The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors

Marketing has evolved into an omnichannel approach. This means you can no longer just go after one channel to succeed.

Back in the day, companies like Facebook grew into billion-dollar businesses through one channel.

Facebook used email to grow and they did it by having you invite all your contacts to join Facebook.

Yelp was also similar. They grew into a multi-million dollar business through one channel… SEO.

Dropbox grew through social media. If you tweeted about Dropbox, they would give you more space.

These marketing approaches worked well for all of these well-known companies, but what’s wrong with them?

The law of shitty click-throughs

What worked for Facebook, Yelp, and Dropbox were all great strategies, but over time, all good marketing channels got saturated and stopped working like they used to.

As Andrew Chen puts it, first it works and then it doesn’t.

It really is that simple. Sure, those channels can still drive traffic and always will, but as people get used to them, they won’t work as well.

Just check out this image below.

Can you guess what that is?

That was the first banner ad. AT&T created that banner ad and placed it on HotWired.com in 1994. And here’s what’s really crazy… out of all the people who saw it, a whopping 44% clicked on it.

Just think about that… that banner ad had a 44% click-through rate.

We can all agree it’s not an amazing banner ad or design, it just so happens that it was new and novel at the time, so it generated massive amounts of clicks.

Just like how SEO was more effective earlier on, or paid ads were more affordable and produced a higher ROI, or referral marketing was much more effective. There are a lot of single-channel case studies that worked in the past.

Again, it doesn’t mean any of these channels don’t work, it just means that they don’t work as well as they used to work.

So how do you survive in a competitive market?

You take an omnichannel approach. You don’t have a choice other than to use all of the marketing channels out there.

Yes, they will be competitive and saturated, but they still work.

It’s a game of papercuts… papercuts are small and don’t do much damage, but if you have tons of these small papercuts, they will add up and can do some damage.

The same goes with your marketing. If you add up all of these channels that produce a small amount of ROI, it will add up to a big number at the end. But when you look at each channel individually, the results aren’t that sexy. But when you combine them, it looks great.

Start with chat

What do you check more, your text messages or your email inbox?

I bet you are going to say text messages because you look at your phone more often than logging into your email inbox.

But here is an interesting stat for you… did you know that over 6 billion SMS messages are sent daily?

Now can you guess how many emails are sent daily?

269 billion!

That’s a big difference.

And do you know how many people visit Facebook each day?

1.62 billion.

Now the point of me sharing those stats isn’t to try and tell you that email is better than text. Or that Facebook isn’t as valuable as text messaging.

It’s more so to show you that they are all massive channels that people are using each and every day.

So why wouldn’t you try and leverage all of them?

And you can easily do so through free chat marketing tools like Manychat that allow you to communicate to your visitors using text messaging, email marketing, and Facebook Messenger.

Once you have created your Manychat account, go here to watch how to set it up. They have tons of very helpful videos that teach you how to do things like setting up Facebook Messenger bots and connecting your Facebook page so you can start sending out messages.

Now that you are all set up, I want you to use the following templates for your business as I know they convert…

Templates that convert

My team and I have tested out tons of different messaging for all channels, such as email, messenger and text messaging.

Here are the ones that have worked the best for us…

Text messaging templates

My favorite text message to send someone is:

[first name]?

When someone sends you a text with just your first name and a “?” what do you do? Chances are you respond with… “who is this?”.

Once someone responds with who is this, our sales reps typically respond with…

This is John from Neil Patel’s team. I just wanted to follow up to see if you have any questions or if we can help you with anything.

It’s simple and it works well and it has boosted our sales by 4.69%.

Another one that works well is a “flash sales” text message…

Flash Sale: All product on [yoursite] are [x]% off for the next 24 hours. [insert URL]

This one works really well during holidays or anytime you want to run a promotion. Depending on the size of the business you run and how big your list is, you will usually see an additional 2 to 3% in revenue for that month.

And my favorite text campaign is…

Check out this new blog post, [subject of the blog post] [URL]

An example would be… “Check out this new blog post on doubling your SEO traffic [URL]”

When I send out text message alerts for new posts, it usually increases the traffic to that blog post by another 4%.

Email templates

You’re probably familiar with this email template as you get it from me every week. 😉

Subject: How to Generate Leads When You Have Little to No Traffic

If you have a ton of traffic, it’s easy to generate leads.

But what if you have a new website or one with little to no traffic?

What if you don’t have any money to spend on paid ads?

What should you do?

Well, there is a solution. Here’s how you generate leads when you have no traffic.

Cheers,

Neil Patel

I send out an email every Tuesday and Saturday that looks something like that.

It’s a simple text-based email where the subject line is the title of your blog post and the text of the email states a problem and solution, with the solution being a link to the blog post.

To give you a rough idea, that email format has been getting me 29% to 33% open rates and 4% to 7% click-through rates.

And if you are selling info products through webinars, there are 8 types of emails I use to generate sales (check out that post if you want to learn how to make good money selling info products):

1. Invite sequence – these are a series of emails that invite people to watch your webinar. (here are my invite emails)
2. Indoctrination – you need to build a connection with people. People are more likely to convert if they know more about you and trust you. (here are my indoctrination emails)
3. No shows – just because someone signs up to watch your webinar, it doesn’t mean they will attend. For everyone who doesn’t attend, you’ll want to email them and get them to watch the replay. (here are my no show emails)
4. Encore – not everyone will watch your whole webinar. If they don’t stick to the end they won’t see your offer. You’ll want a few emails that push the replay. (here are my encore emails)
5. Objection handler – there are a handful of reasons someone may not buy. You’ll want to answer each of those objections through email. (here are my objection handler emails)
6. Countdown sequence – you’ll want to close off your course. Letting people know that they only have a few days left to buy is a really effective way to generate sales. These emails will roughly make up 1/3 to half of your sales. (here are my countdown emails)
7. Last chance email – on the last day you’ll want to send a few emails letting people know it is about to close. (here are my last chance emails)
8. Free trial offer – the majority of people won’t buy from you. Offering the last chance free trial offer is a great way to roughly get 15% more sales. (here are my free trial emails)

If you are selling products, there are 3 main emails that I’ve found to work well. The first 2 are for cart abandonment.

Subject: Did you forget something?

We noticed that you left something behind. Don’t worry though, we saved the items in your cart so you can easily complete your purchase.

[insert picture of products]

CTA button: Return to cart

This simple abandonment email typically increases sales by 1.73%. I know it’s not a lot, but it’s all about the papercuts as I mentioned above. 😉

Subject: Still thinking about it?

If you can’t decide on whether [insert product name] is right for you, here are some of the benefits:

[insert benefit 1]

[insert benefit 2]

[insert benefit 3]

[insert benefit 4]

[insert benefit 5]

[insert benefit 6]

So, what are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose with our 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.

CTA: Complete my purchase

On average this email has provided our customers an increase of 1.44% in sales.

Subject: Who doesn’t love 15% off?

Explore new [type of products you sell] that will help you with [insert benefit].

Sale ends at [insert date and time].

CTA: Claim my discount

Now with the discount/coupon code email, we’ve found the results to vary a lot. The bigger the discount, the more sales you will typically receive. The biggest gains are when companies offer over 30% or greater discount.

Facebook Messenger templates

Unlike email and text, you can’t just easily just message people on Facebook Messenger and do whatever you want. There are rules…

• You can message a subscriber within the last 24 hours of your last interaction.
• Within that 24-hour time period, you can send promotional material.
• After the 24 hour period, messages must contain one of these 4 tags: confirmed event update, post-purchase update, account update, or a human agent.
• For users who opt-in to receive messages after 24 hours, you can, of course, message them.

As for templates that work, because Facebook is continually changing Messenger rules, follow these templates over at Manychat as they constantly change based on real-time data of what is working or what isn’t.

Conclusion

You have no choice but to take an omnichannel approach with your marketing.

Sure, all good channels eventually get crowded and click-throughs will decrease over time, but if you go after all of the main channels the marginal gains will add up.

And the easiest way to start with going omnichannel is with chat. I know you are probably using email, but I bet you aren’t using text messaging or even Facebook Messenger bots. And I bet you aren’t using push notifications either.

So, how many marketing channels are you using?

The post The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.

* This article was originally published here

Operating During COVID-19: Helpful Tips for Local Businesses

Posted by MiriamEllis

Local businesses know better than any other model what it means to fully participate in community life. You are the good neighbors who are there to serve, inspire, and sustain the people and traditions that make your town a unique and enjoyable place to call home.

As we explore this topic of what local businesses can do during the COVID-19 pandemic, I want to honor all that you have always done to take care of your community as a local business owner or marketer. Thank you.

In this article, you will find local SEO tips that could make a difference for your business in the coming weeks, innovative resources for support, advice from my own tight-knit community of some of the world’s best local SEOs, and some serious thinking about building a better local future.

Adhere to all regulations

First and foremost, start each day with a review of both local and national news to be sure you are complying with the evolving regulations for your city, county, and country. Policies designed to mitigate the harm of COVID-19 vary widely from region to region, and your business must keep informed of which forms of service you are allowed to offer in this dynamic scenario.

And, while social media can be a great connector within your community at any time, beware of misinformation and, sadly, scams in the days ahead. Get your news from sources you trust, and if you are not certain about interpreting a guideline, directly contact local authorities. This article does not take the place of laws and regulations specific to your community.

Communicate abundantly

The most helpful thing any local business can do right now, whether it’s deemed an essential or non-essential service, is to provide accurate information to its community. There are three key places to do this:

Google My Business

“More than ever, your Google Business Profile is a critical communication nexus with your customers”. —Mike Blumenthal, GatherUp

Local businesses know just how big a role Google plays as intermediary between brands and the public. This remains true during this difficult time however, Google’s local product is not running at full strength. Joy Hawkins’ article for Local University on March 23 details the limited support for or complete discontinuation of Google Q&As, posts, descriptions, reviews, and owner responses. It’s an evolving scenario, with local SEOs reporting different outcomes each day. For example, some practitioners have been able to get some, but not all, Google posts to publish.

As of writing this, there are four fields you can utilize to communicate current information to customers via GMB, but please be aware that some edits may take several days to go into effect:

Name

Google is allowing businesses to edit their business name field to reflect that they are offering curbside service, takeout, and delivery. For example, if your current name is “John’s Grill”, you are allowed to temporarily change your name to “John’s Grill — Delivery Available”.

Phone number

If regulations are keeping you at home but you still want customers to be able to reach you on your home or cell phone for information, update your work answering machine to reflect the changes and edit your GMB phone number to the appropriate new number.

Hours of operation

The discussion on how best to show that your business either has no hours or limited new hours is ongoing. I believe the best route for the present is to use Google’s method of setting special hours. This option should be especially useful for multi-location enterprises who can set special hours via the API.

Be advised, however, that there are some instances of agencies setting special hours for clients and then clients receiving emails from Google asking if the business has closed. This can alarm those clients. However, to date, it appears that when Google receives responses to this prompt that yes, the business is closed, they simply put a message about this on the listing rather than remove the listing entirely.

On March 25, Google implemented a “temporarily closed” button inside the “Info” tab of the GMB dashboard, as reported by Joy Hawkins. Utilizing this button may temporarily decrease your rankings, but you will be able to remove the label in the future and I strongly hope (but cannot guarantee) that this will remove any effects of suppression. I recommend using this button if it applies to your business because we must put safety first over any other consideration.

COVID-19 update posts

Google has newly created a Google posts type that you’ll see as an option in your GMB dashboard. While other post types have been published sporadically, I am seeing examples of the COVID-19 Update posts going live. Try to fit as much information as you can about the changed status of your business into one of these posts.

In addition to the edits you make to your GMB listing, update your most visible local business listings on other platforms to the best of your ability, including on:

• Bing: A “Temporarily closed” business status is available in the Bing Places dashboard. This is currently not available in the API.

• Yelp: Yelp has introduced a new field called “temporarily closed”. This is meant to be used by businesses which are or will be closed (but not on a permanent basis) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Businesses need to indicate the “end date” for when this business status will end. Given the uncertainty surrounding timelines, Yelp is allowing users to provide an “estimate” for the end date which they can always update later. Special opening hours can be added on Yelp itself, too. Neither field is available in the API.

Website

Google My Business may be experiencing support issues right now, but thank goodness you still have full control of your website as a home base for conveying important information to the public. Here’s a quick checklist of suggested items to update on your site as soon as you can:

• Put a site wide banner on all pages of the website with key information such as “temporarily closed”, “drive-up service available 9-5 Monday - Friday” or “storefront closed but we can still ship to you.”
• Provide the most complete information about how your business has been affected by COVID-19, and detail any services that remain available to customers.
• Edit location landing pages in bulk or individually to reflect closures, new hours, and new temporary offers.
• Be sure hours of operation are accurate everywhere they are mentioned on the website, including the homepage, contact page, about page, and landing pages.
• If your main contact phone number has changed due to the situation, update that number everywhere it exists on the website. Don’t overlook headers, footers, or sidebars as places your contact info may be.
• If you have a blog, use it to keep the public updated about the availability of products and services.
• Be sure your website contains highly visible links to any social media platforms you are using to provide updated information.
• It would be a worthy public service right now to create new content about local resources in your community for all kinds of basic needs.

Social media and email

“Make it clear what you're doing, such as things like home delivery or curbside pickup. And mention it EVERYWHERE. The companies that are being successful with this are telling people non-stop how they can still support them. Additionally, don't be afraid to reach out to people who have supported you via social media in the past and ask them to mention what you're doing.” —Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point

Whether your customers’ social community is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or another platform, there has never been a more vital time to make use of the instant communication these sites provide. It was Fred Rogers who famously said that in times of crisis, we should “look for the helpers.” People will be looking to your brand for help and, also, seeking ways that they can help, too.

If you can make the time to utilize social media to highlight not just your own services, but the services you discover are being provided by other businesses in your city, you will be strengthening your community. Ask your followers and customers to amplify information that can make life safer or better right now.

And, of course, email is one of the best tools presently at your disposal to message your entire base about changed conditions and special offers. My best practice advice for the present is to be sure you’re only communicating what is truly necessary. I’ve seen some examples of brands (which shall remain nameless) exploiting COVID-19 for senseless self-promotion instead of putting customers’ concerns and needs first. Don’t go that route. Be a helper!

Beyond your local business listing, websites, social media platforms, and email, don’t overlook offline media for making further, helpful informational contributions. Call into local radio shows and get in touch with local newspapers if you have facts or offers that can help the public.

Operate as fully as you can

“Find out what support is being made available for you at [the] government level, tap into this as soon as you can — it's likely there will be a lot of paperwork and many hoops through which you'll need to jump.” —Claire Carlile, Claire Carlile Marketing

While the social safety net differs widely from country to country, research any offers of support being made to your business and make use of them to remain as operational as possible for the duration of this pandemic. Here are six adjustments your business should carefully consider to determine whether implementation is possible:

1. Fulfill essentials

If your business meets local, state, or federal regulations that enable it to continue operating because it’s deemed “essential”, here are the ways different business models are adapting to current conditions:

• Some healthcare appointments can be handled via phone or virtual meetings, and some medical facilities are offering drive-up testing.
• Drivethrough, delivery, and curbside pickup are enabling some brands to offer takeout meals, groceries, prescriptions, and other necessary goods to customers.
• Supermarkets and grocery stores without built-in delivery fleets are contracting with third parties for this service.
• Farms and ranches can offer honor system roadside stands to allow customers to access fresh produce, dairy products, and meats with proper social distancing.
• Companies that care for vulnerable populations, banking, laundry, and fuel can implement and communicate the extra steps they are taking to adhere to sanitation guidelines for the safety of customers and staff.
• Brands and organizations that donate goods and services to fulfill essential needs are taking an active role in community support, too.

2. Evaluate e-commerce

If your local business already has an e-commerce component on its website, you’re many steps ahead in being well set up to keep selling via delivery. If you’ve not yet implemented any form of online selling, investigate the following options:

• If you have a credit card processing machine, the most basic solution is to take orders over the phone and then ship them, allow curbside pickup, or deliver them.
• If you lack a credit card processing service, PayPal invoicing can work in a pinch.
• If your site is built on WordPress and you’re quite comfortable with that platform, Moz’s own Sha Menz highly recommends the ease of the WooCommerce plugin for getting online shopping set up with PayPal as a built-in payment option. It allows easy setup of flat rate or free shipping and local pickup options. WooCommerce automatically sends order confirmation emails to both owner and customer and even supports creation of discount coupons.
• Pointy is a simple device that lets you scan product barcodes and have them catalogued online. Read my 2019 interview with the company’s CEO and determine whether Pointy plus shipping could be a solution to keep you in business in the coming months.
• If you’ve determined that robust investing in e-commerce is a wise move for the present and future, I found this 2020 overview of options from Shopify to Volusion to Magento very useful. Don’t overlook the Moz blog’s e-commerce category for free, expert advice.

3. Connect virtually

In my very large family, one relative has transitioned her yoga studio to online classes, another is offering secure online psychotherapy appointments, and another is instructing his orchestra on the web. While nothing can replace in-person relationships, virtual meetings are the next-best-thing and could keep many business models operating at a significant level, despite the pandemic. Check out these resources:

• UC Today provides an excellent guide to free video conferencing and collaboration.
• Business Insider has this tutorial on how to share rivate YouTube videos with anyone .
• I especially want to highlight the exceptional job Zoom is doing in building out an entire section of resources for how to conduct business virtually, whether you are a healthcare professional, an educator, or are managing employees who have transitioned to working from home.

4. Use downtime for education

If COVID-19 has somewhat or completely paused your business, it’s my strong hope that there will be better days ahead for you. If, like so many people, you find yourself with much more time on your hands than usual, consider using it to come out of this period of crisis with new business knowledge. Please make use of this list of resources, and I want to give special thanks to my friend, Claire Carlile, for contributing several of these suggestions:

• Moz is now offering free access to Moz Academy. Sign up for free courses to increase your SEO and local SEO education.
• Lily Ray is connecting marketers with businesses impacted by COVID-19 for free SEO and digital marketing consultation.
• Local Visibility System is offering pro bono local business consultation.
• Helping Small Biz Online is volunteering to consult with small, independent local businesses in the UK free of charge.
• Luke Carthy took to Twitter with an offer of free websites for small UK business owners.
• Data Driven is offering scholarships for access to their Google Skill Courses.
• In the US, some chambers of commerce are offering free economic recovery webinars.
• Here’s an amazing Search Starter Pack freelancers can sign up for to get access to tools and services in the coming months.

Begin working towards a stronger local future

“I would say generally it's critical for business owners to connect with one another. To the extent they can join or form groups for support or to share ideas, they should. This is a terrible and scary time but there are also potential opportunities that may emerge with creative thinking. The 'silver lining', if there is one here, is the opportunity to reexamine business processes, try new things and think — out of necessity — very creatively about how to move forward. Employees are also a great source of ideas and inspiration.” —Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land

I’d like to close with some positive thinking. Local SEO isn’t just a career for me — it’s a personal belief system that well-resourced communities are the strongest. Every community, town, and city shares roughly the same needs, which we might depict like this:

In this simple chart, we see the framework of a functional, prepared, and healthy society. We see a plan for covering the basic needs of human existence, the cooperation required to run a stable community, contributive roles everyone can play to support life and culture, and relief from inevitable disasters. We see regenerative land and water stewardship, an abundance of skilled educators, medical professionals, artisans, and a peaceful platform for full human expression.

COVID-19 marks the third major disaster my community has lived through in three years. The pandemic and California’s wildfires have taught me to think about the areas in which my county is self-sustaining, and areas in which we are unprepared to take care of one another in both good times and bad. While state and national governments bear a serious responsibility for the well-being of citizens, my genuine belief as a local SEO is that local communities should be doing all they can to self-fulfill as many data points on the chart above as possible.

While it’s said that necessity is the mother of invention, and it certainly makes sense that the present moment would be driving us to invent new solutions to keep our communities safe and well, I find models for sane growth in the work others have already contributed. For me, these are sources of serious inspiration:

• Learn from indigenous cultures around the world about stewardship and community. Here is just one example of how knowledge is being applied by tribes in the Pacific Northwest during the pandemic. In my own state of California, a number of tribes are leading the way in mitigating wildfires via cultural burning, addressing what has become an annual disaster where I live.
• Look at the policies of other countries with a higher index of human happiness than my own. For example, I am a great admirer of Norway’s law of allemannsrett which permits all residents to responsibly roam and camp in most of the country, and more importantly, to harvest natural foods like mushrooms and berries. In my community, most land is behind fences, and even though I know which plants are edible, I can’t access most of them. Given current grocery store shortages, this concept deserves local re-thinking.
• Study the Economic Bill of Rights US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced but didn’t live to see passed. Had this been implemented, my local community would not now be suffering from a shortage of medical providers and denial of medical care, a shortage of nearby farms for complete nutrition, homelessness and unaffordable housing, and a widespread lack of education and essential skills. From a purely commercial standpoint, FDR’s bill could also have prevented the collapse of “Main St.”, which local search marketers have been fighting every day to reverse.
• Join organizations like the American Independent Local Business Alliance which exist to build more resilient local communities via methods like the Buy Local movement and community education. I strongly encourage you to check in with AMIBA for guidance in these times.

Other models and examples may personally inspire you, but I share my friend Greg Sterling’s opinion: now is the time to bring creativity to bear, to connect with fellow local business owners and community members, and to begin planning a more realistic and livable future.

For now, you will have to make those connections virtually, but the goal is to come out of this time of crisis with a determination to make local living more sustainable for everyone. You can start with asking very basic questions like: Where is the nearest farm, and how many people can it feed? What do we need to do to attract more doctors and nurses to this town? Which facilities could be converted here to produce soap, or bathroom tissue, or medical supplies?

I don’t want to downplay the challenge of forward-thinking in a time of disruption, but this I know from being a gardener: new seeds sprout best where the earth is disturbed. You have only to visit the margins of new roads being laid to see how digging is quickly followed by verdant crops of fresh seedlings. Humanity needs to dig deep right now for its best solutions to serious challenges, and this can begin right where you are, locally.

Please allow me to wish many better days ahead to you, your business, and your community, and to work by your side to build a stronger local future.

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* This article was originally published here

Generating Local Content at Scale - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by rjonesx.

Building local pages in any amount can be a painful task. It's hard to strike the right mix of on-topic content, expertise, and location, and the temptation to take shortcuts has always been tempered by the fact that good, unique content is almost impossible to scale.

In this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones shares his favorite white-hat technique using natural language generation to create local pages to your heart's content.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, folks, this is Russ Jones here with Moz again to talk to you about important search engine optimization issues. Today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite techniques, something that I invented several years ago for a particular client and has just become more and more and more important over the years. 

Using natural language generation to create hyper-local content

I call this using natural language generation to create hyper-local content. Now I know that there's a bunch of long words in there. Some of you are familiar with them, some of you are not. 

So let me just kind of give you the scenario, which is probably one you've been familiar with at some point or another. Imagine you have a new client and that client has something like 18,000 locations across the United States.

Then you're told by Google you need to make unique content. Now, of course, it doesn't have to be 18,000. Even 100 locations can be difficult, not just to create unique content but to create uniquely valuable content that has some sort of relevance to that particular location. 

So what I want to do today is talk through one particular methodology that uses natural language generation in order to create these types of pages at scale.

What is natural language generation?

Now there might be a couple of questions that we need to just go ahead and get off of our plates at the beginning. So first, what is natural language generation? Well, natural language generation was actually originated for the purpose of generating weather warnings. You've actually probably seen this 100,000 times.

Whenever there's like a thunderstorm or let's say high wind warning or something, you've seen on the bottom of a television, if you're older like me, or you've gotten one on your cellphone and it says the National Weather Service has issued some sort of warning about some sort of weather alert that's dangerous and you need to take cover.

Well, the language that you see there is generated by a machine. It takes into account all of the data that they've arrived at regarding the weather, and then they put it into sentences that humans automatically understand. It's sort of like Mad Libs, but a lot more technical in the sense that what comes out of it, instead of being funny or silly, is actually really useful information.

That's our goal here. We want to use natural language generation to produce local pages for a business that has information that is very useful. 

Isn't that black hat?

Now the question we almost always get or I at least almost always get is: Is this black hat? One of the things that we're not supposed to do is just auto-generate content.

So I'm going to take a moment towards the end to discuss exactly how we differentiate this type of content creation from just the standard, Mad Libs-style, plugging in different city words into content generation and what we're doing here. What we're doing here is providing uniquely valuable content to our customers, and because of that it passes the test of being quality content.

Let's look at an example

So let's do this. Let's talk about probably what I believe to be the easiest methodology, and I call this the Google Trends method. 

1. Choose items to compare

So let's step back for a second and talk about this business that has 18,000 locations. Now what do we know about this business? Well, businesses have a couple of things that are in common regardless of what industry they're in.

They either have like products or services, and those products and services might have styles or flavors or toppings, just all sorts of things that you can compare about the different items and services that they offer. Therein lies our opportunity to produce unique content across almost any region in the United States.

The tool we're going to use to accomplish that is Google Trends. So the first step that you're going to do is you're going to take this client, and in this case I'm going to just say it's a pizza chain, for example, and we're going to identify the items that we might want to compare. In this case, I would probably choose toppings for example.

So we would be interested in pepperoni and sausage and anchovies and God forbid pineapple, just all sorts of different types of toppings that might differ from region to region, from city to city, and from location to location in terms of demand. So then what we'll do is we'll go straight to Google Trends.

The best part about Google Trends is that they're not just providing information at a national level. You can narrow it down to city level, state level, or even in some cases to ZIP Code level, and because of this it allows us to collect hyper-local information about this particular category of services or products.

So, for example, this is actually a comparison of the demand for pepperoni versus mushroom versus sausage toppings in Seattle right now. So most people, when people are Googling for pizza, would be searching for pepperoni.

2. Collect data by location

So what you would do is you would take all of the different locations and you would collect this type of information about them. So you would know that, for example, here there is probably about 2.5 times more interest in pepperoni than there is in sausage pizza. Well, that's not going to be the same in every city and in every state. In fact, if you choose a lot of different toppings, you'll find all sorts of things, not just the comparison of how much people order them or want them, but perhaps how things have changed over time.



For example, perhaps pepperoni has become less popular. If you were to look in certain cities, that probably is the case as vegetarian and veganism has increased. Well, the cool thing about natural language generation is that we can automatically extract out those kinds of unique relationships and then use that as data to inform the content that we end up putting on the pages on our site.

So, for example, let's say we took Seattle. The system would automatically be able to identify these different types of relationships. Let's say we know that pepperoni is the most popular. It might also be able to identify that let's say anchovies have gone out of fashion on pizzas. Almost nobody wants them anymore.

Something of that sort. But what's happening is we're slowly but surely coming up with these trends and data points that are interesting and useful for people who are about to order pizza. For example, if you're going to throw a party for 50 people and you don't know what they want, you can either do what everybody does pretty much, which is let's say one-third pepperoni, one-third plain, and one-third veggie, which is kind of the standard if you're like throwing a birthday party or something.

But if you landed on the Pizza Hut page or the Domino's page and it told you that in the city where you live people actually really like this particular topping, then you might actually make a better decision about what you're going to order. So we're actually providing useful information. 

3. Generate text

So this is where we're talking about generating the text from the trends and the data that we've grabbed from all of the locales.

Find local trends

Now the first step, of course, is just looking at local trends. But local trends aren't the only place we can look. We can go beyond that. For example, we can compare it to other locations. So it might be just as interesting that in Seattle people really like mushroom as a topping or something of that sort.

Compare to other locations

But it would also be really interesting to see if the toppings that are preferred, for example, in Chicago, where Chicago style pizza rules, versus New York are different. That would be something that would be interesting and could be automatically drawn out by natural language generation. Then finally, another thing that people tend to miss in trying to implement this solution is they think that they have to compare everything at once.

Choose subset of items

That's not the way you would do it. What you would do is you would choose the most interesting insights in each situation. Now we could get technical about how that might be accomplished. For example, we might say, okay, we can look at trends. Well, if all of the trends are flat, then we're probably not going to choose that information. But we see that the relationship between one topping and another topping in this city is exceptionally different compared to other cities, well, that might be what gets selected.

4. Human review

Now here's where the question comes in about white hat versus black hat. So we've got this local page, and now we've generated all of this textual content about what people want on a pizza in that particular town or city. We need to make sure that this content is actually quality. That's where the final step comes in, which is just human review.

In my opinion, auto-generated content, as long as it is useful and valuable and has gone through the hands of a human editor who has identified that that's true, is every bit as good as if that human editor had just looked up that same data point and wrote the same sentences.

So I think in this case, especially when we're talking about providing data to such a diverse set of locales across the country, that it makes sense to take advantage of technology in a way that allows us to generate content and also allows us to serve the user the best possible and the most relevant content that we can.

So I hope that you will take this, spend some time looking up natural language generation, and ultimately be able to build much better local pages than you ever have before. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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* This article was originally published here

Ubersuggest is Now More Free

Please read the whole post as I have a few surprises for everyone and it affects all member types.

A month or so ago, I blogged about the future of Ubersuggest and how there will still be free plans along with paid ones.

But as you probably noticed, the free plan wasn’t as generous as you were hoping for.

And with Coronavirus growing at a rapid pace and affecting so many people and businesses, I thought I would do my part and help small businesses out.

Because if I help you grow a bit more without spending money, hopefully, you won’t have to lay off any people and, ideally, you will even be able to hire a few more people.

So today, I have made Ubersuggest “more free” and over the next week, it will become even more free.

What does that mean? Let me break it down for you…

You’ll have full access to historical data

First off, anytime you want to view graphs on historical data, you no longer have to pay.

For example, if you want to see how popular a keyword was over the last 12 months, all you have to do is type it in and you’ll see the data.

If you aren’t logged in, you only see 3 months’ worth of data (this is to help stop scrapers and reduce server expenses), but once you log in, which again is free, you’ll see historical data.

The same goes for traffic estimates. Anytime you look up a competitor, you’ll be able to see their search traffic over the last 12 months as well as how many keywords each site is ranking for during that time period.

As for backlinks, there is a historical link graph and a new and lost link graph.

Currently, it is blocked off for only paid members, but in the next 7 days I WILL BE OPENING IT UP FOR FREE.

Sorry for the delay, but it takes my developers a bit of time to make this change.

So, within the next week, this will also be available for free.

You also have access to more keywords

Have you performed keyword research recently?

If you haven’t tried, look up a domain and go to the “keywords” navigation item…

Once you land on that report, you will see a really long list of keywords. 🙂

If you aren’t logged in, you’ll be asked to do so, and this is also free. The reason being is this helps stops scrapers and reduces server costs.

The same goes for the keyword ideas report. This report gives you more keyword suggestions once you enter in a keyword.

In the navigation menu bar, click on “keyword ideas.”

Enter in a keyword and you’ll be given a list of other related terms.

Again, you may be asked to log in, which is free, but that is to reduce scrapers on our end to save on server costs.

More content ideas and top pages

Over the next 7 days, we are also going to make the content ideas report and the top pages a bit more generous.

We will probably provide four times more results for free on these two reports.

So when you are looking for ideas for your next blog post, you’ll see more recommendations.

Or if you are looking up a competitor to see which pages drive them the most traffic, you’ll want to go to the “top pages” report. In the navigation, click on “top pages.”

At the moment, you can see some for free, but again in the next week, you will be able to see roughly four times more without having to pay for it.

The changes with the content ideas report and the top pages may be rolled out sooner but by next Tuesday at the latest, they will be ready.

There’s also more good news

My goal with Ubersuggest isn’t to make money. It is honestly to break even as my costs are so high. It’s well over $200,000 a month. 🙁

These changes will probably make it take 12 months for me to break even instead of 6 months… but hey, that’s life. It’s the least I can do with all of the businesses out there struggling due to the Coronavirus and all of the people getting sick.

As paid members, you will still get access to more data, be able to create more projects, and crawl more pages to find SEO errors.

But I am going to sweeten the deal for you over the next 30 days as I am adding some stuff that is going to really help you grow your traffic.

Here’s what I am thinking:

1. Bi-weekly training – every month, my team and I will be holding 2 group calls to help you grow your traffic. The first call will go over an SEO tactic that you need to implement and I will break down how you can do so. The second monthly call will be a QA where anyone can ask me and my team questions and we will answer them. And if you are wondering if I am going to be on the calls, I will. With my busy schedule, I probably will miss some, but I will be on many of the calls training you myself.
2. Weekly action plan – I’m currently working on an SEO action plan. As a paid member, I will be giving you 12 things to implement (one each week for 12 weeks) to grow your SEO traffic. If you implement them, you’ll get more traffic. I know many of you are busy business owners, so I am trying to make things easy and help you get the most traffic with the least amount of work.
3. On-demand help and support – we are adding live chat to Ubersuggest and the NeilPatel.com site. That way you can talk with my team of SEO experts, ask any questions related to your site or marketing, and we will help you. That way you can get customized one-on-one advice. This is what you’ll really need to grow.
4. Ultimate SEO course – I’m working on an SEO course that teaches you everything about SEO. It’s looking like it will be over 20 hours of video training material as well as worksheets, cheat sheets, and templates for you to use to make it easier for you to get results.
5. Private Facebook group – we have a pretty decent size community, so why not leverage it to help each other grow? We will be creating a private Facebook group or Slack group (not sure which one), were we all help each other grow our traffic.

You’ll start seeing this stuff rolled out within 30 days as well as the Chrome extension which is in the final round of testing.

I also have some cool new features that we are close to adding that I know you will be excited for. 😉

Conclusion

Over the next 30 days, if you are a paid member, you’ll be getting even more.

And if you are strapped for cash, no worries. I am making the free plan even more generous, as you can see above. Just give Ubersuggest a try and you’ll see it is already “more free.”

My goal has never been to make money with this tool. It’s to help small and medium business owners succeed.

I know times are tough right now but try to stay safe by staying indoors more often and practicing social distancing.

So, what do you think about the new Ubersuggest Free plan?

The post Ubersuggest is Now More Free appeared first on Neil Patel.

* This article was originally published here

Help Your Community from Six Feet Away: Non-Marketing Tips from Mozzers

Posted by morgan.mcmurray

For the last few weeks, you’ve probably experienced an influx of emails from companies detailing how COVID-19 is affecting them and thus you, their customer. It's... a lot, isn't it? So today, we want to take a departure from the world of "how this affects us" and focus instead on actionable things we can all do to make things brighter for ourselves and our communities. This won't be your regularly scheduled programming — we won't be discussing SEO or marketing. Instead, we're sharing ideas and advice from the folks at Moz who've been finding ways to be helpers as we all navigate this new normal.

Donate and shop

For those who have steady income during this time of economic uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to support local businesses and charitable organizations. Many employers, Moz included, offer charitable donation matching to make use of as well.

Food banks, shelters, and charities

You can donate money or call local organizations (like homeless shelters, food banks, and animal rescues) to see what items they most need. Mozzers have found several creative ways to contribute, including a super helpful spreadsheet of all the food banks in our area shared by Britney Muller. A few of us have volunteered to be pet foster parents, and Skye Stewart has even seen neighbors turn their “little free libraries” into pantries for those in need! 

Skye has seen little free libraries stocked as pantries throughout the Wallingford and Fremont neighborhoods of Seattle. This one belongs to Clay and Elli Stricklin.

Blood banks

If you’re healthy and able, consider signing up to donate blood. The blood banks in our area have received so many volunteers that they’re scheduling appointments weeks in advance — what a fantastic show of community support!

Buy gift cards or shop online

All of our favorite local salons, restaurants, bars, or home goods stores are likely suffering from recent closures. Gift cards give them support now and give you the option to shop later (or have your holiday shopping done a little early). Many local businesses also have online shops for you to browse from home. Shipping times are likely impacted, though, so be understanding!

Order take-out

Local restaurants are shifting to take-out and to-go order business models. If you can’t go pick up food, apps like DoorDash and Grubhub are offering no-contact delivery options.

Grocery shop

Stock up only with what you need for two or three weeks for yourself. You can also volunteer, like Mozzer Hayley Sherman, to make grocery runs for at-risk friends or family.

Stay healthy

This sounds like a no-brainer — of course we’re all trying to stay healthy! But it has to be said, as now we have to be a bit more creative to keep up our healthy habits.

Online workouts

With recent closures, local gyms and studios are offering online classes. Have you ever wondered what a yoga or dance class is like via Zoom? A few of us at Moz have found out, and it’s definitely different — but also surprisingly fun — to connect with all the other students in this new way.

Walk or run

We’ve been enjoying some unseasonable sunshine in the Pacific Northwest, making it the perfect time to fight cabin fever with a walk or run outside. Weather permitting, you can do the same! Just make sure to maintain social distance from other walkers and runners (even if they have a cute puppy with them — tough, we know).

Meditate

Meditation can help calm the anxiety many of us might be feeling right now. Dr. Pete recommends the Ten Percent Happier app for assistance, and apps like Insight Timer and Calm have dozens of free meditation options for you to choose from, too.

Keep eating fresh fruits and veggies

While it’s tempting to only stock up on non-perishable food like mac and cheese (I’m guilty of having several boxes stored in my pantry) and rely on supplements or Emergen-C, fresh produce is still one of the best options to get necessary vitamins and boost your immunity.

Go offline

Several of us at Moz have found it helpful to disconnect from the news cycle for a while every day, and we try to only pay attention to news from reputable sources. With so many voices in the conversation, this can be hard, which is why going offline can be so helpful.

Stay connected

Human connection remains important for maintaining morale and good humor, even if we can’t share the same physical space.

Check in

Call people you would normally see regularly, and reach out to those you haven’t seen in awhile. Mozzers are staying connected by calling into morning coffee hangouts and virtual team lunches — it’s been great to see everyone’s smiling faces!

You might start a weekly virtual happy hour or book club using free video conferencing software like Google Hangouts or Skype, or schedule some time to watch movies together with the new Netflix Party extension.

Join online communities

Social media groups or apps like Nextdoor allow you to meet your neighbors, share memes, and check to see if anyone needs anything like a grocery run, medicine, or just a virtual hug.

We’ve created channels in our company Slack for topics like parenting, wellness, gardening, and just general fun. These groups have really helped bring light and friendship to our shared situation. In the parenting channel, specifically, Moz parents have banded together to share resources and suggestions to help support each other in this new world of homeschooling.

Lean into empathy

We're living through an unprecedented time, and one of the best things we can do is understand that sometimes, humans just need to be human. If you're leading a team that's working from home, you might find your employees keeping unorthodox working hours with school closures, disrupted schedules, and technical difficulties. Flex your empathy muscle, and consider enacting flexible policies that will reduce stress on your employees while making sure the work still gets done.

Let everyone know it’s okay to sign off during normal working hours to prioritize family time and child care. You can also schedule non-work-related check-ins, or build relaxation time into your schedules. Moz CEO Sarah Bird gave all employees a “Take a Breather” day to give everyone time to relax, make “quarantinis”, and adjust to our current reality. We all really appreciated that time!

This list of ways to help is by no means exhaustive, and we’d love to hear your ideas! Leave a comment or send us a tweet. We’re in this together.

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What we're doing

We're committed to keeping as much normalcy in the routines of our community as possible, and that includes minimizing the impact of this crisis on our customers and employees. There will be no interruptions to our tool functionality or to our support team’s ability to serve our customers. We will also continue to publish helpful, actionable content — even if that means you see a few Whiteboard Fridays from the living rooms of our experts!

Employees at Moz have already been trained as a distributed team, which has prepared us well for a life of working from home — now a mandatory policy. We're also given paid time off, including sick leave, and are encouraged to sign off from work when we’re feeling under the weather to rest and recuperate.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

* This article was originally published here