Local SEO

Learning how to sell SEO isn’t easy. Why? Your prospects don’t want to buy SEO—they want to buy results. I learned this the hard way. After years of trial and error, I found a system. It consistently delivers what people want: more customers, revenue, and growth. In fact, I’ve maintained a 75% close rate by focusing on one thing: demonstrating value before asking for the sale. Think about it: AI advancements. Nontraditional search results. Constant algorithm shifts. SEO looks different every year. But these changes have made skilled SEOs more valuable than ever. In this guide, you’ll learn my exact process for selling SEO services, backed by insights from industr…

Many ecommerce websites obsess over flashy designs and trendy layouts. Big mistake. Instead, you should focus on conversion-centered design. That’s the blend of buyer psychology, user experience, and strategic design working together to turn visitors into customers. Doing this can get you: More sales Higher average order values Better conversion rates Below, I’ve handpicked nine effective ecommerce website examples that follow a conversion-focused design. Use them as a blueprint to create your own online store that converts. Crème de la Crème: Our Favorite Ecommerce Website Examples Short on time to review every ecommerce website example on this list? Focus on th…

Want more buyers and sellers from Google without relying on Zillow or Redfin? Or more leads for listings that support your cold-calling and door-knocking efforts? Then, become skilled at real estate SEO. SEO is about ranking your site in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will attract qualified buyers and sellers to your agency. Just look at Campion & Company, a small real estate agency in Boston. They outrank Zillow for high-value property searches like “Burrage Mansion.” And that’s just one keyword. This agency ranks for 19K different search terms on Google—all driving potential buyers directly to their listings. All thanks to SEO. In this guide, yo…

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective paid channels helping businesses increase visibility and build awareness. If you’d like to learn about the state of PPC in 2025, find the latest data on PPC usage, most used ad platforms, and PPC benchmarks, we’ve curated a list of 24 essential PPC statistics to help you answer these questions. General PPC Statistics Among surveyed pay-per-click (PPC) marketers, Google (98%), Facebook (76%) and Instagram (70%) are the most widely used advertising platforms (Statista) Here’s a full breakdown: Digital Advertising Platform Share of PPC Professionals Google (excluding YouTube) 98% Facebook 76% Inst…

Travel SEO is about turning strangers into guests. But it’s no small task competing with major sites like Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Expedia. With so many players in the market, standing out in search engine results can feel impossible. Yet, small players can still succeed. Live Oak Lake, a boutique resort in Texas built a strong direct booking website that ranks No. 1 for search terms like “waco cabins.” They made $1.1 million in their first year and sold the business for $7 million in 2024. In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how to implement an effective travel SEO strategy, including: How to optimize for travel-specific search intent 10 proven strategies t…

Search engines help users find webpages related to specific search terms (called queries). Understanding how search engines work can help you make your pages more accessible. And ultimately direct more potential customers to your site. This guide explains how search engines discover, store, and rank content. You’ll also get tips on how to increase visibility in search results. How Do Search Engines Work? Search engines provide users with a list of relevant webpage results related to their search queries (i.e., the words they type into the search bar). They accomplish this by following a three-step process: Crawling: Discovering and downloading the content of webpa…

SEO reporting transforms raw data into actionable decisions. It shows clients and teams exactly what’s working — and what isn’t. But here’s the painful truth: You can waste hours each month collecting data from various platforms. Like copying numbers from Google Analytics, Search Console, and rank trackers into spreadsheets. Then struggling to make it look presentable. Oh, and this is for one website. If you’re managing many projects, reporting can get VERY tedious (and costly). That’s why I’ve handpicked a list of four dedicated SEO reporting tools that: Save time by automatically collating data from your favorite SEO and analytics platforms Help you build client-…

You’re setting goals. Publishing content. Reporting on growth. But deep down, you’re still asking: “Are we aiming too high? Too low? Are we even on track?” That uncertainty is normal — but it’s also a signal that you need an SEO forecast. At Backlinko, we do SEO forecasting throughout the year. We use it to map planned content, track production costs, and project traffic and revenue gains. This approach lets us prioritize effectively. Pivot when content underperforms. And build lasting trust with our stakeholders. As Leigh McKenzie, our Head of SEO puts it: “Forecasting is har…

Whenever you move content, change domain names, or simply tweak a page’s URL, you’ll likely use a redirect. This ensures your users (and Google) get to the right page, and it preserves the SEO value from your backlinks. You can use .htaccess redirects specifically to do this. But I get that messing with your site’s server files can sound daunting. So the goal of this guide is to make .htaccess redirects as accessible as possible. To help, there are two free resources you’ll find in this post: A simple spreadsheet to automatically generate rules for the most common scenarios An…

Back in the early 2000s, keyword stuffing actually worked. All you had to do was repeat the same phrases, and you could rank pretty well. (Readability be damned.) I’m not exaggerating here — these sites were literally littered with keywords. Like this one from 2005. Yes, this is a real site I found on The Wayback Machine. And yes, “online casinos” was used enough times to make your eyes burn. But that game is over. Today, keyword stuffing makes your content unreadable and unrankable. Google’s smarter. Users are pickier. And spammy tactics? They get flagged fast. So, if you’re still stuffing keywords, you’re not just stuck in the past — you’re tanking your chanc…

There are many tools that let you schedule content across different social media platforms. But: Not all of them are built to match your unique workflow. Some focus on collaboration, others on planning. That’s why I’ve handpicked the best tools and highlighted the features that go beyond basic scheduling. Here’s an overview of the best social media management tools included in this article: Best for Pricing Buffer Content creators and small teams that need help generating content ideas and staying consistent Starts at $6/month per channel; limited free plan available Planable Marketing teams that need a centralized hub to collaborate on all types of conte…

Running PPC campaigns isn’t for the faint of heart. You’re constantly juggling dashboards, tweaking campaigns, and fielding requests from clients who wanted performance reports yesterday. That’s why the best PPC tools don’t just offer features. They help you move faster. In this guide, I’ve curated this list of the best PPC tools marketers swear by, organized by use case. The goal? To help you quickly find what fits your workflow and skip the ones that don’t. What Are the Best PPC Tools? PPC Tool Best for Price Semrush Advertising Toolkit All-in-one PPC campaign management Starts at $139.95/month. 14-day Pro trial available. Spyfu Competitor research Start…

Your sitemap is exactly what it sounds like: a map of your site’s pages. A good sitemap organizes all your most important pages logically, and it can help Google crawl and understand your site. Free template: Want to create your own visual sitemap like the example above? Download our free Canva template here. Below, I’ll go through 19 example sitemaps and explain the key best practices …

Meta tags are snippets of HTML code that live in your webpage’s <head> section. Your website’s visitors won’t see them. But search engines, browsers, and social media platforms can see and use them. You can think of meta tags as a way to tell Google and other search engines about what your page contains and how they should display it in search results. Some meta tags are more important than others. In fact, there are really only a couple of meta tags you need to worry about. I’ll explain exactly what these are below and how you can optimize yours. The Components of a Meta Tag Here’s what a basic meta tag looks like: <meta name="description" content="This is …

Strategic ecommerce keyword research can help you reach the right audience and directly impact your bottom line. Just look at Cosmetify’s success. This beauty retailer was struggling with an all-too-common challenge: no traffic on its revenue-generating pages. The team identified and mapped transactional keywords to these money pages. Dorothy Edgar, SEO Manager at Cosmetify, shares more about her strategy: “We also created new money pages to fit customer needs and gaps in our current website hierarchy. For example, we segmented the fragrance category page into ‘women’s perfume …

Want to know the most effective ecommerce growth strategy? I studied successful online stores to find out what works best. While every store’s path is unique, clear patterns emerged. Here are some examples: *All figures in USD Brand Annual Revenue Standout Strategy Hush Blankets $48M Product Validation Mid Day Squares $20M Content Marketing TBH Skincare $6.5M Content Marketing MX Store $65M Search Marketing Who Is Elijah $13M Operational Efficiency Whether your goal is to do $1M or $100M, it comes from executing the fundamentals. I’ve distilled this guide to the five most impactful growth strategies, including: Success metrics Real-world examples…

Like it or not, we’re all at the mercy of Google’s ranking systems. Systems that reward some sites with high rankings. And wipe others off the SERPs overnight. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Google provides fairly detailed guidelines about the type of content it’s looking for: helpful content. We follow these guidelines here at Backlinko. For example, our SEO strategy guide dominates the search results. And ranks for more than 3.2K long tail keywords: But this wasn’t by luck. We aim for every article we publish to meet — or exceed — Google’s helpful content standards. And you can, too. After reading this article, you’ll have 10 Google-approved strategies fo…

This guide will show you how to use ChatGPT the right way. Brand new to using it? I’ll help you skip the rookie mistakes that leave most beginners frustrated. Tried it before and had an average experience? No problem. You’ll learn how to refine your approach to get useful, high-quality responses (finally). Because here’s the thing: ChatGPT IS a powerful tool. But only if you know how to use it effectively. Let’s make that happen. What is ChatGPT (And What Can It Do)? ChatGPT is an AI assistant that answers your questions like a human would. It can also generate ideas and assist with writing, problem-solving, and research tasks. How does it do this? It analyzes …

Pageviews are a web analytics metric that counts each time a visitor loads or reloads a page on your website. Each instance of a user viewing a page is one pageview, regardless of whether the same user views the same page multiple times. Tracking pageviews helps you measure traffic volume and understand which content attracts the most attention. But: Pageviews are not the most important metric you should track. I’ll explain why below, but first let’s clarify what they are in the context of a few other metrics. Pageviews vs. Users vs. Sessions Pageviews represent the total number of times people view your pages. If someone visits your homepage, clicks to your blog, t…

What people say about your brand online shapes your reputation. This could be reviews, social mentions, or business listings. Keeping up with all of them takes A LOT of time and effort. Online reputation management (ORM) tools help you monitor brand mentions, manage reviews, and keep business details consistent across directories. But each tool has its specialties. I researched and tested the best ORM tools available. And found the top five that’ll make your life easier. Here’s what you’ll find in this guide: The best tool for tracking social mentions The easiest way to manage and respond to reviews A solution that automatically updates your business listings 5 Be…

If you publish writing, you’d be crazy not to use artificial intelligence. It’s like telling a carpenter not to use a drill. You can build a deck without one. But why would you? Writers have always embraced new tools to improve their craft. The challenge with AI, or any technology, is that we want the easy way out. We hope the tech will magically automate everything. And for mediocre content, AI is the perfect solution. But creating exceptional content is HARD. No matter what tool you use. For example, I used AI extensively to write this article. Yet, it still took me 40+ hours to produce. Why? AI has made me realize how much I can improve my content. And you ca…

If you’ve ever run an ad campaign, you know that keyword costs can quickly eat up your budget. This is especially true if you’re not strategic about your selections. Of course, you can’t control all the factors that determine pricing. But you can reduce costs by choosing the right keywords and creating experiences that convert. Take digital marketing agency Turn Key Lead, for example. They reduced a mortgage bank client’s cost per conversion in Google Ads by 30% in seven days. Source How’d they do it? Through keyword and landing page optimization—tactics you’ll master today. In this guide, you’ll learn: How to find keyword costs using proven tools Optimization t…

The internet is full of recycled lists claiming to reveal the “most profitable blog niche ideas.” But most lack any actual data to back up their recommendations. That’s why we decided to do something different. We analyzed 100 blog niches using a comprehensive methodology to identify the top 25 opportunities based on cold, hard numbers. This included: Search volume data Keyword difficulty scores Average cost per click (CPC) Search intent Short- and long-term growth trends For each winning niche, we created a detailed scorecard that ranks its performance across three critical dimensions: Growth, monetization, and ranking potential. These metrics are presented on …

Want to 2X, 3X, or even 4X your ecommerce sales? Start by diagnosing what’s working on your site and what isn’t. Then, apply targeted fixes based on real data. Not hunches. In this guide, I’m sharing my lessons and strategies from 10+ years in digital marketing. Plus, I interviewed four leading ecommerce website optimization experts for their best conversion-driving insights: Leigh McKenzie from UnderFit (also head of SEO @ Backlinko) Rishi Rawat from Frictionless Commerce Anna Bolton from Conversion Copy Co. Kurt Philip from Convertica Let’s start by identifying the biggest roadblocks standing between you and more revenue. Phase 1: Analyze and Diagnose Your Site…