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Ubersuggest 7.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what’s new:

More keyword data

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

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

And there are a few reasons why…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More backlink data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better traffic estimations

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy the new changes to Ubersuggest.

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

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

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

What do you think about the new features?

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

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Social media measurement: how to figure out what works

What’s next for Sprout Social

We’re excited to share an important milestone for Sprout Social: Today we became a public company!

We started Sprout in 2010 to help our customers manage the transformation as more than 3.4 billion consumers and tens of millions of brands made social media a critical part of our lives. To do that, we’ve focused on building an exceptional platform and delivering world-class experiences for our customers.

Our mission is to help our customers harness social media to create stronger relationships with their audiences and build stronger businesses as a result. We are honored to have played a role in this journey for more than 23,000 customers to date, and we look forward to what the future of social holds.

This new stage will help us pursue our ambitious vision for the future of social business. It will help us keep building a sustainable company of which our team, customers, families and communities can be proud. And more than that, we believe it will give us the platform and additional resources to execute on our business strategies, continue to evolve with our industry and deliver the solutions our customers need to build stronger brands.

We are thankful to our team, past and present, for building what Sprout has become. To our customers, we couldn’t have reached this milestone without your trust and partnership. Thank you for being part of our journey.

Today is a proud day for our team and we can’t wait for you to see what’s next.

This post What’s next for Sprout Social originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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How to get started with LinkedIn ads

Twitter's Election Labels return to help you make sense of 2020 elections

With 2020 around the corner, it's about that time to actually start paying attention to who's running for what. That's why Twitter is bringing back its Elections Labels feature, which provides you with information on political candidates.

If this sounds familiar, that's because the social media platform first introduced the feature last year during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Starting on Thursday, Twitter will now start verifying candidates for U.S. Senate, House, and governor races.

On each candidate's Twitter profile, you'll see a small ballot box icon, the office they're running for, as well as their state and district number. The label will also appear under the politician's handle whenever they tweet or retweet from their accounts.  Read more...

More about Twitter, Social Media, 2020 Election, Tech, and Consumer Tech

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How to build an effective influencer marketing campaign

Sprout Social named one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2020

I’m thrilled to announce Sprout Social has been recognized as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2020. This is the third year we’ve received this recognition, and we’re honored to be included in this notable roundup once again.

Every year, Glassdoor releases a list of companies who are deemed Best Places to Work by their employees. The winners are based entirely on employee feedback that is shared anonymously on the Glassdoor platform. This year, we were included on the list that recognizes United States-based companies with less than 1,000 employees.

If we’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s that the ability to adapt to change goes hand-in-hand with growth. As our team continues to expand, both nationally and globally, we’ve updated our policies and programs to better support everyone on Team Sprout. Notable highlights this year included updating our parental leave policy (all eligible employees now receive a full 16 weeks of paid leave), expanding our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and introducing company-wide Focus Days and other new approaches to how we work.

These changes are a result of the culture we’ve been able to create that promotes open communication and feedback. We couldn’t be more proud of our team for sharing their thoughts and doing their part to make Sprout the place that it is today—a great place to work.

So what exactly makes Sprout Social the workplace that it is today? Below are a few testimonials from current employees who shared their thoughts on Glassdoor:

“The culture at Sprout is the best you can find in a workplace. From day one I felt welcome and respected. I continuously tell my friends that I genuinely cannot wait for work the next day. Sprout treats its employees better than any other company I have been at.”

— Sales Development Representative, Sprout Social

“Sprout truly cares about its people, in every sense. I’ve never worked at a company that is as thoughtful and intentional about representation and inclusion. Everyone here wants to see you succeed and the mentality is that we’re all one team, working together to provide value to our customers.”

— Anonymous Employee, Sprout Social

“Sprout lives up to its values so much. And since those values are identical to mine, I feel like I’ve found a perfect fit for a workplace. Pros include working with incredibly talented and smart people, having a supportive team and manager, and an environment that focuses on inclusivity. I genuinely enjoy going to work each day and doing what I do.”

— Solutions Engineer, Sprout Social

I want to personally thank everyone on Team Sprout for their contributions in making our culture what it is today—award-winning. We have a world class team and I’m excited to see what the year ahead has in store for us.

Want to join us? We’re hiring.

This post Sprout Social named one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2020 originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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Selling on Instagram: everything you need to know

How to Get More Organic Traffic Without Doing Any SEO (Seriously)

You all know SEO is a long-term game… at least when it comes to Google.

And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time.

So then, what should you do?

Well, what if I told you there were simple ways to get more organic traffic and, best of all, you don’t have to do one bit of SEO?

Seriously.

So, what is it? And how can you get more organic traffic?

Well, this story will help explain it…

The old days

When I first started my journey as an SEO, I got really good at one thing.

Getting rankings!

Now to be fair, this was back in 2003 when it wasn’t that hard to rank on Google (or any other search engine for that matter).

Stuff some keywords into your page, your meta tags, and build some spammy rich anchor text links and you were good to go.

You could literally see results in less than a month.

SEO wasn’t too complicated back then. So much so, that I even started an SEO agency and created a handful of sites.

I was starting to rank my sites at the top of Google but they didn’t make a dollar. Literally, not a single dollar.

In fact, I was actually losing money on them because I had to pay for the domain registration expenses and hosting.

So, one day I decided that I was tired of losing money and I was going to do something about it. I took the keywords that I was ranking for and started to type them into Google to see who was paying for ads for those terms.

I hit up each of those sites and tried to get a hold of the owner or the person in charge of marketing.

I asked them how much they were paying for ads and offered them the same exact traffic for a much lower price. I was able to do this because I already had sites that ranked for those keywords.

In other words, I offered to rent out my website for a monthly fee that was a fraction of what they were paying for paid ads.

Next thing you know I was collecting 5 figures in monthly checks and my “renters” were ecstatic because they were generating sales at a fraction of the costs compared to what they were spending on paid ads.

So, what’s the strategy?

Well, it’s simple. Back in the day, I used to rent out my websites… the whole site.

These days I’ve learned how to monetize my own site, so I don’t rent them out.

But you know what, most of the sites that rank on Google are content-based sites. Over 56% of a website’s organic traffic is typically going to their blog or articles.

So why not rent a page on someone else’s site? From there, modify that page a bit to promote your products or services?

I know this sounds crazy, but it works. I have one person that just reaches out to site owners asking if we can rent out a page on their site. We do this for all industries and verticals… and when I look at how much we are spending versus how much income we are generating, it’s crazy.

Here are the stats for the last month:

Rental fees: $24,592

Outreach costs: $3,000

Legal costs: $580

Copywriting and monetization costs: $1,500

Total monthly cost: $29,672 

Now guess what my monthly income was?

It was $79,283.58.

Not too bad.

Now your cost on this model won’t be as high as mine because you can do your own outreach, monetize the page you are renting on your own, and you probably don’t need a lawyer.

And don’t be afraid of how much I am spending in rental fees as you can get away with spending $0 in the first 30 days as I will show you exactly what to do.

Remember, it’s also not what you are spending, it’s about profit and what you are making. If it won’t cost you any money in the first 30 days and you can generate income, your risk is little to none.

Here are the exact steps you need to follow:

Step #1: Find the terms you want to rank for

If you already know the terms you want to rank for, great, you can skip this step.

If you don’t, I want you to head to Ubersuggest and type in a few of your competitors’ URLs.

Head over to the top pages report and look at their top pages.

Now click on “view all” under the estimated visits column to see a list of keywords that each page ranks for.

I want you to create a list of all of the keywords that contain a high search volume and have a high CPC. Keywords with a high CPC usually mean that they convert well.

Keywords with a low CPC usually mean they don’t convert as well.

When you are making a list of keywords, you’ll need to make sure that you have a product or service that is related to each keyword. If you don’t then you won’t be able to monetize the traffic.

Step #2: Search for the term

It’s time to do some Google searches.

Look for all of the pages that rank in the top 10 for the term you ideally want to rank for.

Don’t waste your time with page 2.

What I want you to look for is:

• Someone who isn’t your competitor. Your competition isn’t likely to rent out a page on their site to you.
• A page that isn’t monetized. Not selling a product or service. (If the page has ads, don’t worry.)
• A site owned by a smaller company… a publicly-traded company isn’t likely to do a deal. A venture-funded company isn’t likely to do a deal either (Crunchbase will tell you if they are venture-funded).

Step #3: Hit up the website

Typically, through their contact page, they should have their email addresses or phone number listed. If they have a contact form, you can get in touch that way as well.

If you can’t find their details, you can do a whois lookup to see if you can find their phone number.

What’ll you want to do is get them on the phone. DO NOT MAKE YOUR PITCH OVER EMAIL.

It just doesn’t work well over email.

If you can’t find their phone number, email them with a message that goes something like this…

Subject: [their website name]

Hey [insert first name],

Do you have time for a quick call this week?

We’ve been researching your business and we would like to potentially make you an offer.

Let me know what works for you.

Cheers,

[insert your name]

[insert your company]

[insert your phone number]

You want to keep the email short as I have found that it tends to generate more calls.

Once you get them on the phone, you can tell them a little bit about yourself. Once you do that, tell them that you noticed they have a page or multiple pages on their website that interest you.

Point out the URL and tell them how you are interested in giving them money each month to rent out the page and you wouldn’t change much of it… but you need some more information before you can make your offer.

At this point, you’ll want to find out how much traffic that page generates and the keywords it ranks for. They should have an idea by just looking at their Google Analytics (you’ll find most of these sites don’t use Google Search Console).

Once you have that, let them know that you will get in touch with them in the next few days after you run some numbers.

Go back, try to figure out what each click is worth based on a conservative conversion rate of .5%. In other words, .if 5% of that traffic converted into a customer, what would the traffic be worth to you after all expenses?

You’ll want to use a conservative number because you can’t modify the page too heavily or else you may lose rankings.

Once you have a rough idea of what the page is worth, get back on the phone with them and say you want to run tests for 30 days to get a more solid number on what you can pay them as you want to give them a fair offer.

Typically, most people don’t have an issue because they aren’t making money from the page in the first place.

Step #4: Monetize the page

If you are selling a product, the easiest way to monetize is to add links to the products you are selling.

For example, if you are selling a kitchen appliance like a toaster, you can add links from the article to your site.

Just like this article.

The easiest way to monetize a blog post is to add links to products or services you are selling.

Don’t delete a lot of the content on the page you are modifying… adding isn’t too much of an issue but when you delete content sometimes you will lose rankings.

As for a service-based business, linking out to pages on your site where people can fill out their lead information is great.

Or you can just add lead capturing to the page you are renting out. Kind of like how HubSpot adds lead forms on their site.

I’ve actually found that they convert better than just linking out to your site.

When monetizing the page you are renting, keep in mind that you will need disclaimers to let people know that you are collecting their information for privacy purposes. You also should disclose you are renting out the page.

Once you are monetizing the page for a bit, you’ll have a rough idea of what it is worth and you can make an offer on what you’ll page.

I recommend doing a 12-month contract in which you can opt-out with a 30-day notice.

The reason you want a 12-month agreement is that you don’t want to have to keep renegotiating. I also include the 30-day opt-out notice in case they lose their rankings, you can opt-out.

And to clarify on the op-out clause, I have it so only I can opt-out and they are stuck in the agreement for a year.

Conclusion

SEO isn’t the only way you can get more organic traffic.

Being creative, such as renting pages that already rank is an easy solution. Best of all, you can get results instantly and it’s probably cheaper than doing SEO in the long run.

The only issue with this model is that it is really hard to scale.

If I were you, I would do both. I, of course, do SEO on my own site because it provides a big ROI. And, of course, if you can rent out the pages of everyone else who ranks for the terms you want to rank for, it can provide multiple streams of income from SEO.

The beauty of this is model is that you can take up more than one listing on page 1. In theory, you can take up all 10 if you can convince everyone to let you rent their ranking page.

So, what do you think of the idea? Are you going to try it out?

The post How to Get More Organic Traffic Without Doing Any SEO (Seriously) appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Social Spotlight: How the ASPCA uses social to inspire action

Welcome to the Social Spotlight, where we dive deep into what we love about a brand’s approach to a specific social campaign. From strategy through execution and results, we’ll examine what makes the best brands on social tick — and leave you with some key takeaways to consider for your own brand’s social strategy.

Overview

We all know social is a powerful platform for great storytelling, but the real secret sauce is when that great storytelling is paired with the immediate connection social offers. This is especially true for nonprofits like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or the ASPCA, which uses social to drive awareness of its causes, exposure for animals in need and fiscal support to operate its programs. Because it relies on donations from the public to fund much of its work, the ASPCA expends great effort to connect with animal lovers through the stories of the animals it helps (and the humans who love them). Social allows the organization to tie those stories directly to actions of support: donations, adoptions, lobbying and awareness.

Analysis

Founded in 1866, the ASPCA is the oldest humane society in the United States and supports the mission that “animals are entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law.” As one of the largest animal rights organizations in the world, the ASPCA uses its platform to support the work of shelters and animal rights organizations everywhere and social media has become one of its key channels for doing so. According to a report the ASPCA released in 2018, 86% of animal shelters and rescue groups surveyed say social has increased general awareness, while 66% say it has increased adoptions overall and 55% say it has made it easier to place hard-to-adopt animals like seniors and disabled pets. 

But identifying exactly why those numbers are so impressive, and how it relates to other nonprofits and their efforts, is where this Spotlight gets really interesting. Like many organizations dedicated to making the world a better place, the ASPCA has emotional stories to tell. But how it organizes those stories across social, executes against specific objectives for each type of story and grows and expands its relationships with different audiences is what makes the ASPCA’s social strategy especially strong.

For instance, adoptable pet stories are most relevant to those with the ability and means to adopt in this moment, but shelter success stories will appeal to just about any animal lover, and animal care tips will be relevant to all animal owners, regardless of how they came to own their pets. Creating multiple “ways in” emotionally expands the relevance of the ASPCA’s messages, which opens up new audiences and potential sources of support for the organization’s mission.

• Goals: The ASPCA’s goals for social are as multifaceted as its objectives as an organization. The most foundational is awareness for the plight of homeless and abused animals in America, which drives a significant percentage of the content across all social platforms. Video is the primary format for this type of storytelling, and the ASPCA does a great job of profiling how its efforts bring people and animals in need together. Video also enables the social team to use highly emotional levers like music, narration and graphics to create moods for the content, ranging from solemn to urgent, to celebratory.
• Engagement is another visible goal for the ASPCA’s social efforts, specifically driving donations. The organization takes full advantage of the social platform functionality that makes giving relatively simple, including Facebook fundraisers (which it also encourages individual followers to set up) and Instagram’s recently added Donation sticker, which allows users to add a direct donation option to their personal Stories. What I appreciate about the ASPCA’s donation calls to action is that they are interspersed with storytelling, so there is plenty to keep audiences engaged with the organization’s mission until they are ready to make a donation or adopt an animal. Finally, the ASPCA seeks to educate its audiences about a number of topics related to animal welfare. One of my favorites is Paws-On Projects, a Facebook video series about how to make homemade pet treats, because it’s relevant to any pet owner and provides viewers with low-lift inspiration to be more involved in the lives of the animals they love. The ASPCA also offers live Q&A opportunities on social for those interested in fostering or adopting a pet but looking for information on the process.
• Offline connection: Driving donations is the key offline connection social provides for the ASPCA, and as mentioned above, the org is taking full advantage of onboard donation tools on the various social platforms. My favorite move is that rather than limit the calls to donate to its own channels, the ASPCA makes it frictionless for individual supporters to solicit donations from their own family, friends and followers by creatively promoting the use of Facebook’s Fundraiser feature and Instagram’s Donation stickers. This not only helps widen the net of potential donors but also helps the ASPCA avoid “ask fatigue” by over-saturating its own audiences with requests.
• Key channels:
  • Instagram – I love how organized and easy to navigate the ASPCA’s Instagram profile is. Story Highlights are categorized by animal type (i.e. Puppies, Horses, Farm) and engagement (Donate, Take Action, Q&A). It’s easy to find exactly the information you’re looking for in an approachable, actionable way.
  • YouTube – The ASPCA’s YouTube page is a repository of great video storytelling, including adoption stories, profiles of donors and supporters, and documentary-style content about how the ASPCA staff cares for animals in recovery. The content is rich in educational information and emotional resonance, and gives a wide-range view into all that the organization does to support the whole lives of animals.
  • Facebook – Despite Facebook still being the world’s largest social platform, it feels rare today for brands to be creating content explicitly for that channel. But Facebook is still where users share the emotional stories that resonate with them, so it’s a must for nonprofits. The ASPCA does a nice job of playing to the strengths of Facebook, particularly sharing and driving donations through the Fundraiser feature.

Takeaways

No one would say that nonprofit marketing is easy, but social has certainly made it easier to spread awareness and galvanize support for worthy causes. One advantage nonprofits will always have is the altruistic nature of their promotional content – the goal is to help others, not to generate profit for a private company. It’s the responsibility of the organization to capitalize on this advantage and create content that connects emotionally and drives action. 

TL;DR:

1. Don’t leave us hanging! If you share a call to action for help with a specific situation, invest time and resources in creating follow-up content that shows your audience the impact their support had. Everyone loves a good success story, especially if they had a hand in the happy ending.
2. Be a community resource. Make your expert staffers available to all subsets of your audience, from those ready to open their wallets to those just trying to satisfy a curiosity or learn something new about your cause. Every piece of content is an opportunity to create a stronger bond, no matter where someone is in their journey with you.
3. Get organized on social. More and more people want to learn about causes on social media rather than your website, so make that as easy as possible for them by keeping your content organized. While the ASPCA has Instagram nailed, I’d love to see them create a more easily navigated experience for all the great content they’re publishing on YouTube. A couple of playlists can go a long way.
4. Activate your audience! Most social platforms have built donation capabilities into their experiences, so don’t just rely on your own followers for donations. Encourage them to engage their personal networks on your behalf by soliciting support from their family and friends for a cause they believe in.

This post Social Spotlight: How the ASPCA uses social to inspire action originally appeared on Sprout Social.

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