If I was asked to do what Tyler had to, I’d be terrified too.

It was late 2014. Tyler was brought into College Raptor, an exciting new startup. They have some incredible new technology. They just closed an impressive series A round of funding.

Amazing opportunity right?

Except for one thing.

They have NO traffic (they’re starting from scratch). And they want Tyler to help scale College Raptor to 1 million visitors in a year.

Piece of cake right?

Nope, that’s not all.

They were only a marketing team of three. It’s at this point I’d probably quit, but Tyler doesn’t.

Well I’m not going to give away the rest of the story, but I do have to say – you’re going to learn a ton about growing traffic. So sit back or keep walking the dog or fighting traffic.

And don’t worry, all the show notes for this episode can be found below.

Enjoy!

NOTE: I am aware the audio on Tyler’s end is not perfect in this episode. Huge apologies, and thank you for your patience. 99% of our audio quality is top notch and I intend to keep it that way and do everything possible in the future to prevent sub-par audio quality.

This episode is still very listenable!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• Tyler’s Website
• Tyler’s Writing Site
• Tom Critchlow’s EOW episode
• Content Marketing Is Chess
• How We Scaled a Startup from 0 to 100k Monthly Searches (In About a Year)
• Where the 114th US Senate Went to College
• Data.gov
• Google Trends
• Hidden Gems: Best Colleges that Receive Fewer Than 5,000 Applications
• Movoto Blog
• Quit Being So Damn Friendly
• Strategic Content for Each Funnel Stage
• Optimist.com

People

• Tyler Hakes
• Neil Patel
• Brian Dean
• EOW Guests – Twitter List

Agenda

Background

• University of Iowa 2010
• Journalism
• “I do content marketing.”
• Purveyor of hiphop

Content Marketing Is Chess

• “A lot of people don’t understand how to do it well.”
• Over a million visitors in one year
• “We talked to parents and students about what their process was like.”
• Young searchers —> Immediate Intent

Creating Content That Fits with Goals

• “Every piece did not have to meet all three objectives…”
• Trifecta – evergreen, link earning, viral content

Go and Get Data

• “We used a freelance designer…”
• Facebook Ad Data
• Search operators to find PDFs

Virality

• “We intended it to be a link building piece…”
• “It had a map. People love maps.”

Plan SEO from the Beginning

• “Have an idea of the SEO landscape in your industry.”
• Keyword tracking?
• Repurposing content

Quick Questions

• “You shouldn’t be afraid to have a stance.”
• Guest posting
• Personas

The post 060: Growth Story – 0 To 100,000 Monthly Visitors (In One Year) w/Tyler Hakes appeared first on Evolving SEO.

I’m minding my own business, doing my SEO ‘thing’. Thinking “I GOT THIS”.

And then Mike King drops an article like this one called “The Technical SEO Renaissance“.

In it, he uses words like “critical rendering path”, “inverse document frequency” and “angular JS” – and I don’t know about you, but maybe you feel a bit behind, intimidated or overwhelmed?

Seems like, per usual, SEO does not stop, and there’s always so much to keep up with.

Yet if we’re going to call ourselves modern SEO’s, these are all concepts we need to have a general understanding of!

So enter today’s guest … Mike King himself.

With a development background and now one of the smartest SEO’s I know, I invited Mike to Experts to shed some light on these modern technical SEO concepts in plain English.

That, and we chat about links, Super Bowl ads and even Hip Hop and more.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• iPullRank
• Quantifying Outreach
• Real Company Stuff
• The Technical SEO Renaissance
• Just How Smart Are Search Robots
• Chrome’s Dev Tools for SEO
• Search Talk Live – Mike King
• How to Create 10x Content
• Chrysler/Eminem Super Bowl Ad
• UndergroundHipHop.com
• Search Engine Land – Mike King

People

• Mike King
• Wil Reynolds
• Rand Fishkin
• Tom Critchlow
• Wu Tang Clan

Books

Agenda

Recovering?

• “It’s a different culture.”
• “You’re not going to get it out of a big agency.”
• “We’re not a production house.”

Hiring?

• “It’s very much hustle.”
• “You have to be able to adapt or you won’t be able to do this work.”

RCS

• “We have a ways to go…”

Technical SEO

• Document Object Model
• “View source is dead.”
• “That’s how search engines are looking at the content.”
• JS Frameworks
• Escaped Fragment
• HTTP/2
• “It’s all about structured data and an experience that loads instantly.”

Worlds Colliding?

• “Ultimately, the confluence on those things is what you’re after.”
• “I won’t let the technical side limit me.”

Link Building

• An effective marketing campaign > link building
• “Link building in a vacuum easily turns to spam.”
• “There needs to be a content component to it.”

Super Bowl Ads

• “Everyone wants their Oreo moment.”
• “It’s so contrived at this point.”

Champagne with Wu-Tang Clan?

UndergroundHipHop.com

• “They got hit by Panda.”
• “We can be completely uninhibited.”
• “It’s a magazine and not a blog or news site.”
• “We’re going to do a lot of predictive modeling.”

The post 059: The NEW Technical SEO (In Plain English) w/Mike King appeared first on Evolving SEO.

There’s massive opportunity in YouTube. But maybe like me, you struggle to understand how to rank videos, how to market them, or how to monetize and drive business value from your YouTube presence.

Whether you’re trying to understand YouTube for yourself or your clients, you’ll walk away from this show with a way better understanding of how YouTube works in 2017.

My guest, Roberto Blake, is a YouTube strategy and idea machine (you’ll hear what I mean). If you don’t walk away from this episode without at least one killer idea for using YouTube better – I’ll give you your money back.

OK, this show is free, so I’ll have no money to give back. I’ll high five you next time I see you in person.

Alright, let’s pass the mic over to the self proclaimed “old man YouTube” – Roberto Blake.

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• RobertoBlake.com
• Roberto’s YouTube Channel
• Tube Buddy
• vidIQ
• Tube Filter
• Roberto’s Instragram
• Brian Dean on YouTube SEO

Books

• 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel

People

• Roberto Blake
• Tim Schmoyer
• Sunny Lenarduzzi
• Amy Schmittauer
• Evan Carmichael
• Mark Fidelman
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Matt Patrick
• Pat Flynn
• Casey Neistat
• John Mueller

Agenda

Growth on YouTube

• “I call myself ‘Old Man YouTube'”
• Subscriber count, view count, etc. (Is it important?)
• “I studied YouTube.”

Publishing

• “I roughly publish a video every day.”
• “I’m doing my content cold (no script).”
• “I spend a maximum of 20 minutes editing anything…”
• “I film and edit in bulk.”

Sources of Income

• “Screw AdSense.”
• “You can sell yourself as a video editor.”
• “When you get bigger sell training and consulting.”
• “If you can’t make products then you can go to affiliate marketing.”

YouTube SEO

• User behavior
• Channel description
• Discoverability strategy
• “Think of thumbnails like billboards.”
• “I look at channel watch time as a whole.”
• “YouTube is using the first 24 hours…”

Soundcloud & Google Acquisition?

• Want to hear this segment? Message me! @dan_shure – if at least a few people request it, I’ll post it on SoundCloud!

The post 058: YouTube SEO, Monetization & Strategy (Real, Expert Talk w/Roberto Blake) appeared first on Evolving SEO.

Do you experience the pain, frustration and overwhelm I feel when logging into Google Analytics – and you’re just buried in data. Maybe like me, you struggle to immediately connect all the dots to useful reports, outcomes and action items.

My guest today told me about some things I’d didn’t even know were possible in GA – and better yet – how to apply them to better our SEO and Content efforts.

Best of all, you’ll find out how to spend less time swimming in spreadsheets and MORE time making better decisions about your content marketing and SEO.

Let’s go!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• Jeffalytics
• Dan on Jeff’s Podcast
• Google Plus Will Make You a Better Marketer
• Live Blogging for Links
• Why I Will Not Do SEO for You
• Screaming Frog
• How to Tell Compelling Stories with Analytics
• Why Blog Comments are Great for Google SEO
• Advanced Content Analysis in Google Analytics
• How to Make Six Figures as a Marketing Consultant
• Zencastr
• WTF with Marc Maron
• Agency Jumpstart Course
• Porkapalooza
• Sol Orwell Interview

People

• Jeff Sauer
• Rand Fishkin
• Aleyda Solis
• Gary Illyes
• Kerry Jones

Agenda

Beginnings

• “That was getting more traffic than my dad’s company website.”
• “These jobs were in demand.”

Google Plus

• “You were giving them the strongest signal … “
• “I don’t think about a Google Plus strategy at this point.”
• “I was getting thousands of people a day coming to my site from G plus.”

Live Blogging

• “You have access to those who are in the same mindset and timeframe … “
• “I’m not sure how live blogging would work now.”

SEO

• “Read this first because you’re not worth my time.”
• “Service providers who are in demand usually don’t compromise prices.”
• “You don’t do SEO.”

Being an Entrepreneur

• “You can be busy and make no progress.”‘
• “Being capable of many things can be a problem.”
• Why specialize in analytics?

Analytics Goal Setting

• “It’s only useful if you have an outcome.”
• “What is the purpose of your website?”
• “Someone said somewhere to have a blog.”
• Destination URL

Bounce Rate

• “Bounce rate is the worst.”
• “Averages are lies.”

Content Groupings

• “Set it up as an administrator.”
• Branded vs non-branded

Custom Channels

Custom Dimensions

Benchmarks

Six Figures as a Marketing Consultant

• “The best way to make money is to have expertise.”
• “You shouldn’t be saying yes all the time … more like 30% of the time.”

Podcasting

• Why the story angle and not tips?

Business Course

Annual Porkapalooza?

The post 057: Turbocharge Your SEO With These Powerful Google Analytics Tips appeared first on Evolving SEO.

You may not know this, but when Tim Ferriss was launching his enormously successful Podcast, my guest today was one of just a few veteran podcasters Tim reached out to ask for advise.

That makes sense.

John’s show, EOFire, receives over 1.5 million monthly listens (and Tim’s show has crossed over 100 million downloads total).

I was lucky to grab 20 minutes of John’s time to have as a guest on Experts.

Whether you’re launching something or not, he’s going to tell you all about two platforms that hold massive opportunity in the marketing landscape, that many people have not caught onto yet (or executed on very well).

AND…

Stick around after the interview where I will tell you exactly how to enter the contest to win a free copy of the mastery journal!

John Lee Dumas is the host of EOFire, an award winning Podcast where he interviews today’s most successful Entrepreneurs 7-days a week. JLD has grown EOFire into a multi-million dollar a year business with over 1500 interviews and 1.5 million monthly listens. He’s the author of The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal, two of the most funded publishing campaigns of all time on Kickstarter. All the magic happens at EOFire.com!

Listen now! Make sure to stick around through the end to find out how to enter the contest to win a free copy of The Mastery Journal!

And don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• How to CRUSH Kickstarter
• The Mastery Journal
• How to Master Productivity – Mixergy Interview
• John Lee on the Price is Right

People

• John Lee Dumas
• Amy Porterfield
• Pat Flynn

Books

• The Freedom Journal

Agenda

Podcasting

• iTunes ‘secret sauce’?
• “Treat your podcast like a real business.”
• “Trying to overanalyze it is a mistake.”

Facebook Groups

• “Use the search bar in Facebook and find specific groups related to … “
• “Spend five minutes … “

Asking for Reviews

• “It’s important to be willing and able to ask BUT it has to be done in the right manner.”
• “It’s the reason I have over 2,400 reviews on iTunes.”

Memorable Guests

• “Someone who is willing and able to tell a story… “

Kickstarter

• “It’s a psychology play and not many understand how or why … “
• Comprising a pledge goal
• “Don’t make it a low number that’s easy to get to.”

Amazon Ads

• “No one is doing it and no one gets it.”
• “They use a different metric … “

Mastery Journal

• “I have three mighty strengths … “
• “Oftentimes people are busy but not necessarily productive.”
• “You’ll get more done in one day than you used to get done in one week.”

Price Is Right?

• “I played a putting game for a car … “

The post 056: The Art Of The Launch (Plus Two Big Marketing Opportunities In 2017) w/John Lee Dumas appeared first on Evolving SEO.

Has this ever happened to you? You create the best 10x piece of content imaginable. (It really is 10x right?) You invest time, research and money into it.

You hit publish and you know it’s going to go crazy!

But then it doesn’t.

That’s because “build it and they will come” is not always true. You have to build it, promote it – and then if you’re content and message is good enough – people will care.

Or maybe you DID pitch it, and people still didn’t care.

Let’s assume you’re content is good enough to make people care. Today you will learn how to get it in front of the publishers that can open the door to massive exposure.

Today, you will learn how to craft pitches publishers actually open, read and accept. My guest Kerry Jones from Fractl has studied what publishers want, and has the data to back it up.

You’ll learn

• How to craft a subject line that actually get your pitch opened
• The three part formula to the body of your pitch
• A campaign that received over 470 media stories
• The two types of content that almost guarantee get coverage – publishers and readers love it
• The ONE word that most publishers, when they see it, will immediate send your email to spam

Enjoy!

And don’t forget to subscribbbbeeeee on iTunes!

Links

• Braulio on Twitter
• Experts on the Wire – Episode 37 w/ Kerry Jones
• BuzzSumo
• Refurbishing Top Content
• What 1,300 Publishers Want From Your Pitches
• A 3-Step Guide to Media and Influencer Outreach Targeting
• 20 Proven PR Tips for Getting Major Publishers to Feature Your Content
• Testing “From” Fields In Email Marketing
• JustReachOut.io
• What We Learned in 2016
• How We Created Controversial Content
• The Tell-All Guide to Digital PR
• Kerry’s Website

Books

• Ogilvy On Advertising 

People

• Kerry Jones
• Ross Hudgens

Agenda

What is a Pitch?

• “The end goal is coverage.”
• Domain Authority of placement
• “BuzzSumo and Google Alerts is effective …”
• “If it’s not obvious you probably don’t have it …”

What is a Valuable Pitch (as seen by a publisher)

• “Someone made it easy for them to write the story…”
• “27% found PR pitches completely valuable.”
• “Tech and finance are more challenging verticals to pitch.”

Audience

• “Where does the customer go to get their information?”
• “Keep the audience top of mind.”
• The ‘exclusive’ pitch

Influencers

• The micro influencer
• “Micro influencers may be better for getting people to take action.”

Subject Lines

• “Keep it between 45 and 65 characters.”
• “Call-out a number or a statistic from the content.”
• “Avoid that word if you can.”

Length

• “Keep it between 100-200 words.”
• Showing relevance regarding their readers
• “We like using bullet points.”

Follow-up

• “Limit it to two follow-ups.”

Maintaining a Relationship

• “Create a Twitter list of publishers.”

2016 Findings

The post 055: Getting Major Publishers To Feature Your Content (20 Proven Tips!) appeared first on Evolving SEO.

That title is no hyperbole.

I don’t know what number you would guess ‘massive’ means, but Ross and his company Siege Media have grown traffic by 250,000-500,000 monthly visits for clients like Zillow, TripAdviser and ZipRecruiter. I’d call that ‘massive’!

I wanted to know how they do this, so I invited him on the show to find out.

We chat about:

• how he estimates if a client will see ROI from content marketing
• his 7-step process of increase traffic by 250,000+ monthly visits
• the qualities of rank-worthy content
• the myth of 10x content
• what people are getting wrong with the Skyscraper Technique
• the curious way in which he learned how to write
• …and a clip of something never released before from … 2013!

Listen now!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• RossHudgens.com
• SiegeMedia.com
• Single Grain
• SEMrush
• How We Improved Blogger Outreach Placements by 63%
• Unsolicited Response Rate – Unthinkable
• How to Increase Website Visits by 250k+
• Skyscraper Technique
• 12 Keyword Research Tools and Creative Ways to Use Them
• Are Your Titles Irresistibly Click Worthy?
• Link Prospector
• BuzzStream
• BuzzSumo
• Which Keywords Have the Worst CTR?
• Solving the Pogo-Sticking Problem

Books

• Gary Vaynerchuk Library
• David Ogilvy Library
• Dan’s Amazon List of Classic Advertising Books

People

• Ross Hudgens
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Sujan Patel
• Jay Acunzo
• Brian Dean
• Todd Mailicoat
• Barry Schwartz
• Chris Winfield
• Rand Fishkin

Agenda

Backstory

• “Do what you’re best at.”
• Sujan’s first employee

Siege Media

• “We can do any content …”
• “Our agency is split …”
• Criteria of clients
• “We grab the competitor’s URL and put it in SEMrush …”

250k+ Visits

• Identify content to create
• Content that ranks (almost) every time
• User Analysis
• Generating Links
• Leveraging Influencer Links
• Sustainability
• Inclusion

Writing

• E-wrestling?
• Introductory passages

10x Content

Voice Search

The post 054: 7 Steps To Massive Traffic Growth (SEO & Content Marketing) appeared first on Evolving SEO.

If you were to ask me:

“Dan, choose an industry to build a website around to get traffic from Google”

I would definitely NOT choose the medical and supplements industry. It’s super hard to get Google and users to trust you, and rank above sites like Wikipedia, WedMD.

But that’s exactly what my guest, Sol Orwell did with his site Examine.com – which has amassed over 2 million monthly visitors in a 4 year period. They rank above wikipedia, webmd, in the ultra competitive medical and supplements space.

Sol will break down the entire process, from spotting an opportunity, to creating rank-worthy content, to building links (they have 400+ linking root domains) and how he plans to continue the growth of Examine.com

Buckle up – it’s a fun one.

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• Examine
• Hostgator
• Reddit Fitness
• The Reddit Keyword Research Tool
• Sol’s Interview on Smart Passive Income
• SolOrwell.com
• How Readability Can Make Sure People Read
• Vitamin D on Examine
• Mixergy
• BuzzSumo
• Majestic Tools
• Ahrefs
• eBay Pez Story
• #CookieLife – How to Network Like This Millionaire

Books

• Deep Work

People

• Sol Orwell
• Brent Oxley
• Pat Flynn
• Brian Clark
• Brian Dean
• Andrew Warner
• John Romaniello

And thanks to Jason Quey for connecting me with Sol!

Agenda

Background

• “Sol sounded like a good name.”
• “He used that as the seed money to start Host Gator.”
• “Web hosting affiliates weren’t always paying out.”
• “This is when it was super easy to buy a link and rank at the top…”
• “I wouldn’t buy links…”

Examine.com

• “We dabbled in Facebook retargeting but basically no ads…”
• “I saw an opportunity within the Reddit forum.”
• “What were the most popular posts in the last year?”
• “It’s a pure firehose of questions.”
• Bro science
• “It was a worthwhile risk to me.”

Content Creation

• “You rank number one for Vitamin D. How are you doing that?”
• Brand vs personal name
• “I was building relationships.”
• “The research team has grown.”
• History of the content?
• “We were our own customers.”

Links

• Four to five years = 60+ DA
• “Why would I want to talk to you?”
• “We built a reputation.”
• “What is a skill I have that others are lacking?”
• “… that’s how you become known to be useful.”
• “Would I want to know this person?”
• “Communication is such an important skill.”
• Staying relevant to reporters/existing contacts

#CookieLife

• “Prove it to me. Mail me your cookies!”

The post 053: How To Rank Above Wikipedia (In An Ultra Competitive Industry) appeared first on Evolving SEO.

Yes, I copied the title exactly from Mark’s Moz Post. In fact that’s WHY I invited Mark to be a guest on today’s show. He wrote a post on Moz a few weeks ago that caught quite a bit of attention from the SEO community. It was actually a response to a prior post on Moz by Tomas Vaitulevicius. called “The SEO Myth Of Going Viral”.

You see, Mark used to work for the agency Distilled.

And during his time there, he was responsible for content ideas that got over 1,000 linking root domains – those are the most extreme and successful results – but even on average, he received 40-50 links per piece of content.

But is that “success”? Did those links actually cause an attributable increase in rankings, traffic and revenue? Thomas didn’t think so. So that’s what Mark is here to rebut against and discuss.

He reveals exactly how all those links happened (which is great just alone). But even better, although he’s not with Distilled anymore, he followed up with some of his former clients to find out – did the work we do actually help? Did they see results?

And if that’s not enough – he also shares some brilliant content and ideation strategies – so you’ll definitely want to stick around through until the end.

Note, that his personal story and the backstory of Distilled was so interesting, we took a little more time than usual to cover that. So if you’re looking for the just SEO talk, feel free to jump ahead to the 18 minute spot – but it’s all really worth it.

Enjoy!

Subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• SearchLove
• Distilled
• Content Marketing Ideas (Slides)
• The SEO Myth of Going Viral
• Simply Business
• Amplify
• JustPark
• What Link Building Success Really Looks Like
• BuzzSumo
• Open Site Explorer
• Compare Vocal Ranges
• Pianogram
• Gorkana (UK Media Tool)
• Mark Johnstone Content Marketing

Books

• Make To Stick

People

• Mark Johnstone
• Lexi Mills
• BBC
• Tomas Vaitulevicius
• Red Bull
• Phil Nottingham
• Tech Crunch
• Roberto Blake

Agenda

Mark’s Start

• “I thought I knew about SEO…”
• Linkbait?
• “We created many pieces of content that went viral…”
• “I’m now a freelance consultant.”

Viral Content

• “I agreed with a lot of assertions in Tomas’s article…”
• “How do you test running 10 viral campaigns?”
• “That could happen but I don’t think it always does…”
• “Setting expectations of results is one of the hardest parts of my job.”

Link Building

• “It’s great if you can build links to a piece that’s product focused but most of the time you have to compromise…”
• Topical relevance
• What a product is vs. what a product does
• Looking too brand-ish

Consulting

• Generating ideas from variables and data sets
• Make it visual —> make it human

What about a real example?

• “What is going to grab a journalist or blogger to write about it first?”
• Getting an emotional response

Remember the time this music piece went viral?

• What generated the success of the piece?
• Uniting data with a story

The post 052: What Link Building Success Really Looks Like w/Mark Johnstone appeared first on Evolving SEO.

NOTE: I originally wrote this for The Next Web In August of 2016. It was officially accepted… but never published (not sure what happened).

UPDATE: It’s been published over on The Next Web (whoo hoo! as you can imagine they have a long queue of content.)

You can read the whole thing there:

http://thenextweb.com/tq/2017/01/19/12-keyword-research-tools-and-creative-ways-to-use-them/

I’ve removed the text from this page, and no-indexed this version from Google, to give The Next Web full credit

BUT, you can still listen in audio form below and in any podcast player.

Either way, enjoy!

The post 12 Creative Ways To Use My Favorite Keyword Research Tools appeared first on Evolving SEO.