits to growing your business.

Scroll through to learn more about Snapchat and how to advertise on Snapchat, one of the most popular social media networks in the world. [Read more…] about How To Advertise on Snapchat Effectively

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How To Advertise on Groupon Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated July 18, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Advertise on Groupon Effectively

The odds are that if you’ve been scouring the web for a deal, you’ve come across Groupon. In recent years, Groupon has become a touchstone for people who are looking for great deals on quality services, products, and more. And advertising your business on Groupon can put you in touch with the millions of people who use the platform each day.

Honestly, Groupon is one of the least utilized advertising platforms around. Using this eCommerce platform means that you won’t have to compete as much with competitors for advertising real estate. And utilizing it efficiently can help attract repeat customers, increase brand recognition, and make more profit along the way.

So, save some paper and embrace the era of digital couponing we’re all living in right now. Here’s how you can advertise your business or brand on Groupon. [Read more…] about How To Advertise on Groupon Effectively

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How To Advertise On Pinterest Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated July 17, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Advertise On Pinterest Effectively (1)

Pinterest was launched in 2010 and has grown to at least 200 million monthly active users in 2017. The social sharing platform is designed to help people discover information on the internet. Just creating an account on Pinterest can draw viewers to your brand.

Pinning content from your own website puts it in front of a new audience. Even pinning other people’s content can draw followers to your Pinterest account. You can get useful analytics data from your account. Optimizing the SEO of your Pinterest boards can boost their organic search rankings in Google. And, all of these strategies are free.

The platform began experimenting with monetizing certain pins in 2014, initiating an effective way for companies to advertise. Nowadays, advertisers can create Promoted Pins, which show up alongside all of the other pins on the page. In this image, you can see that the pin that says “Get 500% more traffic” indicates that it’s promoted by Pinterest in the description below it:

In this case, Pinterest is using its platform to advertise tips for businesses. It’s always encouraging to see a company using its own advertising services. That’s one way to know that the system works.

[Read more…] about How To Advertise On Pinterest Effectively

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How to Advertise on Pandora Effectively

Nate Shivar Updated July 16, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How to Advertise on Pandora Effectively (1)

For much of the 20th century, radio was a dominant advertising platform. Every operation from the nation’s largest companies to small and mid-sized local businesses allocated much of their advertising budgets towards advertising on the radio each year.

Radio has always provided effective opportunities to build a brand or drive awareness about a product or service. Compared to print or television ads, they’re also more affordable.

Plus, the radio remains the only advertising medium that’s inherently portable. Through radio, you can reach people at home, and while they’re away. Other avenues, such as print, digital, or television, require that the user is paying attention, either to a screen or what’s on a page.

Of course, radio ads weren’t without their flaws. They were expensive, they were virtually impossible to track or determine an ROI on, and people would often switch stations to avoid hearing ads in the first place.

As new advertising products become available, traditional radio advertising grows continually less popular. For many businesses, radio advertising isn’t a strong fit for their advertising needs anymore.

While the popularity of traditional radio has declined, a new way to listen to the radio has breathed new life into the industry and restored radio’s usefulness as an advertising medium.

Internet radio solves many of the problems that were inherent in traditional radio advertising. It’s affordable, it’s highly targeted, and it’s easier to track, and it may make a useful addition to your advertising portfolio. Of the internet radio providers, Pandora is by far the largest, and most compelling for advertisers of all sizes.

Whether you’re a national brand, a mid-sized company, or a local business that’s looking to reach a specific type of customer in your area, Pandora has ad products that are geared to your needs and may work well for your business.

This raises the question of how to advertise on Pandora. Today, we’ll cover the ins and outs of how you can advertise on this popular platform, and the different products Pandora offers. [Read more…] about How to Advertise on Pandora Effectively

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How to Write Better Email Copy for eCommerce Stores

Nate Shivar Updated April 24, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How to Write Better Email Copy for eCommerce Stores

Email can be a powerful way to connect with your eCommerce customers. But you already know that.

Chances are, you’ve landed here because you’re looking to make your emails better.

In order to keep your email list engaged and taking action, your actual emails have to be good… which means the copy (AKA the words in the email) needs to get the job done.

So, how do you improve your email copy for your eCommerce store? Here are 5+ email copywriting rules to follow.

[Read more…] about How to Write Better Email Copy for eCommerce Stores

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How to Retain Email Subscribers

Nate Shivar Updated April 5, 2018 By ShivarWeb Staff

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How to Retain Email Subscribers (1)

Did you know it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one? Or that by increasing your retention rate by just 5%, you can increase your profits by 25-95%?

Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk email marketing.

Email marketing is one of the top ways to retain customers. But in order to do that, we’ve got to keep people on our list.

Unfortunately, a lot of business owners put too much emphasis on growing the list instead of retaining the subscribers they have. Meanwhile, they’re losing subscribers left and right, sometimes before they even get the first welcome email.

In order to make email marketing an effective retention technique, we’ve got to retain subscribers. Here’s how to do it.

[Read more…] about How to Retain Email Subscribers

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7+ Ways To Do Better Competitor Research for SEO & Content Marketing

Nate Shivar Updated March 27, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

7+ Ways To Do Better Competitor Research for SEO & Content Marketing

You won’t get ahead in any industry if you simply copy your competitors. And this is especially true in SEO & content marketing.

Competitor research for SEO is really tough because…

  • Nobody truly knows what they are doing.
  • Confirmation bias is the default.
  • Being different has a bigger payoff than being better.
  • Your competitors are probably copying you.
  • And a myriad other reasons.

But – you’re probably going to do it anyway so here’s a few things I do to make it a little more useful. [Read more…] about 7+ Ways To Do Better Competitor Research for SEO & Content Marketing

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

How To Track Right-Click Events & Goals in Google Analytics

Nate Shivar Updated February 7, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Track Right-Click Events & Goals in Google Analytics

You probably know that a large portion of your traffic numbers in Google Analytics is either bullsh*t, spam, or straight-up wrong.

But you know that already. Even if you are tracking everything that you should track – there are still plenty of “unknown unknowns” in Google Analytics.

Like the fact that you did not know that Google Analytics does not track right-clicks (or any non-left click).

Think about how you browse the Internet. Right-clicking all the time, right?

Now think about those PDF downloads and external clicks that you are tracking as Goals in Google Analytics.

Yep – all wrong.

So here’s how to fix it – and track right-click events in Google Analytics as goals. [Read more…] about How To Track Right-Click Events & Goals in Google Analytics

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Analytics & Optimization

How To Set Up Free DIY Brand Monitoring & Social Listening

Nate Shivar Updated January 29, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Set Up Free DIY Brand Monitoring & Social Listening

One of the most incredible things about the Internet is that you can see what people are saying about you – for better and for worse. In fact, there’s a whole industry (and government agencies…) dedicated to social media listening tools, tracking and monitoring.

The information from paid industry tools can be valuable, especially if you have the team and resources to use and act on the data. But social listening tools are expensive. Even cheap ones can really add up if you can’t act on the information.

So what if you’re just a DIY website owner, blogger, or small business owner interested in monitoring your brand online without monthly fees or daunting dashboards (or low-quality “free” ones)? That’s what this guide is for – how monitor your brand & website across the Internet for free yourself… [Read more…] about How To Set Up Free DIY Brand Monitoring & Social Listening

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

14+ Website Marketing Data To Track Now or Lose Forever

Nate Shivar Updated January 11, 2018 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

14+ Website Marketing Data To Track Now or Lose Forever

Most marketers and website owners agree that you should make decisions based on data.

But too often, marketers and website owners think of data as something that you can go acquire on demand. Some data is available on demand. But there is some data that once it’s gone – it is gone forever.

If you aren’t recording and storing it, you can never access it to create reports, run analysis, make decisions or launch a campaign.

In other words, some data is like a lake. It’s a body of water that you can access simply because it’s there. But some marketing data is more like a pipeline. If you aren’t filling it up on one end and channeling it as it flows – you’ll never get to use it.

I’ve gone to optimize websites and kicked off client engagements only to realize “Oh, actually I have no data to base recommendations on” – so here’s my list of 14+ website marketing data that you need to track now or lose forever. [Read more…] about 14+ Website Marketing Data To Track Now or Lose Forever

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Analytics & Optimization

How To Filter Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic

Nate Shivar Updated December 15, 2016 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Filter Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic

The great wonderful world of Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic – the most recent in a long tradition sending irrelevant or inappropriate messages on the Internet to a large number of people. This guide outlines why it matters, what’s going on, and most importantly, exactly what to do about it (skip to that section here).

EDIT 12-15-2016: Google has not developed a global solution. In fact, GA spam is worse than ever. And with the latest wave of spam in November, the most reliable methods are not effective. Your best bet is to keep “layering” all the defenses that I mention below. Additionally, keep learning what you can do with Analytics, and look carefully for spoofed traffic.

EDIT 7-24-2015: Google has announced that they are looking into a global solution. Additionally, Analytics Edge has released a plug and play Advanced Segment for Google Analytics that implements most of what I explore below.

Either way, if you want to understand what is going on with referral spam, keep reading!

You’ve probably recently logged into your Google Analytics account and seen odd domains like darodar.com, buttons-for-website.com, hulfingtonpost, and countless others in your referral report.

Or, you’ve checked your organic keyword report and seen “ilovevitaly SEM”

Or, you’ve seen a giant spike in direct/(none) traffic that spikes one day then goes away.

Or, you’ve seen visits to URLs that are not anywhere on your site (not even hacked pages).

Example of Google Analytics Referral Spam

[Read more…] about How To Filter Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic

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5 Free Beginner SEO Tools From Google & How to Use Them

Nate Shivar Updated October 4, 2016 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

5 Free Beginner SEO Tools From Google & How to Use Them

Here’s an open secret for anyone starting a website: Google loves SEO. It makes their job easier. They provide free Starter Guides To SEO. They provide a very deep and detailed guide to website best practices. And best of all – they provide free SEO tools that you can wield to improve your website & content. If you are starting out and looking for just beginner SEO tools – this is huge.

No need to buy expensive software. No need to get in-depth training courses for only $$$. There are plenty of amazing tools out there – but with a little know-how, you can start getting search traffic to your site with these free tools from Google. Here they are and how to use them… [Read more…] about 5 Free Beginner SEO Tools From Google & How to Use Them

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: SEO & Content Strategy

What Is Bounce Rate & How Should You Use It?

Nate Shivar Updated September 9, 2016 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

What Is Bounce Rate & How Should You Use It_

Bounce rate can be a great metric when evaluating how people interact with your overall website and individual pages. Yet, it’s one of the more mystifying metrics in analytics, mainly because there are a ton of misconceptions about what bounce rate actually is and what it means.

To provide some clarity, I’ll be diving into what bounce rate is, what it isn’t, and some proper ways to look at the metric in order to garner real insights about your site.   [Read more…] about What Is Bounce Rate & How Should You Use It?

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Analytics & Optimization

How To Send Better Email & Avoid Email Spam Trigger Words

Nate Shivar Updated July 8, 2016 By Nate Shivar

Disclosure: ShivarWeb may receive a commission when you purchase from companies mentioned on this site. All data & opinions are based on our experience as customers or consultants to customers.

How To Send Better Email & Avoid Email Spam Trigger Words

Email can be an incredibly effective way to connect with your customers and improve your business.

Chances are, you landed here because no one is opening your emails (or your “open rate” is low). Perhaps you suspect that your email campaigns are getting marked as spam, meaning they’re immediately sent where email goes to die… the spam folder.

So, how do you avoid spam filters? How do you get your audience to actually engage with your emails? [Read more…] about How To Send Better Email & Avoid Email Spam Trigger Words

Read More Posts in This Topic! Filed Under: Social Media & Email Marketing

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