10 Top Link Building Tools to Make Your Life Easier

Link building is not one task in itself, it is a series of events. Everyone completes these steps differently and has a variation on what tools they love to use, but I have a few particularly useful ones that I use at least once a week. I chose these tools because they are easy to use, uncomplicated, and mostly free!

Ubersuggest: This is a Google suggest scraper which harnesses the power of popular keywords into a research tool perfect for diversifying your search. It sorts the keyword add-ons alphabetically and allows you to choose what kinds of searches you are interested in (web, image, news, etc.).
Guest Post Labs Query Generator: After you have figured out some of the best keywords to search for, plug them into this handy tool and just follow the links! You simply enter your keyword and then the tool will pair up search operators to your word to create awesome query strings for you to use.
Query Strings: When you know which kind of search operators you want to use, but you aren’t quite sure which ones are best, turn to this ultimate list of 10,000 query strings(search strings in Google) to get some great suggestions. They include everything from how to snag libraries to awesome searches for guest blog posts.
Broken Link Checker: There’s a million of these on the market, but if you are looking for a simple, free checker that plugs right into Chrome, look no further. You simply click it to identify broken or redirected links on the page, without having to open a new tab or click away from the screen.
Open Site Explorer: If you’re hoping to use competitor backlinks as a link building method, Open Site is the tool for you. While you have to pay to run more than 3 reports a day, the reports are infinitely valuable. You can show internal links on a site or exclusively external sites and sort by anchor text, page authority or domain authority.

Identify Site Networks: If you find a great site, but want to make sure it’s not part of a network, check out Spy on Web. It’s a simple tool that can show sites with the same IP address so that you’re not getting stuck on a network.
Mail Tester: If you need a website’s e-mail address and your Whois search is coming up empty, you might have to try to use many iterations of standard e-mail addresses before you get the webmaster. Things like info@domain.com or contact@domain.com are common e-mail addresses on a domain. With Mail Tester you can see if the e-mail is valid before emailing all different combinations – which I imagine would save some time and effort in the end. It does take a minute to bounce the server and back, so it’s best to be patient.
Netpeak Analyzer: If you’ve found a bunch of really great prospects, but forgot to write down the domain authority of all the sites, fear not! Netpeak is a simple tool that once downloaded can scour a list of sites and report back on metrics such as domain authority, MozRank, IP and Pagerank. It can easily be copied to other spreadsheets or downloaded as a sheet of its own. To make the best use of this tool, you will need a SEOMoz pro membership login to plug in to the tool. It then can access the full API of what SEOMoz offers and deliver any stats that were created.

Timer Tab: Having trouble staying focused? Challenge yourself to work for 25 minutes on just one project with this simple and easy-to-use tab for your Internet browser. You can set any time limit and see how much time you’ve got left in the tabs area above the URL box.
URL Opener: If you enjoy multitasking, this tool is for you. You simply paste in a list of sites and the tool will open them all within your browser so you can check out each page. You can combine the query generator with this tool to perform multiple searches at once and cross check your results.

8 Steps To Creating AdWords Automated Rules

                 The automated rules will ever take the place of getting in there yourself and making changes to your account. They are extremely valuable though if you don’t have time to manage your account daily, or if there are changes that need to be made at inopportune times. This post will walk you through the process of setting up automated rules to enhance account management.

Automated Rules Overview

The table below shows the different changes you can automate across the four account levels.

I work with a retail client who has a limited budget, so it’s very important that we spend the budget at the right times to drive the most sales. Sales for the client increase substantially on the weekends so I want to use campaign automated rules to increase budgets during peak sales days.

Changing Budgets

Since sales spike during the weekends, I want to increase the daily budgets for my campaigns on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead of changing the budget myself whenever it is I decide to wake up on Saturday, I can tell Google to do it for me.
Select the campaigns for which you want to change the budgets then go to Automate and select “Change daily budget when…”

The green box below will open up for you to create your rule.

Step 1: Apply Your Rule. Decide which campaigns the rule will apply to. You can change the budget for selected, all enabled, or all but deleted campaigns. I chose my top converting campaigns so I want apply it to just the selected campaigns.

Step 2:  Set The Automatic Action. What change do you want to happen? I want to increase my weekend budgets by $5. If you have a lot of campaigns which have budgets that change frequently, you might want to select a maximum budget. By setting a maximum budget, you make sure that your rule will not set a new budget that exceeds the maximum you want to spend in a day. Keep in mind that the rule will still run, but only budgets that stay within your maximum will be updated.

Step 3: Set Requirements. You can add requirements so that your rule only runs when specific criteria are met. For example, if I only wanted to increase weekend budgets if my selected campaigns converted more than 10 times I can require that conversions must be greater than 10. For now, I’m going to leave requirements blank and increase the selected campaign budgets no matter what.

Step 4: Set The Frequency. You can set the rule to occur once, daily, weekly, or monthly. This is going to be a weekly change since I want budgets to increase every weekend. For the day I chose Saturday and I set the start time to 12am. If you’ve set requirements, this is where you select how much data Adwords should consider to determine if a campaign meets the requirement. Since I want all my selected campaigns to increase in budget, I’m going to leave this field as is.

Step 5: Name Your Rule. Give you rule a name that will make it easy for you to identify. If you have multiple rules running in an account or if there are multiple people working in an account, it can become difficult to keep track of which rules do what. Since I’m the only one in this account titling it “Increase Daily Budget” is specific enough for me.

Step 6: Set Up Email Notifications. I recommend sending an email every time a rule runs so you can make sure it’s activated at the proper times.

Step 7: Preview Changes. Always, always, always, ALWAYS preview your changes. This is how I realized I had set my budgets to increase BY $25.00, not increase TO $25.00 the first time I set up the rule. When you preview your changes you’ll see what the changes would look like if the rule were to run now.

Step 8: Save Your Rule. All that’s left to do is click save and your rule is scheduled to run.
So we’re all done now right? Wrong. If you are increasing your budget just during a specific time period you also have to set up a rule telling Adwords when to decrease it. Below is a screen shot of the automated rule settings to decrease daily budgets back to the original amount.

Managing Automated Rules

You can view and manage all your automated rules in the Control panel and library. Note that if you edit any of the rules it will create a new rule and the old one will be deleted. Each user is also only able to have ten active rules running at a time so make sure to pause active rules you don’t want running anymore.

The Few Sentences You Need to Dominate Your Market

Almost regardless of what you do, you have bigger competitors.
There’s a blog that has more readers, an e-commerce site with more customers, or a brand with better name recognition.
Usually, one or two of them are clear market leaders.
It’s tempting to think they got there because the planets were aligned and the gods were smiling at them.
And sure, fortune just might’ve played a role in their growth.
But their continued success isn’t about luck.
Instead, they have the best value propositions, and they know how to use them.

What makes you valuable?

People won’t ever buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you. And they notice you only if you have a strong value proposition.
The usual definition of value proposition is crippled. It describes it as “a promise of the value you can deliver.”
Value proposition, if you definite it like that, is a decent—but incomplete—internal tool that can guide your decisions to the right general direction. But nothing more.
A more useful definition of value proposition is “a believable collection of the most persuasive reasons people should notice you and take the action you’re asking for.”
This way, it guides your decisions much more clearly and can be used as the basis for marketing messages.
If you don’t have a strong value proposition, people don’t have good reasons to do either of those.
For example, if your online bookstore has average selection, decent prices, delivery, a guarantee, good customer service, and a website, why would anyone buy from you? There’s surely a competitor who beats you in at least some of those aspects.
You don’t have to be the best in every way. Sure, it’s great if you are. But realistically, it’s difficult enough to be the best in one way.
However, if you’re the best in at least one way, you’re the best option for the people who value that aspect.
Apple doesn’t have the largest product selection. Amazon isn’t the most prestigious. Tiffany’s isn’t the cheapest.
People buy from them for other reasons.
So, if your bookstore has the largest selection, for example, but the other things are “just average,” the people who value a large selection have a reason to buy from you.
Something has to make you the best option for your target customers.
Otherwise, they have no good reason to buy what you’re selling.

Can you prove that?

If you say, “My pizza is the best in the world,” will people flood your restaurant?
No. They won’t believe you.
Without proof, you can’t say much before it starts to sound like “marketing talk,” which people don’t pay almost any attention to (nor do they remember it).
For example, I recently saw a site where someone claimed to be “the secret weapon of digital marketing for the most successful companies in the world.” Needless to say, I doubt anyone can take that seriously when nothing supports the idea.
Being the best isn’t enough. People need to believe you’re the best option for them.
As long as you don’t prove your claims, people are unlikely to really believe them. And your value proposition becomes useless.
You can use studies, testimonials, and common sense, among other methods, to prove your claims.
Basecamp uses social proof to validate their main claim “World’s #1 Project Management App.” The two specific numbers make the claim believable (“6,232 companies” and “97% recommend”).

Impressive numbers can be the right choice (e.g., Basecamp), but they don’t always work.
Numbers can prove popularity and other quantitative things.
But when you’re a “trusted expert,” saying, “1,000 people consider me an expert” won’t work.
Instead, a few expert testimonials make the idea credible. They can even take away the need for you to make any claims—the testimonials can make the claims for you.
Similarly, you can use testimonials to build your product’s overall perceived value and take away the last doubt people might feel about your promises.
StudioPress shows well-known people praising their products.

You need to pick the right way to prove your promises. Otherwise they’re not believable.
Usually, since you’re not just trying to make one claim about you and your products, you need to use different methods to prove each promise.

People can’t read your mind

Many businesses don’t help people see what sets the company apart from its competitors.
They are better than others, and they could prove it.
They just don’t do it.
Instead, they try to persuade people with general promises, corporate babble, and feature lists. Or they just ask you to buy before really even telling you what they sell.
If your website doesn’t clearly tell visitors what makes you worth their attention (and money), they don’t spend the time to figure it out on their own.
It’s your job to hit people in the head with what makes you different and worth attention.
Visual Website Optimizer doesn’t waste time; the home page is very clear about what you can get from them.

The headline might not be as creative as many people seem to think is necessary. Instead, it gets the job done.
Besides, “creative” headlines are often just plain confusing.
You’ll never, ever hear anyone say, “It’s too easy to understand what your site is about.”
But if your site is even a bit confusing, your bounce rate will skyrocket.
It’s not enough to have a headline that’s clear about what makes you different—people won’t really understand your value proposition that easily.
You need to restate it everywhere.
If you say something just once, people can easily forget it, or they don’t realize how important it is.
So, when you know what people need to believe about you and your products, don’t put all the pressure on just one headline; do everything you can to make it clear to people.
The Iconic, an Australian online shoe store, uses the search box to remind people of their big selection.

When people understand why they should buy your product instead of any other, they’ll do it.
But first you need to figure out what makes you different from your competitors and the best choice for your target customers.

Your value proposition

When you start creating (or refining) your value proposition, the first step is to find the core of it.
The core of your value proposition is made up of the ideas that make you clearly the best choice for people.
It’s not everything there is to a strong, refined value proposition (unlike some of the basic definitions would have you believe). But it’s the part that makes the biggest difference.
Those few sentences can give you an unfair advantage.
Using them well can make you the market leader; the current leaders got there because they knew how to do it.

How To Set Up Conversion Tracking In Google AdWords

 

               

              The first thing you’re going to want to do is log into your Google AdWords account.  Now, you don’t need to have any of your campaigns running to set up conversion tracking, but you do need to have the account set up. So we’re going to go to our Reporting and Tools tab, and click on Conversions from the drop-down menu. We’ll then go into creating a new conversion.  There is a new conversion button with a blue plus sign: press that, and it will ask you to name a new conversion. You’re going to want to name this as close to the conversion you want as possible; so here you can see we have a submit a contact form, which would be a good conversion name. However, for the purpose of this video, I’m going to call it Test 3, and choose it’s tracking purpose as other.  I will press “Save and Continue”, and Google is going to take me to the Code tab.

In the code tab, it’s going to first ask me what page security level we have, and there are two choices: HTTP, and HTTPS.  HTTPS means that you have SSL security on your page.  A lot of sites that are set up to take money have this on their sites, so e-Commerce especially. Today, however, we’re working with a website that does not take money from the website, so we will choose HTTP.  You can also put in revenue for your conversion here. So let’s say you have research that shows that every time you get a proposal submitted, you usually get about $100. So that would be a good amount to put in here, so you can better learn to prioritize and plan your marketing schemes. So we’re not going to put that in today, but do keep it in mind.
The next thing Google is going to offer…ask you to do is to set up your tracking indicator settings.  This lets people know that you and Google are tracking their information of when they go online to make a conversion. Now, Google highly suggests that you do this, and they even provide you with two different with small text boxes with different color options. However, if you have the viewer tracking information in your privacy policy you do not need to do this, as long as it is clearly marked in that privacy policy, so we are going to click None because the page we’re working with has this in their privacy policy. I’m going to press save and get the code now, and Google has generated it.
Now here’s the part that a lot of people get a little worried about, about where to put the conversion tracking code. Now I’ll show you: it’s not too hard.  I have pulled up a text file of the code for my conversion page, landing page, here. And you can see that it looks pretty daunting, especially for people who are not developers. However, all I am going to need to do is to put the tracking code at the bottom, between my body tags. So, I am going to copy the code, go into my text editor; you can see that we have the body text all the way to down here.  I’m going to want to go to the bottom, to where I can see the </body>.  This is not the footer, mind you, but bottom of the page. I am going to copy and save my conversion code into the page here, and then upload it onto the website and the conversion tracking will be in.
The one tricky part that you really want to watch out for, is that you are going to want to put this code not on the page with the conversion button, but on the page someone reaches after they click that conversion button. So let me show you an example. let’s say this is our landing page: I got here after clicking on an ad…after putting in a search query and then clicking on an ad. I have now entered all my information and I am going to request a proposal. So this is the page where we do not want the tracking code to be on.  So I click on Request A Proposal, and I am taken to this page…this page that thanks me for doing my conversion. This is the page where the conversion code will be, where you want to put it. It’s actually a fairly simple concept, conversion coding – conversion tracking. It just says that there are certain pages that can only be reached once you’ve made a conversion – usually an order confirmation page, or a thank you page – and that is where you want your conversion tracking to go.
So, now that we have the conversion tracking implemented, there are a few ways to check that it is working. Let’s walk through these really quickly.
Let’s say that I’ve already uploaded the conversion tracking, as this page already has. One way to check would be to view the page source. So I’m going to double-click on the page, and scroll down to View Page Source. It will take me to a page that shows all the coding in HTML format. I will scroll down to the bottom, to see whether or not I can see the Google tracking code. And here it is right here.  You can see it says Google Code for Submit Contact Form Conversion Page, which is what I named that code, and it is above the < /body>, right where it should be. So that’s the easiest way to check to see if it’s in, and that’s the way the Google suggests.
Another way to check is to see if on your landing page you can see the tracking indicator here, if you opted to show that.  And the final way is a little expensive for you, but you can go through, and click on your ad, and make a conversion – a test conversion.  Make sure everyone who manages the account knows that this conversion is not   from an outside source, but is from you. Then, after you log into Google AdWords, you will see the conversion from your ad right in the viewing window. Now, sometimes this takes 24 hours to propagate, so make sure that if you don’t see it, you give it enough time to register.
And that’s all it is for conversion tracking!  Now, conversion tracking is exceptionally important when you are working with a PPC account.

Getting Intimate With Keyword-Level Bidding Strategies

The month of May has brought us not only showers and flowers, but it’s also included the arrival of the Flexible Bidding Strategies as promised this spring!
This is another example of Google giving us additional control of the work we do. As the waves in the ocean of Enhanced Campaigns begin to die down, Google has been taking step after step to allow us more say-so in how we manage our accounts.
So you’re probably saying to yourself or a loved one sitting nearby, “What are my flexible bidding strategy options, anyway?”
You’ve got 4 choices:

• Target CPA: Keyword bids are adjusted through a magical Google algorithm to best reach your designated cost per lead/acquisition

• Target a Position: Your bid is altered in order to gain you a spot in the top section of search results (good old ad ranking 1-3) or on the first page of search results. Whether your keyword just performs better in a certain spot/section, or you’re hoping for a little more brand recognition in the long run, this option allows you to rest comfortably knowing Google’s on top of it!

• Enhanced CPC: Google decides what levers to pull to get your keyword the clicks that will most likely turn into conversions

• Maximized Clicks: Stay with me here, but this strategy helps maximize your clicks.  Boom.

So you’re not impressed- You’ve been using these strategies already, right? But at the ad group level? At the keyword level??


New to AdWords: Bidding Strategies at the keyword level!
When does a feature like this appeal to a PPC Hero? Two examples:

1. If you know that a keyword has the potential to perform a particular way and you want to set a bidding strategy based on that knowledge
2. Based on previous performance, you want to pursue a specific bidding strategy for a couple of keywords, but not necessarily all of them. Example: You’ve got a particular couple of keywords that aren’t hitting your CPA goals. Instead of affecting the entire campaign, these flexible bidding strategies let you select just those keywords for which you want to set Target CPA bidding.

Some specific applications of each bidding strategy might include the following:
Target CPA:

• If you have different CPAs for keywords in a single ad group.  When would this be the case? If you find more value in these conversions, you may be willing to spend more on them than a neighboring keyword.

Target a Position:

• If you have keywords that you want in the top results of your search results page or on the first page of your search results. Perhaps you have a new product or featured item for which you’re hoping to get maximum exposure but you don’t want to have to create an entirely separate ad group to be able to push the Top Position bid strategy.

Enhanced CPC:

• This is much like the previous version of ECPC: Google has their own algorithm associated with that keyword and what bid they suspect will bring in the most conversions. (This is another one of those “Trust me, I’m a professional” moments.) As AdWords spots a trend on the ad rank and frequency with which people see, click on, and subsequently convert for a keyword, it will support that setting through regulating your bid for you. Google Magic!

Maximize Clicks:

• This Bid Strategy approach lets you set the algorithm for a particular keyword that you think is bringing in all the right traffic. For example, if you’ve seen a particular exact match keyword bring in great conversion volume, it stands to reason that the more clicks you get, the more leads you’ll be raking in.

Great, I’m sold! How do I sign up for this fantastic feature??
It’s almost too easy, dear PPC Hero friends. The quick steps are as follows:
From within the AdWords interface, in either the ad group or keyword tab (depending on which you want to set), you’ll see a little something like this:

You’re going to have to choose a bid strategy first. And what that actually means is create a bid strategy.

Now you get to choose!  Enhanced CPC is pretty straightforward. You name it. That’s it.

Target search page location has you name the strategy and then choose between top results and front page results. You are also prompted on a couple advanced “preferences” for the occasions when you are limited by budget within your campaign.

Advanced options:

Target CPA is oh-so-straightforward:

Maximize Clicks is also nice and simple:

Then you simply return to your ad group or keyword list, select it, and then when you open your “Edit Bid Strategy” tab, you’ll be able to select just the one you want!

Almost too easy? We sure hope so!

Case Study: Do People Actually Click Sitelinks?

             A little while ago I wrote a post about how much I liked the new features that Enhanced Campaigns brought to Sitelinks. Today I’m going to dive into the newly available Sitelink statistics and see if we can learn something about the impact they have on your user behaviour.

There are really two things we want to know:

1. Do Sitelinks work and how well?
2. Do people actually click on my Sitelinks or does the presence of Sitelinks improve click-through rate by giving me more ad real estate?

Let’s dive into the first question! I recently inherited an account that was not utilizing Sitelinks and naturally one of the first things I looked to do was add them – it seemed like a simple win. The uplift from this simple change was immediate and noticeable. By this point most of us have a good idea that Sitelinks are important, but getting to see the huge impact of simply turning them on is something that I haven’t had in a couple of years.

Below are the stats from the month before Sitelinks were added, and the couple of months after. For the sake of integrity, when I pulled my data I looked across campaigns & keywords that did not change (I was doing other work in the account designed at optimizing CTR). As you can see my CTR rocketed from 1.16% to 1.9%, an increase of 64%, with the main cause of this being the simple addition of Sitelinks.



Another thing to note from this data is that my CPCs fell fairly considerably as a result of my spiking CTR. The knock on effect means that I can now buy even more clicks within my budget or that I can increase my bids and gain a bigger market share with my old CPC bids.

Conclusion: If you aren’t making use of Sitelinks, you should be!

What do Enhanced Sitelinks teach us about user behaviour?

So now we move on to the crux of the debate – do users actually click our Sitelinks? This is something I had been wondering about for a long time. There were a few workarounds like adding utm tags to our Sitelink URLs and checking the data in Analytics, but generally it has been a pain to monitor their direct impact. Thanks to Enhanced Campaigns, we can grab this data and see what’s going on.

For this you’ll need to have upgraded your Sitelinks to Enhanced Ad Extensions – you can do this simply enough within AdWords (click here for a walkthrough).

Once you have your Enhanced Sitelinks live in your account for a few days you’ll begin to accrue data that will look something like the below:



What we have here are the statistics for our Sitelinks on an individual basis – huzzah!? However, while these numbers are cool, they are in fact the total stats for when that Sitelink was present rather than for interaction with that Sitelink. Confusing, right? This is useful, in the sense that I can now see the overall impact of each Sitelink, but I still want more – how many people actually clicked those non-headline links?

Thanks to Enhanced Campaigns, this is now easy to see. From your segment list (shown below), select ‘This Extension vs. Other’ – this will show us the data we want to see.



Once you have that selected your data will be nicely separated out for you showing the exact number of clicks and conversions for each Sitelink. If you look in my table below you can see why this is important to know: The first Sitelink has an overall better CTR and the same number of total conversions as the second, making me think that it is the better Sitelink. However, when you look at clicks specifically on those links, the second has a 255% better CTR (0.71% vs 0.2%) and it has directly generated 19 conversions compared with 0 for the first link. Pretty important to know!



Beyond simply finding out which Sitelink did best within each campaign for direct interaction, I also wanted to break down the stats to see if the value came simply from having Sitelinks, or from their direct usage. To do this I downloaded my segmented ‘This extension vs other’ data across a couple of accounts and used a pivot table to combine my stats. For more on using pivot tables watch this video.

For the first account, I was simply looking at our click-through rate. What’s very obvious is that the vast majority of people aren’t clicking on your Sitelinks. In the below example only 360/9480 specifically clicked on a particular Sitelink (3.8%). However, if we multiply this number out by 4 as that is typically the number of Sitelinks present when they are showing, we see that our direct Sitelink CTR is actually fairly sizable – 0.56%. While much lower than the 3.49% total, it still accounts for a decent chunk of users and lets me know I shouldn’t give up on always trying to create compelling Sitelinks.



The second account I looked at contained Sitelink level conversion data, which is something I was really interested in finding out about. In the below table you can see that specific clicks on my Sitelinks generated 22 out of 794 conversions at a slightly worse conversion rate than my headline, but still decent at 4.88%. The CPA for my Sitelink extension clicks was $14.19 compared with $22.70 for ‘Other’ clicks. This certainly suggests that Sitelinks do have an intrinsic value in being able to bring my low cost conversions, albeit it on a small scale.



Conclusion: While specific Sitelinks are not clicked on anywhere near as much as headlines, they do provide additional CTR and conversions.

Google Analytics Dashboard Sharing Among Profile Users Coming Soon

                   Soon you’ll be able to share Google Analytics dashboards with other profile users. Google announced that dashboard sharing will be available to all users in the coming weeks.
Currently, users can share dashboard template links, which don’t pass any traffic data. Template Links are a great option for sharing dashboard configurations you think other Google Analytics users will appreciate.
                  The new dashboard sharing feature is designed to be used among users working on the same account, so you can make sure everyone is keeping an eye on the same key metrics. A new “Share Dashboard” option will be added to the Share dropdown, as shown below.

Opting to share a dashboard will make it available to everyone with access to the profile. You’ll be able to see a list of shared and private dashboards in the left-hand sidebar.