Samuel Edwards

If you’re squeamish, don’t worry. This isn’t that kind of parasite. And if you’re a movie buff, you should know this has nothing to do with the 2019 South Korean film. No, this is a different type of parasite. Arguably, a positive parasite. One that can support your website in some highly profitable, tempting ways. And it’s getting more popular. Because it works. So let’s dig in and figure this out. What exactly is parasite SEO? Should you use parasite SEO for your own website? And how, pray tell, do you practice it? Parasite SEO: An Introduction Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tried-and-true digital marketing strategy that’s been pursued by small and large businesses alike since search engines first rose to prominence in the late 1990s. The idea goes that by developing great content, optimizing for commonly searched terms, and building your authority with links, you’ll eventually rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), resulting in much more traffic to your website. But there are a few problems with this approach in the modern era. For starters, there are more than 200 Google ranking factors that need to be considered in your SEO strategy. Learning and mastering them takes a considerable amount of time and effort, which you may or may not be able to afford. On top of that, you’ll have dozens, or even hundreds of top-tier competitors to deal with. These are often companies with well-established authority and expertise, making them difficult to displace in results pages. Building up your own authority and helping your internal pages rank in search engines is, at times, an unaffordable and impractical premise. Parasite SEO may be the answer. As the name suggests, this strategy puts you in the position of a parasite, leeching off the authority of a more established player. In this strategy, you’re not going to be focused on boosting the authority or organic search rankings of your own pages, per se. Instead, you’re going to place an excellent piece of content on a publishing site that already has a massive amount of authority and traffic. If you can get this piece to rank highly, which should be easier than getting your own internal content to rank highly, you can benefit from brand visibility, referral traffic, and greatly increased conversions. Is Parasite SEO Effective? Is parasite SEO good for your website? The short answer is absolutely. Parasite SEO is unlike traditional SEO, since you won’t be focusing on building your own authority or increasing your own ranks. So, if you’re trying to define success as purely organic traffic increases or increases in rankings for your internal pages, parasite SEO is arguably ineffective. But parasite SEO is highly effective at generating more traffic and more conversions for your website, which is probably the ultimate goal of your traditional SEO strategy already. If you find the right publisher, produce an excellent piece of content, and get it in front of an audience who actually wants to read it, you could easily multiply your inbound traffic figures and secure more conversions and revenue. If you can get several pieces published, you’ll be able to multiply these results many times over. But it’s important to note that parasite SEO is not without its downsides or risks. Parasite SEO: Strengths and Weaknesses These are the greatest strengths of parasite SEO: Immediate results. Traditional SEO practices are effective, but time consuming. It can take months, or even longer in competitive environments, so if your business needs early momentum, or if you’re operating on a thin budget, traditional SEO is unpalatable on the surface. Parasite SEO has the potential to bring you immediate, or nearly immediate results. Publishers with established authority have already worked for years to solidify that authority, and you can capitalize on it with a single piece. Obviously, this isn’t a guarantee, and you might have to promote and support the piece you publish with them – but this process is certainly much faster than mainstream SEO. Authority leverage. Building your own authority is more than consuming; it’s legitimately challenging. Building the wrong links, suffering from search algorithm volatility, or dealing with aggressive competitors can all destabilize even the best authority building practices. But with parasite SEO, you’ll be leveraging authority that already exists. It’s like buying a house and moving in, rather than planning and constructing your own house from scratch. Traffic and revenue generation. Many proponents of parasite SEO are especially taken with the potential for traffic and revenue generation. Search optimizers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, tracking metrics like organic search rankings rather than traffic or conversions. But traffic and revenue generation are what really count. Pursuing parasite SEO, instead of or in addition to traditional SEO, gives you a kind of shortcut to these key performance indicators (KPIs). Competition mitigation. Practicing parasite SEO may be a valuable way to avoid your biggest and most threatening competitors as well. If you have rivals who have spent the last decade establishing their online presence and publishing excellent content, you’re going to have trouble beating them at their own game, even if you have internal resources to support this approach. But if you can take advantage of publishers who have also spent the last decade establishing their online presence, you’ll have a critical advantage. Cost savings. For reasons that should be obvious, parasite SEO isn’t particularly expensive. You’ll have to pay people to help you do outreach, write content, and follow up, but these costs pale in comparison to the costs of establishing your own traditional SEO strategy from scratch. For a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, you can get a piece of traffic-generating content on one of the most important publishing sites for your niche – and be rewarded handsomely for it. Risk mitigation. Focusing all your SEO efforts on your own site can be risky. If your content is thin, if your backlinks are weak, or if you otherwise follow black hat practices,

The phrase “how to make money online” is searched some 87,000 times per month. However, the idea that you can launch a website and leverage it to generate revenue – real, tangible dollars – seems like a pipe dream to most. But here’s the deal: Monetizing a website isn’t luck, it’s science.  And if you know how the science works, you can do it…over and over again. This isn’t to say it’s easy, but it is possible and predictable, especially with SEO. It can take months of education and years of execution for most people to reach true levels of success with website monetization. Here’s a list of monetization strategies for your website, but first… How Much Can You Actually Make? I want to begin this article by peeling back the curtain a bit and showing you that this isn’t just hyperbole or hype – you can actually make some real money with a website. To prove this, I want you to consider how much money the following successful blogs make: Smart Passive Income generates more than $100,000 per month. Pinch of Yum is a recipe blog that brings in an impressive $50,000 per month. Making Sense of Cents typically makes around $100,000 per month. The Survival Life..wait for it…a cool $1 million per month. Learning Herbs generates a nice $20,000 every month. Little Coffee Place is a niche blog bringing in more than $10,000 on a monthly basis. Take a look at those blogs. You’ll notice that they all have unique styles, audiences, and niches. (I mean, one of the blogs talks about herbs and generates nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year!) Yet they all share one thing in common: They generate serious cash. And that’s just blogging. We’re going to discuss 10 other website monetization strategies in this article. I just wanted to show you that before launching into the techniques and strategies as a way of showing you that it’s possible. As they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat… So let’s dive right in and find out how you can monetize a website and build a sustainable cash-flowing asset. Keep in mind that these monetization methods exclude any discussion of local SEO or local-based business advertising. 11 Ways to Make Money With Your Website 1. Sell Physical Products One option is to sell physical products. In other words, you set up a traditional ecommerce website and you focus on selling tangible products that then get picked and shipped to the customer. This can be highly profitable, depending on the niche and the infrastructure you have set up. There are a couple of different overarching strategies for selling physical products: Sell your own products. If you’re in the business of making physical products, then it makes sense that you’d use your website to sell your products. Set up listings, drive traffic to these listings, and use an ecommerce platform to streamline the transactions. But even if physical products aren’t your core product offering, you can still get some skin in the game. If, for example, you have a brand that people are crazy about, you can always create branded merchandise (like hats, stickers, and water bottles). Sell dropshipped products. Many business owners don’t want to fuss with manufacturing, inventory management, shipping, and logistics – and I don’t blame them one bit. But there’s still an opportunity to leverage your site to sell physical products. You’ll need to set up a dropship store where you’re able to sell products without ever having to touch it. The margins are lower than if the products were yours, but it’s totally hands off. (There’s something to be said for that.) Either option works. It’s just a matter of which one is more conducive to the type of business you’re running. 2. Sell Digital Products Many entrepreneurs are turned off of physical products (and rightly so). But you have plenty of other monetization options to choose from. This includes the sale of digital products, such as: eBooks. If you have a knack for writing, you can always publish and sell eBooks. The key is to pick topics that interest your audience and to position them in such a way that people feel like they need to read the book. At a $7 price point, you only need to sell a few per day to generate a nice stream of residual income. Audiobooks. In today’s busy world, many people prefer to listen to books. You can sell an audio version of your book and/or bundle it with a traditional eBook to charge a premium price. Design work. Are you a web designer or graphic designer? There’s always a market for design work and you can sell some of your favorites to your website visitors. This is a great way to generate revenue at scale. You design something once and then resell it over and over again. Photography. If you’re a photographer or travel blogger, you might be able to sell some of your best shots in an online store. There’s a market for both print/framed photography and creative licensing for online use. Mobile apps. While it might feel like there’s an app for everything, there’s still room for more. If you have an idea of a mobile app, you can always create one and sell it on your website as an additional stream of revenue. Templates. Many entrepreneurs and bloggers generate healthy revenue streams by selling things like templates, email swipe files, digital guides, and other resources that can be used to save time, organize digital assets, or offer guidance. The benefits of selling digital products include higher profit margins, no physical constraints, on-demand delivery, and recurring revenue streams (in some cases). If you can find a way to fit digital products into your mix, you should take full advantage of this option. 3. Sell Online Courses Selling online courses can be an extremely profitable way to generate website revenue and ultimately build a sustainable business.

You have certainly heard about Google’s algorithm. But how often do you think the search engine modifies its program? Ten times per year? 50? Try 3,200. At least, that was the latest count in 2018 when Google was still transparent about the changes. Now, we can only speculate, but it is safe to say that the number is more than 3,200 based on the historical update pattern. Recent fluctuations in Google’s algorithm have been even more consistent and stark. Webmasters always view Google algorithm updates with dread as all their hard work dissolved with just one snap. However, you would likely survive if you had a good foundation. It means that your website is optimized, and you employed SEO best practices for your content. But what do you do when Google updates its algorithm, which can be as many times as ten per 24 hours? Here is a handy guide to make sure you survive the new Google update: 1. Diversify your Google ranking factors If your website is truly optimized and diversified among the top 200 Google ranking factors, then your likelihood of weathering a Google algorithm update storm is predictably high. In fact, diversity among the 200 ranking factors is THE highest correlated factor for search rankings. It’s not dofollow backlinks. It’s not content length. Diversity among the Google rankings factors (not just diversity among your backlinks) is also the number one way to weather the next Google update. Why? When Google updates their algorithm or Google’s algorithm updates, they tend to either add or remove factors and increase or decrease the respective weight of some factors over others. But, if your pages and your website are properly tuned and optimized to more factors, then the likelihood of a catastrophic drop is much lower. 2. SEO audit for factor diversity The first part of preparation is equipping yourself with the right knowledge. Get an SEO factor audit to find out where your entire site and your pages may have deficiencies. Add correlated factors, starting with the low hanging fruit. Rescan and re-audit to find where deficiencies occur. Rinse and repeat on fixes until the page’s content is fully tuned for SEO with other top-ranking pages. However, people lap up any news of Google updates, which makes them a very attractive clickbait. Some people might have the best intentions, but they jump the gun in their haste to reveal the scoop. As a result, the information is still raw. Make sure to get your information from legit sources. For example, you cannot go wrong with Google Webmaster Blog. Some aggregate news websites might report the news earlier, and they might even be correct. Sites like Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal typically vet their information before releasing it. But then again, it is better to be late than to be wrong. 3. Focus on quality content Quality content will perhaps survive a zombie apocalypse. Google updating its algorithm is but a minor hiccup. Google has always stressed the need to create original content that informs, entertains, and provides a best solution to a problem. Unfortunately, a lot of it is regurgitated and packaged to a new audience. The search engine has stopped being transparent about the amount of data it processes per day. So, we can only base our knowledge back in 2008 when Google claimed that its servers processed 20 petabytes daily. A petabyte is equivalent to 1,000 terabytes. So, how do you ensure that you will create content that ranks? First, you need to know what you are talking about. The way Google’s algorithms work is simple: it always tries to give the searcher the most relevant result. For the longest time, the system works beautifully. For instance, 9 in 10 people see no need to go to page 2 of the search engine results page. It is because they already found their answers from the top-ranked websites that Google recommended. Simply put, Google rewards you if you offer more on the table. 4. Monitor your traffic and keep a record of your factor diversity Regardless of the Google updates, make it a habit to check your traffic and your position in your relevant keywords. You can use several apps for this, such as Ahrefs, Moz or our own Google Website Rankings Checker. The Cognitive SEO Search Visibility widget can also provide a snapshot of your metrics. A sudden drop in the graph can indicate a penalty. Google Analytics is also a useful tool to audit your website. You can view visitor location, bounce rate, traffic sources, your top keywords, and the pages with the greatest number of engagements. Meanwhile, the Search Console will help you spot anomalies in the average position of your important keywords. Make sure to focus on your organic traffic when tracking your keywords. It means that you need to ignore the PPC data for now. You should also keep a record of your factor diversity SEO audits. When Google shifts and your site drops, you can audit again and find out exactly what Google did and where you were deficient and make the appropriate changes to your site. This will arm you with the power to immediately fix issues by being proactive, rather than reactive. 5. Do not panic Unless Google erased your website from the ether, you live to fight another day. If you see a massive drop, do not panic. You are not alone in this. There are probably millions of websites out there who were unknowing unprepared and likely experiencing the same thing. The next step is to determine the cause. There are multiple potential reasons for the sudden drop in traffic: Algorithm updates Erroneous robot.txt rules Changes in the XML sitemap De-indexing bugs and other glitches Keyword duplication and cannibalization Do not fret when you find that the position of your keywords changed after the update. You do not need to abandon your keywords, especially if they have served you well in the past. You simply

Most SEO experts agree that if you use sound link building strategies, you’ll start seeing results in anywhere from 3 to 12 months. But…(and that’s a big but), here are some considerations to keep in mind when understanding how link building might influence your rankings and the time it might take: There is a big difference between ranking and search engine indexation and while your content may be indexed, it can take a VERY long time to rank. While you might see rapid movement for some long tail or local SEO terms within just a couple of months, the broad match short-tail keywords might take 3-5 years to rank well enough to get the leads and business growth you are seeking. The quality and relevance of the links you acquire will be a determinant for how quickly your rankings improve (or don’t). Depending on the age of your site and content, you may experience some search ranking volatility (aka, “Google Dancing”) before your rankings improve. This is especially true if the links pointing to your site are coming from high authority websites. Thanks to artificial intelligence, your links aren’t the only thing that matter. The quality of the content plays a major role. If your content is poor, you’re less likely to rank. Focus on the quality of your assets and the links will be easier to acquire. In this article, we’ll go over exactly what you need to do to take control of your link building efforts. We’ll cover what link building is, what we do and don’t know about it, link building factors, and what you can do now to increase your returns. What is Link Building? Link building refers to acquiring inbound links to your website from other websites. It’s also one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors. Every link from another website to yours is called a backlink. Backlinks are like votes for your site. They tell Google that others think your site is important enough to reference. The more backlinks your site has, the more authority and value Google attributes to it. Simple enough, right? What We Don’t Know about Link Building Well, since Google doesn’t reveal the exact mechanics behind their ranking algorithms, there’s a lot we still don’t know about link building. For example, we don’t know exactly how long it will take for a backlink to impact search rankings because every website and every link is different. Without a full view under the hood of Google’s algorithm, we’re always left a little in the dark. On top of that, there are at least 200 Google ranking factors. So it’s hard to pinpoint a shift in search ranking to a specific backlink. The change could have happened for 199 other reasons. What We Know about Backlinks That said, there are (still) some things we do know about truly effective link building campaigns. First of all, we know that link building, like SEO, takes time. A typical link building campaign looks something like this: Research. You do some keyword research to find other websites that are already ranking well for your target keyword. Outreach. You reach out for a backlink. For example, you could guest post on their site or introduce them to a helpful web resource. Backlink. They publish on their website a link to yours from a web page or blog post. Index. Search engines like Google index the new backlink and adjust search rankings accordingly. The initial link building process alone can take months. It depends on how fast you can find quality websites that will provide high quality links without having to pay for them. Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/19058/number-of-websites-online/ We also know there’s a delay between when you acquire the backlink to when Google’s algorithm crawls it. With the growing amount of websites on the internet, it makes sense that Google doesn’t crawl the same site nonstop. Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller at Google said the following: We don’t crawl URLs with the same frequency all the time. So some URLs we will crawl daily. Some URLs maybe weekly. Other URLs every couple of months, maybe even every once half year or so. So indexing speed can vary a lot. Even once the new backlink is crawled, it takes Google some time to adjust search rankings, though this probably doesn’t take very long. From the initial link building process to indexing backlinks to adjusting search rankings, the time it will take to see results will vary a lot. But there are some ways to speed up the process. Link Building Factors If you want to do everything on your end to accelerate the impact of your link building efforts, here are the factors you need to pay attention to: Backlink relevance. Backlinks will have a higher impact if they are relevant to your site. If they’re not, Google will give little weight to them. You could have a thousand backlinks, but if they’re all from unrelated sites, they won’t do you any good. Backlink quality. Not all backlinks are created equal. Quality backlinks come from sites with a high domain authority (DA). That means Google places a lot of weight on them and they can transfer some of their authority over to you. You also want to make sure backlinks aren’t tagged as “nofollow.” This tells Google not to pass authority on to your website. Fortunately, nofollow links are rare and the websites that give them wouldn’t help your ranking much anyway. Link velocity. Link velocity is the rate at which you build backlinks. Naturally, if you can get a lot of backlinks in a short amount of time, you’ll see faster results. The best way to increase link velocity is by publishing viral content. Of course, it’s hard to predict what will go viral. But viral content tends to be high-quality, to tell a compelling story, and to appeal to viewers’ emotions. Backlink target keyword. Backlinks for competitive keywords will yield fewer and slower returns. So focus on low-competition

We all know how tedious it is to place an exact keyword a certain number of times within the content without hampering its readability. It takes a lot to get search engines to crawl and rank our web pages. Content marketers these days have moved on from simple keywords to using key phrases that show user intent. Search engines have also gotten smarter as they can now understand the exact meaning and context of search queries thanks to machine learning updates. However, long-tail keywords are just the first step to the evolution a proper content marketing strategy. The hub and spoke strategy focuses on topics instead of keywords for a different approach to higher rankings. Read ahead as we outline its importance of the hub and spoke content strategy and explore ways to implement it on your websites. Importance Of The Hub And Spoke SEO Model The hub and spoke model is essential for the following reasons: Improved Content Siloing Backlinks and a page’s keywords aren’t the only things you need to rank higher on Google. Instead, the search engine needs a guarantee that your website offers accurate information about the relevant topic that your keywords represent. Content siloing provides that evidence to Google in the form of additional context related to what your website covers and if it has the authority to discuss a targeted keyword or topic. The hub and spoke model connects related content, helping Google to understand the website’s authority, expertise, and authenticity related to the topic. With an assessment of other ranking queries and their position, Google can determine if an individual page should get a higher rank or not. Content hubs and silos scale the content production due to their relation to organic search ranking. The higher rank you have for a hub, the better rank you will have for the spokes and vice versa. Generate And Distribute Link Equity The hub page is an excellent resource when it forms an internal link with the content, as others can also reference it. When these links are established and backlinks are removed, the equity that the external links manufacture will use internal links to spread across your website. It is also beneficial for the hub page to promote more link magnets, including white papers, related tools, infographics, and more high-value assets, which people can use as references and links from their websites. When you create greater exposure for your hub page, you generate exposure for other relevant high-value resources. As a result, you create more subject-related backlinks. As links establish and generate link equity for your website, the equity spreads throughout the spokes with the help of the internal link structure. This enhances your site’s authority, expertise, and authenticity, driving these signals to the content that can take advantage of it. Organic And Natural Internal Linking Crawlers and users can easily navigate your website, provide link equity with E-A-T signals to different website parts, and discover more pages with the help of internal links. These links help to network other similar content that you want to rank better. The organization creates a natural network and makes the process easier. The hub page needs links to all related content like infographics, videos, written content, and other digital consumable forms relevant to the topic. This content marketing strategy allows crawlers and users to find all related content, precisely what the hub aims to do. Your spokes should have a backlink to your hub, and more spoke pages. Also, make use of any relevant infographics and videos you have, anywhere you can and not just the hub page. This is because if a user or crawler finds your spokes instead of the hub, you can still provide related content to them easily. Hub And Spoke Strategy Structure Now that you know the importance of the hub and spoke model and want to organize your content around it let’s look at the steps you can follow. 1. Short-Tail Keywords Research To begin with your content hub and spoke strategy, your first step is to carry out keyword research. Focus on topics instead of queries since every search can have hundreds and thousands of related queries. As a result, the best approach is, to begin with the topic and use that as a focal point to survey the search landscape. Consider your buyer persona’s top three main problems, or survey your target audience to group all issues and match short-tail keywords with them. Ensure these short-tail keywords are in a sufficient volume so you can write over twenty articles for each one. Write a detailed post on these keywords, covering the subject holistically to create your hub page. It is best to consider whether this page answers the relevant question the reader had searched the keyword for and covers everything needed to create over twenty posts. 2. Long-Tail Keyword Research After picking the main topic (hub), you have to decide the sub-topics (spokes) for the central hub. Spokes include long-tail keywords covering multiple specific angles of the entire topic. Use SEO keyword research tools to begin your research. For instance, if you want to make a content marketing hub page, you can use AnswerThePublic for the main questions regarding the subject. Furthermore, you can look at the search results-related suggestions to get more long-tail keywords and reverse-engineer your keyword’s top competitors. You have to ensure you cover every customer’s issue related to the broad topic, giving them an end-to-end resource. When you have all the long-tail keywords, you can pick the top fifteen to twenty keywords depending on their business value. For instance, if you have an ecommerce store, you could use your customers’ frequently asked questions related to your best-selling products to figure out spokes and then match them with good search volume keywords. 3. Internal Linking And URL Structure A robust site structure is essential for an excellent technical SEO to have better search results for hub and spoke pages. Internal linking on your site allows search

Sit down. It’s time we had a talk. No, this isn’t an intervention. At least, not in the conventional sense. But if you got here because the title piqued your interest, I’d be willing to bet you have a problem. If you’re already working with a search engine optimization (SEO) consulting firm and you’re thrilled with the results, it would never occur to you to read an article like this. The same is true if you’re doing all your marketing in-house and you’re satisfied with the direction things are going. No. You’re either struggling to see the results you want on your own, or you’ve already hired a team of SEO consultants and marketing experts only to see lackluster results. You’re just not sure if it’s really time to hire or fire an SEO consultant. You’re looking for a sanity check. And we’re here to give it to you. The Role of an SEO Consulting/Ad Agency Ad agencies come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them focus on SEO consulting, paid advertising, and generally generating search engine traffic. Some focus more on traditional marketing. Some ad agencies offer a little bit of everything. Some are big and some are small. Some are focused on a specific niche while some attempt to serve the general population. But they all have one thing in common: they offer marketing services, as well as SEO consulting services, to help you see better marketing and advertising results. If you’re currently in a position where you struggle to see real results from your search engine optimization efforts, you need to hire an ad agency. If you already have an ad agency and you’re not happy with the results they’ve given you so far, you need to fire them. These are the basic premises on which we’re going to build the rest of this article. So what are the more specific signs that you need to hire (or fire) SEO consulting services? Signs You Need to Hire SEO Consultants Individually and temporarily, these signs are functionally tolerable. But if you see many of these signs, and you see them consistently, your best course of action is hiring an ad agency. Your marketers are jacks-of-all-trades. Think about the point person on your team responsible for marketing and advertising. If they’re a seasoned SEO consultant, or they have lots of experience managing PPC campaigns, that’s great! But what else are they doing? There’s nothing wrong with members of your team having occasional responsibilities that drift outside their main area of expertise. But if your marketers are functional jacks-of-all-trades who float between roles like HR manager, customer service rep, and project management, chances are, they’re not going to be able to give your marketing and advertising campaigns the attention they need. Think of it this way: if your top marketer is only spending half their day on actual marketing, you’re automatically cutting your potential in half. You’re not seeing enough organic traffic. Consulting is especially important if you’re not seeing enough organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to traffic generated by organic searches conducted by typical users of search engines. What constitutes “enough” is a bit subjective; for some brands, a few thousand organic visitors a month is a great metric to strive for. For others, 20,000 monthly visitors can be disappointing. Still, if you’re not seeing as much organic traffic as you think you should, it’s a sign that you should hire an ad agency. When you search for a brand like yours, your website is nowhere to be found. Run this experiment for me. Open a tab in your favorite web browser in private mode and conduct a search using keywords and phrases associated with your industry. For example, if you’re running a car dealership, you might search for phrases like “used cars for sale in [your city]” or “where can I buy a new [type of car].” Do you see your brand in the results? Run this experiment a few times, with an assortment of different phrases. If you can’t find your brand anywhere on the first page, you have a problem; most people never scroll past page one, so this means you’re functionally invisible to people who would otherwise be interested in visiting your website. This is usually a byproduct of having no SEO campaign or a deeply flawed SEO services campaign in place. The solution is to hire an SEO consulting agency with SEO consultants who can help. You’re still calling it Google Webmaster Tools. You know Google Webmaster Tools, right? It’s a set of tools that help businesses like yours better understand their presence and visibility in search engines, so of course you’ve heard of it! But here’s the thing. Google Webmaster Tools rebranded itself as Google Search Console in 2015. In other words, if you’re still calling it by its former name, you’ve likely been out of the loop on search engine marketing developments that have unfolded over the past eight years. Yikes. Your paid advertising campaigns are falling flat. Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be a seamless way to generate new traffic to your website for a reasonable amount of money. But while these campaigns are practically guaranteed to generate traffic, they aren’t guaranteed to get you your money’s worth. If you’re not seeing the results you expected, if your new visitors aren’t converting, or if the total ROI of your campaign leaves you feeling embarrassed, it’s probably time to hire PPC and SEO consultants. Irrelevant traffic is wasting time on your website. Traffic is a bit of a numbers game, but numbers aren’t everything. If you’re generating a lot of traffic to your website, that’s better than a lot of brands are doing. But if those visitors aren’t really interested in what you’re selling, these inflated numbers turn into vanity metrics. You need relevant traffic coming to your website, or else you’re not going to make any money. If you constantly struggle to get that relevant traffic, it’s probably