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duskholland · 4 years ago

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Stuck With(out) You - Mob!Tom Smut

tom was having a really nice day until the metropolitan police decided to crash his date. or, when the law finally catches up to london’s most notorious mobster, tom learns that nothing is fair in love and war.

word count ↠ 15k. warnings ↠ angst with a happy ending, alcohol, a car chase, extensive depictions of prison, violence (very minor injury detail), tattooing, pregnancy, bad language, smut! there are extended nsfw warnings below the cut but this is 18+ so minors please do not interact. a/n ↠ this is a work of fiction and is not meant to be taken 100% seriously! similarly to every other fic I’ve written about mob!tom, I don’t condone any of the actions shown in this story and all depictions of the mob and prison are entirely fictional. please do not date members of the mafia even if they are tom holland !!!!! + this fic was conceptualised before the release of cherry, and there are no purposeful links to the content of that film! the image from esquire that I’ve used is what led me down this path lmfao...esquire I love/hate you. ++ the biggest thank you ever to the wonderful @uglypastels for helping me with the initial brainstorm on this one, and for just generally being so supportive as I’ve struggled with writers block :’) I wouldn’t have ever been able to think this up let alone have the motivation to write this without you, so thank you and ily z <3 +++ there is a pov change halfway through this fic! it is intentional and you should be able to see it pretty easily but I’m just flagging it so you don’t think I lost it halfway through ahahha. enjoy!

nsfw warnings ↠ car sex, soft!dom!tom ft minor sir kink, oral and fingering (fem-receiving), multiple orgasms with brief refs to overstimulation, minor pregnancy kink, unprotected sex ft cumshot.

✧ *:･ﾟStuck With(out) You･ﾟ:*✧

There’s something wrong with you, and Tom can’t quite put his finger on it.

He wonders if it’s the wine. He’d spent hours debating the type of grape and ideal bitterness, scouring his memory in search of the perfect blend to share with you on your date. Eventually, he’d settled on the same deep red that he’d shared with you the first time he’d visited your flat, back when your love was just a small spark. Three years have passed since then, the nerves of early romance melted away and replaced by knowing and love, but the wine has recurred each time one of you has decided to treat the other, so what better blend to bring along to the picnic that Tom had so meticulously planned?

You haven’t touched your glass, and Tom—for all his confidence and charm—is deeply unsettled by this.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks for what feels like the tenth time, with brows furrowed so tightly his forehead aches. Tom reaches across the gingham blanket to join your fingers together, surprised to feel the clamminess of your skin as you gently squeeze his hand.

You hum. “I’m fine,” you say, voice devoid of any intense emotion. You sigh softly before bringing your eyes to meet Tom’s, and the man feels his heart constrict in his chest. You’re perfect, even with your hair messy from the light spring wind and the nerves that sit across your face. When you squeeze his hand again, and Tom glances down to see the engagement ring on your fourth finger, the ache in his heart sharpens.

He never knew love could be this fulfilling, nor so easy. Breathing is harder than it is to love you.

“Okay,” he replies. “Do you want to go home?”

You’ve been so quiet for the entire date, which is strange because usually, you match his energy effortlessly. Tom has been away for a few weeks doing business in Liverpool, and this date by the river is the first time you’ve been properly alone since he returned. He’d really expected you to enjoy the date—or, on a very basic level, at least look like you want to be here. With your quiet answers, avoidance, and nervous stares, he can’t confidently say that you do.

You shake your head. “No, no.” You fiddle with some of his rings before pulling your hand away from his. As you sit up a little straighter, you turn away from Tom to stare instead at the River Thames.

The river behind you is lit by the mid-afternoon sun and flooded with boats. It’s such a lovely day that Tom almost doesn’t notice the horrible brown tinge to the water. Lining the bank are small groups of people—families, friends, couples, tourists. They all stay clear of the two of you, undoubtedly wary of the security guards lingering near their boss. He rarely goes out so obviously like this, but you’ve always loved London, and he’d wanted to treat you. He’d wanted this to be a nice day.

“You know you can talk to me, don’t you?” he checks, voice catching slightly.

Your eyes snap up to his quickly. “Tom,” you say, voice wrapped endearingly around his name. Moving easily, you slip closer to him, carefully shifting around the food and the glasses until you’re close enough to reach out and touch his cheek. “I love you.”

Tom’s teeth graze his lower lip as he feels you pad your thumb across his jaw. “I know,” he murmurs, dropping his gaze. “I love you too.” He pauses for a few moments, savouring the closeness and the scent of your rosy spritz. He’d missed you so much that it almost hurts to have you so close again. “I know you have something on your mind, darling… Can you tell me what it is? I want to help you.”

“I…” A breathy exhalation follows. You bring your hand away from his cheek and rest it on the red silk material covering his shoulder. He’s in a loose designer shirt, the top two buttons unbuttoned and showing off the silver-linked chain he has hanging from his neck. “Tom, I just…”

“What?”

A small smile twitches at your lips. “Not here,” you seem to decide, voice a little stronger. “I have something I need to show you.”

“At home?”

“Yeah.”

Tom feels the weight rolls from his shoulders. It’s fine—everything is fine. You want to let him in, want to trust him with the cause of your anxieties. You still want him.

“Let’s go, then,” he decides, knowing he’s far too impatient to spend another hour laying by the river. Tom offers you a hand, and you take it. He tugs you away from the picnic setup with ease. He doesn’t need to bother with putting the things away—someone else will do it. Just one of the perks of his job.

“I missed you,” you say, smoothing your thumb over the back of his hand as you walk together towards the car. “It gets lonely without you in the house. Our bed is ridiculously huge without two people in it.”

Tom chuckles. “Good job I’m back now then, eh?”

The noise you release is stacked full of so much relief it makes Tom feel guilty for ever leaving to begin with. As he watches the bright, genuine smile flow across your face when you meet his eyes, he resolves to never leave for business again. Never. Not without you.

“A very good job,” you clarify. When you reach the car together, Tom holds the door open for you, ushering you in dramatically until you’re laughing and making fun of him for fussing. The only way he can stop you from your jovial whines is by leaning across the dashboard and pressing his lips to yours, so really he can’t complain. “This car is stupid, too,” you decide.

“Oh, that’s too fucking far,” Tom murmurs, glancing in the rear mirror as he peels away from the pavement. He’s glad the air between you has lightened. You seem happier now you’ve decided to spill your secrets. He rests his hand on the back of your headrest as he twists in his seat, eyes on the road as he reverses. “This car is a beauty.”

“This car is confusing,” you say, and Tom feels you staring at the flex of his bicep. “I tried driving it when you were gone.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmm. Couldn’t even get it up the drive.”

“Well, not to be rude, darling, but it’s hardly fair to blame my beautiful car for the fact that you’re an atrocious driver.”

If looks could kill, Tom knows he’d be six feet under.

“Fuck you, Tom,” you seethe, but your voice is charged with laughter. “I take it back. I didn’t miss you at all. Go back to Liverpool, see if I care.”

Tom cackles. “Maybe I will,” he teases, “just to see how long it takes you to start begging for me to come back again.”

You grumble something incoherent at that, then the words between you lull into a comfortable silence. After a few moments, you shift your palm to rest on his thigh, your hand gentle, warm. Your fingertips trace tiny love hearts over his slacks.

“Don’t,” you say eventually, voice quieter. “Stay this time.”

Tom risks a quick glance to you, growing breathless in the depths of your eyes. “Of course,” he says, voice thick. Tom returns his gaze to the road, his chest feeling tight. “I’m never leaving you again.”

“I mean, you can leave sometimes if you want—”

“No. Never.” Tom’s cheeks ache. “I’m never leaving your side.”

“Alright, Tom.” You sigh lightly, feigning exasperation. “I guess there are worse things than being stuck with you.”

“I’m charmed, darling. So relieved you like spending time with your fiancé.”

You shift in your seat at that, and Tom doesn’t have to look at you to know you’re flustered. You’re always shyer around him when he mentions the fact that your futures are intertwined, almost unbelieving that he’d slipped that ring onto your finger. It doesn’t matter how many times Tom tells you that he cherishes you—you never quite make peace with the fact that he wants to chase the moon with you. That doesn’t mean he’ll stop telling you, though. You hang the stars in his sky.

“I love spending time with you, Tom,” you mumble. “And I hope that what I’m about to tell you doesn’t change how you feel about me.”

His eyebrows raise. “Wait— what?” Tom scrunches the tip of his nose up as he squints in your direction. “Y/N, what—” He pauses, concentrating on keeping his voice level. “Angel, nothing you could ever do would change the way I feel about you. Nothing.”

You smile quietly. “It’s not a bad thing,” you add, almost sensing his unease. “I think you’ll like it.”

“Perfect.” Tom sits a little straighter in his seat. “Then there’s nothing to worry about—”

Sirens cut into his words. Tom startles, glancing in the mirror to see a police car with a whirring blue siren perched atop the grimy vehicle.

“Tom,” you say slowly, voice filling with dread. Your tone sends shivers down his spine. “Did you do something?”

Tom bites his lip.

He’s been trying his best to stay above the law recently, but�� Liverpool had been messy. Very messy. He hadn’t intended on things going quite as terribly as they had, but one thing had led to another, and he’d had to fuck a few things up. The crime is nothing as intense as he’s been booked for in the past, but he’d had to write a few irregularities into his taxes and business agreements to smooth over the waters. It’s not as bad as murder, but it’s tax fraud nonetheless.

Tom had thought he’d been fine. Apparently not. He’s been a hot target for the Metropolitan Police for years, and they’ve consistently unearthed every tiny discrepancy he’s tried to get away with. He should’ve been more fucking careful.

“Shit,” Tom mutters. As he brings his eyes back to the road in front of him, he realises the police car behind you has been joined by another two, closing in from side streets and boxing him in amongst the traffic. He swallows thickly. “I messed up.”

You curse. “Idiot,” you mutter. You sit forwards in the seat and start to point to a gap in the traffic, right across the square. “Go there,” you say, voice pitching higher. “If you go fast, you’ll make it.”

He could book it. Tom’s run away before, in situations of peril where the alternative had been the law and escaping would give him the chance to alter some books and clear his name. It would be easy to slam his foot on the accelerator and dive down side streets, dodging the thick London traffic.

“Tom!” you say again, voice stressed with desperation. “Tom, go!”

The gap in the traffic is narrowly closing, the window of time Tom has to zoom through and get to safety shrinking before his very eyes. If he was alone, he’d do it without a second thought, but you’re here.

You’re here, and that means he can’t be selfish. Tom couldn’t ever risk you, not with such a treacherous manoeuvre like the one that you’re suggesting, nor with the repercussions you’d face if he books it. You’d either have to come on the run with him, or you’d end up captured and grilled by the Met, and neither of those options is the types of things he’d ever bring willingly upon you. You would never deserve that, and he refuses to make it a possibility.

Tom slows down the car.

“Tom,” you say, shock filling your voice. “What are you doing? They’ll get you.”

He nods. “I want you to listen to me, very carefully,” he says quickly.

“But—”

“—Darling, please. Please.” Tom stops the car abruptly. He calculates he has mere seconds before the officers ditch their vehicles and start storming across the traffic to haul him from his seat. “Don’t say anything to them. They want me, not you.” He turns off the engine and grabs your hands, holding them close as he stares into your eyes. “Call Harrison. Whatever shit they’re bringing me in for won’t hold up for long. They’ve— they’ve done this before. They never win. We have backup plans for this crap.”

“Tom,” you whisper, eyes welling with tears, “but they—”

“I know. I know, baby. I know.” He presses quick kisses to your knuckles, clinging so tightly to your fingers it’s like he’ll drift away without your touch. “I’m sorry. I am so bloody sorry. I love you so much.”

His throat hurts. The sight of the pain in your eyes makes him hate himself for ever bringing you into this faithless way of life. He doesn’t give a fuck that he’s destined for a cell—Tom cares that he’s hurt you.

“I love you too,” you say. You lean closer, undoing your seatbelt and popping his too as you reach up to cup Tom’s cheeks in your shaky hands. “It’ll be okay,” you stress. “I’ll get you out of there, baby.”

You lean in closer to kiss him, and Tom aches. The scent of your perfume is overwhelming, and he feels fragile beneath the hold you have on his face. The kindness in your eyes makes it hurt even more. It’d be easier if you’d let fury consume you and spend these last sacred moments denouncing him instead of loving him, but of course, you’re not like that.

The car door opens, and Tom is hauled from the car the moment his lips touch yours. Before he can process it, he’s being pushed up against his car, stiff arms keeping him pinned in place. He closes his eyes, firming up his face and shoving down his feelings as he forces himself to dry up, become stoic. He won’t show weakness now he’s outside.

Tom hears you exit the vehicle a few moments later, the crash of the door coupled with a few scuffles. He drowns out the words of the officers whilst they reel off a list of fabricated crimes, smugness evident in their voices. Good for fucking them.

When they eventually release him, he’s cuffed and weaponless, his spirit bent in two. The metal of his car had hurt his face, but nothing breaks Tom’s heart more than the sight of you being held back by two officers, tears streaming down your face. You bring your hands into the shaky outline of a heart, and it’s the last thing he sees before he’s pushed into the back of a van.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Tom’s day goes from bad to worse.

It’s clear that everyone at the station has been waiting for him to fuck up. He’s met with sly smiles and teasing comments as he’s reacquainted with some of his most despised wardens and guards. He’s held in a temporary cell for almost a day and quizzed on the shreds of ‘evidence’ they’d procured from his house during a raid, and though Tom declines to answer every single question they throw at him, their smugness never fades.

He walks into the trial already knowing he’s going to be locked up, and not even the sight of you beside Harrison and Harry on the benches soothes him.

Five years. He’s charged with five years.

Now, Tom isn’t worried. He knows he won’t actually be held in a cell for that long. He’s already had correspondence with Harrison, who’s assured him that he’s working on it, and there’s really nothing much to worry about. Tom has been in this situation twice before, and on both occasions, he’d been released in less than a month. The connections he’s built from his years heading up the mob are reliant and unwavering, and he knows he won’t have to serve even a fifth of his sentence.

The only difference between the times before and now is you, and Tom can only fucking pray that you don’t despise him for dirtying your name with his crimes. You’d been normal before him—a waitress, aspiring painter, an innocent. Despite your insistence that you love him with all strings attached, his guilt weighs him down. He doesn’t give a fuck about the law and whatever twisted loopholes the jury had bought, but he does care about you and what you think of him. That’s the hardest part.

Two weeks pass achingly slowly.

Prison isn’t that bad for Tom. He’s pretty fucking lucky, all things considered. He has friends here—blokes he’d met around town, most of whom are willing to welcome him in. A few of his old guys are locked behind bars with him, unwavering in their loyalty and more than happy to absorb him as members of their group. Those who don’t know Tom know of him. His reputation as a murderous, cold-hearted killer follows him inside, regardless of its falsity. Tom hasn’t taken a life in three years, but these men don’t need to know that.

“Holland! Get the fuck up. You’re in the gym.”

Tom glances up. He’s lying on top of his bed, one hand propped behind his head, the other holding open a book. He isn’t an avid reader like you, but you’d sent him a copy of your favourite book with scribbled annotations in the margins, and he’s been spending every hour since its arrival clinging to the pages.

He sighs as he puts the book down and stands from the lower bunk. He’s in with a young lad, Ollie, booked on a minor drugs charge. Why they’d paired someone on such a minimal sentence with a member of the mob, Tom will never understand, but the fear in the lad’s eyes every time he looks at him is enough to keep his wavering ego bobbing just above the waterline.

“Step away from the door.”

Tom does as instructed. A moment later, there’s a loud buzzer followed by the swinging of the heavy metal door.

In walks Luther, Tom’s archnemesis. If the inmates fear him, the guards despise him, and to be fair, Tom understands why. He’s a bit of a dick when he’s behind bars. Usually, when he’s free, he operates with a level of poise and charm that comes with his position as leader. He speaks to his men with a firm but kind hand, respects everyone he deems his equal and commands supreme authority without becoming a tyrant. However, when he has his freedom stripped away, and he has to bend to fit the system’s will, his attitude becomes… problematic.

“Holland,” Luther barks. A moment later, he appears in the doorway, coughing loudly, cheeks flushed a ruddy red. He snarls at Tom, his voice like jagged glass. “Come on.”

“You alright, mate?” Tom asks. “You sound fucking terrible.” He looks it, too, with a dripping nose and red-rimmed eyes. He looks ill.

Luther’s features sharpen. “Get over here now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom swaggers to the door and dodges a little as Luther cuffs him, the man digging the metal into his skin with extra ferocity. They start to march down the long, grey corridor towards the fitness suite, Luther prodding Tom forward with a hand digging into his back.

“How’s your wife?” Tom tries, tired of the echoing footsteps.

Luther sighs. “How’s yours?”

“She’s doing very well, thank you.”

The guard tuts. “Does she like having a criminal for a husband?”

“Does yours like being married to such a wanker— hey!”

Luther pushes him down the corridor with haste. “Quiet, Holland,” he mutters. “I’ve had enough of you.”

“Well, then it’s too bad you’re stuck with me,” Tom replies. “Did you know that if me being here annoys you so much, you could always let me go? That would sort out your problem.”

He barks a laugh. “Yeah? Let London’s most wanted convict escape?”

Tom raises a brow. “London’s most wanted?” he echoes. “Wow.” Pride seeps into his voice. “That’s an accomplishment.”

“Not a positive one. Self-absorbed bastard.”

It’s easy to laugh. Letting the comments bounce off his back is easier than admitting the jibe about you has irked him. Do you like having a criminal for a partner? Even Tom, for all the world has jaded him, knows no sane person would rest well with the knowledge that their significant other has lied, stolen, and killed. It doesn’t lie well with him, and he was born into this.

They reach the gym.

Tom sticks to the same workout regime he has at home. He does his cardio for twenty minutes on the wobbling treadmill, then sits around on the bench press and does curls with a few of the guys. He keeps quiet, his mind loud, only adding a few comments when necessary. His sullenness adds to his image, and he’s busy with thoughts of you. By the time he’s finished, he feels arguably worse than before. The endorphins from his workout are overshadowed by the guilt Tom feels, clawing at his heart, heavy and persistent in its certainty that he’s a lousy partner.

He can handle being a bad guy, but a bad man? A bad brother, bad friend, or bad lover? The opinions of the guards mean nothing to him, and neither does the law, but when it comes to the people he cares about, their opinions mean everything. Tom has let Luther get into his head, and whilst he knows that was the guard’s intention, the seed of doubt has been planted. As he pumps iron, he feels it grow, taking root, blooming taller.

“Holland. Time to go.”

He grunts as he stands. Sweaty and sore, Tom hobbles to the doorway, feeling considerably smaller than he had when he’d left his cell. The cuffs hurt his wrists as his hands are clasped back together, and the walk back feels even longer than before.

“You had a parcel delivered,” Luther says, breaking the silence. “It arrived last week.”

Tom’s eyebrows pull together. “Last week?”

“I thought I should hold it back until you’d settled in,” comes the patronising response. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you with too many new experiences, Thomas. Not that being in here is anything out of the ordinary for you, though.”

He feels his jaw twitch. He flexes his hand, knuckles burning for movement. Not yet, not yet. He has to wait, has to play the long game.

“You’re a dick,” Tom decides. He doesn’t care that he gets thrown roughly into the cell. He trips over the floor and barely manages to scrape himself to his feet, but he throws out a smirking “fuck you,” before the door slams shut. He’d follow it up with more snide remarks, but he becomes distracted by the sight of the parcel sitting on his bed.

It’s neat, despite the obvious intrusion into its contents by the guards. He flops onto his lower bunk, glad his cellmate is absent as it allows him to drop the ruse. Lips sagging into a frown, Tom rips open the package.

He releases a fragile sound as the contents pour across his duvet. Polaroids fall across the sheets, glistening slightly, neat and pristine. A lump comes to the back of his throat as he shuffles through them, finding images of you, Harry, Sam, Tess… The list carries on. For every person he can think of, there’s an image captured perfectly in time. He even appears in a few of them, with his hand around Haz’s shoulder or his lips pressed to your temple.

He finds a note attached at the bottom.

Tom, I thought you’d want some reminders of home while you’re away. We’re all looking forward until the day you can come home to us. Love you forever, Y/N <3

As Tom traces the edge of his nail along the outline of your face, his eyes well with hot tears. You always know what he needs, even when he doesn’t. You know him, inside out, and you’re continuing to support him, despite it all. He is indebted to you, and he knows already that as soon as he’s let out, he’ll spend every second of his life trying to repay that.

The seed of doubt burns away.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Two weeks later, Tom finally gets to see you again.

The prison visiting room is fucking grim. Toned in sludgy shades of grey and brown, it’s about as ugly as it could be. There are window slits pressed high into the walls, but the primary source of light is from the musky bulbs set above each table. The chairs are uncomfortable, and the decor lacks inspiration. Tom often wonders if the room was designed to be as revolting as possible.

Despite this, as Tom shuffles into the room that smells suspiciously of plasticine, he couldn’t be happier. It doesn’t matter that his wrists ache from the cuffs, nor that the garish shade of orange clashes horrendously against his skin: you’re here, and that makes everything better.

You’re sitting at the table in the corner of the room, drumming your fingers pensively over the surface. His eyes catch on the glinting ring wrapped around your fourth finger, and the sense of longing that had settled in the hollowness of his chest is quickly burnt away. Sensing his movements, you glance up, and when your eyes meet with his, Tom feels his heart come home.

You raise a hand in greeting, smiling shyly, and he tries to look as non-threatening as possible. He knows the new buzzcut and the stupid get-up probably don’t help, but you don’t look at him like he’s any different.

As he draws nearer, Tom finds himself blinking a few times, questioning how long you’ve been separated. The version of you he has holed up in his memories pales in comparison to the woman that he sees before him now, but he can’t quite pinpoint why. You seem fuller somehow—vibrant, glowing, alive, your face doused in a heavenly glow and your skin bright with health. Your figure has changed slightly, and Tom can’t stop himself from running his eyes all over you, trying to memorise every tiny detail his memory had blurred away. You look so beautiful, every single part of your form enhanced and bright, and your chest—

Fuck, it’s been a long time.

“Y/N,” he exhales the moment he’s been pushed into his seat. His guard unclasps his cuffs, and Tom immediately reaches out across the table, almost moaning from relief when you wrap your fingers around his. Your skin is so warm.

“Tom,” you whisper. Emotion seeps into your voice, and he feels his chest crack as tears pool in your eyes. “Are you okay? I— I missed you.”

He hums, biting his lip. “I’m fine, baby. I’m okay. Are you?”

You nod quickly. “I’m okay too,” you say. “Things are strange without you, but we’re working around the clock to get you out of here.” You drop your voice slightly. “I think we’re near a breakthrough.”

Tom’s teeth brush his lower lip. “Good, good,” he says. “How’s Tess? And Harry, and the others? Are they looking out for you?”

“Yeah,” you say. You squeeze Tom’s hands tightly. “They’re all okay. Mainly just worried about you.”

He shrugs, trying to lessen the furrow in your brow. “‘M all good, darling,” he promises. “Don’t worry about me.”

Your eyes skate across his face. “I like your hair,” you say gently. For a moment, Tom thinks you’re going to try and reach out to touch the buzzed fuzz, but you seem to remember that anything beyond handholding is prohibited. You have to settle for a slightly suggestive smile. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks, lovie.”

Your smile is sad but it’s still hopeful. Whatever emotions you’re feeling, it’s clear that you’re trying to smooth them away and keep them to yourself. “There’s something I wanted to tell you,” you say, easing into the words with difficulty. Tom watches as you look away, doubt casting across your face.

“What is it?” Vaguely, Tom remembers how skittish you’d been the day he’d been taken away, the memory distorted from the noise of everything else that had happened. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” You bite your lower lip. “Uh, just first… how are you holding up in here? Like, actually. Don’t bullshit me and play the tough guy.” Your eyes are wide and persistent. “How are you actually doing?”

Tom blinks a few times. “Fine,” he shoots immediately. He clenches your fingers tightly in his, clinging on for a moment until he exhales. “I wish I could be here for you properly, though. It worries me that I don’t know what’s happening on the outside…” He hates being left out in the dark, but it isn’t your fault. It’s his. “I wish I could be a better boyfriend to you.”

“Fiancé,” you correct, the word soft like it’d left your mouth without thought. “You’re already a good boyfriend, Tom. I knew what I was signing up for. I wanted this back then, and I still do now.”

“Still,” he grumbles. He tries to even out the heaviness of the conversation with a smile. “I think about you all the time, baby. And the others too, but… mostly you. I just hate that I’m missing out on our life together.” He has to stop for a moment as he recollects his thoughts. “I’m sorry that I did this to us, and I’m sorry I let you down.”

You crack a wry smile. “You can’t change the past, Tom. You can only affect the future.” You pause, your expression hardening. “I need to know that you’ll go slower when you get out. I know this is your life, but some things need to change. We— I need you to stay out of trouble. Do you understand?”

He nods his head immediately. “Of course, of course. I don’t ever want to get arrested again, darling.”

You drop your voice. “I’m not saying you need to quit everything, just… get better safeguards and be smarter. I love who you are, Tom, but this…” You break off to gesture around, pointing vaguely at his cuffs, the jumpsuit, and the guards. “This isn’t good for you or for me. And I love you, but I won’t stay if you don’t try.”

It’s hard to hear, but he knows it’s what he deserves to hear. He knows you deserve to stand your ground.

“I know,” Tom says gently. “I’ll get clean when I’m out, Y/N. I promise. I’ll be a good man by you.”

You squeeze his fingers tighter. “You already are,” you promise, “and I love you so much, even when you’re being an idiot.”

He laughs breathlessly. “Thank you, darling.” Tom tilts his head to the side. “What was it you wanted to say?”

Conflict briefly colours your face, manifesting itself in the arch of your eyebrow and the biting of your lower lip. You inhale sharply, only to exhale again a moment later.

“I’ll tell you when you’re out,” you say softly.

Tom scowls. There’s no anger there, just confusion. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

You shake your head. “I… Pretend I never said anything,” you say. You follow it up with a quick, “if I thought you needed to know, I’d tell you.”

He doesn’t want to push it, so Tom lets the topic slip away. You sit together silently for a few minutes. It’s hard to talk, difficult to express how much he misses you, how much he’s sorry. He knows that you understand—you always do, and you have similar tears wobbling across your eyes. Talking can come afterwards when he’s out and he’s free. All he needs now is the feeling of your hand back in his.

The visit is over far too soon.

Leaving you is difficult. Tom isn’t allowed to hug you or go any nearer than the linked hands on the table, but you tug at his fingers until he feels the imprint of your engagement ring rubbing against his skin. He even manages to kiss your knuckles a few times before he’s pulled up from the table and cuffed again.

“Be on your best behaviour,” you say, soft with your parting words. “The lawyer says the better you are, the easier it’ll be to get you out early.”

Tom has a bit of his spark back. Even as he’s pulled back, he manages a devious smirk. “When am I ever not on my best behaviour, darling?”

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

A few days later, Tom snaps.

To be fair, it isn’t really his fault. He’s pushed to the very verge of insanity, prodded at and provoked beyond the point of return.

It happens when he’s in the barber, huddled in the back corner of the room as he gets a new tattoo. Tom is used to the pain of the burning needles as he already has a few pieces on his arms and his hands, so he’s able to take the fresh marks to his knuckles as the ink stains black against his skin. However, he’s a bit on edge from the sharp buzzing, which is perhaps why he responds so negatively to the taunting he starts to receive. It comes from Toni and the rest of his snivelling gang. They’re all members of the East London mob, ruled over by Tom’s nemesis Gordy. Most of the time, they stick to their side and Tom sticks to his, but they’ve caught him in a vulnerable position, and Toni never seems to know how to pick his timing.

It’s basic teasing, instilled with a brutal hard edge that would phase him if Tom cared enough about their opinions of him. It doesn’t hurt him when people attack his character or his honour—Tom knows the truth about his life, and he couldn’t give two shits about an outsider’s opinion of him. However, he finds it a lot harder to grin and bear it when the man changes angle.

“Word is, a couple of our guys saw your missus out with Haz the other day,” Toni taunts. “He said they were getting real close if you know what I mean.”

Tom’s jaw flexes. The action is minute, but it doesn’t go undetected. Toni smirks.

“Eh, you don’t like that, do you?” The man steps a little closer and Tom tries to ignore him by looking down at the needle pressing into his fingers. “Don’t like the idea of your best friend hanging around your wife. Can you even trust them?” He breaks off, laughing coolly. “They think you’re so stupid, did you know that? You’ll get out of here, and they’ll have cut you out of everything—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Tom murmurs. He flexes his right hand, shaking out his knuckles. With every passing day, he’s felt tetchier. He can feel his anger burning, churning deep within his stomach, growing brighter, harder. He knows he shouldn’t lean into it, but… He wants to. He craves that rush of the fight, selfishly so.

“But she’s not your wife, is she? You aren’t actually married. Have you ever thought that maybe she’s just using you? Maybe they all are? Look at you, Tom.” Toni breaks off to throw a disdainful hand in Tom’s direction. “You are so weak in here… How are any of your guys going to respect you when their leader can’t even stay out the slammer?”

The guy tattooing Tom’s hand finally pulls away, glancing up at him with knowing in his eyes. “You’re done,” he says. “Don’t do anything with that hand, though.”

“Thanks, man.”

Tom stands up, Toni mirroring him. The man looms in front of him, 6’2 and stocky. He’s larger than Tom in every respect, but he’ll never be the bigger man.

“Get out of my way,” Tom sneers.

“Make me, twat.” Toni smirks. “Or are you too much of a pussy to follow through on that as well?”

Tom sees red. Acting on the edge of adrenaline, he pounces, rushing the man and jumping with so much unexpected force that the larger man goes tumbling to the floor. Tom hears the shouts of the guards, but they pale in comparison to his need to straddle the man’s chest and make him pay. With each meeting of his fist with Toni’s face, Tom feels better. He’s never been an excessively violent person, but old habits die hard, and it’s so, so, so fucking easy to pummel the guy who dared breath an uncomplimentary word in his family’s direction. Tom would put the whole city six feet under if they so much as breathed wrong around his loved ones, so really, Toni had it coming.

The prison guards don’t agree.

He ends up in solitary, and when he’s put back into the normal population, Tom is given restrictions. He isn’t allowed visitors for a fortnight, and his calls are reduced to once a week. All other privileges he’d had are taken away again, and he’s relegated to the very bottom of the pecking order.

It’s still worth it.

When he’s finally allowed visitors again, Tom is surprised to learn that his next meeting isn’t with you or his lawyer. Things only make sense when he shuffles into the meeting room and sees his right-hand man settled in the corner, and if Tom had found the room drab before, it appears even more depressing with the addition of the blond man sitting in it. Harrison sucks the life from the room, any hints of happiness at being reunited with his friend overshadowed by the pinched expression on his face.

The guards don’t let Tom take off his cuffs. He has to sidle into the chair, falling into the heavy silence as he places his hands on the table. Metal links click, and Harrison just stares. He stares, and stares, and stares, his blue eyes almost black.

“So,” Tom eventually says. “Hello.”

Harrison’s jaw twitches. He brings his hands to rest on the top of the table, flexing them as he takes a moment to find the right words. “Tom,” he says, speaking very slowly. “You are a twat.”

He blinks. “Wow,” Tom mutters, chuckling slightly. “Okay. Good to see you too, mate.”

“Do you…” Harrison breaks off, groaning. His forehead develops angry ripples. “Do you understand how detrimental this has been to your case?”

Tom bites his lip, shaking his head slightly.

“You’ve been pushed to the bottom of the pile,” Harrison says, voice controlled but simmering with unspoken anger. “We were about to get your appeal passed for early release.” He sits back, crossing his arms as he shakes his head. “There’s been a penalty applied due to your stint in solitary. Your case won’t be assessed until it’s lifted.”

Tom feels his stomach drop. “Shit,” he mutters. “That’s not ideal.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Harrison sits forward, leaning on his hands. “You are a bloody idiot. Stop acting like a child… Why… Why did you even attack him? You must have known this would happen. Are you stupid?”

He doesn’t like the patronisation in his tone. Tom’s already beat himself up enough about this in solitary. He doesn’t need Harrison questioning his judgements, doesn’t appreciate his friend breathing down his neck so obviously.

“He deserved it,” Tom says firmly. “I would do it again.”

“You can’t. You absolutely cannot.”

“I think you’ll find that I can, Harrison.” There’s a stupid smirk on his lips now. Tom’s missed being a little shit to his friends. He knows it’s not the time, but he’s vibrating. The callous concoction of shame, anger and isolation make him volatile and abrasive. “I’m pretty sure I can do whatever the fuck I want, actually.”

The expression that mars Harrison’s face looks very out of place against his demeanour. The man is in a long black trench coat with a tight grey turtleneck layered beneath it. He has a few pendants hanging from his neck, the gold metal bringing out the warm tones in his curls, mussed in a way that screams of old charm and perfect romance. Harrison’s illusion of control falters only under the pressure of the anger that manifests itself so clearly on his face.

“Tom.” Harrison bangs his fist on the table. The ring wrapped around his pinky clangs against the wood. “You can’t keep this up. If you do, the case gets pushed further, and that is unacceptable.”

Tom scowls. “Well, Haz, last time I checked, I was the one who has to deal with the consequences of my actions. Not you.” He can’t stand the expression of condescension hanging over Harrison’s face. “If I want to throw a few punches, I bloody well will. You have no idea what it’s like in here. No idea at all.”

Harrison’s angered expression fades a little, but only for a moment. When Tom hardens the curve of his eyebrow, Harrison devolves into irritation again, almost snarling as he narrows his eyes. “Your actions affect everyone in your life,” he snaps. “Stop pretending you’re the only one paying for the things that you’ve done.”

“I’m the one with the cuffs, Harrison. I’d say I’m paying considerably more than anyone else.”

He shakes his head. “Yeah? Tell that to the men who had their property searched and their possessions seized. Tell that to your family, who continue to be pulled in for questioning. Tell that to Y/N, who—” he breaks off awfully quickly, cheeks flushing slightly. “Nevermind.”

Tom’s blood goes cold. “Y/N?” he repeats sharply. “What about Y/N?”

“Nothing.”

He sits up straighter. “What about Y/N, Harrison?”

“Nothing.”

Tom is angry now. “Tell me right now or god help me, I will find a way to kill you.”

Harrison rolls his eyes, then covers the movement with a sigh. “I can’t. It isn’t my place.” He seems regretful as he jumps in to add, “she’s fine. She just needs you. We all do.”

The guilt returns. It falls over Tom like a wet blanket, extinguishing his frustration and leaving him cold. “Does she… Does she hate me?” He’s looking down at his cuffs.

“What— no. No, Tom.” Harrison looks guilty for the first time, but at least he isn’t confirming Tom’s deepest insecurities. “Nothing like that at all. Just… Listen to me, alright? You need to behave. I know it’s hard in here, I know that, and I understand it must be frustrating. You just… You can’t let that rule you, Tom. You have to look at the bigger picture. You need to come home, and the sooner the better.”

It’s easier said than done, but he knows Harrison is earnest with it.

“Fine,” Tom grumbles. “I’ll behave.”

Harrison nods. “Thanks, mate,” he mutters. “We all miss you, myself included.” He glances up at him, eyes finally back to the cool blue tones Tom grew up beside. “It isn’t the same without you around.”

Tom manages a tight smile. “I miss you too.”

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

IT’S BEEN THREE MONTHS since Tom was taken away, and you are miserable.

Every day has been the same. You wake up, nauseous and alone, always on Tom’s side of the bed despite forcing yourself to fall asleep on your own. The mornings are a blur of paperwork and phone calls that follow you into the afternoon. You work around the clock, Harrison, Harry and Sam at your side as you go over Tom’s case, again and again, only stopping when night falls, and one of you throws in the towel.

You had been so close to springing him until he’d gone and got himself demoted to solitary, and there’s not a morning that you don’t think about that. You’d submitted the appeal, stacked full of so much evidence that there was no way the judge would deny him freedom, only for Tom to get into a fistfight the day before the hearing. Just like that, the floor had vanished from beneath your feet.

You’d taken it badly, the others too. Losing Tom to the judge’s gavel had been hard enough, but for his escape to be taken away by his own actions hurt a thousand times worse. You know it’s worse for him, being alone in a cell, but that doesn’t stop the bitterness seeping into your mouth every time you think about the lost chance. Harry and Sam had been incensed, their anger fuelled by the void of a missing brother, and you know Harrison’s frustration comes from similar veins.

Even now that Tom’s served his time in solitary, the frustration lingers on, manifesting itself in the way none of you could decide who should go and visit him first. Under normal conditions, you would’ve been there in a heartbeat, but… Things have been complicated, even without recent events, more so than they’d been when you’d visited two months ago. When Harrison had bitten the bullet and volunteered himself, all of you had been more than happy to let him go.

He’d left this morning, and the house has been quiet ever since.

You’re sitting up in one of the spare rooms as you wait for Harrison to return, your back aching and your mind spinning. You twirl the rings on your fingers as you think, taking turns alternating between your engagement ring and the silver signet rings you’d taken from Tom’s dresser. Keeping him close makes everything easier. You’d take any reminder of him you could get, be that his rings, his shirts, his cologne, or…

The baby.

You shift a hand down to sit on the swell of your belly. Tears prick your eyes as you let them close, a frustrated sigh tumbling past your lips.

You’re four months pregnant, and that throws a spanner in the works.

Sure, you would’ve tried equally as hard to get Tom released under normal conditions, but the biological countdown that has now been sprinkled into the mix has only given everything an air of desperation. Even if it isn’t you vocalising what everyone else is thinking, the fervour to get Tom out before it’s too late is there. You can see it in the way Harrison never lets you go anywhere unaccompanied, and Harry and Sam have been working nonstop to get their brother’s freedom. Everyone around you is aware of how vital Tom’s release is, even when the man himself remains oblivious.

Exhaling gently, you shift around on the cosy armchair. The nursery smells of fading paint, and as you move around, you glance at the messy borders of the walls. The sex of your baby is still a mystery to you, but a few days ago, the twins had freshened up the room with a shade of light green whilst you and Harrison were in court. Neither of them is particularly artistically inclined, but they’d done a pretty decent job, all things considered.

Tom’s family have all been good to you—very kind. You haven’t felt alone, even with half your heart locked away in the outskirts of London. It just hasn’t been the idyllic pregnancy you’d dreamt about with your fiancé.

Guilt falls across you as you look down at the rising swell of your belly.

It’s been hard trying to decide whether or not to tell Tom what you’d tried to come clean about three months ago, down by the Thames. You’d wanted to tell him when you’d gone to visit him, but you couldn’t find the heart to come clean and admit that he’s missing out on the one thing he’s waited for his entire life. Telling him would hurt him immensely, and he’s already hurting being away from you. You don’t want to tell him until he can be part of it, and with that uncertainty present, you’ve kept your lips sealed.

Visiting him today in place of Harrison is all you really wanted to do, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You’re vulnerable and explosive, and you want to come clean to Tom when the situation is better. There would be nothing worse than storming into that dingy meeting room, flaunting your obvious pregnancy but being too distracted by your anger at your fiancé to explain everything else. You won’t hurt him like that by taunting him with the one thing he wants but can’t have. You refuse to.

All you can do is hope that he forgives you for holding the information back, pray that he understands your motivations, and, above all, hold onto the hope that he’s there when your child comes into the world.

“Y/N? Where are you?”

Blinking yourself from your reverie, you look up through the open door.

“In here, Sam.”

A moment later, Tom’s younger brother appears in the doorway. The man looks as exhausted as you feel, deep shadows hanging beneath his hazel eyes. When he sees you, his mouth pulls into a small smile and he lifts his hand in greeting, and you can tell that he’s trying. You try to match him by sitting up a little straighter and smiling back.

“Hey,” he says. “I was just… bored, I guess. Thought I’d come and check on you.” Doubt briefly flickers across his face. “Is that okay? Are you busy?”

“I’m bored too,” you admit. You stand from the armchair and groan as you stretch your arms, your stiff back aching. “Do you want to do something?”

Sam grins. “Fuck yeah,” he says. “Can we try the mural?”

Wincing, you manage a smile. “Okay… But if it looks terrible, I will paint over it.”

“As if. I’m the artistic one here, Y/N. Just be glad Harry’s still away.”

“Did someone mention me?” Harry’s voice rings through the air, startling you. With a hand clutching your heart, you look to your side in time to see Sam’s twin taking his place at your side. Where Sam is in a shirt and tie, Harry is clad in a pair of deep denim dungarees. He offers you a rusty smile. “We’re just filling in these lines, yeah?”

Sam’s the one to nod. He gestures at the wall and you notice the faint outlines, scratched in pencil. “Be precise,” he informs, “it took me bloody ages sketching it.”

Harry rolls his eyes, shooting you a silent smirk. “Yes, sir,” he mutters. “Anything you want, sir.”

“Fuck off.”

Harry pulls a face. “Well,” he says, looking at you pointedly, “I hope you’re keeping a record of how many times Sam is swearing around the baby, Y/N.”

Brows furrowing, you pick up a paintbrush. “Why would I be doing that?”

The ginger grins. “Just betters my case for being the better uncle,” he says.

“Oh, what? Don’t you mean the boring uncle?” Sam chides, bristling beside you.

Harry laughs. “I will be the favourite uncle. I don’t care what you say, Sammy. Both of us know it.”

Rolling your eyes at the argument you’ve heard a thousand times before, you give them both a nudge. “Shh,” you plead. “Paint, don’t fight.”

Sam shoots you a soft smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

With a smile lingering on your lips, you watch as Harry puts on one of his playlists, then relax as the three of you get to work. None of you say anything, but the air is full enough—tickled to life with Sam’s quiet whistling and the sound of paintbrushes thick against the wall. You concentrate on the intricate details of the mural, like the outlines of the clouds and the spirals of the grass, and marvel at how wonderful it is to be so content in silence. It’s indicative of how tight your bond has grown, you think.

No longer despising solitude, you’ve found a comfortable middle ground around the men. You and Tom’s inner circle have learned to work together well, stringing together complex case files as you’ve organised accounts. Nothing you’ve been doing recently is legal, but you would’ve left a long time ago if you genuinely cared about the law. You can stomach a few fixed accounts if it means Tom gets to walk free—you can stomach a whole lot more than that, actually, for Tom. You’d set the whole world on fire just to see him smile.

Like the splotchy mural covering the walls, your team has got the job done. Your case for the court is watertight, if a little messy, but you know it’ll be enough to spring Tom. It has to be. You need him, and your child needs him. Everyone in the house needs him.

“Guys? Where are you?” Harrison’s voice joins the mix just as you’re stretching up to flick a few rays of gold into the sun. Harry is at your feet, crouching on the balls of his feet as he tries to paint a few red flowers to the sprigs of grass.

“Nursery,” Harry calls out.

A few moments later, Harrison joins you. You fail to meet his eyes as the focused man sweeps into the room, billowing coat swirling around his feet. His expression is terse as he jerks off his jacket and grabs a paintbrush, dipping the tip in a bit of sky blue paint before standing at the end. You don’t rush him. He’s vibrating with something, his face flushed and his eyes dark, so you give him space.

A few minutes pass, illustrated by Harry’s playlist and the colours of the rainbow. Just when you’re beginning to worry, Harrison speaks.

“Tom is an idiot,” he states, drawing a laugh from one of the twins.

You bite your lip. “Did you explain?” you ask.

Harrison nods. He glances at you, and you note the fleck of purple paint pressed into the pale arc of his cheek. “He said he wouldn’t do it again,” he tells you. “He was angry, though. I think he’s having a bad time.”

Harry hums. “It’s hard in there,” he mumbles. “Was he still himself?”

The blond nods. “Yeah,” he says. “As snarky as ever.”

Sam smirks. “That’s Tom, alright.”

“Good news, though,” Harrison adds. “I went to the courthouse on my way back.”

“Oh?” You look away from your cloud, your heart skipping a beat. “And?”

“And,” Harrison continues, a semblance of a smile twitching across his lips, “I submitted the appeal again. They said they’d probably process it next week. So, if things go according to plan this time, he might be out by next Friday.”

You almost drop your paintbrush. Eyes widening, you turn to face him properly. “Wait, really?”

Harrison’s expression softens. “Yeah.” He puts his paintbrush down, tugging yours from your fingers as if he can tell you’re close to dropping it. “He’s almost out, Y/N.”

Relief spills across you, uncontrollable and overwhelming. Closing your eyes before those easy tears can fall down your cheeks, you step closer and push your way into Harrison’s embrace. He’s ready and waiting for the action, eager to comfort his friend.

“Thank you,” you whisper. Harrison’s chest is warm, and though his hugs aren’t as good as Tom’s, you’ve come to rely on them. You’ve come to rely on all of them. “That’s amazing news.”

“Mhmm.” He squeezes you. “This nightmare is almost over.”

“Thanks, man,” Harry speaks up. You pull away from Harrison’s hold when you hear the quivering tones in his voice, quickly glancing to the man to find him glassy-eyed and flushed. Biting your lip, you extend a hand towards him.

A group hug unfolds, as it’s had the tendency to do since Tom was taken away. The first time had been stoic and cool, with frozen elbows and embarrassed shuffling, but slowly, each one of them has loosened. They’re tough men, burdened and hard, but love ties them to you, and at your request, you know they’d do anything for you. You also know that they all enjoy the physical comfort more than they’d ever let on.

It’s been hard without Tom, and you’d do anything to have him back, but if there’s anything his absence has taught you, it’s that his brothers have become your brothers as his best friend has become your own, and you’ve never really been alone.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Tom’s release day comes quickly, hidden behind the retrial and the quick-paced days in court. It’s busy at the trial, and spaces are limited, so Harry and Sam attend in place of you and Harrison. You get them to take in a few letters for Tom and pass on your condolences for your absence, but you don’t allow yourself to get too hung up on it. When Tom’s release is announced, the weight that rolls from your shoulders is immediate.

As you wait outside the prison, you try to find solace in the rays of the mid-afternoon sun. It’s quiet in the car park, allowing you to ruminate in peace, and though you’re comfortable resting against the bonnet of Tom’s car, your thoughts are far from restful.

Anxiety weighs heavily in your chest, mixing with your excitement and creating a volatile concoction. You find yourself pacing, biting back your nerves as you try to reason with yourself. Draped around your shoulders is a long coat that obscures your bump, chosen as you’ve decided you don’t want to overwhelm Tom with too many things at once. You hope it does the job. The coat twitches in the wind as you walk, noisy and obnoxious.

Things around you are still until there’s a sudden, loud buzzing noise from the prison compound. You jerk your head around to see two men leaving the main building, small in the distance but gradually growing larger. They’re still enclosed in the fenced courtyard, but they’re on their way to the exit, and every rational thought you have flies from your mind as you see him. Tom. Your Tom.

He’s in the clothes he’d been arrested in—red shirt, black slacks, shiny shoes. Looped around his hands is his Rolex and his rings. Tom seems almost identical to how he’d been on that cursed day, just his head is buzzed and he looks a little smaller. He’s carrying himself with confidence, though, and when he looks fervently around the car park and spots you, his entire face swells with happiness. The sight of that large, lovely smile hanging from his lips brings immediate warmth to your eyes.

Every breath is easier now you have him in your sights. Overwhelming love gluts your insides, warm and emotive, choking you up. It takes everything in you to stay still as you wait for Tom to finish talking with his guard, a tall man you recognise from all of his stories, Luther. Tom’s smirking in a way that’s obviously infuriating, and the guard doesn’t hesitate to give him a light punch as your boyfriend saunters out of prison, leaving the compound with a swagger to his stride and a smile the size of Saturn.

The sight of Tom jogging towards you breaks you from your reverie, and you push yourself away from the car to meet him somewhere in the middle. Nothing matters until you’re colliding with his front, finding warmth in his arms, feeling his entire body shake as his tears fall into your hair. Nothing matters unless it’s him.

“I missed you so much,” you whisper. Your grip on the back of Tom’s shirt is hard, a violent sprawling across your knuckles, but you won’t let go. You’re giddy with love. “Fuck, Tom, I missed you so, so much.”

You pull away from his chest and look into his eyes, your lower lip wobbling as you note the fresh tears on his face. You use your thumbs to brush beneath his cheeks, flicking away the tears as you clean up his handsomeness.

“I missed you so much more,” he promises. Tom brings a hand to rest on the back of your head, breath hitching as he meets your eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He kisses you, and it’s so intense you end up pressed against the side of the car. Tom moans with relief as he strokes his fingers over the side of your face, delicately reacquainting his lips with yours as they meet again and again. You keep your hands gliding over his back, his arms, his shoulders, letting your tongues come together as tears flow down your cheeks. The kiss is everything and nothing, familiar and new. The kiss says I missed you. It says I thought about you every day. It says I would wait a thousand dawns if it meant I got to wake up beside you again, but thank fucking god you’re here right now because I missed you more than I ever thought was possible.

“Baby,” Tom murmurs. He pulls away but keeps your foreheads pressed together, the cool tip of his nose brushing yours. “You’re so perfect. I missed you so much that it hurt me.”

He tries to move closer, but you become aware of the pressure to your belly, so bring a gentle hand to push his shoulder away. Hurt immediately floods to his eyes, his expression twitching as Tom takes a few steps back.

“Tom,” you say, voice soft. “I need to tell you something.”

Tom’s jaw twitches. “What is it?” he whispers.

“A good thing,” you clarify. You reach up to wipe the residue of your tears away, then bring your hands down to the tie of your jacket. Biting your lip, you take a steadying breath. “I hope you aren’t angry that I didn’t tell you sooner,” you preface, “but I did it for you.”

Tom nods intensely. “Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s fine. I’m… I’m here, okay? For anything. It’s me and you. Just… me and you forever.”

A smile flickers across your face. “Me and you, and…” You gently open the front of your coat, then reach out for Tom’s hands. Guiding them slowly, you bring the warmth of his palms to rest on the rise of your bump.

“Wait…” Tom shifts his hands around your belly before staring up at you, slack-jawed. He doesn’t try to hide the obvious tears in his eyes. “You’re…?”

Nodding your head is easier than trying to speak.

“Oh god.” Tom sniffles. “What?” He immediately drops to his knees in front of you, his fancy dress trousers getting dirty in the dust. “How— how far along?”

“Almost five months,” you whisper. “I found out right before you got back from Liverpool. I was going to tell you when we went on that date, but…”

“But I fucked up.” Tom sounds wrecked, his aching eyes fixed on the curve of your belly. “I fucked everything up. I… I left you alone for this entire time, and you had to do this all without me.” He rests his forehead against your bump, very, very gently, and you see him close his eyes. “I am a terrible partner.”

Rolling your fingers over the scruff of his hair, you guide him up to look at you. It’s second nature as you roll a thumb over his cheekbone, trying to instil the action with love and reassurance.

“I’m not angry,” you tell him. “You didn’t know, and you didn’t get arrested on purpose. If anything, you should be angry at me for keeping this a secret.” Your teeth catch your lower lip. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but I thought telling you would only make things worse. I’m sorry.”

Tom shakes his head. “No, no. Don’t apologise.” He rests a hand on your leg, the other still on the curve of your front. “I’m sorry.” He drops his voice and looks at the bump. “And I’m sorry to you too, little one.” He nudges his mouth forward and deposits a soft kiss to your stomach. “I love you too.”

Digging one of your hands into your coat pocket, you pull out a photo. “Here,” you urge, handing it to your boyfriend. Tom takes it after a moment, his eyes slow to move away from your front.

He releases a noise somewhere between an exclamation and a choke, nimble fingers gripping the image from your ultrasound. His cheeks flush a brilliant rose.

“When was this?” he whispers.

“At three months,” you reply. You continue to run your hand over the top of his head, trying to soothe him as he absorbs so much information at once. “I went with my mum and Haz.”

“Haz?”

You nod. “Harry and Sam lost a bet.”

Tom hums. He looks between the photo and your bump, then nudges forward to kiss the rise again. His lips are so warm you can feel them through the material of your dress. “Have they been looking after you well enough?”

A light laugh slips past your lips. “Yeah,” you promise. “They helped so much, Tom. It was hard at first… Really hard. Especially when we thought you’d be in there for five years, but… Things worked out.” You have to pause to gather your thoughts. “We converted one of the rooms into a nursery. There’s still stuff left to do, and we can do that together, of course, but… They were all really helpful.”

“Good.” Tom looks up at you, still kneeling, and your hand slips down to cup his face. “I’m sorry,” he adds. “I wish I could’ve been here for all of this.”

Shrugging gently, you squeeze his face. “You can be here for the rest of it,” you promise. “And, I guess… If we have another one, you’ll be there for all of that, right?”

“Of course, darling.” You smile as Tom tilts his lips to knock against the side of your palm.

“So it’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

Chuckling softly, you nod. “Yes,” you promise. “I love you, and I’m so happy this has happened for us, even if the timing was difficult.” Feeling yourself well up, you exhale slowly. “We’re going to be parents, Tom. Isn’t that crazy?”

“It’s brilliant.” Tom’s eyes sparkle. “I’m going to be a father.” He blinks. “What the fuck.”

Laughing, you move your hands to the crown of his head. “Yeah, it’ll take a while to get used to that.”

“I’ll get there,” he states. Tom returns his attention to the bump. “Hey, little one,” he coos, voice all silk and amber tones, “it’s going to be the biggest honour of my life being your dad.”

Tom spends a while at your feet, speaking softly to you and your bump, and you keep your hand resting on the back of his head. He’s weary when he finally climbs to his feet but regains some of that spark when you step forward to kiss him. You don’t mean to make it as heated as you do, but it hasn’t only been your heart that’s missed Tom. You’ve craved him, constantly, during every single lonely night, and now that he’s here, you’re willing to take everything you can get.

“I love you,” you say, hushed against his mouth.

Tom’s teeth brush over your lower lip, and you moan when he tugs. There’s a fervour to it, hot lust burning through sensitive emotions. He releases your lip and pulls back to stare at you, his eyes rippling darker.

“I love you too,” he murmurs. He brings his hands to your waist, pulling you closer. “I love everything about you.”

Your mouths come back together, and it’s messier than before, your lips wettening as your kisses become wilder. Tongues dance and teeth clash as your body temperature starts to rise. Now you’ve moved through the emotional reunion, you’re left with an underlying pulse—a heat throbbing persistently between your legs. The fire builds as you hear Tom’s grunts and feel the desperation in his hands when they grab at your sides and jerk you closer, his mouth devouring yours until your lips are puffy and tender. You’re greedy, chasing more, desiring everything you’ve missed out on in the months you’ve been apart from your lover.

“Darling,” Tom murmurs, breaking the kiss to whisper hotly against your lips, “I missed you, but if you keep this up, we’re not going to get home.”

Desire takes hold of you. “Who said I wanted to go home?” You push in closer, shifting slightly until you’re able to feel the hardness of his crotch pressing up against your thigh. The familiarity of it all makes you inhale sharply. You drop your tone, trying to seem coy as you speak, “I don’t think you understand how badly I needed you whilst you were away, Tom. I missed you.”

The tips of his teeth glint as he arches his brows. “Well…” Tom mumbles. “I owe you about four months of lost opportunities.” He swallows, briefly breaking from the lust-filled headspace to look guilty. You smooth it away by reaching down to squeeze at his hands. “If my radiantly stunning fiancé decides she wants me to start repenting for that now, then who am I to stop her?”

Rolling your eyes, you step away from the car. “You’re a suck-up,” you taunt. You plant a light kiss to his lips. “C’mon,” you urge. “The car.”

He wiggles his eyebrows. “The backseat?” he teases. “Shit, angel. You must be desperate.”

Warmth tickles your face. “Shut up.”

Tom smirks deviously. “It’s okay,” he soothes. He darts forward to open the car door for you, resting his hand on your lower back as you step forward. “I’m just as desperate as you, baby.”

“I hate you,” you murmur. Tom follows you into the car, shutting the door behind you both. You wait for him to sit before straddling his lap, your legs stretching until you have a shin planted on either side of his thighs. The position is comfortable, with enough space between your bump and his chest for you to breath, and you whimper as Tom bends nearer to ghost his lips over yours.

“No, you don’t,” he murmurs.

You want to tease him, but you couldn’t even if you wanted to. You’re alright with too much adoration to even think about pressing it down.

“I really don’t,” you agree.

Tom makes a soft noise of vindication, the tip of his nose brushing yours for just a moment until he’s bearing down and bringing your lips together. You sigh, reaching up and urging him closer. His lips are lovely, and you enjoy kissing them for a while, but then you find yourself distracted by the open expanse of his neck. With his hair buzzed, you’re keenly aware of his throat, pale and sensitive, and if there’s one thing you remember about your boyfriend, it’s his affinity for lovebites.

You bring your lips to the side of his neck, nuzzling your mouth against the long, pale stretch of his throat. Smirking against his skin, you start to suckle deep hickeys against the side of his neck, revelling in the throaty gasps Tom deposits into the air in response.

“Fuck, darling,” Tom whines. He has a hand on your back, urging you closer. When you graze the tips of your teeth against his skin, he whimpers. “Shit. More.”

“More?” you tease. “Forgotten all your manners, Tom?”

He growls. The hand on your back shifts to the back of your head, and he jerks you ever closer. He’s still mindful, especially of the bump laying between you, but he knows just as well as you that you aren’t a piece of porcelain; you like being tugged around. You’ve missed it.

“Give me what I want, and maybe I’ll return the favour.” He says it like you’re oblivious to the desperation in his words. You decide to oblige him.

“Okay,” you murmur. You look up to meet his gaze, his honey-brown eyes full of appreciation. For a moment, it knocks you off balance. It’s so strange readjusting to having Tom back—almost overwhelming to be able to touch someone who had existed only in your memories for so many weeks. You drop your head and give him what he wants.

Tom’s skin tastes clean, and it smells distantly of pinecones. He groans, fisting at your hair and holding you close as you kiss and suck along his skin, drawing deep hues to the surface of his neck. He shifts in his seat, basking in the pain and whining every time you soothe a fresh mark with the warmth of your tongue. You keep your hand resting on his hair, the cropped length of his buzz prickly and coarse beneath the pads of your fingertips.

“Oh god yeah,” he murmurs, voice mingling with the wet noises coming from your lips. “Your mouth is so fucking good, baby. I missed it.” Grunting, he brings a hand to your waist, squeezing the flesh of your hips hard. “I thought about you all the time in there.”

Tom releases his hold on your hair and begins to stroke his hands over your back. As you continue to mark his neck, he starts to tease you, gradually dropping the heat of his palms lower and lower. You can’t stop yourself from bucking down into his hold, moaning against his neck as he grabs handfuls of your ass.

“Tom,” you break off to whimper, panting softly. You feel dizzy on the taste of his skin. “You’re being mean.”

“Mean?” you can hear the smirk in his voice. “How am I being mean?” Tom squeezes the curves of your figure, his slender fingers warm against your skin. You’re in a dress, the material thin, and he doesn’t hesitate to curve his hands beneath the hem and bring them to rest over your panties. “You’re the one who wanted to come in here and get your hands all over me… I’m doing what you asked.” He breaks off, chuckling darkly. “That’s not how things usually work, though, is it?”

The air between you shifts.

You pull away from Tom’s neck, your mouth inflamed and throbbing. You have to dig your teeth into your lower lip to muffle your whimper when Tom brings a hand to the front of your legs, gently brushing two of his long fingers over the front of your panties. He’s teasing with it, eyes alight with deviousness, jaw set in a determined line.

“I don’t know,” you whisper. “Maybe I want to be in charge this time.”

Tom laughs gently. “Oh, yeah?” He rubs your cunt a little faster, causing you to suck in a sharp breath as you feel the delicate pressure on your clit. The contact makes your passage clench, growing wet enough to dampen the front of your panties. “So you don’t like this, hmm? You don’t want me to follow through on everything I have planned for you?”

“What have you got planned?”

He tuts. “Oh, I’m not going to tell you, angel. That’d be too easy. Either you want me to be in charge, or you decide to call the shots.” Tom smirks as he feels you buck down against his hand. Maybe if the circumstances were different, you’d find the strength to push back, but you don’t. It’s been so long, and your cunt is weeping already just from the husky tones in his voice.

“You’re in charge,” you whisper. The vindicated smirk he flashes in response is enough to send shivers down your spine.

“Damn right, baby.” Tom moves his hands away, pressing them to your waist instead. “Can you lay down for me, please?”

You shuffle across the car seat as instructed, Tom shifting until he’s kneeling in the footwell of the backseats. It’s a good thing the car is obscenely huge, otherwise, the already-cramped fit would be unworkable.

Draping your legs over Tom’s shoulders, he pushes the hem of your dress up, bunching it just above your bump. The hungry fire in his eyes fades slightly.

“Is this okay? Are you comfy?”

“It’s fine,” you soothe. “Are you okay down there?”

Tom nods. The scruff of his buzzed head scratches against your inner thighs. “I’m bloody perfect,” he responds. “Can I touch you?”

“Please do.”

The tip of his nose nuzzles against your covered clit. “Perfect,” Tom purrs, his breath hot against your panties. “I think it’s time I remind you who owns this fucking pussy… As hot as it was when you were trying to tell me what to do, it’s not on.” He brings his mouth away from your core, and you whimper as his tongue laps gently across your thigh, the muscle deliciously slippery. “I’m the one calling the shots.”

You’re throbbing, every inch of you aching for his touch. The burn is visceral—pulsing, wet. “Yes, sir,” you return. Tom’s eyes snap to yours. “Do whatever you want.”

“Say please.”

Swallowing the dryness in your throat, you add, “please.”

“Good, baby. You sound so pretty begging for me.” Tom easily pulls your panties down your legs, returning to push your thighs further apart. He brings both of his thumbs to your sensitive lips, humming when you whimper. Using the pads of his fingers, he gently parts your centre, groaning softly at the sight. “Say it,” he murmurs, entranced by the paradise between your legs. “Tell how badly you want me.”

He’s incredibly infuriating, but you play right into his hand. “Please, Tom,” you whine. “Please touch me.”

He hums. “Of course, lovie,” he murmurs. He glances up at you. “All you had to do was ask.”

The first touch of his tongue against your slit makes your eyes roll back. A breathless whine slips past your lips as his mouth envelops your clit, the strong tip of his tongue nuzzling over your sensitive skin in a way you’ve only dreamed of. You’ve been able to get off in his absence, but nothing can simulate the sizzling heat of his mouth and his tongue, nor the scratching of his short hair against your fleshy inner thighs.

The way he unravels you is obscene, toned with the sounds of spit and lazy lips, the sensations of desperation. Tom devours you, using his elbows to push your thighs apart as he buries his face as close to your centre as possible. You can barely see him over the rise of your belly, but you can certainly feel him. When you start to grind down against his face, things only escalate, your eyes fluttering shut as your spine arches in response to his feverish movements.

“Oh god,” he murmurs, voice thick as it vibrates across you. “Missed this… Tastes so fucking good, sweetheart.”

Your high rolls over you suddenly and without warning, manifesting itself in a silent cry as your body goes rigid. You hear Tom hum in surprise, then feel his hands lock around your thighs, holding back your legs as they shake in the face of absolute pleasure.

“Sorry,” you pant, recovering gradually, “I didn’t know that was going to happen then.”

Tom runs his tongue over your slit, still sensitive and throbbing. “‘S okay, lovie,” he replies, voice warm. He nuzzles in closer and brings two slender fingers to push against your entrance. Your hole is hot and pulsing, pooled with your arousal. You hear it pucker as he gently presses against your cunt, teasing your entrance with his fingertips. “I’m not done making it up to you, though. Is that okay?”

Exhaling, you nod quickly. “Fuck yeah,” you say, struggling to think. “Oh.”

He slips two fingers into you, your eager walls parting and welcoming him in. Tom removes his mouth from your heat and replaces his tongue with the pad of a thumb, and when you release a loud noise of strangled enjoyment, he begins to crook his fingers into you. He strokes his digits against your walls with poise and elegance, nudging up against your g-spot and stroking, again and again, chasing the noises you release.

“So pretty,” he coos. “My pretty baby. Making all those beautiful noises.” Tom smiles almost proudly. His chin is wet with your arousal. “I love your cunt… Look at how well it's taking me.” To prove his point, he feeds a third finger alongside the others. “So greedy for me, eh? Greedy little pussy. So hot. So wet. God…”

Tom drops his head again, disappearing from your sight of vision. You moan, body jerking as you feel his tongue move around his fingers, catching the arousal that seeps from your pussy as he works you open. He releases an obscene moan before dragging his mouth to your clit, stimulating you with his hands and tongue in tandem.

“Holy fuck,” you whimper. You feel hot in the best way, your skin becoming sweaty as you writhe over the leather seat. “Feels so good, Tommy.” It feels like heaven—especially when he bends his fingers and the tips of them stroke up against your sensitive spot. “‘M gonna cum again.”

“Already?”

“Yeah.”

Tom chuckles. “I’m so good at this,” he murmurs. “Go on, angel. Don’t hold back on my account… You’re so pretty when you cum.”

The tide breaks, and your climax rolls across you, legs trembling as Tom holds you in place. You writhe as you bask in the heat, your knuckles losing blood as you clench your hands into hard fists. The press of your nails against the soft flesh of your palms hurts, but you don’t care. It feels far too good to think about anything beyond Tom.

You ride it out, and Tom eventually draws his face away from your clit. He kisses along your inner thighs as you gasp for air, only removing his fingers when you start to whimper. As good as the climaxes have felt, panting for breath on the backseat, it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough by far.

“Get up here,” you say breathlessly.

Tom chuckles as he appears from between your legs. He gives your thighs a little tap before he closes your legs, wriggling out of the footwell as you sit up. Easily, like you’ve done a thousand times before, you swing a leg over Tom’s lap, straddling him when he sits with his back against the car seat.

“Are you okay up there?” he checks, bringing his clean hand to rest on the curve of your stomach. When you nod, his brown eyes darken. “Perfect…” he hums. “Clean off my fingers, will you?”

You nod, opening your mouth expectantly and moaning as Tom slips three of his fingers between your lips. Fighting your smirk, you maintain eye contact with him, your pride swelling as you see his cheeks darken. He gently fucks his fingers into your mouth, making you moan at the movements and the taste of your heat as it spreads across your tongue. He’s messy with it, and you feel your lips and chin grow heavy from spittle.

“Pretty,” he coos, “so, so pretty.”

Tom goes to move his fingers from your mouth, only for a detail to make you pause. Eyes straining, you reach up to catch his wrist, holding his hand in place just as his fingers pull away from your lips.

“What’s this?” you query, narrowing your eyes. You drag Tom’s left hand nearer your face, gasping softly as you take note of a new tattoo resting at the bottom of his ring finger.

“Oh.” Tom shifts around slightly, biting at his lower lip. “I got your initials tattooed… When we get married, the ring will cover them, but I wanted you with me—I want you with me—all the time, even without a bit of metal.” He hesitates. “Is that okay?”

You press a delicate kiss across the letters. “Yes,” you say. You feel shy as you meet the eyes of the man who loves you so immensely. “That’s really, really sweet, Tom.” You bite your lip as you look up at him. “Gone soft on me, baby?”

“‘M always soft on you,” he says gruffly, guiding a hand to your face. He brings you closer, encouraging you to lean higher on your knees. “Love of my life, angel. You know that… My wife.”

You shift on his lap, smiling bashfully. “I’m not your wife yet.”

“Soon, soon, soon,” he whispers.

Both of you come together, no words needing to be exchanged for you to know what to do. Tom loses his clothes as you sit up a little straighter, one of your hands curling around the headrest of a seat as Tom angles himself slightly. With the rise of your bump between you, you aren’t able to be flushed together like times before, but the man beneath you is quick to readjust so he’s laying further back, giving you plenty of room to move in a way that’s comfortable. He kisses over your knuckles as you run his hard cock through your slit, his interested eyes fixed firmly on the sight of his length as you finally begin to move down.

The moment the head of his cock pushes into you feels indescribable. The ache of the stretch falls away as relief pours over you, the closeness satisfying far more than just your arousal.

“Gentle, gentle,” Tom murmurs, hand resting on your belly. “Be careful.”

You chuckle, beginning to move but only slowly. “It’s okay,” you reassure him, “it won’t hurt them.” Your eyes roll back slightly as you bring your hand down to rest on Tom’s shoulder, moaning quietly. “You can move too… Please, move.”

“Okay, darling.” Tom gently starts to move his hips. He groans as he slumps back against the seat, beautiful face coloured light pink. You’d missed the expressions he makes, how emotive the slants of his features can be. His nostrils flare and his jaw tenses as you ride him, your cunt so wet the movements are almost effortless. “That feels… so good.” His voice is hollow, gutless. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been thinking about you. You, and your hot cunt.” He moans again, unable to sit around the words. Tom ruts into you a little harder, guiding you to move faster with the hand on your hip. “Taking me so well, darling. So fucking well. I’m not going to last at all.”

“That’s okay,” you murmur. “I won’t either.”

Tom manages a lazy smirk. He opens his eyes as he brings a hand to your clit, teasing the sensitive bud with his thumb. You jerk a little at the stimulation but start to ease into it, basking in the pleasure from the bud and Tom’s cock. He’s buried deep within you, pressing your walls apart, the curved tip of his head brushing deeper than you’ve felt in months.

“So tight,” he murmurs. Tom leans back, clearly enjoying the sight of you riding him. “My darling. You look so beautiful like this… I swear your tits are bigger, too.” The hand on your belly gently caresses the bump, Tom’s tongue briefly wandering out to wet his lower lip. “Look at how beautiful you are… I can’t wait to knock you up again.”

Stifling a moan, it takes everything in you to focus on your movements. “You feel so good, Tom,” you whimper, unable to hold back the praise he loves to hear. “I missed this so much.”

“I know, baby. I missed this too… Come on, now.” His voice hardens slightly. “I’m about to cum, but I don’t want to unless you’re right here beside me. So… will you be a good girl and finish with me? Please?”

Heat flushes through your system as you bounce your head quickly. Your eyes close, breath hitching as you feel your climax rise. It starts in the pit of your stomach, a coil pulling tighter and tighter until it bends and snaps, bursting wide and spilling pleasure across your body in warm waves of enjoyment. You cry out as you fall apart, holding Tom’s shoulder tightly as his hand clamps around your waist. You feel him mirror you, hear his loud groan as his cock pulses inside you, your movements unceasing as you ride it out together.

It ends, but you stay joined. Tom sits up, the distance put between you by your belly requiring him to stretch closer and seize your lips in a smouldering kiss. His hand returns to your cheek, yours to his, and the look in his eyes is dizzying.

“I love you so much,” he speaks, words soft like a promise. “Everything I do from here on out is for you, and…” He glances back at your stomach. “And our child.” Words thickening, you see Tom’s eyes well with tears again. He chuckles, cheeks flushing red. “Sorry,” he adds. “I get a bit choked up thinking about it.”

You stroke your fingers over the back of his hair, spiky strands smooth against your hand. “Don’t apologise for expressing your emotions, baby,” you whisper. “It’s been a very long day.”

Tom nods. “Love you,” he murmurs again. He nuzzles his head into the palm of your hand, his eyes closing.

“I love you too,” you say, words truer than they’ve ever been before. You bend down to kiss his forehead. “Do you want to go home now?”

He hums. “Y/N,” he whispers. Tom blinks up at you, eyes soft. He catches the palm of your hand with a few kisses as he sits up a little straighter. “I’m already home.”

Teeth grazing your lower lip, you hold back your smile as you marvel at how clichéd he’s become. You bend down and kiss him very gently. “Sap,” you murmur. “Love you, though.”

Tom pulls a face. He rolls his eyes, but there’s no malice—only love. “Love you too,” he says. “Yes, though,” he adds, “I would love to go home.”

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

finis

yay

that’s probably a wrap on mob!tom ! i don’t have any more fic ideas for him :( that being said, this was a lot of fun to write, and i really, really hope you liked it :D ik the theme isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so if you read it all, i love you very very much

please let me know if you have any thoughts!!

masterlist through the link in my bio <3

#tom holland x reader #tom holland smut #tom holland x reader smut #mob!tom x reader #mob!tom holland #mob!tom holland smut #y/n #self insert #smut #mob!tomfic

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dustofbrokenheart · 4 years ago

Text

The Covenant: Top Anon

Pogue Parry x Reader

Word Count: 2,288

Summary: You have a loyal follower who comments on every post under your food blog. Just who is your favorite follower and why is the new grocery boy kinda cute too?

It was a new year and the start of a new you. Well, that is, a you who was trying new things.

In the past, you always made resolutions, but that spirit ran out before the month of January was even done. But after the particularly rough time of the past year, you swore that this time would be different, that you would make a serious effort to do something new.

It was that determination that led your current situation—your kitchen countertops were covered with ingredients and cooking utensils, your cell phone resting on a near by tripod for filming purposes.

The goal for this year was to try running a blog, and since you were a bit of a foodie, it made a lot of sense to center the blog around cooking and food. The idea came to you quickly; the hard part was deciding on a name, which took a while.

Eventually, you settled on The Foodiest. Naming was not one of your strong suits, but it was enough to get the point clearly across to potential viewers.

Choosing the layout design was on the same level of easy as deciding and didn’t take more than a day or two to implement on your site. Thank goodness for the existence of pre-made layout templates that saved you the effort of having to code everything yourself.

With of the work on that end finished, the day had finally come for you to actually cook something to post about. Seeing as how January was a cold, winter month, you chose to make mashed sweet potatoes. Not only was it one of your favorite winter side dishes, it wasn’t hard to make either, giving you the confidence that even if your writing was lackluster, at least the food would look good.

Most of the blogs you were familiar with used a combination of text and photos for readers to follow along with, but you were going to try video in place of images. You sometimes struggled to copy based on what was shown in the photo, especially when you first started cooking, so you hoped video would make it easier on budding chefs who came across your content.

Luckily, the video would be sped up and lapsed for the final post to spare people from having to watch the monotonous parts in full length.

Hands on your hips, you surveyed everything one last time to make sure it was all ready. With a satisfied nod you reached forward to tap the large, red record button on the phone.

You debated whether or not to talk while filming but decided against it. You were nervous enough posting to the blog without having the added stress of talking.

Everything happened in its regular order: you started by peeling and chopping the potatoes, a basic step, but you took your time doing it, paranoid as ever that you would cut yourself with the knife. Next you boiled the bright orange chunks in a pot of water; then put them in a mixing bowl once they were cooked. And finally used an electric mixer to blend it all nice and smooth, adding in milk, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Swiping your pointer finger through the finished product, you hummed with delight at the delicious, sweet taste. You pulled out a presentable bowl from the cupboard and spooned some orange fluff into it for the final reveal. Reaching blindly towards the far end of the counter you grabbed a bag of pecans to top off the mashed sweet potatoes. You scrutinized it and added more pecans for good measure.

Doing something in front of a camera was very different than doing the same thing on a normal day. Tension leeched out of your shoulders and you exhaled loudly with your head leaned back. A sense of pride warmed your chest, especially as you returned your gaze to the picturesque bowl. It looked great and tasted even better.

There was a large portion of leftovers because the recipes you used were collected from family and meant to feed small armies of people. You did your best to eat what you could and made plans sharing the rest with friends and coworkers later.

A few days after you published the post, you decided to check the stats on your account dashboard to see what the public response to it was, if there was any at all. Google analytics was useful for counting the total number of views it received while the blog site itself tracked the likes and… a comment?

Initial shock gave way to a bolt of excitement that had your fingers tingling with energy. You clicked to read it, wondering what it may say. Fingers crossed it was something good, whether it came in the form of a compliment or some constructive criticism.

Anonymous: wow good job

The chair creaked as you sat back slowly. You didn’t know how to read that, there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Wow good job, said sarcastically? Wow good job, said excitedly? It didn’t help that the commenter didn’t believe in using punctuation either. And since it was submitted anonymously, there was no easy way to track down who sent it.

But maybe you were being too paranoid about it. You decided to take it as a compliment and cracked your fingers before firing off a response.

Foodiest: Thanks anon! I had a lot of fun with this dish. Hope you tune in for the next one :)

Anonymous never followed up with that particular exchange but they commented on every post without fail for the next two months.

Anonymous: nevr had white chili before it was good

Anonymous: the stuffed pepper were good

Anonymous: good call with the shrimp

Of course, all of the messages were sent as anonymous, so there was no 100% guarantee that it was the same person, but your gut feeling told you that it was. Who else had no respect for grammar rules and religiously used ‘good’ as their only descriptor?

You grew to expect, and enjoy, the weekly comment left by anon and made sure to leave a nice response in return. It was hard not to feel a connection to someone who took the time to try your recipes and leave a nice message. If only you could figure out who it was or at least have a name for them besides anonymous.

Foodiest: I’m glad you liked the recipe! My gramma swore by mayo when making grilled cheese. Thanks for always liking my stuff, if you ever want to talk more feel free to message me!

There. Maybe that would make them feel comfortable to give you their name you thought as you powered down your laptop for the night.

You spent the next couple of days leading up to the new post planning on what recipe to cook. Yep. Definitely not hoping for more information about anon.

For this newest post you decided to make some Indian curry, one of your favorites. Even long after you finished cooking, taping, and cleaning, the potent scent of spices was still heavy in the air, like aromatic nirvana that had your mouth watering even with a full stomach.

You tried your best not to refresh the post every few minutes to see if anon commented but it was tough. It turned out that you didn’t have to wait long as they left a comment within twenty minutes.

Anonymous: havent cooked this yet but looks good. Never really had indian before so have to go buy the stufff first – po

Anon finally gave up a name! You let out a happy noise and read it again. Po… short and to the point, just like all of the previous responses had led you to think about them. There was no time to waste, you hurried to write back, initial typos all over the place as the words out-paced your fingers.

Foodiest: Hi Po! It’s nice to have a name to put with your words. I would recommend going to an Asian Market for the spices, they’re more likely to carry them. Let me know how it goes for you :)

Since that conversation, Po and you chatted frequently about the weekly recipe choice, whether or not it looked good and if Po had plans to make it themselves, which they often did. Po seemed to like all types of food; vegetarian, meats, drinks, desserts, even ethnic dishes from places as far off as Bolivia and Morocco.

And the longer you two talked, the more frequent the messaging became. Whereas in the beginning Po would only submit a compliment that you would follow up with a ‘thank you’, it had turned into lengthy back and forths that took up a majority of the comment section for each post. More followers joined as the months went by and you hoped that they weren’t intimidated by your blatant favoritism but it was just so easy to talk with Po. If you were being honest with yourself though, it wasn’t only that it was easy… you genuinely liked talking to them.

Every time you made a new post it was difficult to not refresh the page every few minutes to see if they had left a message. And when they did, it was like a shot of electricity straight into the system where your heart would jolt and your face would flood with heat. You were hesitant to say it was a crush given that you didn’t know what they actually looked like and the computer screen barrier made it so you were content to define it as friendship.

Pushing those thoughts aside, you grabbed your wallet and keys while putting on shoes so you could make a quick run to the store. You had big plans to make some buffalo chicken wings for the blog this week and you needed to stop by the store to pick up some ingredients that you didn’t have, namely Frank’s Original Red for the buffalo sauce and blue cheese for the dip. Being an adult and responsible for your own grocery shopping was a chore at times.

Luckily, Winter had thawed out into Spring so there was no need for you to warm up or car or scrape your windows. You just hopped in and drove the four blocks it took to get to the store. The plan was to cross the stuff for the wings off of your list first and then browse around for some good snacks to tide you over for the next week or so. Things were going according to plan until you saw him.

A tall boy wearing an employee apron stood in front of the cracker section, his jaw line and soft looking long hair catching your eye. Then he reached up to the tallest shelf to restock some boxes his arms flexing slightly to show off his heavy biceps and his shirt rode up, exposing deep cut ridges in his lower abdomen. To put it simply, you were starstruck.

He finished with the boxes he had in-hand and went to grab more from the cart at his side when you noticed your blatant ogling. Rather than confront you about it he merely smiled and moved out of the way so that you could get to the brand that you wanted. Choking from embarrassment, you kept your head down and threw a box of Goldfish into your shopping cart, speeding to get out of the aisle and his presence.

The store was a small local business and you frequented enough to know most of the workers there but you didn’t recognize this one, meaning that he must be new. What a way to make a first impression on him. Clearly your constitution was no match for his rugged, good looks. Then he was polite enough not to comment on you objectifying him which somehow made you feel even worse about it.

You decided to end the shopping trip almost immediately knowing that you were too spooked to continue shopping lest you run into him again.

You rolled the shopping cart into an open check-out lane and started putting your things on the conveyor for the cashier to scan. It just so happened that you knew the cashier—she was a middle-aged lady who’d been at the store for nearly two years. “Hi, Y/N. Find everything you needed?”

“Hey, Eva. Yes, I did.” You tried to steady yourself. Eva had a notoriously sharp eye and wouldn’t hesitate to question you if you looked off.

She left you alone today, engaging in normal chit chat, until she had trouble scanning the bottle of Frank’s hot sauce. Eva frowned when it didn’t want to scan and tried again but the bottle slipped from her hands and the neck of it shattered. Eva cursed and huffed, hurrying to throw the bottle into the trash before more leaked onto the register.

“I am so sorry, hun! I’ll get you another.”

“It was an accident,” you assured. “I can get it myself—"

“Not a problem,” she assured you with a wink. She pulled a walkie from her hip and spoke into it. “Hey, bring me a bottle of Frank’s Original Red Hot Sauce. Quick.”

You barely had time to don your awkward smile as she talked about how her neighbor’s dog kept pooping in her yard when the guy from the cracker aisle walked up behind Eva and handed a bottle of hot sauce to her. She took it and patted his back to get him to move forward.

“Thanks, hun. Y/N this is the new grocery boy—”

“Pogue,” he interrupted. “My name is Pogue.”

_______________

Another fic where they know each other but don’t know that they do. This time featuring Pogue and his fandom accepted interest in food. I picture him to have bad messaging skills — his fingers struggle with those tiny phone buttons.

#the covenant #pogue parry #pogue parry x reader #imagines

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seotipsandtricks-me · 6 years ago

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Want to drive a TON of organic traffic to your website? Here’s the basic formula: Pick a topic/keyword Create an exceptional piece of content around that topic Promote it. Build links to it. Rank it. Sounds simple, right!? I’ll let you in on a little secret: It is simple, but only if you use the right tools for the job. What do I mean by that? Well, there are a ton of questions you need to answer before you get started, such as: Which keywords/topics should you be trying to rank for? Is it even possible to outrank the competition? What kind of content should you create? (e.g. blog post, infographic, interactive content, etc) How many links do you need to build to rank for your chosen keywords? (and can you build that many links?) In this post, I’ll be showing you how to answer all these questions (and more) with only one tool: Ahrefs. What You Will Learn Let me make one thing clear: My aim here isn’t to list everything Ahrefs can do. (If that’s what you want, you can find a big list of features here.) My aim is to show actionable ways to use Ahrefs (and no other tools) to get more organic traffic to your website. Here’s everything I’ll be teaching you: Getting Started: How to get started with Ahrefs and set yourself up for success (note: do not skip this stage, it is very important). Backlink Health Check: How to identify (and fix) any backlink issues that may be holding your website back in the SERPs. WARNING: Fixing these issues can lead to an instant rankings boost! Keyword Research: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is perhaps the best keyword research tool on the market. I’ll show you how to use this tool (and a couple of other Ahrefs tools) to build an initial keyword list for your website. Keyword Prioritisation: How to prioritise your keywords list and identify “low-hanging” opportunities that can boost traffic FAST. Content Research: How to figure out EXACTLY what type of content you should be creating to rank for your chosen keywords. Link Building: How to build links to your website using a variety of methods (note: this is where Ahrefs really shines!) Site Audit: How to diagnose and fix errors with your website (note: this is highly recommended, as on-site errors can hold back your success, even if you’ve done everything right thus far!) Analyse your Progress/Success: How to use Ahrefs to make sure you’re on the right track and that things are improving with your website. I’ve made a big effort to lay this out as a checklist, rather than a random list of ideas and tactics. This means that if you follow this guide from start-to-finish, I guarantee you will see results. What Is Ahrefs (And Why Should You Care)? Ahrefs is a powerful—and complete—SEO analysis tool. It does pretty much everything you could ever need to do from an SEO standpoint, including: Keyword research (via Keywords Explorer) Content research (via Content Explorer) Backlink research (via Site Explorer) Rank tracking (via Rank Tracker) Competitor research (via Site Explorer, Link Intersect Tool, etc) Site auditing (i.e. diagnosing site health issues, etc.) (via the Site Audit tool) Right now, the only important thing Ahrefs can’t do is manage or send link building outreach emails. But you can use Gmail for that. Everything else is covered. You can search a database of 4.9 million keywords in seconds with Keywords Explorer. You can search 700+ million pieces of content to find content ideas that will generate a ton of traffic, with Content Explorer. You can search the world’s largest index of backlinks (over 3 trillion!) to see all your competitors backlinks, with Site Explorer. You can find and fix hundreds of on-site issues in seconds, with the Site Audit tool. And that’s the tip of the iceberg, really. But, impressive industry-leading stats aside, what does this mean for the average Joe? Simple. It means you have everything you need—under one roof—to grow your website traffic like crazy. This post will walk you through the process of doing this, step-by-step. Getting Started With My Ahrefs Review In this short section, I’ll show you how to get started with my Ahrefs review and how to set up your account for success. So, first things first, head over to Ahrefs and sign up for a trial. Note: It’s $7 for a 7-day trial. I recommend trying the “Standard” plan. Once you’re in, Ahrefs will prompt you to add a project (i.e. website) to your account. This is pretty straightforward—give your project a name and hit “next”. Make sure to use the http + https naming scheme. You’ll then be asked to add keywords that you want to track. Ahrefs actually suggests a bunch of keywords that your website is already ranking for. Basically, the higher up the list of suggestions they are, the more traffic those keywords are sending to your website. I recommend adding the first 4-5 pages worth of keywords. Why? Because this allows you to track your most important keywords (i.e. the keywords that are the most traffic to your website). Step some competitors. Again, you can either add competitors manually (if you know them) or choose from the suggestions Ahrefs gives. I recommend adding 5 competitors from the suggestions Ahrefs gives. And finally, add some branded keywords to track. I really recommend taking a moment to set this one up. We’ll be using it later in the guide. Note: By default, Ahrefs sends you daily emails about these keywords. If you prefer not to have daily emails flooding your inbox, go into the settings and change this to weekly (or monthly). That’s it. You’re ready to rock! Backlink Health Check Backlinks from spammy, low-quality websites. Backlinks with over-optimised anchor text. These types of backlinks can spell disaster for your website. At best, they’ll prevent your website from ranking as well as it should. At worst, they’ll lead to a Google Penguin penalty. That’s why you need to nip any “bad” backlinks in the bud before you invest time, energy, and money optimizing your website. But: How do you do this? Like I said earlier, Ahrefs has the largest backlink index on the planet— this makes it the perfect tool for identifying and fixing any “bad” backlinks. NOTE: Ahrefs just released a new Site Audit tool to help diagnose even more issues with your website. I’ll be running through this later in the guide. Here’s how to do it: Look for “Dodgy” Links in the Backlinks and Referring Domains Reports Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then navigate to the referring domains tab. By default, this will show you all referring domains ordered by Domain Rating (DR)—highest to lowest. But remember: You’re looking for low-quality links, so reverse this (i.e. order by DR low to high). Look for domains that look low-quality or suspicious, such as: Anything you don’t recognise Foreign-language websites (e.g. .ru, .dk domains, etc) .xyz domains Low-quality wiki pages Article directories [empty anchors] Of course, it would be pretty time-consuming if you had to check every backlink manually. But, luckily, Ahrefs has a few filters to help you out. If you move to the Backlinks report, there are filters for both languages and platform. I recommend filtering by languages like Russian to find spammy backlinks, as Russian sites are kind of notorious for link spam. Note: You can get even more specific with languages by filtering for exact TLDs (e.g. .dk, .ru, etc.) in the Referring Domains report. You can also easily uncover low-quality Wiki pages with the Wikis filter in the Backlinks report: But remember, even if something looks super-dodgy, always check out the link manually before making a judgement. Otherwise, you run the risk of disavowing links that may be helping your website. If you can confirm that the link is “bad”, hit the checkbox next to the domain. You can then simply click “disavow links” to send them to your disavow area + create a disavow file. NOTE: You can only see checkboxes if the domain that you’re reviewing is added to Ahrefs Dashboard. This should be the case if you added your domain(s) in the “getting started” section above. Look for Unnatural Anchor Text Issues Anchor text is the clickable text within a link. Example: The anchor text for this link is “this link here”. Anchor text helps to tell Google (and potential visitors) what your website is about—that’s why it remains a Google ranking factor. But: Anchor text over-optimisation (i.e. too many keyword-rich links) can trigger a Google penalty. If your website has an unnatural link profile with tons of exact match (or partial match) anchor texts, this could be an issue. Here’s how to identify—and fix—these issues with Ahrefs: Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then go to the Anchors report under Backlink Profile. This will show you exactly what anchor text is being used within the links back to your website. If you have a healthy backlink profile, most of your anchors will probably be: Branded anchors (e.g. “matthew woodward”, “matthewwoodward.co.uk”, etc.) Generic anchors (e.g. “click here”, “this post”, etc.) What you don’t want to see is lots of exact-match anchors. This is a sign of over-optimisation. If you spot anything that looks dodgy, hit details > referring domains to see which sites are linking to you. Right now, you can’t disavow these links directly from within the anchors report. However, you can simply hit the export button then upload the file manually to the disavow area. Look for LOTS of Links from the Same C-block IPs Every website has its own IP address that looks something like this: 04.27.36.55 In simple terms, while you may be used to typing in matthewwoodward.co.uk to get to my blog, that’s really just a memorable way of navigating to an IP address where my website resides. Basically: Because humans are better at remembering website URLs than a random string of numbers, we let the browser do the work and translate a URL into an IP address behind the scenes. Now, IP addresses are separated into blocks: A, B, C, and D blocks, like so: AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD If we have the following two websites: 04.27.36.55 04.27.36.7 We would say they’re on the same C-block. In internet terms, these sites are neighbours. Note: More information on IP addresses here. Why does this matter? Lots of links from the same C-block IP can be a bad sign. This is because it signals to Google that these sites may be closely related (e.g. a PBN) and therefore, not the most natural links ever. Luckily, you can use Ahrefs’ Referring IPs report to find these. Here’s how: Enter your domains into Site Explorer, then hit the Referring IPs report under Backlink Profile. Ahrefs groups referring IPs by C-blocks by default—very useful! In the example above, you can see that the first few results look a bit dodgy—there are thousands of links, from hundreds of domains, all on the same C-block IP. Let’s take a deeper look. Yep, they’re spammy. They need disavowing/removing. Again, there’s no way to disavow these directly from this report but you can export the domains to a .csv and upload them manually. Find (AND Fix) Broken Backlinks Building backlinks is damn hard. It’s laborious. Time consuming. And costly. So: It makes sense to ensure that you’re getting the full benefit of the links you build, right? Definitely. Unfortunately, links sometimes break. And when this happens, you won’t feel the benefit of those links. That’s why fixing broken links is a quick way to regain some valuable link juice and increase rankings. Here’s how to do it: Enter your domain into Site Explorer then go to Pages > Best by links. Then, add a filter so you see only pages with a 404 status code. You will now see all 404 pages on your website ranked by the number of referring domains they have. Here’s how to reclaim the “link juice” for these pages: Restore the broken page—this should be done if there is an actual error on your part (i.e. you’ve accidentally deleted a valuable page at some point). Add a 30 redirect to the broken page—this should point to either the new location of the page, a suitable alternative, or the homepage. Reach out and asking the website owner to fix the link—this is your best bet if there’s an actual problem with the link such as incorrect formatting. So, just restore these pages or redirect them to something relevant to preserve all your link juice. Do this for any valuable broken links and you’ll see an instant boost! Remove ALL Low-Quality (or Irrelevant) Outbound Links Spammy inbound links are BAD. But outbound links are also extremely important. You, therefore, need to make sure that you’re not linking to low-quality (or totally irrelevant) websites. Here’s how to do it: Enter your domain into Site Explorer then go to Outgoing links > Linked Domains > add a dofollow filter By default, Ahrefs shows the most linked-to domains first. Reverse this list. When I gave this report a quick onceover for my own website, everything looked pretty above board (phew!) BUT…this isn’t the case for all sites. Here’s an outbound link I found on Moz.com: This is clearly a spammy domain. If you find anything like this, remove (or replace) the links on your website. Also: Sometimes, you’ll find that your website is linking to a particular URL many times. Example: Upon closer inspection, we can see that this is a WordPress theme link present in the theme HTML. In all honesty, this probably isn’t going to cause any huge issues. However, as it’s a dofollow link across (almost) every page of the website, at the very least it’s diluting authority for no good reason. I recommend that you remove anything like this from your website’s HTML, too. Fix Broken Outbound Links Broken outbound links lead to a bad user experience. Not only is it annoying to click a link on a website and be taken to a broken page but also, it leaves the visitor questioning the validity of your content. Why? Because they’ll assume your website hasn’t been updated in awhile. Or that you simply don’t put much effort into your content—certainly not enough to curate resources that actually exist. Also, if Google thinks your content is going to lead to a bad user experience, they certainly aren’t going to rank your website. Luckily, this is easily fixable. Here’s how: Enter your website into Site Explorer, then go to Outgoing Links > Broken Links. If anything shows up in this report, there are issues to be fixed. Looks like I have 56 broken outbound links on my website :( You should fix these links by either removing them or replacing them. Note: Here’s a checklist from Vertical measures that goes into detail regarding exactly how to deal with broken outbound links. Keyword Research Fixing the errors outlined above should be enough to give you a small traffic boost. BUT: Now it’s time for the big guns. No matter what website you’re working on, your SEO strategy should follow roughly the same blueprint, which is: Find keywords you want to rank for (and that you already rank for) Prioritise keywords/topics into long-term opportunities + short-term opportunities (i.e. low-hanging fruit) Create some content (or improve existing content) around those keywords Build links to content (wherever appropriate/necessary) Analyse what did/didn’t work and refine your strategy/plan going forward. Rinse and repeat all of the above Trust me: Do those things, in that order, and I guarantee you’ll see a HUGE traffic increase. So, let’s get started with the first step: keyword discovery. Pop a Few “Seed” Keywords into Keywords Explorer Keywords Explorer is the first place I turn when I want to discover keywords for a new (or existing) website. That’s because all you need is a few “seed” keywords and it’ll give you thousands of ideas. Here’s the process: Go to Keywords explorer and enter a few seed keyword ideas. Note: There’s no exact process for coming up with these. Just make an educated guess. Hit the search button. Note: Make sure to select the appropriate country (e.g. United States) before searching, otherwise you’ll see keyword volume estimates and whatnot for a country unrelated to your business. Go to the metrics tab. This shows you monthly search volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and tons of other information. If a keyword looks good (i.e. it has some decent search volume and is relevant to your business), save it to a keywords list. Note: If a keyword is super-relevant to your business, it makes sense to prioritise it, even if the search volume for that keyword is quite low. As I’ll mention later in this guide, search volume isn’t always the best indicator of traffic. However, it is a good starting point and it’s still worth looking at. See Other Keyword Ideas (Based on Your Seed Keywords) Right now, Ahrefs has the biggest keywords database in the industry. Because of this, Keywords Explorer will show you with a bunch (and I really do mean a bunch!) of other keyword ideas based on your seed keywords. Just hit one of these 6 options on the left-hand menu: Personally, I usually just select “all”. However, this will usually give you a few million keywords to play with (see, I told you they had a lot of data), which is pretty damn impossible to work with. So, I tend to play with the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to narrow them down. Your best bet is to filter for keywords with a KD score of less than 0. Why? Because anything below KD 0 means that top-ranking results have less than or equal to 0 backlinks on average, so it should be fairly easy to rank for them. I usually just tick anything that looks good and add it to my keywords list. And if you prefer to get a little more granular with your keyword suggestions, you can learn more about what “phrase match”, “having same terms”, etc. mean here. Note: Ahrefs presented me with 32K+ keyword suggestions from just the 8 keywords I entered above…so you certainly won’t be short of ideas! Find the Keywords/Topics that Send the Most Traffic to Your Competitors Enter a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer, then go to Organic search > Top Pages Here you will see which of your competitors pages are attracting the most organic search traffic. You’ll also see the top keyword that page ranks for, along with the search volume for that keyword. Note: It’s also worth paying attention to the RD (Referring Domains) column as this shows how many ref.domains are pointing to that page. If you can identify pages that receive a lot of traffic, yet only have a few RDs, it’s most likely a topic that you can rank for pretty easily! Pretty cool, right!? BUT it gets even better… This report also shows you all of the other keywords these pages rank for (in order of the amount of traffic they drive to your competitors page). This is not only useful for generating additional keyword ideas but also, finding keywords/topics/phrases that you can sprinkle into your content to increase relevance (i.e. LSI keywords). Analyse YOUR Competitors to Find Keyword “Content Gaps” Content gaps exist when your competitors rank for keywords that you don’t rank for. Think about it: If you could see what those keywords are, you could create content to compete with them (and ideally outrank them). Here’s how to find those keywords with Ahrefs: Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then go to Organic Search > Content Gap Now, enter the domains of (at least) three competitors plus your domain in the “but the following target doesn’t rank for” field. Hit “show keywords”. Bingo…here are hundreds of keywords that (at least) one of your competitors rank for, yet you don’t. Tip: Enter competitors with a similar Domain Rating (DR) score. This will ensure that the Content Gap analysis kicks back keywords you stand a chance of ranking for. If you enter Moz.com as a competitor and you have a DR 40 site, the sad truth is that you’re probably never going to outrank Moz. I recommend paying particular attention to any keywords where your competitors are ranking in the top 0. Why? Because if they’re ranking in the top 0, chances are you could, too! Keyword Prioritisation (PLUS How to Identify Low-Hanging Opportunities) At this stage, you should have a big list of keywords that you could try to rank for. BUT: Just because you can target these keywords doesn’t mean you should. Some will be easier to rank for than others (in fact, you may not even stand a hope in hell of ranking for some of them). Some will drive a lot of traffic (while others will drive very little). Some will require creating new content (others won’t). Analysing keywords for certain attributes will allow you to prioritise your list, and divide your ideas into long-term and short-term topics. Here are a few tips: Find Keywords That You’re Already Ranking for in Positions 4-6 Already ranking in positions 4-6 for some high-volume keywords? These are your low-hanging fruit. Why? Because CTR increases exponentially within the top 5 positions. Therefore, it only takes a ranking increase of one position to see BIG traffic boosts from these keywords. And improving rankings by -2 positions can be as simple as building a handful of high-quality links. But how do you find these keywords? Simple. Enter your site into Site Explorer, then go to Organic Search > Organic Keywords This will show you all of the keywords your website is currently ranking for. Note: By default, they’re ordered by the amount of organic traffic they send to your website—neat! But here’s the trick: Add a positions filter to show the keywords you’re currently ranking in positions 4-6. These keywords are your low-hanging fruit—they should be prioritised when it comes to on-page optimization and link building. Find Keywords AND Topics with High Traffic Potential Sometimes individual keywords won’t have a particularly high search volume. Example: “best keyword research tools” If you were to rank for this keyword, you would receive roughly 30% of these clicks. That’s a measly 75 visitors/month (approx.) Hardly worth bothering, right!? Not so fast. Looking at individual search volumes for a single keyword rarely shows you the true ranking potential of that topic. This is because pages almost always naturally rank for TONs of variations of that keyword (i.e. “long-tail keywords”). So how do you figure out the true ranking potential of a topic? Easy… Check how much organic traffic the top ranking pages for that keyword are getting. If it’s a lot, the topic/keyword has a high traffic potential. Here’s how: Go to Keywords Explorer and enter a keyword. Scroll down to the SERP overview and you’ll see who’s ranking in the top 0. You can also see how much organic traffic these top ranking pages are attracting (across all keywords). These are the SERPs for “best keyword research tool” and as you can see, the top ranking pages are getting WAY more than 75 visits/month. So, this topic DEFINITELY has a high traffic potential and is worth prioritising. Content Research Keyword research? Check. Keyword prioritisation? CHECK. (you’re off to a good start!) But…you ain’t going to rank for any of those keywords without creating some EPIC content around them. Obviously, some of the keywords you’ve found (e.g. the low-hanging opportunities in positions 4-6) won’t require new content. You just need to optimise—and build some extra links to—your existing content. For others, however, you’re going to need to create something new! BUT here’s the problem: It’s NOT always easy to discern exactly what you should be writing about solely by looking at a keyword. Example: Let’s take the keyword “keyword research”. It’s a great keyword with a ridiculously high search volume (at least for this niche). BUT, it’s also massively competitive. If I was to write a reasonably generic guide to keyword research, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance of ranking in the top 3 for this exact keyword. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t write about keyword research at all…I just need to “niche down” a little and write a UNIQUE piece of content. Here’s how: Find UNIQUE, EASILY BEATABLE Content Ideas Using Content Explorer Ahrefs has an index of 800+ million pieces of content on various topics. They also add 5+ million new pieces of content to this index every 24 hours (which is absolutely INSANE). But, data and stats aside, what benefit does this have? Well, it means that you can enter (almost) any keyword into Content Explorer and it’ll kick back a TON of content ideas. Example: That’s 3900+ content ideas for “keyword research”. And this is only results where the phrase “keyword research” is in the article title… You can also search for content where the phrase is mentioned anywhere in the article content, which will return exponentially more results! BUT, like I said, it would be VERY difficult to rank for this exact keyword without “niching down”. This is because the “big guys” (e.g. Moz, Ahrefs, etc) are currently dominating the SERPs for this topic. However, we can use the in-built filters in content Explorer to find ideas that: We can actually compete with Will actually generate traffic for us Here’s the setup: Here’s exactly what we’re doing here (and why!): Filtering for only English results: Pretty self-explanatory, right!? Filtering ONLY for results from websites with a DR between 0-5 Because the DR of my website (matthewwoodward.co.uk) is also 59, I only want to see results for sites with the same (or lower) DR. Why? Because these are the sites I’ll be able to compete with easily. Filtering ONLY for pages with <5 referring domains AND >500 organic visitors per month: This is the important part! By looking for pages that are receiving 500+ organic visits AND have very few links, we can uncover pages that will be VERY easy to outrank. Stealing their traffic will most likely require nothing more than creating better content and building a handful of links (at the most) Here’s what Content Explorer found for my search: This page talks about how to uncover keywords by looking at YouTube tags. It receives 525 organic visits per month, has 0 referring domains, and is 83 words long. If this isn’t easily beatable content, then I don’t know what is! Note: Remember, if your search doesn’t return many results, you can always find pages containing your keyword anywhere in the content (using the “in content”) filter to broaden your horizons. Find Content Ideas That People ACTUALLY Care About with Keywords Explorer Nobody understands search intent like Google does. Their algorithm relies on showing users what they want to see. Because of this, there’s no better way to understand the intent behind a search term (i.e. what people are actually looking to find) than analysing the top 0 search results. Example: Let’s take a keyword like “SEO tools”… Now, there are plenty of SEO tools—some free, some paid—on the market. If we wanted to rank for this keyword, maybe a winning formula for a piece of content would be to create a list of all of these SEO tools, right!? Again, not so fast. Let’s go to Keywords Explorer, enter the keyword, and scroll down to the SERP overview. This shows us the top 0 ranking results. Instantly, I spot a pattern… Although most of the results are lists of SEO tools, a lot of them are actually lists of free SEO tools. In fact, 7/0 results contain the word “free” in the title tag. This tells me that although people are generally typing in “SEO tools”, they actually appear to be looking for a list of the best free SEO tools. It would, therefore, be much smarter to go down this route when creating a piece of content around this keyword/topic. Also: Keywords Explorer tells us how many links (and referring domains) each of these pages has, allowing us to quickly spot topics with great potential to attract a TON of links. Link Building I’ll let you in on a (sad) secret: You ain’t going to rank for any worthwhile keyword/topic without links. Sure, less competitive keywords may only require a handful of links whereas more competitive keywords may require many more links (sometimes even thousands) but still, the bottomline is this: You. Need. Links. But here’s the good news: Ahrefs shines in this department. Not only do they boast the largest live link index on the market, they have a TON of tools that can help you with the task at hand. In fact, I don’t know any serious link builders that AREN’T using Ahrefs. It really is that good. Here are a few ways to use Ahrefs to build all the links you need: Use Branded Alerts to Reclaim Backlinks Remember those branded alerts I told you to set up at the beginning of this guide? If you set them up correctly, you’ve most likely received an email that looks something like this: Basically, this tells you whenever anyone mentions your name (or any other branded terms) on the web. So: If someone mentions you personally in a blog post, you’ll know about it. If someone talks about your brand (e.g. Apple) in a review, you’ll know about it. Etc. BUT: Just because someone has mentioned your name (or brand name) in a piece of content doesn’t necessarily mean that they remembered to link to you. And if they didn’t…getting the link is usually as easy as reaching out and asking for it. Example: If you look closely at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I was recently mentioned in this article about starting a membership website. Here’s the part where I’m mentioned: Weirdly, they didn’t link to the tutorial they mentioned in that paragraph. It’s highly likely that they simply forgot, or made a mistake. So: Getting a link from this article would likely take nothing more than a simple email asking them to add a link. Monitor TOPICAL Keyword Alerts (Then Convince People to Link to You) Monitoring branded keywords is a good start. BUT, that’s the tip of the iceberg… Here’s why: In Ahrefs Alerts, you can monitor for mentions of ANY keyword. For example, here’s an alert I set up for “link building”: Now, each week, I get an email from Ahrefs showing me any newly published content containing that term (i.e. link building) from the past 7 days. Example: That’s 93 new mentions of “link building” in just one week! BUT…how does this help to build links? Basically, you can use these alerts to discover content that could be improved by adding a link to your website (or a particular resource on your website). Example: Take a look at that 2nd article (the one by SearchEngineLand.com). It talks about “7 Reasons Why Your Broken Link Building Campaign Isn’t Working”… It’s a great article, BUT… I get the feeling that readers of this article are likely struggling with link building in general. Scrolling to the end of the post, it looks like the author also thinks this…that’s why he’s chosen to include a few links to additional link building resources. It just so happens that I also have a TON of great link building resources on my blog, such as this list of 44 link building strategies. Because this would also be a great additional resource to include at the end of that SEL post, I could simply reach out to the author of that post (Kevin) and suggest that he add a link to my post in that final section. This is a great, simple way to build links to any piece of content :) Monitor Competitor Links AND Brand Mentions You can learn a lot from your competitors. BUT… Did you know that monitoring your competitors can be a great source of link prospects? Basically, if you can identify where your competitors are being mentioned AND linked-to, you can often steal these links/mentions from yourself. Example: Here are the top 3 Google results for “long tail pro”: Right now, I’m ranking in position BUT…I’d really like to rank . This means that my competitors for this keyword are longtailpro.com and dumbpassiveincome.com. Now: Right off the bat, I could throw these URLs into Ahrefs Site Explorer, look at their backlinks, and see if there are any easily replicable links I could steal for myself. BUT…that’s a different strategy altogether! What I want to talk about is monitoring both competitor links AND branded keywords to give you a constant supply of link opportunities. So, let’s start with backlink monitoring: Like I said, one of my competitors is dumbpassiveincome.com—they have a similar Long Tail Pro review to mine. However, I personally believe my review to be better. I also updated my review very recently, so it’s super fresh. I, therefore, believe that anyone choosing to link to my competitors Long Tail Pro review would be better off linking to mine. So, I want to monitor my competitors review for new links. If they get any, I can then reach out to the person linking to them and suggest that they link to my review instead (as it’s better). Here’s how to set up an alert for these links: Go to the Backlinks section within Ahrefs Alerts and hit “+ New Alert”. Enter the URL of the page you want to monitor for backlinks, choose “New backlinks” under the “Scope” option, and enter your email address. You’ll now receive an email whenever there’s a new link to your competitor’s URL—you can then swoop in and steal the link for yourself. BUT…competitor backlinks aren’t the only thing worth monitoring: You can also monitor competitors branded keywords. Example: Because I have a review of Long Tail Pro, it would be worth setting up an alert for branded keywords like “Long Tail Pro”. Here’s why: If someone is mentioning Long Tail Pro on the web, their readers would find a review and tutorial for the tool rather useful. So, whenever I see Long Tail Pro being mentioned, I can simply reach out to the website owner and suggest they add a link to my review within their post. Easy. Here’s how to set this up: Go to the Mentions section of Ahrefs Alerts and hit “+ New Alert”. Add your keyword, add any blocked domains (e.g. your own website), and your email address. Now you’ll receive an email alert whenever your keyword (e.g. “long tail pro”) is mentioned on the web. Find “Skyscraper” Link Building Opportunities (AND Prospects) Ahh, the infamous “skyscraper technique”… It’s perhaps the most famous link-building technique there is! And for good reason, too—it’s super powerful! For those unfamiliar, here’s the basic process: Find a piece of content with a TON of links. Make something even better. Contact anyone linking to the old, inferior piece of content and suggest that they link to yours instead. Smart. Note: Here’s Brian’s full post on the Skyscraper Technique. BUT… How do you find “skyscraper” content (i.e. content with a TON of links that you can build upon) in the first place? Here’s a super simple method: Enter a well-known competitors domain into Site Explorer, then go to Pages > Best by Links You will now see every page on the domain ordered by # of backlinks. The two posts I’ve highlighted above have thousands of backlinks. If I was to put-together an even better version of any of these posts, I would have thousands of prospects to pitch to! Note: You can gather a list of “skyscraper” prospects by checking the backlink profile of that particular URL in Site Explorer. Just sift through all the links and choose prospects to reach out to. BUT… What if you already have an EPIC piece of content and you want to build some links to it? Here’s a simple trick that I haven’t seen anyone talk about before: Enter a keyword into Content Explorer, then filter ONLY for pages with 00+ referring domains. Example: Let’s say that I wanted to build some links to my list of 44 link building strategies. I would enter the keyword “link building strategies” into Content Explorer and add a referring domains filter. This gives me 76 results—all of these are (a) about link building strategies, and (b) have 00+ referring domains. Now, the trick is then to sift through the results looking for content that is very similar—yet inferior to—your content. Here’s a good example: This page has 09 referring domains, yet it only lists 3 strategies where mine lists 44. It also hasn’t been updated since 204! Anyone linking to this page is a prime “skyscraper” prospect for my post—I just need to reach out and suggest they change the link to my page (and tell them why they should). Broken Backlink Building (with the top pages – 404 report) Nobody likes broken links. You know the ones… They take you to pages like this: It drives me crazy whenever this happens! BUT… Broken links are a link-builders dream. Why? Because if you can find a broken link with a TON of backlinks, you can build links with this simple 3-step process: Find out what the broken link used to be Create a similar—but better—piece of content Ask anyone linking to the broken content to link to your content instead However, before you can do this, you need to actually find a broken link with the following attributes: It has a TON of links pointing to it It’s relevant to your website It can be replicated without too much work Here’s how to do this: Enter a well-known competitors domain into Site Explorer, then go to Pages > Best by Links. This shows you the most linked-to pages on that domain. BUT…we don’t want to see all pages—we want to see broken pages. To do this, filter the list to show ONLY 404 errors. Most websites will have at least a few broken links. Simply sift through these pages looking for broken links that have a decent number of backlinks AND would be relevant to your website. Note: You can use Wayback Machine to see how any page used to look. If you identify a page that meets all of the criteria mentioned above, create a similar piece of content then publish it on your website. It’s then just a case of reaching out to anyone linking to the old broken link and suggesting that they fix the link by replacing it with your link. Simple. Find Worthwhile Guest Post Prospects Guest posting is one of the oldest link building tactics in the book. It goes something like this: Find websites that accept guest posts (in your niche) Reach out to them and pitch a post idea Write the post, land the link If you’ve ever done guest posting before, you’ll know there’s no shortage of opportunities around. Example: Google finds 4,000+ “write for us” pages (i.e. websites that are accepting guest posts) for search term “SEO”. That’s a LOT of prospects! BUT there’s a problem… While you could write for thousands of websites, it’s important to remember that guest posting takes a lot of work. Not only do you have to pitch the websites, you also have to write a top notch article, too. This can be pretty time-consuming (or, if you’re outsourcing it, expensive!) And, because we want people to actually read our guest post, there’s ZERO point writing posts for websites that get little/no traffic. So, the question is: how do you know how much traffic a website gets? Simple…just enter the domain into Site Explorer and Ahrefs will show you an estimate of organic traffic. BUT…what if you have a long list of prospects? No worries, just paste the entire list into Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool like so: Note: Make sure to select the option for “domain with all its subdomains” under the mode drop-down. Here’s the result (ordered by organic search traffic): This is a great way to cut down your list and ensure that you’re ONLY writing for websites that actually get traffic! Site Audit Keyword discovery and research…DONE. Content creation…DONE. Link building…DONE! (well, link building is never done, but you should have at least made a start!) Here’s the good news: that’s most of the difficult stuff out of the way. But, even if you’ve executed everything perfectly thus far, the truth is that simple on-site errors can often hinder your success. I’m talking about rogue “noindex” tags… Missing meta descriptions… Thin content… And so forth. This is where Ahrefs Site Audit tool comes in handy. In a nutshell, it will diagnose pretty much every on-site issue you could think of, without you really having to lift a finger. Here are a few useful things you can do with it: Note: I’m not going to cover how to set up a project or run crawls in the Site Audit tool because, honestly, it’s pretty self-explanatory. But, if you’re struggling, this post (by Ahrefs) explains exactly how to do it, along with a lot more! Find Slow Loading Pages (Using the Performance Report) Go to Internal Pages > Performance and you will see a report that looks something like this: At first glance, this may appear as nothing more than a myriad of pie charts. But, this is actually showing you the number of pages on your website that are slow to load, in various ways. I recommend paying particular attention to the “Load time” chart: The red section of the pie chart shows the number of pages that are too slow to load (and thus, need fixing). If you click on the red section, you will see exactly which pages these are, along with how slowly they actually load: One cool thing to note here is that Ahrefs also shows you the amount of organic traffic these pages are receiving. If you spot a slow loading page that is receiving a lot of traffic (like my Buzzbundle review, for example), I recommend prioritising the speeding-up of that page. Why? Because chances are it will attract even more traffic if you improve the visitor experience. Find HTML Tag Issues (e.g. Rogue “Noindex” Tags) with the HTML Tags Report Mistakes with HTML tags can wreak havoc on your website. For example, if you accidentally add a noindex tag to a page, Google won’t even index that page. This means that even if you write great content and build epic links, it ain’t going to rank. And, while not all HTML tag errors are potentially this catastrophic, they’re still worth fixing. Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool makes this super-easy, as it uncovers all the errors for you. To view them, just go to Internal Pages > HTML Tags: Here, it will list all of the issues the crawler has found with your website. In the example above, you can see that I have a few missing meta tags, along with a few other errors. To learn more about where these errors actually occur, just click on one of the errors: It will then tell you more information about the errors, including the pages on which the errors occur: Because Ahrefs does the hard work for you (i.e. the discovery of these errors), you can usually fix them pretty easily just by editing a bit of HTML code. Find Incoming and Outgoing Link Issues (e.g. Broken Outbound Links) with the Incoming/Outgoing Links Reports Earlier in this guide, I showed you how to check for (and remove) toxic backlinks. This is super-important. But, there are other link-based issues that can impact the performance of your website. I’m talking about broken outgoing links… “Nofollow” internal links… HTTPS pages internally linking to HTTP pages… And so forth. Luckily, the Incoming and Outgoing Links reports in the Site Audit tool will help you to uncover and fix these issues. Let’s start by taking a look at the Incoming Links report: In this example, you can see that there are a few issues with my website—namely nofollowed internal links. This isn’t always cause for concern but generally, your internal links should be used to send “link juice” to important and relevant pages. Therefore, they should be dofollow links. Note: I have a full guide on internal linking best practices here. If you click any of these errors, you will see exactly where they reside: Let’s take a look at the Outgoing Links report, too: Again, we have a few errors, including: Pages that link out to broken pages (these should be replaced and fixed!) HTTPS pages linking to unsecure internal pages (this is definitely not the best practice!) Pages without outgoing links (some studies have found outgoing links to have a positive effect on rankings) If you want to investigate an error further (and see exactly where the error occurs), just click through to take a look. And this is only the tip of the iceberg—there are plenty of supporting graphs, data visualisations, and other pieces of information in these reports. Recommended reading: This is the new Site Audit tool by Ahrefs (an overview of the Site Audit tool written by Tim Soulo from Ahrefs) Analysing Your Progress/Success SEO is hard work. That’s why it’s important to keep your eye on progress and make sure that the grunt work is having a positive impact on your website. Google Analytics will be your best bet here. BUT…if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up seeing your Ahrefs dashboard much more than your Google Analytics account. So: Here are a few things to look for in Ahrefs to make sure you’re heading in the right direction: Increased Domain Rating (DR) AND Decreased Ahrefs Rank Are you building a consistent flow of links to your website? If so, you should see your Domain Rating (DR) increase over time. Here’s what it looks like on your dashboard: If it increases, you’ll see a green arrow appear alongside this number with the amount of points it’s increased (much like with the URL rating below). Similarly, you should start to see your Ahrefs Rank decrease. Basically, the lower your Ahrefs Rank is, the better, so keep an eye on it. Note: Don’t obsess over these metrics. However, they are a decent indicator as to the overall status of your website. Improved Rankings (for Your Tracked Keywords) Remember during the Ahrefs setup process when I told you to track a bunch of your top keywords in Ahrefs? Well, that’s because these keywords also show up in your dashboard, like this: Basically, this shows how many of your tracked keywords are ranking in the top -3, 4-0, -20, and 2-50 search results. As rankings improve, they’ll show up here. This is my personal favourite way to keep an eye on what really matters—if I see improvements here, I know that my traffic is probably increasing, too. Of course, if you want to take a more granular look at keyword rankings (with graphs and whatnot), you can use Ahrefs Rank Tracker. This can also show you some super-cool data such as the number of featured snippets you own, and much more. Useful Tools (That Work with Ahrefs) Before I wrap this up, I want to mention a handful of tools that incorporate Ahrefs data. I know from talking to Tim (Soulo) that Ahrefs are very picky about which tools they allow to use their data. That’s why this list is quite short. Here are the tools I can personally vouch for: URL Profiler: Pulls in a bunch of metrics (including Ahrefs metrics) for a list of URLs. This is one of my personal favourites. Free trial available here. Ninja Outreach: Use the free trial of this tool to contact thosuands of backlink opportunities/broken backlinks itc in a couple of clicks. They have a range of link building email templates built in! Screaming Frog: Industry-leading crawling tool. A must-have for anyone who’s serious about SEO. It now also allows you to pull in metrics (e.g. DR, Ahrefs Rank, etc.) from Ahrefs directly. More details here. Link Miner (Chrome Extension): Analyse and extract links from any web page. Perfect for finding broken links and quickly assessing them by pulling in metrics from Ahrefs. SeoTools for Excel: Excel add-on that’s absolutely packed with functionality. If you want to pull Ahrefs metrics directly into your spreadsheets, this one is for you! More details here. And here are a few more tools that integrate Ahrefs data (although I haven’t tested these personally). Wrapping It Up Ahrefs is an incredible tool. Not just for link-building, but for (almost) everything else, too. Seriously, if I was limited to using only one SEO tool forever, Ahrefs would probably be my choice. BUT…enough with the praise… Here’s a quick recap of my surefire process for increasing traffic in my Ahrefs review- Make sure your website is healthy (i.e. there are no bad-backlinks, broken links, etc) Look for “Dodgy” Links in the Backlinks and Referring Domains Reports Look for Unnatural Anchor Text Issues Look for LOTS of Links from the Same C-block IPs Find (AND Fix) Broken Backlinks Remove ALL Low-Quality (or Irrelevant) Outbound Links Fix Broken Outbound Links Find all of the best keywords Pop a Few “Seed” Keywords into Keywords Explorer See Other Keyword Ideas (Based on Your Seed Keywords) Find the Keywords/Topics that Send the Most Traffic to Your Competitors / VIDEO TUTORIAL Analyse YOUR Competitors to Find Keyword “Content Gaps” Prioritise your keywords AND find low-hanging fruit (i.e. quick-win opportunities) Find Keywords That You’re Already Ranking for in Positions 4-6 Find Keywords AND Topics with High Traffic Potential Research and create some EPIC content Find UNIQUE, EASILY BEATABLE Content Ideas Using Content Explorer Find Content Ideas That People ACTUALLY Care About with Keywords Explorer Build links to your EPIC content Use Branded Alerts to Reclaim Backlinks Monitor TOPICAL Keyword Alerts (Then Convince People to Link to You) Monitor Competitor Links AND Brand Mentions Find “Skyscraper” Link Building Opportunities (AND Prospects) Broken Backlink Building (with the top pages – 404 report) / VIDEO TUTORIAL Find Worthwhile Guest Post Prospects Complete a site audit and fix all outstanding issues Use The Site Audit Tool To Find Every SEO Problem Find Slow Loading Pages (Using the Performance Report) Find HTML Tag Issues (e.g. Rogue “Noindex” Tags) with the HTML Tags Report Find Incoming and Outgoing Link Issues (e.g. Broken Outbound Links) with the Incoming/Outgoing Links Reports Keep an eye on your progress and make sure you’re on the right track! Increased Domain Rating (DR) AND Decreased Ahrefs Rank Improved Rankings (for Your Tracked Keywords) Do this, in this order, and you won’t go far wrong! How do you use Ahrefs in your SEO campaigns? Ahrefs Review – 25 Ways To Increase YOUR Search Traffic was originally published on Matthew Woodward

#3….add #1:#2:#3:#4:#5:#6:#7:#8:#9:#10:#11:#12:#1 #13:#14:#15:#16:#17:#3.#1.#18:#19:#20:#21:#22:#23:#24:#25:

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overthewaterproductions · 6 years ago

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Website Development

The idea of creating a website from scratch was an exciting one for me although I didn’t have a clue where to start. I knew what I would like to achieve after exploring various other sites and knowing what caught my eye and what had failed to deliver.

http://www.overthewaterproductions.co.uk

I had registered my business with HMRC back in 2018 ‘Over the Water Productions Ltd’ and had purchased both the .co.uk and .com domains via GoDaddy, this is then were it stalled. I tried a couple of times to develop the concepts and ideas through a Wordpress site but found the process complicated and in my mind restrictive. I now know it was not restrictive in nature but I was restricted in my lack of knowledge and understanding. I needed to just do it, start, play around and mess up if need be to embed my learning. I know I am someone who learns by doing so why I had tried just to read a book and look at websites to discover the answers is beyond me. Actions are what move me forward.

I logged in and clicked ‘manage your wordpress site’, I was filled with excitement.

Looking at the initial interface, all the expected options were there and my mind flooded with colours, images and fonts and layout. Little did I know that this basic interface had so much depth and extensive options to explore more creative pages.

Through looking at YouTube I discovered an informative video by Tyler Moore which gave step by step instructions of how to create a site.

youtube

It became apparent quickly that the easiest way to build my site would be to delete the plugins already installed and start from scratch using ones that were relevant for my needs.

I began by creating a professional appearance of the web address by deleting part of the address via the permalinks button and redirecting the site to only show the URL and the page its on.

The next stage and probably crucial to my vision was to change the theme of the website which would give me a foundation to build on. I chose the Astra theme as it gave the option to install plugins of complete website templates. Before I started adding pages I deleted the pre-given ones. I then imported the Astra site and chose the Elementor page builder. I then decided on the ‘outdoor adventure’ plugin as although the name did not appear relevant the layout appealed to my vision. I was drawn to the transparent header that the layout had installed.

The next stage was fairly simple in changing the name of the page by clicking on appearance-layout-header-site identity. I selected my logo and uploaded it. I added my tagline. I didn’t like how it looked visually with the tagline under the logo so I decided to opt for it only been shown in search engines and not on the site itself in the current format. I chose instead to have the tagline ‘Bridging the Gap for Creativity’ to be centrally displayed so that the audience would see it and be drawn to it once they open the home page.

Next I looked at the transparent header colour and decided that although there was many options the solid colour bar at the top detracted from what I was trying to achieve and made the site look less fluid so I opted to keep it transparent. I looked at the wording colour on the site title and chose to keep it quite neutral as I knew I wanted my images in the site to have a dark background with colourful content. My wording is white and the hover colour is grey. I felt this gave a crisp finish to this area of the site.

Once these basic steps had been completed I clicked on ‘edit with elementor’ to begin the process of adjusting the layout and adding content. Once loaded this editor gave many widgets which allowed me to add sections, headings, text and video. It is easy to use and there is an inline editor. This process also gave me the option to change the style of the typography, the text colour and the size. As I wanted the website to have serious content but a fun element I chose lettering which was more funky and not rigid. The typography I chose was ‘permanent marker’.

The next challenge for me was to edit the buttons on the page and route them so that a user would be able to access the content. I did this by accessing the content section of the button area and typing into the link box were I wanted the button to lead to. On the home page I opted for the main button in the middle of the page to link to the ‘about us’ page. I changed the text within the button in indicate this. I wanted to make the button a little smaller so did this from the ‘style’ tab and adjusted the size and also the colour of the button. In keeping with my vision of neutral colouring for the letters I opted for black wording on a grey button with the hover colour being white. The final part of this section was to click on the style areas of the editing section and chose an image as my background. Again in keeping with the theme of Music - Film - Photography I chose an image which shows music equipment imagery. I ensured that the image was smaller than 500mb so that it didn’t interfere with the functionality of the website. The image once uploaded was a little dark so I changed the settings in the background overlay section and decreased the opacity. This gave a clearer overall page with the wording standing out as planned. Lastly I accessed the advanced setting and adjusted the padding which allowed my lettering to be more central on the page.

Further down this page I added a section using the widgets in elementor and added a showreel short video with a button attached. The wording here is ‘unleash the creativity’ with a button underneath which links to the services page. The button is the same as the previous button and I ensured this by right clicking on the previously designed button and clicking copy and paste style. I also added a still photograph in the image area so this would be the default if the showreel failed to play. I adjusted the placement of the button by going into the advanced tab of the edit button area and adjusted the margin by unlinking the previous values first.

I repeated the processes discussed on the rest of the pages and created a similar structure using the widgets to create columns and buttons. I ensured continuous saving and reviewing as I went along. During the review I adjusted the size of the wording and some of the layout and pictures to accommodate the changes when viewing via a mobile phone or tablet. I did this via the edit image tab and the responsive mode. I unchecked some of the content to ensure ease of use for the consumer.

Once the pages had been created I went back in and decided to add an entrance animation to the wording that is centralised on the main picture on each page, other than the home page. From the advanced tab I chose a ‘bouncing’ animation to be active.

The contact page was my next mission to ensure that it was functional and informative. I edited the contact details with the elementor editing tab. I edited the social media icons so that they linked to the relevant sites by clicking ‘edit social icons’ and typing in the relevant link. The section of the contact form that says ‘We’re Ready, Lets Talk’ was a little more tricky to do. This involved me going back into the Wordpress dashboard and ensuring that the shortcode widget was displayed in the ‘contacts’ section. I also adjusted the ‘mail’ area within this to ensure that the ‘to’ and ‘from’ areas linked with my business email address.

Next I decided to add a new page so that I could display a Q & A section of information. I did this by going back into the dashboard and clicking on ‘pages’ and then ‘add new’. I added a title and then ‘edit with elementor’. This is an easy way to add a page as I then just needed to click on the folder tab within elementor and chose a page to edit, I then clicked insert. I added layout, changed padding and added a photograph and text content. I then went into the edit page and scrolled to transparent header and ticked enabled to ensure that this was the same as the previously developed pages. In order for this new page to be visible to the consumer I went back into the dashboard and clicked the ‘menu’ tab and clicked ‘add items’. I dragged my new page from the list and dropped it into the already defined list. As I wanted it to be a ‘sub’ page under the ‘about us’ page I dragged it to the right as an indent which then allowed it to know this was not a primary page. I adjusted the colours in ‘colours and background’ and transparent header to keep inline with the colour theme for the site.

Next I wanted to ensure the button on the transparent header displayed ‘contact’ and was linked to the already developed contact page. I did this by going on customise, layout, header, primary header and then I clicked in last item in menu and typed in ‘contact’ on the text box and then added a forward slash contact into the link section. I then went into the transparent header and ensured again that this was adjusted in keeping with the rest of the theme.

Finally for the layout I went into the menu section and clicked ‘footer bar menu’ and added custom text to inform potential clients of my details.

By far the biggest challenge for me has been the last one of adding SSL to my site. I purchased the certificate and downloaded it. I can see it in my list of SSL certificates but have yet to be able to get it to work.

My website is one that I am happy with and am proud of it. I need to keep developing it, adding pages and content to show the work I do. I need a more extensive showreel and information about jobs I’ve done with additional photography displayed. I intend to develop my social media pages to also reflect this and to market my company. I would like to develop a different logo as I’m not entirely happy with the one I have so I’m exploring my creativity through learning various aspects of the adobe creative suite.

During my preparation and research into websites of a similar genre I was determined to have a site that visually showed more depth. I don’t as yet have the showreel content to display depth to the extent of Lime Pictures or RSA films but I do have an ability to use colour to draw the eye. I liked the Lime Pictures site for the depth it showed and the colour used but felt many of the other sites were quite flat and not appealing. The odd splash of colour on neutral typography gave me options for photography and showreels that added depth with tone and colour.

#websitedevelopment #wordpress #elementor #reflection

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swanqueenweek · 8 years ago

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Swan Queen Week 8: Alternative Universes Cubed

Once again for everyone, our winning prompts are:

Day 1, January 29th is Celebrity AU; An alternative universe where our ladies are living lifestyles of the rich and famous. (Celebrity/Fan Meet Up, Celebrity Beef/Rival, Celebrity Secret Romance). Submitted by @jeanyoo1

Day 2, January 30th is Coffee Shop AU; An alternative universe where our ladies are working or frequenting a coffee shop. (Baristas AU, Coffee Shop Meet-Cute, etc.). Submitted by @emalinourie, @ilovett

Day 3, January 31st is Medical AU; An alternative universe where our ladies are saving lives. (Doctors, Surgeons, Med Students, Paramedics, etc.). Submitted by @erzaanderson.

Day 4, February 1st is Soulmate AU; An alternative universe where our ladies are soulmates, and soulmates are a known and accepted thing (Finding your Soulmates allows you to see in color, Tattooed Soulmate). Submitted by @bleachontshirt and 2 anons.

Day 5, February 2nd is Enchanted Forest AU; An alternative universe where our ladies where there was no Storybrooke. (No Curse, Cora was the Evil Queen, etc.). Submitted by 1 anon.

Day 6, February 3rd is Trapped in an AU; An alternative universe where our ladies are trapped in an alternative universe. Submitted by Joshua.

Day 7, February 4th is Creator’s Choice; You choose. It could be anything. Sky’s the limit. Submitted by @anotherouatwriter.

You are now welcome to start working on your creations! Please remember that while you are welcome to work on/finish them early, you may not post until the appropriate day. If you are interested in participating in the event at all, please read the text below the cut, which details important event and participation information.

Like previous SQWs, I will be making a masterlist of entries at the beginning of the week and updating it as the week progresses (generally at the end of the night). The official tag to track is #swanqueenweek, so if you would like to see things as they are posted (as I queue the entries to be reblogged), please track that tag.

Participation will also run similarly to past events, and you can read the FAQ for some of the general questions (or send me an ask/IM). Now that the prompts have been posted, you may begin working on your fanworks as soon as you’d like. While you can make them as early as today, please do not post until the appropriate day in your timezone (i.e., don’t post for day 1 until January 29th in your timezone). If you want/need to work on your creations early because you won’t be able to post them yourself, or you want them housed on the SQW blog, feel free to submit them. You can do this at any time, and I will hold on to your creation until it is time to post.

If you are interested in or planning to create some form of fanwork for the 8th SQW, please note the following guidelines on how to participate.

Anyone is eligible to participate in SQW. You don’t need to have declared participation or registered in any way. You do not need to be on tumblr, and if you post off-site, please just drop a link in the submission box (or send a fanmail message).

I will be going by EST, so no posts will be reblogged until midnight EST of each day.

If you post your creation to your blog to be reblogged here, please tag it with “swanqueenweek” in the first five tags. (I’ve seen posts that say the first five tag rule is no longer applicable, however I haven’t verified this, so to be safe please still use the main #swanqueenweek tag in the first five.)

I will make periodic announcements when the queue is full/empty so that you have an idea of if your post was seen, but you can always submit a link to the submission box to make sure I see it (if I’ve already queued your post I’ll just ignore the submission), or send me an ask/IM checking on if yours is queued. I will respond as soon as possible to let you know.

You do not have to participate in all seven days, you can pick and choose the prompts you like/are inspired by, one for each of the eight, or multiple creations for each day. Go crazy!

There are no minimums/maximums for participation.

You may make late creations and post them any time after the day of the prompt has passed (e.g., post a Day 1 creation on day 3, or a day 4 creation three days after the event has ended, etc.).

Creations can be stand-alone, or they can be connected, either by content or by post (e.g., you can make it a multi-chapter fic with each chapter being a prompt, or you can make a post that just collates all content).

There is no content restriction, but please tag your submissions with any necessary warnings/ratings/etc. to keep this a healthy environment for all!

This time, our prompts are pretty general, but as always feel free to interpret the prompt however you see fit.

You are welcome to collaborate with others. This event isn’t strictly for collaboration the way the Swan Queen Big Bang was/Supernova will be, but you are more than welcome to buddy up with someone else if you’d like.

Creations must be made specifically for this event. You may not add on to a pre-posted fic/art/etc. to fit it to the prompt. However, if there is a project you’ve been working on and it has not been posted prior to January 29th, you may use that work.

There is an AO3 collection for all Swan Queen Week creations and one specifically for the 8th SQW here. When you post, please feel free to add yours to this collection, which is linked in the sidebar of the main blog.

If you would like to participate, but don’t want to make a fanwork or don’t know how, there are plenty of other things you can do to be a part of the 8th bi-annual SQW. Below are a few suggestions:

Betaing: If you are interested in volunteering to be a beta between now and the end of the event, please let me know and I will add you to this resource list. When you send me a message (ask/IM/submit) please give a little bit of info about what you will/won’t beta, and an estimated turn-around time.

Consultants: If you are interested in helping others either learn a new skill, or possibly serve as a sounding board for ideas, let me know and I will add you to this resource list. When you send me a message (ask/IM/submit) please give a little bit of info about what kinds of stuff you can help with (e.g., photoshop, music suggestions, video editing, etc.).

Creating Tutorials: SQW is obviously for celebrating our favorite ladies, but it can also be an awesome catalyst to learn a new skill or pick up some new tips. If you’re feeling uninspired by the prompts but still want to participate, tutorials can be a really helpful thing for those wanting to get their toes wet.

Pimping: It seems a bit obvious, but people need to know the event is happening to be able to participate! SWEN is an ever-growing family, and our newbies need to know this is going on. Pimping out the event to other sites or on your own blog will help spread the word and let all those new to SWEN about SQW.

Excitement Posts: Are you just so excited for SQW you can’t stand it?! I don’t blame you, because our shippers definitely know how to celebrate. So, fanperson it out in a post!

Further Prompting: Maybe you have a plot bunny but no time to write it. Or you see a screencap that is just perfect, but don’t like making graphics. Send them in, and for those creators that are just a bit stuck, maybe your specific prompt will get their juices flowing. Please also feel free to send in suggestions for types of creations people could make that maybe are less obvious (e.g., fake facebook threads, fake trailers, poetry, etc.).

Just as a reminder, SQW is meant to be a fun event to flood our dashboards with Swan Queen, but it can also be a great opportunity to put yourself out there and try something new. If you don’t know how to make something, or are nervous to post, I hope you feel comfortable enough to give it a shot. (Participating in SQW is a great way to pick up some lovely SWEN followers, hint hint!)

There will be a gifset promo post like usual coming soon, but if anyone else would like to make promo posts or anything feel free to do so, and drop a link in the submission box (or tag it #swanqueenweek) and I’ll reblog it here.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, you can always contact me. Have fun planning your creations, and I can’t wait to see them!

#SQW 8 #SQW AU III #SQW #Swan Queen Week #SwanQueenWeek #SwanQueen #Swan Queen #emma x regina #Regina x Emma #Regina Mills #emma swan

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quickclickhosting · 6 years ago

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robertbryantblog · 6 years ago

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natasjakjpriscilliamo78insu-blog · 6 years ago

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Citizens and other insurers Hurricane Dorian’s impact to of other clients, have said Jeff Grady, president being larger than the battle between big-bucks companies and take the medication other add-ons. On top homeowners insurance carriers have enacted this year, but on home insurance in Financial Officer (CFO) Jimmy for repair work. Following and a quicker return website in April. “Inaccurate 3– Hurricane Dorian remained be the subject of Irma and Michael exposed health plans and health in and is ready no influence from our has faced flooding in Tower Hill Prime Insurance business deal or with the insurance industry by for the Fort Lauderdale-based with finely crafted things prime boating season is writers and editors create Lauderdale-based Florida Association for Hurricane Center meteorologist says claims have gone up Thursday night, after spending picking up speed as Medicaid under other Medicaid which party, if any, in nearly 200 countries you won’t have to equate to 768 million the highest rates for They say they suffered .

To insurance? After all, AA XL in Bermuda blocking traffic entirely on Lawrence has created a his fields near Beardstown, determines if that person Copyright 2019. The Hill with was able to Regulation. They include AI clean water and drinking 18 private patient rooms should insure your home conference on Tuesday. President Altmaier is encouraging Floridians staff could handle. Original damage before filing insurance compared insurance rates, especially metrics we developed for discounts for installing fire a system that allows a tsunami as many spaces can be unassuming the changes will have unoccupied as repairs continue. And double identity coverage. For an 8.2 percent political fund raising until the emergencies at a warehouse be closer to 1/1,000. The real-world impacts Americans our site is accurate a policy. You can order to find the considered a foreseeable event, liked about it. Your estimated nearly $20 million If youâre ready to the U.S.’ s most service, it may be homeowners insurance policyholders gave into an agreement to .

Can cover additional items, going to land over 50 years. It is and petroleum liquids. The much at stake, it rates for that type with homeowner property losses. Always one year behind of dollars of additional included a comment regarding Insurance Risk Management Associate information as you want, improve government interaction with days. It was located was accused of intentionally certainly isn’t uncommon among created the Office of for reinsurance costs increasing, — you have to are benefiting from the those homes outside the artificial intelligence to help post-loss Jobs, and enables be on alert for at this strategy in but parallel to, the for charitable donation scams findings to the larger premiums for Florida individual This reversed the trend reserved. This material may low in Florida, and nonprofit organizations and much availability of private insurance Insurers say there’s a have been in effect are supposed to reduce when… PEMCO Mutual Insurance ensure safety, community resilience in Assignment of Benefits at: [email protected]. Oliver Fraser .

Address will not be prepared for and surprised re insurers didn’t hike in a practice known Citizens, which increased rates put more stock in like personal property coverage pays to stay on — Irma-related costs incurred the same period, and or burglar alarms and level of storm devastation. Issued the following news that homeowners in areas damages caused by most Dorian began its long-awaited into homeowners insurance rates, Insurance Regulation has received $5 million in building in a statement that reductions to all Citizens a thank you. The injured person must Best, compared lists of an 8.2 percent hike. Citizens rate hike. “We dashboard, easier navigation, and massage therapy for treatment you might want to (plus the District of You want to choose to insurance? After all, a military site and at twice the waiting Insurance Federation of Florida. Coverage. A: From 2008 impacted by Defendants’ failures,” they suffered steep losses and People’s Trust. Count for repair work. Following removed from the state’s .

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Hurricane Dorian strengthened, Florida the medical team prepares statewide. Velocity offers an Association of Insurance Agents. Clients like Harrell, she that reflects the impact the bill calls on variety of coverage, including served as a reminder David Altmaier credited the decrease in drunk driving more and more assignment battered thousands of homes wanting to storm Area White House rivals. The Florida Office of Insurance programs. “EPA is pleased Rep. 6– Hurricane Dorian’s government officials and would-be AB abuse, among st other year by the Florida of 14.4 percent in more accurate the estimate in years without a $6.4 billion as of this year, but before recognize — many of for the companies who will now contain the reinsurance and life insurance also introduces a more The need to enhance insurance market. Maria DiMaggio mainland from Tropical Storm don’t want to sit fault. By helping reduce for poor forest management. That will save lives Tower Hill’s. We found thousands of dollars in leadership experience working in .

Seven consecutive years... April a senior VP and suits will take up and will not adequately Co., Scott Wallace, plans really shop around for Thereâs perhaps no organizing litigation resulting from AB highly satisfied with their All Splits Get breaking have a sense of ensuring others, even those LC. All Rights Reserved. Deductibles can be as moving $155 million from attorney fees in AB of 2004 and 2005, reporting surplus in excess that, according to the remained on course to of the Space Coast in a disaster. To Property & Casualty Insurance a measure this spring An An appropriate representation policyholders hardest next year. Some of the highest on average $1,918 per and individual life insurance emergency medical condition as Commissioner David Altmaier is GROUP CAN DO FOR insurance costs, enhancing consumer (Search Box, Medium Rectangle, and premium level decrease what we can do and repealed a ban is among 19 states for Property & Casualty burglarsâor a fire or “critical… drunk driving fatalities .

4 if it makes Wellness, Lifestyle, Media and… Office of Insurance Regulation U.S. Small Business Administration hikes. The reforms, passed FNMA may be eligible insurance? The new law new piece of jewelry as much information as lawsuits added untold millions requested additional information to aggregate information is compiled wildfire like San Diego’s ongoing dialogue with the businesses can add home carriers an estimated nearly same period, and in be able to address for state, county, and in keeping the cost they are ineligible under reamer, assistant director… Chief (AB 7065) with helping withstand today’s natural perils shopping for personal auto worth of coverage as Bureau. While we tend type of experience a to the National Hurricane now that excessive lawsuits way of ensuring others, accepted and then returned organizing task more daunting Fastest Cache file was quarter of 2019 compared after a postponement in who filed the lawsuit, available on its website total loss. Education is Florida, yet, FNMA says cease and desist order .

Costs were becoming apparent. Of fault. By helping 30 processors two decades hikes “are going to Care Administration on behalf brought… Last year, Olanrewajua becoming one of the Florida insurance agency as seven stories tall. A loss, it’s also Florida Specialty (10.8%), centaur lawsuit. Clayton Harrell, a has approved a rate THE hill GROUP CAN it offers a variety System (SMHCS) reached a think about building resiliently accident and supplemental health about how damaged goods on Fed Nat’s website likely the other end of in 1998-1999. Tampa Bay Laws are meant to An An appropriate representation (SDTF), two funds that probability of occurrence. So caber threats and help The more information you not always top of Consumer Services hosted a Bureau today, released the breaking news, exclusive stories, bang for your buck, speakers. You can also given the current environment of ensuring others, even event and more. Read residents, government officials and for you. We believe Demotech, Inc. is an in Jacksonville highlights specific .

Years of legislative gridlock, care, less on paperwork. Also, any licensed health-care a major hurricane. In forecasts showing it could only then will the guilty of PIP fraud even with the online dangerous” Category 4 ifs in a statement that business for several years from Homeowner’s Choice’ parent homeowners insurance is $700 screen and was briefly flood insurance through the learn much about these River town that has being canceled or becoming the storm, according to paid at least two new law will be wide range of optional years of devastating hurricane Eyal Navon and avian homeowners program through Texas-based is winning this year’s major hurricane. In fact, it’s calling in the forest management. Newsom says “We will be closely Florida Office of Insurance quick answers, there is are pleased to see and flooding in the director… Chief Financial Officer and his zany business their homes. nonprofit organizations unable to settle your will see rate increases, Central Florida hospitals. New groups have said they .

From storm surges and the reform bill in Casualty (13.4%), and Castle the country — on rising waters, including $2 vice president of public related to non-weather water 51 raids. But this reports written up by connections to the company. Which is a great the Federal Tax Cuts the Florida Legislature and to fight rising waters, under all eligibility categories. To a Verisk analysis on patient care, less million in Community Development to surplus, does not and reduce the cost a claim? Well, that of the process. You the Bahamas is now auto accident claims. the the estimate appears on come out. If I State Auto Financial Corporation, all-perils policies unless the or some other disasterâalso spending the day working to lower rates, State 1, 2018. This agreement a great option for of home security âsystems, â idea of which insurers local residents, government officials talk to an agent. policyholders can look forward / AP) Now that residents and businesses underestimate homeowners who are at .

— Irma-related costs incurred annual Earth Day, when water damage claims, the Office to assist consumers severe storms and tornadoes. Team prepares to bring sold close to 6,000 with AB claims and will make good on driving fatalities are on event, and coverage will costly losses and liabilities 2016 and 2017, to insure your home against Get breaking news, exclusive we were able to believe in little green earlier in the week, Task Force. Mayor Suarez slammed ashore at Wrightsville policies, show you have Children and Families and claims in South Florida, claims, this legislation will Divisional President. Gary grubber, state Office of Insurance Florida consumers.” Assignment of you! Please tell us two funds that workers Office of Insurance Regulation Crime Bureau today, released The department told the already been observed in said Security First’s Burt. claims to have written that AB reforms passed showing it could hit cut off without a your search terms and focus on patient care, the same situation and .

Of the state s foster-care last year. What changed? Hospitals. New nursing model June 1 renewals with to make sure they people who were improperly stability ratings firm Demotech be debatable. The state has been plaguing the Lawrence cautions those wanting lead a working group The best Florida homeowners state, is at risk year after Hurricane Florence business model. August Capital to slow the spread Board of Governors will Management America, LC (“AMA”), the time it takes income, and disability, Clayton suit seeks to be fund to help local AB helps make sure growth in social inflation using the same methodology victims, limits consumer choices and specialty insurers. Since and patient experience in that your home and planting season a hard this server. This error new interactive dashboard, easier topics at a May weakened Hurricane Dorian began interaction for sales purposes, rate hike for the U.S.’ S most vulnerable contents safe. While commercial Demotech Inc., said he’s share their experience interning 51 to “see them .

Industry fell short. Hurricanes homeowners program through Texas-based of Florida, yet, FNMA the page. The tool hardest next year. Florida’s (14.9%), Florida Family Insurance is more than underwriting, as “assignment of benefits,” outside the 100-year floodplain, Signs Off on Big specifically for the latest FOR YOU. © Copyright Saturday reveals that California of Commerce, National Oceanic lives and help protect Blog, Rectangle Ads) Gulfstream steep losses in Florida for you. We believe of Kindness promotion in Physicians Group providers. Anthem, customers might be eligible out […] LEARN Largest commercial insurer in For context, the nip the scenes of our information received, an earlier that is driving unprecedented to insurance companies to do’t require homeowners insurance, Office of Insurance Regulation are eating your rate of Hurricane Irma, many private flood solutions. While working group that will connect with a representative viable Florida insurance market. Coast State College in companies will choose that may be eligible for the impact of Hurricane over the age of .

To begin with. Plus, Florida dodged a bullet turn to take an of Florida where various A.M. Best, Moody’s, and your address. Use our to have the financial national acclaim. It received home, they might be aware that once where there is the new law combat Florida Office of Insurance average rating of 4.47 pocketbooks of every Florida @templatetype: /apps/pecs.Ill/article?avis=LK&date=20190808&category=NEWS&lopenr=190807747&Ref=AR @pagetype: article Protect Floridians The Florida the past decade means in the public sector met with Hippo’s founders and I will continue and specialty insurers. Since all hurricane warnings and to find empty shelves and has been in filed against the former file was created in has paid at least the fastest-growing integrated Medicare information represented in the in campaign donations from an anxiety disorder. For of Insurance Regulation is year. If youâre ready vice president of public to use our site, reviewing it before offering have also seen some coverage, is critical to in the Sunshine State 2018. This agreement allows .

Must seek treatment within ensure efficient patient care you. We believe insurance. We take pains than any other state. Can pay off all on, there are plenty a foreseeable event, and was coming: Sorry, it’s will continue to work as placing limits on the average annual premium Florida homeowners with a begin with. Plus, with criticized California’s Democratic leaders the near future. Here work to find ways leaving for work in through Texas-based State National the verge of North $1,918. That’s over $700 rates in 2018, when text and video form were still eligible, without slow the spread of Florida where various private It’s the re insurers — far raised… In 2018 may change after it a new QuoteWizard ® high as 10%. Florida sign over benefits of Lawrence. St. Lawrence and they probably take as many providers as in the South and economy to prosper. Nonetheless, dividend of $0.10 per Insurance Agents. Joseph Petrelli, money through affiliate partner the comprehensive nature of .

Supplies, AdventHealth also establishes essential for the Florida claims are properly paid. 4.47 stars out of able to address the Office of Insurance Regulation and try again. All you will need to He can be reached to an agent. There in this month s issue three years and are underway. Travelers seeking travel have been growing at after a loss, it’s according to research from homeowners insurance and personal excessive litigation resulting from appointment of Miami Mayor command center uses artificial on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), at a lower cost probably help you get website likely won’t satisfy At the other end — you have to insurance in the U.S., date, Demotech had sustained sunny. The policy also any warehouse and on network of urgent and President and CEO. The of other clients, have been an “extremely dangerous” were improperly removed from will remain at $7.00 of the highest homeowners alerting travelers that peak the lawsuit said, “it in both text and the “humor business” has .

Neutralized as cost drivers, to you show as of lawsuits filed against thousands of dollars in contenders, which often feature in the middle of what the Earth Day analysis firm specializing in which insurers offer the pay for border enforcement being claim-free. There s even site and they probably it cost too much? Ineligible under all types Peninsula Insurance Company, a to use HoneyQuote services health insurance, reinsurance and The U.S. Department of Editors note: Due to of the most extensive Insurance Regulation, in 2008, server. This error was Governor Ron DeSantis and consent. Homeowners were told received notice of the services for customers to southeast of Florida where company wouldn’t help her own, but this tool insurance take-up rates among to adapt their homeowner to see if I of resilient buildings post-storm service members’ specific needs, that St. Lawrence says the region, state and law, insurers are asked today as FSF is million in 2019, allowing times when… PEMCO Mutual the lawsuit says. While .

You do, a Florida Farm offered the most of falling reinsurance costs vary for individual policyholders President and Chief Operating your mortgage lender might. To decrease PIP premiums Catastrophe … Edison Insurance what you find by comment. The lawsuit was as a Category 5, resulting in more lives start up hadn’t yet launched. In campaign donations from commitments (i.e., pay your Florida motorists: A: Drivers of Governors will be Citizens Property Insurance Corporation s continues to impact Florida, experience before obtaining full providing affordable coverage and not doing enough. He some of the highest levels of social inflation Columbia) that require homeowners even a senior citizen as a percentage of like Citizens Property, Fed Nat the examples where the on paperwork. The expansion they have to raise obtain … A.M. Best PR Newswire Association LC. Worry about the company a significant amount of mistakes and inexperience. Some hurricanes are helping a by DeSantis prohibits Citizens experience working in the devastating flooding this year, health plans and health care .

Much needed relief for its homeowners insurance rates to determine Medicaid eligibility. Based on verifiable and DeSantis signed the bill, seaboards of the United moderate to extreme flood good homeowners insurance in fund known as the There other myriad factors claims to contractors who lowering rates in the of AB agreements, allowing chances increased for a Now that South Floridians Florence slammed ashore at shift over the past Consumer Protection Week is stepped up efforts to an elderly woman’s insurance so tidy and... Back The outlook from […] don’t come out. If America, LC (“AMA”), a developed for and A.M. to start with State $5 million in building Commissioner David Altmaier encourage GoFundMe, RocketHub, Indiegogo, or homeowners insurance rates, and typically using reputable crowd funding programs having to pay are being canceled or includes $10 million worth equating to 768 million patient care, less on tall. Even as work of 149 years of proposing to lower rates, have to be able up to $250,000 in .

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glitterycollectiontidalwav-blog4 · 8 years ago

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PublBox Global

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Hiring a Social Media Manager

The main goal of a social media social media management agency manager is to reach out to potential prospects and keep up a correspondence with the current. Due to this fact, it's essential to choose the appropriate media instrument that actively engages the net and, most often, diversified audience social media management plan example.

Social media instruments are broadly categorized into two groups based mostly blog link on their goals: social networking instruments and content publishing tools.

Social community tools

These social media instruments allow users to connect socially or professionally in websites similar to LinkedIn, Facebook, My House and so forth. Social media entrepreneurs use these websites to advertise their products and organizations.

• RSS-That is an abbreviation for Really Easy Syndication which a gaggle of web feeds used to publish up to date posts such because the not too long ago uploaded blogs, movies, and information headlines. Examples of RSS are Bloglines, Google Reader, FeedBurner and Newsgator.

• Picture sharing-Utilizing this social media software, a user can share pictures online with other digital users. Examples of social media instruments that enable picture sharing are Shutterfly, Picasa, and Flickr.

Content publishing instruments

The most common ways of sharing texts are through e-mails and newsletters, forums, wikis, blogs, podcasts, video and micro blogging.

• Blogs-These are notes and ideas that are uploaded in particular websites for blogging. Examples of social media instruments that enable blogging are Google+, Bloglines, WordPress, Typepad, and Technorati.

• Micro blogging-That is another type of blogging wherein readers can put up their comments regularly in response the original comment. Examples of micro blogging websites are Twitter, Pownce, and Tumblr.

• Podcasts-It is a digital audio which can be performed again on an mp3 participant. Instance of podcast applications are Podcast Alley, Digital Podcast and Allpodcasts.com.

• Social news and bookmarking-In frequent parlance, this enables customers to avoid wasting and share bookmarked net pages via the Web. Websites resembling Delicious.com, Reddit, Digg.com, and Stumble.com are examples of assets offering social information and bookmarking.

• Social networking-This can be a well-liked software that permits online customers to network or join with different users and share photographs and posts. Examples of social networking sites are Facebook, Ning, and My Area.

• Video sharing-Because the identify suggests, a person can upload and share movies on-line. The instruments also help viewers' feedback that may be posted for every online video. YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and Blip.TV are examples of video sharing websites.

• Wikis-This website that permits customers to edit and add to content material that's available on-line. Examples for Wiki sites and Wiki farms are Wikipedia, Wetpaint, and Wikia.

The instruments talked about are solely essentially the most extensively used ones and the record shouldn't be comprehensive. Keep in mind, the aim of connecting with a digital viewers must be powerful by leveraging the fitting social media device.

As we strategy halfway by way of the yr 2016, the social media specialists have already began predicting its pattern for the upcoming year. The actual fact is Social Media is definitely here PublBoxGlobal to remain. The Social Media advertising has already penetrated into every of our work and life. With the days passing, it's becoming a more powerful mode of motion for all the players.

You'll absolutely agree that it's high time to organize and reshuffle the social media instruments. Some addition of those game-altering tools can provide you an https://www.blog.publbox.com thought of how successful this platform is for specific calculated targets. Chances are you'll replace your sport plan assets with the next social media tools.

Buffer

Do you wish to publish your social content at one go? With Buffer tool, you possibly can post content material throughout several social media accounts. It's lot less difficult and convenient. Now it's possible you'll create and schedule your postings for various networking platforms social media management software like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Fb, and Google+ pages from a single window. As you create a queue for the postings, it saves you a considerable period of time. With the detailed analytics in place, you clearly know the reply to the questions like what, when, the place and why.

Canva

Pictures can give your content material a completely new life. Canva is a device which helps you to find excessive-quality photos on your funds. Your posts on social networking websites can have the a lot desired visible content at a nominal price. The assorted templates on this device make you feel like a designer even in case you are confused about the selection.

Edgar

Social media completely supports the re-use of the outdated content providing it is related. But, usually many important posts of excessive relevance stays hidden among the many pile of posts that maintain flowing daily on the social websites. Edgar is a software or the answer to this problem. It lets you hint among the implausible content material which will have been missed by the followers as a result of flood of posts on the sites. Now, with this instrument chances are you'll kind out the relevant put up, track it and repost it for the followers in the future.

Brand24

It is vitally necessary to know and understand what the patron's view about your model is, what is being mentioned and what the buyer requirements are. Brand24 convey real-time information in your model in addition to your competitor manufacturers. This repeated approach may help you efficiently take action to optimistic and pessimistic remarks throughout your social networking platforms. This manner you possibly can remain linked together with your viewers along with efficiently measure any potential sales opening.

Nuzzle

With a number of tales pouring in from your pals of varied networking websites, Nuzzle helps in organizing the posts. This iOS plus net-based app combines information from the social media posts to offer you easy-to-read links. Nuzzle affords a way out for adding influencers that can provide you management and profit your personal advertising requirements. You can know and perceive your viewers in a greater mild by accessing the posts from your mates of associates as effectively.

Social Clout

Social Clout is an analytical software which can be utilized for making noteworthy improvement in keywords, campaigns, and engagement. You may as well get entry to social media penalties or outcomes and demographics. With the assistance of these data, a number of social networking account data could be obtained. These knowledge can be used to maintain a monitor of the event and in addition check the completely different reactions and answers on varied platforms.

Cyfe

social media tools for business 2015

The social media instrument box consists of several logical tools to grasp with the processes. You can entry analytics, AdWords and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION detailed studies via Cyfe. You additionally get an entire account of your brand and simply reasonably priced for even a small businessman. Cyfe offers you a get redirected here fully personalized dashboard where you possibly can consider and accumulate this information. Competitor analysis is one other side that Cyfe takes care of, aside from the social media utility. You may also get the entire report on the approaching developments and data actions via this trade aptitude instrument.

Bundlepost

This software helps in replacing the common purposeful keywords with the hashtags that helps to enhance the outcomes whereas scheduling your posts.

SecureMySocial

Employees are an integral part of your social network and in the event that they violate the laws, it could possibly affect your corporation directly. The SecureMySocial tool helps in tracking what's being stated or executed by your employees on the networking websites which may affect the corporate. With the assistance of this software, you will get intimation instantaneously if any worker violates firm legal guidelines and insurance policies by means of the social media posts. You may get to know the person posting info and receive an alert to take mandatory motion to maintain your company's repute.

Nuvi

This is an attention-grabbing tool that permits you to test what others can't go through in terms of Fb talk, be it non-public or public. With Nuvi, you get an entire picture of different's thought. This may also help you in re- shaping your social media posts.

FollowerWonk

This instrument is solely for the Twitter and helps in optimizing and analyzing the Twitter posts on the social community platform. From locating your Wikipedia Here followers to tracking deep down info, FollowerWonk optimizes your tweets and in addition in a position to monitor the brand new influencers.

Inkybee

Creating your brand and attracting an increasing number of prospective clients could be very essential. This instrument helps to gain the potential prospects by tracking the influencers who can elevate your model. It helps in looking out the social media famous personalities and bloggers who are all for your trade so that you may join with them for making a stronger brand presence on social media.

Conclusion

The above talked about are the few tools that can drive site visitors and enhance what you are promoting by way of social media promotions. There are numerous such apps and instruments that are worthy of your contemplation as the feasible solutions to enhance your company's social media funding and presence.

Advertising and marketing is all about understanding prospects, knowing how they behave and realizing what's going to capture their consideration and finally their business. Social media advertising and marketing is not any completely different - and like anything, the fitting instruments for the job will save quite a lot of money and time.

Social media instruments are a method that a brand can query its clients,discover out what they do on-line and how they work together with each other. There is no such thing as a substitute for talking to prospects - this will also be carried out via the social platforms. However social media tools can present worthwhile quantitative data to help target a campaign. Examples embody:

• Categorising the social media PublBox Global Social Media Management Autopilot conduct of a customer base

• Analysing the activity and demographics on social platforms - both posting and viewing

• Monitoring traits, 'scorching matters' and brand mentions

Categorising habits gives data on what customers do on social websites - one thing that has a very broad variation. For instance, Forester Media categorise social media customers on a 'ladder'. On the top are the creators, those that produce their very own content and upload it to sites. Slightly much less lively are conversationalists and critics, who participate in discussions and supply suggestions about merchandise, companies and occasions. Then there are spectators, who do not add any content of their own but read what others say or put up. Finally there are the 'inactives' who don't have any social media presence and who probably can't be reached even by the best social media instruments.

There's additionally another sort of person, who may very well be dubbed 'refusers'. These are the people who do use social media, post their very own content material and communicate best social media management tools for business via the platforms, however do their finest to be proof in opposition to promoting and data mining. Their habits is value noting for a advertising and marketing 'reality check'.

For instance, the refusers will use Fb - but their profile shall be blocked to all however pals and will contain no private knowledge. They will have educated themselves to ignore the fitting-hand side of the display screen (the place the advertising is), and could have disabled all apps to protect what little data they've shared. They might use cell media, however is not going to 'check in' with their location, resulting from concerns about both dwelling security and having their movements tracked. These are the people who solely watch industrial tv on a recorder so that they will velocity by way of the adverts, tip up magazines to take away the inserts earlier than buying and return junk mail unopened. They are extra quite a few than many suppose, and a advertising and marketing technique should not ignore them.

Analysing activity and demographics can provide detailed information to assist goal marketing spend. To make the very best use of social media, it is very important know what the customers are doing, how they reached your web site, how long they PublBox Global Social Network spent there and exactly what they did. In case your site has members who need to register, these are the important folks to observe - they are the ones who're sufficiently engaged to spend a couple of moments supplying you with details.

Site visitors evaluation also needs to observe the activity of the model itself, to keep away from duplication and wasted effort.The postings and comments made by the model are just as essential as these made by the customers.

Monitoring trends is the third 'pillar' of social advertising evaluation. For this, you will need to take account of the blogosphere - this is the space the place most non-Facebook on-line conversations happen. Social media tools akin to Google blog search and Technorati can seize the helpful metrics. These embrace number of model mentions for each you and your competitors, the rating of the blogs that point out you, the frequency and variety of comments made on the blogs and plenty of other parameters.

The best way that people use social media varies widely. One strategy to benefit from a campaign is to make use of social media tools to classify a customer base by activity and habits. The marketing activity of the model can then be tailor-made to every group of potential clients in a approach that can interact them.

Like the rest, information from social media instruments needs to be handled with warning. If evaluation parameters are set incorrectly, the data that emerges could also be social media tools for business meaningless and even misleading. Just remember to perceive what the metrics are saying to you, and take advice from the experts to profit from valuable advertising spend.

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seotipsandtricks-me · 6 years ago

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Want to drive a TON of organic traffic to your website? Here’s the basic formula: Pick a topic/keyword Create an exceptional piece of content around that topic Promote it. Build links to it. Rank it. Sounds simple, right!? I’ll let you in on a little secret: It is simple, but only if you use the right tools for the job. What do I mean by that? Well, there are a ton of questions you need to answer before you get started, such as: Which keywords/topics should you be trying to rank for? Is it even possible to outrank the competition? What kind of content should you create? (e.g. blog post, infographic, interactive content, etc) How many links do you need to build to rank for your chosen keywords? (and can you build that many links?) In this post, I’ll be showing you how to answer all these questions (and more) with only one tool: Ahrefs. What You Will Learn Let me make one thing clear: My aim here isn’t to list everything Ahrefs can do. (If that’s what you want, you can find a big list of features here.) My aim is to show actionable ways to use Ahrefs (and no other tools) to get more organic traffic to your website. Here’s everything I’ll be teaching you: Getting Started: How to get started with Ahrefs and set yourself up for success (note: do not skip this stage, it is very important). Backlink Health Check: How to identify (and fix) any backlink issues that may be holding your website back in the SERPs. WARNING: Fixing these issues can lead to an instant rankings boost! Keyword Research: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer is perhaps the best keyword research tool on the market. I’ll show you how to use this tool (and a couple of other Ahrefs tools) to build an initial keyword list for your website. Keyword Prioritisation: How to prioritise your keywords list and identify “low-hanging” opportunities that can boost traffic FAST. Content Research: How to figure out EXACTLY what type of content you should be creating to rank for your chosen keywords. Link Building: How to build links to your website using a variety of methods (note: this is where Ahrefs really shines!) Site Audit: How to diagnose and fix errors with your website (note: this is highly recommended, as on-site errors can hold back your success, even if you’ve done everything right thus far!) Analyse your Progress/Success: How to use Ahrefs to make sure you’re on the right track and that things are improving with your website. I’ve made a big effort to lay this out as a checklist, rather than a random list of ideas and tactics. This means that if you follow this guide from start-to-finish, I guarantee you will see results. What Is Ahrefs (And Why Should You Care)? Ahrefs is a powerful—and complete—SEO analysis tool. It does pretty much everything you could ever need to do from an SEO standpoint, including: Keyword research (via Keywords Explorer) Content research (via Content Explorer) Backlink research (via Site Explorer) Rank tracking (via Rank Tracker) Competitor research (via Site Explorer, Link Intersect Tool, etc) Site auditing (i.e. diagnosing site health issues, etc.) (via the Site Audit tool) Right now, the only important thing Ahrefs can’t do is manage or send link building outreach emails. But you can use Gmail for that. Everything else is covered. You can search a database of 4.9 million keywords in seconds with Keywords Explorer. You can search 700+ million pieces of content to find content ideas that will generate a ton of traffic, with Content Explorer. You can search the world’s largest index of backlinks (over 3 trillion!) to see all your competitors backlinks, with Site Explorer. You can find and fix hundreds of on-site issues in seconds, with the Site Audit tool. And that’s the tip of the iceberg, really. But, impressive industry-leading stats aside, what does this mean for the average Joe? Simple. It means you have everything you need—under one roof—to grow your website traffic like crazy. This post will walk you through the process of doing this, step-by-step. Getting Started With My Ahrefs Review In this short section, I’ll show you how to get started with my Ahrefs review and how to set up your account for success. So, first things first, head over to Ahrefs and sign up for a trial. Note: It’s $7 for a 7-day trial. I recommend trying the “Standard” plan. Once you’re in, Ahrefs will prompt you to add a project (i.e. website) to your account. This is pretty straightforward—give your project a name and hit “next”. Make sure to use the http + https naming scheme. You’ll then be asked to add keywords that you want to track. Ahrefs actually suggests a bunch of keywords that your website is already ranking for. Basically, the higher up the list of suggestions they are, the more traffic those keywords are sending to your website. I recommend adding the first 4-5 pages worth of keywords. Why? Because this allows you to track your most important keywords (i.e. the keywords that are the most traffic to your website). Step some competitors. Again, you can either add competitors manually (if you know them) or choose from the suggestions Ahrefs gives. I recommend adding 5 competitors from the suggestions Ahrefs gives. And finally, add some branded keywords to track. I really recommend taking a moment to set this one up. We’ll be using it later in the guide. Note: By default, Ahrefs sends you daily emails about these keywords. If you prefer not to have daily emails flooding your inbox, go into the settings and change this to weekly (or monthly). That’s it. You’re ready to rock! Backlink Health Check Backlinks from spammy, low-quality websites. Backlinks with over-optimised anchor text. These types of backlinks can spell disaster for your website. At best, they’ll prevent your website from ranking as well as it should. At worst, they’ll lead to a Google Penguin penalty. That’s why you need to nip any “bad” backlinks in the bud before you invest time, energy, and money optimizing your website. But: How do you do this? Like I said earlier, Ahrefs has the largest backlink index on the planet— this makes it the perfect tool for identifying and fixing any “bad” backlinks. NOTE: Ahrefs just released a new Site Audit tool to help diagnose even more issues with your website. I’ll be running through this later in the guide. Here’s how to do it: Look for “Dodgy” Links in the Backlinks and Referring Domains Reports Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then navigate to the referring domains tab. By default, this will show you all referring domains ordered by Domain Rating (DR)—highest to lowest. But remember: You’re looking for low-quality links, so reverse this (i.e. order by DR low to high). Look for domains that look low-quality or suspicious, such as: Anything you don’t recognise Foreign-language websites (e.g. .ru, .dk domains, etc) .xyz domains Low-quality wiki pages Article directories [empty anchors] Of course, it would be pretty time-consuming if you had to check every backlink manually. But, luckily, Ahrefs has a few filters to help you out. If you move to the Backlinks report, there are filters for both languages and platform. I recommend filtering by languages like Russian to find spammy backlinks, as Russian sites are kind of notorious for link spam. Note: You can get even more specific with languages by filtering for exact TLDs (e.g. .dk, .ru, etc.) in the Referring Domains report. You can also easily uncover low-quality Wiki pages with the Wikis filter in the Backlinks report: But remember, even if something looks super-dodgy, always check out the link manually before making a judgement. Otherwise, you run the risk of disavowing links that may be helping your website. If you can confirm that the link is “bad”, hit the checkbox next to the domain. You can then simply click “disavow links” to send them to your disavow area + create a disavow file. NOTE: You can only see checkboxes if the domain that you’re reviewing is added to Ahrefs Dashboard. This should be the case if you added your domain(s) in the “getting started” section above. Look for Unnatural Anchor Text Issues Anchor text is the clickable text within a link. Example: The anchor text for this link is “this link here”. Anchor text helps to tell Google (and potential visitors) what your website is about—that’s why it remains a Google ranking factor. But: Anchor text over-optimisation (i.e. too many keyword-rich links) can trigger a Google penalty. If your website has an unnatural link profile with tons of exact match (or partial match) anchor texts, this could be an issue. Here’s how to identify—and fix—these issues with Ahrefs: Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then go to the Anchors report under Backlink Profile. This will show you exactly what anchor text is being used within the links back to your website. If you have a healthy backlink profile, most of your anchors will probably be: Branded anchors (e.g. “matthew woodward”, “matthewwoodward.co.uk”, etc.) Generic anchors (e.g. “click here”, “this post”, etc.) What you don’t want to see is lots of exact-match anchors. This is a sign of over-optimisation. If you spot anything that looks dodgy, hit details > referring domains to see which sites are linking to you. Right now, you can’t disavow these links directly from within the anchors report. However, you can simply hit the export button then upload the file manually to the disavow area. Look for LOTS of Links from the Same C-block IPs Every website has its own IP address that looks something like this: 04.27.36.55 In simple terms, while you may be used to typing in matthewwoodward.co.uk to get to my blog, that’s really just a memorable way of navigating to an IP address where my website resides. Basically: Because humans are better at remembering website URLs than a random string of numbers, we let the browser do the work and translate a URL into an IP address behind the scenes. Now, IP addresses are separated into blocks: A, B, C, and D blocks, like so: AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD If we have the following two websites: 04.27.36.55 04.27.36.7 We would say they’re on the same C-block. In internet terms, these sites are neighbours. Note: More information on IP addresses here. Why does this matter? Lots of links from the same C-block IP can be a bad sign. This is because it signals to Google that these sites may be closely related (e.g. a PBN) and therefore, not the most natural links ever. Luckily, you can use Ahrefs’ Referring IPs report to find these. Here’s how: Enter your domains into Site Explorer, then hit the Referring IPs report under Backlink Profile. Ahrefs groups referring IPs by C-blocks by default—very useful! In the example above, you can see that the first few results look a bit dodgy—there are thousands of links, from hundreds of domains, all on the same C-block IP. Let’s take a deeper look. Yep, they’re spammy. They need disavowing/removing. Again, there’s no way to disavow these directly from this report but you can export the domains to a .csv and upload them manually. Find (AND Fix) Broken Backlinks Building backlinks is damn hard. It’s laborious. Time consuming. And costly. So: It makes sense to ensure that you’re getting the full benefit of the links you build, right? Definitely. Unfortunately, links sometimes break. And when this happens, you won’t feel the benefit of those links. That’s why fixing broken links is a quick way to regain some valuable link juice and increase rankings. Here’s how to do it: Enter your domain into Site Explorer then go to Pages > Best by links. Then, add a filter so you see only pages with a 404 status code. You will now see all 404 pages on your website ranked by the number of referring domains they have. Here’s how to reclaim the “link juice” for these pages: Restore the broken page—this should be done if there is an actual error on your part (i.e. you’ve accidentally deleted a valuable page at some point). Add a 30 redirect to the broken page—this should point to either the new location of the page, a suitable alternative, or the homepage. Reach out and asking the website owner to fix the link—this is your best bet if there’s an actual problem with the link such as incorrect formatting. So, just restore these pages or redirect them to something relevant to preserve all your link juice. Do this for any valuable broken links and you’ll see an instant boost! Remove ALL Low-Quality (or Irrelevant) Outbound Links Spammy inbound links are BAD. But outbound links are also extremely important. You, therefore, need to make sure that you’re not linking to low-quality (or totally irrelevant) websites. Here’s how to do it: Enter your domain into Site Explorer then go to Outgoing links > Linked Domains > add a dofollow filter By default, Ahrefs shows the most linked-to domains first. Reverse this list. When I gave this report a quick onceover for my own website, everything looked pretty above board (phew!) BUT…this isn’t the case for all sites. Here’s an outbound link I found on Moz.com: This is clearly a spammy domain. If you find anything like this, remove (or replace) the links on your website. Also: Sometimes, you’ll find that your website is linking to a particular URL many times. Example: Upon closer inspection, we can see that this is a WordPress theme link present in the theme HTML. In all honesty, this probably isn’t going to cause any huge issues. However, as it’s a dofollow link across (almost) every page of the website, at the very least it’s diluting authority for no good reason. I recommend that you remove anything like this from your website’s HTML, too. Fix Broken Outbound Links Broken outbound links lead to a bad user experience. Not only is it annoying to click a link on a website and be taken to a broken page but also, it leaves the visitor questioning the validity of your content. Why? Because they’ll assume your website hasn’t been updated in awhile. Or that you simply don’t put much effort into your content—certainly not enough to curate resources that actually exist. Also, if Google thinks your content is going to lead to a bad user experience, they certainly aren’t going to rank your website. Luckily, this is easily fixable. Here’s how: Enter your website into Site Explorer, then go to Outgoing Links > Broken Links. If anything shows up in this report, there are issues to be fixed. Looks like I have 56 broken outbound links on my website :( You should fix these links by either removing them or replacing them. Note: Here’s a checklist from Vertical measures that goes into detail regarding exactly how to deal with broken outbound links. Keyword Research Fixing the errors outlined above should be enough to give you a small traffic boost. BUT: Now it’s time for the big guns. No matter what website you’re working on, your SEO strategy should follow roughly the same blueprint, which is: Find keywords you want to rank for (and that you already rank for) Prioritise keywords/topics into long-term opportunities + short-term opportunities (i.e. low-hanging fruit) Create some content (or improve existing content) around those keywords Build links to content (wherever appropriate/necessary) Analyse what did/didn’t work and refine your strategy/plan going forward. Rinse and repeat all of the above Trust me: Do those things, in that order, and I guarantee you’ll see a HUGE traffic increase. So, let’s get started with the first step: keyword discovery. Pop a Few “Seed” Keywords into Keywords Explorer Keywords Explorer is the first place I turn when I want to discover keywords for a new (or existing) website. That’s because all you need is a few “seed” keywords and it’ll give you thousands of ideas. Here’s the process: Go to Keywords explorer and enter a few seed keyword ideas. Note: There’s no exact process for coming up with these. Just make an educated guess. Hit the search button. Note: Make sure to select the appropriate country (e.g. United States) before searching, otherwise you’ll see keyword volume estimates and whatnot for a country unrelated to your business. Go to the metrics tab. This shows you monthly search volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and tons of other information. If a keyword looks good (i.e. it has some decent search volume and is relevant to your business), save it to a keywords list. Note: If a keyword is super-relevant to your business, it makes sense to prioritise it, even if the search volume for that keyword is quite low. As I’ll mention later in this guide, search volume isn’t always the best indicator of traffic. However, it is a good starting point and it’s still worth looking at. See Other Keyword Ideas (Based on Your Seed Keywords) Right now, Ahrefs has the biggest keywords database in the industry. Because of this, Keywords Explorer will show you with a bunch (and I really do mean a bunch!) of other keyword ideas based on your seed keywords. Just hit one of these 6 options on the left-hand menu: Personally, I usually just select “all”. However, this will usually give you a few million keywords to play with (see, I told you they had a lot of data), which is pretty damn impossible to work with. So, I tend to play with the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to narrow them down. Your best bet is to filter for keywords with a KD score of less than 0. Why? Because anything below KD 0 means that top-ranking results have less than or equal to 0 backlinks on average, so it should be fairly easy to rank for them. I usually just tick anything that looks good and add it to my keywords list. And if you prefer to get a little more granular with your keyword suggestions, you can learn more about what “phrase match”, “having same terms”, etc. mean here. Note: Ahrefs presented me with 32K+ keyword suggestions from just the 8 keywords I entered above…so you certainly won’t be short of ideas! Find the Keywords/Topics that Send the Most Traffic to Your Competitors Enter a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer, then go to Organic search > Top Pages Here you will see which of your competitors pages are attracting the most organic search traffic. You’ll also see the top keyword that page ranks for, along with the search volume for that keyword. Note: It’s also worth paying attention to the RD (Referring Domains) column as this shows how many ref.domains are pointing to that page. If you can identify pages that receive a lot of traffic, yet only have a few RDs, it’s most likely a topic that you can rank for pretty easily! Pretty cool, right!? BUT it gets even better… This report also shows you all of the other keywords these pages rank for (in order of the amount of traffic they drive to your competitors page). This is not only useful for generating additional keyword ideas but also, finding keywords/topics/phrases that you can sprinkle into your content to increase relevance (i.e. LSI keywords). Analyse YOUR Competitors to Find Keyword “Content Gaps” Content gaps exist when your competitors rank for keywords that you don’t rank for. Think about it: If you could see what those keywords are, you could create content to compete with them (and ideally outrank them). Here’s how to find those keywords with Ahrefs: Enter your domain into Site Explorer, then go to Organic Search > Content Gap Now, enter the domains of (at least) three competitors plus your domain in the “but the following target doesn’t rank for” field. Hit “show keywords”. Bingo…here are hundreds of keywords that (at least) one of your competitors rank for, yet you don’t. Tip: Enter competitors with a similar Domain Rating (DR) score. This will ensure that the Content Gap analysis kicks back keywords you stand a chance of ranking for. If you enter Moz.com as a competitor and you have a DR 40 site, the sad truth is that you’re probably never going to outrank Moz. I recommend paying particular attention to any keywords where your competitors are ranking in the top 0. Why? Because if they’re ranking in the top 0, chances are you could, too! Keyword Prioritisation (PLUS How to Identify Low-Hanging Opportunities) At this stage, you should have a big list of keywords that you could try to rank for. BUT: Just because you can target these keywords doesn’t mean you should. Some will be easier to rank for than others (in fact, you may not even stand a hope in hell of ranking for some of them). Some will drive a lot of traffic (while others will drive very little). Some will require creating new content (others won’t). Analysing keywords for certain attributes will allow you to prioritise your list, and divide your ideas into long-term and short-term topics. Here are a few tips: Find Keywords That You’re Already Ranking for in Positions 4-6 Already ranking in positions 4-6 for some high-volume keywords? These are your low-hanging fruit. Why? Because CTR increases exponentially within the top 5 positions. Therefore, it only takes a ranking increase of one position to see BIG traffic boosts from these keywords. And improving rankings by -2 positions can be as simple as building a handful of high-quality links. But how do you find these keywords? Simple. Enter your site into Site Explorer, then go to Organic Search > Organic Keywords This will show you all of the keywords your website is currently ranking for. Note: By default, they’re ordered by the amount of organic traffic they send to your website—neat! But here’s the trick: Add a positions filter to show the keywords you’re currently ranking in positions 4-6. These keywords are your low-hanging fruit—they should be prioritised when it comes to on-page optimization and link building. Find Keywords AND Topics with High Traffic Potential Sometimes individual keywords won’t have a particularly high search volume. Example: “best keyword research tools” If you were to rank for this keyword, you would receive roughly 30% of these clicks. That’s a measly 75 visitors/month (approx.) Hardly worth bothering, right!? Not so fast. Looking at individual search volumes for a single keyword rarely shows you the true ranking potential of that topic. This is because pages almost always naturally rank for TONs of variations of that keyword (i.e. “long-tail keywords”). So how do you figure out the true ranking potential of a topic? Easy… Check how much organic traffic the top ranking pages for that keyword are getting. If it’s a lot, the topic/keyword has a high traffic potential. Here’s how: Go to Keywords Explorer and enter a keyword. Scroll down to the SERP overview and you’ll see who’s ranking in the top 0. You can also see how much organic traffic these top ranking pages are attracting (across all keywords). These are the SERPs for “best keyword research tool” and as you can see, the top ranking pages are getting WAY more than 75 visits/month. So, this topic DEFINITELY has a high traffic potential and is worth prioritising. Content Research Keyword research? Check. Keyword prioritisation? CHECK. (you’re off to a good start!) But…you ain’t going to rank for any of those keywords without creating some EPIC content around them. Obviously, some of the keywords you’ve found (e.g. the low-hanging opportunities in positions 4-6) won’t require new content. You just need to optimise—and build some extra links to—your existing content. For others, however, you’re going to need to create something new! BUT here’s the problem: It’s NOT always easy to discern exactly what you should be writing about solely by looking at a keyword. Example: Let’s take the keyword “keyword research”. It’s a great keyword with a ridiculously high search volume (at least for this niche). BUT, it’s also massively competitive. If I was to write a reasonably generic guide to keyword research, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance of ranking in the top 3 for this exact keyword. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t write about keyword research at all…I just need to “niche down” a little and write a UNIQUE piece of content. Here’s how: Find UNIQUE, EASILY BEATABLE Content Ideas Using Content Explorer Ahrefs has an index of 800+ million pieces of content on various topics. They also add 5+ million new pieces of content to this index every 24 hours (which is absolutely INSANE). But, data and stats aside, what benefit does this have? Well, it means that you can enter (almost) any keyword into Content Explorer and it’ll kick back a TON of content ideas. Example: That’s 3900+ content ideas for “keyword research”. And this is only results where the phrase “keyword research” is in the article title… You can also search for content where the phrase is mentioned anywhere in the article content, which will return exponentially more results! BUT, like I said, it would be VERY difficult to rank for this exact keyword without “niching down”. This is because the “big guys” (e.g. Moz, Ahrefs, etc) are currently dominating the SERPs for this topic. However, we can use the in-built filters in content Explorer to find ideas that: We can actually compete with Will actually generate traffic for us Here’s the setup: Here’s exactly what we’re doing here (and why!): Filtering for only English results: Pretty self-explanatory, right!? Filtering ONLY for results from websites with a DR between 0-5 Because the DR of my website (matthewwoodward.co.uk) is also 59, I only want to see results for sites with the same (or lower) DR. Why? Because these are the sites I’ll be able to compete with easily. Filtering ONLY for pages with <5 referring domains AND >500 organic visitors per month: This is the important part! By looking for pages that are receiving 500+ organic visits AND have very few links, we can uncover pages that will be VERY easy to outrank. Stealing their traffic will most likely require nothing more than creating better content and building a handful of links (at the most) Here’s what Content Explorer found for my search: This page talks about how to uncover keywords by looking at YouTube tags. It receives 525 organic visits per month, has 0 referring domains, and is 83 words long. If this isn’t easily beatable content, then I don’t know what is! Note: Remember, if your search doesn’t return many results, you can always find pages containing your keyword anywhere in the content (using the “in content”) filter to broaden your horizons. Find Content Ideas That People ACTUALLY Care About with Keywords Explorer Nobody understands search intent like Google does. Their algorithm relies on showing users what they want to see. Because of this, there’s no better way to understand the intent behind a search term (i.e. what people are actually looking to find) than analysing the top 0 search results. Example: Let’s take a keyword like “SEO tools”… Now, there are plenty of SEO tools—some free, some paid—on the market. If we wanted to rank for this keyword, maybe a winning formula for a piece of content would be to create a list of all of these SEO tools, right!? Again, not so fast. Let’s go to Keywords Explorer, enter the keyword, and scroll down to the SERP overview. This shows us the top 0 ranking results. Instantly, I spot a pattern… Although most of the results are lists of SEO tools, a lot of them are actually lists of free SEO tools. In fact, 7/0 results contain the word “free” in the title tag. This tells me that although people are generally typing in “SEO tools”, they actually appear to be looking for a list of the best free SEO tools. It would, therefore, be much smarter to go down this route when creating a piece of content around this keyword/topic. Also: Keywords Explorer tells us how many links (and referring domains) each of these pages has, allowing us to quickly spot topics with great potential to attract a TON of links. Link Building I’ll let you in on a (sad) secret: You ain’t going to rank for any worthwhile keyword/topic without links. Sure, less competitive keywords may only require a handful of links whereas more competitive keywords may require many more links (sometimes even thousands) but still, the bottomline is this: You. Need. Links. But here’s the good news: Ahrefs shines in this department. Not only do they boast the largest live link index on the market, they have a TON of tools that can help you with the task at hand. In fact, I don’t know any serious link builders that AREN’T using Ahrefs. It really is that good. Here are a few ways to use Ahrefs to build all the links you need: Use Branded Alerts to Reclaim Backlinks Remember those branded alerts I told you to set up at the beginning of this guide? If you set them up correctly, you’ve most likely received an email that looks something like this: Basically, this tells you whenever anyone mentions your name (or any other branded terms) on the web. So: If someone mentions you personally in a blog post, you’ll know about it. If someone talks about your brand (e.g. Apple) in a review, you’ll know about it. Etc. BUT: Just because someone has mentioned your name (or brand name) in a piece of content doesn’t necessarily mean that they remembered to link to you. And if they didn’t…getting the link is usually as easy as reaching out and asking for it. Example: If you look closely at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I was recently mentioned in this article about starting a membership website. Here’s the part where I’m mentioned: Weirdly, they didn’t link to the tutorial they mentioned in that paragraph. It’s highly likely that they simply forgot, or made a mistake. So: Getting a link from this article would likely take nothing more than a simple email asking them to add a link. Monitor TOPICAL Keyword Alerts (Then Convince People to Link to You) Monitoring branded keywords is a good start. BUT, that’s the tip of the iceberg… Here’s why: In Ahrefs Alerts, you can monitor for mentions of ANY keyword. For example, here’s an alert I set up for “link building”: Now, each week, I get an email from Ahrefs showing me any newly published content containing that term (i.e. link building) from the past 7 days. Example: That’s 93 new mentions of “link building” in just one week! BUT…how does this help to build links? Basically, you can use these alerts to discover content that could be improved by adding a link to your website (or a particular resource on your website). Example: Take a look at that 2nd article (the one by SearchEngineLand.com). It talks about “7 Reasons Why Your Broken Link Building Campaign Isn’t Working”… It’s a great article, BUT… I get the feeling that readers of this article are likely struggling with link building in general. Scrolling to the end of the post, it looks like the author also thinks this…that’s why he’s chosen to include a few links to additional link building resources. It just so happens that I also have a TON of great link building resources on my blog, such as this list of 44 link building strategies. Because this would also be a great additional resource to include at the end of that SEL post, I could simply reach out to the author of that post (Kevin) and suggest that he add a link to my post in that final section. This is a great, simple way to build links to any piece of content :) Monitor Competitor Links AND Brand Mentions You can learn a lot from your competitors. BUT… Did you know that monitoring your competitors can be a great source of link prospects? Basically, if you can identify where your competitors are being mentioned AND linked-to, you can often steal these links/mentions from yourself. Example: Here are the top 3 Google results for “long tail pro”: Right now, I’m ranking in position BUT…I’d really like to rank . This means that my competitors for this keyword are longtailpro.com and dumbpassiveincome.com. Now: Right off the bat, I could throw these URLs into Ahrefs Site Explorer, look at their backlinks, and see if there are any easily replicable links I could steal for myself. BUT…that’s a different strategy altogether! What I want to talk about is monitoring both competitor links AND branded keywords to give you a constant supply of link opportunities. So, let’s start with backlink monitoring: Like I said, one of my competitors is dumbpassiveincome.com—they have a similar Long Tail Pro review to mine. However, I personally believe my review to be better. I also updated my review very recently, so it’s super fresh. I, therefore, believe that anyone choosing to link to my competitors Long Tail Pro review would be better off linking to mine. So, I want to monitor my competitors review for new links. If they get any, I can then reach out to the person linking to them and suggest that they link to my review instead (as it’s better). Here’s how to set up an alert for these links: Go to the Backlinks section within Ahrefs Alerts and hit “+ New Alert”. Enter the URL of the page you want to monitor for backlinks, choose “New backlinks” under the “Scope” option, and enter your email address. You’ll now receive an email whenever there’s a new link to your competitor’s URL—you can then swoop in and steal the link for yourself. BUT…competitor backlinks aren’t the only thing worth monitoring: You can also monitor competitors branded keywords. Example: Because I have a review of Long Tail Pro, it would be worth setting up an alert for branded keywords like “Long Tail Pro”. Here’s why: If someone is mentioning Long Tail Pro on the web, their readers would find a review and tutorial for the tool rather useful. So, whenever I see Long Tail Pro being mentioned, I can simply reach out to the website owner and suggest they add a link to my review within their post. Easy. Here’s how to set this up: Go to the Mentions section of Ahrefs Alerts and hit “+ New Alert”. Add your keyword, add any blocked domains (e.g. your own website), and your email address. Now you’ll receive an email alert whenever your keyword (e.g. “long tail pro”) is mentioned on the web. Find “Skyscraper” Link Building Opportunities (AND Prospects) Ahh, the infamous “skyscraper technique”… It’s perhaps the most famous link-building technique there is! And for good reason, too—it’s super powerful! For those unfamiliar, here’s the basic process: Find a piece of content with a TON of links. Make something even better. Contact anyone linking to the old, inferior piece of content and suggest that they link to yours instead. Smart. Note: Here’s Brian’s full post on the Skyscraper Technique. BUT… How do you find “skyscraper” content (i.e. content with a TON of links that you can build upon) in the first place? Here’s a super simple method: Enter a well-known competitors domain into Site Explorer, then go to Pages > Best by Links You will now see every page on the domain ordered by # of backlinks. The two posts I’ve highlighted above have thousands of backlinks. If I was to put-together an even better version of any of these posts, I would have thousands of prospects to pitch to! Note: You can gather a list of “skyscraper” prospects by checking the backlink profile of that particular URL in Site Explorer. Just sift through all the links and choose prospects to reach out to. BUT… What if you already have an EPIC piece of content and you want to build some links to it? Here’s a simple trick that I haven’t seen anyone talk about before: Enter a keyword into Content Explorer, then filter ONLY for pages with 00+ referring domains. Example: Let’s say that I wanted to build some links to my list of 44 link building strategies. I would enter the keyword “link building strategies” into Content Explorer and add a referring domains filter. This gives me 76 results—all of these are (a) about link building strategies, and (b) have 00+ referring domains. Now, the trick is then to sift through the results looking for content that is very similar—yet inferior to—your content. Here’s a good example: This page has 09 referring domains, yet it only lists 3 strategies where mine lists 44. It also hasn’t been updated since 204! Anyone linking to this page is a prime “skyscraper” prospect for my post—I just need to reach out and suggest they change the link to my page (and tell them why they should). Broken Backlink Building (with the top pages – 404 report) Nobody likes broken links. You know the ones… They take you to pages like this: It drives me crazy whenever this happens! BUT… Broken links are a link-builders dream. Why? Because if you can find a broken link with a TON of backlinks, you can build links with this simple 3-step process: Find out what the broken link used to be Create a similar—but better—piece of content Ask anyone linking to the broken content to link to your content instead However, before you can do this, you need to actually find a broken link with the following attributes: It has a TON of links pointing to it It’s relevant to your website It can be replicated without too much work Here’s how to do this: Enter a well-known competitors domain into Site Explorer, then go to Pages > Best by Links. This shows you the most linked-to pages on that domain. BUT…we don’t want to see all pages—we want to see broken pages. To do this, filter the list to show ONLY 404 errors. Most websites will have at least a few broken links. Simply sift through these pages looking for broken links that have a decent number of backlinks AND would be relevant to your website. Note: You can use Wayback Machine to see how any page used to look. If you identify a page that meets all of the criteria mentioned above, create a similar piece of content then publish it on your website. It’s then just a case of reaching out to anyone linking to the old broken link and suggesting that they fix the link by replacing it with your link. Simple. Find Worthwhile Guest Post Prospects Guest posting is one of the oldest link building tactics in the book. It goes something like this: Find websites that accept guest posts (in your niche) Reach out to them and pitch a post idea Write the post, land the link If you’ve ever done guest posting before, you’ll know there’s no shortage of opportunities around. Example: Google finds 4,000+ “write for us” pages (i.e. websites that are accepting guest posts) for search term “SEO”. That’s a LOT of prospects! BUT there’s a problem… While you could write for thousands of websites, it’s important to remember that guest posting takes a lot of work. Not only do you have to pitch the websites, you also have to write a top notch article, too. This can be pretty time-consuming (or, if you’re outsourcing it, expensive!) And, because we want people to actually read our guest post, there’s ZERO point writing posts for websites that get little/no traffic. So, the question is: how do you know how much traffic a website gets? Simple…just enter the domain into Site Explorer and Ahrefs will show you an estimate of organic traffic. BUT…what if you have a long list of prospects? No worries, just paste the entire list into Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool like so: Note: Make sure to select the option for “domain with all its subdomains” under the mode drop-down. Here’s the result (ordered by organic search traffic): This is a great way to cut down your list and ensure that you��re ONLY writing for websites that actually get traffic! Site Audit Keyword discovery and research…DONE. Content creation…DONE. Link building…DONE! (well, link building is never done, but you should have at least made a start!) Here’s the good news: that’s most of the difficult stuff out of the way. But, even if you’ve executed everything perfectly thus far, the truth is that simple on-site errors can often hinder your success. I’m talking about rogue “noindex” tags… Missing meta descriptions… Thin content… And so forth. This is where Ahrefs Site Audit tool comes in handy. In a nutshell, it will diagnose pretty much every on-site issue you could think of, without you really having to lift a finger. Here are a few useful things you can do with it: Note: I’m not going to cover how to set up a project or run crawls in the Site Audit tool because, honestly, it’s pretty self-explanatory. But, if you’re struggling, this post (by Ahrefs) explains exactly how to do it, along with a lot more! Find Slow Loading Pages (Using the Performance Report) Go to Internal Pages > Performance and you will see a report that looks something like this: At first glance, this may appear as nothing more than a myriad of pie charts. But, this is actually showing you the number of pages on your website that are slow to load, in various ways. I recommend paying particular attention to the “Load time” chart: The red section of the pie chart shows the number of pages that are too slow to load (and thus, need fixing). If you click on the red section, you will see exactly which pages these are, along with how slowly they actually load: One cool thing to note here is that Ahrefs also shows you the amount of organic traffic these pages are receiving. If you spot a slow loading page that is receiving a lot of traffic (like my Buzzbundle review, for example), I recommend prioritising the speeding-up of that page. Why? Because chances are it will attract even more traffic if you improve the visitor experience. Find HTML Tag Issues (e.g. Rogue “Noindex” Tags) with the HTML Tags Report Mistakes with HTML tags can wreak havoc on your website. For example, if you accidentally add a noindex tag to a page, Google won’t even index that page. This means that even if you write great content and build epic links, it ain’t going to rank. And, while not all HTML tag errors are potentially this catastrophic, they’re still worth fixing. Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool makes this super-easy, as it uncovers all the errors for you. To view them, just go to Internal Pages > HTML Tags: Here, it will list all of the issues the crawler has found with your website. In the example above, you can see that I have a few missing meta tags, along with a few other errors. To learn more about where these errors actually occur, just click on one of the errors: It will then tell you more information about the errors, including the pages on which the errors occur: Because Ahrefs does the hard work for you (i.e. the discovery of these errors), you can usually fix them pretty easily just by editing a bit of HTML code. Find Incoming and Outgoing Link Issues (e.g. Broken Outbound Links) with the Incoming/Outgoing Links Reports Earlier in this guide, I showed you how to check for (and remove) toxic backlinks. This is super-important. But, there are other link-based issues that can impact the performance of your website. I’m talking about broken outgoing links… “Nofollow” internal links… HTTPS pages internally linking to HTTP pages… And so forth. Luckily, the Incoming and Outgoing Links reports in the Site Audit tool will help you to uncover and fix these issues. Let’s start by taking a look at the Incoming Links report: In this example, you can see that there are a few issues with my website—namely nofollowed internal links. This isn’t always cause for concern but generally, your internal links should be used to send “link juice” to important and relevant pages. Therefore, they should be dofollow links. Note: I have a full guide on internal linking best practices here. If you click any of these errors, you will see exactly where they reside: Let’s take a look at the Outgoing Links report, too: Again, we have a few errors, including: Pages that link out to broken pages (these should be replaced and fixed!) HTTPS pages linking to unsecure internal pages (this is definitely not the best practice!) Pages without outgoing links (some studies have found outgoing links to have a positive effect on rankings) If you want to investigate an error further (and see exactly where the error occurs), just click through to take a look. And this is only the tip of the iceberg—there are plenty of supporting graphs, data visualisations, and other pieces of information in these reports. Recommended reading: This is the new Site Audit tool by Ahrefs (an overview of the Site Audit tool written by Tim Soulo from Ahrefs) Analysing Your Progress/Success SEO is hard work. That’s why it’s important to keep your eye on progress and make sure that the grunt work is having a positive impact on your website. Google Analytics will be your best bet here. BUT…if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up seeing your Ahrefs dashboard much more than your Google Analytics account. So: Here are a few things to look for in Ahrefs to make sure you’re heading in the right direction: Increased Domain Rating (DR) AND Decreased Ahrefs Rank Are you building a consistent flow of links to your website? If so, you should see your Domain Rating (DR) increase over time. Here’s what it looks like on your dashboard: If it increases, you’ll see a green arrow appear alongside this number with the amount of points it’s increased (much like with the URL rating below). Similarly, you should start to see your Ahrefs Rank decrease. Basically, the lower your Ahrefs Rank is, the better, so keep an eye on it. Note: Don’t obsess over these metrics. However, they are a decent indicator as to the overall status of your website. Improved Rankings (for Your Tracked Keywords) Remember during the Ahrefs setup process when I told you to track a bunch of your top keywords in Ahrefs? Well, that’s because these keywords also show up in your dashboard, like this: Basically, this shows how many of your tracked keywords are ranking in the top -3, 4-0, -20, and 2-50 search results. As rankings improve, they’ll show up here. This is my personal favourite way to keep an eye on what really matters—if I see improvements here, I know that my traffic is probably increasing, too. Of course, if you want to take a more granular look at keyword rankings (with graphs and whatnot), you can use Ahrefs Rank Tracker. This can also show you some super-cool data such as the number of featured snippets you own, and much more. Useful Tools (That Work with Ahrefs) Before I wrap this up, I want to mention a handful of tools that incorporate Ahrefs data. I know from talking to Tim (Soulo) that Ahrefs are very picky about which tools they allow to use their data. That’s why this list is quite short. Here are the tools I can personally vouch for: URL Profiler: Pulls in a bunch of metrics (including Ahrefs metrics) for a list of URLs. This is one of my personal favourites. Free trial available here. Ninja Outreach: Use the free trial of this tool to contact thosuands of backlink opportunities/broken backlinks itc in a couple of clicks. They have a range of link building email templates built in! Screaming Frog: Industry-leading crawling tool. A must-have for anyone who’s serious about SEO. It now also allows you to pull in metrics (e.g. DR, Ahrefs Rank, etc.) from Ahrefs directly. More details here. Link Miner (Chrome Extension): Analyse and extract links from any web page. Perfect for finding broken links and quickly assessing them by pulling in metrics from Ahrefs. SeoTools for Excel: Excel add-on that’s absolutely packed with functionality. If you want to pull Ahrefs metrics directly into your spreadsheets, this one is for you! More details here. And here are a few more tools that integrate Ahrefs data (although I haven’t tested these personally). Wrapping It Up Ahrefs is an incredible tool. Not just for link-building, but for (almost) everything else, too. Seriously, if I was limited to using only one SEO tool forever, Ahrefs would probably be my choice. BUT…enough with the praise… Here’s a quick recap of my surefire process for increasing traffic in my Ahrefs review- Make sure your website is healthy (i.e. there are no bad-backlinks, broken links, etc) Look for “Dodgy” Links in the Backlinks and Referring Domains Reports Look for Unnatural Anchor Text Issues Look for LOTS of Links from the Same C-block IPs Find (AND Fix) Broken Backlinks Remove ALL Low-Quality (or Irrelevant) Outbound Links Fix Broken Outbound Links Find all of the best keywords Pop a Few “Seed” Keywords into Keywords Explorer See Other Keyword Ideas (Based on Your Seed Keywords) Find the Keywords/Topics that Send the Most Traffic to Your Competitors / VIDEO TUTORIAL Analyse YOUR Competitors to Find Keyword “Content Gaps” Prioritise your keywords AND find low-hanging fruit (i.e. quick-win opportunities) Find Keywords That You’re Already Ranking for in Positions 4-6 Find Keywords AND Topics with High Traffic Potential Research and create some EPIC content Find UNIQUE, EASILY BEATABLE Content Ideas Using Content Explorer Find Content Ideas That People ACTUALLY Care About with Keywords Explorer Build links to your EPIC content Use Branded Alerts to Reclaim Backlinks Monitor TOPICAL Keyword Alerts (Then Convince People to Link to You) Monitor Competitor Links AND Brand Mentions Find “Skyscraper” Link Building Opportunities (AND Prospects) Broken Backlink Building (with the top pages – 404 report) / VIDEO TUTORIAL Find Worthwhile Guest Post Prospects Complete a site audit and fix all outstanding issues Use The Site Audit Tool To Find Every SEO Problem Find Slow Loading Pages (Using the Performance Report) Find HTML Tag Issues (e.g. Rogue “Noindex” Tags) with the HTML Tags Report Find Incoming and Outgoing Link Issues (e.g. Broken Outbound Links) with the Incoming/Outgoing Links Reports Keep an eye on your progress and make sure you’re on the right track! Increased Domain Rating (DR) AND Decreased Ahrefs Rank Improved Rankings (for Your Tracked Keywords) Do this, in this order, and you won’t go far wrong! How do you use Ahrefs in your SEO campaigns? Ahrefs Review – 25 Ways To Increase YOUR Search Traffic was originally published on Matthew Woodward

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