Sandeep Mallya

SE Ranking vs SpyFu: Which SEO Tool is Better?

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:24:49 +0000

SE Ranking and SpyFu are two of the most popular tools in the SEO marketplace. SpyFu has created a niche for itself in the competitor analysis space, while SE Ranking has quickly garnered a reputation for being a comprehensive SEO tool.

They are also two of the most economically priced tools on the market.

So which tool is better? Which tool should you buy? Let’s find out!

In this article, I’ll compare SE Ranking with SpyFu and help you decide which SEO tool you should go for.

I’ll be evaluating these tools on the following parameters:

Keyword research
Competitor analysis
PPC analysis
Pricing plans

Let’s get started.

Introduction to SE Ranking and SpyFu

If you’re already aware of these tools, you can skip this section and move over to the comparison of keyword research features. For those of you who are not, here’s a brief overview of SE Ranking and SpyFu.

SE Ranking: Overview

SE Ranking is a cloud-based SEO platform for entrepreneurs, agencies, and online marketing professionals. Launched in 2013, SE Ranking’s headquartered in London, UK, with offices in the US, Ukraine, and Belarus.

SE Ranking offers a complete set of tools for SEO audit, keyword research, rank tracking, competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and much more.

While it’s relatively new compared to other SEO tools on the market, SE Ranking has quickly gained a stellar reputation in the SEO community and is currently used by over 400,000 users across the world.

SE Ranking offers 3 pricing plans and its basic plan starts at $39/month (more on this in the pricing section.) You can sign up for a 2-week free trial on any of the three plans.

I’d encourage you to sign up for a free trial as it’ll allow you to implement some of the action items discussed in this article.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

SpyFu: Overview

Founded in 2006, SpyFu is somewhat of a veteran in the marketplace of SEO tools. As you may have already guessed, SpyFu lets you spy on your competitors’ online strategies and analytics. You can use it to gather insights on your organic as well as paid competitors.

SpyFu collects its data from Google search results in the US and UK. As such, the tool won’t show you data outside of these countries, which is a major drawback of the tool.

SpyFu offers a free forever plan and two paid plans. There’s no free trial offered on any of their paid plans, but the free plan is useful in providing you with surface-level data on your competitors. So I’d urge you to sign up for their free plan to get a deeper understanding of some of the features discussed below.

SpyFu (Free Plan)

With that quick intro of the two tools out of the way, it’s now time to put these tools to the test.

Let’s start by reviewing their keyword research features.

Keyword Research: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Keyword research is the most fundamental aspect of SEO. In order to have a deeper understanding of what keywords your target audience is searching for, you need to develop a keyword research framework.

A strong keyword research framework allows you to align your goals with your strategy. This is where competent SEO tools step in and empower you with the necessary data and intelligence required to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

In this section, we’ll compare keyword research features offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu and find out which tool is more suited for this all-important SEO task.

SE Ranking: Keyword Research Features

When you enter your seed keywords in SE Ranking, you’ll get an overview of important keyword metrics for your keywords like search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC.

But the real value of this tool is in the keyword variations it provides for your seed keywords.

You’ll find these keyword variations grouped into 3 categories — similar keywords, related keywords, and low search volume keywords.

For a deeper analysis of the keywords, you can either click the “Keyword suggestions” tab in the sidebar or hit the “View Detailed Report” button under each column.

You’ll find a complete list of keyword variations for your seed keywords, alongside important keyword metrics.

You can apply filters to arrive at the most relevant keyword ideas for your site.

In the overview report, you’ll also find the top 5 organic search results for your seed keywords, alongside traffic stats and the total number of keywords they rank for.

These are the top 5 ranking pages for your target keywords on Google. These are the pages you’ll be competing against if you decide to target these keywords (and their variations) in your campaign.

To view more organic search results, simply click on the “View Detailed Report” button. This will open up the full report and you can analyze all the top pages that are ranking for your target keywords.

SE Ranking Free Trial

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SpyFu: Keyword Research Features

There are two ways you can do keyword research on SpyFu: you can either perform traditional keyword research or do competitor-based keyword research. SpyFu is better at the latter than the former, and you’re more likely to find keywords with traffic potential by doing analysis of your competitors’ domains.

When you enter your competitor’s domain in SpyFu, you’ll get an overview report featuring your competitor’s top organic and paid keywords.

To get a complete list of keywords, hit the “View All Organic Keywords” link below the top keywords column.

Once you’ve generated a list of keywords your competitor currently ranks for, you can use the filters on top to narrow down the list and target keywords that you can realistically rank for.

You can also perform traditional keyword research by entering your seed keywords in the SpyFu search box.

SpyFu will then generate a keyword research overview report featuring keyword metrics like monthly volume and estimated clicks. You’ll also find similar keywords and question-based keywords for your seed keywords, alongside monthly search volume.

To view more keyword variations, click on the “View all” link below each of these columns. You can also hit the “Related Keywords” tab in the sidebar to land on the same report.

Which Tool is Better for Keyword Research?

SE Ranking is a far superior tool for keyword research. While SpyFu is helpful for churning out competitor-based keywords, SE Ranking provides better keyword variations and more thorough data for those keywords.

It’s also easier to do keyword research in SE Ranking and the slick UI ensures that you get the right keyword data in a quicker and more efficient manner.

Winner: SE Ranking

Competitor Analysis: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

If you’d like to stay ahead of the curve, you need to devote some time to competitor analysis. Why? Because you get to learn what keywords your main competitors are ranking for, what kind of ads they are running, and more importantly, the level of engagement their content receives.

Competitor analysis will help you uncover deep insights into what you’re doing right and what you could be doing to outrank your chief rivals in search results.

Both SE Ranking and SpyFu have nifty features when it comes to competitor analysis. Let’s quickly run through some of these features and determine which tool does it better.

SE Ranking: Competitor Analysis Features

SE Ranking has all the necessary features required to conduct competitor analysis.

Hit the “Competitor Research” tab and enter your main competitor’s domain in the search box.

SE Ranking will generate an overview report featuring data on your competitor’s organic traffic and paid traffic.

To deep dive into your competitor’s organic keywords, scroll down till you find the “Organic Keywords” column and hit “View Detailed Report.”

You’ll get a full list of keywords your competitor is currently ranking for.

Use the advanced filtering options here to get the data you’re looking for.

To see your competitor’s top-ranking pages, hit the “Pages” link in the sidebar.

This will show you pages on your competitor’s site that get the most search traffic.

You’ll see the traffic share and traffic estimations for each page. You can also view all the keywords each page ranks for.

The Top Pages report will reveal those pages and posts on your competitor’s site that receive the most search traffic. Spend some time in this report, visit these pages, analyze them in detail, and then decide for yourself whether you can reverse-engineer some of these pages, improve upon the content, and in the process, steal some of their organic traffic.

SpyFu: Competitor Analysis Features

SpyFu’s true strength resides in competitive analysis.

Enter your competitor’s domain in the search box to get a quick overview of the domain’s top organic keywords, estimated SEO clicks, paid keywords, estimated PPC clicks, and other metrics.

You’ll also see your competitor’s top pages:

These are the pages that are generating the most search traffic. Pay special attention to this section of the report as these are the pages you’d want to replicate and improve upon on your site.

You’ll also see “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” — these are keyword recommendations based on your competitor’s success in Google Ads.

And your competitor’s advertising history.

If you run ads on Google, then this data should really help you scale up your campaigns.

Which Tool is Better for Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis is easier to do in SE Ranking and the reports are more accurate and relevant.

If we were doing this comparison in 2019, then SpyFu would definitely emerge as the winner. But in 2020, SE Ranking has added a host of new features and data points to present a far more comprehensive picture of your competitors’ top organic keywords, backlink profile, and best-ranking pages.

Winner: SE Ranking

PPC Analysis: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Do you use Google Ads to drive traffic to your website? Then you probably need a reliable tool to arm you with data that can help you run effective campaigns on Google and create ads that resonate with your target audience.

Let’s take a deeper look at the PPC features offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu and find out which tool is more adept at PPC analysis.

SE Ranking: PPC Analysis

When you enter your target keywords in SE Ranking, you’ll see the estimated CPC for those keywords in the overview report.

You also get to see the paid results for your target keywords.

To view paid results for your seed keywords, hit the “Paid results” link in the sidebar.

The report will show you all the domains that are bidding for your target keywords on Google Ads.

To view the ad copies, just move your cursor over the “Ad” button against each site.

That’s the extent of SE Ranking’s PPC analysis capabilities. While you can get a decent amount of keywords to target for your PPC campaigns, the PPC intelligence that’s necessary to make informed advertising decisions is sadly lacking.

SpyFu: PPC Analysis

In contrast to SE Ranking, SpyFu has a lot more features for PPC analysis. In addition to providing you in-depth data on paid keywords and PPC ads, you also get access to features like AdWords Advisor and AdWords Templates.

To perform PPC research on SpyFu, hit the “PPC Research” tab from the top menu, and enter your competitor’s domain.

SpyFu will then generate a PPC overview report featuring that domain’s paid keywords, estimated monthly PPC clicks, monthly PPC budget, and other PPC metrics.

Below this data, you’ll find a wealth of PPC keyword data in the “Top AdWords Buy Recommendations” and “Most Successful Advertisers and Their Best Ads” sections.

Hit “See All Recommendations” below the column to view more AdWords keyword recommendations.

The other useful PPC feature in SpyFu is the AdWords Templates. These are pre-written PPC ads handcrafted by the SpyFu team to get your Google Ads campaigns up and running.

To access these templates, head over to:

PPC Research > AdWords Templates > Select Industry from the drop-down list > Continue to download

This will start the download of all ad templates for that specific industry. You can then import these templates to your Google Ads account.

Note: To access AdWords Templates, you need to upgrade to SpyFu’s basic plan ($39/mo).

Which Tool is Better for PPC Analysis?

With features like AdWords Advisor and AdWords Templates, SpyFu provides a better bang for the buck if you’re evaluating this tool purely from a PPC perspective.

SE Ranking is good for surface-level PPC data, but for deeper insights and more actionable recommendations, you’re better off signing up for SpyFu.

Winner: SpyFu

Pricing Plans: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Both SE Ranking and SpyFu are two of the most economically priced tools in the SEO marketplace. They break away from the standard industry practice of charging close to $100 for the basic plan.

Let’s quickly examine the pricing plans offered by SE Ranking and SpyFu.

SE Ranking Pricing Plans

SE Ranking offers 3 pricing plans:

Essential – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
Pro – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
Business – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

* The prices on the above plans change based on the number of keyword rankings you select. For instance, if you’d like to track 500 keyword rankings in the Optimum plan, the pricing changes to $54/mo. You can save 20% on any plan by switching to annual billing.

If you’re an SEO beginner or run a small business or blog, then the Essential plan ($39/mo) should do the trick. It includes all the features we’ve discussed above. As it’s the basic plan, there are certain limitations on the data you can access. For instance, you can only monitor up to 5,000 backlinks and run an audit for 25,000 pages.

If you’re an agency owner or part of a company that’s scaling up, then you should go with the Pro plan ($89/mo). This plan allows you to add unlimited websites, audit 100,000 pages, and monitor up to 25,000 backlinks. You also get access to advanced reporting features.

If you’re part of a large organization, then opt for the Business plan ($189/mo). With this plan, you can audit up to 250,000 pages, monitor 75,000 backlinks, and get access to SE Ranking’s API.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

SpyFu Pricing Plans

The best part about SpyFu is that you can start using it for free and perform unlimited searches. But as with any free plan, there are several restrictions. To unlock more data and access advanced features, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans.

Here’s SpyFu’s current pricing structure:

Free for Life – $0/mo (unlimited searches, 10 search results)
Basic – $39/mo (unlimited search results, 5k weekly tracked keyword rankings)
Professional – $78/mo (15k weekly tracked keyword rankings, custom branded reports)

You can save $69 on the basic plan and $249 on the professional plan by opting for annual billing.

SpyFu (Free Plan)

Final Verdict: SE Ranking vs SpyFu

Despite competing in the same space, SE Ranking and SpyFu are vastly different SEO tools. SpyFu is a decent competitor research and PPC analysis tool. On the other hand, SE Ranking is a powerful all-purpose SEO software that includes tools for website audit, competitor research, keyword research, PPC analysis, among other things.

If you’re looking for an SEO tool that has all the essential features to help you rank higher in SERPs, then you should definitely consider SE Ranking. As explained in detail above, SE Ranking beats SpyFu on keyword research and competitor research parameters. Plus, you also get access to must-have features like Site Audit, Backlink Checker, and On-Page SEO Checker.

That said, if you’re looking for a competitor research tool with advanced PPC analysis features, then SpyFu is a better choice. SE Ranking’s PPC analysis features are simply not up to scratch.

In the end, the choice between SE Ranking and SpyFu comes down to your priority at the moment. If PPC is a higher priority than SEO for you, then go with SpyFu. But if your need of the hour is SEO, then SE Ranking gives the best overall value. And with plans starting at $39/month, it’s easy on the pockets as well.

SE Ranking Free Trial

Get 14-day free access to SE Ranking's complete toolkit

(No credit card required)

SpyFu (Free Plan)

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Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 17 September 2020 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness.

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How to Get High Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques)

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:24:01 +0000

Despite numerous algorithm updates, link building still remains one of the strongest ranking signals used by search engines.

Yet our link building efforts mostly extend to commenting on blogs in the same niche (“nofollow” backlinks with no link juice) or contributing guest posts to simply brag about where we’ve got our content published (under strict scrutiny by Google).

But if you’d like to increase your site’s authority and rank higher than your competitors in search engine result pages (SERPs), you need to build authority backlinks on a consistent basis. In other words, you need to follow effective link building strategies that deliver results.

In this article, we’ll reveal 25 proven techniques to get high-quality backlinks that will help you stay ahead of the competition and rank higher in SERPs.

No time to read this guide right now? No worries! Just click the link below to receive a free PDF copy of this guide, so you can read it at a more convenient time.

Download our Link Building Guide for free

Here’s what this link building guide will cover. Feel free to jump to any section of your preference:

25 Proven Tips to Get High-Quality Backlinks

1. Publish Evergreen Content

Natural links (also called editorial links) are the kind of links Google wants you to build.

This quote from Matt Cutts, former head of Google Web Spam, is from 2009 and it’s still as relevant as it was back then:

Want to know the best way to build links naturally? Publish evergreen content.

Evergreen content is content that stays relevant in the long run. Unlike news articles and posts on trending topics (posts on Fortnite, Pokemon Go, etc.), evergreen posts provide value to the readers a long time after the post was originally published.

Evergreen posts don’t just tend to rank higher on Google, but they also attract a high number of backlinks. In order words, evergreen content is link-worthy content. It’s the type of content that attracts editorial links.

Evergreen posts are also tough to outrank in SERPs.

Ahrefs published an in-depth post on “evergreen content” in which they explain how difficult it is to outrank Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO for beginner SEO queries because of the insane amount of backlinks the guide has acquired over a period of time.

So how do you create evergreen content? Follow these three steps:

Find keywords with a decent search volume – Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool (or any other keyword research tool of your choice) to find keywords with a decent search volume. Make sure the shortlisted keywords are not seasonal and have maintained a good search volume consistently in the last few months.
Create 10x content – Once you’ve identified the keywords you’d like to target in your post, you need to make sure your content is actually 10 times better than the highest ranking search result for the keywords. This type of content is referred to as 10x content in the SEO community. If your post is only slightly better (1x or 2x better) than the top-ranking post, the chances of it getting outranked are quite high. But when you publish content that is 10x better, like in the case of Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, it’s tough for your competition to beat you in the SERPs.
Refresh and relaunch – Just because the post is evergreen and ranking in the top 3 search results, there’s no guarantee it will maintain that status in the long run. Over time, the organic traffic may drop and it may lose its ability to generate links naturally. This is when you need to audit your content and update it with fresh insights to stay relevant. I keep updating and relaunching top-ranking posts on my blog whenever I notice a declining trend in organic traffic. And you should do the same to your evergreen posts in order to maintain their top-ranking status in SERPs.

Bottom line? In order to attract high-quality natural links, publish evergreen blog posts that stay relevant long after you’ve published them.

2. Steal Your Competitors’ Backlinks

In some cases, your evergreen content may not be able to generate authoritative links naturally, or even if it does, it may take a long time to do so.

Without backlinks, you may be able to rank on page 1 for your target keywords, but you’ll find it tough to reach the coveted top 3 spots on Google. As a result, in order to beat your competitors in SERPs, you need to steal their best backlinks.

You can do this with a combination of competitor analysis and blogger outreach. Here’s a quick outline of how you should proceed:

First, check out the top 3 search results for your target keyword terms. You can do this by performing a quick Google search, but since Google rankings fluctuate often, I’d suggest you use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs to see if these pages have been ranking on top consistently, at least for the last 4-6 months.

Second, you need to publish content that’s just as in-depth and comprehensive, if not more, than that of your organic competitors. As explained previously, create content that is 10 times better than the top-ranking post for your target keyword terms. Add your own unique insights and perspective to make it as link-worthy as possible. Aim at making the post a go-to resource for your audience for that specific topic.

Third, identify your competitors’ backlinks i.e., the backlinks that point to the top-3 ranking pages for your target keywords. You can get this data with Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool. Sign up for a 2-week free trial of Semrush Pro here to get full access to this tool.

You’ll view the total number of referring domains and backlinks that point to your competitor URL. Click on the number of backlinks to view the URLs that are linking to your competitor’s page. You can narrow this list down by selecting only “dofollow” and “text” links, and then sorting the domains based on Authority Score (Semrush’s version of domain authority score):

Prepare a spreadsheet of all the URLs that can be potential backlinks for your post. Ignore the URLs where the Authority Score is too low. Repeat the same process for the remaining two competitor URLs.

Once your spreadsheet of link prospects is ready, the final step is to perform an email outreach campaign by sending personalized emails to each publication/blogger who has linked to your competitors. You can find their email addresses by using a tool like FindThatLead or NinjaOutreach.

In your email, make sure you highlight the things that make your content unique and provide reasons as to why you believe your post deserves a link back.

For this specific task, you can use any of these blogger outreach tools.

Not all sites you’ve reached out to will respond positively to your email. But don’t be disheartened. As long as your content is link-worthy and you’ve provided compelling reasons in your email to link back to your content, you should soon be rewarded for your efforts with some high-quality backlinks.

This is an advanced link building tactic. To learn more about email outreach, check out this in-depth email outreach guide by Digital Olympus.

Need help with competitive analysis? Try any of these 7 best competitor research tools to analyze your competition.

3. Build Backlinks with Infographics

Infographics are not just popular on social media sites such as Pinterest and Reddit. They can also improve your SEO significantly and increase web traffic.

Case in point: Websites that publish infographics see their traffic grow an average of 12% more than sites that don’t.

Yet most people ignore infographics because they wrongly assume that it requires a lot of time and effort to design one or consider it to be an expensive task to outsource.

Here’s the truth: Infographics are remarkably effective in generating high-quality backlinks for free.

You don’t need to be a professional designer either. With free online design tools like Canva, Venngage, and Piktochart, you can create fancy infographics in a matter of minutes.

Another way to create beautiful infographics is to outsource it by hiring professional designers on sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, or if you have a bigger budget, Design Pickle.

Once your infographic is up and ready, it’s time to promote it. Follow these steps:

1. Submit your infographic to infographic submission sites

Here’s a list of sites that allow you to submit your infographics (both free and paid). I’ve also mentioned the domain authority of each of these sites to signify the value of each backlink that you’ll get, so you can prioritize your efforts accordingly:

Graphs.net (DA – 54)
Visual.ly (DA – 78)
InfographicBee (DA – 27)
Cool Infographics (DA – 60)
Infographic Journal (DA – 55)
Submit Infographics (DA – 46)

For more infographic submission sites, check out 40 Infographic Submission Sites to Promote Your Infographic (and Get Backlinks).

2. Reach out to bloggers in your niche and offer them the infographic for free as a guest post

The next step is to identify bloggers and influencers in your niche. You can do this by using a tool like BuzzSumo or any of the blogger outreach tools featured here. Once you’ve identified the bloggers, send them an email informing them about your new infographic and how it can add value to the content they have created on the same topic. If need be, offer to write a unique summary for the infographic.

Everyone loves well-designed, informative infographics and half of the sites you reach out to will gladly accept to include your infographic in one of their articles.

3. Use Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator to generate an embed code for your infographic

Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator allows you to generate embed codes for your infographic. Once the code is generated, all you need to do is copy and paste the code below your infographic.

By generating an embed code for your infographic, you make it easier for others to share and embed your infographic onto their own site. Here’s the best part: every time someone includes your infographic in their content, you get an attribution. Yet another easy way to fetch a contextual backlink.

Bonus Resource: For a more detailed description of link building with infographics, check out this article or download this free eBook.

4. Use Reverse Image Search to Build Backlinks

If you have a decent amount of visual content on your blog (infographics, screenshots, charts, etc.), there is a high possibility that someone on the Internet is using your images without giving proper link attribution.

Luckily, there is an easy way to resolve this issue and get a backlink in return. Just follow these steps:

Step 1: Open a new Google Sheet and list down the URLs of all the important visual assets on your site.

Step 2: Use Google Image Search to find websites that are using your images without attribution. Enter the Image URL in the Google search box and then click on ‘Search by Image’ to find all the websites which are using your image in the “Pages that include matching images” section of the search.

Find out which of these sites are not giving you credit for the image.

Step 3: Send an email to the site owner requesting a link attribution for using your image on their site. You can use the email template below:

Hi [Name],

I’m [Your Name] from [Your Blog].

I noticed that you’ve used one of my images in your post: [insert link to the article].

However, you haven’t included a link back to my website.

I’d really appreciate if you could add a link to my website below the image.

Here’s the link where the image is taken from: [insert your post URL]

Thanks,
[Your Name]

In most cases, you’ll get a quick positive response from the site owners. And just like that, you’ve earned yourself a contextual backlink.

5. Create Interactive Content

Interactive content such as quizzes, polls, and calculators generate a lot of buzz on the Internet these days. No other publication exemplifies this trend more than Buzzfeed. On average, the team at Buzzfeed creates 7.8 quizzes a day and 96% of users who start Buzzfeed quizzes finish them.

Quizzes are not just popular with users, but they also tend to generate a ton of authority backlinks. For example, Buzzfeed’s most popular quiz “What City Should You Actually Live In?” till date has generated over 1,500 backlinks, including links from publications such as Washington Post, TechCrunch, Forbes, Fast Company, and many more.

There are several tools on the web that can help you create your own quizzes and calculators. I’d recommend Outgrow since I’ve used them to create interactive content on my blog, but you can also try Uberflip and ion interactive.

Here are 3 pieces of interactive content I created using Outgrow:

Recommended reading: 20 Examples of Truly Engaging Interactive Content

6. Start Your Own Podcast

You can build your link profile by being invited as a special guest on any of the popular podcasts in your niche. That definitely works. But an even better link building strategy is to launch your very own podcast.

Think about it! By having your own podcast, you’ll have more creative control on your content, you don’t need to waste time sending outreach emails to podcasters in your niche and waiting for their response, and more important, podcasting is fun and provides you with an opportunity to build your own personal brand and showcase your expertise.

With free apps like Anchor, it’s now easier than ever to launch your own podcast. In fact, you can start recording an episode using just your smartphone. That said, I do recommend you invest in a good microphone if you’re serious about podcasting.

I started my own podcast, Marketing Mantra, back in August 2018 and here are some of the authority backlinks I’ve been able to build thus far:

Invariably, once your podcast gets popular, other influencers in your niche will reach out to you to be a part of your podcast. Not to mention the invites you’ll receive from other podcasters to feature in their podcasts.

Recommended reading: 38 Best Marketing Podcasts You Should Listen To

7. Get Active on Product Hunt

Image Courtesy: Product Hunt

Product Hunt is a place to discover the latest technology creations, websites, mobile apps, and tools that everyone is geeking about. I love spending time on Product Hunt not just to discover cool new products, but also because it’s a great place to have thoughtful discussions with product-loving enthusiasts.

To get a backlink from Product Hunt, you need to create an account on Product Hunt, link to your website, and then be active on the site. You can do this by writing reviews for products you’ve used, leaving your comments on newly launched products, and of course, by upvoting and downvoting products on a regular basis.

Product Hunt has a domain authority of 86 (and it keeps increasing), so it’s worth having an active account.

Click here to create your Product Hunt account

8. Submit Your Site to Startup Directories

If you’ve just launched your startup, there are tons of startup directories you could submit your site to. Perhaps the most popular startup directory is BetaList, a directory which is focused specifically on early-stage internet startups. The submission is free, but if you’d like to expedite the process and ensure that your startup is listed, then you’ll need to pay a small fee. You can check out their submission criteria here to see how they review the startups.

Even if your startup is not eligible for submission at BetaList, there are lots of other startup directories with high DA which will accept your submission. Here’s a list of 100 startup directories compiled by Ninja Outreach.

9. Build Profile Links

Profile link building is a process where users sign up on sites where they can create a public profile and provide a link to their website.

Several websites which thrive on having an active community allow you to create a public profile where you can feature links to your website and social channels. A few examples are websites such as Kickstarter, Moz, Semrush, and Triberr.

To get more tips and insights into this link building strategy, refer to this in-depth guide by Monitor Backlinks.

10. Find Backlinks from “Best of” Blog Posts

This particular method of getting backlinks is borrowed from Brian Dean at Backlinko and it’s insanely effective.

Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Use these following search strings on Google

“Best (TOPIC) Blog Year”
“(TOPIC) blogs to read”
“My Favorite (TOPIC) blogs”

Any of these above searches will show you a list of “best of” blogs in your selected topic.

Step 2: Create a new Google Doc and add links to any quality blog that you’d like to get a backlink from. Also note down the email addresses of the bloggers you’d be reaching out to. In most cases, you can find them in the contact section. If not, use Ninja Outreach Chrome Extension to find their contact details.

Step 3: Reach out to these blogs via email and present them with a link to your article and ask them if they can include it in one of their weekly/monthly roundup posts.

You can use the below email template to reach out to the bloggers:

Hi [Name],

I’m a digital marketer and regular reader of your blog posts.

I also run the blog at [Your Blog] and today, we published a pretty massive guide on [Subject of Your Blog Post]. I think it might be a good fit for your roundup posts and thought I’d reach out.

Here’s the link to the guide: [Your Post URL]

No worries if it’s not a good fit – I’ll be a regular reader regardless!

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Many of these blogs will also allow you to post a comment along with a link to your website.

One of the easiest and quickest ways to get a backlink is to post thoughtful comments on any of the articles on these blogs that you deem worthy to get a link from. Make sure your comment is THOUGHTFUL. Instead of posting “Great article,” think of creative ways to appreciate the kind of information the author has provided in the article. You may even ask a question.

But you may be thinking that there are blogs which simply don’t allow you to provide a link to your website. They may be using the Facebook comment system or Disqus to manage and moderate their comments.

In such cases, the best way to get backlinks would be to use the email outreach method. Though it involves some work, the backlink you’ll eventually generate for your site would be worth the time and effort.

11. Submit Your Site to Blog Aggregators

Blog Aggregators are sites which list blogs from different industries. Examples include AllTop, Blogarama, and BlogEngage.

Though they don’t have the same amount of link juice they once had, you can still get a decent amount of referral traffic from these blogs.

You can get high-quality dofollow backlinks from most blog aggregators for free in three easy steps:

Submit your site (in most cases, the RSS feed of your blog)
Add a special HTML code to your site to confirm your ownership of the site
Wait for the blog aggregator to review your site

When it’s approved, you will get your own page on the blog aggregator listing all your articles.

Here’s a complete list of blog directories/aggregators you can submit your site to.

12. Syndicate Your Content on Medium and LinkedIn

Yes, the links on Medium and LinkedIn are “nofollow”, but that doesn’t mean they are completely useless. Nofollow links can drive awareness, traffic, and can even lead to dofollow backlinks eventually. If you have a new website, the awareness and traffic boost can be really important.

This article by Nicole Kohler on Moz makes a fantastic case for using and attaching importance to nofollow backlinks. In her article titled “The Hidden Power of Nofollow Links”, Nicole explains the importance of nofollow backlinks as follows:

“At its very core, a link is designed to create awareness of something on a different page. Nofollow links still build awareness, as long as they are seen. They don’t have to be followed. They probably don’t even have to be clicked! They just have to be visible.”

With this in mind, start syndicating your content on Medium and LinkedIn (via LinkedIn Publishing) and expand the reach of your content to a whole new audience. If you can create native content on these platforms, that’s even more wonderful. But the very least you could do is replicate some of your top posts on to these two platforms and gain a wider reach and awareness for your content.

13. Link Roundups

There are lots of high quality blogs that do link roundups. Link roundups are weekly or monthly blog posts that link out to great content in their respective niche.

At my agency blog, we used to publish a weekly roundup of social media news and call the segment ‘This Week in Social Media’. These articles used to include headlines of all the top social media news stories in a given week with a link to the source below each headline to corroborate the news story.

You will find blogs that do similar roundups in your niche as well.

Here’s how it works:

1. Your first task is to find link roundups in your niche. Use the following search strings:

“your keyword” + “link roundup”
“your keyword” + roundup
“best of” + “your keyword”
“your keyword” + “this week”

2. Once you find a blog that you’d like to target for backlinks, pitch your content to the person who runs the blog. You can use the below script:

Hey [Name],

I’m [Your Name] from [Your Blog URL].

I know you like to make compilation articles about everything [TOPIC] – so I just wanted to send a few of my recent ones your way. I’d really appreciate it if you could include these articles in your monthly roundup.

[Link to Article 1]

[Link to Article 2]

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Just sit back and wait for the person to respond. If your content is the right fit for the blog’s roundup, then you’ll get a quality backlink for your site.

14. Create a Crunchbase Account

Crunchbase is a community of millions of users who like to stay on top of the latest industry trends, investments, and news about global companies – from startups to the Fortune 1000 companies.

While Crunchbase is a great place to connect with users with whom you share similar interests, it’s also a great resource to fetch a high-quality backlink for your website.

Just by creating a Crunchbase account and linking to your website, you’ll get a backlink from a website with a domain authority score of 91. If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, create a profile for your company as well.

It’s a simple way to generate a backlink from a high DA site and all it takes is two minutes of your time.

Click here to create your Crunchbase profile

15. Use Brian Dean’s Moving Man Method

This is yet another technique which I learned from one of Brian Dean’s articles and I’ve found it extremely useful.

Here’s how the Moving Man Method works:

Step 1: Find sites in your niche which have either shut down or changed their names and URLs.

Step 2: Find sites linking to the old URL.

Step 3: Reach out to these sites and let them know about their outdated link.

To explain this technique in a better way, let’s take the example of Moz, a popular SEO tool run by SEO Guru, Rand Fishkin. A while back though, Moz was operating as an SEO agency named SEOMoz. As a result, they had to change the URL from seomoz.org to Moz.com.

Sure, if you visit seomoz.org, it redirects to moz.com. So the links used by sites linking to seomoz.org aren’t broken, but they are outdated. This is because the link points to the old URL and the anchor text has the old brand name.

As you may realize, this is a huge opportunity for people running SEO/Marketing blogs to reach out to sites that are still using the seomoz.org link in their content. And there are plenty of sites doing just that.

In order to make this technique work for you, you need to keep an eye out for sites that are either rebranding or changing names. Use PRWeb to see whether there are any brands in your niche that have recently rebranded. Use this search string – “your keyword” + rebrands”. Do a similar check on Google News as well.

Once you’ve found a site which has rebranded or changed its URL, it’s time to reach out to sites which are still using the old URL in their content. Just copy the URL and paste into your backlink checking tool of choice (I recommend Semrush). You’ll find dozens of sites which are still linking to the old resource.

The last step in the Moving Man Method is to reach out to these sites and give them a heads up about the outdated link they are using in their content. And then give a subtle suggestion to add your link to their site.

To learn more about the Moving Man Method, click here.

16. Create and Optimize Your About.me Page

About.me allows you to create your free, one-page website in just a few minutes. An easy way to fetch a dofollow backlink for your site is to create an About.me profile, enter a link to your blog in the ‘Spotlight Button’ section, and also include additional links in your bio. Something like this:

With an About.me profile, you can get an authoritative backlink (About.me’s DA is 92) in under five minutes.

Click here to create your About.me profile

17. Build Authoritative Links with HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a sourcing service which connects journalists and bloggers with relevant expert sources to meet journalists’ demanding deadlines and enables brands to tell their stories. Subscribing to HARO provides you with an opportunity to fetch high quality backlinks from authority news sites.

Here’s how it works:

Sign up for HARO as a source here.
You’ll receive three emails per day on weekdays from reporters looking for sources. Look out for source requests relevant to you and your niche
Respond with some helpful content and your credentials

With HARO, you can build backlinks from authority news sites such as WSJ, Mashable, Inc, FastCompany, Reuters, etc.

Recommended reading: How to Build Backlinks Using HARO [Case Study by Ahrefs]

18. Scoop.it Backlinks

Scoop.it is a site where people aggregate their favorite content around the web into a magazine format.

It’s also an excellent place to get high-quality “nofollow” backlinks and boost your referral traffic. So how do you go about fetching backlinks on Scoop.it? It’s quite simple really.

An active Scoop.it user usually has curated magazines which have hundreds of followers. This means that your content can get in front of hundreds of people. Follow these two simple steps to get people to share your content on their Scoop.it magazine:

Step 1: Give a search on the topic of your content. Ex: Social Media Marketing. Find users who have magazines with lots of followers and views.

Step 2: Pitch your content to these people by using Scoop.it’s ‘suggest’ feature. You can share the same content with 5 people in a day and chances are that about 50% of them will share it with their network.

19. Provide Testimonials

Consider giving a testimonial for a product that you really love using. All companies love showing off customer testimonials on their home page or have a dedicated page for them.

Once you’ve written the testimonial, make sure you let them know that they can include your testimonials on their home page or testimonials page.

Here’s my testimonial for Serpstat published on their testimonials page:

Here’s another example of a testimonial I wrote for AppSumo:

AppSumo has used the above testimonial on several of their promos.

20. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation is simple and works like magic.

Here’s how it works:

First, you find mentions of your brand that don’t link back to your site
Then you send an email to the person with a friendly reminder to add the link

Here’s an email I received from Canva a few weeks ago which serves as a fine example of link reclamation tactic:

It’s that simple and it works in most cases (like it did here in the example above ).

Here’s how you can go about reclaiming your link:

1. Find unlinked mentions using Buzzsumo

A tool like Buzzsumo can help you find unlinked mentions of your brand. Setup a content alert for your brand or domain on Buzzsumo, so that whenever someone mentions your brand, you get an email alert.

2. Check whether the site has linked back to your site

If they have linked back to your site, awesome! If not, then move on to step 3.

3. Reach out and get your link

Send them an email with a friendly reminder. You can use the script below (same that was used by Canva):

Hey NAME,

I just wanted to reach out and say “thanks” for mentioning (your brand) in your article: [link to the article]

We really, really appreciate it.

I’m reaching out today to ask if you could add a link back to our site. That way, people can easily find us while reading your article.

Either way, thanks for the shout out and keep up the great work!

Thanks,

(Your Name)

Link reclamation is an easy, yet effective way to get quality backlinks for your site.

21. Broken Link Building

A broken link is one that points to a page on a site that has since been moved or deleted. In other words, these are pages that return a 404 error.

Broken link building involves some bit of work, but it’s a safe way to generate fresh, high quality backlinks for your site.

Here’s what you need to do:

Use tools such as Check My Links or Broken Link Checker to find broken links from a site you want to fetch a backlink from.
Once you’ve found the broken links, reach out to the site owner and let him know about them.
Share relevant links from your site that the site owner could use to replace the broken links with.

Voila! You’ve earned yourself a high quality backlink.

22. Submit Your Site to CSS Galleries

Proud of your site’s design? Then you can showcase them on CSS galleries and gain easy backlinks in return.

Here’s a list of CSS galleries where you can feature your website for free or for a nominal fee:

23. Republish Your Content on Steemit

Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website which rewards its users with the cryptocurrency STEEM for publishing and curating content.

The website currently has over a million registered users. You can republish some of your articles here, reach a wider audience for your content, and even gain backlinks in return.

Click here to create your Steemit account

24. Email Outreach to People Featured on Your Blog

This strategy may not get you a backlink each time, but it will definitely get you more social shares and help you build relationships with influencers in your niche.

Whenever you mention a specific tool or blog in your article, send the owner an email to let them know they were featured in your article.

I’ve done this several times and it works. Not only will your post receive a social boost, but it will also help nurture relationships with industry influencers and may even fetch you an authority backlink in the long run.

To do the outreach, I recommend you use an outreach tool like Mailshake. The tool also contains several customizable email templates to assist you in your outreach efforts.

25. Repurpose Your Articles on Quora Spaces

Quora is a platform where users can ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers. Quora also allows users to create their own blog and start publishing blog posts. More recently, Quora transitioned blogs to Spaces.

Just like you’d do on Medium or LinkedIn, you can repurpose some of your older content on Quora and gain high quality backlinks in return. Click here to activate Spaces on Quora and republish your old posts to reach a whole new audience for your content.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned these powerful link building strategies, it’s time to get started and test these techniques out.

I’d also urge you to use a reliable SEO tool to help you in your link building efforts. I recommend Semrush, one of the most popular SEO and competitor analysis tools on the market. With Semrush’s Backlink Analytics feature, you can analyze the backlink profiles of your competitors, identify new link building opportunities, and even identify toxic backlinks and disavow them.

Click the link below to sign up for a free 14-day trial of Semrush Pro:

EXCLUSIVE OFFER

Semrush

Experience the full power of Semrush Pro with a 14-day free trial.

Remember: The links you build should be natural, so they don’t hurt your online rankings. To make sure you don’t make a lot of common SEO mistakes, check out this step-by-step process on how to build backlinks the right way.

Which link building strategy gets you the best backlinks? Let me know in the comments section.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

25 Proven Link Building Strategies to Get High Quality Backlinks Click to Tweet

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in July 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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The post How to Get High Quality Backlinks (25 Proven Techniques) appeared first on 99signals.

10 SEO Metrics That You Should Consider Tracking

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:23:12 +0000

SEO metrics are critical data points or performance indicators that help you understand if your SEO efforts are working.

With a plethora of SEO metrics vying for your attention, it’s important to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But the question is: how do you differentiate between useful SEO metrics and vanity metrics?

We’ve got you covered.

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at 10 SEO metrics that are worth tracking. By the time you’re done, you’ll know exactly which SEO metrics to focus on and which ones to ignore.

Side note: To track some of these metrics, you’ll need to subscribe to a premium SEO tool. Out of all the prominent SEO tools out there, Semrush is my personal favorite. In my decade-long experience in the SEO field, I’ve learned that Semrush provides the most accurate and comprehensive insights on critical SEO metrics.

Click here to sign up for a free 14-day trial of Semrush

Having said that, Semrush is not cheap.

With prices starting at $129.95/month, Semrush is not everyone’s cup of tea. Especially for entrepreneurs or bloggers who are just starting out.

If you’re looking for a budget-friendly alternative to Semrush, I’d highly recommend SE Ranking. Check out my full review of SE Ranking to learn more about this highly underrated SEO tool or sign up for a 14-day free trial to test it out for yourself.

10 Most Important SEO Metrics

1. Organic Traffic

Let’s start with the most obvious and perhaps the most important SEO metric you should be tracking — organic traffic.

Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site from a search engine that doesn’t include traffic from paid results.

The easiest way to track your organic traffic is via Google Analytics.

Here’s how to do it:

From your Google Analytics dashboard, navigate to:

Acquisition > Overview

Here you can view the different traffic sources to your site, including organic search.

It’s that simple.

You can also track organic traffic in Google Search Console.

In addition to these two free tools, you can use Semrush or Ahrefs to keep a tab on your site’s organic performance.

If you’re a Semrush user, you can track your site’s organic traffic by entering your domain in the search box.

The resulting overview report will have a column on the domain’s organic search traffic.

Click through the number to view the organic keywords that are bringing traffic to your site. We’ll cover organic keywords in greater depth next.

But here’s an important caveat: SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can only show the estimated traffic of a particular website. You may not always get an accurate representation of a site’s organic traffic.

But based on my personal experience, the organic traffic data in Semrush is pretty close to the actual figure that you see in Google Analytics.

2. Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings refer to a website’s organic ranking positions for different keywords.

It’s an SEO best practice to keep a tab on the performance of your most important keywords. Ideally, these are a set of keywords that are most relevant to your business and industry.

The best way to check your keyword rankings is to view the organic keywords report in premium SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking.

In my experience, Semrush gives the most comprehensive and accurate data on keyword rankings.

Semrush’s position tracking tool even lets you to add and track the most important keywords that you’d like to have on your radar.

Why is this important?

Because it lets you keep a track of the keywords that really matter to your business. This is especially important if you have a large site and rank for a boatload of keywords.

With a rank tracking software like Semrush‘s position tracking tool, you can narrow your focus down and zero-in on improving the rankings of priority keywords for your business.

To set up position tracking in Semrush, go through this sequence:

Keyword Research > Position Tracking > Set up

Add the necessary details here, including a list of keywords that you’d like to track.

In a few minutes, Semrush will generate your position tracking report, where you’ll see data and graphs on your best performing keywords, search visibility metrics, rankings distribution graph, and more.

Scroll down to see your top 5 organic keywords, alongside columns for keywords with positive impact (improved rankings) and keywords with negative impact (decreased rankings).

Hit the “View all” button below each of these columns to open the detailed position tracking report.

You can check the position tracking report from time to time or choose to get regular email alerts on the progress of your tracked keywords.

There’s another, much faster way to check your rankings in Semrush. And that is to view your organic keywords report.

To view your rankings in Semrush, just plug your domain in the search box and click through the number in the Organic Search column.

You’ll then see a list of all the organic keywords your site is currently ranking for.

From here, you can use advanced filters and sorting options to arrive at the data you need.

3. Referring Domains

Referring domains are websites that are linking to your website.

Despite numerous algorithm updates over the years, backlinks still remain one of the top three Google ranking factors.

Recently, Backlinko conducted a Google SERP analysis of 11 million websites and found that there is a strong correlation between total number of backlinks and higher rankings.

No surprises there.

But what was interesting, though, is that websites with lots of referring domains tend to rank higher in SERPs.

What’s the significance of this finding?

Referring domains and backlinks are not the same. Referring domains are not the total number of backlinks pointing to your site. Referring domains are different websites that link to your domain.

Here’s the thing: Google values links from different websites a lot more than links from the same website.

Which is why it’s important that you focus more on referring domains than total backlinks.

Bottom line: The more authoritative referring domains you have pointing to your site, the more likely you are to rank higher in Google organic search.

You can check your referring domains in Semrush by plugging your domain into the search bar. In the overview report, check the number reflecting against “Referring Domains” in the “Backlinks” section.

Click through this number to open the Referring Domains report to check the quality of the domains pointing to your site.

You can use the sorting and advanced filtering options to skim through this data and deep dive into the referring domains that are pointing to your site.

4. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a set of three important technical SEO metrics that measure your site’s speed and performance.

Here’s how Google explains Core Web Vitals in their own quirky way:

Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!).

Below are the three CWV metrics:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures when the largest content element in the viewport becomes visible.
First Input Delay (FID) – measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site to the time when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – measures all layout shifts that aren’t caused by user interaction.

So why are core web vitals suddenly so important?

Because these three core web vitals are now ranking signals.

Google’s page experience algorithm update, which was rolled out in May 2021, combines existing user experience signals like mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, safe browsing, etc. with core web vitals.

How do you track your core web vitals?

There are several ways, but the easiest way is to access the core web vitals report in your Google Search Console account.

To access this report, login to your GSC account and navigate to:

Experience > Core Web Vitals

The CWV report will categorize your site’s URLs into three categories for both desktop and mobile:

Good URLs
Poor URLs
URLs that need improvement

Needless to say, you need to pay special attention to poor URLs followed by URLs that need improvement.

Inside the report, you can find more details on the issues and a list of affected URLs.

As you can see, there are several URLs on my site that have an LCP issue on mobile devices.

In order to fix these CWV issues, it’s best to use PageSpeed Insights.

PageSpeed Insights performs a detailed analysis of your website and provides recommendations on fixing all the CWV issues.

You can find more information on LCP in the Diagnostics section of the report.

If you’re using Semrush, you can perform a side audit and refer to the Core Web Vitals column in the Site Audit overview report.

When you click through the number, you can see the errors that you need to fix to improve your CWV score.

You’ll also see recommendations and tips on the necessary steps you need to take to improve your overall CWV score.

5. Mobile Traffic

The “mobilegeddon” algorithm update in mid-2015 completely flipped the search landscape.

Websites that hadn’t embraced mobile-friendly design yet saw their rankings plummet overnight. Even renowned publications and companies couldn’t escape Google’s wrath.

Image Credit: Marketoonist

It is perhaps the single most important algorithm update from Google since the Panda algorithm update.

Fast forward to today, the importance of mobile traffic has only increased. In fact, as of May 2023, 51.52% of all web traffic comes through mobile devices.

Here’s how Google explains the importance of having a mobile-friendly website:

If not mobile-friendly, a site can be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. A non-mobile-friendly site requires users to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site. Alternatively, the mobile-friendly version is readable and immediately usable.

This is why you should keep an eye on the mobile friendliness of your website design and make sure you’re providing an optimized user experience to the mobile visitors on your site.

If you operate in an industry where a large portion of your traffic comes from mobile devices, then this becomes an even more important metric to consider.

You can get accurate data on your site’s mobile traffic in Google Analytics.

Visit Audience > Mobile > Overview

Here you’ll be able to see the data on traffic from mobile, desktop, and tablet.

Once you’ve determined your mobile traffic, it’s important that you check the mobile usability of your site. You can easily check this report in your Google Search Console account.

Navigate to Experience > Mobile Usability

This report will show you the total number of mobile-friendly pages on your site.

If Google identifies issues with the mobile interface of your website, then this report will pinpoint those exact issues. For instance, you may find that the clickable elements on your website are too close together or your content is wider than a mobile screen.

Fix these issues as and when they appear in this report to improve the mobile experience on your site. Once you’ve fixed these errors, return to the mobile usability report and perform a validation check on each error and see if the error is well and truly fixed.

Another free tool you can use is Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. As the name suggests, this free tool by Google lets you test the mobile-friendliness of your website.

To use the tool, just enter your domain into the search box:

The resulting report will show whether or not your domain is mobile-friendly.

Use these free tools to ensure that your website performs well on all devices.

6. Indexed Pages

Indexed pages are pages that have been crawled by Googlebot and stored in the Google index.

According to Google:

A page is indexed by Google if it has been visited by the Google crawler, analyzed for content and meaning, and stored in the Google index. Indexed pages can be shown in Google Search results.

In other words, this SEO metric simply shows you the number of pages from your site that are indexed by Google.

Why is this important?

While the number of indexed pages for your site doesn’t necessarily mean higher search rankings, it is a great indicator of how well your site is doing from an SEO standpoint.

As a general rule, you’d want to make sure all the important pages on your site are indexed. At the same time, you’d want to leave a few pages out of the index.

Why?

Because having too many pages indexed can sometimes cause technical SEO issues like duplicate content, index coverage errors, and affect the overall website health score.

There are three ways you can determine how many indexed pages you’ve got.

The quickest way is to use a site search operator (site: yourdomain.com) in Google search like this:

The search results will help you get a rough estimate of how many pages Google has indexed from your site.

To get a more accurate summary of your indexed pages, check the coverage report in your GSC account.

To access this report, go to:

Index > Coverage

Here you’ll not just find the precise number of pages from your site that Google has indexed, but also the errors that are preventing certain pages from being indexed.

Simply click through on an error to view the URLs that have issues. Alongside the URL, you’ll also find a link that includes instructions on how to fix the error.

Check the coverage report in GSC every month to make sure your site has no index coverage issues.

You can also identify index coverage errors with SEO tools that have a site audit feature.

If you’re using Semrush, you can refer to the crawlability column under “Thematic Reports” in your site audit report.

If you don’t get a 100% score here, that means your site may have indexability issues. If that’s indeed the case, hit the “View details” button to view the site indexability graph and other crawlability data.

You can also check the Crawl Budget Waste column to identify all the pages on your site that are negatively affecting your website’s crawlability, and, as a result, reducing your crawl budget.

Finally, you can visit the “Issues” tab to see the exact indexability issues that are affecting your site.

To learn more about these issues, click on the “Why and how to fix it” link against each issue. You’ll also get recommendations on how you can go about fixing each issue.

7. Traffic Cost

On the surface, this may seem like a PPC metric, but I’d consider it an important SEO metric.

Why?

Because it’s a clear indication of whether your SEO efforts are working.

Traffic cost is the answer to the all-important, albeit annoying, question: What’s the ROI of SEO?

As an SEO professional, if you’ve ever had to tackle this question, you’d know the role it plays in you retaining your clients in the long run.

Traffic cost is the best SEO metric that can explain ROI in terms of dollars.

Traffic cost is an estimate of how much you’d spend on Google Ads to generate the same traffic you’re currently getting from organic search.

You can see your site’s traffic cost in Semrush.

From the SEO dashboard, navigate to:

Competitive Research > Organic Research

Just plug your domain in the search box and in the resulting overview report, you can see your site’s traffic cost alongside other key SEO data points.

You can also see your traffic cost in Ahrefs. They call it traffic value, but it’s the same metric.

Keep in mind that this number is just a rough estimate of how much your search traffic is worth. You can’t expect 100% accuracy.

8. Website Health Score

Your website’s health score is essentially the technical SEO score of your website. The higher the score, the less you need to worry about technical SEO.

SEO performance tools that have the site audit feature crawl your website and update your health score accordingly.

Semrush’s site audit tool is by far the best tool to measure the technical SEO health of your website.

Every time you run a site audit on this tool, Semrushbot crawls your website and runs checks for over 140 common website issues.

Essentially, Semrush calculates your site’s health score based on the issues it finds during the crawl.

These issues are classified into three main categories:

Errors – these are the most critical issues that have the highest impact on your site’s health score. These errors include indexability issues (see #6), broken internal links, missing title tags, slow site speed, etc.
Warnings – these issues are of medium impact. For example, low text-HTML ratio, unminified JavaScript and CSS files, and broken external links are classified as warnings.
Notices – the least important issues that have very little impact on your site’s health score. These issues include orphaned pages in Google Analytics, lack of internal links, links with non-descriptive anchor text, etc.

Needless to say, you should first focus on fixing errors before moving on to issues found in warnings and notices.

Each issue that you find in your site audit report contains a “Why and how to fix it” explanation next to it so you can fetch more details on the issue and Semrush‘s recommendations on how to fix these issues.

Once you’ve fixed the most critical issues, you can re-run the site audit to check if your website’s health score has improved.

Learn more: Semrush Site Audit: 10 Most Overlooked Features

9. Average Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

Average clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click through your site in Google SERPs. So naturally, the higher your CTR, the better your chances of consistently ranking on the first page of Google.

But when it comes to CTR, not all search results are created equal. Just because you rank at #1 for your target keywords doesn’t automatically translate to more traffic.

Some search results will have a higher average CTR than others.

Based on the keywords you’re targeting, some of your results may compete against featured snippets, Google ads, and more.

Take a look at the SERP for this query:

The SERP here is a combination of PPC ads, featured snippet, and more. As a result, your CTR may not be as high as the search volume suggests. Even if you rank at #1 for these keywords.

And now, take a look at the SERP for this query:

As you can see, for this search query, there’s not a lot of competition. So the site ranking at #1 for these keywords will have a higher average CTR than the top result for the earlier search query.

Now that you know the importance of this SEO metric, how do you go about measuring the average CTR of all your top-ranking pages?

As much as I love Semrush, Ahrefs has a better feature to measure CTR.

When you perform keyword research in Ahrefs, you get to see the average monthly number of clicks alongside search volume data for your keywords.

This is really helpful because you can then zero-in on keywords that have more traffic potential.

Next question: how do you improve the CTR of your pages?

You can start by optimizing the title tag and meta description of all your pages to make them as appealing as possible.

Pro Tip: Use a free tool like Headline Analyzer to improve the quality of your headlines.

The tool scores your overall headline quality and rates its ability to result in increased traffic and social shares.

Learn more: Meta Tags for SEO: The Definitive Guide

10. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave the website after visiting just one page. It’s often confused with pogo-sticking, but there’s a subtle difference.

Pogo-sticking is a scenario where a user quickly navigates back to the SERPs to visit another page. Bounce rate, on the other hand, is when a user enters a site from any source and doesn’t perform any action. In other words, when a user visits a page and doesn’t click on any any of the links or put an item in their cart, it’s counted as a bounce.

This is how Google defines bounce rate:

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.

Bounce rate has been getting a bad rap in recent years from the SEO community. In fact, Ahrefs published a post on SEO metrics in which they explained why bounce rate is not an important SEO metric.

In a way, Ahrefs is right. For years, SEOs used to obsesses over this metric, while ignoring other important SEO metrics already featured on this list.

This obsession would sometimes be at the cost of ignoring crucial SEO metrics like keyword rankings, referring domains, and technical SEO health.

In fact, I still work with SEO clients who are obsessed with this metric.

Having said that, bounce rate should not be completely ignored. It’s still a critical user experience signal. Ignoring it completely will most likely prevent you from making improvements to the content and user experience on your website.

When Backlinko conducted their analysis of 11.8 million Google search results, they found a strong correlation between low bounce rate and higher search rankings.

So how do you check your bounce rate?

It’s quite simple: Google Analytics to the rescue again.

Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

Here, you’ll get a breakdown of all the pages on your website alongside different analytics data points. The column you should pay attention to is “Bounce Rate.”

Obviously, the lower your bounce rate, the better.

The other column you should pay attention to is “Avg. Session Duration.” This metric is also called “Dwell Time” and it reveals the time spent by users once they land on your site.

While there are several ways to improve your bounce rate, the best way is to speed up your website.

Use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to test your site speed and to get specific recommendations on improving the speed and performance of your website.

Final Thoughts on SEO Metrics

If you’d like to understand the value of your SEO efforts, you need to make sure you’re tracking and reporting on the right SEO metrics. In this guide, I’ve made an attempt to provide insights on the most important metrics you should track and analyze to improve your overall SEO performance.

Now I’d like to hear from you…

Do you agree that these 10 SEO metrics are important? Which ones do you track on a regular basis? And which ones, in your opinion, are overrated? Let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Let’s keep the conversation going.

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Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 6 December 2021 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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22 Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:22:23 +0000

The cryptocurrency space is in a constant state of flux. If you’re a crypto enthusiast and investor, it’s important to stay on top of the latest developments in the rapidly evolving space of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

One of the best ways to stay updated is to listen to cryptocurrency podcasts. But with so many crypto podcasts vying for your attention, it can be a frustrating task to single out the ones worth listening to.

Which is why I decided to make this job easier for you by listing down the top cryptocurrency podcasts. Here are 22 of the best cryptocurrency podcasts that are a must-have on your podcast playlist.

22 Best Crypto Podcasts

1. The Money Movement

Episode Length: 25-45 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 5/5 (>100 reviews)

Hosted by Circle co-founder and CEO, Jeremy Allaire, The Money Movement is a video podcast series exploring and chronicling the issues and ideas driving the brave new world of cryptocurrency and digital money.

On his podcast, Allaire invites thought leaders and innovators in the blockchain space to discuss a wide range of crypto topics, from the future of DAOs to crypto gaming to the potential of metaverse. Allaire’s interview with Scott Lawin, co-Founder and CEO at Candy, on the use of blockchain technology in sports is particularly insightful.

If you’d like to get a deeper understanding of the potential of blockchain technology across different industries, The Money Movement is the best cryptocurrency podcast you can subscribe to.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Website | Spotify | YouTube

2. Unchained

Episode Length: 40-70 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.6/5 (1.1k reviews)

Unchained is a crypto podcast hosted by Laura Shin. Shin was the first mainstream media journalist to cover crypto full time at Forbes and is also the author of the newly released book “The Cryptopians” — a must read page tuner on the origin stories of Ethereum.

The show is known for delivering a constant flow of up-to-date information on the top crypto stories of the day. For example, when UST lost its peg, they were the first show to have a relevant guest on speaking the facts of the situation, and provided an extra-long episode to make sure their listeners were well informed. They are true trailblazers of the industry as the show sets the pace for what is relevant each and every week.

The crypto show also has an impressive array of guests, including the CEO of Binance who goes by CZ, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, as well as many other founders and leaders in the industry. There is even a selection of great episodes for beginners, like their show on “How to explain cryptocurrency to the average person.”

A surprising fact that I later learned about the host Laura Shin is that, despite being a proponent of the potential of cryptocurrency, she’s a nocoiner (meaning she doesn’t invest in bitcoin or any other digital currencies.)

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

3. The Pomp Podcast

Episode Length: 10-40 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.7/5 (1.7k reviews)

The Pomp Podcast, hosted by Anthony Pompliano (aka Pomp), is one of the most popular business podcasts among crypto investors and entrepreneurs. On his podcast, Pompliano invites and interviews the most interesting people in business, finance, and cryptocurrency.

Past guests on the show have included billionaire crypto enthusiasts like Mark Cuban and Chamath Palihapitiya, retired army general Tony Thomas, bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki, and many other prominent crypto investors and blockchain innovators.

The podcast focuses on bitcoin in particular and the blockchain technology in general, and includes engaging discussions on a wide range of topics in the cryptoverse. One of the recent episodes, for example, offered a complete breakdown of what a DAO is and why they will be important in the coming decade.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

4. Tales from the Crypt

Episode Length: 70-120 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (600+ reviews)

Tales from the Crypt is a bitcoin podcast hosted by Marty Bent, the Editor-in-chief at Marty’s Bent, a popular newsletter on bitcoin. The title of this crypto podcast pays homage to the iconic horror TV series Tales from the Crypt.

Marty and his guests keep the conversations anchored around bitcoin and the far-reaching political and economic implications of bitcoin. The podcast also features a weekly roundup of crypto news called “Rabbit Hole Recap.”

It’s one of the best bitcoin podcasts for seasoned investors as well as people who are new to the bitcoin ecosystem.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

5. What Bitcoin Did

Episode Length: 100-120 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (1.9k reviews)

Hosted by journalist and bitcoin evangelist Peter McCormack, What Bitcoin Did is a triweekly crypto podcast that features interviews with experts in the world of bitcoin development, privacy, investment, and adoption.

Launched in November 2017, What Bitcoin Did has over 450 episodes and it’s considered by many to be one of the best cryptocurrency podcasts for beginners.

The podcast includes engaging conversations with some of the most influential minds in the industry — from developers to investors, journalists to bitcoin company CEOs.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

6. Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

Episode Length: 50-75 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.7/5 (100+ reviews)

The Bitcoin Magazine Podcast is a daily blockchain podcast by Bitcoin Magazine, one of the oldest, most established sources of news and expert commentary on bitcoin. This highly-rated podcast is considered the gold standard of bitcoin podcasts in the cryptosphere.

The podcast guides listeners through all the major stories shaping the price, philosophy, and community around the most popular cryptocurrency in the world.

A few episodes also feature brief interviews with leading experts in the industry. The show has had guests from a spectrum of fields, including angel investor and tech founder Balaji Srinivasan, entrepreneur and political leader Andrew Yang, and human rights advocate Alex Gladstein, among several other influential voices in the blockchain ecosystem.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

7. Bitcoin Audible

Episode Length: 50-75 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.9/5 (300+ reviews)

Bitcoin Audible explores bitcoin from an investment perspective, economic analysis, its philosophical foundations, and technological primitives. Hosted by Guy Swann, this cryptocurrency podcast is all about spreading the knowledge of bitcoin and making it accessible to everyone.

Swann is extremely knowledgeable about bitcoin and the rich pre-history that led to its creation. While the topics covered on the podcast may seem overwhelming for crypto beginners, Swann has a knack of deconstructing technical aspects of digital currencies in a jargon-free way that makes it easy for everyone to understand. Prepare to invest a little smarter in bitcoin after each episode.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

8. Crypto Island

Episode Length: 15-45 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.9/5 (130+ reviews)

This podcast is a bit different from the other crypto podcasts on this list. Launched in March 2022, Crypto Island is a new podcast that explains and explores the strange and exciting world of cryptocurrency. It promises to be one of the most entertaining podcasts on the web.

While the podcast covers cryptocurrency in general, it’s really more about the weird human stories behind the world of bitcoin and blockchain. Take the first episode, for example, which tells the story of a private island near Fiji that is being turned into a utopian society populated entirely by the “crypto rich, bitcoin dynasts, and dogecoin princelings.” Deadline calls it the Fyre Festival of Web3.

Created and hosted by radio producer PJ Vogt, there are plans to adapt this podcast into a TV series or documentary series.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

9. Web3 Breakdowns

Episode Length: 45-70 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 5/5 (40+ reviews)

If you believe Web3 is the future of the internet, then you need to check out Web3 Breakdowns. Hosted by entrepreneur and angel investor Eric Golden, this podcast offers a good primer on complex Web3 topics, including popular NFT projects, crypto assets, blockchain-based protocols, and businesses being built with Web3 architecture.

The podcast features a series of conversations with innovators, founders, investors, and influencers in the world of decentralized internet. It’s the best blockchain podcast to tune into if you’d like to expand your knowledge and understanding of Web3’s emerging ecosystem.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

10. Bankless

Episode Length: 60-100 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (700+ reviews)

Hosted by cryptoasset investors and entrepreneurs Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman, Bankless bills itself as the ultimate guide to crypto finance. Featuring conversations focused specifically on ethereum and Web3, Adams and Hoffman deconstruct a wide range of topics from exploring the dynamics of being a venture capitalist in Web3 to describing what the metaverse actually is.

One of my favorite discussions on the podcast was when guest Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, explained how he would rebuild Reddit for Web3. If you believe in the potential of ethereum, DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and the metaverse, then this show is a must on your podcast playlist.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

11. Crypto Over Coffee

Episode Length: 30-40 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (30+ reviews)

Crypto Over Coffee is a weekly podcast that covers the latest news, explanations, and insights about blockchain and cryptocurrency. It’s a podcast that both crypto beginners and experts can enjoy and learn from.

Hosted by crypto YouTuber and educator Hashoshi, this podcast takes its listeners through the latest innovations in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and emerging technology. If you’d like to learn about how the latest crypto platforms work and master the ins-and-outs of blockchain technology, Hashoshi’s podcast and YouTube channel are the perfect places to do so.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

12. CoinDesk Podcast Network

Episode Length: 15-20 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (500+ reviews)

CoinDesk, the most popular cryptocurrency and blockchain news site, has some of the best crypto podcasts in its repertoire, but if you’re looking for a daily breakdown of the top news stories in the blockchain world, then CoinDesk Podcast Network is the podcast worth listening to.

Whether it’s El Salvador’s bitcoin adoption or big banks entering the metaverse, this podcast keeps you up-to-date with the latest developments in the crypto space.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

13. Opinionated

Episode Length: 20-30 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: Not enough reviews yet

Launched in early 2022, Opinionated is the most recent podcast by CoinDesk. Hosted by CoinDesk Managing Editor Ben Schiller and CoinDesk reporters Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson, the show follows the format of a roundtable debate on the latest bitcoin and crypto news from around the world.

From predicting the politics of bitcoin in 2022 to pondering on the future of privacy, the team at Opinionated doesn’t hold back from exploring strong ideas and controversies surrounding bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

14. Cryptocurrency for Beginners

Episode Length: 10-15 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (210+ reviews)

Cryptocurrency for Beginners is all about breaking down complex cryptocurrency and blockchain concepts and processes in ways that are easy for everyone to understand.

Whether you’re a beginner who wants to learn how bitcoin works or an investor looking to buy altcoins, you can check out this podcast to get a fundamental understanding of all the digital currencies that are making the news.

Cryptocurrency for Beginners is an offshoot of Crypto Casey, a popular YouTube channel in the cryptocurrency space by blockchain technology expert Casey Leigh Henry.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

15. The Gentlemen of Crypto

Episode Length: 35-60 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.7/5 (130+ reviews)

Co-hosts King Bless and Isiah Jackson (aka Bitcoin Zay) cover the latest cryptocurrency news and updates in this critically-acclaimed crypto podcast. Both Bless and Jackson are “Certified Bitcoin Professionals” with experience in bitcoin and cryptocurrency investing, ICOs, regulatory frameworks, blockchain technology, and DeFi.

With over 900 episodes, the podcast has an extensive back catalogue. The duo also upload their latest episodes on YouTube; in fact, The Gentlemen of Crypto is the longest running cryptocurrency YouTube podcast.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

16. Crypto News Alerts

Episode Length: 25 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4/5 (400+ reviews)

Crypto News Alerts is a daily cryptocurrency podcast that covers the latest breaking news stories surrounding bitcoin, ethereum, and other popular cryptocurrencies. If you’d like to stay informed with the latest happenings in the rapidly evolving and highly volatile world of blockchain, this podcast is a must-listen for you.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

17. Coin Stories

Episode Length: 60 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 5/5 (120+ reviews)

Coin Stories is a podcast by journalist and educator Natalie Brunell where she interviews bitcoin and cryptocurrency thought leaders.

The discussions on Brunell’s podcast are interesting and thought-provoking. A perfect example of this is a recent Coin Stories episode where Brunell explored why some of Bitcoin’s all-stars and most knowledgeable leaders have conviction in bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

18. The Bad Crypto Podcast

Episode Length: 45-60 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.6/5 (990+ reviews)

Hosted by technologists and blockchain enthusiasts Joel Comm and Travis Wright, The Bad Crypto Podcast attempts to demystify the world of bitcoin, blockchain, ethereum, altcoins, NFTs, and ICOs in this podcast tailored towards cryptocurrency newbies.

If you’re looking for a cryptocurrency podcast with hosts who don’t mind engaging in a bit of self-deprecating humor and amusing banter, this podcast is for you.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

19. The Decrypt Daily

Episode Length: 10-30 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.7/5 (220+ reviews)

The Decrypt Daily is a daily crypto podcast that decodes the top digital currency news stories and crypto market updates. Hosted by Matthew Diemer, this is yet another podcast you can tune into for unique perspectives on all the top crypto-related news stories.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

20. Crypto 101

Episode Length: 30-45 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.4/5 (680+ reviews)

Hosted by Bryce Paul and Aaron Malone, Crypto 101 is an award-winning podcast that specializes in breaking down complicated crypto concepts into ways that are easy for everyone to understand.

Described as “the average guide to cryptocurrency,” Crypto 101 is the perfect crypto podcast for people who are new to cryptocurrency.

Started way back in 2017, the podcast has an impressive back catalogue of over 400 episodes. If you’re new to the world of cryptocurrency, I’d recommend some of their early episodes like “HODL and Other Slang”, “What Gives Cryptocurrency Value”, and “14 Stages of Emotions When Trading & What What We Can Do About It.”

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

21. Swan Signal

Episode Length: 60-120 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.8/5 (120+ reviews)

Swan Signal is a popular bitcoin podcast that pairs up influencers and thought leaders in the bitcoin space for compelling discussions that are unique on the bitcoin content scene. If you’re new to the crypto scene and would like a deep dive into bitcoin, then you need to check out this podcast.

Each episode is broadcast live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch, and the audio is subsequently published on all the popular podcast platforms.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

22. Thinking Crypto Podcast

Episode Length: 20-40 Minutes
Apple Podcasts Star Rating: 4.6/5 (140+ reviews)

Thinking Crypto features the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Founded and hosted by Tony Edward, the podcast also features interviews with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors in the cryptocurrency industry. Edward also publishes his podcast episodes on YouTube, where he has amassed over 100,000 followers.

Tune in to learn about the latest developments of technology in the crypto market, crypto regulations, and political influence on crypto.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website | YouTube

Final Thoughts

So these are my recommendations for the best cryptocurrency podcasts. Did I miss out on any of your favorite cryptocurrency podcasts? Let me know in the comments section. I’d love to hear your recommendations and expand this list of crypto podcasts.

If you’d like more podcast recommendations, check out these lists of best podcasts on my blog:

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

22 Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts Click to Tweet

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on March 30, 2022 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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8 Best Mailchimp Alternatives to Try in 2024

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:19:39 +0000

When I was seeking a reliable email marketing service for my digital marketing agency, Mailchimp seemed like the best option.

It had a stellar reputation and most marketers I knew were using it at the time for their email marketing needs.

Furthermore, Mailchimp was one of the few email marketing services that offered a forever free plan, wherein you were allowed to send 12,000 emails per month.

At the time, my agency blog had less than 500 followers, so it was an easy decision to make. I created my free account with Mailchimp and kickstarted my email marketing journey.

A few months later, I started 99signals as a side project to document all the strategies and tactics I was using to grow my agency business. A few posts started performing well in search results and with the help of an in-depth guide on link building, my email list grew from a mere hundred to over 2,000 subscribers. My email list had outgrown Mailchimp’s forever free plan.

Up until that time, I was content with Mailchimp’s free plan. It was only when I crossed the limit and started paying the ever-escalating monthly bills, that I realized that my favorite email marketing software had limitations. It was only when I noticed these chinks in the armor that I started considering Mailchimp alternatives.

But before I reveal these alternatives, let’s get one thing straight — I’m not suggesting that Mailchimp is not a good email marketing tool.

On the contrary, Mailchimp is a phenomenally useful tool, packed with features most marketers and bloggers will find extremely valuable in their quest to engage their followers.

It is the preferred email marketing service provider (ESP) for several businesses and bloggers worldwide. And from a market share standpoint, Mailchimp has no competitors. It commands a market share of over 60% in the email marketing space, dwarfing all the other major players in the segment.

That said, it’s not the best email marketing service for every business and blogger out there.

3 Reasons Why You Need to Consider Mailchimp Alternatives

From my own personal experience, I found 3 main reasons why Mailchimp alternatives are worth considering:

1. Steep Learning Curve

One of the most common complaints users have about Mailchimp is that it has a steep learning curve.

For someone who’s new to email marketing, the interface can seem convoluted and it can definitely take a while before you zero-in on the perfect email template for your business.

It’s definitely not a beginner-friendly tool and it’ll take time before you master all the features within the tool.

2. The Limitations of the Forever Free Plan

Mailchimp is widely known for its forever free plan. It’s perhaps the best “freemium” plan at the moment (second only to Brevo’s forever free plan). But it’s not without its limitations.

After Intuit’s acquisition of Mailchimp in 2021, the free plan’s offerings have become less enticing. Previously, you could send up to 12,000 emails monthly, but this has been reduced to just 1,000 emails per month. Additionally, the subscriber limit on the free plan dropped from 2,000 to a mere 500.

Once you cross that limit, you need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. Furthermore, some of Mailchimp’s best features are not available under the free plan, including my favorite Mailchimp feature — Send Time Optimization.

Send Time Optimization uses data science to determine when your subscribers are most likely to engage, and sends your emails at that time. You no longer have to worry about the right time to send your emails. Unfortunately, in order to use Send Time Optimization, you’ll need to upgrade to one of their paid plans.

[Side note: Check out this resource for a more detailed take on Mailchimp pricing]

3. Lack of Customer Support

I judge brands by the quality of their customer support. Sadly, Mailchimp’s customer support leaves a lot to be desired.

If you’re on the forever free plan, there is no email and chat support. You’ll have to rely on their knowledge base to learn the nitty-gritties of email marketing. Mailchimp cites cost control as the reason for not providing adequate customer service which I find really strange for a brand that commands over 60% market share in the ESP space.

Most of the Mailchimp competitors featured below provide exceptional customer service.

If you’re reading this article, you are likely seeking an alternative service to Mailchimp and perhaps you have your own reasons for doing so. You’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I’ll reveal 8 of the best Mailchimp alternatives and explore some of their key features and pricing plans.

8 Best Alternatives to Mailchimp

1. Moosend

Pricing: Starts at $9/mo for 500 subscribers; sign up for a 30-day free trial

Special Offer: Get 25% off your first three months when you switch from Mailchimp to Moosend; Use promo code MC25

If you’re an existing Mailchimp user who’s concerned with the escalating monthly fees, Moosend steps in as the budget-friendly Mailchimp alternative that offers the same features.

Indeed, if you’re making the switch from Mailchimp to Moosend, you’ll find that Moosend is more than 45% cheaper on average.

But let’s dive a bit deeper into what Moosend brings to the table.

Moosend is an email marketing and marketing automation platform designed to cater to both beginners and seasoned marketers. Its user-friendly interface is paired with an impressive suite of features that can challenge other Mailchimp competitors.

With Moosend’s drag-and-drop email editor and automation toolkit, you can seamlessly design and roll out effective email campaigns that resonate with your audience. It also holds a strong sender reputation and effortlessly integrates with various third-party apps and services.

With a focus on user experience, versatility, and delivering high-end features at a fraction of the cost, Moosend is an option worth exploring if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

Moosend: Key Features

Easy Migration from Mailchimp: Transitioning from Mailchimp to Moosend is hassle-free. With intuitive migration tools, you can seamlessly transfer your contacts, templates, and campaigns, ensuring no disruption to your ongoing marketing strategies.
Drag-and-Drop Email Editor: Crafting professional-looking emails becomes a breeze with Moosend’s intuitive editor. No coding required; just drag, drop, and design.
Marketing Automation: Moosend’s automation tools let you set up trigger-based campaigns, allowing for more personalized interactions with your subscribers. From welcome emails to cart abandonment reminders, the platform automates tasks based on user behaviors.
Segmentation and Personalization: Send targeted emails to specific subscriber groups with Moosend’s advanced segmentation tools. You can also personalize your content to resonate more with individual recipients.
Detailed Analytics: Track the performance of your campaigns with in-depth metrics. From open rates to click-through rates and beyond, Moosend’s analytics provide actionable insights.
Integration Capabilities: Moosend seamlessly integrates with a host of third-party apps and platforms, ensuring you can connect it with your existing tech stack or eCommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce.

Moosend: Pricing

Moosend follows a simple list-based pricing structure. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Moosend’s Pro plan to try out all the premium features.

Free Trial – 30 days (No credit card required)
Pro – $9/mo (500 subscribers, unlimited emails, automation workflows, landing pages & forms)
Enterprise – Custom

Note: The pricing of Pro will vary based on the number of subscribers in your email list.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Moosend Pro

Limited Time Offer: Get 25% off your first three months when you switch from Mailchimp to Moosend; Use promo code MC25

2. Brevo (formerly SendinBlue)

Pricing: Starts at $25/mo for unlimited subscribers; sign up for Brevo’s plan

With over a decade of experience in the email marketing arena, Brevo (formerly SendinBlue) is one of the leading email marketing and automation platforms on the market. It offers a broad range of tools to help you optimize your digital communication strategies, drive customer engagement, and enhance you overall marketing ROI.

Whether it’s designing visually compelling emails, segmenting audience lists for targeted campaigns, or automating complex customer journeys, Brevo provides a complete toolkit tailored to meet the diverse needs of small businesses and startups.

If you’re looking for a feature-rich alternative to Mailchimp, Brevo is a strong contender.

One key difference between Brevo and Mailchimp is their pricing structure. Brevo’s pricing is based on the number of emails sent, whereas Mailchimp’s pricing is often based on the number of contacts. This can make Brevo more affordable for businesses that have a large contact list but don’t send emails frequently.

Brevo’s free plan allows you to send 300 emails per day. Despite being free, it lets you have an unlimited number of contacts in your list and comes with email automation capabilities.

Brevo: Key Features

Marketing Automation: Set up automated workflows for email campaigns, segmenting contacts based on behavior, scoring leads, or other criteria.
Segmentation: Organize your contact list by demographics, behavior, or custom parameters to tailor campaigns.
A/B Testing: Test different versions of emails to find out which one performs better in terms of open rates, click-through rates, and more.
Landing Pages: Design and create custom landing pages to capture leads or promote specific products/events.
Reporting and Analytics: Gain insights into campaign performance with detailed metrics like open rate, click rate, and bounce rate.

Brevo Pricing

As mentioned previously, Brevo’s pricing doesn’t rely on list size, but revolves around the volume of emails you send each month.

Free – $0/mo (300 emails/day, drag and drop editor)
Starter – $25/mo (Starts from 20,000 emails/mo; No daily sending limit, basic analytics)
Business – $65/mo (Starts from 20,000 emails/mo; Advanced analytics, marketing automation)
Brevo Plus – Custom (Enterprise-grade security, advanced integrations)

Sign up for Brevo’s free plan

3. Omnisend

Pricing: Starts at $16/mo for 500 subscribers; sign up for Omnisend’s free plan

If you’re in the eCommerce space and are looking to improve your omnichannel communication, Omnisend should be your first option.

SMS automation, Facebook custom audiences, and Google remarketing lists are some of the most important features for advanced eCommerce marketing automation. If your business is growing and you’re seeking a great Mailchimp alternative for more advanced eCommerce marketing automation, you should seriously consider Omnisend.

You can also use Omnisend’s easy-to-use Mailchimp migration tool to seamlessly transfer all your data from Mailchimp to Omnisend.

In fact, Omnisend is currently running a special offer for users who are planning to migrate from Mailchimp. You can find out more about this Omnisend Mailchimp migration offer here and understand the steps involved in making the switch from Mailchimp to Omnisend.

Omnisend: Key Features

Omnichannel Approach: Beyond email, SMS, and push notifications, Omnisend also supports channels like Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Customer Match to provide a unified marketing approach across multiple channels.
Drag-and-Drop Email Builder: Easily design professional emails without any coding knowledge.
Pre-built Workflows: Automate common e-commerce sequences such as cart abandonment, post-purchase follow-ups, and welcome series.
Push Notifications: Engage customers with web browser notifications, even if they’re not on your website.
Integration: Omnisend can integrate with a wide variety of e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and others.

Omnisend Pricing

Omnisend offers a free plan, where you can send 500 emails, 50 SMS, and 60 web push notifications to 250 contacts every month. You’ll need to upgrade to a higher-tiered plan to access more advanced features and higher limits.

Omnisend follows list-based pricing, which means you pay based on the number of subscribers in your email list. The pricing of Standard and Pro varies depending on the number of contacts in your email list.

Free – $0/mo (250 contacts, 500 emails/mo, 50 SMS alerts, 60 web push notifications)
Standard – Starts at $16/mo (500 contacts, 6000 emails/mo, 60 SMS alerts, unlimited web push notifications)
Pro – Starts at $59/mo (2500 contacts, unlimited emails, 3933 SMS alerts, unlimited web push notifications)

Click here to sign up for Omnisend

Side note: If you’re planning to migrate from Mailchimp to Omnisend, use Omnisend’s Mailchimp Migration tool to easily move your data between the two platforms.

4. SendFox

Pricing: Lifetime plan starting at $49 for 5000 subscribers; get lifetime access to SendFox

Launched in November 2019 by serial entrepreneur Noah Kagan (founder of AppSumo and KingSumo), SendFox is an email marketing tool designed specifically for content creators.

SendFox was created as a response to the challenges that Noah and his team were facing with email marketing at AppSumo. Dissatisfied with prevailing email marketing services, including Mailchimp, Noah aimed to introduce an email marketing tool that was both user-friendly and affordable.

To be honest, when I reviewed SendFox back in November 2019, I found it lacking several key features.

Since then, SendFox has worked on adding some new features, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

I’d like to see more email templates, integrations, automation triggers, and font types added to the mix.

I wouldn’t include SendFox in the same league as other Mailchimp alternatives like Moosend and Brevo, but if you’re on a shoestring budget and tired of the restrictions with Mailchimp’s free plan, then you should definitely try SendFox.

SendFox: Key Features

Smart Campaigns: Automatically generate emails based on RSS feeds, ensuring recent content is sent to subscribers without manual intervention.
Automated Email Campaigns: Set up automated email sequences for subscribers, ensuring continuous engagement with minimal effort.
Lifetime Deal: Unlike many other platforms that charge monthly, SendFox offers a one-time payment option, making it budget-friendly for many users.
Straightforward Interface: Designed with simplicity in mind, the platform is user-friendly even for those new to email marketing.

To learn more about SendFox’s key features and functionalities, you can watch my in-depth review and walkthrough below or read the accompanying article here.

SendFox Pricing

SendFox offers a free plan and a lifetime plan that’s currently live at AppSumo. You can get lifetime access to SendFox for just $49 and send unlimited emails to 5000 subscribers.

SendFox’s lifetime plan has five licence tiers, ranging from 5000 to 25000 subscribers.

Free – $0/mo (1000 subscribers, throttled sends per month)
Lifetime plan – $49 (5000 subscribers, unlimited sends, automations, smart pages, and forms)

This deal has been live at AppSumo since October 2019. But since this is AppSumo’s very own email marketing tool, you can expect it to be live for a longer duration than some of the other deals on AppSumo. Because of the lifetime access deal on AppSumo, SendFox is currently the most affordable email marketing tool on the market.

Side note: To remove the SendFox branding from your emails and optimize sending deliverability, you’ll need to opt for the Empire add-on plan which is priced at $18/mo.

Get lifetime access to SendFox for just $49

5. iContact

Pricing: Starts at $14/mo for 750 contacts; sign up for iContact’s free plan

iContact is an email marketing software that offers a wide range of tools to help you market your business, grow your email lists, and engage with your audience effectively and easily.

With iContact’s intuitive drag-and-drop email editor, you can design and send beautiful emails using responsive templates that adapt seamlessly to any device, all without the need for coding.

iContact’s robust segmentation and automation features mirror some of the best aspects of Mailchimp, ensuring a smooth transition for users. Additionally, its pricing structure can be more favorable for certain businesses, especially when considering the feature-to-cost ratio.

All in all, iContact is a great alternative to Mailchimp and it strikes the perfect balance between functionality and user experience.

iContact: Key Features

Segmentation Tools: Customize your messages by segmenting your audience based on various criteria like behavior, demographics, or past interactions.
Responsive Email Design: Emails automatically adjust to fit any device, ensuring a consistent viewing experience.
Advanced Reporting: Get insights into campaign performance, subscriber engagement, and other metrics to fine-tune your strategy.
SpamCheck: This feature evaluates your emails against common spam filters, providing recommendations to improve deliverability before you send them out.

iContact Pricing

iContact offers list-based pricing with seven tiers. iContact’s Test plan is essentially its free plan; it doesn’t quite measure up to the free plans offered by some of the other Mailchimp competitors on this list. It serves mostly as a free trial, letting you explore the key features within the iContact platform.

Test – $0/mo (250 contacts)
Launch – $14/mo (750 contacts)
Grow – $36/mo (2,500 contacts)
Expand – $65/mo (5,000 contacts)
Advanced – $95/mo (10,000 contacts)
Advanced+ – $199/mo (25,000 contacts)
Pro – Custom (25,000+ contacts)

Sign up for iContact’s free plan

6. ConvertKit

Pricing: Starts at $9/mo for 300 subscribers; sign up for ConvertKit’s free plan

ConvertKit is one of the most widely used email marketing platforms that’s essentially tailored to the needs of content creators, bloggers, and online entrepreneurs. Over the last few years, it’s emerged as a strong Mailchimp alternative, thanks in no small part to its growing popularity with prominent bloggers and podcasters.

Recognized for its user-friendly interface, ConvertKit offers a suite of tools to create, send, and monitor email campaigns effectively. Its visual automation builder allows you to craft and visualize email sequences seamlessly.

The platform also provides customizable forms and landing pages, aiding in the efficient capture and growth of subscriber lists.

Beyond the basics, ConvertKit offers the ability to quickly set up standalone web pages to promote products, events, or content, all without any coding knowledge.

ConvertKit: Key Features

Visual Automation Builder: Easily create and visualize email sequences and automation workflows with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
Customizable Forms and Landing Pages: Design attractive sign-up forms and landing pages to capture leads and grow your email list.
Subscriber Tagging: Allows for sophisticated audience segmentation based on actions, behaviors, or other custom criteria.
Integrations: It offers seamless connections to many popular platforms, apps, and tools to enhance its functionality.
Subscriber-Centric Approach: Unlike many other platforms, ConvertKit doesn’t count the same subscriber multiple times if they are on multiple lists. This ensures more transparent billing and easier list management.

ConvertKit Pricing

ConvertKit follows list-based pricing with three tiers. ConvertKit’s free plan gives you access to basic features and supports up to 1000 subscribers.

Free – $0/mo (1000 subscribers, basic features)
Creator – Starts at $9/mo (300 subscribers; advanced features such as automated email sequences and third-party integrations)
Creator Pro – Starts at $25/mo (300 subscribers; everything in Creator plan + premium features such as subscriber scoring and advanced reporting)

Note: The pricing of Creator and Creator Pro will vary depending on the number of contacts in your email list.

Sign up for ConvertKit’s free plan

7. MailerLite

Pricing: Starts at $10 for 1000 subscribers; sign up for MailerLite’s free plan

MailerLite is an email marketing platform used by 560,000+ small businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, artists, authors, hobbyists, activists, dreamers, and anyone else who wants to build relationships with their audience.

Their goal is to remove the complexity from email marketing with easy-to-use, yet powerful features and exceptional 24/7 customer support with real people always ready to help.

MailerLite offers the same advanced tools and integrations of other Mailchimp alternatives, yet they manage to keep it simple, inexpensive and fun to use for people of all skill levels.

MailerLite: Key Features

Customizable Templates: Access a variety of pre-designed templates that can be tailored to fit different campaigns and branding styles.
Pop-ups: Create customizable pop-ups for your website to capture visitor information or promote offers.
Embedded Forms and Surveys: Add customizable sign-up forms to your website to grow your subscriber list. Create and send surveys directly from the platform to gather feedback from your audience.
A/B Split Testing: Test different variations of your emails to see which one performs best in terms of opens, clicks, and conversions.

MailerLite Pricing

MailerLite keeps pricing simple as well. While the free plan includes most of the features, all of their paid plans include unlimited emails with every feature.

Up to 1000 subscribers (limited features) – FREE
Up to 1000 subscribers – $10/month
Up to 2,500 subscribers – $15/month
Up to 5,000 subscribers – $30/month
Up to 10,000 subscribers – $50/month
Up to 15,000 subscribers – $75/month
Over 25,000 subscribers – $120/month

Sign up for MailerLite’s free plan

8. Yespo

Pricing: Starts at $1.99 for 1000 emails

Yespo (formerly eSputnik) is a Ukraine-based marketing automation company that helps you set up multichannel campaigns via email, text, web push, and messengers easily and quickly.

With Yespo’s email editor, you can build scenarios for sending ready-made messages – when, to whom, where, and under what conditions. The other great thing about Yespo is that the service doesn’t divide its users into basic and pro users like other email marketing services normally do.

The company adheres to its motto of making professional marketing easy and affordable.

Yespo: Key Features

Advanced Email Editor: Design responsive emails with a drag-and-drop editor, making it easy to create visually appealing campaigns.
Segmentation: Create targeted customer segments based on behavior, demographics, and purchase history to deliver personalized messages.
Marketing Automation: Set up automated workflows to engage users at different stages of the customer journey, from welcome series to cart abandonment reminders.
Integrations: Connect with various e-commerce platforms, CRM systems, and other tools to synchronize data and enhance functionality.

Yespo Pricing

Here are the current email pricing plans Yespo offers:

Freedom – $1.99/1,000 messages (No subscription fee, unlimited contacts and emails)
Optimal – $19/mo (up to 10,000 emails per month, unlimited contacts)
Email Marketing Agency – $599/mo (Yespo will take care of the entire email marketing and marketing automation complex for your business)

Click here to sign up for Yespo

Final Thoughts on Mailchimp Alternatives

So these are eight of the best alternatives to Mailchimp you should consider.

If you have a preferred email marketing service that you think is a better alternative to Mailchimp than the ones listed here, please feel free to mention them in the comments section. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 24 Aug 2016 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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The post 8 Best Mailchimp Alternatives to Try in 2024 appeared first on 99signals.

27 Best Documentaries for Entrepreneurs

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:18:53 +0000

If you’re in need of inspiration in your entrepreneurial journey or you’d like a break from your hectic schedule, watching business documentaries is an excellent way to unwind and learn more about your craft. Business documentaries can be both entertaining and insightful, while also providing important lessons and mental models in innovation and critical thinking.

While you can always watch business-focused movies like The Social Network, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Boiler Room, the element of authenticity in business documentaries resonates with entrepreneurs at a deeper level.

With so many business documentaries on so many different streaming platforms, it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Don’t worry, we have you covered!

In this post, we have cherry-picked the 27 best documentaries that entrepreneurs and business owners can watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, and YouTube.

By the time you’re done with this post, you’ll have 27 of the best entrepreneur documentaries to add to your watchlist.

Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List (38 Essential Commands)

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:48:14 +0000

All SEOs and marketers know the importance of advanced Google search operators. For the uninitiated, they are special commands that you type into the Google search box to broaden the scope of regular text searches.

The most common example of a Google search operator is the “site:” search operator, which essentially displays search results from a specified site.

For instance, if I were to enter “site:99signals.com” on Google, the search engine result pages (SERPs) will only display pages from my site. Like this:

Knowing all the essential Google search operators can level up your SEO skills and help you uncover content and SEO opportunities that you may have missed otherwise.

In this article, I’ll share a complete list of advanced Google search operators that will come handy in your SEO research. In addition, I’ll share 5 actionable tips to help you to make the best use of Google search operators and discover a goldmine of marketing opportunities.

Let’s get started.

Advanced Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List

Google’s search algorithm keeps evolving. Which is why many of the search operators that used to work in the past don’t work anymore. The advanced search operators featured below have been tried and tested. I’ll keep this post updated at all times, so if and when Google eventually retires a search operator, I’ll delete it from this list as well.

So here are all the Google search operators that still work:

“search term”

Use this operator to do an exact-match search.

Example: “sundar pichai”

OR

Use this when you want to search for this or that. This will return results related to the two terms or both. For this specific search, you can also use the operator “|” instead of “OR.”

Example: iphone OR android

AND

This is when you want to search for this and that. This will only generate results related to the two terms.

Example: iphone AND android

–

This operator is used when you want to exclude a specific term or phrase.

Example: “best smartphones” -iphone

*

This search operator acts as a wildcard that will match with any search term or phrase.

Example: iphone * android

( )

This operator groups multiple terms or search operators to control how the search results are displayed.

Example: (semrush OR ahrefs) seo tools

$

The dollar sign search operator is used when you want to search for prices. The only other currency sign that works as a search operator is euro (€).

Example: macbook pro $2499

define:

Use this operator when you want to know the meaning of a word. The meaning is displayed in a card-like result.

Example: define:preposterous

cache:

This search operator displays the most recent cached version of a page (provided the page is indexed).

Example: cache:semrush.com

filetype:

This search operator shows results of a certain filetype (PDF, TXT, PPT, etc.) The “ext:” operator can also be used and it displays the same results.

Example: semrush filetype:pdf

site:

This is the most common Google search operator. Use this operator to display pages from a specific site.

Example: site:techcrunch.com

This search operator is used when you want to find sites related to a specific website.

Example: related:apple.com

intitle:

Use this operator to find pages that contain a specific word (or words) in the title.

Example: intitle:tesla

allintitle:

Similar to the previous search operator, this operator is used when you want to find pages containing all the specific words in the title.

Example: allintitle:tesla cars

inurl:

Use this search operator to find a specific word (or words) in the URL.

Example: inurl:semrush

allinurl:

Similar to the previous one, this operator is used to find pages containing all the specified words in the URL.

Example: allinurl:semrush pricing

intext:

Use this search operator to find pages containing a specific word or phrase in the content.

Example: intext:semrush

allintext:

This search operator finds pages with all the specified words in the content.

Example: allintext:semrush pricing

AROUND(X)

This proximity search operator finds pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other.

Example: content AROUND(5) marketing

weather:

Use this to find the weather of a specific location.

Example: weather:bangalore

stocks:

Use this search operator to find the stock information for a specific ticker.

Example: stock:meta

map:

This search operator shows you map results for a location search.

Example: map:bangalore

movie:

Use this search operator to find information about a specific movie. If the movie is new, the search results will display the movie showtimes if it’s playing close to your location.

Example: movie:goodfellas

in

This search operator helps you convert one unit to another. It works with currencies, weights, temperatures, etc.

Example: $200 in INR

source:

This operator helps you find news results from a specific source in Google News.

Example: source:nytimes

#..#

This search operator allows you to find results for a range of numbers.

Example: oscars 2015..2020

inanchor:

This search operator helps you find pages linked to the specified anchor text or phrase.

Example: inanchor:”link building techniques”

allinanchor:

Similar to the previous search operator, this operator helps you find pages with all individual terms in the anchor text.

Example: allinanchor:”link building techniques”

blogurl:

This operator helps you find blog URLs for specific domains.

Example: blogurl:hubspot.com

link:

This search operator helps you find pages linking to a specific domain or URL.

Example: link:huffingtonpost.com

inposttitle:

Use this Google search operator to find posts with specific words in their title.

Example: inposttitle:”meditation apps”

+

Use this search operator to force an exact-match search for a single term or phrase.

Example: amazon +india

phonebook:

Use this operator to find someone’s phone number.

Example: phonebook:oracle

#

Use this search operator to search for hashtags. It used to work for Google+, but after its shutdown, it works mostly for Twitter.

Example: #elonmusk

info:

This operator helps you find information about a specific page.

Example: info:semrush.com

id:

Same as the previous operator with identical search results.

Example: id:semrush.com

location:

Use this search operator to find news articles on Google News from a certain location.

Example: location:bangalore

loc:

Use this operator to find local search results from a certain location.

Example: loc:bangalore

5 Actionable Ways to Use Google Search Operators

Now that you’re familiar with most of the advanced Google search operators, let’s explore a few actionable techniques to make the best use of these search operators.

1. Fix Non-Secure Pages

With the “site:” search operator, you can find pages that are non-secure on your site. Since HTTPS is a critical ranking signal, it’s an SEO best practice to ensure all the pages on your site are secure.

Let’s use this search operator for my site and see if we can find non-secure pages.

Looks like I just have 1 non-secure page — it links to an old PDF that I’m no longer offering on the site.

Let’s now use this search operator for a large site like The New York Times (nytimes.com).

Surprisingly, The New York Times has several pages on their site that are unsecured.

Bottom line: With a “site:” search operator, you’ll be able to identify non-secure pages on your website and fix them accordingly.

2. Find and Evaluate Link Building Prospects

Here’s the deal: In order to rank your pages on Google, you’ve got to put effort into building authoritative and relevant backlinks.

Let’s say you’ve done enough leg work to find a site that you want a link from. You can then find related sites which can be potential link building prospects.

Using the “related:” search operator, you can find similar sites:

Similarly, you can use the “related:” operator to find similar pages. Let’s take Semrush‘s post on SEO audit as an example and see what we find:

As you can see, there are 14 results that are similar.

Now, here’s the catch with the “related:” search operator: Most of the sites you stumble upon will have a ton of posts and pages, and finding the most relevant page for link building purpose can be quite a challenge.

For instance, if Semrush is the site you want a link from, you’d have to sift through 190,000 pages. As you can imagine, that’s a waste of your time.

In such cases, you can use the “site:” operator to find only the most relevant results from the target website.

You can do a site:domain.com “your target keywords” search to identify the posts that are most relevant to your needs.

Let’s stick with Semrush and see what we find:

As you can see, there are currently only 4 results that contain the keywords “collaboration tools” on Semrush‘s website. This is how you can narrow down the list of relevant pages from a potential prospect’s website.

3. Optimize Your Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the best ways to pass on link authority from a top-ranking page on your site to a page that’s either new or struggling to climb the SERPs.

That said, it can be a time consuming task to find relevant internal links from your site. Your time is better spent on identifying link building prospects and chasing high-quality backlinks.

This is where you can use the “site:” search operator to its best effect.

Using the “site:” operator on Google, you can find internal linking opportunities on your site and add internal links where they are relevant and most useful.

When adding internal links to existing posts, you need to make sure the links are relevant and add value to the content. Otherwise, you’ll be doing more harm than good to your posts.

Let me share an example of the internal linking process I followed for one of my recent posts about SEO metrics.

In this scenario, I wanted to identify blog posts with keyword phrases similar to the topic discussed in the new post while excluding the post that I wanted to build internal links to.

This is the search operator I used:

I found over 50 results from my blog. It would have been time consuming to find these posts through a manual search.

Recommended reading: Internal Links for SEO: The Definitive Guide

4. Find Indexing Errors

Indexing errors are more common than you may think.

When you use the “site:” search operator, you may find certain pages indexed that are better left unindexed. It can also be the other way round. Certain pages that should be indexed may remain non-indexed.

In each of these scenarios, you need to fix the issue as and when they occur.

Let’s take the example of my own blog once again.

Using the “site:” search operator, I found that Google has indexed over 500 pages from my site.

That number is way higher than the number of blog posts and pages I have on my site.

When I dug a little deeper, I found a few pages that definitely shouldn’t have been indexed. So I proceeded to delete or noindex these pages.

You can repeat a similar process for your blog and remove specific pages from SERPs by noindexing them.

In addition, if you use WordPress, you can also use these two Google search operators to identify category and tag pages that are better left nonindexed.

site:yoursite.com/category – helps you find blog category pages;
site:yoursite.com inurl:tag – helps you find tag pages.

5. Discover Resource Page Link Building Opportunities

Most professional bloggers have a “resource” page where they have a list of all their favorite tools, software, blog posts, books, and other resources that have helped them succeed in their blogging endeavors.

These resource pages are great link building prospects. My blog has a resource page too — a list of 75+ marketing tools which I consider essential for blogging success.

Once in a while, I get requests from other entrepreneurs and bloggers to feature their tool or software in the list. If I find the tool promising and useful, I add it to the list and the list keeps growing.

It’s a win-win for both parties involved: I get to expand my list and keep my post updated and fresh at all times, and they get an authoritative backlink in return (DR: 63).

Now, if you have a useful tool or resource at your disposal, you can reach out to sites in your niche and pitch your resource for inclusion in their lists.

Here’s the search operator you can use to find resource pages:

By using the “intitle:” operator, you can narrow down the results and make it easier to find potential link building prospects.

Final Thoughts

Google advanced search operators are extremely useful. When used the right way, they can save a lot of time and effort and guide you in your SEO and blogging journey.

What Google advanced search operators do you find the most useful? Are there any operator combinations that you’d like to recommend to other marketers out there? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List (38 Essential Commands) Click to Tweet

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 8, 2022 and has been updated frequently since then for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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The post Google Search Operators: The Ultimate List (38 Essential Commands) appeared first on 99signals.

13 Best Content Marketing Podcasts to Listen to Now

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:42:17 +0000

With each passing year, content marketing is evolving and becoming more sophisticated. As a marketer, if you don’t keep up with the latest and hottest trends in content marketing, you may be left behind.

Podcasts are a great way to keep yourself informed about the most popular content marketing trends, tools, and tactics.

One of my favorite things about podcasts is that you can subscribe to them and listen to the episodes on your own time.

But here’s the catch: There are too many podcasts to choose from.

With so many marketing podcasts vying for your attention, you may be wondering which ones devote the most time to content marketing. Which podcasts are worth checking out? Which podcasts provide the most value in terms of deconstructing content marketing ideas?

If you have these questions, you’ve come to the right place.

This list featuring the best content marketing podcasts will help you streamline your content marketing efforts and motivate you to come up with creative ideas to take your business to the next level.

Here are the 13 best content marketing podcasts I’d recommend to seasoned as well as new content marketers.

13 Best Content Marketing Podcasts

1. This Old Marketing

Hosts: Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is the top online authority when it comes to content marketing. So it makes sense to feature CMI’s podcast, This Old Marketing, at #1 on our list.

Hosted by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, two of the leading experts in the content marketing space, the podcast covers the latest trends and headlines in the content marketing industry.

Each episode also features rants and raves from Pulizzi and Rose on some of the breaking news stories in the marketing and business world. Thus, one of their recent episodes featured the hosts sharing their views on the intriguing GameStop short squeeze situation.

This Old Marketing is as informative as it’s entertaining. It’s also a great podcast to stay up-to-date with the latest news in the digital marketing space.

Launched in 2013, the show went on a brief hiatus in late 2017 before returning in 2019. Since then, Pulizzi and Rose have worked actively to inform everyone that the podcast is back. Let’s make their job easier by placing their brilliant podcast firmly at the top of our list of best content marketing podcasts.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

2. Online Marketing Made Easy

Host: Amy Porterfield

Amy Porterfield has helped more than 250,000 online entrepreneurs with her best-selling marketing courses, thriving social media channels, and her top-rated business podcast, Online Marketing Made Easy.

The podcast covers everything from content marketing and social media marketing topics to conversion optimization and marketing automation.

Porterfield also invites successful entrepreneurs and industry experts to her show to share their process and strategy. Past guests on the podcast have included Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, online advertising expert Rick Mulready, John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and several others.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommend Episodes

3. Content Inc.

Host: Joe Pulizzi

In addition to co-hosting This Old Marketing with Robert Rose, Joe Pulizzi also hosts a weekly podcast called Content Inc.

Pulizzi is known as the “Godfather of Content Marketing” and rightly so. Having founded Content Marketing Institute in 2007, Pulizzi has long believed that businesses can achieve sustainable growth not by creating and selling more products, but by building an audience with remarkable content.

As such, Content Inc. is aimed at entrepreneurs who are seeking creative content marketing ideas to build an audience for their business. Each episode contains one inspirational idea that has the potential to change your business.

Unlike the long-form format his other podcast follows, Content Inc. features short-form podcast episodes, with most episodes lasting less than 5 minutes. But don’t let the short length of the episodes fool you. Pulizzi ensures you leave each episode with takeaways you can apply to your business.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

4. Everyone Hates Marketers

Host: Louis Grenier

Louis Grenier’s contrarian marketing podcast, Everyone Hates Marketers, is easily one of the most popular marketing podcasts on this list.

Case in point: It reached over a million downloads in less than 4 years.

With over ten years of experience in marketing, Grenier started his podcast to share actionable marketing tips for people who were tired of shady and in-your-face marketing tactics.

Grenier explores a variety of marketing topics on his podcast, including content marketing. In one of his recent episodes, he invited Benji Hyam, co-founder of Grow and Convert, to deconstruct how he creates high-quality content that converts.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

5. Social Pros Podcast

Hosts: Jay Baer and Adam Brown

Social media and content marketing should always work together to achieve greater results. SocialPros is the best podcast to tune in to for improving your content marketing performance through effective social media strategies.

Hosted by social media marketing stalwarts, Jay Baer (Convince & Convert) and Adam Brown (Salesforce), the podcast features interviews from leading social media strategists who share how their companies are using social media to engage with their audience. Recent guests have included Rick Wion from Kellogg’s, Zachary Lones from Walmart, and Anna Gonzalez from Google Developer Studio.

Baer and Brown also discuss, dissect, or debunk the latest trends and ideas in the social media industry. A must-listen podcast for anyone who wants to level up their social media marketing skills.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

6. Social Savvy Podcast

Host: Andrea Jones

The Savvy Social Podcast is yet another podcast on this list that illustrates the importance of aligning your content marketing and social media efforts.

Hosted by social media strategist Andrea Jones, the podcast features interviews with leading industry professionals who share their expertise and strategies to help listeners get better results from social media.

Tune in to this podcast to learn effective techniques to integrate social media with your content marketing strategy.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

7. Storytelling Secrets

Host: Jules Dan

Storytelling is an important component of your content marketing strategy. When done the right way, it makes you more relatable and helps you build deeper connections with your audience. Jules Dan’s podcast Storytelling Secrets deep dives into the storytelling aspect of content marketing.

In the podcast, Dan explains how you can use the power of storytelling to instantly connect with your audience. You’ll also hear from industry experts who are currently crafting compelling stories that persuade and influence others to take action.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Side note: I was thrilled to be a guest on his podcast back in April 2020 where we discussed the importance of storytelling in affiliate marketing. I also shared a few actionable tips for people who want to dabble with affiliate marketing and start a side hustle. Give it a listen here.

Recommended Episodes

8. The GaryVee Audio Experience

Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk can rant and rave for 10 minutes on any marketing topic and turn it into an interesting podcast episode. And that’s exactly how some of the episodes feel.

All jokes aside, Gary Vaynerchuk’s podcast has consistently ranked among the best business podcasts ever since he started the show. It includes a mix of original content and clips from his #AskGaryVee show on YouTube, his keynote speeches, and fireside chats.

Although Gary Vee covers a wide range of marketing and entrepreneurial topics, he knows the importance of content marketing in the grand scheme of things. As such, many of his episodes revolve around the topics of storytelling, content creation, and content distribution. In one of his recent episodes, he shared tips on adding context to your story while building a brand and how to make content for multiple platforms at the same time.

He also occasionally interviews entrepreneurs, authors, and marketing experts on his podcast. Seth Godin, Pat Flynn, Tim Ferriss, and Tony Robbins have all been guests on his show in the past.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

9. Marketing School

Hosts: Neil Patel and Eric Siu

Neil Patel and Eric Siu combine their marketing expertise to host this highly popular podcast. As you may have guessed, the podcast covers a wide variety of online marketing topics, including content marketing.

Since launching the podcast in 2016, Patel and Siu have committed to releasing a new episode daily. At the time of writing this post, Marketing School has close to 1,700 episodes. The podcast has a dedicated website, where you can find time-stamped show notes for each episode.

Since most episodes are only 5-7 minutes long, you can binge-listen to them and emerge with some truly amazing insights on growing your online business.

Occasionally, the hosts digress from the short-form format of their podcast to invite guests and industry experts who reveal their key marketing hacks and strategies.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Top 3 Episodes

10. ProBlogger Podcast

Host: Darren Rowse

If there’s one thing Darren Rowse knows, it’s to churn out compelling content for bloggers on a consistent basis. Whether it’s through in-depth blog posts or insightful podcast episodes, Rowse always makes sure you leave with actionable tips to level up your blog.

Because of his commitment to helping other bloggers, his two blogs, ProBlogger and Digital Photography School, are massively popular and are read by over 5 million readers around the world.

Rowse’s podcast is designed to help you build a better blog and explore a variety of income streams to sustain your blogging efforts. His show features a mix of teaching, case studies, and challenges to help bloggers generate an audience and develop a deeper engagement with their readers.

Rowse also invites other bloggers from different industries to share their success stories and strategies.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

11. Content and Conversation

Host: Ross Hudgens

Content and Conversation is a podcast by Siege Media, an SEO-focused content marketing agency based in San Diego.

Hosted by Siege Media founder Ross Hudgens, Content and Conversation is a relatively new podcast and most of its episodes revolve around integrating content marketing with SEO. As such, one of their recent episodes featured an all-star guest list of SEO experts, including Rand Fishkin and Cyrus Shepherd, to share their SEO predictions for 2021.

If you’d like to learn techniques to combine SEO and content marketing effectively, this podcast is a must-listen.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts

Recommended Episodes

12. The Long Game

Hosts: Alex Birkett, Allie Decker, and David Khim

The Long Game podcast is a unique spin on content marketing.

Hosted by Alex Birkett, Allie Decker, and David Khim, the team conducts long-form interviews with practitioners in the content marketing field. The conversations range widely, from freelance writing to building content teams to conversion optimization and more.

At the heart of the interviews is the goal to learn about the underlying mental models, frameworks, and principles that drive the guest’s thinking. In this way, it goes slightly deeper than the tactics of today and tries to tease out “the long game” of the experts.

They also periodically do “kitchen side” episodes where the hosts debate among themselves different ideas in the content marketing world. A recent example is the question “what should a content marketer be goaled on.”

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

13. Marketing Mantra

Host: Sandeep Mallya

The final entry on our list is Marketing Mantra — a podcast I launched in mid-2018 with an aim to deconstruct marketing strategies and tactics that helped me grow my blog and marketing agency.

Like most podcasts on this list, I cover marketing topics in general, including content marketing. Since content marketing played a huge role in the growth of my blog as well as my digital marketing agency, many of the topics covered on this podcast revolve around content marketing hacks.

Occasionally, I invite experts and successful bloggers to share their lessons and strategies with my listeners, so they can put these insights into action. Matthew Woodward, Craig Campbell, Alexandra Tachalova, John Wall, Vlad Calus, and Daniel Daines-Hutt have all been guests on the show in the past.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Recommended Episodes

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing Podcasts

That wraps up my list of best content marketing podcasts. It’s time now for you to fire up your favorite podcast app, subscribe to these 13 podcasts, and listen to them whenever you find the time. It’ll be time well spent as these podcasts will help you craft a solid content marketing strategy that educates and inspires your audience.

Did I miss out on your favorite content marketing podcast? Please let me know in the comments section below. If you’d like more podcast recommendations, check out these lists as well:

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

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Editor’s Note: This article was first published on March 16, 2021 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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15 Best Marketing YouTube Channels (That Are Worth Subscribing To)

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:38:21 +0000

YouTube is a great place where both new and experienced marketers can learn new ideas and tactics to get traction for their business.

Marketing beginners can learn everything they need to know about different facets of digital marketing, SEO, content marketing, analytics, and more.

Similarly, marketing veterans can get up to speed with the latest trends in the rapidly changing marketing landscape and learn better and smarter ways to create and sustain growth for their business.

YouTube has no shortage of exceptional marketing content. With so many marketing YouTube channels to consider, figuring out which ones to follow is tough.

This post is an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. The list below features 15 of the best marketing YouTube channels you should follow, along with a few honorable mentions at the end.

In addition to the description of the specific YouTube channel, you’ll also find the most popular video on the channel (based on total view count) and my three favorite videos from the channel to help you get started.

Side note: This list will specifically touch upon the marketing content uploaded by these creators. If you’d like to subscribe to YouTube channels that specifically cater to entrepreneurs, please refer to this list of best YouTube channels for entrepreneurs.

Top 15 Marketing YouTube Channels

1. Pat Flynn

Pat Flynn is one of the most respected and well-known digital marketers in the world. His blog Smart Passive Income is widely popular amongst marketers and is an inspiration to anyone who’d like to make passive income online. His weekly podcast of the same name is one of the most popular marketing podcasts with over 60 million downloads.

Since launching his blog-based business in 2008, Pat Flynn has generated over $6 million in earnings through various income streams: affiliate marketing, digital products, online courses, books, advertising, and more.

Pat Flynn’s YouTube channel is an extension of his blog and podcast where he shares a wide array of techniques and strategies to generate passive income online and grow your online business. He also shares his thoughts on trending marketing topics and occasionally shares productivity hacks.

If you’d like to learn the nitty-gritty of running a successful blog, this marketing YouTube channel is a must-follow.

Subscribers: 430,000+
Most Popular Video: How to Start a Podcast (Complete Tutorial)

Subscribe to Pat Flynn’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Pat Flynn Videos

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ YouTube channel features a treasure trove of helpful content for SEOs and online marketers alike.

Not surprising considering Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools on the market. My personal favorite is Semrush, but Ahrefs is a close second.

Most SEO tools have their own YouTube channel. What differentiates Ahrefs’ YouTube channel from others is the consistent stream of helpful tutorials on SEO topics like keyword research, link building, technical SEO, and everything that’s trending in the world of SEO today.

It’s because of this commitment to consistency that Ahrefs’ YouTube channel has more views and followers than its competitors.

In addition to SEO tutorials, you’ll also find a handful of case studies from research and marketing experiments conducted by Ahrefs. For example, in their 3-part link building case study, you’ll learn how Ahrefs created an SEO statistics blog post and the exact link building technique they used to build backlinks to that post.

If you’d like to learn how to grow your organic traffic, Ahrefs’ marketing YouTube channel should definitely be on your radar.

Subscribers: 490,000+
Most Popular Video: SEO for Beginners: A Basic Tutorial for Higher Google Rankings

Subscribe to the Ahrefs YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Ahrefs Videos

3. Brian Dean

Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, is one of the most respected figures in SEO. If you’re an SEO beginner, Brian Dean’s in-depth guides on SEO topics can help you get acquainted with various SEO concepts that will help you achieve higher rankings for your site.

On his channel, Dean shares actionable SEO, link building, and content marketing strategies that you can use to grow your business.

He also shares real-life examples and SEO case studies to show you the exact techniques he’s using to increase his website’s organic traffic. For example, in this link building case study, he explains how the “Guestographics” strategy helped one of his readers boost his site’s search traffic by over 900%.

Subscribers: 550,000+
Most Popular Video: How to Get More Views on YouTube

Subscribe to Brian Dean’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Brian Dean Videos

4. Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan is a serial entrepreneur who’s launched several successful SaaS companies. He’s widely known for being Chief Sumo at AppSumo, a popular online marketplace for entrepreneurs. AppSumo’s channel itself is featured later on this list, but let’s cover Noah Kagan’s channel first.

Noah’s channel focuses on marketing experiments, growth hacking techniques, productivity hacks, and occasional interviews with other entrepreneurs who are using innovative marketing techniques to fuel their business growth.

He also has a series where he deconstructs the business secrets behind successful millionaires and billionaires. Don’t miss his video on how 3 entrepreneurs are making $1,000,000+ with 0 employees.

Subscribers: 1 million+
Most Popular Video: Meet the Billionaire that Works a Normal Job

Subscribe to Noah Kagan’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Noah Kagan Videos

5. Vanessa Lau

If Instagram is your preferred channel for marketing and reaching out to your audience, Vannessa Lau’s YouTube channel has you covered.

Vanessa Lau educates her subscribers about how entrepreneurs and content creators can leverage Instagram to connect with their audience and build a loyal following. Indeed, in one of her most-watched videos, Lau shares five Instagram hacks to gain followers on the platform organically.

In addition, Lau also shares YouTube marketing tips and strategies to stand out on other popular platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.

Subscribers: 700,000+
Most Popular Video: How to Gain Instagram Followers Organically

Subscribe to Vanessa Lau’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Vanessa Lau Videos

6. Gary Vaynerchuk

If there’s a marketer who has truly achieved cult status, it’s Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s a serial entrepreneur and 5-time New York Times best-selling author. More recently, he launched his own NFT collection called VeeFriends.

GaryVee maintains an active presence on all major social channels and YouTube is no exception, where he posts videos almost on a daily basis. At the time of writing this post, there are 2,000+ videos on the channel. These videos include Q&A sessions, his documentary series DailyVee, interviews, keynote speeches, and occasional rants.

If you’re a marketer and you haven’t followed Gary Vaynerchuk on YouTube yet, you’re seriously missing out.

Subscribers: 4.3 million+
Most Popular Video: One Life, No Regrets

Subscribe to Gary Vaynerchuk’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Gary Vaynerchuk Videos

7. WPCrafter

Wondering whether a specific WordPress plugin is right for your website? Then this marketing YouTube channel is for you.

Adam Preiser’s channel WPCrafter is dedicated to deconstructing WordPress. You’ll find tutorials of popular WordPress plugins, themes, page builders, and other tools which can help you optimize your WordPress site.

Adam’s commitment to in-depth tutorials has helped him rack up over 200,000 subscribers. For a niched-down channel like WPCrafter, that’s quite an achievement and proves how you can build a loyal following by catering to a specific audience. His Elementor tutorial, for example, is perfect for anyone who’s just getting started with a complex page builder like Elementor.

Amidst the tutorials, you’ll also find occasional reviews of the latest AppSumo lifetime deals and a discussion on the changes coming to the ever-evolving WordPress ecosystem.

Subscribers: 245,000+
Most Popular Video: Elementor – WordPress Page Builder Tutorial

Subscribe to WPCrafter’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite WPCrafter Videos

8. Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner’s YouTube channel has attracted more than 285,000 subscribers and 5 million views to date. If you are a marketer who’s seeking ideas on improving your social media marketing skills, this channel has you covered.

From marketing tutorials to interviews with leading industry experts, Michael Stelzner and team post 3-4 videos every week that feature discussions and advice on helping marketers navigate the constantly changing social media jungle.

Social Media Examiner also delves deep into advanced social media marketing strategies. In their video on advanced Facebook ad targeting, for example, advertising expert Rick Mulready shows you an advanced targeting method for expanding your cold audiences on Facebook.

Subscribers: 300,000+
Most Popular Video: LinkedIn Content Strategy: Post Ideas for Growth

Subscribe to Social Media Examiner’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Social Media Examiner Videos

9. vidIQ

If you have a new YouTube channel and don’t know where to start, vidIQ’s YouTube channel has videos you can binge to get your channel up and running.

vidIQ is a YouTube marketing tool that helps you uncover hidden metrics on every YouTube video, identify potential keywords, boost your video SEO, and more.

vidIQ’s channel focuses on helping you get more views and subscribers for your channel. You’ll find tutorials on how to use vidIQ as well as tips, tricks, and guides on how to grow your YouTube channel. If you’ve just started your YouTube channel, I’d highly recommend you watch their video on how to get your first 100 YouTube subscribers.

They also have a weekly series called “YouTube Channel Audits,” where they review different YouTube channels and offer tips and recommendations to help creators take their channel to the next level.

Subscribers: 1.75 million+
Most Popular Video: How to Get Your First 100 Subscribers on YouTube

Subscribe to the vidIQ YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite vidIQ Videos

10. Semrush

If you’ve followed my blog long enough, then you’d know that I prefer Semrush over every other SEO tool on the market.

Semrush’s YouTube channel has enough content to teach you the basics of SEO and digital marketing, covering topics like “How to Get Backlinks to Your Site,” “How to Rank on YouTube“, and “Track SEO Metrics and Rank Faster on Google.”

In addition, the channel contains tutorials on how to use Semrush for keyword research, competitive analysis, content marketing, and more to help you rank higher in SERPs.

You can also follow Semrush Live, which is the Semrush channel for live events like webinars and online conferences.

Subscribers: 175,000+
Most Popular Video: Most Common SEO Mistakes You Don’t Wanna Make

Subscribe to Semrush’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Semrush Videos

11. Income School

Run by internet entrepreneurs Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler, the Income School YouTube channel has been around since 2014 teaching their subscribers digital marketing, blogging, SEO, and YouTube marketing.

Subscribing to the channel will leave you with videos like “Write 4X More Blog Posts this Month,” “74 Successful Niche Site Ideas,” and “Becoming a Content Warrior.”

I like the honest, no-nonsense approach to the videos on this channel. I also like the fact that Harmer and Kesler are not afraid of sharing their views on some of the more controversial SEO tactics advocated by online marketing experts and influencers.

One of my favorite videos on the channel is their excellent rebuttal of a questionable claim made by Neil Patel on one of his videos. Harmer and Kesler wasted no time in sharing solid reasons as to why Neil Patel’s content strategy is not ideal for new bloggers and website owners.

Subscribers: 235,000+
Most Popular Video: The Complete Guide to SEO

Subscribe to the Income School YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Income School Videos

12. AppSumo

There was a time when the AppSumo YouTube channel only contained snapshots of the latest SaaS tools on offer at the #1 deal site for entrepreneurs. But the channel has lately evolved into an educational hub for entrepreneurs and marketers.

The information on all the new deals has now moved over to AppSumo’s second channel, AppSumo / Products. You can subscribe to this channel to be on the alert when a new tool drops at the AppSumo store.

The main AppSumo Youtube channel now exclusively features productivity hacks and marketing tips. In one of their recent videos, they discussed the best ways to level up your negotiation skills.

Subscribers: 78,000+
Most Popular Video: 10 Tips for Using Slack Like A Pro

Subscribe to AppSumo’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite AppSumo Videos

13. HubSpot Marketing

HubSpot is a marketing, sales, and customer service platform that helps companies grow better. They also offer a plethora of free tools and resources to help entrepreneurs scale up their business and bolster their revenue.

Marketers, entrepreneurs, and agency owners can find a ton of value by subscribing to HubSpot’s YouTube channel. If you’re looking to level up your social media marketing skills, there’s no channel better than HubSpot. They cover everything from tips to create great Instagram ads to growth tactics for emerging platforms like Clubhouse and ChatGPT.

In addition, you’ll also get the inside scoop on the strategies and tactics HubSpot used to drive the company’s explosive growth. For example, in their video “How HubSpot Grew to 7 Million Monthly Blog Views,” Jamal Meneide from HubSpot explains how the HubSpot blog generates such an enormous amount of organic traffic and how you can replicate the same strategy for your own blog.

Subscribers: 395,000+
Most Popular Video: Why No One Knows Who Created the Bitcoin

Subscribe to HubSpot’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite HubSpot Videos

14. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is one of the most polarizing figures in digital marketing. People either love him or love to hate him. But even his harshest critic won’t be able to deny the success he’s achieved in all his business endeavors.

Neil Patel has the uncanny ability to scale up any project he becomes involved in. From his marketing podcast to his hugely popular blog to his SEO tool Ubersuggest, Neil has been able to build a loyal audience.

The same is the case with his YouTube channel, which has racked up over 1 million subscribers in a short span of time.

Neil Patel covers all the broad areas of digital marketing on his channel, from content marketing to email marketing to SEO.

Subscribers: 1.20 million+
Most Popular Video: SEO for Beginners: 3 Powerful SEO Tips to Rank #1 on Google

Subscribe to Neil Patel’s YouTube Channel

My 3 Favorite Neil Patel Videos

15. Sandeep Mallya — 99signals (that’s my channel )

And coming in at #15 is my own YouTube channel (sorry for the shameless plug.)

If you’re an AppSumo customer (aka Sumoling), then you’ll find reviews and tutorials of the latest AppSumo deals that you ought to consider for your business. My reviews are in-depth and help you make an informed decision whether you should buy or skip a specific software deal.

In addition, I also post online marketing tutorials and how-to guides on the channel to help streamline your marketing efforts and grow your business.

Subscribers: 2,400+
Most Popular Video: How to Track Facebook Ads in Google Analytics [Using URL Parameters]

Subscribe to My YouTube Channel

Here are the 3 videos I’d recommend from my channel:

Honorable Mentions

With so much quality marketing content on YouTube, it was quite a task to narrow this list down to just 15 marketing YouTube channels. Which is why I’ve included this section at the end of a few more channels that are worth subscribing to.

Google Search Central – The official Google Search Central YouTube channel is a great place to find information on how to get the most out of your GSC account and improve your rankings in Google search results. The channel has over 600,000 subscribers. Click here to subscribe to Google Search Central.
MeasureSchool – If you have any questions about Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, this channel most likely has the answers. Run by Julian Juenemann, MeasureSchool takes a data-driven approach to digital marketing. It’s the perfect channel to follow for measuring your digital marketing efforts. Click here to subscribe to MeasureSchool.
Tips With Trena – Want to learn the secrets behind growing your YouTube channel organically? Then Trena Little’s channel is right up your alley. You’ll learn how to start your YouTube channel from scratch and get results fast. Click here to subscribe to Tips with Trena.
Ranking Academy – As the name suggests, this channel focuses on teaching you how to get higher rankings and better online visibility through search engines. It’s one of the fastest growing marketing channels on YouTube with over 250,000 subscribers. Click here to subscribe to Ranking Academy.
Fast Company – Fast Company is one of the world’s leading business publications. Their YouTube channel features a ton of branding and advertising advice. For example, in one of their recent videos, they explained how the new Mountain Dew commercial featuring LeBron James was a personal branding triumph for LeBron. Click here to subscribe to Fast Company.
Moz – I was tempted to include Moz in the top 15 marketing YouTube channels, but since Rand Fishkin’s departure, the content is just not the same anymore. That’s not to say they don’t publish informative blog posts and videos every now and then. The company also has one of the best business newsletters for marketers. Rand Fishkin still makes a cameo here and there on the channel, and they are capable of churning out videos that are helpful for advanced SEO users. Click here to subscribe to Moz.

Final Thoughts

That wraps up my list of best marketing YouTube channels that are worth subscribing to. Did I miss out on your favorite channel for marketing tips? Let me know in the comments section below. Don’t forget to share the reasons as to why that specific channel is your favorite for marketing advice.

If you found this article useful, please share it on Twitter using the link below:

15 Best Marketing YouTube Channels (That Are Worth Subscribing To) Click to Tweet

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 3 June 2021 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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10 Best Firefox Add-ons and Extensions for SEO

Sandeep Mallya — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 04:29:26 +0000

Despite stiff competition, Mozilla Firefox continues to be a popular web browser with a very loyal user base. As of December 2023, Firefox still commands a 6.66% browser market share, making it the third most popular web browser worldwide.

If you’re an SEO professional, a blogger, or an entrepreneur who’s looking for efficient and quick ways to improve your site’s SEO right in your web browser, then we have good news for you. There are several Firefox add-ons and extensions you can install on your browser to turn it into an SEO powerhouse.

In this article, we’ll reveal 10 of the best Firefox SEO extensions you can install right away to improve your search rankings and boost your traffic.

Are you a Chrome user? We’ve got you covered. Check out these 26 best SEO extensions for Google Chrome.

Top 10 SEO Extensions for Mozilla Firefox

1. SEOquake

SEOquake is a free SEO extension by Semrush which helps you accelerate your SEO efforts on the fly. SEOquake provides you with key SEO metrics for a specific page, along with other useful tools such as the SEO Audit tool, the Keyword Density report, Internal/External link analysis, and even social metrics.

With SEOquake installed on your Firefox, you can:

Get an SEO overview of any page at a glance
Discover your SERP competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
Analyze a webpage’s external and internal links
Get detailed information about your backlinks and much more.

Add SEOquake to Firefox

Further reading

2. Ahrefs SEO Toolbar

Ahrefs SEO Toolbar provides the most important SEO metrics right in your web browser.

This add-on gives you instant access to major page and keyword metrics, including domain rating (DR), URL rating (UR), estimated organic search traffic, number of referring domains, number of backlinks, and more.

The only problem? You need an active Ahrefs subscription in order to use this extension. We’ve covered Ahrefs extensively on this blog and it’s a phenomenal tool for link building and website analysis. Check out our in-depth review of Ahrefs to learn more.

Add Ahrefs SEO Extension to Firefox

3. Mangools SEO Extension

Mangools SEO extension allows you to speed up your SEO right in your browser.

With this free extension added to your Firefox, you can see all the key SEO metrics, popularity trends, backlinks, and on-page SEO insights of any domain or URL.

Add Mangools SEO Extension to Firefox

4. SEO & Website Analysis by WooRank

SEO & Website Analysis is a free Firefox extension by WooRank which provides a review for any given website.

SEO & Website Analysis extension provides several tips for your website to improve your rankings in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It is a powerful extension for digital marketing professionals, SEOs, web developers, mobile developers, and bloggers.

Add WooRank Extension to Firefox

5. Foxy SEO Tool

Foxy SEO Tool is an exclusive add-on to Firefox which provides quick and easy access to a multitude of search engine functions and web traffic analysis sites such as Alexa, Compete, and Semrush.

With this tool, you can check your website’s listing in important directories, references in Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and find shortcuts to useful network functions and social media sites.

Add Foxy SEO Tool to Firefox

6. Majestic Backlink Analyzer

Majestic Backlink Analyzer gives you instant insights into the number of backlinks and domains linking to the URL and domain you are currently browsing.

With this Firefox add-on, you can see SEO metrics like link profile charts, link counts at the URL, subdomains and root level, and the two Flow Metrics scores (Majestic’s version of domain authority) from 0-100 for pages you visit.

While the above information can be viewed for free, you’ll need an active subscription to Majestic to unlock all the key features. Majestic users can get more in-depth data into backlinks, anchor text, and get access to backlink analysis tools from Majestic.

Add Majestic Backlink Analyzer to Firefox

7. Link Redirect Trace

Link Redirect Trace lets you perform advanced and comprehensive analysis of links, redirects, and canonical URLs.

Here are some of the things you can use this Firefox add-on for:

Check for problems with your site’s on-page SEO
Check for problems with your site’s off-page SEO (incoming links)
Perform competitor research
Check your affiliate links
Understand the full redirect chain
Check your links after a website migration or redesign
Check if a shortened URL points to a dangerous website
Trace a hacker website redirect
Track links from advertising and affiliate networks.

Add Link Redirect Trace to Firefox

8. Search by Image

Link building through reverse image search is one of the most scalable ways to build quality backlinks.

Luckily there’s a Firefox extension that reduces the manual work associated with reverse image search. Search by Image is a browser extension that allows you to initiate a reverse image search from the right-click context menu or the browser toolbar.

This extension will find all images positioned in the clicked area, including those declared in CSS. It also supports uploading local images and searching for images from private sites.

Add Search by Image to Firefox

Further reading

9. Link Research SEO Toolbar

Link Research SEO Toolbar lets you view all the advanced SEO metrics for every page you visit on Firefox.

Here are some of the things you can do with this extension:

See the power and trust of a domain or page
Discover great places to get links from
See how successful a page is on social media
Understand user engagement
See the strongest pages by Keyword Ranking
Spot drastic changes in the number of links
See how many backlinks a page has.

Add Link Research SEO Tool to Firefox

10. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere add-on for Firefox is a free keyword research tool that shows you useful keyword search volume, CPC, and competition data on 15+ websites, including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ubersuggest, Majestic, Moz Open Site Explorer, AnswerthePublic, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Bing, Etsy and more.

This browser extension saves you the hassle of copying data from various websites and using the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads to see relevant search volume and CPC data.

Add Keywords Everywhere to Firefox

Summary

So these are the 10 best Firefox add-ons and extensions we’d suggest you install on your Firefox browser.

Did we miss out on any of your favorite Firefox add-ons for SEO? Let us know in the comments section.

If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below or share it on your preferred social channel using the social share bar on the left.

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Editor’s Note: This article was first published on November 7, 2018 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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