Securing 2-3 backlinks daily and writing 2-3 articles weekly since December 2021 for a SaaS website. Result: 100x traffic and 100s of signups. Who says content marketing can't drive MRR?

AdverGames to drive active engagement in a marketing campaign Games allow your audience to take an active role in your marketing campaign. This engagement alone can make a world of difference. Forced ads on Youtube, gated content, pop-ups, etc. are not always fun. The worst part is, people get distracted by traditional ads and jump onto other activities. On the contrary, games put them in the driver's seat. They don't think they are forced to play a game. They are playing it to have fun, and most importantly its their own choice. We are social creatures. We seek adventure, competition, and achievement. Games are the most viable way to deliver all of these safely and conveniently. From a marketing perspective, these innate human experiences lead to active engagements. A business can smartly use these engagements to deliver its messages, offers, and drive sales. Games have this amazing power to connect with the target audience for almost 3x longer than other media. Even if its an advergame or branded game, most people won't mind. Gamified marketing campaigns combined with rewards, for example, a simple leaderboard, coupons, or point swap help the audience connect with a brand emotionally. In this crowded era of the internet, gamification can be your best bet toward building a human-centric brand/business.

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Daily Growth Tip: Get more eyes on your content by targeting keywords with zero search volume Keyword research tools, no matter how useful they are, are not always correct about search volume and do not always detect emerging trends. Targeting keywords with no search volume will help your content rank. Steve Toth of SEO Notebook received nearly 5000 clicks in two months using keywords with zero search volume — and he's not alone. Most people ignore zero-search-volume keywords at face value, giving newer websites a chance to rank in the SERP. So use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to find keywords in your niche, and keep drilling down until you have a list of keywords with no volume. Many of these keywords will obviously be duds, so target a large number of them, make sure they're relatively easy topics to write about, and keep the articles short. Here are a few signs that a particular zero-search-volume keyword is worth your time: When you search for a keyword with quotes around it, it returns a plethora of relevant content. It's similar to a more well-known keyword (bonus if Google suggests it as a related search). The keyword is being targeted by competitors.

Advergames can directly contribute to your brand's ROI. Back in 2006, Burger King sold 3.2 million copies of its advergames, each at $3.99. BK saw a 40% rise in quarterly profits because of these games. This was the time when mass adoption of the internet didn't happen, at least not on mobile devices. Now we are in the mobile and Web3 era. The barrier of entry to advergaming is extremely low. Players can load a game right on their browsers in seconds and play. Brands can easily make these games more exciting with web3 tokens, NFTs, or simple rewards/discount coupons. Bothering the audience with stupid ads and pop-ups does not make sense anymore. It makes the messaging boring and brand engagement meaningless. For a marketer, its time to be creative. Advergames can keep a player engaged for over 17 minutes. A strategically planned advergame can lead to direct purchases when everybody else is struggling to get a few seconds of attention. Advergaming is not a new concept, the first advergame was planned in 1978. Historically these games have been ignored by small businesses as the development costs were sky-high and used to take months. This is not the case anymore with the increased popularity of casual games. You can get an advergame for your brand in days. However, what matters is, are you considering the ROI potential? Just like any other ad format, there should be a clear objective for advergames too. Either creating awareness, driving sales, or simply educating the target audience. We have seen some businesses to become more creative and pairing their advergames with ad networks that unlock game features. In any case, the messages that advergames convey are powerful. Sky is the limit when you let the audience interact with your brand using advergames.

Today, let me give you my playbook for getting 100 premium SaaS backlinks a month, which drives 700 inbound signups & 65k traffic a month for us. Note - we didn’t even have a blog page on our site until December 2021. But first, what are backlinks & what is the need? Backlinks are links from one website to a page on another website. Google consider backlinks “votes” for a specific page. Pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. Always remember, content gives you linear growth but backlinks give you exponential growth. Now let me explain the ways in which you can get backlinks: Organic backlinks - you write unique high-value content, & you have certain authority, people will share on the internet. Neilpatel & HubSpot are good examples. I get around 10-20 backlinks a month like this. Paid backlinks - You pay websites to give you backlinks. You can go to sites like adsy & simply place an order. Problem with these sites is that most sites offered are pbns or news sites or just blogs. There is a lot of work in just finding right saas site. I prefer cold emailing high-traffic SaaS websites asking for paid links. Now some people put up my backlink in one of their blogs, while rest, ask me to write a guest post for them. This is a little tedious as everyone has their own content guidelines. The market standard for a 20k traffic saas website is 70-150 dollars. Saving me a lot & making this process scalable instead of replying on link-building sites. I secure 30 backlinks a month via this method. AB exchange - you exchange links directly with somebody. X gives a direct link to one of the blogs of Y & then Y gives to a blog of X. This can backfire as Google can easily find out this & then penalise your website. ABC exchange - X gives a link to Y, Y gives a link to Z, & Z gives a link to X. If you do this, there is virtually no way for google to pick this up since there is no predictability here. When I started out back in December 2021, I had 2 websites of my own & took another 3 websites from my friends. So I would reach out to people & tell them I have 5 SaaS websites; this gave me a lot of leverage while exchanging but also make exchanges quick & easy. Further, these people would tell their SEO friends to contact me since I had 5 premium saas websites. In the SEO community, premium saas websites are king. Currently I have 9 saas websites, so just with one website, I do a lot of exchanges. So this is how the exchange would occur - I have 5 websites, A, B, C, D & E. John has 2 websites, X & Y. I would give links from A, B & C to X & then D, E to Y. In return I would take links from X on D & E; & Y on A, B, & C. Over time, we have joined some 20 communities on slack & FB for the ABC exchange. We actively look out for posts & even message people. I get 30-50 backlinks a month just doing this. Use these backlinking hacks and grow your traffic 100x within 6-12 months.

15-minute user engagement with advergames The internet is chaotic right now. There are too many distractions. Engaging someone from five to 10 minutes is a huge deal. Advergames with effective gameplay can engage the audience for 15 minutes up to an hour. That's not all, these easy-to-play small games keep bringing them repeatedly. The longer they play, the more it impacts brand recognition and purchase intent grows. Traditional online ads like search ads, banner ads, and even video ads often fail to grab the user's attention. Some brands try to force-feed their ads. Doing so simply annoys the user and can not ensure if the audience is looking at it or paying attention to it. With advergaming, the scenario is the opposite. Whether it's a brand message infused in-game or showing ads directly inside the game, people are concentrating because they are enjoying it. Internet users don’t mind seeing advertising messages in games. They are smart and understand that there is a value exchange when they play a game. That being said, there needs to be subtle balance. The game can not simply be an ad, but it does have to have a marketing component to it. Associating a brand with something that people are doing for stress relief and fun is a positive brand association. The opportunity is tremendous. As a marketer, you would need still need to be creative with the distribution. Do you simply like to bury your advergame deep in your site or have strategies around how to make it go viral? Game-based marketing campaigns are still not widely adopted. It's time to consider advergames in terms of competitive advantage.

If you do a wild marketing experiment, like parachute your executive team out of a helicopter with huge branded flags over a big music festival….. It may lead to millions of eyes, but very likely will have little to no impact in 12 months. On the other hand, if you raise your Domain Authority from 20 -> 80 over the course of 24 months, it will almost assuredly have a cumulative, long-term positive effect for your business. These long-term levers are highly coveted as they lead to step-changes in the business. Podcasts for us was one of these, staying our third highest source of paid traffic years after our initial push. So what are a list of these type of marketing levers and how can we lean into them? • Partnering w/ an ecosystem (building an integration with say Salesforce or Shopify) • Building a community/group (one of the most powerful long-horizon growth plays out there is to build a high-value community) • Growing an owned asset (creating a noteworthy podcast or blog) • SEO • Marketplaces (say you build a marketplace of 100 templates and keep adding) • Brand awareness • Get featured in a growing asset (We got a chapter written about us in Superfans and as that book went on to sell thousands of copies, we were connected to that success. Same thing with podcasts. The key is a growing asset, things like a PR feature in Forbes wouldn’t classify) • Reviews (these accumulate over time to increasing advantage) • Getting listed on a prominent tools list (brands listed on influencer websites under their tools sections can get massive traction. I have seen this with Pat Flynn)

My blueprint for SaaS and Marketplace founders to build 70k relevant monthly web traffic in just 8 months and bring 1000s of signups in as little as $4,000 a month. This playbook has worked really well in Cliently and Clientvenue 1. Make your marketing team independent of the technical team. The marketing team shouldn't rely on developers to get things done. If possible, convert the blog into a WordPress blog. Also, make sure blogs are optimized for reading on cellphones. Have comments, likes and sharing options (on social media) section in blogs. 2. Hire two grade 7 and grade 8 quality writers from Linkedin, Indeed. Test their writing abilities by giving them a bottom of the funnel to write on. Salary - $800-$1500 a month per employee in India and similar countries. 3. Hire 2 freelancers from Upwork for $10-$150 a blog. Please give them the same test. 4. The goal would be to publish 10-20 articles a month to build writing momentum. 5. Build a keyword list from Ahrefs and only pick the bottom-of-funnel keywords, to begin with. Like competitor's pricing, alternative, reviews, product use cases, etc. Go for medium volume and medium competition keywords. Even a volume of 10 is good since nobody is trying to compete with them and you will have double-digit conversions. Don't forget to use parent keywords and combine keywords with the same intent. 6. Create a checklist for writers to follow. It should contain all the SEO and writing hygiene. Put a manager on them to ensure the process doesn't break. 7. Create a list of your features. Usp and pricing; so writers can easily take info from there and fill in relevant details in blogs. 8. Motivate and coach writers, and have calls with them consistently, or you will see output dropping quickly. 9. A strong call to action on the blogs page. No multiple CTA. To begin with, just land people on the homepage, and once you hit 5k traffic a month, start a/b testing. I like to drive people to the homepage, then free trial. For those not converting into paid customers in 7 days, have a team of account executives chasing them. 10. Install Google analytics, Google search console and Microsoft clarity to measure and understand traffic. 11. Set goals in google analytics. Goal 1: Coming from blog to homepage. Goal 2: blog to the homepage to signup. 12. Start getting ABC and paid backlinks from month 2 of writing. Secure backlinks only on pages indexed by google. 13. Backlinks can be secured in relevant slack, FB groups, and cold emails 14. Buy paid backlinks on cold email and platforms like adsy. 15. Keep track of your do-follow links. Those who remove yours, email them back. 16. Keep re-writing the blogs which get traffic. 17. Advanced stage - use optinmonster to optimize CTA and convert more traffic. 18. Advanced stage - Use websites like leadfeeder to get data on people visiting your site and prospecting them back. 19. Advanced stage - Use the same organic visitors in your re-marketing campaign. 20. Get a technical SEO audit from time to time. From month 3rd, you will start seeing results and beat all your competitors in 6-12 months!

A Tesla Model 3 for playing an advergame Yep, you heard it right. Chiptole took advergames to the next level and announced a Tesla Model 3 for the winner of Race to Rewards. Even players ranking 2nd-10th positions on the leaderboard won electric bikes and skateboards. The advergame-driven campaign lasted for 48 hours only. Chiptole has been running its loyalty program since 2019. The objective was to celebrate the existing rewards program and launch the Chipotle Rewards Exchange. The brand also partnered up with gaming influencers to spread the word. The 16-bit vintage advergame tasked participants to sign up, choose one of eco-friendly transport, then race on a firm-inspired map and collect Chiptole branded items. This play-to-earn game had no limit on playing. A player could exchange earned points for food, drinks, and even Chiptole merchandise. Was this browser-based advergame any good for Chiptole? Apparently, it was a massive success. The campaign was well-received by the online gaming community. Players posted their top scores across various social media and asked their peers to play. Chiptole received 71K new Chipotle Rewards members with 2.1 million game plays and over 15K social shares. The game was played for over 36 million minutes, resulting in an average of 17+ minutes average play time per player. Alongside eco-friendly vehicles for the winners, Chiptole also gave away over 200k chips to the participants. The game is still live on a Chiptole-branded microsite. Gamified advertising is backed by multiple scientific pieces of research. Chiptole's strategic approach with advergames is proof of how these games can make a strong connection between a brand and its target consumers. The prolonged brand exposure even influences the buying decision. In this cookieless world of advertising, advergames can be an effective shortcut for collecting first-party user data. At the same time offering the audience an immersive, distraction-free gaming experience.

SEMRUSH Site Audit Tool Accuracy? Hello everyone, I believe most of the people in this group do use Advance SEO tools like SEMRUSH, Ahrefs, etc. on a daily basis. And, so do I. Here, what I found unacceptable by SEMrush. Accuracy Test: I don’t support the fact that one should use Tools for Site Auditing. But my client wants his websites to be Indexed within these tools, so that he can have an idea of what’s going on. So, today my client called me and said SEMRUSH is showing these issues: • Errors = 5 • Warnings = 4 • Notices = 8 I immediately checked the GSC but there was no such warnings at all. So, I manually put all these URL’s in the inspection tool and the accuracy rate was only 1.33% which means only one URL was showing the crawling issue out of all, and that was due to a pagination issue that the developer caused due to some improper HTML. So, the point of saying this here is that sometimes you have to think out of the box because in the end they are just tools with a dynamic prediction score! -Cheers

Starbucks Odyssey - what do you think? Starbucks recently launched Starbucks Odyssey - an NFT-based Rewards loyalty program. Starbucks Odyssey experience will engage consumers with various activities, i.e. Starbucks branded games, fun challenges, etc. The interesting thing is Starbucks is avoiding tech-lingo, for instance NFTs are journey stamps. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Starbucks will eventually replace traditional Starbucks Rewards with Starbucks Odyssey?