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November 21, 2019 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

Strategies to Get More Instagram Swipes, Saves & Comments

Optimizing for Instagram is all about getting your current followers, and people searching for hashtags to engage with your content. For this post I’m going to focus on how to increase Instagram engagement for your current fans and followers, with the goal of sending the right signals that your images and posts are high quality.

When your followers engage with your Instagram posts in a natural way, it should help you to get more exposure to new audiences in the hashtag search feature and for the people that already follow you. On Instagram there are multiple signals that can send a positive note to the algorithm.

Five Instagram Engagement Ranking Signals Include:

Swipes
Likes
Comments
Saves
Shares

To get your fans and strangers to engage, you not only have to produce images your audience wants to see, but you have to be creative. That is where I come in and I help the partners in my affiliate marketing programs with this regularly. Here are a few Instagram optimization strategies by the type of account to try and help you get more swipes, comments, and saves.

Swipes

Swipes are when people swipe left and right to look at your photos when you have multiple images in the same post. If a user is scrolling through their feed and stops to look at your image, then also swipes through the series, there is a good chance the content is good. Aside from asking your followers to look through each image, here are a few ways to encourage more Instagram swipes by popular type of Instagram account.

Bonus tip: Add arrows that point right in the lower right hand corner as an additional signal if you have a series. You could also place “next” or “step two” over top of the arrow in the lower right corner of the image.

For Photography Instagram Accounts:

Share a series of how you create your photos starting with the final version as the first image in the series. You could caption it, “how to create a photo like this”. You could also do a split picture with a before and after image that has a line dividing the image in half. Then make each image in the progression a major step in your editing process. Now your fans can follow along to see your process and replicate it. In order for them to create the same outcome, they’ll have to swipe through each image in your series.
Teach a photography technique like “taking an XY shot in harsh light”, or “how to create XYZ effect with photo editing”. Each image in your series should be the next step to reach the end goal. If the fan or follower wants to learn the technique or skill, they’ll need to swipe through.
Upload multiple shots with the same theme, and offer a discount on the last photo in the series that applies to each. This shows off your work and provides an incentive to look at the last image in the series.

Makeup and Beauty Instagrammers:

November 18, 2019 By adamriemer 2 Comments

7 Best Speakers to Listen to at Affiliate Summit

Affiliate Summit is coming up soon, and the only thing that comes up short at this show is time. You have incredible networking opportunities, tons of meetings and parties, not to mention a crowded expo hall. But something else you won’t want to miss are the speakers.

(The links in this post are ads and I earn commissions if you shop through them.)

Affiliate Summit speakers are almost always on point, or ready to help. They provide you with information, entertainment, and some let you know when you’re making money. That is one of the best things about the show, you get all the networking in the world, and also access to some of the most informative speakers. That’s why I’ve created this list of my favorite speakers to listen to at Affiliate Summit.

And if you haven’t purchased your ticket to affiliate summit yet, click here to buy it today since they always sell out and the prices go up the closer you get to the show.

If your favorite speaker from Affiliate Summit is not on it, I apologize, but this list is kept for the top 7 only. It may change from show to show, but these are my personal choices and the reasons why.

November 11, 2019 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

31+ Ways to Recruit Affiliates for Affiliate Marketing Programs

Are you looking for information on how to recruit affiliates for your affiliate marketing program? Then you’re in luck! As a two time Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award winner and affiliate manager for 15+ years, I’ve learned and come up with numerous strategies. As a way to give back to the community, here are 31+ of my favorite ways to recruit affiliates for a program.

The strategies below are in no particular order. There is a good chance you have probably have tried some of these, and others will be new to you. If they didn’t work to recruit affiliates, or you didn’t get enough sign ups from them, I go into detail about how I do each. The details may help to determine why affiliates didn’t sign up for your program. I also highly recommend reading this post about reaching out to high value affiliate partners and making sure your pitch is good enough to stand out. [Read more…] about 31+ Ways to Recruit Affiliates for Affiliate Marketing Programs

August 8, 2019 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

How to Find Keywords & Content Topics That Convert Into Sales

One of the most common obstacles that cause stagnation with content, SEO, affiliate earnings, and PPC teams is that there are “no more keywords, modifiers or topics to go after”. A lesser known, but common issue, is that SEOs and Affiliate Managers get blocked from having access to PPC accounts. That is why I’m writing this step-by-step guide on locating new keywords for SEO that drive sales.

Below you’ll find a new way to discover keywords phrases that can convert into revenue, because they are based on data, not assumptions, and you’ll have a solid reason why you need PPC account access to give to your boss or clients.

After I show you how to locate these keywords and phrases, you’ll learn when, why and how to incorporate them into:

Product and category pages
Location pages
Blog posts

Let’s start by figuring out how to find the keywords that have volume and also drive sales. This is important for ecommerce stores, lead gen companies, service providers, and affiliates.

Log into your adwords account – if you don’t have one, create one and launch campaigns with conversion tracking on.
Set the date range to at least 3 or 4 months, the shopping season you’re building content for (Valentine’s, Back to School, Engagement, etc…), or the year to date if you have a solid amount of data.
Click on Campaigns > Select an Ad Group > Click the “Search Terms” tab on the keywords page
Modify the columns so you have these five showing:
1. Search term
2. Match type
3. Impressions
4. Clicks
5. Conversions
Now export to a spreadsheet or sort by match type.
Delete or exclude all rows that have zero conversions from your spreadsheet or ignore them within the interface.

This is your gold mine. As long as you do not have “broad match” for everything, [Read more…] about How to Find Keywords & Content Topics That Convert Into Sales

July 30, 2019 By adamriemer 3 Comments

SEO Case Study – How Your .htaccess Can Increase SEO Rankings

Your .htaccess is kind of like the front door in your home or the directory you see once entering an office building. It helps you find the right path to the room you’re looking for, a direct route to the person you are visiting, or to navigate to the nearest restroom if you have to go. However, in many cases when it comes to SEO, .htaccess is more like the attic.

It’s where you store items you use once a year like holiday decor, things you don’t want to throw out, and all the junk which could land you a runner-up position on the show hoarders. When you have to open your .htaccess (much like an attic), you remember all of the things you’re supposed to do, but you put it off and let the clutter continue to pile up. That is where you run into a lot of SEO issues that can prevent your rankings from growing.

By not having a clean and direct .htaccess, you make search engines have to work to find the right pages and versions of your website. Think about showing up to an interview and being 10 minutes late because the directory was wrong, and the security desk kept giving you wrong instructions to find the HR team, then the administrative assistant sent you back downstairs to start over again. Now that you know what the .htaccess does for SEO, here is how we used this to increase a client’s positions from the lower part of page 1 in Google to the upper.

Our team is working with a client on SEO, and they have tons of content and backlinks, but their positions had plateaued and they couldn’t figure out why. It turned out to be a tech SEO issue with one of the big fixes being .htaccess.

During the first round of cleanup, we reduced the file by more than 1,100 redirects and instructions. We also reset other directives to properly point to the correct pages, or versions of the pages. From there we reduced redirect chains by stripping them out, and reset the options that needed to remain. This was only round one.

After this round of cleaning, the results helped the client to remove the stagnant positions, and get them to climb higher on page one. Often times your SEO will say you need content or backlinks, but that often isn’t true when you already have them, and the content is good.

In the screenshots below you’ll see current ranking positions in the columns (Google, Yahoo, Bing), and then the search volume for the keyword phrases. I pulled the report on 7/29/2019 with a comparison to the previous 30 days because I want to show the climb that happened once the pages and files were reindexed. The green number next to the ranking position is the amount of spaces it moved up. I used this tool to track, just like I do all clients. If you’re wondering why there are some with 0’s across, we haven’t launched those sections or the content yet. I add the tracking first so we can watch as it appears and properly monitor.

The niche is fairly competitive with lots of big money players. The goal was to move from the lower part of the first page to the upper, and this is the way we started the progress. Keep reading below to learn more about how .htaccess impacts SEO (without all of the other things it does). BTW, if you’re a programmer and yelling about the explanation above, don’t continue down. This post isn’t for you. It is for people like me in marketing, so I changed it to be non-techie for marketing teams.

How .htaccess Impacts SEO

Your .htaccess file is going to be big, scary, and complex. This is especially true for older sites which have had numerous designs, URL structures, and developers working on it. Knowing how to properly implement, test, and then retest is an art form rather than a science.

.htaccess files require a lot of patience and frustration, so if you’re going through a clean up, get ready. Here are some of the things that the programmer will be doing, looking at, and trying to fix. [Read more…] about SEO Case Study – How Your .htaccess Can Increase SEO Rankings

July 2, 2019 By adamriemer Leave a Comment

SEO Case Study & Results – Content Redo & Site Structure

A client who I had a short term SEO contract with came to me after not having much success with a previous agency. Their site had some falls and lost traffic, and the agency told them they just needed backlinks. This could be further from the truth. The issues were tech, content and site structure.

Tech was out of our control for the project, but we did send a detailed report with what to do (at least from a starting point). What was under our control is the content on the pages, where it links too, and how the navigation works. After auditing the content, it became clear that this was one of the biggest opportunities to increase their search engine visibility, so that is what we addressed first. It included rewriting, deleting and adding.

The screenshots below are from this tool which I use for rank tracking on specific keywords and phrases. I have it set from when I first added the keywords to be tracked (pre-implementation of the content) to today 6/30/2019 after two major Google updates. Because the contract was short term, we did not get to implement everything I wanted too, but there is a chance we’ll be re-engaging in the future as we did generate positive results.

The niche is noticine and vaping which is highly competitive. The competitive nature is because of the limited ability to advertise on traditional advertising platforms like Facebook and Google Ads.

Below are screenshots with the results from the content implementation. Implementation is not 100% complete yet, so I’m excited to see as they finish and continue with new content creation. After the screenshots you’ll find the steps we took, and how we implemented them to generate these results. The client’s name has been blocked, even though they said I can use it, and you’ll find the results highlighted in the red boxes.

The green numbers show the climb in positions in Google, Yahoo and Bing. The blue number is where the company’s website currently ranks in Google, which was our focus for this optimization. The second red box has the total monthly search volume for these keywords so you can see the level of competition and traffic at stake. Click any image to scroll in and see it closer.

Step 1: Redo product copy and provide education to the product team.

The most important role an SEO can play is to work with the client’s team, and to teach them what you know. [Read more…] about SEO Case Study & Results – Content Redo & Site Structure