#reverse search is giving me no results even after searching to the bottom of exact matches

[cry-ptidd]

Beast

[crazymisscarly]

OBVIOUSLY I’m gonna ask about: Bughead sexcapades !!!

Oh God, my inner puritan is *blushing* right now. I started writing this like... over a year ago and I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. I low key got tired of re-reading all the season 2 era bughead smut fanfics on ao3 (because believe me, i’ve read them all) and decided to give it a go myself. I’m not very explicitly smutty when I write, I prefer to allude to things or just graze the surface. not to say that I don’t like including sex scenes in my works - I just tend to steer clear of anything graphic.

Since I don’t know if I’ll actually finish it, I’ll post it here in its current entirety. For context, it’s meant to go through all of bughead’s ‘sexcapades’ throughout the early series, all the unseen intimate moments between them from their kitchen makeout scene in 1x13 up until they actually do the deed in 2x12, and possibly even exploring how their relationship changed and strengthened afterwards -- I 100% would name it something else if it ever went up on ao3, but for now, bughead sexcapades is the working title hahahahaa

Who knows, maybe going through my old WIPs thanks to this game might’ve just inspired me to keep writing it aahahaha

Betty had been honest with her mother; the night of Riverdale’s 75th Jubilee, her and Jughead almost had sex when they went back to FP’s trailer. 

They didn’t talk about it beforehand, and really, both had been too distracted by the Black Hood shooting Fred Andrews to properly discuss it with each other afterwards. But somewhere between Betty removing her pink coat and Jughead lifting her up and near-slamming her against the kitchen cabinets, both of them were completely aware of what was about to happen.

But then Jughead changed schools, and there was less time to spend with each other, and the nerves set in. They started making out once or twice, and both of them could feel the urge to connect with each other in the most intimate of ways… but had always been interrupted. 

Their first post-“shirtless in the trailer kitchen” make out was in the Red and Black office; Jughead deepened their kiss and pulled Betty towards his body as he leaned back against a desk - it reminded him of the Blue and Gold, their haven of intelligence gathering (and their place to escape for a few moments alone during school hours). Their near-hookup in FP’s trailer had ignited some kind of flame in both of them; they weren’t as cautious with touching, the familiar comfortability giving both of them the confidence to explore each other’s bodies in their own nervous way - Jughead’s hands strayed from Betty’s cheeks to her neck, then to her waist, and he hoped that maybe he’d get to move his hands even lower...

But still, they’d been interrupted - then, and any other subsequent time, whether by friends or Betty’s mother calling her to come home. So much so that sex seemed like it was going to become an impossible mission that not even Tom Cruise could achieve.

When they had finally found the time to be alone, shortly after Jughead drag raced the Ghoulies and Betty admitted that she didn’t really want to break up with Jughead (in fact, that was not what she’d asked Archie to do), they’d both overthought the possibility of sex so much that neither was certain whether they were actually ready for it, or if their intensifying emotions were the result of the life-threatening happenings in their hometown. 

“We’ll know when it feels like the right time, Betts.” Jughead reassured her after she wiggled out from under him on the trailer’s bed; Jughead had claimed it after FP was imprisoned, but Betty was struggling to think of it as being anything other than Jughead’s parents bed. And something about having sex in it felt... off.

Betty sighed. “I want you, Juggie, I don’t know what’s wrong with me…” 

Less than two weeks earlier she’d practically torn her and Jughead’s shirts off in an effort to get closer to him. But today, lying on her back beneath her boyfriend, on a bed, her thighs cradling is hips as they kissed (hot, open mouthed kisses) as though her body was in control and her brain was just following its lead, sex just seemed so much more real - and the butterflies in her stomach threatened to swallow her up. Betty knew having sex would change something between them that couldn’t be reversed, and she’d only just gotten him back. She didn’t want to risk losing him by doing too much too fast. 

“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with you.” Jughead said quickly; his eyes betrayed the mild panic he felt. “We both have to be feeling completely comfortable and ready or it’s not going to work out - and I read that on Reddit, so we can reasonably believe it’s true.” He smirked as his eyes met hers. 

Betty giggled. “Did you find a thread called ‘how to have sex’ and use the replies as research?” She brushed a stray lock of hair from Jughead’s forehead. 

Jughead’s cheeks were turning pink. He cleared his throat before speaking. “Well, that’s, ah - that wasn’t the exact title…” 

Betty smiled and reached out to take his hand. “Hey, comfortable, right?” She leaned over and kissed him. Although she still wasn’t completely sure about sex itself, kissing Jughead and feeling his arms wrap around her was a great experience in itself. 

Jughead leaned into her, his body coming dangerously close to pinning her down into the mattress. He groaned quietly as Betty kissed his neck, and Betty felt the sound all the way down her navel, and lower…

He felt Betty lightly pushing his chest, and he rolled onto his back so she could straddle him. His body felt like it was on fire. The feel of her, pressed against him, had him filled with desires he didn’t know could exist. Everywhere Jughead touched her felt hot, and her mouth on his was like a fulfilling heat that awakened every nerve inside him. He trailed his hands down to her hips and pulled her up his body slightly so she was straddling his lower abdomen instead of his lap, fearing that if he left her there then this would be over before it even really started.

Betty pulled away from his mouth, her eyes a mixture of lust and vulnerability that had Jughead’s breath coming out in laboured gasps. “Juggie?” she asked in a breathy moan. 

Oh God and yes were the only words in Jughead’s mind. “Ye-yeah?” He forced out when he could focus. 

“It’s getting kind of late…” She bit her bottom lip for a moment. Jughead’s grip on her hips tightened at the sight. “I could tell my Mom I’m staying over at Veronica’s… that’s if, you know… you don’t want me to go.” Her eyes searched Jughead’s. 

Jughead’s mind was swimming, and he would have been embarrassed that it took him so long to figure out what she meant if he could even think at all. “Um, yes, that's a great idea.” She probably could have asked him to paint himself blue and go to school dressed as a Smurf and he would have agreed, so long as she stayed right where she was. 

Betty smiled and laughed softly. The vibrations sent tingly jolts through Jughead’s body and he couldn’t contain the groan that escaped his mouth. Betty’s eyes lit up for a moment before she blushed and looked down at his chest. She ran her fingers up his chest softly, and Jughead placed his hands on her cheeks to pull her down for another kiss.

This kiss felt deeper than the others. Betty’s tongue slipped into his mouth. One of Jughead’s hands slid into Betty’s hair as the other wrapped around her back. Her chest pressed deliciously up against his. She was so warm, right now and every day. And she freely gave him her warmth, no strings attached. Betty’s love warmed his heart, his body, his mind - he gravitated towards it every day, and gave it back to her in the form of light brushes of fingers, a hand in her hand, a gentle nudging of her shoulder...  

And her smiles… wow.

Jughead’s heart was beating faster than he’d ever felt it beat as Betty started kissing and sucking on his neck. He’d never been so closely entangled with Betty before, and all he wanted was to get even closer. As close as two people could get… 

But he wasn’t going to push the point, not when they both had reasons to hesitate. 

“Can I…” Betty said nervously. “Do you want me to…” her hand slid down his chest, over his hip (his breath hitched as her fingers met the skin where his shirt had ridden up) and rested on his thigh. She squeezed his thigh just a little, and Jughead couldn’t believe how sensitive it was; how good it felt. 

[kat-hawke]

Inquisitive Acquaintances

(Following [Change of Plans])

Sea birds called to one another in the distance, circling overhead and lining up along the stone ledges of buildings and walls. The normal bustle of dockworkers and overseers competing in the cacophony of the busy harbor, the occasional bell and sound of the tides claiming the moments between. A gentle breeze rolled over the stone pathways and overlooks, the raven tresses that cascaded around the Director’s face flowing with the air as it passed by.

Leaning forward her weight rest in the elbows which propped on the knees, legs parted just enough for the hands to hang in the space between, fingers picking at the skin around the nails as she anxiously awaited the Arcanist’s arrival. She was tired, physically and mentally, and it was visible. Dark bags hung beneath the vibrant ambers, the facial features thinning faintly. So lost her own thoughts she nearly missed the woman call.

"Director Hawke.” Valerie’s tone was stiff, but not hostile.

"Valerie." Kat replied just as stiff, and neutral in tone.

"Thank you again for making the time to do this.” With a crease forming between her brows the Arcanist took a seat at the opposite end of the bench. “Shall I get immediately to brass tacks?"

"Ya' have an hour, so..." Fingers ceased their anxious picking, one hand lifting in a mock shrug that required little energy. It was preferred that they proceed right to the point of the meeting, the pair had a history of turning hostile in the blink of an eye. 

Valerie's eyes narrowed with a soft hum in acknowledgement. "An hour then. Well. The obvious question is, do you know where Alyssa is?"

She knew that question was coming and despite how much she tried to mentally prepare her self for it, hearing it aloud sent a pain across her heart. Eyes slowly shut as a deep inhale was taken through the nostrils, steadying herself to not break as she had time and time again at him. Speaking softly as she opened her eyes, looking at the ground between them she answered.

"I wish I did." It wasn’t an outright lie.

"She just left?"  Val shook her head slightly, then glanced askance to the space next to the Director.  "Apologies, but that seems out of character, even leaving the fire aside."

Shaking her head as she drew another long breath, She knew Valerie wouldn’t leave it at that. "We were supposed t'have dinner. Her turn t'cook," she begins to explain, gaze shifting to the sea below. "Went up t'her place and found, well, likely th'same ya' did. Found th'dog restin' under the nearby tree." Bending the truth, she placed the events in the wrong order.

Val's eyes flicked downward momentarily.  "He's good at staying put," she finally said, tone still neutral. "But - when?  When did all of this happen?"

"A while ago, before Winter Veil." Tone still soft, she peered over towards the woman. She knew better than to give a specific time frame. "I've been run ragged with work and still rake m'self over th'coals searching for answers. Ya'll have t'excuse my lack of exact time recollection."

"I tried to scry her when I went up there after the New Year, thought it would give me something, but all I got was static." A brief pause before the Arcanist pressed further. "There was nothing left at the scene that was useful?  In the ash, or leading away?"

"Nothin' that I could find. No. Just that....thing in her backyard. I stood there fer over an hour just starin' at it, hoping it would spark t'life and she'd come walkin' out of it. But—" Kat’s shoulders lifted in a weak and shallow shrug. "No such luck. M'assumin' yer aware of her magical—" She searched for a different word than what came to mind. "Practices."

"I am."  Val pursed her lips in thought, glancing in Kat’s direction. "But do you think that is related, or somehow the root cause? The house burnt down when a series of wards were tripped, many of which were arcane in nature."

That was unexpected, the information of arcane being present enough to push the Director’s brows together. “Arcane? I had assumed th'destruction was fel related, considerin'...” Trailing off she shook her head, finally answering Valerie’s question.

"Well. Isn't it always related with practitioners of such..." A faint hint of disapproval touched her words.

“I helped her ward her house when she moved in. Some of them - the wards - were modified when I looked at them post-fire, others were new.  Again though - is it her magical predilections you suspect are behind her disappearance?"

It began to feel as if they were going in circles and annoyance started to fester. Taking another deep breath she calmed the growing emotion, the tongue clicking against teeth before speaking, shifting her attention to Valerie. "Can't help but suspect that, no? Maybe that's wron' of me to assume. I can't help but shake th'feelin' that the level o' corruption could have caught up. Maybe it was worse than we could see on th'surface.”

The tail end of her sentence nearly caused her voice to crack, aware now of how truthful it was. But she remained disciplined, of all the people she could let emotions slip in front of, Valerie was not among them.

“Demons don't come, carry someone off, and leave no trace."  Val pursed her lips a moment, then shook her head.  "Hellfire doesn't leave behind a burnt house but no body, and it doesn't leave behind dogs. Since the Dread Gate was long dead, and I saw neither footsteps nor a body...?" Shoulders bounced in a small shrug.  "I can only assume it's another option."

"Yer assumin' foul play then?" Kat’s gaze settled on the Arcanist, peering as if searching for answers.

"I don't know.  I never thought she was the type to run away, so... what other explanation is there?"

With a low hum the Director’s lips pursed her lips and cast her gaze to the harbor below. It was clear Valerie wasn’t going to let it go, not that she could blame her, especially since she knew if the situations were reversed she’d stop at nothing to get answers. Something needed to be offered, with a soft exhale she spoke up.

"I'd be lyin' t'say it hadn't crossed m'mind either. She mentioned someone last we spoke, Remy. No' a name I'm familiar with. I wouldn' doubt she had plenty of enemies either, all things considered.” Fingers began to pick idly again as they hung lazily between the legs. "I just... I miss her."

"Remy? He was an ex of Alyssa's. The one before the Gilnean fellow that went off to war, before... you. I don't know that I'd call any of them her enemy, but. I've never known her in that way. You two were together for some time, right?"

Kat could feel her walls starting to wane now that Valerie was prodding at their relationship. Regret and guilt threatened to well up if she hadn’t pushed it down with the quick mental reminder she needed to return to work after this.

"About a year, yeah. But we kept our secrets, which I doubt comes as a surprise. Communication was neither of our stronger suits, even after all th'time. We'd just avoid certain topics, skirt around possible issues, and ignore th' more...hot button topics. Such as magical practices."

With that Val gave her own soft hum, looking for a moment to the amethyst which hung from the cord about her wrist. "It's... communication's difficult but necessary for any relationship to work long term.  Her magic seems to have very much bothered you."

A chuckle and scoff mixed as the Director shook her head faintly, hoping this wouldn't turn into a counseling. "About as much as my magic bothered her at time. We had our moments though, but I doubt ya' came out here just to dissect our relationship."

"I didn't, that's true.  But when there's a mystery at hand, you piece together the whole from its disparate parts.  I say, talking to someone who deals in mysteries."  The very corners of Valerie’s lips turn upward ever faintly, to Kat’s disbelief.

"My mysteries are, usually, more straight forward." Her own lips dropped, pursing to one side. "Unfortunately a missing persons falls to the guard, nor could I officially be involved in a investigation because of our relationship. Conductin' an unofficial one on m'own would only bring consequences."

"Well...It's lucky, then, that not all of us are thusly bound." 

The city bell sounded on the half-hour mark, drawing the attention of both women for a moment before Valerie inquired further.

"Tell me what you've done so far."

"Looked over the ruins of th' cottage, recovered Dog, kept on eye on the places she frequented just in case. There's a....former associate who is known to scry. Reached out t'collect a favor, but the results were nothin'."

"And the guards?  Have they been alerted?" The Arcanist pressed.

"I submitted a report on the destruction of the cottage, wot eva they did after that- I don' know." A half truth. She filled out a report but filed it herself under an alias.

There was silence between them for a moment before Valerie dragged her gaze to the Director. "Two things, then.  First - whatever is between us aside, Alyssa was a very dear friend to me.  I want to get to the bottom of this.  Will you accept my help?"

Turning her attention the other woman Kat stared for a moment in surprise, having expected her to sling some sort of accusation. "I know she was a dear friend t'ya' Val. I loved her, and want her back just as badly. But I don't know how I can help, I can't put m'career at risk again."

"I'm not asking how and whether you can help.  I'm asking whether you'll accept mine."  Valerie’s expression was neutral, voice steady and matter-of-fact.

Several nods followed, shallow at first but growing in volume as she wrestled back another wave of emotion. She didn’t expect to admit her love aloud, and doubly so to the present company. "Yeah- yes. I just, I'll do woteva t'get her back."

Try as she might her tone still cracked faintly as she spoke. There was no rouse here, no lie or misguided statement to lead the Arcanist. She wanted the warlock to return in some capacity, dreading going back to find the vacant dagger.

"That brings me to two..." Valerie inhaled sharply as she eyed the Director, searching for words before her jaw shut, teeth clicking softly  "Mm.  Nevermind." Rising to her feet she glanced down at the raven haired woman.  "You should get some lunch while you still have a break."

Blinking rapidly she watched the woman stand, confusion drowning out any other emotion as raven brows pulled together. “Ya’ sure?” 

Standing as she spoke her hands brushed against the dress pants, smoothing them out before tugging the bottom of the blazer to fit firmly once again.  Nodding with a quiet clear of the throat. "Yer right, I probably should. Haven't eaten anythin' at all today."

"I'm sure.  Save your health.  And in the meantime..."  Valerie’s attention turned to the far side of the docks as she readied herself to leave. "There's a small shack near the shipyard; it's run down and has words graffiti'd down the side of it - caution: sea monsters, if memory serves. If there's anything you need to leave to make it easier to work - evidence, notes, whatever - leave it there."

Following the woman’s gaze to the mentioned location Kat responded with a shallow nod and stifled hum in acknowledgement. With a few short words to arrange for the collection of the Arcanist’s canine companion they parted ways.

[ @the-real-arcanist-val​ ] [ Mentions/Relevant: @alyssa-ward​ ]

[moyochu]

my euphoria | jjk

summary: when jeongguk forgets it’s mother’s day and your flower shop is the only one nearby that has his mom’s favorite flower, but oh shit it’s 4:45 and your shop closes at 5:00 and there’s rush hour traffic and so many dumb obstacles and now he’s in panting in front of your store at 5:02 while hopping on one foot and oh shit oh shit he didn’t expect an angel to step out

[fake dating au ; ceo jjk x florist oc]

pairing: jeongguk + female reader

word count: 7.6k 

genre: fluff, fluff, fluff

“Shit, shit, shit!”  

How can I let myself forget today’s Mother’s day? Jeongguk curses at himself, anxiously wondering as he paces the corridor back and forth, trying to make calls to all nearby florists. Yet with each unpromising call, Jeongguk starts losing hope-- none of them hold the flower that makes his mother the happiest.  

But his assistant, Jimin, has yet to stray from his determined traits. That’s the main reason Jeongguk hired him: Jimin is dedicated and willing to go to any and all necessary lengths in order to accomplish his goals. In fact, here he is, practically working overtime--which Jeongguk always pays an overwhelming amount in gratitude-- just to help his boss find some flowers. Said assistant is also currently searching, typing rapidly on his laptop, tongue sticking out ever so slightly. But after the millionth disappointing call, Jeongguk claps his hand on Jimin’s shoulder, about to dejectedly call it a day and tell Jimin to go home when Jimin interrupts his negative train of thought. He shouts excitedly, “Wait, Mr. Jeon! I think I found a place!”  

Jeongguk feels hope surge through him, maybe he can get the flowers after all! He squints at Jimin’s screen, eyes scanning the name Zahra. He knows it isn’t a word of any of the six languages he knows, so he assumes maybe it’s the name of the store owner. As he continues reading with Jimin, Jimin reads out loud, “It’s a nine minute drive from here... and it closes at five on Sunday’s.”

Both men’s eyes shoot towards the bottom right corner, eyes bulging at the time. Jimin shuts his computer hastily and shouts, “It’s 4:45! Go, Mr. Jeon! I’ll bring your stuff over to your apartment! Go!”

In a series of quick motions, Jeongguk shoots his assistant a grateful look before dashing out of the building. Hopping into his car and swiftly reversing out of his reserved parking spot, Jeongguk is ready to speed his way to this flower shop.  

What he doesn’t expect, happens: traffic right before he can turn into the parking lot of the store. Jeongguk swears he doesn’t have road rage, but he suddenly hits his head on the steering wheel, letting it honk a few times, before groaning when he sees the time: 4:58. There’s no way he’s going to make it on time. The cars ahead of him are slowly moving forward, but he knows there’s no point.

As Jeongguk lifts his head away from the steerwheel, his eyes catch sight of an empty spot on the side of the road with just the right amount of space for his car. Acting like he doesn’t notice the sign that obviously spells out in big black letters, “NO PARKING,” he parallel parks into the spot. Within seconds, Jeongguk is out the door, sprinting in his black suit and tie, probably looking like a complete wacko to everyone who can see his hair flopping past them. His legs sting, but he can’t let that get to him. He sees your store, quaint and cute as it is, he cannot allow himself to admire it as he rushes to the front door, I made it-- I can’t believe I made it.

And then Jeongguk tries opening the door.  

Locked.

He checks his watch only to see the numbers 5:02 laughing at him. Overwhelmingly upset, Jeongguk, CEO of the biggest bank in the entire country, kicks the ground in petty anger.  

He did not see the red brick waiting for him to stupidly make contact with it.

“Fuck!” Jeongguk whimpers as he hops on one foot, the other in his hands. He groans, muttering a series of profanity over and over again. But he can’t pay attention to his hurt foot for long, because suddenly the front door of the shop opens, the sound of the creaking door flowing through Jeongguk’s ears like doves singing the way to Heaven.

He didn’t expect an angel to step out.

You hummed a tune that’s been stuck in your head all day, not having noticed the suit-clad man holding his foot in his hands, until you look up as you, eyes widening slightly as you take in the situation. You pull the trash bag out of your store, staring curiously. Jeongguk opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out as you continue to stare at him, waiting for any type of a explanation. But he stays speechless-- lost in thought. He’s never seen someone look so soft. Every movement you make has Jeongguk pulled in, his foot momentarily forgotten. His heart especially quickens when you move a piece of hair behind your ear and give a polite smile before putting the trash bag you were carrying next to the door. You were about to walk back in the shop when Jeongguk finally gets himself to talk, “Wait!”  

Pausing, you raise an eyebrow. You wait for him to continue as Jeongguk stutters, “I-I know you’re closed, but you’re the only store I could find that sold my mother’s favorite flower. I’m supposed to meet her today, and it completely ran over my head that today is Mother’s Day, and now I don’t have anything to give her. But those flowers would make her the happiest. Would you please open the store for just ten more minutes? I-I’ll play extra!”

Jeongguk finally finishes his rambling, suddenly self-conscious in front of your wide eyes. Your look of surprise morphs into amusement as you chuckle about God knows what. As Jeongguk waits for you to respond, he scratches the back of his head nervously, concluding maybe you thought he was dumb and starts plotting how to slowly crawl into a hole and never see the light of day ever again.

After what seems like hours later, you respond with an even softer smile than before, and Jeongguk’s shoulders slowly drop as your presence simply makes him melt for some reason. Flashing your pearls, you open your door slightly before saying, “You know all you had to do was knock on the door, and I would have opened it. It’s only--” Jeongguk feels heat rush to his face as you look at the watch on your wrist before continuing, “Three minutes after closing.”

Assuming you embarrassed the man, you don’t wait for him to give a response. You hold the door open, signalling for him to come in and Jeongguk quickly follows, the smell of all the different flowers instantly hitting him. As he looks around, he sees that every type of flower is sectioned off by color, the organization leaving customers with a feeling of satisfaction.  

In between admiring the interior, he follows your back, attentive to the way your hair curls against your ears. You turn around abruptly, making Jeongguk pay attention to the matter at hand, his insides feeling tingly when you throw a smirk his way. “So what is this flower you are dying to get your hands on?”

Clearing his throat, Jeongguk says, “A chocolate cosmo.”  

You nod slightly, turning around to walk towards the deep reds, “Your mother has good taste. Do you want just the chocolate cosmos or would you like to pair it with other flowers?”  

Jeongguk didn’t think that far ahead, the chocolate cosmo being the main task at hand. So he shrugs, “What do you think I should do?”

Walking towards the whites, you look at Jeongguk and suggest, “Customers usually pair cosmos with white roses. It’s not really a stand-alone type flower.”

But before you grab some white roses, Jeongguk interrupts you. “But what do you think I should pair it with?”

Surprise passes through your face as you chuckle, the sound instantly making Jeongguk give an iconic bunny smile. You make your way around the counter, Jeongguk following. “Well, tell me what your mother is like, and I’ll tell you what I’d pick.”

And tell you is what Jeongguk does. His eyes light up as his words seem to run off his mouth so effortlessly, “She’s a strong, but gentle woman. She likes living her life without a care about how she looks. Like, she’ll often dress for spring with fall clothes! Even if they make her hot because fall is her favorite season. Her love trumps everything else. Therefore, she practically lives in fall colors and attire. She’s always positive no matter what....she’s never afraid to be bold and adventure outside of her comfort zone.” Jeongguk takes in a shaky breath, “She’s amazing.”

Your heart swells at the amount of love Jeongguk appears to have for his mother, the smile that appears on your face being an exact result of that. While Jeongguk went on his spiel, you had been picking flowers that went with his characterization of his mother, gathering them at the counter Jeongguk stood at, fist holding his chin up with a gentle smile.

While you get your supplies out, you explain your plan for the bouquet and motives for it, “So while hearing you talk about your mother, I picked up on a few vibes; I chose a couple of different flowers we can mix around.” You look up from your actions to gauge his reaction. Jeongguk nodded silently, lost in thought as he continues to stare at you. You take that as a sign to continue, grabbing your scissors. “In addition to the cosmos, I grabbed orange roses, because they come with the meaning of an energetic fascination, which are vibes I totally get from your mother. Plus, orange roses are tragically underrated.” You smirk when you hear a chuckle from Jeongguk. “I also picked up sunflowers for loyalty and longevity…” You say as you start fixing them together.  

You don’t notice Jeongguk staring at your lips as you go on, “...dahlia’s for symbol of a commitment and bond that lasts forever, calla lilies for faithfulness, apricot roses for enthusiasm, and finally, billy balls for good health.” Jeongguk’s smile falters at the last bit of your words, but you do not notice, busy wrapping the flowers up.  

When you look up, he’s grinning again while staring at you, more so than the flowers, and confidently declares, “This is one of the most beautiful bouquets I’ve ever seen. Thank you.”  

You lower your head bashfully as you softly state the price, ringing him up. With a wave of your hand, you deny Jeongguk’s statement, “Nah. It’s just because it was chosen based on your mother’s personality. It feels more special that way.” 

Jeongguk wants to argue back, but you don’t leave room for retaliation. “I really hope she likes them,” you say while handing him the flowers. You wipe your hands on your apron before pulling it off. Your eyes twinkle as you hang up your apron, “She’s lucky to have a son like you.”  

Biting his lip to hide the grin that was about to surface, Jeongguk decided to opt out of responding to that comment. Instead, he says, “I’ll let you know how she likes them.”  

Your eyebrows raise at that. You thought it would be the last time you’d see him. Crossing your arms against your chest you question, “Oh? You’re telling me I’m going to see you again?”  

Chuckling, Jeongguk makes his way to the door, “You’re my favorite florist now. Plus, it’s a bonus that you’re really cute.” You didn’t expect that last bit, and honestly neither did Jeongguk. He tries to play it casually, while you become flustered, attempting not the blush, but your rosy cheeks were most definitely apparent. It didn’t help Jeongguk’s lowkey-beginning-of-a-crush case that your cheeks especially popped in front of the pinks and purple behind you.  

Breathtaking, was the only word Jeongguk could think of as he watched you shake your head before picking up your bag. He falters in his steps, looking as if he doesn’t want the conversation to end. You raise your eyebrow as to say, “What now?” and he responds, “You told me the meaning behind every flower, except for the chocolate cosmos.”

He catches you taking a deep breath before answering the question he wants to ask, “Well, it was once said to mean, ‘I love you more than anyone can.’” You watch Jeongguk’s reaction and you thought your eyes must have been deceiving you when you saw Jeongguk blushing, so you concluded it had to be just the abundant of flowers surrounding the two of you. Jeongguk doesn’t comprehend what is going on with himself either, so he concludes he must be getting high on the overpowering smell of flowers.

Yeah, that’s the reason.

You finally bid him adieu, letting him toss you a cheeky smile and a wave. You finally take a moment to check the time, and when your stare at the numbers, it’s only then you remember your plans. Damn! I forgot about my date! You quickly grab your belongings, getting ready to lock up when you see a card turned over on the counter Jeongguk had been standing at. You picked it up, the corners of your mouth twitching as you read the contents of the card. When did he even write this?

Thank you for keeping your store open for me. It meant a lot. Call me if you ever need anything. I’m at your disposal. :,) -- Jeongguk

You muttered the name softly as you brushed over it, wondering if he took notice of your name attached to your shirt. Shaking your head, you told yourself to stop lingering too long. You send a text to your date, apologizing for being late and that you were on your way.

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” Jeongguk giddly calls out as he shuts the door with this foot. The bright white always glares back and he hates it, hates it all, but keeps positive for his mother.

“Jeongguk? Is that you, my love?” Jeongguk watches the back of his mother as she finishes up painting the last bit, before setting her materials aside. She turns around to see her beloved son holding the most beautiful bouquet she has ever seen, and are those chocolate cosmos?

His mother coos, covering her mouth with her hands, looking as if she wants to get up from her seat to greet him, but Jeongguk quickly makes his way over, “I’ll come to you, Mom.”

She accepts them graciously, her eyes automatically closing as she takes in the scent of the flowers. “These are so beautiful, Jeongguk. Especially the cosmos. Thank you.”

Jeongguk nods, eyes twinkling, as he brushes his mother’s hair out of her eyes. He notices the dark circles underneath them, causing him to frown. “You haven’t been sleeping have you?” And before his mother can interject, he is already calling out for a doctor, “We should tell the doctors, nur--!”

With a touch of her hand, Jeongguk’s mother shakes her head at him, “No, Jeongguk. I’m fine and my sleeping is normal. Trust me. I know what I can handle.”

Battling stage four leukemia, Jeongguk’s mother knows which wars are worth it and which are a waste of time and effort. She only bites what she can chew and she always does it with a grin. “Tell me about your day, honey. You are better than any medicine.”

The concerned expression on Jeongguk’s face softens at that-- he should be there more for his mother. She pats the seat next to him, motioning for him to sit down. She waits for him to start and so he does, “Well, I met a woman today.”

His mother’s eyebrows raise at that, “Oh? Finally?”

Jeongguk almost swats his mother’s hands that were trying to pinch his cheeks, but it makes her laugh, so he lets her pinch them, even though it makes him feel like a little kid. Scratching the back of his neck, he absentmindedly stares at the flowers in his mother’s hand. “Yeah… she’s the owner of the flower shop I went to for your flowers.”

Sitting criss cross on the hospital bed, his mother places her hand underneath her chin, urging him to continue. Pink sprouts on Jeongguk’s cheeks as he thinks about you, and it definitely doesn’t pass by his mother. “Mom… I’m going to be honest here. Don’t get mad at me, okay?”

She shrugs and Jeongguk takes it as a sign to continue. “When I was younger, I remember when dad used to say you were the most beautiful woman in the world, and... I thought surely he did not think that. There’s always someone who is going to be smarter, funnier, prettier than you, you know?”

Nodding his mother agrees, “True. What about it?”

“Well...mom, I think I just met the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Are you pregnant?”  

Your date chokes on his salad at your question, coughing as he grabs his water. He takes a sip, looking at you like you were crazy. You simply chuckle as he asks, in the midst of hacking, “W-What?”

Shoving a piece of steak in your mouth, you stare at him innocently. “It’s Mother’s Day and you asked me out on a date. I sure as hell ain’t pregnant nor am I a mother, so I’m assuming you are?”

Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he presses his mouth in a tight line, “Right.”

You wanted to inwardly groan at response. The only reason why you said something as unrealistic and stupid like that was to bring some humor to this dull date. Since you’ve sat down, he’s been nothing but serious. To start, he judged you for getting steak, because apparently he was one of those vegetarians, which to begin with, you didn’t even know that fact about him until he outwardly glared at you when you recited your order to the waiter.

And now you just wanted to joke around, but he takes all of them too seriously. Sure, what you said may have been surprising and ridiculous, but does laughing-- even an awkward one-- really hurt him? Immediate turn off.

The lengthy night finally ends as you two say your goodbyes with zero intentions of meeting each other ever again. Once you make your way home, you take your heels off, the feeling of your feet finally coming back to you. You decide at that moment, you were never purchasing heels from Forever 21 ever again.

You brush your hair with your fingers, wandering into the kitchen for a drink. Your cell phone starts ringing and you groan for what seems like the fifteenth time today. You run to your bag you had thrown on the floor, struggling to get it out of your purse before it stops ringing. When your hands finally grab it, you answer it without checking the name, “Hello?”

“What? No happy Mother’s Day for your mother?”  

Another groan. You should have checked who was calling before accepting the call. You sarcastically reply, “Oh! Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! My apologies. I forgot to send a gift over after you made fun of me the year before for my choice!”  

You can see your stepmom’s eyes rolling as she talks through clenched teeth, “Watch your tone, young lady. Or else I’ll tell your father.”

Scoffing, you are ready to end the call, “How old do you think I am, Soomin? You make me have second-hand embarrassment for you. What do you want from me? Unless you simply called me to mock me?”

You’ve made it back to the kitchen, always needing to chug down some drink whenever you have conversations with your stepmother. You tap on your counter as you wait for her to tell you the reason she felt the need to ruin your night even more, “Well? I’m waiting.”

“Honey,” your eyebrows furrowed at the name. You hear a door close, which leads you to assume she walked away from your dad, before spitting out, “Your father wants to see you at the family dinner next Saturday. He’s worried about you. I mean? Can you blame him? Dumb job, small apartment, no husband...let alone a boyfriend. You really can’t hold a man for the life of you, huh?”

You usually don’t let your Soomin’s words affect you, but that last one one stung, allowing hot, white fury to blur your eyes. She knows of your past experience with relationships and she knows how much you hate talking about it. You clenched your teeth, trying not to let her hear it affecting you.  

“What? Have nothing to say?” You can feel her smirk through the phone and you hate it, hate it all.

You are about to just angrily end the call, but you don’t want her to win. That’s when an idea pops into your head.

“Actually, I have a boyfriend,” you blurt out without thinking it as thoroughly as you should have.

But for a moment, you are glad you did as your stepmom pauses. “W-Wait, what? No you don’t.”

You nod vigorously, as if she can see you. “Yup. I do! His name is Jeongguk and he’ll be there with me on Saturday. See you then.”

Ending the call, you throw your phone on the counter, not caring if it breaks. You slide down, letting your back hit the refrigerator as you hold your head in your hands. Fuck.  

After hitting your head a couple of times for doing something so impulsive just to prove yourself, you pace your kitchen with your phone and Jeongguk’s business card in your hand. As you try to think of what to say, you shakily insert the phone number on the card that read BANK OF JEON. Your eyebrows scrunch up at that, does he work at a bank or something?

Deciding to just press call and wing it, you anxiously bite your lips as you let it ring. You’re about to end the call, your nervousness clouding your judgment when you hear a, “Hello?”

“J-Jeongguk!” You exclaim, before clearing your throat. “It’s me, Y/N. The owner of Zahra?”

Jeongguk almost dropped his phone when he heard your nervous voice flows through his ears. You were the last person he expected to be calling him, or even at all. “Y/N! I didn’t expect you to call so fast.”

You chuckle nervously, brushing your hair behind your ear, “Yeah...I’m sorry about that. I didn’t expect so either.”

The anxiousness was strong in your tone, and it confused Jeongguk. That was not the front you showcased earlier that afternoon when he came running towards your shop. And so before he could stop the words from toppling out of his mouth, he blurts, “No! Don’t apologize. I’m glad you did.”

There is an awkward pause, neither of you saying anything, and all Jeongguk wants to do is bang his head against a wall. Why did he say that? Your voice picks up again ever so lightly, Jeongguk wouldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t sucking in a breath in panic. “I wanted to cash in that favor you wrote about on your business card.”

Jeongguk’s lips curved upwards as he chuckled, “Oh? This soon? What do you need?”

You squeeze your eyes tight before rapidly shooting out, “I need you to be my boyfriend.”

What sounded like water spurting out of a mouth was all you could hear from your phone speaker as you quickly clarified, “Fake boyfriend! I need you to be my fake boyfriend!”

“Y/N?” you hear Jeongguk ask in a concerned, but seemingly giddy voice. Seemingly.

You’ve resorted to biting your nails as you chant in your head, stupid, stupid, stupid. “Yes?”

“Can you explain what’s going on? I’m just a tad bit confused.” In this moment, you thanked God you were miles away from each other and not face to face. You don’t know how you would cope if he was in front of you.  

Inhaling, you give out a shaky chuckle, “Yeah! I’m sorry for saying it like that. Honestly, I’ve been freaking myself out about calling you.”

A couple of miles away, in the penthouse suite of one of the fanciest apartment complexes in town, Jeongguk is in his silk pajamas, kicking the pillow in front of him giddly, as he contorts his body in excitement. He can just imagine the rosy flush of your cheeks and those dainty fingers brushing your curls behind your ear. You’re so cute, and Jeongguk just can’t help feeling the butterflies swarming around the bouquets you made in his stomach. The tingly feeling embracing him gently, one he simply cannot remember last when felt this excited for something so new and adorable.  

He eventually composes himself, realizing he shouldn’t take a liking in you so quickly. He, quite frankly, barely knows who you are. Yet, here you are asking for him to be your fake boyfriend, and he’s having a parade day about it. Now he can’t help but feel so bubbly-- like a little kid-- at this new forming...companionship? Clearing his throat, he bites his lip to stop another smile from spreading his face, “Why are you nervous? What’s this boyfriend thing about?”

And you ramble on, similar to how Jeongguk bombarded you at your shop, “My family basically thinks I’m a low-life with nothing promising to offer. Which I get, I live a pretty bland life, I guess. And so my stepmom kept pushing my buttons, saying some nasty things about...my lack of a romantic life, and I, hurt and wanting to prove myself, ended up somehow blurting out that you were my boyfriend! And I know I don’t need a man to prove myself, but it’s more than that. I just want my stepmom to lose for once. Funny right? So here I am, interrupting your night, asking you to be my fake boyfriend for a night on Saturday, even though I don’t even know if you’re free that day, and this is abs--!”

“Y/N?”  

You cough, your throat feeling dry. The heat from your cheeks staying put since your conversation with your stepmom. Anger and embarrassment: you chronically wear those two emotions very well. Finally, you squeak out, “Yes, Jeongguk?”  

“I would love to be your fake boyfriend. And no offence, but your stepmom sounds like a bitch.”

All the weight slides off your shoulders, as you gratefully smile at that, “Yeah she is. But really? You would do that for me?”  

Jeongguk jokingly scoffs, “Do you not take me to be a man of my words, Y/N?”  

You wildly shake your head no, before realizing he cannot see you. You stutter out, “N-No! I definitely think you are. It’s just a ridiculous favor; we barely know each other. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you called me crazy and blocked my number. So thank you. I don’t think you know how much this means to me.”

The feeling in Jeongguk’s chest never ceases. He feels like he’s on a high for simply being able to make you happy. “No problem, Y/N. Get some rest. It’s getting late. I’ll text or call you tomorrow and you can run me through everything. Trust me, I’ll be an amazing boyfriend, babe.”

The laugh that comes out is free and genuine, no longer laced with nerves. “I don’t doubt it.”

Right before you can say your farewell, Jeongguk continues, “Oh and Y/N? I don’t think you’re a low-life. In just the brief moments I’ve known you, I can tell you are amazing, strong woman. You deserve respect.”

The call ends as you stare at your phone in shock. The soft smile on your face was the cause of the fact that that was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to you, and now, all you needed to do was gain confidence in yourself.  

You put your phone down, staring at the card once more, your heart skips a beat.

“How long have we been dating?”

“Five months.”

“How did we meet?”

“Blind date set up by our mutual friends.”

“What’s my favorite food?”

“Pizza. Cold and hot. It doesn’t matter-- pizza is pizza.”

“Who loves corny jokes?”

“You.”

You pause at that, smacking Jeongguk’s arm as he snickers, “My aunt, Jeongguk!”

“I prefer babe,” Jeongguk emphasis with the wiggling of his eyebrows. You scoff, but there’s a smile threatening to break out as you stare out the window, but the nerves in your mind overcloud the mushy feeling in your stomach.

As you psych yourself out, you feel Jeongguk’s hand slowly interlock with yours, squeezing it ever so lightly. You look up to see Jeongguk with eyes on the road, but with the slightest smile. He doesn’t like driving with only one hand, but he knew you needed reassurance.  

Plus, he might have really wanted to hold your hand.  

The scenery passing by reminds you of how quickly time passed between the two of you. It’s already Saturday night and you and Jeongguk are on your way to meet your family. In the span of a week, you and Jeongguk met up three times, not including the many texts and memes you two shared. First, at a cafe as you explained to him the history of your family and why exactly you were doing this-- he only interjected with uplifting curses when you ranted about certain people in your stories and paid his full attention on you no matter how dramatic you thought someone would think you were sounding. He made you feel special. The second time you guys met, you plotted out the details of your relationship, emphasizing the fact that this was all fake, even though you started becoming comfortable. That made you feel uneasy. The third time you met… it wasn’t necessary. Jeongguk had called you and asked you to go out for karaoke with him; his reasoning was so you two can be comfortable around each other, “or our relationship won’t be seem real!” With a roll of your eyes, you joined him. It was a evening full of serenading, longing, and unwanted crushing.  

Needless to say, it was one of the best nights of your life. And to wrap the night up, Jeongguk left you with a soft kiss on your forehead and a tingly feeling in your stomach.

This was dangerous and you knew it. You don’t know if you can handle another relationship. These were all just emotions-- romantic desires, if you will. You haven’t had some action in a while and you knew it was a taking more of a toll on you than you had wished. You wished for someone to hold your hand, to take the left side of your bed-- someone who’d be there for you no matter what. But you’ve never truly experienced that type of fantasy, so you most definitely don’t want to go searching for it in Jeongguk.

The car stills and you know you’ve arrived, but you just want Jeongguk to turn this car back around and whisk you away into the sunset.

Sadly, this was reality, not some fantasy.

You inhale, ready to push open the door, when you realize your hand was still intertwined with Jeongguk’s. He smirks before bringing your hand up to his lips, placing a kiss on your knuckles, his gaze never leaving yours. You’re gaping, you know you are, but you can’t help but do so. But you quickly revert back to your normal expression as Jeongguk squeezes your hand once more before letting it go. “You can do this, Y/N.”

“That’s baby to you,” you say with a smirk, before opening the door and stepping out. This time, Jeongguk is gaping, before he quickly composes himself, stepping out of the car.

Two can play at this game.  

You’re walking ahead of Jeongguk, but he quickly catches up, interlacing your fingers once more. He just loves the feeling of your hand flush against his.

The pink dusting on your cheek is a plus.

Jeongguk rings the door for you, knowing your nerves are probably getting the best of you right now. Plus, you’re squeezing his hand unintentionally tight, so he can take a stab at how you’re feeling.

You paint a smile on your face as the door opens...only to see your father’s frowning face. Your smile slowly falls as you stare at your dad’s stoic face. “I see you finally decided to show up. We already had dinner, Y/N.”

Confused, you check your watch, “But It’s 8:15.”  

Your dad doesn’t move away from the entrance of the house to let you two in, leaving you and Jeongguk to stand awkwardly, “Yeah, and dinner was at 5:30. Everyone already left.”

When you give a more perplexed look, Jeongguk lets go of your hand to touch your back with the palm of his hand, his actions and expression taking on the “boyfriend role” quite well as he looks at you, slightly concerned, almost as if he already knows what’s going on. “Didn’t your stepmom tell you dinner’s at 8:30?’ 

And suddenly it all clicked in your mind, your stepmom was setting you up once again. You turn to your dad, his expression unchanging. “Dad, I’m sorry, but Soomin--”

“Mom.”

Your words falter before you internally roll your eyes and continued, “--told me dinner was at 8:30. So here I am.”

Shaking his head, your dad finally moves to the side for you and Jeongguk to enter, but he doesn’t stop talking. “No, she didn’t. Plus, she was kind enough to call you three times to ask where you were, young lady. And you didn’t respond to any of them.”

The man you’ve known as your father tsks while shaking his head, taking your stepmom’s side yet once again. Said stepmom walks into the living room with a smirk and you want to retaliate and justify your actions so badly, but the hand rubbing your back stops you. You glance up at Jeongguk to see him throwing another one of his show-stopping smiles at your dad. “We’re so sorry, sir. Whether we got the time wrong or not, I was busy at work until now, either way.” Jeongguk reaches his hand out for a handshake. “I’m Jeongguk.”

The smirk on your stepmom’s face wavers when she moves to the side to see the man on your side, as if she didn’t expect you to actually bring someone. And by the look of her face, it doesn’t look like she expected anyone as handsome as Jeongguk, either.

Your dad gives Jeongguk a firm shake, before ushering you two to the living room where your stepmom smiles sickly sweet at your dad. Wanting to cringe, you look away from the kiss that is exchanged between the two of them, Jeongguk giving you a look of amusement.

Noticing the silence, your dad turns back to you and Jeongguk with a blank face.  

It’s times like this when you wonder when your dad lost himself.

Clearing his throat, your dad calls out Jeongguk’s name, making Jeongguk straighten up and respond, “Yes, sir?”

“Where do you work that you can’t make it to a dinner?” your dad asks and you inwardly groan. It looks like he isn’t letting go of that one soon, even though it’s Soomin’s fault and that she’s a total bitch and a gold digger and a complete waste of--

Jeongguk interlocks his hand with yours, rubbing the back of your hand with his thumb, somehow always sensing when you are feeling like running someone over. “Have you heard of Bank of Jeon?”

Your dad nods while your stepmom obnoxiously exclaims, almost as if she’s ridiculing Jeongguk for even asking, “Duh! It’s the biggest bank in all of Korea!”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” Jeongguk humbly responds. “I’m the CEO and founder of Bank of Jeon.”

All three sets of eyes bulge, including yours. “What?!” your stepmom yells in shock, stopping you from giving yourself away. You quickly compose yourself as you notice even your dad seemed surprise and impressed.

You nudge Jeongguk’s thigh as to say, “What the fuck, dude?” and Jeongguk simply laughs, kissing your knuckles like he did in the car. You feel your heart flutter as you look away, not wanting to give away the blush that coats your cheeks.

Unfortunately, your stepmom notices your reaction, and states before she can stop herself, “There’s no way Y/N got that lucky. All she does is sit in that dumb flower shop all day.”

Neither do you believe it, but you can’t let your parents know that. Instead, you smirk at the disbelief on Soomin’s face. There’s so much you want to say and call her out on, but before you can, Jeongguk beats you to the bush, giving you a fond smile as he does so, “With all do respect, ma’am, I think I’m the lucky one. And I happen to think her shop is beautiful.”

Underneath Jeongguk’s soft gaze, you instantly turn into a pile of mush as you tune out your stepmom’s scoff. Your cheeks dimpled gratefully as Jeongguk slightly shakes his head and scrunches his nose up cutely to you before turning back to your parents. “I’m not joking. When I entered her shop, I didn’t expect to start falling for the amazing woman who lives amongst flowers that strive to match her beauty.” Thump, thump. There goes your heart. Jeongguk gives you an almost longing look, but you ignore the feeling that bubbles in your chest, “But I’m glad I did. And if it wasn’t for you, sir, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to ever meet her. So I want to thank you. You’ve raised a beautiful daughter.”

Is it getting hot in here?

And when you turn back to look at your dad, you notice his expression has changed-- as if something awakened inside of him. He stares at Soomin in-- is that disgust?-- as she practically bad mouths you, letting go of her hand. He makes eye contact with you and you barely hear him, but he softly states, while interrupting your stepmom, “Yes, she is amazing. Isn’t she?”

Somehow the night ends up with your stepmom in her room, probably pouting while plotting on how to find another rich man, while your dad shows baby pictures of you to Jeongguk. Right now they are laughing at a picture of you with your two front teeth missing as you roll your eyes at them. You have absolutely no idea how the mood of the room shifted from tense to amusing, but you have a sneaking suspicion Jeongguk’s presence influenced that matter.  

“And this was the first day Y/N had to wear braces! She was livid that she had to get them; I had to practically drag her to the dentist!” Jeongguk laughs loudly before cooing at you when he sees your unamused look. “Aw, Y/N, you look like Darla from Finding Nemo.”  

You gasp while smacking his arm, and shout, “That’s so mean!”  which only causes him to laugh louder as he snaps as a picture of it, keeping it for a later you two never talked about having.

Without warning, the mood was muted down. You look over to see your dad staring at a photo of your real mom in her young adult years. And as if you weren’t in the room, your dad motions to your mom in the photo to Jeongguk, “Y/N looks exactly like her, doesn’t she?” Jeongguk looks at the picture and then at you. The resemblance is uncanny, that’s for sure. But no one says anything as your father admires the photograph. No words needed to be said. You felt uneasy, so you get up, ready to call it a night as Jeongguk follows your movements, but your dad stops you two.

“Son,” he says staring at you in what looks to be regret before looking back to Jeongguk. “Thank you for giving my daughter the love she always deserved.”

Guilt nestled at the bottom of your stomach as Jeongguk smiles at your father. Even through everything you’ve been through because of your family, you still felt bad. At the end of the day, your dad is still your dad and you love him. You knew your mother’s death still haunts him. You witnessed his personality change. So in your heart, you knew it wasn’t right, and you weren’t a liar.

“Dad,” you squeeze your eyes tight before opening them and continuing, Jeongguk staring at you in curiosity. She wouldn’t, Jeongguk thinks to himself. Why would she? “I lied to you. Jeongguk’s not my--”

“Y/N!” Jeongguk interrupts, afraid. He doesn’t want it to end so soon. He gives you a look of panicked confusion.

You smile sadly at Jeongguk. He’s helped out so much, and you feel indebted to him as if he didn’t owe you in the first place. “Jeongguk’s not my boyfriend. I-I asked him to be my fake boyfriend for a night, because I always felt so inadequate. But I realize a guy suddenly being in my life as a front, may fool outsiders, but I know the truth. And I don’t want to depend on anyone else but myself. I’m sorry. I honestly don’t have any real excuses.”

Avoiding Jeongguk’s gaze, you start heading towards the door when you hear a chuckle. You turn back around in confusion as you stare at your dad. He claps Jeongguk’s back, patting it a few times. “Y/N, you’re still my daughter. I knew he’s wasn’t really your boyfriend. But I still stand by what I said.”

Shocked and full of emotions ready to burst, you hesitantly glance over to Jeongguk as he shakes your father’s hand. He doesn’t look at you as he instead decides to grin at your father.

You quickly walk over to the door, trying to block out all the thoughts circulating through your head. Your dad opens the door, waving goodbye as you and Jeongguk step out.  

You hear the door close, still avoiding Jeongguk’s gaze as you haistly make your way around the car. Looking at the car in disbelief, you start thinking to yourself, How did I not know he was rich! It’s a fricking range--

The rambling thoughts in your mind cease to exist as a hand suddenly spins you around. You stare at Jeongguk in shock and confusion as he gently pushes you towards the car, your back hitting the hood of the car. Jeongguk focuses on you with that same longing look, the tension between you thick. All you hear is your heartbeat wildly jumping up and down, as if your insides were a bed to play on. The closer Jeongguk gets, you start wondering: were Jeongguk’s eyes always so sparkly? Did his hair always look so fluffy and touchable? You reach a hand to his chest, as if to push him away before swallowing, stammering as you try to decipher what was happening, “J-Jeongguk, what are you--!”

Jeongguk caught your hand before you touched him, he whispers, voice a few octaves lower, “Don’t avoid me.” He startles you as you caught the intense look in his eyes. But before you could properly react, Jeongguk yanks you towards him, his lips colliding with yours. You’re stationary at first, trying to process his actions, but your mind screams, fuck it! And you respond to the kiss just as feverishly, if not more. Jeongguk softly grunts, making you smirk into the kiss as your fingers slide up to play with his smooth locks, pulling them slightly before curling them around your finger. He gently tugs on your bottom lip, not beating around the bush. You want to play around and annoy him, but you are way too impatient at the moment, so you open your mouth, delving deeper in the kiss.  

Your lips feel like pillows and clouds and everything soft and Jeongguk just can’t believe he’s kissing you, but suddenly you are pulling away way too fast and--  

“Wow,” Jeongguk mutters as he pulls away and rests his forehead against yours. You bite your lip, before giggling as you play with the hairs at the back of his neck. You look up only to see Jeongguk already staring at you. He demands with that damn bunny smile of his, “Do that again.”

“Do what?” You ask innocently.

“Giggle like that again.”

You look at Jeongguk in dubity while stating obviously, “I can’t laugh on command!”

A pause. A raised eyebrow mocks you.

Giggles start tumbling out of your mouth before you can stop them, causing Jeongguk to beam, eyes twinkling in the utmost happiness he’s felt all week. He nuzzles his nose against yours, “That’s my girl.”

He’s so smitten, so damn smitten. 

You back away, causing Jeongguk to pout. Shaking your head, you whisper what he said to your earlier against his lips, “I prefer babe.”

Giving you a incredulous look, Jeongguk chuckles, “Okay, babe. Does this mean I can be your boyfriend now? Like foreal? Because I’ve been dying to kiss you like that since I first met you.”  

“No.”

“What?!”  

“You have to take me on a real date first! Then ask.”

“Oh, of course, where are my manners? First date starts now. Let’s go get McDonalds-- I know you’re hungry.”

“Shit, babe, that turns me on.”

And as you and Jeongguk bond over $1.29 cheeseburgers and salty french fries, laughter flows between you two as easily as air flowing. You don’t realize how empty you felt without the euphoria he brings you, until you acquire an abundance of it and fear losing it. Jeongguk was just that. He was an out-of-breath-in-a-damn-suit-over-flowers-for-his-mother type of interruption in your life, but you just knew he was the wind that was meant to breeze into your life.

[shearssheep47-blog]

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Whizrt: Simulated Intelligent Cybersecurity Red Team

Include Your Get In Touch With Info Properly

The Types Of Security Guards

Specialist Driving Capability

Go to Application tab import your any type of application (. qvf file), I am importing Customer Sales( which drops by default with installment of Qlik Feeling Desktop and fairly popular throughout everybody ). Security to MasterObject or AppObject is the inmost or lower level security. This is shown in the Hex-Rays decompiler pseudocode in Number 5. method anticipated 3 specifications, yet this COM object was reverse and not well-documented design was required, suggesting it was time to dig with some assembly code. If Wat van beveiligingsbedrijf is objectbeveiliging run this manuscript, anticipate some intriguing side-effect habits such as approximate applications being introduced, system ices up, or manuscript hangs.

After watching item detail pages, look right here to discover a simple means to browse back to pages you want. Amazon.com computes an item's celebrity scores based upon a device found out model instead of a raw data standard. The version takes into consideration variables consisting of the age of a score, whether the scores are from confirmed buyers, and also aspects that establish reviewer reliability. Please maintain publishing your views as well as Questions, It will lead me to enhance the quality of the paper.

What are the 5 performance objectives?

A good security guard is always alert and aware of his surroundings. It is necessary to constantly stay focused and avoid distractions as much as possible, or risk missing something that could prove important.

Whizrt: Simulated Intelligent Cybersecurity Red Team

used for the various services and also can be safeguarded independently. determining the authenticity or accuracy of the information being shared. The features defined here are based upon the exchange of body components. If the genuine identity of the stemming individual is unknown, customer even. mastermind will not have the ability to review the message that was sent out.

What is the objective of safety officer?

According to Andy Neely, author of the book “Business Performance Measurement: Unifying Theory and Integrating Practice,” there are five main operational performance objectives: speed, quality, costs, flexibility, and dependability.

Add Your Get In Touch With Info The Right Way

A lot of these concerns can be fixed by closing the applications that were launched or by eliminating the processes that were generated. The checklist of CLSIDs can be obtained making use of the following Powershell commands in Number 1. The term "COM Object" refers to an executable code section which applies several interfaces stemming from IUnknown.

Right-click the initial access which will certainly appear as a search engine result and also pick the "Run as administrator" context food selection access. Click the number 4 key or F4 in order to start your COMPUTER in Safe Setting on Windows 10. Merely click the Beginning food selection button of your computer adhered to by the Power Switch.

This enables you to control object accessibility by transforming a customer's group membership, instead of straight editing and enhancing the object's role map.

Appian suggests using only groups to establish object security.

Each object accepts a different collection of permission degrees in its duty map.

We offer versatile and also simple support programs to make best use of the value of your FireEye product or services. Therefore, more content will certainly be included the coming weeks. Logging use of an object by a particular event by wrapping the object in a logging forwarder. Limiting the use of an object by covering it in a narrower user interface.

exact same line delimiter be utilized by both the mastermind as well as the recipient. either the quoted-printable or base64 encoding as defined by COMEDIAN. securing the hash worth with the personal secret of the producer. beveiligingsbedrijf heeft veel to be authorized is prepared according to the summary listed below.

Objectsecurity. The Security Plan Automation Company.

Discover how your company can gain from Security Policy Automation. Exactly, that's why I did not include it in my listing of options, plus, markings have a recommended ceiling of 100 marking which would certainly not be suitable in my case. I'm fine with Mozilla managing my details as described in this Privacy Policy.

A Ticket Broker equipment, which is a solitary static IP equipment that the Tableau Web server depend demands Trusted Tickets, that machines with dynamic IPs can ask to retrieve a trusted ticket for them. A device of trust between the Ticket Broker and also the various other internet application machines need to be developed also. If you are not embedding Tableau web content right into one more web page, but still want to implement SSO, you can make use of SAML or Relied on Verification (see to it to activate Unrestricted Trusted Tickets ). Tableau Web server has constructed in multi-tenancy utilizing the Sites include. Ideal method in a multi-tenant release is to give each occupant their very own site.

For an explanation of just how multi-tenancy in Tableau maps to multi-tenancy in your data source systems, checked out The Tenets of Tableau Templates on Multitenants. Search for "Command Motivate" by typing it either right in the Beginning menu or by pressing the search button right beside it.

The Kind Of Security Guards

IUnknown is an interface with 3 techniques, which support object lifetime recommendation counting as well as discovery of extra interfaces. Every COM object is identified by an unique binary identifier. These 128 little bit (16 byte) internationally unique identifiers are generically described as GUIDs. When a GUID is utilized to identify a COM object, it is a CLSID (class identifier), as well as when it is made use of to identify a User interface it is an IID (user interface identifier). Some CLSIDs likewise have human-readable text matchings called a ProgID.

Security Vs. Exposure

If you can see, Currently I have actually taken concern all object Graph Call, Measure as well as Dimension that made that worry chart as resource.name. You wish to limit your customer to any graph particular graph and also hide other graphes to customer( JARVIS). All the charts will show up on that particular restricted sheet(" Budget Analysis"). Now login with customer JARVIS, you will certainly discover Stream for Jarvis.

What are the objectives of a security guard?

To obtain the position of Security Guard with The Towers residence; coming with experience completing multiple tasks, such as patrolling, monitoring surveillance systems, responding to alarms, and investigating problems with the desire to create a safe living environment.

[darrentrinh6441]

Something Awesome Update 2

 This post was actually for last week (I didn’t have time to write an update for last week hence this post). 

The first challenge that was completed this week was the 3ManyNumbers challenge which can be found at the following link: https://jacobedelman.gitbooks.io/hsctf-3-practice-problems/content/3manynumbers-problem.html.

The clue that was given is that this challenge is like text2numbers but with a twist. The first thing I tried was trying to shift the numbers by observable patterns. Looking at the sequence, the first thing that catches my eye is ‘1000′ looks like it’s spaced out enough to look like it could be spaces. So I assigned those at ‘1000′ and treated the numbers like a substitution cipher question. I tried shifting the numbers by the same way as text2numbers and other variations to try to get at least a word that makes sense. This resulted in output that was outside the usual ascii table and I was getting foreign language texts (pretty sure I saw some Greek letters in output). After a while, I noticed that all the digits are 0, 1, 2. It took another while before I figured that the numbers are of base 3. I wrote a python script and used the ‘int’ def to convert the numbers from base 3 to decimal. This was then turned into a char. Eureka! I managed to get the flag using this method. I’ve attached a picture of my python script for reference:

flag: here we use ternary to get the flag three_digits_isnt_very_secure

The next question that I completed was the ‘collision’ question on pwnable. Having just looked at collisions, I thought it made sense to put into practice what we had learned. Whilst I understood what collision was (finding an identical hash for the codeword without actually finding out the codeword), I had trouble understanding how I would go about doing this. I remembered that in the tutorial, Hayden used ‘crackstation’ to generate hashes for various words. I opened the C program that was provided and had a look at what was being done. I noticed that there was a hashcode (0x21DD09EC) at the top which gets verified with the password. I tried hashing various versions of this and inputting in as the password. I kept getting an error that the password is 20 bytes long. I found this to be very strange as MD5 (and most other hashing algorithms) returns a 32 byte hash. I then tried to research how to generate 20 byte long MD5 hashes with no luck. So I spent some time looking at the C code and noticed that there was a check_password function. What I found strange is that the password is 20 bytes long but the for loop only checks 5 indices... So i figured that perhaps they only check the first 5 bytes of the password and the rest of it is discarded. So I tried the first 5 bytes of the hash code, last 5 bytes and various other combinations with no luck. I then thought perhaps the hashcode is visible by 5 such that if you add the same number 5 times, you would get the hashcode. Converting the hashcode to decimal got me, 568134124. This number is not divisible by 5 (the result dividing by 5 is 113626824). I was quite desperate so I tried inputting 113626824 in as the password to see if it worked. It didn’t. So I figured doesn’t hurt to multiply 113626824 by 4 and then adding the remainder, not thinking that it would actually work. I tried running the following line,

./col $(python -c 'print hex(113626824*4 + 113626828)')

This returned the passcode must be 20 bytes error. However, when I tried 

python -c 'print hex(113626824*4 + 113626828)'

I got the exact same password as the hashcode (0x21dd09ec). So I figured perhaps the way I was typing it was larger than 20 bytes. I converted the decimal values to hex and tried rerunning it with the following line,

./col $(python -c 'print "\xC8\xCE\xC5\x06"*4 + "\xCC\xCE\xC5\x06"')

I managed to get through and got the flag! :)

flag: daddy! I just managed to create a hash collision :)

I’m actually not too sure if this actually constituted a collision... It seems more like a reverse engineering question by having to work backwards to get the solution...

The next challenge that was completed ‘cmd1′ challenge on pwnable. Even after completing it, I’m not too sure what the question could be classified as... So this one was a little tricky for me, there was literally only 20 lines or so in the C file. The only thing that the code appears to be doing is checking what words were input in argv and the words ‘flag’, ‘sh’ and ‘temp’. On first look, I had no idea what those three words had anything to do with each other. So I conducted some research to see how ‘sh’ and what’s in ‘temp’ that those words are blacklisted in the C program. I didn’t have much luck with finding out how they may be used (if they were permitted) in relation to this question. I was completely stumped on how this question might be solved. After giving it some time, I came back and had a look on the pwnable website. The clue that I got from that is that you have to exploit the PATH environment in Linux somehow. From searching online, PATH environment is just a way of making a directory human-readable, so no particularly useful information as such yet. I then stumbled across a website that said path environment is closely tied together with Linux System Scripts. This started to make sense why ‘sh’ is blacklisted, you have to use a Linux System Script somehow to get the flag...  I knew that it wasn’t as simple as ‘cat flag’ as I had tried that for previous challenges and it didn’t work. Then I figured what if I tried giving it the path of cat since PATH was emphasised in the question. I ran the command ‘which cat’ to get the path of cat and input that as argv (I ran the following line ./cmd1 "/bin/cat”). This didn’t work and I was just getting a repeat of whatever I typed (including flag etc.). I then realised that usually when typing cat *, all the contents of the files in the directory is printed. So I ran the line  ./cmd1 "/bin/cat *”. Surely enough, after a bunch of rubbish lines, I saw the code for cmd1.c as well as the flag down the bottom! I had managed to solve the question, though I do have to admit this one was solved only with a bit of luck...

flag: mommy now I get what PATH environment is for :)

After writing this post, I’ve realised how long it actually is... I think starting from the next one I will be posting updates as I finish the tasks as to make it more readable (Sorry Hayden! and other readers who may be reading).

[permanenthairreplacement-blog]

Oz Investigates Hair Loss Surgery

Hair Restoration Scams: How Far Would http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=Fort Lauderdale FUT vs FUE Process You Go to Reverse Your Thinning Hair?

As seen on tv, investigative journalist Elisabeth Leamy raises concerns about the hair restoration clinic she visited. Then, Dr. Matt Huebner, an expert in hair restoration, reveals the questions you should ask before agreeing to a hair restoration treatment which may include a hair transplant.

Oz Investigates: Fue Hair Restoration

Be wary of unscrupulous hair restoration clinics' scams. Make sure you choose an honest and trustworthy hair transplant doctor and their clinic like the ones discussed in the video.

Watch this video about For Hair Transplant scams.

Audio Title: Hair Restoration - Scams Exposed by Dr. Oz

Duration Transcribed: 0:00:00 – 0:15:22

Number of Speakers: 6

Transcript

Dr. Oz: Hair Restoration Scams.

Clinic Counselor: We guarantee our work 100%.

Dr. Oz: Are some of them duping you and trying to steal your money?

Clinic Doctor: you’re going to be looking about 10 to 12 range.

Dr. Oz: We went undercover to find out.

[Music]

Dr. Oz: We’ll save lives today. [Music] We are good and healthy!

[Cheering]

Dr. Oz: All season long. We have been taking on scammers’ rigged systems and people out to get your money. The undercover investigation you’re about to see is going to make you angry. Because we’re exposing how some companies prey on women who feel shame and embarrassment about their hair loss. Investigative correspondent, Elisabeth Leamy is exposing hair restoration scams. And she’s asking the question, “How far would you go to reverse your hair thinning?”

Elisabeth Leamy: If you’re considering hair loss restoration, the first thing to keep in mind is “Buyer, Beware!” hair restoration is a booming business. Transplants are up 27% since 2012. And high-priced clinics offering foolproof results are popping up all over West Palm Beach Hair Regrowth Treatment so are the horror stories. These are pictures of hair loss surgeries gone wrong, excessive bleeding, infection, scarring, and failure to actually restore hair. Any of these serious side effects are possible when unscrupulous or unskilled doctors and technicians attempt the procedure without sufficient training.

That lack of training is more common than you might think. Thanks to companies that peddle 3-day training seminars and even online courses to physicians eager to cash in on this lucrative procedure. I went undercover with Anne, who suffers from thinning hair visiting a hair restoration clinic with appalling online reviews.

Anne: This part– what I mean over here…

Clinic Counselor: Yeah.

Anne: …like my hairline…

Clinic Counselor: Mm-hmm.

Anne: …is not what it used to be.

Elisabeth Leamy: We wanted to know just what they’re promising hopeful patients.

Anne: You’re guaranteeing the success of my operation?

Clinic counselor: We guarantee our work 100%

Elisabeth Leamy: Then why are there so many unsatisfied patients complaining?

Dr. Oz: Elisabeth Leamy is joining us. So what surprised you the most? You give her applause because it’s a very difficult thing to go undercover and get these folks to talk openly. So what surprised you the most about this experience?

Elisabeth Leamy: You know I went in thinking that hair restoration was something rich people did. But that waiting room we visited was absolutely hopping, jammed with ordinary looking, hard-working Americans who are somehow going to come up with the money to pay for this. Hoping to restore their hair and maybe they’re self-esteem too.

Dr. Oz: And I– and I’ve seen it firsthand and I know how painful it is to think that your hair has been playing for the other team. So this is not shocking to me that it’s crowded but what is shocking is what you found. Now listen, everybody, there are medications that do work for hair loss. We’ll talk about them later in the show. But there’s also a hair transplant surgery which we’re going to focus on right now. And when it’s done right, results are oh, impeccable! They look so natural.

As a doctor, I’ve seen that desperation in women’s eyes. They’ll do anything, you’ll do anything frankly, so old men could get their hair back that they have when they were young. So joining us now is a top hair restoration surgeon, perhaps in the country, arguably. So, Dr. Matt Heubner.

[Applause]

Dr. Oz: Welcome to the show.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Thanks for having me.

Dr. Oz: So, you got a thousand or more of these procedures that…

Dr. Matt Heubner: Right.

Dr. Oz: …takes between 5 and 12 hours a lot…

Dr. Matt Heubner: Right.

Dr. Oz: …of effort.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Absolutely.

Dr. Oz: When you see these physicians conning these women, we’ll about to show some footages could– actually riveting on this.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Yeah.

Dr. Oz: How does it affect you?

Dr. Matt Heubner: It makes me angry. I feel bad for the women who have to go through this. I mean it’s such an emotionally charged thing for a woman to lose her hair. And now you all of these places that are offering cheap hair transplants and preying on that and, you know, it’s very important to do your research correctly. You’re more likely to get a bad hair transplant than a good one nowadays. And unfortunately, if you don’t know how to do your research, you could be a prey to one of these scams.

Dr. Oz: So you get– if you’re– it’s 50/50 or worse to get a good procedure?

Dr, Matt Heubner: I don’t know the exact percentage is. This is from me having patients come in that are dissatisfied with prior results elsewhere. So, you know, looking around, I feel sorry for the consumer that has no idea and doesn’t know what to ask for.

Dr. Oz: So why do you call it the “Wild Wild West”? And most of the medicine is somehow regulated.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Correct. And I came from an emergency medicine background myself, so I understand that. But, hair transplant is not considered to be true surgery in the way that say, a breast augmentation would be or liposuction. And as such is not– it’s not regulated with the same rules and regulations. There is no board certification in hair transplant. It’s not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. And that’s the problem.

Dr. Oz: All right, so how big a deal is this? How dangerous could it be if it’s not done well?

Dr. Matt Heubner: Well, certainly there are a lot of people now going to other countries, Pakistan, Turkey, India to get cheaper hair transplants. Just last year, a 22-year old medical student died…

Dr. Oz: Oh.

Dr. Matt Heubner: …three days after a hair…

Dr. Oz: Oh.

Dr. Matt Heubner: …transplant from a huge infection.

Dr. Oz: Mmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: This was a big center. This is a– they have 17 centers in India for this, OK? So, it’s very scary not only physically can it be dangerous, but what I see mostly in the US is the emotional scarring…

Dr. Oz: Right.

Dr. Matt Heubner: …that people, women…

Dr. Oz: Oh my God!

Dr. Matt Heubner: …especially are coming with.

Dr. Oz: So I’m looking at these pictures, I mean these are catastrophes.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Oz: I mean I don’t– whether those are puncture holes they get to over the hair is in the top left…

Dr. Matt Heubner: Right.

Dr. Oz: …bottom left.

Dr. Matt Heubner: There are some different ways of doing hair transplants. In these foreign countries, the big push is something called FUE where they take little extractions individually from the back of the head rather than a strip. So, there’s all kind of complications that can occur. And if someone’s not trained the right way, it could be a disaster. My doctors that I trained, it takes at least nine months for them to become comfortable and where I feel comfortable of them putting out good work in representing our practice.

Dr. Oz: And how good does it look when it’s done right?

Dr. Matt Heubner: Absolutely incredible! I have hundreds of patients that can attest to how it’s changed their lives, giving them more confidence. Women that who can never wear their hair back in a ponytail are now going out publicly.

Dr. Oz: Here’s an example. This woman in this is before and after.

Dr. Matt Heubner: That’s Tanya, yeah. So, this is one of our patients that is a huge advocate for us with African-American hair. And it’s important to know African-American hair types are much different than Caucasian. In the experience of the technicians, doctor, it’s very important. It changed her life and she’s– she’s happy to talk about it, she has her own YouTube channel and everything.

Dr. Oz: And there’s a gentleman who’s got a pretty good result. So I– I have a friend actually recently had what I could not tell if he– anyway looks like before. So I know what good can be which is why it’s so infuriating when I see bad. So…

Dr. Matt Heubner: Yes.

Dr. Oz: …we wanted to know what really is going on in this hair restoration scams. So Elisabeth Leamey bravely went undercover with one woman who is losing her hair to find out. What’s going to happen next will shock you. Stick around.

[Applause]

Dr. Oz: Next, what really goes on inside these hair restoration clinics. Protect yourself from being scammed.

[Applause]

Dr. Oz: Today, we’re revealing what’s really going on inside a popular hair restoration clinics. Are some of them duping you and trying to steal your money? Investigative correspondent, Elisabeth Leamy went undercover to find out.

Elisabeth Leamy: Anne who’s hair is thinning in the front has considered hair replacement. So she agreed to go undercover with us.

Anne: I would love to get my hair back the way it used to be, here, you know. But, I’m not sure if hair loss surgery is safe or effective.

Elisabeth Leamy: We did our homework reading online reviews about multiple hair restoration clinics. Then we got suited up with hidden camera gear and went for a visit to a well-known clinic. Right away, a surprise.

Clinic Counselor: Anne, the thing is I’m not a physician.

Elisabeth Leamy: The person who met with us initially was not a doctor. Even though hair restoration is a medical procedure. That made us wonder who would be doing the actual operation. In numerous reviews of multiple clinics, patients report crucial parts of hair restoration procedures being done by non-medical staffers instead of doctors.

And the doctors do the actual work?

Clinic Counselor: We have technicians that worked with the doctors. It’s like heart surgery…

Anne: The doctor–

Clinic Counselor: …they do–

Anne: They are…

Clinic Counselor: All they do day in and day out is under the microscope separating grafts.

Elisabeth Leamy: Wow.

Clinic Counselor: Maybe one of them– [Laughter] India.

Elisabeth Leamy: Huh!

But online, reviewers complained that some technicians are far less skilled than others leaving patients with erratic results.

Is there a chance of side effects or risks or injuries of some sort?

Clinic Counselor: Scar.

Elisabeth Leamy: From the–

Clinic Counselor: She will have a scar back here. But you’re never going to shave your head, are you?

Anne: I hope not.

Clinic Counselor: No.

[Laughter]

Clinic Counselor: No, no, no, no.

Elisabeth Leamy: The representative we met with downplayed the risks.

Clinic Counselor: There’s no long-term side effects or risks.

Elisabeth Leamy: But some patients have said, “I left bloodied” and described “Incredible amounts of pain during and after the surgery.” Plus, “An extreme sensation of tightness and pulling of my scalp that doesn’t go away.”

Clinic Counselor: We’ll be guarantee– yeah.

Anne: You’re guaranteeing the success of my operation?

Clinic Counselor: We guarantee our work 100%

Anne: Damn.

Clinic Counselor: The– any grafts that do not survive or grow normally will be replaced at no charge unless you don’t have sufficient donor hair then that would be a refund. And you be so

Anne: Oh, so you’re saying you’re not actually guaranteeing my result. But if they don’t…

Clinic Counselor: Oh, no, no.

Anne: If it doesn’t work–

Clinic Counselor: There are two to three patients a year that come back and aren’t happy.

Elisabeth Leamy: Many reviewers say after all they went through, there was virtually no improvement in their hair, with comments like, “I practiced patience but the results never came” and “One year later, I am bald to a point in need a wig.”

Clinic Counselor: here he is.

Elisabeth Leamy: Hello.

Clinic Doctor: Hi.

Anne: Hi.

Clinic Doctor: Pleased to meet you. what’s your name?

Anne: Anne.

Clinic Doctor: Anne.

Elisabeth Leamy: But when Anne finally met the doctor, he declared her an excellent candidate for hair restoration.

Clinic Doctor: She’s a very good candidate. Look at that curl– look what you have!

Clinic Counselor: Yeah

Elisabeth Leamy: And the estimated cost for the procedure?

Clinic Doctor: so you’re going to be looking about 10k to 12k range.

Elisabeth Leamy: That’s 10 to 12,000.00 dollars.

Anne: That’s a lot for some hair.

Elisabeth Leamy: At that price, you have to use your head if you’re thinking about restoring your hair.

Dr. Oz: Elisabeth Leamy and Anne are here.

[Applause]

Dr. Oz: Anne, if Elisabeth hasn't been with you, you think you would have paid 10 to 12,000.00 dollars to have this done?

Anne: If money was no object, I would have fallen for it, totally! Because the salesman, his pitch was flawless.

Dr. Oz: Mm-hmm.

Anne: And, it’s– he had done the operation himself. He had the procedure done himself. So he showed me his before and after pictures and I would– you know, I would have been convinced. He started out the pricing in like a lower level. But then like, once the doctor came in, he– the price practically doubled.

Dr. Oz: Why?

Elisabeth Leamy: He said she’s going to need two treatments.

Anne: Yeah, because I would need two.

Elisabeth Leamy: Suddenly the price was going up.

Anne: Yeah.

Dr. Oz: So, Elisabeth what brilliant depth to this investigation? When you actually saw the pitches and the proposals, what bothered you the most?

Elisabeth Leamy: It felt like a business instead of a doctor’s office. I mean the first person we met what he’s called the counselor. But come West Palm Beach Hair Growth For Women on, he was a salesman.

Anne: Totally.

Elisabeth Leamy: And the educational brochures, those were marketing brochures. I know what a marketing brochure looks like. And he even offered Anne a line of credit. Basically a credit card…

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Elisabeth Leamy: …to pay for the procedure. This was a business.

Dr. Oz: And like they’re selling you a car, basically.

Anne: Yeah, pretty much.

Dr. Oz: Doctor, you witnessed this?

Dr. Matt Heubner: Yeah.

Dr. Oz: As an expert in the field, what did you think about that? What would you have told West Palm Beach Hair Loss Remedies Anne if you’re honest about this procedure?

Dr. Matt Heubner: Sure. So, couple things. One would be there was no– nobody brings up the idea about testing. So, just because you lost your hair doesn’t mean that everyone’s a candidate for a hair transplant. There are many medical diseases, things– thyroid condition, for example, hormone imbalances which can cause hair loss. There are also conditions which can have you lose your hair which don’t respond well to a hair transplant.

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Inflammatory conditions that will require a biopsy before getting a transplant. And this has really lost a lot of the time. When people meet with the salesperson, that’s the last thing on their mind because that doesn’t allow them to sell you surgery.

Anne: Mmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: The second thing I would tell you is technicians that the doctor works with are just as important as the doctor. They are the ones cutting your grafts up and they are the ones placing it. So there are very different types of technicians and based on experience. So you can have a technician. And by the way, there’s no school for technicians.

Anne: Mmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: This is something that’s taught on the job.

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: So there’s [0:12:31.6] [Crosstalk]

Dr. Oz: Don’t be first.

Elisabeth Leamy: …on you.

Dr. Matt Heubner: It’s scary. Again, Wild Wild West, it’s true. So these are the important questions to ask. So, you know, I’ve seen patients come in from other places unsatisfied where one half of their head was great and the other half was completely different. It was almost like two different surgeries. And what’s happened is you have an experienced technician and inexperienced technician on different sides of the head. So that’s–

Dr. Oz: The big story here, it didn’t have to happen to you Anne. Thank goodness you had Elisabeth with you. But everybody at home, I want you to have the right tools that can take control of your health, so we’re laughing not crying. And you can control your wallet most effectively as well. So doctor, you– reveal some tools we can all use right now.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Sure. So, you know the first thing I would tell you is make sure you do your research, very, very important. Some people just go in and say, “Well, this a big company. I don’t need to do the research.”

Anne: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: Make sure you research your doctor. Ask how many doctors are in the practice. A real transplant takes a doctor anywhere from 5 to 12 hours to do a surgery.

Dr. Oz: Mmm.

Dr. Matt Heubner: So, ask how many patients do you do a day? If the answer is any more than two, run away as fast as you can. You cannot be in that room for that long. So a lot of doctors, unfortunately, have the text doing all the work and they’re in their office on the Internet or maybe even doing a plastic surgery case and not really involved.

Dr. Oz: all right. So, ask the questions, you always have to do that. Make sure the MD is doing the procedure otherwise you’re going to have someone else, maybe the first time ever trying it out on your body.

Anne: Yes.

Dr. Oz: And then finally, if it’s too cheap to be true, we shouldn’t believe it.

Dr. Matt Heubner:

[teamwoah]

Play Poker On the web and Produce Income

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The people that are creating good income from this and I am trying to get there ( little by little ) myself. These people can browse the play and are mild on there feet and move about activities as rapid as you are able to click your finger.

It might take a little while to become accustomed to this kind of thinking but its really worth the outcome, trust me I know from encountering the benefits my self. But it does take practice. Without doubt about it.

Also be prepared to hit and run in the face area of a poor outcome. It's number position to use and sense a few bets of one or two players when each of a sudden you find your self on the wrong conclusion of the stick. If it's turning poor - Run

Search at your poker career as one constant session and few hick ups today and again just do not matter in the extended run.

This approach works and operates very well. If you want to enjoy poker on line and generate income, You're effectively on the way to doing so by using many of these tips.

All in or flip? The concept of bluffing can be very simple or extremely tough one to master. There are many methods to grasp that concept of bluffing, but that will not mean it can be successful. Bluffing may prize you or demolish you. When enjoying free poker on the web is a very important factor, but if playing real money, I could be additional careful in regards to bluffing. I'll examine my some ideas and ideas of bluffing in no restrict Texas holdem poker.

Although plenty of bluffing comes down seriously to judgment and instincts there's however an awful ton you are able to learn. The very first exemplory instance of bluffing amounts to nearly all enjoy: if your instincts kick in after an competitors checks from the fail, turn or stream then you can chance high. A great case with this when playing an opponent minds up. If you will find just 2 players and you're keeping a top set or top kickers- you've a brilliant possibility of winning. I will describe why; your opponent only has 2 cards from the pack exactly like you meaning the chances are small. If bluffing a brains up opponent, only ensure you have performed your research and realize this type of player, so you know when the proper time and energy to bluff is.

An ingenious means of thinking when deciding on bluffing or perhaps not is not what you can get but what is at stake in the event that you lose. Bluffing could be the'red herring'of poker as there's number way to grasp this talent, actually the pros would be in contract that they're still struggling making calls on whether to bluff or not. Moreover as the level of opponent becomes more remarkable you might find an opponent bluffs bluffing!! For example when an opponent is slow playing it's very difficult to know their technique and if whether they're bluffing. When bluffing in free poker you shouldn't take a cavalier attitude and enjoy out of hand. Even though you're perhaps not losing income from your right back wallet you're not improving as a player.

Third, still another idea of bluffing may be the persistent value guess method. All through this approach, you are betting on nothing from the fail all how you can the lake wanting they will fold if they have chased their hand. If you bet the same amount on the fail and change but guess only a little higher on the lake together with your bluffing give, the other person is many likely to fold their hand to you. But again, that does not at all times have the same result every time.

Ultimately, my personal favorite part of bluffing is when you try to generate a guess that appears just like a bluff, but is not. The very best bluff bet could be the popular all in or the bet pot. Also, if you're using the exact same number of participants on a regular base, you can change up your style by betting an amount they'd perhaps not expect. The simplest way to get as much as you may get from somebody out of a give would be to only call all the way and go all in on the stream, ideally they'll believe you overlooked what you had been pursuing and they'll call.

In parting I confidence you have a better notion of bluffing and what sort of simple concept has several levels, and these levels split the planet of poker. It's one thing to be always a respectable poker player and another to become a decent bluffer. It requires a certain amount of time to understand if you're great at bluffing or just have a large amount of beginners luck. The bottom range is bluffing will only enable you to get up to now and whether your enjoying income games or free poker; just remember just bluff everything you can afford to lose.

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😍 GET YOUR AMAZON KEYWORDS TO PAGE 1 USING HOW TO RANK AMAZON FBA THREE SIMPLE HACKS!

What is up ninjas it is Kevin back again with that lifestyle ninja and today I’m going to teach you how to do Amazon back, back-end keywords the right way, so I think we can all agree that backend keywords on Amazon are bitcom, complicated people always ask me what should I include what should I leave out, how many keywords should I put in, do I have to have keywords in my title and my back in, thank you words in my product, prescription or just once, and don’t let that complexity to tell you guys, cuz right now today I’m going to make it, incredibly simple from hundreds of hours of, iterative testing I’m going to lay it out for you simple what you need to include it to have, the best keywords in the head on all the long-tail phrases that you need for your product, all right. So let’s Jump Right In soap for today the tools that we’re going to be using our, Merchant words, keyword inspector, and Microsoft Excel, so the example product a time to be doing for you guys today and I’m going to walk you through eggs, exactly how I’m generating these back-end keywords from start, to finish right so, the first Potter going to take a look at is an acrylic sign holder, this is one of the products that I was interested in the past, so I know a little bit about it and so I hope that it’ll, shed some insight on, exactly how we’re actually generating is back, so the first thing I do is head over to merchantwords. Com, ryan Toby type in acrylic sign, i’m in as you can see there’s some long-tail phrases here acrylic sign holder wall mount, acrylic sign holder, outlook sign 5 x 7 some of the long tails for the actual sizes, So go ahead and download this is a CSV, now let’s get a little bit, different right so what is an acrylic sign holder mainly used for, so it’s mainly used, for a restaurant, sign, right because, this designs that are used in restaurants to kind of show the menu at the front desk so here you go a hundred and six, 55000 searches a month, and we wouldn’t have originally seen that, unless we had typed in, an indirect usage of our products, so let’s try a few others, plastic sign, plastic sign holders plastic sign board blank wall sign with 8 and 1/2 by 11, alright let’s take this one too, menu sign holder, nothing there, tri menu holder, 3 up menu restaurant menu holder that a lot of great stuff right here, so then once you have, pretty much all of your bases covered for the usages of your of your product, And all the different ways that people could actually be typing these you should just end.

They were going to go ahead and jump into Excel, i got so the next thing I do, and this is a tip that I learned from a buddy that’s doing about a million a month on on Amazon that I hadn’t thought of myself so I’m going to give him a gift, credits of Brock out there you know who you are, is it take a look at the highest, traffic per month keywords right so you can, you know if you want to include your first 10 of your first 20, whatever it is right just, make a choice, then go ahead and head back into our trusty tool to remove duplicates, so these are the top volume of all of our searches right guys, So let’s take a look at these, menu holder restaurant Mexican signs clear acrylic corrugated maybe mini corrugated in the best warrior, for us, blanks with Siri 11, trespassing, wampler’s bored, card back poster, but Livingston rights of these all make, perfect sense right these are our biggest volume guys, send take, this, this, collection of words with no duplicates, and go ahead and run it into a Spanish translator, i have to go the number to language spoken in America guys is Spanish so leaving these key word. It’s really doing yourself, a big disturbance, so take these key words here, and let’s throw them into our Master list that we have, generated here guys, so go ahead and count the characters and then from here I basically just copy and paste, groupings of remember this is a few go manually through it and make sure that anything that snuck in, In like you know, lawn probably doesn’t deserve to be there any answer this is after the manual go through you add your Spanish, words and then, you take groupings of 1000 characters and copy and paste them into your back and keyword guys and then, you are, done, alright so what you have this master-list, we go ahead and, copy and paste, i’m just holding shift command down, go ahead and, copy and paste all of these in a column, then head over to tracemyip. Org tools remove duplicate words in text that this is the key guys, silver copy and pasting all of our different keywords all the unique long-tail phrases that we found, and when you compiled in that Master list, composed The Four merchantwords, excel files and then also the one that we got from keyword inspector, taking a look at some of the key words that are competitors right, I meant so then go ahead and press the original order, so what this does, is it remove all duplicate words right because Amazon the Amazon search algorithm how it works, is you only need a keyword, one time, in your title, your description, which is your ability your paragraphs that you’re actually describing what your product is, and you’re back in keywords it only needs to appear once and so what this does, is it removes all of the duplicate words, unless you really get the most bang for your buck in the character space that Amazon allows Junior back-end keywords, i’m so, we have, 3925 characters here, so I usually go through this, this is kind of the tedious part but trust me. It’s worth it, i go through and make sure, that anything that might not necessarily be related to my, a listing that just kind of snuck in there somehow I go ahead and, Take care of manually.

Rights of leather, might not be a good one for us, people could use it for parking signs, maybe in a police station, the suction cups, price of we’re not offering that in our listing it’s not a bundle or anything like that so I might take, they take that out, and the sizes are good right so you can head for all these long tail phrases when people, search for a specific size, sizes, neon might not be for us right because we’re kind of just doing the generic, acrylic, plastic cases, on bearings might not be good right. So goes through this kind of manually and make sure, that you know anything that snuck in that isn’t necessarily related to your keyless, do your keywords list you manually remove, and once you’re done with that then I’ll show you what to do next, All right. So what the next step once you have those, 4cs vs downloaded the next thing I do is get them all aggregated into one Excel sheet, right so this is the first one we did, this is the second one we did starting at Mexican restaurant signs, i’m at Exedra so there’s four in here, then the next thing I do, is go ahead and, filter by volume, it’s a Once you have is filtered by volume then we’re going to go into, keyword inspector, right into the thing we do here is, do a reverse and search, so what this does is show you the exact key phrases, that your competitors are renting, 4, as well as far as long tails and they sometimes give you PCS while depending on which option you choose, so the thing I do for identifying which listing I’m going to use my reverse and search on, Is by checking out the one that appears in the number one organic search results so these are the sponsored ones right side., not the ones that are actually appearing for, our main keyword which is acrylic sign, so go ahead and click into this listing, copy the a sin, go into New River Station search, they sit here, instart reverse and search and I usually use the USA extensive, 3 credits for AC, so once you have that downloaded, you can take a look at what your competitors are right, so this is showing the keyword phrase itself, on the ranking on Amazon pages, the keywords of her example of someone search clear frame holder, they would appear in the organic position 1, for this this keyword phrase, that’s what I normally do here, is go ahead and hide or delete this right here, And then copy and paste the keyword, and the estimated search, volume, and if there’s a lot right so there’s, 2800 here, and a lot of these there’s a zero search volume, so when you have one with a bunch of key words like that sometimes I like to go ahead and filter out, the ones that have zero Amazon estimated monthly search volume, because you don’t really care if your ranking for words that have, no searches, so let’s put, this group in here, the bottom of our previously generated Excel she writes of this is the one that we generated from Merchant words, pS4, on different Excel sheets, and then let’s go ahead and sort this one more time, by descending, so now we have our Master list guys write so then, the Next Step here is to get rid of any do, Duplicates.

So in Excel this is pretty easy just head over to data, remove duplicates, do you want to make sure both are highlighted so that if there is duplicated also deletes the volume, remove duplicates from column a ride cuz this is where they would be so it looks like this 26 duplicates, go ahead and remove them, and then we’ll head to tracemyip guys in this is the key, alright ninjas I hope that was a really helpful kind of look into how I’m generating my back-end keywords and getting the most, most possible longtail key phrases that I can get, set a time ranking for no long tail key phrases that I may not even thought of, burton more content on how I’m generating keywords, how to identify common misspellings, right and so I know that sounds weird but trusting guys typos work people make mistakes all the time and you want to make sure that you’re hitting, For those mistakes, i’m for the key word errors, for a lot more info for a ton more on keywords back-end keywords and for advanced FBA strategies in general, make sure you check out our FB a Facebook page, is the only Facebook page for advanced seller so make sure you check it out, and please please please make sure that you’re subscribing right. Because I’m putting this out all for free and I’m doing that, because I want to make sure that everybody grinding every single day to become financially independent, has all the help that they deserve, and make sure you’re checking out my other video of guys I promise you they’re packed with, nothing but Advanced FBA content that is going to make you money, and take your Amazon business, to the next level.

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Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

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[paulineberry]

Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

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[epackingvietnam]

Case Study: How a Media Company Grew 400% and Used SEO to Get Acquired

Posted by Gaetano-DiNardi-NYC

Disclaimer: I’m currently the Director of Demand Generation at Nextiva, and writing this case study post-mortem as the former VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (Jan. 2017 - Sept. 2018).

Every B2B company is investing in content marketing right now. Why? Because they all want the same thing: Search traffic that leads to website conversions, which leads to money.

But here’s the challenge: Companies are struggling to get traction because competition has reached an all-time high. Keyword difficulty (and CPC) has skyrocketed in most verticals. In my current space, Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS), some of the CPCs have nearly doubled since 2017, with many keywords hovering close to $300 per click.

Not to mention, organic CTRs are declining, and zero-click queries are rising.

Bottom line: If you’re not creating 10x quality content based on strategic keyword research that satisfies searcher intent and aligns back to business goals, you’re completely wasting your time.

So, that’s exactly what we did. The outcome? We grew from 19k monthly organic sessions to over 100k monthly organic sessions in approximately 14 months, leading to an acquisition by Outreach.io

We validated our hard work by measuring organic growth (traffic and keywords) against our email list growth and revenue, which correlated positively, as we expected. 

Organic Growth Highlights

January 2017–June 2018

As soon as I was hired at Sales Hacker as Director of Marketing, I began making SEO improvements from day one. While I didn’t waste any time, you’ll also notice that there was no silver bullet.

This was the result of daily blocking and tackling. Pure execution and no growth hacks or gimmicks. However, I firmly believe that the homepage redesign (in July 2017) was a tremendous enabler of growth.

Organic Growth to Present Day

I officially left Sales Hacker in August of 2018, when the company was acquired by Outreach.io. However, I thought it would be interesting to see the lasting impact of my work by sharing a present-day screenshot of the organic traffic trend, via Google Analytics. There appears to be a dip immediately following my departure, however, it looks like my predecessor, Colin Campbell, has picked up the slack and got the train back on the rails. Well done!

Unique considerations — Some context behind Sales Hacker’s growth

Before I dive into our findings, here's a little context behind Sales Hacker's growth:

Sales Hacker’s blog is 100 percent community-generated — This means we didn’t pay “content marketers” to write for us. Sales Hacker is a publishing hub led by B2B sales, marketing, and customer success contributors. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time — on one hand, the site gets loads of amazing free content. On the other hand, the posts are not even close to being optimized upon receiving the first draft. That means, the editorial process is intense and laborious.

Aggressive publishing cadence (4–5x per week) — Sales Hacker built an incredible reputation in the B2B Sales Tech niche — we became known as the go-to destination for unbiased thought leadership for practitioners in the space (think of Sales Hacker as the sales equivalent to Growth Hackers). Due to high demand and popularity, we had more content available than we could handle. While it’s a good problem to have, we realized we needed to keep shipping content in order to avoid a content pipeline blockage and a backlog of unhappy contributors.

We had to “reverse engineer” SEO — In short, we got free community-generated and sponsored content from top sales and marketing leaders at SaaS companies like Intercom, HubSpot, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Adobe and many others, but none of it was strategically built for SEO out of the box. We also had contributors like John Barrows, Richard Harris, Lauren Bailey, Tito Bohrt, and Trish Bertuzzi giving us a treasure trove of amazing content to work with. However, we had to collaborate with each contributor from beginning to end and guide them through the entire process. Topical ideation (based on what they were qualified to write about), keyword research, content structure, content type, etc. So, the real secret sauce was in our editorial process. Shout out to my teammate Alina Benny for learning and inheriting my SEO process after we hired her to run content marketing. She crushed it for us!

Almost all content was evergreen and highly tactical — I made it a rule that we’d never agree to publish fluffy pieces, whether it was sponsored or not. Plain and simple. Because we didn’t allow “content marketers” to publish with us, our content had a positive reputation, since it was coming from highly respected practitioners. We focused on evergreen content strategies in order to fuel our organic growth. Salespeople don’t want fluff. They want actionable and tactical advice they can implement immediately. I firmly believe that achieving audience satisfaction with our content was a major factor in our SEO success.

Outranking the “big guys” — If you look at the highest-ranking sales content, it’s the usual suspects. HubSpot, Salesforce, Forbes, Inc, and many other sites that were far more powerful than Sales Hacker. But it didn’t matter as much as traditional SEO wisdom tells us, largely due to the fact that we had authenticity and rawness to our content. We realized most sales practitioners would rather read insights from their peers in their community, above the traditional “Ultimate Guides,” which tended to be a tad dry.

We did VERY little manual link building — Our link building was literally an email from me, or our CEO, to a site we had a great relationship with. “Yo, can we get a link?” It was that simple. We never did large-scale outreach to build links. We were a very lean, remote digital marketing team, and therefore lacked the bandwidth to allocate resources to link building. However, we knew that we would acquire links naturally due to the popularity of our brand and the highly tactical nature of our content.

Our social media and brand firepower helped us to naturally acquire links — It helps A LOT when you have a popular brand on social media and a well-known CEO who authored an essential book called “Hacking Sales”. Most of Sales Hacker’s articles would get widely circulated by over 50+ SaaS partners which would help drive natural links.

Updating stale content was the lowest hanging fruit — The biggest chunk of our new-found organic traffic came from updating / refreshing old posts. We have specific examples of this coming up later in the post.

Email list growth was the “north star” metric — Because Sales Hacker is not a SaaS company, and the “product” is the audience, there was no need for aggressive website CTAs like “book a demo.” Instead, we built a very relationship heavy, referral-based sales cadence that was supported by marketing automation, so list growth was the metric to pay attention to. This was also a key component to positioning Sales Hacker for acquisition. Here's how the email growth progression was trending.

So, now that I’ve set the stage, let’s dive into exactly how I built this SEO strategy.

Bonus: You can also watch the interview I had with Dan Shure on the Evolving SEO Podcast, where I breakdown this strategy in great detail.

1) Audience research

Imagine you are the new head of marketing for a well-known startup brand. You are tasked with tackling growth and need to show fast results — where do you start?

That’s the exact position I was in. There were a million things I could have done, but I decided to start by surveying and interviewing our audience and customers.

Because Sales Hacker is a business built on content, I knew this was the right choice.

I also knew that I would be able to stand out in an unglamorous industry by talking to customers about their content interests.

Think about it: B2B tech sales is all about numbers and selling stuff. Very few brands are really taking the time to learn about the types of content their audiences would like to consume.

When I was asking people if I could talk to them about their media and content interests, their response was: “So, wait, you’re actually not trying to sell me something? Sure! Let’s talk!”

Here’s what I set out to learn:

Goal 1 — Find one major brand messaging insight.

Goal 2 — Find one major audience development insight.

Goal 3 — Find one major content strategy insight.

Goal 4 — Find one major UX / website navigation insight.

Goal 5 — Find one major email marketing insight.

In short, I accomplished all of these learning goals and implemented changes based on what the audience told me.

If you’re curious, you can check out my entire UX research process for yourself, but here are some of the key learnings:

Based on these outcomes, I was able to determine the following:

Topical “buckets” to focus on — Based on the most common daily tasks, the data told us to build content on sales prospecting, building partnerships and referral programs, outbound sales, sales management, sales leadership, sales training, and sales ops.

Thought leadership — 62 percent of site visitors said they kept coming back purely due to thought leadership content, so we had to double down on that.

Content Types — Step by step guides, checklists, and templates were highly desired. This told me that fluffy BS content had to be ruthlessly eliminated at all costs.

Sales Hacker Podcast — 76 percent of respondents said they would listen to the Sales Hacker Podcast (if it existed), so we had to launch it!

2) SEO site audit — Key findings

I can’t fully break down how to do an SEO site audit step by step in this post (because it would be way too much information), but I will share the key findings and takeaways from our own Site Audit that led to some major improvements in our website performance.

Lack of referring domain growth

Sales Hacker was not able to acquire referring domains at the same rate as competitors. I knew this wasn’t because of a link building acquisition problem, but due to a content quality problem.

Lack of organic keyword growth

Sales Hacker had been publishing blog content for years (before I joined) and there wasn’t much to show for it from an organic traffic standpoint. However, I do feel the brand experienced a remarkable social media uplift by building content that was helpful and engaging. 

Sales Hacker did happen to get lucky and rank for some non-branded keywords by accident, but the amount of content published versus the amount of traffic they were getting wasn’t making sense. 

To me, this immediately screamed that there was an issue with on-page optimization and keyword targeting. It wasn’t anyone's fault - this was largely due to a startup founder thinking about building a community first, and then bringing SEO into the picture later. 

At the end of the day, Sales Hacker was only ranking for 6k keywords at an estimated organic traffic cost of $8.9k — which is nothing. By the time Sales Hacker got acquired, the site had an organic traffic cost of $122k.

Non-optimized URLs

This is common among startups that are just looking to get content out. This is just one example, but truth be told, there was a whole mess of non-descriptive URLs that had to get cleaned up.

Poor internal linking structure

The internal linking concentration was poorly distributed. Most of the equity was pointing to some of the lowest value pages on the site.

Poor taxonomy, site structure, and navigation

I created a mind-map of how I envisioned the new site structure and internal linking scheme. I wanted all the content pages to be organized into categories and subcategories.

My goals with the new proposed taxonomy would accomplish the following:

Increase engagement from natural site visitor exploration

Allow users to navigate to the most important content on the site

Improve landing page visibility from an increase in relevant internal links pointing to them.

Topical directories and category pages eliminated with redirects

Topical landing pages used to exist on SalesHacker.com, but they were eliminated with 301 redirects and disallowed in robots.txt. I didn’t agree with this configuration. Example: /social-selling/

Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash duplicate content with canonical errors

Multiple pages for the same exact intent. Failing to specify the canonical version.

Branded search problems — “Sales Hacker Webinar”

Some of the site’s most important content is not discoverable from search due to technical problems. For example, a search for “Sales Hacker Webinar” returns irrelevant results in Google because there isn’t an optimized indexable hub page for webinar content. It doesn’t get that much search volume (0–10 monthly volume according to Keyword Explorer), but still, that’s 10 potential customers you are pissing off every month by not fixing this.

3) Homepage — Before and after

Sooooo, this beauty right here (screenshot below) was the homepage I inherited in early 2017 when I took over the site.

Fast forward six months later, and this was the new homepage we built after doing audience and customer research…

New homepage goals

Tell people EXACTLY what Sales Hacker is and what we do.

Make it stupidly simple to sign up for the email list.

Allow visitors to easily and quickly find the content they want.

Add social proof.

Improve internal linking.

I’m proud to say, that it all went according to plan. I’m also proud to say that as a result, organic traffic skyrocketed shortly after.

Special Note: Major shout out to Joshua Giardino, the lead developer who worked with me on the homepage redesign. Josh is one of my closest friends and my marketing mentor. I would not be writing this case study today without him!

There wasn’t one super measurable thing we isolated in order to prove this. We just knew intuitively that there was a positive correlation with organic traffic growth, and figured it was due to the internal linking improvements and increased average session duration from improving the UX.

4) Updating and optimizing existing content

Special note: We enforced “Ditch the Pitch”

Before I get into the nitty-gritty SEO stuff, I’ll tell you right now that one of the most important things we did was blockade contributors and sponsors from linking to product pages and injecting screenshots of product features into blog articles, webinars, etc.

Side note: One thing we also had to do was add a nofollow attribute to all outbound links within sponsored content that sent referral traffic back to partner websites (which is no longer applicable due to the acquisition).

The #1 complaint we discovered in our audience research was that people were getting irritated with content that was “too salesy” or “too pitchy” — and rightfully so, because who wants to get pitched at all day?

So we made it all about value. Pure education. School of hard knocks style insights. Actionable and tactical. No fluff. No nonsense. To the point.

And that’s where things really started to take off.

Before and after: “Best sales books”

What you are about to see is classic SEO on-page optimization at its finest.

This is what the post originally looked like (and it didn’t rank well for “best sales books).

And then after…

And the result…

Before and after: “Sales operations”

What we noticed here was a crappy article attempting to explain the role of sales operations.

Here are the steps we took to rank #1 for “Sales Operations:”

Built a super optimized mega guide on the topic.

Since the old crappy article had some decent links, we figured let’s 301 redirect it to the new mega guide.

Promote it on social, email and normal channels.

Here’s what the new guide on Sales Ops looks like…

And the result…

5) New content opportunities

One thing I quickly realized Sales Hacker had to its advantage was topical authority. Exploiting this was going to be our secret weapon, and boy, did we do it well: 

“Cold calling”

We knew we could win this SERP by creating content that was super actionable and tactical with examples.

Most of the competing articles in the SERP were definition style and theory-based, or low-value roundups from domains with high authority.

In this case, DA doesn’t really matter. The better man wins.

“Best sales tools”

Because Sales Hacker is an aggregator website, we had the advantage of easily out-ranking vendor websites for best and top queries.

Of course, it also helps when you build a super helpful mega list of tools. We included over 150+ options to choose from in the list. Whereas SERP competitors did not even come close.

“Channel sales”

Notice how Sales Hacker’s article is from 2017 still beats HubSpot’s 2019 version. Why? Because we probably satisfied user intent better than them.

For this query, we figured out that users really want to know about Direct Sales vs Channel Sales, and how they intersect.

HubSpot went for the generic, “factory style” Ultimate Guide tactic.

Don’t get me wrong, it works very well for them (especially with their 91 DA), but here is another example where nailing the user intent wins.

“Sales excel templates”

This was pure lead gen gold for us. Everyone loves templates, especially sales excel templates.

The SERP was easily winnable because the competition was so BORING in their copy. Not only did we build a better content experience, but we used numbers, lists, and power words that salespeople like to see, such as FAST and Pipeline Growth.

Special note: We never used long intros

The one trend you’ll notice is that all of our content gets RIGHT TO THE POINT. This is inherently obvious, but we also uncovered it during audience surveying. Salespeople don’t have time for fluff. They need to cut to the chase ASAP, get what they came for, and get back to selling. It’s really that straightforward.

When you figure out something THAT important to your audience, (like keeping intros short and sweet), and then you continuously leverage it to your advantage, it’s really powerful.

6) Featured Snippets

Featured snippets became a huge part of our quest for SERP dominance. Even for SERPs where organic clicks have reduced, we didn’t mind as much because we knew we were getting the snippet and free brand exposure.

Here are some of the best-featured snippets we got!

Featured snippet: “Channel sales”

Featured snippet: “Sales pipeline management”

Featured snippet: “BANT”

Featured snippet: “Customer success manager”

Featured snippet: “How to manage a sales team”

Featured snippet: “How to get past the gatekeeper”

Featured snippet: “Sales forecast modeling”

Featured snippet: “How to build a sales pipeline”

7) So, why did Sales Hacker get acquired?

At first, it seems weird. Why would a SaaS company buy a blog? It really comes down to one thing — community (and the leverage you get with it).

Two learnings from this acquisition are:

1. It may be worth acquiring a niche media brand in your space

2. It may be worth starting your own niche media brand in your space

I feel like most B2B companies (not all, but most) come across as only trying to sell a product — because most of them are. You don’t see the majority of B2B brands doing a good job on social. They don’t know how to market to emotion. They completely ignore top-funnel in many cases and, as a result, get minimal engagement with their content.

There’s really so many areas of opportunity to exploit in B2B marketing if you know how to leverage that human emotion — it’s easy to stand out if you have a soul. Sales Hacker became that “soul” for Outreach — that voice and community.

But one final reason why a SaaS company would buy a media brand is to get the edge over a rival competitor. Especially in a niche where two giants are battling over the top spot.

In this case, it’s Outreach’s good old arch-nemesis, Salesloft. You see, both Outreach and Salesloft are fighting tooth and nail to win a new category called “Sales Engagement”.

As part of the acquisition process, I prepared a deck that highlighted how beneficial it would be for Outreach to acquire Sales Hacker, purely based on the traffic advantage it would give them over Salesloft.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Total organic keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays that Sales Hacker is ranking for more total organic keywords than Salesloft and Outreach combined.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Estimated traffic cost

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the cost of the organic traffic compared by domain. Sales Hacker ranks for more commercial terms due to having the highest traffic cost.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Rank zone distributions

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays the rank zone distribution by domain. Sales Hacker ranked for more organic keywords across all search positions.

Sales Hacker vs. Salesloft vs Outreach — Support vs. demand keywords

This chart from 2018 (data exported via SEMrush), displays support vs demand keywords by domain. Because Sales Hacker did not have a support portal, all its keywords were inherently demand focused.

Meanwhile, Outreach was mostly ranking for support keywords at the time. Compared to Salesloft, they were at a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t be writing this right now without the help, support, and trust that I got from so many people along the way.

Joshua Giardino — Lead developer at Sales Hacker, my marketing mentor and older brother I never had. Couldn’t have done this without you!

Max Altschuler — Founder of Sales Hacker, and the man who gave me a shot at the big leagues. You built an incredible platform and I am eternally grateful to have been a part of it.

Scott Barker — Head of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. Thanks for being in the trenches with me! It’s a pleasure to look back on this wild ride, and wonder how we pulled this off.

Alina Benny — My marketing protege. Super proud of your growth! You came into Sales Hacker with no fear and seized the opportunity.

Mike King — Founder of iPullRank, and the man who gave me my very first shot in SEO. Thanks for taking a chance on an unproven kid from the Bronx who was always late to work.

Yaniv Masjedi — Our phenomenal CMO at Nextiva. Thank you for always believing in me and encouraging me to flex my thought leadership muscle. Your support has enabled me to truly become a high-impact growth marketer.

Thanks for reading — tell me what you think below in the comments!

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