A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Clients by Writing Case Studies

You can use many methods to improve your conversion rate. But very few can improve your conversion rate as much as case studies can. Case studies have a few big benefits: they resonate with prospects they show that your product or service can work the transparency increases the trust a reader has in you All of these benefits are important, but the last one—in particular.  Trust is one of the most important factors in conversion rate optimization: Why is trust important? The reasons might seem obvious, but data explains these reasons to eliminate all doubt. A study by Edelman showed that gaining a customer’s trust has many rewards: Obviously, most will buy your products if they trust you and need what you’re selling. On top of that, they will recommend you to friends. And because they trust you, they would rather pay you more for a product than go to a competitor, all because they know what they’re getting when they buy from you. But trust is getting harder to earn. The sa
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Announcing the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors Results

As we head into the thick of fall conference season, I m happy to announce that the results of the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey are in. Eager to dive right in? Click here for the full results. At the very least, I hope they help kickstart your Birds of a Feather roundtable conversations. (Or if you have a local search addiction as debilitating as mine, perhaps even an after-party conversation over over a pint!) My high-level takeaways Google s local search algorithm seems to be maturing Overall, we ve seen a continuation of the gradual trend towards Google rewarding quality on all fronts—from citations to links to reviews. And as more companies have implemented the table stakes of site architecture, keyword- and location-relevant title tags, and claiming their Google My Business pages, quality and authority become the differentiators in competitive markets. The influence of Google+ on local results is on its way out (if it even existed in the first place) With the remova
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Link Building Outreach Platforms Compared

Find the original post on Point Blank SEO at: %%PostLink%% In this post we’re going to compare the most popular solutions for conducting & managing link building and/or PR outreach. Which one should I use? After my research & testing, it pains me to give such one-dimensional answers (cue waves of criticism), but since that’s what a lot of you are looking for, here’s the TL;DR version of what you should use: Small business owners – Google Drive / Excel ($ 0/anything/month) Solo person or small team – Pitchbox ($ 47-67/project/month) Mid to large-size team – BuzzStream ($ 15-25/user/month) See the more in-depth comparison here. The group up for the most debate is the mid-size teams (i.e. ~5 people). With that said, making a decision purely off the above is a very poor idea. They were made off a few critical assumptions that don’t hold true for ALL of you. Each platform has its own sets of advantages, so you need to answer these main questions before you can decide which i
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Let Me Work, Please: A Case for Fewer & More Productive Meetings

If you feel like your workweek is structured around meetings—like all you re doing is preparing for and attending meetings, talking about and reporting on your work rather than sitting and doing it—then you ve reached a point of frustration where you need to regain control of your time. There are two sides to meetings: not attending them if they re unnecessary, and when running a meeting, ensuring that it s purposeful, on-point, and driving a specific outcome. If the meeting lacks purpose and has no desired outcome, what s the point? Today s workplace The current workplace is operated on a model that doesn t promote productivity. Many offices are built around the open office concept, which serves as an ideal delivery system for distraction. This open-plan environment may promote camaraderie, but constant noise damages attention spans and workplace productivity. Even the most sophisticated noise-canceling headphones cannot defend workers from inevitable but unpredictable waves of i
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Social Influencer Prospecting with Co-Citation

A few Saturday nights ago, I had a bit of a eureka moment. I’d been thinking about how we could prospect for social influencers in a way that was more data driven than the current approach of doing keyword searches on tools like Followerwonk. An interesting feature of BuzzSumo was introduced to me a few weeks prior by AJ Ghergich (@SEO), a marketer that’s very talented when it comes to content promotion. He pointed out to me that you can see exactly which Twitter accounts shared a given piece of content, via the ‘View Sharers’ button next to each result. This was very interesting, and thought it would be useful to simply grab a list of who shared a specific piece of content that was relevant, and add them to our prospecting lists. However, on that Saturday night, I realized that this feature was much more powerful than that. But before we explain how, let’s start with how we currently generate quick-win link prospecting reports for new clients to give you the background know
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14 Examples of Truly “Epic” Content: How Does Yours Stack Up?

 The word epic is overused. It’s become watered down over the years, and most people don’t seem to appreciate what it means. Which is a problem. Why? Because the first rule of content marketing is: Create epic content. I’ve written about creating great content many times before, but epic is a level above that. According to the dictionary, epic describes something that is: heroic; majestic; impressively great OR of unusually great size or extent In plain English, it refers to something that’s so much better than any other thing out there that you can’t help but to be impressed with it. And although you can’t always hit the epic level with your content, it’s something you should strive to reach at least a few times a year. That’s when you’ll start getting hundreds of links to your content and tens of thousands of views. But here’s the problem: You can’t create a guide to making epic content because it comes in many different forms. Great content is fairly predic
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Drive More Traffic To Your Site With These Proven Methods

When it comes to the success and profitability of your blog, the number of visitors you receive is more important than anything else. We can talk about leads, conversions and authoritative backlinks until we’re blue in the face, but without any actual traffic your blog is just a barren wasteland on the internet. In order for your blog to be successful, it needs to be seen. Today I’m going to reveal proven methods that are guaranteed to bring people to your blog. What You Will Learn Proven methods to generate traffic How to apply them to your own site How to get your first 1,000 visitors ATTENTION: Unlock My Award Winning Blogging Resources Instantly 3 Ways To Bring Traffic to Your Blog Today Before we dive into these methods, it’s important to understand that while traffic is good it’s important to drive relevant traffic to your blog. More specifically, it needs to be people who are within your target audience. If you you blog about SEO tactics and someone stumbles in looking
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