Ahrefs Insights

How to Rock Outreach Better Than Sales People
When it comes to developing your outreach strategy, it is completely wrong to take the approach “just mail and the link is yours,” usually practiced by SEOs and link builders. It’s not that simple. You’d better follow an approach practiced by sales people – champions of outreach, who do it for a living. By doing so, you can increase your chances of having your email acted upon, reduce the number of emails you have to send and generally, get better results. Discover 7 characteristics of a great outreach email an feel the difference between an email that gets you lots of links in return and one that gets ignored.

6 SEO Challenges Small Businesses Face in 2014
In this post we lift the veil of obscurity, discussing what the future has in store for small businesses in terms of SEO. Apparently, SEO won’t get any easier in 2014: the top 6 SEO challenges small business owners are likely to face include creating and promoting content, building brand recognition, putting the SEO in social, making mobile a must, dealing with information overload. But no need to worry! We offer a few tried-and-true remedies to help you cope with those challenges.

Design and Programming: Two Important Elements of Successful SEO
I’m sure, you are well aware of the fact that user experience directly impacts SEO. So, modern SEO is not just about content, it requires user-friendly design. To make your SEO efforts truly successful these days, you’ve got to start by including relevant keywords and keyword phrases in your site’s content and then move to incorporating design and programming best practices. In this post we offer some site design and programming considerations for you SEO success. Use this knowledge and your customers – and the search engines – will thank you for it.

SEO Research and Trends

Bing SEO Ranking Factors 2013 Study By SearchMetrics
Is there any difference in the search results between Google and Bing? Judge for yourself! In this post Barry Schwartz reports that Searchmetrics has released their SEO ranking factors for Bing (similar as they did for Google before). Here are the top five key findings shared: top brands rank higher on Bing, as they do in Google, backlink numbers are closely linked to higher rankings on Bing, social signals closely linked to higher rankings, quality content is important for search rankings, on page technical factors are a must have.

3 SEO Success Factors for 2014
What will it take to create a successful SEO strategy in 2014? There is nothing new to it. Well, almost: sites still must be crawled efficiently and have “natural-looking” link profiles, you’ll have to create great content for link building and social promotion. Anyway, as Google is moving closer to bringing local, mobile, and social together, you should concentrate on: allowing your audience to help you build a local presence, building a community (a socialized brand), and optimizing an experience for those who are “mobile and content hungry.”

Big Brands, Google, Penalties & You
Why do most sites that are big brands usually rank well and are more likely to survive or recover from a penalty? Do they really occupy a special place in Google’s heart? Not necessarily. Rules are the same for everyone. Even if you run a small- or medium-sized business site, strive for more: learn from big brands, get your site to send out big brand signals, have algorithmic awesomeness, authority, and expectancy, mimic all the good things a brand does well, and perhaps, Google will reward you with a higher position in the search results.

Penguin 2.1: What Changed Since 2.0, and How to Recover
In this article Jayson DeMers concludes that the main difference between 2.0 and 2.1 versions of Google’s Penguin is simply the depth of the algorithm: the ability to crawl and analyze even deeper-level pages to identify spam activities at a deeper page-level. He also shares some tips on how to find out if your website has been hit by Penguin 2.1, and steps you should take to recover. Actually, there is nothing new here, but repetition is the mother of learning: to be safe, execute a high-quality content marketing strategy to build relevant links, and audit your links periodically.

Google Seeks Searcher Satisfaction: How Marketers Can Keep Up
Google is constantly improving its algorithm (and is not going to stop!), but what does Google evaluate in determining the “success” of the algorithm change? There is a plausible assumption that Google focuses on measuring and discovering searcher satisfaction with their search results. What does it mean for search marketers? Quite a lot. But first of all, they should start thinking beyond rankings and evaluate the full searcher experience, including his satisfaction with a site’s content quality, look and feel, and site structure/navigation.

Mobile SEO

For SEO, Mobile Experience Matters
It is no news that mobile SEO is gaining importance, so it is high time to ensure your website offers positive experiences for mobile visitors. How would you do that? This post covers some of the most common errors that companies make when designing websites for mobile devices (problems with redirects, embedded videos, interstitials & overlays, page load speed, quality issues, incorrectly handling the Googlebot-Mobile crawler) and shares some tips on how to prepare your website for mobile SEO.

Link Building

Will Google Punish a Guest Posting Strategy Due to Unnatural Link Patterns?
Wondering if guest posting is still an effective and not risky way to build credible links? According to Eric Ward, it is. Anyway, you shouldn’t guest post for search rank as your only goal, cause Google might spot manipulation and get you penalized. Use this method as a way to increase direct traffic and exposure to your targeted audience and be selective about where you guest post and who you accept guest post content from. How? Discover some guidelines/criteria that may help you as you seek out guest posting opportunities.

Google Disavow Removal After Penalty Removal
Wondering whether you should remove your disavow file or some of the links from this file after Google lifts your penalty? The answer is no: you should not remove the disavow file. Why? First of all, cause Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, tells you not to. And then, who knows, Google may take a look once again and then penalize your site anew. So, it’s definitely not something you should experiment with.

Why The YouTube Keyword Tool Is So Amazing For Link Building
With that much of competition everywhere, to achieve success as content marketer or link builder these days, you really need to stand out from the herd. According to Julie Joyce, leveraging the potential of the YouTube keyword tool to find something that will generate interest but not be the same thing everyone else is doing, seems to be a good and fresh idea. Check out her quick guide for example plan and some actionable tips on how to use the YouTube keyword tool for link building.

Link building in Yandex SEO – status quo and best practices
For those, interested in Russian link building practices, this post covers the common link building practices for Yandex SEO. Discover how Russian SEO differs from Western SEO and learn the basics of Google and Yandex SEO-friendly link building. Remember: quality is your key to success.

Social Media Marketing

FAQ: All About Google’s New “Shared Endorsement” Ads
In case you haven’t heard yet, starting from November 11, Google is planning to display users’ details and information in their content and ads, as part of the “Shared Endorsements” change. Want some details? There is not much to tell, but in this post Danny Sullivan explains how its going to work and how it differs from what Google already does. Quick tip from the author: look closely at any type of social activity you do, especially if it’s public, or just disable the setting that allows people to see your name and photo in shared endorsements on ads.

Google’s Matt Cutts on Search vs. Social: Don’t Rely on Just One Channel
Fresh tips from Google’s Matt Cutts revealed in his latest Webmaster Help video: don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to getting leads from other sources, such as social media leads or pay per click; you’ve got to deal with it: Google will keep trying to make it even harder for spammers to rank from black hat techniques and will constantly be upgrading its algorithm. So, rather than trying to figure out reverse engineering Google’s algorithm, concentrate on making a fantastic site with great content that people love.

Google+ Drives A Fraction Of The Referral Traffic That Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter Do [Report]
Matt McGee rightly notes that though statistically Google+ usage continues to grow, it is hardly a good place for content sharing. Not to be unfounded: according to an annual report relased by Shareaholic, “Google+ is growing the slowest as a referral source and has consistently driven much less (> 0.1%) of all referral traffic to its publishers than other social media sites over the past year.” The top three referring sites are Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

6 Stupid Content Promotion Mistakes No Marketer Should Make
We all make mistakes, and it’s ok. Why? Cause we learn from them! In this post the author outlines some of the content promotion mistakes you should avoid to make sure you get the promotion strategy right: stopping at the start line, always relying solely on organic social media promotion, making sharing difficult, publishing crappy content, sending the same message to all social platforms, lacking frequency and consistency of posting.

Social Media Monitoring is Essential – Unless You’re a Hedgehog
The author of this article makes a good point saying that the only way to find out if your social media strategy is actually working is to monitor your campaigns on a regular basis. Monitoring your social media campaigns every day and reporting every week is essential for growth/trend tracking, customer service, finding areas for new opportunities, customer acquisition and new markets to target, competitor research, on-going consultancy. Still not convinced? Well, in that case you must be a hedgehog!

Content Marketing

Google’s Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Best Done In Moderation
Eager to secure your guest blogging efforts in Google’s eyes? First of all, make sure your guest blogging content does match the subject of the blog itself, doesn’t contain keyword rich anchor text, and avoid spinning content for contribution on a bunch of blogs. In his new Webmaster Help video, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, identified specific differences between spam and organic guest blogging content Google looks at when trying to determine if something is spam, and once again emphasized the importance of moderation in everything you do.

Build Content, Links, & Relationships with Reverse Guest Posting
Sometimes to make something work, you need just to turn it upside-down. Wondering if that approach could be implemented to your guest posting strategy? Why not! Learn to build content, links, and relationships with reverse guest posting, discover its benefits, and make use of the tips on prospecting for guest posters and outreach, shared by the author.

10 Signs To Show Your Content Marketing Strategy Is A Winner
The author of this article describes the major points of content creation you should include in your content marketing strategy to make sure it is a winning one. Hopefully, these tips will help you create a champ of a content and achieve continued success with your content marketing strategy.

Multinational SEO

Optimising search user journey to conversion for multinational SEO
Eager to boost your multinational SEO success? This post explains how you can do that in two steps: gaining control of your SERPs locally and going global for exponential traffic return. All you need to do is to learn SERP conversion basics in the local SEO world and apply it to a multinational campaign. Sounds like a lot of work, but it’s definitely worth the efforts.