Misc

17 Best Amazon Affiliate Alternatives In 2024 (More Profits)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 08:45:24 +0000

The Amazon affiliate program is often the go-to for new affiliates, but this may not be wise. It potentially costs you thousands in lost income due to Amazon’s consistently reducing commission rates, making income growth challenging. As someone who’s faced the challenges and limitations of the Amazon affiliate program, I’ve explored various alternatives to unlock greater earning potential. I’m excited to share my tried-and-tested recommendations with you, helping you increase your revenue without the need for additional traffic. Let’s delve into the world of alternative affiliate programs that can truly elevate your earnings. Alternative Affiliate Networks Now, we’re going to take a look at some more affiliate networks out there that offer an alternative to Amazon’s affiliate program and a way to boost your affiliate income. The main reasons for considering non-Amazon affiliate networks as an alternative are higher commission rates, and you can speak to a dedicated affiliate manager in many cases. Not just some nameless customer service soul at the other end of an email form or phone call who knows less about affiliate marketing than you do. 1. Shareasale ShareASale is one of the best affiliate networks to work with. This affiliate network has been in business for over 20 years, has Awin as its parent company, and has thousands of merchants to choose from. But they also feature lots of advertisers you won’t find elsewhere, which means you can find emerging niches here. Finding offers to promote is straightforward, even if their dashboard looks a little bit dated. You can filter available programs using everything from EPC (Earnings per Click), to ShareASale’s in-house ‘Power Rank’ scoring system. So you won’t have to spend all day trawling through thousands of advertisers to find the handful you want to promote on your niche site. 2. CJ Affiliate By Conversant Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate by Conversant) is probably the biggest affiliate network in the world, both by reputation and the caliber of the merchants they have on their books. Their advertiser portfolio reads like a list of some of the world’s biggest brand names, e.g. Zappos, VistaPrint, Walgreens, Xfinity, Verizon, Trip Advisor, TK Maxx, etc. The signup process is relatively straightforward, as is applying to affiliate offers. But if you want to speed up the approval process: You’ll find that makes your approval for programs go a lot more smoothly. You also get all the usual creatives for programs and the ability to generate deep links to products. This affiliate network has been a favorite among affiliate enthusiats for a long time now and is one of the best alternatives to Amazon’s program. 3. Impact Impact Radius is one of the newer affiliate platforms in the world of affiliate marketing and was founded by some of the same people who set up Commission Junction. Their goal was to create a new type of network focused on high-quality relationships with partners rather than just high-volume relationships. But they’re still an affiliate platform with offers you can promote – a mixture of over five hundred CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and CPS (Cost per Sale). So there’s the potential here for you to earn a lot of affiliate revenue. The only downside for beginners is that it appears to be very easy to get declined when applying to their network. But you can still apply to programs on their network (Target, etc) separately and get approved. 4. Rakuten Advertising Rakuten Advertising is a Japanese company with a significant presence in the online retail market in Japan and Asia. They acquired Linkshare in 2005 and currently manage the affiliate programs of over one thousand advertisers. What makes this a great network to work with is that you can promote global brands such as Kodak, Macy’s, Lego, Microsoft, Dyson, Klarna, Telus, and hundreds of others. But you also get to work with smaller, more niche companies too. The signup process is relatively straightforward, and they tend to approve most new affiliate applications pretty quickly. The interface is a little dated but the sheer quality of their advertisers more than makes up for it. 5. Awin AWIN has over 16,000 advertisers on their books that generated a total of $10.8 billion in sales last year. This also means that Awin affiliates are also making a lot of money. Awin is also the only network that charges a $5 fee (refundable) to sign up with them. But it does seem to limit the number of time wasters signing up with this Amazon alternative. Something else to like about Awin is that while they do work with major brand names like Qatar Airways, AliExpress, Etsy, and HP, they’re also a great place to find smaller, emerging brands with a ton of potential. 6. OfferVault OfferVault is different from the other affiliate platforms featured in this guide because it’s neither a network nor a direct affiliate program. Instead, it’s a free-to-register-for search engine that allows you to find many other affiliate networks and offers with just a few clicks of your mouse. The programs and networks featured do lean more towards CPA and CPL offers. So you can expect to find networks like MaxBounty and TerraLeads popping up in their search results, but not Commission Junction or ShareASale. But if you are looking for affiliate programs that pay out anywhere up to $2,900 per lead, then OfferVault is an excellent place to start. Just be prepared to work with smaller advertisers in very competitive niches against other – probably very experienced – affiliate marketers. 7. ClickBank Next up on our list of alternative affiliate programs is ClickBank, a network with a difference because its advertisers sell a mixture of physical and digital products. The physical products are often health supplements, whereas the digital offerings span everything from gardening, politics, and herbal remedies to games, personal finance, and how to make money online. Selling digital products as an affiliate makes a lot of sense… Your customers get their order immediately, and you can earn a whole lot of money promoting the right products. The top-performing offers on ClickBank pay up to $200 – $400 for a single referral. The trick with ClickBank is finding a winning offer in a market that’s not completely saturated. But if you can do that, then it’s entirely possible to make 5-figures per month with this network. Our first stop is to look at Amazon’s direct competitors in the e-commerce space i.e. other companies that sell lots of different stuff and are happy to pay you a commission for hooking them up with new customers. Niche Solutions I’m a big fan of not going wide with a huge authority site when you first start out in the affiliate marketing game. My advice is to go narrow and deep using smaller networks and niche affiliate programs that focus on very specific audiences. They also tend to pay some of the best commission rates. There are lots of other great affiliate programs out there to choose from. Here are some of my favorites. 8. Fan Fuel I’m a big fan of the health and fitness vertical and have several profitable affiliate sites operating in that specific niche. And one of my favorite networks to work with is FanFuel. Unlike most other networks, they manufacture their own range of health supplements, including bodybuilding products, weight loss supplements, beauty treatments, overall wellness supplements, and nootropics. FanFuel markets its products using a number of active professional athletes and fitness influencers to build its brand presence. They have a very attractive commission structure, a good selection of payment options, and their landing pages also do a great job of converting qualified traffic. This is one of the best Amazon affiliate alternatives if you’re in the health, beauty, or fitness niches. 9. Market Health Market Health is both an affiliate program and network. The network is basically used to host their offers and manage their affiliate publishers and other assets. And it’s a winning combination. From an affiliate’s perspective, you get to work directly with a marketing-savvy manufacturer who’s willing to pay you a minimum commission of $40 for each sale you generate for them. Their health and beauty products cover everything from acne treatments to colon health and anti-aging creams and even pet products. So there’s enough variety in their offerings to span several niches. 10. Travel Payouts Travel Payouts started in 2011 as a site to help people find cheap flights, before developing its own affiliate program, and then finally becoming an affiliate network. And they’ve paid out over $28 million in affiliate commissions since those early days. International travel obviously experienced a serious downturn during the recent pandemic. But despite this, the travel industry is recovering and will reach pre-pandemic levels in the not-too-distant future. So now is a good time to position yourself ahead of that uptick with some solid travel affiliate programs. Travel Payouts is home to 100 such CPA offers from leading brand names for flights, hotels, car hire, and much more – their top affiliates Read More Read More

The post 17 Best Amazon Affiliate Alternatives In 2024 (More Profits) first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

How To Hire Employees For An Affiliate Marketing Team

Ugis Balmaks — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 17:36:20 +0000

There are clear benefits to building a high-functioning affiliate marketing team. You can achieve more faster, at a higher quality, and lower cost. But there is usually a downside. Hiring employees can be one of the most frustrating parts of running a business. That certainly was my experience scaling my previous business from 5 to high-7 figures – especially early on. Over the years, though, I figured out how to stack the odds in my favor when hiring employees. In fact, my new company does just that. Recruiter Mill helps online businesses hire A-Players in 6 weeks or less. I’ll share my expertise and insights on building a successful affiliate marketing team in this article. Quick Summary Planning Your Next Successful Hire Most affiliate marketing teams will only need a handful of different roles. Let’s look at each in detail. Below, you will find out when each role should be your next hire, whether to hire full-time or part-time, which countries to hire from, what salaries to pay employees, and what skills to pay special attention to. Hiring Virtual Assistants (VAs) When Should I Hire a Virtual Assistant? You should hire a VA if you’re bogged down by admin work like uploading content, creating simple images, scheduling social media posts, measuring KPIs, etc. VAs can do all that for you at a low cost. And they’re usually quite easy to find. One thing to watch out for is expecting too much of your VA. At $3-$6/h they’re unlikely to be able to do EVERYTHING well. A good way to determine whether you can entrust a task to a VA is by creating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). That’s a document that describes the exact steps that need to be taken to accomplish the task. If the SOP is straightforward, your odds of success are high. If the SOP has lots of intricacies and requires creativity, your VA will need prior experience with this type of task or extensive training. A Virtual Assistant will often be your first employee. Should You Hire a Part-Time or Full-Time Virtual Assistant? You should hire a full-time virtual assistant if the tasks add up to 40 hours per week. List all the tasks you expect your VA to do on a regular basis. If it adds up to 40 hours per week or close to it, go for a full-time VA. If not, find a freelancer. Which Country to Hire Virtual Assistants From? The country you can hire Virtual Assistants from is The Philippines. The Philippines offers the best value for the price. Filipinos speak great English, and they have a large VA market. What Salary Should I Pay a Full-Time Virtual Assistant? You should pay a full-time virtual assistant anywhere from $500-$1000/month. Which Skills Should I Pay Attention to When Hiring a Virtual Assistant? You should pay attention to their communication skills, time-management skills as well as technical proficiency. As you’ll see throughout this article, testing a candidate’s ability with a real-world task before bringing them on is a key step in any hiring process. The best way to test a VA’s ability is to ask them to follow an SOP you already have in your business. If they can do it fast and accurately, you have a high chance of success. If not, they’re likely not the right person. Hiring Link Builders When Should I Hire a Link Builder? You should hire a Link Builder if you already have high-quality content on your site. In that case, link building is usually the most efficient way to increase your SEO traffic. Should You Hire a Part-Time or Full-Time Link Builder (Or a Link Building Agency)? You should hire a full-time link builder if your site already has a lot of content and a part-time link builder if not. As a rule of thumb, a single Link Builder can build 20-30 links per month from Domain Rating (DR) 30-50 sites. They can build more links if you’re fine with backlinks from lower-DR sites. And fewer if you want links from higher-DR sites. If your site has enough quality content to build this amount of links monthly, you can safely hire a full-time Link Builder. If not – or if you want to save on total cost – you can go for a part-time Link Builder. Just know that the price per link will be higher when you employ freelancers. It’s best to hire an agency if you don’t have the know-how, interest, or time to manage Link Builders. This will be the most expensive option, of course. Which Country to Hire Link Builders From? Your first choice when hiring Link Builders should be Serbia and most other former-Yugoslavian countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Montenegro). You can also consider South Africa. They offer the best value for the price. Your second choice should be Ukraine. While the salaries in Ukraine are slightly lower, the average quality of Link Builders is not as high as in the Balkans and South Africa. Despite the war in Ukraine, the job market there is still active. Your third choice should be the rest of Eastern Europe. The salaries there are slightly higher without a significant difference in quality. Finally, your fourth choice should be the Philippines. While the salaries here are lower than in the countries mentioned above, the quality from one Link Builder to another is inconsistent and lower on average. What Salary Should I Pay a Full-Time Link Builder? Which Skills Should I Pay Attention to When Hiring a Link Builder? The simplest way to determine whether a Link Builder will work out is to ask for samples of outreach they’ve used. Seeing 1-2 initial messages will tell you whether this Link Builder follows the best practices for blogger outreach. Hiring Content Writers And Editors When Should I Hire Content Writers and an Editor? You should hire content writers and an editor when you have at least 10 well-written articles on your blog AND when you have (at least) 40 other articles you want to be written. Do not assume that your Content Writers or Editor will do the keyword research for you. While some people can do both well, it’s usually not the case. It’s important to note that finding great Content Writers and Editors is very hard. Almost every authority site owner I know struggles with it. So if you ever find top talent for these job roles, hold onto them. It doesn’t happen often. Should You Hire Part-Time or Full-Time Content Writers and Editors? You should hire full-time content writers if you are looking for more consistency and easier management. But this depends on your preferences. Most professional writers want variety in their work, so they choose part-time engagements. This means that part-time Content Writers and Editors are easier to find. But in general, part-time employees are more difficult to manage. There’s a baseline of management time new employees need. If they don’t work full-time, you put in roughly the same management time for less content produced. Part-time work is usually more difficult for the employee to manage successfully. It’s just harder to focus on multiple projects at a time. Which Country to Hire Content Writers and Editors From? You should hire content writers from either Western English-speaking countries or the Philippines. For the highest quality, go for qualified candidates from Western English-speaking countries. If you want to save on costs, the Philippines is likely your best option. What Salary Should I Pay Content Writers and Editors? The salary you should pay content writers and editors will depend on where your writers are from. I’m hesitant to provide exact numbers for these roles because I’ve had less success with them. Editors from Western English-speaking countries command salaries of at least $20/h – and often much higher. Content Writers are usually paid less. To give you an idea, one of my clients got a steady stream of US-based applicants, offering $0.05-0.06/word. To be fair, none of the hundreds of candidates blew them away. You can expect to pay around $1500/month for an editor in the Philippines. I’ve seen great Content Writers from the Philippines that were paid $0.03/word. Which Skills Should I Pay Attention to When Hiring Content Writers and Editors? You should pay attention to their research skills and attention to detail. The best way to see if they will be a good fit is to ask them to write or edit an article for you. Since Content Writers are used to working on more than one project at a time, you can start slow and assign more work to them as they gain your confidence. Hiring SEO Managers When Should I Hire an SEO Manager? You should hire an SEO Manager if you have a project you’re ready to let someone else run. By now, your time is better spent on other aspects of running the business. Should You Hire a Part-Time or Full-Time SEO Manager? You should hire a full-time SEO Read More Read More

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Matt Diggity’s Favorite Purchases of 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 02:46:49 +0000

2020 has been quite the year, hasn’t it? I know I personally have found solace through these troubling times by doing what always makes me feel better when I’m down: buying massive amounts of material things! Jokes aside. I have stumbled upon some impactful products and services throughout the year that I’d like to share with you, just like I do every year, with no affiliate links. Here’s a list of my favorite purchases of 2020. Productivity Kindle + Audible Combination I’ve always had a Kindle for reading e-books. I’ve always had Audible for listing to audiobooks on my iPhone. But this year I finally discovered using them at the same fucking time!! Read the book visually on your Kindle while the audiobook is being read to you at 1.5x – 2x speed. You’ll devour books at lightspeed, but the absorption level remains high, as if you were reading. You can even have the Kindle app on iPad manage both services for an even better experience (it highlights the text as it reads to you). Note: you have to buy both the eBook and the audio versions of a book, but I tell you, this is a gamechanger. Samsung 34″ Ultra-Wide Monitor I was in the dual-screen camp for a long time. I don’t know why it took me so long to try an ultra-wide. I guess I thought things would look goofy all stretched out over a huge screen. Now, I can’t go back. Work is more efficient, gaming is significantly better, and my overall enjoyment of my 2nd wife (my PC) is higher. The only downside is that if you do any type of screen capture using PowerPoint, you’ll have to keep a 16:9 resolution monitor on hand, otherwise your video is going to get stretched out. Personal Finance WealthFront I’ve stayed away from stock investing for the past 6 years. Namely because of a bad experience with a financial advisor, combined with not knowing what the hell I’m doing. We’ll talk about this later. Now, let’s get this straight, I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and you should assume that any personal finance information you get from a guy who ranks weight loss pills on the internet is suspect. But I’m a fan of the whole robo-investment strategy that helps laymen like me create a balanced portfolio, does tax-loss harvesting, re-invests, and rebalances automatically. Play at your own risk, and all that, yadda yadda… Health Strategene A few years ago I mentioned 23 and Me DNA sequencing as a favorite purchase of that year. What Strategene does is it runs a similar DNA saliva-type test through a gene-sequencing software and creates a report of all your gene variations. Ok, great, so what does that mean? Well, I’m big-time into biohacking and I know that I should be sleeping well, getting enough vitamins, etc… but that’s advice for everybody, isn’t it? Knowing your gene map tells you what your own body is deficient in and what you can do to supplement and improve. And I can tell you, I feel and look a lot different than I did last year. Bear in mind, Strategene spits out a decent report, but you’ll 10x the value from it by talking to an educated physician who specializes in this kind of stuff. I can provide a reference if you’re interested. Yoga Tune Up Balls If you like a little bit of self-inflicted S&M, these little balls (not the red gag balls that go in your mouth) do wonders for releasing tight muscles – especially in your feet, glutes, and I.T. bands. Step on them and roll them around at your standing or sitting desk. It hurts while you’re doing it, but feels amazing after. Philips goLITE BLU I position this light about 45 degrees to the side of my face and turn it on in the morning for 20 minutes. What it does is tells your body, “Hey, it’s day time. Wake up and give this man some energy and produce from vitamin D.” It’s a great replacement for caffeine and a complete hack when it comes to resetting your clock when you’re jet-lagged. Rescue Sleep Liquid Melts Of course, we can’t have a product recommendation list from me that doesn’t involve sleep hacking. I feel like I’ve got my sleep pretty dialed in. But, like many of you, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night (usually to drain the lizard) and just can’t fall back to sleep. Pop one of these under your tongue and the magical oils just give me enough of a push to calm down my monkey mind and get back to sleep, when in a pinch. Entertainment Steezy – Online Dance Studio This thing saved my life during lockdowns in March and April. You may not know this, but I’ve been involved in a street dance called “Popping” since I was 19 years old. You could say I’m retired from it these days, but from time-to-time, I still like to cut it up. My wife and I got into Steezy during the lockdown and it was a blast. You can learn from literally the best dancers in any street dance genre from their incredible platform. Books Shoe Dog – Phil Knight Written by the founder of Nike, he takes you through the conception and growth of the world-famous Nike brand. It’s a treat to read (99% sure its ghostwritten) and you’ll love every moment of it. What I love best about this book is that it really humanizes this idea we have of mega-successful founders. Just like many of you who are figuring things out along the way, Knight was the same. Money Master the Game – Tony Robbins This was my first Tony Robbins book. Not sure why. I guess I had a subconscious blockage because my first encounter with him was from “Shallow Hal”. I read this book at the right time. After telling myself for 6-years that “stocks are too high” and “I’ll take a look whenever we see a dip”… well, the dip happened, so I dug in. I like the investing philosophy of this book: low fee index funds + diversity + long hold time = winning. And since reading Money Master the Game, of course, most personal finance books say the same thing – because it’s the most successful strategy (for the masses) to date. But as you can expect from someone like Tony, he puts a passion into it which, I gotta say, gets you pumped up. Angel – Jason Calacanis Angel investing is like playing the lottery, but with better odds, if you know what you’re doing. I want to know what I’m doing when I’m placing big bets, so I took my buddy Travis Jamison’s advice and picked up this book. Angel is a no-bullshit playbook for angel investment from one of the best angels in the Silicon Valley. Highly recommended. Die with Zero – Bill Perkins Despite my last two books being recommendations on how to masse enough money to rule the universe, this one is about spending it. Not on “stuff”, but the experiences that really enrich your life. The main thesis is that money has more value to you when you’re young. For example, $10k can create a first-class dream holiday for my family skiing and snowboarding in the French Alps. But when I’m 80, that $10k is going to diapers. Better to spend it now when its going to create the most joy in your life, rather than horde it all for a day that may never even come. Thanks for reading. For more inspiration, check back on the previous years. 2017 2018 2019 Got Questions or Comments? Join the discussion here on Facebook. 2020 has been quite the year, hasn’t it? I know I personally have found solace through these troubling times by doing what always makes me feel better when I’m down: buying massive amounts of material things! Jokes aside. I have stumbled upon some impactful products and services throughout the year that I’d like to share with you, just like I do every year, with no affiliate links. Here’s a list of my favorite purchases of 2020. Productivity Kindle + Audible Combination I’ve always had a Kindle for reading e-books. I’ve always had Audible for listing to audiobooks on my iPhone. But this year I finally discovered using them at the same fucking time!! Read the book visually on your Kindle while the audiobook is being read to you at 1.5x – 2x speed. You’ll devour books at lightspeed, but the absorption level remains high, as if you were reading. You can even have the Kindle app on iPad manage both services for an even better experience (it highlights the text as it reads to you). Note: you have to buy both the eBook and the audio versions of Read More Read More

The post Matt Diggity’s Favorite Purchases of 2020 first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

The Influencer Pitch – How to Build E-A-T for your Content Website

Matt Diggity — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 04:26:10 +0000

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and it’s a key factor that search engines like Google use to evaluate the quality of your website’s content. It’s crucial for establishing your website as a reliable source of information for your audience. Drawing from my own experience in the field, I’ll show you how to enhance E-A-T by leveraging real influencers who possess expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to vouch for your content. This approach will help you build immense trust while creating online platforms that are primed for E-A-T implementation. Let’s start by exploring the E-A-T standards we’re aiming to meet, their relationship with search engine algorithms, and why you should care about them—even if they’re still evolving. Video Version For those who like video content, here’s a TLDR version of the article: What is E-A-T? E-A-T stands for expertise authoritativeness and trustworthiness and it is extremely important in the SEO industry. It comes from this larger set of guidelines that Google publishes for its search quality rater guidelines. Google refers you to the best way to build your website’s E-A-T. They’re a legion of Google e a t contractors from all around the world who perform manual (human) reviews of Google results. While they’re using Google’s algorithm to dig through results, they use search quality rater guidelines like those you see in the image above to make judgments about the pages they review. These busy clickers then create reports that Google E-A-T uses (along with other methods) to evaluate what a live user sees and experiences when browsing for organic results. Manual review plays an important role in the rollout of each new search algorithm changes. After the update lands, Google E-A-T guidelines deploy them to scour the results for unintended changes, such as bizarre returns for common searches or unintended hits to websites. It may seem like I’m saying that sticking to rating guidelines translates directly to an improved ranking factor. Sorry, but that isn’t the case. Let’s look at the relationship between rater guidelines and the algorithm. What relationship do rater guidelines have with the algorithm? They’re related, but you probably shouldn’t assume you can judge Google’s intent for the algorithm just by looking at what they’re telling their human search raters. The rater guidelines exist to help humans judge algorithm results. As an example, the Google search results algorithm is a long way from being sophisticated enough to do most background research. If someone provides comprehensive—but entirely fraudulent—authorship information—the algorithm can’t independently verify: • The authenticity of an identity • Affiliations with organizations and institutions like universities • Credentials and certifications A lot of raters reporting the same issue may eventually result in tweaks to the algorithm. But you still won’t find authoritative websites on the first page for every search. Making sure your content obeys E-A-T standards isn’t likely to result in immediate, measurable improvements. So, why should you care about the SEO strategy process coming right up? Why do I care? I’ll tell you why we cared, at least: because we’re preparing for the next few years ahead. Just because Google seo strategy hasn’t figured out how to automate these verifications doesn’t mean they aren’t giving E-A-T guidelines the best try. They’ve already begun to strike in a related area. Websites that make it difficult to find any ownership or authorship information are taking hits. Sure, E-A-T strategies can change over time, but they aren’t likely to slow down or back down on this one. It’s just a good ymyl websites idea. Google has every motivation to keep information that might provide bad medical/financial stability away from the top of the page. With Google E-A-T, users can quickly and easily find the answers they need, whether it’s a definition of a word, a medical fact, an image, or even a Wikipedia page. And why fight it? Your high-quality content isn’t going to suffer from having more subject matter experts involved. At the same time, as much as we love trying new things, it’s hard to justify a budget for the best E-A-T practice that doesn’t even work yet. We wanted to get ready, but we wanted the process to be: Cheap Easy to implement A no-brainer win-win If there was no way to meet those E-A-T qualifications, this experiment was getting placed on the back burner until it was more relevant. You’re reading this now, so you know we succeeded. We’ve developed a process that isn’t just future-proof—It’s already paying off. Introducing: the Influencer Pitch Alright, so far, you understand that authors who demonstrate E-A-T may matter a lot in the future. Do you know any in your niche? Have you built long-term relationships with people who have degrees, certifications, or influential positions in notable organizations? Don’t worry if you haven’t because that what the process coming right up is going to help you do. You can start with just one professional who demonstrates E-A-T, and work your way up. In the following sections, you’re going to learn how to find influencers, how to pitch them (with an example email), and how to make the relationship profitable for both of you. Finding influencers Nearly every niche has influencers, and by their nature, they are not very hard to find. Search results of niche-related keywords should bring up people talking about your niche, reviewing products in it, or fighting to be the first to drop news about it. YouTube and Instagram are the best hunting ground for my niches, but certain audiences tend to gravitate to certain platforms. Use your E-A-T judgment and your background in your niche to determine the best platform. No matter which one you choose, you want to focus on what you could call “budding” influencers. These are the troopers in the trenches who are starting to develop an audience but are still working their way off the ground. I’m talking about people who post regularly, seem to put their hearts into it and care about improving, but just haven’t managed to break a couple of thousand followers, yet. Let me show you. First, I would search for phrases specific to my niche and expect results that match and answer my question. For examples sake, let’s call that “protein powder reviews”. I’m going to plug that in and browse the results until I find someone who matches my criteria. With that search, I didn’t get far down the page until I found a video I liked. I clicked the account under the video and was taken to the profile page of this guy: He has just over 1.6k subscribers, and many of his videos focus on our example phrase. That’s only the first E-A-T criteria, though. You’ll want to make a few more search quality guidelines research based on what you see around the profile page. Are videos updated frequently? (In this example, yes) Do the last 10-20 videos tend to stick to the brand/niche? (again, yes) Does this author bring any of their own credibility problems to a relationship? (not at first glance, but naturally I’d do more homework outside this example) Overall, this influencer looks like a good place to start. After you find a good candidate, find out how to contact them. In most cases, you can just use the platform’s standard messaging service or hunt around the profile page for E-A-T information. In this case, you can see I easily just clicked over to the about tab and found a button for “business inquiries”. When you do finally reach out, you’re going to want to make them an E-A-T offer they cannot refuse. Here are some ideas and an example pitch. Pitching influencers The name of our game here is win-win. We’re controlling our costs by being able to offer E-A-T influencers enough that they get value out of a mutual relationship. The best way to explain how we do that is by showing you how we present the first offer when we email them. Here’s a pitch email I’ve written for a fictitious name and website. If I were in this niche, this is how I’d approach my first contact. Disclaimer: Subject Line: Looking for Partnership Got the gist? Alright, let me just add a few notes. For one, I think it’s really important that you identify your E-A-T value in the first couple of lines, as I did. Notice I covered each ranking factor in the first few lines of the email. Second, note that we’re not asking him to make a big E-A-T investment. We only asked this guy to create videos because that’s already his thing. If he were to leverage user generated content, we’d want more of that. Finally, don’t underestimate the value of your online stores or blogs being published on a major ymyl website by a fresh influencer. Authorship opportunities are just as important to ambitious influencers. I know for sure that they’re enthusiastic, now. After all… Leveraging authored content OK, you’ve made some connections now, but you need to Read More Read More

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A List of SEOs Favorite Books: What The Pros Are Reading…

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 07:23:14 +0000

This isn’t your typical blog post about SEO, but perhaps the knowledge behind what motivates and guides SEOs. I put out a question on social media “What is your all-time favorite book?” The thread got a lot of traction so I thought it would be great to compile them together here in this post. Biography From the life stories of legendary entrepreneurs and investors like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and Phil Knight to the inspirational journey of Nelson Mandela, one of the 20th century’s greatest freedom fighters and political leaders, these biographies hold pride of place on the bookshelves of many an SEO. Books like Ray Dalio’s Principles and Ben Carson’s The Big Picture draw on the author’s experiences to suggest powerful new ways of looking at the world. Each of these unique biographies and memoirs have much to teach their readers. Business Not surprisingly, books about business are among many SEO’s favorites. Classics like the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett’s collected essays sit next to decidedly more contemporary tomes like “How to Be F*cking Awesome” and Gino Wickman’s “Traction” which introduced the Entrepreneurial Operating System — a must-read for anyone looking to scale their business. Fiction All work and no play makes for dull SEOs… And while some may argue that time spent reading fiction could be better spent, sages as diverse as Tim Ferriss and former President Barack Obama strongly disagree. Even when he was in office, Obama put aside an hour each night to read, and told the New York Times that reading fiction left him “better able to imagine what’s going on in the lives of people throughout my presidency.” As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Fantasy and sci-fi are well represented in our SEO’s favorite fiction selections. Classics like Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, War and Peace, and The Picture of Dorian Grey remain as timeless as ever… But there’s also plenty of room for pop culture staples like 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. Non-Fiction There’s no shortage of classics in the Non-Fiction category either, with some of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever produced represented here. From Sun Tzu’s Art of War, to the Bhagavad Gita, and the King James version of The Holy Bible, thousands of years of human knowledge and philosophy is included in this list. But it’s not all ancient texts. Runaway bestsellers that have changed how many of us view the world like Freakanomics, Antifragile, and Sapiens also make the cut. If you’re looking to build a respectable bookshelf that covers both age-old and cutting edge thought, you could do a lot worse than using this list as a starting point. Self-Help / Self-Improvement I can say without hesitation that if I hadn’t discovered two of the books in this section — The 4-Hour Workweek and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — my life today would look very different. I’m sure many of the other books listed below had a similarly seismic impact on the lives of the SEOs who recommended them. One of the benefits of being an SEO is the freedom it can give you to live life on your own terms. These self-improvement books can truly help you optimize your life… What titles on this list are you itching to tackle? Any must-rereads it reminded you of? Most importantly, what books are missing that you think other SEOs would enjoy? (Or could even change their life?) This list is a living document… It’s not too late for you to contribute… Join the discussion here on Facebook. This isn’t your typical blog post about SEO, but perhaps the knowledge behind what motivates and guides SEOs. I put out a question on social media “What is your all-time favorite book?” The thread got a lot of traction so I thought it would be great to compile them together here in this post. Biography From the life stories of legendary entrepreneurs and investors like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and Phil Knight to the inspirational journey of Nelson Mandela, one of the 20th century’s greatest freedom fighters and political leaders, these biographies hold pride of place on the bookshelves of many an SEO. Books like Ray Dalio’s Principles and Ben Carson’s The Big Picture draw on the author’s experiences to suggest powerful new ways of looking at the world. Each of these unique biographies and memoirs have much to teach their readers. Business Not surprisingly, books about business are among many SEO’s favorites. Classics like the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett’s collected essays sit next to decidedly more contemporary tomes like “How to Be F*cking Awesome” and Gino Wickman’s “Traction” which introduced the Entrepreneurial Operating System — a must-read for anyone looking to scale their business. Fiction All work and no play makes for dull SEOs… And while some may argue that time spent reading fiction could be better spent, sages as diverse as Tim Ferriss and former President Barack Obama strongly disagree. Even when he was in office, Obama put aside an hour each night to read, and told the New York Times that reading fiction left him “better able to imagine what’s going on in the lives of people throughout my presidency.” As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Fantasy and sci-fi are well represented in our SEO’s favorite fiction selections. Classics like Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, War and Peace, and The Picture of Dorian Grey remain as timeless as ever… But there’s also plenty of room for pop culture staples like 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. Non-Fiction There’s no shortage of classics in the Non-Fiction category either, with some of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever produced represented here. From Sun Tzu’s Art of War, to the Bhagavad Gita, and the King James version of The Holy Bible, thousands of years of human knowledge and philosophy is included in this list. But it’s not all ancient texts. Runaway bestsellers that have changed how many of us view the world like Freakanomics, Antifragile, and Sapiens also make the cut. If you’re looking to build a respectable bookshelf that covers both age-old and cutting edge thought, you could do a lot worse than using this list as a starting point. Self-Help / Self-Improvement I can say without hesitation that if I hadn’t discovered two of the books in this section — The 4-Hour Workweek and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — my life today would look very different. I’m sure many of the other books listed below had a similarly seismic impact on the lives of the SEOs who recommended them. One of the benefits of being an SEO is the freedom it can give you to live life on your own terms. These self-improvement books can truly help you optimize your life… What titles on this list are you itching to tackle? Any must-rereads it reminded you of? Most importantly, what books are missing that you think other SEOs would enjoy? (Or could even change their life?) This list is a living document… It’s not too late for you to contribute… Join the discussion here on Facebook. Read More

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10 Most Profitable Niches (2024) List of Top Selling Markets

Matt Diggity — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 08:30:14 +0000

If you’re pouring your energy into marketing niches with awful growth potential, you’re losing money. You may be losing more than you think. The difference between niches that make money and those that don’t can be millions of dollars per month. If you need help and want to improve your personal finance by building profitable online businesses, this guide will point you to the next step. Whether you’re an affiliate marketing beginner (or just looking for a new angle), you owe it to yourself to focus on the opportunities that will pay off in a big way. In this comprehensive guide, you’re going to get an introduction to the year’s most profitable niches. With our expert guidance and insights, you can maximize your earning potential and build a successful affiliate marketing business in no time. So, let’s dive in and explore the most profitable blog niches of the year. And if you’d like to learn the method to find fail-proof niche right for yourself, check this video. The Most Profitable Blog Niches 1. Weight loss Losing weight is a goal for nearly all people at some point in their lives. That makes weight loss a market hardy and profitable to the tune of billions [1]. Marketers in this top-selling niche make money by serving up everything from diet guides to supplements. In addition to this, the weight loss niche is a broad niche that offers a wealth of content possibilities. It encompasses a broad spectrum of sub-niches like fitness regimes, nutrition advice, mental well-being, and even fashion tips for weight loss. This diversity allows marketers to hit specific target audience segments, thereby enhancing customer engagement and maximizing revenue potential. Sub niches and products Expected commissions There are many ways to make money in this profitable and broad niche. What each conversion is worth to you depends wildly on your selling products. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Diet Doctor is a well-designed site in the weight loss industry. It focuses on the low-carb diet sub-niche. Low carb is just one type of diet, but this site shows you how to make the most of that. The content connects to the needs of different people. Podcasts, meal plans, meal delivery services, and other partners help this online business make money. 2. Hosting/VPN Web services like hosting and VPNs are not only popular; they can also be very high-dollar. Those who can establish themselves can make money from this online business by scrapping with others for big commissions from enterprise businesses. The hosting and VPN market is continuously growing, propelled by the increasing importance of internet privacy and the burgeoning digital landscape. This niche also opens up opportunities for affiliate marketing, where substantial commissions can be earned from referrals. With the right expertise and knowledge about these services, one can create an amazing online business and valuable content that appeals to both individual and corporate users. Hosting is definitely one of the most profitable niches nowadays. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions Many products and services in this niche are subscriptions. If you manage to get a sale, you can claim recurring commissions for years to come. Examples of profitable sites in the niche VPN Mentor is a successful blog site in this profitable niche that carved out its place set with authoritative content. Named (and qualified) authors and richly-detailed reviews have helped this site establish credibility among savvy web service buyers. 3. Muscle/Bodybuilding Bodybuilding has a dedicated fan base that isn’t afraid of dropping money to get those gains. When you enter this market, you can direct their dedication toward a range of different solutions that have (generally) high commissions. The muscle and bodybuilding niche extends beyond just physical products and it is one of the most profitable niches out there nowadays. It encompasses lifestyle guidance, training methodologies, dietary plans, and personal coaching. A personal development niche like this one will always be profitable. There’s also a significant interest in content around bodybuilding competitions, athlete profiles, and trending fitness routines. By offering comprehensive solutions and engaging content, you can tap into this niche’s potential, creating a great online business model with a loyal target audience ready to invest in their fitness goals. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions There are a wide variety of offers in this top-selling niche, including subscription services that can earn you recurring commissions. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Healthline is massive and massively-successful across many profit-making niche sites, including the fitness niche. To legally work in the space, they took on the expense of having every article reviewed by doctors, nurses, or other specialists. 4. Finance They say you’ve got to spend money to make money. That may be why people in this profitable niche market are ready to snap up guides in the personal finance niche, books, personalized advice, and marketing tips. The finance niche is vast and one of the most profitable niches out there, covering areas like investing, retirement planning, real estate, tax advice, and budgeting. Each sub-niche offers opportunities for monetization through courses, consulting, eBooks, or software tools. With the rise of fintech and digital currencies, the demand for reliable and up-to-date financial advice is higher than ever, making this an ideal niche for a profitable blog or online business. The dynamic nature of the finance sector offers endless opportunities for content creation. It’s not only about sharing knowledge but also providing analysis and opinion on market trends, policy changes, and emerging investment avenues like cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the inclusion of trade finance, with its focus on international transactions and financial instruments, enriches the content palette, catering to a more diverse and globally-oriented audience. This aspect of finance, crucial for businesses engaging in cross-border trade, adds a layer of complexity and relevance to the already rich tapestry of financial topics. You can establish trust with your audience by offering insightful, well-researched content, and later monetize through memberships, premium content, sponsored posts, or partnerships with financial institutions. Leveraging this niche effectively could lead to a prosperous online venture. Sub niches and products Check out our list of the best finance affiliate programs for even more ideas and opportunities. Expected Commissions Offers in this market can deliver great commissions, though success may depend on how well you define your audience. Trust can be hard to come by unless you’re speaking directly to a need. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Nerdwallet is a great example of a finance niche site targeting all the signs of financial health. You can learn from their obsessively clean design and emphasis on providing answers before pushing merchandise. People want to learn, and this website delivers. 5. Male Enhancement This niche has a lot of crossover with other men’s health markets, including other appearance-focused goods. For that reason, it’s a relatively easy topic to slide into existing sites that are serving those niches. This niche is emerging as one of the more profitable niches for a reason. It’s becoming increasingly popular each day. On another note, this niche holds vast potential due to its wide array of sub-categories, ranging from fitness and nutritional supplements to skincare and grooming products. This crossover with various men’s health aspects allows for comprehensive content creation that can appeal to a broader audience. By incorporating expert reviews, testimonials, and scientific evidence, trust, and credibility can be established, thereby attracting a dedicated audience willing to invest in their wellness and appearance and you’ll make lots of money online. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions There’s a great variety of compensation schemes in this niche. Pills can be a reliable moneymaker, but generating leads for advanced hair loss or ED procedures is another profitable way to go. Examples of profitable sites in the niche GoodRx is a pharma-focused site connecting users to many popular medicines. It has a loyal base of visitors that come back for the site’s focus on money-saving coupons and offers. 6. Survival This is another one of the more profitable niches that has exploded over the last few years. Flip open any newspaper, and you can find out why it’s not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. Whether it’s tools, food, or field guides, there are endless opportunities for an online business. This niche isn’t limited to physical products. There’s a rising interest in survival skills training, emergency preparedness courses, and wilderness adventure experiences. From blogging about survival tips to selling eBooks or hosting webinars on self-sufficiency, there’s substantial potential for growth. Creating a community around these profitable niches can foster engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, monetization through various channels. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions This niche doesn’t have the highest commissions, but many of the most popular goods in this niche cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Examples of profitable sites in the niche SkilledSurvival takes its dramatic niche very seriously, and it’s a great example of just how many offers can live side-by-side in the same Read More Read More

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Matt Diggity’s Favorite Purchases of 2019

Matt Diggity — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 10:55:17 +0000

Another year comes to a close and it’s about that time to start thinking about the rewards you’d like to give others, or even yourself for your hard work. Continuing with tradition, I’d like to share a list of the best products and services I’ve purchased in 2019. These will cover the categories of business, personal, and books that have significantly made an impact on my year. Business Purchases Surfer Surfer started making big waves (see what I did there?) in 2019 for its emergence into the market as a powerful onsite optimization tool. It allows you to make data-driven optimizations to your website that are based on what the top-rankers in the niche are already doing. It looks at word count, keyword density, backlinks, subheadings, and nearly everything else to give you a playbook on what you need to change in order to compete on page 1. It also has a content editor that allows your writers to be guided by data when writing their content. It’s a game-changer. WPX Hosting For the longest time, I was stuck on a terrible “premium” host, simply because of the inconvenience of migrating 20 sites. I’d never out a business, but you know what? They’ve ripped me off multiple times so here it goes: WPEngine, you suck. After 100’s of recommendations and knowing that Terry Kyle was running WPX Hosting, I took the plunge and switched over. … and never regretted it. WPX has solid pricing, a built-in CDN that kicks ass, and next-level support. I even ranked them #1 on my top hosts for SEOs post. Use coupon code “DIGGITY90” for 90% off your first month. Accuranker We switched over to Accuranker earlier this year. It’s got a nice interface, and has all of the typical features you find in a solid rank tracker. But what I really like most about it is their “Share of Voice” feature. “Share of Voice is an indicator of how your most important keywords are performing. All keywords that rank between positions 1 to 20 are used for the calculation. The average CTR for the position is multiplied by the search volume of each keyword, allowing you to see if a high traffic keyword is losing rank.” Rankings go up and down every day. But most of the time, it doesn’t matter. Share of Voice gives you a quick way to assess whether or not you should actually care about these fluctuations. Personal Purchases Oura Ring Hands-down, the best thing I’ve done for my life in 2019 is optimize my sleep. Sleep affects everything: your energy levels, mood, hormone production, immune system, etc. If sleep were irrelevant, why didn’t we evolve out of it millions of years ago? Peter Drucker said “What gets measured gets managed.” How much deep sleep do you get? How many times do you truly wake up? And so forth. Once you understand the data, the Oura ring gives you suggestions on how to optimize your weak spots. Waking Up – Meditation App by Sam Harris If you know me at all, you’d know that I’m huge on meditation. I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Meditation allows you to have control over your reactions… to actually choose which thoughts you give your attention to. This app gives you a 50 day course in meditation, building up your skills one day at a time. Unlike other apps, Sam’s “Waking Up” is very practical and straightforward. It skips a lot of the fluff found in typical meditation apps and gets straight to the foundations, which allows you to see quick benefits. I still use this app nearly every day. Muse Meditation Headband Keeping on the theme of meditation, the Muse headband is a wearable device that guides your meditation. While using Muse, you hear the sound of the ocean. The headband senses your brain waves and notices when you mind isn’t calm. It then feeds that back to the audio, making the waves crash harder. When you hear the change, you know you’ve lost focus and you know it’s now time to refocus on the breath. I’ve always shied away from long meditation sessions of 20min or longer, but because of this gamified system, I’m easily hitting 45min+ meditations with no issue at all. Google Home Hub I always brushed aside voice search. But last time I went back home to Cali, I decided to pick one of these things up and give it a try. Oh man, it’s addicting. Once you experience the convenience of simply speaking commands to your search and home devices, it’s easy to get used to. Get one of these things if you want to really understand where we’re going with voice. Just don’t set it up in your office. :p Niacin This is where I come in and say that I’m not a medical professional and to always consult with your doctor and all that stuff. Niacin is vitamin B3 – and its amazing for detox. You pop the recommended dose of Niacin, then spend half an hour doing some light cardio. This brings your blood and toxins to the skin surface. Then you jump in the sauna for some major detox action. Fair warning, you’re going to sweat a lot. But that’s a good thing. Read up on the process here. Standing/Sitting Desk I spend a lot of time in my office. And they say “sitting is the new smoking”. Sitting down for extended periods of time is extremely harsh on your back, posture, circulation, and general health. I got this automatic standing/sitting desk to help me switch-things-up during the day. The benefits have been outstanding (see what I did there, again?!). Varier Kneeling Chair When people come into my office, they almost always say “what in the hell is that thing?” This chair forces you to have good posture. If you don’t sit straight on a kneeling chair, you’re simply going to fall off. It also takes pressure off your spine and spinal discs by distributing weight into your shins. It’s surprisingly comfortable as well. When I’m not standing at my desk, I’m using this weird ass thing. Books End of Jobs – Taylor Pearson Oh man, I wish I had read this book 10 years ago. I got this book on recommendation from at least a dozen friends. It goes through the evolution of the primary skills that have been needed in the workforce throughout the ages. Spoiler alert… If you haven’t quite decided to jump ship and become an entrepreneur, this book will help you make that decision with statistics and qualitative argument. If you’ve already taken the leap, it will give you a valuable justification for what you’re doing and will help strengthen your resolve in the inevitable bumpy times. Who: The A-method for Hiring – Geoff Smart Ever feel like hiring is a trial-and-error process? That’s because you’re not shooting for A-players. A-players don’t drop the ball. They don’t quit when things get challenging. A-players are the ones that will change your business for the better and help take things to another level. This book helps you identify the right candidates for each position, filter out the bad ones, and conduct interviews through a well-designed process created by experts. Since I read this book, I refuse to hire outside this system. Thanks for reading this article. For more inspiration, check back on the previous years. 2017 2018 Have a great holiday season, and I’ll be back with you in 2020 with a huge post that could potentially change the way you look at affiliate SEO. Another year comes to a close and it’s about that time to start thinking about the rewards you’d like to give others, or even yourself for your hard work. Continuing with tradition, I’d like to share a list of the best products and services I’ve purchased in 2019. These will cover the categories of business, personal, and books that have significantly made an impact on my year. Business Purchases Surfer Surfer started making big waves (see what I did there?) in 2019 for its emergence into the market as a powerful onsite optimization tool. It allows you to make data-driven optimizations to your website that are based on what the top-rankers in the niche are already doing. It looks at word count, keyword density, backlinks, subheadings, and nearly everything else to give you a playbook on what you need to change in order to compete on page 1. It also has a content editor that allows your writers to be guided by data when writing their content. It’s a game-changer. WPX Hosting For the longest time, I was stuck on a terrible “premium” host, simply because of the inconvenience of migrating 20 sites. I’d never out a business, but you know what? They’ve ripped me off multiple times so here it goes: WPEngine, you suck. After 100’s of recommendations and knowing that Terry Kyle was running WPX Hosting, I took the plunge and switched Read More Read More

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15 Best Affiliate Networks of 2024: The Year’s Top Platforms

Matt Diggity — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 04:39:23 +0000

Choosing a solid affiliate network is a crucial part of being a successful affiliate marketer, whether you’re starting as a new affiliate or just diving into a new niche. There are thousands of affiliate programs offered by merchants to market their services or products. I’ve tried most of them. No matter which type of affiliate programs you like or what types of affiliate products or services you promote, you can find a variety of reliable affiliate networks to suit your needs. According to multiple surveys in our Affiliate Lab community (and my own affiliate network experience) here are the best affiliate marketing platforms to catapult your success. The Best Affiliate Network in Below is a list of my list of top affiliate networks for . These cater to various products, services, and industries. All of them are worth a look. And after that, I’ll discuss how you can find the perfect one for you and your affiliate marketing goals. 1. ShareASale ShareASale is close to the largest U.S. affiliate network. Doing a quick search, it currently boasts over 3900 merchant programs on its affiliate platform and over 1.2M registered publishers participating. This affiliate network is based out of Chicago, IL, and has been operating since 2000 with an outstanding reputation as a fair and honest business. In January 2017, global affiliate network Awin acquired ShareASale to provide further international affiliate opportunities to domestic advertisers and publishers. ShareASale is a great affiliate network for people getting into affiliate marketing to promote physical products and looking for an Amazon Associates alternative. I’ve earned a lot of income with the ShareASale affiliate marketing network. 2. FlexOffers FlexOffers is a massive affiliate network with a large variety of advertisers and offers to explore. Those who sign up to this affiliate platform can choose from over 10,000 of them covering products ranging from seasonal items to consumer electronics. Due to the large number of offers in the affiliate network, most kinds of programs (CPA, CPI) are represented. Major featured brands on the site have included SKECHERS, Kohls, Macy’s, and Barnes & Noble. Most of those who have tried it out say good things about the dashboard, the customer support, and the quality and variety of offers. We can’t say anything bad either. There’s a tier 2 program where you can earn even by sharing affiliate links with other advertisers. 3. MaxBounty This is a CPA affiliate network, which means each advertiser pays for a specific action. It is one of the top affiliate marketing networks out there, in our opinion. This affiliate network offers lots of models, including CPA, CPL, and mobile. They work with advertisers involved in market research, diet, dating, and real estate. That action could be a sale, form submission, download, or any other action performed by the visitor. All of them can be tracked and then paid for by the advertiser. There are certain web services (such as software downloads or file sharing) that generate much more affiliate income for a dedicated account manager when using a CPA program—as opposed to premium affiliate networks such as CJ or ShareASale. If you’re an ace at conversion rate optimization this is where you want to be. MaxBounty has been around for over a decade and is consistently considered one of the best and most reliable CPA affiliate networks. And we can confirm that. 4. MoreNiche MoreNiche is a reliable affiliate network that was established in 2002. While they don’t have many affiliate marketing programs to choose from, the products are quite good, with most of them offering high commissions (30%-40%). One of the key aspects that sets them apart from other top affiliate networks is how they treat their people. Their dedicated affiliate manager personnel provide proactive support, giving up-to-date SEO advice, website audits, and CRO suggestions. They also hold affiliate marketing mastermind events, which I’ve attended and spoken at. They’re great. Affiliates are not just income generators – each dedicated account manager wants to generally get to know their customers and build long-lasting relationships. This is the best approach you could ask for from your affiliate network. 5. Affiliaxe Affiliaxe is an affiliate platform that rates itself as the best option for experienced affiliate enthusiasts. In keeping with that drive for exclusivity, it has an invitation-only approval process that some reviewers have found frustrating. Those that get in do enjoy great benefits and high commissions. Those benefits include 700+ offers in profitable niches to choose from, including wellness, entertainment, dieting, and mobile content. Their dedicated affiliate manager personnel (shout out to Pavel) are reported to offer a lot of guidance on the creation and improvement of digital marketing campaigns. I’ve found them to be reasonable when it comes to negotiating commission bumps (try that with Amazon Associates). Pavel and I worked together to get a single product to $60k/month at its peak, resulting in my best single-product money-maker of the year. When I asked Pavel, “What makes Affiliaxe special?”, he replied… “All our offers are whitehat and we work with big brands such as Norton, Mcafee, Marley Spoon, Omega XL (presented by Larry King), TruthFinder, etc. We work hard on making our landing pages compliant while getting campaigns approved as fast as possible.” Pavel Maister Sr. Affiliate Manager Finally, the platform is pretty solid. It has a good collection of features and is intuitive to figure out. If you are experienced and have a lot of weight to throw around, this may be the top affiliate network for you, but first, you’ll have to get through their qualification process. 6. Rakuten Formerly Buy.com, this is another popular affiliate network for e-commerce focusing mostly on physical goods. It’s another decent alternative to Amazon. Rakuten represents a variety of different industry-standard brands, including Walmart, Sephora, New Balance, etc. While their platform is smaller than some other top affiliate networks with around 1,000 partners, they are one of the oldest affiliate networks, and dedicated to premium technology. These guys offer a ton of creatives to choose from. Optimizing sales is made easier through the use of technology such as rotating ads and flexible linking options. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) junkies like myself will get the most out of Rakuten’s slick optimization features that this program provides. Fun fact: Rakuten helped me get my greatest affiliate month ever in December. 7. Clickbank This large and longstanding affiliate network breaks away from the pack by focusing on digital information products, product launches, and other internet marketing products. They market over 6 million unique lifestyle products created by digital entrepreneurs. In short, they specialize in digital products and currently reach over 200 million customers. ClickBank is likely the first program you’d be recommended when you’re first getting into digital products, email marketing, or other “making money online” endeavors. Are they the top affiliate program in the entire industry for digital products? That’s up to the individual, but I’ve got no complaints. There are plenty of ClickBank alternatives to choose from. I’ve never offered any digital products to publishers through an affiliate network, but this is likely where I’d go if I did. 8. Px.com If rank and rent lead generation is your game, then this affiliate network is not one to be overlooked. PX specializes in the industries of insurance, home services, and financial verticals in global markets. They offer a full-service platform that focuses on using superior technology to fully automate lead generation. Customizers will have a great time with this affiliate network because, with lead scoring and verification technology, they enable you to maximize your revenue and earn higher lead conversions. 9. CJ Affiliate Formerly Commission Junction, the CJ affiliate marketing network specializes in pay-for-performance affiliate programs. CJ affiliate is considered to be one of the largest affiliate networks online. A simple search can send you down a rabbit hole of different offers. They operate globally and have programs for some of the world’s most recognized and specialized retailers. CJ Affiliate has attracted a “who’s who” of premium partners including Home Depot, Apple, TurboTax, and Zappos. I like CJ Affiliate for its high-end, powerful reporting tools as well as reliable and timely payments. That said, they do like to cancel accounts with little to no explanation—similar to Amazon Associates —which we’ll discuss in an upcoming section. 10. 2checkout 2checkout specializes in global eCommerce of software, digital products, and SaaS solutions. Their partners include over 4,000 digital businesses in over 180 countries. Strong support from their publisher community has given this partner network a big boost in rankings. 11. Market Health This is amongst the top affiliate networks that specialize in health and beauty products, including more than 200 they manufacture themselves. This is a friendly affiliate network if you’re marketing health and wellness products and operating outside the US. It’s also got the best makeup affiliate program for those in the beauty niche. I’ve done at least $200,000 with Market Health affiliate programs, and a share of that has to do with their eagerness to reward Read More Read More

The post 15 Best Affiliate Networks of 2024: The Year’s Top Platforms first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

Infographic: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO

Matt Diggity — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:59:56 +0000

Looks like we’re starting a tradition… My link building service, Authority Builders, ran another contest in The Lab Facebook group. Over 300 people responded to the age-old question: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO: Which One is Better? Since the cool thing to do these days is put data in infographic format, here are their responses, all wrapped up for you. Want to add your own feedback to this battle? See you in the comments section. Share this Image On Your Site: Please include attribution to DiggityMarketing.com with this graphic. <a href=”https://diggitymarketing.com/infographic-affiliate-vs-client-seo “><img src=”https://diggitymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Infographic-Affiliate-vs-Client-SEO.jpg” alt=’Affiliate vs Client SEO Infographic’ width=’700px’ border=’0′ /></a> Shout out goes out to Win Bound Digital for creating this sexy infographic. Looks like we’re starting a tradition… My link building service, Authority Builders, ran another contest in The Lab Facebook group. Over 300 people responded to the age-old question: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO: Which One is Better? Since the cool thing to do these days is put data in infographic format, here are their responses, all wrapped up for you. Want to add your own feedback to this battle? See you in the comments section. Share this Image On Your Site: Please include attribution to DiggityMarketing.com with this graphic. <a href=”https://diggitymarketing.com/infographic-affiliate-vs-client-seo “><img src=”https://diggitymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Infographic-Affiliate-vs-Client-SEO.jpg” alt=’Affiliate vs Client SEO Infographic’ width=’700px’ border=’0′ /></a> Shout out goes out to Win Bound Digital for creating this sexy infographic. Read More

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Announcement: Rank Club Acquires Diggity Links

Matt Diggity — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 10:04:06 +0000

4 years ago, I was sitting down with a business partner and we decided to sell links from our private blog network. But if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. We wanted to change the game of PBN rentals. We wanted to have the most powerful links, the most secure network, and the best customer service. I tend to be modest with my accomplishments, but from what I gather, we’ve did a good job. Alas, it’s time for me to depart. Diggity Links has been recently acquired by Rank Club, a new project launched by an investor group that I’ve worked with before in the past. These guys will definitely be able to do a good (if not better) job at taking care of our customers with The Link Service, the rebranded offering. What will my role be in The Link Service? For the first 6 months, I will act as a consultant, making sure that the same level of standards will continue at The Link Service. I also have a few R&D projects to finish off to make sure they get applied to the new offering. As for my team, in order to upkeep the same levels of service and product, my entire team is getting absorbed into the Rank Club. This includes the R&D staff, writers, designers, sales concierges, and support. You’re in great hands. FAQ Q: Why did you decide to step down at Diggity Links? A: As a business, Diggity Links is doing absolutely great. The links are getting amazing results, the customers are happy, and the company is growing. But on a personal level, my time is getting spread too thin and I need some time to focus on existing projects. Plus… I’m getting married soon. ? Q: Does this mean that you are giving up on PBNs? A: Absolutely not. Put it this way, my affiliate SEO agency LeadSpring is Diggity Links (and now Rank Club’s biggest customer) and accounts for 64% of its revenue. Each month, this number increases. I am very much heavily invested in PBNs as a tactic. When/if I change my opinion on that, you’ll know right away. Q: What will you be focusing on now? A: First off, I’m doubling down on what I do best, creating affiliate websites and ranking them in Google. At LeadSpring, we’ve recently bought 2 and launched 5 new sites that I’m crazy excited about. Secondly, I’m putting my heart and soul into The Lab. There’s so much good stuff that we’re teaching there and it’s requiring more of my time and testing in order to do that. Q: Will The Link Service maintain the same level of standard that Diggity Links has? A: Absolutely. In fact, Rank Club has more resources on hand to perform more testing and support. My Director of Research and Development, Rob Rok, is also going along to Rank Club and will continue carrying out all the testing we do with these increased resources. Expect more blog posts on PBN too. Q: Do my PayPal subscriptions need to be renewed or updated? A: Not at all. You will notice no change in how the billing is performed. Q: Who will I contact for new purchases? A: Please continue to contact your same sales concierge using their @diggitymarketing.com email address. It will get forwarded to their corresponding @rankclub.io address. Q: Will The Link Service have more openings per year and let in more customers than Diggity Links did? A: They are unsure at this point. The main focus is to maintain the same level of quality. Q: I’ve applied to Diggity Links and I’m in the application queue. Do I need to reapply for The Link Service. A: No need. I’ve ported over all the applicants. Q: Who will take over for marketing for The Link Service? Where can I find out about The Link Service openings and promotions. A: I’m happy to announce Rob Rok, will be taking over my role in marketing. Many of you have met him before, so the transition should be seamless. Please like Rank Club’s Facebook page, to make sure you’re dialed in for future promotions. To your continued success, Matt Diggity 4 years ago, I was sitting down with a business partner and we decided to sell links from our private blog network. But if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. We wanted to change the game of PBN rentals. We wanted to have the most powerful links, the most secure network, and the best customer service. I tend to be modest with my accomplishments, but from what I gather, we’ve did a good job. Alas, it’s time for me to depart. Diggity Links has been recently acquired by Rank Club, a new project launched by an investor group that I’ve worked with before in the past. These guys will definitely be able to do a good (if not better) job at taking care of our customers with The Link Service, the rebranded offering. What will my role be in The Link Service? For the first 6 months, I will act as a consultant, making sure that the same level of standards will continue at The Link Service. I also have a few R&D projects to finish off to make sure they get applied to the new offering. As for my team, in order to upkeep the same levels of service and product, my entire team is getting absorbed into the Rank Club. This includes the R&D staff, writers, designers, sales concierges, and support. You’re in great hands. FAQ Q: Why did you decide to step down at Diggity Links? A: As a business, Diggity Links is doing absolutely great. The links are getting amazing results, the customers are happy, and the company is growing. But on a personal level, my time is getting spread too thin and I need some time to focus on existing projects. Plus… I’m getting married soon. ? Q: Does this mean that you are giving up on PBNs? A: Absolutely not. Put it this way, my affiliate SEO agency LeadSpring is Diggity Links (and now Rank Club’s biggest customer) and accounts for 64% of its revenue. Each month, this number increases. I am very much heavily invested in PBNs as a tactic. When/if I change my opinion on that, you’ll know right away. Q: What will you be focusing on now? A: First off, I’m doubling down on what I do best, creating affiliate websites and ranking them in Google. At LeadSpring, we’ve recently bought 2 and launched 5 new sites that I’m crazy excited about. Secondly, I’m putting my heart and soul into The Lab. There’s so much good stuff that we’re teaching there and it’s requiring more of my time and testing in order to do that. Q: Will The Link Service maintain the same level of standard that Diggity Links has? A: Absolutely. In fact, Rank Club has more resources on hand to perform more testing and support. My Director of Research and Development, Rob Rok, is also going along to Rank Club and will continue carrying out all the testing we do with these increased resources. Expect more blog posts on PBN too. Q: Do my PayPal subscriptions need to be renewed or updated? A: Not at all. You will notice no change in how the billing is performed. Q: Who will I contact for new purchases? A: Please continue to contact your same sales concierge using their @diggitymarketing.com email address. It will get forwarded to their corresponding @rankclub.io address. Q: Will The Link Service have more openings per year and let in more customers than Diggity Links did? A: They are unsure at this point. The main focus is to maintain the same level of quality. Q: I’ve applied to Diggity Links and I’m in the application queue. Do I need to reapply for The Link Service. A: No need. I’ve ported over all the applicants. Q: Who will take over for marketing for The Link Service? Where can I find out about The Link Service openings and promotions. A: I’m happy to announce Rob Rok, will be taking over my role in marketing. Many of you have met him before, so the transition should be seamless. Please like Rank Club’s Facebook page, to make sure you’re dialed in for future promotions. To your continued success, Matt Diggity Read More

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The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites

Matt Diggity — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 09:11:37 +0000

Foreword by Matt Diggity: Impressive. Knowledgeable. Underrated. These are a few words that I would use to describe Brendan Tully. B.T. is one of the first SEOs I ever met in Chiang Mai. He’s a veteran in the game and it shows. I mean… the man used to be commissioned by the Australian government to teach SEO. The guy is good. He’s a beast at E-commerce SEO, as you’re about to find out in this monster of a piece. Introduction It’s tough when Matt Diggity asks you to do a guest post. The guy sets a seriously high standard and regularly wows the SEO space putting out stuff that nobody is talking about or has talked about before publicly. When I first started in this game in the early 2000’s, I had zero idea what SEO was, but knew if I changed certain things on my site it would move up and down the SERPs in a particular way. We grew that biz to 7 figures in the mid 2000s and ultimately ended up in client work at some point in 2008. Now through our services, one-on-one consulting, and in-person training workshops, we’ve worked with over 3000 different businesses or sites in some capacity, which has given me an awesome opportunity to try and test different approaches to determine what works and what actually moves the needle. SEO has changed a lot since then – (strangely, stuffing a website footer with 200 suburbs and cities doesn’t seem to work anymore) with the SERP landscape changing week to week in some cases. While the tactics and SERP layout change massively over time, I think it’s safe to say search is here for the long term – which brings me to the next point. The more I speak with different SEOs and clients, the more ecommerce SEO in particular seems completely misunderstood. Because tactics change so rapidly, I’ve tried as much as possible in this article to stay away from short term tactics that have a use-by date. Instead, I focus on core fundamentals and strategies that are time-tested and supported by solid business, sales, and marketing principles – this article is not limited by just ecommerce SEO but instead is more broadly focused on ecommerce marketing and optimization – which is where you ultimately need to be playing if you want to stay competitive. I’ve included action items as we work through this article – some are going to be totally obvious but are things that are regularly missed and some you may not have heard of before but have the potential to make a huge impact with a small amount of work. I’ve also included an audio breakdown for most sections and a handful of videos too as some things are just easier explained that way. Please bear in mind that the bigger your site the chunkier the action items or todos, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to create 3 months of SEO work here for a 7 figure site. Ideally, if I can have you walk away after digging into this article with one easy actionable tactic or quick win, one new broad SEO strategy you can apply to your site, or one principle or SEO foundation you weren’t aware of before – then I’ll be happy to say this article was a success. If you have a question about a particular point here, post in the comments section and I’ll be happy to clarify for you. Ecommerce vs Local SEO vs Affiliate SEO Before we get into the meat and potatoes, let’s look at some of the key differences between ecommerce, local small business, and affiliate sites. There are some fundamental differences between them so let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Ecommerce Sites Typically an ecommerce site has a lot more pages than other types of sites, even if there’s only a handful of products. Most of these pages are auto-generated from the CMS, for example category, tag, cart, and checkout pages. When you add tags, especially if you’re using a platform like Shopify, tons of pages are auto-generated off those tags and can create a canonical and keyword cannibalization mess. For bigger sites, cleaning this mess up can take some serious work but is a key component of getting the site to rank. It’s easier to fix these issues on smaller ecommerce sites, but for bigger sites, it’s tough to handle auto-tags without automation or SEO techniques that work at scale. Local & Affiliate Sites Local SEO sites may offer 5 to 10 services or products. What that translates to are 5 to 10 target keywords or groups of keywords. Affiliate sites are targeting more keywords but generally still not as many as a mid size ecommerce site – for example, an ecom site that offers 100 products will typically have 100 or more target keyword groups. It’s difficult to hand optimise a large number of keywords without using automation, templating, or SEO techniques that scale well when you’re dealing with a lot of pages and keywords. SEO is not just backlinks What I often see is when SEO’s do ecommerce SEO, they do it poorly. A lot of the time the default thinking is SEO=links but that’s not the case at all. Particularly with ecommerce sites, on-page SEO is vital and you need to get it nailed before chasing backlinks and internal links if you’re going to get serious SEO traction. This should be common sense, but you’d be surprised how often we see well established ecommerce sites with glaring on-site issues. On page SEO should be your initial focus, especially for established ecommerce sites. Generally as an ecommerce SEO strategy, I handle backlinks last. Backlinks are usually the most expensive part of SEO compared to internal links but actually give you the least control and there’s often no direct correlation between a link and a result. With on-page, there’s close to a 100% direct correlation between doing the work and getting results. ACTION STEPS: Run a Semrush Site Audit across the site. I’ve tried dozens of onpage audit tools and right now Semrush is my favorite. It picks up a ton of things other ecommerce seo tools won’t and presents them in a way that it makes them easy to get fixed. Semrush will pickup many of the easy technical problems that are roadblocking rankings. Run the site through siteliner.com – this is a fantastic tool for uncovering content duplication and cannibalisation issues. Get a Littlewarden.com account setup. It’ll monitor your site on an ongoing basis and detect basic but critical onpage SEO problems that you wouldn’t otherwise notice until your rankings start to tank (shout out to Kevin from Bulk Buy Hosting for this reco) A Note On Ecommerce Client SEO… It can be tough working with smaller ecommerce sites as clients, brand new sites, or sites where the average sale size is small. Generally I’ll stay well away from these types of clients. Generally when we do client SEO for ecommerce sites we never do SEO only. It’s just too hard to get them fast results and if the client is not commercially mature, often the expectation is that you’ll make them a millionaire overnight Whether I’m talking with a prospect about Adwords, SEO or something else one of the first questions I’ll ask if what is their budget. You can usually tell by the way they react what they’re comfortable spending and how commercially mature they are. A common problem with client SEO is that expectation that SEO is free so that’s where the focus should be versus ads. But that’s the wrong way to look at it. At least half of SERPs are paid ads now. If you don’t include paid traffic into your ecommerce SEO campaign strategy, you’ll have a hard time matching the competition. Ecommerce SEO – The Current State of Play, SEO is not enough any more Let’s talk about the current state of play with ecommerce SEO. As you’re well aware the SERP is constantly evolving which means your SEO approach MUST evolve otherwise it’s simply going to be less effective as time goes on. SEO is becoming increasingly fragmented. 10 years ago, the #1 result on Google was the SEO search results. There might have been one or two adwords results at the top of the page but now the landscape has totally changed. The #1 search result could mean many different things today: Regular paid adwords Google Shopping Google Maps Featured snippet (learn how to get it) Knowledge panel Paid Google Maps, which changes depending on location And more To top it off, the SERP also changes based on device AND the location of that device at the time of the search. The traditional #1 result has been drowned out by ads and other SERP elements now. A lot of SEOs haven’t realised it yet: Google is a paid search engine with some free results. Google wants to sell ads, they don’t care about searchers. Read More Read More

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My Favorite Purchases of 2017

Matt Diggity — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 12:00:52 +0000

Having trouble putting together a holiday wish list? Last year, I compiled a list a list of my favorite books in attempt to keep you well-read and inspired throughout the year. This time I’m switching things up a bit with a general list of my favorite purchases of 2017. It’s been divided up into 3 sections, for your browsing pleasure. Marketing Purchases Serpworx This is by far the best, browser overlay tool on the market. I’m borderline depressed that I didn’t find it earlier. On the SERP result, it overlays Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, and Semrush metrics and stats. When you open-up a webpage, you get those same stats, plus information like word count, heading structure, domain age, whois information, and more. And… It’s not slow and clunky like the alternatives. Buzzsumo One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in 2017 with regards to ranking is the increases importance of overall site quality score. This means that each one of the pages on your website needs to be an asset, as opposed to thin filler content. While you could get away with cheap Iwriter content in the past, those days are coming to a close. I use Buzzsumo for determining what are the highest shared blog topics in my niche, so I can use them for informational blog topics on my affiliate sites. The results have been excellent. Personal The 5-minute Journal I absolutely love this thing. Since I bought it, I haven’t skipped a day. It’s a well-designed gratitude journal that you write in for 5-mintues when you wake up and 5-minutes before bed. It prompts you with questions like “what are 3 things I’m grateful for?” which helps set your day with the right outlook. Let me back up a second… I’m really into the concept of gratitude and gratitude journals. I even made an iOS gratitude journal app a few years ago. Admittedly, the format of the 5-minute journal blows my app out of the water. This journal also asks to list “what could I have done to make today even better?”. Whenever I fill up a journal, I’ll review this question, look for patterns and cut out any behavior that isn’t serving me. This journal has been priceless. Chilipad In general, men are warm(er) blooded than our female counterparts. This usually means that we sleep better when we’re colder and bundled up with blankets. If you’ve ever gone on a ski/snowboarding trip and slept with the window open, you know what I’m talking about. The Chilipad is a thin mattress toper that pretty much just makes your bed cold AF. Usually, I’m a very stubborn sleeper, but this year I’ve never slept better. And speaking of chili, here’s a recipe. 23 and Me It works like this… They send you a plastic vial in the mail, you spit in it, send it back to them, and then a couple weeks later they map out your chromosomal DNA which you can view online. You get to see if you have any pre-conditions for certain behavioral traits, age-induced diseases (Alzheimer’s), etc., which is obviously good to know. They’ll tell you what kind of metabolism you have, so you can figure out what diet will work best for you. One thing tripped me out… They knew that I was 50% Asian, but not only that… the Asian part was completely Japanese. I mean… How the heck did they even know that? Japan has invaded and bred with pretty much everyone around them. I was impressed. Sk2 Facial Treatment Essence Ok. Let me first explain myself. My fiancé is really into skin care and other girly topics. She got me this (what I had thought to be at the time) expensive ass water and I gave it a shot. The result… seriously, it knocked at least a year of aging off my face. Really made a difference. I don’t know what they put in that stuff, but I’m pretty sure someone had to die for it. Books Homo Deus (A Brief History of Tomorrow) – Yuval Noah Harari Homo Deus is Harari’s follow up to Sapiens, a book that changed my life. This book did the same. Harari describes his predictions on what us humans will do in the future given our historical paths through society, culture, religion and industry. The author truly is brilliant. The way he presents his futurist hypotheses, seems more like fact than prediction because of his detailed analysis of how we homo sapiens truly are. Life 3.0 – Max Tegmark If you’re into artificial intelligence and futurism, this is a must-read. The opening prologue to this book is a crazy rollercoaster ride, going through a possible scenario of what could happen if artificial superintelligence came online. Life 3.0 is an exploration of human life in a world with with infinite intelligence. Technological paradise? Cosmic colonization? Conscious uploads into simulators? Prepare to have your mind blown. Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman – Richard Feynman PhD I first heard about Dr. Feynman in physics class in high school. I studied his “Feynman diagrams”, didn’t understand them, so by default, he was smart by my standards. In this autobiography, you see what a playful character and absolute genius this guy was. He is so extremely confident about his intellectual abilities, nothing held him back from learning anything – such as safe-cracking, playing samba, or designing the first atomic bomb. After you read this, you should never have an excuse for hesitating on learning something new. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline This fiction was written for me. In the future, Earth has gone to shit, and everyone spends their existence in a virtual reality utopia called The Oasis. The Oasis was designed by a hardcore 80’s fanatic and gamer, and when he died, he left his entire inheritance and control of Oasis to whatever gamer could solve a series of Easter Eggs. Voltron, Freddy Kreger, the Millennium Falcon… everything cameos in this book. Needless to say, I finished this book in less than a week and I can’t wait for the movie. Having trouble putting together a holiday wish list? Last year, I compiled a list a list of my favorite books in attempt to keep you well-read and inspired throughout the year. This time I’m switching things up a bit with a general list of my favorite purchases of 2017. It’s been divided up into 3 sections, for your browsing pleasure. Marketing Purchases Serpworx This is by far the best, browser overlay tool on the market. I’m borderline depressed that I didn’t find it earlier. On the SERP result, it overlays Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, and Semrush metrics and stats. When you open-up a webpage, you get those same stats, plus information like word count, heading structure, domain age, whois information, and more. And… It’s not slow and clunky like the alternatives. Buzzsumo One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in 2017 with regards to ranking is the increases importance of overall site quality score. This means that each one of the pages on your website needs to be an asset, as opposed to thin filler content. While you could get away with cheap Iwriter content in the past, those days are coming to a close. I use Buzzsumo for determining what are the highest shared blog topics in my niche, so I can use them for informational blog topics on my affiliate sites. The results have been excellent. Personal The 5-minute Journal I absolutely love this thing. Since I bought it, I haven’t skipped a day. It’s a well-designed gratitude journal that you write in for 5-mintues when you wake up and 5-minutes before bed. It prompts you with questions like “what are 3 things I’m grateful for?” which helps set your day with the right outlook. Let me back up a second… I’m really into the concept of gratitude and gratitude journals. I even made an iOS gratitude journal app a few years ago. Admittedly, the format of the 5-minute journal blows my app out of the water. This journal also asks to list “what could I have done to make today even better?”. Whenever I fill up a journal, I’ll review this question, look for patterns and cut out any behavior that isn’t serving me. This journal has been priceless. Chilipad In general, men are warm(er) blooded than our female counterparts. This usually means that we sleep better when we’re colder and bundled up with blankets. If you’ve ever gone on a ski/snowboarding trip and slept with the window open, you know what I’m talking about. The Chilipad is a thin mattress toper that pretty much just makes your bed cold AF. Usually, I’m a very stubborn sleeper, but this year I’ve never slept better. And speaking of chili, here’s a recipe. 23 and Me It works like this… They send you a plastic vial in the mail, you spit in it, send it back to them, and then a couple weeks later they map Read More Read More

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An SEO’s Guide to Time Management and Analysis

Matt Diggity — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 10:00:02 +0000

I think we can all agree here… Managing time is extremely difficult in the SEO world. So many projects, clients, affiliate sites… but not enough time to deal with them. I’m a busy guy. 46 live money sites, 4630 PBNs, and three companies does that to a person. The only possible way I can stay efficient and continue to grow my businesses is through strategic and systematized time management. In this article, I’ll be deviating from my normal topic focus about SEO ranking techniques, case studies and test results. Instead I will be teaching, what I believe to be, the most powerful SEO technique period: the ability to carefully manage time. Smart time management allows you to work on more projects, get more clients, build more sites, and test more ranking techniques. What you’re going to be learning is the exact process I’ve developed over the years which will enable you to: See exactly where your time is being spent Determine which are your highest $/hour projects Find out which are your biggest time sinks Figure out your Personal Value per Hour (PVH) Offload all tasks that can be outsourced for less than your value per hour By the end of this post, you’ll have a solid framework that you can duplicate to see where the biggest time-wasters exist in your life so you can eradicate them in the name of massive productivity. Background By all means, I am no pioneer in the areas of time management and personal efficiency. However, I am a big book nerd (see my recommended reading list) and I know where to look for answers. I was first introduced to the allure of time management from the oh-so-famous 4-Hour Work Week. This modern classic for today’s digital nomad opened my eyes to the importance of time efficiency. Back in 2010, I was an engineer for a software company… or should I say “slave”? On a typical week, I spent 60+ hours doing inefficient work that was used to sell software using an archaic sales process, while hoping to make people rich… people that weren’t me. Once I broke free of the 9-5 and went full time into the SEO industry, I knew I wanted to do things differently. I was scorned by the inefficiencies of old school corporate work culture, and wanted to hack my own processes for productivity. At that point, I sat down and hit the books. The book that has had the biggest impact with regards to time management is Peter Drucker’s Effective Executive. In this book, Drucker has an entire chapter on the importance of managing your time. I selected the key essentials from this book (and others) and came up with a system that enables me to accurately see where my time is going, so I can invest more into the areas that are generating me money and happiness, while surgically removing time-wasters. Through a few years of trial and error, I’ve perfected the simple but effective process you’re about to learn. The Quarterly Time-Management Audit Every 3 months, I sit down and begin the following process. It takes two weeks to complete, but adds only about 1% to your workload during this time. By the end of it you’ll be able to see exactly how much time you’re spending in efficient activities, how much time is being wasted, and what you can do to optimize. Before you begin this endeavor, note that… Integrity is the key to making this work. You MUST be consistent. Make a promise to yourself to stick to it every day. Phase 1 – Day 1 to Day 14: Track Each Minute of Your Working Day The purpose of this phase is to track down exactly where your time is going so that you can audit it later using a simple spreadsheet that I’ll soon be providing you. The night before you start this process, get a piece of paper and a pen lay them down on top of your keyboard. Get a good night’s sleep and wake up the next day, bright and early, ready for work. From the second you sit down and the computer and start working, you’re going to write down how each minute is spent. Write down your first task Write down the minute you started doing it Write down the minute you stopped doing it Typically, I wake up, brush my teeth, meditate and grab some food. Then the first work-related task I do is on Facebook: replying to tags, answering questions, etc. My first entry typically looks like this: Then I jump on email. I like to make sure that each person depends on me for answers has what they need to continue on with their tasks. I’ll record this down as well: As the day goes on, whenever you start a new task, it gets added to your notes. In the event that you go back to doing a task a second time (such as below with email), make sure to tack that onto sheet. Note how there are two time entries for “Email” as I’ve worked on email twice so far: Easy stuff. By the end of the day, you’ll have a sheet that looks like this: Call it a day and tuck away your notes for phase 2 of this exercise. Come tomorrow morning, you’re going to wake up and do the same thing. In fact, you’re going to continue this forward for a full 14 days, before you move on to phase 2. Expect to Start Seeing Benefits Already As you go through this phase of tracking your activity, you’ll begin to experience some intense benefits. For one, you’re going to be working more efficiently. When you’re on email-duty, for example, since you’re tracking time, you’ll work faster. Why? Because your ego doesn’t want you to write down 65 minutes instead of 15 for doing a task because you got distracted watching fail compilations on YouTube. You’re going to stay focused because you want to write down a small number. You want to prove to yourself that you’re fast. The ego is your friend, in this case. You’ll also notice that you’re batching together your activities more. When it’s time to do client follow-ups, you’ll naturally want to do them all in a row. Since you know you have to track time every time you switch between activities, it makes more sense to simply so all your client follow-ups in one session, rather than toggle between that and email and placing backlinks, etc. Batching is hands-down, one of the best tools in your arsenal to work more efficiently. We’ll visit this again later after we audit your time expenditure. Frequently Asked Questions so Far Q: Why use pen and paper? Aren’t there apps for this? A: In my experience, the tactile requirement of actually picking up a piece of pen and repeatedly tracking your tasks on paper instills a muscle memory and makes the task hard to forget. While an app is supposed to automate the process, you still need to remember to turn it on. And let me just tell you now; if the app crashes and loses your data after 13 days, you’re probably going to murder someone. Q: Why do we do this for two weeks? A: Most likely, each of your weeks varies from one to the next. One week you might be working intensely on closing clients, and the next you might be working on your own affiliate projects. By tracking two weeks, we’re capturing a larger sample of your life, and we’ll be taking the average of each of the weeks. Phase 2 – The Audit of all Audits Once you’ve gathered two weeks of data, it’s time to start entering it into a master spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is designed to do two main things: Lay out exactly where you’re spending your time Find out how much time you’re spending in rewarding projects vs. non-rewarding projects Let’s see how it works. Fill in the Time Analysis Spreadsheet For each day of the week that you’ve tracked, simply add in the total number of minutes that you spent on each task. Here’s what my sheet looks like after entering the first Sunday and Monday of the time tracking phase. In dark blue, you’ll see my main businesses (or projects) which are broken down into smaller tasks. Continue to fill out each day of the week. Once you’re done, you’ll be over to scroll over to the right-hand side and see exactly how many hours you spend in each task as well as each project they’re associated with. Record How Much Money You Made in the Previous Month Now here’s the fun part. Notice the yellow squares. Here’s where you fill out how much money each of your businesses/projects/clients made for you in the previous month. (Note: I’m not using real numbers in this example because I’m not an “income report kind of guy”.) The tool will Read More Read More

The post An SEO’s Guide to Time Management and Analysis first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

How to Rank In Google Images in 5 Steps

Matt Diggity — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 09:25:59 +0000

Foreword by Matt Diggity: If you’ve look in the SERPs recently, you might have noticed that featured snippets have slightly changed. Whereas before, if you rank for the snippet the image is pulled from your site – Now, the image will most likely be pulled from the #1 ranking image in Google Image search. Sounds annoying, right? Not if you know how to rank in Google Images. In the video below, we’ll cover how to rank #1. For this sneaky post, I’ve brought on Dino Gomez to show you exactly how to do just that. Benefits of Ranking Images 1) Branding Include a logo watermark on your image and that can be seen front and center on Google for a competitive target keyword. 2) Traffic Depending on your niche, image optimization can drive a fair bit of extra traffic. In particular, ecommerce websites have much to gain. I ranked a client in the fashion apparel industry and their designs showed up first for competitive terms in addition to their website. Since people look closely at the design of clothing as part of the buying consideration; it helped drive click through rate from Google image results. “How to articles” also have much to gain from image optimization. When people are looking to learn something they often want to see a “visual” of how it is done. 3) Rich Snippets There’s been a lot of recent discussion around how to rank for rich snippets and rich snippet images. Results are showing that rich snippets sometimes pull images from websites not even on page 1 of Google for that query. The truth is that most of the time, like Matt said, the images is getting pulled from Google image rankings. Imagine your competitor does all the work to gain a rich snippet but your image is sitting with the snippet at position zero. There’s a good chance you’re going to steal some of that traffic and brand awareness again. 4) Amusement I ranked myself for “best looking guy in San Diego”. My competition (see the images next to me) was obviously fierce as I’m barely beating out the fellas that went shirtless. Needless to say, I showed my girlfriend. And my mom. And my buddy who spams me with fake political stories. Their reaction? And the result… Girlfriend thinks I’m amazing. (win) Mom has most proud moment of her life. (win) Friend stops spamming me with fake news. (win) Who would’ve thought image optimization could be so damn amusing and powerful. How to Rank Images in Google (Step by Step) Ranking images in Google is very similar to ranking a Youtube video. In fact ranking images is actually easier because the competition is lower (not many people are intentionally aiming to rank photos). Here are the steps to rank an image… 1) Alt text The alt text of the image needs to match or be a partial match keyword to what you’re aiming to rank for. 2) Content The content surrounding where your image is hosted needs to be closely related to your target keyword. 3) Authority This is relevant to the competitiveness of the keyword you’re trying to rank. If you’re aiming to steal a rich snippet image spot then the hosting website of your image should have some comparable authority to your competition holding the actual text snippet. Here’s an example of stealing the image snippet. If you check the alt text of the image you’ll verify it’s a partial match of the keyword. You’ll also see the website stealing the image snippet has very similar authority to the website with the actual text snippet. (below) 4) Syndication Take your image and syndicate it out to all the image sharing websites. This includes Google plus, Flickr, Google Picassa, & others. Link back to the original image. Here’s a link to the gig that I use: click here. 5) Juice The Image Take your image and embed it on a few PBN sites just as you would if you were aiming to rank a Youtube video. Make sure the embed references the hosting website image source code as the point of origin. That’s it. Depending on the competition level and authority of your image-hosting website you’ll hit the top of google images quickly. Finally, what image search do you plan to rank for? Foreword by Matt Diggity: If you’ve look in the SERPs recently, you might have noticed that featured snippets have slightly changed. Whereas before, if you rank for the snippet the image is pulled from your site – Now, the image will most likely be pulled from the #1 ranking image in Google Image search. Sounds annoying, right? Not if you know how to rank in Google Images. In the video below, we’ll cover how to rank #1. For this sneaky post, I’ve brought on Dino Gomez to show you exactly how to do just that. Benefits of Ranking Images 1) Branding Include a logo watermark on your image and that can be seen front and center on Google for a competitive target keyword. 2) Traffic Depending on your niche, image optimization can drive a fair bit of extra traffic. In particular, ecommerce websites have much to gain. I ranked a client in the fashion apparel industry and their designs showed up first for competitive terms in addition to their website. Since people look closely at the design of clothing as part of the buying consideration; it helped drive click through rate from Google image results. “How to articles” also have much to gain from image optimization. When people are looking to learn something they often want to see a “visual” of how it is done. 3) Rich Snippets There’s been a lot of recent discussion around how to rank for rich snippets and rich snippet images. Results are showing that rich snippets sometimes pull images from websites not even on page 1 of Google for that query. The truth is that most of the time, like Matt said, the images is getting pulled from Google image rankings. Imagine your competitor does all the work to gain a rich snippet but your image is sitting with the snippet at position zero. There’s a good chance you’re going to steal some of that traffic and brand awareness again. 4) Amusement I ranked myself for “best looking guy in San Diego”. My competition (see the images next to me) was obviously fierce as I’m barely beating out the fellas that went shirtless. Needless to say, I showed my girlfriend. And my mom. And my buddy who spams me with fake political stories. Their reaction? And the result… Girlfriend thinks I’m amazing. (win) Mom has most proud moment of her life. (win) Friend stops spamming me with fake news. (win) Who would’ve thought image optimization could be so damn amusing and powerful. How to Rank Images in Google (Step by Step) Ranking images in Google is very similar to ranking a Youtube video. In fact ranking images is actually easier because the competition is lower (not many people are intentionally aiming to rank photos). Here are the steps to rank an image… 1) Alt text The alt text of the image needs to match or be a partial match keyword to what you’re aiming to rank for. 2) Content The content surrounding where your image is hosted needs to be closely related to your target keyword. 3) Authority This is relevant to the competitiveness of the keyword you’re trying to rank. If you’re aiming to steal a rich snippet image spot then the hosting website of your image should have some comparable authority to your competition holding the actual text snippet. Here’s an example of stealing the image snippet. If you check the alt text of the image you’ll verify it’s a partial match of the keyword. You’ll also see the website stealing the image snippet has very similar authority to the website with the actual text snippet. (below) 4) Syndication Take your image and syndicate it out to all the image sharing websites. This includes Google plus, Flickr, Google Picassa, & others. Link back to the original image. Here’s a link to the gig that I use: click here. 5) Juice The Image Take your image and embed it on a few PBN sites just as you would if you were aiming to rank a Youtube video. Make sure the embed references the hosting website image source code as the point of origin. That’s it. Depending on the competition level and authority of your image-hosting website you’ll hit the top of google images quickly. Finally, what image search do you plan to rank for? Read More

The post How to Rank In Google Images in 5 Steps first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

A Marketer’s Ultimate List of 16 Must-Read Books

Matt Diggity — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 13:07:21 +0000

Growing up, I used to hate reading. And not in a typical all-kids-hate-books fashion. I would actually avoid reading at all costs. For book report assignments, I would purposely choose books that had movie adaptions. Anyone ever read Hook… I mean, Peter Pan? When I was 19 years old, I read a book that literally changed my life (listed below). It had such a profound effect on me that it forged a habit of reading that I’ve carried out to this day. Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of must-read books that have had significant effect on my life, both professionally and personally. I’m happy to be sharing them here with you. Business 1. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber If I could go back in time and give my younger entrepreneur self any book, this would be it. The E-Myth is an absolute must for anyone who wants to truly understand how to scale and automate. 2. The Magic of Thinking Big – David J. Schwartz Excellent primer on how to configure your mindset for success. I read this book once per year. 3. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk – Al Ries This quick-read is a hidden gem. The lessons taught about marketing are timeless and will always apply, no matter what business you’re in. 4. Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets – Michael Bosworth This book was huge for me as it introduced a concept I apply on a daily basis: The Sales Cycle. 5. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You Recommended by my best friend, who is an absolute boss at team management. 6. CRUSH IT! – Gary Vaynerchuk Highly motivating book for anyone interested in branding oneself and taking advantage of the incredibly fast and agile marketing environment we currently live in. 7. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done – Peter F. Drucker Key takeaway from this one: your most important asset is time. Track it, manage it, and don’t give it out without consideration. 8. A / B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers – Dan Siroker If you’re into conversion rate optimization (CRO), then get this book right away. Breaks down split testing simply, yet effectively. 9. Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion – Ben Hunt Every page on your site should have a purpose. This book, combined with Solution Selling (#4), will help you tell a story with your website that visitors will relate to. 10. Start Your Own Corporation: Why the Rich Own Their Own Companies and Everyone Else Works for Them – Garrett Sutton If you don’t have an LLC or have never considered incorporating, after you read this, you’ll be filing the next day. 11. Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes – Tom Wheelwright I shit you not. This book saved me $50k last year. Check this video below, to get a list of 10 more books that will change your life. Personal 12. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey This is the book that changed my life. My parents died when I was young. Needless to say, it affected me very harshly. This book opened me up to the possibility that I’m actually in control of how I feel. 13. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl Written by a profound psychologist whom was incarcerated in three Nazi internment camps during WWII. Frankl found happiness, despite his environment, through purpose. 14. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Really interesting take on the functioning of the human mind. Once you understand the idea of a “flow state”, try to seek it everyday. 15. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment – Eckhart Tolle Probably the best modern spiritual book that I’ve ever read. Whether you believe in a higher power or not, this book will simply make you a better human. 16. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel – Rolf Potts Learn how to evolve from a “tourist” to a “traveler” by immersing and getting lost in the uncertainty and character of long term travel. Growing up, I used to hate reading. And not in a typical all-kids-hate-books fashion. I would actually avoid reading at all costs. For book report assignments, I would purposely choose books that had movie adaptions. Anyone ever read Hook… I mean, Peter Pan? When I was 19 years old, I read a book that literally changed my life (listed below). It had such a profound effect on me that it forged a habit of reading that I’ve carried out to this day. Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of must-read books that have had significant effect on my life, both professionally and personally. I’m happy to be sharing them here with you. Business 1. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber If I could go back in time and give my younger entrepreneur self any book, this would be it. The E-Myth is an absolute must for anyone who wants to truly understand how to scale and automate. 2. The Magic of Thinking Big – David J. Schwartz Excellent primer on how to configure your mindset for success. I read this book once per year. 3. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk – Al Ries This quick-read is a hidden gem. The lessons taught about marketing are timeless and will always apply, no matter what business you’re in. 4. Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets – Michael Bosworth This book was huge for me as it introduced a concept I apply on a daily basis: The Sales Cycle. 5. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You Recommended by my best friend, who is an absolute boss at team management. 6. CRUSH IT! – Gary Vaynerchuk Highly motivating book for anyone interested in branding oneself and taking advantage of the incredibly fast and agile marketing environment we currently live in. 7. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done – Peter F. Drucker Key takeaway from this one: your most important asset is time. Track it, manage it, and don’t give it out without consideration. 8. A / B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers – Dan Siroker If you’re into conversion rate optimization (CRO), then get this book right away. Breaks down split testing simply, yet effectively. 9. Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion – Ben Hunt Every page on your site should have a purpose. This book, combined with Solution Selling (#4), will help you tell a story with your website that visitors will relate to. 10. Start Your Own Corporation: Why the Rich Own Their Own Companies and Everyone Else Works for Them – Garrett Sutton If you don’t have an LLC or have never considered incorporating, after you read this, you’ll be filing the next day. 11. Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes – Tom Wheelwright I shit you not. This book saved me $50k last year. Check this video below, to get a list of 10 more books that will change your life. Personal 12. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey This is the book that changed my life. My parents died when I was young. Needless to say, it affected me very harshly. This book opened me up to the possibility that I’m actually in control of how I feel. 13. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl Written by a profound psychologist whom was incarcerated in three Nazi internment camps during WWII. Frankl found happiness, despite his environment, through purpose. 14. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Really interesting take on the functioning of the human mind. Once you understand the idea of a “flow state”, try to seek it everyday. 15. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment – Eckhart Tolle Probably the best modern spiritual book that I’ve ever read. Whether you believe in a higher power or not, this book will simply make you a better human. 16. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel – Rolf Potts Learn how to evolve from a “tourist” to a “traveler” by immersing and getting lost in the uncertainty and character of long term travel. Read More

The post A Marketer’s Ultimate List of 16 Must-Read Books first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

An SEO’s Guide to Flipping Websites: 9 Essential Steps

Matt Diggity — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 12:00:09 +0000

How would you like to collect 25 months of your website’s income right now? Sounds pretty sweet, right? You can potentially cash-in on over two years of net income from your website and all you have to do is sell that website. You might be wondering… why would I sell a website when it is almost completely hands off? After all, at the end of the day, SEO can be pretty passive once you have the content, the web design, and the profitable rankings to support your site. So why would you let something like this go? Let’s explore that. We’re about to take a look at the benefits of selling websites and by the end of this article, I’m going to make sure you know how to make sure you get the maximum value from your flips. 1) Find Your Reason to Sell: What is Your Goal? Goal #1: Build an Affiliate Website Empire When you first started in SEO, you most likely didn’t have a ton of capital to grow out your affiliate sites. This meant you had to focus on easier niche markets to rank with lower barriers to entry. Probably the reason these niches were easier to conquer was that they were not so profitable. But what if you had a little war chest full of funds which allowed you to compete in those more lucrative, competitive spaces? When you sell off your website, you can effectively raise capital for increasingly lucrative projects. As I’ve mentioned before, it is important to periodically 80-20 your website inventory – sell off the 80% that are making you the lowest amount of money, keep the 20% that are creating 80% of your income, and use the capital you get from selling the previous sites to absolutely explode your affiliate empire. Goal #2: Investment If you have a website doing $5,000 per month in net profit, it would not be unreasonable to sell it for $110,000. In the USA, that is often enough to buy a house free and clear depending on the location. You could easily become a debt free landlord in just a few months of hard work in the SEO game, by converting your digital profit machines into real estate cash flow assets – without ever having to worry about a mortgage. Goal #3: Risk Mitigation Every business has its own set of inherent risks and SEO is no different. If the next Google algorithm update doesn’t go your way, all your cash cows can get slaughtered in a single night. The same effect can happen if a competitor negative SEOs you and pushes their own properties to page 1 of Google, leaving yours in the dust. When you sell your website, you remove those risk factors completely. You jump in a time machine and warp 20-30 months into the future and collect all that income today, regardless of what capricious search engines might have in store for everyone else. Goal #4: It’s Time to Move On You might sell your website if you simply don’t see the growth potential anymore. You may feel like you have explored all the profitable avenues you could. Tunnel vision can set in after months of working so close with a project and the ability to see any new directions for the site can be lost. That’s okay. Buyers with a myriad of alternate experiences and skill sets might look at your site and see a potential gold mine to be brought to life if they could get the chance to apply their expertise to the site. Goal #5: Life Happened and You Need Some Cash The last factor is life itself. Sometimes you need an injection of cash, whether you’re adopting a baby or going through a divorce. You never know what can happen, and it is nice to rest assured that you have the ability to sell off your digital assets in times of need. Objection: What about my recurring, passive income? A lot of SEOs love that affiliate paycheck that comes in whether or not you are sleeping or working on other projects. I understand. I love it too. Here’s the thing… you can still collect a passive income check from these websites even after you sell them. If you own and use PBN’s like me, the sites you are selling rank in Google because of your PBN links. When a new buyer comes along who is interested in purchasing your website, you can sell them on paying a monthly maintenance fee to keep all the links active. As long as the seller keeps paying, you keep the PBN links just as they are. Boom, you are not only collecting months of income upfront, but you are also creating a little stream of side income on what would had been dead space on your PBN. 2. Find the Right Platform to Sell Your Site I have a lot of projects going on in both my business and personal life. Time is my most precious resource. The last thing I want is extra work – even if that extra work nets me a large upfront payment. This is why I prefer using a website broker like Empire Flippers. They’re a turnkey solution meaning that they handle 90% of the process for you. Tasks like: Seller communication Listing Valuation (determining the price for your site) Marketing of your business Switching over affiliate accounts and migrating your website to the new owner (this is an extremely tedious process if you’ve never done it yourself) And a ton more Another benefit of using their service is their deposit system. By requiring an upfront deposit they remove a vast majority of buyers that are out to scam sellers like us. In terms of website valuation, Empire Flippers gets you the best price on the open market for your site. This isn’t because they’re overvaluing sites. They actually sell these sites at these big prices with 20-30x multiples of monthly profit. One reason they are able to pull this off is the sheer volume of buyers they are in contact with. Their email list is a bit over 30,000 subscribers and their site receives around 50,000 views a month. What Types of Sites Sell Well on Empire Flippers? Affiliate Sites In particular, Amazon affiliate sites sell extremely well since most buyers are fairly familiar with this program. I reached out to Justin Cooke, one of the founders of Empire Flippers, and asked him for his feedback on this topic. Here is what he had to say when it comes to what kind of sites sell well: Using well-known and widely-used affiliates like the Amazon affiliate program ensures a wider audience of potential buyers to purchase the site. Having more potential buyers helps to both sell quickly and for a higher valuation. Lead Generation Sites Another monetization model that sells well on Empire Flippers is rank-and-rent leadgen. In the last couple of years, leadgen has become a huge movement in of itself in the SEO community. Here’s Justin on the sell-ability of leadgen sites: Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen significant interest in lead generation sites, particularly those in the education space. For-profit vocational schools are willing to pay top dollar for student leads, typically working through 3rd party affiliates like Campus Explorer or Quinstreet. Will your Niche Be Protected after you List your Site? A common objection when it comes to selling off a website is that once your niche is listed publicly, competition might come in and steal it. Empire Flippers’ marketplace has protections in place that help mitigate risks like this. I asked Justin what he says to sellers with this concern: We get this objection quite a bit from sellers, but it’s really the buyers who should be worried! After all, the sellers are letting go of the website – it’s the buyers who will have to deal with the increased competition from copycats. To solve this problem, we limit the exposure of the exact niche and URL to those who have paid a deposit. The process isn’t perfect, but it does weed out those who are less serious or don’t have access to some amount of capital. 3. Maximize Your Sale Price Increase Profit You can find out what your site would sell for with some simple math. Sales price = Sales Multiple x Monthly Net Profit Currently, the industry standard multiple for a sale price is between 20x-30x of net income profits. This means that if you’re making $1,000 profit per month, you can expect to sell for $20,000 to $30,000. The single greatest impact on your sales price will be improving your net monthly profit. You can do this by growing top-line revenue while cutting expenses, especially those that are unnecessary. (Exploratory marketing, hardly-used software, etc.) Obviously, do everything you can to increase your top-line by increasing your monthly revenue. Rank higher, collect more traffic, and optimize for conversion. Many people ignore the gains in sale price you Read More Read More

The post An SEO’s Guide to Flipping Websites: 9 Essential Steps first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

How to Properly Track and Manage Your Backlinks

Matt Diggity — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:00:29 +0000

I am absolutely O.C.D. when it comes to tracking, measuring, and recording data. One of the best skills you can have in SEO is to be able to stay efficiently organized. Only by keeping track of what actions you’ve taken, will you be effectively able to make correct decisions about what to do next. Famous management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same nerdy obsession I have over collecting data. Every week, I perform SEO consultations for various clients. When someone doesn’t show up with a list of the links pointing to their site, I simply can’t help diagnose their offsite SEO problems. There’s simply nothing to talk about. I decided to make this post to help make your (and my) life easier by explaining how to properly track and manage your backlinks. The importance of staying organized in SEO It is said that there are over 200 ranking signals that Google uses to determine SERP placement. This means, that in your ranking equation, there are over 200 variables that are constantly changing from day-to-day. Your only chance at wrapping your head around this equation is if you successfully reduce as many variables as possible. If you can confidently answer questions like “do I have enough nofollow links pointing to my site?” then you’re one step closer to understanding your rankings. This is not possible unless you keep track of your backlinks. Why you can’t rely on Majestic to track your backlinks Do not count on the 3rd party backlink crawlers to track your links for you. Why is that? 3rd party crawlers are extremely flawed and will not pick up all your links. If you’ve ever tried comparing Majestic vs Ahrefs vs Moz results, you know what I’m talking about. Their results are highly varied and grossly incomplete. You’re likely blocking your PBNs from being picked up by them anyways. Imagine you start a new project money site. A few months go by and you’re not ranking where you’d like to be. You decide that it’s possible that you were too aggressive with your anchor text and you’d like to compare your sites anchor text profile to the niche-specific average ratio. Well, my friend, if you didn’t keep track of your website link building efforts yourself, you’re completely screwed. Majestic, Moz and Ahrefs are going to all give you conflicting and incomplete data. Even Webmaster Tools won’t display all of the links to your site. If you want to be able to debug your sites, it’s time to start tracking your backlinks in detail. What you need to track I recommend keeping one large master spreadsheet for each of your projects. Each spreadsheet should contain the following data: Backlinks First and foremost, you’ll want to track your backlinks: all links coming from PBNs, Web 2.0s, Press Releases, blog comments, etc. Namely, track every link that is pointing to your site that is indexed. This does not include social signals which play a different role in ranking altogether. In the video below, you’ll learn why backlinks are still considered as a top ranking factor and what other things you can do to win on Google SEO. Here’s exactly what you should record: When was the link placed? What is the referring domain? What is the target URL? What is the anchor text used? Dofollow or nofollow? Is the link indexed? Anchor Text Distribution This is definitely the most important thing to track. Keep an ongoing record of the overall anchor text distribution pointing to your site and how it measures up to the niche-specific target anchor text. This is best accomplished with an automatically-updating pie chart. Rankings Whenever you place or purchase links, keep track of what the rankings were before you placed the link. This will allow you to see what links/anchors were most likely to have caused positive or negative movement. This is most easily accomplished with a rank tracker, but I also recommend adding weekly ranking notes to your spreadsheet every time you place a backlink. It’s simply going to make your life easier. You’ll see what I mean. A List of Keywords and Which Pages Target Them Keep track of each of the keywords your site is gunning for and which pages on your site are gunning for them. In most situations, I recommend you don’t send the same exact anchor text more than 1-2 times. Each time you send a keyword’s exact anchor, mark this down in your spreadsheet. Social Fortress Tracking List all of your social fortress profiles, including your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. and denote whether or not they are indexed. Also if you’re trust pulling and linking to your social fortress, keep track of the links and anchors that you’re sending to each social profile. Weekly Log Keep a weekly update on what actions you took for the week as well as what actions you recommend yourself to take next week. This will help you make quicker decisions from week-to-week as you won’t need to re-familiarize yourself with what your goals were. But probably the most valuable outcome of keeping a proper weekly log is when you start to deploy multiple websites and dominate a niche. Once you’ve figured out how to rank one site in a particular niche, you have a blueprint on how to rank other sites moving forward. You simply need to follow the same weekly actions until your 2nd, 3rd, etc. pages are ranked on page 1 as well. This can be huge when you really want to scale. High-level responsibilities such as anchor text selection can be outsourced to a VA with very little SEO training. As long as they can follow the instructions outlined in your weekly log, they can rank a website. My Free Website Tracking Template Keeping track of everything I’ve listed above is quite an organizational feat, so I’ve helped you out by providing you with the exact template that I use to keep track of my projects (must be opened on desktop). And here’s a demo on how to use this spreadsheet to its fullest potential. I am absolutely O.C.D. when it comes to tracking, measuring, and recording data. One of the best skills you can have in SEO is to be able to stay efficiently organized. Only by keeping track of what actions you’ve taken, will you be effectively able to make correct decisions about what to do next. Famous management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same nerdy obsession I have over collecting data. Every week, I perform SEO consultations for various clients. When someone doesn’t show up with a list of the links pointing to their site, I simply can’t help diagnose their offsite SEO problems. There’s simply nothing to talk about. I decided to make this post to help make your (and my) life easier by explaining how to properly track and manage your backlinks. The importance of staying organized in SEO It is said that there are over 200 ranking signals that Google uses to determine SERP placement. This means, that in your ranking equation, there are over 200 variables that are constantly changing from day-to-day. Your only chance at wrapping your head around this equation is if you successfully reduce as many variables as possible. If you can confidently answer questions like “do I have enough nofollow links pointing to my site?” then you’re one step closer to understanding your rankings. This is not possible unless you keep track of your backlinks. Why you can’t rely on Majestic to track your backlinks Do not count on the 3rd party backlink crawlers to track your links for you. Why is that? 3rd party crawlers are extremely flawed and will not pick up all your links. If you’ve ever tried comparing Majestic vs Ahrefs vs Moz results, you know what I’m talking about. Their results are highly varied and grossly incomplete. You’re likely blocking your PBNs from being picked up by them anyways. Imagine you start a new project money site. A few months go by and you’re not ranking where you’d like to be. You decide that it’s possible that you were too aggressive with your anchor text and you’d like to compare your sites anchor text profile to the niche-specific average ratio. Well, my friend, if you didn’t keep track of your website link building efforts yourself, you’re completely screwed. Majestic, Moz and Ahrefs are going to all give you conflicting and incomplete data. Even Webmaster Tools won’t display all of the links to your site. If you want to be able to debug your sites, it’s time to start tracking your backlinks in detail. What you need to track I recommend keeping one large master spreadsheet for each of your projects. Each spreadsheet should contain the following data: Backlinks First and foremost, you’ll want to track your backlinks: all links coming Read More Read More

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SEO Spotlight: Daryl Rosser, Lior Ohayon, Joseph Elshazly

Matt Diggity — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 13:00:49 +0000

Welcome back to Episode 2 of the SEO Spotlight series. In the last episode, we visited three SEO’s that think outside-the-box in order to tackle their problems. Being a person who appreciates creativity, I’ll be keeping up with the same theme here by interviewing three more SEOs who have made great progress in the areas of affiliate SEO, PBN, and client scaling. You’ll learn their thought processes and find out how you can apply these same ideas to your own SEO projects. Daryl Rosser – Breaking Down Problems into Bite Size Pieces Daryl has got to be one of the most likeable guys in SEO. He’s got an incredible head for business, especially for such a young fella, and has a sound technical understanding as well. Plus, he’s fun to party with. His technique for deconstructing high-competition affiliate SEO is bound to get some ideas popping off in your head. Name: Daryl Rosser Age: 22 Location: Northamptonshire, England Matt: When did you get into SEO and how? Daryl: 2.5 years ago when I was seriously struggling to make money. A local business had contacted me, they said they wanted SEO and heard I could help. I had no idea about SEO, but I needed money, so I met them, read up on some SEO buzzwords before meeting them, and later on ended up closing them as a client. After their first payment came through, I setup some backlinks, and got them ranked #1 in 3 weeks, and had an “oh shit” moment. Matt: Let’s talk more about how you make affiliate SEO ridiculously easy. Daryl: Why is it that most people prefer local SEO to affiliate SEO? It’s easier. When people think of affiliate SEO, they think of competing with all the other affiliates. This requires a higher budget, better knowledge of ranking, and most likely more time. This technique is how I approach affiliate SEO, where there is barely any competition, you don’t need a lot of PBN links, and the conversion rate is ridiculous. Matt: How exactly do you do it? Spill the beans. Daryl: I don’t sell products as an affiliate. That’s a great model, and it works, but it takes a lot more traffic. I specifically seek out national firms that have pay-per-lead and/or pay-per-call affiliate offers. Firstly, this makes it a lot easier to generate a commission, and some of these can pay upwards of $100, depending on the niche. (Lingo clarification: Pay-per-lead means they will pay for an enquiry. Pay-per-call means they will pay for a call.) But the smart part of this strategy is that I treat them as local clients. Rather than try to compete on the national keywords, I can pick out a few towns or cities, rank my site top in them, and reap the rewards. This leaves you competing with local businesses, not other affiliates. The search volume is low, but you can rank multiple sites easier, and the search traffic is highly qualified. Say you work with a national plumbing company. If someone searches “plumbers in [your city]”, how qualified do you think they are to wanting a plumbing company? Then all you need to do is drive an enquiry or call through their website, and you get paid. It’s like local lead gen, but it’s through affiliate networks, so no client management. The next question people ask me when I share this is, “where do I get the offers?” All I can say is that you should be on every reputable network, and you should be looking out for them. Here is a list of 20 reputable CPA networks: https://mthink.com/top-cpa-networks-2015/. You can specific ask your affiliate managers for these types of offers and they’ll be able to help. Matt: Very clever. What’s your biggest win from using this technique? Daryl: Last month one of my websites had 1,342 unique visitors. The revenue (entirely from SEO) was $2,600. That is around $1.94 per visitor to my website. Compare that to some affiliates that have over 1,000 visitors daily with lower revenues. This is a solid model. Matt: Any advice to others in this SEO game? Daryl: My advice isn’t related to SEO so much as it’s related to business. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past, and I see others make, is to focus on things in the wrong order. They do the right work, but in the wrong order. Take client SEO as an example. People invest thousands of dollars and several hours into building up a PBN before they even have a client. How does that help you? It doesn’t. Evaluate your goals and ask yourself what is the one thing you should be focusing on right now to get you closer to that. If you’re just starting out with client SEO, it’s probably prospecting or outreach. Once you’ve done that, then you can build a PBN or rent links. As you expand your business you get better at this, but then it becomes – are you spending all your time managing and maintaining what you have, or are you focusing on growth? It’s easy to get complacent at a certain stage and just manage things, don’t, keep focusing on growth and working your ass off towards it. Be sure to check out Daryl’s Lionzeal.com, a blog and community (of over 2,000 members) committed to scaling SEO businesses. Lior Ohayon – No Software Tool Exists? Create it Yourself. We all have some tasks that repeatedly consume a large amount of time. Tasks that would be better resolved by software, if it existed. Lior took matters into his own hands and developed a tool for speeding up the PBN auditing process. Name: Lior Ohayon Age: 23 Location: Toronto, Canada Matt: When did you get into SEO and how? Lior: I got into the SEO world by accident in 2013. I was a typical college dropout looking for ways to make money online. Everything I would read about starting a business boiled down to getting traffic to websites and SEO was one of the main ways. I consumed a lot of content about affiliate websites and link building, mainly through Pat Flynn, and played around with my own sites a little. Then I realized instead of starting a bunch of websites, I could just offer these new skills I learnt to existing business owners and help them grow their traffic. I stumbled into client SEO by accident! Matt: Let’s talk more about the software you created. What problem does it solve? Lior: When you are buying an expired domain for your PBN at auction or from a broker, you need to do a lot of research using third party tools to see if it is a powerful, clean domain. There could be dozens of metrics to research, and it can get very time consuming and a headache to manage all of the tools in your browser (multiple tabs, logins, etc). I got frustrated with this whole process so I created ScopeReveal. It’s a free tool that aims to eliminate that problem by streamlining all the tools into one convenient dashboard, as well as providing our own metrics from our algorithm that combines many of the imported metrics. Matt: Many SEOs including myself have considered having software created. What was the development process like? Lior: First I decided which metrics are the most important, and figured out how to use their APIs to capture that data into my own software. Next, I found my developer by using Elance (now UpWork). He was one of the first to respond and he even built a prototype of the software which he included in his initial SEO proposal. That blew me away and his English was perfect so it was the right fit all around. Some tips I have for hiring on these sites is to include a secret code they should put in their proposal so you know they read it, as well as requiring a small test to be done (can be a paid test – well worth it). Then you will know their communication skills, skill level and ability to deliver on schedule. It also helps to promise future work on other projects if the first one goes well. This will lower rates if you always choose fixed price like me. On a side note, do research before making any SEO software that makes your life easier. It could already exist, or it could be cheaper to have a virtual assistant do the same tasks. You really have to calculate how much time or money it will save you in the long run, including upkeep and all. Matt: How much time savings can one expect using ScopeReveal? Lior: I typically buy PBNs from brokers. So once I get the URL from them, I would have to open MOZ, Majestic, Google, Ahrefs, Archive Wayback Machine, Who Is. That’s maybe 5 minutes in total. Then adding the domain to each one, analyzing the data, another 15 minutes or so. Read More Read More

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Quick Indexing with the Video Sitemap Trick

Matt Diggity — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 06:25:34 +0000

Indexing can be a pain in the ass. Until I found this trick, I was fumbling around impatiently, trying to use pinging services and social bookmark blasts in order to get something indexed. This trick is: Reliable (at the time of this writing): If it doesn’t index your site, then your site won’t index period. Its probably a penalized domain. Fast: 5 min – 2 hours Safe: Index-forcing with tools like pingers is an SEO tool. Google doesn’t like SEO’s. Don’t do stuff that only an SEO would do. Step 1) Embed a YouTube Video on the Page you want to Index Browse YouTube and find any video that’s in your niche. Find the embed code and copy it (Ctrl-C). In terms of getting your page indexed, you don’t need to find an in-niche video. But I find that it’s always good practice to always keep the theme for a page consistent at all times, so take the extra 2.3 seconds and find a pertinent video. Step 2) Paste the Embed Code into your Page’s HTML Editor and Save Step 3) Install Google XML Sitemap for Videos You want the version by “Amit Agarwal”. Step 4) Generate Site Map and Ping Google Step a) Tools > Video Sitemap Step b) Generate Video Sitemap Step c) Tell Google to Crawl It Step 5) Watch Cat Videos (Wait) This usually takes about 1-2 hours to get your page indexed, but I see it go through sometimes as fast as 5 minutes. Bonus: Does this work for indexing pages that aren’t on your site? Yes! If you’re trying to index your social fortress, press release URLs, or even citations, the video sitemap trick still works. The sitemap-video.xml file that is created by the plugin is a text file. Copy one of the entries that it created for one of your posts and create a new entry. An entry starts with <url> and ends with </url>. Between the <loc> and </loc> tags, you’ll edit the URL there and input the path of the URL you’d like to index. Why does it work? No idea, but it does. Indexing can be a pain in the ass. Until I found this trick, I was fumbling around impatiently, trying to use pinging services and social bookmark blasts in order to get something indexed. This trick is: Reliable (at the time of this writing): If it doesn’t index your site, then your site won’t index period. Its probably a penalized domain. Fast: 5 min – 2 hours Safe: Index-forcing with tools like pingers is an SEO tool. Google doesn’t like SEO’s. Don’t do stuff that only an SEO would do. Step 1) Embed a YouTube Video on the Page you want to Index Browse YouTube and find any video that’s in your niche. Find the embed code and copy it (Ctrl-C). In terms of getting your page indexed, you don’t need to find an in-niche video. But I find that it’s always good practice to always keep the theme for a page consistent at all times, so take the extra 2.3 seconds and find a pertinent video. Step 2) Paste the Embed Code into your Page’s HTML Editor and Save Step 3) Install Google XML Sitemap for Videos You want the version by “Amit Agarwal”. Step 4) Generate Site Map and Ping Google Step a) Tools > Video Sitemap Step b) Generate Video Sitemap Step c) Tell Google to Crawl It Step 5) Watch Cat Videos (Wait) This usually takes about 1-2 hours to get your page indexed, but I see it go through sometimes as fast as 5 minutes. Bonus: Does this work for indexing pages that aren’t on your site? Yes! If you’re trying to index your social fortress, press release URLs, or even citations, the video sitemap trick still works. The sitemap-video.xml file that is created by the plugin is a text file. Copy one of the entries that it created for one of your posts and create a new entry. An entry starts with <url> and ends with </url>. Between the <loc> and </loc> tags, you’ll edit the URL there and input the path of the URL you’d like to index. Why does it work? No idea, but it does. Read More

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Reduce Sandbox Length by Timing your Backlinks

Matt Diggity — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 08:43:49 +0000

What is Sandboxing? Definition: When you build links to a site and you see little to no ranking benefit. Back around mid-2014, we started to see a sandboxing effect on new domains that had been recently registered. Before that time, you used to be able to register a new domain, build some backlinks to it, and within 5 days it could potentially be on page 1. Now a days, SEOs are reporting sandbox periods of 3-6 months long. People have been discussing various ways to beat the sandbox and reduce the time it takes to rank. In general, the most widespread theory is that you want to create a viral effect. Here’s my recipe for sandbox reduction, and the results I’ve gotten by using it… Social Fortress – For most “real” businesses, a website’s first links are usually from social websites. Once their site is made, a business naturally goes out to brand itself on Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc. This social fortress should constitute the first links that you create to your website. Business Citations – After social profiles are created, a typical business would like to make sure potential customers can find them in local and industry-specific directories. Leverage directories like these to build free but natural links to your homepage. Social Signals – After that, create a social signal campaign to drip out 50-200 Facebook shares, Twitter tweets, etc over the next 30 days. This is where the virality comes from. To generate signals, I use SEO Butler’s 200 signals package, namely for their ease of use, delivery of quality signals, and repeatedly good results. Use coupon code “DIGGITY10” for 10% off. Guest Posts – Now that the stage is set, it’s a safe time to build links. I stick to quality guest posts from websites with traffic in this beginning phase. Why? Because in the natural course of the internet, most new links are created on brand new pages. Similar to how guest posts are created. The name of the game is to look as natural as possible. Results Here are the results of two separate tests running the sequence listed above. Of course, there are various techniques people use to skate around the sandbox, but this is what I use and it seems to be working quite well, and quite consistently. Give it a shot and share your results as well. What is Sandboxing? Definition: When you build links to a site and you see little to no ranking benefit. Back around mid-2014, we started to see a sandboxing effect on new domains that had been recently registered. Before that time, you used to be able to register a new domain, build some backlinks to it, and within 5 days it could potentially be on page 1. Now a days, SEOs are reporting sandbox periods of 3-6 months long. People have been discussing various ways to beat the sandbox and reduce the time it takes to rank. In general, the most widespread theory is that you want to create a viral effect. Here’s my recipe for sandbox reduction, and the results I’ve gotten by using it… Social Fortress – For most “real” businesses, a website’s first links are usually from social websites. Once their site is made, a business naturally goes out to brand itself on Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc. This social fortress should constitute the first links that you create to your website. Business Citations – After social profiles are created, a typical business would like to make sure potential customers can find them in local and industry-specific directories. Leverage directories like these to build free but natural links to your homepage. Social Signals – After that, create a social signal campaign to drip out 50-200 Facebook shares, Twitter tweets, etc over the next 30 days. This is where the virality comes from. To generate signals, I use SEO Butler’s 200 signals package, namely for their ease of use, delivery of quality signals, and repeatedly good results. Use coupon code “DIGGITY10” for 10% off. Guest Posts – Now that the stage is set, it’s a safe time to build links. I stick to quality guest posts from websites with traffic in this beginning phase. Why? Because in the natural course of the internet, most new links are created on brand new pages. Similar to how guest posts are created. The name of the game is to look as natural as possible. Results Here are the results of two separate tests running the sequence listed above. Of course, there are various techniques people use to skate around the sandbox, but this is what I use and it seems to be working quite well, and quite consistently. Give it a shot and share your results as well. Read More

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SEO Testing Results: CTR & Social Shares in 2015

Matt Diggity — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 04:18:17 +0000

There’s a ton of buzz going around about what the next face of SEO is going to look like. Those who stay ahead of the curve are going to reap the benefits. In case you’re not up to speed, here’s a summary on a few SEO techniques are being hyped up right now and my testing results on each. Testing Results: Social Signals Tweets, Shares, G+’s, Facebook likes, Pins, and bookmarks. There’s been a ton of talk about social signals over the past 3 months. People have come forth saying that they’re ranking local search YouTube videos solely on social signals. The main debate seems to be over how the social signals are obtained. Namely, if they should come from real accounts or automatically generated accounts. Here’s the test scenario I setup, comparing three different groups: FCS Networker – Auto-generates accounts on many social bookmarking platforms and Twitter; and posts to them. No limit on the # of accounts created. (5 testcases) SocialAdr + Link Collider – Uses a credit system to encourage people to post on each other’s real accounts (with the option to simply buy credits). SocialAdr focuses around bookmarks, while Link Collider provides signals from G+, FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. (5 testcases) Control Group – No social signals. (3 testcases) Signals were sent to sets A & B on week 2 and were dripped over the course of 6 additional weeks. All sites had zero social signals before the test began. Each site received the same amount of signals. Results: Negligible difference between approach A and B – Whether or not social signals are coming from brand new auto-generated accounts or old accounts, G doesn’t seem to notice. I’ve confirmed this with many others, including an actual developer of a social signal service similar to Approach B. As of now, it seems a signal is just a signal. I actually expected a better result from B because it includes more “important” social platforms (FB, G+) than A. B did however achieve a faster ranking increase, most likely because their accounts are already indexed and ready to be crawled. Groups A and B showed a slight positive increase (3.6-3.7%) in result compared to the control group C. Summary: Moz recently said that they believe social signals only contribute to a total ranking factor of 5%. I agree. In low competition niches, this 5% can make a big difference because it’s you against other sites with zero SEO. Anything you do will yield a positive result. In high competition niches, my analysis shows me that that social signals will give you a boost, but more importantly, social signals are absolutely needed to justify the backlinks you’re getting. A site with 20 high authority backlinks and zero social signals simply doesn’t make sense to Google, and it shouldn’t. This is further backed up by some real money sites of mine that have died with no social signals, while others survived in the same niche that had social signals. If you’re in a remotely competitive niche, then you need social. Recommendation: At this point in time, FCS Networker (click for best price) is my recommendation. It’s cheap ($27/month), completely automated, and you can run it on an unlimited number of domains and send an unlimited amount of signals. The smallest package for SocialAdr and Link Collider togeter about $30/month but only supports 1-2 URLs with minimal amounts of shares. Since they both yield the same result, I’d rather go with FCS which is cheaper, easier to use, and scalable. Will FCS be a solution for years to come? Probably not. As we’ve seen with backlinks, the quality control noose will tighten and eventually we’ll need aged accounts with followers/fans and non-spun content. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Click-Through Rate (CTR) For years now, CTR is has been known to be a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. When a search is made, the sites that are clicked on the most often (i.e. have the highest CTR) are deemed to be more relevant, and a ranking boost is theoretically applied. I tested CTR with a upcoming service that outsources individual users across the US (and other countries). Software is installed on their computers to ensure they make a search, find your site, spend time on your page, and randomly browse on other pages (reducing bounce rate). Results: I have to say I was pretty excited for this to work out. The logic behind it makes sense and the solution’s implementation seems sound. Over 6 testcases spread out over brand, EMD, aged, non-aged, competitive national searches, and local low competition searches… the results were flat. That being said, I’ve talked with others in my circle of SEO’s and people are reporting positive results only if their original rank was on the first page already. In all fairness, my testcases all had page 2-7 ranks. I’ll get back to you later with my tests on first page rankers. Summary: Right now, I won’t recommend this because I personally haven’t seen a positive result so far. There’s potential safety issues, especially if G catches onto the IPs of the searchers. However, climbing 1-3 spots on the first page for a minimal price, while being completely automated, is a no brainer. I’m waiting to see it for myself though. PBN Sites Are Still Killing It With all the testing I’ve been doing, I’m still finding that the main tool in your SEO arsenal remains to be PBNs. There simply doesn’t exist a more effective, faster way to rank a site. Here’s just a couple examples of it kicking ass just a few weeks ago (both results are from a single PBN link pointing to a real, customer money site). There’s a ton of buzz going around about what the next face of SEO is going to look like. Those who stay ahead of the curve are going to reap the benefits. In case you’re not up to speed, here’s a summary on a few SEO techniques are being hyped up right now and my testing results on each. Testing Results: Social Signals Tweets, Shares, G+’s, Facebook likes, Pins, and bookmarks. There’s been a ton of talk about social signals over the past 3 months. People have come forth saying that they’re ranking local search YouTube videos solely on social signals. The main debate seems to be over how the social signals are obtained. Namely, if they should come from real accounts or automatically generated accounts. Here’s the test scenario I setup, comparing three different groups: FCS Networker – Auto-generates accounts on many social bookmarking platforms and Twitter; and posts to them. No limit on the # of accounts created. (5 testcases) SocialAdr + Link Collider – Uses a credit system to encourage people to post on each other’s real accounts (with the option to simply buy credits). SocialAdr focuses around bookmarks, while Link Collider provides signals from G+, FB, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. (5 testcases) Control Group – No social signals. (3 testcases) Signals were sent to sets A & B on week 2 and were dripped over the course of 6 additional weeks. All sites had zero social signals before the test began. Each site received the same amount of signals. Results: Negligible difference between approach A and B – Whether or not social signals are coming from brand new auto-generated accounts or old accounts, G doesn’t seem to notice. I’ve confirmed this with many others, including an actual developer of a social signal service similar to Approach B. As of now, it seems a signal is just a signal. I actually expected a better result from B because it includes more “important” social platforms (FB, G+) than A. B did however achieve a faster ranking increase, most likely because their accounts are already indexed and ready to be crawled. Groups A and B showed a slight positive increase (3.6-3.7%) in result compared to the control group C. Summary: Moz recently said that they believe social signals only contribute to a total ranking factor of 5%. I agree. In low competition niches, this 5% can make a big difference because it’s you against other sites with zero SEO. Anything you do will yield a positive result. In high competition niches, my analysis shows me that that social signals will give you a boost, but more importantly, social signals are absolutely needed to justify the backlinks you’re getting. A site with 20 high authority backlinks and zero social signals simply doesn’t make sense to Google, and it shouldn’t. This is further backed up by some real money sites of mine that have died with no social signals, while others survived in the same niche that had social signals. If you’re in a remotely competitive niche, then you need social. Recommendation: At this point in time, FCS Networker (click for best price) is my recommendation. It’s cheap ($27/month), completely automated, and you can run it on an unlimited number of domains and send an unlimited amount of signals. The smallest package for SocialAdr and Read More Read More

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