Ahrefs - Ahrefs' Weekly Digest #64

Hey there,

November was a productive month for us. We’ve released tons of new features this month, from the new Traffic potential metric to the ability to search for any HTML/text content in a crawl in Site Audit.

For a one-stop catch-up on everything we’ve released in November, read this blog post (or if you prefer a video, watch it here).

Now, onto the newsletter for the week, where Joshua was equally as productive:

✍️ New on our blog

Local SEO Solutions: 8 Tips to Boost Local Rankings by Joshua Hardwick

If you’ve never done it before, local SEO can be pretty daunting. After all, it seems like there’s an infinite number of things you could potentially do to try and boost your rankings. But which ones should you start with first? Which ones give the most bang for your buck?

If you just want a quick primer or a short list of things you should implement, follow the eight tactics in this guide. Then, whenever you’re ready (or have the time or resources), follow our start-to-finish local SEO guide.

If you’re too busy to implement anything else, then at least claim and optimize your Google Business Profile.

Keyword Cannibalization: What It (Really) Is & How to Fix It by Joshua Hardwick

Keyword cannibalization is bad. Right? It confuses search engines, leads them to rank the wrong page, and hurts your organic traffic.

Well… we disagree. We think that keyword cannibalization isn’t really a thing—at least not in the way most people understand it. In fact, trying to solve keyword cannibalization using the standard definition (i.e., you have two pages targeting the same keyword, and the page you prefer to rank is nowhere to be seen) is likely doing more harm than good.

So how can you find real keyword cannibalization issues? Joshua has you covered in the post. (He did a Twitter thread too. So if you’re interested in the tl;dr, go here.)

Redirects for SEO: A Simple (But Complete) Guide by Joshua Hardwick

Redirects can be confusing. But no more! Read this guide, and you’ll learn everything you need to know about redirects for SEO.

Also, make sure to do the basic redirects, such as redirecting all your pages on HTTP to HTTPS.

Do Links Still Matter for Rankings? A Study by Ahrefs by Patrick Stox

We did a crazy experiment:

We picked three articles and disavowed all links to these pages for a month.
Then, a month later, we removed them from the disavowed file.

Why did we do this? To test whether links still make an impact. After all, in recent years, more and more people seem to believe that links no longer matter. Hopefully, this experiment provides some enlightenment.

As for what the answer is—I shan’t spoil you. Read the article to find out. ;-)

📚 What we’re reading

Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It [Book]

I’ve recommended this book a number of times in my blog posts, but it’s worth recommending again.

Positioning is an important concept in marketing. But it can be tough to figure out how to actually create one for your business. At least until this book. April Dunford has created an easy-to-follow framework for anyone to successfully position their business and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

How Long to Keep 301 Redirects? [Video]

It’s funny, but this question was asked and answered by Google’s John Mueller. And the answer: at least one year.

Why There Are No VP SEO Jobs [Newsletter]

Tom Critchlow once helped a company design a team structure with a “VP SEO” at the top. But shortly after, the title changed to “VP Product.” Why?

Simple: A team designed to be responsible for the entire front-end experience of the site needs to eventually care about things that aren’t SEO.

That’s why there’s no VP SEO, just like how there’s no VP UX. To be in a senior role, you’re eventually responsible for more. To make the jump, you have to “leave the tribe.”

As Tom writes, “Holding too tightly to a label like SEO can hold you back. Tribalism limits your potential assimilation.”

How I Grew a Website to 1 Million Visitors in 15 Months [Video]

Luke Jordan’s website was decimated by a Google update, so he decided to rebrand and rework his site. This is the case study of how he did it. No “secrets” were shared—it’s mostly a lot of hard work and executing in the right direction. This really goes to show how often we overthink things.

Oh, and one more thing: 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.

Till next time. ;)

Cheers,
Si Quan
Content Marketing @ Ahrefs

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Ahrefs - Ahrefs' Weekly Digest #64

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