Our wake-up call of the week:

🔝 SEO

The six biggest SEO challenges you’ll face in 2024: Google updates, AI Overviews, Google favoring big sites—SEOs have their work cut out this year and in the foreseeable future.

How recent Google updates punish good SEO: 50-site case study: Cyrus Shepard ran a study to see if recent Google updates are targeting common SEO practices. Here’s what he found:

• Losing sites were far likelier to have more anchor text variations per page than winning sites.
• Losing sites appeared to be updating their content more frequently (yes, more!) than winning sites
• On average, losing sites used more structured data than winning sites.

[Tweet] There is a new scam that will destroy your local rankings: If you’re a local business, you need to beware. Google lets anyone move your map pin, and if it’s moved, you will lose all your local rankings. (Guess what spammers are doing?) If you try to move it back, Google may suspend your Google Business Profile.

💻 Digital marketing

How to share your point of view (even if you’re afraid of being wrong): My favorite quote: “If you stay silent, you’ll never be noticed. You’ll never contribute the way you could if folks heard your voice. You’re actually robbing your organization of your insights.”

🎙 Ahrefs' Podcast

In this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Jon Yongfook Cockle, founder of Bannerbear and a well-known indie hacker. We discussed:

• What was it like to do the "12 Startups in 12 Months" challenge

• How Bannerbear was created and who designed it

• The pros and cons of building in public

• The framework Jon uses to make sure he's investing enough in marketing

• What his marketing strategy for Bannerbear looks like

• Why building free tools is a great growth lever

• Whether building a "ChatGPT wrapper" is a viable strategy

Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Till next time ;)
Cheers,