Video Transcript - Top 11 Landing Page Optimization Strategies

In this tutorial, we will share with you 11 landing page optimization strategies to help you turn more clicks into leads and buyers. 

But before getting into the details, we want to clarify the landing page optimization lingo that we will use and that you will hear from all sorts of marketers talking about landing pages.

We want to clear this up because before we get into the actual strategies that we will share with you here today, we want to make sure you understand what the heck we are talking about when we use these terms.

Landing Page Lingo

Home Page

When building a website, a home page is one of the first things built. The home page is typically the front door of the website.

Not everyone accessing the website enters from the home page. Customers and users can enter the website through any number of pages or landing pages.

Landing Page

People enter a website through an entry point known as the landing page. It is the first page they see.

First Fold

Arguably, the most critical part of your website and landing page. 

It is the piece of the page that someone immediately sees. It will determine if they are interested in scrolling down further to see additional content.

If they do not like the first fold, they lose interest. The first fold is where first impressions are made.

Below The Fold

Once they become interested in the first fold, they will explore the content below the fold.

So now we hope you will understand when you hear marketers and web developers talk about the landing pages, first folds, below the fold.

Next, let us discuss the 11 conversion optimization strategies to help drive your business, increase results, and convert clicks into leads and buyers.

Landing Page Optimization Strategies

Strategy #1 - Keep It Simple

The first conversion optimization strategy beginning with the basics is to KEEP IT SIMPLE.

When creating a landing page, you want to get the maximum results, so you need to keep it simple.

This is probably the most messed up biggest mistake we see all of the time.

Keep it simple and have as few offers as possible.

If you can have a landing page that focuses on one single offer or one goal, that will probably get you the highest result.

Now, if you are in e-commerce with multiple offers or multiple goals, this may not always apply.

But, even in e-commerce, if you have numerous different products or categories, ask yourself, what is the goal? How do I make the decision-making process when somebody lands on a landing page as easy as possible.

Ask yourself, how do I create a path as simple as possible to help them reach our goal, whether it is opt-in or purchasing? One of the fastest ways to accomplish this is to eliminate options.

If you ever went to a restaurant, opened their menu, and seen pages and pages, hundreds of options, and you are like, I do not know what I want because there are too many options.

The same thing happens when people enter your landing page and they have too many options. Keep it focused, one offer, one call to action, or as few as possible.

Once you have narrowed it down, look at your landing page.

Ask yourself, are there distractions that do not need to be there, or am I linking off to other things from my landing page that might be a distraction. You will see lots of landing pages that are sub-pages on a website that do not even have a navigation bar.

You want people to focus.

Again, look at your landing pages and remove any distractions you see. Focus on your offers.

Make sure you are getting as many people to take that offer as possible rather than clicking on all of these random things that do not support your business goals.

This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy #2 - Compelling Headline

The headline is one element that is more important than any other element in the first fold that convinces people to stay, read more, and engage with the website.

The headline should be front and center on your landing page.

The headline is the very first thing someone's eyeballs should magnetically be drawn to when accessing a landing page.

The headline has one and only one purpose; it must answer the question: WHAT IS IN IT FOR ME? (WIIFM)

When people surf the internet, they are searching for something. They need something.

The headline needs to communicate in as few words as possible to help people find what they are looking for here.

Write a compelling, benefit-driven headline in as few words as possible, letting people know, here is what you are going to get, here is how your life will improve, and here is the problem we are going to solve for you if you stay on this landing page and read more.

It hooks the people opening your landing page.

The HEADLINE is the essential part of your first fold, and honestly, the headline is the most critical part of the website.

If the headline is wrong, it will not matter if you have the best product, the best pricing, the best ad copy, the best guarantee because people will not stick around long enough to read about it.

Go back and ask yourself, do I have a good headline?

If you have a headline that you have used since starting the website, start testing new headlines.

Writing a better headline is one of the fastest ways to increase results on your landing pages and get more people to stick and more people to read.

If there is anything you should test right away, you should try a new headline. Just this minor change will potentially get you better results immediately.

Strategy #3 - Complementary & Contrasting Color Palette 

Colors, here is the problem and the mistake we see all of the time.

People take their ad copy and everything ready for the landing page and give it to their designer.

Designers like to use complementary colors. 

They make the websites, and the landing pages look pretty, really nice, but pretty and nice does not always mean practical.

They end up using complementary colors that hide the message rather than making the key points, the headlines, and the calls to action stand out loud; they kind of blend it in.

So if you want your landing page to be as effective as possible, you need to use COMPLEMENTARY BUT CONTRASTING color palettes.

With the main text, we recommend dark text and light background.

The best is black on white for sure; for your main body, if you have a lot of text, or a longer sales piece, try black on white; you can not beat it.

But if you want to use color on color, make sure it contrasts.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when we see a website with a light purple background with a darker purple text. That is the same color. It is not contrasting.

So it is hard for the eye to read because it does not contrast as well.

It is not that someone can not read the text; it slows down our reading, and when you slow down people's reading, you slow down their comprehension.

What happens is people get bored, and when they get bored, they leave.

So GET YOUR COLORS RIGHT.

When it comes to your call to action, make sure that you have bright contrasting colors.

Make sure to reserve the bright contrasting color for your call-to-action links.

If we had a website with many red colors, we probably would not use a red call to action.

But, if we were primarily using blues and grays, maybe we would use red just for the call to action.

Why?

Because it would stand out like a sore thumb.

Your call to attention would be so different that it would get people's attention.

Use complementary and contrasting color palettes.  

This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy #4.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy #4 - Simple and Obvious Call-to-Action

Keep your call to action

a) SIMPLE, and

b) OBVIOUS 

Your call to action should never be a series of multiple steps.

Go here, then go here, then do this, and then do this.

No, it should be; click here to sign up.

Click here to order.

Click here to register.

One of our rules we recommend when writing calls to action and creating buttons is to avoid words like buy and purchase.

Because that has the feeling like hey, I am trying to get money from people.

Instead, we would use more gentle positive words like Join now – Download today – Register now – Sign-up – Get yours – Add to cart, rather than buy or purchase.

Now, the other rule is to use big, bright, and bold buttons.

When you are trying to get peoples attention, you want to make it loud and in their faces.

So there is no way they can miss it.

We can tell you right now that the designers are going to cringe.

They are not necessarily going to like that, but you want it to stand out.

We have tested many different scenarios, and we are not sure what it is about red, but it is hard to beat a bright red button.

We have tested red against yellows, red against blues, red against purples, and when we use a red button, it gets more clicks.

We have even seen in screen recordings where there have been bright red graphics, and you can see people click on it. It is something about the red.

People just get drawn to it, and they click on it. That tells us that our buttons probably should be red.

This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.

Strategy #5 - Social Proof

Sometimes people come to a website, and they do not know you; they may feel like they are the first to invest in your product or service.

The best way to take away that uncertainty and the most powerful selling tools you have to convince people to trust you is not you telling people to trust you, but rather it is showing examples of other people who have already put their trust in you.  

Now, when we say social proof, a lot of people think about testimonials.

But, there are so many different ways you can show social proof on your landing pages.

Of course, you can use written and video testimonials from past customers who have benefited from your offers.

Those are super powerful. We would highly recommend those.

Other ways to display social proof are to show 3^rd party ratings and reviews like Google Reviews, Amazon Reviews, and Trust Pilot.

For instance, take a screen capture of great Google reviews like 4.5 stars on Google or 5 Stars on Google and over a thousand reviews on Amazon.

Screen capture that review and put it in your marketing on your landing pages to show people that you have your reviews.

Trust pilot is a company who have built their entire company around these reviews. When you use Trust Pilot, and people review you there, you can insert their widget to show real-time reviews that you have had on Trust Pilot.

Also, on top of that, there are other tools like UseProof.com, which is a real-time social proof service.

UseProof.com uses a little live pop-up at the bottom of the screen, telling people who enter your site where and how long ago purchases have happened.

For example, the pop-up displays that so and so from California purchased ten minutes ago. Or so and so from Vancouver, Canada purchased 5 minutes ago. And so and so from where ever purchased two hours ago.

And all that is constant social proof saying to people, Hey, do not worry other people have invested here too.

The bottom line is, SOCIAL PROOF is not purely testimonials.

It is ratings.

It is reviews.

Check out my website for my podcast, "The Project Ignite", where I set-up a ton of social-proofs. 

And, it is screen captures of comments people have made on other social media platforms turned into images on that website.

It is widgets showing that other people are buying your product or service. These are all powerful tools to support the sales message on your landing pages.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy #6 - Make It Scannable

SCANNABILITY is an old direct response ad copy strategy.

Using old text formatting tools like BOLD, ITALICS, or HIGHLIGHTS, draw out key messages and benefits throughout your landing page.

So if you have three paragraphs of text on a landing page, you would have the regular text, and then you use rich text formatting to actually draw out key benefits and messages.

We ask that you avoid using underlines because people may confuse this with a hyperlink.

Studies show that, using an eye-tracking test to watch how people interact with landing pages, they quickly scan the first fold, and with a good headline that captures their attention and convinces them to stay, most people will not read from top to bottom.

Instead, they grab the scroll bar and scroll down while looking for other indicators, which let them know that, yes, this is what I want.

So the headline hooks them, but now they are scanning.

You want to use the rich text formatting tools to pull out key messages and benefits that support the headline, convincing people that, yes, this is something that interests them.

And you might notice that a lot of people will scan and immediately take action.

Additionally, many people will go back and read the content in more detail because your headline and RICH TEXT FORMATTING got their attention and convinced them that this is something they want.

If the rich text formatting of bold, italics, or highlights do not appear, then when they are scanning, they scan over all of it and miss the key benefits and messages.

Make sure your landing page is scannable.

This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.

Strategy #7 - Credibility

Do anything you can on your landing page to enhance and increase your CREDIBILITY.

This means to display any and all relevant certifications, associations, or awards.

Add any security and safe shopping seals. 

There are tons of them out there that you can use on your website that, hey, I am legitimate, my website is secure, you can trust me, even if the people are not examining them, they are seeing them out of their periphery while scanning.

Subconsciously it is enhancing and building your credibility.

Display any as seen on or as seen in media logos.

For example, display any interviews you have conducted or featured in any media or website with authority.

Your credibility is enhanced and built when logos are displayed.

Remember, when people come to your website for the very first time, they probably do not know you, and if they do not know you, you need to build trust, you need to build authority, and you need to build credibility on top of the message that is the bulk of the page.

How do we do that?

We do that by using all of the other elements that we can add, and you see this is used all of the time.

If you go to our website, you will see as seen on, as seen in, because we have been published and featured in many different places, and we leverage those high authorities and well-known brands to help build our credibility to those people who may not know us.

That is a compelling strategy.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy #8 - Scarcity & Urgency

It would be best if you gave people a reason why they need to act.

You need to create scarcity.

You need to create urgency.

If you do not tell people why they need to buy today, register now, subscribe today, they will think, no worries, this looks great, I will come back later.

But they will not.

If ten people say to you that they will be back, nine of them will not return.

It is just the nature of sales. It is the nature of marketing online.

It is not that they do not want your product or service; they do, but once they have left, they are not coming back, or very few will.

The way around this is to create scarcity and urgency.

Create a Limited-time offer – Limited time bonus – Limited quantity offer.

Display urgency with count down timers and using dates.

However you do it, you need to give people a reason why they need to act now.

Then it would be best if you reinforced that because the more you can reinforce that, the better the result you are going to get.

The more urgency you create, the better the result you are going to get.

FULL STOP.

If there is no URGENCY on your landing page right now on your key offers, if there is no SCARCITY, create it, and your results will go up. 

This brings us to the next landing page optimization strategy.

Strategy #9 - Speed

Speed, speed, speed.

SPEED IS CRITICAL.

The most crucial piece of your landing page optimization, which has to be fast, is the first fold.

Your first-fold needs to load in a few seconds or less because people have no patience.

Think about it now, when you go to a webpage, and the loading page icon goes around and around spinning, what do you do?

You hit back, hit refresh, or think, oh, it is not working, it must be down, and you leave.

Your landing pages have to be super optimized. They have to load quickly.

The biggest culprit for slow loading landing pages these days is too many graphics.

That is why you will see that the quickest landing pages are very sparse on graphics—no large images.

The images they do have, are super compressed and super well optimized.

If you are going to have video images on your landing pages, avoid preloading those.

Have the landing page load and then have a placeholder load, but when they hit play, the video loads because big loading videos in the background can destroy your conversion because people on slow connections are sitting there waiting for a video load.

DO NOT DO THAT!

The best way to avoid a slow-loading landing page is to use lazy load plug-ins.

If you use Google or WordPress, search lazy load plug-ins. You will find that plug-ins will fix your webpage so that certain assets will not load until they are actually needed.

Using lazy load plug-ins will dramatically speed up your webpage.

We recommend that you use a content delivery network or caching to help speed up your website rapidly.

Because, if it is slow loading, if your landing page is taking five seconds before people can see what your webpage is about, you are actively losing people.

FULL STOP. No question.

Landing Page Optimization Strategy #10 - Remove The Risk

When you have any offer that requires people to invest their money, and these are people that do not know you and have not done business with you, and it is the first purchase, and they do not know what the quality of your product or service is like, you have to use guarantees.

Always remove the risk with a guarantee.

MONEY-BACK GUARANTEES REMOVE THE RISK.

Some people might ask, won’t that drive up our refunds.

Yes, you will have refunds, and that is OK.  

A great money-back guarantee will always outweigh potential refunds and the gains you get by having a money-back guarantee.

This brings us to our final and last landing page optimization strategy, strategy # 11.

Strategy #11 - Contact Information

Think about it, when people land on a landing page on your website, and they do not know you, we have already talked about all of these elements you can use to build trust and credibility.

Still, the fact of the matter is that people are not going to purchase if they do not feel like somebody behind the website can be contacted or that there is someone they can reach out to if they have questions or a problem.

But we live in a world where many people get into an online business because they do not want to talk to people.

Or they think that because it is an online business, they do not have to speak with people.

Now, we know no matter how many times we say this, some people will never have a phone number on their website.

Heck, there are certain websites we do not have phone numbers on.

Why?

Because we do not have anyone to answer that phone.

But in all of my big businesses, I have a phone number, and we have people that will answer that phone.

Here is the reality, even if you do not have someone answering the phone, that is OK because you have a phone number that goes to a voice mail that says you have reached XYZ business; if you have a question, please leave a message, and we will call you back promptly.

If you would like to, you can also e-mail @ blah, and they can leave a message, and you can call them back at your own time and convenience.

But the fact is, the more ways people can contact you, the more trust you are going to create.

It is not that everybody will contact you, but having your contact information on the website will build the trust and confidence they will need to invest in your business.

In order, phone numbers build the most trust but, live chat is a very close second.

Live chat is a fantastic way to interact with people on your website without having someone staffing a phone number.

Finally, e-mail.

Have an e-mail obviously that people can reach out to you.

But the more options people have to CONTACT YOU, the more trust and confidence you will build.

Conclusion

There you have it – 11 conversion optimization strategies for your landing page. 

If you are not doing all of these?

Even if you are doing ten out of eleven, take the one you are not doing and do it.

You will start to begin to see the results go up.

Write all of these down and then look at your landing page and check off all of the strategies you have.

What are the ones you do not have?

What is your score?

Did you get an 11 out of 11?

If you did, great.

If you got an 11 out of 11 and you are still not getting the results, now you have to go back and ask yourself, do I have the right offer? Is my offer good?

Or am I driving the wrong traffic to this landing page, and do I need to change my traffic strategy?

If you only have a few of these, and you have got a lot of room to improve, we guarantee you that if you start implementing these and testing these strategies, you will see the results increase.

But, we should warn you, do not make the mistake of changing ten things at once on your landing page.

If you already have a landing page that is getting results, if you change five things, right now, if your sales go up or your sales go down, or your results go up, or your results go down, you will never know why.

So, take one thing, change it. Monitor the results.

If they go up, fantastic! If they go down, revert to what you had and then make the following change.

This is how you systematically, step by step, improve your landing page.

If you want, you get into A/B split testing, and there are lots of tools; Google creates some.

There are some like optimize that can help you do split testing. But, the best way to get started is to take and make one change and monitor the results.

If they go up, you have got a winner. Keep it and make the next change.

So now we hope you have a few ideas to help you improve the conversion rates on your landing pages.

Video Transcript - Best SEO Strategies in 2021

In this lesson, I'm going to show you the five pillars of a successful SEO campaign. If you want to get ranked in Google and attract some of that super-targeted, high-quality, high-converting traffic that Google can send to you in 2021, you need to pay close attention.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- kind of the same thing.

Why is it something so many people attempt but then fail miserably at?

It's because, typically, they're focused on one or two or three of these five pillars. What I want to do right now is I want to go through these five pillars of a successful search engine marketing campaign.

When I get to the end, you're going to understand all of the components that you need to have in place on your website in your search engine marketing plan

Do I Have To Rank Higher in Google?

If you want to start ranking or ranking better in Google, if you've never had free traffic from Google, I can tell you right up front; you're probably missing out.

Why?

Because clicks from Google are some of the highest converting traffic that you can get with online organic traffic. 

Why?

Because when people go to Google, they search for something, maybe it's for a product or a solution to a problem or information.

If you can get your website to rank on page one, when they search that keyword, and you can provide them with the information or the product or the solution that they're looking for, there's a very high likelihood that they're going to engage very, very quickly.

What this results in is a swift conversion, a much shorter sales cycle than, say, social traffic.

Why?

Because social traffic, for example, is more of an interruption ad. We go out, and we target our ads, and we have them show up in people's newsfeeds. And we hope that they're going to click on it because we've interrupted them and grabbed their attention.

But they weren't actively searching for something. So we typically have to nurture them and spend more time with them to get them to that point where they're willing to make that investment search.

When somebody's actively searching for something, you can shorten that down. You can see much faster conversions and precious traffic. The organic traffic from Google always converts substantially higher than paid traffic from Google.

Because there is an inherent trust that comes from Google's organic search results when people see an ad, they immediately have a bias and think, "oh, they're going to sell me something."

But when you rank organically in Google, people assume that this must be the best recommendation because you can't pay to be here.

Google chose you. Google guides our decisions every single day.

Your goal is to make sure your business is ranked, and your website is ranked for the right keywords.

You can be one of those choices when Google is guiding people to make a decision.

The Reality of SEO

The problem with SEO is it's constantly evolving and constantly changing.

And if you head on out into the big wide world of the internet and search for information on ranking in Google, you're going to get all sorts of different answers.

I've been doing SEO now; it makes me feel old, for but over 20 years from back in the early days of Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, and then first-generation Google.

In my businesses, Google and organic traffic generates in the low six figures over $100,000 in sales for me every single month across all of my businesses.

Is it my only channel?

No, absolutely not. But it plays a significant role. 

I would never tell somebody to focus on one channel entirely. Because things evolve and things change.

But I believe any established business on the internet also needs to have a solid organic strategy. Because there's no benefit if you're putting all this money into paid ads and neglecting the organic, you're building search volume.

The fact is, is when people search for something, or when people see an ad, in many cases, they don't click the ad. They go and search it.

If you're not coming up for the keywords they're searching for and somebody else, is your ad spend is driving search back into Google that somebody else is benefiting from. 

That's why this multi-channel strategy that I do believe in combining paid organic, across social media buys, across native, across all different channels, is so important.

I don't want to overwhelm you, and I don't want to think, "Oh my God, I gotta go do all of this."

You don't.

You need to work through the different channels, figure out what your hottest channel is.

But as you build a brand, as you build a name, as people become familiar with you and become familiar with your products, and they begin searching for your products, better make damn sure your website is the one coming up.

Five Pillars of a Successful SEO Campaign

Let's get into these five pillars of a successful SEO campaign. Once I've gone through these, I'm going to tell you what the most important one of these is.

1. Keywords

Alright, pillar number one. Keywords. The foundation of any good SEO strategy starts with keyword research.

Why?

Because if you get your keywords wrong, one of two things will happen: you're going to get the wrong traffic, or you're going to get no traffic.

So if you choose keywords that are being searched by people who aren't entirely interested in what you have, you're wasting their time and your time.

Or, if you focus on keywords that are too competitive, the likelihood of ranking for them will be extremely difficult.

This is a trap too many people fall into. They go after the big sexy general keywords with massive search volume, only to find out that ranking for them is very difficult. It takes a very long time.

The traffic that you get from them isn't actually that qualified because keywords in and of themselves are a little too general. So the first pillar before you do anything else is building your keyword strategy.

What keywords do you want your website to rank for?

I'm not going to go deep into keywords. But I can't emphasize enough how important it is to take the time to find the right keywords.

Also, realize that when you rank for a keyword and focus on ranking for a keyword, there will be multiple related keywords that you automatically begin to rank for.

These are called semantically related keywords. 

One of the mistakes many people make is they say, "Okay, well, I want to rank for the keyword dog training. But how am I going to rank for the keyword how to train a dog? Do I have to do something different?"

Google has gotten very good at recognizing topics. And if you're ranking in the top spots for how to train a dog, there are chances are you're going to start ranking for dog training type keywords as well.

You want to pick the right topical keywords that you're going to focus on. Once you have figured out the top keyword topics that you will focus on with your SEO campaign you want to rank for, we can move on.

Which brings us to pillar number two.

2. Authority Content

Pillar number two is taking that keyword or keywords and topics and creating authority content. 

If I go back in time, the content looked very different. There was a time when Google favored shorter 500 - 750 word articles.

It was more about frequency and not necessarily depth.

But Google and their algorithm have realized that they want to present content that offers the most value to the person searching, and their algorithm has figured that out. Their engineers have figured out that 500 words of content for an information type search ain't going to answer any question in any depth.

That's why over the past decade, we've seen a shift from shorter content to what we call Cornerstone Content or Authority Content pieces.

We go into great depth, we take a topic, a very tight topic, and we go into great depth that could be in 1000 words that could be 2000 words, it could be 3000 words.

But not just words for the sake of words, words that are meaningful that offer immense value.

I should make it very clear when I say content isn't just words anymore. Content is imagery content and video and creating an engaging multimedia piece of content that offers immense value.

When your visitors get there, they want to read it. They want to share it. And that's what Google is looking for.

When you create that content, it needs to be topical. It needs to be optimized for those keywords, which now brings me to the next point.

3. On-Site Optimization

Once we have chosen our keywords, we've created great content; it's not enough to throw it on a blog post and hopes Google finds it and knows what it's about and finds their way around our website and finds what page should be ranked for.

We now need to optimize our website and have the basic stuff like our title tags and our description tags. And then including the keywords and then the semantically related keywords throughout our authority content.

In our heading tags, H1, alt tags through the keywords so that when Google does scan it, they recognize that this keyword and topic is what we want to rank it for.

Then we go even further than that. And one of the most prominent places people mess up when it comes to on-site optimization is they'll do an excellent job of a page and optimizing it.

But then they don't think about all of the internal linking within a website, and when Google comes to a website and spiders out, you need to make sure that they recognize that.

If you have a website about dog training, for example, and you want blog post A to be ranked well for how to choose the best dog training collar, you need to make sure that the rest of the content around that on your website points back to it whenever we're talking about Dog Training collars.

So that when Google is spidering, that they're finding internal links that are saying, "Hey, this is the page to rank for dog training collars."

This is like the roadmap for Google.

The good news is, is there are lots of great plugins that exist out there.

If you're using WordPress, I love Yoast SEO for WordPress. There are other great ones out there like RankMath, stuff like that.

Even if you're using Shopify or things like that, there are SEO tools for those which will help organize structure, set up proper URL structures, coach you on your keyword density and on page optimization, and make sure that you get all of that right.

We chose our keywords, we created some kick-ass authority content, and then we put it on our website, and we optimized our website. Our job is done, right?

Wrong.

This is where most people mess up. And this is where they stop.

Why?

Because most of this is in our sphere of control.

You can get a long way with just doing this well, mainly when you're dealing with long-tail or local markets and stuff like that.

I've seen and experienced many times with local websites going in and just fixing this and watching their rankings shoot up. But in more competitive markets, you've got to go to the following step number four has become more prevalent and more important.

4. Page Experience

This will play an even more significant role in SEO in your Google rankings in 2021.

Google calls it page experience. What is page experience?

When people go to your web page, does it load really quickly? Is it easy to navigate? Is there weird stuff that's misleading? 

When you go into your Google Search Console account, which is the place to go to find out how Google sees your website in terms of search engine optimization and stuff like that.

They've now added a new tab, a new button called page experience. And when you click on that, they're going to give you a page experience score. 

If you have a low score, they're going to tell you what you've done wrong and how to fix that. This is going to become more and more critical.

Is it going to be a make or break?

No.

This page experience is going to be less important than everything I've just shown you here. But if they see your page is difficult to use or it's slow to load, those are things that are going to hurt your rank.

Again, this is becoming more and more important, and we need to pay more and more attention to it.

The good news is in Google Search Console they will show you what your page experience score is and tell you how to fix it.

Again, everything in our sphere of control is here. We can go a long way with this.

This is our foundation. But there's one more critical factor that you have to embrace and do well if you want to rank at the top of Google in just about any niche. And that is backlinks.

5. Backlinks

For those unfamiliar with a backlink, a backlink is when one website links back to your website.

Backlinks were invented by Google back in the very, very early days of Google. When Google launched, they looked at all of the other search engines that existed at that time, the Alta Vistas and the Excite Lycos, AOL, Yahoo.

The problem with all of those old search engines is that they would scan a page and then try and determine where that page should rank or that website should rank based on what they saw on the website.

It was easy to manipulate. That's where Google came along. Larry and Sergey, back in their university dorm, came up with the concept of Google. And their algorithm was different.

First, it looked at what was on the site to get an idea of what it was about and what it should rank for.

As the internet grew, the big problem faced by the search engines is you could have 100 websites, all optimized for the exact keywords, all with authority content, all with great on-site optimization. How the heck were you going to tell that apart?

That's when they added in the backlink factor. In its earliest days and its simplest form, backlinks were like votes.

If you had ten websites, all equal in terms of content in terms of authority and optimization, they would look at who has the most other websites linking to them. Whoever had the most is going to rank the highest.

It's like a voting system. If 100 websites linked to me and only ten linked to you. Well, I'm a better website because more people are linked to me. So they're going to rank me higher.

That was backlinks in its simplest form, but it's become far more complex now. Google's algorithm has become far, far smarter, more intelligent.

They don't just look at the sheer quantity of links because they figured out very quickly, once again, that can be manipulated.

Now what they focus on isn't just quantity, but quality and authority links back to you.

I would rather have one backlink from a government website or an Education website with massive authority in Google's eyes. One link from them would be a bigger vote worth way more than 100 links from no-name sites with no authority in Google's eyes.

Once we've completed the first four steps, the last step, and the most important step, hands down, is building high-quality backlinks that are getting other people in the industry to link to you.

Backlinks are where most people come to a grinding halt and hit a wall.

How do you get other people to link to you?

Here's one of the biggest problems that we see in SEO: people start and say they want to rank in Google.

They go to Google, and the advice Google's going to give you is, "As long as you build great content and focus on the user experience, the backlinks will happen. Don't worry about building backlinks. Once you're a big website and a big name and you have a following."

Yeah, that's what will happen. You'll post content, and your existing followers will share it and link to it. It will gain momentum on its own.

But let's face it -- when you're starting. That isn't going to happen. There's nobody there to see it. 

Types of SEO

This is where we have two types of SEO.

We have white hat SEO. Following all the rules, what Google says, "Don't buy backlinks. Don't go out there and ask for backlinks and try and get backlinks. Let backlinks happen organically." 

That's what they tell you. That's a white hat.

On the black hat side, you have guys using tools and software that are going out there and mass creating links and completely violating all of Google's policies.

The fact to the matter is, when you're getting started, you got to be somewhere in the middle. There's going to be a little bit of grey hat going on.

You've got to ignore Google. You've got to go out there.

You have to build some links through guest posting that could be through outreach, that could even be through buying some high-quality links off some high-quality websites, which happens every day.

I can tell you, the big SEO agencies, the ones that some of them will look you in the eye and say, "Oh, we would never pay for a backlink," are out there buying backlinks. 

Why?

Because it's a valuable asset now.

Although I would encourage you to create great content that people want to link to because it offers so much value, that is the best way to get backlinks.

When you're getting started, you need to give it that boost. You need to go out there, and you need to build some backlinks yourself. It would be best if you used some of these outreach strategies.

Some of these strategies in the white hat world, Google would say no, but that's just the way it is.

Maybe in a later video, I'll go deeper into backlinks and some of the different strategies.

But today was lifting the fog and showing you what it takes to rank in Google.

Conclusion 

Google can be an invaluable source of traffic, amazing high converting clicks once you get there.

But it takes time. It takes patience. 

And it takes a well-formed strategy. And although I say to you, backlinks are the most important piece of SEO. You can't have a good SEO campaign without doing all of this.

This is the foundation.

This is what's in our sphere of control, which means other people have this in their sphere of control.

It's easier to do in competitive niches, where we differentiate is with the backlinks.

Those are the five pillars of a successful SEO campaign in 2021.

Sometimes we got to read between the lines. We've got to take what Google tells us and take what the black hat guys tell us.

We got to figure out what's working in the middle.

I can tell you firsthand as somebody who has multiple different websites, ranking across numerous industries, keywords, niches, and working with clients in multiple other industries on multiple topics.

This is what works—the more competitive your niches, the better. You're going to have to do all of this, the more of this you're going to need.

It's that simple. It'll work. But you got to take action. It's going to take time.

SEO is an evolution; it's not a revolution. 

If you're patient and you start farming this now, letting it grow.

Six months from now, you're going to start to see results. In 12 months, it's going to be making you money in a couple of years from now when you built an authority piece of content in your niche.

You will have a valuable piece of money generating real estate that your competitors envy and wished they had taken the time to do that too.

Hopefully, we've cleared the confusion given you a roadmap.

If you're looking for some help and tools to do keyword research, go check out the free IdeaBot.ai tool that I developed for digital entrepreneurs to give you access to killer keyword data without having to spend a fortune on keyword research tools.

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