Category: Marketing

Opps! I Accidentally Increased Google+ Traffic By Over 700% … But How?
If you think the title was a mistake, no it is not and I am not joking either. I managed to increase Google Plus traffic multiple times in just a very short period of time. To be exact, close to 1000% increase in Google+ referral traffic in just 3 days.

Yes, no black hat SEO and no rocket science needed! All you need is patience and lots of hardwork.

For starters, I was generating all-time-low referral traffic from Google+ and I am well aware that there are many bloggers who are doing so well. Yes, it is no secret now. I was getting around 2 traffic a day from Google+.

That’s truth!

So, how do I actually turn the table around and basically, increased my website traffic? I will be explaining to you in a short moment.

Before that, let’s go into why you need Google+ traffic to your blog or website.

Why should you focus (at least a little) on Google+?

For those who missed out what Rand posted last week on Moz, you can find it here, Using Google+ to Appear in the Top Results Every Time – Whiteboard Friday.

I read that article not once, not twice but three times and it really made me think, “What will I be missing out if I am not spending time on Google Plus?”

Obviously, traffic and influence to name a few!

With Google+ being the ‘backbone’ of Google Inc. and a direct competitor to both Facebook and Twitter, I see no reason for me to NOT join the fun. Moreover, some of my closest blogging buddies are already there such as Adrienne Smith, Barry Wells, Harleena Singh and Randy Hilarski.

And so, the journey begins with a video …

What I did to increase Google Plus traffic by 700%?

Before this, I was partially active on Google+. This means that sharing about 1 – 5 posts on my profile and leaving another 5 more posts on my page. And those posts look like this:

Looks like I didn’t do the job well right? Look at the number of +1’s and reshare. Just two and they are from my loyal readers!

Epic fail!

Now, this is my improved version of my Google+ share:

Now, take your time and compare both. Which looks better and more ‘tempting’ to click?

Obviously the second one is better right? For me, getting 7 +1’s and 1 reshare after just a day posting is definitely a good ROI.

As for the record, I didn’t published many posts on Google Plus. Just 1-3 optimized posts a day in general and here’s the result comparing several weeks before this.

From an average of 15 Google Plus traffic a week, my traffic shoot up to 154 and counting. That’s way over 700% and to be honest, it’s 1000% more effective … and in just 3 days (Nov 3 to Nov 5)!

Wait! Guess what? The week isn’t over yet and this means that the stats might just continue to rise (fingers crossed).

With my Facebook account filled with tons of spams on my wall (plus I am lazy to get it ‘cleaned’), this move was suppose to be my strategy to ‘get back’ to Google+. Of course, this simple move of mine turned out to be an explosive traffic generator for me! An honest and unexpected incident you call it?

You bet!

How to start growing your Google Plus traffic?

By now, you should be wondering how you can achieve that. Trust me, this is yet to be the grand prize for me. Much more to come … if you get what I mean.

I never consider Google+ as my normal social media platform. If you want to generate referral traffic from Google+, you need to be active and most importantly, smart.

If you think that you can just be active posting post on your wall just like Facebook, then you are absolutely going the wrong way.

Here are 4 easy ways to build referral traffic using Google+.

1. Google+ Communities

Participate in relevant Google+ communities to increase web traffic

This is my first confession. From the first day of joining Google+ until recently, I have NOT joined any community. Yes, I thought that Google+ was just like other platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Sadly, I am wrong.

If you want to boost traffic to your blog or website, you need to join Google+ communities. Yes!

Google+ is home to hundreds or many thousands of active communities and with so many communities lying around, I know it is crazily hard to choose the right one. Seriously, there’s no way out for this.

Grab your favorite coffee (beer for me) and spend at least 60 minutes to stream down a list of Google Plus communities that fits your interest.

Your ultimate goal here is to join the right community for the right purpose; Increase referral traffic and improve your social media presence.

When it comes to choosing the right community, you need to ensure that you are joining:
- The right community
- Communities which are really focused in the related topic (you can see the engagement level)
- Avoid communities that are sharing links only
- Has a half a page of terms and conditions (the more, the merrier)
- Running multiple categories on the related topic
Through my experience, avoid joining general communities such as ‘blogging’ or ‘SEO’. Usually, most members are just for sharing links. Instead, focus on Google+ communities that are more precised such as ‘content writing’ or ‘social media SEO’.

You need to avoid communities which are:
- Having lots of spam or link sharing (out of 10 posts, 8 are all links with no descriptions)
- Inactive members (scroll down the first 10 and see if the poster is always the same person)
Yes, these are very tedious job but you may be getting more returns than you can ever image!

2. Sharing quality feedback and serve the community

What’s the trick to make people click, +1 and the endless reshare which ultimately become a viral?

Okay let’s be honest here. Unless you are that famous, having a strong list of followers or a social media influencer, you won’t be getting hundreds/thousands of reshares. However, a goal is still a goal right?

The first step of making your links and post a hit is to always offer quality content. When it comes to generating referral traffic, visibility is always important. You need be a ‘servant to the community’ before they even notice your presence … so to say.

This is how I do it on a daily basis:
- Check on my communities notification (any new posts etc)
- Comment and share information if needed
- Refrain from sharing links on every feedback or comment (just relevant ones)
- Share one link per day at the right time
- Never ever copy paste the CTA sentences from one community to another
Important tip: When you are sharing and commenting, make sure that you are tagging the person as well. This improves visibility and encourages the person to engage back. Excellent way to get more reshares.

And this brings me to the next point of mine below.

Related read: The importance of social engagement in SEO

3. Proper way to engage on Google Plus especially on ‘hot times’

Now, being a huge Followerwonk user, I don’t think that there’s an analytics tool out there that could tell you when your readers are most active on Google Plus. If there is one, please tell me!

The only way to understand the ‘hot zones’ are by watching closely on the engagements. Finding the right time to publish a post (especially with links) could easily multiply your referral traffic without you knowing.

And if you think that sharing an article at the right time is enough, you are terribly wrong my friend.

You need to be specific and use the right CTA. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, you could easily share a related link with just 1 or 2 sentences. However, this is not the case when it comes to Google+.

A highly optimized Google+ post will attracts more readers than you can ever image. Here’s what I call a better and more optimized Google+ post:

Provide a longer description, relevant hashtags and quality links on your posts

Pro tip: On desktop and mobile view, those Google+ posts and updates will be minimized and thus, you need to think wisely on using the right call to action or CTA. For example, you will be able to see around 4 lines of sentences before it goes ‘show more’. Therefore, using the right CTA will play a huge role in determine if your post is ‘clickable’.

4. Increase traffic following the current trends

If you want to multiple your Google+ traffic, one of the simplest method is to follow the current trend. For example, I am very active in the social media marketing communities and one of the hottest topic currently is about enabling Google+ vanity URL.

Simply by posting one of my highly related write up on the matter tripled my traffic overnight. And that’s what I am trying to say!

Here are some very important tips to double, triple or nuke your Google+ traffic:
- Follow the trend (and skip any that is not related)
- Analyze if the topic is going to be a killer or else you might just be wasting your time
- If you want to share a topic or link, make sure it is just that damn good
- At times, engaging with the community on hot topics could even boost your traffic instead of just sharing links
Among the 4 tips above, this is probably the hardest among all because we have no idea what will actually ‘tick’ the readers. I like consider that … a pandora’s box.

Nonetheless, you should always put on your thinking cap to analyze the best bet for your job done.

When it comes to finding the best trend, there are two very simple ways which are:
- Using Google Trend
- Manual checking on related niche communities
For me, I usually skip using Google Trend and head straight over to my communities. That is much faster and less time consuming for me.

Read more: 8 Essential Website Optimization Tips That Makes Google Happy

Is Google+ doing any good to you?

The reality remains the same; Different traffic generation techniques, work for different people and that’s the truth.

When it comes to Google+, it is all about engagement level and how active you are. If you are thinking of using social media automation techniques, the results might not be as good as the one that you do it manually.

How about you? Do you experienced significant traffic growth when you use Google+? Tell me what you think using the comment form below.
January 20, 2024
8 (No Brainer) Website Optimization Techniques To Skyrocket Your Blog Ranking
By now, you probably had read a dozen or more website optimization techniques on the web and probably, you are using some of them now. Have you ever wonder what are the recommended website optimization techniques recommended by Google?

From my own experience, I noticed that many optimization techniques nowadays are leaning towards to outsmart Google. They claimed that they have hijacked and even hacked the big G. Truth is … did they REALLY achieve that?

Matt Cutts even said this a thousand times on his blog and Youtube channel; Don’t outsmart Google. Just follow what Google wants and you will be ranking just fine.

Before we go into detail, here is my podcast on the whole topic. Yes, allow me to explain the whole topic in less than 6 minutes.

Google recommended website optimization techniques

When it comes to optimizing your website, it is not wise to over do it. Most of the time, SEO is rather aggregated and this my friends, impacted the search engine world one way or another.

Ever heard about the slow and steady wins the race? The same concept applies to web ranking.

If you think that SEO is tough, you are wrong. This is how you can learn SEO in just 521 seconds.

Through the years, Google had always recommend specific (and repeated) optimization techniques for bloggers and webmasters. Here are a list of them.

1. Content is (still) king

Quality content is still important especially when it comes to SEO

If you want to rank well, forget about writing for bots. Instead, focus in writing quality articles.

One of the most common question asked by many are “How long should an article with good quality be?”

The answer is … it is totally up to you. By rule, articles should be at least 600 words. I am a huge fan of longer articles and nearly all my write ups are above 1,000 words. It doesn’t mean that just because my write ups are long, I am writing quality articles.

The easiest way to determine that you had done a great job writing is by reading through the draft after several hours of completing it. Read it from a reader’s point of view and judge if the article is useful. Personally, I read my drafts 3 times at least in a period range of 48 hours.

Quality control – checked!

Related read: What are the steps to build a high traffic website from scratch?

2. Focusing on the right keywords

If you want to rank well on search engines, you need to use the right keywords. I call it, SEO keywords; Basically keywords that has SEO ‘properties’ in it and would have a better score in search ranking.

With Google Penguin 2.1 update, it is rather useless to put all your money into long tail keywords. The simplest trick is to have a variety of them. Maybe you can use 60% long tail and 40% general keywords ratio for example.

The mistake here is when bloggers focus too much on keywords. Keywords serve as a guidance for bloggers and they are NOT your traffic generator.

Using the right keywords will steer you to the right course and that’s it. Even though keywords usage are important for a website, there are many other factors that contribute to this.

So when it comes to keywords, moderation is the key. Focusing on long tail keywords is not wrong but make sure you are focusing on several keywords instead of one.

When it comes to keywords research, Long Tail Pro is one of the best tools out there. However, if you are not affordable for it, this is a complete guide on how to use Google Keyword Planner for your day to day keyword research.

3. Practice proper backlinking methods

What is the best backlinking practice for bloggers?

Backlink has been the bread and butter of SEO and it has not changed at all. The biggest issue that make Google ‘unhappy’ is that there are too many bloggers, affiliate marketers and even webmasters who use black hat tools to build backlinks.

So, why use black hat tools right? The answer is simple; They want to build backlinks fast. Imagine blasting out Tier 1, 2 and 3 links by the thousands daily.

Backlinking should always be done in a moderate way and most importantly, those links must be natural. Building thousands of backlinks overnight will not prove useful and you will just open the backdoor for Google to slap you with penalization.

When you are building backlinks, follow these rules:
- Build natural links
- Avoid paid backlinks
- Avoid using black hat SEO tools for link building
4. The importance of internal link building

We all know how important it is to build external backlinks but internal backlinks play a huge role too. Matt Cutts has explained it perfectly well in this video.

Personally, I feel the most important part about website optimization which emphasized by Matt Cutts is that you need to have a good website structure.

A good website structure will help you to:
- Reduce the chances of losing PageRank juice
- Improve visitor’s navigation
- Increase your Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA)
5. Using the NoFollow tag could boost your website ranking

How many of you actually agree with the above sentence?

The NoFollow tag plays a huge role in terms of website optimization especially when you do not want Google to index a specific link on your page. Those links could ranged from:
- Affiliate links
- Non related links
- Paid links
Related post: What is NoFollow tag and how it can affects SEO?

6. Make a SEO-friendly URL

Choosing the right and clean permalink structure is important

Let me ask you a question, “What is a a SEO-friendly URL?”

Here’s two example:

8 (No Brainer) Website Optimization Techniques To Skyrocket Your Blog Ranking

Now tell me. Which looks better and cleaner?

Obviously the second one right? It doesn’t only look cleaner but it also makes the website link easier to read. When it comes to selecting a proper URL string or permalink in this nature, it is best not to overdo it.

Most of the time, simplicity is the best.

Pro tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a ‘space,’ while underscores are not.

7. Include a sitemap page

Sitemap or site map; It doesn’t matter which is the correct write but you really need one if you want to rank well on search engines.

You have to remember that crawlers or spiders are not able to crawl pages that cannot be crawled. A sitemap will help the spiders to index all the pages while allowing it to determine which is the best and most important pages for your site (great for sitelinks).

Crawlers are just like human. They might get ‘lost’ if the navigation is too complicated and messy. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links.

For best website optimization practise, it is always recommended to submit your sitemap manually once a month to both Google Webmaster Tool and Bing.

Recommended tool to put sitemap creation and submission on autopilot: WordPress SEO by Yoast.

8. Become a student of SEO

Have you ever wonder why there are so many channels created by Google Webmaster team? Yes, they want you to learn what is SEO all about!

SEO is ever changing and thus, you should too. There isn’t any straightforward way to really rank well on search engines (or else everyone already trying to do that).

The most effective website optimization techniques is to understand what SEO is all about, which you can read it all here. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Dummies.

If you want to improve in SEO or learn more about SEO, it is highly recommended to subscribe to:
- Google Webmaster Tool on Youtube
- Follow Matt Cutts on Twitter
Or, you can signup for my newsletter to get the latest SEO strategies below:

Did I miss out anything?

I hope you enjoyed these 8 website optimization techniques that truly work for me. However, I am sure there are probably a dozen more of these and feel free to add them up using the comment form below.

If you have not hear my podcast above, here’s the link for it again: 8 SEO Techniques Recommended By Google.
January 20, 2024
Step by step guide in setting up WordPress SEO by Yoast
Search engine optimization or SEO in short is one of the most discussed matter for both bloggers and serious content writers. For those who are using WordPress SEO by Yoast, you are really lucky. It is one of the best free SEO plugins for WordPress and it serves millions of blogs daily.

As easy as it sounds, configuring WordPress SEO by Yoast is challenging and there are probably a dozen or more guides on this topic itself.

Yes, this is how important this plugin is to many bloggers.

Personally, I have been using this plugin since 2005 and it had never failed me (badly) before. Don’t be fooled by the years of me using this plugin; I am always finding the best settings for WordPress SEO by Yoast that could bring my website to the next level.

When I redesigned my website recently, I decided that I need to cut down on the number of plugins and I am using more than one SEO plugin. Being a lazy person, I had ‘integrated’ Scribe SEO, SEOPressor and WP Social Booster Pro into my SEO blueprint as well.

Now, that’s 4 different plugins to do one job; SEO. So, I decided that it is time to ‘get up from the couch’ and do my homework. I basically ditched all of those and left with WordPress SEO.

What are the best settings for WordPress SEO?

What are the best settings for WordPress SEO by Yoast?

Listen to me.

WordPress SEO by Yoast is so powerful that the wrong settings could easily disrupt your SEO strategies to dominate the SERPs.

I did many research overtime and found out that there are many different settings that could work depending on your blogging style.

Disclaimer: I had personally tested these settings and they work fine for me. Certainly, I hope these work well for you too.

Generally, WordPress SEO plugin allows you to configure many SEO aspects such as NoFollow and NoIndex. There are things that you need to consider if you are going to enable them.

Dashboard

This part is rather easy. You can decide to enable or disable the tracking as it has no effect on SEO. I am being a security freak and I disallow that. Same goes to the Security settings. However, I highly recommend to enable it if you are running a multi-author blog.

As for the Webmaster Tool settings, copy and paste the meta tags given by the respective sites. As easy as 1, 2 and 3 right?

Titles & Metas

As you can see above, I enabled:
- Noindex subpages of archieves
- Use mate keywords tag
- Hide RSD Links
- Hide WLW Manifest Links
- Hide Shortlink for posts
Some experts advise to enable the ‘Force rewrite titles’ but for me, I rather leave it out.

Enabling meta keywords tag is also your decision. Disable this option and you will not need to enter any keywords in posts and pages anymore.

Google does not use meta keywords anymore for ranking. However, other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing still use them but on a very limited basis. Even Yoast recommend to disable it.

1. Homepage settings

For title template, I am using %%sitedesc%% – %%sitename%% but you are free to use your own methods. Some even ditch the sitename since it is just for branding.

As for meta description, I would recommend between 100 to 120 characters count. Remember that this will only be visible for your homepage. This is where you write a simple description of what your website is all about.

If you had enabled meta keywords tag earlier, you would have the option to key in your meta keywords. You may leave it blank or put in your keywords.

2. Post Types

Here, ensure that you DO NOT enable noindex and nofollow on Posts and Pages. The rest, you can leave it as it is or by default.

You may or may not change the template settings here as the default is rather good already.

3. Taxonomies

One of the biggest concern here is to either enable both the noindex and nofollow or enable just one of them.

For me, I enable nofollow for my Tags only.

Do not enable dofollow for both Categories and Tags as this will create duplicate content.

*I am not going into detail for Other tab as no changes needed to be done there.

Social settings

Yoast WordPress SEO makes Open Graph and Twitter Cards setting easy and highly configurable. Yes, Yoast SEO really saves up a lot of ‘space’ as it replaces many plugins.

1. Facebook

As seen above, enable the Open Graph setting and add your Facebook account. Generally speaking, using your personal account is already sufficient. However, you may also link your Facebook page as an admin too.

Last but not least, adding your Facebook page URL into the right column.

2. Twitter

You can use WordPress SEO to configure Twitter Cards as well. All you need to do is to enable the option and key in your Twitter handler. Of course, you would need to apply it at the first place.

Read more about it here; What is Twitter Cards all about?

3. Google+

So, how about Google+? WordPress SEO by Yoast makes Google authorship easier. All you need to do are:
1. Ensure your WordPress profile is updated with the right Google author link
2. Select your Google+ profile via WordPress SEO
3. Key in your Google+ publisher link (Google+ page) if you have any
Yup! Your Google+ authorship is all set and running.

Related post: How do you enable Google+ custom URL?

XML Sitemap settings

I know some bloggers use this while other doesn’t. If you are using it, you need (or recommended) to enable:
- Enable the XML sitemap feature
- Ping Yahoo!
- Ping Ask.com
- Media
- Affiliate links (some users don’t have it so no worries about it)
- Tags
- Format
- Link categories (some users don’t have it so no worries about it)
You can find your sitemap by clicking ‘XML sitemap’ or search for this on your browser: http://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

Whenever you update or publish any new posts, Yoast SEO will automatically send the new sitemap to Google Webmaster Tool. All you need to do is to manually submit the sitemap to Bing once a week or so.

Permalinks

For this part, do not configure anything else unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing. Changing permalinks on a live site could easily make your links go 404-error.

Recommended settings (enable these):
- Redirect attachment URL’s to parent post
- Remove the ?replytocom variables
For the record, both the settings above are recommended and highly optional.

Internal Links

This is the breadcrumbs settings. You can enable or disable it according to your liking. For those using Genesis Framework, breadcrumbs are pre-installed and just like WordPress SEO, you can just tick to enable or disable it from the Genesis settings.

If you have no idea what this is, it is absolutely safe to disable it.

RSS settings

This basically configures your RSS settings. Just like the above, if you have no idea what this is all about, then just leave it alone.

Congratulation! You have successfully configured your WordPress SEO

Phew, that was long right? Basically configuring WordPress SEO is rather easy. Once you had set it up, you can basically leave it alone for a long, long time.

Remember that WordPress SEO or any SEO plugins doesn’t help you directly in terms of improving your ranks. These SEO tools usually helps to provide crucial suggestions to further optimize your blog post.

Now, over to you. Do you have any special WordPress SEO settings you would like to share? Tell me more using the comment form below!
January 20, 2024
What Is Google+ Custom URL And How To Enable It?
What the heck is Google+ custom URL? In short, Google+ custom URL is a new ‘face lift’ for the old and long Google URL. When it comes to linking my Google+ account with any other services (where you need to provide the URL), it is a huge hassle for me. Firstly, the URL string is long and secondly, I need to login to my Google+ account just to find the exact URL.

A lot of work right?

Introducing the all-new Google+ Custom URL

What is Google+ custom URL?

With the Google+ custom URL, everything becomes shorter and easier. This is how my Google+ URL string looks like (before and after):

Before – http://plus.google.com/100463551691770040057

After –

Now ask yourself something, isn’t this cool?

For me, it was a blessing in the skies. How on Earth could I (or anyone in this matter) remember ‘100463551691770040057’ as my Google URL link?

Therefore, having to add +ReginaldChan at the back is REALLY helpful indeed

Now, if you are really interested to know more about this program, you can head over to this article here.

Oh wait, you want a quick rundown of it instead of reading it? Check out the video and detailed guide below:

Requirements to get a Google+ Custom URL

This program will roll out to nearly all Google Plus members but it will go on batches. In order to be in the first batch (or getting eligible as soon as possible), you need to satisfy these requirements for your Google+ personal profile:
- Ten or more followers
- Your account is at least 30 days old
- A profile picture
And there are two simple ways you can get your own Google Plus Custom URL which are:
1. Direct email notification from Google (check your inbox now!)
2. Login to your Google+ account and head over to your profile page
The direct email notification is rather straight forward and all you need to do is to click ‘Get URL’. The rest are self explanatory. Kim did a great explanation here if you require additional information.

However, I was unlucky was I did not receive any emails and I thought to go with method #2; Applying myself.

All you need to do are:
1. Login your Google+ account
2. Select Home > Profile
3. If you are eligible, you will see a blue colour floating bar on the top of the screen asking you to apply for it.
By default, Google+ will provide +yourname and if you would want to change it, that is your ONLY chance to change it.

You can only change Google+ custom URL once.

Yes, once the custom URL is set, there is NO WAY of changing it back. So think twice, my friends.

Confirming your Google+ custom URL takes less than 5 minutes to complete

Once you are all done with the selection and happy with your new chosen URL, you will see this box:

Verify that’s the custom URL you want and hit ‘Confirm Choice’.

Wait for the screen to refresh as Google need to verify that the URL chosen is still available … which will takes less than 5 seconds and leading to this page:

You’ll receive notification once the change is completed

Walaa~ You are done!

Wait a minute … how about local Google+ pages and non-local Google+ pages?
- Eligibility for Local Google+ pages: Must be a verified local business
- Eligibility for Non-local Google+ pages: Must be linked to a website (linking your website in the ‘About’ setting as contributor)
How does Google+ custom URL work?

Basically, it makes a long string of URL (numeric) to something shorter and more memorable. Google+ custom URL also works well in terms of categorizing your links such as:
- Profile –
- About –
- Posts –
- Photos –
- Youtube videos –
- Plus ones –
For me, it takes sharing easier and yes, putting Google+ up on par with other social media platforms. Could this possibly be a way Google want to compete with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?

If you are wondering what happens to your old URL, don’t worry. Everything is now redirected to your new custom URL.

You might also want to read Google+ Is Rolling Out Custom URLs To Make It Short And Sweet [ Claim Your’s ] by Amal Rafeeq.

Over to you

Have you enabled your Google Plus custom URL? If yes, what you think about it? Tell me using the comment form below.
January 20, 2024
5 Steps To Become An Influencer In Your Own Niche Like Brian Clark
Have you ever wondered how articles published by CopyBlogger team get reblogged, reposted and shared around the world close to 100,000 times or more for every post they published? Some people say Brian Clark has a black book for contact, having a huge fan base and some believe Brian is an influencer in the industry. Which do you think is true?

Glen Allsopp is another example. He is a great mastermind when it comes to SEO and at times, he shares his thoughts of what Google is doing wrong etc. So, what makes him such an important figure? Could it because of his wonderful creation of OptinSkin, his bold rambling on Google or simply, he is a great contributor to the SEO community?

In order to be an influencer, you need to reach out. Yes my friend … go out the door and say “hello” to your neighbour!

How to become an influencer? What is an influencer?

When I started this site, I was determined to turn myself into an influencer. Yes, while people are thinking of how to monetize their blogs, I was thinking on how to build a bigger audience and brand.

So, how do I make ‘Reginald Chan’ stand out from the rest?

Here are a few goals I had planned for myself:
1. Perform soul searching and explore my talents
2. Building a portfolio of myself
3. Choose the right talents and develop them further
4. Reaching out to others
5. Learning from other influencers
As easy as those may sound, it could take a lot of time and highly depending on your techniques. It took me roughly 3 months to build a good reputation and standing out from the crowd.

1. The talent search process

The first step is to find what you are good at

Blogging is really a saturated industry with over 60 million blogs out there. If your main goal is to blog about general niches, you stand a high chance of failing. This is extremely true especially when you are starting a new blog.

Knowing what you are going to blog is extremely important.

Here’s another cold and hard fact – if you think that you want to start a blog to help others generally, you are creating the recipe for failure. You need to be specific … real specific when it comes to blogging.

As much as it may sound crazy but that’s true. Here’s an example:

Derek Halpern from Social Triggers. He blogs about marketing strategy and this is one very challenging industry. So, what was the trick for him to be at the top of the pile? Adding psychology into his marketing strategies. This means that instead of being an influencer of a very challenging industry, he basically ‘long tailed’ to a smaller but still popular niche.

If you want to reach out and become an influencer yourself, you need to know the facts. You need to know what you are really good at. In this world, I don’t believe you can be successful if you are a ‘Jack of all trades’.

2. Build a damn good portfolio

Portfolio is important for an influencer

I am not talking about those random portfolios. I am talking about great ones.

Look at Neil Patel and how he boost about helping TechCrunch to increase their traffic by 30% in a short period of time.

Yes, that’s what I am talking about!

A good portfolio will convince others that you are an influencer and they should listen or trust your words. Now, I am not saying about deceiving others but you got to be honest with them. For example, you are probably good in marketing and you need to convince others why you are really good at it.

When you are building a portfolio, remember that you are your ‘face’ and stepping stone for your business.

A good portfolio is usually short and precise. Forget about providing 1,000 reasons why they need you. Instead, give them just one great reasons why they MUST use or follow you.

3. Developing your influence and going the beyond of influence marketing

Learning from your influencers is an important step to improve yourself

For this part, it is all about learning and further increasing your influence market. Once you have located your hidden ‘talents’, you need to start reaching out to other influencers of the same niche.

When choosing a person to be your ‘mentor’ or a person who you can look up to, you need to avoid finding for the best. Instead, find for influencers who are more popular than you (obviously) and who are around mid-level. This means that they have yet to be the top 50 or 100 influencers in the world but yet, still play a very sufficient role in the influence market.

You need these ‘mid-level’ influencers as top influencers usually have the money and social strength to get things moving real fast … and something you probably wouldn’t have. A mid-level one would be a better bet for you in terms of time and money.

Get a list of 50 or maybe 100 of them and start contributing on their blogs (and read them of course). Do this for the next few months and they will slowly recognize you as one of their loyal readers.

Now, this is where you start to say “hello” and build a relationship from there. The most important thing is to learn from them. These are people with lots of experience and of course, their guidance are of great help to start ups like you.

Recommended read: How do you create, manage and measure influence marketing?

4. Getting out of your safe zone and reach out to your potential market

You might be thinking that with over 60 million blogs out there, everyone is a competitor which makes no sense on why you should reach out to them right?

This is where you are wrong! We can’t avoid competitions and that’s a fact. However, what we can control are creating more followers and building a bigger reach.

Influence market is all about the number of reach. The more reach you have, the more chance you are going to expand your ‘territory’.

Reaching out to others is always the easy part all thanks to number of social media platforms we have today. Here are some of the popular social platforms you can start with.

Through my experience, Facebook and Google+ are the fastest way to build influence and here are you can get it done correctly:
- Join communities or groups which are related to your expertise
- Contribute and help other members constantly (twice a day is more than enough)
- Share other members’ links on social media platform and tagging them
Do it for a month or so and you will see your influence level grow. You may increase or decrease the level of engagement according to your liking and the above are just my examples.

5. Reverse engineering your influencers

Your influencers made it to fame because of something they did and you got to learn ‘that’ from them.

So, how do you talk the talk, and walk the walk?

The concept here is easy; Understand what makes your influencers popular and how they reach out to others.

By now, you should have realized that there is probably no way you can recreate the same situation. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t use the information for your own gain.

When it comes to influence marketing, it is all about sharing the right information … at the right time.

For example, you know that your influencer is attracting a lot of traffic due to the topic he or she is blogging. Draft down a list of keywords and niche to start with.

The next step will be writing article related to the keyword or niche you have selected. The trick here is to avoid using the same keywords as your influencer to avoid competitions and even if you are going to compete, chances are you will lose due to your lower credibility.

Related article: Using Google Keyword Planner to find long tail keywords.

The science behind becoming a successful influencer and reaching out to others

There are probably two very distinct ways to become an influencer in today’s market:
- Provide information or services no one else is doing
- Follow what successful influencers are doing and reverse engineer those steps
Both of these methods have their own risk factor which is failing. In the first method, there is a chance of failing because it depends on timing while the second method depends on your research strategy. Focusing on the wrong keyword or target market could easily be a downfall for you.

As easy as they might both sound, the chances of failing is very real. If you want to make it to the influencer’s world, you need to be hardworking and do your homework properly; this means finding the right long tail keywords and the proper target market.

And a simple video for a quick recap.

Did I miss out anything about being an influencer?

I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I do. When it comes to influence marketing, do you have any tips under your sleeves? I bet you do and let’s discuss it over. Tell me if you have any plans when it comes to building an influencer’s portfolio and how that works out for you using the comment form below.
January 20, 2024
3 Steps To Design Mouth Watering Business Website Templates
Business website templates are more than just pretty looks for eCommerce websites. When choosing a name for your business, consider registering an LLC to protect your personal assets and give your online presence a professional touch, ensuring an appetizing first impression for those visiting your site.

When I started this website, my plans were to make this solely a niche blog and within a month or less, I knew I got to change the plan. Obviously, I have some monetization issues back in my head and I was determine to turn this into a full-fledged business website down the road.

Four long months past and my traffic was at an average of 200 visitors per day. If you call this a victory, think again. I was converting less than 10% of my visitors to become potential clients.

The truth is … blogging isn’t going to make me much money but my services will. You may benefit from this article: 5 Insights You Should Know About Make Money Blogging.

Before we go into much details, here’s a simple video on why you need a high converting template for your business website.

What are the best business website templates that REALLY convert?

WordPress makes it easy to build a website from scratch and Dynamik Website Builder makes it even easier to do so. However, building a business website with the right designs that increases conversion rate is the hardest part.

In order to build the right business website template, you need stats, figures and lots of data. In this case study, I used ClickTale to do the analytics for me.

With ClickTale analytic tool, I realized that I was driving traffic to my ‘Hire Me‘ page but honestly, I got only 3 inquiries over 4 full month of hard work.

Now think back (real hard), why only 3 inquiries? What had I done wrong?

I was determined to change everything on this website to look more professional and the first step was no other than to choose the best business website template.

Before I even think of a design, I need stats and figures to point me to the right direction. Yes, I am not talking about any website design; I need the best.

So, here are 3 simple steps which I took to design the best business website template that fit my niche.

Step 1: Using the right website analysis tools

Analytics and stats are important in order to build a great business website theme

In order to do any visible changes, I decided to analyze my blog completely. My main goals are to figure out:
- Why is the conversion rate is so low?
- How to increase my signup rate?
- What attracts my readers most?
The above three are just the main ones. I had over a dozen smaller goals but all these are just to give you a simple outlook on what you should be doing.

Analytics isn’t cheap and if you are thinking of the good old fashion Google Analytics, trust me that it is not going to bring you that far. Sorry Google but I am just being truthful.

Bear in mind that even though Google Analytics does offer you information such as click rates, heatmaps and bounce rate, you need more than that to do a complete analysis.

My first step of analyzing my website is my front page. I don’t know about others but my front page (or homepage) is capping over 35% of all my traffic. Taking an example of 200 visitors a day, I am losing about 2,100 potential clients in a month.

Imagine the ability to convert 10% of those traffic into business. Guess I would be a very happy blogger right?

The analytics tool that I use is ClickTale. For the record, ClickTale is a freemium tool. On a free account, it offers up to 5,000 recorded pageviews per month and probably a dozen more features.

ClickTale does slightly more than what other web analytics companies are offering and what really dig me in was the customer service.

Mitchell Schneider (Social Communications Manager) and Melody Frank (my product consultant) were great in ensuring that I had no issues trying to get ClickTale running on my site.

Kudos to them.

Step 2: Analyzing and fixing the loopholes

A poorly configured website theme can easily affects the sales and production of a website

ClickTale offers a huge range of services such as heatmap, clicks and web analytics. However, I basically uses ClickTale to focus on improving my visitor’s engagement.

So, why is ClickTale such an useful tool especially when you are designing a business website template?

I use ClickTale to track:
- Where my readers are clicking
- How long it takes for traffic to click on my CTA (and ‘Hire Me’ page)
- How much they like my homepage and my blog posts (engagement level)
I allowed the tool to run on my site for about 3 days (okay I couldn’t wait to see the results then) and I was given the biggest shock of my life. The results are devastating and here are a few examples:
- Navigation bar – 70% clicks on ‘Blogging’ and 30% on ‘WordPress’
- ‘Hire Me’ page – 85% traffic to homepage hit that link (bear in mind, only 2 inquiries over the months)
- 95% of readers on my blogs are skimmers
Now, tell me. Does all these sounds alarming to you?

Step 3: Drastic solutions to turn my blog into a business

Website designs often play an important role when it comes to the eCommerce industry

This is probably the last and most crucial step; designing my business website template. After being hit by Google Hummingbird and Penguin 2.1, I was determined to come back with a bang. Therefore, this design must REALLY make the kill.

In order to complete the project in a very short time period, I divided it into 3 crucial parts which are:
- Change website theme
- Provide easier navigation
- Turning skimmers into profit
I did a quick survey on 20 popular websites and I noticed that they had many things in common such as landing pages and packing too many things (or choices) on one page.

On top of that, data and stats taken from ClickTale explained on what I needed to improve on my website (specifically) if I want to completely turn my website into a ‘money generator’.

With all data and information packed in my mind, the first step was to choose a professional and business like website theme.

Choosing a website design is rather easy since I am a Genesis Pro Package user that comes with over 40 child themes to choose from. Alternatively, you can just choose a beautiful child theme using this tool or build your own WordPress theme.

After choosing the right WordPress theme for myself, it was time to customize my theme.

I decided to place a huge Call To Action before the fold and this is done for only one reasons; to increase conversion rate and getting my readers going through my ‘sales funnel’. In other words, landing potential clients to where they want to be … finding solutions to their problems.

If you are wondering how important CTA is, you need to read this: How did I build a MASSIVE mailing list?

Now, you might think that displaying all the categories on your menu bar might be the best choice … and even I do too. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Too many navigation bars will confuse your readers. Therefore, the lesser is better. I have 9 navigation bars before this and only 4 are ever clicked.

Make any sense to you?

Lastly, it is all about skimmers (traffic). My readers are mostly skimmers and maybe that is due to the fact that most of my blogs are way above 1.5k words. So, this means that my bounce rate is rather high and I ~~probably~~ got to do something with it.

Here are a few things I could do:
- Having a floating bar with the latest articles or RSS pull (such as using FooBar plugin)
- Share some eye-catching stuffs (links in this case) right before my comment form
- Pop up (not for newsletter but for related articles)
Now, I tested all of these for a period of time (very specific) and sharing related posts seems to do the trick. That’s where I uses a related post plugin and this is what I had created:

My favorite ‘related post’ plugin at the end of each posts

You can also try using images and catching titles but personally, I think colours do best and it is followed closely by images. If you have a very engaging audience which are NOT skimmers, you may use more wordings for a change.

Putting all the above into one stunning business website design

I am not sure if you can call this a step but the last part is all about using the right widgets at the right area.

My sidebar is really ‘cold’. I was only converting about 3% of my total traffic to click on my sidebar and I was given the choice to either ditch the sidebar or do something with it … fast.

I removed several ads and place only important information on the sidebar. This helps to reduce my website loading speed too.

My fiancee is a great critic and I convinced her to check on my site. Within minutes, she pointed out some changes and I did accordingly. One of the most obvious parts is using colours and images to attract readers.

Before this, I am always Genesis Extender plugin to make easier modification but this time around, I was determined to do it with CSS codes. Changes were done and perfected in the next 48 hours.

Hard work + luck + stunning business-like website design = Win

Improvements started to be visible within the first 3 days after the design changes were done to the website

Now, after reading over 1.4k words, you would be wondering what was the outcome of my ‘so-called’ business website template.
- Bounce rate reduced from 78.52% to 62.26%
- Average visit duration increased from 1.44 minutes to 2.45 minutes
- Page per visit increased from 1.47 to 1.81
- Securing two SEO huge projects which would last between 3 to 6 months each
In my 8 years of blogging, this is probably the best moment ever experienced by me. Being able to see the effects right after days of implementing was definitely a marvelous feeling.

Over to you …

I hope that with this article, I am able to share some lights on how to really build a good business-like website from scratch. It is never easy but certainly, doable!

Therefore, do you have plans to change your website theme anytime soon or you are happy with the current ones? Share with me what you think and the criteria needed to choose the perfect business template for your website using the comment form below.
January 20, 2024