Ahrefs’ Digest #195: SEO reporting dashboards, the default blocklist, and more

Welcome to another edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.

Here’s our meme of the week:

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Quick SEO news

• A federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search.

• Google unveiled a new Search Console feature offering personalized SEO recommendation.

• Google’s John Mueller said a core update isn’t far away.

• Google may rely less on hreflang and shift to auto-language detection in the future.

• Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners.

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Best of the week

The Default Blocklist: Why Google Trusts Big Brands (But Not You): In the AI era, Google is turning to gatekeepers, trusted entities that can vouch for the credibility and authenticity of content. Faced with the same problem, individual searchers will too. Our job as marketers is to become one of these trusted gatekeepers of information.

SEO Reporting Dashboards (For 3 Different Types of Websites): Creating an SEO reporting dashboard can get complicated depending on whether you’re creating it for your own website, a small business, or an enterprise business. Chris shares how to tailor the dashboard for your particular audience.

New Research: So Far, AI is Not Disrupting Search or Making a Dent in Google: Look at this chart:



Keyword Relevance: What It Is, and How to Demonstrate It to Google: Google determines relevance in search results by understanding the intent behind user queries, considering exact and related keyword matches, and analyzing user engagement with pages. It also takes into account factors like internal links, localization, personalization, and whether the content is up-to-date.

The Pyramid Principle Explained for SEOs: One of the quickest wins to getting things done is to improve your communication skills. Use the Pyramid Principle: A technique business consultants use to communicate complex ideas to busy executives.



I Analyzed 52 SEO Manager Job Listings. Here’s What They Do and How You Can Become One: Everything you need to know on how to become an SEO manager, including salaries, responsibilities, skills, and how to progress.

How I Use "AI": Here’s how a research scientist at Google DeepMind uses LLM. See if there are any new things you can pick up.

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Latest from our podcast

This week’s podcast guest is Tomasz Niezgoda, co-founder and Head of Marketing of Surfer. Here’s what we covered:

• How to excel at product marketing

• Why Surfer does 1:1 onboarding calls (with every client)

• The benefit of educational videos

• Where you should be distributing your webinars

• What the brand got out of redesigning their homepage

• Should you create a brand bible? 

• Why SaaS certifications are valuable to clients and companies

• The secret to making your AI content actually good

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

See you next week,
Si Quan

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