#072 Content Marketing VIP Newsletter
Learn why you shouldn't hide content behind too many clicks, most ignored content distribution tactic, and more.
🎯 Actionable Insights
💡 1. Don’t hide your content behind too many clicks
One of the mistakes of blogs with dozens of posts is content accessibility. If you visit the blog page, you'll only see a few of latest blog articles.
And, the only way to access the older articles is by pagination links like this:
This might seem okay from a reader’s point of view. But it will be a complicated scenario for a crawler (especially for a larger site).
"When content is buried hundreds of links deep, it sends a strong message to the search engines that you don’t think the content is important.
The pages will probably be crawled less often, if at all, and they probably will not rank very well.
If just one page in that long-chain returns an error (e.g., because of a temporary server hiccup), the crawler won't be able to discover any of the other pages downstream."
– Matthew Henry (SEO tool developer at Portent).
Issues with this approach:
Hard to find articles by topic or date
The crawler needs to follow lots of links to get older blog archive pages
Better approach:
Add blog categories so that users can sort articles by topic, date, or format. This helps users and bots multiple ways to access older posts.
An example:
The second approach is about adding midpoint links for pagination to make the older articles a few clicks away from the home page.
An example:
👉 Recommended reading: How Site Pagination and Click Depth Affect SEO
💡 2. Elements That Make Ahrefs's Landing Page So Good
There is no single right way of creating or writing landing pages.
But when it comes to using social proof, Ahrefs’s home page is one of the best.
Here are five important elements of high-converting landing pages →
1. Clear message
The first thing users will see on the page is the above-the-fold section.
Ahrefs wanted to shift from positioning just as a backlink research tool to an all-in-one SEO tool for everyone. And the message clearly conveys this idea.
Takeaway: Ensure that the above-the-fold section answers these questions right away:
Who is this for?
What benefits will I get?
2. Customer-shared images
Adding human photos strengthens social proof. You might have seen testimonials with a tiny image of the customer.
Here, Ahrefs stand out by adding large-sized images of customer-shared images.
Takeaway: Never miss a chance to humanize your marketing by adding human photos.
3. Relevant testimonials
The Ahrefs tool has multiple target audiences, such as:
Bloggers
Content marketers
SEO folks
Agencies
SaaS
Therefore adding testimonials only from bloggers or SEO professionals doesn't make it completely relevant to other audience bases.
The solution?
Ahrefs categorized their testimonials for every set of audiences.
That way, a blogger can easily know what other bloggers say about the tool. Likewise, SEO folks will see testimonials from other SEO pros.
Takeaway: Categorizing testimonials for different user bases is a great practice.
And, if your product doesn't have multiple audience bases like Ahrefs, ensure you're adding testimonials from the people of the same industry as your prospects.
4. Show, don’t tell
Whether you have a complex product like Ahrefs or a simple newsletter subscription, you should follow the "show, don't tell" approach.
Takeaway: Help your audience visualize your product's features/benefits/experience with either an illustration or a quick video.
5. Third-party reviews
Many people/brands put fake positive reviews (even fake images, too) on the landing page to persuade the users.
But this cheap trick doesn’t always work. “1 out of 3 consumers suspect FAKE reviews if there’s nothing negative" (From Revoo research report).
The solution?
Leverage third-party reviews as Ahrefs did on the home page. They have added reviews from third-party sites like:
G2
Capterra
Trustpilot, etc.
Ahrefs has linked these testimonials to the source page so anyone can verify the reviews immediately.
Takeaway: Showing third-party reviews (even better linking to the source) boost your credibility.
👉 Learn SEO-Driven Content Marketing With Real Examples (Yearly offer).
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💬 Bite-sized Insights
💡 1. Most Ignored Content distribution tactic [But you shouldn’t]
“Super easy content distribution tactic:
Google best [your industry] newsletters
Here’s an example:
Subscribe to the ~20 most relevant
Read the newsletter! reply with thanks, feedback, ideas
Once every few months, send them your best article and ask if they want to feature it :)."
👉 Insights from Ryan Law
💡 2. Improve Your eCommerce rankings
“Many ecom sites have powerful links pointing to site search URLs which are often blocked by robots.txt.
Redirect these (where it makes sense) to product/category URLs so those links can be 'seen' and help improve rankings.
You won't find these links in GSC because the URLs are blocked in robots.txt.
Instead, use semrush/ahrefs/Majestic to scope out those links to your site search URLs.”
👉 Insights from Luke Carthy
🗓️ Learning Resources and Tools
💡 1. Find questions that real people are asking on Google [Free SEO research tool]
‘Answer Socrates’ is a free research tool that helps you find all the possible questions on a specific topic.
This tool is an alternative to AnswerThePublic but is free.
What is this for?
“Socrates discovers questions that real people are asking on Google to help you write a thorough research-based article, answer every possible question about your product, brainstorm ideas, and gain deeper insight on almost any topic.”
How does it work?
“The tool combines a brute-force of Google Suggests, People Also Asked featured questions, and Google Trends data to show you relevant and interesting questions.”
👉 Find questions using Answer Socrates (Try for free)
💡 3. Let's never talk about SEO audits again
This will be a great read if you're involved in doing SEO audits for clients.
In this guide, Tom Critchlow shares insights on:
Examples of bad SEO audits
What makes a good SEO strategy (balance between details and ideas)
“A plan of action, however, isn't enough. You need to ensure your strategy is compelling – and that requires using stories to bridge the gap between your presenting ideas and the technical details of what you want to get done.”
👉 Read the full guide here (by Tom Critchlow)
📹 Behind The Scene
Non-SEO update.
Last week I visited Darjeeling (one of India's most charming hill stations) and Nepal😊.
This is to remind you that sometimes you need breaks from your busy schedules to give yourself time.