Hey there,

In this week’s edition:

• Mateusz shares the nine essential marketing analytics tools in his toolkit. 

• Patrick ran a study across 146,741 websites and nearly 9 billion total clicks. He reveals an interesting discovery about Google Search Console.

• Fraser writes about music marketing, a topic that’s off the beaten track for our blog. 

• I share the top Google searches in the U.S. and worldwide.

• Himanshu shows you how you can actually make money blogging. 

• Mateusz goes through an SEO process you can follow for your site. 

• Bill shares his SEO writing process (the one he uses for every article he writes).

• Nick shares 14 free tried-and-tested Chrome extensions.

• Sam shares simple SEO tips that even beginners can implement.

As always, click through to read each post. Or if you’re busy, read the tl;dr below each link.

New on the blog 🎉

9 Marketing Analytics Tools to Eliminate Guesswork

The nine essential marketing analytics tools are:

1. Google Analytics 4

2. Ahrefs

3. Google Search Console

4. Mixpanel

5. Hotjar

6. Google Optimize

7. SparkToro

8. Brand24

9. Klipfolio

Almost Half of GSC Clicks Go to Hidden Terms – A Study by Ahrefs

Patrick Stox

Most SEOs consider Google Search Console (GSC) their source of truth and trust the data to be accurate. But what if you learned that GSC doesn’t tell you all of the keywords you’re getting traffic from?

We ran a study across 146,741 websites and nearly 9 billion total clicks. Almost half of the clicks go to terms GSC doesn’t show you.

Music Marketing: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

Fraser McCulloch

Are you a musician or an aspiring one? Follow these seven steps to nail your music marketing.

1. Create or decide your product

2. Decide your pricing/income streams

3. Set a goal

4. Choose the places to distribute your product

5. Create promotional campaigns

6. Measure and review

7. Repeat

Top Google Searches (U.S. & Worldwide)

Si Quan Ong

What are the top Google searches in the U.S. and around the world? We pulled them from our database of 19.8 billion keywords.

Here’s a sample of the top 10 Google searches globally:

1. YouTube 

2. Facebook 

3. Google 

4. WhatsApp Web

5. Weather 

6. Gmail

7. Translate

8. Amazon

9. Google Translate

10. Instagram

How to Make Money Blogging: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

Himanshu Gupta

No matter what niche you’re in, focusing on driving traffic that you can monetize is critical. You can do this in four steps:

1. Choose a profitable niche 

2. Develop the right mindset 

3. Build credibility

4. Focus on building an email list 

When you have a decent amount of traffic, you can begin to consider monetization. Here are the six main ways to make money blogging:

1. Advertising

2. Affiliate marketing

3. Sponsorships

4. Selling digital products

5. Paid communities

6. Consulting and freelance writing

The SEO Process in a Nutshell (4 Steps)

Mateusz Makosiewicz

Here are the four steps of the SEO process:

SEO Writing: 7 Steps to Create Search-Optimized Content

Bill Widmer

SEO writing is the process of writing content with the intent of ranking on the first page of a search engine, e.g., Google. Once you know the keyword you want to target, follow these seven SEO writing steps:

1. Research the SERPs for your target keyword(s)

2. Create an article outline

3. Write your draft

4. Get feedback and revise the draft

5. Edit and format the draft into a proper article

6. Set your SEO elements and publish your post

7. Update internal links

14 Best Free Chrome Extensions for SEOs (Tried & Tested)

Nick Churick

The Chrome extensions are:

1. META SEO Inspector

2. Hreflang Tag Checker

3. TextOptimizer

4. Keyword Surfer

5. SEO Minion

6. SEO Search Simulator

7. Link Redirect Trace

8. Glimpse

9. View Rendered Source

10. Similarweb

11. Hunter

12. GMass

13. Data Scraper

14. Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar

New on YouTube 📺

SEO Tips That Work (Even for Beginners)

Sam Oh

Here are the SEO tips:

1. Fix broken backlinks on your site

2. License your images with Creative Commons

3. Strategically repurpose blog posts into videos

4. Find featured snippet opportunities

5. Add internal links to your important pages

What we’re reading 🤓

The Winner Doesn’t Take It All: ‘Information Gain’ and the New Future of SEO

Article

In April 2020, Google filed a patent for information gain, a measurement of the new information provided by a given article over and above the information present in other articles on the same topic.

The simplest way to measure information gain is to compare the content of a given article to those already ranking on the SERPs. But Google suggests taking into account the user’s search journey to work out what constitutes “new information” as well. 

In other words, information gain will be relative to the competing content but also to the articles each searcher has read.

The simplest interpretation of this patent is that an article that adds something new to the discussion may rank more highly than an article that repeats the same information as others.

How Google Creates Knowledge Panels

Article

Over the years, the presence of knowledge panels has been increasing in Google’s SERPs. Find out how Google creates a knowledge panel and Google determines the relevance of an entity to serve a knowledge panel.

Virtual Environment Optimization (VEO) Is Coming. Ready for It? 

Article

VEO is the task of working within a virtual environment and utilizing the resources available to best position the clients’ products and services within an alternative reality.

Common SEO Issues for News Publishing Websites

Twitter thread

Barry Adams performed over 50 SEO audits for news publishing websites, and these are the common issues he found. 


Till next time ;)
Cheers,