Ahrefs - Ahrefs' Weekly Digest #71

✍️ New on our blog

• Nearly 33% of websites are passing CWV thresholds (up ~10% from previous year).
• Websites seem to be making progress on improving FID and CLS, but they are struggling with LCP.
• Websites seem to struggle a bit more with LCP on mobile compared to desktop. It’s likely because of the connection speed and mobile CPUs having less processing power.
• When CWV is broken down by connection speed, almost no sites on 3G or slower connections are passing. 
• The location of your users seems to have a big impact. If your users are in a country where everyone uses desktop devices with fast internet, your website will more likely have good CWV. The opposite is likely true too. 

1. Have a superb product offering. If your product is bad, no number of tips and tactics can make up for it. 
2. Manage your brand properly. Think about the bigger picture and plan for the long-term. Invest resources into brand-building, manage your online reputation and be a likeable brand.
3. Focus on product-led content marketing. This is the main driver of our word-of-mouth marketing. Learn how we do it here.
4. Create or hire brand ambassadors. Patrick Stox is our brand ambassador and he’s one of the most well-known technical SEOs. You can hire one like us or partner with influencers in your niche. 
5. Build an engaged community. We have Ahrefs Insider, our customers-only FB group. We also regularly engage with our audience, listen to feedback, and distribute high-quality swag (that many people want!)

1. Awareness – The buyer realizes they have a problem. They want to understand more about it.
2. Consideration – The buyer is looking for and comparing potential solutions to their problem.
3. Decision – The buyer purchases a solution.

1. Create buyer persona(s). Call or talk to your customers. Gather the data and look for patterns. Based on these patterns, you should start to see some specific audiences popping out of the data. These will be your buyer personas.
2. Find topics that match each stage of the buyer’s journey. This is when you can use keyword research to discover topics for each stage.
3. Create content for each stage. The easiest way to figure out what kind of content to create is by analyzing the top-ranking pages for the three Cs of search intent.
4. Add calls to action (CTAs) for each piece of content. Your CTAs should be tailored to each stage. For example, in your “Awareness stage” content, you shouldn’t try and sell your product right away. You should introduce them to your newsletter or a free version of your product. 

• There is a strong positive correlation between word count and backlinks, but only up to 1,000 words. For posts longer than 1,000 words, there is a strong negative correlation between word count and backlinks.
• There is a moderate positive correlation between content length and organic traffic, but only up to 2,000 words. For posts longer than 2,000 words, there is a moderate negative correlation between word count and organic traffic.
• Bloggers who publish more often are more likely to report “strong results”.
• 65% of B2B buyers cite vendor websites as one of their most highly influential content types. This is followed by third-party websites (48%) and third-party articles by independent publishers (39%).
• Bloggers who include 10+ images per post are the most likely to report “strong results”.

📚 What we’re reading

• Relevancy adjustments. Some content Google once believed was relevant for the query is not relevant anymore. 
• Intent shifts. When Google decides to show different types of content for the queries you once ranked for (based on what it believes users want to see).
• Site quality problems. This can span several key areas, including content quality, user experience, aggressive, disruptive, or deceptive advertising, aggressive affiliate setups, technical problems that cause quality issues, and more.