Digital Marketing [2023]: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide

Digital marketing is one of the sizzling terms that is getting even hotter as time is passing and cooking the minds of most of the businesses.

I am sure about you to listen to people defining it something like this:

It is the marketing of merchandise (products) or services utilizing digital technologies/digital convergence such as mobile phones or the internet…And blah blah blah!  

[Secret: Most of them googled it and told as if they already knew it.]

Hell no!

This is the most realistic piece of shit. Isn’t it?

Boo! Forget it.

Let us primarily dive into the pool which is not very deep, and understand what digital marketing genuinely means.

So, in more than simple words, digital marketing refers to marketing with electronics.

Of course, you can’t make it up with your refrigerator because I mentioned the word ‘electronics‘ over. (That’s common sense, you know.)

To comprehend and keep the right strategies in mind, I bet that you need to know at least some of the history, infrastructure, and transformations. This is how you can make better decisions.

Don’t regret! It is the right place to learn all that stuff.

Digital Marketing: The History

Let us look over what, how, and why in a precise and divergent way to acquire the important fundamentals.

I mentioned the history part because it is more pivotal for you to learn this from the perspective of a smart-ass marketer.

Down below is a series of main events that took place in the history of digital marketing.

When It All Started

Do you know who the handsome is?

I think you already know him. You must have heard his name as G. Marconi from one of your school teachers.

He is the inventor of Radio (1895).

But what the heck he has to do with marketing?

Wait, I’ll show you how…

For he invented the radio and the radio increased the reach to different areas for bodies, he is called the original digital marketer in the yore.

At that time, wireless telegraphy was a transcendent way to reach out to people all across the sky with a no brainer (you know it).

People with their families would sit around and listen to their favorite broadcasts for hours on radio.

Look at the graph to have an idea of the percentage of people owning radios in the U.S. itself.

Shucks!

If so much people were engaged, how couldn’t businesses and marketers jump into and sneak out?

Not surprisingly, that is what happened!

Advertising on the radio started and people took action (Started to buy things).

What else was needed? It all went up from there!

As Standard For The First Time

Do you know which the first search engine was? No, it was neither Google nor Yahoo (If you’re guessing).

Your Answer is Archie

Yep! Archie was the first search engine out there as early as in 1990. Also, it was the first time when the term ‘Digital Marketing’ was used. That was the year when the term was coined.

I see people mingling digital marketing and online marketing. Precisely, online marketing is a sub-division of digital marketing..

Digital marketing could be both online as well as offline. But online marketing is self-explanatory. We will chit-chat on these two later more specifically.

The First Clickable Web Ad Banner

‘Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.‘

Before you think I’ve gone crazy, let me tell you that this was something written on the first advertising (ad) banner ever created on 27 October 1994, by Wired.

It was really weird looking. You can see it too…I’ve just grabbed the image.

First E-commerce Transaction

Do you know Dan Kohn?

Let me introduce him. He was the first person to sell online. He sold a CD of Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales album to his friend in Philadelphia. The mate used a credit card for around 12 bucks and shipping costs.

It was the first e-commerce transaction! A turn to the online word. I don’t think you knew this before.

Awesome!

That’s enough out of the past…I believe more than this much history and events can make you and me both brainless. So, let’s drop the past and move forward.

Why Is Digital Marketing So Popular?

There are tons of huge reasons why digital marketing is getting at the top. Let’s have a look at them.

1. Digital Media Usage

What are you doing now?

Certainly, reading this post on your device. Good job! Keep it up.

What did you do before 14 or 15 years? Probably, you didn’t read blog posts on the internet. That’s the point.

I have got some statistics…

More than half of the population is using the internet. Around 4.4 billion people (in a round figure) are there on the web and using it frequently. Every second is generating 11 new internet users.

People are spending even more than 11 hours a day on devices Including TVs, laptops, mobiles, tablets, and computers.

Even I also spend more than 10 hours a day online, to be honest.

You can see some more stats right below.

Fair enough.

2. You Enjoy Low Expenses

I clearly remember my childhood moments. I looked at billboards of expensive cars while traveling in my father’s Honda every time we went out. It was around 7 years back.

Now the scenario has changed. Whenever I go out at present with my family, there are more than many chances of me either watching David Sharpe, Neil Patel, Garry Vaynerchuk, or even Netflix!

Oops…! It is something that happened naturally. Not only to me, but to a lot of others as well.

Quick question – How many of you buy something influenced by billboard advertising?

Well, I don’t. The reason is not that I don’t like traditional marketing or I like digital marketing, but simply because it is almost every time not relevant to what my mind is thinking.

Yes! That’s true. It is even not to you [Don’t get me wrong…It doesn’t happen all the time].

Now, do you know the expenses of a billboard in a nice location?

On average, $20,000 a month.

So, you spend 20 grand a month on advertising on a single billboard which is ignored by 69 percent of the people.

How ridiculous that is, right?

Why should you waste your money and time on something that doesn’t work anymore? [As a small business].

You can’t be transparent with billboard advertising because it’s not under your shadow.

Big brands (local businesses too) still do that to increase awareness among the people. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably not a brand.

You’ll know how much you can do with $20K if you consume this guide fully.

Good. Let’s move on.

3. High-End Tracking System

Can you throw your money at a place where you don’t see any proven results or possibilities (tracking in general)?

According to my brain’s size – No!

Bluntly, traditional marketing never allows you to do so, regardless of how good you are at your strategies.

You can’t track where you and your business is going with traditional methods.

There are no daily reports to figure out your mistakes to fix.

Let me show you statistics of my brand new website that I started about two weeks and 4 days ago.

This is the virtue of digital marketing.

I hope you get the intent behind showing screenshot.

That’s that!

You have the resources to track your success and have reports of something you started even a day ago and start working on your weaknesses.

4. Convenience And Digital Marketing

People are becoming lazy over the course.

Do you agree?

For sure, you do.

Most of the people want comfort. They don’t want to go outside to the restaurant for eating food with their family.

Why to take the pain of going out when you can use Uber Eats, or DoorDash instead, correct?

Just think of yourself. Do you use any platform to buy goods online?

Yes, you make that happen frequently. Don’t you?

Inventions satisfy convenience and that is what taking place every single day.

Over 2.14 Billion people will be global digital buyers by 2021. That’s a huge number!

From the latest reports by UNCTAD, the e-commerce industry is worth around $22.1 Trillion

Now, take a glimpse at the graph.

You see the figures working out?

Everything is growing massively. This leads to the significance of digital marketing as the fuel of our fast-moving car.

5. Perfect Targeting To Shoot

A quick question: when is your best time?

For me, it’s when I am reading engaging blog posts.

Let’s take a situation out of that.

Let’s say I’m reading a blog post about writing a bestseller book, and if I see an advertisement saying: Proven Strategies To Write A Bestseller With In 10 Days.

Guess, what is going to happen?

There are more than 80% of chances that I’ll click on it (it’s not a researched sentence by the way).

This is how accurate targeting takes place in digital marketing.

Look at the screenshot of my Facebook Ads manager.

You get to choose the age of your audience, their income, place they live in, their interests, job roles, behavior, and a lot of other options.

My one simple question.

Can you target your audience the same as above with your best of best traditional marketing strategies?

Impossible.

6. High ROI And Conversions

Digital marketing provides a remarkably high return on investment (ROI).

I know you already know that it provides a high return.

Can you tell me what the average rating is?

You don’t have to go anywhere and search for it. I have the charts examined by me and my friends right below.

The average including all channels, comes out to 61.6%.

That’s an exciting percentage. Isn’t it?

Conversion rates have always touched the sky with properly implemented strategies in digital marketing.

This is what people love it for.

Did you feel the power of digital marketing now?

I think you have digested the reason for digital marketing being so renowned. Time to go ahead.

A Run-Through

As I told you that we’ll discuss the parts of digital marketing later on, here we go! (I remember it.)

Digital Marketing is divided into two types. I call them its branches.

Digital online marketing – the first, and digital offline marketing – the second.

That’s right. Perhaps you know it already if you have been reading this post from scratch.

I have got a plane now. Let’s skydive from Seville and take a quick beautiful overview of what we are going to learn in this guide.

1. Digital Online Marketing

• Introduction
• Definition
• Content Marketing
• [SEO] Search Engine Optimization
• [SEM] Search Engine Marketing
• [PPC] Pay Per Click
• [SMM] Social Media Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Future of Online Marketing

2. Digital Offline Marketing

• Definition
• Billboards In Depth
• Radio Marketing In-Depth
• [TV] Television Marketing
• Cell Phone Marketing
• Offline Digital Marketing Before 2023
• Future of Offline Digital Marketing

3. Conclusion

Fantastic!

This will be really fun to learn. Let’s do it.

{Advice: Get some snacks before you commence}

Online Marketing: A Tier Of Digital Marketing

Introduction To Online Marketing

Online Marketing is something that has always fascinated me to begin my journey as an entrepreneur.

Seriously, it’s not just a vogue word. It is the most profitable and alluring thing you’d have ever seen or thought of.

The more you get deeper in it with good uphill-climbing, strategies, and loyalty, the better of you’re going to be.

By ‘better’, I don’t just mean better…but a lot better.

Oh! Instead of making it so complicated, let me simplify this with an instance of my own mentor David Sharpe.

He’s done hundreds of millions in sales and still, doesn’t work 18 hours a day.

You see how rewarding is that?

You can also build a great online business in a very little time if you really are persistent and believe in your smart work.

That’s true.

(Still, those things don’t happen overnight. Before you get on there, it takes at least some time to make it sustainable.)

Defining Online Marketing

When you search in the search engines, there comes a very pathetic definition of online marketing.

Something like this, right?

Online marketing is a practice with a set of methodologies that involves advertising and marketing efforts on the internet/web commonly with electronic commerce. It is also a way to promote any brand…Yada yada yada.

My head starts aching when I read something like this. I know yours too.

Here’s a break-down of the shoddy definition.

Promotion of a brand and generation of leads or sales using the internet with marketing work is known as online marketing.

It consists of seven major channels.

They’re right below.

Content Marketing

There are a lot of people muttering ‘Content is king’ and so on.

My one simple question from you.

Do you actually know what does content actually mean?

If yes, scroll down to the bottom and tell me in the comments. I’m fantastically anxious about it!

I already broke the definition down completely with my new shiny hammer.

Sense it out.

Content in general means satisfaction.

Now, if I take this to a higher level. It seems something like this according to me…

Content is a type of information, work, entertainment, or inspiration provided to people/audiences that makes complete sense i.e. possesses value and satisfies someone by building a strong trust.

If even this is long for you, there is one below that you can remember…

Okay, have you ever heard to people saying that they have been creating a ton of content from a long time o different channels (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or whatever) but not getting any results?

I ponder, you would definitely have.

Can you take a guess of what the reason is for they’re not getting results?

It’s Content Marketing.

Here’s a definition that you can take to your cerebrum.

Marketing that involves strategic promotion of content online with consistent creation to make consumers interested in converting into customers.

But you know what? Content marketing is never about your brand or services.

It is always about the AUDIENCE!

Consistency, value, and blueprint are the bones of content marketing.

I’m damn sure that you’re confused with the word ‘blueprint’.

Yes or yes?

I will explain everything.

See the simplest blueprint of content marketing that I’ve created and try to understand.

Blueprint is nothing but having clear goals in mind with set parameters and time frames.

Here are some of the essentials that you should consider while starting content marketing.

Your Authority Matters

The level of the content you produce defines your authority. It’s all about creating genuine content.

The word genuine is not only about greatly researched, non-plagiarized, and configured content. It is actually about how real you are being in the content you produced.

For example, if you have a site about mountain bikes and you claim yourself to be an expert in it, you will have to make it real for the reason.

See the difference between what I mean by high authority and low authority.

Image 1: High Authority

Image 2: Low Authority

There’s Image 1 and Image 2.

Which one of these two seems to be more authentic and real to you?

My guesses: Probably Image 1, right?

If yes, then why so?

Because it is REAL. Hence, has high authority.

This is what creating high authority content (your authority) means.

Your Expertise

Your expertise is the biggest factor in your brand’s/business’s growth. People always seek for experts. And, experts climb the hill faster than others.

Now, expertise doesn’t only mean that you should be an expert in what you produce, but also showing people that you’re an expert.

The question is: How you could show your expertise?

See an example of my tutor, Neil Patel.

Yes, you can show your expertise like this.

It’s not necessary that you also have to be an NYT best-selling author or something like that.

If you’ve got some certifications, just go ahead a show them out. That works more than anything.

Engagement: The King

Engaging with people means pushing the sharing button a thousand times. That’s right!

As I’ve said that content marketing is for the people or your audience, you have got to implement it.

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

You have to feel with people.

People who read your blogs, watch your videos, or listen to your podcasts, are not robots. They are all humans with beautiful hearts who are eager to learn.

One like or one comment is never ever something robotic. It has emotions behind and an expectation that you’ll (or do) support somehow.

Provide free content to people. Be the king of their hearts. Help them because you genuinely care about their growth.

Apply this principle consistently forever, and you’ll observe yourself being better in the long run.

Advanced Content Marketing Strategy

Let’s have a peep at what strategy I use for mounting my company/blogs/websites/channels, and what you should too.

Step 1: Apprehending The Interest Of The People

Before you start doing what you’re so passionate about, it’s important to know how likely people are to hold interest in that. Also, you have to make sure whether it’s going to be successful and productive in the long-run or not.

To check this out, I use Google Trends.

Here is a simple process.

Head over to Google Trends and sign in via your Google account.

In the search bar, type your topic as shown under and press enter .

I’m going to type ‘content marketing’.

You will see an overview of people’s interest in the past twelve months with regions within your country and a graph.

Now that you have an idea about the popularity of your topic, the next action you have to take is – being more specific.

Optimize the results according to your industry from the drop-down options.

It’s never like you have only one topic in your industry. There are a lot of other ones twisting and turning inside your mind. Go ahead and click on the compare button to type in some related or competitive terms out there, and look at the insights.

You’ll see something like this:

Oops! My perception has drastically changed now. From what I see, email marketing is taking over content marketing and affiliate marketing in my industry. {We will understand the two new terms further if you’re thinking about them.}

So now, I’ll produce more content on email marketing instead of affiliate and content marketing.

I mean why not?

Step 2: Testing The Content

You can’t just produce content and be confident about people liking it and engaging with it.

Then how to fix this up?

Answer – by testing.

• Produce your first piece of content.
• Ask people to share their opinions on the quality of your production.
• Take feedback from your tutors or experts, if you have anybody known.
• Ask your friends and family about how they feel like when they watch it, read it or listen to it.
• Wait for the next 24 or 26 hours and then see the results.
• If the results are good, go ahead and create massive engrossing content.
• If the results are not good: develop it, make it clear, make it interesting, and valuable.
• By developing I mean going so much above and beyond. [For example, in a blog post, you have to include videos, infographics, images, facts, reports, and audios to make it shiny.]
• Publish the content again.
• Leverage all the testing methods again and see the results.

Step 3: Targeting Your Audience

No matter what you do, but ultimately your goal is to make money and build your business to the ensuing step through content marketing, right?

If it’s a yes for you, you have to know your targeted audience. It’s actually simple. All you have to do is a little bit of research on the web, ask people, or the best thing is testing everything out.

Let’s discuss how to co+operate with successful content creators.

Here is an instance of the cooperation I mentioned above. It’s based on blogging because that’s what I’ve been doing.

Jordan is a blogger whose blog drives over 200,000 visitors a month. When I release my masterpiece out, I hit this uncomplicated outreach email to him.

But remember…when you send this out, be honest with yourself. You want the receiver to link you out or share your content, don’t hide that, but be professional and clear.

Also, don’t copy the exact pattern of my email. Write whatever comes to your heart.

Researching and sending out 15-25 quality emails a day will boost your number, rankings and of course traffic gradually.

Focus on quality and transparency.

You’re done with content marketing in short. Great job!

[SEO] Search Engine Optimization

Introduction

SEO is the fundamental thing when you start out digital marketing.

So what is it?

This is the easiest definition:

[SEO] Search engine optimization refers to the practice of driving more traffic on your website without spending money on ads.

According to Backlinko, 70.6 percent of the total traffic is generated by search engines and 29.4 percent from other sources.

There are many search engines down there.

Which search engine do you use in the present?

Without a doubt, Google!

Google is leading with over 70% of total desktop traffic and over 60 percent in general.

*Occupying 87%+ of market share.

There are about 3.5 Billion searches made on Google each and every second.

Every query you put out, has hundreds of millions or even billions of search results from a lot of websites.

Over 1.94 Billion Websites Live The Web At Present.

I searched for the term ‘Bentley’ and got about 33,60,00,000 results.

That’s huge.

You can’t just sit and hope to get on the first page of Google or in the top 10 results, right?

This makes me and you think about doing SEO.

Let’s break it down.

There are top 10 results on the first page of Google that are ranked by its algorithms. The top 10 results enjoy the vast majority of traffic.

So, what we actually want is to get placed inside the top 10 listings. More specifically, #1, #2, or #3 positions. [That’s where the gold is.]

Let me take an example here.

Let’s say I’m ranking #1 for a phrase: ‘make money online’ and it gets 74,000 visits a month in the United States.

According to the sources, the first position gets 33% percent of the traffic. Or you could be saying that the Click Through Rate (CTR) of the first result is 33%. { CTR is nothing but the percentage of people clicked on the result out of total impressions.}

I’ll depreciate it even more by 29%.

Now, let’s do the math. As I’ve taken 29% as my Click Through Rate, and the volume is 74000, the calculation goes something like this.

Great! The first result should be getting at least 21460 visits a month.

Let’s look at what the tool Ubersuggest says about it.

An article from Entrepreneur is ranking on the top and gets 22495 monthly visits at approximate.

Our number 21460 is working out, you know? It was a rough figure after all.

I generally, take a grand or two less while test something out. That’s okay.

As you know how much traffic the #1 rank enjoys with the term ‘make money online’, you’d surely be interested to make your way to the top…but wait, you have to get stuff done ruthlessly for reaching on there which involves outranking your competitors.

Again, this is why we have to optimize for search results. [Who doesn’t want the traffic?]

But what should you focus upon?

There are over 200 factors that Google looks after to rank you at the top.

Huh, what?

That’s too much, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t. You’ll need not to focus on each and every factor minutely. There are very few essential factors you need to care about. [I’ll be teaching you in this guide.]

So, before I tell you what is important, it is super important to state what is not important [I’m talking about something black].

Here is what I mean by this: According to the practices, SEO is divided into two types. White Hat SEO (the good one), and Black Hat SEO (the bad one).

I just want to give you a brief notion of what White and Black Hat SEO is, and why you should not use the weird black one. We will not look into it much because it’s not our requirement. We are hard-workers who don’t snoop for shortcuts.

White Hat SEO

Simply, white hat SEO is something legit, something real, and trustworthy.

It is highly beneficial for you in the long run because it assures traffic and conversions if you do it consistently and strategically. [Will teach you the strategies.]

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO is an unethical, illegal and bad one. It seems to be attracting (all negative things attract faster) but it’s all fake.

You cheat, break the trust of the people and of yourself.

You should never practice this as it’s harmful.

Maybe, you could get ranked for a very short period, but ultimately, Google will slap you tightly, and smash you down on the ground.

You can’t cheat Google. It’s a billion-dollar company, and also smarter than you.

I’m feeling so cold now. Let’s move on to the heater and talk about On-Page-SEO and Off-Page-SEO.

What, On-Page and Off-Page?

It’s nothing complicated. Grab a cup of coffee ’cause this is going to be a good one.

Turning the eyes to On-Page, now.

On-Page SEO

Everything that you could do on your site yourself to rank higher on Google is called On-Page SEO.

Well, the name itself suggests what it’s all about: SEO on the page!

This is the simplest clarification of it. Even a non-practical sucking nerd can understand this.

You know what?

You are fortunate enough to know that SEO and digital marketing aren’t that hard the way people tell you.

There are a couple of components of On-Page SEO. Actually, there are loads of them, but I’ll discuss the most important ones.

That’s fabulous.

Without wasting a millisecond, let’s jump on…

We’ve got a lot to cover.

What Are Keywords?

I don’t want to engulf your mind as others do.

Here’s the thing.

Keywords mean the words or phrases that assist people to discover you with search engines.

So, keywords are the words inside people’s minds.

Like, what they search, okay?

They play a very good role in your site’s ranking (I’m talking about keywords not people).

Let’s try something out to give you a better understanding. I’m searching ‘hotels in California’, randomly.

This is what happened.

Oh! I see a lot of results coming on the first page in an order of the most relevant to the least.

About 7 very relevant (exact match to what I just searched) keywords are there in the first 4 results.

They are the keywords that match my query and pop-up in the top 10 results by search algorithms to satisfy our needs.

This is how they help us.

I see some people saying keywords don’t hold the same importance as they did.

It leads to a diversion.

Let me explain this here.

If you have a pet shop where you sell dogs, you definitely want to rank for the term “best dog shop” or “best pet shop“. But if you don’t care about it, you may rank for “best pet“, and the traffic you get is least interested in buying pets from your shop.

That’s of no use, then. Right?

Yes. Even Google too explains it for the better. [Ah, it’s about ads but works in SEO too.]

They don’t say anything contrary but you can get the idea that keywords play a great role, STILL. I believe they’ll keep on hanging around till the end.

Alright…I hope you understood that.

Now, what can you do with these nifty keywords to your site?

Lovely question!

You need to optimize your content according to your keywords in the most appropriate format.

Wait! You can’t just go and start writing the content of your post or pages on the fly. You’ll need to do Keyword Research.

Ugh!

What’s that and how to do this?

I am going to tell you. Come, join me in my research lab.

What Is Keyword Research?

This is the process or science of researching the most popular, long–lasting, easiest to rank, and profitable keywords in your niche with the help of tools to have a better life :).

As I mentioned the term ‘tools’ above, you must be wondering what they are and how do you do with them.

Keyword tools are the tools that give you data about your keywords. You look at various aspects like volume (amount of traffic a month), difficulty, performance, social shares, paid difficulty, etc. with the help of these tools.

Hmm…but what tool to use?

On the top of the game, remains Ahrefs.

You can type in your keyword in the Ahrefs Keyword Research Tool and it will give you all the studies about it.

I have an amazing, cool, and easy bonus formula to research keywords.

You can simply research keywords with the search bar of the Google itself.

That’s right!

Here is the process.

Head over to Google search engine and search for any word. I’m doing ‘cat food’.

Don’t press enter when you type the word fully.

You’ll get some suggestions below.

There you go. Steal them! They’re all great keywords you can target.

Now, put a space before the term/phrase which you’ve entered. You’ll see some more question or list (mostly) based long-tailed keywords.

You can use them as well.

Noice! You have more keyword ideas with you.

Now the last step with Google to explore keywords is:

When you scroll down on the result page to the bottom, you will see related searches to your term. These can be amazing ones for you.

They’re all a great source to you as energetic keywords.

Good to go!

I’ve got a bonus for you:-

It is called Ubersuggest. A keyword research tool from one of my mentors – Neil Patel. It’s totally free and great to be utilized.

I and my team use it. It is the most versatile free tool ever.

So, after typing in the keywords, you get some reports from these all tools.

But the information could be overwhelming to a beginner.

What do you look at in the reports that the tools generate?

Luckily, not A lot many complicated things.

Cheers! That’s all you look at in the beginning.

After selecting the best suitable and relevant keywords, you start shooting your words into the content very wisely.

Let me say this again:

Very Wisely.

What exactly do I mean by this?

It means that you don’t have to stuff keywords in your content.

Keyword Stuffing: The Myth

Keyword stuffing has been a myth among the ones who start coming to learn SEO.

Some say that if you use a lot of keywords, you rank well.

Let’s plant a bomb together and explode everything out.

That’s not true. You shouldn’t do that.

It is never real and worthy.

Yes, using relevant keywords frequently and appropriately matters. But if you’re chasing a certain percentage like 4% or 5%…

That’s completely wrong, my friend.

Also, I’d not recommend you searching for something like this: “What is the ideal percentage of keywords to be used in the content?“

It really depends on the topic.

Let me pick up two articles ranking for some keyword called ‘six-pack abs‘ in the top 10 results to prove that keywords stuffing is wrong.

There you go! I’ve selected two articles that I’d probably click on when searching the term.

Recommended density (Percentage that your keyword contributes to the whole content.) by most of the sources is somewhere between 1.8-3%!

Let me check it out in front of you.

To count the words, I’m using a tool called WordCounter.

You can see the word count of two articles down below:

Article One – 2311 Total Words.

Article Two – 2808 Total Words.

Alright. Time to search for the recurrence of the keyword within the content manually, then check the keyword density.

Here’s what I got.

Hmm. Now, I can see what is happening.

Can you too?

The article ranking #3 has a keyword density of 1.3 percent with 2300+ words, whereas the second has only 0.75 percent with 2800+ words!

It is still ranking #4 and definitely driving a ton of traffic.

Hence, the lesson is – never believe in the bullshit blindly.

Google has also given an elaboration on this keyword-stuffed-sandwich.

You got it now, right?

Let’s walk over to title tags as they are just a couple of meters away.

Title Tags

You may already know what title tags are. Let me give you a quick revision.

The HTML tags that specify the title of your web pages are called title tags.

They are all about how your site is shown on the Google SERP style [Search Engine Results Pages].

People also call them meta titles!

It’s all the same thing.

If you’re still not sure about it, I always have sources to show and make you understand.

Have a glimpse below…

There is a strong possibility of you thinking this as of no use! I also did when I got started, but they are fantastically needed for better results.

I call meta titles as the key to your content which is locked inside your website.

Stay tuned while I cover the topic and you’ll get know how.

Here is some great self-explanatory stuff.

What you saw may have shocked you. It’s possible to increase your traffic by 500 percent just with little to no tweaks in your meta title.

That is a huge percentage (profit as well)!

Let’s test something out.

I’ve pulled up a screenshot of meta titles and want to ask which one will you click out of the results…

Well, according to me, this is what I will click. [The results have a good CTR already.]

Probably, you will also click the two results I’ve mentioned as they are more appealing than the others.

That’s the point!

Good titles drive you exponential traffic. So you’ve got to optimize them at any cost.

For users as well as SEO both.

Optimizing Titles For SEO And Users

There is no rocket to launch for Mars in it. You just have to follow some simple steps:

Step #1: Include your primary keyword in the very beginning of your title.

Something like this:-

Yes, it gives you a nice nifty start.

You don’t really have to sit hours and write your titles. Just some work of 5-10 minutes is okay.

Step #2: Keep an eye on the length of your title.

Google doesn’t really specify the exact characters but some stats say that it has to be around 56-62 characters or a maximum of 600 pixels in size.

Here’s the difference between professional titles and unprofessional ones.

You can see a clear difference between what is likely to be legit and what is not.

The second title is longer than what Google loves…so, it has been awarded a jab.

Here is a free and fabulous tool I’ve found to use for inspecting your title tags. It’s by Zeo.

Good one, but how do you manage the looks of your title?

You can also use the Yoast SEO Plugin to do that.

It’s free.

Step #3: Add adjectives, years, and locations to your title for a good CTR

Adding adjectives and buzzwords do get you a great number of users clicking through.

It’s a simple math.

Adding one or two words in your title that make people want to click on your headline works.

Note* – Your content should not suck after they click on your title.

Examples:

If you want to convert your visitors, you can also be location-specific with the titles and it does really work well.

Something like this…

Affiliate marketing masterminds in Florida [Reviews Included]

I don’t want to fill this article with examples, but you kinda get the point.

That’s all. There is no step #4. That’s pretty much it.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is precisely important for rankings. Having great and inter-linked content keeps the visitors to your site for a long time.

This is a positive sign to Google.

Stop stop stop!

I think I haven’t already told you what internal linking means.

This is what it is:

When you link a page which is of the same domain in your content, it’s called as internal linking.

You can see the concept of internal linking above.

Here’s an extra example to explain…

Internal linking doesn’t only drive traffic by increasing search engines rankings, but it’s also a good source for them to know the hierarchy or structure of your site.

They let the crawlers [Google bots] figure the relationship of your content that can help your other articles rank at the top.

This way Google can read your content, and put it out for users.

Learn more about internal linking.

Meta Description

The summary of your page’s content that is showed right below the title tag or meta title by the search engines is known as meta description.

So, what do you and I need to do with meta description?

The science is to get more click-throughs from the search engine listings.

It actually has nothing to do with SEO, but still, it helps in getting more traffic based on the lines you’ve written.

That means you write the meta description, and it tells Google what your page is all about, Google captures it and shows to the users for deciding whether to click on your result or not.

It all depends on the copy you jot down.

Here are some tips for writing better copy…

Tip #1: Keep It Concise and Precise.

You have to keep it short and sweet.

Try to keep it under 155 characters in length or google will cut your rest of the part somewhere from 156 characters in general.

We analyzed over 77,000 snippets and noted that the majority of snippets in SERP results get cut between the length of 140-161 characters.

After getting the results, we cross-checked with the studies of other platforms, and it was pretty much the same result.

Another reason why I said 155 characters is because they become easier to read without being confused.

So, users will not scroll down to the next results. [Seems good]

Well, do you have any ideas about the shot below?

The first result’s meta description is greatly optimized for the users but the second one’s is not. It’s cut by Google and seems like it’s an automatic addition from a part of the page content by Google itself.

You don’t have to do like the second one. It can affect your CTR.

Get it?

Tip #2: Don’t exaggerate [Never Please]

You must have already got what I’m about to say.

Over-exaggeration sucks.

You just have to be realistic. That’s much more profitable.

Don’t add a lot of call to actions like – Click Now, Hit it Up, Click Here etc.

Don’t add too many adjectives as well.

People are really good and smart enough to understand that you’re spamming.

The reason why I added this tip is because I’ve seen a lot of beginners making this mistake.

Tip #3: Include your keyword or its synonyms.

As you spend a lot of your time writing content on your researched keywords and add them to your pages and titles, why won’t you add them to the meta description as well?

At least for the better…

This is how you can sum them up into your meta…

Tip #4: Structured Data.

What is structured data?

Is it some kind of organized data?

If you’re somewhere around what I just said above, it’s too close.

Structure data is a code written in such a manner that the busy search engines grasp it.

Search engines read the code and then decode it in the results with a nice, trendy reputation.

You don’t have to apply for NASA to do this. It’s pretty easy.

I know, if you’re new to this thing, it’s like the hair of cat’s fur inside your nose.

Let me consider myself as a search engine and decode the data in front of you as a result.

Well, you’d have passed-by this kind of thing already if you live on earth.

Did it ever make you click on any result?

If it did to you, it does to everyone else too!

Here’s a complete guide that teaches everything about structured data.

These are the best practices that you can do to make your meta description SEO-healthy and appealing at the same time.

URL Structure

This seems a really diminish part to consider but it still attracts the vitality. Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) structure has to be SEO friendly.

So, what do I mean by SEO friendly?

SEO friendly URLs tend to be shorter, organized, and keyword-rich in nature.

Why URL Matters?

As other sources like meta description, title tag, and the content of your page are used by search engines to know your content industry, URL is also taken into account.

So, what can you do to enhance URLs?

These are the steps…

Step: 1| Edit Your Default URLs.

Even Google doesn’t like default URLs.

When you write the content and publish, your page’s URL is really complex to understand what you’ve produced.

It’s really ugly to be read and understood.

Something like shown below:

Hence, there is a need to edit the URL structure.

It could be done by removing all the useless stuffing present in it to make it beautiful and meaningful.

[Recommendation* – Remove the dates as well…for good traffic and looks.]

Here is a real example of a good URL structure.

You can see the URL is easy to understand.

Step: 2 | Keep It Short

You’ve got to keep the URL shorter.

Google wants the user to navigate effortlessly. If your URL remains longer, there are a very few chances that you’re going to do well.

This is because shorter URLs and higher rankings. Check yourself.

The advantage of making them short is simple – clear focus on the topic.

Let’s take the same example that I used before…

[https://optinmonster.com/how-to-get-traffic-from-facebook-for-free/]

It has 67 characters. Which is not considered great by an SEO nerd.

According to me, if it would have been even shorter, it could have made a difference.

There are gaps to rephrase it.

Here is how:-

This is much better than the previous one for it clarifies the content faster and clearer.

That’s enough to customize your URLs.

But I do have 3 quick tips as well.

Tip No. 1) Don’t use special characters in the URLs.

Tip No. 2) Don’t use words that just fill up the gap. {Example – the, a, an, that, etc.}

Tip No. 3) Avoid using capital letters as they lead to 404 NOT FOUND Errors.

Google’s Tip:

Heading Tags

Heading tags are the tags which define the headings of a page. They give proper formatting and structure to your site pages.

The hierarchy of the tags goes from H1 to H6.

So, there has been some debate around the corner about whether header tags impact your SEO or not. Studies show that H1 and H2 tags still matter but H3 – H6 tags are not that important.

According to our experience, and some other sources, search engines still love them.

How do they help you?

SEO: Search engine crawlers find it easier to crawl your structured and formatted content than crawling through issues with the structure.

USERS: Usage of accurate header tags make your content easier to read and digest with no irrelevant problems.

As a result, people stay on your site longer to read your article…which can improve your overall performance.

They are much more likely to engage with structured content.

So what’s the deal with using them properly?

Let’s dive right in.

How to use heading tags?

Have you ever written any heading in your content to emphasize?

Of course, you’ve done.

Did you use the bold feature to do that ever?

I bet you did it. I also made the mistake as a newbie.

[If your content is written by any content writer, make sure to check this before you distribute it. Most content writers don’t use them correctly.]

You can use heading tags instead of the blod feature.

H1 tag is the most important tag and is considered for the relevancy of the content.

The importance of the tags decreases as they go down from 1 to 6.

Usage of the rest of the heading tags more than one time is good. You should use them as subheadings. It’ll be good for readers and crawlers both…as I mentioned above.

Here is something sensible for you to decide…

You understood what I mean now.

Did you?

Optimizing Images For SEO

The last part of On-Page-SEO is Optimizing your images.

There are 6 things you need to focus on to optimize your images brilliantly for SEO.

∎ Compress Your Images

∎ Select A Proper File Name

∎ Add A Title

∎ Add Alternative Text

∎ Add Description

∎ Write A Caption

Let’s take the image that I used above of my mentor Neil. Here’s How I optimized it.

You just have to customize the pointers. Just keep this in mind that you don’t have to make your alternative text more than 125 characters. Try to make it under this length.

Another necessary thing is compressing the images.

It plays a key role in grabbing the attention of the users [by decreasing load time].

You can install plugins like reSmush to make it possible.

There’s noting much when it comes to compressing the images.

Optimizing your alt text, title, and description of the images gives great back-up to your post.

Off-Page SEO

You can simply call off-page SEO as the best practices to show your site up in the top search results.

As the phrase, ‘off-page’ itself suggests, you can’t do it on the page. What is meant by this is that it’s done indirectly by you and others together.

So, what does this include?

See below…

Domain Authority, Trust, and Link-Building are the main components of Off-Page SEO.

Domain Authority

Authority simply refers to the quality and authenticity of anything.

When it comes to your domain, it’s called as domain authority or DA.

Let’s be straightforward.

It is a score from one to 100 that determines the authority of your website and predicts how well your site will rank on Google SERPs.

The score was firstly developed by Moz.

Let’s take a domain reebok.com and see how authoritative it is with MOZ itself.

Great! It’s 85. Is it good?

Of course…! There are some facts about Domain Authority that you should know.

You can’t classify DA as good or bad and low or high. It depends on what industry you’re in.

If your niche is too small and least competitive, a DA score of 26 can be really good…whereas if you’re in a competitive industry like shoes or fashion, it could be close to 70.

But again, it depends on what niche you play in.

Trust Being A Factor

Back in the day, when learning about SEO, I saw people talking about TrustRank.

I was always confused by the phrase as there was no particular layout given by Google on this.

After scrolling through some results, I’ve found a video of Google Webmasters and got the answer.

It’s right below.

They had also given a patent too that clarifies ‘trust’.

So, the more high-quality links (backlinks – I’ll talk about them soon) you get from other high-reputed + relevant websites, the more trust you build with Google.

It’s about the quality of your website at all. This will decide whether your site will show up high in the search results or not, based on some trust signals.

There’s a catch, hang on!

You don’t just need quality backlinks. You have to link out to quality and trustworthy sites too.

You need to build that rapport.

One study from Survey Monkey and Search Engine Land shows that trust is even a lot more important to the end-user as well.

Out of 412 people who answered the question of what makes them click on a search result to buy…

Around 70% of them opted ‘Known Retailer’. This could be noticed as a brand signal, right?

Brand signs are really high. People want to click Amazon to buy instead of a rare website.

It’s true! You and I do this all the time as well. Hence, trust matters.

Bonus Tip:– Have a privacy policy and terms page on your site. Google takes them into an account while considering trust.

I’ve been muttering about backlinks and link-building a lot, it’s time to get on there fast!

Link-Building

What is it?

The practice of stretching your brain’s nerves and finding linking opportunities from other high authority websites is the same niche and then getting backlinks is known as link-building.

It matters a lot and Google itself has said that it’s one of their top 3 ranking signals.

You must have heard people saying ‘backlinks are everything’. That’s completely wrong. It’s a very important set in SEO but it’s not the only important thing.

In a cucumber, you have to do link-building to acquire better rankings and traffic.

Reports show that about 37% of the business owners spend around $10,000-$50,000 on link-building to build trust, get higher rankings and traffic.

Now the question is: What are backlinks and how do I get it?

Here’s your explanation. Let’s go!

What are Backlinks?

The external links from other websites pointing towards your content are called backlinks. Or, when somebody else links your content as a source to theirs, the link is referred to as a backlink.

Agree or not, people do it naturally while formulating a blog post.

Think about it this way…when you speak to your friend about chocolates or any other thing that you’ve purchased, you add a source from where you bought.

For example:- I’ve got this chocolate from ‘The Choco Paradise in 3rd Ave‘ or I’ve ordered this wine from Empathy Wines.

The same story goes with backlinks.

So the more high-authority backlinks you have, the better rankings you get.

Here’s the relation between Google rankings and the number of backlinks.

Wow! Even the 10th position has over 30K backlinks in its piggy bank. This means you should have them too.

Here’s the deal.

You know I have used the phrase ‘high-authority links’ over and over. I know it’s annoying but there is a reason behind this for sure.

The quality of the links matters a lot more than quantity. No matter how many people you get to link out to you, but if that’s not trustworthy to Google, you won’t do well.

One of my fellows, Eric recently wrote a post about entrepreneurship…he ranked his content within 4 months in the top 3.

Can you guess how many backlinks did he have?

Even less than 25!

That’s right! But they were all from authoritative sites like Entrepreneur, Inc, and many others.

So, you have to spin the wheel for quality, not quantity.

Now, the question is:- How do you grab backlinks?

You need to do this…

Step 1: Create Link-worthy Content

Yep! There’s a need to create a masterpiece content before you think of getting links.

Using Brain Dean’s skyscraper technique, you can create a disrupting content in your niche.

To create great content that people will love to link to and share, you’ll need to…

Create Original Content

Primarily, think about the users. They don’t want the same shit again and again. You’ve got to create unique and original content for both people and Google to be happy.

Try to be real in your articles. People love genuine things.

Come up with real ideas and show your experience. Unique content doesn’t mean you copy and spin the piece and throw high on your website. It has to have added value.

Make It Engaging and Force People To Act

Yes, your content should be engaging otherwise no one’s going to read it and link to it.

Try to avoid long-form of paragraphs. No one likes that crap!

Keep the passages between 2 and 3 lines as I do.

Include great images, videos and audios to make it interesting.

Also, use the words ‘you’ and ‘I’ frequently because you have to hook people up.

They feel much more connected and personal when you integrate these words.

Use Infographics [As Much As You Can]

You must be knowing about the Backlinko blog. The reason why it is so popular is that it has a tons and tons of infographics. [By the way, mine’s too.]

According to Moz, people link out to infographics and surveys more than anything.

Just think about this post. I’ve linked out to a lot of infographics. People do this in general as well.

That’s the key.

I know you’ve started pondering about what the design of your content will be…but wait, before that, I have a lot more to teach you.

Write Long Form Of Content

This is what the Skyscrapper technique is all about.

If some article is ranking on the top with 2,000 words, you go ahead and create something really thorough with 6,000 words.

Don’t just write 6K words for the sake of stuffing.

Go so much up and down that people will be like: Oh My God! This is the best article I’ve ever read.

Now, here’s the thing!

Long-form of content generates more backlinks over time.

You don’t want to miss an opportunity like this.

Um, hmm?

That’s why long posts.

Do Case Studies and Include Statistics

As said, using a ton of statistics and case studies makes your way easier.

If you take some time to look at this same article and not anywhere else, you can find I’ve linked a lot of other contents because of stats.

Stats and case studies get popular easily because people are curious about figures.

One of my friend Kim wrote an article about email marketing stats which ranks in the top 3 positions for the term ‘email marketing stats‘.

When I looked over the backlinks of the URL, the single post got about 219 high-authority links.

That’s a lot of links…!

It proves once again that figures tend to have more link juice.

This is how you can shape what you post and call it link-worthy.

Now that you’ve got mind-boggling content, you have to follow the second step to get people to link out to you.

Step 2: Send Outreach Emails [Wisely]

The far preponderance of people takes it the wrong way.

Yeah, I’m talking about the same: Outreach Emails.

I know I’ve given some introduction about it in the content marketing part.

It’s because sending outreach emails is basically a part of content marketing.

So, I don’t want you to beg people for links when your content is fabulous. Rather than that, you could just do what I call as ‘Spy Value Strategy‘.

It’s not rocket science, don’t worry.

Let me explain to you.

First, you have to find people who are linking to content that is on the same topic of yours but is not better than yours.

So, how do you do that?

All you have to do is head over to a tool called backlinks (It’s free).

— Type in your competitor’s URL.

— Scroll down and it will show you all the other sites that link out to it.

Woo! That was an easy task, right?

Now, I don’t want you to send emails to each and everyone out there.

Say no!

Look at the domain scores too of the referring websites.

Where you find it above 70 (maybe 65 too), you’re good to go.

I don’t want you to be a spammer. Please don’t be.

Provide value by investing your time when emailing people.

Here’s how you can do this…

Read every single post thoroughly, look for suggestions to notify and find the weak spots in the other posts that they’re referring to.

List all of them down.

Collect their email addresses from sources.

Now that you have the weaknesses, suggestions, and appreciation for them…You can shoot something like this.

That’s what you need to do to have a better quality of links for you.

According to my experience, every 2 or 3 people link to my articles out of 10.

That’s completely fine. Not everybody will link back.

Step 3: Broken Link Building

This is the most effective and easy, but at the same time, the hardest way to build links.

So, what is it and how it’s done?

When you go ahead and spy other people’s posts, find broken links which are relevant to your site, and ask them to replace them by yours, it’s known as broken link-building.

Seems very easy, right?

So it is…! [But it can take loads of work.]

You just have to put in the work to find broken links and then notify the blog authors to replace.

The doubt is:- How do you find the broken links?

Be calm, you’ll not have to click on every single link and check.

You can use link checkers that crawl and tell you what’s broken and what’s not.

I’ve got a recommendation for you.

It’s called Check My Links – a browser extension which’ll automatically find broken links.

When you find the broken links, you can send a customized email to get people to link to your content.

It’s really that simple.

Congratulations! These are the best strategies of link-building you can follow.

If you want more, read this. Also, watch the bonus video below to avoid some mistakes that people generally make.

We’re now done with Off-Page SEO.

It’s time to get eyes on the MOST important ranking factor and store it in the brains.

SERIOUSLY!

User Experience (UX)

Do you know the mission of Google?

It’s a user experience company.

User signals are the most significant signals. And they will keep on getting more attention from now till the end.

If you and your site are user first, you can chill on the beach.

What exactly do I mean by the term ‘user first’?

In the most compressed format, I can say that how a user behaves on your site in the eyes of Google.

Does he spend more time on your site or instantly smash the back button and move on to some other site?

You can see this in your Google Analytics.

Let me show you the analytics of my site that I’ve started some days ago.

As you can see, the site has 610 visitors but only 5.7 percent of them are returning.

This is a signal of low user experience. You can also see the bounce rate which is pretty high and the average session duration per user is only 1.67 seconds.

This means the site is not user-friendly.

How Does Google Look At User Matrix?

We’ve been talking about user experience. Now, let’s discuss how Google look at the insights and measure user matrix.

RankBrain

What is RankBrain?

RankBrain is a machine learning-based search engine algorithm, the use of which was confirmed by Google on 26 October 2015. It helps Google to process search results and provide more relevant search results for users.

– Wikipedia

It is the 3rd most important ranking factor officially mentioned by Google.

So, it is not something new but a powerful algorithm of Google which can learn from the interactions of the users in the search results and then rank them accordingly.

Let me illustrate with the help of an example.

If there are two articles ranking #1 and #2 for the term ‘digital marketing’, and most of the people spend time on the second one, it changes and flips the position of those two.

It takes notice whether the one is better or the other.

That ishow the process takes place in your ranking via RankBrain.

Try to do friendship with it and it’ll be your great virtual friend forever.

Why Does RankBrain Matter to Google?

It is because you can’t fake it. It is more accurate than Google engineers. [According to an article on Forbes.]

Yep! It is 10 percent more accurate.

Here is one more study I did to prove that user-experience is getting hotter and hotter over the course.

I searched and analyzed the interest level of people worldwide for ‘user experience’ in Google Trends.

It keeps on rising on an average.

This means that people are becoming concerned about it for Google is making them do it.

Great, so far. But how can you improve your user experience or user satisfaction?

Here is the simple process…

Speeding Your Site UP

Tell me, when you are searching for something on the web, do you like a slow website?

No! Never.

Nobody likes a slow website.

Site speed plays a really really and really pivotal part in your Google rankings. It directly connects with the user experience. If your site is like a tortoise, you have to make it like a bullet train. This helps you more than what you think with everything.

Let me tell you something shocking and interesting.

A study by eConsultancy says that if your website is one second slower (1s), it results in the reduction of 7% of conversions.

KissMetrics states that 79 percent of the web shoppers will not return to your site if it has a speed problem.

40% of the people leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

More importantly, you won’t get ranked because you don’t have a better and praiseworthy user experience.

Look at research by Backlinko which shows the relation more appropriately.

So, how do you check your website speed?

There are so many tools to do that. Most of the tools are real.

Here’s one from Google: Google PageSpeed Insights

Look at my site’s speed according to this tool.

Oh! The score doesn’t seem to be good at all, right?

That’s not right. Not at all.

Before I say something, look at the page speed score of the Google Blog.

It seems to be very less, right?

No, it’s not! Open google blog on your mobile and see the speed. I think it’s a second or a bit more than that.

That’s super fast even with a score of 63.

What I conclude from this is – Google PageSpeed Insights is not perfect just because it’s a Google product.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

The tool is good and tells you about what action to take with the page elements but the truth is…

It only analyzes the code of your page, nothing else.

So, how do you get a reasonable idea of your speed?

Check it manually. [I do it]

Or, use tools like GTmetrix, and WebPageTest. {They are not extraordinary but are good to be used.}

GTmetrix shows me my page size, requests, and all the necessary stuff. {Not 100% correct, though.}

Here is the report from WebPageTest.

It is so overwhelming. All the tools show different results.

But I know what both the reports show. My page size around 600 KB, and the ideal size is less than 1 MB…I’m at the good side.

This is how you can check and then improve your speed from the suggestions provided in the reports like compressing your images, minifying CSS and HTML, removing unwanted elements, etc.

If you can’t do it, you’ll need an expert to tweak into your coding.

Improve Your Navigation

How do you feel when you’re in a site where there is nothing to navigate?

[You don’t know how to move back, how to move forward, and how to move to the top easily.]

In my case, I feel like I have been caught and I instantly hit the back button of the browser to get out of the jail.

I’m sure you sense the same too.

You know what? When a lot of people do like this, your bounce rate increases that lead to bad user experience and results in tanking of your Google rankings.

You don’t want that on yours.

Here are some simple things you’ve got to do.

I mean that’s it.

Nothing more than this.

Appealing Design

Design is not something associated with SEO, but still, it is incredibly useful.

I love staying websites with great designs.

That’s what influenced me to create SB Digital a masterpiece (actually a coding guy did this to be real honest).

Tell me in the comments whether you liked the design or not.

Pretty simple –the better the design, the better the user experience.

It doesn’t simply mean that you put all your work in design and not in content.

‘Content is King‘ when you just start. ‘Promotion+Design+Content are Kings’ when you have built an audience base.

Keep the four things in mind when you design a good one.

SSL Certificate

What is this SSL?

Well, this is the full form: Secure Sockets Layer.

What you have to do about it then?

Let’s look at it.

How likely would you stay longer on a site showing a ‘not secure’ signal?

If I would be there, within a second, I would have hit the back button and switched to a safe site.

It’s practical. Isn’t it?

If you would be there, you would have done that too.

Then why not your users will do it? They’re also human beings after all.

Alright! Now, how about this?

I’m sure you’re going to stick with a site like this because it’s trustworthy.

In fact, it’s secure!

This is what having an SSL certificate means. Basically, your site should be an https.

Mine is already.

Now the question is, how do you get an SSL certificate?

There are companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and more from where you can grab yours. Bluehost is recommended.

This is a very important part of user experience.

Value Is Everything

If you provide value at what you do, you are the horse of the long run.

No one is going to visit and stay on a page which is not providing the specific information.

You have to do masterpieces to shoot your rankings to the sky.

So, provide as much value you can. If you don’t, you won’t rank because people won’t like you for anything.

But they will dislike something :).

What do I exactly mean by value?

Here is the elaboration with an instance.

Let’s say someone types in the term ‘digital marketing’ on Google and he scrolls through a couple of results which don’t really meet his needs and satisfy him.

Then, he encounters a result which has great content that he learns all the concepts of digital marketing within that one post.

Will he keep on coming to your site for more information?

Of course, yes!

Even you also do it if something holds an influencing essence with new notions and tactics to your subject.

This is what value is.

It means going so much above and beyond in the content that you produce. If you write a post, include each and everything in it.

Like if I write on digital marketing, I include the past of it, the definition, the parts of it, the strategies that are used in it now, what will be the future or the present strategies, proven statistics, and bonus tips to start with it safely.

If I do that, the users will fall in love with me deeply. They won’t even dare to visit my competitors.

See how adding just a little bit of value resulted in the growth of my new website.

Consider it or not, if you provide great value and premium experience with nothing in return, you’re the person of your work. It’s easy to make and deploy it when people love the content you produce.

Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?

Do you use a smartphone?

Sure thing! Most of the people do.

Over 80% of people use mobile devices. There are over 4.68 Billion people using mobile presently.

Around 47.96% of the total traffic on the web is from mobile devices.

They’re killing it.

Did you look at the insights? Even most of the conversions take place through mobile devices.

Then, what about your site?

It has to be easy to use and responsive oo mobile devices. Even you use mobile most of the time searching for something and so do I.

There’s no rocket science in it.

You have to have a site that looks good on mobile, fascinates people, and functions phenomenally well.

Mine is already under the shell.

It’s now your turn.

But wait before we go further…

I have a bonus tip for you.

Do you know which media screen sizes are most common and generate the highest amount of conversions?

I’ve got the information for you so that you can optimize the website best for conversions.

The best two sizes are 4.7 inches and 5.0 inches!

Yep! If you optimize your site for mobile and focus on these two main screen sizes, you’ll make as many times more money than you press the home screen of your mobile.

That’s crazy. But it’s true because of real data and case studies.

Love it!

That’s all you can do for a better user experience.

So far, I just want to say that when you work for Google and users, they give love, traffic, and rankings in return.

SEO completed.

[SEM] Search Engine Marketing

You know about SEO a bit now.

What about SEM then? What is it?

Search Engine Marketing [SEM], generally referred to as ‘search marketing’, is a practice of buying traffic with the paid listings.

SEO is about getting sustainable results with no money and SEM is getting results with spending money. [As long as you keep spending.]

Before I tell you more about it, why not we compare both of them, right?

SEO VS SEM

SEO gives long-term benefits whereas SEM works only for money as said already.

SEO is a slow process. SEM is a fast process.

SEO results are shown below on search engines. SEM results are above SEO ones (in the screenshot bleow).

SEO builds brand and trust. SEM may or may not.

Out of the total listings, only 30% of the people click on paid search listings (SEM) and around 70% of the people click on the organic (SEO) listings.

That’s major the difference.

What Should You Use? SEO or SEM?

You don’t have to underestimate search engine marketing.

It’s is very powerful.

If it wouldn’t, why big brands like Linkedin would do this? [Hint: Look at the screenshot above that I used to explain what SEM is.]

So, it’s a very effective piece of marketing when you can spend money to gain traffic and have to get quick responses.

In fact, one of my friends generates over $100,000 a month spending somewhere close to $10,000.

My advice to you is for using both of them if possible.

You have to go all in.

How Does SEM Work?

Every search engine has a marketing platform.

[Bing Ads, Yahoo Search Ads, and more…]

You can use any of them. But I will talk about the six letters you’ve seen over and over in this guide.

You’re all familiar with these six letters – G o o g l e.

Absolutely! I’m going to talk about Google Ads. [Earlier Google Adwords]

So, how do you do it with Google Ads?

First of all, you need to know what keyword you want to show up at the top because different prices have to be paid for different types of keywords.

Sometimes a keyword can cost over $650 per click!

You’ve got to be very smart for it.

After that, you just have to create campaigns and run ads to make money. [sounds easy]

But…

Unless you have a strategic, successful and backed-up campaign for practicing SEM you won’t really do well.

Don’t worry, I have a perfect source for you to master Google Ads.

While I was looking for providing you some great visual courses, I stumbled upon Neil’s site again and found a pal named Jerry Banfield.

He makes more than anything on Google Ads.

You can master SEM like him as well. [Really]

Most of the lessons are free and they’ll walk you through everything you need to know to create your first campaign and nail it.

[PPC] Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-Per-Click.

The name itself speaks about it.

It’s an advertising model where you pay when your ad is clicked. In other words, you pay-per-click.

It is also known as Cost Per Click [CPC].

Before learning this type of advertising and more about it, I should tell you why actually this type of structure was created.

It’s not a surprise that there are stale frauds in every industry. I think they are the most in the black pool of internet.

So, to get a safe zone and reduce click frauds, PPC was given birth by Bill T. Gross.

You bid according to your daily budget to show your ads to the number of targeted people.

It’s kind of something similar to search engine marketing, isn’t it?

Hey, that’s right.

Search engine marketing is a form of PPC. [It’s really efficient and unique though.]

Almost every platform runs ads based on PPC.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Instagram, on and on and on…

But again, you know Google and Facebook always kill it.

You can create user-familiar ads on Facebook and skyrocket everything.

Like you can target homeowners based in Orlando who earn over $100K, have interest in pets and are men aged between 30-40.

It’s that accurate.

After you publish the advertisement creatives, your ads get served within the feeds/search results and you start climbing the Mt. Everest financially.

The reason why PPC is a good model of advertising is that it doesn’t highlight the advertisement differently. This makes difficult for the people to ignore your ad.

You can just be safe in the scrolling-through-feedsprocess and can easily take advantage of it.

Here’s how to bootstrap and enhance Facebook Ads from scratch.

Two guides for you to learn.

• A Beginner’s Guide To Facebook Ads: A Simple Step-by-Step Tutorial
• 22 Facebook Advertising Tips to Maximize Conversions

You can see an example of twitter too.

Twitter is also established on earth.

Why not it will practice PPC model then?

Here’s an instance of twitter ads…

So do platforms like LinkedIn, Google, and Instagram do.

If you’re reading this from the origin, you already know how Google Ads work.

If you don’t. I still have some big open gates for you to enter.

• The Ultimate Google Ads Guide
• The Definitive Guide To Learn Advanced Google Ads

[SMM] SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media is a giant in today’s world.

If you’re not using it the right way, you’re doing something wrong for sure.

It has grown with the speed of light in the past few years.

Can you take a guess, how many daily active social media users across the world are?

The numbers are crazy!

Not only this, but here are some mind-blowing sentences for you to know.

63% of customers expect companies to offer Customer Support via social media channels.

90% of users have used social media to communicate with a brand.

81% of small or big businesses use social media to engage and increase awareness among people.

Actually, social media has a great return on investment rating but it is actually unclear how much to be exact.

So, my feet are getting chilly in this cold whether…let’s dive right in.

Benefits of Using Social Media

The far majority of you already know why to use social media for your business now. But still, I’ll explain it.

According to my own experience, there are top two reasons for using social media.

1. Branding and relationships with customers

2. Generating leads and sales

Branding

As the numbers of social media users are in billions, there cannot be a better way to grab the attention of the people towards a business in my opinion.

Due to things like comments, likes, shares, tagging, and more…social stands out.

There’s everything available for you and the customers to engage, and share feelings.

People are so thrilled when they connect with brands through social platforms.

Just ask yourself. How would you feel when Amazon messages you on twitter and say ‘hello’.

Thus, it’s a great source of branding even when you’re nobody and just start out.

That’s why Amazon does it and every other brand too.

Generate Leads and Sales

This is something very driving to a dollar-hungry person.

Can you think of an easier way of promoting your products and services than just publishing a post on your Instagram or Facebook account?

If you do, then please share with me and everyone else because we don’t know.

I hope you’re able to understand my feeling.

All you have to do is create content that brings value to your customers (end consumers) or people, engage with them, and drive them to your leads/sales pages (landing pages) to finally convert.

I mean it’s that basic.

SMM is all about engagement and content.

Which Social Media Platform Should You Use?

There are different social networks. What should you use?

Let me categorize each one of the major networks right down the road.

Facebook.

Facebook is one of the biggest marketing channels out there. It’s grown tremendously and seems like the second moon of the earth with over 2.4 Billion people living on it.

See the growth trend of Facebook from 2015 to 2019.

A lot of people struggle with this. You don’t have to.

User-base is not the only thing that matters in SMM. It’s also the intent and age of the users inside the office.

People on Facebook are generally aged between 25-34, who are interested in watching funny videos and having some fun.

If you produce business content over there. People are more likely to slip.

So, it may not be a good place for B2B.

In contrast, it is a prominent place for B2C.

Instagram and Snapchat

Instagram and Snapchat are young and have a fabulous audience. 1B+ and 203M respectively.

Having understood, I can say that they both would fit if your targeted age group is pretty young.

Instagram – 18 to 29-year-olds

Snapchat – 17 to 18 and 25 to 34-year-olds.

These two majorly work for B2C.

Twitter and LinkedIn

Twitter and LinkedIn are great platforms for B2B.

It is worth spending your money, time and efforts on these two if you’re in the B2B industry.

Twitter had 330 Million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2019. Although the number was high before but still, it’s a place of quality.

Nearly 24% of the male and 21% of female internet users use Twitter.

The organic reach is high if you make something that engages people in the first 2-3 hours.

LinkedIn on the other side has also grown drastically.

It’s now the best terrace in the B2B network.

Within a few years, it has made it’s way to 610 Million users in the present world.

You don’t want to miss out the organic reach and potential of LinkedIn.

If you haven’t tried, you have to.

That’s the basic phase of Social Media Marketing. By the way, I’ve got an expert’s guide for you to check.

• The Complete Social Media Marketing Guide

Affiliate Marketing

If I ask you – Can you recommend me a great watch under $400?

You’d probably suggest me watches of companies like Seiko, Citizen or any other.

What basically are you doing here?

Easy to say…you’re recommending something to me.

That’s what affiliate marketing is all about.

But amusing enough, you get paid to do that.

Let me define for you…

Promotion of other people’s or businesses’ products online who pay commissions for each sale made is known as affiliate marketing.

It’s the best form of marketing to generate high income within a short period of time.

This type of business model can be scaled enormously by both people who promote and the companies owning the products. Let me break down what actually the affiliate marketing business model is.

Affiliate Marketing Business Model Explained

There is nothing difficult here.

It is a business model in which you be a link between people who need the services and people who provide the services.

If it’s unclear, what I want to say is that you connect consumers to businesses and earn money.

Something like this…

Makes sense, right?

This is how the business model works. It’s pretty simple.

I know you’re getting excited about how much money you can make with it.

Here’s your answer…

Believe it or not, you can earn thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands, or even millions depending on how hard and smart you work.

My mentor David Sharpe himself is an affiliate and runs an affiliate marketing program. He has done over $250 Million+ in sales.

Again, you can too! It just requires work and empathy. I have a small surprise for you at the end of this topic, by the way.

How To Start Affiliate Marketing From Scratch?

As I’ve covered the full part of affiliate marketing in a separate guide. I’m just going to give you a basic idea about it.

Nowadays, there are loads of companies who love you being their affiliate.

Companies like Amazon, Apple, Clickbank, WordPress, etc. also offer affiliate marketing platforms.

You can just go to their official websites and click on the ‘affiliate‘ section at the bottom or top.

Then by filling out the required information, you can be a member and promote their products with a unique link of your ID.

These type of links are generally known as affiliate links.

Now the problem is how do you actually promote the products?

I have a solution.

In my opinion, Clickbank is the best network out there for affiliate marketing.

So, after being registered there, you’ll choose any product you like and come to social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram for promotion by continuously posting content which is compelling to people, and add your affiliate links.

Like this…

I know it’s not that kind of professional…but nevertheless, you can do something like this.

It’s all about creativity.

The more creative you are the better you will do.

This was one free way of doing this.

Another way is to create video content and then navigate people to buy products from your link.

I’m sure you’d have heard people saying – Click the link below in the description to buy ‘X’ product. [On Youtube or any other media.]

That’s how it works when you’re just starting out with nothing.

There are plenty of other strategies that could be used to do affiliate marketing.

That said, the rest of it I’ve covered in a separate ultimate guide.

[Surprise] By the time, you can check out these comprehensive guides I’ve gathered:-

• The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing

Email Marketing

The term ‘email marketing‘ can sound very basic but it’s actually acidic.

Ha! That was funny.

What I meant is that it’s super vital.

Really?

The same reaction I used to have before I realized the real power of email marketing.

So, let’s define the term.

The science of sending commercial and promotional emails to a group of people is known as email marketing.

If you don’t know, email marketing is the best way to scale your business, even now! [When chatbots and artificial intelligence are on the hype.]

It’s a long-term marketing channel because people rarely change their emails frequently. A lot of people use their emails for a lifetime.

We all know that, right?

Let me break down some amazing stats about email marketing with the help of an infographic.

Also, with 89% of Americans checking their inbox each and every day, there’s nothing more to say.

Now I believe you will not ask any questions like ‘how’ and ‘why’.

What do you need to start email marketing?

For sure an email list.

If you don’t know what an email list is, it is a list of email addresses which are collected by hard-working people like us.

I have solicited thousands of emails which helped me to scale my business to the next level.

The question is…how do you collect email addresses?

I’m going to narrate you how within a second.

The best tool to collect emails in a nice and advanced way is AWeber

I have been using this for a while. Even if you’re just commencing the work, I recommend to join it because it is free as well.

You can do everything with it like popups, sign up forms and whatnot.

In fact, I do it with AWeber too…

When you write a blog post, you can ask people to leave their name and email address by giving them some sort of gifts, guides, e-books, or making promises.

There are a ton of ways to collect emails mentioned and illustrated in this guide that you can leverage.

Also, I would recommend AWeber’s free email marketing course to learn the best practices and become a lead guru within minutes.

As you’ve taken the AWeber’s course, let’s assume you have thousands (maybe a couple hundreds) of emails now. What next?

The subsequent step you have to take is to send emails to your subscribers.

There are three types of emails businesses generally send.

A) Non-commercial/ Non-promotional emails

B) Commercial/ Promotional emails

C) Hybrid emails

Non-commercial/ Non-promotional emails

These type of emails are sent to subscribers for knowledge. When brands and individuals want to build trust with their audience by providing them free value, they send non-commercial emails.

Commercial/ Promotional emails

As the name itself is suggesting, these emails are commercial emails that are dedicated to boosting sales and leads which contain offers and deals. In simple words, these emails ask for the money.

Hybrid emails

These types of emails are a mixture of both commercials and non-commercials. This means that the emails provide information but there’s also an intent to sell or promote products and services or collect leads (contact information).

That’s what email marketing is all about.

You have to repeat this for the rest of your life with your subscribers.

And, before I leave the topic, I crave to say something…

The real business takes place inside the inbox.

Hope you understood what I meant.

Future of Online Marketing

It looks and feels very confusing when you and I think about the future of online marketing. Everyday is bringing new growth hacks, technologies, techniques, and methods to tweak for growing your business and brand.

After looking at various aspects and almost 30 years of sustainable development with online marketing, I strongly believe that it’s going to stay in the game.

Maybe, there could be shifts in the algorithms and culture, but it’s is the most effective form of marketing in history.

Also, online marketing is now about having multiple channels. I say this a lot. It’s only sustainable if you’re going omnichannel.

You should practice it if you’re not doing it and if you do it already, you’re quite well known with the power and potential of it.

If I were to speak in one sentence, then online marketing is the future of marketing.

Offline Marketing: Another Tier Of Digital Marketing

I apprehend you already know a lot about it.

You have experienced it yourself already.

Won’t waste any time…let’s drive in our old Mercedes-Benz to circle around offline digital marketing.

Defining Offline Digital Marketing

This form of digital marketing is also known as outdoor marketing or out of home marketing.

Although there are a few nuances between each of these terms, but they’re roughly referencing the same thing.

Here’s a definition again…

When the promotion of a business takes place without using the internet, but radio, digital billboards, cold calling, and networking that revolves around offline things instead, it is referred to as offline marketing.

It is something that we encounter every day.

Offline digital marketing is not dried up or dead. It is still something that a large number of businesses and brands use.

Our Mercedes is going really fast now. I’m so excited to drive deep into it.

Offline digital marketing is divided into 4 parts.

Billboards in Depth

As I’ve criticized billboards in the start, you know that I don’t really like the idea of billboard advertising much. [I’m not saying it’s not effective…but it doesn’t work that good for SMBs.]

Still, you should know at least something about it.

I don’t think there’s a need to define billboards.

There are two races of billboard advertising…

No. 1) Traditional Billboard Advertising

This form of advertising is done with the usage of traditional billboards. What I mean by the underlined term is…not using LED boards.

[Of course, it’s not a part of digital marketing but of billboards for sure. You’ll not get confused if you know the difference between traditional and digital billboards.]

No. 2) Electronic/ Digital Billboard Advertising

What’s different from traditional billboards in here?

Light Emitting Diode [LED].

In a cocoon, when advertising takes place with the cooperation of electronic or digital billboards instead of traditional ones, it is known as electronic billboard advertising or digital billboard advertising.

Is Billboard Advertising Worth It?

The working of billboard advertising really depends on the location and of course, how fancy your board is.

If you’re placing yours in the Times Square in New York where over 300,00 people jog every day, with an attracting piece, you will snatch it.

However, it can be very expensive to get on there.

A single one can cost you between $1M to $4M in a nice place like Times Square.

Yet, you won’t be sure about it to work.

It could be done wisely too. If it’s done wisely with a great layout, it can crack!

Here are some ad examples you can get for this.

Radio Marketing in Depth

Radio is not dead, my friend. It’s been over a hundred years and radio still kills it.

It’s still in the game.

There are some facts you need to know.

The world is surrounded by 44,000 radio stations at the present time.

More than 92% of the American aged 12 or more listen to radio every week.

75% of households in developing countries have access to radios.

Radio’s global market is worth over $40 billion per year. The United States contributes $21.81 billion out of that.

Whoa! You didn’t know all that before, right?

I think your perception of radio marketing is reconstructed. And, you know what? It should.

It’s worth doing radio advertising even now. The reason behind it is that voice will continue to grow up.

But wait, there are different types of radio advertising too! [3 types]

No. 1) Live Read

When an announcer reads a commercial on the spot, it is known as live read. You hear this every time you listen to the radio.

You know what?

This kind of advertisement is more productive when it is announced by a popular host because advertisers believe that a popular host’s voice tends to build more trust with the audience.

Funny enough!

No. 2) Sponsorship

Have you ever heard anything like this…

California’s [maybe any other place] traffic update brought to you by “X company’.

It is a sponsorship.

Whenever someone says ‘brought to you by…’ on the radio, it should click in your mind that this type of advertising is called sponsorship.

No. 3) Produced Spot

Unlike live read, this advertising involves an already produced piece of creation which is played out for the audience.

It could be a small song for your brand or any other piece of creative.

How To Stand Out With Radio Marketing?

The foremost thing is to be as creative as you can with your commercials.

The second thing you can do is…advertise either in the beginning of the shows or in the end of the shows or maybe both if possible.

The reason behind this is that the audience doesn’t get distracted from their entertainment and perceives the information about the product or service too.

But again, it’s all dependent on the creative you put out.

[TV] Television Marketing

The television industry is the best place to dump your money. Each year, hundreds of millions and billions are burned in TV advertising.

Today’s world has social media, search engines, re-marketing, re-targeting, and tracking. Why would you spend your money on something unspecific and irrelevant?

After the emergence of new trendy platforms, the value of TV commercials has touched the ground in the eyes of marketers.

Why would you watch MTV instead of pulling your phone out and enjoying music with Zayn on Youtube?

Heck yeah, you can leave your comment on there and share it with your friends as well.

All for free!

Unlike other digital marketing channels, it is extremely expensive!

The average cost placements for 30-second Super Bowl ads can go to a hike of $5.25 million.

That’s too much!

Hence, not only me but every marketer will advise you spending your money elsewhere that focuses on the future, rather than TV commercials.

Cell Phone Marketing

Cell phones are the mini kings now.

Everyone has one in their pocket which comes out over and over for notifications and updates.

Guess what?

If a person near to you is busy on his/her phone.

If so many people are attracted to it, why won’t you utilize them for your business?

There are two valid and working things you can do with phones…

• Cold Calling
• Texting

Cold Calling – It is an act of calling unknown people to close a deal or to sell something.

It’s not the best way to get sales but works good enough. Like, really good.

There’s nothing bad if you call 20 people and close 2 deals.

It’s at least better than zero.

Isn’t it?

You should have the charisma which is needed to do connect with people and then you raise funds each day.

Texting – Sending text messages to give offers, special deals, discounts, and coupons to people as a part of marketing to stimulate sales.

I know we still get these types of messages from brands like Amazon, Levis, and many others.

You know what?

A text message is a guaranteed read.

Thus, there are more than many chances to get customers via text messages using cell phones.

At last…

Phones will continue to kick it off, for sure.

Offline Digital Marketing Before 2023

Offline digital marketing rocked in the past. It was the only thing that people focused on to nurture their business models.

TV Marketing, Radio Marketing, Phone Marketing, and Billboards were a center of attraction for the people and they were impacted by the bits VERY MUCH.

Using the four major channels was the core for every service provider because of no other alternative and so was the limitation with the audience.

Hence, they both (audience and businesses) had to cooperate with each other naturally to make it work smoothly.

It even did pretty well.

Future Of Offline Digital Marketing

Online marketing has revolutionized the whole model of digital marketing this time.

That doesn’t mean offline marketing is going to die.

It still holds an important role in driving results as not everyone at every place and every time is using online stuff.

There’s a need for offline marketing too.

The reason is that – it’s more natural to people when something physical appears in front of them.

At least for now and a couple of more years it will be substantial for it can entrance potential customers. [But smartphones/text messages will play the game.]

Conclusion

As you’ve seen so far…digital marketing is not only limited to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and other online platforms. It is offline too. And, can be effective without the web as well.

The sheer of practicing digital marketing is really amazing and adventurous. The different complex looking terms like SEO, SEM, SMM, PPC, etc. are not actually that hard when you do it practically.

If you add up all these different things, so-called as the parts of digital marketing, you’ll definitely notice a vigorous spike in your graph.

Of course, the fast-moving online world will affect the offline world but it will take a shape and modernize itself by the time.

What will you try very firstly while getting started with digital marketing?

Is there something I missed in the guide?

If you have any problem or advice, feel free and share your knowledge below in the comments.

[FAQs] Frequently Asked Questions