How Google’s New Layout Predicts the Future of SEO

When you think about SEO and what’s changed over the last 5 years, what comes to your mind?

Chances are, it’s something related to how it’s harder to get rankings on Google.

But why has it gotten harder to get more organic traffic?

Well, if you ask most SEOs, they’ll say it’s because Google has created a much more complex algorithm.

They look at factors like page speed, brand queries, and hundreds of other factors that it may have not been placing much emphasis on in the past.

But that’s only half the story.

The reason SEO has gotten harder is only partially related to Google’s algorithm changes.

Here’s what most SEOs aren’t talking about that you need to pay attention to because this will show you the future of SEO.

Google’s ever-changing layout

When you perform a Google search, what do you see?

Some organic listings and some paid results, right?

And that’s what Google has shown for years. Much hasn’t changed from its core concept.

But over the years, they have continually made small layout tweaks which have added up to big changes.

Let’s look at Google’s layout changes over the past few years… lucky for us, Orbit Media performed random Google searches in 2013, 2014, and 2015 and compared them to Google’s current layout for us.

The big differences from 2013 versus 2019 are:

• The first organic listing is drastically pushed down
• The ads used to be clearly identified through design elements, but now they blend in more.

Now let’s look at 2014 versus 2019:

And 2015 versus 2019:

The big trend is that the organic search results have been drastically pushed down below the fold. Roughly by 3.3X.

That’s a huge difference!

A listing these days may have a map, elements from their knowledge graph, more videos and images, and whatever else Google feels their users may want.

Another big trend is that there are now featured snippets. Although these featured snippets can drive traffic to your site, they also provide the searcher with the answer they are looking for without having to click through to your site.

Just perform a search for the largest tree in the world…

Sure, I could click through over to livescience.com to get the answer, but why? Google gives it to me right then and there.

With organic listings being pushed down, and Google answering a portion of people’s questions without them even needing to click through, this means organic listings will get fewer clicks over time.

And it’s not stopping there

Let me ask you a question…

How many organic listings are on the first page?

10, right?

Well, that’s what we are used to, but when’s the last time you actually counted?

Google’s dumped 5.5% of organic first page listings. Yes, the first page does have 10 listings a lot of the time, but not as often now.

Here’s a graph that’ll show you the change:

18%!! That’s the percentage of first page listings with less than 10 organic results.

What’s crazy is it used to be 2%. That’s a huge jump.

So, what else is Google testing with their layout?

This is a small test that they are doing with their layout, in which some results may not have any listings.

But Google did report that was a glitch. The page was not supposed to contain any organic listings, but at the same time, it was supposed to contain no paid listings either.

And over time you should continually expect Google to run more layout experiments and make more permanent changes.

Now before we get into the future of SEO, let’s get one thing straight.

Google is a publicly traded company. Sure, their goal is to create an amazing product, but they have to make money at the same time.

You can’t blame them for making changes that increase their ad revenues.

Yes, you may claim that this is creating a terrible experience for users, but is it really? If it was, people would switch to Bing or any of the other alternative search engines out there.

I still use Google every day. Yes, it may be harder to get clicks organically, but as a user, they’ve created an amazing experience.

The future of SEO

Google doesn’t just make changes to their layout blindly. They run experiments, they survey users, they try to figure out what searchers want and provide it.

Based on the layout changes they have made over the years, you can make a few assumptions:

1. More rich snippets – people want the answers to their problems as quickly as possible. You’ll see more versions and variations of rich snippets integrated within future layouts as this provides searches with their answers faster.
2. Less clicks to your site because of voice search – according to Comscore, 50% of searches will be voice searches by 2020. Don’t expect people to go to your site because of voice search.
3. People are trained to ignore ads – no matter how much Google pushes the first organic listing below the fold, people are trained to ignore ads. No matter how much Google blends them in, most people tend to click on organic listings.
4. 43.9% of the world still hasn’t come online – we all know Google is the dominant global search engine. But only 56.1% of the world’s population has Internet access. As more people come online, more people will use Google as their search engine, which means more people to click on your organic listings.

In other words, SEO isn’t dead and it is still an amazing channel. Just look at my traffic stats over the last 31 days:

Now of those 4,362,165 million monthly visits, guess how many come from search engines like Google?

A whopping 2,343,362 million visits.

In other words, SEO makes up 53.71% of my traffic. That’s a ton of traffic.

And even with Google’s continual changes, you would expect my traffic to be lower, but it isn’t… it’s gone up.

A year ago, I was generating 1,088,251 visits a month from Google. It’s now gone up to 2,343,362 even though Google’s algorithm has continually gotten harder and organic results are continually being pushed further below the fold.

But still, you shouldn’t only rely on SEO

I love Google and even though there is a future for SEO, you shouldn’t rely on it. No matter how good you are at SEO, it doesn’t guarantee success.

Let’s look at a company that you are familiar with… Airbnb.

Did you know that Airbnb didn’t come up with the concept of renting out your house or rooms in your house?

Can you guess who it was?

It was VRBO and they came up with that model 13 years before Airbnb did.

But here’s what’s interesting… who do you think wins when it comes to SEO?

Shockingly, it’s VRBO.

VRBO crushes Airbnb when it comes to Google rankings and they have for a very long time. Here are just a few examples of keywords VRBO ranks for that Airbnb doesn’t:

• hilton head rentals
• ocean city maryland rentals
• cape cod rentals
• cabin rentals
• vacation homes
• vacation rentals
• vacation home rentals

Airbnb does rank for organic keywords as well, but most of them are brand related.

They crushed their competition without relying on SEO and they were 13 years late when it came to entering the market.

So how did Airbnb win? Well, the main way was they built a better product.

But in addition to that, you focused on an omnichannel approach. From SEO to PPC to advertising on TV screens in airplanes, they tried all of the major channels out there.

Yes, you need to do SEO, but you can’t rely on it as your only source of traffic or income. Diversify, not because of Google, but because you can’t control consumer behavior.

People may not prefer to use search engines in the future, they may want something else, which means you will have to adapt.

Plus you can no longer build a big business through one channel.

Yes, Facebook did grow through referrals. Quora did grow through SEO. Dropbox grew through social media… but those circumstances don’t exist anymore. What worked for these old companies won’t work for you.

You have to leverage all channels to do well in today’s market.

Conclusion

Google may be making changes that you don’t like as a marketer or business owner, but that doesn’t mean SEO is dead.

You can see it from my own traffic stats. You can still grow your traffic, even with Google’s ever-changing algorithm.

Don’t worry about the future because you won’t be able to always predict it or even prevent the inevitable.

The only real solution is to take an omnichannel approach so that you aren’t relying on any one channel.

What do you think about Google’s current layout?

The post How Google’s New Layout Predicts the Future of SEO appeared first on Neil Patel.

from Blog – Neil Patel http://bit.ly/2Jl2Xu1

How to Generate 100 Content Ideas in 60 Seconds (Seriously)

I have a question for you…

How do you figure out what you should blog about?

If I had to take a guess, you probably come up with ideas based on one of two strategies.

The first is to use tools like Ubersuggest to come up with a list of keywords.

But once you find popular keywords, you have to brainstorm topic and titles ideas.

What a drag, right?  

Now, the second way you probably come up with ideas is by using tools like Buzzsumo.

You type in a keyword and it shows you the most popular blog posts that have performed well in the past based on social shares.

But there’s an issue… actually a few issues:

1. Buzzsumo only shows you 10 ideas… unless you pay them $99 a month.
2. And just because a blog post has a ton of social shares, it doesn’t mean it will get consistent traffic like you would through SEO. Social shares typically provide a boost in traffic for only a few days and that’s it.
3. Tools like Ubersuggest show you popular keywords, but it’s not easy to come up with titles based on those keywords.

There must be a better way to find topics you should blog about, right?

There will be in 30 days with your help!

Content marketing made simple

A few weeks ago I made an upgrade to Ubersuggest: I added a free backlink checker called Backlinks.

But why stop there?

I now plan to release a new feature on Ubersuggest that will provide data similar to what you would find on Buzzsumo, but I need your help to do so.

Let’s say you are interested in creating content that gets a lot of traffic.

What’s the process you use?

Well, you probably head over to Ubersuggest and type in a keyword. You’ll see a report that looks something like this:

You then pick a few keywords and create articles about them. Now sure, at least with this approach you are writing content about keywords that have decent search volume.

But what about the title?

Here’s an interesting stat for you… 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 will click through and read the rest of your article.

So how do you come up with that title or headline? One that grabs attention.

What if I made that easy for you?

What do you think of the idea of seeing a list of blog articles that have done well anytime you type in a keyword into Ubersuggest? Something that looks like this.

*The screenshot has fake data… the real version would show real data with real-time results.

It would list out all of the articles that people have written in the past that contain the keywords you researched in both the title and meta description.

The results would then be sorted by:

1. Social shares – which content got the most shares on social sites like Facebook and Pinterest.
2. Estimated visits – how many visits is each article receiving from Google? And what are the keywords that each article ranks for?
3. Backlinks – how many people are linking to each article? What are the URLs, their domain score, and even page score?

What if I showed you all of that in this “Content Ideas” report that I’m going to add to Ubersuggest?

Here are some more screenshots that’ll help describe what I am trying to create for you… this one shows keywords that a blog post ranks for.

And here is one that shows the web pages linking to a blog post.

Would it help you come up with better content topics to write about?

Why should you want this new Ubersuggest report?

When you write any type of content, as a marketer, you want to ensure that it gets the most amount of traffic.

The current tools will either show you how many social shares a similar article received in the past or how people shared content with specific keywords.

But that’s the problem… you aren’t presented with enough data, which means you are more likely to write content that doesn’t perform well.

See, social algorithms are much harder than they were in the past, which means you probably won’t get as many social shares as some of the other articles that have done well.

And SEO is also harder than what it was in the past, which means it won’t be as easy to get rankings.

By seeing content broken down by social share count, estimated visits (organic monthly Google traffic), and backlinks you will have the data you need to pick the right topic to write about. Because if you are picking topics that have a lot of all 3, the chances are that the topic is worth writing about and will do well.

Social shares will provide you that quick influx of traffic at the beginning. Backlinks will help you with referral traffic and over time help you boost your search engine rankings. And estimated visits shows you which keywords to focus on for that article.

And best of all, you’ll see over 100 content (topic) ideas so you’ll have a lot to choose from. I don’t know how long it will take to show you 100 ideas per keywords, but I do know I can do it well under 60 seconds. 🙂

Competitor analysis

I don’t know if you knew this but I already have half of what you can get from Buzzsumo built into Ubersuggest. This part is already live.

Did you know that you can enter a URL into Ubersuggest?

Then when you click on the “Top Pages” navigational button you can then see a list of all of the top articles and pages on your competitor’s site.

The results are broken down based on estimated visits a page receives from Google on a monthly basis, the backlink count, and the number of social shares each page has.

Just click “view all” underestimated visits and you will see all of the top keywords that drive traffic to that page.

And under backlinks, if you click “view all” you can see all of the sites linking to that page.

Conclusion

What do you think of this new content ideas report that I am trying to create?

In other words, something similar to Buzzsumo, but I will show you more results as well as show you who is linking to each of those articles and how many visits each article is generating from Google each month?

My goal is to make it easier to find ideas for your next blog post. And of course, increase the odds of you creating content that actually gets traffic and backlinks.

So, what do you think, should I release this free feature within the next 30 days?

And if you think I should do it, what other features would you want me to release?

The post How to Generate 100 Content Ideas in 60 Seconds (Seriously) appeared first on Neil Patel.

from Blog – Neil Patel http://bit.ly/2H6fBuw

How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget

There’s a formula to SEO and as long as you follow it, you’ll get rankings.

So, what’s this formula?

Well, you write amazing content, optimize your code, create a great user experience, and you mix in some backlinks.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, the formula isn’t too complicated, but it does require hard work and patience.

Now what makes SEO challenging isn’t the formula, or the time, or the patience. It has more to do with how you beat people who have more money than you because, in theory, they can do more of everything, which should cause them to outrank you.

But you know what? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I love SEO because it’s the one channel where you can beat big companies even if you can’t outspend them.

How? Well, let’s go over that.

Let’s first start with the two mental shifts you’ll have to make.

Mental shift #1: Speed is everything

What most people won’t tell you is big companies need to spend more to get the same results that you can for pennies on the dollar. They have way too many employees and layers in their organization to move fast and nimble.

In other words, everything moves slowly.

So, what do they do? They spend money in hopes that it makes them move faster. But the reality is, spending more doesn’t necessarily get them faster results.

If you want to beat them, the first thing you’ll have to do is focus on execution. If you can’t move fast, you won’t win.

This is your biggest advantage.

The reason I have gotten to where I am today is due to my execution speed. And now that we keep growing in size, things are moving slower.

For example, because my business has continually been growing, we now prioritize based on what makes us the most revenue and I bet you SEO isn’t as high on that priority list as it used to be. Not just for me, but for all companies my size and bigger.

You have to remember, we have multiple offices, hundreds of employees… we have to focus on what pays the bills.

So how do we compensate? We spend more money in hopes that it fixes it. Just like how I write less content these days, and I spend money on things like Ubersuggest and Backlinks in hopes that it helps.

But that won’t fix everything.

The point is, if you can move fast, it will give you a huge advantage.

Mental shift #2: Scrappiness beats money

Alright, let’s recap the formula to SEO…

Content + SEO friendly code + user experience + backlinks = rankings.

I know Google has over 200 ranking factors, but the formula above encompasses the majority of it.

Now you are probably thinking that if you want to write content or build links you have to spend money, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

With my previous marketing blog, Quick Sprout, I grew it by partnering with other writers.

I wasn’t as well known in the marketing world back then, but I hit up people like Brian Dean and co-authored guides like this one on link building with him.

That guide is over 20,000 words. And Brian did the majority of the work and for free.

I also did something similar with Ritika Puri and we created a guide on marketing psychology.

And every time I partnered with other writers and marketers to create these in-depth guides my traffic skyrocketed.

The first time I published one, my traffic went up by 117% in 2 months.

Now, that’s something that you can still do to this day to see great results.

Another way you can boost your SEO traffic is to get people to contribute content to your site for free.

I did this with the KISSmetrics blog before I acquired it. During its peak, it generated 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.

We grew the KISSmetrics traffic through one simple approach… we hit up tons of writers in our space and asked them to contribute articles.

At first, we had to pay a few because the blog wasn’t known and we barely had any visitors. But once we paid a handful of well-known writers who were guest contributors on competing sites, we now had a great foundation.

We still didn’t have much traffic, but having those writers publish content was enough to convince other writers to submit content for free.

It’s a simple approach that still works to this day.

There are many ways you can be scrappy, you just have to think outside the box. Don’t think you need tons of money to solve your marketing problems. Being scrappy in most cases is more effective.

Now that we’ve covered the two mental shifts you need to make, let’s focus on the 4 quick wins that will yield the biggest results in the least amount of time.

Yes, many of these “quick wins” are well known, but less than 1% of SEOs focus on them. I know this because I have an ad agency that works with large Fortune 100 companies… and it doesn’t stop there, most companies no matter what size they are, don’t focus on these quick wins.

Quick win #1: Land and expand

They say the more content you create the more traffic you will get.

Do you want to know what the big issue with this strategy is?

Writing more content doesn’t guarantee more traffic.

Content marketing has changed. Writing no longer guarantees you more traffic because there are over 1 billion blogs.

With people cranking out so much content on a daily basis, Google now has the choice of what content to rank and what not to rank.

Similar to me, your top 10 pages are going to make up a lot of your traffic… and probably more than me.

The top 10 pages on my site make up 29.23% of my traffic. That’s crazy considering I have 5,171 blog posts.

With your site, your top 10 pages will probably make up over 40% of your traffic as you probably don’t have as much content as me.

So instead of spending the majority of your time writing new content, why not get more traffic out of the content you have.

I call this the land and expand method. In other words, you already have pages that are getting search traffic and rank on Google, might as well adjust them so you can 2 or 3 times more search traffic to those pages.

Best of all, this method gets results within 1 month for most sites and within 2 months if your site doesn’t have as much authority.

If you want to leverage this technique, follow “step 2” in this article where I break down how to land and expand step by step.

Quick win #2: Optimize for revenue, not traffic

Your goal is to increase your search traffic, right?

Well, if you are reading this blog it is. 😉

But as you get more search traffic, what’s happened to your revenue?

Actually, let’s rephrase the question… as my traffic climbed, can you guess what happened to my revenue?

That traffic according to SEMrush is worth $1.2 million.

But here is the thing: as my search traffic grew by 123%, my revenue only grew by 12.5%… not a good deal.

Yes, you want to optimize your site for Google so you can rank higher. But what’s the point if it doesn’t increase your revenue?

You need to look at the pages on your site that are responsible for revenue generation activities and first optimize those so they rank higher on Google. You can do this by setting up goal tracking within Google Analytics.

Once you set up goal tracking, you’ll now know what pages to focus your attention on so that those extra visitors you in bring will turn into revenue. You can then take that extra revenue and reinvest it in your marketing initiatives.

Quick win #3: Optimize for clicks, not rankings

Question for you…

If everyone did a Google search and clicked on the second results instead of the first result, what do you think will happen?

Well, it would tell Google that people prefer the second listing and it would move that ranking to the number 1 spot.

To prove this theory, Rand Fishkin told all of his Twitter followers to search for the phrase “best grilled steak” and click on the 4th listing instead of the 1st.

And within 70 minutes the 4th listing jumped up to the top spot.

It was so effective that the listing Rand Fishkin told everyone to clicked on skyrocketed to the top of Google for the phrase “grilled steak”.

If you want to boost your rankings, it isn’t just about the content you are creating or the links you are building. If people don’t want to click on your listing, you’ll find that your rankings will continually tank.

And if people click on yours more than the competitors, than your rankings will skyrocket even if you don’t build as many links.

So how do you increase your click-through-rate?

Well you don’t want to tell your friends to click on your listing as that is a temporary effect and your rankings will only climb for a short period of time. You want to optimize your title tag and meta description to encourage people to click on your listings over the competition.

This will cause your rankings to climb slower, but they will stick once you reach the top.

I won’t bore you with the details in this article on optimizing click-through-rates as I have already blogged on it… just head over to this post and follow hack number 1. 😉

Quick win #4: Update your old content

Have you noticed over time that your rankings fluctuate? No matter how good you are at SEO and no matter how much money you have, there is no guarantee you’ll be at the top spot.

Do you want to know why your rankings drop?

Most people assume that it’s a penalty. But Google is very friendly (believe it or not), and their goal isn’t to penalize sites. Their goal is to rank the best sites at the top.

You know… the sites that users love the most.

Just think of it this way, if Google hypothetically penalized BMW for building backlinks and removed them from the index, what do you think would happen when people search for “BMW”?

People would be pissed that BMW isn’t showing up.

And they wouldn’t be pissed at BMW, they would be pissed at Google and they may not use Google again.

Google’s goal isn’t to penalize your site or be mean to you or tank your rankings. Their goal is simple… always put the site that is best for the end user at the top.

When your rankings tank, it’s typically because someone else created a page that provides a better experience for the term you were ranking for.

The way you fix this, maintain your rankings, and even climb higher is to continually update your old content.

If you have content that is old, outdated, or if your rankings drop, read this. It breaks down what to do step by step, and it will help you outrank your competition because I bet they aren’t updating their old content.

This is so effective I currently have 3 full-time people updating my old content.

You don’t have to get as crazy as me, but you should update your old content.

Conclusion

Money isn’t stopping you from beating your competition. The only thing standing in your way is you.

That’s ok though. We can fix that.

With a few mindset shifts and some quick wins, things are about to change.

I’ve never let my competition get in my way. I don’t care if they have more money than me or that they have been at this longer.

If I started my journey cleaning restrooms and picking up trash and eventually got here… you can too.

There is nothing really stopping you from winning.

So what do you think, are you ready to beat your competition?

The post How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget appeared first on Neil Patel.

from Blog – Neil Patel http://bit.ly/2GKXSaP

One Simple Hack That’ll Boost Your Ecommerce Sales

There’s a little growth hack that every ecommerce site should be using.

It’s the easiest hack… it doesn’t require money, you don’t need a following, and it works instantly.

But you know what? No one is using it.

Can you guess what it is?

Well, I’ll give you hint… just look at the image above.

It’s not related to SEO, paid ads, or anything else you are used to reading about here on the blog.

The beautiful part about it is no one is leveraging it, which means it works roughly 100% of the time. 🙂

A simple way to get more ecommerce sales

Alright, do you want to know what it is? Well, I’ll give you one more hint before spilling the beans.

If you watched a video like this on YouTube about the best makeup products, what do you think would happen?

There’s a good chance you’ll buy one of the products recommended. And if you don’t, someone else will.

The issue is, it only works if you generate enough video views.

And I have a lot of articles breaking down how to get more YouTube traffic like:

• YouTube for E-Commerce: The Art of Selling Without Selling
• Is YouTube Worth It? 7.6 Million Views Later, Here’s What I Learned
• How to Hack YouTube SEO – 26 Tactics for Gaining Top Results
• How to Get More YouTube Views

There is one big problem… there is no guarantee that your video will rank on YouTube or get enough views.

But what if I told you that there is a channel that is highly relevant to ecommerce and you can easily get 20,000 plus views per video?

Best of all, there is no competition and you can do it every single time, without even having a following!

How to get 29,090 video views on Amazon

You already know about YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Instagram Live… and you may even know about LinkedIn Live.

But did you know about Amazon Live?

Just like all of the other live platforms, it works similarly, but the whole purpose is to show off and promote your products so you can drive more brand awareness and sales.

The video above is by Skincare by Alana. Alana presented tips in the video about how to reduce puffiness around your eyes and how to make them brighter.

Can you guess how many views that video received in the first week it aired?

Well, based on the headline above you are probably going to guess 29,090. That is correct. 😉

And all Alana spent was $200 to boost the video.

It’s not just Alana who is seeing massive success… I know 2 other people that are getting similar results, but they won’t let me share their stats as they are white labeling other people’s products and don’t want more competition. 🙁

So how do you get thousands of views from Amazon Live?

Well, there is a simple process… let’s break down how you can do it step by step.

Now before we get into that, I need to be transparent: You are going to find it a bit awkward at first. But after you do it a few times, you’ll find that it is easy and fast.

Step #1: Download the Amazon Live app

You probably have an iPhone or an Andriod device. Log into your app store and download the Amazon Live app.

Although you can view Amazon Live on your desktop computer, you can’t post a video unless you do it from your phone.

When you install the app, make sure you allow Amazon to access everything on your phone. This will come in handy later when you try to upload your slate image. I will get into what a slate image is later on…

Step #2: Open the app

Now open up the app. Once it’s opened it will look something like this other than the fact that you won’t have any videos.

On the bottom left you will see a “Streams” navigational option and that will show you all of the videos you have aired.

On the bottom right you will see a “More” navigational option that shows you all the preferences and options you have.

And to get started, you would click the “+” button at the bottom.

Step #3: Getting started

When you click the “+” button at the bottom, you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

Amazon Live has a cool practice mode feature. I highly recommend you start off with a practice run or two.

Once you get the hang of it, create a real live video. But before you do you’ll want to add products that you want to promote. You can select one or multiple.

As for video source, your phone camera will be the easiest. There are other options as well such as an encoder and other things for video ninjas, but I would just use your phone camera (also known as phone cam) as it’s simple and works well.

You’ll also have to name your live stream. This is where you enter the title of the video.

This is very important because if your title sucks, you won’t get as many views. If you don’t know how to write amazing headlines, check out these posts:

• The Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Powerful Headlines
• How to Write Headlines People Can’t Help but Click [Formulas Inside]
• The Definitive Guide to Writing a Headline that Doesn’t Suck (Tips, Tactics & Tools Included)
• How to Boost Your Social Shares Through These 10 Headline Formulas
• How to Fail-Proof Your Ad Campaigns with These 7 Headline Formulas

Step #4: Boost your video

It doesn’t take much money to get thousands of views. Technically, you will get thousands of views without spending a dollar. But if you want to spend a few hundred dollars it will go a very long way.

Again, this tactic works without spending any money, but a few dollars can help you get a lot more traction.

Step #5: Schedule or post your video

You’ll have 2 options when it comes to posting your video. You can go live and post right away, or you can schedule your video to go out.

If you haven’t filmed your video during peak hours, I recommend that you schedule it. The last thing you want to do is publish a video in the middle of the night or too early in the morning.

Step #6: Add a slate image

A slate image is a cover image. This is what people see when browsing Amazon Live. Here’s an example of a slate image:

Remember how I said you’ll want to allow the app access to files on your phone? You’ll want to do that so you can upload a slate image.

Step #7: Show a banner

You need to show a banner. It will change the number of sales you generate.

You have 2 options when it comes to showing a banner. The first is to share a promotion with the views, and the second is to share a custom message.

When you select the “share a promotion” option, your promotion will be displayed as a banner at the bottom of your video. Customers can click on the banner to apply the promotion to their account.

And when you select the “share a custom message” option, your custom message will be displayed as a banner at the bottom of your video. People can hide the message at any point.

You can test both options, but I recommend that you at least “share a promotion” so it makes it easier for people to get a discount with just a click.

Step #8: Watch the sales roll in

Alana only generated one sale on her first video, but that’s because she didn’t push too hard. She already knows how to drastically improve that number and, in a bit, I will go over how to generate hundreds of sales through Amazon Live.

The other accounts I have access to have generated hundreds of sales through Live. One has generated 391 sales so far from 2 videos and the other has generated 328 sales from 3 videos. And I will share below why they were able to generate sales and why Alana wasn’t.

How to maximize your sales from Amazon Live

Here’s how to get more sales:

• Buy equipment – if using your phone, get an awesome ring light and a vertical phone holder. It will NOT record horizontally. This will help improve the quality of your video.
• Sell, sell, sell – Amazon wants this feature to sell, sell, and then sell some more. This is the big mistake Alana made and she knows it and will fix this during her next live video. If you don’t sell, don’t expect sales.
• Offer a discount – Pick an awesome product, and a deep discount. If you don’t offer a discount you won’t generate over 100 dollars in sales from your live video. If you generate more sales, you’ll typically get more video views because when you sell Amazon makes more money. I know I have talked in the past about how giving discounts is a bad long-term strategy for your brand. I still stand by that. However, live videos are a much different way to sell in the short term and offering discounts will drive many sales and more awareness quickly. Because the offer is only accessible during the Live and nowhere else, this is one of the situations where not only do I think discounts are acceptable but necessary.
• Be careful – if you are sending tons of traffic to a product and you don’t generate any sales, you will hurt your Amazon organic rankings. For that reason, you really have to sell. If you aren’t willing to sell hard, Amazon Live may not be for you. If you perform well, it can help with your organic rankings.
• Create a sign – hold a sign at the beginning of the video that says “UNMUTE ME” or something like that. Amazon appears to track how many people actually listen to your video, and how long they listen. This should help you get more views and sales.
• Hook viewers – making bold statements that are true or telling people what you are going to cover later in the video is a great way to keep people engaged longer. Poor engagement will lead to very little video views.
• Build authority – although I told you to sell hard, you need to provide amazing information and tips at the same time. This will help you become an authority and it should boost your sales in the long run. Selling without providing value will make you look bad.

It really isn’t that complicated. As long as you follow the tips above, it shouldn’t be hard for you to generate dozens of sales from each Amazon Live video.

Conclusion

Just like every other video platform, the reach will eventually be limited, and it will be harder to get results. And sadly, there is nothing you can do about it.

For the time being, though, you need to jump on the Amazon Live bandwagon and create as many videos as you can. Once you get the process down right and you are seeing sales, I would create 1 video each and every day.

I can’t create videos on Amazon Live as I don’t sell ecommerce products myself, but you can. That’s a requirement that I can’t get around.

So, what do you think about Amazon Live? If you aren’t jumping to create a video after reading this, you are missing out.

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