Bowensthinks

Can you guess how many keywords I rank for? Well, you are probably going to say 477,000 because I used that number in the title of this post. 😉 And it’s true, just look at the screenshot from Ahrefs. It shows the number of keywords I rank for. But what’s crazy is that I am in a super competitive niche… digital marketing . So, are you wondering how I did it? Well, it starts with proper keyword research. See most marketers start their keyword research with tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest and they type in a keyword like “SEO”. You then get a list back with hundreds of keyword suggestions with cost per click and competition data. And once you have a list of keywords you like, you probably do what most marketers do, which is to start inserting them into your website or creating content around the keywords. Does this process sound familiar? Well, of course, it does because that’s what everyone has been teaching you to do. But what’s wrong with this? This process is like ga...

You know what’s interesting about having an ad agency? It’s that you get to talk to companies of all sizes and learn what causes them to grow. And I know what you are thinking… “Neil, shouldn’t you be the one telling companies how to grow”? Technically, yes. And I do. But at the same time, I need to analyze what a company has done so far to come up with the best marketing strategy for them. And the sad reality is, most marketers and companies are focusing on the wrong things. (I’ll go over how to fix it later in this post.) Over the last 7 months, I talked to 208 companies to find out where they are spending their marketing efforts and what’s working. And best of all, I got the approval to share their data with you. 🙂 I talked to companies generating anywhere from one million dollars in yearly revenue to $291 million. I avoided talking to companies less than a million in revenue because most of them weren’t doing much marketing. And I avoided talking to companies generating o...

When you do a Google search, what do you see? Lists of websites, maybe an answer to your question, some images, some ads that you usually ignore, and even some products that you can buy. There are tons of different types of content you see when you do a Google search. But what’s one form of content that you barely see on Google? Well, technically two forms of content. It’s video and audio content. Whenever you perform a Google search, it’s rare to see videos or audio files that rank high on page 1. So the question I get all the time: Why would I spend $16,302 a month on audio and video content that Google won’t rank? But before I answer that, let’s first run through all of the numbers. You’ll probably think I am crazy at first, but hopefully, it will all make sense in the end. 😉 How much do I spend on content? Let’s do a quick run-down of my content expenses. I spent $2,144 last month on my podcast, Marketing School  (studio time, editing, hosting, and I ran a few pod...

Before I get into why everything I taught you about SEO was wrong, let me first give you some context on how I (and many marketers) became SEOs. When I started off with my entrepreneurial journey, I didn’t have much money. I was working at a theme park where I cleaned restrooms and picked up garbage. Although most companies grow through paid ads, that just wasn’t possible for me because I was making $5.75 an hour. I had no choice but to learn SEO and get good at it if I ever wanted my site to generate traffic and hopefully make money . And just like most SEOs, I always thought that the keywords that people spend the most money on  tend to convert well. Just think about it: If a company is spending $50 a click for certain keywords they have to be making money. So, wouldn’t those be the keywords that you would want to go after? Here’s how I taught people how to do SEO over the years Back in the day I would use keyword tools like Ubersuggest , find all of the high traffic ke...