Pixels From Top is a new metric that can tell you your visual position on a search engine results page measured in--you guessed it--pixels from the top of the page.

We measure the pixels in the SERPs from the top and left to every listing on the page. Furthermore we measure the width and height of each listing so that we can calculate it's SERP % which, is the pixel coverage each result occupies per SERP.

<a href="https://nozzle.io/trial" target='blank'>Click to give Nozzle a trial run.</a>

![Michael Jordan's Best Games SERP - pixels from the top](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3IkNmXYlFyokw9eJK11S23/2e0126e8553992d74b3b209684f3aa90/Michael_Jordan_s_Best_Games_SERP_pixels_from_the_top.png)

![Life insurance SERP showing pixels from top](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2ZDHOWBaMYIfb86ijXmJkP/aa3dd5c991a40fc2576f425c8f492a41/Life_insurance_SERP_showing_pixels_from_top.png)

## Why is Pixels From Top Important? 

Gone are the days where the SERPs contained only ten blue links. With SERP features like Featured Snippets, People Also Ask boxes, Local Listings, Video packs, etc. occupying SERP real estate, ranking #3 is very likely to be below the fold these days. Pixels From Top is going to help you identify which #3 rankings are more valuable to your business.

Also, Pixels From Top is a valuable metric to help you understand why you may be dropping in traffic even if your rankings haven't dropped.

This siutation can occur for a number of reasons including: an increase in the number of ads displayed, the addition of a new featured snippet for queries that previously displayed none, a change in the layout to a featured snippet that makes it taller, or the addition of site links to a listing that ranks above yours.

Most SEOs include in reports to clients or bosses, some sort of historical rankings graph, maybe even sorted by different keyword groups, to show general improvements over time. You will want to include Pixels From Top in the same report as another way to show movements up the SERPs.

![Pixels From Top comparing top competitors](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/295zb9ZQwPDmM9nISxCzgF/23c0f46d6444bd94bd61bc940d0ab620/Pixels_From_Top_comparing_top_competitors.png)

In the image above, the Pixels From Top is showing the average pixel distance from the top of the SERP to the highest ranking result for each domain across their whole keyword list.

Below, you can see where realtor.com ranks in terms of Pixels From Top for specific search queries. For example, as of the date that that data was pulled, they ranked in the first position for 'condos' which was located 155 pixels from the top. This means there were no ads showing up at that moment in time because the first result (whether ad or organic listing) usually sits between 155 and 172 pixels from the top.

![Pixels From Top Specific Keyword Rankings](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6OsCq6H1NrHo5TCLOku4rk/a3f5b3c4c4807fd184e25a0213282436/Pixels_From_Top_by_keyword.png)

<a href="https://nozzle.io/trial" target='blank'>Sign up for a free trial today to see your visual location in the SERPs for your keywords.</a>

SERP Real Estate Screenshot

Pixels From Top - A Nozzle Feature

PR opportunities abound. You just need to know where to look. Every business should take a few moments to setup the two following processes to be alerted to new PR opportunities which will help in <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/building-backlinks-should-be-building-your-brand" target="blank">building your brand</a>.

These two PR tactics are simple and free. They just require that you set aside a little time and effort.

1. HARO
2. #JournoRequest and #PRrequest

__HARO__

HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out and is a free service you can sign up for at <a href="https://www.helpareporter.com/" target="blank">helpareporter.com</a>. You will receive 3 emails a day that include requests from journalists looking for quotes or answers to specific questions around topics the following broad topics: 

- Biotech and Healthcare
- Business and Finance
- Entertainment and Media
- General
- High Tech
- Lifestyle and Fitness
- Public Policy and Government
- Sports
- Travel

You just need to find the inquiries that apply to your brand and email your response before the deadline. Deadlines are typically 1-4 days from the receipt of the email so you need to set aside some time every other day or so to answer relevent inquiries.

If your submission is used in the journalist's article, typically they will mention your name and brand and link to your website in the response.

__#JournoRequest and #PRrequest__

These are hashtags used on Twitter by journalists looking for info on a specific topic.

There are 3 ways you can find these types of tweets related to your industry.

1. Manually do a search on Twitter for one of those hashtags followed by a keyword in your industry. For example, I found the following tweet when searching on twitter for "#journorequest seo".

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hi <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DigitalMarketing?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DigitalMarketing</a> friends, I&#39;m looking to write an article on regulating the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SEO?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SEO</a> industry. Anyone willing to provide an expert comment? Are you for or against the idea? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/journorequest?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#journorequest</a></p>&mdash; Helen Pollitt (@HelenPollitt1) <a href="https://twitter.com/HelenPollitt1/status/1108976044122521606?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

2. Use <a href="https://ifttt.com/" target="blank">IFTTT</a> to setup an auto response to email you everytime someone tweets using #journorequest or #prrequest and one of your keywords. This way you don't have to schedule time each day or week to remember to search Twitter for PR opportunities. You just need to take action when you receive an email.

Below is a quick tutorial from <a href="https://rofe.co.uk/" target="blank">Mark Rofe</a> with <a href="https://riseatseven.com/" target="blank">Rise at Seven</a> on how to setup IFTTT properly for this purpose. 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">PR tip: How to use Twitter to land coverage. <a href="https://t.co/HOsLJmvE6U">pic.twitter.com/HOsLJmvE6U</a></p>&mdash; Mark Rofe (@iamrofe) <a href="https://twitter.com/iamrofe/status/1220095133410037761?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 22, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

3. Use a nifty Google Sheets Add-on called <a href="https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/tweet_archiver/976886281542" target="blank">Tweet Archiver</a>. This tool will monitor your Twitter search query once every hour and pull in any new tweets to your spreadsheet. You can then open any tweets that you want to respond to and engage with the journalist.

![Tweet Archiver Google Sheets Add on Tool: Find PR opportunities](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/LUqwFfHXSJ81vbVHejLxv/0de845b7ad184261952216978c3b4aee/Tweet_Archiver_Data.png)

Below is a video that shows how to install Tweet Archiver on a Google Sheet. Start watching at 2:08 for installation instructions.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MGU7azCYFpw?start=128" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<br>__Take away:__ Spend 10 minutes right now to set up the alerts for these two PR strategies and set aside 30 minutes each week to follow up on any new PR opportunities that come your way.

Happy brand building!


Tweet Archiver Google Sheets Add on Tool: Find PR opportunities

PR opportunities abound. You just need to know where to look. Every business should take a few moments to setup the two following processes to be alerted to new PR opportunities which will help in building your brand.

PR Strategies for Businesses: Build Your Brand and Acquire Links Simultaneously

PR Tactics and Strategies for Businesses: Build Your Brand and Acquire Links Simultaneously

To be competitive in today’s digital world, your brand needs to stand out from the crowd and engage effectively with your audience. Custom graphics that are consistently on-brand can take time to develop--precious time that you may not have. 

Creating custom graphic designs to support your brand doesn’t have to be a daunting task. The days of purchasing expensive software with a serious learning curve (*ahem--Adobe) are basically over. Today’s digital marketer or entrepreneur has much more user-friendly options at their fingertips. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an Adobe fan for sure, but not everyone wants or needs to go to those lengths for simple branding designs. 

Two products available right now aim to make graphic design much more approachable for the Average Joe--Canva and Snappa. These products share a lot of similarities, which may make it tough to decide which one’s right for you. That’s why I’ve broken down some of the key components of each to help ease that analysis paralysis.

Even their logos are undeniably similar.
![Canva and Snappa logos: Twinning?](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2ofuItOpQb5gHNnbLUOO96/0f3e5e2af877f8e4fe19fba55e191593/Untitled_design__1_.png)
   
__Here’s the breakdown: __

### __Let’s Begin at the Beginning__
Both Canva and Snappa sign users up in roughly the same way; you’ll enter your name, email and a password for your account. With Snappa, you’ll then receive a confirmation email. Right away, you’re sent an email with a video link to a quick Snappa tutorial, guiding you through account set up and beginner creation of custom graphics. This is certainly helpful if you are a complete beginner.

While Canva doesn’t send an onboarding video, they do send emails with tons of tips and tricks, and always route you to their robust help center and knowledge base if you can’t find your way. __In terms of onboarding support, Snappa wins.__
 
 
### __The Dashboard__
Once you’re logged in, the experience begins to diverge. The look and navigation is quite different at first.

__Canva__
![Canva Dashboard](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1mmtrxjQGBIc2j5Exx5v7z/7052711a833511082b953ab8a0d74434/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_8.52.32_PM.png)

Canva is instantly colorful and whimsical and provides ample visual inspiration in the form of templates (for a variety of digital and print applications) that can be customized however you need. You can also start with a blank canva if you choose. Canva also offers a navigation menu on the left hand side to help you find your way, some of which is only relevant for pro users, such as the custom brand kit. 

Once you decide on the type of content you want to create you click on it and travel down the rabbit hole of the endless ways you can edit and customize it. Users can upload their own images and icons, and switch fonts as needed. You can also search through tons of other templates if you change your mind about your initial choice.

__Canva__
![Canva - You can search templates](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/WFtTvTKpabvHPrkol9Ayu/80befd881f794842030c0f0dfb26939b/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_9.10.24_PM.png)

__Snappa__
![Snappa's Dashboard is a blank canvas](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/a7sYm0vEu3zJWHaMmZTEe/508454c96b653cd7ae3cc452874d00da/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_8.52.51_PM.png)

Snappa’s dashboard is essentially and effectively a blank canvas; knowing right off the bat what you want to create is key. Once you decide if you’re, say, building an Instagram post vs. a Twitter post, you can click on it, and THEN you’re offered the option of starting a design from scratch or using one of Snappa’s colorful and enticing template designs. 

![Snappa templates](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5pw1NhINw5wbBSmHjnAnBR/9d1463f02981ce068c2bada4adca28fe/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_9.07.44_PM.png)

Both Canva and Snappa eventually get users to the same point--of selecting from numerous professional design templates or starting a design from scratch. They just have slightly different routes to get you there. Canva immediately splashes you with color and ideas, while Snappa’s dashboard design urges users to be a bit more premeditated in how they start their design. It’s really a matter of choice, depending on your personal style. I will say that __Canva’s left-hand-side navigation menu provides a slight usability edge here, so I dub Canva the dashboard interface winner.__
 
 
### __The Content__
Canva has waaaay more design ideas and templates that transcend just the digital, including brochures, book covers, cd covers, posters, resumes, newsletters and more. Snappa doesn’t appear to have templates for physical printed designs - or maybe they are buried somewhere? Snappa’s focus is clearly on the digital; they even have templates for display ads, which is really helpful! After a bit of digging, I did find that display ad templates are available through Canva as well, though they are not right on the front page. 

__Canva__
![Canva design ideas](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/26aJj9VeEu4Mi5NUBJOyIg/26e79fc7bfe542e3596770c113565724/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_9.50.52_PM.png)

__Snappa __
![Snappa design ideas](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7xhEoCJCzvVF2qmEvFJBKR/4c3ac8ffc917e84f1b5fb810c2daaa29/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_9.50.14_PM.png)

In terms of content variety, it’s apples and oranges. Snappa’s focus is strictly on the digital realm, and they cover all the bases there. Canva offers templates for both print and digital applications. 

However, when it comes to the editing dashboard, Canva appears to be more versatile and user friendly as well. The selection of backgrounds, fonts, and other design elements is more vast and therefore superior in my opinión.  Also, once you’ve entered Snappa’s editing dashboard, you can’t get back to the home dashboard easily, which I found a bit annoying, because sometimes you need to backtrack! __The verdict: Canva winds up on top in terms of design template variety and editing options.__


### __The Pro Upgrade__
Both Canva and Snappa offer a pro upgrade for about $10 monthly. Canva Pro is free for 30 days, Snappa Pro doesn’t have a free trial window. Both of these pro upgrades unlock vastly greater options for templates, stock imagery and the opportunity to upload custom fonts. 

__Canva__
![Canva upgrade options](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3bQA2mZdYLAE9F8mBFOYtp/bcb72091b4ff178e5de8a210ef31c6a1/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_8.41.47_PM.png)

__Snappa__
![Snappa Upgrade Options](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6zTZkSMgptcNfOPP9Yr5pn/ec20383ea1bee022a28097e6e147da50/Screen_Shot_2020-04-12_at_8.38.26_PM.png)

The pro pricing is similar, which makes it a tough choice at a glance. However, there are a handful of distinctions. Snappa includes social media integrations at the pro level, which could be pretty handy. Snappa limits the number of users at every subscription level, and Canva doesn’t have an explicit user limit. 

Canva also cleverly organizes customizations (fonts, logos, color palettes) to help build a “brand kit” for consistency across users at the pro level. And if you don’t feel like upgrading? Well, Canva seems a slightly better value. At the free level, Snappa limits users to 3 downloads monthly. If you’re working on audience engagement with your brand, 3 designs monthly might not hit the mark. Canva doesn’t limit downloads of designs at the free level. Canva also offers a few more templates to choose from at any level. __The winner? With a 30 day free pro trial and more design variety, it’s Canva again, folks.__


### __Bringing it All Home__
Marketing pros and digital entrepreneurs (and pretty much any brand or business out there) need custom graphics to make their brand soar.
Obviously, not every brand can afford the cost of advanced graphic design software like Adobe Creative Suite. Depending on your unique needs, either Canva or Snappa would work beautifully for you. 

If your needs are strictly digital, you are a solo user, and you are ok with limited monthly downloads, Snappa would be a fine choice. 

__If you want more bells and whistles, greater design versatility, numerous users, and unlimited monthly downloads--like the ability to build print designs in addition to digital--Canva is where it’s at.__ Canva is the clear leader, in my opinion. But, hey, see for yourself--both of these awesome, user-friendly design programs are super easy to take for a spin.
 


Creating engaging graphics to promote your brand doesn't have to be a daunting task - Canva vs. Snappa 

Canva vs. Snappa

Managing your brand's digital designs is easier than ever before. The simple online design program Canva, and alternatives like Snappa, make it super easy to create and share all sorts of creative designs. Canva vs. Snappa: which team are you on?



The Best Digital Design Bang For Your Buck? Canva vs. Snappa

Canva vs. Snappa - Snappa is a Program Similar to Canva

Backlinks, love them, or hate them, are a critical component to doing search engine optimization.

While there are a variety of methods that have changed over the years as Google rolls out more algorithm updates based on feathered and furry animals or Sesame Street characters, one thing is for certain—backlinks still remain an integral part of how a website ranks.

## Creating High-Quality Backlinks
One of the most common questions for most people in digital marketing is "how to create quality backlinks."

Unfortunately, for a lot of marketers, this is where things start to get confusing. 

After all, how do you create “quality links?”

Here are a few things I’ll be discussing in this article:
- [Common link building pitfalls](#pitfalls)
- [Why entities matter when building links](#buildYourBrand)
- [Actionable link building](#actionableLinkBuilding)
- [Content juicing](#contentJuicing)
- [Leveraging automation](#leveragingAutomation)
- [Link continuity and UX](#walkingAMile)

<a name="pitfalls"></a>
## Backlink Pitfalls
Typically, there are a couple of common pitfalls when people build backlinks.

### Pitfall 1: Content Only Strategy
It’s true, content is king. However, content without links is a lot like having a car without any fuel. Sure, it looks nice and may get the attention of a few people—but how far can that really get you? 

Even with the most experienced wordsmith at the helm, content without links may be overtaken by sites that are seen as more authoritative and trusted. 

So how the heck does a site become more trusted? 
In spite of all the advancements Google has made in its algorithm, links still provide one of the clearest signals that a website can be trusted. The more links from quality sources can equate into traffic increases and additional authority within a particular market.

### Pitfall 2: Link Only Strategy
If you’re relying on links alone to rank your site it’s probably not going to happen. 

That’s not to say you can’t brute force a website up in search results, there are plenty of case studies showing how this can be done. However, using this method, will most likely not stick without a lot of additional effort. Additionally, you’re probably going to be penalized depending on how aggressively you’re seeking those links. This approach is commonly classified as a black hat tactic.

The problem is that many people in this camp tend to have horrible content (looking at you lazy spinner). It's blasé and uninspired. In order to get a link from someone, you must have content worth linking to.

The sad reality is that, without quality content, links alone won't get you very far. You must have something worth linking to if you want a link from a quality site. 

To be truly effective, you need *both* content and links.

## Build Your Brand

Before building links, I cannot underscore the importance of getting your on-page SEO dialed in.

Making sure your on-page SEO is correctly implemented will help ease the process of backlink building. In fact, you’ll need far fewer backlinks to rank well.This means you’ll need to spend some time on your titles, descriptions and headings, adjusting site architecture, improving internal linking, and structured data. 

As Google moves from the web of strings (search queries) to the web of things (relationships) working on your entity becomes increasingly more important. Similarly, an understanding of natural language processing (NLP) and semantic search can provide a competitive edge.

Brand building, or building links around a brand is a fundamental part of marketing. If done properly, it can weather the storm in spite of algorithm updates. Wouldn’t that be nice—"worryless SEO?"

<a name ="buildYourBrand"></a>
## Building Your Brand Using Entity-Based SEO

In case you’re not familiar with what entities are and how they relate to SEO, I’d recommend checking out this article on <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/entity-seo/277231/" target="blank">Search Engine Journal.</a> Entities are defined as, “A thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable.”

To illustrate this in something less abstract, entities often trigger knowledge panel results or additional SERP features. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t always get this correct. In most cases, this is due to multiple results that may be unclear.

As a simple example, the word “cars” could mean a lot of things. By itself (without any kind of clarification) you could be talking about any of the following:
●	An automobile
●	The Disney-Pixar movie
●	The 1970’s new wave band (You’re just what I needed…🎶)

![cars-image-carousel](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6qaYVk8xREa34y9gsGB9Zh/c1207d10db4bbfae91b9c7551236c665/cars-image-carousel.jpg)

However, when we provide additional context and add keywords to the page like, “1964 Shelby Cobra,” “muffler,” or “transmission system” it becomes quite clear that the keyword “cars” is clearly talking about an automobile.

![cars-disambiguation-image](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/14Z67XgL9HrKudpGCVa0mW/a4d901a4791c0561aece4eb190125580/cars-disambiguation-image.jpg)

Disambiguation can be a powerful thing when paired with the implementation of structured data markup.

## Brand-Based Link Building

<a href="https://www.link-assistant.com/news/entity-case-study.html" target="blank">Using entity-based SEO</a> can have a significant impact on brand visibility. When you get your entity right, it only takes a few links to provide a decent amount of “push.”

So how is this done? Connecting relationships between your brand and other keywords that are so strong, you’re seen as the definitive result.

Think about brands like Kleenex or Google. You’d never say, “I’m going to get a facial tissue”—you’d say please get me a Kleenex. This is because Kleenex has become synonymous with the brand. Some could even argue that they are THE brand and others are the generic version.

The same could be said about Google. We rarely say “I’m going to run a search query” on a particular topic. We say, “I’m going to Google that.”

While this is an overly simplified way to look at brand building, the concept should be quite clear. You want to be the definitive brand that represents the entity.

To start brand building, obviously consider all of the profiles that any business should have. These can provide additional signals that validate your entity:
- Google My Business (if a local business)
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Linkedin
- YouTube
- Yelp
- Pinterest
- Vimeo
- Foursquare
- Crunchbase

Branded properties help provide signals that can serve as a foundation for your link building efforts. Like our example of Kleenex and Google, we want to be ubiquitous. You don’t need to be active on each of the platforms, but claiming these profiles increases your brand’s footprint as well as prevents your competitors from hijacking your brand.

Next consider places in which you can start building brand signals. These could be places in which you share photos, whitepapers, resources, or news. You could also consider building citations as long as the site isn’t too spammy. 

To get you started, consider the following:
- Press release news rooms
- Whatsapp
- Tumblr
- Flickr
- Blogger
- Slideshare
- Issuu
- Medium
- Alignable
- Upcity
- Paper.li

When building these additional profiles, remember that you’re creating signals about your business. At this point, I’m not too concerned with follow vs nofollow links—it’s simply getting your name out there.

<a name="actionableLinkBuilding"></a>
## Actionable Link Building

Before embarking on a link building campaign, take a moment to develop your plan. Having a blueprint in place can help you identify potential pitfalls.

A blueprint can also serve as an anchor point that you can refer back to. I’ve found this to be invaluable, especially when you’re in the middle of a campaign and things get crazy.

Sometimes, you need that reference to keep the campaign focused and on-track.

The key questions to ask when creating your plan are:
1.	__What do you hope to accomplish with the campaign?__ This should follow SMART goal setting (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-based)
2.	__Who do you want a link from?__ Before starting a link building campaign, ask yourself who/where you want a link from‒this could be another website, social shares, public relations or brand recognition.
3.	__Is this time-sensitive or evergreen?__ I almost always opt for links to evergreen content, since they’re easier to obtain when content juicing.

<a name="contentJuicing"></a>
## Content Juicing

One of my favorite link building techniques is a repurposing technique I refer to as “content juicing.” 

This method leverages off-page branded assets that can pass link equity back to your primary property.

When you have a piece of content, think of the various ways that you could repurpose and leverage it on as many mediums as possible.

![content juicing diagram - link building technique](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5xdwzVnEAZhG97TRTHkBzY/585678e78e81b0da6559e43b63950193/content-juicing-diagram.png)

As an example, you might consider the following:
1.	Create a vlog or video interview
2.	Cut the vlog into short clips for snippets or social posts
3.	Separate the audio from the video and create a podcast
4.	Convert the audio to text using a service like Rev
5.	Add additional content to the text as necessary and use as a blog
6.	Create an infographic, incorporate visuals, and create a video thumbnail
7.	Create additional resources for your blog (Google slides can work very well for this purpose)
8.	Before publishing the blog, use the previous assets you’ve created to allow users to read, listen, or watch your blog—whichever happens to be their preferred medium

The key component of content juicing is to provide multiple platforms in which a user can engage with your content. Additionally, a call to action should assist in driving traffic back to your website. Ideally, this would be in the form of a link or call to action.

When considering this method, it’s important to run your properties through a link tracer, such as wheregoes.com or Link Redirect Trace Extension, to make sure that you’re getting value from the links you’re building.

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/c3ff8981a4174699a621ccd18096089b" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

![link redirect trace Chrome Extension Example](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3c8V1Ks0Jaqvf4GALNPePW/f888499256605459b980628bb04233b0/link-redirect-trace.png)

<a name="leveragingAutomation"></a>

## Leveraging Automation

This is more of a content syndication method, not necessarily a link-building strategy. Still, it can enhance your brand signals, which can have an effect on people linking to you.

It goes without saying, but consider the platform you’re publishing content to. Facebook users consume content in a different way than Instagram users. 

Also, it’s important to note there’s no substitute for personalized engagement. Using automation to schedule or promote your content can buy you a ton of time!

Whether you do this manually or through automated processes is irrelevant. The point is that you want to promote your content on several channels and create signals that point back to your primary entity. 

Another benefit of automation is that you can schedule many top-of-funnel activities, such as posting your content and focus on engagement. Imagine, spending 2-3 hours on developing the content for the entire month, then interacting with users—this allows you to spend more time cultivating meaningful relationships.

<a name="walkingAMile"></a>
## Walking A Mile In Your Customer’s Shoes

Be honest, when was the last time you did a top-to-bottom screenshot of your website or social media page and analyzed it. 

For that matter, when was the last time you’d evaluated the engagement of a page?

It doesn’t have to be a laborious process. I’m talking super-simple, knee-jerk analysis:
- Is there cohesiveness in the links and messaging?
- Does your content elicit a reaction from people? If so, what does that look like?
- Is your content and backlink strategy in-line with what other big players in your industry are doing?

Doing something this simple can uncover some opportunities.

Consider interlinking content together using traditional silos throughout your branded properties. This is one way to funnel authority to your primary pieces of content. It’s also a powerful link building method that you can control.

Also, just because you’ve promoted a piece of content once or twice, doesn’t mean you have to stop. Keep building links to your evergreen content on a monthly basis. This will help increase the relevancy and authority of not only the link, but also your entity.

### Conclusion

Link building doesn’t have to be difficult. By focusing on your entity, creating quality brand signals, repurposing content into multiple mediums, you can create quality links. 

Quit thinking of yourself as an SEO or link builder. Instead, think of yourself as a marketer and focus on places you can promote the brand. This can help uncover opportunities you may have previously overlooked.

Remember: create for humans, optimize for bots.


content juicing diagram - link building technique

Backlinks still remain an integral part of how a website ranks. Build your brand and your backlinks at the same time using the 'content juicing' method and more.

Backlinks, love them, or hate them, are a critical component to doing search engine optimization.

Building Backlinks Should Be Building Your Brand

Are you wondering how to use keywords for search engine optimization (SEO)? Do you find yourself at a loss when figuring out where to put keywords in your content? Then you’re at the right place because we’ve dedicated this guide to telling you exactly where you need to use keywords for SEO so Google can rank your pages higher for those keywords.
 
Before we dive in any further though, let’s get this right off the bat – you need to use keywords in your content. Organic search is responsible for over half of website traffic, <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/seo-statistics/" target="blank">51% to be specific.</a> So it makes sense to conclude that your business is losing out on potential traffic, leads, and sales when you aren’t paying attention to adding keywords in your content.

Now that we’re on the same page regarding the importance of keywords for better ranking, let’s talk key placement.
 
By the end of this guide, we’re hopeful you’ll learn exactly how to use keywords in your content naturally and strategically.
 
Let’s get started:

## Where to use keywords in your content: 7 different places to pop your KWs in

Here’s a handy infographic showing you the exact places you need to add keywords for SEO, followed by a detailed look at why you need include keywords in the places identified:

![Where to add keywords in your content for on page optimization](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6hXVqixeCkvxI8474uQyvq/977e623a117e00bf01e25c161e74b52e/Where_to_add_keywords_in_your_content_for_on_page_optimization.jpg)

### 1. Use keywords in your title tag

Your title tag is the first thing Google looks at when determining what your page covers. It’s also an invite for your readers, which helps them decide whether they’ll find what they’re looking for on your page.
 
As is common practice, invites are better off when they’re direct, which is why you need to add your keyword to your title tag.
 
Here are two proven tips for you to correctly use keywords in the title tag:

Use the keyword in the beginning of your title

- Although a title is worth a 100 characters, Google truncates the last 35 characters when displaying it.

![Use keywords in title tag for Keyword optimization - SERP screenshot](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/716KNvNEzzHOTgzkB2g1Vw/6caf9ea4d396a934475327da6e59954b/Use_Keywords_in_Title_Tag_-_SERP_screenshot_with_truncated_title_tag.png)

This means you need to add your keywords within the first 65 characters of your title so it shows up in search.
 
One good way of doing so is using the keyword right away. This is why you’ll find the following headline style common:
 
__Example keyword:__ Content repurposing

__Example title tag:__ Content Repurposing 101: Your Guide to Reusing Your Content for Maximum Reach
 

- Use the Yoast SEO plugin to differentiate your title tag and headline
You also need to know that there's a difference between the title tag and headline. The title tag is the title that displays on a search engine results page (SERPs). A headline, on the flip side, is your content’s title, displayed on your web page, and you can make both different using Yoast.

### 2. Add the SEO keyword in your meta description

The meta description is the small snippet that shows up below your title tag on a search results page.

![SERP Screenshot - Add the keyword in your meta description for on-page optimization](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7diSOZSr2ZeUFBOOkQpchu/df73551d2aecaf9944ddc1046b1d1130/On_page_optimization_-_Add_the_keyword_in_your_meta_description_-_SERP_Screenshot.png)

I like to think of it as a couple of enticing words that support the invite (your title tag), encouraging people to read your content. That’s what it technically does too.
 
Come to think of it – how many times have you found yourself reading the meta description to get a sense of what the content includes? In the example above, the meta descriptions give a quick idea of what’s included, like calendar, noting taking, and to-do lists apps in the piece by CNET.
 
You’ll find yourself clicking on the result with the meta description that speaks to you the most. This is also the exact reason why you need to add your keyword in the meta description – for the reader – encouraging him to click.
 
Of course, the more the clicks, the better your chances of ranking.
 
On a side note, Google does not pay attention to keywords in meta descriptions for ranking purposes. You’ll be adding your keyword here for the humans, not the bots that crawl the content for ranking.
 
Always keep the following trick in mind when adding keyword in meta description:

- Use keyword in the beginning of your meta description
You have between 55-160 characters in a meta description before it’s chopped off by Google like a title tag. Therefore, a keyword toward the start of your meta description is a better idea.

### 3. Include your keyword in the URL

The URL is another important place Google looks at when figuring out what your page talks about. From a reader’s lens, the URL needs to be simple so it’s easy to recall.
 
Think of it like this – a visitor enjoys your content, even remembers your site, but not the exact title of your content. He has two options. Either he heads back to your site and does a site search or he remembers your URL and types it in.
 
Even typing the basics like “Visme how to make an infographic,” for example, can instantly spit out your piece (because how to make an infographic is what’s in the URL)

![SERP screenshot showing keyword in the url for keyword optimization](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7Gfn6xjEXZAr6T2tFZHaX6/7fc1ac42ae2bc83f357d2d07da61162f/SERP_screenshot_showing_keyword_in_the_url_for_keyword_optimization.png)

Makes sense, doesn’t it?
 
Plus, here are your tips for adding keywords for SEO in your URL:

- Add nothing but the keywords in your URL
- Remove any extra hyphens or punctuation marks so it’s clean and crisp – ideal to remember

Note the difference between an SEO-optimized URL and one that’s not tended to:
 
❌  __Bad URL example:__
 
https://xyz.com/content-marketing-tips-that-will-blow-your-mind-away-in-2020

✔  __Good example:__ 
 
https://contently.com/2020/01/08/content-marketing-2020-tips/

### 4. Don’t forget to include keywords to your content headings

Heading tags like the H1, H2, H3, and other tags guide Google regarding what’s on your page.
 
As for the reader, headings and subheading improve reading experience. How, you ask? One, by dividing the piece into readable blocks of text so readers don’t run into an ugly, I’d-rather-not-read wall of text (remember, you’re writing for the web – not an essay for your English teacher). And, two, by showing readers what’s covered on the page. This way, your reader can scan and tell if your piece is worth reading or not.
 
Here’s how to play with keyword placement when it comes to headings:

- Add your keywords in the H1 heading
You have two options here. Either include your keyword-packed H1 heading straightaway. Note how Fingerprint for Success does that:

![How to use keywords for SEO - Keywords in heading tags](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/542nWo3NCkSVrIhsq7mYB6/36033752eb806192bc4f29c0d7374e05/How_to_use_keywords_for_SEO_-_Keywords_in_heading_tags.png)
<center><a href="https://www.fingerprintforsuccess.com/blog/defeatist-attitude" target="blank">Source</a></center>

Or, include your H1 after the intro just as G2 Learning Hub here:

![On page optimization in SEO - keywords in H1 tag](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1dIfENgGMpQ5YZmIgoPACN/2868cd99913068912d04ba71674ac03f/On_page_optimization_in_SEO_-_keywords_in_H1_tag.png)
<center><a href="https://learn.g2.com/graphic-design-mistakes" target='blank'>Source</a></center>

- Keywords in your subheadings H2, H3, and so on
This one’s important because keywords in your subheadings can show up in Google’s answer boxes or featured snippets like here:

![How to use long tail keywords - keywords in subheading H2, H3, H4](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/54xCFziep3qttrClmgI652/786173230a96e45440645f5c0ea6f1b8/How_to_use_long_tail_keywords_-_keywords_in_subheading_H2__H3__H4.png)

__Tip:__ Make sure you add keywords in your subheadings at least 2-3 times.

### 5. Sprinkle in keywords throughout the content

But don’t be a douchebag about it. Meaning: use them naturally + subtly. Here’s where your keywords will go:
 
- First paragraph
This requires you to be creative to get the keyword in the first line. If not, keep it to the first paragraph. 
 
- Throughout your content
It’s best to use keyword variations and long-tail keywords here. One quick way to find these is to conduct a quick Google search and see what results show in the search box:

![Using long tail keywords for seo within content - Find them in Google search dropdown](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/76xWtVDuMa33aU3I8xq4IB/95858f0dbd8d45ddb62ec57673241590/Using_long_tail_keywords_for_seo_within_content_-_Find_them_on_Google_search_dropdown.png)

Also look at the related searches and use them as your keywords variations. Find these at the bottom of the SERP:

![Search engine optimization keywords - Screenshot of bottom of SERP](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7u8tVTju20cjHkJYaEef5u/952420773b05de518be6e89f4deb05e0/Search_engine_optimization_keywords_-_Screenshot_of_bottom_of_SERP.png)

- Last paragraph
Bonus points for slipping your keywords in your last subheading too.
 
__Tip:__ Don’t be spammy and overstuff keywords. Remember you’re writing mostly for humans while ensuring the bots see your page too.

### 6. Include keywords with images too

Google indexes images. So when a reader clicks on the ‘images’ search option, he finds all the images with the keywords. Naturally, this makes your content more findable.
 
Here’s an example: My featured image for ‘email writing tips’ is ranking among Google’s images, but not in the SERPs. 😀 See the difference using keywords in your images can make?

![SEO keyword optimization - Use keywords in alt text and image file names](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3OQFcDwMMhIwnUTtTAvGgg/5c71d86bd417f57361ad027188156482/SEO_keyword_optimization_-_Use_keywords_in_alt_text_and_image_file_names.png)

You have two places to work your keywords with images:
 
- Image file name
This helps you get your images indexed on Google. A handy way to go about doing this is naming your image files and screenshots with the keyword or its variations as you save them.
 
- Alt text
Keywords in alt text play another important role – they make your content accessible. Wait, what? Yep. Alt text are small tags that pop up when you hover your mouse over an image. This is, particularly, helpful for those with visual impairments. Alt text is also great for making content readable for those who block images.
 
__Tip:__ Don’t use the main keyword only. Use variations and synonyms so people and search engines can better understand what your image talks about.

### 7. Last on how to use keywords: add them to links

Links? Yes, you heard that right. This applies to both incoming and outgoing links.
 
Let’s elaborate. Incoming links are links that come to your site. Of course, you have little control over these. But, when you’re consciously building links, say using any of the <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/5-proven-off-page-seo-tactics-to-help-you-build-powerful-links-in-no-time/" target='blank'>off-page SEO tactics</a> like guest posting, you can have a say.
 
In that case, request the site linking to you to use your keyword phrase to link to your page. The keyword-packed text used here is the anchor text and it’s <a href="https://www.wordstream.com/anchor-text" target='blank'>an important signal Google uses to determine</a> what a web page covers. Don’t forget to make sure the linked page talks about the keyword. Otherwise, you’d be linking to the wrong page – misleading readers. That’s a big no-no.
 
On the other hand, outgoing links are links that go from your page to another one of your pages. Hence, when you’re internally linking content (just as I did above with off-page SEO tactics), make sure you use the right keyword too.
 
But here’s an important __tip__: always vary the keyword text linking to you. Using the same text for every internal link sends the wrong signal to Google, which can get you penalized.

### How to use keywords for SEO: Best practices

The truth is – an important difference between good content and poor content is that the former uses keywords as naturally as possible. Poor content, on the flip side, adds a chock-full of keywords in the content and throws it to their reader. How well do you think a reader will receive it? Pretty bad, if you ask me.
 
So here’s what you need to do:
 
- Always use keywords natural and subtly. This way your readers learn your content is answering their questions and isn’t written to please the search engine solely.
 
- Write for humans. Ultimately, Google appreciates and rewards in ranking the content that its users click, spend most time on, and link to. So if your post doesn’t satisfy them, it won’t be long before your ranking tanks. Or, like Wendy Piersall says, “Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.”
 
- Stick with using keyword variations, synonyms, and long-tail keywords. These are different versions of your primary keyword. Using them comes with a serious advantage – you don’t sound repetitive and unnatural with your keyword usage.

### Go on and use keywords in your content

So what are you waiting for? Now that you know where it’s best to use keywords in your content, you’re in a better place to create content that ranks. Remember, keywords go into your title tag, meta description, URL, headings, and images. Slip them into the rest of the content and add keywords to anchor texts too.

Where to add keywords in your content for on page optimization

Are you wondering how to use keywords for SEO? Nozzle presents a comprehnsive on page optimization guide plus infographic. Optimize your pages today to get more traffic tomorrow.

Keyword placement guide for on page optimization. Get optimizing!

Where to add keywords in your content to improve your ranking? [Infographic Included]

Keyword Optimization: Where and how to use keywords in your content to improve your ranking

![Top SEO Tweets of 2019](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5szGbN7kR7YvyJtVC2jwjA/af19af52a9de473566ee6687c9985258/___2_.gif)

I personally scoured over 700 twitter accounts to find the most popular SEO related tweets during 2019.

To be including in the list, tweets had to meet the following criteria:

- Included more than 600 likes, retweets, and comments combined 
- Related to SEO in some way, shape or form
- Was tweeted from a personal twitter account
- Was not negative towards another human being
- Was found by me 😊😉 

(If you know of any tweets that meet the criteria above that I failed to include, please message me on twitter: @boydnorwood.)

This post was supposed to be published in late January but it took longer to do the research than anticipated (and then a pandemic threw things off), but I'm glad I stuck with it because there are some great gems in this list. Also, doing all this research is how I found almost all of the tweets I included in my <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/seo-humor-from-the-twitterverse" target="blank">SEO humor article</a>.

And now, without further ado, lets look back at what the SEO world was like last year so we can reminisce what occupied our brilliant SEO minds before the pandemic.

By default, the tweets below are sorted in ascending order according to total engagements.

<center>__Click on any of the filter buttons below to see only tweets related to specific topics.__</center>

Top SEO Tweets of 2019

Come on in to find a list of the 57 most popular SEO tweets of 2019.

Tweet List

Top SEO Tweets From 2019

If your company offers a scholarship to prospective and current college students, then good on you. Now you need to advertise your scholarship opportunity in as many places as possible to reach as many of your targeted students as possible.

![Scholarship Link Building](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/tgxej5RwuY9xVBeEKH8vV/d04d0cf4d014cf1abc85f32796bb95a2/Scholarship_Link_Building_smaller_size.png)

Below is a list I compiled that will get your scholarship seen. Some of them will turn into links back to your website which is also a side benefit.

- https://www.fastweb.com/

You can submit scholarships for free as long as you follow the following criteria: https://www.fastweb.com/content/scholarship-provider-guidelines

It doesn't appear that it will become a link but it will be a brand mention and potentially get some exposure.

- https://studentscholarships.org

An example with a followed link: https://studentscholarships.org/2020_college_scholarships.php

Adding a scholarship appears to be free: https://studentscholarships.org/scholarship_upload.php

- https://www.honorsociety.org/scholarship-directory

Followed links and category pages like, https://www.honorsociety.org/scholarship-directory?tid=38905 and company/scholarship pages like, https://www.honorsociety.org/scholarships/king-charles-lucille-family-foundation-undergraduate-scholarships

I can't find an easy way to submit a scholarship. The best option I found so far, besides calling them, is https://support.honorsociety.org/hc/en-us/requests/new

- https://brokescholar.com/scholarship

The scholarship page includes a nofollowed button link to your scholarship page on your website. Click on any of the scholarship by study area pages, then a scholarship listed to see an example.

Fill out their contact form here: https://www.brokescholar.com/contact

- https://scholarshipowl.com

Submit scholarship here: https://scholarshipowl.com/list-your-scholarship

There directory appears to hide behind a login so it won't count for links but it can still get you some exposure to students.

- https://www.careeronestop.org/Toolkit/Training/find-scholarships.aspx

Followed link from scholarship listing page: https://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/training/find-scholarships.aspx?keyword=textile&sortcolumns=BestMatch&sortdirections=&lang=en&scholarshipid=9998315

How to submit scholarship: https://www.careeronestop.org/Toolkit/Training/scholarship-finder-help.aspx. "How can I add, remove, or change scholarship information provided by Scholarship Finder? Requests for additions, removals, or any other changes can be sent to info@careeronestop.org."

- https://www.tuitionfundingsources.com/

Directory is hidden behind membership account but still worth submitting.

- https://www.chegg.com/scholarships

There is a followed link from the scholarship listing page. Example: https://www.chegg.com/scholarships/james-j-burns-ca-haynes-textile-scholarship-2380

I could not find a contact form. So call or fill out form to find out how to submit scholarship opportunity. https://www.chegg.com/press/contact-us/


- https://www.scholarships.com/

Several individual scholarship listing pages did not link to their website. Here is one example: https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarships/scholarship-directory/artistic-ability/art-furnishing-and-design/agl-over-the-rainbow-foundation. 

But I found this, https://www.scholarships.com/scholarship-providers-resources/scholarship-provider-guidelines/, which says, "Scholarship URL must link directly to provider’s scholarship page. Scholarship information landing pages must be hosted on a web page specific to the scholarship, at a domain/URL registered to the scholarship provider." So it seems like you can get a link.

The submission form is here: https://www.scholarships.com/scholarship-providers-resources/list-your-scholarship/create-account

- https://www.listsofscholarships.com

This site lists your scholarship with a followed link. Example: - https://www.listsofscholarships.com/avalaunch-media-scholarship/

To post your scholarship, go here: https://www.listsofscholarships.com/post/

Scholarship Link Building

If you have a scholarship opportunity, you need to advertise it properly to get as many links as possible and to be found by as many college students as possible.

Learn how to advertise your scholarship opportunity as many potential students as possible can apply.

Scholarship Link Building and Getting the Word Out

How to Properly Advertise Your Brand's Scholarship Opportunity - Scholarship Link Building

## What is a SERP and why does it matter?

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. When you enter a search term into Google, the search engine will return a list of matching results based on their algorithms. For example, when you enter the search phrase, “What is a SERP” into Google’s search engine, it will return about 7 million results. Google will also tell you how long it took them to return that many results, in this case, just 0.74 seconds. 

![What is a SERP](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1mlK5mCwFKJtxYo2nmJRp1/a07453d11956fa10004afa6de146a514/what_is_a_serp.png)

Right below that, you’ll see what Google’s algorithm has decided is the best match for your search term, such as a definition from Wikipedia. You may get results for similar queries, which Google outlines in a box called “People also ask” with dropdown selections for answers. Depending on what you searched for from recipes to products, you’ll get a variety of different results designed specifically for that kind of query.

![What is a SERP image](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4yhU0Pm0TXMls56CbHSML4/da56ca3bc6e53e9204c9af5a1d035802/What_is_a_SERP_Google_Search.png)

Below the boxed results, you’ll see the illustrious top nine pages of Google’s indexed pages that its algorithm has deemed most relevant to your search. If you’re trying to be found on the Internet through a Google search, your goal is to appear on page one of the SERPs. This is important because most users don’t look at anything beyond the top five results, let alone venturing onto page three or four of the SERPs. 

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. During its early days, Google simply returned a set of 10 links per page for users to browse through. This is how Google a SERP looked in 1998.

![Google Search 1998](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6kQnX4nrKF9a2VDP7GeEY3/a6124cb56e8fa30c16ce9c894aedf9d9/Google_Search_1998.png)

As search became more sophisticated, so did the SERPs. In 2005, sitelinks appeared in search results for the first time. Engineers at Google determined searchers’ eye patterns when looking at SERPs started basing results on the Golden Triangle -- eye patterns that start in the upper left corner of a screen and then down to the third or fourth search result and back up to the first result. 

![Google eye tracking - Golden Triangle](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4gAawjKJm23ZZL1ReOJXdM/2c50cd7fd965be7c6f938bbe9b716b8d/Golden_Triangle.jpg)

In 2007, Google’s universal search was introduced. In what was considered a radical change to search at the time, Google implemented a universal search system that blended listings from news, images, video, local, maps, and book search engines. Google purchased YouTube in 2006, so results from videos were also included in this new universal search integration.

![Universal Search](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/zOycZalYLD2CdQbnwGLfo/0b4260205f60d812a5eac5312709a2f1/Universal_Search.jpg)

In 2008, Google introduced the auto-suggestions feature in the search bar. Using predictive text, Google started auto-completing searcher’s queries as a way of speeding up the process by attempting to predict what a user is trying to find.

![Google Auto Suggest](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/GnpongyzUcGDNaPoXRNw7/a4e446ae0fa4533d848c47b8dbf7aca9/Google_Auto_Suggest.PNG)

Google Search results included images as early as 2000, but became exceptionally dialed in 2011, when the “Search by Image” feature was added. This allows users to reverse search images in the search bar to find similar results from an uploaded sample image. They also created a way for users to sort by subject to help them find what they were looking for. 

![Google Image Search](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5ntuRf09mWQhL4EVl58mVo/eb3c97574e6ab20a401f65df3527b782/Google_Image_Search.jpg)

In 2012, Google debuted the knowledge graph with the intent of eliminating the need for users to visit another website, such as Wikipedia for general information. 

![Google Knowledge Graph](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2rZihO8us7NU7ii3bZbm5C/d94b1e44a840dd6a440deed213f61519/Google_Knowledge_Graph.png)

The “3-Pack” appeared in 2014. Also referred to as the Snack Pack, this was Google’s way of highlighting the top three results for local SERPs based on a user’s location and query. This was a game-changer for local search. The local 3-pack appears in the first position 93% of the time so businesses optimized for local search have a much better chance of ranking at the top of the SERP. 

![Google snack pack](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/14WS9glgczyDYnp9gBjzFU/e3224691b1ddad3d3a24b2a54043fd71/snack_pack.png)

In 2019, Google started labeling advertisements more clearly for mobile search. They created black “Ad” labels to help searchers sift through results faster. They also added a local “search by photos” option that enables users to get visual results along with descriptions for their searches, which is helpful for restaurants and other businesses.

![Pizza on Google Search](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7rTT2IQCeOYCs76Q1q10mt/9133fefceb512a332df4efa5e417e40c/Pizza_on_Google_Search.png)





Image of Google Search - image was labeled for reuse in Google Image Search

Google SERP

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. When you enter a search term into Google, the search engine will return a list of matching results based on their algorithms.  During its early days, Google simply returned a set of 10 links per page for users to browse through. Since then, Google has radically changed the way users find information.

Evolution of the Google SERP

Evolution of the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

In order to try and obtain some more links for Nozzle, I found a list of startups from a blog posted by Twoodo.

![list of startups tweedo blog post screenshot](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1uGXRKvPViIAtYwBpRXMfB/96a68f95115aa71afbf29cdd92e91c05/twoodo.jpg)

As a SaaS startup, we have been looking for places to promote Nozzle and get more brand exposure, traffic, and links.
We came across Twoodo’s list of 33 startup directories that are mostly geared towards SaaS and web apps.

Out of 33 websites, I was able to submit Nozzle to 10 of them with mixed results. Some of the submissions are still pending review. I'll come back and update the following information as we hear back from those sites.

## The 10 sites I submitted to:

1.       Alternative To- This was a really easy submission process. I entered information about Nozzle, as well as added competitors of our product.
![AlternativeTo nozzle submission screenshot ](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/33MXafrHgMNyG0jriBTqzW/ea7809fc991ab65444fbda53f1013c74/alternative_to.png)
 
2.       CrunchBase- Another easy submission asking for company name, description and location. I also recommend connecting founders and employee profiles to the company profile and adding your company’s LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.
![Crunch base nozzle submission screenshot](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/11qmZAN8P39uyAzv42licX/12a7fac7e527628b8adc396d6b2fb998/crunchbase.png)
                                                                                
 
3.       Listly- Listly is unlike the previous two. It’s a website where people can create lists about products, services, and so on. I made a list of 5 rank trackers, and included Nozzle. Listly was more difficult to navigate compared to the others. The list I made as well didn’t come out in the order I wanted it to. I’ll try and see if that can be fixed.

![Listly top 5 rank trackers including nozzle](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6DLJVdSMlBEqDt1mHdTYlg/d82883829ad58923d8741080e1dc3b31/listly.jpg)


4.       BetaList- BetaList was an easy website to navigate, and I was able to submit Nozzle to be reviewed. I have not heard anything back yet, and BetaList said it could take a month or more for my application to be reviewed.

![Betalist home page screenshot](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6DlMK341Hg40Fb1E3s568e/45608a1cf33ac772e65b95ca346e5164/betalist.jpg)



5.       Top Alternative- Top Alternative easily allowed me to submit Nozzle for a review. I haven’t heard anything back since my submission.
 
 
6.       Launching Next- Launching Next had an easy submission form in order to submit a startup. Once submitting Nozzle, I had a message pop up on my screen telling me it could be 2-4 months before our application is reviewed. 7.       Killer Startups- Killer Startups was another easy submission to fill out with our information. Once submitted, I was told that it could take up to 90 days to review. 

![Launching next home page](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4F9Fj5ODYzhbxUe0RYeXPd/2e8b0419281ed1d8a39439c3693507e6/launching_next.png)


Capterra- Capterra’s submission process was easy. After going back on the site, I couldn’t find the exact place where I had submitted our application. I received a  message back that they needed more information about Nozzle in order to process our application. I’m waiting to hear back about what the next steps are.
  
Hacker News- Hacker News is like Reddit, where you submit different ideas or questions as threads. I submitted a question asking if people are looking for a rank tracking tool. 
I don’t recommend submitting to this site unless you are going to invest some time to learn how to properly engage with its audience.

Addictive Tips- On Addictive Tips, I sent in a  message talking about our work here at Nozzle, being an enterprise level rank tracking tool and how we stand out against our competitors. At this time, I haven’t received a link or a message back.

![Addictive tips tip us page](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7fuJeWArOaTss1pcnWRzFP/f76baf59ff3951f8c1ae99fd5bfea161/addictive_tips.jpg)

 Mashable- On Mashable, I submitted a  “Hot Tip” about Nozzle. I haven’t heard back yet at this time regarding if Nozzle would be featured or not.

## Some of the sites I didn’t submit to:
The following sites require payment and I haven’t tested any of them as of yet: GetApp, Erlibird, Top Alternative, and App Appeal. This next group of sites don’t exist anymore: Maqtoob, Start Up Vid, The Next Web Marketplace, About Your Startup, Launch Sky and Startups FM.
![Money](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4A5Fw5LRl8c6vCK077D0th/ecdb720180a20dcce5b9e7f763861d73/giphy.gif)

I tried submitting Nozzle to New Big What but after filling out the application I was denied because my browser was a “spambot”. I found that funny.

# And finally, the following sites weren’t a good fit for the industry that Nozzle is in:
Product Hunt, AngelList, All Web 2, TechCrunch, Startup Tank, AppStorm, Upload.com, Fuel Up, Reddit, Gust, and Clpud base 3.

![Not a good fit](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1Wt49vKl2OeGWA3w4YZOhh/ae8acaecc86ab0de95b2dd24f782c297/giphy.gif)

Overall, submitting to these start-up, SaaS directories was okay. Hopefully my successes and findings above will help you save time so you can focus only on the handful that worked. 


Tanner Linsley

tanner

Finding SAAS Directories from a Blog Post

Our results from submitting to various SAAS directories off the Twoodo Blog

Our Results Submitting to SaaS Directories

Have you ever pondered the time disparity between how long it takes to build something versus destroy it?

For example:

- I spent dozens of hours over the course of five months putting together a 5,000 piece puzzle; it took only 2 minutes to destroy it and put it back into the box.
- A building takes months to construct and days to demolish.
- A great marriage takes years to nurture and develop but can be ruined in a matter of weeks, days, or even minutes.
- A wooden marble track I build with my kids takes minutes to construct but one accidental movement knocks it down in seconds.

The same fast-acting destruction can happen to all of your hard work and efforts in SEO. It takes weeks, months, and years to build up a well optimized site with tons of authority and backlinks and buttoned up technical SEO. In a matter of minutes, it can all be destroyed because of a simple mistake, oversight, or decision made by the upper brass.

Let's take a look at five destructive SEO tactics--er--mishaps that can ruin all your SEO progress before you finish reading this post.

## 1. Noindexing your whole site

![car crashing into garage door is like noindexing your website](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3CEjn5gIFrO1Lna0DYpMao/0a90efcf44da1694285bd4e8ee904bd2/car_crashing_into_garage_door_is_like_noindexing_your_website.gif)

I've seen this happen several times over the years, mostly by accident.

One website I worked on a few years back launched some site updates with their robots.txt file disallowing their whole site. This company lost weeks of organic traffic before anyone realized this huge oversight. Unfortunately, this happened twice.

It makes sense to have your staging site disallow search engine indexing but you need to have a process in place to change that when you launch. Since this time, they have added an automated process that corrects the robots.txt file when moving from staging to launched.

## 2. Deleting all of your informational pages

![shooting a pole at a window pane is like deleting all of your informational and authoritative web pages](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2qxfOayNOxVc4Ytv6LkM8X/e5c8a1ad426d0d07106a4adac23f9bfb/shooting_a_pole_at_a_window_pane_is_like_deleting_all_of_your_informational_and_authoritative_web_pages.gif)

Rankings and organic traffic can suffer as a result of business decisions. Eoghan Henn, co founder of <a href="https://www.searchviu.com/en/" target="blank">searchVIU</a>, shared a case study that showed the <a href="https://searchengineland.com/case-study-the-true-value-of-informational-content-for-e-commerce-seo-327692" target="blank">negative impact of deleting informational pages with link authority</a> from a website.

The homepage and category pages lost most of their top rankings for search queries responsible for generating revenue for the company resulting in a loss of about one-third of its overall visibility in the SERPs. Ouch! 

## 3. Failing to redirect an old domain to a new domain

![knocking down shelfs with a forklift is like not implementing 301 redirects properly](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/PWv0RVJUaC8A4qJJdb5oe/3d5942acf73dd3e91d514c2c411e01c0/knocking_down_shelfs_with_a_forklift_is_like_not_implementing_301_redirects_properly.gif)

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A disappointing few months on this one...client moving domains wouldn&#39;t redirect the previous domain. Even worse, they then let the old domain expire &amp; it&#39;s been grabbed by someone else. We gave them *plenty* of warnings...it had 1 million links pointing to it 😱 <a href="https://t.co/Zbd0hC44W2">pic.twitter.com/Zbd0hC44W2</a></p>&mdash; Will O&#39;Hara 👨🏽‍💻 (@willohara) <a href="https://twitter.com/willohara/status/1132750204661305351?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 26, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This has to be one of the saddest SEO stories out there. Unfortunately, it happens way more than it should.

Here's another example from the same twitter thread. As you can see, we SEOs like to commiserate with each other.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Been there. Site&#39;s blog had 800k links, 10k pages of content, and back when we measured those things? A PR10. <br><br>They moved it to Tumblr, carried over none of content, and redirected none of the pages. <br><br>I nearly cried lol<br><br>So hard to save clients from themselves at times :)</p>&mdash; Kristine Schachinger (@schachin) <a href="https://twitter.com/schachin/status/1132952136730308608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 27, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


## 4. Removing a large quantity of valuable backlinks

![exploding a watermelon with rubberbands is like deleting your backlinks one by one](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5FUWKi8EPbH76qBlTVXARV/ec96b5e5d586b0226393d63b70b191fc/exploding_a_watermelon_with_rubberbands_is_like_deleting_your_backlinks_one_by_one.gif)

One healthcare company, after an FDA inspection, decided to immediately ask hundreds of websites to remove the link pointing to their website until approved content could be verified.  As a result, a large quantity of their links disappeared over night.

Eventually, most of those links were reacquired once they could verify that all verbiage on each individual site was compliant with the FDA's approved messaging.

## 5. Not adding optimized content to every important page

![house falling into a river is like ignoring adding optimized content to your web pages](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7LfeTRdr7tSLSLCMQPCwL2/f0dffbbf4ac70eecc3d23b798371cba9/house_falling_into_a_river_is_like_ignoring_adding_optimized_content_to_your_web_pages.gif)

Every important page on a website will fare better with optimized content. Choosing to not add more content to important pages can hurt your ability to rank for more keywords.

I recently wrote about the <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/success-story-adding-content-to-ecommerce-category-pages" target="blank">results of one ecommerce site</a> that added a few paragraphs of content to all their ecommerce category landing pages. After it was all done, they ranked in the top ten for 800 more phrases than before they added the content.

__In Conclusion:__

Sometimes frustrating decisions are made that affect your job as an SEO. Do your best to communicate to the decision makers the ranking and organic traffic consequences and what that will mean to the bottom line. You can't win them all but you can come out looking like you know what you're talking about.

In the end, if you can avoid any of the above SEO disasters, then give yourself a pat on the back.


car crashing into garage door is like noindexing your website

In business, decisions sometimes are made that will impede or destroy all of your SEO progress. Look out for these and good luck.

5 Destructive SEO Decisions

What are the benefits of tracking your competitors rankings alongside your own with a <a href="https://nozzle.io/features">SERP tracking tool</a>?

- To identify, in realtime, any big fluctuations in the SERPs for your keywords so you can analyze those URLs to see what has changed
- To know which competitors show up the most in the top ten across the board for all your keywords
- To easily see which domains own spots in featured snippets, video packs, image packs, local packs, etc.

Why does Nozzle allow you to track an unlimited amount of competitors?

- When a new competitor pops up in the top ten that you haven't noticed before, you can add them to your list of competitors and we'll rewrite history for you so you can see the history of their movements as if you'd been tracking them from the start.
- With reputation management, it's sometimes tricky to know which of the sites in the top 30 have the ability to move up to page 1 to push down the negative results. This is why you'll want to keep an eye on 30-40 "SERP competitors"--to be able to have the data on which of these you should continue to put more resources into higher rankings.
- You are not just competing against known brand name competitors but any URL that shows up in the same SERP that you are working to climb. And when you multiply this across thousands of keywords, you're going to want to track more than just a few competitors. 

So <a href="https://nozzle.io/trial">start tracking unimited competitors today</a> with Nozzle and don't listen to anyone who claims <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/is-seo-dead/">SEO is dead</a>, otherwise your competitors will win.

Why does Nozzle allow you to track an unlimited amount of competitors? Because we can. :)

Track SERP Rankings for an Unlimited Amount of Competitors with Nozzle

Track SERP Rankings for an Unlimited Amount of Competitors with Nozzle | Competitor Tracking

As with almost all things SEO, there are varying opinions about adding content to e-commerce category pages.

Some argue that a few paragraphs of content on a product category page isn't going to make much of a difference in terms of rankings and could distract people from clicking through to the product pages.

My counter-argument is that you can always place the content below the product listings to not distract from the products or write better content that visitors are happy to read.

Another argument is that successful e-commerce sites like REI.com and Zappos.com don't include content on their category pages so, why should I?

In response, I would ask: do you have as many inbound links and as much authority as they have? Furthermore, just because other sites are doing something a certain way doesn't mean that you shouldn't try something different.

Anywho, you should always be testing different tweaks to see what works best for your site, in your industry to get the best ranking results that you can.

Let's take a look at the results for one e-commerce website in terms of number of keywords ranking in the top 10 before and after adding a few paragraphs of content to their category pages.

Back in August of 2018, I began overseeing this campaign. At this time, none of their category pages contained any content other than their product listings.

We began adding 3-5 paragraphs of content to 20-30 pages a month starting in September, and finished the content additions to all category pages in January 2019. 

First, let's look at sitewide gains.

This first image shows the growth in number of phrases ranking in the top ten from August 2018 to February 2019.

![growth of total number of keywords in top 10 positions](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/Dv67HrMHbVqB1ecmoMseb/8e2f23084b32b528f60d73e3a44e9d84/growth_of_total_number_of_keywords_in_top_10_positions.jpg)

Here is the increase in just top 3 positions:

![growth of total number of keywords in top 3 positions](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6YyHIfqGTLCd3MvyrmiPX8/348f85e6c1d7a594f494e8b60ddc884f/growth_of_total_number_of_keywords_in_top_3_positions.jpg)

Here is the increase in positions 4-10:

![growth of total number of keywords in positions 4-10](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5wxnpwdzKhBHzf33mg53pj/a6b187117f5a4d9db0c4c44c7d636908/growth_of_total_number_of_keywords_in_positions_4-10.jpg)

To be fair, there were more SEO things happening on the site during this time period too but I can assure you that only a handful of new links were acquired during that time frame and all of them pointed to the homepage. We also added canonical tags to the site in September. And we also used the opportunity to add a couple internal links to other pages from within the new content that we added.

But to get more granular, let's take a look at 5 specific category pages that we added content to and their keyword ranking improvements during this time period.

![1st Category Page ranking improvements](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5WWNaTcoKxM6OIqbHJrWse/78d99622fd8ebd902abcb395ff52d661/1st_Category_Page.jpg)

![2nd Category Page ranking improvements](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4uvX73eI2f5e6tjtG7cCjL/8797c2496ef1cb3f7a9377dedd910453/2nd_Category_Page.jpg)

![3rd category page ranking improvements](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/E8VNNrgi9eeq3jhacKzE6/936636396e8e7285b3b286631486ec7a/3rd_category_page.jpg)

![4th Category Page ranking improvements](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5Hi9u3kmRSQ8pqUT8xQV8H/a68cb22cdc613fdcd869b5f226f1d075/4th_Category_Page.jpg)

![5th Category Page ranking improvements](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4aE3aIarUmQFfIgaRzChPm/337498f1c8ca41bd8f0cb0b3c7e5d1ba/5th_Category_Page.jpg)

There are dozens of more examples of category pages with similar increases. Some of the increases started in November, December or January based on the timeline of when we got to those pages.

These increased rankings obviously resulted in more organic traffic to the site and has proven to be one example of why you should test adding content to e-commerce category pages.

Now go learn <a href="https://www.searchbloom.com/blog/6-ways-smaller-companies-can-keep-up-with-ecommerce-giants/" target="blank">6 additional ways to compete with ecommerce giants</a> in your same industry.

growth of total number of keywords in top 3 positions

Success story from adding content to an ecommerce site's category pages.

Success Story: Adding Content to eCommerce Category Pages

Funny SEO Jokes and Humor from the Twitterverse

SEO Humor from the Twitterverse

SEO Humor from the Twitterverse - Funny SEO Jokes, Moments & Memes 

In the video below, Ty Kilgore shares his experience with personas and how spending time to create in-depth personas will create a strong foundation that will help guide the rest of your marketing efforts.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SfxixxZUC8I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<p>
All right guys, one mistake that so many digital marketers make early on in their career, and I know I kind of made this mistake as well, is figuring out and fine tuning who your target demographic is and who you’re actually trying to target as a business owner or as a marketing strategy. 

You’re trying to understand who you’re trying to reach and sometimes what happens is that people are making things too broad. 

In today’s marketing world, in order for you to have success, you have to narrow in on who you’re trying to reach and what their pain points are. 

So understanding who your target demographic is, is everything when it comes to digital marketing. 

It’s something that I thought that as I got into it, I was learning the tactics and I was learning the strategies and I was learning how to do keyword research and how to do content creation but one of the big missing elements, looking back on my career now, is realizing the pain point of figuring out who I was trying to serve. 

I continue to see this as I audit sites and as I look at different people’s business models.

What I find in the marketing world is too many people have the 'me too' or a 'following' mentality meaning they are just trying to follow what other established businesses in their industry are doing.

In business, you absolutely have to make yourself unique. You have to have a strong 'why'. And you absolutely have to make yourself stand out amongst your competition. You cannot just follow what other people are doing and expect to have success. 

But when you look at people’s marketing strategies, they are mostly just following what other people are doing. 

So let me just break this down a little bit. Whether your selling B2B or B2C you have to know what is keeping your potential customer up at night? What exactly is their pain point and how can your product or service or information provide relief for that pain?

You need to spend the time to create in-depth personas for the people who will be buying from you.

In the beginning of my career, I did not really put a lot of emphasis on creating personas but I have since realized the importance of doing so. 

### The very first step in figuring out who you serve is to ask yourself some very obvious questions. 

- What is their name? 
- What is their age? 
- What is their education level? 
- What are their pain points?
- What are they trying to achieve? 
- What keeps them up at night? 
- What are some of their hobbies? 
- What kind of car do they have? 
- What kind of house do they live in?
- What type of individual concerns do they have on the weekend? 
- What does their weekend look like? 

Now, you might think that’s a little over the top. __*It’s not!*__

Once you understand everything about your customer, you can provide a better
marketing strategy for them. 

For example, if you’re creating a blog post, you absolutely need to know if you're targeting Persona A, Persona B, or Persona C and then provide them with the specific information that they can relate to.

I see many businesses get this wrong and are not writing to specific personas. 

__Writing to personas will make the difference in many aspects of your marketing efforts. __

When you understand who you’re trying to reach, the pain points they have, their 'why'--in additon to knowing why you are in business--you can address and target so much more effectively.

So beyond the tactics of keyword research, page copy, ad copy, SEO, social media, etc., you need to understand on almost an emotional level why your product/service is helpful. When you get down to that level, you will absolutely attract the correct audience. 

As I work with companies and I talk to them about what their marketing strategy is going to be and why they’re coming out with a new product, I ask them the following:

- Why are you making this new product? 
- What is it going to do to your customer to help them solve a pain point? 

You need to start with the persona your trying to serve, not keyword research.

When you understand what makes you unique, how your uniqueness can benefit the overall market that you’re playing in, how you share that story, and how you help solve that pain point in the eyes of your customers--when you do that effectively and  have all of those things working together, it’s amazing to see how the marketing content will actually write itself. 

You’ll find that your voice and the reason why you’re in business, and how you are helping people, will become that much more clear. It drives all of your marketing decisions. It helps put pen to paper or fingers to keys and provides
you with clarity as compared to being all over the map when it comes to what you’re trying to do.

Do not be in the situation where you’re putting out content and just hoping that something is helpful. I audit too many sites, I work with too many companies where I see that a lot of the stuff they put out--nobody’s watching, nobody looks at. The reason why is because they missed this key important step. 

### Here are the steps you need to take to create value with your content:

- Create a persona. Go through the exercise of figuring out a name, age, education level etc.
- Figure out who is serving this demographic well. If they are serving it well, how are you going to be different? If they’re not serving it well? Why? And what can you do to serve them better?

Once you figure out those two things, then you can take a second to put yourself in their shoes. Then when you’re coming up with new content to write, new ads, new marketing material, etc., you'll better to be able to create content that will actually benefit their life.  And when you approach it that way, reaching your audience becomes a lot easier.

### In review

I want you guys to absolutely take a look at who you’re serving and who is your target demographic. 

Envision for a second, you are a college professor in a stadium type classroom setting and the chairs are all empty and you’re at the bottom. 

What is your product and service and who do you want walking through that door?

If you don’t know who you’re wanting to serve, then that is a huge reason why your marketing isn’t effective. 

And if your marketing isn’t effective, you’re not going to be able to make sales. 

And if your sales aren’t effective, you’re not going to be in business very long. 

It’s absolutely key that you know who you serve, not just that you have a great idea or that you have a great product.

Without knowing who you’re serving, you will not be able to market the way that you need to.

You need to spend the time to create in-depth personas for the people who will be buying from you.

Creating User Personas In Your Marketing - Why Most Companies Get It Wrong

Getting your site to rank is tricky business. Just when you think you’ve multiplied your chances of ranking by using the right keyword in your content, you realize you haven’t been paying attention to off-page SEO.
 
Wasn’t on-site SEO enough? You sprinkled in keywords throughout your headings and content, added them to the Yoast SEO plugin, and wrote a tight meta description too. Now you’re hearing you’ve got to pay attention to off-page SEO too. What?
 
It’s simple, really. Off-page SEO means attempting to get backlinks from other, already-established sites so those links can signal Google your site is authoritative and get better ranking.
 
Now how do you get the links?
 
Let’s answer this in this post. We’ll talk about 5 off-page SEO techniques, which can help you get backlinks to your site. Before diving into these, however, let’s touch base with what off-page SEO is and some basics of link building.
 
Let’s start, shall we?
 
### What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO involves actions you take to improve your rankings in the search engine. The only thing is, you take these steps outside your website’s realm, much like dining out. On-page SEO is the exact opposite – steps you take on your website to improve your rankings. It’s the eat-at-home version.
 
Notice both off-page SEO, also known as off-site SEO, and on-page SEO share their goal – to get you to rank better on the search engine. A lower ranking reduces your odds of getting better traffic as your page is not very discoverable.
 
Webpages showing up in the first five organic results of Google search <a href="https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/seo-statistics" target="blank">take home 67.60% of the clicks</a>. Besides, people <a href="https://www.conversionguru.co.za/2017/05/29/90-people-dont-go-past-page-1-google-search-results-searching/" target="blank">rarely scroll past the first search results page</a>. So who wants to rank better?

### The basics of link building
It’s settled then – off-site SEO is your bat signal that tells Google you’re trustworthy, therefore, deserve a better positioning in the search results. But are all links created equal?
 
Certain links are trustworthy while others are spam (created through spammy off-page SEO practices). Since we’ll be covering only authentic off-site SEO tactics, you don’t need to worry about those.
 
For now, keep the following in mind:

- The links you’re attempting to get should come from a relevant site. 

If you’re a career coach, it doesn’t make sense to get a link from a food blogger. The link becomes irrelevant. 

- The linking domain and page should have good authority. 

Google’s page authority metric is called PageRank. Unfortunately there is no way to see that metric anymore, but some SEO tools have their own authority metrics, which can give us a good idea. For instance, keep tabs on Moz’s DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority) metrics. Alternatively, Ahrefs’ metrics of DR (Domain Rating) and UR (URL Rating) are also good indicators. A site with low DA or DR doesn’t have the I’ve-stood-the-test-of-time authority to tell Google you deserve better ranking. In short, it doesn’t bring much value to the table.

In a nutshell, you need links from high authority, trustworthy sites that are relevant to your niche. 

What’s next? Getting your hands dirty with off-page SEO. Here we go:


## 1. Build links by guest blogging

Guest blogging involves you writing content for another site in your niche as a “guest” on their page. You either add a link to your page in the content or get one in the author bio that credits you for writing the piece.

![Links in Guest Post Author Bio on GetResponse](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6pJrw2nhIjEhPsGyWGNNt/66f10015cf9fba5e9a693be13dedcc10/Links_in_Guest_Post_Author_Bio_on_GetResponse.png)

<center><a href="https://www.getresponse.com/blog/emojis-email-subject-line-best-practices" target="blank">Guest post for GetResponse</a></center>

<p>Some say guest blogging has lost its charm. Others, like <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=guest%20blogging%20(from%3AAaronOrendorff)&src=typed_query" target="blank">Aaron Orendorff</a>, promise it works, having guest posted for over <a href="https://copyhackers.com/2019/11/guest-posting/" target="blank">40 leading publications and gotten a job</a> as the editor in chief at Shopify Plus. The correct answer?
 
Done correctly, guest blogging can be a good source of solid backlinks and referral traffic to your site. Just as in the case of any other off-site SEO strategy, there are two ways to build links with guest posting:

❌ __The wrong way__: Writing meh content on every site that can link back to you, never caring if the site is relevant to yours or if its readers are interested in what you have to say.
 
✔ __The right way__: Contributing valuable content to a guest site in your niche on a topic that genuinely interests readers.
 
So how do you go about doing things the right way?

❌ The wrong way: Writing meh content on every site that can link back to you, never caring if the site is relevant to yours or if its readers are interested in what you have to say.
 
✔ The right way: Contributing valuable content to a guest site in your niche on a topic that genuinely interests readers.
 
So how do you go about doing things the right way?

### How to guest post the right way?

The best (and most effective) way to guest post starts with building relationships in your industry. Discover potential target sites by googling:
 
[Your niche] + [write for us] or [guest post] or [contribute to] or [guest writer]
 
For instance:

![SERPs Query - marketing write for us](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/dSMkXT5nvWiSrzO1bXob6/d4df25466c4b3f0c9b73f88fa8a91a2b/SERPs_Query_-_marketing_write_for_us.png)

(On a side note, find several dozen more search operators to use <a href="https://www.iqseo.org/search-operators-for-seo/" target="blank">here</a>.)
 
Next, start networking with editors of publications that are on your to-guest-post list. Eventually, <a href="https://bloggingwizard.com/the-best-guest-post-pitch/" target="blank">pitch</a> your topics.
 
I like to think you need to interact with someone at least 6-7 times before you pitch, it’s something I’ve picked from the <a href="https://www.krusecontrolinc.com/rule-of-7-how-social-media-crushes-old-school-marketing/" target="blank">marketing rule of 7</a>.
 
Pitching this way increases your chances of getting a reply from busy editors. But what confirms your chances of getting your pitch approved? Studying the target site to pitch topics that their audience will enjoy.
 
<a href="https://twitter.com/jennals" target="blank">Jenna Scaglione</a>, the Managing Editor for Foundr magazine <a href="https://foundr.com/how-to-pitch-a-blog" target="blank">shares</a>, “The goal is to show the editor that you did your homework and you understand the blog’s style and audience. You don’t have to even tell editors that you did this research. They will know right away from your pitch email.”

Alternatively, cold pitch editors of your target site. Use a tool like <a href="https://respona.com/" target="blank">Respona</a> to schedule an outreach campaign. However, warm your pitches by personalizing your emails to editors. How? Read about the person who you’ll be emailing to develop a personal connection or share what you liked in one of the pieces you read on the target site.
 
### Where should you guest post?

Go for sites with:

- High DA and PA
- Active presence on social
- Engaged audience (hint: look at the comments or, at least, the social shares)

### Best practices:

- Never pitch a site before first studying it.
- Pitch 3-5 topics to give the editor a choice.
- Don’t just pitch a topic. Pitch a short outline to show the angle the piece will take.
- Establish your credibility in your pitch, for instance, by sharing links to what you’ve written.


## 2. Tap into off-page SEO with HARO

<a href="https://www.helpareporter.com/" target="blank">HARO or Help A Reporter Out</a> is a platform where journalists get sources (aka quotes) from experts for their content. You can benefit by signing up as a source that offers valuable insights to pitches shared. For instance, Nozzle <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/haro-link-building-success-story" target="blank">acquired a link from a DA 53 (DR 75) site via HARO</a>.
 
Two ways to go about using HARO:
 
❌ __The wrong way__: Replying to every pitch with poor quality answers that lack depth and clarity.
 
✔ __The right way__: Replying to selected but highly relevant pitches where your expertise matters. Moreover, giving an in-depth answer that is clear, focused, and meets all requirements listed in a pitch.


### How to build backlinks with HARO?

Every pitch that accepts you as a source links back to your site. That’s a backlink. Bingo! So you need to kick things off by signing up for HARO and keeping an eye on the pitches pouring into your inbox. Once you spot a relevant pitch, hit reply.
 
### Where and how should you respond on HARO?

Respond to relevant pitches where you understand you can add value. For instance, I can best offer my opinion on writing, blogging, and content marketing. I can never offer advice on pet matters.

### Best practices:

- Take your time to craft your response. Journalists reject thin responses right away.
- Provide unique insights, an answer that you think others wouldn’t have covered.
- Read through the pitch to see if you meet the journalist’s requirements and answer everything they ask for.
- Wait. Don’t expect backlinks to roll in with your first reply to a HARO request itself.


## 3. Use Quora to build links

<a href="https://www.quora.com/" target="blank">Quora</a> is a Q&A platform where people connect to ask and answer questions in areas where they’re experts in.
 
But here’s the catch – Quora doesn’t offer do-follow links. Instead, it offers no-follow links which don’t pass on link juice..
 
So why should you chase Quora in the first place? Because you need no-follow links too. A link portfolio that includes no follow links looks more natural. Moreover, your answers on Quora increase your content’s exposure to niche-specific audiences, who can link back to you. That’s mission accomplished, except, indirectly.
 
So, what’s wrong, what’s right here?
 
❌ __The wrong way__: Responding to whatever questions you see in your stream with half-baked answers immediately linking to your content.
 
✔ __The right way__: Engaging with community members by adding to others’ answers and pairing this with answering relevant questions that link to your page.

![Imran Esmail on Quora](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6dnbvqp1XVxxqUF8mC18XE/75b68dce292799ea969bf46010922571/Imran_Esmail_on_Quora.png)
<center><a href="https://www.quora.com/profile/Imran-Esmail" target="blank">Imran Esmail on Quora</a></center>

### How to build backlinks with Quora?

You need to start with engaging on the platform just like you do on social media. Read responses and add your take to them. Eventually, start answering questions yourself. But the trick is in making your answer valuable enough for the viewer to click your link.
 
You have two options for this:
 
One, write a solid introduction that hooks the reader and gets him to click on your link.
Two, share pointers answering the question, but tell readers to get more details on your page.
 
### Which questions should you answer on Quora?

Answer questions with good followers. This shows several people are interested in the answer. You’ll also need to pick a question with as few answers as possible, so your response has a better chance of getting the exposure it deserves. Lastly, answer recently asked questions. Check the last asked date to learn how fresh or stale a question is.

### Best practices:

- Use a friendly, professional tone.
- Add visuals that supplement your answer. Not many people include visuals so it’s a good way to standout in the crowd.
- Don’t just write an answer, humanize it – share your experience, what you’ve learned, and so on.


## 4. Build backlinks on social media

Sure social media is a good place to promote your content, but it’s an equally good place for building backlinks. You only need to be good at making useful connections and become part of active communities.
 
Check out the wrong and right ways in this case:
 
❌ __The wrong way__: Spamming social media, for instance, joining Facebook groups and sharing your links there without context.
 
✔ __The right way__: Engaging with people, offering value, making meaningful connections, and building links when the opportunity arises.


### How to build backlinks on social?

Ready to get backlinks from social media? Let’s dig into networks individually. But remember, it all starts with engagement.
 
<a href="https://twitter.com/boydnorwood/status/1222956358535761920?s=20" target="blank">https://twitter.com/boydnorwood/status/1222956358535761920?s=20</a>
 
<h4>Facebook</h4>
Join niche-relevant groups. Certain groups offer PR opportunities. Others, put up collaboration threads where you can connect with people to guest post or exchange links. Still others, ask for contributions like in the example below:

![Contribution links Via Quuu Promote Facebook Group](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3LVVzf6HdKYZcj78mfb7tM/898231a8c412e3048cfd0ad8274f198d/Contribution_links_Via_Quuu_Promote_Facebook_Group.png)
<center><a href="https://www.facebook.com/quuuco/" target="blank">Via Quuu Promote Facebook Group</a></center>

<p><h4>Twitter</h4>
Connect with journalists and writers who are always on the lookout for contributors. Looking for a shortcut? Track the #journorequest #PRrequest #bloggerrequest hashtags. These are dedicated to connecting experts and writers.
 
<a href="https://twitter.com/inkandcopy/status/1207406658344882176" target="blank">https://twitter.com/inkandcopy/status/1207406658344882176</a>
 
<h4>Pinterest</h4>
<a href="https://venngage.com/blog/visual-content-marketing-statistics/" target="blank">42% of marketers</a> confirm infographics and original graphics are the most engaging. Naturally, putting them on a visual platform like Pinterest opens doors for backlinks for these infographics and images.
 
What’s more, you can also get links if your visual content ends up in a “best from Pinterest” article such as “<a href="https://www.translationroyale.com/top-content-marketing-pinterest-accounts/" target="blank">8 pinterest accounts every content marketer should follow</a>”.

### Best practices:

- Offer free value to establish yourself as a subject matter authority.
- Solve people’s problems by answering questions they have on social.
- Use hashtag tracking tools to keep tabs on important hashtags.


## 5. Get links by blog commenting

Although blog commenting became notorious some time back, Google’s former head of search spam, <a href="https://twitter.com/mattcutts" target="blank">Matt Cutts</a>, disclosed that even he built links with blog commenting in a video explaining the right way to do it:
 
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDRlVSWTRY&feature=youtu.be" target="blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNDRlVSWTRY&feature=youtu.be</a>
 
Here’s a summary of the wrong and right way of blog commenting:
 
❌ __The wrong way__: Leaving a large number of meaningless comments with your link.
 
✔ __The right way__: Making comments that add value on relevant sites with high engagement.



### How to build backlinks by blog commenting?
 
The first rule is to always comment on niche-relevant sites. And the second is to read the post before commenting. Take a point and expand on it by adding your experience to it.
 
Make sure your <a href="https://smartblogger.com/blog-comments/" target="blank">comment is offering value</a> and isn’t a mere “great post” or “excellent article.” See that you comment on an engaged, high-DA site where comments are common. For instance, this site:

![Example of blog with regular commenters](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/zlzWoBXwf2VMGWPXSBoqZ/301bfb4bde37d26c3ad0ed6ff71753b3/Example_of_blog_with_regular_commenters.png)

<center><a href="https://dispatch.m.io/" target="blank">source</a></center>

<p>
Don’t overdo comments though. If all the links to your site come from comments without any natural links, Google will sniff that as a link scheme.
 
Anna Crowe, Content Strategy Lead at Leadfeeder <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-building-guide/blog-comments/" target="blank">shares a solution</a> to this end, “If you take the time to comment on two blog posts per day, with a backlink back to your website (even if the links are nofollowed), the end result will be roughly 60 backlinks per month, or 720 per year.”

### Best practices:
 
Make highly relevant comments on posts that are relevant to your niche.
Comment with your profile and image rather than a keyword or anchor text.
Avoid sending spam signals to Google by limiting the number of blog comments.

## Ready to make some backlinks?
  
Off-page SEO takes time, but reaps sweet fruit. Get to building links with these five proven strategies. But remember – in all instances, building relationships and basing those relationships on offering free value takes home the trophy. Now, go crush those off-site SEO goals. 🙌




5 Proven Off-page SEO Tactics to Help You Build Powerful Links in No Time

# A New Player Enters the Game: 

<a href=https://explodingtopics.com/topic/rankmath/?period=24 target=”_blank”>
![Rank Math SEO Plugin](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7qgaCHTnuIY4uiXlVadRIo/dd01975a210ed8b37955da0110e75274/rank_math.jpg)
      </a>

## 9 Features to Love About the Rank Math SEO Plugin

Released in November 2018, the Rank Math wordpress SEO plugin is fast becoming the favorite among SEOs. It was created by Suraj Vibhute and Bhanu Ahluwalia, who developed the plugin for their personal websites because they weren’t getting everything they needed from any of the SEO plugins for wordpess that were already available. 

The best part about this new plugin is that it does everything that Yoast Pro, Yoast Local, and WooCommerce does but for free. There is no pro version of the plugin and though one may be available in the future, the developers have promised that the current free version will continue to include all of the features it does now. Vibhute and Ahluwalia have offered this powerful free SEO tool as a way to compete with the heavyweight titleholder, Yoast SEO, which boasts more than five million active installations -- and it’s working. As of January 2020, Rank Math SEO has 100,000+ installs and counting. 

SEOs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzN1qMagTEw" target="blank">Matthew Woodward</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/rankmathseo/status/1138288141947695104" target="blank">Cyrus Shepard</a> are singing its praises for being faster, easier, and more intuitive than Yoast. It’s also 66% lighter than Yoast, which means it’s more efficient with fewer PHP requests. When you’re ready to convert, Rank Math SEO will walk you through an easy to follow setup wizard and will import existing data from your site’s current SEO plugin before deactivating it. 

![Rank math vs yaost overview](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1eKQlKi1k3EUdmHkvikHOK/1f32cfd67486a05c90391092d3b15a4e/Yoast-SEO-Rank-Math-Comparison.jpg)

#### Key features that set it apart from other plugins:

__Better Rich Snippets & Schema Markup Support__
Rank Math SEO plugin allows users to easily add the right metadata for Schema markup so that search engine bots can get an accurate read of the content. It allows you to choose the Rich Snippet Type, such as article, recipe, product, service, etc., and then add relevant information such as title, description, and post robots meta. Users can also select a default category and taxonomies. The layout is very straightforward and examples are provided to help with clarity.

![Rank Math Rich Snippet Image](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4vffOaZg1Tb9D7IB3RLkK6/8e28d652c4433e923a9e127f3aa0d4b8/09-Rank-Math-Rich-Snippet-Support.jpg)


__404 Error Monitor & Broken Link Checker__
Rank Math SEO has a 404 checker with two modes, simple and advanced. The simple mode captures wordpress 404 error while the advanced mode tracks the error page, the referring page, the time of the error, and the user agent. Yoast doesn’t offer 404 support with the current free version of their plugin. Rank Math allows you to sort and redirect or fix the errors.

![404 Error Monitor and Broken Link Checker Image](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2OHfWy9fPmVowJ2g0h6gG3/a250b0374d5c7f64e6da1136295a49f4/404_Detection_Rank_Math_SEO.PNG)

![Rank Math SEO 404 Monitor](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5Ctsxc6eS4P3bKCIk6I71u/6a1a8b940a207b4a2c1eeac5a954aa46/all-options-in-the-404-monitor.jpg)
__Redirections__
Users can set up custom 302 , 301 , 307, 410, or 451 redirections and create automatic behaviors like a default 404 redirect to the Homepage. The plugin also allows for choice of redirection type, like a 301 redirect (permanent) or 302 redirect (temporary). 

![Rank Math SEO Plugin Redirections](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4tyOpfUc2NEvBFldZCJnvE/701a768f119b6cccf27928542c4d393f/Rank_Math_SEO_Plugin_Redirections_Screen.PNG)

__1-Click SEO Audit__
Accessed from the the SEO Analysis menu, it provides a fast and comprehensive analysis and tells you how to fix the issues. 

![Rank Math SEO Site-Wide Analysis](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4TNz4bVD31VKgVQ2uTiPjX/816ed61a8c379fb9616a69bf173d2e2a/Rank_Math_SEO_Plugin_Site-Wide_Analysis.PNG)

__Robots.txt Editing__

Rank Math SEO allows you to edit the virtual wordpress robots.txt file. It's automatically added to help a site index better.

![Rank Math SEO Robots Edit](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4RoeFlurE95n1sCH9rwZg9/e8fb2a1f95d40908c0bb28d0d7d0c7c2/Robots_Editing.png)

__Automatic SEO image optimizer__
Rank Math SEO allows users to choose whether to automatically add missing image alt text and missing TITLE attributes. If a screen reader is used, the site visitors may experience accessibility issues, but it’s ideal for when a post has only one image. Though WordPress does add an image name by default, this feature gives people the option to add title attributes for all images without a title.   

![Rank Math SEO Images](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/66ZCqhtBOgddNlncR8bQcQ/56bb63f1a9674b5cb568f2c7e19f120f/general-settings-images-corrected.png)

__Google Keyword Suggestions, Keyword Integration, and Click-Through Rank Tracking__
With Rank Math, you can choose up to five focus keywords for each post and rank multiple keywords. It tracks how they are ranking in SERPs. The plugin also integrates Google keyword suggestions and provides rank tracking info within the Google Search Console in the WordPress admin dashboard. 

![Rank Math SEO Rank and CTR Tracking](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/1bFlDqgwF781dLc7tU1yNi/81bd23133604da9a0a987d38271136d4/Rank_Math_SEO_CTR_Tracking.PNG)

Though the keyword tracker is still in beta, when its launched, it will integrate with the Google Trends Tool to help users check keyword search trends. Currently, Rank Math provides an overview and detailed information about keyword search analytics including clicks, impressions, and click-through-rates for your site’s top-performing keywords. The Search Analytics tab in the Search Console provides an overview of data sets, search analytics for keywords, sitemaps, crawl errors, and the keyword tracker. 

![Rank Math SEO Keyword Search Analytics](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/GOUz68ZWsevKICAqKHkJM/ee08b912008f49ff0d0743c46448c946/Rank-Math-Search-Console-Full.jpg)

Shameless plug: While Rank Math SEO lets you track hundreds of keywords, if you want to track tens of thousands of phrases, you should start a [free trial with Nozzle](https://nozzle.io/trial). 

__WordPress Breadcrumbs__
If your WordPress theme doesn’t already include Breadcrumbs, this tool is very helpful not only for making your site easily navigable, but also for helping search engine bots read your content classifications. Once you’ve enabled the Breadcrumbs function, you can dial in the settings, like separator characters and homepage links. 

![Rank Math SEO Breadcrumbs](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6kh7jWtQRNCAyXQqL5FF9S/2d8daf8df7ed8981971e8fcee8be44ae/Rank_Math_SEO_Breadcrumbs.PNG)

So far, Rank Math is a free seo plugin for wordpress that not only passes muster but crushes Yoast SEO plugin in offerings and performance and it does so at the very good price of free. Rank Math SEO provides features that even Yoast SEO premium plan does not. This wordpress seo plugin also makes website data easily digestible and more accessible to amateurs and pros alike.  



Rank Math SEO Featured Image

The Rank Math SEO plugin for WordPress offers the same functionality of Yoast Pro, Yoast Local, and WooCommerce for FREE.

9 Features to Love About the Rank Math SEO Plugin

# <center>Why Use YouTube?</center>

Need help deciding if YouTube is right for your business? 

In short, it is. 

But if you're the kind that likes to have a list of reasons before taking action, then I just so happen to have a list of why your business should be using YouTube as part of your marketing mix.

## Audience Size

YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world, second only to Google. Each day there are well over a billion searches performed on this video platform. There's a strong likelihood that your ideal customers are part of those.

## Double Rankings

YouTube videos can __rank in Google__ as well. So, plan it right and you can get rankings in both YouTube AND Google, capturing views and interested search traffic from both sources.

## YouTube Videos Rank Better

YouTube is owned by Google. Perhaps that is why over __80% of the videos__ that rank in the top ten for video-related searches in Google __are from YouTube__, as opposed to other video platforms, embeds on websites or natively hosted video.

## Qualified Leads

When visiting your site from your YouTube videos, people are much __more qualified__ as a lead or potential buyer because they have already decided they like what you do by watching your video(s).

So, it's decided then? You're going to stake your claim (nod to YouTube great <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZbvKhLl-I7UomMugaO24fw" target="blank">Brian G. Johnson</a>) on YouTube and begin attracting your ideal customer via YouTube?

Great!

Then how do you begin?

Start by familiarizing yourself with the following best practices checklist. It will put you in the right frame of mind to research, create & promote solid videos that actually reach your target viewer.

# <center>YouTube Upload Checklist</center>

## Create an Engaging Video

I don't claim to know what's most engaging to your business's audience, but here are 9 hot tips from my buddy Brian G Johnson on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovMrx68H5dY" target="blank">creating a winning YouTube video structure</a> that are guaranteed to tempt YouTube's algorithms to put you in front of more viewers.

### 1. Choose KWs that Show Specific Intent

The more you understand what a viewer wants, the more likely you'll create a video that keeps them engaged for the duration of the video. Ex: Instead of DIY Halloween Costume, target DIY Pirate Costume for Boys.

### 2. Hook the Viewer with the Promise

You HAVE to start your video with what the viewer wants if you want to keep them watching. Your video may be about YouTube Video Tags, but what those viewers really want is more views, so "You can absolutely get more views by using the right YouTube Tags on your videos." Start with what they're going to get out of your video. [15 sec max]

### 3. Branded Channel Intro
People don't care about your channel intro, so lead off with the hook and then roll your intro. [5 sec max]. Having your value proposition (if short) here too makes lots of sense. Brian Dean does a great job of this <a href="https://youtu.be/2bMbdWn1x-U?t=29" target="blank">here</a>.

### 4. Value Proposition w/ Subscribe Invite

Replace the underlined text in the following sentence with the answer to the question, *"What makes your channel awesome? If you're new here, <u>get more leads for your business for free</u> by clicking subscribe and then the bell icon and you won't miss anything."* Keep it short and to the point about why people should subscribe. This CTA simply plants the seed for later subscribe invitations and attaches it to the benefit of doing so.

### 5. Stimulating Video Delivery

Structure your video with bullet points or steps to keep people moving along and continuing watching. You can also encourage retention by saying things like "upcoming step that will help you get more subscribers," and "glad you made it this far by step 8 is a BIG DEAL," or by throwing in cultural references that you know your target audience will appreciate. Add stats if you have them to prove your points.

### 6. Subscriber Lower Third

Between 90 seconds to 2 minutes prompt the viewer again to subscribe.

### 7. Make it Easy to Comment

Embrace the community element of YouTube by asking simple questions that viewers can easily answer. Ex: *Do you like \_\_\_\_ or \_\_\_\_? Let me know in the comments below.* It's also like an ice breaker for new viewers to get them to engage.

### 8. End with Value Prop

DO NOT end with words like *Thanks for watching* or *To recap*. This will trigger people to leave your video, because you're telling them it's over. Instead, restate your initial value proposition and end with the call to subscribe (and click on the bell icon). Leave with the why. You can give them a little more at this point about how you plan on delivering on your value prop.

### 9. Ritual View Handoff

Tell the viewers what to watch next (another video of yours). Like the hook you started with above, state the benefit they'll get when watching the video you're inviting them to watch. Put that video with your verbal CTA in an end card so following through on your invite is simple and seamless. The next video should also somehow connect to the value the viewer is trying to get from the current video they just watched.

## Create a Clickable Title

If your video's worth watching, then it's worth spending a good amount of time in keyword/title research to entice the click with an intriguing title. Your first goal in YouTube is to get the click and this in part happens with a good title. 

__Keyword Research:__ Use keywords that your audience is searching for and make sure your video delivers on the promise of that keyword.  The most basic way to check this is typing your keyword into the YouTube search bar. If it auto populates in the dropdown, people are searching for it. You can also try using a tool like <a href="https://keywordtool.io/youtube" target="blank">KeywordTool.io</a> or <a href="https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer" target="blank">Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer</a>.

If the stakes are high and you're able, split test your video titles with Ads and use the one that gets the most clicks.

__Keyword Placement:__ Keywords used at the beginning of the title hold more weight than keywords at the end, so put your most important keywords up front.

## Make Safe, Clickable Thumbnails

__Safe:__ Upload image to <a href="https://cloud.google.com/vision/" target="blank">Google Cloud Vision</a> and check for Safe Search. If your video enters restricted mode, you WILL lose almost all your traffic. 

__Correct Size:__ Ensure that your thumbnail shows up crisp and clear on all devices by publishing a high resolution version. Google recommends your image to be 1280 x 720 pixels, with a minimum width of 640 pixels. A ratio of 16:9 is ideal as it's used most often in YouTube players and previews.

__Showcase People:__ Having a person in the thumbnail has been shown to get more clicks, specifically when you can see the whites of their eyes and also when they are displaying an emotion.

__Channel Branding:__ Tie all your thumbnails together with the same branding style. Ideally all thumbnails will include your brand colors, possibly your logo as well as other easily identifiable icons/imagery of your brand.

__Short Text:__ Shortening the benefit of your video into punchy text to overlay on the thumbnail can give your video the added boost it needs to stand out in search results and garner the click.

__Examples:__ 

- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/backlinko" target="blank">Brian Dean</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCytOqtKYpACcWMD14UjhSeQ/videos?shelf_id=6&view=0&sort=dd" target="blank">Income School</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZbvKhLl-I7UomMugaO24fw" target="blank">Brian G. Johnson</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/BYUTelevision" target="blank">Studio C</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvxDZJe1lbaZVnQrpwQCmpKqJWbTr4UpH" target="blank">Video Creators</a>

## Strategically Add Tags

Tags help YouTube determine how relevant your video is for any given search query as well as how relevant it is to other videos. 

The goal with your tag strategy is to own more of the suggested video spots on each of your videos. If you create videos with good viewer retention then the following tag strategy can help you show up more in search *and* own those coveted suggested video spots.

__Tag Research:__ You want to use tags that are keywords that both directly represent what your video is about *and* that people are looking for. While looking at what other creators are using in their top performing videos is best practice, simply copying those tags won't do the trick here. Make sure to research all potential tags.

__Three Sets:__ For each video you want to have three sets of tags: 

  1. One set that you use for all your videos. These should be a subset of your channel tags and represent what all your videos are about. You can set these in your upload defaults.
  2. One set that you use for all videos in the same category
  3. One set that are unique to each video

## Add a Keyword Rich Description

After your Thumbnail & Title, your video's description is the next most important factor in increasing your click through rate from YouTube search. 

__Increase CTR:__ Make sure that the first part, specifically the first 2 lines or roughly 100 characters, is enticing and shares why someone should watch your video over the others. 

__Include Keywords:__ Work keywords used in the video into a cohesive description that entices viewers to watch. Think of this as a mini blog post. 300 words is usually sufficient, but you can add more if you're on a roll. Test it out!

__Invite to Subscribe:__ Add a link for viewers to subscribe. Add "?sub_confirmation=1" to the end of your channel URL for higher subscribe conversions. You could even use a url shortener to track clicks on these links. 

__Display CTAs:__ Whether or not your video has a verbal CTA to opt-in for some sort of bonus or value add, make sure to do it here. Instead of asking them to "subscribe to our newsletter" simply tell them to go to the link for their free gift. Make the call to action enticing, stating the benefit to the viewer. Sell the free.

__Pitch Relevant videos:__ If you have other videos that could help someone learn more about what you just presented in the video, add a link to them here. You get bonus points for adding links to the videos inside a playlist.

__List Your Social Accounts:__ You may consider listing other ways for people to connect with your business. Some people may just be visiting YouTube while Instagram is their platform of choice. You can let them know you're there. Keep in mind however that YouTube prizes keeping people on YouTube as much as possible, so you'll have to weigh the importance of getting another Facebook like or having better YouTube rankings.

__Include Video Assets:__ If you mention any resources or data in the video, link to them in the description.

__Credit Other Channels:__ If you collaborated with other video creators, make sure to link over to their channels.

__Set Upload Defaults:__ You can add the basics that you'll use in each video to your upload defaults so that's set for all future videos.

## Add an End Screen

Those who stick around to the end of your video are highly interested (assuming they didn't push play and then head to the restroom), so take advantage of that with a custom endscreen and clear CTAs.

__Make it Custom:__ While it *is* possible to add an endscreen to existing videos, you'll want to design your video with these in mind.

__Use Verbal CTAs:__ While your endscreens can simply display the CTAs listed above, creating a custom endscreen where you directly invite viewers to take action increases those who will.

__Link to Videos:__ Directing the viewer to a related video of yours builds their affinity with your channel and they'll be more likely to see your videos suggested to them in the future. YouTube prizes watch time over just about any other stat. 

When your video keeps viewers watching longer and then keeps them on YouTube after it's over, that video will get promoted more by YouTube. This means higher rankings in YouTube search, better placement in suggested videos and more visibility in browse. 

*Pro Tip: Link to your own video playlist on your endscreen and all the next up videos will be your own.*

__Invite to Subscribe:__ Add a subscribe button (at the very least) on your endscreen to increase those who will be more likely to be alerted to new videos. Subscribers will often have higher retention rates on your videos and be more inclined to interact with them by liking, commenting and sharing (all signals to YouTube that they should show it to more people). 

Additionally, be sure to visually and/or verbally ask viewers to "click the bell" to be notified of when you post new videos.

__Offsite CTAs:__ For most videos the goal should be to keep people watching, but don't be afraid to invite your watchers to go to your site to see more information in an associated blog post, download a free report or tool, or even to signup for a free account to try your services. 

If you're creating solid videos that inform and entertain your audience, these kinds of CTA should feel natural and be welcomed. 

__Good End Screen Examples:__ 

- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io4ugroDedo&feature=youtu.be&t=415" target="blank">Ahrefs</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KmXPcSxz2g&feature=youtu.be&t=298" target="blank">Studio C</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_838Dk966Y&feature=youtu.be&t=785" target="blank">Brian Dean</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvmzDKXUfCA&feature=youtu.be&t=442" target="blank">The Slanted Lens</a>
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F19G1oe4T-w&feature=youtu.be&t=456" target="blank">Derral Eves</a>

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64QbHfWh-EM" target="blank">How to make an end screen</a> (template included)

## Upload Accurate Closed Captions

Captions are how YouTube can tell the actual content of a video. Unfortunately YouTube's auto captions aren't so accurate. So be sure to take the time to fix the auto captions or upload your own. If you need help, here's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfJthDvcZ08" target="blank">a video to show you how</a>.

## Add Info Cards

Add Info Cards in order to provide relevant external information to your video - a related video of yours or your website, etc. Think of it as linking in a blog post to an article that goes more in depth on the topic you're mentioning. It's even best practice to call out this resource in the video. 

## <center>Promote! Promote! Promote!</center>

If a video is worth creating, it's worth promoting. Some spend double the amount of time promoting a video as they do creating it. 

As soon as you publish, be ready to drive as much traffic to the video as possible. During a video's initial 24 hours YouTube is taking notes on it's performance. If it does well, YouTube will begin recommending it more through their search & discovery system.

Consider each of the following ways to get your video in front of more people and add ways of your own to build your own promotion schedule for each video you publish. Not all of these tactics will apply for every video, but use what works.

- Send email to your subscribers
- Add to relevant Playlists 
- Revisit older videos and add as an end card where appropriate
- Add to YouTube descriptions of relevant videos
- Direct message or email leaders in the industry
- Paid promotion
- Share in Facebook, LinkedIn groups
- Post in relevant Forums
- Pin to relevant Pinterest group boards you're a part of
- Add to Featured Content widget
- Reach out to influencers to promote
- If this video was a collaboration, alert those involved
- Leave comments (and links) on other people's videos
- Promote on social media accounts
- Build out several social posts targeting different benefits of the video and share over the next week
- Create a dedicated post/page on own website and embed
- Submit to relevant sub Reddits 
- Contact 3rd party websites to embed
- Answer relevant questions on Quora with an embed/link to your video

  
*__If you're just beginning, you're bound to have questions after reading this. I'd be happy to answer those questions. Connect with me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmendenhall/" target="blank">LinkedIn</a> and let me know how I can help.__*

Now that you've learned about best practices on Youtube, how about learning ways to navigate more efficiently on Youtube using <a href="https://nozzle.io/blog/youtube-and-wistia-watching-hacks-keyboard-shortcuts-and-more/" target="blank">Youtube Hotkeys?</a> You're sure to learn hacks to improve your Youtube experience.

YouTube Best Practices for Beginners

Why your business should be using YouTube as part of your marketing mix.

I recently analyzed some of the links we acquired last year by responding to HARO requests. 

If you're unfamiliar with HARO, Benjamin Houy wrote a great write-up on <a href="https://growwithless.com/haro/" target='blank'>how to use HARO.</a>

I want to highlight the process of acquiring one specific link and look at the value of the link itself.

## The Process:

I received the HARO email containing the inquiry on April 29th, 2019 at 10:38 AM.

> "27) Summary: What's ONE important SEO metric all marketers should be tracking? (Besides Organic Traffic.)
> 
> Name: Databox Blog
Category: Business and Finance
> 
> Email: query-9a2j[@]helpareporter.net
> 
> Media Outlet: Databox Blog
> 
> Deadline: 11:00 AM EST - 30 April
> 
> Query:
> 
> We're looking to curate a list of important SEO metrics that
> marketers should track.
> 
> They could be the obvious ones. They could be more of the less
> common or unusual ones.
> 
> Either way, we want to provide marketers with a comprehensive
> list of important SEO metrics they should be tracking.
> 
> What's ONE important SEO metric all marketers should be
> tracking? Why? (Please share ONE metric, why it's important to
> track, as well as any insights around benchmarks marketers
> should aim for.) (Please share ONE metric, why it's important to
> track, as well as any insights around benchmarks marketers
> should aim for.)
> Requirements:
> 
> You have to be willing to answer additional multiple choice questions via email."


I responded with the following on April 29th, 2019 at 10:33 PM:

> "One important SEO metric to track is the click-through rate (CTR) of each landing page and how it fluctuates as you move up in rankings and as you tweak that page's title tag and meta description. Google Search Console tracks this for you automatically; you just need to pay attention to it. 
> 
> Given how simple it is to test title tag and meta description changes, it is wise to take the time to test many variations to find the best combination of highest ranking with highest CTR."

I got an email back on April 30th at 1:49 AM asking me to participate in an SEO tools survey:

> "Hey Boyd,
> 
> Just read through your HARO response. Good stuff. 
> 
> I'd like to include your response, as well as a link back to your website, in a report we're putting together. 
> 
> Before I do that, can I ask you to share what SEO tools you use? 
> 
> Can you tick all that apply via this link?
> (Just copy paste your input into the text box by the open-ended question)
> 
> Thank you"

I filled out the survey later that morning.

On May 8, 2019, the post went live here: <a href="https://databox.com/most-important-seo-kpis" target='blank'>https://databox.com/most-important-seo-kpis</a> and used only a portion of my quote (which is totally fine, I'm not complaining):

> "Given how simple it is to test title tag and meta description changes, it is wise to take the time to test many variations to find the best combination of highest ranking with highest CTR."

I got an email on May 9, 2019 at 1:54 PM announcing the use of my quote and the published article URL.

> "Hi Boyd,
> 
> Thank you for contributing to our greatest article on SEO KPIs so far!
> 
> With your help we compiled another insightful report:
> <a href="https://databox.com/most-important-seo-kpis" target='blank'>*The 49 SEO KPIs That Marketers Are Tracking Most*</a>
> 
> Along with your response, we included a backlink back to your website."

## The link value:

As of today (1/17/20), the Databox article has the following metrics:

- A Page Authority of 36 from Moz on a site with a Domain Authority of 53
- A URL Rating of 21 from Ahrefs on a site with a Domain Rating of 75
- 9 backlinks that I manually checked (3 are nofollowed)
- Those 9 backlinks have a total of 6 backlinks linking to them (4 are nofollowed)

![Link Trail from a Successful HARO Request](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2cDPJ6mdUIcXzRfQuAfKBc/caa873bd57d6b151d63813899b468427/Link_Trail_from_a_Successful_HARO_Request.png)

Update:

A more recent example from a post I was quoted in about <a href="https://flashpointmarketing.biz/get-featured-snippets/" target="blank">how to get featured snippets</a> on 2/11/30:

- The article has a Moz PA of 20 and a DA of 30 (ahrefs: UR-15 and DR-22)
- 7 backlinks point to this article as of 4/3/20
- Those 7 pages that link to the article have 17 total backlinks linking to them


## Proper Expectations from HARO Link Building:

Not all HARO links are created equal. Some are more valuable and some are less valuable but it can be a great use of time if done correctly.

Keep the following in mind:

- It can be time consuming to read through every HARO pitch, inside each of the three daily emails, looking for pitches that are relevant to you and your business.
- When you do send a response to a pitch, <a href="https://growwithless.com/haro/" target='blank'>"roughly 20% of pitches will get a reply and 10% will be used."</a>
- Most pitches have short deadlines so don't dawdle.
- HARO <a href="https://monitorbacklinks.com/blog/seo/haro-link-building" target='blank'>"[is not] a garden of roses" but is still good to include in your overall link and PR strategy</a>.
- But for others, <a href="https://www.contentfac.com/how-i-got-quoted-in-major-outlets-5-times-in-1-month-using-haro/" target='blank'>it's worked out tremendously</a>!




Link Trail from a Successful HARO Request

One example of a decent link from using HARO.

HARO Link Building Success Story

![wrap zone super mario brothers ](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7ztQtirsOqcXWBf6bJZf6G/f76c363efbadaf5e0daa2115771ffdbd/Super_Mario_Bros_1st_Warp_Zone.png)
Do you remember that feeling you had once you learned how to find the Warp Zone in Super Mario Brothers?

That knowledge gave you the option to skip ahead several Worlds to beat the game faster if desired. You didn't always use the info but, inside, you felt better knowing you had the option.

Well, I recently discovered some "Warp Zone" features on YouTube and other video platforms that have improved my viewing experiences immensely and I want to share them with you.

## Youtube Keyboard Shortcuts

Of the 37 YouTube shortcuts/hotkeys, I only knew of about 12 up until last week and I only used 2 of them regularly, the space bar and the esc key. 

### First One To Memorize
__? (SHIFT + /)__ -- Opens the keyboard shortcuts menu to help you remember all of them

Also, you can hover over a button and you can see the shortcut in parentheses.

![Hovering over buttons to see Youtube hotkeys shortcut in parentheses on YouTube](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3MavRN1ynltDSj50liTsBN/6056ecc3d4de9ef12dce6cf5c36ff023/Hovering_over_buttons_to_see_keyboard_shortcut_in_parentheses_on_YouTube.gif)

I discovered 29 shortcuts on my own by testing every key on the keyboard before I discovered the menu of shortcuts. Haha!

### Most Useful Shortcuts

__'Space Bar' or 'k'__ -- Toggle play/pause

__How to change youtube playback speed:__

__'\<' (SHIFT + ,)__ -- Decrease playback rate by 0.25 seconds
__'>' (SHIFT + .)__ -- Increase playback rate by 0.25 seconds

__The above two keyboard shortcuts are the most exciting features.__ No more clicking on the gear, then 'Playback speed', then the desired speed. Just use the keyboard shortcut and you're good.

(Scroll down to More Interesting Hacks section for more custom speed awesomeness.)

__How to fast forward and rewind using youtube hotkeys:__

__'j'__ -- Rewind 10 seconds
__'l'__ -- Fast forward 10 seconds
__'left arrow'__ -- Rewind 5 seconds
__'right arrow'__ -- Fast forward 5 seconds

One great use for the above four shortcuts is when a youtube creator records an ad in the middle of their actual video and you can just hit the right arrow several times to get past it and if you go a little too far, you simply hit the left arrow once or twice.

Note: The number of seconds that the previous four options will fast forward or rewind will be multiplied by the playback speed that you are on. So if you are on double speed, the 'j' key will rewind in 20 second intervals and if you are in 0.5 speed, the 'right arrow' key will fast forward in 2.5 second intervals.

__'m'__ -- mute/unmute
__'up arrow'__ -- Increase volume in 5% increments
__'down arrow'__ -- Decrease volume in 5% increments
__'c'__ -- Toggle captions ON/OFF

__'='__ -- Increase caption font size (YouTube's shortcut menu says the code for this is the '+' key but since you don't need to hold down shift, it's technically the '=' key. ;)
__'-'__ -- Decrease caption font size

You can see the font size increasing and decreasing in the following GIF: (I accidentally recorded it in double time speed. Oops!)
![decrease and increase captions with youtube keyboard shortcuts](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4SUQJcosQKGwBzxx1bLkks/398fd9f71004c0670e0a8ab7cc228e60/Closed_Captions_font_size_increasing_and_decreasing.gif)

__'t'__ -- Toggle theater mode
__'i'__ -- Toggle miniplayer mode (allows you to wander YouTube while video is playing
__'esc'__ -- Exits full screen, closes shortcuts window, closes miniplayer and does not take you back to video but leaves you on the page you were browsing in YouTube


### Most Interesting and Most Fun Shortcuts

Now lets have some fun! 

While a video is paused, you can use the following two shortcuts:

__' , '__ -- Moves to previous frame
__' . '__ -- Moves to next frame

There are 24 frames in a second so you'd have to press one of these keys 24 times in a row to watch one second of video time pass by in slow motion.

You can use this functionality for a few things:

__#1)__ Sometimes video creators throw in a quick flash of an image or word in just a few frames and so it shows up as just a blip when watching at normal speed. But now, you can easily pause right after it disappears and then hit the ',' key to go back to the exact frame when it shows up so you can read it.

![how to go frame by frame on Youtube](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6PqJYMPRJVQCbIuPLmi4Uw/be35344f49f354d8528c016c3fa785e0/Rewinding_Frame_by_Frame_to_See_Blip_on_Screen.gif)

__#2)__ You can slow things way down to really take in the amazingness of something. For example, the following dunk.
![frame by frame youtube view of Gerald Green's dunk](//downloads.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/358C6eJ8ACV310moEalD1R/321d122d6292dc6f98563113ecf042e6/frame_by_frame_view_of_Gerald_Green_s_dunk.gif)

![Finding moment when his head is at its peak Youtube frame by frame](//downloads.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3ISdBIosSqXIG1YL0tZ36H/f950a99a1569c4d44c238fb74fb80820/Finding_moment_when_his_head_is_at_its_peak.gif)

__#3)__ You can see all the images crammed into some hectic transition. Here is one example from the Imagine Dragons music video, "Believer".

This video shows the clip at normal speed which covers just over a second of time:
![imagine dragon believer normal speed youtube](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7Gks33awFmU5t8bihYAGq9/b2332c8f7ef337aa647c2e95062b9a5c/Normal_speed_of_quick_transition_in_Believer.gif)

This video shows the same one second of video but broken out frame by frame so you can see all the images:
![imagine dragon frame by frame YouTube](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/394jdUTubhMGpLWu3ljMeS/1f8a86650a44ae89afeffc115bf5804e/Frame_by_frame_view_of_quick_transition_in_Believer.gif)


### While in a Playlist

__'N' (SHIFT + n)__ -- Play next video in playlist (this will also play next video even when not in a playlist)
__'P' (SHIFT + p)__ -- Play previous video in playlist

So in the example in the image below, 'N' would take you to video #5 and 'P' would take you to video #3.
![play next or previous video in playlist with YouTube kyeboard shortcuts](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3pcSfVJr6KHpEUnJ2pOUbX/01277773af5e6cf574ef51ec92c63ffe/IgniteVisibility_Playlist_-_Learn_SEO_with_John_Lincoln.png)

## More Interesting Watching Features:

- You can scroll down with the mouse scroll wheel while in full screen mode to see the description and comments without exiting full screen mode.
- Play back speed can be customized to any speed at any .05 interval from .25 speed to 2 speed by clicking the settings gear, then 'Playback speed', then 'Custom'.
- Once you choose a custom speed, it will show up as an option in the 'Playback speed' menu above the 0.25 speed.
- While a video is playing from a playlist, you can click the back button in the browser, and the current video will go to miniplayer mode and continue playing (if the previous page is still in YouTube, course.)


## Wistia Player Keyboard Shortcuts
(<a href="https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday" target='blank'>Moz's Whiteboard Friday videos</a> for example)

__'m'__ - mute
__'f'__ - full screen on and off
__'left arrow'__ - skip back two seconds
__'right arrow'__ - skip forward two seconds

__When paused:__
__'left arrow'__ - skip back one frame
__'right arrow'__ - skip forward one frame


If you found these Youtube hotkeys and Wistia Watching Hacks, helpful, these other shortcuts could be beneficial for your viewing experience.
## For Netflix:
To control the volume when watching on a web browser you can:

Press “M” to mute 
Press the down arrow on your keyboard to decrease the volume
Press the up arrow on your keyboard to increase the volume

For navigation within Netflix:

To get full screen, press F. To be taken out of full screen press Esc.
PgUp will play a video and PgDn will pause.

To rewind and fast forward:
Pressing the left arrow will rewind 10 seconds, whereas the right arrow will fast forward 10 seconds.

On Mobile:

To rewind, double tap on the left side of the screen to rewind 10 seconds, or double tap on the right to fast forward ten seconds.

To zoom in, simply pinch the screen, and to zoom back out, pinch the screen again.

## Hulu Watching Hacks

Using your mobile device in order to fast forward double click on the right side of your video on your mobile device to fast forward approximately thirty seconds. To rewind, double click on the left side of your video on mobile to rewind approximately 10 seconds.

On a web browser:
To pause orplay the video press the spacebar.

To control the volume:

Left/Right Arrows- These both control the volume  if the volume button is selected. You can also use the up/down arrows to control volume as well.

However, left/right and up/down arrows can also be used to rewind or fast forward the video if the playback bar is selected.




Super Mario Bros 1st Warp Zone

YouTube and Wistia Watching Hacks: Keyboard Shortcuts and More

Youtube Keyboard Shortcuts - Learn Youtube Hotkeys - Youtube Shortcuts Controls

2020 has finally arrived and since hindsight is 20/20 lets take a look back with perfect vision (still totally subjective, I know) over the last decade and discover what the most impactful change was to the SEO industry.

First of all let me list several big changes that made an impact on me in my career:

- EMD update
- Panda updates
- Penguin updates
- Disavow tools created
- People Also Ask feature in SERPs
- Knowledge Graph - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQl6VGvX-c
- Mobilegeddon
- RankBrain
- Mobile-First indexing
- SSL became a ranking factor
- Pigeon update
- Pandas and penguins become animals that I have a love/hate relationship with now

Then I started wondering what were some of the big milestones hit or changes made by well known companies and communities in the SEO space. I discovered the following:
- <a href="https://www.bing.com/" target="blank">Bing</a> turned 10
- <a href="https://ahrefs.com/about" target="blank">ahrefs</a> was founded and became a powerhouse
- <a href="https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/our-story/" target="blank">Screaming Frog</a> was founded and is the go-to crawler for SEOs
- <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/" target="blank">The SEO subreddit</a> passed the 100k member mark
- <a href="https://moz.com/blog/new-domain-authority" target="blank">Moz</a> launched Domain Authority 2.0
- <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/1-year-100-updates-1-000-000-users-what-was-2016-like-for-semrush/" target="blank">SEMRush</a> reached 1,000,000 users in 2016 
- <a href="https://blog.majestic.com/index-updates/majestic-historic-index-update/" target="blank">Majestic</a> crawls over 7 billion URL's

Now to answer the main question, which change to the SEO industry had the biggest impact in the last decade?

Drumroll please...

Hands down, the winner is...__<a href="https://search.googleblog.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html" target="blank">The Penguin update of April 24th, 2012.</a>__

![Emperor Penguin with Crown](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/56hIArgwGTiF0VFVnle8J6/b70e4cbac6099ae74e087ac2427555ba/Emperor_Penguin_with_Crown.jpg)

## Why was the Penguin update the most impactful change of the 2010's?

It forever changed how all SEOs thought about and worked on link building. SEOs to this day have differing opinions on which types of links are acceptable but Penguin moved the bar along the acceptable spectrum for all of us.

It changed how we thought about anchor text and if, and how often, keywords should be used as the anchor text.

It brought about the disavow tools from Bing and Google. (Sidenote: <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-disavow-links-tool-15370.html" target="blank">Bing launched their disavow tool before Google.</a>)

Many blogging link networks were killed. I know some people still use them to this day but it's not even close to how it was before Penguin.

This was a time of massive SEO cleanup efforts and it scared some SEOs from doing any link building for years to come.

Penguin truly caused a huge paradigm shift about link building that you can only fully grasp if you built links before and after April 24th, 2012.

## What are your thoughts?

Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below.

Also, let me know which impactful changes you think I should add to the lists above in the comments section.

### Enjoy these articles as well:

- [How Google Engineers Decide What Changes to Make to the Algorithm](https://nozzle.io/blog/how-google-engineers-decide-what-changes-to-make-to-the-algorithm/)
- [Is SEO Dead?](https://nozzle.io/blog/is-seo-dead/)
- [Nozzle's Keyword Tracking Tool Features](https://nozzle.io/features)


Emperor Penguin with Crown

There have been many changes to the SEO industry in the last 10 years but there can only be one change that created the biggest impact.

The Most Impactful Change to the SEO Industry in the Last Decade

In 2018, Google launched 3,234 improvements to Search. That is an average of 8.86 changes a day. Yowza! Google engineers are busy.

For the curious, I've compiled some videos and quotes from Google engineers that explain very well how an update goes from new idea, to approved, to launched.

If you're short on time and just want a quick summary, watch Video 1 below. It's just under 4 minutes.

But for those of you who are SEO geeks like me and have more time, I present to you a few more videos. Below the videos, I have pulled out snippets from the videos and an article from Google, where I attempt to come up with a more in depth flow of the process behind how SERP and algorithm changes get approved at Google.
<br />

__Video 1: *How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J5RZOU6vK4Q" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 2: *SMX West 2016 - How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iJPu4vHETXw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 3: *The Evolution of Search*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mTBShTwCnD4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 4: *Search Quality Meeting: Spelling for Long Queries*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JtRJXnXgE-A" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## Goal
Video 3 at 00:08-00:26 —
> "Our goal is actually to make improvements to Search that just answer the user's information need. Get them to their answer faster and faster. So that there's almost a seamless connection between their thoughts and their information needs and the search results that they find."

## Ideas

Video 1 at 00:34-00:37 —
> "The first step in improving Google Search is coming up with an idea."

Video 1 at 00:43-00:50 —
> "Ranking engineers then come up with a hypothesis about what signal, what data, could we integrate into our algorithm."

Video 2 at 25:30-25:42 —
> "[Google has] a team of a few hundred software engineers. They are focused on [the] metrics and signals. They run lots and lots of experiments and they make a lot of changes." And they come up with a lot of ideas.

## Search Quality Tests

Video 1 at 00:50-00:58 —
> "We test all these reasonable ideas through rigorous scientific testing. The first is with raters."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "We work with external Search Quality Raters to measure the quality of search results on an ongoing basis. Raters assess how well a website gives people who click on it what they are looking for, and evaluate the quality of results based on the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the content."

Video 2 at 16:34-16:56 —
> "We published our human rater guidelines last year (in 2015). There are about 160 pages (168 pages in 2019) of great detail about how we think about what's good for users. If you're wondering why Google is doing something, often the answer is to make it look more like what the rater guidelines say.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[You can find the rater guidelines <a href="https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf" target=blank>here</a>.]

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 595,429 Search quality tests with raters (2018)

## Side-by-Side Experiments

![Panda Comparison Side by Side](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4G0YAbhna2iBZBTMACSLjG/02518f0e695bf8b85cf4420e0e6b21cb/Panda_Comparison_Side_by_Side.jpg)

Video 1 at 01:01-01:07 —
> "We [show] these raters side-by-side [experiments] for queries that the engineer's experiment might be affecting.

Rigorous Testing Article —
> In a side-by-side experiment, we show Raters two different sets of search results: one with the proposed change already implemented and one without.

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 44,155 Side-by-side experiments (2018)

## Live Traffic Experiments

Video 1 at 01:11-1:25 —
> "We also confirm these changes with live experiments on real users. And we do this in something that's called a Sandbox. We send a very small fraction of actual Google traffic to the Sandbox. We compute lots of different metrics."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "We enable the feature in question to just a small percentage of people, usually starting at 0.1%."

Video 2 at 12:48-13:26 —
> "We do A/B experiments on real traffic. And then we look for changes in click patterns. And I should just mention that we run a lot of experiments. It is very rare, if you do a search on Google and you're not in at least one experiment. Now not all of these are ranking experiments. [Famously](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html) Google tested the color blue that we use for links and other blue highlighting with 41 different blues and came to the conclusion what was the perfect blue."

Video 2 at 28:36-28:48 —
> "By and large, [Google engineers] try to move results with good human ratings and live experiment ratings up. And move results with bad ratings down."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 15,096 Live traffic experiments (2018)

## Launch Reports by Quantitative Analysts
Video 2 at 26:31-26:42 —
> "A launch report is written by a quantitative analyst who is basically a statistician and someone who's an expert at analyzing our experiments."

Video 1 at 01:34-01:41 —
> "For each project, it's usually one analyst assigned from the moment that we're talking to the engineers trying to learn about their change.

Video 1 at 01:51-01:58 —
> "Ultimately, the goal of the search eval analyst team is just to provide an informed, data-driven decision and present an unbiased view."

## Launch Reviews

Video 2 at 27:54-28:00 —
> He mentions a video Google created of one of their weekly Search Quality meetings. I'm pretty sure Video 4 above is the one he is referencing.

Video 4 in video description —
> "We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch."

Just look how many people are at that meeting. After looking at all the angles, I count at least 37 people crammed into that conference room but I think I'm missing a few more that are behind the cameras angle of vision. That is one expensive meeting!

Video 2 at 27:29-27:41 —
> "We try to debate ... is this good for the users, is this good for the system architecture, are we going to be able to keep improving the system after one of the these changes is made."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "Of the proposed changes this past year (2018), many never went live, because unless we can show a change actually makes things better for people, we don’t launch it."

## Launch

Video 1 at 2:03-2:10 —
> "If our scientific testing says this is a good idea for Google users, we will launch it on Google."

Video 5 at 0:31-0:48 —
> "We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."

Video 2 at 28:07-28:36 —
> "[Once] approved, getting into production can be an easy thing. Some teams will ship it the same week. Sometimes you have to rewrite your code to actually make it suitable for our production architecture. Making things fast enough, making things clean enough. That can take awhile. I've known it to take months. In the worst case I know about, it took just shy of two years between approval and actually launching."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 3,234 Launches (2018)

## Issues With The Process and How Google Engineers Fix It

Video 2 at 28:51-32:35 —
This is a great 4 minute segment showing two cases that illustrate where the raters and the metrics weren't cutting it and how the engineers fixed the problem.

Two kinds of problems at the core of everything engineers see:

- Systematically bad ratings
- Metrics don't capture things they care about

Video 2 at 32:28-32:35 —
> "[W]hen the metrics miss something, what ranking engineers need to do is fix the guidelines or develop new metrics."

## Summary

Video 3 at 04:24-04:40 —
> "Our goal is to make it so that the improvement we make is so much what you wanted and fits so cleanly into the flow of what you are looking for that you almost don't notice that it's happened. And looking back at it, it seems obvious that that's the way it should have always been in the first place."

Video 1 at 03:24-03:29 —
> "We've put a huge investment into understanding what works for users."

Video 1 at 03:36-03:41 —
> "I think we get excited when we feel like we've hit on an idea that really helps a lot of users."

As you can see, Google engineers are modern day superheroes. They work very hard to improve Search for all of us. And it's obviously working since Google has been the number one search engine for just under two decades now.

### Appendix A: Videos and Content Quoted
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPu4vHETXw
Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBShTwCnD4
Video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
Video 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_jm_isupFY
Rigorous Testing Article: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/

Other interesting and related articles you'll enjoy:

- [How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?](https://moz.com/blog/how-often-does-google-update-its-algorithm)
- [Complex Search-Results Pages Change Search Behavior: The Pinball Pattern](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pinball-pattern-search-behavior/)


Panda Comparison Side by Side

Google engineers have an important and difficult job. Learn how they work to improve the search algorithm.

How Google Engineers Decide What Changes to Make to the Algorithm

Is SEO dead trend on Google coinciding with major updates

Google Trends history for Is SEO Dead 2

A long and a short answer to the question, "Is SEO dead?"

Is SEO Dead?

We decided to join in on the fun of this time of year and make an SEO christmas song.

We came up with "The 12 Years of Google Updates" which is sung to the tune of the popular (and slightly annoying, I might add) 12 Days of Christmas.

Some Nozzlers were reluctant to participate but in the end everyone did great and we had a lot of fun putting it together. We did practice singing several times to work out some bugs but we decided to only do one video take to keep it a little bit more raw.

Enjoy!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XeIUKSgiZQU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## Lyrics:
For the last 12 years of updates, Google gave to us,
{2008} - Google Suggest 
{2009} - Rel Canonical Tags and Vince
{2010} - May Day and Caffeine Rollout
{2011} - Hordes and hordes of Pandas
{2012} - Penguins with more Pandas
{2013} - Hummingbird, Penguins and Pandas
{2014} - SSL is a ranking factor--and another Penguin and some Pandas
{2015} - Mobilegeddon and Rank Brain (with a sign adding "And the last of the Pandas")
{2016} - Penguin 4.0
{2017} - Fred
{2018} - A Broad Core Algo update (with a sign stating "boring")
{2019} - And a BERT... for everyone

I'm realizing now that the lyrics for 2018 would have been better as "Core Updates Unnamed" since there were a handful of them.

## Quick Algo History Lesson:
As all SEO's know, Google updates their algorithm hundreds, even thousands of times a year. In 2018, for example, Google announced that they made [launched 3,234 changes.](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/)

In May, 2019, Dr. Pete from Moz, wrote in depth about [how often Google updates its algorithm](https://moz.com/blog/how-often-does-google-update-its-algorithm). It's interesting to see the increase in changes over the last decade.

## Monitoring the SERPs
With the constant changes happening in the SERPs everyday you need [keyword rank tracker](https://nozzle.io/) to monitor your website rankings. [Sign up for a Nozzle trial today.](https://nozzle.io/trial)



The last 12 years of updates Christmas SEO Song Performers

An SEO version of The 12 Days of Christmas Song.

The 12 Years of Google Updates Christmas Song

TechSEO Boost was the place to be on the 4th and 5th of December if you love SEO. Let me tell you about it. But if you'd rather just watch it, you can find videos of each session [over here](https://www.catalystdigital.com/techseoboost-2019-session-recordings/).

![Meghan, Paul and Derek](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3nQiHc0loQie5nMx7BcVjQ/7d0f87389ea5b1f3f42c41a0cc0df088/Meghan__Paul_and_Derek.JPG)

## NHL Refs. Who us?

The fun began when we arrived late at night at our hotel located just across from the Boston Garden when a happy drunk man asked if we were NHL refs. The Boston Bruins had apparently just won their game 2-0 across the street and this stranger was convinced we looked just like NHL referees. It took us 10-15 minutes to convince him otherwise.

## Perfectly Organized Event
Anywho, we were happy to sponsor such a great conference. It's a super organized and well run conference. The two day event went very well and never felt rushed. There were great speakers and great food. We truly appreciate all the hard work by all the event coordinators. Meghan Lavin, Paul Shapiro and the rest of the [Catalyst Digital](https://www.catalystdigital.com/) team deserve all the credit.


## The Venue and Fun
The venue was perfect. It was held at the [City Winery](https://citywinery.com/boston/). 

![Welcom to City Winery Mat](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5q0DxDjsg6oSF3X93P2NgL/2f7bc7a68f69e66140231484ac324509/Welcom_to_City_Winery_Mat.JPG)
![TechSEO city winery venue](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2XpywlLX9umfWWhNCRgA1D/23fdbc7312177b4718f40bf62e39ab38/IMG_3476__1_.JPG) 

Here is a quick video showing the main areas where us SEO nerds hung out for two days.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w-Mn5wOzE6E" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


There were also some fun props to use for taking pictures with old and new friends alike.

![TechSEO Boost Props for photo shoots](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6K6qlMJJujz8pGLcjpn4ZA/28e2d47cdf16da8570556eb28debfeb4/TechSEO_Boost_Props_for_photo_shoots.JPG)


## The Knowledge Disbursed
TechSEO Boost is such a great SEO conference because there is only one track and it's all about technical SEO. There were sessions about a whole bunch of cool topics including:

  - Technical Link Building
  - Crawl Budget
  - Google Apps Script
  - NLP for SEO
  - Googlebot & Javascript
  - Crawling & Rendering
  - Faceted Nav
  - Pagination for SEO

Below is a quick twitter recap of my favorite moments and takeaways from the event:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nice! <a href="https://twitter.com/SeekerDigital?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SeekerDigital</a> is running titles of contacts that <a href="https://twitter.com/PitchboxApp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PitchboxApp</a> is pulling back through <a href="https://twitter.com/monkeylearn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@monkeylearn</a> and helping to automate the choosing of contacts to reach out to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a></p>&mdash; MyCool King (@iPullRank) <a href="https://twitter.com/iPullRank/status/1202709546625568769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

    
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/SimpsonGareth?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@simpsongareth</a> is automatically classifying email responses in <a href="https://twitter.com/monkeylearn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@monkeylearn</a> by intent, sentiment and urgency and custom tagging them in <a href="https://twitter.com/PitchboxApp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PitchboxApp</a> to help them quickly filter their emails so the team can focus emails that are worth responding to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a></p>&mdash; MyCool King (@iPullRank) <a href="https://twitter.com/iPullRank/status/1202710104690307076?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Am I the only one who looks at Googlers in the audience to see their reactions when a speaker says Google does X? In this case I am looking at <a href="https://twitter.com/g33konaut?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@g33konaut</a> during <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) <a href="https://twitter.com/rustybrick/status/1202633907981758466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;It&#39;s not that we have short attention spans, we are good at filter things that aren&#39;t important. It&#39;s about moderating cognitive load.&quot; -<a href="https://twitter.com/dawnieando?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dawnieando</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Jairus Mitchell (@AnInternetRobot) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnInternetRobot/status/1202632199759118337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Humans are informavores. -<a href="https://twitter.com/dawnieando?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dawnieando</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a> (Totally putting that one in my pocket for later.) <a href="https://t.co/Ksuv35m5Sj">pic.twitter.com/Ksuv35m5Sj</a></p>&mdash; Jessica Levenson (@guerillagirl) <a href="https://twitter.com/guerillagirl/status/1202632041810079746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BERT needs stop words because if you take out the stop words you remove a lot of contextual information -<a href="https://twitter.com/jroakes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jroakes</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Tyler Reardon (@TylerReardon) <a href="https://twitter.com/TylerReardon/status/1202602988969365504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If you think ‘Self, there is no way <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a> could be as good as the hype.’<br><br>Let me tell you, as a majorly curmudgeonly person, it’s better then that!<br><br>The presentations are top tier, but the networking is s-tier. Any question can get answered. Congrats &amp; thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/fighto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@fighto</a></p>&mdash; Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanLeibson/status/1202383839949152257?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;25% of queries can be answered with less than 1% of URL&#39;s.&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PolarBearby?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PolarBearby</a><br><br>This stat is both interesting and depressing at the same time.</p>&mdash; Boyd Norwood  (@boydnorwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/boydnorwood/status/1202339394725789697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techSEOBoost</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ClaudiaFaceoff?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ClaudiaFaceoff</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Derek_Perkins?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Derek_Perkins</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jsilton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jsilton</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jroakes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jroakes</a> /5<br><br>key takeaways /2: 🗝️<br> - build things, don&#39;t stress about your self image😅<br> - when you want to build something &gt;&gt; wait!🛑<br> - sometimes the best solution is simple 🔵<br> - understand the problem scope 🧮</p>&mdash; Alexis Sanders (@AlexisKSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexisKSanders/status/1202330714752126976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" tw-align-center><p lang="en" dir="ltr">SEO + Google Sheets + JavaScript + Free Code Examples<br><br>Endorsed 💯💯💯<br><br>Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/dsottimano?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dsottimano</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techSEOboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techSEOboost</a> <a href="https://t.co/E12gtvzVjY">https://t.co/E12gtvzVjY</a></p>&mdash; Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) <a href="https://twitter.com/CyrusShepard/status/1202457804226740224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The slides by [David Sottimano](https://davidsottimano.com/) that are mentioned in the last tweet and that were a huge favorite [can be found here.](https://www.slideshare.net/dsottimano/techseo-boost-apps-script-for-seos) 

Can't wait for next year's event!


Meghan, Paul and Derek

TechSEO Boost 2019 was full of great speakers, people and food.

We Sponsored TechSEO Boost and Loved Every Minute

On March 28, 2019, [Kevin Indig](https://twitter.com/Kevin_Indig), VP of SEO & Content at [G2.com](https://www.g2.com/), tweeted a question that sparked some good discussion on how to find the best SEO tools to use.

![How do you choose which SEO tool to use and buy from Kevin Indig's tweet](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7ocntSw64U4MFmrlZiRJ0g/b6813e89d8256486c9dbc856871ace98/How_do_you_choose_which_SEO_tool_to_use_and_buy_from_Kevin_Indig_s_tweet.JPG)

With 45 replies and dozens of sub replies, we were able to compile a great list from a host of digital marketers and SEOs. 

__These are the sources people said they use to find SEO tools:__
- Peers/Network/Co-workers/Mentors (17 mentions) 
- SEO articles, blog reviews and case studies mentioning SEO Tools (13 mentions)
- Twitter (9 mentions)
- Event/Conference speakers and sponsors (5 mentions)
- Google (4 mentions)
- Webinars, youtube videos (3 mentions)
- [@G2CrowdReviews](https://twitter.com/G2CrowdReviews) (2 mentions)
- [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/) (2 mentions)
- Linkedin
- [AppSumo](https://appsumo.com/)
- [Detailed.com](https://detailed.com/)
- [Ahrefs blog](https://ahrefs.com/blog/)
- [Backlinko blog](https://backlinko.com/blog)
- [Moz blog](https://moz.com/blog)
- Google trends
- Forums
- [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/)
- Magazine articles
- Reddit
- Github

__And then this is how they determine whether or not to use/buy the tool they find:__

[David Iwanow (@davidiwanow)](https://twitter.com/davidiwanow) suggested the following:
- CS support and post sales service
- Willingness to improve the product and fix issues/bugs (not shrug them off)
- Aggressively adding to and improving the product
- Proactive support

[Alexandra Tachalova (@AlexTachalova)](https://twitter.com/AlexTachalova) looks to the source:
- Try to understand the {SEO Tools} data source. There are a HUGE number of tools simply reselling someone else's data.

[Arnoldo Cabrera (@spanskseo)](https://twitter.com/spanskseo) looks for the following:
- It is scalable multilingual, geographies, data set
- provides api connectivity not only to your data but to your toolbox
- time saving, e.g. reporting time
- it has good support and product managers listen to the user feedback
- enable cross collaboration outside seo team

[Matt Ramage (@ramagetime)](https://twitter.com/ramagetime)
- Cost and ease of use. And of Course the data.

[Hardik Oza (@Ozaemotion)](https://twitter.com/Ozaemotion) lists the following:
- Freshness of data
- Quality of data rather than quantity
- Number of users
- Support

[Kelly Stanze (@KellyStanze)](https://twitter.com/KellyStanze) offers:
- Similar clientele and their happiness
- The tool features itself, and how data for those tools is supplied/supported
- Support - do we get an account team? What’s included?
- Pricing structure (don’t nickel and dime me)
- Innovation

[Seb Adler (@seoseb)](https://twitter.com/seoseb) advises:
- Does it state to be the all-in-one solution → skip it
- Do a trial, test it on a real life project, check against existing workflows. Does it automate workflows oder provide additional insights? If so:
- Does it integrate well in our data warehousing.

[Damien Anderson (@echwa)](https://twitter.com/echwa) suggests you:
- Understand and document needs
- Ask select vendors to demonstrate to needs

[Willow Colios (@willowcolios)](https://twitter.com/willowcolios) puts forward these thoughts:
- Can you align the tool with team processes and workflow?
- Is it usable for those that use it every day/week?
- Is it a good fit for the organisation
- Right spec at the right price?

[Adam J. Humphreys (@Making8)](https://twitter.com/Making8) offers some great insight:
- Features, UX (time savings, compatibly with other platforms, easily exported reports, actionable data summaries), price compared to others (this really matters as some are 2500 a month per client)
- The best way to engage with us is letting influencers in search test it then blog about it on a main journal.
- One can’t really win over our industry without letting us test it out and given our time constraints we often don’t get to use it right away so capping amount of uses vs time is also best."

__Biggest Takeaway:__
Use your network to find tools that they love and would recommend. If at all possible, sign up for a trial run to find out if it can solve your needs and will be compatible with your processes and workflows. 

It may be cool but is it the right fit?
<div style="width:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:90%;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/6klKY9ggNR744" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe></div>

Kevin Indig's tweet asking how do you choose which SEO tool to use/buy?

How do you choose which SEO tool to use and buy from Kevin Indig's tweet

Learn how dozens of marketers find SEO tools and decide which ones to use/buy.

Dozens of Marketers Share How They Choose Which SEO Tool to Use and Buy

A coworker stumbled upon a tweet yesterday from [@BrittanyZerr](https://twitter.com/BrittanyZerr) which showed a funny featured snippet mistake that the great Google machine made.

![Brittany Zerr Tweet Image of Featured Snippet Gone Wrong](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6VEnaQ54z7a4keKYC8XfTJ/9631d42512feed28e4a06a6fe4fe1f97/Brittany_Zerr_Tweet_Image_of_Featured_Snippet_Gone_Wrong.JPG)

If you search for "How to make the best risotto", you'll see the featured snippet from the image above at the top of the SERPs. But if you head on over to the [bonappetit article](https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/common-mistakes/article/how-to-make-the-best-risotto-and-avoid-these-8-common-mistakes), you'll see that it's subtitle is, "Here are the 8 most common mistakes people make when cooking the beloved Italian rice dish, so you can avoid them".

As you scroll down you'll see that each numbered item is crossed out as it is something you should avoid if you want to make the best risotto.

![crossed out numbered items as things to avoid-1](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2Mf4JaPOKI6I93bBFCCuBZ/d24eeb23210a4b51e1e254dceeb22843/crossed_out_numbered_items_as_things_to_avoid-1.JPG)

To be fair, it is a useful list of things that can help you make the best risotto if you avoid doing them but the featured snippet doesn't point out that fact which is where the failure lies. Obviously a human being wouldn't feautre a list of things to avoid doing and present them as things to do. Even the great Google machine can make mistakes and isn't quite human--yet. ;)

__What we can learn from this:__

Google likes to display numbered list snippets when the query implies the searcher is looking for a list of steps to accomplish a specific task.

So if you rank for queries that have this intent, make sure to list the tasks to be performed in an html numbered list.

Furthermore, add a bulleted list to any post or article where it makes sense. People love them because they are skimmable and Google loves them too. 

Your numbered or bulleted lists may not become the featured snippet for a query but they absolutely will not if they do not exist. As they say, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take--so take them!




Google featured snippet showing opposite results than what was intended.

Brittany Zerr Tweet Image of Featured Snippet Gone Wrong

Funny featured snippet mistake that Google made that implies the exact opposite of what was intended.