Bowensthinks

If you have ever left a comment on NeilPatel.com, you’ll notice that there is no URL field. Why? Well, a few years ago, blog commenting exploded. I was literally getting thousands of spam comments a day from people just leaving a comment for the purpose of link building instead of providing value to the community. Sure, there are spam plugins like Akismet , but it doesn’t catch everything. Now, most blog comments contain the nofollow attribute in which they tell Google not to follow the link or drive any “SEO value” to that URL. But still, people still leave blog comments for the purpose of link building. So, over the past 7 months, I’ve been running an interesting experiment to answer the age-old question… Do backlinks from blog comments actually help rankings? Experiment rules First off, for this experiment, we used “domain score,” which is similar to domain authority. If you want to know your domain score, the backlinks report in Ubersuggest will tell you what it is. W...

Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for almost 3 years now. I bought it on February 13, 2017 , for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO. Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for. But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have. So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO, make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are going do keyword research (in a good way). On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations. Here’s what’s new: More keyword data The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword. Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming y...

You all know SEO is a long-term game… at least when it comes to Google . And yes, who doesn’t want to be at the top of Google for some of the most competitive terms? But the reality is, we don’t all have the budget or time. So then, what should you do? Well, what if I told you there were simple ways to get more organic traffic and, best of all, you don’t have to do one bit of SEO? Seriously. So, what is it? And how can you get more organic traffic? Well, this story will help explain it… The old days When I first started my journey as an SEO, I got really good at one thing. Getting rankings! Now to be fair, this was back in 2003 when it wasn’t that hard to rank on Google (or any other search engine for that matter). Stuff some keywords into your page, your meta tags, and build some spammy rich anchor text links and you were good to go. You could literally see results in less than a month. SEO wasn’t too complicated back then. So much so, that I even started an SEO agency a...

Marketers tend to be very reactive. And it makes sense because every time a search engine or a social network changes their algorithm we jump as marketers. We are conditioned to be very reactive. Whether it’s your boss who is pissed that your traffic dips or even yourself… everyone hates when sales and income drop because of something you can’t fully control. And even when you try to be proactive, you are probably planning ahead from a 3-month period to a year max. But that’s not how you win. You win by making bold bets that take time and can’t be done in a few months or a year… you win by doing what your competition isn’t willing to do. So how do you come up with these bold bets? You unplug! Here’s how I come up with my ideas Once a year I try to unplug. Just like right now, as I am writing this I don’t have cell reception and there is no WiFi. I’m on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. No matter where I look, there are no neighbors. All you have is nature in its rawes...

Everyone talks about algorithm updates, but Google does a whole lot more than adjust algorithms. Some of the moves they are making are really going to impact your marketing efforts. So, what are these non-algorithm changes? Well before I get into them, keep in mind that you aren’t going to like some of them, and that’s ok. Instead, I want you to focus your energy on how you can leverage these changes before your competition. Let’s get started… Change #1: Google executives are big on “ambient computing” If you aren’t familiar with the concept of ambient computing , here’s a quick definition: Ambient computing is a term that encompasses many different concepts. At its core, it is the combination of hardware, software, user experience, and machine/human interaction and learning, all of these things becoming the idea of using a computer or internet-enabled device, without necessarily consciously using it. In other words, Google wants you to use them 24/7 no matter where you are or...

It’s been more than a year since I launched the “new” Ubersuggest. And over the last 12 months, I have made a lot of progress. Just as a quick recap: Ubersuggest went from a basic keyword research tool to now containing backlink data, rank tracking, content ideas, site audit reports, and many more features. If you haven’t played with Ubersuggest in the past few months, give it a try. Type in a URL or a keyword and click around. The reason I am asking you to give it a try is that I need your help to determine what I should develop next so I can help you improve your traffic and rankings even more. But before we get into that, let me first tell you what I am releasing in the next few months. Upcoming features So, let’s break it down by section as I am making a lot of small changes that should not only improve the data, but also the usability of the product. Funny enough, there will be changes to every section of the tool. Keyword research Over the next month, the keyword over...

Writing a blog post is easy. If you don’t write often, you may feel otherwise, but just follow this and you’ll be good to go when it comes to writing. Or, you can just watch the video below. But still, you write a blog post and then what do you do? Well, I’ll tell you this… most people forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Most people write content but don’t do a great job of promoting it. Here’s the thing: I figured out the perfect formula to promoting content. Best of all, it’s not complex. Heck, it doesn’t even take 30 minutes. It’s so easy that I broke it down into 6 steps. And just to give you an idea before we dive into the formula, it’s so effective here is the traffic to my latest blog post. 35,492 visits in a week isn’t too shabby. The post didn’t do exceptionally well and it didn’t tank. It was just an average post. Now you probably won’t see the same results as me as I’ve been doing this for a long time, but your results will be much better than what you...