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murasaki-murasame · 3 years
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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep10
I’m kinda out of it due to a mix of toothache and painkillers, so bare with me on this one, lmao.
Anyway, thoughts under the cut. Also lots of Umineko spoilers, probably.
I’m genuinely kinda shocked that this arc STILL isn’t over, but at least it makes a lot more sense now why it ended up being longer than I expected, lol. I still think it probably could have been condensed by an episode or two, but still. It turns out that way more was going on with Satoko behind the scenes in this arc than I thought.
There’s also the whole possibility that Ryukishi might have intentionally laid out the script of Gou/Sotsu so that this whole sequence of Satoko definitively accepting that she’s a witch and killing her humanity happened on the cumulative 34th episode [24 from Gou and now 10 from Sotsu]. I’ve been wondering if anything could actually justify the extremely slow pacing this has had up to this point, but this might actually be dumb enough to make me think it was all worth it, lol.
Also, I’ve been trying to avoid saying it, but I looked at the whole batch of leaks from this arc when they got posted about a month ago, and it looks like we’ve officially covered everything that was in those leaks. I kinda regret looking at them, since it spoiled that Satoko would have an internal conflict that gets expressed literally in usual WTC fashion, but in a funny way I guess I ended up getting a misguided idea of what was going to happen just from looking at the leaks.
For one thing, I completely forgot about the leak of Satoko shooting Teppei until I double checked it a few days ago, so I was mostly just focused on the stuff about her two sides fighting against each other, and I guess I thought it would have made her seem a lot more redeemable than how it ended up actually working out, lol. I thought that it would basically go in the opposite direction and this would signal the start of her spiraling into regret and despair over the course of Nekodamashi, but basically the opposite happened.
I guess this probably answers the question I’ve had of what could stop Satoko from just immediately shooting Rika after the cliffhanger from Nekodamashi, since this raises the possibility of her ‘human side’ literally stopping her from doing it.
Though at this point I’m starting to seriously wonder if there’ll be some big meta twist about how Sotsu has actually been a separate set of loops to what we saw in Gou, and maybe Nekodamashi really did just end in tragedy and then everything got reset. I’ve been toying with that idea in my head for a while, mainly just as a way to try and make Sotsu feel like more than just a literal retread of Gou, but this is giving it a bit more validity as a theory.
For one thing, Eua already implied during Satokowashi that she had a history with Satoko, and going by something Ryukishi said in an interview, there’s already been a time where Satoko called her Eua, so it’s possible that Satokowashi onward is an entirely new loop where both Satoko and Rika have had their memories reset, but Eua still remembers it. Presumably the ‘Gou loop’ would have just ended with failure some way or another, and Eua decided to do it again. She’s given Satoko a pretty definitive failure state in Sotsu, but it’s possible that wasn’t always the case, and up until now she’s been willing to just do it over and over again until she gets the right outcome.
There’s also the theory some people have suggested that maybe the conflict between Satoko’s two halves represented a literal split in the timeline of some kind, with Tataridamashi maybe being a version of events where her human side won out, if only temporarily, and Teppei stayed alive to attack Keiichi at the end of the arc. That’d at least be one way to explain the weirdness of Satoko killing Teppei in this episode after we saw him attack Keiichi at the end of this arc in Gou. I’m not entirely sure I support this exact interpretation, though, even if I like the idea of these maybe being different arcs.
I think that for now my theory about the Teppei situation is that either 1: it was some kind of hallucination from Keiichi, 2: it was a fictionalized account of events that she fed to Ooishi to help trigger his L5 state, or 3: it’s the same sort of thing as the ‘Illusion of Witches’ in Umineko, and we as the audience were directly being shown a fantasy version of events by Satoko. Which is basically the same thing as the second option, but still. Considering how this seems to be barreling it’s way towards being some kind of Umineko prequel, I’ve been wondering if maybe they’d go that far with introducing narrative concepts here that get expanded upon more in Umineko. This would at least be a pretty straightforward example to use to illustrate the idea of how fantasy is used as a device in Umineko. And since there were infamously major issues with people not understanding what Ryukishi was trying to do with those scenes in Umineko ep2 which lead to him having to rewrite ep3 to explain it more clearly, I can see why he might go as far as to include an introduction to this idea in this series.
It’s possible that it’s just a hallucination, but I kinda doubt it at this point. For one thing, it’d feel kinda weird if THIS was a hallucination but not the whole fight scene between Keiichi and Rena, but it’d also just feel kinda weird since Keiichi didn’t really seem to be going L5 in this arc, so it’s kinda hard to imagine him jumping straight to that level of insanity on such short notice.
At least if we assume that this leads into the ending we saw in Tataridamashi, and not something entirely different, I think the real version of events is probably that after leading Keiichi to her house, Satoko attacks him with the bat [or she rigged some kind of trap to knock him out], and then when he wakes up he sees the aftermath of Satoko killing Teppei and he assumes he did it. Though tbh even at the end of Tataridamashi I’m not even sure if Keiichi acknowledged any memory of what happened with Teppei, so I’m not even sure if we need to explain how he’d end up convinced that that version of events happen. For all we know it might just be something that the audience alone was being shown, and from Keiichi’s POV he just gets knocked out and then wakes up in the hospital.
It’s possible that Ooishi ends up attacking him, but I kinda doubt it, at least after how this episode went. Even in the midst of HS, he seemed aware of the fact that Keiichi was at worst just being unwittingly manipulated by the villagers, and that he genuinely thought he was helping her, so I doubt that Satoko would be able to convince him to attack him. And at this point it just seems more likely that Satoko would attack Keiichi herself instead of pointlessly relying on someone else to do it for her.
We do know that he shows up at the festival with the bloody bat, but he could have just entered the house after hearing the commotion of Keiichi getting attacked, and then Satoko told her version of events to him, and he just picked up the bat from the crime scene and took it to the festival.
It’s also worth noting that apparently in the manga version of Tataridamashi, Satoko never even leads Keiichi to her house in the first place, and he just gets shot by Ooishi at the festival, which makes it seem more likely that Keiichi himself isn’t super relevant to how this arc ends. At least in the manga version of the arc, it seems like Ooishi probably just walked in on Teppei’s dead body and then picked up the bat and went on to do his killing spree.
Now I’m also wondering what’ll happen in the next episode, since it seems like they literally only have the festival left to cover before this arc ends. I guess there might just be a lot of content related to what happens with Satoko in the fragment space between this arc and Nekodamashi, but either way it feels like it shouldn’t take long at all to reach the big climax of this arc, especially since Satoko has already steeled her resolve. I mean, I doubt that human-Satoko is gone for good, but the rest of this arc is probably just gonna be witch-Satoko putting her final plans into motion, so there shouldn’t be much to cover there.
There’s a possibility that they’ll also speedrun through all of Nekodamashi from her POV in the next episode, but I kinda doubt it’d go by that fast. In spite of it mostly being a montage from Rika’s POV, and there presumably not being much worth showing about the mechanics and reasoning behind how Satoko set up the different mini-loops there, I think there’s still a fair bit to be shown from her perspective in that arc. For one thing, we’ll probably get a reveal of what was really going on behind the scenes with how Hanyuu suddenly gave Rika a new set of powers, and the whole deal with the sword. And even after the loop montage, I think that stuff will go on behind the scenes with Satoko and Takano to lead into the scene where Takano apologizes to Rika.
At this point my main question is how long it might take to get through all of that, since we only have five episodes left. At least as far as we know. There might be some kind of continuation yet to be announced, but I don’t want to bet on it.
It just feels like there’s a whole lot of stuff left to do before we end this. Like the stuff I’ve mentioned before with the OP having scenes of the club members as teenagers wearing outfits different to their ones from Satokowashi, and the scene of teenage Rika and Satoko fighting in the fragment space.
I’m also wondering at this point if we’ll get some Bernkastel origin story stuff to go with the apparent Lambda origin story. At the very least, they never really explained why she ended up being Featherine’s miko in Umineko, aside from the vague ‘Featherine is probably some version of Hanyuu’ thing. Which has been especially weird since Eua has been using Satoko as her pawn against Rika in this series. But this episode also makes it seem even more likely that Eua doesn’t even like Satoko, and is just using her as a pawn towards a greater goal of entertainment, while probably also playing both sides, so I could see this leading to a situation where she ends up working with Bernkastel instead.
There’s still the question about if this is even a Lambda origin story in the first place, but at this point I think that it’d just be a straight up waste of time if it’s not. That basically feels like the entire purpose of Gou/Sotsu’s existence right now, so if it’s all some sort of elaborate troll, then that just feels like it’d make EVERYONE pissed off. It’d obviously annoy the Umineko fans who like the idea of this being a genuine prequel or tie-in of some kind, but for the people on the opposite end who hate that idea, I don’t think they’d appreciate being told ‘I was just spending nearly 50 episodes tricking you into thinking this was something you’d hate, lol’. It just seems like the worst of both worlds.
Also, I’m pretty open to different variants of how they could pull off the specifics of this being a ‘Lambda origin story’. Like, I still think it’d count if this ends up being set after Umineko and is some kind of elaborate reenactment of how Lambda came to be, or whatever. There’s a lot of specific ways it could be executed, but it’d basically just be the same thing at the end of the day.
I know that witch Satoko right now doesn’t have the same sort of personality that Lambda had, but like with how Beatrice went through multiple design iterations that changed her personality, Satoko might just end up going through more development that makes her closer to the Lambda we know in Umineko. There’s also the fact that the end of Umineko already implied that Bernkastel was just ‘playing the villain’ for fun, so Lambda’s whole personality there might have been somewhat manufactured.
I guess at this point I just have to wonder if we’ll see Satoko come up with the name Lambdadelta for herself, lol. Even back in Higurashi we saw how Rika came up with the name Bernkastel, so if they’re really going in this direction, it’d make sense. I know Satoko is still calling herself Satoko by this point, but just a few episodes ago she denied that she was becoming a witch, and now she’s calling herself one, so these things can change, lol.
Anyway, this whole episode ended up being more Umineko-y than I expected. Even aside from the obvious stuff with them using the term witch, the whole fight between the two Satokos in the fragment space was exactly the sort of thing you’d see in Umineko, down to the fact that it was a gun fight like the love trial was. The imagery of the red cracks on the black background, and the entire screen shattering like glass, also felt like it was lifted straight out of Umineko.
Even if it might be kinda cheesy and forced, the monkey brain part of me really likes this stuff, lol.
Come to think of it, I guess this also makes it a lot more likely in hindsight that her classroom panic attack in this arc really was [at least in part] a representation of her two sides clashing. I think she always planned to do it as a recreation of that scene from Tatarigoroshi, but when it actually started her human side bled through and her genuine regret came through as well. I also assume that all the shots in this arc of her looking uncomfortable or depressed, especially around Teppei, were probably also setting up for this. Which I think is fine, but they probably should have been a little more clear about it, since it came across as her just faking everything, and this ended up feeling more sudden than it should have. I get why people would still see it as being sudden and unearned, but I don’t really think so. They probably should have included more stuff like that during the first two arcs of Sotsu, though.
I’m curious to see if I’ll end up being right about my theory that the sword will end up being used as a plot device to completely separate Satoko’s witch self, and maybe Rika’s as well, into their own beings separate from Rika and Satoko in the ‘real world’. It still feels like the only way to have this actually set up for Umineko without having things end in total tragedy for Rika and Satoko in general.
There’s probably a lot more I could say about this episode, but I think this has gone on long enough as it is, lol.
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leonarsfrey1991 · 4 years
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ruthjsmithfl · 4 years
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Competitor Research - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution
If you’re designing a new online venture, or are simply sick and tired of losing to competitors in organic search, then you need to do an SEO competitor analysis.
You can learn many things from your competitor. In fact competitors are a goldmine of information that can inform you about every aspect of your SEO strategy and help to increase your website’s organic traffic.
In solid terms, performing an SEO competitor analysis lets you:
Get In Touch
Learn what works and what doesn’t in your industry.
Find competitors’ weaknesses, and capitalize on them.
Find competitors’ strengths, and replicate them.
Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward.
Understand how difficult outperforming competitors in the SERPs are likely to be.
Here, I will run through the SEO competitive analysis process for a hypothetical new infographic design tool—Minimagraphic.com.
Minimagraphic.com — a hypothetical new infographic design tool launching soon (maybe).
#makeInfographicsGreatAgain
We have also added a competitive analysis template so you can follow along with your site.
Things to Keep In Mind
Getting Started
You can do this complete process with only two tools
Ahrefs (take a 7‑day trial)
This Google Sheets template (IMPORTANT: make a copy!)
It would be great if you also make a copy of the completed sheet for our hypothetical website, as that may come in handy for clarification if any of the instructions given below feel unclear. (Hopefully, they won’t!)
You can do that here.
Got it? Let’s get started
Identify Competitors
First we need to identify our main competitors than we should proceed further
These are the websites struggling for our desired keywords in organic search.   
Some competitors that come to our mind are Canva, Piktochart, Infogram, easel.ly, and Visme  regarding our hypothetical infographic design tool However, our organic search competitors may not be the same as our direct business competitors.
So let’s first look at how potential customers would search for our service.
I thought that this would be something like “infographic design tool,” but it appears that I was wrong as when I search for this in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, it tells me there is no search volume.
So let’s inspect the “Also rank for” report and see if we can find a better keyword.
It seems like “infographic maker” is the most famous way people search for such tools.
Now let’s see the SERP overview to see who currently ranks in the top five.
Not an Ahrefs user?
Run a Google search instead.
It appears that our top five competitors are Piktochart, Venngage, Canva, Visme, and Infogram.
The interesting thing is, Easel.ly didn’t make the cut as they don’t rank in the top 10.
This is why you should not always rely on your instincts for direct business competitors because they’re not always competitors when it comes to SEO.
SEO is like another world, imagine that a person has a butcher business in a small town. The business that keeps him awake at night is the other small butcher down the road. However, when it’s come to SEO, they’re no competitors because they don’t even have a website.
I will note these five competitors to my spreadsheet.
PRO TIP
If you are trying to find competitors for a blog or ecommerce site, then looking for sites that rank for a single keyword may not be the best way to go about things.
That is because you are probably targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords and topics across many pages.
So it is good to see who is competing with you across the board.
For this, you can use the Competing domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic search > Competing domains
Analyze the Competitive Landscape
 Next, we have a high-level view of the competitive landscape.
To do that, we will pull a small number of key stats and SEO metrics which should give us an idea as to how established the competition is.
Let’s use Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool to do this for all competitors’ websites at once.
Batch Analysis > Enter competitors’ domains > Analyze
Batch Analysis will return many useful stats for each site, and I am interested in:
Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs Rank (AR)
Number of referring domains
Estimated organic search traffic
Estimated number of keyword rankings
Now add them to our sheet.
To explain these SEO metrics a bit more:
Domain Rating (DR):
      Having a high DR score means that the website has a solid backlink profile. Instead of considering DR absolutely you should judge it relatively. For your understanding let’s take an example, suppose that your website is DR30 and your competitor is DR50, that is a bit higher. If your website is DR30 whereas yours competitor site is DR90 that is similar comparing your mom and pop store to Walmart—they aren’t your competitor.
Ahrefs Rank (AR):
Having a low Ahrefs rank means that the website is strong. AR explains the same thing as DR but with more details. For example, if you have two competitors with the same DR like DR33 websites, you can use AR to see which is the stronger of the two sites.
Referring domains:
If your links are of good quality then having a large number of referring domains could also mean that the website is strong A high number of referring domains can also indicate a strong site—provided that those links aren’t low-quality. However, keep in mind that grabbing DR is always useful as this takes into account both the quality and quantity of links to a website.
Organic traffic & keywords: 
This is quite obvious that the higher these numbers are, the better the website is performing in organic search.
In simple words the more distance between your stats and yours competitor stats, the more you have to struggle. 
Still these metrics don’t explain everything about our competitors’ SEO progress.
Study Backlink Growth
 We have studied approximately  930 million pages and it appears to us that link popularity     is a clear SEO “ranking factor”
That is why we have to learn more about our competitors’ link building efforts.
Let’s look at the speed with which they acquire new referring domains (linking sites), as this gives us an approximate target to shoot for with our link building.
To do this, we’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > Enter domain > Overview > Referring Domains graph > Set to ‘One year’
For each participant, we take the number of all referring domains that today have minus the same number from a year ago, and then divide it by twelve to get the average monthly value.
Here is the calculation for Visme:
(7,603 — 5,599) / 12 = 167 new referring domains per month (on average)
Also keep in mind that this is the cumulative growth or decline in referring domains. For example, if a competitor gets links from a hundred new RDs in a month but loses links from ten existing RDs, their cumulative growth is ninety.
Let’s also inspect the growth trend for our other competitors.
We need to check if there is an element of consistency or not, In other words, do their link profiles show consistent or inconsistent growth or decline?
For Venngage, besides from a small irregularity earlier this year, their growth has been relatively consistent.
This might be natural, or it might be the byproduct of long-term link building efforts.
Whatever the case is, it would be worth following these two articles to go deeper into their backlink profile to see what we can learn… once finished with the basic competitive analysis, of course.
For Piktochart, their growth seems more inconsistent.
They have gained the experience of “hockey stick” growth between May and July last year, which may be the indication of a specific piece of content performing well, or them ramping up their existing link building efforts. It could also provide an indication of negative SEO attacks.
To get a sense of which, we can check the New referring domains report.
Site Explorer > Referring domains > New > use the date range to filter for that period
It is probably a negative SEO attack if most of the domains look like spam. (Hint: Confirm this by looking at the New backlinks report for the same date range)
It is probably down to a particular piece of content doing well if most of the links point to the same web page. If the spike happened recently, use the Best by Link Growth report in Site Explorer to help identify which piece of content attracted the links.
It’s likely the ramping up of existing link building efforts if you find lots of links from a specific type of content—e.g., guest posts, resource pages, etc.
For now, I am going to add some growth-related stats for each competitor to my spreadsheet.
Find Superfans
 Those who have linked to our competitors on multiple occasions are called Superfans. These are people with whom it is easy for us to build relationships because they tend to link out to websites they like regularly.
In order to find these people, we can check the Referring domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > Referring Domains > add a “dofollow” filter > sort by “links to target / dofollow”
Now we will go through the list for industry blogs.
Here is just one that stood out for Canva:
If we hit the caret, we can see that this site links numerous times across many blog posts.
By just spending five seconds on the website we found that this is a single author blog by a woman named Elaine—she is the one with whom we may want to build a relationship and introduce to our product.
Now look for five superfans for each of our competitors and add them to our sheet.
Find Broken Pages
 Have you ever heard the saying that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure?
That saying is true on the web too.
So now we need to see if our competitors’ websites for a specific type of junk: broken pages.
To this task we will use the Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > sort by the Referring domains column (high to low)
Sidenote: I am searching for content on a subdomain here so that I only see dead informational pages—e.g., blog posts, infographics, etc.
If we see broken pages on our competitors’ websites, that have backlinks, and are also somewhat relevant to our business, then we may be able to take advantage of such pages by:
Figuring out what the dead page used to be;
Publishing something similar, but better;
Finding everyone linking to the dead resource (use the Backlinks report in Site Explorer)
Asking them to swap out the dead link in favor of our working resource.
    Learn how to carry out this strategy in our broken link building guide.
    Now we are going to focus on competitive analysis and not link building, let’s just add any related broken pages from our five competitors to the spreadsheet.
Quick Note: In Following step (6 , 7 and 8) we will focus on organic traffic
By having a knowledge of which countries our competitors get the bulk of their organic traffic from can help us to understand where the opportunity lies in this niche.
For this, we will use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Overview > Organic search tab
Let’s add the top five countries along with their traffic percentages to our spreadsheet.
I’ll then do the same for our other competitors.
Here’s what we get:
Seems like the United States is where the bulk of the traffic opportunity lies in this niche, as this is where our competitors get approximately 31% of their traffic from on average.
There is some opportunity in other English-speaking countries like the UK and Canada too.
So we now know that we should almost certainly prioritize content creation for folks in these countries, as this is where we see the bulk of search demand.
Hardly surprising.
However, the fact that there is traffic potential in Latin America and Asia has got me thinking: perhaps it would make sense to translate our landing pages into Spanish, Indian, and possibly Indonesian?
We could even launch a multilingual blog to maximize traffic from these countries.
That’s what we did here at Ahrefs—we have a Spanish blog and a Chinese blog.
The Spanish version of the Ahrefs Blog.
The Chinese version of the Ahrefs Blog.
Many of our landing pages are available in multiple languages too.
Pro Tip:
Organic traffic is not always representative of traffic value. It might be misleading to look solely at organic traffic numbers.
For example, Visme gets roughly the same amount of search traffic from the UK and Mexico.
But if we look at the traffic value for Mexico VS UK, We see that UK traffic is worth 700%+ more!
So it probably makes sense for us to prioritize UK traffic growth.
Break it Down
What Are The Different Types Of SEO?
At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P. 
“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.
I’m Interested!
Technical SEO
Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.
Relevancy SEO
Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.
Authority SEO
Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority. 
Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight. 
If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.
Popularity
Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.
I’m Interested!
Continued …
Spy on Competitors’ Organic Keywords
 Next, we need to find out which keywords are currently driving organic traffic to our competitors’ sites.
We can do it by running the Organic keywords report for each domain.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Organic search > Organic keywords
Above we can see that visme.co currently ranks for 133,667 keywords in the US.
By default, the Organic Keywords report shows keyword rankings for the country that generates the most search traffic. And that is not a problem, but if you want to see keyword data for a different country, hit “more” and choose from any of the 150+ countries in our database.
Now look for some juicy keywords that might be worth targeting.
There are some that jump out right away such as “infographic maker,” “infographic creator,” etc. But there are also a lot of unrelated results muddying the waters.
So now first exclude all branded keywords with the “exclude” function.
I will also try to filter only for keywords for which our competitor ranks in the top 10 so that we only see the most relevant keywords.
Let’s keep things simple for now and note down the top five relevant, non-branded keywords sending the most traffic to our competitors, and their search volumes.
A few of those keywords would be a good match for our homepage. Others would make better blog posts (For example “what is an infographic?”).
Note: If you’re following along and are only interested in finding keyword ideas for your homepage, use the “URL” mode in Site Explorer as opposed to “*.domain/*”. That way, you will only see keyword suggestions from the homepage instead of the whole site. And don’t forget to exclude branded searches from the report!
PRO TIP
Some of the keywords that I noted down have high Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores, which mean that they will be hard to rank for without building lots of links.
For example, “infographic maker” has a KD score of 73 … and will need backlinks from approximately 235 domains to rank in the top 10.
Recommended reading: Learn more about how we calculate Keyword Difficulty.
I am not really concerned about this right now as I am looking more for “ultimate goal” keywords.
If you are following along and would prefer to find keywords that you stand a chance at ranking for in the short-to-medium-term, feel free to filter for keywords with a low KD score.
Spy on Competitors’ Featured Snippets
 One additional thing you should pay attention to while analyzing your competitor’s organic traffic:
SERP features for which your competitors rank.
Featured snippets alone show up for approximately 12% of search queries, as per our study…
… And they get approximately 9% of clicks from the results on the first page:
So let’s keep things simple and focus solely on those.
The first thing is that I need to know which featured snippets our competitors own and for that, I’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Organic search > Organic keywords > SERP features filter > Featured snippets > Only linking to target
Piktochart owns 87 snippets in the US right now and gets a fair amount of traffic as a result.
Visme owns 216.
I will add these numbers to my sheet for each competitor. 
To be honest, if our competitors rank for a lot of featured snippets, there could be an opportunity for us to do the same.
This can even be easy traffic because it’s not always the #1 ranking page that owns the snippet.
59.2% of featured snippets come from pages ranking in positions 2–5.
In other words, even if the SERP is competitive, there’s still a chance of owning the snippet provided that we can make it to the top 5.
Recommended reading: How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets in 2020
QUICK NOTE
In the few steps (#9, #10, and #11), we’ll delve deeper into competitors’ content.
Find Content Gaps
If you look at a particular site for some information that is not there, this is what a content gap is. 
Content gaps in SEO are keywords for which your competitors rank, but you don’t, that is a gap you will probably want to fill.
To find content gaps, we can use Ahrefs Content Gap tool.
Site Explorer > enter your domain > Content gap
You can see that this prefills the “But the following target doesn’t rank for” field with our domain.
Now we need to fill the other fields with competitors.
I will then set it to “Show keywords that all of the below targets rank for,” tick the “at least one of the targets should rank in the top 10” box, and run the search.
You can see that this returns some quite relevant keywords above.
Sidenote: If you are following along and don’t see any relevant keywords, feel free to loosen the settings a little and find keywords for which two, three, or four of your competitors rank, rather than all of them.
 We have limited resources therefore targeting all these keywords is an impossible task.
Let’s use the filters to focus in on low/medium difficulty, high-volume opportunities.
Having low difficulty scores means that it would be easy to rank for whereas the solid search volume means that ranking will give a nice bump to our search traffic.
However, some of these keywords look to be ones we already found in the previous step.
So I am just going to add the five most relevant new keywords to my sheet.
Find Competitors’ Most Popular Content
 There is no doubt that keyword search is a critical part of SEO but these days, Google’s understanding of the intent behind searches is arguably better than ever.
This is why; one page can easily rank for hundreds or even thousands of long-tail keywords.
By finding our competitors’ top pages, we can figure out which of their articles are:
ranking for a ton of keywords
pulling in loads of traffic
Then we can write about these overarching topics and earn some traffic.
For this, we can use the Top Pages report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Keep in mind that we are interested in finding blog posts here so if possible, we actually need to search the blog folder URL/subdomain as opposed to the entire domain.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > select “prefix” mode > Top pages
PRO TIP
If you are not sure where your competitor’s blog is located?
Check the Top subfolders report in Site Explorer and look for their blog path.
If you don’t find anything, check the Top subdomains report instead. Some websites host their blog on a subdomain.
Either way, make sure the traffic percentage for the subfolder/subfolder is in the doubt digits. If it isn’t, then it’s likely that their blog posts aren’t nested within that URL structure.
In which case, stick with a domain search.
Now one thing to note about this report is that the pages on sites with the most organic traffic often tend to have a lot of referring domains. That is hardly surprising, as backlinks are a strong ranking factor.
So let’s skim this report for each competitor and eyeball the RD column.
What we are looking for are pages with lots of traffic but not too many referring domains, as these are likely to be much easier to compete with.
I will add five relevant pages that fit the bill to my sheet, plus their traffic.
Sidenote: If you are interested in the individual keywords for which these top pages rank, click the caret in the keywords column.
Find Competitors’ Most Linked Content
 Links mean referrals and often as a result, more organic search traffic.
So we know we need to build links, but where do we begin?
We will see what is working for our competitors.
The Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer shows competitors’ most linked content. If it worked for them, then something similar will probably work for us.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s blog subfolder/subdomain > Organic search > Best by links
Sidenote: If you are doing this for a competitor whose blog posts aren’t nested under a subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com/…) or subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/…) then use their domain instead. You will have to be a little more vigilant when browsing the report.
Here, I will add the URLs of the five most relevant top pages from each competitor, the number of referring domains to each page, and what “type” of content it is to my sheet.
Now we can find at a glance what types of content work best for each competitor and in general.
For example, 60% of the most linked pages articles from Venngage are listicles, and it’s a similar story for Visme too.
Sidenote: Not every niche is the same. You may see that a different type of content is more popular in your niche.
On the other side, gaps can also present opportunities.
For example, Canva has a lot of links to text-heavy content. Such content could be simplified as an infographic and possibly attract even more links.
We could also use what is commonly known as the ‘skyscraper’ technique to attract links:
Create a similar but even better piece of content
Show it to everyone who links to our competitor’s now inferior content
Ask them to swap out the link in favor of our superior content
If you are wondering how we can find out who links to our competitor’s content, all we need to do is click the number under the Referring domains column, and we will be able to see all the sites linking to that page.
In other words, our competitor has kindly created a list of prospects for us.
Find Competitors’ PPC Keywords
 Analyzing competitors’ PPC activity can be perceptive when it comes to planning an SEO strategy for one simple reason:
If they’re paying for traffic from a keyword, then that keyword is most likely profitable.
To find our competitors’ PPC keywords, let’s use the PPC keywords report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords
It looks like Venngage is bidding on a lot of infographic-related terms.
Which lead me to another point:
If you look at the competitors’ PPC data, you can find small volumes of keywords with high conversion, which can be easily omitted when conducting keyword research.
For example, a keyword like “make infographics online” (70 searches per month) is likely to have a much higher conversion rate than “creator of free infographics” (600 searches per month).
If the conversion rate for a keyword of 70 search queries per month is 20%, and the conversion rate for a keyword of 600 search queries per month is 2%, what do you think is the most appropriate keyword to rank?
I’m sure you’ve already done the math. That low-volume keyword will make more money.
Following this logic, I’m going to add five PPC keywords for each participant to my sheet, but I will intentionally choose keywords that, in my opinion, can convert well.
DISCLAIMER Take this idea with a pinch of salt. Just because a competitor spends money on a checkpoint does not necessarily know what they are doing. Before using PPC, you can check any keywords you find before trying to get a ranking for yourself.
Learn From Competitors’ PPC Ads
 Viewing an ad copy of PPC members can help write title tags and descriptions that increase CTR.
This is because competitors pay cold cash to attract customers with specific keywords, and Google encourages more relevant ads with lower CPCs.
So it’s in their interest to make sure their ads win the click!
To use the PPC keyword report, look again at the copy of your competitor for the keyword for which we want to assign a rating, “Infographic maker:”
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords
To preview an ad for a keyword, hover over the yellow ‘Ad’ icon.
They seem to use speed, cost (or lack thereof) and ingenuity to lure clicks.
These are all things we could incorporate into our meta titles and descriptions to generate more traffic from organic search.
Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect SEO Title Tag (Our 4-Step Process) 
Final Thoughts
Competitive analysis is a vast field; everything mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you are familiar with Ahrefs, then you know that there are many additional reports in which we can dive deeper into the overall strategy of our competitors in the field of marketing, content and link building.
You just need to follow the process described above and then use other reports to delve into any Ahrefs area of interest (and possibly other competitive analysis tools).
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Competitor Research - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution
If you’re designing a new online venture, or are simply sick and tired of losing to competitors in organic search, then you need to do an SEO competitor analysis.
You can learn many things from your competitor. In fact competitors are a goldmine of information that can inform you about every aspect of your SEO strategy and help to increase your website’s organic traffic.
In solid terms, performing an SEO competitor analysis lets you:
Get In Touch
Learn what works and what doesn’t in your industry.
Find competitors’ weaknesses, and capitalize on them.
Find competitors’ strengths, and replicate them.
Understand what SEO tasks to prioritize going forward.
Understand how difficult outperforming competitors in the SERPs are likely to be.
Here, I will run through the SEO competitive analysis process for a hypothetical new infographic design tool—Minimagraphic.com.
Minimagraphic.com — a hypothetical new infographic design tool launching soon (maybe).
#makeInfographicsGreatAgain
We have also added a competitive analysis template so you can follow along with your site.
Things to Keep In Mind
Getting Started
You can do this complete process with only two tools
Ahrefs (take a 7‑day trial)
This Google Sheets template (IMPORTANT: make a copy!)
It would be great if you also make a copy of the completed sheet for our hypothetical website, as that may come in handy for clarification if any of the instructions given below feel unclear. (Hopefully, they won’t!)
You can do that here.
Got it? Let’s get started
Identify Competitors
 First we need to identify our main competitors than we should proceed further
These are the websites struggling for our desired keywords in organic search.   
Some competitors that come to our mind are Canva, Piktochart, Infogram, easel.ly, and Visme  regarding our hypothetical infographic design tool However, our organic search competitors may not be the same as our direct business competitors.
So let’s first look at how potential customers would search for our service.
I thought that this would be something like “infographic design tool,” but it appears that I was wrong as when I search for this in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, it tells me there is no search volume.
So let’s inspect the “Also rank for” report and see if we can find a better keyword.
It seems like “infographic maker” is the most famous way people search for such tools.
Now let’s see the SERP overview to see who currently ranks in the top five.
Not an Ahrefs user?
Run a Google search instead.
It appears that our top five competitors are Piktochart, Venngage, Canva, Visme, and Infogram.
The interesting thing is, Easel.ly didn’t make the cut as they don’t rank in the top 10.
This is why you should not always rely on your instincts for direct business competitors because they’re not always competitors when it comes to SEO.
SEO is like another world, imagine that a person has a butcher business in a small town. The business that keeps him awake at night is the other small butcher down the road. However, when it’s come to SEO, they’re no competitors because they don’t even have a website.
I will note these five competitors to my spreadsheet.
PRO TIP
If you are trying to find competitors for a blog or ecommerce site, then looking for sites that rank for a single keyword may not be the best way to go about things.
That is because you are probably targeting hundreds or thousands of keywords and topics across many pages.
So it is good to see who is competing with you across the board.
For this, you can use the Competing domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic search > Competing domains
Analyze the Competitive Landscape
 Next, we have a high-level view of the competitive landscape.
To do that, we will pull a small number of key stats and SEO metrics which should give us an idea as to how established the competition is.
Let’s use Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool to do this for all competitors’ websites at once.
Batch Analysis > Enter competitors’ domains > Analyze
Batch Analysis will return many useful stats for each site, and I am interested in:
Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs Rank (AR)
Number of referring domains
Estimated organic search traffic
Estimated number of keyword rankings
Now add them to our sheet.
To explain these SEO metrics a bit more:
Domain Rating (DR):
      Having a high DR score means that the website has a solid backlink profile. Instead of considering DR absolutely you should judge it relatively. For your understanding let’s take an example, suppose that your website is DR30 and your competitor is DR50, that is a bit higher. If your website is DR30 whereas yours competitor site is DR90 that is similar comparing your mom and pop store to Walmart—they aren’t your competitor.
Ahrefs Rank (AR):
Having a low Ahrefs rank means that the website is strong. AR explains the same thing as DR but with more details. For example, if you have two competitors with the same DR like DR33 websites, you can use AR to see which is the stronger of the two sites.
Referring domains:
If your links are of good quality then having a large number of referring domains could also mean that the website is strong A high number of referring domains can also indicate a strong site—provided that those links aren’t low-quality. However, keep in mind that grabbing DR is always useful as this takes into account both the quality and quantity of links to a website.
Organic traffic & keywords: 
This is quite obvious that the higher these numbers are, the better the website is performing in organic search.
In simple words the more distance between your stats and yours competitor stats, the more you have to struggle. 
Still these metrics don’t explain everything about our competitors’ SEO progress.
Study Backlink Growth
 We have studied approximately  930 million pages and it appears to us that link popularity     is a clear SEO “ranking factor”
That is why we have to learn more about our competitors’ link building efforts.
Let’s look at the speed with which they acquire new referring domains (linking sites), as this gives us an approximate target to shoot for with our link building.
To do this, we’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > Enter domain > Overview > Referring Domains graph > Set to ‘One year’
For each participant, we take the number of all referring domains that today have minus the same number from a year ago, and then divide it by twelve to get the average monthly value.
Here is the calculation for Visme:
(7,603 — 5,599) / 12 = 167 new referring domains per month (on average)
Also keep in mind that this is the cumulative growth or decline in referring domains. For example, if a competitor gets links from a hundred new RDs in a month but loses links from ten existing RDs, their cumulative growth is ninety.
Let’s also inspect the growth trend for our other competitors.
We need to check if there is an element of consistency or not, In other words, do their link profiles show consistent or inconsistent growth or decline?
For Venngage, besides from a small irregularity earlier this year, their growth has been relatively consistent.
This might be natural, or it might be the byproduct of long-term link building efforts.
Whatever the case is, it would be worth following these two articles to go deeper into their backlink profile to see what we can learn… once finished with the basic competitive analysis, of course.
For Piktochart, their growth seems more inconsistent.
They have gained the experience of “hockey stick” growth between May and July last year, which may be the indication of a specific piece of content performing well, or them ramping up their existing link building efforts. It could also provide an indication of negative SEO attacks.
To get a sense of which, we can check the New referring domains report.
Site Explorer > Referring domains > New > use the date range to filter for that period
It is probably a negative SEO attack if most of the domains look like spam. (Hint: Confirm this by looking at the New backlinks report for the same date range)
It is probably down to a particular piece of content doing well if most of the links point to the same web page. If the spike happened recently, use the Best by Link Growth report in Site Explorer to help identify which piece of content attracted the links.
It’s likely the ramping up of existing link building efforts if you find lots of links from a specific type of content—e.g., guest posts, resource pages, etc.
For now, I am going to add some growth-related stats for each competitor to my spreadsheet.
Find Superfans
 Those who have linked to our competitors on multiple occasions are called Superfans. These are people with whom it is easy for us to build relationships because they tend to link out to websites they like regularly.
In order to find these people, we can check the Referring domains report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > Referring Domains > add a “dofollow” filter > sort by “links to target / dofollow”
Now we will go through the list for industry blogs.
Here is just one that stood out for Canva:
If we hit the caret, we can see that this site links numerous times across many blog posts.
By just spending five seconds on the website we found that this is a single author blog by a woman named Elaine—she is the one with whom we may want to build a relationship and introduce to our product.
Now look for five superfans for each of our competitors and add them to our sheet.
Find Broken Pages
 Have you ever heard the saying that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure?
That saying is true on the web too.
So now we need to see if our competitors’ websites for a specific type of junk: broken pages.
To this task we will use the Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > sort by the Referring domains column (high to low)
Sidenote: I am searching for content on a subdomain here so that I only see dead informational pages—e.g., blog posts, infographics, etc.
If we see broken pages on our competitors’ websites, that have backlinks, and are also somewhat relevant to our business, then we may be able to take advantage of such pages by:
Figuring out what the dead page used to be;
Publishing something similar, but better;
Finding everyone linking to the dead resource (use the Backlinks report in Site Explorer)
Asking them to swap out the dead link in favor of our working resource.
    Learn how to carry out this strategy in our broken link building guide.
    Now we are going to focus on competitive analysis and not link building, let’s just add any related broken pages from our five competitors to the spreadsheet.
Quick Note: In Following step (6 , 7 and 8) we will focus on organic traffic
By having a knowledge of which countries our competitors get the bulk of their organic traffic from can help us to understand where the opportunity lies in this niche.
For this, we will use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Overview > Organic search tab
Let’s add the top five countries along with their traffic percentages to our spreadsheet.
I’ll then do the same for our other competitors.
Here’s what we get:
Seems like the United States is where the bulk of the traffic opportunity lies in this niche, as this is where our competitors get approximately 31% of their traffic from on average.
There is some opportunity in other English-speaking countries like the UK and Canada too.
So we now know that we should almost certainly prioritize content creation for folks in these countries, as this is where we see the bulk of search demand.
Hardly surprising.
However, the fact that there is traffic potential in Latin America and Asia has got me thinking: perhaps it would make sense to translate our landing pages into Spanish, Indian, and possibly Indonesian?
We could even launch a multilingual blog to maximize traffic from these countries.
That’s what we did here at Ahrefs—we have a Spanish blog and a Chinese blog.
The Spanish version of the Ahrefs Blog.
The Chinese version of the Ahrefs Blog.
Many of our landing pages are available in multiple languages too.
Pro Tip:
Organic traffic is not always representative of traffic value. It might be misleading to look solely at organic traffic numbers.
For example, Visme gets roughly the same amount of search traffic from the UK and Mexico.
But if we look at the traffic value for Mexico VS UK, We see that UK traffic is worth 700%+ more!
So it probably makes sense for us to prioritize UK traffic growth.
Break it Down
What Are The Different Types Of SEO?
At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P. 
“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.
I'm Interested!
Technical SEO
Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.
Relevancy SEO
Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.
Authority SEO
Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority. 
Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight. 
If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.
Popularity
Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.
I'm Interested!
Continued . . .
Spy on Competitors’ Organic Keywords
 Next, we need to find out which keywords are currently driving organic traffic to our competitors’ sites.
We can do it by running the Organic keywords report for each domain.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > Organic search > Organic keywords
Above we can see that visme.co currently ranks for 133,667 keywords in the US.
By default, the Organic Keywords report shows keyword rankings for the country that generates the most search traffic. And that is not a problem, but if you want to see keyword data for a different country, hit “more” and choose from any of the 150+ countries in our database.
Now look for some juicy keywords that might be worth targeting.
There are some that jump out right away such as “infographic maker,” “infographic creator,” etc. But there are also a lot of unrelated results muddying the waters.
So now first exclude all branded keywords with the “exclude” function.
I will also try to filter only for keywords for which our competitor ranks in the top 10 so that we only see the most relevant keywords.
Let’s keep things simple for now and note down the top five relevant, non-branded keywords sending the most traffic to our competitors, and their search volumes.
A few of those keywords would be a good match for our homepage. Others would make better blog posts (For example “what is an infographic?”).
Note: If you’re following along and are only interested in finding keyword ideas for your homepage, use the “URL” mode in Site Explorer as opposed to “*.domain/*”. That way, you will only see keyword suggestions from the homepage instead of the whole site. And don’t forget to exclude branded searches from the report!
PRO TIP
Some of the keywords that I noted down have high Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores, which mean that they will be hard to rank for without building lots of links.
For example, “infographic maker” has a KD score of 73 … and will need backlinks from approximately 235 domains to rank in the top 10.
Recommended reading: Learn more about how we calculate Keyword Difficulty.
I am not really concerned about this right now as I am looking more for “ultimate goal” keywords.
If you are following along and would prefer to find keywords that you stand a chance at ranking for in the short-to-medium-term, feel free to filter for keywords with a low KD score.
Spy on Competitors’ Featured Snippets
 One additional thing you should pay attention to while analyzing your competitor’s organic traffic:
SERP features for which your competitors rank.
Featured snippets alone show up for approximately 12% of search queries, as per our study…
… And they get approximately 9% of clicks from the results on the first page:
So let’s keep things simple and focus solely on those.
The first thing is that I need to know which featured snippets our competitors own and for that, I’ll use Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Organic search > Organic keywords > SERP features filter > Featured snippets > Only linking to target
Piktochart owns 87 snippets in the US right now and gets a fair amount of traffic as a result.
Visme owns 216.
I will add these numbers to my sheet for each competitor. 
To be honest, if our competitors rank for a lot of featured snippets, there could be an opportunity for us to do the same.
This can even be easy traffic because it’s not always the #1 ranking page that owns the snippet.
59.2% of featured snippets come from pages ranking in positions 2–5.
In other words, even if the SERP is competitive, there’s still a chance of owning the snippet provided that we can make it to the top 5.
Recommended reading: How to Optimize for Google’s Featured Snippets in 2020
QUICK NOTE
In the few steps (#9, #10, and #11), we’ll delve deeper into competitors’ content.
Find Content Gaps
 If you look at a particular site for some information that is not there, this is what a content gap is. 
Content gaps in SEO are keywords for which your competitors rank, but you don’t, that is a gap you will probably want to fill.
To find content gaps, we can use Ahrefs Content Gap tool.
Site Explorer > enter your domain > Content gap
You can see that this prefills the “But the following target doesn’t rank for” field with our domain.
Now we need to fill the other fields with competitors.
I will then set it to “Show keywords that all of the below targets rank for,” tick the “at least one of the targets should rank in the top 10” box, and run the search.
You can see that this returns some quite relevant keywords above.
Sidenote: If you are following along and don’t see any relevant keywords, feel free to loosen the settings a little and find keywords for which two, three, or four of your competitors rank, rather than all of them.
 We have limited resources therefore targeting all these keywords is an impossible task.
Let’s use the filters to focus in on low/medium difficulty, high-volume opportunities.
Having low difficulty scores means that it would be easy to rank for whereas the solid search volume means that ranking will give a nice bump to our search traffic.
However, some of these keywords look to be ones we already found in the previous step.
So I am just going to add the five most relevant new keywords to my sheet.
Find Competitors’ Most Popular Content
 There is no doubt that keyword search is a critical part of SEO but these days, Google’s understanding of the intent behind searches is arguably better than ever.
This is why; one page can easily rank for hundreds or even thousands of long-tail keywords.
By finding our competitors’ top pages, we can figure out which of their articles are:
ranking for a ton of keywords
pulling in loads of traffic
Then we can write about these overarching topics and earn some traffic.
For this, we can use the Top Pages report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Keep in mind that we are interested in finding blog posts here so if possible, we actually need to search the blog folder URL/subdomain as opposed to the entire domain.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s domain > select “prefix” mode > Top pages
PRO TIP
If you are not sure where your competitor’s blog is located?
Check the Top subfolders report in Site Explorer and look for their blog path.
If you don’t find anything, check the Top subdomains report instead. Some websites host their blog on a subdomain.
Either way, make sure the traffic percentage for the subfolder/subfolder is in the doubt digits. If it isn’t, then it’s likely that their blog posts aren’t nested within that URL structure.
In which case, stick with a domain search.
Now one thing to note about this report is that the pages on sites with the most organic traffic often tend to have a lot of referring domains. That is hardly surprising, as backlinks are a strong ranking factor.
So let’s skim this report for each competitor and eyeball the RD column.
What we are looking for are pages with lots of traffic but not too many referring domains, as these are likely to be much easier to compete with.
I will add five relevant pages that fit the bill to my sheet, plus their traffic.
Sidenote: If you are interested in the individual keywords for which these top pages rank, click the caret in the keywords column.
Find Competitors’ Most Linked Content
 Links mean referrals and often as a result, more organic search traffic.
So we know we need to build links, but where do we begin?
We will see what is working for our competitors.
The Best by links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer shows competitors’ most linked content. If it worked for them, then something similar will probably work for us.
Site Explorer > enter competitor’s blog subfolder/subdomain > Organic search > Best by links
Sidenote: If you are doing this for a competitor whose blog posts aren’t nested under a subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com/…) or subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/…) then use their domain instead. You will have to be a little more vigilant when browsing the report.
Here, I will add the URLs of the five most relevant top pages from each competitor, the number of referring domains to each page, and what “type” of content it is to my sheet.
Now we can find at a glance what types of content work best for each competitor and in general.
For example, 60% of the most linked pages articles from Venngage are listicles, and it’s a similar story for Visme too.
Sidenote: Not every niche is the same. You may see that a different type of content is more popular in your niche.
On the other side, gaps can also present opportunities.
For example, Canva has a lot of links to text-heavy content. Such content could be simplified as an infographic and possibly attract even more links.
We could also use what is commonly known as the ‘skyscraper’ technique to attract links:
Create a similar but even better piece of content
Show it to everyone who links to our competitor’s now inferior content
Ask them to swap out the link in favor of our superior content
If you are wondering how we can find out who links to our competitor’s content, all we need to do is click the number under the Referring domains column, and we will be able to see all the sites linking to that page.
In other words, our competitor has kindly created a list of prospects for us.
Find Competitors’ PPC Keywords
 Analyzing competitors’ PPC activity can be perceptive when it comes to planning an SEO strategy for one simple reason:
If they’re paying for traffic from a keyword, then that keyword is most likely profitable.
To find our competitors’ PPC keywords, let’s use the PPC keywords report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords
It looks like Venngage is bidding on a lot of infographic-related terms.
Which lead me to another point:
If you look at the competitors’ PPC data, you can find small volumes of keywords with high conversion, which can be easily omitted when conducting keyword research.
For example, a keyword like “make infographics online” (70 searches per month) is likely to have a much higher conversion rate than “creator of free infographics” (600 searches per month).
If the conversion rate for a keyword of 70 search queries per month is 20%, and the conversion rate for a keyword of 600 search queries per month is 2%, what do you think is the most appropriate keyword to rank?
I’m sure you’ve already done the math. That low-volume keyword will make more money.
Following this logic, I’m going to add five PPC keywords for each participant to my sheet, but I will intentionally choose keywords that, in my opinion, can convert well.
DISCLAIMER Take this idea with a pinch of salt. Just because a competitor spends money on a checkpoint does not necessarily know what they are doing. Before using PPC, you can check any keywords you find before trying to get a ranking for yourself.
Learn From Competitors’ PPC Ads
 Viewing an ad copy of PPC members can help write title tags and descriptions that increase CTR.
This is because competitors pay cold cash to attract customers with specific keywords, and Google encourages more relevant ads with lower CPCs.
So it’s in their interest to make sure their ads win the click!
To use the PPC keyword report, look again at the copy of your competitor for the keyword for which we want to assign a rating, “Infographic maker:”
Site Explorer > enter competitors domain > Paid search > PPC keywords
To preview an ad for a keyword, hover over the yellow ‘Ad’ icon.
They seem to use speed, cost (or lack thereof) and ingenuity to lure clicks.
These are all things we could incorporate into our meta titles and descriptions to generate more traffic from organic search.
Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect SEO Title Tag (Our 4-Step Process) 
Final Thoughts
Competitive analysis is a vast field; everything mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you are familiar with Ahrefs, then you know that there are many additional reports in which we can dive deeper into the overall strategy of our competitors in the field of marketing, content and link building.
You just need to follow the process described above and then use other reports to delve into any Ahrefs area of interest (and possibly other competitive analysis tools).
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cstesttaken · 7 years
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28 Business-Boosting Marketing Activities You Can Do in 1 Hour or Less – SEO NYC & Digital Marketing
The entrepreneurial lifestyle is often a hectic one.
Some “treps” easily end up working 50, 60, or even more hours per week.
I love almost everything about running my businesses and blogs, but time is definitely at a premium.
And I’m sure many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day to spend on an extensive, exhaustive marketing campaign.
There are a lot of marketing activities that can get legitimate results that you can do in 1 hour or less.
I came up with 28 specific activities you can do in your downtime but which will still give your business a nice boost.
1. Create an editorial calendar
Almost any great blog begins with a detailed editorial calendar.
This is where you coordinate your content, schedule your posts, set deadlines, list your CTAs, and so on.
In other words, an editorial calendar provides structure to your blogging campaign and keeps things from getting messy.
Honestly, this is the only way I’m able to stay on top of my game (and maintain sanity) with all of my different projects.
2. Tweak your editorial calendar
You should also know that an editorial calendar is never static.
A good one is dynamic, ever-changing.
If you haven’t checked your editorial calendar in a while, look it over and make any necessary adjustments.
Check off posts that have been completed
Add new content to create over the next month
Look for ways to make it more organized
3. Read three industry blog posts
I really recommend staying on top of industry trends.
This is your ticket to spotting patterns, generating new marketing ideas, and coming up with interesting new content to share with your audience.
That’s why I try to make it a habit to read three high-level industry blog posts whenever I get a chance.
4. Comment on three industry blogs
When you’re done reading, leave a thoughtful comment.
Go for more than just saying, “I love this blog post!”
Instead, shoot for something more detailed and insightful to prove you’ve really sifted through the information and analyzed it.
Here’s a great example of a recent comment I received on Quick Sprout:
I think this comment added even more depth to the conversation, and I can guarantee you any blogger would greatly appreciate such a comment.
5. Research industry trends
The way I see it, crushing it in most businesses is all about striking while the iron is hot.
That’s why I routinely do industry research to see what’s happening and stay on top of recent changes.
A quick Google search on “[your industry] trends” should pop up a wealth of information.
This can shape your business and marketing decisions and will help you stay sharp as an entrepreneur.
6. Brainstorm topics for your blog
That’s why I like to devote some time to simply brainstorming new ideas so I don’t have to come up with them off the top of my head.
One of the ways I streamline this process is by using Alltop and BuzzSumo.
They’re both great for seeing what’s popular and for generating ideas.
Sometimes, I can come up with as many as 50 rock solid ideas in just 1 hour this way.
7. Do keyword research
I’m a big fan of a process known as “batching,” which I’ve written about before on Quick Sprout.
Batching can be used to make nearly any task quicker and more efficient.
Here’s a simple example of using batching to deliver mail:
One marketing task that can be quite time-consuming is keyword research.
When you do this prior to writing every blog post, it can really drain your time.
That’s why I suggest doing it in blocks: identify keywords to target—all in one sitting.
You can then add your keywords to your editorial calendar so you know what to use in your upcoming content.
8. Send a pitch for a guest post
If you can get in front of a large, established audience, you’ll get exposure for your brand.
It’s just as simple as that.
But, of course, guest blogging first begins with sending an initial pitch.
If you’ve got an hour to burn, why not send out a couple of pitches to relevant bloggers?
It will walk you through guest blogging step by step.
9. Repurpose one of your best blog posts
If you’ve been blogging for awhile, there’s a good chance you have a handful of posts that totally crushed it.
They’re the best of the best—your “unicorn content.”
Repurpose one of your best posts using a different medium, e.g., a whitepaper, long-form guide, infographic, or a short e-book.
If your audience was receptive to a particular topic presented in a standard blog post, there’s a good chance they will give it a warm reception in a different medium too.
10. Record a video
Video marketing is ridiculously huge right now.
It also gets massive conversion rates.
If you’re not already leveraging video marketing, I suggest getting on board right away.
I know for a fact that video allows me to connect with my audience on a level that most other mediums cannot.
And the odds are good that it will produce a positive impact for you as well.
11. Record a podcast
I friggin’ love podcasts!
Interest in them has grown over the past few years quite a bit:
In my opinion, they’re a great way to “round off” your content and offer your audience an alternative type of media to consume.
At the time of publication of this article, I’ve recorded over 200 podcast episodes on NeilPatel.com and have found it to be a tremendous experience.
Once you figure out the software and equipment, it doesn’t take much effort to record a podcast.
You can easily do it within 1 hour.
12. Make a slideshow
I feel slideshows don’t get a whole lot of love and get lost in the content mix.
But they’ve got plenty of potential and are worth experimenting with.
Slideshare alone had 70 million users as of early 2017 and can be a great way to pull in some extra traffic.
13. Create a picture quote
I’m sure you’ve seen picture quotes floating on social media.
They’re especially big on Twitter and Instagram and work great for expressing thoughts in a visual-centric way.
The cool thing is that picture quotes are super quick and easy to make.
You can borrow from famous quotes or create your own.
14. Share three epic posts on social media
Curating content is an integral part of the social media marketing process.
You definitely want to shine the spotlight on other people’s great work rather than shamelessly self-promoting your brand.
Whenever you’ve got some free time, search the Internet for three epic posts to share.
15. Follow five relevant people
Sometimes I feel my social feed is a little stale.
In which case, I search for a few new follows to spice it up.
You may even be able to make some new contacts, so always be willing to make the first move on social media.
16. Engage with five people on social media
Allow me to piggyback on that last statement.
If you’re looking to expand your network and potentially find new business partners, be always engaging with others.
This hardly takes any time, but commenting or even liking or retweeting great content can sometimes be the catalyst for new opportunities.
17. Engage with five recent followers
It’s also important to engage with the people who follow you and build genuine rapport with your audience.
When you’ve got some spare time, go through your social media accounts and pick out a handful of recent followers.
Then hit them up by thanking them for following you or even start an online conversation.
18. Target an influencer
I’m sure you’ve heard about influencer marketing and how potent it can be as a marketing tool.
But getting to the point where an influencer actually promotes your brand takes time.
The first step in the process is finding someone who is likely to be on board.
One technique I’ve found to be effective when searching for influencers is to use BuzzSumo.
Here’s an example of what pops up after I searched for content marketing influencers:
I think a great way to make use of an hour is to research and target potential influencers in your industry.
19. Contact an influencer
Once you’ve found an influencer, it’s time for the approach.
This typically involves doing a little research about them, their brand, values, philosophy, etc.
Next, send them an email or contact them via their website to give them your pitch.
20. Submit your business to directories
Did you know that 145 million people use Yelp each month?
And that’s just one of many business directories.
If you’re looking for a way to boost your exposure and reel in more local consumers, it’s smart to spend some time submitting your business to relevant directories.
This highlights 50 of the best directories for local marketing.
21. Check Google Analytics
It’s important to stay current on key metrics.
I like to know about any visitor traffic patterns and behavior that could impact my ability to make conversions.
If you haven’t checked Google Analytics (or whatever type of metrics platform you use) in a while, it’s smart to spend some time there.
In particular, I pay close attention to the amount of time people spend on my site, referrals, and audience interests.
22. Analyze your top competitors
If you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you may want to see what the competition is up to.
I suggest identifying three or four of your top competitors and checking the following:
Top organic keywords
Backlinks
Top anchors
Referring domains
This will give you some valuable intel on what’s working for them and what you can do to gain the upper hand.
One of my favorite tools for doing this is SEMrush.
It’s free and will supply you with a load of information.
23. Do a content audit
Although the word audit may sound time-consuming and even a little intimidating, it’s actually not all that involved.
You can do a basic content audit in as little as 1 hour.
While it may be a tad boring, it’s a great way to ensure your content is hitting its mark.
24. Do an SEO audit
Just like you want to ensure that your content is in tip top shape, it’s also crucial to see what state your SEO is in from time to time.
Doing an SEO audit is a great way to get a glimpse of how things are performing.
More specifically, you can tell:
What your top organic keywords are
Whether there are any issues with meta descriptions, URL structure, etc.
How your domain ranks among the competition
25. Check for dead links
They disrupt the user experience and can make your brand seem unprofessional.
That’s why I suggest checking for dead links every few months or so.
It’s completely free, and it will give you the rundown of any broken links and identify their location on your site.
26. Do some internal linking
An internal link “is one that points to another page on the same website.”
Internal linking is a fundamental part of SEO and helps “spread link juice around your site.”
It’s a good idea to spend some time doing some internal linking if it’s something you’ve slacked on in the past.
Just make sure your links point to pages that are relevant and truly add to the reader experience.
27. Improve your email signature
Having an email signature that’s consistent with your company is an important aspect of branding.
Unfortunately, it’s sometimes overlooked.
If you really want to make a splash, add your logo along with a professional headshot.
28. Fine-tune your sales funnel
Your sales funnel is the key to leading consumers through the buying process until they ultimately make a purchase.
But if you’ve been using the same sales funnel for the past few years, some serious inefficiencies could be holding you back.
Why not spend a little time going over your existing sales funnel to check for areas that could use some improvement?
Conclusion
Amping up your marketing doesn’t always require exhaustive work sessions.
In fact, there are many business-boosting marketing activities you can do in 1 hour or less.
If you’ve got some downtime and want to devote it to marketing, any of these activities should be worth your while.
Can you think of any other marketing activities that don’t require a big time commitment?
Source
https://seonycdigitalmarketing.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/28-business-boosting-marketing-activities-you-can-do-in-1-hour-or-less/
0 notes
likefusion · 7 years
Text
28 Business-Boosting Marketing Activities You Can Do in 1 Hour or Less: The entrepreneurial lifestyle is often a hectic one. Some “treps” easily end up working 50, 60, or even more hours per week. Don't get me wrong. I love almost everything about running my businesses and blogs, but time is definitely at a premium. And I'm sure many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day to spend on an extensive, exhaustive marketing campaign. But you know what? There are a lot of marketing activities that can get legitimate results that you can do in 1 hour or less. I came up with 28 specific activities you can do in your downtime but which will still give your business a nice boost. Here we go. 1. Create an editorial calendar Almost any great blog begins with a detailed editorial calendar. This is where you coordinate your content, schedule your posts, set deadlines, list your CTAs, and so on. In other words, an editorial calendar provides structure to your blogging campaign and keeps things from getting messy. Honestly, this is the only way I'm able to stay on top of my game (and maintain sanity) with all of my different projects. I recommend checking out this list of editorial calendar templates from Builtvisible for more. 2. Tweak your editorial calendar You should also know that an editorial calendar is never static. A good one is dynamic, ever-changing. If you haven't checked your editorial calendar in a while, look it over and make any necessary adjustments. For instance, you might: Check off posts that have been completed Add new content to create over the next month Look for ways to make it more organized 3. Read three industry blog posts I really recommend staying on top of industry trends. This is your ticket to spotting patterns, generating new marketing ideas, and coming up with interesting new content to share with your audience. That's why I try to make it a habit to read three high-level industry blog posts whenever I get a chance. 4. Comment on three industry blogs When you're done reading, leave a thoughtful comment. Go for more than just saying, “I love this blog post!” Instead, shoot for something more detailed and insightful to prove you've really sifted through the information and analyzed it. Here's a great example of a recent comment I received on Quick Sprout: I think this comment added even more depth to the conversation, and I can guarantee you any blogger would greatly appreciate such a comment. I know I do. 5. Research industry trends The way I see it, crushing it in most businesses is all about striking while the iron is hot. That's why I routinely do industry research to see what's happening and stay on top of recent changes. A quick Google search on “[your industry] trends” should pop up a wealth of information. This can shape your business and marketing decisions and will help you stay sharp as an entrepreneur. 6. Brainstorm topics for your blog As I've said before, coming up with new ideas for blog posts can be quite exhausting. That's why I like to devote some time to simply brainstorming new ideas so I don't have to come up with them off the top of my head. One of the ways I streamline this process is by using Alltop and BuzzSumo. Here's Alltop: And here's BuzzSumo: They're both great for seeing what's popular and for generating ideas. Sometimes, I can come up with as many as 50 rock solid ideas in just 1 hour this way. 7. Do keyword research I'm a big fan of a process known as “batching,” which I've written about before on Quick Sprout. Batching can be used to make nearly any task quicker and more efficient. Here's a simple example of using batching to deliver mail: One marketing task that can be quite time-consuming is keyword research. When you do this prior to writing every blog post, it can really drain your time. That's why I suggest doing it in blocks: identify keywords to target—all in one sitting. You can then add your keywords to your editorial calendar so you know what to use in your upcoming content. 8. Send a pitch for a guest post You probably already know I'm a huge proponent of guest blogging. If you can get in front of a large, established audience, you'll get exposure for your brand. It's just as simple as that. But, of course, guest blogging first begins with sending an initial pitch. If you've got an hour to burn, why not send out a couple of pitches to relevant bloggers? And if you're new to this, I really love this guide from Backlinko. It will walk you through guest blogging step by step. 9. Repurpose one of your best blog posts If you've been blogging for awhile, there's a good chance you have a handful of posts that totally crushed it. They're the best of the best—your “unicorn content.” Repurpose one of your best posts using a different medium, e.g., a whitepaper, long-form guide, infographic, or a short e-book. If your audience was receptive to a particular topic presented in a standard blog post, there's a good chance they will give it a warm reception in a different medium too. Read over this guide for everything you need to know on repurposing content. 10. Record a video Video marketing is ridiculously huge right now. On average, video gets crazy engagement. It also gets massive conversion rates. If you're not already leveraging video marketing, I suggest getting on board right away. I know for a fact that video allows me to connect with my audience on a level that most other mediums cannot. And the odds are good that it will produce a positive impact for you as well. 11. Record a podcast I friggin' love podcasts! Interest in them has grown over the past few years quite a bit: In my opinion, they're a great way to “round off” your content and offer your audience an alternative type of media to consume. At the time of publication of this article, I've recorded over 200 podcast episodes on NeilPatel.com and have found it to be a tremendous experience. Once you figure out the software and equipment, it doesn't take much effort to record a podcast. You can easily do it within 1 hour. If you're not sure how to get started, check out this guide from Pat Flynn. 12. Make a slideshow I feel slideshows don't get a whole lot of love and get lost in the content mix. But they've got plenty of potential and are worth experimenting with. Slideshare alone had 70 million users as of early 2017 and can be a great way to pull in some extra traffic. 13. Create a picture quote I'm sure you've seen picture quotes floating on social media. They look like this: They're especially big on Twitter and Instagram and work great for expressing thoughts in a visual-centric way. The cool thing is that picture quotes are super quick and easy to make. Canva is one of my favorite platforms because it offers a large library of professional images that are mostly free to use. You can borrow from famous quotes or create your own. 14. Share three epic posts on social media Curating content is an integral part of the social media marketing process. You definitely want to shine the spotlight on other people's great work rather than shamelessly self-promoting your brand. Whenever you've got some free time, search the Internet for three epic posts to share. To curate content like a boss, check out this guide from Curata. 15. Follow five relevant people Sometimes I feel my social feed is a little stale. In which case, I search for a few new follows to spice it up. You may even be able to make some new contacts, so always be willing to make the first move on social media. 16. Engage with five people on social media Allow me to piggyback on that last statement. If you're looking to expand your network and potentially find new business partners, be always engaging with others. This hardly takes any time, but commenting or even liking or retweeting great content can sometimes be the catalyst for new opportunities. 17. Engage with five recent followers It's also important to engage with the people who follow you and build genuine rapport with your audience. When you've got some spare time, go through your social media accounts and pick out a handful of recent followers. Then hit them up by thanking them for following you or even start an online conversation. 18. Target an influencer I'm sure you've heard about influencer marketing and how potent it can be as a marketing tool. And it's totally true. But getting to the point where an influencer actually promotes your brand takes time. The first step in the process is finding someone who is likely to be on board. One technique I've found to be effective when searching for influencers is to use BuzzSumo. Here's an example of what pops up after I searched for content marketing influencers: I think a great way to make use of an hour is to research and target potential influencers in your industry. To learn about this process, check out this post from NeilPatel.com. 19. Contact an influencer Once you've found an influencer, it's time for the approach. This typically involves doing a little research about them, their brand, values, philosophy, etc. Next, send them an email or contact them via their website to give them your pitch. I recommend reading this post from Crazy Egg for the skinny on reaching out to influencers. 20. Submit your business to directories Did you know that 145 million people use Yelp each month? And that's just one of many business directories. If you're looking for a way to boost your exposure and reel in more local consumers, it's smart to spend some time submitting your business to relevant directories. This ultimate list from HubSpot highlights 50 of the best directories for local marketing. 21. Check Google Analytics It's important to stay current on key metrics. I like to know about any visitor traffic patterns and behavior that could impact my ability to make conversions. If you haven't checked Google Analytics (or whatever type of metrics platform you use) in a while, it's smart to spend some time there. In particular, I pay close attention to the amount of time people spend on my site, referrals, and audience interests. 22. Analyze your top competitors If you've got some extra time on your hands, you may want to see what the competition is up to. I suggest identifying three or four of your top competitors and checking the following: Top organic keywords Backlinks Top anchors Referring domains This will give you some valuable intel on what's working for them and what you can do to gain the upper hand. One of my favorite tools for doing this is SEMrush. It's free and will supply you with a load of information. 23. Do a content audit Although the word audit may sound time-consuming and even a little intimidating, it's actually not all that involved. You can do a basic content audit in as little as 1 hour. While it may be a tad boring, it's a great way to ensure your content is hitting its mark. You can learn the basics in this guide from Quick Sprout. 24. Do an SEO audit Just like you want to ensure that your content is in tip top shape, it's also crucial to see what state your SEO is in from time to time. Doing an SEO audit is a great way to get a glimpse of how things are performing. More specifically, you can tell: What your top organic keywords are Whether there are any issues with meta descriptions, URL structure, etc. How your domain ranks among the competition Check out this post from Search Engine Land to learn how to do your own SEO audit in only 5 minutes. 25. Check for dead links Dead links aren't cool. They disrupt the user experience and can make your brand seem unprofessional. That's why I suggest checking for dead links every few months or so. It's no big deal. Just use the Online Broken Link Checker. It's completely free, and it will give you the rundown of any broken links and identify their location on your site. 26. Do some internal linking An internal link “is one that points to another page on the same website.” Internal linking is a fundamental part of SEO and helps “spread link juice around your site.” It's a good idea to spend some time doing some internal linking if it's something you've slacked on in the past. Just make sure your links point to pages that are relevant and truly add to the reader experience. 27. Improve your email signature Having an email signature that's consistent with your company is an important aspect of branding. Unfortunately, it's sometimes overlooked. If you really want to make a splash, add your logo along with a professional headshot. Check out this infographic from Business 2 Community for the details on creating a killer email signature. 28. Fine-tune your sales funnel Your sales funnel is the key to leading consumers through the buying process until they ultimately make a purchase. But if you've been using the same sales funnel for the past few years, some serious inefficiencies could be holding you back. Why not spend a little time going over your existing sales funnel to check for areas that could use some improvement? Conclusion Amping up your marketing doesn't always require exhaustive work sessions. In fact, there are many business-boosting marketing activities you can do in 1 hour or less. If you've got some downtime and want to devote it to marketing, any of these activities should be worth your while. Can you think of any other marketing activities that don't require a big time commitment? http://bit.ly/2noYMPm
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anseladams03 · 7 years
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28 Business-Boosting Marketing Activities You Can Do in 1 Hour or Less
The entrepreneurial lifestyle is often a hectic one.
Some “treps” easily end up working 50, 60, or even more hours per week.
Don’t get me wrong.
I love almost everything about running my businesses and blogs, but time is definitely at a premium.
And I’m sure many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day to spend on an extensive, exhaustive marketing campaign.
But you know what?
There are a lot of marketing activities that can get legitimate results that you can do in 1 hour or less.
I came up with 28 specific activities you can do in your downtime but which will still give your business a nice boost.
Here we go.
1. Create an editorial calendar
Almost any great blog begins with a detailed editorial calendar.
This is where you coordinate your content, schedule your posts, set deadlines, list your CTAs, and so on.
In other words, an editorial calendar provides structure to your blogging campaign and keeps things from getting messy.
Honestly, this is the only way I’m able to stay on top of my game (and maintain sanity) with all of my different projects.
I recommend checking out this list of editorial calendar templates from Builtvisible for more.
2. Tweak your editorial calendar
You should also know that an editorial calendar is never static.
A good one is dynamic, ever-changing.
If you haven’t checked your editorial calendar in a while, look it over and make any necessary adjustments.
For instance, you might:
Check off posts that have been completed
Add new content to create over the next month
Look for ways to make it more organized
3. Read three industry blog posts
I really recommend staying on top of industry trends.
This is your ticket to spotting patterns, generating new marketing ideas, and coming up with interesting new content to share with your audience.
That’s why I try to make it a habit to read three high-level industry blog posts whenever I get a chance.
4. Comment on three industry blogs
When you’re done reading, leave a thoughtful comment.
Go for more than just saying, “I love this blog post!”
Instead, shoot for something more detailed and insightful to prove you’ve really sifted through the information and analyzed it.
Here’s a great example of a recent comment I received on Quick Sprout:
I think this comment added even more depth to the conversation, and I can guarantee you any blogger would greatly appreciate such a comment.
I know I do.
5. Research industry trends
The way I see it, crushing it in most businesses is all about striking while the iron is hot.
That’s why I routinely do industry research to see what’s happening and stay on top of recent changes.
A quick Google search on “[your industry] trends” should pop up a wealth of information.
This can shape your business and marketing decisions and will help you stay sharp as an entrepreneur.
6. Brainstorm topics for your blog
As I’ve said before, coming up with new ideas for blog posts can be quite exhausting.
That’s why I like to devote some time to simply brainstorming new ideas so I don’t have to come up with them off the top of my head.
One of the ways I streamline this process is by using Alltop and BuzzSumo.
Here’s Alltop:
And here’s BuzzSumo:
They’re both great for seeing what’s popular and for generating ideas.
Sometimes, I can come up with as many as 50 rock solid ideas in just 1 hour this way.
7. Do keyword research
I’m a big fan of a process known as “batching,” which I’ve written about before on Quick Sprout.
Batching can be used to make nearly any task quicker and more efficient.
Here’s a simple example of using batching to deliver mail:
One marketing task that can be quite time-consuming is keyword research.
When you do this prior to writing every blog post, it can really drain your time.
That’s why I suggest doing it in blocks: identify keywords to target—all in one sitting.
You can then add your keywords to your editorial calendar so you know what to use in your upcoming content.
8. Send a pitch for a guest post
You probably already know I’m a huge proponent of guest blogging.
If you can get in front of a large, established audience, you’ll get exposure for your brand.
It’s just as simple as that.
But, of course, guest blogging first begins with sending an initial pitch.
If you’ve got an hour to burn, why not send out a couple of pitches to relevant bloggers?
And if you’re new to this, I really love this guide from Backlinko.
It will walk you through guest blogging step by step.
9. Repurpose one of your best blog posts
If you’ve been blogging for awhile, there’s a good chance you have a handful of posts that totally crushed it.
They’re the best of the best—your “unicorn content.”
Repurpose one of your best posts using a different medium, e.g., a whitepaper, long-form guide, infographic, or a short e-book.
If your audience was receptive to a particular topic presented in a standard blog post, there’s a good chance they will give it a warm reception in a different medium too.
Read over this guide for everything you need to know on repurposing content.
10. Record a video
Video marketing is ridiculously huge right now.
On average, video gets crazy engagement.
It also gets massive conversion rates.
If you’re not already leveraging video marketing, I suggest getting on board right away.
I know for a fact that video allows me to connect with my audience on a level that most other mediums cannot.
And the odds are good that it will produce a positive impact for you as well.
11. Record a podcast
I friggin’ love podcasts!
Interest in them has grown over the past few years quite a bit:
In my opinion, they’re a great way to “round off” your content and offer your audience an alternative type of media to consume.
At the time of publication of this article, I’ve recorded over 200 podcast episodes on NeilPatel.com and have found it to be a tremendous experience.
Once you figure out the software and equipment, it doesn’t take much effort to record a podcast.
You can easily do it within 1 hour.
If you’re not sure how to get started, check out this guide from Pat Flynn.
12. Make a slideshow
I feel slideshows don’t get a whole lot of love and get lost in the content mix.
But they’ve got plenty of potential and are worth experimenting with.
Slideshare alone had 70 million users as of early 2017 and can be a great way to pull in some extra traffic.
13. Create a picture quote
I’m sure you’ve seen picture quotes floating on social media.
They look like this:
They’re especially big on Twitter and Instagram and work great for expressing thoughts in a visual-centric way.
The cool thing is that picture quotes are super quick and easy to make.
Canva is one of my favorite platforms because it offers a large library of professional images that are mostly free to use.
You can borrow from famous quotes or create your own.
14. Share three epic posts on social media
Curating content is an integral part of the social media marketing process.
You definitely want to shine the spotlight on other people’s great work rather than shamelessly self-promoting your brand.
Whenever you’ve got some free time, search the Internet for three epic posts to share.
To curate content like a boss, check out this guide from Curata.
15. Follow five relevant people
Sometimes I feel my social feed is a little stale.
In which case, I search for a few new follows to spice it up.
You may even be able to make some new contacts, so always be willing to make the first move on social media.
16. Engage with five people on social media
Allow me to piggyback on that last statement.
If you’re looking to expand your network and potentially find new business partners, be always engaging with others.
This hardly takes any time, but commenting or even liking or retweeting great content can sometimes be the catalyst for new opportunities.
17. Engage with five recent followers
It’s also important to engage with the people who follow you and build genuine rapport with your audience.
When you’ve got some spare time, go through your social media accounts and pick out a handful of recent followers.
Then hit them up by thanking them for following you or even start an online conversation.
18. Target an influencer
I’m sure you’ve heard about influencer marketing and how potent it can be as a marketing tool.
And it’s totally true.
But getting to the point where an influencer actually promotes your brand takes time.
The first step in the process is finding someone who is likely to be on board.
One technique I’ve found to be effective when searching for influencers is to use BuzzSumo.
Here’s an example of what pops up after I searched for content marketing influencers:
I think a great way to make use of an hour is to research and target potential influencers in your industry.
To learn about this process, check out this post from NeilPatel.com.
19. Contact an influencer
Once you’ve found an influencer, it’s time for the approach.
This typically involves doing a little research about them, their brand, values, philosophy, etc.
Next, send them an email or contact them via their website to give them your pitch.
I recommend reading this post from Crazy Egg for the skinny on reaching out to influencers.
20. Submit your business to directories
Did you know that 145 million people use Yelp each month?
And that’s just one of many business directories.
If you’re looking for a way to boost your exposure and reel in more local consumers, it’s smart to spend some time submitting your business to relevant directories.
This ultimate list from HubSpot highlights 50 of the best directories for local marketing.
21. Check Google Analytics
It’s important to stay current on key metrics.
I like to know about any visitor traffic patterns and behavior that could impact my ability to make conversions.
If you haven’t checked Google Analytics (or whatever type of metrics platform you use) in a while, it’s smart to spend some time there.
In particular, I pay close attention to the amount of time people spend on my site, referrals, and audience interests.
22. Analyze your top competitors
If you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you may want to see what the competition is up to.
I suggest identifying three or four of your top competitors and checking the following:
Top organic keywords
Backlinks
Top anchors
Referring domains
This will give you some valuable intel on what’s working for them and what you can do to gain the upper hand.
One of my favorite tools for doing this is SEMrush.
It’s free and will supply you with a load of information.
23. Do a content audit
Although the word audit may sound time-consuming and even a little intimidating, it’s actually not all that involved.
You can do a basic content audit in as little as 1 hour.
While it may be a tad boring, it’s a great way to ensure your content is hitting its mark.
You can learn the basics in this guide from Quick Sprout.
24. Do an SEO audit
Just like you want to ensure that your content is in tip top shape, it’s also crucial to see what state your SEO is in from time to time.
Doing an SEO audit is a great way to get a glimpse of how things are performing.
More specifically, you can tell:
What your top organic keywords are
Whether there are any issues with meta descriptions, URL structure, etc.
How your domain ranks among the competition
Check out this post from Search Engine Land to learn how to do your own SEO audit in only 5 minutes.
25. Check for dead links
Dead links aren’t cool.
They disrupt the user experience and can make your brand seem unprofessional.
That’s why I suggest checking for dead links every few months or so.
It’s no big deal.
Just use the Online Broken Link Checker.
It’s completely free, and it will give you the rundown of any broken links and identify their location on your site.
26. Do some internal linking
An internal link “is one that points to another page on the same website.”
Internal linking is a fundamental part of SEO and helps “spread link juice around your site.”
It’s a good idea to spend some time doing some internal linking if it’s something you’ve slacked on in the past.
Just make sure your links point to pages that are relevant and truly add to the reader experience.
27. Improve your email signature
Having an email signature that’s consistent with your company is an important aspect of branding.
Unfortunately, it’s sometimes overlooked.
If you really want to make a splash, add your logo along with a professional headshot.
Check out this infographic from Business 2 Community for the details on creating a killer email signature.
28. Fine-tune your sales funnel
Your sales funnel is the key to leading consumers through the buying process until they ultimately make a purchase.
But if you’ve been using the same sales funnel for the past few years, some serious inefficiencies could be holding you back.
Why not spend a little time going over your existing sales funnel to check for areas that could use some improvement?
Conclusion
Amping up your marketing doesn’t always require exhaustive work sessions.
In fact, there are many business-boosting marketing activities you can do in 1 hour or less.
If you’ve got some downtime and want to devote it to marketing, any of these activities should be worth your while.
Can you think of any other marketing activities that don’t require a big time commitment?
from Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/2mPXIYs from Blogger http://ift.tt/2nwlWEu March 29, 2017 at 09:26PM
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lucyariablog · 7 years
Text
7 Productivity Killers for Marketers and How to Fix Them
If there is one thing on my mind this year, it’s how we, as marketers, are getting our work done. Not to mince words, but how we work seems broken.
I see the issues with the way I work. All. The. Time.
I want dedicated time in my schedule to create, but I get interrupted or – when I do have time – I can’t seem to focus. Here are just a few common scenarios. 
I have an organized list of blog post ideas – and many half-finished articles – but I still scramble to meet deadlines.
My days are filled with scheduled and unplanned phone conversations that result in more ideas – but the more I talk, the less time I have to act.
When I do sit down to do actual work, I am interrupted with pings from IMs or phone calls.
When I struggle with something I’m writing, I check email to see if anything to add came in.
Many marketers I talk to can relate.
We spend so much time responding to immediate needs that it can feel exceedingly difficult to produce something meaningful. Many people wear their busy like a badge of honor, but how much are we truly doing to move our businesses – and our personal selves – forward?
I recently read Deep Work by Cal Newport (highly recommend), and it was an eye-opener. It offered ideas for so many productivity issues I have been grappling with. While many of Cal’s examples hail from academia and tech, there are lessons for marketers who are overwhelmed and who are looking for time to create necessary, great work, even if it is not urgent.
Here are some favorite aha moments on why marketers are having such a tough time being productive – and what we can do about it.
Lacking strategy
It’s no surprise that people aren’t productive if they don’t know what they should do – and how their work will positively impact the business. Cal calls this “The Principle of Least Resistance.” He explains:
In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment.”
In short, if you are feeling unproductive, it could be because you don’t know where you should spend your time.
If you feel unproductive, it could be you don’t know where to spend your time, says @michelelinn. Click To Tweet
A better way: (We say this one all the time.) Document your strategy. If you aren’t certain where to start, seek these three must-have items to help your editorial and marketing teams work their best:
Who can you help the most? (This is the same question as audience, but the semantic change shifts your focus to who you can help instead of who you are targeting.)
How will you help your audience in a way that no one else can? (This is your content tilt.)
How do you define success – and how will you concretely measure this?
Are you thinking, “This all sounds great, but I’m not the person responsible for our strategy.” Or maybe something else is stopping you? Joe Pulizzi recently called out the most common excuses people have, so start here if needed.
Switching from task to task
We all know multitasking ultimately makes you less productive. But, even if you can avoid multitasking, many of us are plagued with going from meeting to meeting or answering whatever issue comes up when it arises.
Cal talks about the term “attention residue,” which Sophie Leroy coined in her 2009 paper, Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? As Cal explains,
When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.
A better way: This may sound counterproductive, but I have been letting my brain rest in between tasks – and trying not to constantly jump from one thing to the next. For instance, when I am out of the office, I make an effort to not look at my phone and to become comfortable with silence and quiet. While you may wonder how this helps, it’s letting me build the discipline to turn off – and not always be looking for the next new thing where I need to shift my attention.
Giving in to distraction
I think we can all relate: We’re faced with a difficult task. We put it off and prioritize other work we can get done. But, when we do find the time, we can’t get into our groove and focus. Maybe we overthink the topic or simply feel stuck.
Instead of pushing through, we check email, Twitter, or Facebook to see if anything new needs our attention. (Hint: Nothing typically needs your attention right then, but it’s a great way to feel like you are feeling productive.)
A better way: While the urge to check email or go online won’t necessarily dissipate, train your brain to focus on one task for a time. You need to practice turning off all distractions and doing one thing without stopping.
I often refer to the Pomodoro technique, which is a common method of working for 25 minutes, taking a five-minute break, and then repeating the process. This is a great approach if you are trying to create something or tackle a particularly thorny issue.
I also find success training my brain by reading 20 minutes of a non-fiction book each day. I started this habit last month when I swapped reading with checking email first thing.
While this may sound crazy, I find that this mini-exercise in concentration not only inspires my writing, but it also trains my brain to stay focused. It’s expected that my mind may start to wander, but I don’t stop reading – or give in to the temptation to do something else – for at least 20 minutes. Surprisingly (or not), on the days when I don’t make time to read, I find my mind wanders more easily and I give in to distraction.
Reading for 20 minutes is a concentration exercise that trains my brain to stay focused, says @michelelinn. Click To Tweet
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Train Your Brain for Content Marketing Greatness
Being accessible
As a manager and someone who tries to be a helpful colleague and industry peer, I used to put a lot of value on being accessible. While there is something to be said for being available, it’s draining and makes it difficult to have control over your day. What you set out to accomplish simply doesn’t happen. While unscheduled conversations may be helpful, do they need to happen right now?
A better way:  I used to consider myself available if I wasn’t on a phone call. Now, I’ve flipped and my default is “unavailable.”
Cal, who hails from academia, suggests having “office hours.” As he and many others have discovered, “people will usually respect your right to become inaccessible if these periods are well-defined and well-advertised, and outside these stretches, you’re once again easy to find.”
Wanting to appear busy
We have all done this: We shoot off a few emails first thing or late at night so people know we’re working. Or we constantly check email during the day so people think we are at our desks. Again, Cal explains:
If you send and answer e-mails at all hours, if you schedule and attend meetings constantly, if you weigh in on instant message systems … within seconds when someone poses a new question, or if you roam your open office bouncing ideas off all whom you encounter – all of these behaviors make you seem busy in a public manner. If you’re using busyness as a proxy for productivity, then these behaviors can seem crucial for convincing yourself and others that you’re doing your job well.”
A better way: Put boundaries on your work life – and prove your worth by what you produce instead of how quickly you answer emails. While I used to value constant connection, I now consider it a hindrance and wish more people would make it a point not to check email so frequently.
Prove your worth by what you produce instead of how quickly you answer emails, says @michelelinn. Click To Tweet
Sharing too much
Another seemingly productive task is sharing your ideas with coworkers. I immediately related to Cal calling out an exceedingly common practice of sending – and getting – emails that simply say, “Thoughts?”
Yes, as the sender, this practice gets the emails out of your inbox, but it can take a lot of time for the person on the other end to decipher and respond. And, what you are thinking is often on a different train of thought than what spurred the sender to forward something in the first place. At times, a train of fruitless emails ensues, and, even if you do find an agreement, should this item even be a priority?
A better way: I often think back to these words of wisdom from Robert Rose who talks about the time and care it took to send interoffice memos 20-plus years ago. Given that process, you only sent a memo when you had something important to share. But now, we share more because it’s easy. But is this truly the best thing for your teams? I challenge you to think about what you are sending via email. Just because you can, should you – and should you send it now? Will this help your coworkers do their job better or will this send them down an unproductive path?
Ideally, your team would have a central place to store ideas that don’t need immediate attention but which you don’t want to lose. But, if this resource doesn’t exist, batch your ideas for people and share them at regular intervals so you can prioritize what needs to happen when.
Not prioritizing projects
Another productivity killer related to lack of strategy and sharing too much is not prioritizing your most important projects. For many of us, it’s easy to come up with ideas, and, to an extent, brainstorming has this aura of productivity to it. It feels like you are doing something even though nothing concrete is delivered.
Lack of strategy & not prioritizing most important projects are #productivity killers, says @michelelinn. Click To Tweet
A better way: I recently shared some ideas on how to get control of your ideas and be systematic with how you knock them out one by one. Agile marketing is an even more rigorous approach to identifying and working on your most important tasks first. It’s something I am learning more about this year, as I think it will be a boon to productivity. Andrea Fryrear, my go-to person for Agile marketing, recently answered common questions about this increasingly popular approach.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
7 Ways Limitations Can Boost Your Content Creation Productivity
10 Ways to Save Time in Creating Content
I’d love to hear from you. What is killing your creativity (i.e., driving you crazy with your process)? What other ideas do you have for working more efficiently?
When you go to your inbox, do you want to open one email that will help your content marketing productivity, processes, or strategy? Subscribe for CMI’s free daily email or simplify and sign up for the weekly digest.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
The post 7 Productivity Killers for Marketers and How to Fix Them appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/02/productivity-killers-marketers-solutions/
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