Ways to Get More Traffic and Traction byPromoting Your Content Like a Boss

Some bloggers seem to have all the luck.
They get way more shares than you. They get tons more email subscribers than you. They get much higher search rankings than you.
And it sucks, right?
Because their content is good, but it’s not great.
Certainly it’s not that much better than yours.
So what are they doing differently?
Why is their content so much more successful than yours?
The difference is in the way they promote it.

What Promotion-Smart Bloggers Know That Most Bloggers Miss

As a blogger, you’ll have been lectured many times on the importance of good content.
Time and time again you’ve been told you must create high-quality content. Awesome content. Even epic content.
But smart bloggers know that while quality is important, it’s just one piece of the content puzzle.
In fact – and prepare to be shocked – it’s not even the most important piece of the puzzle.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: who gets more traffic – the blogger who’s great at writing and good at promotion, or the blogger who’s good at writing and great at promotion?
The answer should be obvious. The blogger who’s great at promotion will run circles around the talented writer every time.
Consider this: the New York Times doesn’t publish a list of best books. They publish a list of best-selling books.
See the difference? It’s all about promotion.
And the following tips will show you how to promote your content like a boss:

1) Think Cross-Channel and Multi-Format

When the average blogger thinks about content, they usually think in terms of blog posts. And they often don’t consider at all how readers first encounter those posts.
The boss blogger, however, knows how to combine promotion tactics and content formats for maximum effect.
That means blending search, social and email:

• Email and social allow you to stay connected to your audience.
• Social and search enable discovery, bringing new traffic and subscribers.
• Search and email give you consistent visibility with your readers.

Content is at the heart of all three channels, but you can’t just push out the same content in each. Different formats work better in different places.
Long-form text is good for search. Shareable images work well in social streams.
So a boss blogger creates assets in many formats.
They’re not just creating an endless stream of 800-word blog posts. They create charts, diagrams, SlideShare presentations, downloadable PDFs, infographics, quizzes, expert interviews, whitepapers, videos and podcasts.
Each asset is created with promotion in mind, knowing that different formats get traction in different channels.
And each channel makes different demands on the content creator.

Email Subject Lines, Tweets, Facebook Posts

These need headlines that grab attention, surprise the reader, include numbers (as in, list posts), align with cultural trends or leave a curiosity gap.
Examples:

• Blog Like a Honey Badger
• I Thought I Knew Analytics, Until I Watched This Video
• 101 Ways to Make Your Sales Prospects Smile

SEO-Motivated Content

This requires titles and headings that align with phrases people are searching for – including complete questions and phrases – and long, detailed articles.
Examples:

• How to Market an Event
• Keyword Research Strategies
• How Does Social Media Affect SEO?

Pinterest, Instagram, SlideShare and YouTube

These visual channels require evocative images that grab attention. Do this by including a person’s face and a headline or subheadline from the article. Be sure to size images appropriately for each network.
Examples:

If you want a single piece of content to get traction in several channels, combine tactics.
Use provocative images with embedded headlines as the featured image in a post. Then embed a video with a striking thumbnail image or a slideshow with a compelling title slide.

Pro Tip!

To create headlines that get traction in both social media and SEO, use a colon to separate the search-friendly keyword from the social-friendly click bait. This gives you good key-phrase prominence (phrase appears at the beginning of the title) but still lets you leverage human psychology in the rest of the headline/title.
The following are some examples from my blog:

• Competitive Analysis Tools: 5 Free Ways to See the Analytics of Any Website
• Neuromarketing Web Design: 15 Ways to Connect with Visitors’ Brains
• Internal Linking: 9 Best Practices for Internal Links
• Ego Bait: 5 Simple Ways to Leverage Blog Mentions
• Thank You Pages: 9 Example of Missed Opportunities

Each of these was effective in both search and social.
So, are you publishing in different formats?
Are you tailoring each piece of content for each specific channel?

2) Use Your Blog as the Ultimate Networking Tool

Boss bloggers are power networkers.
They know that the difference between a popular blog and a deserted blog is relationships. So they’re constantly using their blogs as tools to connect with other people.
Want to build relationships with influencers? Invite people over, have a conversation and deepen those connections. If the website is a house, the blog is the living room.
Here’s how to use your blog as a power networking tool:

• Take a stand. Rant a little. State an opinion and invite dissent. Start discussions that power players will be unable to resist joining.
• Move the conversation from the blog into social media and vice versa.
• Source topics from relevant communities on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Quora. Intentionally focus on communities where your target influencers are known to hang out.
• Write detailed, thoughtful comments. Share half-formed ideas and ask for input. Talk to people in the comments of their blogs.
• Write response posts, adding to what people have written elsewhere. Most people will be flattered that their writing has inspired other people.
• When you share a blog post, mention specific people who would likely be interested in what you wrote. Use social media to find specific people who will love the content. For example:

So ask yourself: are you making friends on your blog?
If not, you’re doing it wrong.

3) ABC. Always Be Collaborating.

A boss blogger doesn’t work alone. They collaborate – with friends, influencers, readers, even competitors.
Collaboration strengthens your network and goes beyond simple outreach because it creates bonds through content.
Turn strangers into friends by including them in round-ups. Interview the major players in your niche. Ask them to contribute a quote.
The advantage of collaboration is that each co-creator is also a partner in promotion once the content goes live.
And here’s a trick that most bloggers miss: get the voice of your target audience into your content.
Looking to increase engagement with your readers? Come up with a content idea that would benefit from their input. Conduct a survey that puts their views and experiences at the heart of your next post.
Collaboration has two huge benefits: it shares the burden of creating content easier, and it creates allies when it comes time to promote the content.
Example: 6 Questions for 6 Analytics Experts
This post is part of a series where we ask questions to influencers on various topics. This post included input from Justin Cutroni (Google), Neil Patel (QuickSprout) and Dr. Pete (MOZ). Most people love to be interviewed, so the outreach wasn’t difficult.

Are you using your blog to create reasons to contact people?
Remember – you’re a publisher. You can create reasons to contact people anytime.

4) Go Big or Go Home

Big results come from big efforts. The pros know this well.
Eighty percent of bloggers publish posts that are 1,000 words or less:

Example: Survey of 1000+ Bloggers.
But boss bloggers know this, and when other bloggers zig, they zag. So they go big.
They know that content that goes way beyond what’s expected gets more traction than a dozen medium-quality posts.
Content that’s more detailed, more comprehensive, or simply asks the questions no one else took the time to ask cuts through the noise created by less-ambitious content.
Try one of the following:

• Do a survey of a large number of people in your industry.
• Collect data over a long date range and publish the insights you discover.
• Publish a guide that explains every aspect of an important topic.
• Build an interactive tool that helps your audience make important decisions.
• Do a series of live webinars.
• Write and self-publish a book.

Bigger content is far easier to promote. It’s more worthy of shares, links, opens and clicks.
Bigger content also gives you an advantage for longer. Because content that is harder to create is also harder to replicate.
The Internet is ravenous for originality. So feed that appetite with original research.
At Orbit Media, we spent around 100 hours to create an original piece of research that answered big questions in our industry.
How much time do people spend blogging? What percentage of bloggers use editors? How are people promoting their content?
The post was covered by some of the biggest blogs and podcasts in the industry and has been translated into four languages.

So are you creating something truly original?
Are you investing enough time in your content?
Are you going big?

5) Get Strategic About Your Content

Most bloggers publish a steady stream of loosely connected posts.
Each week they take an idea, write it up and publish.
The next week? Another idea.
Even if they stick to a strict publishing calendar, they end up with a collection of posts with no underlying strategy. The posts may relate to each other, but then again, they may not. It’s mostly down to luck.
The boss blogger takes a different approach. They start with a plan to dominate a topic within their niche and then systematically create the posts (and other types of content) required to make it happen.
By staying focused on the topic for longer, they get bigger benefits. They don’t create isolated posts; they create interconnected hubs of content.
The benefits to the boss blogger are many:

• The key phrases they target are interrelated, so they support each other.
• The connections they build with influencers stay relevant to their content for longer.
• The most recent subscribers to their lists are more likely to be interested in subsequent posts because there’s topic continuity.
• They have better opportunities for internal linking between posts.

And they don’t move on to the next topic until they reach the minimum amount of content and connections to be truly influential on that subject.
A strong content hub does the following:

• Offers value on several interrelated sub-topics
• Targets several key phrases
• Includes content in various formats (as discussed in point #1)
• Appears on more than one website (e.g., via guest blogging)
• Includes content created by various collaborators

Here’s what it looks like:

Example: Lead Generation Website Best Practices (and related content)
First, we created a detailed, practical post and aligned it with a valuable key phrase. Then we published an infographic and five guest posts on similar topics. After several weeks of hard work and focus, the post ranks on page one, above many famous and authoritative websites.
With the hub built, Google now does most of the hard work of promoting the content within the hub. Pretty cool, huh?
So are you focusing on one topic long enough to get real results before moving on?
Are you creating a deliberate structure between your posts and the rest of the content on your blog?

6) Use Your Analytics to Actually Do Analysis

Most bloggers look at their traffic stats, smile or frown, and then move on.
But they’re not doing real analysis. They’re certainly not using the data to guide their next move.
The boss blogger, on the other hand, knows that analytics is not a scoreboard – it’s a decision support tool.
They use insights gained from their analytics to influence their promotion strategy:

• They learn which posts are traffic champions and which posts are conversion champions, and they know how to use one to promote the other.
• They know which social networks pull in what kinds of visitors, and they adjust their promotional activities on those networks accordingly.
• They know which topics get traction, which keywords get clicked, which formats work best, and they use that information to create content that is already optimized for promotion.

If you’re not currently using analytics, you’re blogging in the dark.
And if you’re using analytics simply to keep score, you’re missing a huge opportunity – the ongoing improvement of your blog and its promotion. A process based on trials, testing and a regular review of analytics.
So, are you making decisions based on data?
Do you know what’s working and what isn’t?
Are you truly analyzing the performance of your content?

Are You Ready to Start Thinking Like a Boss?

In a crowded blogosphere, great content isn’t enough.
You need great promotion too.
That’s why popular bloggers are as serious about promoting their content as they are about creating it in the first place.
They think long term. They aren’t limited to one tactic. They focus on relationships. They make decisions based on evidence.
Because that’s how a boss gets it done.
The hard truth is that if a blog post is created without a plan for promotion, it won’t get the traffic or the reach – or the end results – it deserves.
So adopt a promotion-focused mindset and start taking action.
The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be the boss of your blog, your network and your niche.

This Nigerian Man Built A Solar-Powered Tricycle ‘Keke Napep’ In Lagos

 A Nigerian man was reportedly pictured riding his recently built solar-powered tricycle (keke-napep) around Yaba area of Lagos state.

 This is one amazing innovation considering the surge of Keke Napeps (tricycles) in Lagos.

This Is What Jay-Z Had To Say About His Elevator Fight With Beyonce’s Sister

For the first time since 2014, JAY-Z has finally spoken out over the viral video that showed his wife Beyonce‘s sister, Solange, apparently attacking him.
Speaking on Rap Radar podcast last week, he said the disagreement didn’t mean they hated each other.

‘I fought my brothers and argued with my brothers my whole life. It just so happens, who we are, these things go into a different space, but it ain’t nothing. 
‘We had one disagreement ever. Before and after we’ve been cool. She’s like my sister. I will protect her. That’s my sister, not my sister-in-law, my sister.’

Although the hip-hop legend had stayed quiet since the incident, the allegations of infidelity on his part became rampant after Beyonce addressed the issue with her Lemonade album, and JAY-Z himself confirmed on the 4:44 album.

Bishop David Oyedepo Happily Celebrates 35th Wedding Anniversary With Wife

 Senior Pastor of the General Overseer of Living Faith Church aka Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo and his wife, Faith, are celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary today August 21st.


They got married in 1982 and have four children. Celebrating his wife on social media, Pastor Oyedepo wrote;

“Happy 35th Wedding Anniversary to my Heaven-sent Wife, Faith Abiola Oyedepo.
It gets sweeter by the day!”

Why National Broadcasting Corporation Banned Davido, Olamide And 9ice’s Songs

 The National Broadcasting Corporation NBC has placed a ban on some of Nigeria’s most popular tunes for alleged violation of the commissions rules and regulations regarding music lyrics and videos.

The commission which is responsible for making sure there is a degree of sense and meaning in the contents released by Entertainers into the industry has deemed it fit to ban Olamide’s new jam WO and his previous song Wavy Level amongst other songs.
Davido’s Banana anthem FALL did not survive the blow neither did the remix of IF. Another song that was listed for ban was 9ice’s controversial song Living Things, a song that has been criticized to be a glorification of fraudsters.

It could be recalled that the visual for Olamide’s new song was released just some days ago and the Ministry of Health already consider it a hazard to the nation giving the level of indiscriminate smoking seen in the already viral video.
The ban implies that these songs would no longer be played on TV stations and radio stations

Watch Jay Z Pay Touching Tribute To Linkin Park’s Chester Bessington

 JAY Z in his set during V Festival paid tribute to Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington who committed suicide in July.


The rapper performed his collabo with the band “Numb/Encore” of their joint EP “Collision Course.”
“Can you guys light it up tonight for Chester?” JAY Z told the audience, “Linkin Park, one time, tonight. Please make some noise so he can hear you all the way in heaven tonight!”
“Numb/Encore” won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 2006 Grammy Awards
Watch video
 https://youtu.be/pkpBX6EeMv8

Top 10 Killer Ways To Promote YouTube Videos For Higher Traffic

Do you have a YouTube channel & publish videos regularly?
It doesn’t matter how much time you put into creating your videos; if you are not marketing & promoting your videos, your work will never be seen by the majority of your target audience.
But YouTube video promotion is an art which anyone can learn… with a little discipline.
In this guide, I have shared strategies and techniques that you can follow to market & promote your YouTube videos.
These tips are tested, proven, and work for videos from almost every niche. Think of this post as a checklist that you need to follow once you are done producing your videos.
So without further delay, let’s learn the art of YouTube video promotion!

How To Promote A YouTube Video & Get More Views

I have covered all major promotion techniques in the sub-topics below.
Note: In upcoming posts in our YouTube promotion series, I will explain these sub-topics in detail. If you are a professional YouTuber or are planning to become one, you should subscribe to our blog updates or download our iOS/Android app to stay updated.

1. Video Title

The titles of your videos are a major deciding factor between them being widely seen & shared across the internet, or only getting a small number of views.
It’s a good idea to do proper keyword research to find what people are searching for and then crafting a great title around that.

Here are some tips for writing great video titles on YouTube:

• Keep them short and to the point.
• Add the current year if you can (Ex: Best Tips for 2017).
• Make it attention grabbing.
• Include keywords in the beginning of the title (where possible).
• Use “Power Words” (Ex: Best, Awesome, Incredible).
• Use emotional triggers words (Ex: Sensual, Lonely, Passionate, Censored).
• Capitalize your headline title. Use this tool to help you.

2. Video Tags

One of the biggest mistakes that hinders the growth of your YouTube video’s organic promotion is incorrect tag usage.
Tagging in YouTube works differently than it does in a blog post. If you’ve never paid attention to YouTube tags, now’s a good time to start. You can even go back and edit all of your old tags.
Here are some rules for using YouTube video tags:

• Use a unique branded tag so that your videos are shown in related videos. Ex: Use your brand name in all videos. (See below screenshot.)
• Use your main keywords as the video tag.
• Use a variation of your keyword as a tag (take help of the YouTube auto-suggest feature).
• Find the tags used by high ranking videos & use those in your video. You can use the TubeBuddy Chrome extension to help you find tags used by others.
•  

Do remember, YouTube video tags are an important factor for the organic ranking of videos.

3. Use A Custom Thumbnail

Verified YouTube accounts can take advantage of the custom thumbnail feature. A good video thumbnail helps you stand out in the related video and suggested video section.
Here are some tips for thumbnails:

• Have a resolution of 1280 x 720 (with a minimum width of 640 pixels).
• Upload in either .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG.
• Keep it under 2MB.
• Try to use a 16:9 aspect ratio as it’s the most used in YouTube players and previews.

I don’t want to confuse you with these technicalities, but it’s important for you to know this so that you can craft a thumbnail that works well on desktops as well mobile devices.


You can use Canva or YouZign to design a thumbnail for YouTube videos in minutes.
Watch this video to learn more about creating clickable thumbnails:

Subscribe on Youtube

4. Focus On Branding

There are a few branding things that you should do from now on which will ensure every video stands out. One of those things is using a branded intro and outro.

• YouTube intro: A 3-5 second clip that runs at the beginning to showcase your brand.
• YouTube outro: This runs at the end and can be as simple as showing related videos for your channel or asking users to like & subscribe to videos.

Getting a YouTube intro & outro video is easy, and you can create them yourself using Camtasia or you can hire someone from Fiverr.
Take a look at this video and see the outro I got created for me from someone on Fiverr: (Browse to 3.53 seconds for video outro)

Subscribe on Youtube

If you don’t have a channel logo yet, do get that designed, too.
Check out: How To Build A Personal Brand (and why you need one)

5. Share Videos On Social Media Channels

If you are a video blogger, you should have some social media properties for your YouTube channel. This gives you an opportunity to create a community outside of YouTube & direct traffic from other popular social media/social networking channels.
Here are some of the social media properties that you must create:

• Facebook page
• Twitter profile
• Google Plus page
• Instagram profile
• Pinterest profile

You can use a tool like Buffer to schedule videos to be shared on your social media channels. You can take advantage of IFTT + Buffer integration to automatically share your newly published videos on your social media pages.

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One important tip here:

• Always share your video after a regular interval.

I typically share each video at least 10-15 times within eight months after publishing. Also, use hashtags when sharing so that others can easily discover them.

6. Start A Blog For Your YouTube Channel

If you are a full-time YouTuber, you shouldn’t miss out on creating a blog for your YouTube videos. These days, it’s pretty easy to embed YouTube videos onto a blog & you can create a blog on any free or paid platform.
I recommend you to create a blog using WordPress & use a video-specific WordPress theme. It’s better for you to use Managed WordPress Hosting so that you don’t have to worry about blog maintenance.
At the same time, you can use plugins like:

• Yoast SEO WordPress plugin – to make your blog rank higher.
• YouTube Viral Subscribe plugin – to automatically add a “subscribe to channel” tag after every video.

If not WordPress, you can take advantage of other platforms like:

• Medium
• Tumblr
• BlogSpot

Bonus Tip: You can also buy a domain name & redirect it to your YouTube channel. This way when someone asks you “How can I find you on YouTube?”, simply share the domain name. Use this coupon from GoDaddy to buy a domain name for less than $2.

7. Create A Playlist Or Add Video To An Existing Playlist

A YouTube playlist is a great way to get more views on your existing videos. When you are done uploading a new video, add it to a playlist (either one you create or an existing one).
If you are creating a new playlist, follow these steps:

1. Give a meaningful name to the playlist & have a keyword in the title of that playlist.
2. Add a detailed description of the playlist and put your keyword(s) in there.
3. Group similar videos into one playlist.
4. A single video can be listed in more than one playlist.

YouTube playlists also appear in search results. By doing this, further discovery of your videos is increased.

Watch this below video to learn about creating a Playlist on YouTube:

8. Use Calls To Action

People on social media sites need to be told about the actions you want them to take.
At the end of the video, or even somewhere in middle, ask viewers to like & subscribe to your channel. At the same time, you can ask them to share the video with others who might benefit from it.
Most of the prominent YouTube stars use this technique to take advantage of their existing viewership. If you have never done this before, start doing it from your next video onward. You will be amazed to discover that by simply asking, the number of shares increases by a great extent.

9. Interview Influencers In Your Niche

This one is not a direct YouTube video promotion technique, but it fits perfectly in the overall strategy of your channel promotion.
Interviewing an influencer gives you an opportunity to get access to an already thriving community in your niche. Not only you will grab the attention of others who follow that particular influencer, you will also get noticed by the industry as a whole.
You can find the top influencers in your niche & you can interview them using Google Hangouts or Skype. For Skype, you can use a tool like Ecamm call recorder.

10. Spend Time Learning At YouTube’s Creator Academy

One mistake most of the growing YouTube marketers make is they just focus on publishing more videos & stop learning.
YouTube is one of the fastest changing platforms, and it’s important for you to learn about all of the existing and emerging tips and tricks.


You can use Creator Academy by YouTube to learn some pro tips for making the most out of your YouTube videos (and your channel as a whole). When I started learning here, I was surprised to learn so many growth hacks & tricks which I would have otherwise missed.

Promote Your YouTube Videos And Get More Views

Well, these are some simple promotion strategies & techniques that you can use from today onward for your YouTube videos.
These tricks and tips will surely help you get a lot more traffic, and ultimately, more subscribers.
Now it’s your turn to share how you are promoting videos on YouTube after you hit the ‘publish’ button. Let me hear about your promotion strategies! I’ll keep updating this post with all of the best suggestions from the comments section.
If you find any of the listed tips useful, share them with your YouTuber friends! And don’t forget to join me on YouTube!

Best way To Moderate YouTube Spam Comments Automatically Using Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is here, and many companies are offering it to us to improve our work flows.

Earlier, I talked about the web app (also iOS app), SmartModeration, which automatically tackles spam comments on Instagram and Facebook (check out my review here). I’ve been using it for almost a year to tackle the spam comments on ShoutMeLoud’s Instagram and Facebook pages.
The big news: The same AI technology can now help us combat spam comments on YouTube.
Recently, SmartModeration has integrated with YouTube, so you no longer have to worry about moderating and tackling spam comments on your videos. If you are a YouTube channel owner or a YouTube influencer, this new integration is going to be so valuable for you.

How To Tackle YouTube Spam Comments Automatically Using Artificial Intelligence

If you have never used SmartModeration before, go ahead and sign up right now. They offer a 3 day-free trial which is good enough to tackle spam comments for all of your existing updates on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
In this tutorial, I’m sharing how to use their new YouTube integration.

• Log in to your SmartModeration account.
• Click on the Page Management tab (Direct link).

• Click on Add New Channel.
• Give access to your YouTube channel.
• Repeat the process if you have more than one YouTube channel.

Once you have allowed access, it will take a few minutes to scan your existing published and pending YouTube comments.
You should give an hour or so to let the SmartModeration bot to do its magic.
When done, you can use the tabs to quickly find ‘inappropriate’ and ‘automatically hidden spam comments’.

Well, now you’re all set. You can start using their web app or their mobile app to moderate your YouTube comments.

What if you have a new or moderately popular YouTube channel?

Here is the thing, not everyone needs SmartModeration to moderate YouTube comments. If you have a well-established and active YouTube channel, SmartModeration is definitely a good choice.
But if you are someone who gets a limited amount of comments, then you don’t need SmartModeration. You can manually moderate comments by configuring the settings.
Here is how you do that:

• Go to the YouTube community settings by clicking here.

Here you can configure settings to manually review all comments.

This definitely increases the time by which new comments will appear on your newly publishes posts, but you won’t have to pay for SmartModeration.
For new and medium traffic YouTubers, you can use the YouTube Creator Studio app (Android | iOS) on your smartphone to moderate comments.
However, once you reach the stage where your time is money, and you are getting a lot of comments, using an AI tool like SmartModeration can significantly improve your work flow.
Take a 3-day free trial of SmartModeration
Along with this new YouTube integration, they have recently revamped their dashboard:

They’ve also added another cool feature…
AI-Powered Blacklist: Here you can define keywords for your specific moderation needs, and the AI-powered blacklist will detect and hide comments with your pre-set keywords and their variations like frequent misspellings or large spaces in between letters.
I have been using this tool to manage my Instagram and my Facebook for quite some time. And now, I’m pretty excited that I get to use it to moderate my YouTube comments as well. If you are someone who understands not only the importance of comments but also the idea that “time is money”, you should definitely look into using this great service.
Now I want to hear from you: Have you used SmartModeration before? What do you think about it? Are you excited about this YouTube integration? Let me hear your reviews in the comments below! Also, if you use any other Artificial Intelligence comment fighting tool, do tell us about it in the comments!  
Here are some more hand-picked articles to improve your YouTube experience:

Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!

SmartModeration is a great tool to use to tackle spam comments on Facebook, Instagram, and now YouTube. It's a little pricey for new marketers, but for those with large followings, this tool is invaluable.

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Four Steps to Determining the Scope and Relevance of Social media

The social networks have reached an extraordinary peak knowing them to manage, can be beneficial to many areas of some companies. Fundamental to them is the knowledge of user behavior to determine the scope of our message and relevance of them. There are many ways to determine the scope and relevance, but it might be good to focus on two simple questions:
1) What number and what kind of people I’m coming with my efforts in Social Media?
2) How will we develop content specifically targeted to these people?

The scope and work closely with relevant metrics, helping you determine the effectiveness of your campaign and how to improve your interactions. It is not only how many people are coming, but if you’re heading to the right audience and relevant at a time.
Here are four steps that will help you examine and understand the scope and relevance of your message in a Social Media strategy.

Step 1 – Determine the current scope

This is the easy part. Your strategy in Social Media interaction likely involves multiple platforms.Measure its scope is to find how many people follow you or have chosen to establish a relationship with you on every platform. For example:
• How many Twitter followers do you have?
• How many Facebook fans?
• How many YouTube subscribers?
• How quickly your audience grows in each of these networks?
• What is the number of page views of your blog?
• What is the average number of retweets your content?
All these numbers will give you a clear idea of the scope and expected growth potential given your current strategy. The goal is to increase your reach, so the following three steps are designed to help you increase your business and know what is happening channels.

Step 2 – Determine the demographics of your fans

The scope is not the ultimate objective measures success in Social Media. You may have gained a huge following on Twitter or Facebook, but that does not correspond with the growth of the business.You may also be struggling to grow your reach and followers you have, are fans and are very committed to you to recommend your content to others.
By measuring your fingertips, you need to look beyond the numbers in general. It is important to understand who are your supporters and fans, and learn about their demographics as possible.Using the measurement information available on most platforms, data can be determined as:
• Age
• Location
• Genre
• Type of content preferred
• Other interests
You can review this information together with the measurement of interactions to determine which subset of the numbers, in general, are more active and also what content is appealing to different demographics within their constituency as a whole.

Step 3 – Calibrate the relevance of content and interactions

Once you have determined who is forming the core of your presence in social media, you’re ready to start developing content that is highly relevant to your audience.
The relevance of the content is the key to the success of your Social Media strategy. You might have a massive reach, but without relevance, is not effectively connecting with constituents, and as a result, you’ll never see the positive results for your business. You can measure the relevance of your content by checking how users interact with it. The following questions will help:
• What content has generated most of the interactions in recent months?
• What was the feeling of those interactions?
• How is the content related to my business/brand / product?
• What were the demographic Highlights of users who interact with your content?
• What content generated less interaction occurred?
• Why did not succeed the content?
Relevance is what enables brands to harness the power of amplification through a network of users.When the content is relevant, is likely to be shared by your followers among his friends and quickly spread and generate value from a wider network. By interacting on social networks, the relevance is the first thing any marketer should consider before developing or publishing content, so you understand what worked and what not, is the first step in creating truly relevant content in the future.

The specific orientation of the influencers in your network of followers is also key, as these evangelists have earned the trust of readers in their sector and have a special impact on them.

Step 4 – Customize the content to increase relevance to the main public

The final step of your reach and relevance is to create and test new content based on what you have learned about the profile of users who follow you through the last three steps. The generation of highly relevant content and targeted to specific groups of users in a meaningful way will begin to grow their interactions.

Then you can compare previous data with new data set to modify and refine your campaign, to identify what is working and what is not. As the relevance of content grows and continues to reach your target audience, increase its power generating meaningful interactions with the fans that will result in business growth and is therefore in sales.Once you get used to controlling a process of regular measurement and have a set of relevant statistics of the trends of your users, you will see improvements in your business driven by the extent of your message through influential users.
Once you get used to controlling a process of regular measurement and have a set of relevant statistics of the trends of your users, you will see improvements in your business driven by the extent of your message through influential users.

Did You Lose Traffic After Migrating To HTTPS? Here’s How To Fix That.

• Should you move your website from HTTP to HTTPS?
• Is it worth moving an information site like a blog to HTTPS?

These were some of the questions we all had last year when HTTPS became really common.
If we look at the current trend, it’s a no brainer that our sites should be using HTTPS.


And when you are starting a new site & implementing HTTPS, things are easy.
However, when you are moving an existing/running site from HTTP to HTTPS, things are not that simple.
Moving to HTTPS is indeed a big technical SEO change. At times, people make mistakes here & start losing their SEO traffic.
However, one can quickly avoid this if they are following all the right steps before & after moving their site from HTTP to HTTPS.

There are a few tools that let us check for proper SSL implementation, but they are not geared toward SEO. These tools usually check for canonical & SSL certificate implementation, which is not enough when you are doing an SEO audit after moving your site to HTTPS.
So, what’s the solution?
SEMrush, which is the most popular SEO tool, recently added an HTTPS implementation audit feature in their site SEO audit feautre. As some of you may know, SEMrush is the most comprehensive HTTPS SEO audit tool I have ever come across.
In this guide, I will share how you can use this tool to check if there’s anything wrong with your HTTPS implementation.

If you have migrated your site from HTTP to HTTPS recently and have noticed a drop in traffic, or if you are planning to move your site to HTTPS sometime in the future (which you should), this is the tool that you should be using.
SEMrush is a paid tool, however, you can use the link below to sign up for a 14-day free trial (you can simply cancel the subscription before 14 days is up).
Test drive the HTTPS feature of SEMrush (14 days of unrestricted access)

How To Use The HTTPS Implementation Site SEO Audit Feature

Note: This feature can be used by existing SEMrush users & new users who are signing up for the first time.
Here is what you need to do:

• Create an account on SEMrush or log in to your dashboard.
• Click on Projects on the left side column.

• Click on Add New Project & give your project a name (see the below screenshot for the reference).

• Click on Save & then click on the “Site Audit” option.

This part is pretty easy & straight forward.

• Depending upon your site’s size, select the number of pages you want to be crawled.

SEMrush crawlers will start crawling your site & within a few minutes, you will have your report ready.
Along with any HTTPS issues, SEMrush will show all other SEO issues present on your site.
In my case, it took about 5 minutes to crawl 400+ pages.

• Now, open up the generated report & on the next page, click on the HTTPS Implementation tab to find all existing HTTPS implementation errors on your site.

In this case, all reports are OK apart from one subdomain HSTS issue (which is not major).

An Example Of An HTTPS Implementation Error:

Let’s look at ShoutMeLoud, a big site where there are a few HTTPS SEO issues.
This is a screenshot from the ShoutMeLoud.com HTTPS audit report:

Here I have discovered a few site-wide links which are still HTTP.

Fixing this issue helped me lower down the number of redirections & will help search engine bots to crawl the site more effectively.
Discovering non-secure pages:

This issue is triggered if the SEMrush Bot detects an HTTP page with a <input type=”password”> field. Using a <input type=”password”> field on your HTTP page is harmful to user security, as there is a high risk that user login credentials can be stolen. To protect users’ sensitive information from being compromised, Google Chrome will start informing users about the dangers of submitting their passwords on HTTP pages by labeling such pages as “non-secure” starting January 2017. This could have a negative impact on your bounce rate, as users will most likely feel uncomfortable and leave your page as quickly as possible.

If you have effectively implemented an SSL certificate & are serving all of your pages properly, this result should show zero non-secure pages.
However, in my case, I have 2 sub-domains which I have yet to move to HTTPS.


Depending upon the complexity of your or your client’s website architecture, this tool can help you discover severe SEO issues which are not easy to discover manually.
Most of you who have used my earlier guides on HTTP to HTTPS migration will either have no issues or very minor ones.
If you need those tutorials, they’re here:



However, it would be very unwise for anyone to be over confident & not use another tool to ensure the HTTP to HTTPS migration is problem-free.

Since SEMrush offers a 14-day free trial, it’s a good starting point for anyone to test out their HTTPS implementation.

• Check your site’s HTTPS implementation issues

Go ahead & do a complete SEO audit using the above tutorial.
Let us know what kind of HTTPS implementation issues you have found using this tool. Also, if you are stuck somewhere while fixing the issue, let me know in the comments section below and I will help you along.
Know someone who is waiting to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS? Share this guide with them to help them avoid any SEO blunders!

Changing Domain Names? Learn How To Tell Google About Site Address Change

 


Do you know you can change your domain name without losing search traffic?
Yes, it’s possible.


But once you have changed your web address, you need to do some post-site address change things to ensure you don’t lose organic traffic.
If you don’t tell Google about this change of address, you might be putting your site’s organic ranking into danger.

Let me help you with fixing this potentially big error.
(In the below example, I have placed a URL change request using the Google Search Console. The process is the same for anyone needing to change their domain.)
Let me first give you a background of why I had to change the URL of one of my popular niche blogs.
If you are a regular reader of ShoutMeLoud, you might be aware of our niche WordPress blog. The name used to be WPFreesetup & lately, I realized the name of the blog could be better.
When I started WPFreesetup back in 201o, my goal was different & a lot has changed in the past 6 years.

This is when I decided to change the name from WPfreesetup to WPsutra.
“Sutra” is a Sanskrit word that means a set of texts on grammar or Hindu law or philosophy. (If you want to learn more about Sutras, you can learn here at the WikiPedia page.)
Now, changing an existing website URL is no joke.

It takes a lot of precision to ensure you don’t lose search traffic and a lot needs to be done to move everything (other web properties) from the old domain to the new domain.
Thanks to Kinsta hosting customer support, changing my domain name took only 5 minutes.
When you change URLs, one thing you need to take care of is 301 redirection. Every page from “Domain A” should now point to “Domain B”.
For example:
DomaninA.com/123.html should 301 redirect to DomainB.com/123.html
You can verify the same using an online redirect checker.  Here is one such redirect checker.
Here’s my redirect status:

I hope this clears up the basics. Now it’s time to look at the steps that you need to follow for placing a site address change request.

How to successfully place a site address change using the Google Search Console

• Login to your Google Webmaster Tool account.
• Open the website which you want to move.
• Click on the “Gear” icon & select “Change of Address”.

• On the next page, pick your new site from the list.
• Confirm that the 301-redirects work properly (see above).
• Check that verification methods are still present.

Once you have confirmed everything, click on “Submit”.
You will see this message:

• “Submitted – Your request for a site move has succeeded. If you believe this is an error, you can withdraw the request.”

What happens after putting in a request for a site address change?

This request allows Google to index your new URL at the new address while minimizing impact to your current ranking in Google Search results.
Additionally, all Google Search results for your site will now be redirected to the new domain automatically for 180 days. You must still update any resources on your site such as tags or headers that refer to the old domain.

Doing this will ensure that traffic fluctuation due to this URL change will not be high.
I hope this guide helps you to change your site address without losing search engine traffic.
In an upcoming guide, I will be sharing other important things to do after changing your domain name.

If you know any blogger friends who are about to change his/her domain address, do let him/her know about this guide. It may help them (& they may buy you a coffee someday).

Best 6 Awesome Tools to Find Long-Tail Keywords In Any Niche

I have written a lot about keyword research and its benefits. One of the major mistakes I have seen many people make is that they will target direct keywords instead of long-tail keywords (LTK) .
If you are not familiar with long-tail keywords, here is a quick example of the difference between short-tail and long-tail:

• Long-tail Keywords (Ex. of short tail keyword) – Monthly searches 50
• Long tail Keywords vs. short tail Keywords (Ex. of LTK) – Monthly searches 12
• long tail keywords conversion rate (Ex of LTK) – Monthly searches 13

You may notice that the last two keywords have fewer searches, but the competition for these two keywords is far less than it is for the short-tail keyword. Also, long-tail keywords drive more targeted traffic than short-tail keywords do, so your conversion (sales, email sign-ups) improves a lot. If you want to learn more about this subject, check out How long tail keywords could equal massive success.
In this post I am sharing some of the best tools for finding long-tail keywords in any niche. Note that some of them are free, and a few of them are paid. I will explain the features of each, and you can choose any one that suits your needs.

Best Online tools to find Long-Tail Keywords:

Answer the Public:

This one is one of my favorite free long tail Keyword research tool. This one is in the line of Ubersuggest  but offers one unique proposition. Using this tool, you can search for any Keyword & it would show you common questions asked around that “Keyword” “Topic” in search engine.
Check out Answer ThePublic

SEMRUSH:

This is the tool that all the SEO guys use as a complete SEO suite. SEMRUSH is the first finest SEO tool that was ever built to find keywords that your competitors are ranking for.


Unlike traditional keyword research, SEMRUSH takes away the guess work & help you quickly find long tail keyword from any website.  If you are looking for one perfect tool for long tail Keyword research, look no further than SEMRUSH.
You don’t have to believe me rather for next 14 days use SEMRUSH for free. 2 weeks are enough to help you decide if SEMRUSH is for you or not.
Try SEMRUSH for 14 days

KWFinder::

This is one of the newest entrant in the Keyword research tools market. However, the kind of features & functionalities KWfinder offers, it’s certainly one of the best tool out there.


KWfinder provide all important data about the keywords including difficulty level to help you find the easy to rank long tail Keywords. Persoanlly, after SEMRUSH is this is the second tool I use & recommend.
Check out KWfinder

Google Auto Complete tool:

The auto-suggestion feature of Google search is your first free tool. This is a handy feature from Google, which will allow you to easily find long-tail keywords in any niche. Google auto-populates keywords (search terms) based on popularity. All you need to do is start typing your first keyword, and select the options from the auto-suggestion.
You will need to use another keyword tool to see additional details such as the number of searches, CPC, competition and other important information.  (On my micro-niche site, I usually skip the competition check because it is easier to get a higher ranking with a niche site.)

Google Auto-suggest:

This is a tool by Keyword Tool Dominator which actually takes the default feature of Google’s auto-suggestion to the next level.
With this free tool you can easily find all auto-suggested keywords, and it will allow you

to download keywords in .csv format.
You can then use any of your favorite keyword research tools to check other important details about the keyword.
If you are using Google search to find new long-tail keywords, I highly recommend that you make a shift to this one.

WordTracker Keyword Tool:

WordTracker is a popular SEO keyword tool. Using WordTracker Keyword Tool you can easily find profitable long-tail keywords along with important details like searches, competition, IAAT (keyword in anchor and text) and KEI (keyword effectiveness index).
With a free confirmed account you will be able to get 100 keyword results. I actually find this tool to be very effective, as you can easily find long-tail topic ideas. Here is a screenshot of this tool in use, to give you a better idea:


You can also consider taking their 7-day free trial to get advanced features like:

• The ability to see 2000 search results
• The option to use the related search tools (this is very handy)
• Access to search engine data using SEMRUSH
• The option to save your lists
• The option to get other details like competition details and KEI

You can create a free account for WordTracker and start using this tool right away, or grab a 7-day free trial of their advanced version as suggested above. Here is the link to sign-up for a free account.

UberSuggest:

UberSuggest is a fantastic free long-tail keyword research tool.

I have written about UberSuggest before, and Steven has previously explained how he is using this free keyword tool for finding post ideas.
With UberSuggest you will not get important keyword details like keyword competition and search volume.  This tool is best for generating ideas for your long-tail keyword articles.
You can try Ubersuggest here, and read a complete review here.

Long Tail Pro:

LongTail pro is another paid tool, and it offers many features in addition to finding profitable long-tail keywords. They used to be desktop based solution & now everything is on cloud. They are popular among niche marketer & a good tool if you are looking for paid options.
You can grab a complete 10-day free trial from here
.


These are some of the best paid and free long-tail keyword tools and software I have tried and can recommend freely.
Once you have compiled a list of keywords, your goal should be to write down high-quality content, targeting those keywords.
Other long tail keyword research tools:

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You can check out this guide to understand what you should focus on in order to create high-quality articles.
And here is a guide to making your article’s keywords targeted.
The key is to write content targeting your users, and then work on optimizing things like heading tags, meta title and description, readability, LSI and keyword density, to make your article search-engine-friendly.
Here are a few more free SEO tools that you should not miss:



If you know of other free tools or software for finding profitable long-tail keywords, do let me know via the comments section below.

Do share this collection with other blogger friends on Facebook and Google Plus!

How To Show Different Post Titles To Readers And Search Engines

As bloggers, when we write a blog post, we tend to write a catchy title so that it will increase the CTR (because readers love to click on things with catchy titles).
But one problem with this approach is that if you optimize your post title for readers, you miss out on one of the most important aspects of post titles: Search engine optimization (aka SEO).


I have talked a lot about the importance of keyword research, and how to perform keyword research, and tools you can use for keyword research. Once we have our target keyword(s) in hand, it’s time to write some high-quality content that keeps both readers and search engines in mind.
Our target is to write content which is reader-oriented, but also search engine friendly. We should apply basic on-page optimization techniques, and use plugins like SEOpressor.

One Title For Readers, One Title For Search Engines

Suppose you write this post title:
“Make Money Online with Infolinks”
Competition in search engines is very high for this title because it contains the words, “make money online”.
But you can optimize this title to make it rank higher on search engines by keeping it about Infolinks (our main keyword).
So now we have two titles:

• User-friendly post title: Make Money Online with Infolinks
• Search engine friendly SEO title: Infolinks: In-text Advertisement Program (Review)

And how do we create these two titles?

Optimizing Post Title for Both SEO and Readers in WordPress:

Most of the WordPress SEO plugins like SEO by Yoast, Platinum SEO, All In One SEO, the inbuilt SEO features of Thesis (…and many others) offer you the option to write a different title for search engines (technically called a “meta title”).
Here’s the difference between a meta title and a post title:

If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, head over to this post:

• 
  

Now whenever you write an article, after writing the user-friendly title, go down to the end of the page to the SEO section.
Add in your “SEO title”, which is what will be displayed in search engines. Also, don’t forget to add a unique meta description in 158 characters to make your post even more search engine friendly.
I recommend you read this post which talks about how to make your blog post targeted for certain keywords.
Make it a habit to optimize your blog post for both readers and search engines. This will help you rank better and increase your readership.
When you write a meta title for search engines, always keep CTR in mind. A catchy post title will help you get a better CTR, and search engines follow click patterns to judge the quality of a page. This will ultimately help you rank higher.
For more SEO tips, refer to the following articles:

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If you have any other questions related to creating meta titles, let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer your query.
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