Travel Agent Marketing Blueprint

Establishing the reason why your travel business 'should' exist is paramount in setting out a strategy. It's unfortunately not enough just to 'want to run a business' - in the same way as individuals have a 'hierarchy of needs' - so do businesses. Take a look at the infographic below and see how these apply to your business.

For new businesses owners will concentrate on the first two rungs of the pyramid. Typically investment in marketing will involve a website, social media accounts set up, email marketing software. See what Richard Branson has to say on social media at Virgin and The Four Seasons Hotels Group >> & here - why travel agents should use social media

For existing businesses - having built up a loyal clientele, they will create a strategy around the upper 3 tiers. 

In this first section of the Travel Agent Marketing Blueprint I expand upon the ways to 'Establish the Why?' It is tempting for established businesses to ignore this section, thinking that because they exist that is enough. It is today, but it won't be for tomorrow and in this highly competitive and disruptive world, it has never been more important to develop the answers to the 'Why? Question.

READING RESOURCES:

Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow >>

After fifteen years of rising to the pinnacle of the hospitality industry, Chip Conley's company was suddenly undercapitalised and overexposed in the post-dot.com, post-9/11 economy. For relief and inspiration, Conley, the CEO and founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, turned to psychologist Abraham Maslow's iconic Hierarchy of Needs. This book explores how Conley's company "the second largest boutique hotelier in the world" overcame the storm that hit the travel industry by applying Maslow's theory to what Conley identifies as the key Relationship Truths in business with Employees, Customers and Investors.

Part memoir, part theory, and part application, the book tells of Joie de Vivre's remarkable transformation while providing real world examples from other companies and showing how readers can bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. Conley explains how to understand the motivations of employees, customers, bosses, and investors, and use that understanding to foster better relationships and build an enduring and profitable corporate culture.

1. Establish your USP

Before starting any Marketing Strategy for your travel business it is absolutely imperative that you establish what your USP is ( Unique Selling Point). Many established businesses really struggle at this, seeing their competitors and saying 'we do the same, how are we different'. This can't be an excuse though as without a strategy you can't begin to decide on what content you produce, what keywords you focus on and ultimately what customers you attract to you business.

Answer the following headings to establish your 'reason for being' ( example answers in italics)

(a) Who are you?

We are a Travel business based in [County - Country]. The business started in [year] and is owned by [ shareholders] and exists for [ why do you exist]

(b) What do you Do?

What do you market? Market segments, holiday types, customer type etc.

(c) Your Vision

e.g. [to be the pre eminent travel agent in region [county] or selling [holiday type] to [customer type]

(d) Your Mission ( or your Purpose Statement - see this blog article on redefining Mission Statements ( http://www.net-effect.co.uk/what-is-your-purpose/ )

e.g. to grow your % share of the sector / grow revenues by [ x% each year], produce enough profit to support x charity etc.

(e) Your Strategy

To grow revenues to £x million by e.g. 2020 and have 75% of the business in high end bespoke holidays.

Do your set of goals for online marketing cover all the bases? A good set of digital marketing goals covers a range of different measures to help set, review and control performance across all digital marketing activities.

The 5Ss of digital marketing is a good, simple starting point to help check you're covering the whole of digital marketing, not just sales!

1. Sell - Grow Sales

Start with your most important transactions that lead to revenue and profit. That's sales, the leads that your online marketing will deliver which will convert through to sales of either holidays or travel products.

Set Quantitative marketing goals and track with analytics.

2. Speak

Digital channels are not only great sales channels, they excel as communications channels to engage your audience through the 6 main digital marketing tools.We recommend creating detailed conversion or budget models which allow you to set goals by channel for reaching and influencing your audience.

Since digital channels work best when joined with other channels, the goals here should also include online visits prompted by traditional offline media.

Consider the use of LiveChat on websites to increase opportunities to engage in a live way with potential customers

3. Service

The company website and social customer service are a natural place for customers to go to get their questions answers or to complain... Paying attention to the quality of service you offer is also key to support your capability to Sell, Speak, Save and Sizzle.

So you need customer satisfaction goals to assess how you good you are at customer service and then improve it further.

4. Save Costs

Less glamorous than the sizzle of building your brand and social media engagement, but you should show the value you gain through using online cost savings to reduce service costs and save on traditional media like print and post.

This is most relevant for a multichannel retailer or service company who can set goals for number of service transactions compared to other channels ( e.g. telephone calls) or products sold over the phone rather than instore

If you're fighting for budget for online channels, the savings you can demonstrate to your finance director or budget holder will improve help your cause.

5. Sizzle - Your Brand online

Putting the Sizzle into your digital marketing will really help your sales and speak goals, but it's not to easy to set goals for and then to track. So what is the "Sizzle in your Sausage"?

Sizzle is about building your brand online. Think about what makes for a positive online brand experience is for your audience and you.

If the experience you create is effective, the benefits of engaging with your digital presence will be clear; the interactions within the site and with other channels will be smooth and the visitor will want to use your online services again, and tell their friends and colleagues about it.

So key sizzle goals are levels of satisfaction and recommendations or advocacy. Brands investing heavily in community platforms and social media to deliver the sizzle include all the main larger tour operators but this can be applied equally effectively by regional agents and travel businesses!

There are many great examples of brands defining themselves online now and this sometimes becomes the key factor in selling their product or service. Sometimes a quirky video is what is needed to set you apart from the competition - see examples below and also : http://www.net-effect.co.uk/reverse-marketing-for-independent-travel-agents/

Integrated marketing is the way forward for all customer-centric travel businesses. The customer journey is more connected than ever and the customer experience regains its’ deserved status. 

The traditional integrated marketing view mainly looked at the integration of channels, tactics and the reinforcement of campaigns. However, the main reason why integrated marketing deserves more attention should not be about your campaigns and marketing efforts themselves in the first place. It’s not about you, it’s about the customer experience, the focal point of all optimisation efforts.

For travel businesses - the customer journey has become even more elongated than ever with rising choice online. See the graph below

The only way to ensure that you are visible throughout the cycle and therefore gain a chance of pitching for the holiday is to be consistent in your marketing communication.

The biorhythm shows that consistent communication throughout the life cycle of a consumer planning and research makes sure that you stay relevant to the consumer. Your email will land in the inbox with your ‘Call to Action’ at the right time, when the consumer is most open to purchasing a holiday.

This biorhythm set us off on a quest to develop The Travel Selling System – an automated sure fire way to make sure that you compete effectively for that holiday spend.

Read more at: http://www.net-effect.co.uk/the-biorhythm-of-customer-holiday-planning-and-buying/

What did Angela Ahrendts focus on for success at Burberry? It’s simple, positioning the brand and engaging with employees and customers alike and using technology to do so.

This video below is a must watch, in it the Burberry Chief talks about the importance of connecting with customers (for those of you that don’t know what Salesforce is, it is a CRM (customer relationship management platform) system. This is integrated marketing at its best.

We have some ahead of the curve agents who have recently upgraded their internal systems to include the latest CRM systems (that start from only £8/user/month) and we are happy to help anyone with this. We believe it is crucial to success. Read more here: http://www.net-effect.co.uk/how-does-the-burberry-story-affect-you-as-a-travel-agent/

Marketing is essentially getting someone that has a need to know, like and trust you. Of course then you must turn that know, like, and trust into try, buy, repeat and refer.

The entire practice of marketing summed up in seven little words that make up what John Jantsch calls The Marketing Hourglass.

The idea behind the hourglass is that you look at each of the seven stages and intentionally plan products, services, processes and touches that logically move prospects along to the point where they become customers and then receive such a remarkable customer experience they become repeat customers and referral advocates.

Duct Tape Marketing is a great blog and system to use when trying to remember the elements that make up customer acquisition and retention

Right at the top of the marketing funnel is where a customer gets to know you and you get to know them. 

The key element here is blog or website content created on a narrowly defined set of keyword phrases and topics. One of the best ways to become known is through organic search. This phase would also include advertising that draws awareness to other, more advanced forms of content such as eBooks and seminars.

In many businesses a referral introduction is the first exposure that someone gains to an organisation. This calls for content that is geared towards this type of exposure and specifically acknowledges your referral process.

External advertising, offline and online will bring potential customers to your site. They need to find 'relevant content' that leads them further down the funnel.

TASK:

• Build ( or work with specialist travel website companies ) a website with a set of tools that ensure that referrals and other new visitors to your site can find product and content that is relevant to their search. For travel agents this is ensuring that you showcase the breadth of product that you sell on your website ( you can do this by ensuring that your website has the relevant product feeds from tour operators that you work with). Ask yourself this question? How can a referral customer looking for Cruise content start a relationship with you ( i.e. - get to first base, that all important phone call) if you have not showcased on your site the types of Cruise that work with and sell?
• Customer Target: Define your preferred customer and make sure that your website speaks to this targeted customer. For existing broad sell travel agents this will mean that your website forgoes some of the enquiries that you might otherwise get as a high street or 'offline' agent. But defining who your target market is and then developing a web presence around this will mean that your future business builds the clientele you want, rather than the clientele who just happen to have found you.
• Produce a content creation and blogging plan that includes elements of social media marketing and email marketing to promote your content to new and existing customers

An eNewsletter can be a great content tool for nurturing during the like and trust building phases as it allows you to demonstrate expertise, knowledge, resources, and experience over time.

A series of blog posts around a specific topic turned into an eBook or email series is another great content play that helps tell your story.

Using your staff 'Fam' trips and turning the knowledge that they gain while away into great content onsite is a great way of building trust.

Tasks

(a) Produce a newsletter plan, for an e-newsletter this should be every 2 or 4 weeks and for offline printed newsletter a little less frequently depending on budget.

Use >> Net Effect LateCards printed newsletter function to produce limited print runs and distribute locally to dentists, cafes etc.  

(b) Produce seasonal newsletters when an event happens such as a Fam trip so that you have something new to tell your customers

(c) Create in store open evenings after FAM trips to introduce new customers to new destinations. 

Use: LateCards TV on in store computer terminals and TV screen during the event to showcase product from the destination / holiday type that you are holding the event for

Use: TravelmailPro iPad email address sign up during the event to sign customers and potential clients up to receiving emails about the destination that you are marketing

Use: TripQuote to follow up on potential quotes/enquiries received during the event

The world has changed. 10 years ago the default position was one of trust. It is now one of distrust and so a company wishing to lead nurture a new client MUST ensure that they generate trust.

Once you’ve gained attention you must move towards that all-important next step. Customers rarely commit to organisations unless they trust them.

Your customer generated videos, case studies and stories make great content here. Your SEO efforts (others trusting and linking to your content) and Social Media participation comes into play in the trust phase.

Getting your customers involved in the content creation game is an essential element and one that many are happy to be involved in.

The ability to tell why your organisation does what it does in stories that illustrate purpose in action is perhaps the key trust building content piece of the puzzle.

Task:

• Use your website as a central hub to engage with customers. Perhaps introduce a 'Forum' such as G Adventures do http://wateringhole.gadventures.com/ that creates not only great inbound SEO content but also builds expertise and trust. Forums are easy to add to websites and they offer an ability to start to engage with your potential clients
• Invest in acquiring 'testimonials' from clients through ensuring that you use 'Pre and Post Departure' automated emails ( see www.travelsellingsystem.co.uk) and even having these embedded on other websites such as http://www.trustedtravelagents.co.uk/ or Feefo

Try is a phase that many people skip, but it’s the easiest way to move people to buy, particularly in highly competitive and highly priced situations.

Many people miss this point but this is an audition and it’s where you need to deliver more than anyone could possibly consider doing for a free or low cost version of what you sell. This is one of the first places where you plant the seed for a referral as well as a sale.

By producing content in the try phase that clearly demonstrates how much better your paid product or service is than most, you can differentiate your business and create evangelists out of those that don’t ever buy.

How to content in the form of videos, workbooks, examples, cheat sheets and checklists – the kind of stuff your competitors are charging real money for – is the stuff that the try phase in built on.

Task: Develop a series of travel 'how to's', checklists for holidays such as this one or itineraries that showcase the depth of your knowledge to highlight how you are useful during the phase when a customer wants to know whether to trust you.

Write: Blogs are an excellent way to showcase your in depth knowledge of a destination. Try using applications (free) like Bon Journal and then link into your website. Bon Journal is an excellent blog platform to record those FAM trips while on the go and of course, act as inbound ( backlinks) links into your website

Use: Professional Trip Quotation Software

At the try phase in a travel marketing scenario you may well have received an enquiry about a particular product or offer that you were selling.

It is at this point that you need to demonstrate effectively that you are the person to buy from - this is the perfect opportunity for you to let the customer get to know you and let them understand what your proposition is and why they should revert to you to buy the holiday/trip. Unlike many products sold, a holiday is the most expensive annual purchase that many householders make and so this phase where you allow the customer to get to know you is arguably the one that many travel companies slip up on the most. It's cost you lots of money to get the customer to this point so don't let them slip through the net at this point. This is when it important to be able to prove to the customer your 'unique selling proposition' - the one you feel most confident will enable the customer to move to the next phase - the buy stage.

Rather than simply writing an email, or worse, writing a quote on a slip of paper and giving it to a potential customer without obtaining their contact details you should use a professional quote system such as TripQuote . This enables you to:

1. capture a new lead email address
2. Include your USP in the quote ( the 'why to book with us')
3. Interact with the customer through the next cycle, the booking phase, easily.

Content that converts consists of proof. You must be able to show real results, customer stories and clearly show your buyer you are the expert.

Many people miss the idea of content during just after the buy phase because the thinking is that the person has already made a decision and the product or service will speak for itself.

The total customer experience is measured by the end result, not the build up to the sale. In order to deliver a remarkable customer experience you’ve got to continue to educate with content.

Creating content that acts as a new customer kit or orientation to your business or product is the first step.

Task: Develop a Question and Answer section on your website to allow customers to ask questions and you to show answers that are searchable by future cusrtomers

Don’t wait for your customer to call you when they need something, stay top of mind through content that educates at a higher lever.

Use email and print to start to share how you build itineraries and holiday ideas for others. Create customer events that have a content sharing component.

Create a results review process where you help your client measure the results they are actually getting by working with your agency and use this process to capture content in the form of success stories.

Task: Use www.travelmailpro.co.uk to drip feed content to customers throughout the year. Set up mail alerts when a customer starts to enquire one year so that you can send reminder emails the next year

Use Review Software from Net Effect to encourage customers to give you an indication of their next holiday plans so that you can target them online with relevant information and product using LateCards email templates

Develop partnerships and joint ventures with partners to help promote and refer your company.

Work with a team of best of class providers (the folks that can help your clients get everything they need) and create a team blog. Create and acquire content that makes it easy for you to introduce your partners and gives them plenty of incentive to do likewise.

You don’t have to do all of your content creation from scratch either – there are many ways to effectively use other people’s content as part of the overall picture.

Content creation is the hardest job of a marketer these days but when you plan your content with your hourglass in mind it may well be the highest payoff work your can do.

Example: Travel with Jules - Leica Partnership >>

Deciding on your investment in what type of website you want is crucial. 

Over the last few years there has been a great concentration on bookable travel websites. Some OTA's do exceptionally well out of these ( onthebeach / loveholidays etc.) but a word of caution..... These big OTA's have massive budgets to build, maintain and promote their websites running into the hundreds of thousands and with an online bookable site you will be competing with them.

Our advice for anyone with less than a budget of £50k to spend building a site is to concentrate on content - by all means have live feeds of tour operator product and hotels, but don't make the 'investment' in online book ability. The current aggregators for dynamic product selling cannot provide the speed of results needed to keep a potential client on the site and when you are looking at stats of conversion of only 1.5% on visitors to your site that actually put something in the basket to buy, this is a tough game.

So we recommend that agents instead concentrate on getting product onto their sites, rather than the 'checkout' and building their content, as the next section prescribes.

For any travel company - content is King. But there is so much content that can be shown the task of keeping the detailed product content up to date is almost impossible without a full time team.

Travel Companies should use professional partners to help them at this stage. Professional travel web partners will already have the content and product feeds from tour operators, airlines and hotels that can feed directly into your site and as a starting point this is the very first stage to getting a professional travel agent site developed.

Detailed Content Pages

It is not possible for you to be a 'master of all trades' effectively online. By effectively I mean building a web presence that will allow you to be top of Google for anything from luxury holidays to camping holidays.

So you should design your online content marketing around subjects which you have first hand experience of giving the reader something else to read about than just standard content blurb.

Use: WordPress is the most flexible, user friendly platform for building websites. Around 25 - 30% of all global websites are now built using WordPress.

Net Effect - travel website providers build the majority of their solutions using WordPress, including their web solution that comes with holiday product built in.

Outside of your own website you will want to consider platforms such as Bon Journal, social media marketing ( Pinterest, Instagram) to build your content online.

LateCards: Use LateCards to manage multi distribution of holidays via:

• website
• social media channels
• in store TV
• store window posters
• email marketing
• printed newsletters

Blogging as a travel blogger ( e.g. - this example is a lovely travel blogger example) https://www.junglesinparis.com/stories/borneo-s-last-blowpipe-specialists) is an art form. The blogger sets out to showcase expertise and in this example this boutique travel journal, run by brothers Oliver and Darrell Hartman, uses beautiful photography and short film to tell inspiring stories of craftsmanship, tradition, and extreme natural environments.

But - it is not very commercial and if you are a commercial travel business you want to be able to blog effectively so that you drive more sakes to your door. By all means take lots of inspiration from the expert travel bloggers ( and even ask some to do guest posts for you), but work out how you can also monetise this whole activity ( there are only a certain number of hours in the day to run your business).

Blogging for Commercial Reasons....

Blogging is a relatively easy thing to do and WordPress is probably the World's default blogging platform ( and means you can have a commercial website with say Holiday Search and Live Offers on the same platform as your blog) and is an easy place to start).

For anyone serious about showing their expertise online in travel you absolutely must have a blog ( because how else will anyone know you are the expert?) NB: You don't need to have a blog as part of your main commercial travel site. Inbound marketing techniques allow you to easily use other Blog style apps if you feel these are easier ( e.g. BonJournal) to write your blogs

You need to plan your blogging activity and just as importantly organise your blogging so that any writing that you do is easily bookmarked for your users/readers to find. Like any good reference manual a blog needs to have sections so that readers can easily look into any section and find what they are looking for.

Sections/Categories

When publishing a blog use 'categories' to bookmark what your blog is about. Choosing your categories is the MOST important element of designing the structure of your blog. If you have not planned your structure then it will show through ( and make it difficult to navigate the blog for users) and just using categories such as 'Africa' 'food' 'safari' and other generic words, while they might describe the overall content of each blog post, are not much use to the reader ( have these as topics instead).

Of course there are plenty of great travel bloggers out there, but if you run a commercial operation and are building a brand, mixing the 'independent' nature of a blog ( blogs should never be out and out sales commercial adverts) with your commercial activity on your website is difficult.

WHO GETS IT RIGHT? 

As you would expect from one of the global leaders in travel, Abercrombie & Kent have nailed this recently and so are an excellent example to look at before you plan your blog.

Inside the Ampersand - So what does A&K get absolutely right ( apart from the excellent content)

THE CATEGORIES....

POPULAR TOPICS

SEARCH

In Conclusion

Don't copy A&K ( or anyone else for that matter) - But take inspiration. 

1. Know who your ideal client is and write for them. If you can't write consider note taking and hiring a writer from great online resources such as peopleperhour.com

2. Work out the categories that fit your business and best describe to your readers what content you have for them to read. Set your categories and make sure that you post your blogs to the right category.

3. Consider documenting all your FAM trips/Staff Trips in any media - BonJournal, Instagram, Pinterest and link to all these channels in your blog

4. Blog interesting stuff - post your blog on social media channels and email your database with the latest blog ( or round up if you blog more frequently than you email your database)

5. Ensure that there is a 'Subscribe to Blog' button so that you can keep readers automatically updated on new blogs

.... and enjoy building your subscriber list and future sales

By: Rand Fishkin

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

Content

It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.

NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007 (and updated again in 2012). This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

#1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord ( like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

#2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.

Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using aweb-based tool like Google's Display Planner:

Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, " SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2014, Google will see over 6 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:

sources: Comscore + Google

Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.

SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

• Blogger's Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
• The Beginner's Guide to SEO (from Moz)
• WordPress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
• SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog - from Moz)

Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

#4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

Twitter has 271 million active users every month. Facebook has over 1 billion active users. Google+ has over 300 million. LinkedIn is over 300 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.

Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

• If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following -Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages onFacebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
• Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services likeFollowerWonk and CircleCount can be incredible for this:

• Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
• Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

#5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.

Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:

As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).

Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

#6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr or Niice to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.

When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.

Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:

Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

#7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Planner.

Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the keyword filters, keyword options, and include/exclude features:

When you choose "exact match" AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."

I also use and recommend Keywordtool.io, which mines keywords from Google's Suggest function:

When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."

Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization.

#8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.

Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts (or, if they're using Moz, they might get Fresh Alerts 🙂 ) or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the Moz blog and the power continues to this day.

#9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month),StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry(knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).

Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.

These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subredditsand their search function can help with that.

#10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.

Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:

• Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
• Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
• When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
• Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasie to a skeptical writer.

Be aware that Google's recently cracked down on guest blog posts and guest blog tools that focus exclusively on attracting links. While links can be a nice byproduct of a relevant, useful, and high quality contribution to another site, it can look very fishy to Google if all your links are coming from guest contributions that appear to have little relevance and low quality. Moz's Jen Lopez wrote an excellent summation of the new rules for guest posting here.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and services like BuzzSumo or Fresh Web Explorer are also solid tools for discovery.

#11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.

These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration

If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:

• Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
• Forrst - another excellent design profile community
• Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
• Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
• 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)

This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

#12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.

Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly FWE) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.

Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

#13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers,Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.

The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:

• The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
• The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
• The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by

I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!

Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, Ianswer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

#14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.

In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).

If you're using WordPress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.

Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

#15 - Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.

I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).

The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

#17 - Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.

You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.

If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:

That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. 🙂

Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.

Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.

Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.

If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.

I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into WordPress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

#21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.

OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

There are other good tools for link research as well, including Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.

Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.

I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.

When I started the Moz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.

Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!

Feel free to copy and re-post this content or the graphics, but please do link back (or reference Moz if using the images offline). Thanks!

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Learn More About Moz Content

If you know anything about SEO, you know that Google values fresh content. Fresh content is a significant factor in positively influencing ratings. The logic here is that the more frequently you update your site, the more frequently Googlebot (Google’s crawling bot) visits your site.

In turn, this gives you the opportunity to achieve better rankings.

Although you can update your site in several different ways (not to mention all the different types of content you can create), writing new blog posts tends to be the simplest way to generate fresh content.

So let’s go back to my question: why do I keep blogging? Why are you blogging? Should you quit? Should I quit? Are there better ways to do marketing, gain traffic, and grow conversions?

Is blogging truly all it’s cracked up to be? More specifically, just how big of an impact does it have on SEO?

Some key stats

First, here are just a few statistics from Kapost to put blogging in perspective:

• Brands that create 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month.
• Blogs give websites 434 percent more indexed pages and 97 percent more indexed links.
• Blogs on company sites result in 55 percent more visitors.
• B2B companies that blog generate 67 percent more leads per month than those that do not blog.

These are some legit numbers. They show just how monumental of an impact blogging can have.

But what would happen if you stopped blogging?

You pull the plug. You quit. You’re done. No more publishing.

What would happen?

Would it have any catastrophic consequences, or would it merely be a mild impediment?

Let’s take a look at a study that put this to the test.

251 days of no blogging

WordPress developer/social media manager/SEO expert Robert Ryan conducted a simple yet enlightening experiment.

In 2015, he refrained from posting any new content on his blog for 251 days. That’s eight months and seven days.

Here are some of his key findings:

• Overall traffic to the site saw a major decline as it fell by 32 percent.
• Organic traffic dropped by a massive 42 percent.
• Traffic to the contact page was down by 15 percent.
• Overall site conversions fell by 28 percent.

What can we take away from these stats?

Blogging affects overall traffic

When Ryan quit blogging, his traffic rapidly fell by 32%.

The fact that Ryan’s overall traffic dropped by nearly a third during this time is tangible evidence that there’s a correlation between your blog output and your overall traffic volume.

Quite frankly, I find it a bit alarming to see such a dramatic drop just because of not blogging.

Of course, we should keep in mind that his experiment lasted for over eight months.

If you stopped blogging for only a month or two, the consequences probably wouldn’t be this extreme.

However, it still wouldn’t do you any favors.

This brings up a good point. What if your business runs into trouble, you get sick, or something else happens that prevents you from blogging for a time?

I suggest having a backlog of articles to publish at all times. I like to have several posts scheduled ahead of time. If something unexpected comes up, at least I know my posts will go live according to the schedule.

Organic traffic can take a massive hit

A 42 percent drop in organic traffic is colossal.

For some businesses, that kind of drop could make the difference between making money andlosing money.

An organic traffic loss of that magnitude is similar to receiving an algorithmic penalty.

Most websites earn most of their traffic organically.

If you’re in the “business services” industry, you earn a disproportionate amount of organic traffic.

Where does all this organic traffic come from?

It comes from content. More specifically, it comes from blogging.

Organic traffic is nothing to wink at. This is the lifeline of your business. This is your audience.

It’s hard to dispute that Google does indeed show preference to sites with consistently fresh content.

As Moz explains,

“Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.”

It’s all theoretical, of course. No one knows exactly how Google’s algorithm works.

But we can’t dispute the fact that quitting a blog leads to an organic traffic nosedive.

By having a dynamic site (publishing content) as opposed to a static one (not publishing new content), you provide Google with new content to crawl and index. In turn, this keeps you on Google’s radar in a positive way.

You also have to consider the fact that each new blog post presents an opportunity to generate more backlinks and rank for additional keywords.

I imagine that you want to see an uptick in traffic like this:

The fact is, you can’t get traffic like that unless you blog like you mean it.

When you stop blogging for an extended period of time, your stream of organic traffic can dry up, which can obviously have some undesirable consequences.

More blogging equals more leads

The stat from Kapost, stating that brands with 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 new leads per month, and Ryan’s stat—stating that traffic to his contact page fell by 15 percent—show us just how intertwined blogging and lead generation really are.

This makes sense when you think about it.

No blogging means much less organic and overall traffic. In turn, fewer visitors are landing on your website, which means fewer leads.

Blogging, quite obviously, leads to more leads.

Notice this data from MarketingCharts.com. Their data shows that a higher blogging frequency is positively correlated with higher customer acquisition rates.

Quitting blogging is a conversion killer

The final and perhaps most alarming of Ryan’s findings was the drop in overall site conversions (28 percent).

I can connect the dots to see how this could happen.

Few people blog just for the heck of it. We blog because it makes a significant difference.

We blog because it builds conversions.

But how does this work? How is blogging so inextricably linked to conversions?

From my experience, I’ve found blogging to be an incredibly effective way to build rapport with my audience and get them comfortable with the idea of buying.

For example, before a prospect would want to go ahead and purchase Crazy Egg, there’s a good chance that they would first want to explore “The Daily Egg,” which is the accompanying blog.

I don’t sell anything on that blog. I just provide value, value, value.

In fact, two stats from Aabaco found that “60 percent of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content on its site.”

It’s about fostering positive feelings, as vague as that sounds.

Furthermore, “78 percent of consumers believe that companies behind content are interested in building good relationships.”

Good relationships are built one blog post at a time.

Basically, blogging builds trust.

If you blog the right way, you can demonstrate transparency.

Transparency, in turn, creates trust.

There’s no secret here. If you want to truly influence purchases (conversions), you should be blogging.

Customers look to content to grow and sustain positivity and goodwill towards the brand.

This positivity and goodwill influences conversions. You’ll earn more conversions because you are blogging. It’s that simple.

I would also make the point that stopping blogging out of the blue can make you look a little flaky in the eyes of customers. Some may even wonder if you’re still in business.

No one wants to do business with a place that seems quiet and untended. You might still be in business, but if your blog isn’t buzzing with new content and activity, users might get the idea that you’re not around to serve them.

This will kill your conversions.

For these reasons, you can see how a lack of blogging can slowly trickle down to hurt conversions and eventually result in a considerable decline in customers.

Jeff Bullas provides an excellent explanation of how blogging builds credibility in this infographic:

These aren’t just random stats. These are concrete data-driven signals that your blog builds your credibility.

And your credibility as a business influences whether or not people will buy from you.

The takeaway

While I can’t say for sure that you would experience the same level of backlash that Ryan did, it’s fair to say that quitting blogging for an extended period of time isn’t going to help you.

Even going a single month without an update could throw a wrench in your SEO.

For this reason, I can’t stress enough just how important it is to be consistent with publishing blogs.

Everyone has their own opinion on what the bare minimum is, but most bloggers would agree that you should strive for at least one per week.

But to determine the ideal frequency, I would suggest checking out this post I wrote about determining how often you need to blog.

A blog such as the Huffington Post (yes, it’s a blog) publishes an article a minute. They can do that because they have a ton of semi-free and syndicated content being pushed out.

If you’re Forbes, you might publish more than 1,000 articles a month.

Obviously, you won’t be able to keep pace with Forbes or Huffpo, especially if you’re blogging for your personal brand.

Instead, you should focus on consistency. As this article shows, when you quit blogging, your traffic and conversions tank.

If you stay consistent, you’ll win.

Conclusion

Blogging accomplishes much more than simply demonstrating your expertise and building trust.

It plays a major role in SEO, and the frequency of your blogging can determine how much traffic you bring in, how many leads you generate, and ultimately how many conversions you make.

If you want to win at the game of online marketing, you’ve got to be publishing content.

And you can’t stop.

Internet marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. As a ten-year veteran of this sprint, I can attest to the fact that it gets ugly and tiring, and there are times when you want to quit.

But I can also attest to the fact that your hard work pays off.

Sure, at times you might feel like you’re banging your head against a wall, but all that work is doing something. It’s growing your audience. It’s building trust. It’s pushing up conversions bit by bit, day by day, month by month.

Don’t quit.

Within WordPress, there are a bunch of tools to use.

Templates within WordPress: 

For more flexible pages recommend using Instapage to design and launch landing pages. Instapage integrates with WordPress websites ( so the pages appear as your own on your website) and also many email marketing programmes

There are a bunch of other tools out there including KickOffLabs and Unbounce - both of which are excellent solutions.

If you want to read around which software is best to use trying using Quora to ask the question of other web experts, or try finding the question already in Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-alternatives-to-Unbounce-ideally-less-expensive

Taking content distribution to the next level is not covered here but in addition to natural search lots of companies use Google Adwords to drive users to landing pages or services such as http://www.outbrain.com

LateCards: Use LateCards to manage multi distribution of holidays via:

• website
• social media channels
• in store TV
• store window posters
• email marketing
• printed newsletters

Getting social media marketing right is time consuming. But it is one of the most important elements to help build your presence and personality online.

Use:

Facebook/Twitter - as news feeds for customers

Pinterest/Instagram - as content platforms to refer your users to, and use as inbound marketing funnels to your business as people follow/pin/repin etc. on these social channels

Bufferapp to manage your social accounts and posting

Building your 'potential client' list is the goal with any content marketing. Once you have managed to obtain an email address you need to make sure that you keep communicating. Buying a holiday can sometimes take weeks ( in the case of honeymoon nurturing this can be months). Online users are very forgetful so email newsletters with relevant content is one of the most effective ways of nurturing and keeping in touch.

Email Newsletters:

www.travelmailpro.co.uk

www.mailchimp.com

Email Templates: from LateCards

Printed Newsletters

Small Print newsletters for local distribution: LateCards Printed Newsletters

All Travel businesses have relationships with 3rd parties. For Travel Agents these are usually the Tour Operators that they work with that have bigger 'brand names' than the agent.

Agents should use these relationships openly and in doing so, will increase the level of trust that potential new clients will put in them.

ACTION POINTS

1. Devise a 12 month marketing plan that includes joint promotions with preferred operators

2. Write to and meet up with Operators to discuss the operator marketing plan and dovetail this in with your own

3. Consider monthly promotions focussing on one operator or destination

4. Run offline and online marketing. Operators very often have printed publications that can be 'overbranded' with the agent details that can be sent out and dovetailed into any online marketing

Use the example email template below to approach Operators and set up a meeting to uncover some 'marketing funds' that they would be happy to help you with

EXAMPLE EMAIL TO OPERATOR TO START THE PROCESS OF WORKING TOGETHER

Dear [operator]

We are developing our online and offline sales promotion plan for the upcoming months and wish to develop closer ties to you and expand on our relationship with [Operator Name] when talking with customers. We have recently overhauled our marketing and are developing an 'integrated' marketing plan, that funnels customers whether online or offline, down a sales/marketing track to ensure that we maximise any opportunities we have to sell your product. 

We use 'LateCards' to manage our online marketing distribution and are developing a monthly targetted marketing action that includes:

1. Offline - targetted direct mail ( including Operator only offers and product that links with offers promoted online)

2. Online - email database promotion - linking to your product and offers

3. On WebSite - pop ups and calls to action together with operator only individual landing pages

4. On Site - some client evenings (not every month)

We very much wish to include you in these monthly marketing actions. In many cases we will only promote one operator per month, but if required, we would look to promote two non competing operators. 

We have worked in the past with Operators who have provided us with printed material to send out ( or have sent out for us) and we would like to extend this so that we have a 'seamless marketing strategy' for both offline and online promotion, using our website as an enquiry 'hub' for all enquiries, whether initiated online or offline.

In the first instance I think it would be a good idea if we could meet to discuss any help that you could give us in promoting your products to our database.

I'll call you in a couple of days to arrange a date to meet.

Kind Regards

GOOGLE ADWORDS - the definitive online advert medium

WWW.OUTBRAIN.COM - for content marketing

LATECARDS: Work with external websites ( such as newspapers) to embed LateCards offers with your offers on external sites

If you need convincing on why to use email marketing take a read of this: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/email-crushes-social-media/

You will need to choose your provider from the many available, take a look at these two for starters:

www.travelmailpro.co.uk

www.mailchimp.com

Email Templates: from LateCards

Quote Stage

In travel the first call to action is when a potential customer asks for a quote. This is when the agent should use professional quote software such as www.tripquote.co.uk enabling the agent to send professional quotes, trackable  and including your USP to give your quote the very best chance of converting.

For High Street Agents, introducing the use of TripQuote also ensures that any new enquiries are recorded and their important email address is recorded and entered onto the correct list for email marketing nurturing.

Ten years ago the default position for most people was one of trust. In the last 10 years that has reversed so that without either a referral, testimonials or other reviews of a product or service it becomes increasingly difficult to attract new customers.

In short - people expect to see reviews.

There are a number of review systems available. For Travel Agents I recommend www.travelsellingsystem.co.uk or Feefo but depending on your budget you can achieve some success just using email marketing and then uploading testimonials to your website. This is easy of you have access to the CMS such as with WordPress.

Having reviews on 3rd party sites is a very strong call to action for customers. For instance - see how much more weight is assumed from a 3rd party site review like this one on Trusted Travel Agents than just on your own site.

Net Effect are your online travel partners. We provide both software applications as detailed in this blueprint and services as detailed. Depending on resources travel companies tend to use us to help them develop their strategy and then work alongside their existing in house marketing resource. The online world is changing rapidly and it is difficult for smaller business to recruit and retain the right level of expertise for online channels.

SOFTWARE

• Website design and development
• Product promotion with latecards multi channel distribution
• TripQuote - Professional travel quote software
• email marketing - www.travelmailpro.co.uk
• Pre and Post Departure emails - www.travelsellingsystem.co.uk

SERVICES

• email newsletter writing and management
• blog writing and management
• website content strategy and writing
• Google SEO management
• Google Adwords Management
• Social Media Management

We recommend that travel agents complete a full review of the strategic direction and targets are set prior to developing any content and email marketing strategy. It is important that any offline marketing is dovetailed into online marketing.

Net Effect can provide an overview strategic review programme to detail out the tactics and plans required for any travel business ( and these tactical plans can be performed in house or again outsourced to Net Effect if no resource available). Please enquire here if you would like a quote for this.

This section will help you navigate your way through starting with Search Engine Optimisation ( SEO) on your site. Reading this introduction to SEO for Travel Agents is a good place to start if you are new to SEO and any of the Matt Cutts Videos below - click on the Youtube link for the full playlist. 

It goes without saying that in order to get the best from SEO you need to create unique content that fits your business/marketing plan.

MOZ.com is an expert in SEO - read their beginners guide here: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

or here as a PDF

Google uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm…some are proven, some are controversial. Others are SEO nerd speculation!

But they’re all here.

Domain Factors

1. Domain Age: The Video Below, Matt Cutts states that:

In other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not very important.

2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: Doesn’t give the boost that it used to, but having your keyword in the domain still acts as a relevancy signal. After all, they still bold keywords that appear in a domain name.

3. Keyword As First Word in Domain: A domain that starts with their target keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have the keyword in their domain or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain.

4. Domain registration length: 

5. Keyword in Subdomain Name: Moz’s 2011 panel agreed that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings:

6. Domain History: A site with volatile ownership (via whois) or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain.

7. Exact Match Domain: EMDs may still give you an edge…if it’s a quality site. But if the EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update:

8. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Private WhoIs information may be a sign of “something to hide”. Matt Cutts is quoted as stating at Pubcon 2006:

9. Penalized WhoIs Owner: If Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.

10. Country TLD extension: Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) helps the site rank for that particular country…but limits the site’s ability to rank globally.

Page-Level Factors

11. Keyword in Title Tag: The title tag is a webpage’s second most important piece of content (besides the content of the page) and therefore sends a strong on-page SEO signal.

12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to Moz data, title tags that starts with a keyword tend to perform better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag:

13. Keyword in Description Tag: Another relevancy signal. Not especially important now, but still makes a difference.

14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag” that sends another relevancy signal to Google, according to results from this correlation study:

15. Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document: Having a keyword appear more than any other likely acts as a relevancy signal.

16. Content Length:  Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferred to shorter superficial articles. SERPIQ found that content length correlated with SERP position:

17. Keyword Density: Although not as important as it once was, keyword density is still something Google uses to determine the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you.

18. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words with more than one meaning (Apple the computer company vs. the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI probably also acts as a content quality signal.

19. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help Google discern between synonyms. May also act as a relevancy signal.

20. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on a page’s code and filesize.

21. Duplicate Content: Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.

22. Rel=Canonical: When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from considering pages duplicate content.

23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome: Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time as this takes into account server speed, CDN usage and other non HTML-related site speed signals.

24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption.

25. Recency of Content Updates: Google Caffeine update favors recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date of a page’s last update for certain pages:

26. Magnitude of Content Updates: The significance of edits and changes is also a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is a more significant update than switching around the order of a few words.

27. Historical Updates Page Updates: How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5-years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.

28. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100-words of a page’s content appears to be a significant relevancy signal.

29. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags: Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal. Moz’s panel agrees:

30. Keyword Word Order: An exact match of a searcher’s keyword in a page’s content will generally rank better than the same keyword phrase in a different order. For example: consider a search for: “cat shaving techniques”. A page optimized for the phrase “cat shaving techniques” will rank better than a page optimized for “techniques for shaving a cat”. This is a good illustration of why keyword research is really, reallyimportant.

31. Outbound Link Quality: Many SEOs think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google.

32. Outbound Link Theme: According to Moz, search engines may use the content of the pages you link to as a relevancy signal. For example, if you have a page about cars that links to movie-related pages, this may tell Google that your page is about the movie Cars, not the automobile.

33. Grammar and Spelling: Proper grammar and spelling  is a quality signal, although Cutts gave mixed messages in 2011 on whether or not this was important.

34. Syndicated Content: Is the content on the page original? If it’s scraped or copied from an indexed page it won’t rank as well as the original or end up in their Supplemental Index.

35. Helpful Supplementary Content: According to a now-public Google Rater Guidelines Document, helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality (and therefore, Google ranking). Examples include currency converters, loan interest calculators and interactive recipes.

36. Number of Outbound Links: Too many dofollow OBLs may “leak” PageRank, which can hurt that page’s rankings.

37. Multimedia: Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal.

38. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page: The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.

39. Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page: Internal links from authoritative pages on domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PR.

40. Broken Links: Having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links as one was to assess a homepage’s quality.

41. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats:

But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles.

42. Affiliate Links: Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to other quality signals to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site”.

43. HTML errors/W3C validation: Lots of HTML errors or sloppy coding may be a sign of a poor quality site. While controversial, many in SEO think that WC3 validation is a weak quality signal.

44. Page Host’s Domain Authority: All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.

45. Page’s PageRank: Not perfectly correlated. But in general higher PR pages tend to rank better than low PR pages.

46. URL Length: Search Engine Journal notes that excessively long URLs may hurt search visibility.

47. URL Path: A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost.

48. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patentfor a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.

49. Page Category: The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category should get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s filed under an unrelated or less related category.

50. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal.  According to Yoast.com:

51. Keyword in URL: Another important relevancy signal.

52. URL String:  The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about:

53. References and Sources: Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal.

54. Bullets and Numbered Lists: Bullets and numbered lists help break up your content for readers, making them more user friendly. Google likely agrees and may prefer content with bullets and numbers.

55. Priority of Page in Sitemap: The priority a page is given via the sitemap.xml file may influence ranking.

56. Too Many Outbound Links: Straight from the aforementioned Quality rater document:

57. Quantity of Other Keywords Page Ranks For: If the page ranks for several other keywords it may give Google an internal sign of quality.

58. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.

59. User Friendly Layout: Citing the Google Quality Guidelines Document yet again:

60. Parked Domains: A Google update in December of 2011 decreased search visibility of parked domains.

61. Useful Content:  As pointed out by Backlinko reader Jared Carrizales, Google may distinguish between “quality” and “useful” content.

Site-Level Factors

62. Content Provides Value and Unique Insights: Google has stated that they’re on the hunt for sites that don’t bring anything new or useful to the table, especially thin affiliate sites.

63. Contact Us Page: The aforementioned Google Quality Document states that they prefer sites with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. Supposed bonus if your contact information matches your whois info.

64. Domain Trust/TrustRank: Site trust — measured by how many links away your site is from highly-trusted seed sites — is a massively important ranking factor. You can read more about TrustRank here.

65. Site Architecture: A well put-together site architecture (especially a silo structure) helps Google thematically organize your content.

66. Site Updates: How often a site is updated — and especially when new content is added to the site — is a site-wide freshness factor.

67. Number of Pages: The number of pages a site has is a weak sign of authority. At the very least a large site helps distinguish it from thin affiliate sites.

68. Presence of Sitemap: A sitemap helps search engines index your pages easier and more thoroughly, improving visibility.

69. Site Uptime: Lots of downtime from site maintenance or server issues may hurt your ranking (and can even result in deindexing if not corrected).

70. Server Location: Server location may influence where your site ranks in different geographical regions. Especially important for geo-specific searches.

71. SSL Certificate:  Google has confirmed that they index SSL certificates and that they use HTTPS as a ranking signal.

72. Terms of Service and Privacy Pages: These two pages help tell Google that a site is a trustworthy member of the internet.

73. Duplicate Meta Information On-Site: Duplicate meta information across your site may bring down all of your page’s visibility.

74. Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a style of user-friendly site-architecture that helps users (and search engines) know where they are on a site:

Both SearchEngineJournal.com and Ethical SEO Consulting claim that this set-up may be a ranking factor.

75. Mobile Optimized: Google’s official stance on mobile is to create a responsive site. It’s likely that responsive sites get an edge in searches from a mobile device. In fact, they now add “Mobile friendly” tags to sites that display well on mobile devices. Google also started penalizing sites in Mobile search that aren’t mobile friendly

76. YouTube: There’s no doubt that YouTube videos are given preferential treatment in the SERPs (probably because Google owns it ):

In fact, Search Engine Land found that YouTube.com traffic increased significantly after Google Panda.

77. Site Usability: A site that’s difficult to use or to navigate can hurt ranking by reducing time on site, pages viewed and bounce rate. This may be an independent algorithmic factor gleaned from massive amounts of user data.

78. Use of Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools: Some think that having these two programs installed on your site can improve your page’s indexing. They may also directly influence rank by giving Google more data to work with (ie. more accurate bounce rate, whether or not you get referral traffic from your backlinks etc.).

79. User reviews/Site reputation: A site’s on review sites like Yelp.com and RipOffReport.com likely play an important role in the algorithm. Google even posted a rarely candid outline of their approach to user reviews after an eyeglass site was caught ripping off customers in an effort to get backlinks.

Backlink Factors

80. Linking Domain Age: Backlinks from aged domains may be more powerful than new domains.

81. # of Linking Root Domains: The number of referring domains is one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, as you can see from this chart from Moz (bottom axis is SERP position):

82. # of Links from Separate C-Class IPs: Links from separate class-c IP addresses suggest a wider breadth of sites linking to you.

83. # of Linking Pages: The total number of linking pages — even if some are on the same domain — is a ranking factor.

84. Alt Tag (for Image Links): Alt text is an image’s version of anchor text.

85. Links from .edu or .gov Domains: Matt Cutts has stated that TLD doesn’t factor into a site’s importance. However, that doesn’t stop SEOs from thinking that there’s a special place in the algo for .gov and .edu TLDs.

86. Authority of Linking Page: The authority (PageRank) of the referring page is an extremely important ranking factor.

87. Authority of Linking Domain: The referring domain’s authority may play an independent role in a link’s importance (ie. a PR2 page link from a site with a homepage PR3  may be worth less than a PR2 page link from PR8 Yale.edu).

88. Links From Competitors: Links from other pages ranking in the same SERP may be more valuable for a page’s rank for that particular keyword.

89. Social Shares of Referring Page: The amount of page-level social shares may influence the link’s value.

90. Links from Bad Neighborhoods: Links from “bad neighborhoods”may hurt your site.

91. Guest Posts: Although guest posting can be part of a white hat SEO campaign, links coming from guest posts — especially in an author bio area — may not be as valuable as a contextual link on the same page.

92. Links to Homepage Domain that Page Sits On: Links to a referring page’s homepage may play special importance in evaluating a site’s — and therefore a link’s — weight.

93. Nofollow Links: One of the most controversial topics in SEO.Google’s official word on the matter is:

Which suggests that they do…at least in certain cases. Having a certain % of nofollow links may also indicate a natural vs. unnatural link profile.

94. Diversity of Link Types: Having an unnaturally large percentage of your links come from a single source (ie. forum profiles, blog comments) may be a sign of webspam. On the other hand, links from diverse sources is a sign of a natural link profile.

95. “Sponsored Links” Or Other Words Around Link: Words like “sponsors”, “link partners” and “sponsored links” may decrease a link’s value.

96. Contextual Links: Links embedded inside a page’s content are considered more powerful than links on an empty page or found elsewhere on the page.

A good example of contextual links are backlinks from guestographics.

97. Excessive 301 Redirects to Page: Links coming from 301 redirects dilute some (or even all) PR, according to a Webmaster Help Video.

98. Backlink Anchor Text: As noted in this description of Google’s original algorithm:

Obviously, anchor text is less important than before (and likely a webspam signal). But it still sends a strong relevancy signal in small doses.

99. Internal Link Anchor Text: Internal link anchor text is another relevancy signal, although probably weighed differently than backlink anchor text.

100. Link Title Attribution: The link title (the text that appears when you hover over a link) is also used as a weak relevancy signals.

101. Country TLD of Referring Domain: Getting links from country-specific top level domain extensions (.de, .cn, .co.uk) may help you rank better in that country.

102. Link Location In Content: Links in the beginning of a piece of content carry slightly more weight than links placed at the end of the content.

103. Link Location on Page: Where a link appears on a page is important. Generally, links embedded in a page’s content are more powerful than links in the footer or sidebar area.

104. Linking Domain Relevancy: A link from site in a similar niche is significantly more powerful than a link from a completely unrelated site. That’s why any effective SEO strategy today focuses on obtainingrelevant links.

105. Page Level Relevancy:  The Hilltop Algorithm states that link from a page that’s closely tied to page’s content is more powerful than a link from an unrelated page.

106. Text Around Link Sentiment: Google has probably figured outwhether or not a link to your site is a recommendation or part of a negative review. Links with positive sentiments around them likely carry more weight.

107. Keyword in Title: Google gives extra love to links on pages that contain your page’s keyword in the title (“Experts linking to experts”.)

108. Positive Link Velocity: A site with positive link velocity usually gets a SERP boost.

109. Negative Link Velocity: Negative link velocity can significantly reduce rankings as it’s a signal of decreasing popularity.

110. Links from “Hub” Pages: Aaron Wall claims that getting links from pages that are considered top resources (or hubs) on a certain topic are given special treatment.

111. Link from Authority Sites: A link from a site considered an “authority site” likely pass more juice than a link from a small, microniche site.

112. Linked to as Wikipedia Source: Although the links are nofollow, many think that getting a link from Wikipedia gives you a little added trust and authority in the eyes of search engines.

113. Co-Occurrences: The words that tend to appear around your backlinks helps tell Google what that page is about.

114. Backlink Age: According to a Google patent, older links have more ranking power than newly minted backlinks.

115. Links from Real Sites vs. Splogs: Due to the proliferation of blog networks, Google probably gives more weight to links coming from “real sites” than from fake blogs. They likely use brand and user-interaction signals to distinguish between the two.

116. Natural Link Profile: A site with a “natural” link profile is going to rank highly and be more durable to updates.

117. Reciprocal Links: Google’s Link Schemes page lists “Excessive link exchanging” as a link scheme to avoid.

118. User Generated Content Links: Google is able to identify links generated from UGC vs. the actual site owner. For example, they know that a link from the official WordPress.com blog at en.blog.wordpress.com is very different than a link from besttoasterreviews.wordpress.com.

119. Links from 301: Links from 301 redirects may lose a little bit of juice compared to a direct link. However, Matt Cutts says that a 301 is similar to a direct link.

120. Schema.org Microformats: Pages that support microformats may rank above pages without it. This may be a direct boost or the fact that pages with microformatting have a higher SERP CTR:

121. DMOZ Listed: Many believe that Google gives DMOZ listed sites a little extra trust.

122. TrustRank of Linking Site: The trustworthiness of the site linking to you determines how much “TrustRank” gets passed onto you.

123. Number of Outbound Links on Page: PageRank is finite. A link on a page with hundreds of OBLs passes less PR than a page with only a few OBLs.

124. Forum Profile Links: Because of industrial-level spamming, Google may significantly devalue links from forum profiles.

125. Word Count of Linking Content: A link from a 1000-word post is more valuable than a link inside of  a 25-word snippet.

126. Quality of Linking Content: Links from poorly written or spun content don’t pass as much value as links from well-written, multimedia-enhanced content.

127. Sitewide Links: Matt Cutts has confirmed that sitewide links are “compressed” to count as a single link.

User Interaction

128. Organic Click Through Rate for a Keyword: Pages that get clicked more in CTR may get a SERP boost for that particular keyword.

129. Organic CTR for All Keywords: A page’s (or site’s) organic CTR for all keywords is ranks for may be a human-based, user interaction signal.

130. Bounce Rate: Not everyone in SEO agrees bounce rate matters, but it may be a way of Google to use their users as quality testers (pages where people quickly bounce is probably not very good).

131. Direct Traffic: It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine whether or not people visit a site (and how often). Sites with lots of direct traffic are likely higher quality than sites that get very little direct traffic.

132. Repeat Traffic: They may also look at whether or not users go back to a page or site after visiting. Sites with repeat visitors may get a Google ranking boost.

133. Blocked Sites: Google has discontinued this feature in Chrome. However, Panda used this feature as a quality signal.

134. Chrome Bookmarks: We know that Google collects Chrome browser usage data. Pages that get bookmarked in Chrome might get a boost.

135. Google Toolbar Data: Search Engine Watch’s Danny Goodwin reports that Google uses toolbar data as a ranking signal. However, besides page loading speed and malware, it’s not known what kind of data they glean from the toolbar.

136. Number of Comments: Pages with lots of comments may be a signal of user-interaction and quality.

137. Dwell Time: Google pays very close attention to “dwell time”: how long people spend on your page when coming from a Google search. This is also sometimes referred to as “long clicks vs short clicks”. If people spend a lot of time on your site, that may be used as a quality signal.

Special Algorithm Rules

138. Query Deserves Freshness: Google gives newer pages a boost for certain searches.

139. Query Deserves Diversity: Google may add diversity to a SERP for ambiguous keywords, such as “Ted”, “WWF” or “ruby”.

140. User Browsing History: Sites that you frequently visit while signed into Google get a SERP bump for your searches.

141. User Search History: Search chain influence search results for later searches. For example, if you search for “reviews” then search for “toasters”, Google is more likely to show toaster review sites higher in the SERPs.

142. Geo Targeting: Google gives preference to sites with a local server IP and country-specific domain name extension.

143. Safe Search: Search results with curse words or adult content won’t appear for people with Safe Search turned on.

144. Google+ Circles: Google shows higher results for authors and sites that you’ve added to your Google Plus Circles

145. DMCA Complaints: Google “downranks” pages with DMCA complaints.

146. Domain Diversity: The so-called “Bigfoot Update” supposedly added more domains to each SERP page.

147. Transactional Searches: Google sometimes displays different results for shopping-related keywords, like flight searches.

148. Local Searches: Google often places Google+ Local results above the “normal” organic SERPs.

149. Google News Box: Certain keywords trigger a Google News box:

150. Big Brand Preference: After the Vince Update, Google began giving big brands a boost for certain short-tail searches.

151. Shopping Results: Google sometimes displays Google Shopping results in organic SERPs:

152. Image Results: Google elbows our organic listings for image results for searches commonly used on Google Image Search.

153. Easter Egg Results: Google has a dozen or so Easter Egg results. For example, when you search for “Atari Breakout” in Google image search, the search results turn into a playable game (!).  Shout out to Victor Panfor this one.

154. Single Site Results for Brands: Domain or brand-oriented keywords bring up several results from the same site.

Social Signals

155. Number of Tweets: Like links, the tweets a page has may influence its rank in Google.

156. Authority of Twitter Users Accounts: It’s likely that Tweets coming from aged, authority Twitter profiles with a ton of followers (like Justin Bieber) have more of an effect than tweets from new, low-influence accounts.

157. Number of Facebook Likes: Although Google can’t see most Facebook accounts, it’s likely they consider the number of Facebook likes a page receives as a weak ranking signal.

158. Facebook Shares: Facebook shares — because they’re more similar to a backlink — may have a stronger influence than Facebook likes.

159. Authority of Facebook User Accounts: As with Twitter, Facebook shares and likes coming from popular Facebook pages may pass more weight.

160. Pinterest Pins: Pinterest is an insanely popular social media account with lots of public data. It’s probably that Google considers Pinterest Pins a social signal.

161. Votes on Social Sharing Sites: It’s possible that Google uses shares at sites like Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg as another type of social signal.

162. Number of Google+1’s: Although Matt Cutts gone on the record as saying Google+ has “no direct effect” on rankings, it’s hard to believe that they’d ignore their own social network.

163. Authority of Google+ User Accounts: It’s logical that Google would weigh +1’s coming from authoritative accounts more than from accounts without many followers.

164. Known Authorship: In February 2013, Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously claimed:

Although the Google+ authorship program has been shut down, it’s likely Google uses some form of authorship to determine influential content producers online (and give them a boost in rankings).

165. Social Signal Relevancy: Google probably uses relevancy information from the account sharing the content and the text surrounding the link.

166. Site Level Social Signals: Site-wide social signals may increase a site’s overall authority, which will increase search visibility for all of its pages.

Brand Signals

167. Brand Name Anchor Text: Branded anchor text is a simple — but strong — brand signal.

168. Branded Searches: It’s simple: people search for brands. If people search for your site in Google (ie. “Backlinko twitter”, Backlinko + “ranking factors”), Google likely takes this into consideration when determining a brand.

169. Site Has Facebook Page and Likes: Brands tend to have Facebook pages with lots of likes.

170. Site has Twitter Profile with Followers: Twitter profiles with a lot of followers signals a popular brand.

171. Official Linkedin Company Page: Most real businesses have company Linkedin pages.

172. Employees Listed at Linkedin: Rand Fishkin thinks that having Linkedin profiles that say they work for your company is a brand signal.

173. Legitimacy of Social Media Accounts: A social media account with 10,000 followers and 2 posts is probably interpreted a lot differently than another 10,000-follower strong account with lots of interaction.

174. Brand Mentions on News Sites: Really big brands get mentioned on Google News sites all the time. In fact, some brands even have their own Google News feed on the first page:

175. Co-Citations: Brands get mentioned without getting linked to. Google likely looks at non-hyperlinked brand mentions as a brand signal.

176. Number of RSS Subscribers: Considering that Google owns the popular Feedburner RSS service, it makes sense that they would look at RSS Subscriber data as a popularity/brand signal.

177. Brick and Mortar Location With Google+ Local Listing: Real businesses have offices. It’s possible that Google fishes for location-data to determine whether or not a site is a big brand.

178. Website is Tax Paying Business: Moz reports that Google may look at whether or not a site is associated with a tax-paying business.

On-Site WebSpam Factors

179. Panda Penalty: Sites with low-quality content (particularly content farms) are less visible in search after getting hit by a Panda penalty.

180. Links to Bad Neighborhoods: Linking out to “bad neighborhoods” — like pharmacy or payday loan sites — may hurt your search visibility.

181. Redirects: Sneaky redirects is a big no-no. If caught, it can get a site not just penalized, but de-indexed.

182. Popups or Distracting Ads: The official Google Rater Guidelines Document says that popups and distracting ads is a sign of a low-quality site.

183. Site Over-Optimization: Includes on-page factors like keyword stuffing, header tag stuffing, excessive keyword decoration.

184. Page Over-Optimization: Many people report that — unlike Panda — Penguin targets individual page (and even then just for certain keywords).

185. Ads Above the Fold: The “Page Layout Algorithm” penalizes sites with lots of ads (and not much content) above the fold.

186. Hiding Affiliate Links: Going too far when trying to hide affiliate links (especially with cloaking) can bring on a penalty.

187. Affiliate Sites: It’s no secret that Google isn’t the biggest fan of affiliates. And many think that sites that monetize with affiliate links are put under extra scrutiny.

188. Autogenerated Content: Google isn’t a big fan of autogenerated content. If they suspect that your site’s pumping out computer-generated content, it could result in a penalty or de-indexing.

189. Excess PageRank Sculpting: Going too far with PageRank sculpting— by nofollowing all outbound links or most internal links — may be a sign of gaming the system.

190. IP Address Flagged as Spam: If your server’s IP address is flagged for spam, it may hurt all of the sites on that server.

191. Meta Tag Spamming: Keyword stuffing can also happen in meta tags. If Google thinks you’re adding keywords to your meta tags to game the algo, they may hit your site with a penalty.

Off Page Webspam Factors

192. Unnatural Influx of Links: A sudden (and unnatural) influx of links is a sure-fire sign of phony links.

193. Penguin Penalty: Sites that were hit by Google Penguin are significantly less visible in search.

194. Link Profile with High % of Low Quality Links: Lots of links from sources commonly used by black hat SEOs (like blog comments and forum profiles) may be a sign of gaming the system.

195. Linking Domain Relevancy: The famous analysis byMicroSiteMasters.com found that sites with an unnaturally high amount of links from unrelated sites were more susceptible to Penguin.

196. Unnatural Links Warning: Google sent out thousands of “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links” messages. This usually precedes a ranking drop, although not 100% of the time.

197. Links from the Same Class C IP: Getting an unnatural amount of links from sites on the same server IP may be a sign of blog network link building.

198. “Poison” Anchor Text: Having “poison” anchor text (especially pharmacy keywords) pointed to your site may be a sign of spam or a hacked site. Either way, it can hurt your site’s ranking.

199. Manual Penalty: Google has been known to hand out manual penalties, like in the well-publicized Interflora fiasco.

200. Selling Links: Selling links can definitely impact toolbar PageRankand may hurt your search visibility.

201. Google Sandbox: New sites that get a sudden influx of links are sometimes put in the Google Sandbox, which temporarily limits search visibility.

202. Google Dance: The Google Dance can temporarily shake up rankings. According to a Google Patent, this may be a way for them to determine whether or not a site is trying to game the algorithm.

203. Disavow Tool: Use of the Disavow Tool may remove a manual or algorithmic penalty for sites that were the victims of negative SEO.

204. Reconsideration Request: A successful reconsideration request can lift a penalty.

205. Temporary Link Schemes: Google has (apparently) caught onto people that create — and quickly remove — spammy links. Also know as a temporary link scheme.

Various SEO experts have their own view on the most important aspects for ranking well on Google. Content is an absolue must of course, but we also think that this checklist put together by backlinkio is a good start ( although its always worth looking at all the 200 factors in the top section).

Using these guildelines and the Yoast SEO Function that comes as standard with all Net Effect websites will ensure that any work that you carry out on your site will be rankable in the best way.

There are two downloads below - one is a strategy guide and will enable you to creat a link building strategy ( it's 101 pages) and the other is a Google ranking checklist ( you'll see how important links in this guide)

10 Strategies to Build Links Without Content: A Curated Guide

The word content is often closely tied to link building. Content often makes a link builder’s job much easier, and content is the easiest way to acquire links Google will value.

But there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all online marketing strategy. Is content on your site important? Absolutely. Is content necessary to build links? No – not always. There are in fact multiple tactics that help you acquire useful links that make sense without having to create fresh content.

We’ve created this curated resource guide to help you build good links to your site without having to hire a team of content creators. Simply click on one of the tactics below to learn more. 

Mention Links

Building links through online mentions is one of my favorite tactics - you won't find more organic, natural links.

The concept here is simple: a website has mentioned your website, URL, brand, product, resource, or a company figure. Ideally, these mentions should be fresh, but for a website updating or launching a new online marketing campaign older mentions should be considered as well.

Once you've found the mention all that’s left is outreach. Make sure you lead by expressing appreciation for the mention and then ask for a link. Let common sense be your guide for gauging the quality of the mention and likelihood of link conversion. Is the mention positive? Is the site active? Does the site have an engaged audience? Do you (or the client) have a previous relationship? Would the link make sense?

Outreach should always be polite. Focus on the relationship first, link second - if this website mentioned your brand/website/product, there's a reason. Express your gratitude, then ask if they’d mind linking. Simple, direct, and easy. Remember, you are filling the role of brand ambassador here. Link building and relationship building are by no means mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to online mention link building.

Here are a few well-written guides to help you find an execute link building through online mentions:

• Link Building 101: Finding Web Mentions
• Guide to Using Unlinked Brand Mentions for Link Building
• Using Fresh Web Explorer to Build Links and Exposure
• How to Find Non-Linking Brand Mentions
• Link Building for Startups - Finding Unlinked Brand Mentions at Scale

Link Reclamation

Sussing out bad, broken, or improper links to your website is a simple tactic useful at the start of a new link building campaign - particularly if you’re working on an older site.

Websites change, pages move, content is updated, and links break. It’s a fact of life, especially for sites that have been around for a while.
This is an easy win that can help establish trust and confidence from the start of a campaign. So, before you go chasing big wins make sure that all the bases have been covered, the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. Finding and fixing bad, broken, or improper links pointed at your site is very much a part of that.

A few handy guides that cover this process in depth:

• Link Building 101: 404 Pages & Link Reclamation
• 6 Quick Win Strategies to Kick Off any Link Building Campaign - Misspelled Domain
• Link Building 101: Utilizing Past and Current Relationships
• Link Reclamation - How to Get the Links You Deserve

Broken Links

Broken link building is the premier link building tactic for building strong links requiring zero content (although it can incorporate content, depending on implementation and execution).

At its core, the concept is to find broken links that pointed to sites/pages similar to your own, outreach to that site, and inform them of the dead link and showcase your own site/page as a fix.

Creatively, there are a variety of ways you can include dead links into your link building campaigns: you can find old or dead resources and create new content, then outreach to anyone linking to the old content and inform them of your new and superior content. Or when a competitor goes out of business you can find and capture links pointing to their now dead site. Lastly, you can scan a page you're planning to outreach to and use it any dead links a hook in the email for extra value.  

Broken link building is extremely popular right now, and there have been quite a few helpful guides recently released that cover this tactic:

• The Broken Link Building Bible
• How to Get High Quality Backlinks (Without Guest Posting)
• How to Build 7 Contextual Links in an Hour....Without ANY Content (Really)
• The Ninja Guide to Broken Link Building

Image Links

Many websites and companies have proprietary images and logos they use on their site. The web being what it is, these exclusive images and logos will inevitably end up on other websites. Instead of being upset and sending angry emails, the best thing to to do is think strategically.

Again, similar to finding online mentions, common sense should be your guide. You’ll want to ensure the website is worth securing a link from, that the logo/image is used in an appropriate way, etc.

Here are a few guides to help you track down and convert these images to links:

• 10 Ways to Use Images for Link Building
• 6 Quick Win Strategies to Kick Off any Link Building Campaign - Image Reclamation
• 6 Quick Win Strategies to Kick Off any Link Building Campaign - Old Logos
• The Advanced Guide to Link Building: Chapter 9 - Turning Images into Links

Local Links

Local link building is, in my opinion, a severely under tapped market. Lately I’ve been researching local SERPs, and there’s a plethora of opportunity compared to national SERPs.

Google naturally promotes local businesses for many searches, even if they’re not strictly local terms. So, if your business or website has any chance at local clientele, local links should definitely be a consideration. Especially since you've likely already created valuable relationships locally that could result in stellar links.

Check out these guides for more information:

• Link Building 101: Local Link Building
• Local Link Building: An Easy Win
• Local Link Building - Relevance, Values, Opportunities
• Link Building for Small and Local Businesses
• 5 Ways to Build Local Relevant Links

HARO

Help a Reporter Out (HARO), is exactly what it sounds like: a website dedicated to helping reporters get quotes and sources.

HARO will alert you when a journalist is looking for a quote in your field. You simply  respond, providing an intelligent and insightful quote about your industry and perspective.

All marketers are aware of the power of press mentions and the resulting publicity, and that includes SEOs. HARO should be involved in every link building (or online marketing) campaign, especially if you’re working to establish authority within your industry.

Here are some guides that focus on using HARO in the pursuit of links:

• 10 Tips for Getting Press as a HARO Source
• Building Links through HARO - Real Examples
• 17 Untapped Link Building Resources (Updated)
• How to Get Free Links and Online PR with HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
• Be a HARO Hero: Make the Most of Off-Topic Queries

RNDs

Relevant niche directories are a natural consideration in a link building campaign. Link building should be the pursuit of good links that make sense, and niche directories certainly fit that bill.

The goal here shouldn't just be another link. You want to find useful niche directories with signs of life and build outposts on them, fleshing out a full company profile and building what we call an “online outpost”. This is where your website, brand, and company is fully represented on another site. Building these outposts help with online visibility, beyond netting just another link - although that certainly doesn't hurt.

Here are a few posts which deal with finding and acquiring links on niche directories:

• 17 Untapped Link Building Resources (Updated)
• Diversifying your Backlink Profile with 86'd Tactics
• Directories Aren't Dead: How to Work With Niche Directories the Right Way

Contests

Link building often works best when paired with another online marketing activity, whether that’s content creation, community building, authority building, etc.

Contests are certainly no exception to this. Contests are great for driving online engagement, social sharing, and of course creating fresh mentions. All of these can be used to acquire good links that make sense. If you’re not actively thinking about how to encourage and acquire appropriate links, you’re likely leaving marketing equity on the table.

Here are a few guides to help you pursue links in conjunction with a contest:

• Using Competitions for Increased Traffic, Links, and Brand Awareness
• 31 Link Building Tactics Discovered from Competitive Analysis  
• A Case Study: Using Contests to Build Links
  
• How to Use Contests to Grow Your Brand

Reviews

Before Google, links were used predominantly as a way to cite useful information, show credibility, or show confidence in another site. Reviews takes advantage of all three of these aspects: if you provide another website with a positive review, they'll typically link to your website to show their users who exactly is providing a positive review.

This means that not only will they naturally provide you with a link, but you’re seen as an authority worth citing a review from. So you’re simultaneously providing useful information, being cited as a credible source, and have a vote of confidence flowing both ways.
Reviews are a great tactic for building links, particularly for sites you've established a good relationship with.

Here are some useful & thoughtful posts to get you on your way:

• 35 Local Link Opportunities you Missed
• How to Get Links from Review Sites
• 20 Ways to Get Reviews (and Links) from the Media
• Link Building for the Little Guys
• Headsmacking Tip #14: Offer Testimonials, Get Links