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As a completely self-taught SEO, I have always had a deep feeling of imposter syndrome and inferiority to big SEO agency types. And imposter syndrome just comes with the territory of being an …
Continue Reading about The common but often waste of time things a first phase of SEO includes →
In most cases, your traffic is down across the board even as you have more content than ever. Even if your overall Google traffic is up, when you look at your "per-post traffic," you will find …
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A little click-baity of a headline, I know. But I felt like I had to offset the unclick-ability of the word patent. In 2010, Google published a patent called the "ranking document (uspto.gov …
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Discounting as resurrecting old (dead) products I do like the idea of rebundling products with a discounted rate from the original price. But this is still more of a price change strategy than a …
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Why do we discount? Competition We're competing for limited attention so we evoke scarcity to stir those who would otherwise not pay attention into consideration. We're competing for limited …
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In info product land, bundle sales are very short-term (usually 24 hour) windows where bundles of old products sold together at vast discounts. This is bulk pricing meets epic one-time-only or …
Ann and I were walking some trails in the Pine Barrens a few years ago. We decided to take a shortcut. Okay, I decided to take a shortcut. Ann wasn't completely on board but we were newly-ish in a …
Is this possible? Nothing I'm learning is convincing me that discounting for info products is more effective than other approaches. Sure, I can run a sale and guarantee X in revenue with one …
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Expertise, Authority, Trust. E-A-T is a commonly used term in the SEO world because it is a large part of their push to battle disinformation on the web. But those three words are also central to …
Yesterday we reviewed a landmark study, When More Is Less: The Impact of Base Value Neglect on Consumer Preferences for Bonus Packs over Price Discounts (Chen, Marmorstein, Tsiros, & Rao, 2012). …
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Yesterday we talked a little about using the exposure-response model to help think about when and how much discounting is bad: Maybe you can you sneak a discount or two in annually without an …
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There are a lot of opinions out there about discounting. You have the camp that believes you should never discount. A lot of these people have even "tested" discounting and found it doesn't work. And …
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When selling online, info products share similarities with other types of products, but they're also deeply different. By nature they're personal, hand-crafted, have low barriers to entry, and …
A few years ago, you could have something important to say, serve your audience, and your info products would sell themselves. That's just not the case anymore: Now everyone has a list, funnels, …
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Starting another mini series without having finished the last one. This is the first in a few emails on when you don't need to validate an info product. Anything that successfully reduces costs is …
A lot of the time poor validation (or inability to validate) is just a matter of focusing the messaging around the value or outcome instead of the process. When you're really product-centric, its …
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Let's say you have an info product idea. When do you really have to validate it? What aspects do you have to validate? Validating for a list vs a market If you have a list and your idea is …
When you get to the next block, Google Ads will by default have "Search Network" and "Display Network" selected. Leave those options that way if you want to at best have no idea what's happening or …
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-Or- how not to lose your shirt before you get started with your info product test campaign Disclaimer: Of course, with all settings, there are caveats and targeting options should reflect the …
For Google you have targeting options in your campaign setup and then on the keyword level - let's review: Whether you target networks (network options explained here)Only Google Search - Do …
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Are you helping people who want to "transform" in some way or solve a common problem? Google Ads are good for common problems (we all got 'em) Common problems will show significant search …
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This is the fifth post in a short series on building a minimum viable funnel to validate an info product idea. You can go back here: Shaving down your ideaDetermine the value to your ideal …
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We looked at your brain on search, now let's contrast that with what we can learn about Facebook users' brains on Facebook. I have a lot of questions about Facebook and consumer purchasing …
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-or- your brain on Google This post is essentially a cut section from another post comparing Google Ads and Facebook Ads. This was getting into the weeds when it was over there but couldn't bring …
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Some key steps: Update plugins, themes, core Wordpress to most recent versionsRemove extraneous logins from Wordpress and hosting (old developers, past employees, etc.,)Reset all passwords in …
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Google released another "broad core" algorithm update publicly this week. Not sure why that would get 2k likes. Every time Google "improves" its core algorithm, thousands of small online …
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This is the fourth post in a short series on building a minimum viable funnel to validate an info product idea. You can go back here: Shaving down your ideaDetermine the value to your ideal …
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This is the third post in a short series on building a minimum viable funnel to validate an info product idea. You can go back: Shaving down your ideaDetermine the value to your ideal …
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This is the second post in a short series on building a minimum viable funnel to validate an info product idea. The first is about shaving down your idea. Go deeper, what's the crux of the …
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This is the first post in a short series on building a minimum viable funnel to validate an info product idea One way to validate is by doing. Keep it all as simple as possible. Take a …
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Typically we pick a direction and try it. If it works, great, if not, we go back to the drawing board. In this way validating and marketing have a lot of overlap. Validation as curiosity You …
Validating a digital product idea for your list makes a lot of sense if you're going to be launching a product with your list as the key sales channel and target market. The easy way is to say, …
Yesterday we talked about Google Hummingbird - an algorithm update that evolved into "Rankbrain," a core machine learning component to how search engines interpret what users search. Ever since, …
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When I explain how SEO works for Google, I'll keep it to under 30 seconds for clients. Since I've done this, I have not put one client or prospect to sleep during a meeting. Here's what I'll say: …
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In research methods you learn about factors of good experimental and correlational research design. Experimental design 101 As a 101 refresher, experimental designs by nature less easily …
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This is part of a maybe someday series on info product validation inspired by this post by PM. First, know whether you've already decided Last night we were watching season 2 of Fleabag on …
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We spend a fair amount of time on user and market research in order to optimize decisions around marketing experiments (more commonly referred to as campaigns). Optimizing for product validation and …
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Growth KPIs are fine. But choosing growth as the goal will come at a cost to long term stability and profit. I think of Pinky from Pinky and the Brain, making big moves to take over the world that …
If we onboard a client and cannot significantly improve metrics they care about we'll lose that client. If not everyone at the client is sold on the work we're doing then it has to be even more clear …
Typically we cater to KPIs around reducing costs and increasing leads or sales. We set these with our clients at various points in the funnel and sometimes they care about other things we cannot …
