When searching for the list of best books on marketing to read, I came across many articles, but none of them showcased the latest books combined with my favourite classics.

So I decided to create my own, the most recommended part of this article being the cult marketing books list that I honestly think every marketer should read.

This article mentions more than 80 digital marketing and branding books from the 1960s through to 2019, each having something special to teach you – from creating advertising strategies to building the products that get people hooked.

Here’s a quick list of the 10 books I highly recommend, with a link to their Amazon pages, in case you prefer to quickly browse through.

My favourite 10 marketing books of all time:

1. Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
3. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
4. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
5. Start with Why by Simon Sinek
6. The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Scott
7. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
8. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
9. Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
10. The Advertising Concept Book by Pete Barry

And now, an in-depth list of all the best marketing books covering everything from digital to branding to growth hacking.

The best marketing books published in 2019/2020

1. InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z by Sarah Weise

This book is definitely going to my reading list as a promising way to learn the latest Instagram advertising hacks.

Learn what gets people hooked on Instagram, how the audiences make their purchasing decisions, and how to tailor your marketing strategy to attract young audiences.

Learn more about Instagram ads by checking out this list of the best Instagram ads from leading brands.

The key thing you will learn: How to succeed in Instagram marketing and create content that the millennial audiences want to engage with.

2. Digital Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Approach to Online Marketing by Simon Kingsnorth

This second edition of the bestselling digital marketing guide, published in 2019, provides a step-by-step framework for planning, using, and measuring of all popular digital platforms and marketing tactics.

Ranging from social media marketing, SEO, content creation and UX to customer loyalty, automation and personalized advertising, this book features cutting-edge best practices on marketing automation, messaging and email, online and offline integration, the power of technologies such as AI, and even covers the new data protection and privacy strategies.

The key thing you will learn: A quick overview of various digital marketing channels.

3. Becoming A Digital Marketer: Gaining the Hard & Soft Skills for a Tech-Driven Marketing Career by Gil Gildner

Want to get started as a digital marketer but have no idea where to start? This book is a good road guide for both fresh university graduates as well as traditional marketers.

The book touches upon topics from online advertising campaigns to building websites, understanding SEO strategy, and succeeding with email marketing.

A good overall guide that points you towards a wide range of digital marketing topics to dig deeper.

The key thing you will learn: A quick overview of various digital marketing channels.

4. Conversational Marketing: How the World’s Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365 by David Cancel

Here’s the full title of this book: Conversational Marketing: How the World’s Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365 (and How You Can Too). Qiute self-explanatory, right?

Modern messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have transformed the way we interact with each other. Everyone is used to the instant messaging and getting an answer fast. Conversational chatbot marketing is focused on real-time, one-on-one conversations with customers.

The key thing you will learn: How the chatbot marketing works and how to use technology to automatically convert more leads to clients.

5. Email Marketing Demystified by Matthew Paulson

Full name of the book: : Email Marketing Demystified: Build a Massive Mailing List, Write Copy that Converts and Generate More Sales

Email marketing can be an amazingly effective (and free!) marketing channel. In this marketing book, the author Matthew Paulson presents an impressive list of little-known email marketing tactics – to build big mailing lists, write copy that converts, and to turn the readers into customers.

The book will teach you how to:

• Build a massive mailing list
• Write engaging email copy that drivers the readers to take action.
• Optimize every step of your email marketing funnel
• Keep your emails out of the spam folders

Released in 2019, the new second edition of Email Marketing Demystified includes new strategies, including how to comply with GDPR regulations and how to benefit from web push notifications.

The key thing you will learn: Howw to get started with email marketing and build a big email list fast.

6. This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin

All Seth Godin books are instant marketing bestsellers.

His latest book explains how marketing is essentially offering a solution to your customers’ problems. Instead of spammy emails and irrelevant online ads, Godin teched you how to really tap into the conversation and engage your audiences with marketing that matters to them.

Among other things, you will learn how to:

• Build trust with your target audience
• Smartly position your brand
• Build a product and brand that people deeply care about
• Use powerful storytelling as a marketing strategy

The key thing you will learn: How to build a brand nad marketing strategy that creates real value for your audience.

7. SEO 2019: Learn Search Engine Optimization With Smart Internet Marketing Strategies by Adam Clarke

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) best practices change every year, with Google’s algorithms getting more and more complex.

Based on a 2014 bestseller, here’s an up-to-date version to SEO in 2019 by Google-certified exert Adam Clarke – a must-read for anyone serious about gaining organic website traffic.

Read more: How to grow your organic blog traffic from 1.6k to 32k in six months

The key thing you will learn: The latest SEO best practices from page speed optimization to mobile-responsive landing pages.

8. 3 Months to No.1: The 2019 “No-Nonsense” SEO Playbook for Getting Your Website Found on Google9

by Will Coombe

Running a successful SEO agency in London, Will Coombe’s in a great position to teach you how to reach the top of Google search results.

You will learn how to:

• Do SEO on your own or build an in-house team
• Do keyword research to unveil the low-hanging fruits
• Boost your organic search rankings with the help of social media

The key thing you will learn: How to get started with SEO and increase the organic traffic to your website.

The best cult marketing books

9. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

I can’t praise this book enough and will always give it the credit for teaching me about behavioral economics and psychological triggers that get people’s attention.

Explaining the cognitive biases we all have – from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation – Kahneman opens up a completely new world of behavioral sciences that every marketer should be aware of. Knowing about the psychological system shaping our judgments and decisions will help you create a stronger marketing strategy and come up with branding campaigns that get people truly engaged.

The book is an international bestseller and was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011. I’d also say it’s one of the best marketing books for students.

The key thing you will learn: How irrational the human brain can be and how to use this knowledge to your advantage in business.

10. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

The New York Times bestseller that explains why some specific products and brands become popular. If you’re looking to build a product that people want to share with their family and friends, this book will give you some nice ideas.

You will learn how six basic principles can help almost anything to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to Instagram posts.

The key thing you will learn: How to build virality into your product and brand and creates messages, ads, and content that people will want to share.

11. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

In this marketing book, Nir Eyal combines many years of research, consulting, and practical experience to explain a four-step process to creating “sticky” products (think Facebook and Instagram for example).

The author will share:

• Practical tips and hacks to create user habits that stick

• Actionable steps for building products people can’t get enough of

• Impressive examples from the iPhone to social media platforms

The key thing you will learn: How to create and market products that keep the users hooked over a long period of time.

12. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

This book is also available in Amazon Audible for listening.

Influence is one of the cult marketing books that keep getting reprinted over and over again. It never gets old as the human brain will always be working the same way. Writing this article, I realized I’d like to give it a third round of reading.

Teaching about the art of persuasion, the book explains how to get people to say “yes” to you.

The key thing you will learn: How to use the six universal principles (reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, consensus) to convince people about anything.

13. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

“When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

This quote from the book by advertising legend David Ogilvy, first published in 1985, is still relevant today. One of the key things I learned from the book is that your brand needs to have a strong USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that you keep communicating throughout your marketing activities and ads.

The key thing you will learn: How to find your product’s USP and gradually build a strong brand that people relate to a unique benefit.

Read my long review of the book here: 18 Golden Advertising Rules by Marketing Legends

14. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

“The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” is a classic marketing book that covers topics from leadership to product marketing. You’ll be surprised by how many marketing tactics that were working 20 years ago are still relevant today.

The key thing you will learn: The basics of how to acquire a successful marketer’s mindset.

15. Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini

This is the follow-up marketing psychology book that Cialdini wrote years after his initial bestseller Influence. I must admit that I was gravely disappointed with the book, the first one having been one of my favourite marketing books of all time.

According to the author, in order to change “minds,” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.” Cialdini draws on a list of studies and stories to outline the specific techniques you can use in both online and offline marketing campaigns.

These insights will help you in two primary areas, making it one of the best books to learn marketing:

• Persuading your in-house team and managers to support your marketing strategy
• persuading your target audiences to take appropriate action

The key thing you will learn: How prime your target audience before delivering an important message, so that they’re more receptive to it.

16. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

Grant’s #1 New York Times bestseller examines how people (like me and you) can champion new ideas, and how to avoid falling into groupthink.

How can we come up with new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all? This business book uses a wide array of stories and case studies spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, and teaches the reader to think outside of the box and notice good ideas.

I highly recommend the book, both for its impact on your way of thinking and for interesting stories, e.g. the one about a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor.

The key thing you will learn: How to originate and recognize great ideas and think outside of the box.

17. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

More than 28 million have watched Sinek’s TED Talk based on START WITH WHY, the third most popular TED video of all time.

Sinek starts his book with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more powerful, and more profitable than others? He goes on to explain that the great minds from politicians to billion dollar business founders all started with WHY – people won’t truly be interested in your product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind the concept.

The key thing you will learn: That your product/brand needs a reason to exist – the WHY – and how to find it.

18. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly by David Scott

This marketing book has arguably been the most influential for me, as after reading it, I made a switch from the PR industry to online marketing in less than a month.

Scott’s book is a true eye-opener to anyone still playing by the old offline marketing rules. In today’s highly digital world, the rules have changed, and you need to focus on virality, SEO, content marketing, online advertising, and other digital strategies to get your product noticed.

The key thing you will learn: You’ll get a great overview of the modern marketing and PR tactics – the perfect starting point for any marketing career.

Read more: How to Learn Marketing

19. The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin

Seth Godin could be given the title of a “cult marketer.” In this book, he challenges the reader to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art, constantly looking for ways to improve.

Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a set of specific talents. It’s an attitude you too can adopt. It’s a hunger to keep learning, make connections, and think outside of the box. If you manage to do those things a little more often you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

The key thing you will learn: The best marketers are constantly learning and testing new ideas. This book will guide you to go the extra mile and do excellent, not average job.

20. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

In his landmark marketing bestseller, Malcolm Gladwell unveils how we see the world, how we think without thinking, and how to become a better decision-maker.

Gladwell asks some interesting questions:

• Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up making bad decisions?
• How do our brains really work – in the office, in the classroom, at a party?
• Why are the best decisions often impossible to explain to others?

The key thing you will learn: How our decision-making process works and how to make better, non-biased decisions.

21. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley

This is by far the best marketing copywriting book I’ve read this far, teaching both the macro- and micro-level nuances of good writing.

Everybody Writes is a go-to guide for marketers looking to attract and retain customers via stellar wriiten communication.

The sections in the books include:

• How to write better
• Easy grammar and usage rules tailored for business
• Winning your audience’s heart with masterful storytelling
• Best practices for creating credible, trustworthy content
• Content Tools: The best tools you need to get the job done

The key thing you will learn: How to write better marketing copy.

22. Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler spent his career studying how humans are predictable, error-prone individuals. Traditional economics assumes rational actors – yet in real life, people are far from rational when it comes to making decisions.

Coupling recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behavior, Thaler enlightens you about how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world (or how to apply the knowledge about irrational decision-making into marketing).

The key thing you will learn: The irrational logic of the human brain and how to use this knowledge to your advantage.

Best growth marketing books

23. Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success By Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

This growth marketing book dives into building a rapid growth strategy for your company. Exploring the fascinating case studies of the likes of Airbnb and Uber, the authors explore the growth engines behind these companies’ extraordinary rise.

You will learn about leading cross-functional teams and fast A/B testing and iteration that helps you acquire more customers: attain them, retain them, engage them, and motivate them to come back and buy more.

The key thing you will learn: The common tactics and ways of thinking of growth hacking.

24. Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday’s book tells a fascinating story of how combining smart public relations, marketing and advertising, you can achieve almost any marketing results. The book is guaranteed to get you excited about growth hacking, yet you’ll have to do plenty of additional research and put in a lot of work if you want to replicate Holiday’s success.

The growth hacking theory relies on testing, tracking and scaling everything you do, which is ideal for marketing in the digital world.

The key thing you will learn: How small, well-planned efforts can lead to fast business growth.

25. Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan

The founders of a well-known Silicon Valley advisory firm looked into legendary category-creating companies and reveal how to notice and buiöd new product categories.

Presenting case studies around the inner workings of “category kings”— companies such as Amazon, Salesforce, Uber, and IKEA – this marketing book introduces the notion of “category design.” By applying category design, businesses can create new demand where none existed, changing customers’ minds so they change their expectations and buying habits.

The key thing you will learn: How to create and promote a completely new product category, gradually building a huge demand for it.

26. Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter To You by John Hall

Building trust with your audience doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months (or even years) of calculated effort to reach and stay on top of mind with people. John Hall’s book will teach you how to use content marketing to build a meaningful relationship with your audience.

You will learn about the approach that was used to build Influence & Co. into one of “America’s Most Promising Companies,” according to Forbes, including:

• How to build a helpful, authentic, and consistent brand
• How to create digital content that enriches your target audience’s lives

The key thing you will learn: How to build a content-driven brand and create content that your audience sincerely wants to engage with.

Best branding books for marketers

27. The Advertising Concept Book: Think Now, Design Later by Pete Barry

I found this advertising book while visiting a bookstore in London and it took me a few months to work through it, with ups and downs. I came away with a fresh knowledgeable outlook to building marketing and branding campaigns. I highly recommend it.

From creative ideation to writing ad copy to building a consistent message, this book is a great guide for anyone looking to learn about branding campaigns, including different strategies used for all types of media.

The key thing you will learn: The framework for thinking like an advertising agency.

28. Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits by Debbie Millman

What is a brand? – If you don’t know the answer, here’s a book that will help you understand the concept in a more broad and meaningful way.

By asking questions around “What is a brand?”, Millman presents eye.opening answers from twenty-two interview subjects, among them Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and godfather of modern branding Wally Olins.

You will find a fascinating road guide to modern branding and how companies and buyers can best understand the behavior behind why we build brands and why we buy them.

The key thing you will learn: How to define the word “brand” and build a strong brand of your own.

29. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Positioning describes a proven approach to creating a “position” in a prospective customer’s mind by taking into consideration your company’s own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your competition.

The advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:

• Position your brand as the industry leader
• Maintain the industry leader position as competition gets harder
• Use ad agency techniques to capture a wide market share and become a household name
• Build your branding strategy around your competition’s weaknesses
• Choose the best name for your product

The key thing you will learn: How to position your brand in a crowded market and become the leading business in your industry.

30. Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team by Alina Wheeler

This branding book will present you with a toolkit for creating, building, and maintaining a strong brand. From research and analysis through to implementing a brand strategy and design development, you will come away from this book with plenty of inspiration for building (or redefining) your own brand.

Wheeler’s book features more than 30 all-new case studies showing branding best practices and offers a proven, universal five-phase process for creating and implementing effective brand identity.

The key thing you will learn: How to design and implement a brand that will result in high business ROI.

31. How Brands Become Icons by Douglas B. Holt

In his bestseller marketing book, the former Harvard Business School professor Douglas B. Holt lays down what marketers need to know if they want to build an authentic brand that truly resonates with customers over a long period of time, not just temporarily because of a low price or hype.

Exploring the case studies from iconic brands including ESPN, Budweiser, Mountain Dew, and Volkswagen, Holt shows how to establish a meaningful brand connection with potential customers.

The key thing you will learn: How to build a strong brand that people will care about over a long period of time.

32. Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Digital Distraction by Derek Thomson

Nothing goes viral out of the blue. If you think that a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a worldwide viral success in today’s crowded media environment, you’re wrong.

Each blockbuster has a secret history of power, influence, and passionate followers that turn some new products into cultural phenomena.

In his groundbreaking investigation, the Atlantic’s senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like and how cultural economics shape our taste. People love a familiar surprise: a product that is bold, yet conveniently recognizable.

The key thing you will learn: How to build viral products by following the simple tactics of simplicity, familiarity, frequency, influential supporters, close-knit supportive groups, memorable copy, cross-channel support, gradual innovation, and ad hoc random influences.

More marketing books to check out

If the above list of 30 bestsellers wasn’t enough for you and you’d like to explore even more marketing books, check out the titles below. 💁

33. 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating ‘Competition-Free Content’ That Stands Out and Gets Results by Garrett Moon

34. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

35. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

36. What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint by Nicholas J. Webb

37. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis

38. Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses by Joe Pulizzi

39. All Marketers Are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works–And Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All by Seth Godin

40. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler

41. The Art of the Click: How to Harness the Power of Direct-Response Copywriting and Make More Sales by Glenn Fisher

42. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less by Joe Pulizzi

43. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull

44. The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters by Joseph Sugarman

45. The Choice Factory: 25 Behavioural Biases That Influence What We Buy by Richard Shotton

46. Copywriting: Successful Writing for Design, Advertising and Marketing by Mark Shaw

47. Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World’s Best Campaigns by Mario Pricken

48. Book of Ideas: a Journal of Creative Direction and Graphic Design – Volume 1 by Radim Malinic

49. How to Do Better Creative Work by Steve Harrison

50. Made to Stick : Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath

51. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

52. Integrated Marketing Communications: Putting It Together & Making It Work by Don E. Schultz, Stanley I. Tannenbaum,‎ and Robert F. Lauterborn

53. The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business by Rita Gunther McGrath

54. AdCult USA by James Twitchell

55. Brand New Name: A Proven, Step-by-Step Process to Create an Unforgettable Brand Name by Jeremy Miller

56. Content Marketing For Traffic And Sales: How To Use Direct Response Copywriting, For More Effective Content Marketing by Daniel Daines-Hutt

57. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and‎ Renee Mauborgne

58. Tap: Unlocking the Mobile Economy by Anindya Ghose

59. The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing by Rich Brooks

60. The Business of Social Media: Clients and Customers Not Just Likes & Followers by Angela K. Denton

61. Location is (Still) Everything: The Surprising Influence of the Real World on How We Search, Shop, and Sell in the Virtual One by David Bell

62. The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! 2.0 by Stoney DeGeyter

63. 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business by Andrew Macarthy

64. Content Marketing for PR: How to Build Brand Visibility, Influence and Trust in Today’s Social Age by Trevor Young

65. Ultimate Guide to Link Building by Eric Ward & Garrett French

66. Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – and What to Do About It by Gabe Weisert

67. Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz

68. The Unexpected: Breakthrough Strategies to Supercharge Your Business and Earn Loyal Customers for Life by Howard Brodsky

69. Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention by John Rulin

70. Powering Content: Building a Nonstop Content Marketing Machine by Laura Busche

71. Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World by Melissa Agnes

72. Getting Everything You Can out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham

73. When Coffee and Kale Compete: Become Great at Making Products People Will Buy by Alan Klement

74. Get Online: 6 Simple Steps to Launching a Digital Marketing Strategy for the Non-tech Savvy by Stacey Kehoe

75. Crossing The Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products To Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore

76. Points: A Blue Print for Digital Marketing Strategy by Sergio Restrepo

77. Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact by Phil M. Jones

78. Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter by Scott Adams

79. The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Work or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

80. The One Sentence Persuasion Course – 27 Words to Make the World Do your Bidding by Blair Warren

81. Magnetic Marketing: How To Attract A Flood Of New Customers That Pay, Stay, and Refer by Dan S. Kennedy

82. Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite by Paul Arden

83. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith

84. You, Inc.: The Art Of Selling Yourself by Harry Beckwith and Christine Clifford Beckwith

The post 80+ BEST Marketing Books – 2021 [Updated] appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Just come up with an idea, set up a WordPress site in a couple of hours, and type away.

Well… That was the easy part.

There’s no guarantee that people will read your articles and keep coming back for more. In fact, many successful bloggers have started out with no readers and felt like giving up.

So how can you start a blog that will succeed, get thousands of people reading your articles, and turn your writing into profit?

We reached out to some of the best marketing experts and asked for their opinion.

Also, it’s almost one year since Aggregate blog went live. Looking back, there are many things I’d do differently. I also learned a lot on the journey.

In one year, Aggregate blog has grown close to 30k monthly readers, most of who come to the blog via Google or are return visitors.

As I’m not a big fan of the marketing expert roundup posts that just list everyone’s answers, I decided to test a different format that is, hopefully, more beneficial to someone looking to start a blog.

All the best practices and hacks shared by the marketing experts are edited into a logical order. I also added some of my personal key learnings based on building Aggregate blog.

Look at this article as a guide to starting a new blog or improving your existing website.

Also, big thanks to all the marketing experts who contributed to this article. (This list follows a random order)

Lukasz Zelezny, @LukaszZelezny | Ross Simmonds, @thecoolestcool |
Dubie Bacino, @opajdara | Daniel Wallock, @danielwallock | Cameron Conaway, @CameronConaway | Joanna Wiebe, @copyhackers | Jacob Varghese, @jacobvar | Chuck Bankoff, @KreativeWebwrks | Mark Traphagen , @marktraphagen| Raul Tiru, @raultiru | Sam Hurley, @Sam___Hurley | Samantha Kelly, @SJKellyWrites | Madalyn Sklar,  @MadalynSklar| Amy Purdie, @amypurdie | Peter Trapasso, @petertrapasso |  Adam Connell, @adamjayc | Dan Knowlton, @dknowlton1 | Adel de Meyer, @adeldmeyer | Keri Jaehnig, @kerijaehnig | Shelly Kramer, @shellykramer | Chelsea Krost, @ChelseaKrost | Eric Peters, @EricPeters0 | Dan Marks, @wdanmarks| Nirav Dave, @nirav_dave | Peter Banerjea, @successiswhat | Erik Emanuelli, @ErikEmanuelli | Sarah Dudley, @sarahdudley3 | Jason Acidre, @jasonacidre | Johnathan Dane, @johnathandane | Ashley Faulkes, @madlemmingz | Mike Schiemer | Phil Pallen, @philpallen

Part 1: Things to do before launching a blog

1. Define Your Blog’s Goal

According to Shelly Kramer, CEO + Founder of V3 Broadsuite, it’s important to understand that you’re competing against hundreds of thousands of other corporate blogs, all vying for attention and eyeballs.

Far too many companies launch blogs that are nothing more than thinly-disguised, or not disguised at all sales pitches that are all pieces of brand-centric content.

“If your answer [to why you’re starting a blog] isn’t that you want a way to be able to serve your customers and prospective customers and provide information, resources, solutions, ideas, report on industry trends, and overall help them by giving them information that will help them grow their businesses and solve the problems they might have, stop right there.”

– Shelly Kramer

Social media marketer Adel de Meyer also added that:

“Starting a successful blog starts with a clear goal, message and target audience in mind. You need to plan out your content path and you need to understand exactly what you want your blog to do for you. Every business including personal brands has different goals, missions and stories.”

– Adel de Meyer

When starting out this blog, I had a goal of building myself an online portfolio. As time went by, I started to grasp the importance of a long-term goal and focused more efforts on high-quality articles and SEO.

Blogging is a more strategic endeavour than you might expect.

You should ask yourself:

• What are my expectations for this blog?
• What profit/outcome do I want to get out of it?
• What are my 1-year and 5-year goals regarding this blog?

Once you know what it is you want to achieve, you can adjust the type of blog content to contribute to your objectives in the long term.

2. Position your blog on the market

According to content marketing expert Adam Connell, one of the most important things that most people forget is positioning.

Positioning is what differentiates your blog from the rest.

“Look at what your competitors are doing right now. Identify the good and the bad. And use that to position your brand in a way that allows you to cut through the noise. But what’s critical here is that you re-evaluate your positioning every so often.“

– Adam Connell

Adam noted that if you take your eye off the ball, you may find yourself surrounded by new competitors that are doing exactly what you’re doing because they see how well it’s working for you.

This is why you’ve got to be agile and be prepared to adapt – your competitors won’t stand still so you shouldn’t either.

Nirav Dave from Capsicum Mediaworks also emphasized the importance of choosing your niche market carefully: Once that’s done, you’ll be able to create relevant content that’ll resonate with your audience and drive in more traffic to your site.

3. Select your blog’s name smartly

When starting my blog, I had no idea how to name it. So I went with Aggregate to signify my plan to aggregate many marketing hacks to this one blog.

That was not the best of my decisions.

Let’s face it; the name is kind of random. 😃

UPDATE: In June 2018, I finally changed this blog’s domain to karolakarlson.com and renamed the blog to Advertise. Grow.

So now, I’ve been thinking about a slight rebranding and change of my blog’s name.

The problem with changing your blog’s name is the need for domain name change. And this can potentially mess up your organic blog traffic and backlinks.

So here’s the key takeaway: Consider your blog’s name carefully!

Dubie Bacino from FriendFiler made another great point:

“Before you launch a blog, check if your blog’s domain name is also available as a handle (username) on all the social networks you intend to use. If not, spend some time now to find a short, catchy domain name that relates to your blog’s content and is also available as the brand name across social media sites.”

“Consider that online marketing is based on growing your brand’s influence. Having a uniform name will help to consolidate your branding efforts and make it easy for your audience to find you. A good brand name can be a great asset. In the same way, a bad brand name can turn out to be a constant challenge in your promotional efforts. Setting up your brand with a good name will save you a lot of headache and money in the long run “

– Dubie Bacino

I couldn’t agree more!

4. Create a distinct brand style

Your brand’s style is another important point to consider carefully before starting your blog.

It will take a lot of time to rebrand your blog later.

Moreover, the sooner you develop a strong brand image, the more people will start recognizing your content in social media and other sharing platforms.

The first 6-7 articles in Aggregate blog followed a simple design principle: all images needed to be colourful and eye-catching.

However, after a while, the blog developed a stronger brand image. You might need a small-scale website redesign to bring more personality to your blog.

Now, whenever we share an article on social media, people immediately recognize the ponycorns (yes, they’re not unicorns 🙃).

So how should you think about your blog’s style before the initial launch?

Amy Purdie from Whiteacres Design told us that:

“It’s important to figure out your brand style. This doesn’t need to be perfect at this point, you can develop it as you go – and you probably will – but if you can create a brand style that is easy for you to put together when you’re creating graphics and that is carried through across everything that you do. Then, when you are sharing your posts and repurposing content and spreading the word about your blog everything will have a consistent look and feel, you’ll stand out, you’ll be recognised across different platforms, you’ll be remembered and people will become curious, remember your past posts and want to find out more about you.”

– Amy Purdie

Unsure where to start? Check out these 142 Facebook ad examples that all exhibit a different branded style.

5. Find your content/market fit

It’s an obvious one, but understand your niche, understand your audience. – Samantha Kelly.

When we asked her what’s the most important thing about launching a new blog, Kelly noted that the keywords for your article should match the user intent, not search popularity.

Look to providing the type of content your audience will want to read.

Cameron Conaway, Director of Content at Reflektion, explains this further:

“Find your content/market fit. As with product/market fit, there are many variables to consider and many questions to answer before launching a new blog.”

–Cameron Conaway

Here are two fundamental questions Conaway suggests that you think about:”

1. Do you understand the untapped and/or unfulfilled audience you want to engage?
2. If so, do you have a plan (of content creation, cadence, distribution, and SEO) and the resources to consistently deliver valuable content to this audience?

(We’ll get back to discussing content distribution later in the article.)

6. Define your personal niche

“Before launching a new blog, or anything in the marketing arena like that, I would always make sure you have your niche at least approximately nailed down,” Ashley Faulkes, SEO & WordPress Specialist at Mad Lemmings suggests.

That means doing some research, figuring out where you can stand out from the crowd, where there is enough traffic or a big enough audience (on social channels, for example).

“If you are just going to do what everyone else is doing, you will really struggle. It is far easier, and a faster path to success if you find a narrower niche, at least in the beginning. One that you want to spend time in, and there are people there to listen to you.”

– Ashley Faulkes

For example, Hundred5’s blog focuses on hiring and recruitment.

But not just that – they’re also qualified to talk on the topic, having previous recruiting experience of their own.

How to find your blog’s niche?

Usually, the key to creating valuable content that people want to read is your experience in the field.

(That’s why, famous blogs also prefer contributors who are practitioners, not just freelance writers.)

7. Provide something unique

One of the surefire ways of never making your blog succeed is repeating what others are saying.

If your blog is just an echo of Entrepreneur and Forbes articles, why would anyone prefer it to the original sources?

Think about it… Are you publishing original content that can’t be found anywhere else online?

Dan Marks from Hancock Whitney, suggests that you try to understand your target audiences’ interests and how you uniquely provide value.

According to the marketing legend David Ogilvy, writing a good advertisement starts by studying the product – you need to know what makes it beneficial to its users and different from the competition.

Rosser Reeves, another notorious marketer, explained that your product needs a USP – unique selling proposition.

What he said about advertisements surprisingly well applies to blog articles too:

1. Each advertisement (read: blog article) must make a proposition to the consumer.
2. Not just words, not just puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement (blog article) must say to each reader: “Read this article, and you will get this specific benefit.”
3. The proposition must be one that the competition doesn’t offer.
4. It must be unique – either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
5. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass of millions.
6. Your advertisements (blog articles) should pull over a large number of new customers to your product (website).

When starting out with Aggregate blog, I had previously worked as a growth marketer for more than two years. I also had a fair share of blogging experience from working with some of the top marketing blogs.

That’s why, whenever I’m writing an article, I make a point of sharing advice that’s based on real marketing experience, not just on what other people and blogs are saying.

When starting a new blog, ask yourself:

1. Does this blog bring some unique value to readers?
2. Does this blog contain original data & insights not to be found in other articles across the web?

8. Know your reader persona

According to marketing influencer Sam Hurley, you need to know exactly who you’re targeting.

“Blanket approaches don’t work — your blog must be fit for a specific purpose, geared towards a particular audience — else it won’t be successful.”

– Sam Hurley

Mark Traphagen from Stone Temple added that you should think about the needs, wants, hopes and desires of your target audience. That information should then guide everything about your blog, from its design to the content you post there.

Stay true to the reader persona you’ve created, and solve their problem(s) in every blog post – Eric Peters from HubSpot emphasized that you should think about your target audience every time you’re writing an article.

9. Build your audience beforehand

Digital strategist and entrepreneur Ross Simmonds told that the most important thing to do before launching a blog is ensuring that you have an audience to actually launch to.

He’s onto something here.

“Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.’ The same idea holds true when it comes to planning a successful launch for your blog. Spend time building a mailing list, building relationships with people who will share your first post on social media, businesses who will share with their teams and any other opportunities to give your blog launch more life.”

– Ross Simmonds

Marketing consultant Peter Trapasso also suggests that you start building up your social presence once you have secured your domain name. Build up your followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn first, then launch your blog and begin posting regularly.

At this point before the launch, you don’t necessarily need to have thousands of fan emails.

All you need is to find your 1,000 true fans – people who will become your loyal readers and help to spread the word.

“Making connections is, by far, the most important lesson I learned since when I started blogging in 2010. Whether you are launching a new blog or promoting an existing one, building relationships with bloggers of your niche ensures new visitors and knowledge exchange.”

– Erik Emanuelli, social media marketer

Another way to build up your blog’s audience is to become part of an online community.

This idea is the curtesy of Joanna Wiebe from Copy Hackers:

“Invest some real time in becoming part of the community you’ll want to read your blog. By “real time” I mean more than 6 months of regular engagement with that community – to the point where people in it recognize your name. And don’t rely on upvoting / liking their content alone. You need to dig into the community. Ask questions, comment in discussions, share interesting content that’s not yours, post about the community on social media — contribute as much and as well as someone who’s paid to.“

– Joanna Wiebe

There are online communities focused on all possible topics. For example, GrowthHackers brings together digital marketers all over the world.

Building up a blog audience before the big launch is not an easy task. However, you will find it a lot easier to distribute your content later.

Tip: You can also use the communities for distributing your blog content in later stages.

10. Set up branded social media pages

If you’ve ever launched a blog, you’ll know how much effort it takes to keep things running and to publish content regularly.

The new blog is going to demand a lot of your time.

That’s why, it’s a good idea to create your blog’s social media accounts before the launch.

Here’s Mike Schiemer from Bootstrap Business:

“In my opinion, the most important thing to do in the early stages of a blog launch is to grow your social media accounts. Initially, your blog will not be getting much or any organic traffic because you don’t have a subscriber list yet, SEO takes time, and PPC campaigns can be very expensive. Social media provides free or affordable platforms to share your new or upcoming content and amplify your reach.”

– Mike Schiemer

Strive to increase followers and engagement on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and even Google+ pages so you’ll have a sizeable audience.

You’re going to need every platform and follower to maximize the reach of your blog posts and gain shares. The increased website traffic from social media will help your blog significantly in the short and long term, Schiemer added.

Tip: If you already have branded social media accounts, there’s no need to create new ones for your blog.

You can also use your personal brand and tie it to your blog. For example, Joanna Wiebe has tied her Twitter account to her brand Copy Hackers.

Look at your social media accounts as a platform for building new connections and creating brand awareness.

One last thing… Do your best to publish on social media accounts on a consistent basis!

Part 2: The technical aspects of your blog

The second part of this article is dedicated to probably the most overlooked aspect of starting a new blog.

If you’ve never set up a website before, you’ll be surprised by how much technical aspects matter – your choice of website hosting will have a long-lasting effect on your blog’s maintenance costs, loading speed, and SEO results.

After all, you don’t want your blog to be crashing under a heavy traffic load once an article goes viral…

So here are the most important technical details to consider.

11. Select a good hosting provider

Whenever you want to launch a new website with a unique domain name (e.g. a blog without the .wordpress ending), you’ll need to host it in servers.

Luckily, there are many hosting providers out there that also help you with buying the domain name you want.

SEO expert Lukasz Zelezny suggests the following:

“I bet You are launching Your blog on Wordpress. Use server-side version. Then consider a good hosting provider. I am always using SiteGround. WP Engine seems to be good too.”
– Lukasz Zelezny

There are 10+ good hosting providers out there, the most popular ones (and easiest) to use being Hostgator and Bluehost.

Using a hosting service with shared servers often means that when someone loads your blog article, the servers take a long time to respond, and your page loading speed will be low.

Here’s an example of an article page speed load report by Google – their website is not well-optimized for high page loading speed.

We used to have the same problem with Aggregate blog.

The articles took too much time to load, and it was damaging the SEO results.

That’s why, we decided to move the blog over to Google Cloud Platform that’s a bit more expensive, but provides high server response times.

According to Google, there are still many things that could be improved. However, we already have 90/100 points on Desktop and 68/100 points on Mobile.

12. Upgrade your blog from HTTP to HTTPS

SSL is not a choice, is a must. – Lukasz Zelezny

According to an article in the Moz blog, 50% of page 1 Google results in a 10,000-keyword tracking study set were secure (HTTPS).

If your website does not have an SSL certificate, its links will use http:// instead of https://.

Often, websites without the SSL certificate are marked unsafe by web browsers, and people will see the copy “Your connection is not private” when trying to load your website.

You can get an SSL certificate for free. Here’s a guide explaining how.

13. Work on your page loading speed

Your blog pages’ loading speed is an important factor that Google evaluates when deciding whether to show your blog in the search engine results.

No matter how much better your article is compared to your competition – if it takes 5+ seconds to load it, people will just get tired of waiting.

You can use page speed tracking tools to uncover how your new blog performs.

“This includes speed tests (you can use Pingdom and Google page speed insights), SEO friendliness (there are plenty of onsite SEO tools such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider), Schema testing (google schema tests), Tracking & Analytics (Use Ghostery browser plugin to make sure your code is setup and tracking correctly), Email opt-in functionality and most importantly Security. Only after you are satisfied with the results should you launch your blog and start receiving traffic. “

– Zaid from PPC Masterminds

Use Pingdom to see how much it takes for your blog pages to load.

Tip: Check the loading speed of specific blog pages, not the home page of your blog.

After all, it’s the specific articles you want ranking on Google.

As you enter your landing page and hit the “Start Test” button, you will get tons of recommendations for improving your blog.

What is a good page loading speed?

According to Google’s 2017 research, the average time it takes to fully load a mobile landing page is 22 seconds. Yet 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load.

Here’s some more stellar advice from Lukasz Zelezny on how to improve your page loading speed:

1. Make sure you are using caching (especially that SiteGround provide 4 level caches).
2. Make sure you minify javascript and CSS.
3. Make sure you are not using too many external scripts.
4. And if you have a bit of money to spend, make sure you are utilizing CDN (like Cloudflare for example.

14. Place your blog on your main domain

Raul Tiru from GlobalOwls emphasized another critical factor of your new blog’s SEO success: Research has shown that placing your blog on your main domain rather than on a sub domain helps improve SEO.

Start a blog as following: yourdomain/blog instead of blog.yourdomain. Here is a video by Moz explaining this.

Do this right from the start, save yourself time later, improve your domain authority and SEO.

15. Use the optimal number of plugins

Plugins are the add-ons that you can use to improve your WordPress site.

For example, there are plugins that help improve your SEO results, collect emails, and much much more.

An article in the WPBeginner blog suggests 24 plugins that are a must-have. That’s slightly misleading. I rather agree with Lukasz Zelezny who said that:

“Make sure you will not install million plugins – if you do, you will kill website performance and you will not be able to rank as high as you would with a well-pptimized website.”

– Lukasz Zelezny

Having too many plugins (24, for example) on your blog will slow down your blog’s loading speed.

However, there are some great plugins that you should install.

16. Get some technical and SEO plugins

Nirav Dave from Capsicum Mediaworks suggests the following:

“If your website is powered by WordPress, then the next step would include installing useful plugins like Yoast SEO (the best on-page SEO plugin), Wordfence Security plugin, W3 Total Cache (to speed up your WordPress website), BackUpWordPress (to backup your entire site and database), Contact Form 7 (to create customise contact forms), Akismet ( to prevent spam), Thrive Leads (best email opt-in plugin) and WP Smushit (to optimize your site’s images).”

– Nirav Dave

Here’s the list broken down:

1. Yoast SEO
2. Wordfence Security plugin
3. W3 Total Cache
4. BackUpWordPress
5. Contact Form 7
6. Akismet
7. Thrive Leads
8. WP Smushit

Equipped with all these plugins, your blog’s both protected, optimized, and working as a lead platform.

17. Make your blog design mobile friendly

Be sure your website and blog are designed to be mobile responsive. – Keri Jaehnig, Idea Girl Media

A recent article I read in the Moz blog was discussing Google’s new feature of mobile-first indexing.

Mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version of your website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index, and the baseline for how they determine your website’s rankings.

You can submit your blog to Google and say you’d prefer them to apply the mobile-first indexing on your website. Here’s the main difference with desktop-first indexing:

Is your blog doomed to fail without the mobile-first indexing?

No, not really. Or rather, not yet.

According to Google’s latest article on the topic, if your website is responsive or otherwise identical in its desktop and mobile versions, you’re all good.

What you should do is ensure all your images and content is also loading on mobile, and that your blog’s theme is mobile responsive.

18. Select a good Wordpress theme

Before starting Aggregate blog, I spent more than a day looking for a good WordPress theme. It paid off big time – I’m still happy with the selection I made.

You can browse for WordPress themes on sites like Themeforest.

Here’s how it works: You buy a premium WordPress theme and can then install it to your website. Here’s an installation guide, in case you need it.

What to look for in a WordPress theme:

1. High customizability – can you easily achieve the blog look you want?
2. High page loading speed – read reviews rather than trusting the “Speed Optimized” slogan on a theme’s promotional page.
3. Good UX – is it pleasant for people to browse your blog and read the articles?

Alright… You’ve now set up your blog’s domain and WordPress page, meanwhile making sure it has a swift loading speed and will rock in SEO.

It’s time to launch your new blog.

Part 3: Launching your new blog

19. Launch with a big bang

According to Peter Banerjea, Co-Founder at SuccessIsWhat.com, the most important thing to do before a blog launch is to ensure that you get tons of traffic on the day of launch.

Here are a couple of tactics Peter suggests:

1. Build an email list before you launch a blog. One way of doing that is to do lots of guest posts and have a link to a lead magnet in your bio.
2. Build partnerships with other bloggers and podcasters. Ask them to drive traffic to a launch page or a lead magnet before you launch.
3. Write an incredibly compelling article as the first post on your blog. Then, ask influencers in your niche to contribute quotes, data or any other type of input for the post. Then, when you launch, ask them to share it. That’s sure to drive tons of traffic to your post. Make sure you reach out to several more influencers after you launch and ask them to share your article too.
4. Never try to launch a blog on your own. The only way you will have a successful launch is if you have the support of influencers.

Tip: As you’ve put tons of effort into setting up your new blog, it’s worth taking the extra step and creating a blog launch plan.

20. Get help in promoting your blog

Unless you’re already an influencer in a given field, you probably won’t have thousands of social media fans to share your blog with.

However, there are other influencers who could help you out.

Check out what three marketing experts suggest:

“Once you have the plan in place and started producing your blog content you need to spend the time to build relationships with people in your niche on Social Media. This will help you tremendously with collaboration opportunities, traffic, building credibility and getting your blog content out to a wider audience. Launch your new blog with influencer partnerships, roundup posts or a long-form piece case study on research you did that offer massive value to readers.”

– Adel de Meyer

“Create a launch event where you are collaborating with others that will be enthused about your content and mission. Do livestreams, hold a contest, collaborate with guest authors that can share your content. Launch with meaning! Also be sure your blog is listed in GOOD blog directories so you can attract a relevant readership. {There is a list of things I recommend, but the answer above answers this specific question with quick important things people can do easily}.”

– Keri Jaehnig

“One great way to increase traffic is by quoting industry experts, influencers, fellow bloggers, or thought leaders within your post. Then, when you share the blog post on social, be sure to tag the individual(s) quoted in the article in hopes that they will retweet or share the post on their channel further bringing more brand awareness & traffic to your blog! Taking this tactic one step further, ask the person you quoted if they would do a FB Live or Instagram Live with you to discuss the topic of the article. This way you are creating more content for your audience while driving more awareness to your blog post. “

– Chelsea Krost

21. Don’t launch an empty blog

Sarah Dudley from Marketing Macros pointed out another interesting idea: do not launch a blog that only includes a single article.

“When launching a new blog, have enough content available to entice people to subscribe during the launch period. If you only have one post that goes live the day of your launch, it’s harder to gauge whether that content will be of interest to me than if you have 10 blogs available. Then I get a true sense of the voice of this person or brand and whether I want to see more of what they do in the future. Similarly, have those CTA’s built into your blogs. Having great content isn’t enough if you don’t give people the next step to take, whether it is subscribing, signing up for a service, or downloading a piece of content.”

– Sarah Dudley

If your goal is to get your blog visitors to return later, it’s important they grasp what your blog’s about.

It is difficult to evaluate a blog’s quality based on a single blog post.

Moreover, your blog will look sad and empty with a single article in it.

I would suggest that you write at least three articles before focusing on the BIG LAUNCH. And although these articles may not get that much of a stage light, still make sure they’re top-notch stuff.

22. Start with cornerstone articles

Jason Acidre from Kaiserthesage suggests that you thoroughly plan and build the first set of cornerstone content assets (4-5 comprehensive guides/tutorials/lists).

According to Acidre, your cornerstone articles should:

1. Be evergreen, so that you can run promotion campaigns for the content (through outreach or paid social) in a stretch of 3-6 months. Mainly to lessen the pressure of having the need to consistently create/publish new content on the site.
2. Focus on topic areas that have substantial search volume (and be able to cover both top and middle of the funnel audience).
3. Be linkable and shareable in nature (to attract and earn the right links over time, for them to eventually rank better on search results). And to also ensure that there’s a ton of link opportunities for the topics we’ll be creating content around on.
4. Make an impact on the site/blog’s business objectives. Content assets that should help demonstrate expertise, in order to convert more visitors.

Digital Marketing Strategist (Director of Marketing @solufy) Jacob Varghese suggests that you think about three different types of content:

1. Broader Niche Topics: These are topics on the blog that would tackle the broader interests within your target niche. e.g.: Say you are a personal trainer for executive women over 40, writing about time management (for exercising) for women, benefits of meditation, could be potential broader niche topics.
2. Niche Topics: These topics would be closer to your target audience. Like ‘health and wellness for women over 40’ ‘connection between good leadership and good health’ ‘exercise tips for women’.
3. Target Niche Topics: These would one-to-one conversations with those who are your clients.e.g.: Specific exercises for women over 40.

Although the ‘Target Nice Topics’ could form the bulk of your posts, the other topic clusters will lay strong foundations for longer-term brand vitality and other benefits like more room for creative expression and well-rounded thought leadership in your niche.

“Ensure that these topics resonate with most of your reader/buyer personas. Use a spreadsheet if you want to keep track of which persona/s and topic cluster each topic is being written for.

Before/during/after your blog launch you also want to use connect (digitally and otherwise) with other influencers and audiences for those topic clusters so you can share, exchange, and amplify each other’s valuable content for mutual benefit.”

– Jacob Varghese

23. Use the skyscraper technique

Johnathan Dane, CEO at KlientBoost suggests that you use the Skyscraper Technique when writing blog articles.

According to a blog article in Backlinko’s blog, following this technique can significantly boost your organic traffic and also the number of backlinks you’ll get.

Broken down to 3 steps, here’s how thie Skyscraper Technique works:

• Step 1: Find link-worthy content
• Step 2: Make something even better
• Step 3: Reach out to the right people

24. Write “the best damn blog post”

If you truly want people to give you their time and read your blog, write what Joanna Wiebe calls “the best damn blog posts.”

“Once you’ve given to that community (and gathered a bunch of karma points along the way), publish the best damn blog post you’ve ever written. It doesn’t have to be long; it has to be incredible. And it has to be the first of several planned amazing posts that you’ll publish regularly over the next X days/weeks/months. As in, have a long-term plan – there’s no such thing as one and done.”

– Joanna Wiebe

What makes a good blog post?

1. It has to be original
2. Don’t just merely copy other blogs
3. It has to cover the subject in-depth
4. Usually, best articles are 2,000+ words long
5. You have to prove your claims with stats and studies
6. You have to have an engaging writing style
7. You need awesome images and illustrations
8. Make sure your article sparks emotions
9. Make your blog article actionable

For more writing hacks, see this article: 16 Hacks for Copywriting for Facebook and Social Media

25. Work hard on your headlines

There’s arguably no other element to your blog article as important to its success than the headline.

A good headline will make people click on your social media posts and makes them curious about your article.

However, a good headline is hard to come by.

Chuck Bankoff from Kreative Webworks explains: People don’t read on the Internet, they scan. They see images and headlines. No mater how good your blog article is, you need to get their attention first.

“Traffic breeds traffic, and nothing jumpstarts traffic to a new blog like an intriguing headline. As David Ogilvy, the father of advertising said, “You have to crap out 25 headlines for every piece of content.
Your headline should be either clever, shocking or interesting. It should be focused, relevant and address your target audiences’ pain.
Tip: Start with a working headline to name your piece, but don’t commit until after the entire blog has been written. You will be amazed at how often the headline writes itself based on the content you just wrote. Try scanning your article for a stand-out sentence, and use that for the basis of your headline.”

– Chuck Bankoff

Research by Conductor showed that people prefer headlines that contain numbers.

Read more: Backed by Data: How to Write Extraordinarily Good Headlines

26. Create a blog promotion plan

“Spend substantial time creating content for your blog — and even more promoting it. There’s absolutely no point in producing material, if nobody is ever going to see it.”

– Sam Hurley, OPTIM-EYEZ

Dan Knowlton from KPS Digital Marketing suggests that 20% of your time should be creating blogs, 80% of your time should be promoting them.

Think about it… You spend around 8-12 hours on writing a great blog article. If you put no effort in promoting it, this time if half wasted.

“Video is one of the best ways to promote your blogs as social media algorithms don’t penalise videos as much as links. Here is an example of how we’ve been creative with video to promote one of our blogs. “

– Dan Knowlton

Here’s another marketing expert weighing in:

“The most important thing you need to do for your launch is to promote it. Do this before, during and after. My secret weapon is SocialJukebox. It’s a great tool for evergreen content on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It saves me so much time and allows me to “work smarter not harder.”

– Madalyn Sklar

And another…

“Also, think about how it is you’re going to get eyeballs to that content. Just because you hit “publish” doesn’t mean anyone is going to find or read your blog content.

Do you have a robust presence in the social media space? Do you do regular email marketing/send email newsletters? Have you factored in the value of paid social as a way of getting traction for your content? Does your sales team understand the value of sharing well-written, informative blog content? Do they know how to do that? Bottom line: For success with a corporate blog, start with a strategy. Develop the right kind of content, and figure out how you’ll get that content in front of people as part of that strategic plan.”

– Shelly Kramer

The key takeaway from what all three marketers are saying is that you need to spend a lot of time on promoting your article. Otherwise, nobody will find it.

27. Create a content promotion checklist

If you want to consistently succeed in promoting your blog, create a list of best practices that work for you.

Start a content promotion checklist and keep to it with near-religious devotion.

“The most important thing I do before I launch a blog post is creating a content promotion checklist. In a spreadsheet I list all the places I’m going to promote the blog post and the specific tactics I’m going to execute to drive traffic and shares. I also list my estimation of how much traffic each promotional activity will drive. By check-listing every single thing I’m going to do for promotion I can be ready to promote the content effectively.“

– Daniel Wallock

Johnathan Dane suggests that you promote your blog articles via upvoting communities, social channels, and other formats so you get your vanity social proof up.

Also, you can both share and promote your blog articles on Facebook.

Tip: Before you promote your blog article to a wide audience of people (based on their interests and location), promote it to your fans and customers.

28. Engage your blog readers to comment

As you’re starting a new blog, you’re likely interested in engaging with your audience.

One of the best ways to do it is in your blog’s comments section.

Tip: Get the Disqus WordPress plugin to have a good-looking commenting platform in the end of each article.

Chelsea Krost suggests that in order to engage a higher number of readers, always think about that strategic Call To Action to include and the bottom of each blog to kick start engagement in the comments section.

“Make sure to always check the comments section to gain inspiration from what people like or questions asked to determine what topics to cover next.”
– Chelsea Krost

Part 4: Growing your new blog

29. Be consistent in publishing and promotion

After a successful new blog launch, you definitely deserve some praise and a few days of rest.

However, the initial success can easily pass if you leave your blog unattended for the upcoming weeks.

Here’s some solid advice from three marketing experts:

“Once you get traction, keep your content consistent, maintain your website to be fast, modern and a delightful experience for your visitor.”

– Adel de Meyer

“Publish at least twice/week.”

– Johnathan Dane

“Focus more on maintenance than launch. People put so much energy into the launch, but forget to create a system that keeps them accountable for continuing to publish new content. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

– Phil Pallen

Moreover, you should give your best to keep sharing your blog articles on social media for maximized visibility.

30. Set up an editorial calendar

An easy way to keep yourself on track with consistent content creation is to set up an editorial calendar.

“Plan an editorial calendar that focuses on your best work that speaks to those three factors so you attract the right readers for your content.”

– Keri Jaehnig

Nothing fancy is needed. For example, I like to keep a Google Doc. with all my blog article ideas. Truth be told, it’s still difficult to keep writing on a consistent basis.

31. Experiment with different content formats

Nirav Dave suggests that you take use of different content formats like infographics, case studies, expert roundups, videos, etc. as this will help enhance engagement with your audience as well as help increase your site’s ranking on SERPs.

Different content formats will help your blog get visibility in a wide range of distribution channels.

For example, infographics can do really well on Pinterest.

Tip: No matter what type of content you publish, make sure it’s SEO-optimized.

If you’re publishing an infographic in your blog, write an intro, so that Google’s algorithms will get more information about the illustration’s content.

32. Build a list of your blog readers

Many people come to your blog only once. Then, they forget about you.

If you want to keep people engaged in the long term and keep notifying them of your latest blog articles, start building an email marketing list.

“Add an opt-in overlay (with an opt-in *and* opt-out button on it) to your blog. Make your opt-in magnet something you KNOW is compelling to the community you’re a part of.”

– Joanna Wiebe

Here’s a great example by Jeff Bullas:

In Aggregate blog, we created an e-book with more than 200 Facebook ad examples that we use as a lead magnet. This far, we’ve got already more than 2,500 downloads.

33. Build and engage your community

Joanna Wiebe suggests that you sometimes ask your community for help.

“Share your blog post with the community, driving them to your blog. And if it’s not stretching the rules of that community, give them a link to one of your tweets about the post so they can retweet it.”

– Joanna Wiebe

However, don’t go overboard with this tactic and only try it on people who really know you and your blog.

34. Repurpose and redistribute your blog content

After you’ve run your blog for a while, there will be a substantial amount of content that you can start to repurpose.

“Content distribution never ends. This is a mistake I frequently encounter. Repurpose and redeploy across multiple channels/platforms!”

– Sam Hurley

For example, you could create an infographic out a listicle post. Or make a 2017 guide into an updated 2018 guide.

35. Do guest blogging to get backlinks

If you want your website/blog to rank higher in Google search results, go guest post for other sites and link back to your site and articles in their posts. – Johnathan Dane

However, as I wrote in a recent article on guest blogging, it’s often not worth your time.

Tim Soulo, Head of Marketing at Ahrefs, conducted an extensive analysis of 273 guest posts and their ROI.

In terms of referral traffic, guest posting is almost as good as doing nothing.

If you’re just starting a blog, focus on creating better-than-life articles for your own blog and build up your fan base.

Then, if you truly have time aside from keeping your own blog filled with new content, think about blogging for others.

36. Don’t expect overnight success

As a final note, I would like to emphasize that your blog won’t get famous overnight.

Even if you write the best articles in the entire universe, it takes time for people to find out about your blog and learn to love it.

“First and foremost, have realistic expectations when you start or plan to start your own blog. Getting traction and building an audience takes time, so don’t beat yourself up about not achieving overnight success.”

– Adel de Meyer

Here are a few key learnings I took away from the first year of growing Aggregate blog:

1. Some of the posts you think are AWESOME won’t get much traffic.
2. It’s partly due to chance that some posts go viral.
3. Consistency really is the key when it comes to growing.
4. The quickest way to grow your blog traffic is via smart SEO.
5. It really is important to outreach and engage with other influencers.

Look at growing your blog as evolution – it’s not perfect from the beginning, but it will keep improving with time.

Alright, folks… This article’s gotten way too long already. I hope you’re at least a bit more inspired to get started with a blog.

Also, BIG KUDOS to all the marketing experts for being part of this article.

If you’ve got any additional must-know tactics for starting a blog, let us know in the comments! 

The post 36 Hacks for Starting a Blog by 30+ TOP Marketing Experts appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

If you’re looking answers to these three questions, this article’s for you.

Because that’s exactly what this article’s about – how to get started with guest blogging and accelerate your way to contributing to the top publications.

But first, there’s one important question that needs to be answered:

Is guest blogging even worth your time?

Around 2 years ago, I wrote my first guest post for a small business blog.

Fast forward to 2017, I’ve become a contributor to some of the top-tier blogs that once seemed like a distant dream: Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and many more.

Here’s what I’ve learned about guest posting after contributing more than 50 articles to more than 15 blogs.

Part 1: The benefits of guest blogging

Believe me, I’m highly sceptical about the ROI of guest posting.

This said, I’ve seen both value and time wasted when publishing in third-party blogs.

If you want to get the maximum value out of guest blogging, you need to know your goal.

Here are some common reasons for guest blogging:

• Getting high-quality backlinks for your website
• Establishing yourself as a thought leader
• Increasing the awareness of your brand
• Finding new clients and potential partners
• Building new connections within your industry

The reason I started guest blogging was to get quality backlinks for Scoro’s website – my employer at the time. I also loved the challenge of getting accepted to some of the top blogs I had myself learned from.

Guest blogging can be a highly efficient strategy to improve your SEO results.

Ahrefs studied the correlation between the number of backlinks and keyword rankings on Google. They found that those two metrics have a high correlation between them.

While I personally believe that guest blogging didn’t contribute much to our blog’s growth, I still believe it had some effect on the rapid growth of our organic blog traffic thanks to quality backlinks.

Key takeaway #1: You need to know why you’re guest blogging.

Alright, we can say that submitting guest posts to other websites has the potential to increase your Domain Authority in the eyes of Google and bring you more website traffic in the long term.

But there’s also a caveat: not all guest blogging is equally beneficial to your SEO results.

There’s a big difference between a backlink from a popular blog and a website with low authority.

Compare this to creating your brand’s showroom in the middle of the woods or a royal castle.

Guest blogging on a low-authority site with a few readers is likely going to have a smaller impact on your long-term website traffic than writing a high-quality blog article for your own blog.

Key takeaway #2: It’s worth guest blogging on high-authority sites.

Popular blogs also get more traffic which means higher visibility for your post, you, and your brand.

P.S. If you’re looking to increase your blog traffic, check out this article: 18 Hacks for Promoting Blog Articles on Facebook

If you’re hesitating whether to write a guest post for a particular website, use an SEO tool like Mozbar to check how high Domain Authority that website has. Mozbar will show you the Domain Authority (on the scale of 1-100) of any website you’re interested in.

Try to find guest posting opportunities on websites with the DA higher than 60 points.

But what if your goal for guest blogging isn’t to improve your website’s SEO? What if you’re interested in building your personal brand?

Guest blogging is a great way of establishing yourself as a thought leader in any particular industry.

However, it’s not always as efficient as you might think.

For example, when I published an article in Entrepreneur, only nine readers looked up my profile and website.

It looks like guest blogging isn’t going to bring you much fame after all… Even a small’scale Facebook advertising campaign would bring you significantly more results.

Tim Soulo, Head of Marketing at Ahrefs, conducted an extensive analysis of 273 guest posts and their ROI.

Here’s what he had to say about referral traffic from guest posting:

Out of 239 guest articles Tim wrote, 35% generated less than 10 visits and only 15% generated more than 100 visits.

Alright, so now we have data from two marketers saying that guest blogging is a terrible way of getting more traffic to your personal or branded website.

Key takeaway #3: Guest blogging is an awfully inefficient way to increase website traffic

Does this mean you shouldn’t be guest posting at all?

Not necessarily.

Here’s another finding from Tim’s research:

If you’re able to include a relevant link to an article or research material on your website, the guest post will bring you a lot more value.

Key takeaway #4: Increase your traffic from guest posts by linking to your other articles/research.

Another cool idea is to create a content upgrade, e.g. an eBook with additional insights, and offer it to your guest post readers in exchange for their emails. This way, you can collect the readers’ emails and reach out to them in the future.

I’ve also learned that the topic of your guest post matters a lot.

For example, if you’re a marketer looking to get hired, it makes sense to write guest posts on marketing, not productivity or management.

When I wrote an article on Facebook advertising for Content Marketing Institute, it was picked up by other marketers.

Compare to the nine website visits I got from a guest post in Entrepreneur, writing for a marketing blog had a significantly higher ROI.

The guest post brought me 30+ visitors. While it’s not much, some of those people were interested in collaboration or hiring me.

Look for blogs where your potential customers hang out and write guest posts that show your expertise on the right topics.

Here’s another question people are curious about:

Can you get hired via guest blogging?

Definitely!

More than once did I write a guest post to a marketing blog and got made an offer to keep writing to them as a paid contributor.

I’ve also had several people read my guest contributions to leading marketing blogs and reach out to hire me.

Key takeaway #5: Guest blogging can be an efficient way to attract new customers.

However, don’t get too excited about writing one or two guest posts and seeing all the business to come in…

You also need to have a strong landing page / personal blog to land a job. People who love your guest post will check out your website.

Having a website to back up your expertise will help to convince people to hire you.

Key takeaway #6: You need a personal website for people to find out more about you.

For me, guest blogging has always worked hand-in-hand with my personal website. The best job offers never even came via a guest post, but thanks to people reading my blog.

However, guest posting helps to strengthen your personal brand and establish you as an expert in your field.

Here’s an example of a Twitter profile belonging to marketing influencer Aaron Orendorff – having published in so many well-known publications helps him to increase credibility.

To sum up the first half of this article, here’s how you can benefit from guest posting:

1. It’s worth guest blogging on high-authority websites and the blogs your potential clients read.
2. Guest posts do not usually bring much traffic to your website, even not the articles published on high-authority sites.
3. Sometimes, it’s worth skipping a guest posting opportunity and write an article in your own blog instead.
4. Guest blogging works best when combined with a personal blog or a branded website.
5. Look at guest posting as a way to increase credibility and connect with other people in your field.

If you find the goals above worthy of your time (it takes around 8h to write a 2000-word article or even more) and you’re willing to put in some hard work, keep reading.

In the second part of this article, we’re going to explore how you can become a guest blogger to world-class blogs like Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, and The Next Web.

Part 2: How to get started with guest blogging

I wrote my first ever blog article in 2015.

I had just joined the software startup Scoro as their Content Marketing Manager.

My first week at work, I wrote the first blog article I’d ever written in English.

Looking at it now, I feel slightly embarrassed, would like to rewrite the entire article, and prohibit my past self from publishing any more content.

However, if I hadn’t started to publish those blog articles, I never would have learned to write.

Key takeaway #7: The best way to learn to write is to write.

Your first articles are 99% sure to be poorly written and will fail to attract many readers.

But that’s just fine.

The worst thing you can do is to give up and never take on writing again. Keep blogging on a regular basis until you get better and start attracting some readers.

A good litmus test is to show your articles to your friends and ask if they’d read that.

I started to write and publish a blog article on Scoro’s blog every week. After six months, my articles started to improve and I kept learning from my colleagues that helped to edit my work.

I was super eager to start guest posting in some of my favourite marketing blogs. Yet some of my earliest outreaches got negative replies.

I still needed to grow as a writer.

Key takeaway #8: Your early pitches will be rejected. Don’t give up.

Reaching the level of expertise and writing skills demanded by top publications takes time.

If you submit the first article you’ve written in your life as a guest contribution, it probably won’t get accepted. You’ll first need to gain some credibility as a writer.

So here’s what I did next: I started by guest posting to small blogs.

Here’s how I looked at it: If I get accepted to some mid-tier blogs, I can put in hard work, publish some amazing articles, and then pitch larger blogs based on that experience.

I sent out 10+ pitches to some of the blogs I considered to be reachable, pitched them highly relevant ideas and was given a chance by a couple of editors. You must constantly improve your copywriting skills to write better pitches.

Here’s the thing: Instead of pitching your ideas to 1-2 blogs, reach out to more than 10. There’s a lot higher chance that one of your pitches will get accepted.

One of the first guest posts I wrote was for the HubSpot blog.

It even had a decent amount of social shares that made it possible to pitch myself as a guest blogger to additional blogs.

Key takeaway #9: Start guest blogging in small or mid-tier blogs and work your way up.

Don’t expect those first guest posts to bring you fame and new customers.

However, you’ve got to get your snowball-effect snowball rolling from somewhere. So look for blogs that accept articles from less-experienced writers like yourself.

Here’s one more highly important tip: Write relevant and original pitches.

Here’s how NOT to get your guest post pitch accepted:

Here’s what’s wrong with this pitch:

• The blogger did not introduce herself.
• The blogger made no pitches for articles she wanted to write.
• She didn’t refer to her previous work to prove she can write.

That’s worse than not sending any email. It’s sending an email and wasting the editor’s time.

Here’s another one: the regular guest post pitch I saw when working as the Content Marketing Manager for Scoro.

What’s wrong with that pitch?

All the three topics they pitched are generic, and there are probably 10 articles with the exact same titles already published. This pitch is a no-go.

Key takeaway #10: A bad pitch is worse than no pitch at all.

So what makes a good guest post pitch – one that gets you accepted to the leading blogs?

CopyHackers has a funny and insightful guide to writing an awesome pitch. Here’s what they suggest:

• STEP 1: Be awesome.
• STEP 2: Choose a topic you know shit-tons about.
• STEP 3: Work on that headline some more.

In fact, their guidelines make you almost too intimidated to send over a pitch.

But these guidelines also push you out of your comfort zone, nudging you to be creative and put in some hard work.

That’s exactly how writing a good pitch should feel like.

As I’d always wanted to be a guest blogger for CopyHackers, I decided to take my chance. It took me 22 minutes (instead of the 3 minutes most people put in their pitches) to write an email to the blog.

I’m still proud of myself when looking at this pitch.

A couple of hours after sending over my email, I got a reply from CopyHackers’ founder Joanna Wiebe, saying she loved the pitch and would like to see the outline or first draft. ????

In a few weeks, my article was published and got tons of positive feedback.

Which leads us to the next lesson…

Key takeaway #11: Work on your pitches like your life depends on it.

Here’s what a good guest post pitch looks like:

• It shows personality – your introduction should differentiate your from other contributors
• It’s original – the ideas you pitch have not been written about before or you’re offering a unique angle to the subject.
• It’s practical – you’ve done your research on the blog and suggest topics they haven’t published yet.
• It’s convincing – you explain to the reader why you’re the right person to write on the proposed topics and also link to some of your previous articles.
• It’s entertaining – use interesting wording and create a good flow, so that the reader will enjoy reviewing your pitch.

Yeah, that’s a lot of things you need to get right. It’s a lot harder than creating an Instagram campaign or brewing the perfect espresso.

But… The more you practice the art of writing pitches, the better you’ll get at it.

How to become a guest author in top blogs

If this question’s the reason you’re reading this article… Well… Here comes the answer!

After I had written for some notable marketing blogs, I felt ready to approach the big players – blogs I had only recently dreamed of writing for.

By this time, I had tens of articles and referrals to prove my expertise.

I had written 30+ articles for HubSpot, Kissmetrics, CopyHackers, AdEspresso, KlientBoost, InfusionSoft, Duct Tape Marketing, The Next Web, and many more blogs.

More importantly, I had set in motion the growth of my personal blog that was seeing high readership from fellow marketers.

First, you need credibility. Only then can you start pitching to the high-level blogs.

Key takeaway #12: Before pitching to top-level blogs, build up your personal brand and credibility.

Look at guest blogging like a game – you need to level up in order to get accepted to high-rank blogs. Coming up with original ideas and pitches that get accepted gets harder once you start approaching the leading business blogs.

Becoming a contributor to leading publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur and the top industry blogs is not easy, but definitely a goal that you can reach.

—

Did something remain unclear? Do you have additional questions regarding guest blogging? Leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.

The post After Guest Blogging 50+ Articles to Top Blogs, Here’s What I’ve Learned appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

• It’s about real growth, not “a 400% growth without any mention of the initial traffic numbers” (growing 400% from 100 website visitors to 500 visitors is no big deal. Growing from 1.6k to 30k+ is a real deal).
• All the tactics mentioned here really work. They’ve been tried and tested, not copied from other blogs.
• It’s also an honest account of what didn’t work. It’s not just shiny victories that paved our way to 30k+ monthly blog visits.

In September 2015, our startup’s blog had the total of 1,615 organic visits from Google. By March 2017, this number had grown to 31,375 visits.

A quick calculation shows that in the past 12 months, our organic blog traffic increased by 1,843%. This has also translated into a significant growth in the number of leads and sales.

However, the fastest growth has happened in the past 11 months while we grew our traffic from 6k/month to 31k/month.

To be honest, this good-looking growth curve did not always result from a solid SEO strategy. Rather, it was a series of a-ha moments and sudden revelations that guided the process.

We got an abrupt idea, applied it to our website, and kept our fingers crossed to see whether our (often crazy) ideas work. Sometimes, they did.

And that’s how we grew from 1,6k organic blog visits to 30k+ visits.

You know how some people say there are no golden nuggets and it’s only the long-term strategy that leads to goals… That’s not entirely true – the best results appear when a strong long-term plan gets mixed with bold ideas.

This article’s about the hacks and growth tactics we used to build our website traffic. The best part is that they can be easily applied to your marketing strategy as well.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’d also like to give credit to our brilliant colleague Merily who’s been rocking our SEO, content, and CRO.

Here’s another article you might like: After Guest Blogging 50+ Articles to Top Blogs, Here’s What I’ve Learned

How we got started:

When I joined Scoro, I was eager to get started with content marketing right away.

Up to this point, the SaaS startup had been buying generic 800-word articles from an agency. Nobody wanted to read them, and it showed in the blog’s readership numbers.

Key takeaway #1: Don’t outsource your content marketing to an agency as they can’t see your SEO results nor do they plan for your long-term growth. (At least the agencies I’ve seen in action)

What you should do instead, is to establish a solid content strategy and a growth plan with two main goals:

• Building brand awareness and acquiring fans
• Publishing content that will bring you traffic in the long run

Rather than publishing three short articles per week, we aimed to publish one really good article once a week. This tactic’s also been explained by Rand Fishkin in his Whiteboard Friday episode on 10x content.

Key takeaway #2: Don’t publish for the sake of publishing – focus on quality, not quantity. (I bet you’re tired of hearing this, but it’s 100% true)

Our initial content marketing strategy was simple. It included a topic, headline, keywords, and a publishing date. We’re using a similar approach to this day.

Building a growth-focused content marketing strategy

At the beginning, our content marketing strategy was like a vacant parking lot – there were so many potential keywords and opportunities waiting to be employed.

Not to waste a single opportunity, every article we published had to show a huge organic traffic potential.

According to research by Ahrefs, the average Top10 ranking page is 2+ years old. It takes nearly three years to land the #1 spot.

The fact that it may take 2+ years to have your blog articles rank on Google means that you need to focus on the long-term strategy and build “content bundles” with articles complementing each other.

#Key takeaway 3: Plan and create content with long-term gains in mind. It may take up to two years for an article to start ranking in the TOP10 on SERPs.

Actually, I can assure you that some articles only take a month or two to start ranking high on SERPs. But it doesn’t change the fact that the focus should be placed on the long-term growth.

Instead of brainstorming fun headlines, we defined the five main topics to center our content around. I like to call those overarching topics the “content bundles”.

Creating content bundles as an SEO strategy

When analyzing our past three months’ website traffic, we noticed that 75% of the organic traffic resulted from two types of articles – software lists and KPI-related content.

I’ve never been a big believer in the 80/20 rule, but it sure seems to apply to our blog strategy. Most of our organic traffic comes from two content bundles that we’ve been expanding since 2015.

Just to be clear, here’s how I like to define content bundles:

• A series of articles around one key topic
• Each article focuses on a different (yet related) keyword

By interlinking the articles inside a content bundle, you’re able to create a keyword bubble. And for what I’ve seen, Google loves these kinds of bubbles around a specific topic. After some time, Google will begin to perceive your blog as an expert resource in the given field, assigning your articles a higher rank in SERPs.

Key takeaway #4: Create content bundles – a series of articles centered around one key topic.

For example, we’ve been working on the content bundle focusing on the keyword “KPI dashboard” for over 15 months. It’s a sweet keyword – the exact match has over 1k monthly searches in the US alone.

The other pages ranking for this keyword have a considerably higher domain authority. However, we’re now ranking as the #4 result in SERPs in the US.

Slowly but surely developing the content bundles has certainly been one of our highest-ROI tactics. The best part is that it’s easily applicable even to sites with a low domain authority – to blogs just starting out.

https://www.mindtitan.com/?utm_source=aggregate&utm_medium=paid-ads

The secret SEO tactics that bring skyrocketing results

Alright, it’s time for the best part of the article – the no-BS tactics that helped to grow our organic blog traffic at a fast pace.

As you might have guessed, it all starts with keyword research and identifying the best opportunities.

?SEO hack 1: Learn to do SEO research the right way

Instead of simply checking the Google Keyword Tool to see the monthly search volume of specific keywords, you can take your research to a higher level. I’ve also written about this method in-depth here.

Step 1: Google your keywords

After you’ve discovered some keywords with a great monthly search volume, head to Google and, well, google. (You can use a tool like ISearchFrom to see the results in specific countries)

Let’s say you want to create a list of Top SEO Blogs.

A quick Google search will reveal a list of results:

While it’s a good general overview of your competition, there’s a simple way to learn a lot more.

Key takeaway #5: Don’t limit your SEO research to the Google Keyword Tool. Dig deeper.

My personal favourite tool for competitive SEO research in the Moz SEO Toolbar.

Step 2: Use the Moz SEO Toolbar for advanced research

Use the Moz SEO Toolbar to get more insight about the articles in search results. Most of the features are free, simply add the extension to your web browser.

The SEO Toolbar will show you the Domain Authority and Page Authority of each website on the search engine results page.

What you want to do is to look for pages with a low domain authority that have managed to get listed among the high-DA pages. This means they’ve published such good content that Google thinks it’s necessary to refer to their site.

For example, an article from a site with the DA of 29 could appear between other pages with a DA of 80+.

The guys over at the low-DA site must have done something right. Analyze what differentiates their content from all other results.

Often, you’ll find that those low-DA pages have 10x more comprehensive content or have an exact keyword match. That’s what you’ll want to copy when creating content to rank for the same keyword.

Key takeaway #6: Find content marketing and SEO opportunities by discovering low domain authority sites that rank among pages with a high domain authority.

Once you’ve discovered that another low-DA site is able to rank in the TOP10 SERP results for a particular keyword, so can you.

?SEO hack 2: Spend more time interlinking

Remember when we talked about the content bundles in the first half of this article?

Adding links in between your blog articles helps to strengthen your keyword bubbles and make them visible to Google (and get your new articles ranking more quickly).

While most websites make an effort to add links to older articles inside the newer content, we took it one step further. After we had published a new article on a given topic, we went and edited older articles around the same subject, and added links to the new article.

For example, when we published this article on KPI Reporting in February 2017…

We went ahead and linked to it in a KPI-related article published one year before.

As a result, the new article picked up more quickly and appeared in the TOP20 SERPs two weeks after publishing.

Key takeaway #7: Interlink all the articles around a related topic to create keyword bubbles and improve your search rankings.

By interlinking our blog articles, we steadily built a network of links, supporting each individual keyword and helping our articles rank higher on Google SERPs.

https://www.mindtitan.com/?utm_source=aggregate&utm_medium=paid-ads

?SEO hack 3: A/B test new headlines and meta descriptions

The two SEO tactics mentioned previously helped us to grow our blog’s organic traffic by over 1,500%.

However, it’s this third trick that gets credit for the latest improvements in our SERP rankings. It’s about rewriting and A/B testing your article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

Hearing about this SEO hack was definitely one of the few a-ha moments on our journey to 30k+ monthly organic (blog) traffic.

Key takeaway #8: Rewrite and A/B test your article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

Here’s how it works…

Step 1

Select an article that’s ranking in the TOP20 search results and is optimized for a high search volume keyword.

I like to use Moz’s keyword ranking reports for that.

The keyword “What is a kpi” has a considerable search volume, and the current ranking #15 shows that it has a potential to move up the ranks.

Step 2

Google the keyword to see what other articles rank next to yours.

In this phase, you’re going to sherlock on your competition, looking for their article’s headlines and meta descriptions.

We like to approach this stage by asking: What would make our article differentiate from the crowd and make people click?

In this case, all the headlines seem pretty generic and boring. What if we could rewrite the headline to make it more noteworthy (and clickable)?

Key takeaway #9: Rewrite your headlines to increase the CTR on search result pages, and thereby raise your SERP rankings.

We usually rewrite both the primary and SEO headline – if we come up with a better solution, we also want to have it in our blog.

The key tactics we use to write powerful headlines:

• Create a curiosity gap so that people will click on the headline.
• Include your main keyword in the headline to be highlighted in search results.
• Create comprehensive lists with odd numbers.
• Make your headlines actionable by using action verbs such as “Learn”, “Get”, etc.

Google evaluates search results based on their click-through rates. It makes a lot of sense to put effort into increasing your top article’s CTRs.

Higher SERP click-through rates = higher rankings

Step 3

Use the Google Search Console to A/B test and measure results

A marketing tactic is useless without proper measurement.

What if you rewrite your blog headlines, but instead of increasing, your CTR actually drops?

We’ve seen both success and failure with this SEO hack. It’s a good thing we measured the results and were able to restore some changed headlines and meta descriptions to their original state.

By using the Google Search Console, you can easily track your keywords’ and article’s click-through rates on Google.

To get a report that looks like this…

Follow these steps:

1. Log in to Google Search Console
2. Select “Search Traffic”, the “Search Analytics”
3. Tick the box in front of CTR
4. Change the columns from Queries to Pages
5. Select the dates you’d like to compare

Using these reports has been of tremendous help in optimizing and A/B testing our article’s meta descriptions and headlines.

Key takeaway #10: Measure your marketing experiments’ results to see what actually works.

And now, it’s time for the sweetest part of the article – the fuckups.

You can’t always win – our biggest failures

I promised to also share our failures. While some of them being embarrassing to think of, we can at least say: We tried.

In retrospect, many of these failures make us feel like this…

But there are also the mistakes that make us feel more like…

It’s up to you to guess which failures make us feel in certain ways. (I’ve boldened my favourite ones)

• We tried Outbrain for content promotion, but it never delivered the anticipated results.
• We forgot to add UTM codes and REF codes behind our paid promotions’ links.
• We sometimes created content that stole our landing pages’ place on SERPs. We fixed this by adding CTAs inside blog articles.
• We created a Christmas infographic on productivity that we published 20 days too late.
• We tried some crazy headline and meta description changes that significantly decreased the CTRs to our articles. Luckily, the rankings recovered in a few weeks.
• Once, I mistakenly thought Outbrain’s budget signifies the total campaign budget. It was the daily budget. You might have guessed why I don’t like Outbrain…
• We waited for too long to update our blog layout and redesign the article page.
• We didn’t do enough outreach and collaborate with other industry blogs.
• For the first 8 months, we focused on vanity metrics such as social shares, instead of website traffic and lead conversions.
• We spent 30+ hours on an eBook campaign that returned only 4 leads.

For us, guest blogging didn’t work. At all.

While everyone’s praising guest blogging as a brilliant SEO tactic, I’m going to play the devil’s advocate here.

We did lots of guest posting on other sites, like here, here, and here. However, considering the time and resources spent, this is not a high-ROI way to grow your blog traffic.

I would recommend that you do PR, but forget about guest posting – focus on publishing excellent content in your own blog instead.

Over to you

As you can see, nothing too serious went wrong. We were able to happily test away all our new ideas.

If you intend to grow your organic blog traffic, know that there is no instant way to win (Ahrefs’ case study perfectly illustrates it). Use what you’ve learned in this article to accelerate your journey to tens of thousands monthly blog visitors.

I hope this helps and would love to hear the hacks that have helps you to grow your website traffic. Let’s have a discussion in the comments.  ???

The post From 1.6k to 31k Monthly Blog Visitors in 20 Months – How We Did It appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

And marketers know it.

Recently, GIFs have made a comeback in social media posts, blog articles, email newsletters, messenger conversations, and even corporate Slack channels.

Including GIFs in your articles and tweets can help to increase both the average engagement and the number of shares.

The only headache with GIFs is that when time comes, it’s difficult to find the suitable animations that alig with your message.

So, whatcha gonna do?

For one, you could go hunting for GIFs on your own, starting with these sites:

• Giphy
• Tumblr
• Imgur
• 9GAG

If you’re too lazy for that, you can simply bookmark this article for future reference and use these 35 emotional GIFs across your marketing campaigns and ad designs. Depending on your love for GIFs, this list should get you through a couple of months! ?

P.S. If you also dig into emojis, check out this list: The Very Best Emojis to Apply in Marketing Campaigns

Happy

For the times you feel like the world’s your oyster…

Surprised

For the moments you recall forgetting to instagram your amazing-looking breakfast. Too late, it’s a mess now…

Confused

Whenever you’re having trouble understanding why someone doesn’t love ping pong or caramel lattes…

Shy / Embarrassed

For the moments you’re feeling like the world’s sooo confusing…

Cool

For when you come out of those embarrassing moments by keeping your cool…

Liked the GIFs? Don’t forget to bookmark this page for the future. ?

+ Share your fave GIFs below in the comments section! ?

The post 36 Magnetic GIFs for Mesmerizing Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Or do they?

Emojis have received their admittance to the modern marketing arsenal long since. But as you scroll around on Facebook and Twitter, only a few brands are rocking ‘em.

This could mean two things. A: emojis don’t work or B: nobody really knows how to use them. There’s also C: people are too lazy to copy-paste a few emojis to their messages.

So, what’s in it for you?

It means that you haven’t missed the boat just yet. You can still build up an emoji-strategy and be among the first to apply it.

We’ve done a fair share of emoji-testing at Scoro, and I’ve also applied the same techniques when promoting this blog.

This article will introduce three applications to emojis that work like a charm.

➕  Scroll to the end of the article to see the list of my Top 20 fave emojis.

1. Use emojis in Facebook ads

We ran a test at Scoro to see whether using emojis in ad headlines helps to get better results. It does.

The ad with emoji in the headline had a 241% higher click-through rate than the ad with no emoji.

(Full disclosure: We didn’t have 10 000+ impressions and a sufficient amount of click-throughs to say this test was 100% statistically significant. So look at it as a fun test to replicate.)

In fact, emojis can be added into every part of your Facebook ad copy:

• Headline
• Text
• Link description

And it doesn’t have to be limited to Facebook advertising — apply the same technique on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram ads.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started: How to Use Emojis in Facebook Ads [Complete Guide]

2. Tweet with emojis

I recently observed a simple Twitter hack: using line spacing to cover more real estate in the Twitter feed.

Instead of sharing content the good old way…

I used emojis and started each link from a new line, like this:

If you compare the length of these Tweets and the space they take up in the Twitter feed, guess which one gets more clicks?

Using emojis in your tweets does several things:

• It makes your tweet more engaging
• It takes up more space in the Twitter feed
• It makes your brand differentiate
• It helps to give your tweets more personality

The next time you’re scheduling tweets, don’t forget to drop in an emoji or two.

3. Use emojis in emails

A report by Experian said that 56% of brands using emoji in their email subject lines see higher open rates.

✉️ + ? = ?

Here are a few good examples of brands using emojis in the subject line:

In my personal opinion, adding emojis before the subject line draws more attention than at the end of line.

What about emojis inside the email?

I had to crawl my inbox to see whether any brand is using emojis anywhere else than the subject line.

I found only one by Tech Ladies:

So here’s your untapped potential: insert emojis in the email copy in addition to subject lines.

Emoji inspiration

I promised to share my Top 20 fave emojis. So here they come:

?  ?  ?  ?  ? ? ?  ?  ?  ?️  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?

You can find more emojis in Emojipedia.

—

What other use cases have you found for emojis? If you don’t want to comment, send me a private email ?

The post 3 Must-Know Tactics for Marketing With Emojis appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

Don’t act surprised – everyone’s doing it.

It’s not just some shady Twitter accounts and armies of bots. Many beloved brands and well-known influencers are using follow-unfollow tools to inflate their follower numbers.

And the weird part is, it works.

This article will explain who?, why?, and how? are using the automated accumulation of Twitter followers. You’ll also find the answer to the question Should I do it?

Here’s an honest account on why brands can benefit from inflated Twitter follower numbers, but also why this monkey business is a waste of everyone’s time.

The popularity of automated Twitter following

As mentioned before, many prominent people and brands are using automated Twitter follower tools.

We recently analyzed Twitter accounts of top 145 marketing tools.

Out of 145 MarTech Twitter accounts, 33.1% are potentially inflating their follower numbers by using follow-unfollow tactics.

This chart illustrates the concentration of mutual following between a Twitter account and their followers. (The accounts were randomly chosen among the 145 accounts analyzed)

Accounts with high red and purple columns follow thousands of users who never followed them back.

Now, why would a marketing tool want to follow hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts?

How to recognize a Twitter account with “fake” followers:

The first sign that a Twitter account is using an automated following tool is a high ratio of people they follow vs. people following them.

Another red flag is an account following hundreds of thousands of people – no social media manager could’ve possible followed all those people.

I didn’t have to look hard to find these examples, there are millions of similar accounts out there. And these aren’t bot accounts. These are brands trying to increase the number of Twitter followers, earn people’s trust via social proof, and drive more sales.

Automated Twitter following tools are wildly popular. A quick Google search reveals that this is quite a competitive industry with tens of different tools promising you more Twitter followers. Look at the second result.

Increasing Twitter follower count – how it works

In case you haven’t heard of this technique before, here’s how it works: a Twitter account owner uses automated tools follow another Twitter user’s followers, up to 1000 people per day (that’s a limit set by Twitter).

As a few days pass, they’ll unfollow all the users who haven’t followed them back. Meanwhile, they’re following new Twitter profiles every day.

In this automated click-and-follow routing, there’s no consideration who’s being followed. The sole goal is to inflate the numbers on a Twitter profile’s follower parameter.

Yet, as someone who has used the follow-unfollow tools, I must say – it is borderline addictive.

Right after following hundreds of people, your Twitter notifications light up. You’ll get tons of new followers and automated welcome messages.

There’s just one important question people forget to ask – If these people are automatically following me back and sending a welcome message… Aren’t they using the same tools as I am?

Is “fake” Twitter following working?

Yes.

There’s a time in a Twitter account’s lifecycle when automated follower inflation can help. It’s right after creating the profile.

When seeing a cool tweet and being on the verge of following the profile behind it, people usually look for social proof – Are other following this account?

If your new Twitter profile’s follower account is 20, you won’t look like the most popular kid on the block. If it’s 1000+, you’ll be perceived as someone worth following.

Automated Twitter following tools can help you get to the first 1000 followers in a matter of days. If your goal is to share high-quality content and weighty opinions, the rest will follow organically.

No.

If your goal is to become a well-known Twitter influencer and accumulate thousands of engaged readers, while being lazy and relying on fake following, you won’t get very far.

If you’re just publishing low-value content and spamming other Twitter users with your offers, not even 100k “fake” Twitter followers won’t help you.

What’s the point of having 100k Twitter followers if all of them follow back thousands of profiles like yours? These people and brands never see your tweet, lest to speak of engaging with it.

Using automated follow-unfollow tools will bring you followers that are just as indifferent of your tweets as they are of yours. These “fake” followers will never like, retweet, or mention your tweets.

Stop using automated following tools

When starting the Aggregate blog, I finally realized one thing:

Using the automated Twitter follow-unfollow tools is never worth the time spent.

With an extra 15 minutes each day, one can:

• Create 8 high-quality tweets to share
• Start conversations with Twitter influencers
• Brainstorm new ways of engaging with your audience

All of these activities have a higher return on investment than any mechanical follower hack you can pull.

The post Everyone’s Using Automated Twitter Following Tools. Stop. appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

There’s not enough reading power in this world to work through every article published. Whether people click on the link to your article depends on the allure of your headline.

A magnetic headline is concise, fascinating, and has a touch of magic✨  to it.

But there’s also a quantifiable side to writing irresistible headlines: the length, the right wording, etc.

We gathered all the data analyzing the anatomy of a perfect headline and topped it with original research. Up next, you’ll find six visualizations that help you understand and compile headlines people want to see.

1. Start with a number

Turns out that the type of headline you use plays a significant role in your article’s success.

Research by Conductor shows that people prefer headlines that contain numbers. Their second choice is the headline directly addressing them.

Just to be clear, here are some examples:

• Headline starting with a number: 22 Ways to Write The Perfect Headline
• Headline addressing the person: 22 Ways You Can Write Perfect Headlines
• “How to” headline: How to Write a Perfect Headline
• Regular Headline: Guide to Writing a Perfect Headline
• Headline Including a Question: Did You Know About These Headline Writing Hacks?

Key takeaway: Test headlines that start with a number, but make the number impressive, not 5 or 8. Aim fo 65, 101, or 36 (this also keeps your content quality high)

2. Use the right words

People’s reaction to different words and adjectives varies heavily, depending on their mood and background.

When analyzing 23,858 tweets by 145 Twitter profiles (we’ll publish the entire analysis soon), we discovered that the Top 5% best-performing tweets started with the following words:

The thing is, also the Top 5% worst-performing tweets contained similar words. So we extracted the words that were present in the Top 5% but less popular in the rest of tweets.

• Words to use in your tweets and headlines (words that were frequent in top 5% but not so widely used in other tweets): Thanks, Our, Check, In, Don’t, Top
• Words to avoid (words that were frequent in the 25% lowest engagement tweets but unpopular in the top 5%): 6, See, Get, 4, Are, Do

We explored the matter a little further ad discovered that there some words had a statistically significant higher possibility to get your tweets noticed and engaged with.

We discovered that the words “Thanks”, “Top”, “We”, “Congratulations”, “Learn”, and “Great” at the beginning of your tweets could help to reach higher engagement.

Key takeaway: Test the words “Thanks”, “Top”, “We”, “Congratulations”, “Learn”, and “Great” at in your headlines (and tweets) to reach higher engagement.

3. Don’t be that lazy

A web traffic chart published by NewsWhip revealed that Upworthy generated about 75,000 Facebook likes for each article.

What about the rest of the best-performing sites? They each generated fewer than 10,000 likes on average.

The reason why top publishers’ articles get thousands of Facebook shares often lies in the science of perfect headlines. Upworthy is said to write 25 headlines for each of their articles.

Why should you write 25 headlines?

The formula is pretty simple: Out of 25 headlines you’ve managed to brainstorm as fast as possible, 20 are crap, and the remaining 5 have an opportunity to be great.

Key takeaway: Don’t settle with the first headline that comes to mind. Brainstorm at least 10 different ideas and the choose the best.

4. Use odd numbers

Outbrain collected data from 150,000 article headlines and discovered that headlines with odd numbers have a 20% higher clickthrough rate than headlines with even numbers.

Instead of creating a list of 12 tips, make it a list of 11 tips. One of the reasons odd numbers work better is that they’re more uncommon. Bet you’ve seen more “10 tips” articles than “9 tips” posts.

Key takeaway: Test using odd numbers in your headlines.

5. Find the perfect headline length

Another study by Outbrain found that headlines with 60-100 characters earn the highest click-through rates

To confirm these results, we looked at the headlines of popular business magazines’ most shared articles in January 2017.

Forbes headlines that gathered the most Twitter shares:

• 10 Ways To Push Your Business Further In 2017 (28,000+ Twitter shares) – 45 characters
• Seek These 7 Character Traits To Avoid The Risk Of Bad Hires (21,000+ Twitter shares) – 60 characters
• Resilience: The Skill Above All Others That Helps Entrepreneurs To Excel (19,000+ Twitter shares) – 72 characters
• 10 Influential American Business Leaders Today (8,000+ Twitter shares) – 46 characters
• Seven Habits Of Extra Interesting People (4,000+ Twitter shares) – 40 characters

As you can see, none of these articles really included over 75 characters. So maybe Outbrain’s research isn’t the best to follow. Having 60+ words in your headline doesn’t work out so well for SEO either.

We decided to check the headline character count of 20 top shared articles by Fast Company, Inc., Forbes, and Entrepreneur.

60 characters seems to be the most-used headline length. (It’s also a good choice SEO-wise)

Key takeaway: Keep your headline length around 60 characters.

Quick recap

Before you move on to the next article, review everything you just learned.

• Start headlines with numbers
• Use the right wording
• Brainstorm more than 1 headline per article
• Use odd numbers more often
• Keep your headline length around 60 characters

Now that you’ve mastered some new copywriting skills, go ahead and check out these 25 Facebook ad design hacks to also improve your ads’ visual identity.

The post How to Write Adorable Headlines, Answered by Data appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

It’s 100% free and it’s based on keywords and search terms highly relevant to your content (and offers).

Many successful businesses have built their entire acquisition strategy on inbound marketing. Over 70% of their sales funnel is powered by organic traffic.

Blogs with up to 3 million monthly visits get most of their website visitors via organic traffic.

If you’ve done your keyword research wisely, you can drive thousands of visitors to your website and make them convert to customers.

More organic traffic = more leads = more sales

Up next, you’ll find a cool hack we’ve used many times over, to give out organic search traffic a serious boost. The best thing about it is that it only takes about 2 hours of your time.

?  The hack? – Rewrite all your blog headlines.

Why your headlines matter:

On average, 80% of people will read your headline, but only 20% of them will read the rest.

Your headline decides whether people will read your article or skip it.

This rule doesn’t only apply to your blog and Facebook newsfeed. It also applies on the search engine result pages.

Which one of these search results would you click on? My vote goes for the ones including the word “Magnetic” and promising viral posts.

Better headlines = more clicks = higher CTR = higher search engine rankings

The more people click on your headline, the more Google perceives it as a valuable resource.

How to improve your blog headlines in 2 hours:

For most people, it takes about 2 hours to rewrite all the blog headlines.

To learn how to write a hero headline that has a high click-through rate, see this guide by Single Grain: How to Write Hero Headlines to Skyrocket Click-Through Rates

? Step 1: Find blog posts with the highest organic traffic

If you have 50+ blog posts, use Google Analytics to find your TOP 50 posts bringing the most organic traffic.

Go to Google Analytics > Behavior > Landing Pages, and choose the segment Organic Traffic (it’s pre-set by Google, so you don’t even need to create it)

Don’t forget to remove the All Users segment.

You now have a list of the best-performing blog content that you’re going to optimize for maximum reach.

? Step 2: Brainstorm headlines

Use a tool like CoSchedule’s headline analyzer to brainstorm and test at least 3 different headlines.

After some trial and error, you’ll get a list of all your ideas to choose from.

? Step 3: Change the headlines

The next step is to go log into your blogging platform and change the headline.

These 2 hours are probably going to be your this month’s highest-ROI marketing activity.

Results & measurement:

After you’ve changed your headlines, you’ll want to check whether it helped to improve your click-through rates.

Not all the headline changes might have a positive impact on your search engine results CTR.

As you check the right reports and notice which new headlines work the best, you can optimize your articles even further.

The easiest way to check your search engine click-through rates (many marketers still don’t know about it) is to use the Google Search Console.

Log in to Google Search Console and go to Search Traffic > Search Analytics.

Filter the report so that it shows Clicks and CTR per Pages that get the most organic traffic.

What you’re interested in is the CTR of the blog posts with changed headlines.

Compare two time periods (open in different windows for the best overview): 14 days before the big headline change and 14 days after the change.

Have your click-through rates and search traffic increased? If so, you’ve done a great job! If there’s a negative change, you can always go back and re-write your headlines again.

In my experience, rewriting the headlines is a magnificent way to fix all the boring intros in your blog and get more organic traffic for no big effort.

It’s definitely a bargain for the 2 hours you only need to put into the task.

? Best guides on writing irresistible headlines:

• AdEspresso: 8 Startling Discoveries to Write Powerful Facebook Ad Headlines
• ConversionXL: 5 Characteristics Of High Converting Headlines
• WordStream: 19 Headline Writing Tips for More Clickable, Shareable Blog Posts

The post The 2-hour Hack to Double Your Organic Traffic appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.

When starting out with content marketing, one of the first things you’ll to do is keyword research. After all, you’d like your articles to appear in the top Google’s search results.

Even after 2 years of working with content marketing, it’s still kind of a mystery to me why some search engine optimized articles start to rank and others won’t.

There’s no crystal ball to tell you which keywords start to bring thousands of organic visits every month. Although we all wish there was… ?

I recently happened to watch a video of CXL’s new Customer Acquisition Live Class with Dan Shure from Evolving SEO. There was a keyword research hack that particularly caught my interest. In fact, I think it was genius. And I immediately wanted to share it with anyone working on content or SEO.

So, here it comes, an SEO keyword research hack worth applying every single time.

Keyword Research with Domain Authorities

One of the main reasons your content never ranks high on Google as there are so many other websites with a much higher Domain Authority.

Domain Authority (DA) is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. The metric is calculated by combining all of Moz’s other link metrics—linking root domains, the number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc.—into a single score.

So, here’s a hack that makes a lot of sense, come to think of it.

When doing keyword research for new content or landing pages, add an extra step to the process.

1. Google your keywords

After you’ve found some keywords with a high enough search volume, head to Google and search for these.

Let’s say we’d like to create a list of Top Growth Marketing Blogs.

The Google search results page will look something like this:

While it’s a good general overview of the competition, there’s a simple way to learn even more.

2. Use the Moz SEO Toolbar

Use the Moz SEO Toolbar to get more insight about the articles in search results. Most of its features are free, simply add it to your browser.

As you click on it, the search results page gets a whole new look:

Now, you can see the Domain Authority and Page Authority of each website on the SERP (search engine results page).

The first two results have a Domain Authority of over 90 points. If your website isn’t hugely popular, you probably have the DA of 30-40 points. So, you can’t go against these giants.

3. Look for low domain authority websites ?

Google is not likely to rank your article higher than the first search results as their DA is so much higher than yours.

However, as we scroll down, there’s an article from a website with DA 28 on the third place in the list.There’s also a website with DA 21 on the 7th place. Now that’s what we call a good omen.

Finding that some low DA articles rank high in competitive keywords search results is a sign that your article could potentially rank there as well.

4. Learn how to rank high with your content

Analyze what differentiates the content on the low DA website from all others.

Often, you’ll find that they’re 10x more comprehensive or have a more exact keyword match. This is what you’ll want to copy when creating content for the keyword.

Creating low-quality content with no clear value to the readers will not get you ranking in search engine results. You need to put in some real effort.

Not to keep this DO IT NOW post too long, let’s conclude it by naming a few marketing tools/websites whose content marketing is worth admiring and whose mindset worth copying: Drift, KlientBoost, AdEspresso, Moz, SumoMe, WordStream, ConversionXL, Unbounce.

Why do you think all the aforementioned brands are so well-known and trusted? It’s the high-quality content and advice they’re continuously putting out there. You can do the same.

The post How to Do SEO Keyword Research Like a PRO appeared first on Marketing Fix blog.