With metrics like this, it goes without saying that optimizing your sites for question keywords can be a massive benefit to your SEO strategies. Done right, you can generate tons of traffic, earn good Links, and easily convert traffic to a sale. Yup, it’s well worth your time to optimize your content to use more & more question keywords. 

But hey, here’s a question: how to do it? How can we better ready our contents for Question keywords? 

Come, let’s find out in detail.

Tips to Boost SEO with Question Keywords Optimization – Why it really matters?

With the rise of voice search, there is now a paradigm shift in how people are finding their answers.  

Search queries are getting longer, taking on a conversational form – turning in to “LongTail” keywords.  

As an SEO enthusiast, this should excite you, as long-tail keywords – when searched for – appear as a highlighted result that sits above the rest in a panel of its own. Given this standout nature, it’s naturally more likely to be clicked upon compared to the other results on the same page. You see the appeal here right? It’s SEO gold! 

With their help you can; 

• Improve organic rankings by better meeting user intent and context 
• Earn rich results via structured data 
• Show search engines your expertise in specific niches 
• Offer opportunities for increasing UGC (user-generated content) in your sites 
• Improve Local SEO 
• Improve your site’s user experience, thus boosting conversions 

 Tips to Boost SEO with Question Keywords Optimization – all you need to know 

Below, let’s look at all the top ways by which you can use these top keyword solutions to maximum effect, and earn a better SEO score.

However, don’t stuff things and get caught! Be natural!  

1) Incorporate questions via FAQ (using FAQ schema)

Though quite odd, the sudden love for FAQ’s Google had a few years ago has since created many top opportunities for creators to earn tons of organic traffic via the use of question keywords in an effortless manner. 

Creating an FAQ can be beneficial to your content in two different ways: (A) it can give you a place to integrate your question keywords & be liberal about it effectively. (2) It also helps to deliver exceptional value to your customers, as it allows you to address their grievances, huge doubts, and issues, etc. Both of these factors generate high SEO points & help’s you look great in Google’s book, leading to higher SERP rankings. 

Heck, that not all! Other benefits include being able to “infuse” Links on to other pages within your answers – great for SEO. You can also use FAQ to mix and match with other Schema’s, creating Richer results – again great for SEO! 

Indeed, FAQ’s bring great results to your SEO – when used appropriately, that is. 

Be sure to add FAQs to product pages, location pages, or other top template pages for an enhanced position in the organic search results. That said; make sure not to overuse it as Google has begun cracking down on this for killing spam. 

2) Implementing Q & A sessions on to your websites

The FAQ is not the only way to add question keywords into your content’s. There is another awesome way you can do the same. The best part? This new “Way” also allow you to develop user engagements with ease! 

Remember, you don’t have to be the only one to answer the questions contained in your website. By opening up this space to your users to share their perspectives, you can create high valuable/engaging pages for SEO. In other words, this is a quick & easy way to allow users to create the content on your behalf – just be sure to moderate the user-generated content for quality & reliability of the highest order. 

The art of creating premium quality Q&A differs depending on what the site in question is. For websites with a community aspect, you can seed question keywords into your forums, top message boards, or comment sections to spark “talk” amongst your users. 

For eCommerce sites, on the other hand, you can trigger Q&A sessions to your product detail pages, and start the conversations by seeding commonly asked questions about the product on the branding’s behalf. 

Whichever way you go, make sure the overall quality is high. Time & time again, Google has made abundantly clear that bad quality or non-moderated comments can SURELY bring down your SEO in a jiffy. 

3) Adding Q&A to your Google my Business profile

Many people don’t know this, but if there are commonly asked queries about your online businesses at large, the” Google My Business” Q&A platform is a truly an outstanding yet comically underutilized resource to upload queries with good question keywords and answer them on behalf of your business & image (and earn SEO). 

The nicest part about this is that anyone with a Gmail account can engage here, post questions, and answers about any business on this platform. In other words, there is nothing to stop you from including your own questions, or from someone you know, and then directly answer these posing as your business. 

You can also “up-vote” these questions so that they get pinned to the front of your Google Business “Profile”. Indeed this is a great way to stay a step ahead of the conversation & grab control of your brand’s presence on the web. 

Types of all the questions answered by Google (question keywords)

Now that you saw how to enhance your SEO with question keywords, here’s a look at the common types of “Queries” you need to work with.

1) Direct Answer Questions (start with “what”, “which”, “where”, “who”, “when”, and “why”, etc…) 

These kinds of question keywords are meant to elicit a SINGLE answer – like “what is the name of the 7th planet?” with the answer being “Uranus”. 

2) Short Answer Questions (starts with “Why”, “Can”, etc…) 

Under FAQ, when a query like “how to perform dental SEO?” is asked, the answer is going to be returned on a SHORT snippet that’ll give the right explanation. 

3) Long Answer questions (start with “How to”, “How can”, etc…) 

The answers to these kinds of question keywords are often long and may involve several steps, like the question “How to cook Pasta?” The searchers want to learn the procedure to cook pasta in a detailed manner. Google predicts this intent & looks for results that explain the process thoroughly in a simple yet detailed manner. 

If, for example, you are looking for “top menu display software“, Google will most likely show results that provide a list of the best software options for menu display, rather than just one direct answer.

4) Comparative questions (starts with “vs.”)

These types of question keywords compare two or more things, such as “iPhone vs Samsung” or “best laptops under $1000”. They are often used when making purchasing decisions or researching different products.

5) Open-ended questions (start with “how”, “what”, etc…)

Unlike direct answer questions, open-ended questions do not have a specific expected answer. These can include thought-provoking questions like “What is the meaning of life?” or “How can we reduce our carbon footprint?”. Google may show a variety of sources and perspectives for these types of questions.

6) Localized questions (include location in query)

With the rise of mobile usage, local searches have become increasingly important. These types of question keywords include specific locations such as “best restaurants in New York City” or “nearest gas station”. Google takes into account the user’s location when providing results for localized queries.

 Tips to Boost SEO with Question Keywords Optimization – the Conclusion 

At the end of the day, the above SEO enhancing tactics only scratches the surface of what you can do with good, reliable question keywords – fuelled SEO strategy that focuses on answering your audience’s queries. 

If you know what your audience’s real needs and concerns are, question keyword SEO strategies can do wonders for you. Indeed, it can turn your SEO effort from good to excellent. Having superb content from your site showing up high in search results can obviously help you get more traffic and enough natural, high-quality links. 

Finally, make sure you keep up to date with Google’s developments in this area as they’re constantly innovating every year. 

Let me know what you think about ranking for question-based keywords, in the comments section below! 

The Science Behind Power Words

Power words leverage basic human psychology. They tap into our deepest desires, fears, and curiosities, motivating us to act.

For instance, words like “discover,” “secret,” and “exclusive” play on our innate love for mystery and exclusivity.

Similarly, “free,” “bonus,” and “sale” instantly attract those looking for a deal, showcasing the item’s perceived value and urgency.

How Power Words Elevate Content

1. Boosting Engagement

Content enriched with power words can dramatically increase reader engagement. These words transform standard headlines, calls-to-action (CTAs), and email subject lines into compelling hooks that draw readers in, fostering an emotional connection that makes the content memorable.

2. Enhancing SEO

From an SEO perspective, integrating power words into your content can indirectly boost your site’s search engine ranking. While power words themselves aren’t a direct ranking factor, their ability to increase user engagement signals to search engines that your content is valuable, thereby improving your visibility.

3. Increasing Conversions

Power words can significantly influence conversion rates. Whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, downloading a guide, or making a purchase, the strategic placement of these impactful words in CTAs can persuade readers to take the desired action.

Categories of Power Words and Their Uses

To effectively harness the potential of power words, it’s crucial to understand the various categories and their specific applications:

Emotional Power Words

These words evoke strong emotional responses, such as happiness, sorrow, excitement, or anger. Examples include “joy,” “heartbreaking,” “thrilling,” and “furious.” They are particularly effective in storytelling, allowing the reader to feel more connected to the narrative.

Sensory Power Words

Sensory words describe experiences or reactions to something tangible. “Crunchy,” “smooth,” “vibrant,” and “silky” are such words that appeal to the senses, making descriptions more vivid and engaging.

Urgency Power Words

Creating a sense of urgency encourages readers to act promptly. Words like “now,” “limited,” “before,” and “deadline” signal that time is of the essence, making offers more enticing.

Trust-Building Power Words

Establishing trust is paramount in any relationship, including between brands and their audience. Terms like “certified,” “guaranteed,” “research-backed,” and “proven” help to build credibility and reassure readers about the brand’s integrity and the quality of the offer.

Examples

To help categorize and understand the vast array of power words, we’ve broken them down into thematic clusters, each serving a different emotional or psychological purpose:

• Curiosity and Intrigue: Unlock, Secret, Behind-the-Scenes, Exclusive
• Urgency and Scarcity: Now, Limited, Before, Last Chance, Immediate
• Value and Benefit: Transform, Boost, Elevate, Maximize, Ultimate
• Trust and Authority: Proven, Guaranteed, Expert, Endorsed, Backed
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): Missing, Slip, Never Again, Now or Never

Using Power Words Effectively

While power words can elevate your content, strategic placement and moderation are key. Overuse can make your message seem forced or insincere, diluting its impact. Here are a few tips for effective implementation:

• Headlines and Titles: Incorporate power words to make your headlines more compelling and share-worthy.
• Email Subject Lines: Use them to increase open rates.
• Calls-to-Action: Strengthen your CTAs to boost clicks and conversions.
• Meta Descriptions and Snippets: Attract more clicks from search engine results pages.

Understanding and applying the concept of power words can significantly influence the success of your content marketing efforts. By strategically incorporating these dynamic phrases, you can craft messages that resonate deeply with your audience, prompting them to engage, convert, and ultimately, become loyal advocates for your brand.

Crafting compelling content that resonates with your audience requires not just creativity but also a strategic understanding of how to write effective blog posts and their potential impact on SEO and user engagement.

Here’s a rundown of ten effective types of blog posts that can help you attract more visitors and convert them into loyal followers or customers.

1. How-To Guides

How-to guides are invaluable resources that provide step-by-step instructions to help readers achieve specific tasks or solve problems. These posts are not only educational but also highly sought after by users seeking practical advice. By breaking down complex tasks into manageable steps, you make information accessible to beginners and experts alike.

2. Listicles

Listicles, or list-based articles, offer information in an easily digestible format that appeals to readers looking for quick, actionable insights. They can range from ‘Top 10’ lists to ‘5 Best’ recommendations, providing curated content that saves readers time and decision-making effort.

3. Case Studies

Case studies are in-depth analyses of specific instances, such as a company’s success story, the effectiveness of a particular strategy, or a project’s results. These posts not only highlight your successes or lessons learned but also establish your brand’s authority and reliability in your field.

4. Infographics

Infographics combine visual elements with data to present information compellingly and succinctly. They are particularly effective for summarizing research findings, trends, or complex data, making your content more engaging and shareable.

5. Interviews

Interview posts feature conversations with industry experts, influencers, or thought leaders. These provide unique insights and perspectives, adding significant value to your content while enhancing its credibility.

6. Ultimate Guides

Ultimate guides are comprehensive posts that cover all aspects of a particular topic. These long-form articles position your blog as a go-to resource, helping improve SEO through increased time spent on page and higher keyword relevance.

7. Opinion Pieces

Opinion pieces allow you to express your views on industry trends, news, or controversies. These posts can spark discussions and encourage reader engagement by inviting comments and diverse viewpoints.

8. Guest Posts

Inviting experts or influencers to contribute guest posts to your blog can introduce new perspectives and expertise, attracting their followers to your website and enhancing content diversity.

9. Comparisons and Reviews

Comparison and review posts help readers make informed decisions by evaluating products, services, or strategies against each other. These posts are highly valued by readers actively seeking solutions and can significantly influence purchasing decisions.

10. Success Stories

Sharing success stories, whether your own or those of your clients/customers, can be incredibly motivating and inspiring. These posts highlight real-world applications of your products or services and demonstrate their value.

Implementing These Types into Your Strategy

When incorporating these blog post types into your content strategy, consider your audience’s preferences and needs. Experiment with different formats to see what resonates best with your readers and drives the desired outcomes, whether it’s increased traffic, higher engagement, or more leads.

Remember, the key to successful blogging lies in providing value. By diversifying your content and offering a mix of educational, insightful, and compelling posts, you’ll not only attract a wider audience but also foster a loyal community around your brand.

If you’re looking to enhance your content marketing efforts, exploring these ten blog post types is an excellent starting point. By strategically leveraging each format’s strengths, you can significantly boost your blog’s performance, driving more traffic and generating valuable leads in the process.

Far from it!

To demonstrate the power of very alive SEO, today I’m going to share 4 tried and proven SEO tips that will still drive traffic to your website this year.

1. Grow Your Revenue By Using Long-tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are created when you combine at least three words to form a search query that targets your specific niche.

How can you find all those terms?

Use a SEO checker.

And, how do these long-tail keywords help you?  

Let’s imagine you’re the owner of a chicken teriyaki recipe site.

According to SEMrush, there are 110,000 people searching for “teriyaki.” At first, you might think “Great! I’ll just use teriyaki as my main keyword!” And while that may seem like a good idea, what percentage of people searching for teriyaki will you actually be able to convince to visit your recipe site? Since most of them are looking for teriyaki restaurants, odds are you won’t get many clicks.

To get your website in front of that niche of people who are looking specifically for teriyaki recipes, you need to use a long-tail keyword. For example, “easy teriyaki chicken recipe.”

Looking at this SEMrush data, you can see how long-tail keywords are so effective. By using the long-tail keyword, your teriyaki recipe website will be discoverable by 2,400 searchers who are seeking exactly what your site offers.

Some SEO tips to help you craft effective long-tail keywords are:

• Make sure you understand your buyer personas.

What kind of questions are they typing into Google? What stage of the buyer’s journey are they in?

Answering questions like these will give you the ability to perfectly tailor your long-tail keywords to your personas’ needs.

• Check what keywords you’re already ranking for and use them.

Use Google Analytics to see what keywords are driving the most traffic to your site. Use these in your long-tails.

• Research what long-tail keywords are currently driving the most traffic.

Two great tools for this are Google auto suggest and SEMRush — use these to see what kind of long-tail queries your personas are making. Or, for a free substitute to SEMRush, check out Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool — type in a keyword, click “keyword ideas,” and scroll through the suggestions.

If you don’t know how to use Ubersuggest, here is a quick guide to get you started.

2. Increase Your Website’s Loading Speed

People are impatient. If your website doesn’t load within 3 seconds, 40% of your audience is going to bounce. As your bounce rate increases, your rankings will drop.

Here are three powerful SEO tips to make sure your site is loading quickly:

• Smooth out your site’s HTML by using PageSpeed Insights to identify problems.

Run your homepage and any other major pages or posts through the program, and take action based on the Opportunities and Diagnostics reports.

• Make sure that all the images on your site are compressed.

Use a program like Piio.co to optimize images and increase your site’s loading speed.  

• Start browser caching.

Browser caching is a fast and easy way to make big speed improvements for your website. Caching saves the basic elements of your site on visitors’ devices, so that when they navigate between pages your logo, menus, and the like, don’t need to be loaded again — increasing loading speed!

3. Build Your Site Authority

Two proven SEO tips to boost your website’s authority:

• Make it easy for your clients to give you social proof.

Put review forms on your product pages, ask previous clients to leave reviews, and show off your review stars where it really counts — in your post’s schema markup.

Written reviews contribute towards content and keyword count, so not only will your future prospects benefit from seeing 5 stars on your product, Google will also rank you higher due to the increase in relevant content and keywords.

• Get an SSL certificate.

Chrome has recently started flagging HTTP sites as “Not Secure” — driving potential clients away from your website.

Communicate trust and authority to your prospects by installing an SSL certificate and moving your site to HTTPS.

4. Answer Your Persona’s Questions To Get Featured In Search Snippets

Have you wondered how certain websites get their content featured in a nice little box at the top of the search results? These are called “search snippets” and they look like this:

According to a study done by Ahrefs, featured snippets have an 8.6 percent click-through rate.

That’s huge!

But it gets even better.

Being selected for search snippets gives your website double-representation — first in the snippet and again in the results. Wow!

Now that you understand what a powerful SEO tool search snippets can be, let’s get your website to be featured there.

Here are a couple quality SEO tips for getting your website featured in the search snippets:

• First, do keyword research.

Use Answer The Public to see the questions your personas’ are asking. Decide which one you want to answer.

Type the question into Google and take not of the kind of content that is making the search snippet. There are three kinds of content that get featured — tables, lists, and paragraphs. Whichever one Google is currently featuring is what you should also do in your post.

• Write a kick ass post and format it correctly.

To reach the search snippets, your post needs to rank in the top 10. So make sure you follow SEO best practices when creating your content.

Take the question you chose during the research stage, and place the answer as close to the top of your content as possible.

Put the question in an H2 heading and write your answer directly beneath the H2, making sure you keep your answer between 54-58 words.

• Publish and monitor your content.

Track the analytics of your post to make sure it reaches the top 10 search results for your target question.

Make adjustments where necessary.

Once you capture the search snippet, celebrate with some champagne.

Conclusion

SEO is still the primary tool by which to rank your website in 2019. Mobile and voice search may be changing the way people interact with the internet, but the way we do SEO hasn’t changed.

Getting ranked on Google requires diligent research, testing, implementation, more testing, and a continual emphasis on quality — all of these things are SEO.

Combine the tips I gave you today with quality content, and you will see your rankings grow and traffic increase.

This is true even if you just want to create a simple blog page to post your thoughts for the rest of the world to read.

Creating your website is indeed much easier now than it used to be in the early days of the Internet.

However, people who rush the process will end up with a site that has a lot of problems that they are not happy with.

Here are some helpful hints you can use when you are trying to get your site off the ground.

1. Who Will Handle The Design Chores?

You will need to hire a web designer if you are not skilled enough to do all of the designing yourself.

It is at this early stage that many people make a rather large mistake. They falsely believe that all web designers possess the same skills and are the same. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Web designers come in all skill levels and price ranges. You tend to get what you pay for where web designers are concerned. This is why you should not simply hire the first web designer you find online without completely checking out their background and experience ahead of time.

It is essential that you know what type of web design prowess you will be getting for the money you will be paying this person. Talk to many web designers to get a feel for the talent that is available in your area.

You should always ask to see examples of their previous work. This will allow you to determine if that particular person is up to the challenge of designing your site.

You might want to consider hiring a college student to be your web designer. Some of these young people are very talented and charge far less than professional web designers.

2. Find a Web Hosting Company

You will also need to look into what company you will be doing business with in terms of hosting your site. This is yet another decision that should not be made in haste. Some web hosting companies are much better than others.

You need to find a company that is not going to have any interruptions in service that will cause your site to go offline. This will be a disaster if you plan on running an online business.

You will not be able to make money if your site is offline. Fortunately, there are many web hosting and design packages for you to choose from. Compare prices to get the best deal.

3. Set a Budget For Yourself

There will be various expenses that you will need to deal with during the crucial early days of your site.

Make a list and figure out what your overhead will be.

Make sure you have some extra cash set aside for any emergencies that might arise.

4. The Importance Of The Domain Name

For many, that’s a random choice, but it’s a wrong practice.

Search engines still give huge importance to the domain name to rank websites.

Sometimes, it just takes an appropriate name to be placed at the top of Google without much effort.

5. Choose Appropriate Titles For Search Engines and Visitors

The names of the pages, as well as slugs, H1 titles, and subtitles (and content, of course), are very important for achieving a good ranking, and so they are for your visitors.

Therefore, you must choose wisely.

For example, if you want to rank a page for certain keywords (let’s say “affiliate marketing“), be sure to place them in the H1 title, slug, subtitles and within the content:

6. The Importance Of The Content

Content is still the most important thing when building a website.

Many (especially graphics experts, web designers, and advertising agencies) tend to underestimate the importance of writing. They focus on images, on the “special effects” of a web page, and they write a short text. That’s a bad approach. The search engines are hungry for good content…just take a look at your competitors!

7. Loading Speed Of The Site

We have just a few seconds to convince the users to stay on our sites (see article).

If you offer pages that are loading slowly, then you risk losing many visitors (also search engines do not love to wait much to scan your site).

There are several ways to speed up your pages, be sure to check this post for more details.

8. Work To Retain Users On Your Site

Google recently published “Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines” (click here to download the PDF).

They are instructing the users on what they should consider to evaluating the websites.

Have you read it already?

I did it.

My take is that user experience is extremely important, and it’s becoming the most significant factor to rank.

Your mission should be to give users exactly what they are looking for when they land on your site.

How to achieve it?

Writing articles with added value and significant deepening of the topic treated.

Easier said, than done!

Here’s a quote taken from this post at MOZ of a few days ago:

“Content is king.”

But…

“The user is queen, and she rules the universe.”

Google only cares about your content inasmuch as it answers the user’s search query. Search results are not a collection of “good” content; they are a ranked list of content that best satisfies what the user is looking for.

What do you think?

Are you working already on the points mentioned in this post?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

It’s an important decision that definitely deserves some attention. In fact, since you need time and money to create a website, you have to be sure that your domain expresses in a few words the content that you treat.

The choice of the domain has an impact both on the way visitors perceive you and how the search engines will consider your site.

So if you want to choose and buy the right domain, I suggest you read this list carefully.

1. Your Domain Should Explain What You Do

Think, in a nutshell.

If you treat topics regarding “green tea”, for example, the rule should not be www.ILikeToDrinkTea.com, but rather www.GreenTea.com.

If this name is not available, you can try other versions of it.

2. If You Don’t Have a Strong Brand, Choose a Descriptive Name

Unless you are the owner of a known brand, it will be difficult to create a new one from scratch and push it out, just by focusing on the domain name.

So if you are creating a site around a specific topic, you have two options.

A) Choose a “Brand” name and accept the fact that people will not understand who you are, especially at the beginning
B) Choose a domain name that describes your topics, so that people can immediately understand your niche

3. Remember that Search Engines Still Take Into Account the Domain Name

When it comes to better indexing, the domain plays a very important role.

Ask yourself:

How do I look at my potential visitors?

What keywords would they use to find me at Google?

Then go to Google Adwords Keyword Planner and performs a search to locate the most used and relevant keywords.

Now think about how to include them into your domain.

4. Go For the Most Popular Extensions

.com extension is the web’s most popular extension.

Clearly it indicates the word “commerce”, so it is definitely the ideal extension to communicate to your users on your site that there are products on sale.

Get the .com, if it is possible or, in alternative, choose any .net or .org.

5. Choose a Short and Direct Domain Name

NoPassiveIncome is kinda a short and direct domain name.

It tells that the site is about passive income.

I could have chosen www.HowToWorkOnlineAndBuildAPassiveIncome.com, but it would be too long, unreadable and difficult to remember.

Better to be short and get straight to the point.

6. Choose an Easy to Write Domain

If your visitors find your site interesting and helpful, there’s a good chance they will want to go back.

Choose a name that is easy to write, as well simple to remember.

Imagine if your main site would be: www.xzbnahtypals.com … definitely hard to type on the keyboard and difficult to remember!

7. Do Not Copy Other Ones

It could be the biggest mistake.

Be careful not to use a name similar to that of a competitor to try to steal its market.

You could even end up in court and having to pay expensive fines.

Play fair and points to what your users are looking for.

8. Think About the Domain Name Look

Even a domain has its aesthetics.

Ask yourself how you can see it when it is written on a browser.

Make attempts writing on the search bar of your browser the domain name you would like to buy. This way you’re sure that you will choose the more attractive one!

9. Plan Long Term

If you want to create a successful site that will resist the passage of time, consider choosing a domain that is not strongly tied to the momentary trend.

Make sure that in 10 years your domain will be recognizable and current.

10. Gold Is In the Niche

Unless you’re a business magnate with a million euro budget available to spend on advertising, keep faith to the basics of good web marketer.

Focus on one niche and conquer it.

Long-tail keywords work best for this purpose.

11. Singular or Plural?

It makes little difference for the SEO purposes if your domain targets your niche using a plural instead of a singular.

So if one is already taken, you may want to opt for the opposite.

But pay attention to copyright!

12. Avoid Articles

Avoid buying domains including articles (the, a, an, etc).

These do not serve the purpose of better search engines indexing. Also think about how your domain will be perceived.

Simply avoid articles in domain names. They are useless.

An example?

Is is better “TheFacebook.com” or “Facebook.com“?

13. Need a Tool to Get New Domain Name Ideas?

Have you ran out of ideas?

Try Panabee.com:

14. If You Have a Unique Name, Consider Buying All Its Variants

If you choose a domain name and you want to make sure that no one else can create a site similar to yours, you should consider buying all the variations of your domain name (plus all the extensions).

Defend your site by blocking the access to roads of your niche for other potential contenders.

15. Protect Your Domain Name With a Trademark

Again, if you have an unique name that you don’t want to be used by others (and if you are doing things seriously), be sure to immediately record the trademark of your site or brand.

16. Think About Your Audience

When choosing your domain think about those who come to visit you.

What do they expect you to be?

Who are your visitors like?

How old are they?

Consider also the psychology of your users before choosing the name of your site.

17. Think About Social Networks

Try to see how it could be your domain when your site is shared on social channels.

This gives you a principle to be followed to facilitate the circulation of your content.

Pay a visit to Facebook, Twitter and watch how the URLs shared are showed.

Then with Google Chrome, make a double click and select “Inspect Element”.

Then from there, change the address of the site that you are viewing and save the edit.

Now you can study carefully what you see and choose the version that has a greater visual impact.

18. Dashes, Yes or No?

Many have chosen a domain name with dashes and still were able to build big sites.

Aha-Now or Entrepreneurs-Journey are examples of popular sites with dashes in their domain names, but their owners worked really hard to reach that level of popularity.

I prefer domain names without dashes, but it’s up to you.

19. Numbers, Yes or No?

I don’t see a problem when using numbers in the domain name.

Just think about if is relevant to your brand and/or what your users expect to find.

There are no restrictions or penalties from the search engines for those websites that use numbers. The search engines value more the older domains. Like the good wine, the more the domain ages the more is good.

Conclusion

In the last 13 years, I have bought many domain names and I expect do purchase even more!

Hopefully after reading this post, you will be able to get the perfect domain name (if still available!).

I make a few mistakes in my blogging journey and if you’re smarter than me, you will save a few hundred dollars and go straight to the point buying a clear, explicit and memorable domain name.

Want some more advice?

Any suggestions you’d like to add?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!

This means that you can set up ways to make money through your blog and then sit back and wait for the money to come in without having to put any work into the process.

Keep reading for a few ways that you can get started.

Image link credit

Write and Sell an E-Book

If you are already blogging, you are already confident in your abilities as a writer. And if you have a large enough following, you know that people respect you for what you have to say, for the knowledge that you can share with them, and for the valuable content that your blog provides.

So why not go a step further and write up a short e-book that you can then promote to your subscribers and readers for sale?

Whether you are a blogging expert on public health policy, thanks to your masters of public health from a reputable university, or you are known for your ability to teach others how to create art online with Adobe programs, all you have to do is put your e-book on your blog and wait for the sales to come in.

Sell Ad Space on Your Blog

If you are able to prove that you get a lot of traffic to your blog on a consistent basis, you can start selling ad space to fellow businesses on your website.

This is one of the many popular methods that bloggers use to generate passive income, as you can simply place the ads within the headers and the margins of the site without them getting in the way of your content.

Just be sure to keep the ads to a minimum, display them in a tasteful way, and focus on getting ads from businesses that would appeal to your readers.

With NoPassiveIncome, I’m doing great with BuySellAds:

Sign Up for Affiliate Marketing Programs

Finally, you can sign up for one of the many affiliate marketing programs that are available to bloggers and website owners just like you. These are really easy to sign up for and set up, and all you have to do is place ads for those companies on your website.

Depending upon the affiliate program that you sign up with, you can make money every time that a visitor clicks on one of the links, or when that person clicks through and makes a purchase.

You can also work on incorporating your affiliate offers in a tasteful way throughout your content so that more people are encouraged to click through, find out more, and make a purchase.

Just make sure the affiliates are related to your blog’s content so that readers will not be turned off by them.

Here’s a great guide you want to read about affiliate marketing: How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing – A 7 Minute Guide

By following the tips above, you can use your skills and education, such as your masters in public health online degree or your web development background, on your blog to start earning more passive income easily.

Give one or all of these strategies a try and see which one works best.

What’s your experience with passive income?

Are you earning something from your blog?

Please share your experience in the comments below, thanks!

As you can see in the screenshot below, the popularity of affiliate marketing has risen steadily during the last decade.

Image via Statista

Given that it can be a great source of passive income, it’s popularity shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

For brands, partnering with the right affiliates can help them reach a larger audience and promote their products to bigger and new audiences. 

For you, for each sale made via your affiliate link or promo code, you can earn a commission.

Without putting in extra effort, you can boost your income via affiliate marketing. However, to get the maximum ROI, you need to be strategic in your approach.

In this post, let’s take a look at how you can optimize your affiliate marketing campaign.

4 Effective Tips to Optimize Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

With the right mix of planning and strategizing, it’s possible to increase your profitability and get more out of your affiliate marketing campaigns. 

Here is what you can do to boost the ROI of your affiliate marketing campaigns:

1. Define Clear Goals For Your Affiliate Marketing Campaign

Have you tried getting somewhere without entering the final destination in your GPS? 

It can be confusing and tough. Similarly, if you start working on your affiliate marketing campaign without a clear vision and goals, it can be difficult to achieve them. 

So, the first step towards optimizing your campaign is goal setting. 

Consider what you would like to achieve in a defined time frame. Take into account your skills and resources, and make sure you set realistic goals.

Also, don’t confuse goals with wishes. Your goals are more concrete. They are time-bound and provide specific details about what you’d like to achieve.

Here are some goals that can impact your affiliate marketing campaign’s profitability:

• Increase your content’s impression count in X months by Y% 
• Increase the conversion rate of your affiliate marketing campaign by X% in Y months

As you can see, these goals are all measurable. They make it easy for you to track them and ascertain whether you were able to achieve them. 

If you are opting for native advertising, it’s all the more important to define these metrics beforehand. Why? Because measuring the performance of native ads isn’t exactly a cakewalk.

2. Compare Different Affiliate Programs

Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, PeerFly, and more — there are a lot of different programs for affiliate marketing out there. They make it super easy for anyone out there to get affiliate links. 

While you have a lot of options available, not all of them might be worth your time and energy. Before you sign up for an affiliate program, invest time in filtering out your choices so that you choose the right ones for you.

For the vetting process, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is and what they might like. Additionally, make sure your the affiliate products are relevant to your audience.

Image via Amazon Associates

A common mistake that many affiliate marketers do is to pick the affiliate programs that offer the highest commission rates. But the first thing you should check out is audience compatibility. 

If the audience of the program isn’t related to your target audience, you’ll have a hard time generating any income.

On the other hand, a network that offers low commission but has a target audience related to your brand can still help you boost your revenue.

3. Check All Your Traffic Source Options

On the front of traffic sources, there is a lot of campaign optimization that is possible. The good news is that it’s also easy to work on it. On the flip side, what you can do depends on your traffic sources.

Some of them allow you to purchase traffic on the basis of the type of device used while others are more specific. They will only provide desktop or mobile traffic. 

You can also add custom variables and then pass the relevant data to your affiliate program. For instance, some sources enable you to send information like the placement type from where your traffic comes. Without setting it up on the side of the traffic source, you can’t get it done.

Also, if you can block or pause some traffic types in your traffic source, do that. You can then make a report which can help you evaluate the kind of traffic that matters.

Let’s say, you have a pop-up campaign for desktops and mobile devices. If you want, you can pause your traffic source based on its incoming source (desktop or mobile) and the network connection. 

4. Analyze Your Test Results

Test your campaign and wait till you collect a significant amount of data. Once you have it, check your numbers and assess whether you need to change your tactic. 

To optimize your campaign, you may want to leverage landing page CRO or change the offer to cut out a sweeter deal for your target audience. Sometimes, your landing page might work well on desktop, but may not show the same results on mobile devices. 

You can also optimize your campaigns based on different types of browsers, ISPs, OS versions, and other such factors.

Remember that adapting your strategy to the response that you get is the key to optimize your affiliate marketing strategy.

Pro Tip: Use specialized tools to analyze your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Ready to Optimize Your Affiliate Campaign for Profitability?

Affiliate marketing offers a ton of opportunities to earn passive income. If you’re planning to create an affiliate marketing campaign, make sure you optimize it well. That way, you can get the most out of your efforts.

From the onset, you should be clear about what you want to achieve. Clear realistic goals will help you stay focused. It will also help you determine the KPIs that are important to measure the success of your campaign.

For optimization, you can focus on the traffic sources, landing pages, as well as the offers that you give to your target audience. Lastly, you should test your campaigns and change your strategy as required.

Do you have any questions about optimizing your affiliate marketing campaigns? Please mention them in the comments section. 

Engagement is the ability of a product (a brand, a blog, an application) to create solid and lasting relationships with its users by establishing a link between the brand and the consumer. The more we know about the user, the more we can implement better tactics to ensure that this relationship is solid and lasting.

Engagement can be measured in different ways, with repeat purchases, repeated visits to a site, or in web statistics through elements such as bounce rate and residence time, number of pages viewed per user, time remaining on the web page or comments on a post. In short, it is necessary to measure and increase the user’s love for what you do.

But how can you improve user engagement without coding on your website?

In this article, I’ll talk about Smartarget, an interesting tool you can use to better connect with your users and increase sales.

Smartarget Popular Features

Smartarget is a fantastic tool that will help you increase engagement with your users by using different useful apps.

Registration is free (without credit card), and after you will confirm your email, you can start using it.

With the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

One of the most popular features of Smartarget is the “Whatsapp – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

Users that will click on the message will be redirected to the WhatsApp API, with your phone number to get in touch with you.

Another interesting feature is the “Email – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

When clicking on the message, users will be able to send a direct email to you.

The icon can be placed on any corner of your site, top, bottom, right or left.

But there are many more formats and interesting apps you can try, such as:

• Corner Ribbon (you can customize a message to appear in the corner of your site. For example, to get more subscribers)
• Skype – Contact US (users will use Skype to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Telegram – Contact US (users will use Telegram to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Facebook – Contact US (users will use Messanger to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Contact Us – All in One. Clicking on the message, will open a menu where users can choose their favorite way to contact you. It looks really nice, see:

A feature I like is the “Exit Popup“.

In your Smartarget dashboard, you can personalize the message to be shown to your users when they leave your site.

For example, if you have a blog and you want to sell your eBook, or course, or training program, you can use this feature to invite users for a special discount:

You can customize the action type, which means the message will be open in a new tab or the same tab.

The delay of the message to appear can be customized. So, for example, to get your message displayed after 3 seconds, just type “3” in the “Delay before Flash Card appears” field.

You can set the message to be dismissed after of period of time, such as:

• X Days
• Every page refresh
• Never
• Dismiss period X days
• Works if you picked X days

Boost eCommerce Sales and Increase User Engagement Using Smartarget

Smartarget works with all platforms. No matter what CMS you are using, Smartarget apps work across all platforms:

• WordPress (the plugin can be found here)
• Shopify
• Wix
• ecwid
• Shift4Shop

If you have an eCommerce, there are some particular features you can use to boost your sales and increase user engagement.

For example, with the Information message, you can show important updates and information on your site:

Again, the message is entirely customizable and can be placed anywhere on your website.

A Smartarget app I found useful for eCommerce owners is “Social Sales“. By using it, you can improve user’s trust by making users think that there are currently ongoing sales on the website.

You can change the message, the name to be displayed and the product, with the target link:

To boost engagement via social media, you can use both these features:

• Instagram Follow Us (it will display a message to invite users to follow you on Instagram)
• Follow Us (a menu tab will appear with icons that can be clicked to invite users to follow you on social media)

Smartarget Prices

As mentioned earlier, with the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

Once you reach 50 clicks per month, the apps will be visible on the homepage only until the next month.

After that, you can upgrade to the premium version, with Unlimited clicks on apps, at$4.16/mo:

Final Words

I find Smartarget such a great tool to use to boost user engagement and increase sales on your website. And without using coding.

The integration is really simple and the reports function will display interesting data such as how many clicks you got, clicks per device type, the average time to click, clicks per app and clicks per URL.

I plan to create an eCommerce site in the next months and Smartarget will be on my top tools to use to increase sales and improve the engagement with my visitors.

Now, it’s over to you.

Are you going to test Smartarget?

What are your thoughts?

Please share your comments in the form below, thanks!

We have different traffic channels to trigger an avalanche of readers to our online store or website. While this isn’t something that can be achieved with the click of the mouse, following the channels with patience and consistency will allow you gradually build sustainable sources of targeted readers.

Let’s examine these traffic channels and how you can capitalize on them for your business growth:

1. Search Engine Traffic

Without any iota of doubt, Search Engines are a major part of the Internet world. They drive a huge part of Internet movement through keywords.

Keywords are the basis of Search engines from the point of view of the searcher. But from the perspective of content marketers, it’s completely changing to semantics.

What I mean is that searchers on Google (for instance) will actually key in a short or long tail keyword in the search box. But Google doesn’t just match these keywords against content.  What it tries to do is figure out which content has a fair understanding of the keyword intent.

There are two main branches of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  you must focus on to see results:

a) Technical SEO: This includes your web server configuration and optimization, mobile friendliness of your site theme, images and other aspects that have to do with your site load speed

b) Content SEO: This is further split into two

• On Page SEO
• Off Page SEO

Let me say something more about these two:

– On Page Search Engine Optimization

In today’s semantic web, the new keyword is topic. That sounds weird but I think marketers should cease optimizing for keyword and rather try to cover topics in details.

I’m of the opinion that most of the LSI SEO tools in the market today should be overhauled. I recently was trying out LSIGraph and I think something should be done about this:

These are simply keyword variations not semantics. Semantic SEO (which is what On Page SEO is all about) is about topical relevant world not seed keyword synonyms . I have this post on Semantic SEO on my blog. You may want to read for a bit more on this.

– Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Off Page SEO is principally about backlinks and mentions. But you really have to be warned.

Tell between building links and earning learns. To earn links, you have to create and publish link-worthy content and wait for free inbound links from your community. Your readers find your article and deliberately link to it without you doing anything.

But if you have to build links, you’ll have to get your fingers wet on outreach marketing. Here are some common link building activities:

• Guest posting on relevant blogs by yourself.
• Hiring SEO experts, Link building agencies or Guest Posting Services.
• Blog commenting on relevant blogs.
• Buying of links from micro job boards like Fiverr (Serious Warning though)
• Etc.

But I’m not fan of buying links from random link sellers. First, Google frowns at this as it’s considered manipulating search results.

Be weary when it comes to working with guest posting firms. I have written this post about guest posting services to study out more.

I worked more closely with Sunil Gupta, one of my good friends who runs the Trafficora guest posting service and came to understand that one has just got to be very careful. Some of these link building services out there may end up completely damaging your SEO marketing campaigns.

2. Email List Traffic

If you are online and not building an email list for your business, you are hurting your business growth. Your list is an asset. It’s the only source of traffic whose terms fully dwell in your pocket.  You decide when and what to send to your list.

Each time I mail my subscribers, there is always a huge leap in clicks on my blog. Everyone else that builds and maintains an active list similarly has a success story.

There are three simple steps to building an email list for your online business:

1. Choose a cost-effective and reliable email marketing platform.
2. Get a free gift to entice your readers to signup to your list.
3. Place the list building elements on your website (Sidebar forms, Content Upgrades, Pop ups, Light boxes, Pop Unders, etc)

Recommended Read: 12 Action Steps To Build A Profitable Email List From Scratch

3. Social Media Traffic

Social media today has moved considerably from social to business. And if you are not involving social media marketing in your strategies, you really are getting it wrong.

Of course it’s absolutely free to use these platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. However, for purposes of ease, you may want to spend on services that will get more traffic for you.

We are not talking about these paid services though. Let’s maintain the talk within the free sphere. What you must do is to have an active presence on any of these platforms. You may not be active on all the platforms. Chose one or two and be the king.

Depending on your business type, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc have different approaches. While Pinterest is specifically designed for traffic, others have more emphasis laid on social.

Creating content and spamming social media won’t just help. Successful social media marketers are folks who engage and help others with exposure.

As you share your content, share others’ as well. Engage with them and build solid relationships. Many people will share your content simply because they recognize your brand. They may not have the time to read through. But they know that this coming from you must be worth sharing.

That’s why branding is a strong content marketing factor that must be heavily invested in.

4. Referral Traffic

This is traffic sent to your site by clicks on links on other sites. If you click here ( for instance) to my blog, I’m going to have a referral traffic from nopassiveincome.com.

Getting your website mentioned on other sites for referral traffic is tough. But there are different content marketing practices that can make this easier:

1. Guest posting (like what I’m doing here)
2. Commenting on other sites
3. Posting on Content Curation platforms – Medium, Zest, Scoop.it, etc
4. Forum signatures and active participation
5. Etc

Now, these are things you can do yourself for more referral traffic and it’s just the basics of Content outreach.

If you build healthy relationships with bloggers and publish link-worthy content, you are going to get those links from your content consumers. Of course that will add up to your referral link.

Wrapping Up

You may want to go on and identify many different traffic channels, but most evidently, these are near fetched. Start building up strategies for them and watch as your results grow.

Let me know what you think as you share your thoughts in the comment box.