Ahrefs - Ahrefs' Weekly Digest #63

Hey there,

Pages don’t just rank for one keyword. So, the search volume of an individual keyword is not always indicative of the total search traffic you’ll get if you rank for it.

We recently introduced a new metric called Traffic Potential. We pull this metric from the total amount of search traffic the top-ranking page gets (for that country).

This metric will help you make much better SEO decisions.

(For a deep discussion on search volume itself, I recommend reading the first article in this newsletter.)

✍️ New on our blog

Keyword Search Volume: 5 Things You Need to Know to Avoid SEO Mistakes - By Tim Soulo

As marketers and SEOs, we look at search volume frequently. But do you know everything about it?

For example, did you know that search volumes from Google Keyword Planner (GKP) aren’t very accurate? Since it comes directly from Google, SEOs tend to treat GKP as the best source of search volume data. But in our experiment, we discovered that the search volumes in GKP were only “roughly accurate” in just 45% of cases.

One reason for this is that GKP blends search queries with similar meanings together in one group without an option to see a distinct search volume for each individual query.

If you’re making decisions based on search volumes at face value… think again.

What is Growth Marketing? A Beginner’s Guide - By Si Quan Ong

When I first started out in digital marketing, growth hacking was all the rage. Every week, a new blog post about a seemingly incredible “growth hack” was published. There was no regard for a business’s context—each “hack” was promoted as if it was the silver bullet to any startup’s marketing problems.

Turns out: growth hacking wasn’t about the “hacks,” but rather the process that led to such discoveries. Even then, the process is difficult to implement. Hiring a dedicated growth team is expensive, data volume is insufficient for smaller companies, and gains are often minimal.

So, what should you do instead? Based on our experience at Ahrefs, I suggest an alternative idea you can implement.

SEO Analytics: The Simple Step-By-Step Guide - By Kayle Larkin

You can’t make good SEO decisions without knowing which of your SEO efforts are (and aren’t) contributing to your SEO goals. But to know which efforts are working, you need data. That means you need to be able to collect and analyze said data.

If your SEO analytics process has not been set up yet, follow this step-by-step guide to create it.

(Also, make sure you have your SEO goals established and know which metrics you should be measuring.)

📹 New on YouTube

How to Scale Content Creation - By Sam Oh

Everything gets harder as you scale. Content creation is no different. Many companies see quality degrade when they do this, and things often get expensive because they create inefficient systems.

We’re not spared from the process and difficulty either. Right now, this is what we’re focused on—scaling content creation. And in this video, Sam shares our current plan and process for doing this.

📚 What we’re reading

The 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors [Article]

The annual local search ranking factors report by Darren Shaw is out!

Seems like SEOs think that Google My Business (now Google Business Profile) is the most important ranking factor for local pack results, while on-page is the most important ranking factor for local organic results.

The 2021 Web Almanac [Article]

Now that December is here, it seems like all the annual reports are out. This time around, it’s the 2021 Web Almanac.

The Web Almanac is a comprehensive report on the state of the web. The 2021 edition comprises 24 chapters spanning aspects of page content, user experience, publishing, and distribution. (And our very own Patrick Stox contributed as well!)

If you’re only interested in the SEO chapter, go straight here.

How an Excel TikToker Manifested Her Way to Making Six Figures a Day [Article]

Amazing story of how Miss Excel, i.e., Kate Norton, turned her social media following into a successful six-figure business. Some woo-woo language is involved, but look past that and there’s plenty to learn.

Her sales funnel is simple: traffic -> sales page.

Of course, her entertaining personality and videos can’t be easily replicated, but other than that, there’s nothing magical about how she runs her business. Online creators shouldn’t overcomplicate things—simplicity works.

Till next time ;)

Cheers,

P.S. We’re experimenting with adding more content to our newsletter. What do you think? What should we improve? What should we add? Let me know by replying to this email.