Peter Benei

It happens so often with off-page SEO. Decision-makers try so hard to be smart that they become inefficient. Here is the landscape: - Plenty of agencies around + quite an overlap for tricky GEOs and topics. - Exclusive deals are nearly impossible to get, as niche agencies work with 1000s publishers and up to 50 active clients. As an operator/affiliate, you might think:   1. Let's hire juniors to manage the agencies.  2. Let's create a master db to compare the deals. It seems logical. Yet it leads to problems. Why? 1. The cheapest sites your team will select won't be reconfirmed. It will take ages to get your article live. The agency will ask for a higher price. Expect a cancellation rate of 50%. You won't think it's fun.   2. "Unique" sites your team will select with slighly pricier agencies will turn out to be unavailable. It'll take you 2 weeks to realise. The agencies will get bad cred, even though you haven't even tried them for any of the other sites, as they charge $5 more and don't make it through your fancy filter. 3. Your team is not enough into it to know who is the "real deal". Delayed process. Dodgy agencies will try to negotiate down the price for weeks with vendors. Your Dear Sir SEO "guru" will suck at topic ideation, anchors etc. To be frank, most likely your team won't be great at it either. 4. Managers need to prove their importance. All the monkey business above will make them - and you - think that you bring value. Do they? Fair agencies earn 8-15% EBITDA. Is running your team worth it? 5. Marketplaces. Your team will give them a try and end up with unused credits, annoying salespeople, and spammy articles everyone else out there has. You're entering a red-light district area of off-page SEO here. Treat your project with love! 6. Trust. For agencies, it's all about transparency. They won't share the best deals with juniors. God knows where they will be next week. Lists will follow & end up in competitors' hands. Maybe they will reach out to publishers directly. This can be tracked in Ahrefs or Majestic, yet they won't care. Off-page guys get a lot of hate & disrespect. Yet, to succeed you still need your off-page SEO done right. (Not talking about articles about burgers, UFOs & beers now) What's the solution? - Select 2-3 niche agencies. Show that you care. Create competition, obtain freedom + protect yourself from corrupt managers - Let your team do the QA. Focus on strategy + own complementary outreach Select partners well. Trust, transparency, respect With off-page SEO there's always value out there. Yet, it's impossible to hide it from the competitors. Perfect example of a service where you can't do it all in-house. It's all about finding the right partners. Yet so few out there are good at it. The message we often get is: "We do it all in-house". Even when we know that's not the case, or when we have grounds to believe that a manager works with one agency only & has some sort of private interest in it.

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🚀 Unlocking Digital Visibility: Navigating Beyond Page Two of Google 🚀 "The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google." 🕵️‍♂️ This witty quip underscores a profound truth in today's digital landscape: if your business or brand isn't on the first page of Google search results, it might as well be invisible. As a digital strategist with years of experience in enhancing online visibility, I've seen firsthand the transformative power of securing that coveted first-page ranking. Let's delve into why it matters and how to achieve it. In the vast ocean of cyberspace, Google serves as the ultimate compass for seekers of information, solutions, and services. Consider this: 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. Landing on page two or beyond is akin to entering a black hole, where visibility dwindles, and opportunities vanish. This underscores the paramount importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies tailored to propel your content to the forefront. Crafting compelling, keyword-rich content lies at the heart of any successful SEO endeavor. By aligning your content with the queries and interests of your target audience, you not only ascend the ranks of Google's algorithm but also establish thought leadership and foster meaningful connections. Remember, it's not merely about being found; it's about being valued and trusted. Yet, the quest for digital supremacy extends beyond content creation. Technical SEO, link building, and user experience optimization are indispensable pillars of a holistic SEO strategy. From enhancing website speed and mobile responsiveness to cultivating a robust backlink profile, every facet contributes to the overarching goal of dominating search engine results. Moreover, in an era defined by the proliferation of multimedia content, diversification is key. Embrace the power of video marketing, harness the allure of infographics, and leverage the magnetic pull of podcasts to engage audiences across diverse platforms. By transcending traditional text-based approaches, you amplify your reach and resonate with an ever-evolving digital landscape. Nevertheless, the pursuit of first-page glory demands patience, perseverance, and adaptability. Google's algorithmic updates, competitive dynamics, and shifting consumer behaviors necessitate a constant evolution of strategies. Embrace analytics as your guiding compass, extracting insights, iterating strategies, and staying ahead of the curve. In conclusion, while the notion of hiding a dead body on page two of Google may evoke a chuckle, it serves as a sobering reminder of the stakes in today's digital arena. #DigitalMarketing #SEO #SearchEngineOptimization #ContentMarketing #OnlineVisibility #LinkedInProfile #DigitalStrategy #GoogleRanking #OnlinePresence #BrandVisibility

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Why your primary metric matters in a/b testing: It’s not always about transaction rate; the metric should be closely tied to the specific change you're testing. For example, if you're tweaking a product detail page (PDP), "adds to cart" would be a more relevant primary metric than transactions. At surefoot, we determine our primary metric based on the change we're implementing. This focus ensures that our tests are targeted and the results are actionable. By aligning our primary metrics with business goals, we make informed decisions that drive growth. How do you choose your primary metrics for A/B tests?

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CAC is a useless ad metric unless you do this.   Most conversations around why CAC is up or down aren't helpful.   Too many brands & agencies see it's up or down and start guessing.   That's a bad use of time.   A way better way is to focus on the inputs:   CAC = Spend / (Impr * CTR * CVR)   If you want to understand CAC, analyze what's happening with CPMs, CTRs, & CVRs.   This is how you find the highest ROI areas to improve. E.g., Media buying, creative, landing pages, etc.   So stop focusing on the output (CAC).   It makes for a much longer path to profitable growth.

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BFCM is almost here. Ask yourself one question: are your landing pages ready to convert? How confident are you that they’re going to perform? A lot of times, we see brands throwing money at ads, only to lose valuable traffic on landing pages that just suck or don’t work. Here’s where things usually break down: → Messaging that doesn’t match → A value prop that’s all over the place → Clunky user experience Out of all these, let’s zero in on the most critical piece: messaging. When your landing page copy doesn’t align with the ad that got the click, you’re already losing the game. Yes, we all love to talk about product features, benefits and value, but conversions come from showing your customers how your product is actually going to make their lives easier. What problem are you solving for them? Here’s a simple framework to make sure your messaging is on point: Consistency matters – Your landing page should mirror the language and visuals of your ad. This keeps users on your site longer and builds trust. Know your audience – Speak to their pain points. Run surveys, dig into user research, whatever it takes to understand what’s driving them. Turn features into benefits – No one really cares about features until they see how those features make their life better or easier. Visuals count – Use images that help people imagine themselves using your product and getting the results they want. So… are you confident that you’ve nailed all of these? If not, you still have time and I’ve been working with an amazing partner, surefoot – has one of the best conversion lifts of any CRO agency we’ve worked with. They’ve nailed the ability to align your messaging, sharpen your value prop, and make your user experience perfect. Ensuring that your pages are ready to convert. Check them out today 👇 https://lnkd.in/dvZFeyeP

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Exactly why iGamingAffiliates.io is your place to go! Reach out to me or Daniel Stanton to hear more how we can make your affiliate department more effective! #iga #affiliation #affiliate #HeadOfAffiliates

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Here's how yesterday's announcements at OpenAI's DevDay might affect marketers in the coming weeks, months, and years: 1. You can now build apps with the Realtime API using speech input and output, just like Advanced Voice Mode in the ChatGPT app. For marketers, if many more websites and services and apps start using voice to interact, will your users or customers come to expect that from you? Time was, if a website wasn't responsive on mobile, it was just broken. In the future, if a website or service or app can't respond to my voice and provide voice back, will it be broken? 2. Even if you're not using the Realtime API, OpenAI is adding the voice feature to the old Completions API, so you can get voice in and voice out using the existing API. What features might that enable for your users? What if you could provide customized, personalized audio feedback to your customers? 3. Prompt Caching. If you use the same long prompts over and over again, OpenAI will cache those for you and only charge you 50% of the cost of those input tokens. So if you're doing the same tasks over and over again with a large, expansive prompt, this could save you a lot of money in the long run. 4. Vision Fine-Tuning. You can now use images to fine-tune your GPT 4o model. Basically, you can enhance the performance on specific vision tasks by fine-tuning the model using your own image sets. This can improve visual searching or other image-based functionality your app, service, or website might want to include, by ensuring the model has been fine-tuned on images specific to your use case. 5. OpenAI is supercharging fine-tuning with Model Distillation. Basically, you can fine-tune GPT 4o mini on outputs from GPT 4o or even o1-preview. So if you've got a specific task that o1-preview or 4o are really good on but 4o mini isn't, you can train 4o mini on the outputs from those better models. So for very specific use cases, you might get the smarts of a larger model with the cost and speed of a very small one. So what features are you most excited about? How is this going to affect your marketing day-to-day? Let me know in the comments below. #OpenAI #AInews #AI #Prompting

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Learn how we scaled this Shopify client from $15K/m Nov 2023 to $148K in organic search revenue for the past 30 days... A year ago, they did $15K in November, had never crossed $20K in organic, and struggled to scale past $200K in monthly revenue. Fast-forward a year, and they have exceeded $1M in total revenue in the last 30 days. SEO has had a transformative effect on the brand's ability to scale. Here is how we did it: 1. Posted 5 new blog posts monthly (with links to product pages and collections). 2. Built new collections to capture long-tail traffic with optimized content and internal links. 3. Optimized product listings for long-tail searches. 4. Monthly SEO workflows: Track new content and re-optimize for new keywords. Use GSC data to maximize the traffic potential of every important page. 5. We implemented our link-building system within their company. We create manual outreach campaigns where we scrape their keywords and reach out to sites ranking for these keywords to land high-quality links. 6. We answered journalist queries about things they are experts at and landed links from high-authority publications. 7. We found high-authority publications and paid for listings or co-authored articles (advertorial). We then built links to these articles that helped them rank, driving a ton of authority and traffic to the brand. 8. Made sure to resolve conflicts when different pages rank for the same term or react to pages that would not rank. 9. Made sure the site was technically solid. 10. We were consistent and did the right things repeatedly until things started to rank. That's it. SEO is simple, but it is important to do the right things and be consistent.

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So Gartner just reported marketing budgets have been slashed by 15% from 2023 to 2024. In the same report, 62% of the CEOs say that growth is a top priority for the coming year. There are two explanations. Either the CEOs have really good ideas on finding growth elsewhere, or they don't understand the reality of marketing. Regrettably, I am sure it is the latter. Most CMOs I talk to are expected to show growth on their metrics while not having budgets corresponding to targets. The reality is of course two things. 1. With a slashed budget, marketing's prime contribution is to hold ground, not to advance. It is a major feat to just maintain the status quo, considering that a mid size brand will lose 50% of sales in 3 years if you stop advertising it.* Asking your soldiers to charge when they have no weapons and ammunition is not war, it is suicide. 2. That offensive capability is just getting worse and worse. Performance marketing effectiveness has declined 3 years in a row.** In B2B, companies report customer acquisition cost being doubled and growth rates having declined by over 50% in just 2 years. You can't milk a starving cow, folks. But there is hope, young padawan. Marketing budgets have historically been eaten up by MarTech, and corresponding overstaffing with specialists. Now, however, things are changing. Investments in MarTech have fallen by a fifth in five years, while investments in media have risen by the same proportion. Undoubtedly this is in part thanks to EBI and Byron Sharps compelling evidence of the efficacy of broad reach and mental availability, but to me it is equally back to the time tested basics of marketing of the other titans. What companies need to do now, to stay on the inner curve coming out of this shift, is to look at how they will shift back to building brand concepts that are relevant to the drivers of the category as well as to the brand itself. How to be distinctive and differentiated - in a way that drives business. This can be established empirically, with scientifically established methods, I mean why guess if you can find out? Unless you are trading pure commodities, your success *requires* you to build a strong brand. One can either dabble and hope it happens eventually, or you can go directly to the core – how all your resources and assets should combine to build the right brand experience for your market. This can be done scientifically and empirically, why guess when there are ways of knowing? The marketing revolution is coming, don’t lose your head! *Ehrenberg Bass Institute. **DMA (Data & Marketing Association) UK’s Value of Measurement report

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Important advice on how to avoid trolls and fake sites this election season!!!

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There is no longer a "Single Source of Truth" when it comes to measuring marketing performance. It's a hard truth, but it's the truth. I was inspired yesterday by a graphic I saw published in an IPA study, comparing legacy measurement methodologies: Attribution, Experiments, and MMM. And while I didn't agree with the way Attribution was represented on the graphic, I did think that the innovative method we developed at INCRMNTAL was definitely missing. INCRMNTAL just won a $500,000 innovation grant. One of the ONLY companies in the marketing space that won such a grant in the last decade. The reason given that marketing technology, typically measurement technology, often relies on methodologies invented in the 1960s, 1950s, and 1990s. INCRMNTAL innovates. The original graphic and sketch, as well as a link to INCRMNTAL can be found in the 1st comment. #innovation #incrementality #marketingmeasurement

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A new attribution setting? Meta made some big announcements related to optimization improvements, and Incremental Conversions was one of them. Here's a link to the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gqeZwqRT Incremental Conversions are those that Meta believes would not have happened without seeing your ad. Meta says that when this was tested, advertisers saw an average improvement of more than 20% in Incremental Conversions. This could help cut out the fluff, though it’s not clear how it would be much different or better than optimizing for click attribution. But, I'm very likely missing some details that will make more sense later. I’m also confused by how Meta calls this an attribution setting, but they explain how this is in contrast to optimizing for volume. So, is this a new attribution setting to go along with click and view attribution? Or is it a performance goal option in addition to maximize number or value of conversions? It was a short description, so I won't hold it against Meta that I'm confused. I'm easily confused, especially without access to a new feature -- or at least some screenshots. I'm not too worried about it. We’ll see soon enough. Meta says that Incremental Conversions will start rolling out in the second half of the year.

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Lately, I've observed two distinct strategies that SEO teams in iGaming (and affiliate marketing in general) are adopting: >> A ‘quantity over quality approach’: Creating 100 sites at $100 each, using API-generated content, PBNs, and fully automated text entry. About 70 of these fail soon after launch, while the remaining 30 will manage to generate some revenue. These sites are viable for a maximum of two years before they die out naturally. >> Long-term media project focus: Investing in quality content, EEAT, and trustworthy link building. This strategy focuses on long-term investments with the goal of generating a consistent profit and eventually selling the site for a six or seven-figure sum. Personal reflection: All the content you could generate for your websites will be instantly created by Google itself — faster, with higher quality, and displayed at the very top of the search results, eliminating the need to visit other sites (including yours!). Who will remain? - Large media platforms that have earned their status through unique content. - Resources offering fresh and valuable expertise. - News outlets, original content creators, and similar sites. Google's stance is clear; it's only a matter of perfecting the tools for assessing expertise. Yes, Google's methods may seem random at the moment, but any battle against it is sure to be lost in the long run. What, then, is the strategic sense in creating these 100 sites with $100 worth of low-quality content? All those teams, “unique” prompts, and generating tools – what's the point long-term? This approach will never become a passive income stream or a retirement plan; it’ll just be a "side hustle" during times of change. As Einstein once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ We must evolve in line with developments, and here we are talking about a strategic vision rather than the force of inertia. Let’s discuss this in the comments section! #aicontent #igamingcontent #gamblingcontent #aitext

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From ZipTie.dev, here's a look at the verticals that trigger AI Overviews. There's also data for queries that contain "how to" or "how much" and keywords related to reviews. It's interesting to see health-related queries (image below) triggering AIOs almost 60% of the time. Not surprising really, especially considering how prevalent those queries are. But with health being a vertical where misinformation carries more weight, we'll have to watch the sources that are being used for the AOIs. One other thing to consider: "how to" queries usually have video results in the SERPs, so there are lots of opportunities to get your brand in front of users! https://lnkd.in/g5eneTg3

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Every ambitious, high-growth brand wanting to scale Meta profitably should do this asap. I call it The Creative Power Law: - Graph analyzes 500+ ads - Every ad = a bar - Bars = share of spend per ad - Line = cumulative distribution function (CDF) CDF is just a fancy name to calc your Creative Power Law. In this case: - 5% of ads drove 50% of spend - 10% of ads drove 67% of spend - 17% of ads drove 80% of spend ➡️ Almost a perfect 80/20 rule ✅ 📈 👊 5-steps to win: 1. Theme all ads part of your Power Law 2a. What’s working? 2b. E.g., Comparisons, reviews, benefits, etc. 3. Double down building new versions 4. Balance iterative ads + bigger swings 5. Test w/an A+ structure for testing + scaling Math * Creative = a superpower for profitable growth. Left brain * right brain FTW 🙌

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Paid ads are an easy way to multiply your revenue. $1 in = $2 out. But sometimes, you can get results like: $1000 in = $32,000 out. (dependent on LTV & product) If you get really good at paid ads, the multiplier grows. I’m not telling you it’s free money. I’m showing you that these kinds of results are POSSIBLE. Lucky for you, most people don’t understand the game yet. So if you get in now… You might be able to turn any business into gold.

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Sold two businesses for millions in his 20s. He did it with no market testing—just on a hunch, here's how. It started with a problem: Google released a major update targeting bad links from SEO agencies. He thought: founders will need someone to clean up their mess. He threw together a website in a couple of hours and started running ads the next day. The website? An agency offering a backlink audit and removal service. In a few days, he had his first customer. The problem? He didn’t know how to revoke the penalties. He became obsessed, testing things out and tracking results until he cracked the code. Soon, he became the only company that guaranteed solve of the problem. He also attributes his success to putting people first: not selling but offering a tangible solution—even if they weren’t paying him. If they couldn’t afford him, he told them exactly how to fix the problem. That created a lot of goodwill. When he was ready, he reached back out to us (we had helped him sell his previous business - that's another story) and the rest is history. So many great businesses come from big problems with no clear solutions—particularly if those are the problems of people with deep wallets. #founderstories #acquisitions #seo

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