Digital Marketing Agencies Blog and Resources

Many people in the business world use SEO and digital marketing synonymously. Let's get down to business and make some sense of these buzzwords. Hint: They are NOT the same. "It's a common misconception," says Jess Holmes, founder and CEO of Wildish Digital, "SEO is a part of digital marketing. Digital marketing is comprised of a variety of marketing branches with SEO being one of those branches." To better understand where SEO lies within the field of digital marketing, we are going to first explore SEO. What is SEO? "The abbreviation SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization," explains Rob Smith, founder and director of Web Design City. "It is systematically increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to a website." This traffic is from search engines, and is referred to as "natural, organic, or algorithmic" traffic, according to Smith. In other words, "SEO is one specific way to drive organic traffic in an affordable and scalable way from search engines," explains Adam Ayers, CEO of Number 5. The key here is that SEO is targeting improvements in organic traffic, not traffic that you have to pay or advertise for. How does SEO work? SEO is a multifaceted field in and of itself, whose goal is "To increase the overall (organic) traffic of potential customers to the company's website" says Hamna Amjad, Content Marketing Executive at SIA Enterprises. To help dig in, Tom Buchok, Founder of Mailcharts explains, "SEO is all about optimizing the content on your website so that you can hang out with the cool kids on Google's Page 1. An agency that focuses on SEO will work with keywords, links, meta information and images so that your keywords and pages will rank higher in searches." SEO is about working with search engines. "Search engine algorithms rank a website on the search result based on various parameters," explains Smith. "Websites that rank higher on the first page for a search receive almost 95 percent more clicks. Research also shows that websites that rank higher on the search page have a better click-through rate (CTR) and traffic." When you search for something on Google, the organic search results are those that appear "directly below the paid search or pay-per-click advertisements," says Smith. Types of SEO "While SEO is not marketing," says Amjad, "it is a strategy to optimize your site so that it can rank higher in search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo among others. It includes both on-page SEO and off-page SEO methods." While SEO is just one component of internet marketing, it is still a multifaceted discipline with several specific ingredients. Let's explore the different facets of SEO. On-site SEO vs. off-site SEO "Onsite, as the name indicates are the activities that you perform on the website to improve organic visibility," explains Smith. "This involves improving the content and optimizing the website to provide value to the customers and to enhance their experience when on the site." Onsite SEO strategies include keyword research, technical auditing, on-site optimization, and user experience (UX) optimization for loading speed and navigation. Off-site SEO factors are also crucial. "When we talk of offsite SEO," says Smith, "we are referring to activities that increase the organic visibility of a website through actions carried outside the website. Offsite SEO is also called 'link building,' which aims to increase the number of reputable inbound links to a website. As Google uses reputable websites linking to your website as an indicator of reputation and popularity, link building is a major SEO technique." While link building is important, it's not the only off-site SEO tactic. Marcus Miller is an SEO and Digital Marketing Strategist at BowlerHat and a SearchEngineLand columnist. He says, "Something else to consider is visibility on third-party sites that themselves rank well on search engines. So, any true SEO strategy should aim to not only promote your site but to promote your business on sites that also rank well — maximizing your overall visibility." He suggests that reputation signals are also important to SEO. These signals come from consumer "reviews on Google My Business and other relevant portals." Other off-site SEO tactics include content marketing and collaboration, digital PR, promotion, and outreach. National SEO v. local SEO In addition to both on-site and off-site SEO practices, experts also point out the difference between tactics for national SEO and local SEO. Karthik Subramanian, a content marketer for Paperflite explains the distinction: "If you are a business that caters to your local community or city or town, you can hire an SEO agency. They will help you optimize your website for the local communities or specific regions. For example, a keyword such as 'Tennis shoes' is very generic and will give you millions of options on Google. However, 'Tennis shoes in Brooklyn' helps you cater to your local audience." SEO and digital marketing are not synonymous "The distinction between the two is that SEO is a tool within digital marketing," says Brock Murray, COO of seoplus+. "SEO is designed to properly optimize your website for search engines — a critical feature for your business." While SEO's focus on organic traffic is mission-critical for sustainable growth, digital marketing adds a myriad of other helpful tools to the toolbox. Digital marketing basics Now that we have heard about how SEO is just one piece of the digital marketing pie, let's branch out. What exactly is this all-encompassing field of digital marketing? Let's hear from the experts: "Digital marketing is a blanket term for all the various ways you can drive traffic to your digital funnel." — Adam Ayers, CEO of Number 5 "Digital marketing is just using the internet to market. For me, this includes email, pay per click, SEO, email, display/retargeting, affiliate, and social media at least. Really anything you do online or that shows up online would fall under digital marketing for me." — Dave Rohrer, Founder of NorthSide Metrics and co-host of The Business of Digital Podcast "Digital marketing encompasses the manner in which you can connect and network with new or existing customers. You can expect strategies like email marketing, content marketing, direct marketing, and more." — Tom Buchok, Founder, Mailcharts How does digital marketing differ from SEO? "SEO is a kind of digital marketing — one part of a much larger puzzle," says Miller, "SEO is a tactic that focuses only on getting your business to the top of the natural results on the major search engines (Google and Bing). While being visible on search engines is important, it is only part of a larger marketing strategy. You still need to get users to click through to your site and then to get in touch. There are also many other ways to market a business online or digitally — social networks being the big and obvious example here. But there is a whole suite of platforms and tactics that fall under the umbrella term of digital marketing." "The key difference," he adds, "is that SEO only focuses on getting exposure in the natural search engine results, while digital marketing is a broader approach that will typically involve more platforms, channels, and the entire customer journey." To better understand how SEO fits into digital marketing, let's look a little more in-depth at factors influencing a consumer's experience. A user's journey "All good marketing starts with the customer," says Miller. "How do they find out about your business? Is this something they need right now, like an emergency plumber? Is your business something that the end-user would research? What is the competition like?" "At Bowler Hat (my agency) we focus on helping smaller businesses. People like plumbers, roofers, financial advisors — traditional business categories. In most cases, a potential customer for these businesses will start on a search engine, so being visible when a user conducts that search is hugely important." Organic search engine visibility is SEO-centric, but its not the only way to get noticed. "Of course," continues Miller, "you can also run ads at the top of the search engine result pages which is most certainly not SEO but rather SEM (Search Engine Marketing)," which is also referred to as PPC, or pay-per-click advertising. "While there are no exact figures here, studies tend to show that organic results tend to get around 20 times the number of clicks that the paid ads receive — so, in an ideal world, good organic and paid search engine marketing is the best combo. Certainly, SEO and PPC work well together, combining SEO and another digital marketing tactic." SEO + ? = digital marketing SEO is one pillar of digital marketing. One pillar is cool, but it won't hold up much on its own. So, how exactly does this pillar fit in with the rest of the broader digital marketing field? "You'll often find that great digital marketing agencies are built on a foundation of great technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO, while simultaneously offering a variety of paid media, multimedia, and web design services," explains Venta Marketing CEO Max Prokell. Here some of the services or tasks that digital marketing encompasses: SEO Content marketing Social media marketing and management Influencer marketing PPC and digital advertising Website analytics  Online reputation management Many digital marketing agencies even combine SEO with the following creative marketing services, offering websites a fuller slate of options and turnkey solutions: Email marketing Conversion rate optimization Website or app development and design Lead generation Logo design Branding Display banners and ads Web hosting Site maintenance Ecommerce development Remarketing Marketing automation   To better understand how the fields of digital marketing and SEO are similar, yet different, we asked experts to help point out the biggest differences. Here's what they said: 1. Driving organic traffic vs. increasing online presence "The biggest difference between SEO and digital marketing is its purpose," says Greg Heilers, a partner at Jolly Content. "The job of an SEO Specialist is to drive more traffic to the company's website, along with revenue. The job of a digital marketer is to use any medium to increase the company's online presence. These two often work together to maximize their impact." 2. Technical appeal vs. human appeal "SEO is designed to appeal to the search rngines. Digital marketing is designed to appeal to consumers/customers, i.e. real people," explains Jann Mirchandani, Founder and Principal of Westchester Marketing Cafe. "SEO is where you tweak a myriad of different elements on your webpage so that search engines will recognize the page as relevant for a given search query. At times, this means writing copy in a way that may seem stilted. Digital marketing includes website content, email campaigns, social media engagement and, depending upon who you talk you, may also include paid advertising. It is written and designed to appeal to the human reader. As such, copy is generally more natural-sounding or conversational." Kaddie Fancher, Founder and Owner of KC Media, Inc agrees that SEO and digital marketing differ in their approach. Of the latter, she says, "It's also strategic, but it's more human. Digital marketing encompasses various strategies, sometimes including SEO, and also advertising, digital media placements, and social media. As a whole, digital marketing is really establishing your digital presence and continuing to serve your target audience where they are through a variety of mediums. Digital marketers will often work directly with an SEO expert to be sure their content is optimized." 3. Short term vs. long-term strategy "SEO is a longer-term specific strategy to gain organic rankings in Google and the other search engines for website pages and other online properties," points out V. Michael Santoro, Co-Founder of Vaetas. "Digital Marketing is the holistic term and encompasses all online marketing services including SEO, social media, content marketing and paid advertising (PPC and social ads). SEO also includes using content marketing to rank in the search engines for more than your website pages. For example, images, YouTube videos, and articles can be optimized to rank for desired keyword phrases simultaneously with your web pages. However, SEO is blending with the other digital marketing areas to achieve results. For example, obtaining social signals, e.g. your visitors sharing your content is an SEO signal that helps with rankings. However, obtaining quality backlinks is still the number one SEO priority." Santoro wasn't joking about the longer-term strategy. Marilyn Heywood Paige, Chief Marketing Officer at Paige Black elaborates: "SEO takes six to twelve months of investment to begin to see results, that's the biggest difference. SEO is a long-term play. It is an investment that will reap dividends in earning more credibility in the marketplace. It also is a strategy that builds on itself and builds momentum over time, while digital marketing does not build momentum. If you stop paying for advertising, you stop getting leads. Digital marketing garners faster leads. Digital marketing, (AdWords or PPC advertising) is more of an immediate lead generator. You place ads and people click on them and go to your landing page or website. The success of this tactic relies on how well you have optimized the campaign with keywords and how good the landing page is that the person lands on when they click your ad. Neither solution is easy. Both require strategic know-how, attention to detail, and consistent effort." 4. Technical skills vs. soft skills  "The biggest difference between the two disciplines is that SEO marketing involves a lot of technical skills besides soft skills," says Carsten Schaefer, founder and CEO of SaaS tool crowdy.ai. "In other words, besides content writing, link building, outreach and other 'softer' skills, it also requires you to have the technical knowledge of how websites work. You need to know a lot about site structure, schemas, website speed, scripts, and things of that nature. On the other hand, digital marketing encompasses a wide variety of skills, most of which are soft skills: PR, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing. Tthese are all disciplines that require creativity primarily, and technical skills are nice to have." 5. Narrow vs. broad scope "The biggest difference between SEO and digital marketing is the scope of what they cover," suggests Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing. "SEO is very specific and only applies to ranking a website in the search engine results. As the name suggests, you're optimizing for the search engines. This includes Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It also expanded to include voice search results in the search engines. If you ask 'Siri, what's the best pizza place near me?' the results you receive will be based on search engine optimization. Digital marketing is very encompassing. In fact, most digital marketers consider SEO an important component of digital marketing. However, it's not the only component." 6. Offense vs. defense "The main difference between the two is that SEO is more defense and digital marketing is more offense," advises Mikaela Delia owner of Mikaela Delia Creative Marketing Agency. "SEO is very internally focused between keyword strategy, web development, etc., while digital marketing focuses more on external strategies that funnel traffic to a brand's digital properties. An SEO agency will focus solely on helping to improve your search rank, while a digital marketing agency will help you reach other main objectives such as increasing organic impressions, conversions, assist in online advertising, etc." 7. Marathon vs. sprint "We like to compare SEO to a marathon, and paid media to a sprint," states Matt Erickson, Marketing Director, National Positions. "SEO is going to focus on getting you valuable organic traffic with content, technical improvements, linking profiles, etc. Your budget on SEO will usually stay fairly consistent. A digital marketing agency, on the other hand, may do everything from video production to Facebook Ads to PPC and Amazon advertising. So you will often find agencies that do everything and some that only focus on social media or Google. So at the end of the day, each will be striving for different goals when it comes to your overall marketing." "While there is some crossover," he adds, "SEO's key focuses are to drive traffic, get your site higher in the rankings, and improve your site's domain authority or DA. SEO is usually a longer play for results — a slower and steady climb will net more month-over-month organic traffic that you can turn into opportunities. Digital marketing, whether it is social media, Google Ads, YouTube ads, etc., is more direct and aimed at driving opportunities faster. Basically, you are paying for eyeballs and attention." Hiring decisions So, here is the big question: Should my company hire an SEO agency or a digital marketing agency? What to expect from an SEO agency "Hiring an SEO agency means you are employing an agency that will solely focus on getting your website ranked in the search engine listings," explains Patricia Walterick, CEO of Open Space Digital. "To some degree," Rohrer notes, "an SEO agency may have some competency in other aspects of digital marketing, but most of their team and expertise will be wrapped up in just SEO. This means that when hiring an SEO agency you shouldn't expect them to be running your paid search, email, and affiliate channels. If that is what you need help with, then you should look at something more like a full-service digital marketing agency. These are agencies that might not be experts on EVERYTHING but most certainly have a good understanding and are well versed in multiple aspects of digital marketing." With an SEO agency, says Walterick, "Typically you will pay a monthly retainer for as long as you require their services. Most companies will keep SEO agencies on retainer even after they have achieved the desired rankings for their keywords so that they can track and maintain those rankings." What to expect from a digital marketing agency "A digital marketing firm offers services for all online marketing services including social media, content marketing, online advertising, and SEO," describes Santoro. "They may even provide a service to help a client build their online brand." "The difference between hiring an SEO agency and a digital marketing agency is that the latter will have specialists working on all aspects of your digital marketing," says Murray. "SEO agencies naturally have much narrower views on the overall process of growing a client's business since their only focus is on SEO. A digital marketing agency will have specialists in all areas of the industry, including social media, content, public relations, web development, as well as SEO." Additionally, adds Walterick, "A digital marketing agency will assess your current situation and listen to your business goals then offer a number of options for you to consider. You and the agency may adjust your budget and various ad campaigns throughout the year as they determine what works best for your niche and clientele. The digital marketing agency is focused on acquiring leads for your business and increasing sales." Hiring a digital marketing agency doesn't automatically mean that all of your services will be handled in-house. As Santoro says, "many digital marketing firms outsource to more technical SEO firms or white label these SEO services as their own. With SEO becoming more complex, using technical SEO firms can help to produce better results for search engine rankings." Hiring advice for subcontracting and white label SEO Why would a digital marketing agency contract an SEO agency to work on your account? "We see many digital agencies subcontracting SEO to specialty companies because of how difficult SEO can be, advises Alexander De Ridder, co-founder of INK, a content optimization platform for writers. De Ridder continues, "SEO is an extreme specialization in an area of constant, immediate change. SEO specialization falls under four general centers of excellence: management, strategy, technical, and content. SEO agencies need to know everything about new technologies such as AMP and PWA, and how it impacts organic search, click-through rates, on-site user satisfaction. They need to know how to rank for local search, international search, multi-language search. They need to be JavaScript and code experts to optimize slow sites. They need to be browser experts and know the latest updates. They need to be Google algorithm experts, experimenting and tinkering to find out what works now that didn't work yesterday. They need to be site structure experts, content experts so that the content can be optimized for semantic intent. And not at all finally, be great at SEO research such as content gap analysis and keyword research, be site migration experts, and so on." So, how do you choose which service provider is right for your situation? Should you go with a one-stop-shop with more general knowledge in a variety of digital applications? Or should you go to an SEO expert to focus on the basics, then add on a full-service agency later? Do you have in-house marketing handling some tasks, but need help from an outsider for others? Don't worry. We asked marketing experts for advice on how and why to hire either an SEO or a digital marketing firm. Here are the six questions you should be asking: 1.  What are your needs? "Really it all depends upon your requirements and strategy," says Miller. "If you know that the only part of your marketing you need to address is improved visibility in organic search then an SEO agency is what you need. If you really want to look at strategy and the best tactics or know that your customers or product or service would be better promoted on social media or via some other means, then you need a digital marketing agency. Certainly, if you want an agency that will look at building awareness, engagement, conversions, retention, upsell and just generally working through the customer lifecycle, then you need an agency that can handle more than just SEO. It is worth noting as well that digital marketing is such a broad subject that no two agencies are exactly the same and some may be stronger in some areas than others. What really matters here is understanding what you need and then finding the agency that is the best fit for your unique requirements." Your company is unique. Hiring an agency to help isn't a one-size-fits-all decision. Quincy Smith, Head of SEO and Content at Ampjar gives this advice: "I firmly believe you should hire for your needs, so I'd advise against hiring a digital marketing agency if you only need help with your SEO. However, if you need help with your entire marketing strategy, then an agency is a good solution but you might lose a bit in individual expertise. That tradeoff is the biggest difference. Every agency will tell you that they can do SEO, but they likely aren't as skilled in it as a company where that's their only focus." 2. Is your current focus on niche keywords or a big-picture goal? "If your objective is to increase revenue or leads via organic search, the best bet is to hire a firm that specializes in SEO," advises Kent Lewis, President and Founder of Anvil Media. However, he adds, "If you're looking for SEO as part of a larger service mix, consider a digital marketing agency. Although I started my SEO career in 1996, I've always been a proponent of a multi-disciplinary/multi-channel approach to digital, including paid advertising, PR and email, among other disciplines. At Anvil, we're 40 percent SEO, 50 percent paid media, and 10 percent other digital disciplines, to provide our clients with the optimal mix. The benefit of going with a digital agency is seeing the bigger picture and integrating digital efforts across channels." Walterick agrees. She says,"if you are looking only to have a company assist you with getting your website to rank for your niche-specific keywords, hire an SEO agency. If you want a company to assess your big-picture marketing plans and campaigns by handling your email lists and marketing, paid advertising, and other online promotions, as well as work on ranking your website, hire a digital marketing agency." 3. What would you like to achieve? "When choosing between hiring an SEO agency or a digital marketing agency, think about what you'd like to achieve, suggests Mark Pratt, Marketing Manager at ClickSend. "Do you want one agency to be able to handle all aspects of digital marketing? If so, a digital marketing agency is the better call. If you want specialized technical SEO know-how, you may choose an agency where their main focus is SEO. A good SEO agency should be able to assist with more advanced technical SEO, like structured data, canonicalization, hreflangs (for international SEO), site structure, redirects, page speed, etc. They should be able to help set up correct reporting and analytics, as poor implementation of analytics can cause huge headaches later down the track. They also might have good relationships established with website owners to assist with your backlink strategy. Furthermore, any SEO agency worth their salt will be up to date on all the major search engine algorithm changes." 4. How much of a commitment are you looking for? Marcus Clarke, Founder of Searchant.co shares this perspective: "If your focus is solely on increasing organic traffic (perhaps you handle social media in-house), then an SEO agency might well be your best option and offer the best value for money and expertise. Ask for case studies in your niche to see what they might do for you. Hiring a digital marketing agency is generally a larger commitment as they will be across more parts of your business, and you should be prepared to work in a more integrated way with them, giving them more access and sharing more information with them to allow the to promote you in various ways." 5. Are quick results your focus? "If you want to hire an agency that can give you faster results due to the available departments within their business, a digital marketing agency is your best bet," says Garret Seevers, VP of Marketing for Azuga. "They can also offer you additional services depending on the agency (e.g. email marketing and social media marketing)." 6. Are you hiring with a budget in mind? "[W]hether you need an SEO agency or a digital marketing agency, majorly depends on your requirements and budget," advises Amjad. "An SEO agency can help you with improving your site's rankings. And you can hire a digital marketing agency if you want to enhance your company's overall exposure using digital media. It can be quite costly if you are using paid ads in your strategy." A caution about hiring We will leave you with this helpful advice from Calloway Cook, Founder of Illuminate Labs, a dietary supplements company: "As a company looking to hire, it's more challenging to analyze the effectiveness of an SEO agency than a digital marketing agency. Because Google rankings tend to increase with time regardless (due primarily to increased backlinks to the website), an SEO firm may attribute increases in a client's Google rankings solely to their efforts, but this may not be accurate. This is a nuanced point, but it's impossible to objectively parse out how much the SEO firm's work contributed to rankings improvements and how much would have happened anyway. Hiring a digital marketing company, on the other hand, is easier because you can measure exactly the ROI of their efforts. Whether it's a Google Campaign, PPC Campaign, or a social campaign, it's easy to determine whether the efforts of the potential hire are generating a positive ROI for their clients."

In a blog titled "How to Become a Better Blog Writer in 30 Days," SEO godfather Neil Patel says, "If you want to write better blog posts, then you MUST read other great writers inside and outside your industry. It's one of the most vital blog writing tips you need to memorize and put into action. The books, journals, and blogs that you'll read may not be closely-connected to your topic (e.g., lead generation), but you're training your brain to think outside of its comfort zone and give you more great ideas. In turn? You'll be better equipped to write a great blog post. The truth is that if you don't read great writing, you don't really know how to do it — and that successful blog that you dream of will evade you." For new bloggers or people new to content marketing, weeding out the good writers from the bad can often be difficult. We asked marketers, bloggers, and writers for suggestions of "great writers" that budding content marketers can read and emulate. Here are their recommendations: Blogs Ahrefs"Ahrefs blog — it's all geared around SEO and content as a foundation to a good strategy. I like this for content because it's not just about the content. It's about great writing and proper structure to ensure your content is getting read. They dive into lots of SEO stuff on the blog, but reading their posts and writing style gives you a great idea of what industry leading content should look like. I personally get lots of tips from them because they have access to data on large scales that the average person doesn't, so you can always learn something interesting from their posts." — Brad Ormsby, Founder and CEO of Colorstone Marketing BiggerPockets "BiggerPockets is one of the leading blogs for real estate investing which covers all possible topics related to this matter. The blog publishes a couple of new articles every day, thus being always up to date. One of the best features of this blog is that it features a large number of writers with different expertise and style to fit the needs of every content writer looking for inspiration. When I first started writing about real estate, BiggerPockets was one of the sources where I was always going for reliable information presented in a way accessible to just about anyone." — Daniela Andreevska, Marketing Director at Mashvisor Content Marketing Institute"Content Marketing Institute — the name says it all. This is an excellent blog to follow for content marketing. They discuss everything from telling stories within your content to getting more shares from your content. If you just read their daily posts, you'll not only learn about the topic but also get a feel for what high level conversational writing is supposed to look like. I've personally learned quite a bit about writing conversationally and keeping points concise in my posts." — Ormsby Problogger"Their posts are all highly professional and focused on getting ROI from your content. If you're interested in learning how to not only write like the pros but also make money from your posts, then you should check them out. Their posts are heavily text oriented, usually with only one photo which shows that you don't need all the glitz and glam to get excellent results from your blog." — Ormsby Searchengine Journal"SearchEngineJournal.com is a great source to learn more about the latest digital marketing trends that are data-centric. Their articles are informative and concise, and their writers and contributors share expertise and tips I have used and will continue to use on behalf of my agency and our clients." — Holly Rollins, President of 10xdigital Writers Andy Crestodina: Orbit Media"Orbit Media's blog gets my vote as an indispensable resource for content marketers, particularly posts by its co-founder Andy Crestodina. Andy's posts are well-researched and equally well-written. Andy's writing style is concise and to the point with little fluff. He addresses common topics from a unique angle which makes it always interesting to read." — Stephen Jeske, Content Strategist, MarketMuse Ann Smarty "For how-to posts, nobody writes better than Ann Smarty. She mixes detailed explanations with screenshots to illustrate her points…and it is clear that she put tons of research into every post before she even begins to write. Ann also makes good use of text sculpting. That is, she uses bullet lists. She also uses one-sentence paragraphs. Readers are never assaulted by huge blocks of text, one following the other. This is an important skill for any kind of writing. How-to posts are not really my thing, although sometimes I have to write them – especially ghostwriting for others – so Ann's work is a great inspiration and her posts serve as great examples to emulate." — David Leonhardt, President, THGM Writers Brene Brown"Brene Brown writes about shame and vulnerability, which are difficult enough to think about, much less WRITE about. Yet she addresses it simply, clearly, and in a way that allows the reader to feel safe. It might look easy, but you know it's not if you've ever had to write anything about a sensitive topic. Networking (my topic) can be a sensitive topic for many people who feel like they don't have the "right" personality for it, so I'm learning a lot from Brene on how to make people feel normal and how to address their fears." — Beth Bridges, The Networking Motivator Brian Dean: Backlinko"Brian Dean understands how to write for the web. He uses short concise sentences, asks questions throughout, and like other great writers, writes at a middle school reading level which Contently has shown increases shareability and improves the user experience. Writers should pay attention to Brian's use of line breaks. Rather than writing in typical paragraph blocks, Brian breaks his articles up into short sentences followed by line breaks which makes his content feel much more conversational. Brian also typically builds context and intrigue for his articles by sharing a story in the intros of his articles. Brian's content feels like you're having a casual conversation with him. Combined with his use of stories, I've been able to learn from his writing style to create content on otherwise "boring" topics, and create something interesting, easy to read, and shareable." — Kevin Ho, VP of Marketing, Wishpond Brian Solis"Brian Solis is an award-winning author, blogger, marketing analyst and keynote speaker who's written seven books, including Engage! — a guide for creating online content that builds loyalty and trust for your brand. Solis writes his blog posts in first person, so if you like his books you're able to get more content straight from him on the blog." — Tyler Horvath, CEO, TytonMedia.com Heidi Cohen"Heidi Cohen is a blogger and speaker who built her marketing career at well-known brands and has developed actionable guides for newbies and experts. Grounded in established marketing fundamentals, she provides insights on social media, content marketing, and mobile marketing." —  Horvath John Jantsch"John Jantsch is the author of several bestsellers, including Duct Tape Marketing, Duct Tape Selling, The Referral Engine, and more. He coined the term "duct tape marketing" to define useful, simple, and affordable marketing that is effective at solving a wide array of problems. The blog covers all things marketing, from SEO and mobile SEO to social media and lead generation." — Horvath Jon Dykstra: Fat Stacks"I recommend the Fat Stacks blog written by Jon Dykstra. I recommend reading and following his content because he writes in a conversational tone that is easy to follow, and he starts his posts with interesting stories and facts that draw you in. Not only are his posts easy to read, they are chock full of SEO and website growth tips that actually work and are based on his own experiments." — Stacy Caprio, Founder, Her.CEO Joshua Hardwick: Ahrefs"I'd suggest that for anyone who utilizes content marketing as a means of promoting their product or service should check out the Ahrefs Blog where the main writer is Joshua Hardwick. What's great about the content they put out is how informative their articles are. They also dive deep into the topic and share their expertise in the most digestible way. Also, they're great at promoting their own product between the lines of regular content. That also shows how good of a job they do when it comes to topic selection, and that's really important when you are just starting out — not to write on a certain topic because its shareable if you don't have a deep understanding of it. I always enjoy their blog posts, guides, how-tos, and I believe any new writer, especially in a tech industry will benefit from checking out their blog!" — Jakub Kliszczak, Marketing Specialist, CrazyCall Frank Sonnenberg"Frank Sonnenberg's bio mentions being named one of "America's Top 100 Thought Leaders." His posts read like a thought leader's. They are informal, written to the reader, yet professional in every way. He uses plain language, targeting a small business audience. Frank sculpts his text very well. He uses bullet points, numbered lists, and short sentences, and also uses colored headings (a bit more than I'm willing to do). Frank's work is just a little less personal than I feel like writing, but a great example for me when I am ghostwriting for others. A lot of my clients like an easy, informal writing style, but as a ghostwriter, I am rarely in a position to get too personal on their behalf." — Leonhardt Rohit Bhargava"Marketing expert Rohit Bhargava is the founder of the Non-Obvious Company, which provides workshops for business teams. He's a Wall Street Journal best selling author of five business books and a professor of marketing at Georgetown University. His blog is laden with expert knowledge on brand humanity, marketing psychology, consumer behavior, marketing strategies, social media, content marketing, and how culture and trends affect the way businesses should do marketing." — Horvath Ross Hudgens at Siege Media"Ross Hudgens at siegemedia.com is a really great writer and a fantastic example of how to write compelling copy. As an industry expert, he goes into real depth with each article, sharing his own opinions and methods as well as analysing others'. The most compelling thing about his style is that it's a relaxed, easygoing tone, but the text is still full of relevant data and examples. It's a fantastic balance of being easy to read, but full of detail and depth. It's made us realise that great content has to be comprehensive, as you only create real value for your audience when you get into the details of your subject. Without the depth, you're really just writing for you, not for them. " — Sam Orchard, Creative Director, edgeoftheweb.co.uk Ross Tavendale: SEMrush"I am a BIG fan of Ross Tavendale's column on SEMrush. It's clear that he knows his stuff, and he knows how to communicate it to others well. It might be a stretch, but based on his background and current mastery of SEO concepts Ross strikes me as the David Ogilvy of search engine optimization.Ross cuts through the noise by sharing truly novel insights about digital marketing analysis (usually on a tactical level).Ross has mostly helped me discover ways to tactically improve my content, but he also regularly covers techniques to come up with new and exciting ideas for content." — Tony Mastri, Marketing Specialist, MARION Marketing Agency Roy Ackerman: Cerebrations"Roy Ackerman is an unlikely thought leader, with few followers on any social platform. But he writes thought leadership just the same. He talks about business and finance, as well as about politics and social issues. He often writes from the perspective of his personal life, including his Jewish heritage, as well as from his experiences with clients. It is on this last point that he serves as a great example to other bloggers. He reminds his readers that he has clients. He reminds us of what he does, and that he does it well. And he does so in a way that is completely without boasting or selling. I really need to remember to blog about client experiences more frequently." — Leonhardt Seth Godin"Seth Godin is a professional writer who has authored over 18 bestselling books and made a huge splash in the online marketing arena. He teaches The Marketing Seminar, an online course on marketing strategies and tactics. His blog is equipped with free ebooks and videos, as well as how-to posts on writing better content, authentic storytelling, branding, thought leadership, and the psychology of marketing." — Horvath "After reading Seth Godin's book, Linchpin, early in my career, I have enjoyed the daily insights on his blog. Seth focuses on concise insights that provoke thought about the real workings of the world (and how they pertain to marketing). Seth's approach goes against the recent wisdom of content marketing and SEO experts by not writing 1000+ word blogs to gain visibility. Godin's insights help me improve my introspection as a person and marketer, and guides me to search for new opportunities daily." — Mastri "Pay special attention to how Seth Godin (especially his books) writes BRIEFLY. He addresses just one idea, one topic at a time. Too often, we try to do too many things with one article or story. Check out how short his posts are at his blog." — Beth Bridges, The Networking Motivator Seth Williams: REtipster"The REtipster blog is written by Seth Williams, who is an experienced real estate investor. The best thing about this blog is that all the information, advice, and tips come from the personal experience of the writer, which makes it very reliable and relatable. The articles cover a wide range of topics from real estate investing as well as reviews of major products and services in the industry, which are always detailed and completely honest." — Andreevska Sonia Simone: Copyblogger"Sonia is the heart and soul of Copyblogger, which is a fantastic resource I have been turned onto for a while now. What I find especially helpful is her ability to break down practical insights for content marketing as a whole. With 'content marketing' being used as a catch-all phrase that can lack substance, Sonia keeps the strategies simple and actionable. This simplicity does not sacrifice depth of thought, so not only do you receive strategies you can use, but also the insight as to why they're effective. Also, she has a great wit that comes through, which helps lighten up potentially dry, boring topics. Her Sonia at Copyblogger email blasts are a welcome addition to my inbox. Any writer will benefit from her wealth of knowledge, easy to digest style, and direct messaging." — Shaan Patel, Founder and CEO, Prep Expert Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft"Obviously Stephen King is a very prominent fiction writer that most of us know, and in this (relatively thin) book, he discussed various techniques and principles that we can apply on our content — even if we are essentially writing non-fiction This is, as mentioned, a book about fiction writing, so we will need to differentiate between principles and techniques that are specifically for fiction, and those we can apply on our content marketing work. (Thankfully, this is not very difficult). The book is written in a light, rather playful manner where King used anecdotes and illustrations to explain various techniques. Essentially content marketing is about telling a (good) story, and this book especially helped in that aspect. As a non-English native writer, this book taught me various techniques and industry secrets in English writing, for example, to avoid using adjectives unless it's absolutely necessary. Many techniques we can apply, and a very fun read overall. Also, I guess most of us writers always have that dream to write a successful novel, and this book will help in that regard." — Steve Kurniawan, Nine Peaks Media Steve PavlinaSteve Pavlina covers various subjects in his blog from relationship to health advice, but he's especially famous with his productivity lessons. In his blog, you get two things (or more, if you are willing to read his other sections): productivity tips (a thing a lot of content creators are struggling with), and an example of good blog writing. It's important to note that blog writing requires different approaches than for example, writing a book. Steve Pavlina's blog is an example of a well-structured blog that is designed to engage online readers, so we can use various techniques like how he used bullet points, when he uses bold text to emphasize things, and so on. Also, his productivity lessons are useful to help us structure our work ethic and avoid procrastination. I often struggle with productivity in general, especially when I have a lot of projects and deadlines at hand. This blog has helped me overcome this subject. Besides that, there are many practical examples we can learn from this blog on how to write an engaging blog post, how we should use images and videos, and so on." — Kurniawan Theodore Schleifer at Recode"One of the best blogs focusing on tech news, and especially Silicon Valley news, is Vox's Recode. It has plenty of quality writers, but I'd recommend reading articles written by Theodore Schleifer, a Senior Reporter on that site. Tech market today is one of the fastest changing and evolving fields. It's a challenge to find writers that are able to comprehensively write about those topics. What's really impressive with Mr. Schleifer is the attention to detail and the way he concisely and clearly presents the financial aspect of tech companies. Mr. Schleifer writes relatively long and well-researched articles that aren't hard for laymen to understand. They're backed by facts, and you can see by the author's eloquence that he was involved in covering politics. His articles are based on facts but also centered around stories that will hold the interest and attention of readers. Reading the articles published on Recode and by Mr. Schleifer has helped me orient myself in this large industry. The news and topics that the author delivers are useful because they're educational, unique and very perceptive." — Jeremy Rose, Director, Certa Hosting Vicki Batman "For a highly personal style, Vicki Batman has it down to a tee, blending personal stories and self-promotion. She talks a lot about things she likes. This is what readers want from authors: to get to know them, as well as their books. Many of her posts feel like she's just sat down across the table at the diner, and has something to share. Vicki writes short, crisp blog posts that get to the point. She doesn't need to sculpt her text, although she's not afraid to use one-line sentences and ample illustrations. I rarely write quite that informally, although I find her a great inspiration for setting the stage for some of my longer posts in a more personal way. And I do find her to be a great example when writing less business-oriented posts." — Leonhardt   A note from the author: We want this to be a living document to help new content marketers, copywriters, and more to find ‘great writers' in their industry and out. If you have a blogger, reporter, or writer that has been influential to you within your content niche, drop me a line at ahays@bestcompany.com, explaining your suggested blog/writer and what takeaways we should look for. All suggestions are welcome.

If you are new to digital marketing, a wealth of information is available to you. If you don't know where to start, you may feel overwhelmed. We asked marketing experts for their suggestions of favorite and influential books and courses for new digital marketers. Here's what they said: Books to read This Is Marketing by Seth Godin “Anything by Seth Godin but one of his latest is This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See. He is a master who really understands what drives people to purchase from a practitioner’s perspective using his first-hand experience and simple language not jargon” — Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder and CEO, Mavens & Moguls   “Seth Godin is a legend in marketing. For anyone new to the game, I get them Seth's recent This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See. At 288 pages, it is a bit lengthy, so if I know they aren't the reader  type, I'll happily pitch in for an audio version. I highly recommend this to both new and established marketers, so regardless of where my newest team member is at in their career, I'm getting them this!” — Yaniv Masjedi, CMO, Nextiva   "This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin is an incredible book that will help a marketer shift their thinking about connecting with the right audience rather than a mass audience." — Brian Williams, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Prolific Interactive   Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin “I recently read Lost and Founder: A painfully honest field guide to the startup world by Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of Moz. It circles around his experience running arguably the most famous company in the world of SEO. The book is not only a startup story, but also a guide to marketing management and is a must-read for anyone getting into marketing.”  — Katherine Rowland, Digital Marketing Executive, YourParkingSpace.co.uk   Purple Cow by Seth Godin “For me as a digital marketer, the best gift would be Seth Godin's book Purple Cow. It takes on the topic of being exceptional and producing remarkable products, content, and businesses. In today's world when people simply copy-paste past ideas, it's crucial to find out how to stand out and how to do it right, especially when it comes to the world of marketing, promotion, and ads. That's why I believe Purple Cow is a great read and therefore a great gift for any digital marketer!” — Jakub Kliszczak, Marketing Specialist, CrazyCall   The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell “Malcolm Gladwell is one of today's most influential thought leaders whose insights could easily help transform any business. In Tipping Point, he describes that small intrinsically supernatural moment when an idea catches fire. Gladwell goes on to explain what goes into making a trend spread and how anyone can take advantage of this tipping point.” — Nate Masterson, CMO, Maple Holistics   Everybody Writes by Ann Handley “Get your favorite digital marketer a copy of EverybodyWrites: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. Whether it’s SEO optimization, ad content, blogs, or social media posts, digital marketers are constantly thinking about the best ways to communicate their message. This Wall Street Journal bestseller delivers what it promises for developing good content that attracts and retains customers.” — Alex Membrillo, CEO, Cardinal Digital Marketing   “For a book, I’d recommend Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley.” — Raquelle Dickerson, Director of Marketing, Seo.com   The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott “[I recommend] The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. As the sub head says, he teaches you “How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, Newsjacking, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly” and again he has been there and done it, so he tells it like it is not theoretically but from the trenches.” — Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder and CEO, Mavens & Moguls   Blinkist subscription “My number one gift idea for all digital marketers is a subscription to Blinkist.After having it spruiked to me by podcasts left and right, I finally decided to give it a try for myself and have been raving about it since.As marketers we are constantly inundated with content in the form of blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, and books and any marketer can tell you there's not enough time in the day to get through it all.Blinkist is fantastic because it condenses books down to just the key takeaways and as marketers, all we want from the content we read is fresh insights.There's a wealth of business and marketing books and books about other subjects as well, like psychology and decision-making.” — Greg Moskovitch, Digital Marketing Consultant and Growth Marketing Manager, Rome2rio Online courses Marketing is always changing and those in the industry need to constantly be learning and beefing up their skills. Here are a few suggestions for online educational resources suggested by our experts: Codeacademy or Hubspot “Marketing is a fast-paced, demanding, and stressful job that many underestimate. For a new marketer, there is a lot of learning to be had. Because they are just starting their marketing career, reimbursement to relevant online courses such as those at Codecademy and Hubspot Academy would be a great gift.” — Raquelle Dickerson, Director of Marketing, Seo.com   AI course from MIT “The recommendation from me is MIT’s online executive certificate Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy.It was a gift given to me by my employer to brush up on emerging trends in Artificial Intelligence. The course materials are developed by the brightest minds at MIT, both the Sloane School of Business and CSAIL. The course takes six weeks and is a combination of videos, online group discussion, and coursework. The coursework is structured in such a way that at the end of the program the student ends up with a practical plan for implementing an AI program around a challenge of their choice.I’ve read a number of books on the subject, and am hands-on with voice interfaces, but the comprehensive nature of the course, combined with very active group discussions (including some that became real-life meetings in some cities), made the course far more valuable than any single book on the subject.” — Sean MacPhedran, Director, Future Platforms, SMITH.co   Udemy “Since I've learned almost everything I know about digital marketing from Udemy, I have to recommend Udemy courses as a useful (and addictive) gift for digital marketers. The e-learning platform has over 6,000 video-based courses on digital marketing alone, plus a whole bunch of other subjects. You can get a broad overview of topics like social media marketing, SEO, PPC, content marketing, and analytics, or you can learn a more specific skill, like how to use ClickFunnels or build Facebook chatbots.Courses are rated and reviewed by other users, so you can quickly filter out the best and most comprehensive courses. You can easily gift any course straight from the course's landing page.” — Chloe Brittain, Owner, Opal Transcription   Coursera “I recently took ‘Viral Marketing’ and ‘How to Craft Contagious Content’ and I am currently taking ‘The Strategy of Content Marketing’ — both insightful useful courses.” — Sean Allan, Digital Marketing Manager, Aware Corporation Ltd.   Do you have a product that would be a good fit for this new digital marketers gift guide? If so, feel free to reach out to ahays@bestcompany.com

Finding the right gift for your friend who just graduated with a marketing degree or got their first digital marketing job can be daunting. What will they find helpful and practical for their new life?To help you find the right gift for your friend, brother, cousin, or co-worker, we put together this list of highly recommended products that digital marketers, new, old, and in-between will be sure to appreciate. Coffee club “Marketers are known for burning the midnight oil, or in my case, rising at the crack of dawn. For many, coffee is a must-have to get them through the day. A great gift for marketers is a monthly coffee subscription service. My top pick is Atlas Coffee Club. Every month they'll send you globally curated coffee from around the world, including Columbia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.”  Suggested by Alex Membrillo, CEO, Cardinal Digital Marketing Motivational mug What about something to put that fancy coffee in? What about a mug with a motivational or marketing-specific saying like this one from Proud Gifts, that says, “I’m silently judging your font choice,” or one of these from Red Bubble with quippy sayings like, “Internet marketing because it's cheaper than therapy.” Desk calendar “Being a marketer means you need focus and attention to detail; these have to be ingrained in you. If they're not, you're in for some serious issues. I keep a whiteboard calendar on my desk with cork and space for notes. I keep a digital calendar in addition to this but I find it helps to write dates out and visualize my week/month. I use this one!Buy some extra marker colors for color-coordinating notes.” Suggested by Brett Middleton, Owner, Brett Middleton Digital Image used with permission from Hamelin Notebook with superpowers This new notebook line from French paper company Hamelin comes in seven colors and comes with superpowers. That’s right — super powers. It comes with a free app called SCRIBZEE, which allows users to scan, save, share, and file images of notes for easy access. Stylish laptop stand Consider getting a sleek laptop stand. A new tech gadget that really has a purpose is always helpful. This model is one of Rachael Lovette’s favorite marketing-marketing related gifts she has received. Suggested by Rachael Lovette, Digital Marketer, Microsoft FidgetCube “Most people have seen fidget spinners, but another fun (and helpful) fidget gadget for digital marketers is the FidgetCube. It’s the perfect desk toy designed to help you focus. It’s addicting and fun and an awesome gift for any digital marketer who logs a lot of desk or computer time.” Suggested by Alex Membrillo, CEO, Cardinal Digital Marketing“It's perfect for the people who drank lots of coffee to stay awake but are forced to sit (or stand) behind a computer. It lets you put your energy into something, and it's great for de-stressing during stressful calls or hard web updates.” Suggested by Dylan Myatt, Digital Marketing Associate, Advice Media Stationery “Another gift that I am sure will be appreciated by someone starting out in marketing (or any new career) would have to be new stationery. I myself use a 10 subject project book, that allows me to separate all of my different projects neatly, and find the information I need easily. The receiver will be sure to thank you for a set of new pens, notebook, and perhaps a few highlighters for good measure.” Suggested by Katherine Rowland, Digital Marketing Executive, YourParkingSpace.co.uk Ember smart mug “Give the gift of control. Instead of burning your tongue on a hot cup of coffee, keep the temperature just right. An Ember Mug is embedded with technology that allows you to change the temperature of your drink to a preferred setting. Don’t let your coffee get lukewarm on a cold winter day, take control with a perfect hot drink on a cold afternoon. Staying in control of the heat setting on your drink gives you the comfort of knowing that you can enjoy your drink without being rushed.” Suggested by Leo Friedman, iPromo Light filtering glasses What about a pair of blue light filtering glasses. A lot of people are prone to headaches and these help alleviate those, as well as some eye strain, that you get for constantly looking at a computer screen. Suggested by Dylan Myatt, Digital Marketing Associate, Advice Media Fashion statement Image used with permission from Fat Joe SwagThis “Mo Links Mo Problems” t-shirt comes in men’s and women's styles, and will be sure to catch the eye of link-builders everywhere. Check out fatjoe.co for more SEO swag. On top of that, FatJoe sends 100 percent of the profits to the Children’s Cancer Research Fund.Another suggestion is this Redbubble double-whammy for fans of SEO and Heisenberg. Spark Hustle Grow “One website I recently came across was Spark Hustle Grow. It’s a monthly subscription box website and an online community for female entrepreneurs. The box includes four to six items like planners, books, and chic office supplies.” Suggested by Clare Bittourna, Marketing Designer, Codal Kangaroo water bottle “...as a young business owner with a number of friends who are in the digital marketing game, there is one gift which I have given one of them previously, that I think every marketer should have.The Kangaroo water bottle is versatile and 100 percent leak and spill proof. The dishwasher safe container features a built-in compartment which can store ID, gym card, money, and much more — perfect for a busy marketer who may not have time to go home before hitting the gym.”  Suggested by Ollie Smith, Chief Executive Officer, ExpertSure Fancy chocolates Image used with permission from The Chocolate Therapist“Does every digital specialist want digital gifts? Maybe they just need a glass of wine and a box of chocolates every now and then. There's a dark chocolate pairing collection (for red wine and port), a milk chocolate collection (white wines), a beer collection, tea collection, and whisky collection. When given with a bottle of someone's favorite wine, this gift is a fun and completely unique experience.” Suggested by Julie Nygard, Founder, The Chocolate Therapist Honorable mentions "You Reap What You SEO" stickersThis cheeky notebook that says, “Knock, Knock, Who’s There? No one because your average position is 6.8”Do you have a product that would be a good fit for this new digital marketers gift guide? If so, feel free to reach out to ahays@bestcompany.com

Every new year brings new goals, trends, and fads. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies should look completely different than they did five years ago. Unfortunately, not many site and blog owners know where to start when it comes to creating, building, and optimizing a website.Don’t worry, everyone struggles with ranking in Google. That’s why the entire digital marketing industry was created — to help site owners win the Google turf war.Since the process of ranking for the best keywords can take months and even years, your SEO strategy needs to be well thought out. The main problem is that people aren’t creating big picture SEO strategies. They build their strategy article by article. This type of strategy leads to thin content, lack of enthusiasm, and eventually terrible content.You need to start by creating a big picture strategy. Think about the objective of your site. Is the purpose to inform? Is it to sell something? Where do you want to drive your traffic? You should have a clear vision and an answer for each of these questions.You need to clearly define your traffic goals, which means you must know your target audience. After you’ve defined your goals and researched your audience, it is vital that you not only create value, but that you also create targeted value (valuable content exactly applicable to your target audience).A quick Google search will bring up endless information on best practices, but the reality is that most of this information is either out of date or too general, making it difficult to know where to begin. It can be overwhelming to sort through the information, let alone implement it. This guide provides all the information you need to optimize your website. To win the Google game and rank in Google in 2019, you need to perfect these five SEO tactics: Build a perfect content strategy Create content that wins an audience and ranks on Google Beat your Competitors with on-site optimizations Become an expert in off-site tactics Utilize tools to maximize efforts If you implement these SEO practices, you’ll be on you way to the top of the search results in no time. Building the perfect content strategy in 2019 Whatever the objective, chances are you’ll want to drive traffic to a specific page on your site. Look at your website as a building. The foundation is a content strategy. The walls are your landing pages (what pages visitors are seeing first). The doors are where your visitors are entering. The rooms within your building are the different pages on your site. There is one room where you want every visitor to end up — the page where you turn visitors into money.Ask yourself, are you missing walls, rooms, a foundation? The goal is to create a building that attracts AND converts. As with any building, the foundation is fundamental. Your content strategy needs to be solid or it won’t support anything built on top of it. While developing your content strategy, keep the following in mind: Define your goals: Great content is created with a defined purpose in mind before you even start writing. Much like your big picture strategy, focus on the objective of the individual piece of content, and don’t stray from that objective. Research your audience: Your content strategy becomes more laser focused as soon as you identify your audience. This can also help you determine what other audiences to target as well. Create a unique endpoint: This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s where you want everyone on your site to end up. Make this page as unique and valuable to the reader as possible. This is also the point where you want to sell or convert.Keep the marketing funnel in mind as you create your content strategy. It’s important to know which stage you’re focusing on with a specific piece of content. The stages are as follows: This can seem like a lot to keep in mind every time you create a new piece of content; however, a little planning upfront can save a lot of headache in the long run. Set your content strategy upfront and then tweak it as you progress, and you’ll never have to worry about creating meaningless content again. Creating content that wins an audience and ranks on Google Neil Patel, cofounder of the Neil Patel Digital Marketing Agency, said the following about content: “Writing great content is a choice. You can choose to put in the time and work required to create great content and build a prosperous brand. Or you can choose to take the easy path and write poor content – a path that ultimately will get you nowhere. It will only result in a waste of time, energy, and resources.” Most of the content on the internet is useless. This content either already exists or doesn’t provide value to the user. Make sure your content not only fulfills your content strategy objective, but also provides valuable information to the reader. Here are a few tips for creating original, engaging, and thought-provoking content to rank in Google: Write short paragraphs and concise content: Nobody wants to look at a wall of text. It’s visually unappealing and you’ll lose the reader’s interest. Shorter paragraphs will engage your audience. Use graphics or video if available: Everybody learns differently. Some people tend to be more visual, so an infographic may help them connect with your content. A photo or video is a great way to break up the monotony of text.Refresh old content and update regularly: Your content needs to be relevant or nobody will stick around to read it.While some information stands the test of time, add a paragraph every now and then with new or updated information. Target clusters > keywords: This is based around user intent. Google’s algorithm is evolving, and so strictly optimizing for keywords alone is not as effective as it was five years ago. Organize content into topic clusters and optimize from there. The diversity in keywords has the potential to help you create more user friendly content as well. Provide answers: When users make a search query, they are looking for an answer, and you need to provide that answer. Try to cite any sources and keep the information as accurate as possible. Writing great content is not easy; don’t get discouraged if you struggle at first. It takes time to research and write, so allot yourself time to immerse yourself in the writing. Your effort will be reflected in your writing. On-site optimization is still a vital part of SEO Most SEO guides tend to gloss over on-site and focus on off-site tactics, as they are constantly changing. Remember, on-site optimization is still as important as ever. Getting your on-site optimizations lays a foundation to build on.Google uses the content on your site to determine what keywords your website should rank for. If you have specific keywords you’re looking to rank for, make sure those keywords are in your content. Google will assign more or less relevancy to different elements of the page. These elements include the following: Title tag: The page title shows up as the clickable portion on the search engine, as well as within the tab on your site. This is the most important on-site element to focus on. There’s limited space here (512 pixels, or about 70 characters), so put only the most important information here. The important terms should be placed closer to the front. The title tag also works as an advertisement for your website on the search engine. Make sure that it’s user-friendly, easy to read, clear, and to the point. Meta description: Page descriptions don’t directly affect your rankings; however, they are still an important part of SEO as they can sway your click through rate one way or the other. Click through rate is not a ranking factor, yet it does play an important part when it comes to site traffic. The best way to write your description is to follow the FAB (Feature, Advantage, Benefit) principle. State what it is, what it can do, and why it’s a good thing. Page headings: Headers are used as a stylistic element, yet they are still an active ranking factor. The ranking importance has diminished in recent years, so don’t spend too much time on these. They should adequately describe the following paragraph, and you shouldn’t need to worry about it beyond that. Keyword in content: Keywords are important, so include several in the body of your content. If you have specific keywords you want to rank for, make sure you mention those within the first 100 words of your content. But don’t sacrifice the quality of your content in order to fit more keywords (otherwise known as keyword-stuffing). Keyword variance: While Google cares about where the keywords are on your page, it also cares about how keywords relate to one another. The best practice here is to write your content naturally, then go back to see if you have implemented the keyword enough. Detail, detail, detail: A recent study by Backlinko shows that Google favors content with over 2000 words. You don’t need to crank out long content with every article or blog post you put out, but it is something to keep in mind with content you want to perform well. You can also repurpose older content by adding additional relevant information. Make sure you aren’t adding words just to add words; if it’s not beneficial to the overall piece of content, leave it out. Focus on writing quality content without sacrificing or compromising the integrity of the page. Alt image tags: Images have a written description as well, known as the Alt image tag. This is important to optimize for your images, as it will then allow Google to read the image and you can use that to your advantage when it comes to content. URL: The URL can be an underrated asset. It not only adds additional value to your keywords, it also shows up in the search results themselves. Like the title tags, don’t make them too long. Just make sure they read well and are relevant to the page. Brush up on your technical knowledge. Whether it be switching to HTTPS, or enabling Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), it’s important to show some love to the technical side of SEO, as it can enhance the user experience of your website as well as help with your overall rankings. It’s important to know the difference between white hat and black hat SEO. The difference between white and black hat refers to the technique used in order to get ahead in the search results. Think of black hat SEO as gaming the system. Don’t cut corners and try to trick the search engine, and you shouldn’t have to worry about this when it comes to onsite work. Off-site SEO tactics to set you above the rest While on-site SEO focuses on making your site relevant, off-site SEO focuses on making your site authoritative. Anyone can create a website and optimize it, but proving to Google you deserve to be on the first page is a different story. Optimizing for off-site SEO involves improving the search engine and user’s perception of your site’s reputation, authority, relevance and popularity. This is achieved by other relevant and authoritative sites linking to your site, essentially ‘vouching’ for the quality of your content and site. Most off-site work focuses on obtaining these links. Remember, not all links are created equal. If you’re focused on creating quality content, you may see a lot of natural links come from people genuinely wanting to share your content. This is the ideal situation, however there are other ways to try to obtain backlinks that can be effective. Guest posting is one of the most popular methods, and for good reason. Essentially, you write a piece of content for someone else’s site, and in turn, they link back to you. This works well because you are exchanging content in turn for a link. If the content is good, it’s putting valuable information out there, and you’re compensated with the link. With guest posting, make sure you are only reaching out to relevant sites, as you want to add value with your expertise. And study how to use anchor text effectively so you're maximizing the impact of the outbound links you're asking for. Guest posting is also a good opportunity to network and build connections within your industry. This goes back to the core principle behind link building which is to build authority. The more you can interact and network within your industry, the more credibility you will build and you will be an authoritative site to the search engine and users alike. Tools to help you along the way As with most professions, you can’t get very far without some tools. As the SEO industry has grown, the available resources and tools have grown with it. Google Search Console and Analytics will be two extremely valuable tools as they will tell you how you’re doing on the search engines as well as how users are behaving on your site. These are both free, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be utilizing them. Ahrefs is one of the best tools to check keywords and backlinks. Buzzstream is a great tool for outreach. The list goes on, but what’s important to remember is that these tools can help you track your progress. Tips from SEO and content marketing experts These beneficial tips from SEO experts in different industries are divided into the following four categories: Content strategy, Content curation, On-site SEO, and Off-site SEO. Content strategy tips 1. BrandingShawn Lim, Founder of Traffic Bees“When we first started doing SEO five years ago, branding is one thing that we overlooked. Initially, we focused on finding the right keywords with a significant search volume. But after working with some of our clients for a few years, we realized that they were getting the most traffic from their brand name. Studies have also shown that brand recognition increases click-through rate as well.” 2. Correlative potential keywordsCary Haun, SEO Specialist at Page 1 Solutions"One important aspect of SEO that tends to be overlooked is the correlative potential between keywords. Oftentimes, people will choose and target keywords that are either topping the charts or obscurely dangling with the low-hanging fruit. (This is a common strategy, of course.) However, combining keywords into new, niche topics is how an innovative SEO can not only find new potential audiences, but create them as well."3. Don't overlook evergreen content for SEOBradley Shaw, President of SEO Expert Brad Inc. “Evergreen Content is content that does not lose relevance over time; it is ageless. It does not expire.Blogs have become the keys to online marketing and SEO. Content should be crafted in a style that presumes the basic facts on the topic will not likely change over a long period of time. Using present perfect tense is one of the easiest ways to keep content evergreen.” 4. Dwell timePierre de Braux, Content Strategist at Spiralytics Inc“For me, the most overlooked SEO strategy would have to be keeping visitors on your page for longer.While traditional on-page/off-page elements are undoubtedly important, bounce rates and average time on page also significantly affect how well a page ranks. And that's not even mentioning the additional conversion potential that comes with more engagement.If you take a look at your best-performing content, you'll almost always see that bounce rates are relatively low and time on page is relatively high. So, the next time you're trying to optimize a page, think more engagement and more dwell time.”5. Focus on lower volume keywordsJason Lavis, Managing Director at Out of the Box Innovations Ltd“Something that I missed for years, and still often neglect now, is a focus on lower volume keywords. Content creation tends to come with SEO nowadays since you need something to rank in the first place. As more marketers and companies start to expand their web presence, they look at the easy wins first. If they have high domain authority, they can go straight for trophy keywords and have a realistic chance of page one without much work.The result is that everyone else, finds that they're now on page two or three, with little chance of page one. It's easier to create a 1,000 word post that includes ten keywords with 100 monthly search volumes than to go for a 1,000 per month keyword. In the same way, pages with ten 1,000 volume keywords words will be easier to rank than a 10,000 volume keyword.”6. Power wordsBriana Marie, Content Marketing Manager at Tanzek Media“The use of power words in title tags is often overlooked when it comes to SEO. Power words are action-packed terms or phrases such as amazing, fast, step-by-step, proven, crazy, exclusive, shocking, etc. The use of these words in your title tag will greatly increase your click-through-rate as people are seeking the quickest and most effective answers to their questions. Your CTR is important because it helps search engines determine how relevant your content is to the terms the user has searched.”7. Quality over quantityMatt Erickson, Marketing Director at National Positions"One area that is commonly overlooked is too much content. Some end up having hundreds of site pages with thousands of words that people are not going to read. You might have a short-lived bump in your rankings but over time, Google will learn that your content lacks relevancy and your ratings will begin dropping. Shorter, highly relevant content is far more valuable and powerful — so focus on your context, timeliness, and the impact of your content before you focus on content volume and length."8. Semantically related subtopicsStephen Jeske, Content Strategist at MarketMuse“Those new to SEO often focus on keywords while neglecting the importance of semantically related subtopics. That’s a mistake. In September 2018, Google revealed it added a new layer to its Knowledge Graph. It’s called the Topic Layer and helps the search engine deeply understand a topic space in order to surface relevant content.In this environment, it’s imperative your content demonstrates an in-depth understanding of the subject. Employing a detailed topic model ensures the content you create thoroughly covers those critical subtopics.”9. User ExperienceLila Eidi, Founder and CEO of EIDI Communications “User experience (UX) is critical to SEO and something that can easily be overlooked, especially with SEO newcomers. UX on a site is often underestimated as a valuable aspect of link building campaigns. When a site has a good UX, visitors to that site stay. Their extended time on the site adds value to the SEO juice. Conversely, a poor UX causes visitors to leave quickly. This reduces the value of inbound links from that site.”10. User search intentBrandon Andersen, Chief Strategist at CerAlytics“The most commonly overlooked aspect of SEO we see with our clients is not taking user intent into account when creating recommendations on keywords and building out content. If a user's search intent is to know more about a topic, throwing a product page at them in search is not going to work. Likewise, if the user's search intent is to get help with a topic immediately from someone, giving them a how-to guide isn't going to work either. Match the intent of the user's query with the content you create.”11. Visual contentTony DeGennaro, Director of Marketing at Dragon Social LTD“I'd say creating shareable visual content is one SEO tactic I think that tends to get overlooked. Many companies employ full-time designers, who by putting together a simple and updated infographic, could end up drastically improving a post's backlink profile. Nearly every infographic I've created has resulted in a huge amount of backlinks that have helped to increase SERP. I also think this fits in well with the mantra of creating high-quality content. Everyone likes a good infographic, especially when it’s chock full of updated statistics, quotable information, and high quality visuals!” Content curation tips 12. Build more landing pagesGene Caballero, Co-Founder of Your Green Pal“One SEO strategy that gets overlooked is building more landing pages. What we have done to grow our business and ramp up our organic SEO in different markets is to create landing pages for those new markets — outside of our larger markets that we already operate in. For example, in addition to creating landing pages for large metros, we also create them for smaller cities.  This will ensure that Google algorithm can detect the keywords and our business in that specific location. This helps expand our business to a new city by ranking for search and has improved our business by 10 percent by launching this practice.” 13. Delete old contentTatiana Morand, Content and SEO Manager at Wild Apricot"Something that many people overlook when thinking of SEO techniques is the importance of deleting old content. If your website has been around for a while, chances are that there's some pretty thin content on there.Auditing your site and editing or removing content that provides little to no value to visitors (and to Google) can give you an easy boost without being too time-consuming or difficult to do." 14. Experience and site structureShafi Khan, SEO Analyst at Optiux Marketing“User experience is among the top ranking factor for SEO in 2019 and optimizing the site structure should be the first thing you should do. Make sure no page on the website should take more than three clicks to reach (from the homepage).”15. Featured snippetsVi Trang, SEO Specialist at Savings.com.au“I think the most overlooked SEO practice so far has been identifying opportunities for featured snippets. Featured snippets, sometimes known as position 0, offer great visibility to websites because they rank above all organic results. While keyword research is a familiar task to SEO specialists, it doesn’t often move beyond researching and mapping relevant keywords based on user’s intent and monthly search volume. Keywords that provide great opportunities for featured snippets (those that have yet to generate any) are often overlooked. These should be singled out on day one, to help drive a content strategy that focuses on such keywords, increasing the likelihood of gaining featured snippets while competitors have yet to get there.”16. Optimize video contentAndre Guelmann, SEO Manager at Promo.com“Today, the most overlooked SEO practice is ignoring/not optimizing your video content. People no longer want to read online, and we can see this with the increasing prevalence of video results when you do a search on Google. As an SEO, your job is to optimize CONTENT, no matter the format, so you need to be prepared to do it wherever your audience is.”17. Start a blogDr. Ty Belknap, SEO Expert at Port Bell Inc. “Everybody knows that content is king when it comes to getting higher in the search engines, but few people set up blogs. Blogs are a great way to blast content, but each blog post doesn’t have to be the size of a book. Write a post reviewing an article or a helpful hint for customers. Small blog posts are not as effective as larger blog posts, but they are much more effective than nothing at all.”18. Use of images Marie Lamonde, Content Marketing Specialist at DashThis“One of the SEO practices I consider people overlook is the use of images. We talk about content, blog posts, landing pages, etc. But very few marketers actually talk about the importance of optimizing images for SEO. We all know that we have to add alt text, but what about the picture itself? You have to take into consideration the nature of the image (original and relevant), the name (SEO optimized), the format (high-quality pictures with a small size for page speed), the presentation (organize them neatly, and in a way that makes sense for the visitor), and the captions (use some if possible since they are crawlable).Indexing your images properly can give you a lot of traffic that you would otherwise never get! You could also get image snippets that would place you before the first ranking page! So don't choose your images lightly, and make sure they are as optimized as your text.”19. Voice search optimizationKetan Pande, Founder of Goodvitae“One of the overlooked SEO practices is optimizing content for the voice search. The volume of voice search is increasing day by day, and while writing a blog and making a video, we tend to overlook it. It's mostly overlooked by SEO, who runs a blog or youtube channel which concentrates on local topics and issue. The sentence 'XYZ near me' is becoming a gold mine, and an SEO must take note of it. Also framing questions in the title can help us in optimizing as per voice search.” On-site SEO tips 20. Aggregate rating schemaKristie Deaver, SEO Specialist at Page 1 Solutions"One aspect of SEO which is often overlooked is adding aggregate rating schema to your site. Adding this markup will add the coveted stars to your SERP entry, making it stand out among the sea of results given to users. SEOs need to be careful when adding this to their sites, as mistakes will result in a warning from Google. Be honest in your schema and you should be fine.”21. CanonicalizationChris Foster, Head of SEO at Acquiro Digital"One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO that we've experienced is canonicalization. Duplicate pages and URLs are a common occurrence on many platforms and is something which can't always be avoided, but in terms of SEO, having these duplicate pages could negatively affect your organic performance. Canonicalizing similar or duplicate pages signals to search engines that these areas of the site are very similar and it allows you to tell Google which is the preferred page that you wish to be shown in search results. It's a vital element that any new SEO specialist should take into consideration when optimizing a site."22. Check redirectsRyan Scollon, SEO and PPC Consultant at ryanscollon.co.uk“One key tactic that is often overlooked is redirects. When you start working on any site, it's always worth reviewing the site in Web Archive for any old variations of the website. Then you need to grab a few page URLs from the old versions and test them in a browser. Do they redirect? If not, it's certainly worth getting a redirect in place should there be any historical links that still exist.”23. Crawl efficiencyDavid Pagotto, Founder of SIXGUN"One of the most overlooked SEO practices is the focus on crawl efficiency — essentially making your website as efficient as possible for a search engine to crawl. Unlike individual SEO practices, crawl efficiency is a wider philosophy that encompasses a number of different optimisation areas. For example, ensuring the website has no unnecessary indexed pages, duplicate content, or internal 301 redirects and 404 errors. This type of thinking can go a long way in boosting your organic search performance."24. Fix technical errors first Jeff Ferguson, CEO of Fang Marketing“The most overlooked practice in SEO is realizing that most SEO issues aren't SEO issues at all, but larger technical issues that are causing numerous SEO issues. Say you're just starting work on a new site. You pull out your trusty SEO site crawler tool and it's a bloodbath of errors. However, nine times out of ten, the reams of errors that you see are caused by another technical issue that mucks up a dozen other issues. Find the root of the issue first, fix that, then crawl again. Your life will be so much easier.”25. Incorrect canonical linkAdam Riemer, President of Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC “The canonical link is set up incorrectly. Canonical links are designed to show the proper version of a page so Google knows what to display to an end user.  Many websites and templates do not have it set up correctly.” 26.  Internal link hierarchyJeff Kear, Head of Marketing at Planning Pod“Creating internal links to key pages on your site in the body copy of your site pages is vitally important in letting the SERPs know the hierarchy of your site as well as passing more link value to important pages and less to marginal pages. This is also critical if you are restructuring a site and need new or repurposed pages to take more prominence and want them to be recognized by the SERPs for specific keywords or phrases.”27. Internal link impactJimmy Rodriguez, COO of 3dcart“Internal links can have a huge impact on how Google reads and prioritizes pages on your site, and it can be the difference between you ranking for your target keyword or not. The way you link pages within your site tells the bots what that page is about, so make sure to always clean up your link profile and use the right anchors for the right pages.”28. Internal linking opportunitiesDave Hermansen, CEO of Store Coach“The mistake I see more often than any other when it comes to websites — especially new ones — is that people miss so many internal linking opportunities. Maybe it's because there were no internal pages to link to at the beginning. Almost every post, product, or category on a website has at least one page that it should be linking to from the textual content. Go back and review each page of your site and I'm sure you'll find internal linking opportunities galore!”29. Optimize for mobile Sadi Khan, Digital Marketing Manager at Run Repeat“Optimizing for mobile: This gets overlooked a lot because SEO specialists are working on the desktop computers or laptops. Mobile searches and mobile traffic has now surpassed desktop users. So, SEO specialists need to acclimatize to a mobile-first approach in everything they do. It will include, but will not be limited to, voice searches, mobile user experience, and loading speed.”30. Optimize meta titles and descriptions to grab people's attentionJack Parcell, CEO of Clovr Creative“I think the biggest thing that new SEO specialists overlook when first starting out is to optimize meta titles and descriptions to grab people's attention. By grabbing people's attention, you are sure to improve your click-through rate.I think that SEO specialists, especially new ones, get so caught up in trying to inject their keywords into the titles and descriptions that the titles and descriptions end up dull and boring. While it is important to make sure the keywords are there, click through rate is a huge indicator for Google, so it is important to stand out from competitors.”31. Page load speedAndrew King, Search Analyst at Klood Digital“A commonly overlooked aspect of SEO, and improving the ranking of a website, is page load speed. Many SEOs don't think about it, as they consider it to be more of a technical issue for developers to deal with, but there are many simple jobs that can be done to improve it. One example is to ensure images are compressed to a reasonable file size to allow them to load more quickly.”32. Robots.txt file checkBorislav Ivanov, SEO Executive at Best Response Media“The thing that rookies often miss is the thing you should do first when you start working on a website as a technical SEO. That's a robots.txt checkup along with robots meta directives and canonical links. Without proper sorting, the bots crawl and index on all of the wrong places. Often there are blocked assets, like CSS files. That means that little bots can't reach them and render the page.”33. Sitemap checkStephanie Hooper, Senior SEO and Digital Marketing Manager at Infront Webworks“One aspect of SEO that gets overlooked is checking your sitemap. Your sitemap is a directory or guide that lists the web pages on a website and can also include when the pages were last updated. The pages are listed in a hierarchical order and the most relevant pages are listed at the top. It is important to submit your website’s xml sitemap to Google Search Console. This ensures that Google has the most updated version of your website.”34. Update disavow filesAdam Gingery, Paid Search and Digital Strategy Manager at Majux Marketing“New SEOs aren't often tasked with updating disavow files, but it's an important process that can't be overlooked. Google has said that it actively credits or discredits links in real time, with the implication that your disavow file is superfluous, and you won't be penalized for bad links — they just won't help you rank higher. However, our own tests have shown that deleting a disavow file will expose you to penalty-level fluctuations, and when a disavow is re-uploaded to Search Console, the eventual rankings recovery (likely during a core algorithm update) will make it fairly obvious that the disavow file was important all along.”35. URL lengthKris Rivenburgh, SEO Specialist at RIVE Marketing “New SEOs often overlook URL length. Although simple to implement, keeping URL slugs as short as possible by removing filler/unimportant words definitely makes a difference.” Off-site SEO tips 36. Anchor text ratioKevin Peguero, Digital Marketing Manager at Astro Pak“Anchor Text Ratio is overlooked. Many people don’t know how to build backlinks to have correct anchor text ratios pointing to their site. They get penalized often for this.   I specialize in building backlinks for my clients. That is what I do and I have came across dozen of brands with this issue. It is also not talked about much. It is not as sexy as other SEO practices.”37. Broken link buildingOwen Cook, Founder of Blockchain SEO“While it may be somewhat time-consuming, broken link building is still an effective way to boost SEO results and is highly scalable in 2019. Specifically, broken link building is the process of identifying a broken or dead link, recreating the content which was linked to, and then notifying the website or party linking to that dead content. After all, it’s in a website’s best interests to make the user experience as smooth as possible — and broken links sure don’t help!” 38. Digital PRCaroline Khalili, Associate Director of PR at Circa Interactive “Digital PR has emerged as a powerful tool for generating exposure and establishing credibility online. Forging strong relationships with journalists, bloggers, and other producers of digital content can help an organization amplify its story and reach larger, higher-quality audiences. Digital PR also creates value in the form of improved search engine rankings, greater conversion rates, and enhanced brand trust.”39. Google review systemMercy Muigai, Founder and CEO of Onlipac Digital Solutions“As a white hat SEO tip, Google review system is an overlooked SEO practice. The more positive reviews your website has, the better the SEO. Businesses should take advantage of this practice by asking people to leave their reviews on Google and not just on social media. It's not only for SEO but also builds the credibility of a website.”40. Handle toxic backlinksDan Rawley, Account Manager at The SEO Works “One area of SEO that often gets neglected is handling toxic backlinks. While actively building strong backlinks is a common focus of any SEO campaign, it is just as important to monitor new links to the site that you have not built, and ensure that undesirable links are dealt with, either by creating and submitting a disavow file or by contacting webmasters to request link removal. This ensures that the strength of the backlinks you are building is not being diluted and allows you to keep on top of any potentially harmful new links.”41. Name, address, and phone number consistency Damien Buxton, Director at Midas Creative"One fairly simple task that often gets overlooked is to review every website that your business is mentioned online. Look at places such as online directories, social media accounts, and local listings  What you should look for is consistency of the business name, address, contact number and categories that your business is listed as. Search engines such as Google cross reference other sites to validate data that it holds on your company. If you've moved address recently, for example, make sure that your new location is updated across the web. By doing this you're helping your website have a better chance of appearing stronger in local search results." 42. Networking through PRWinston Nguyen, Owner of BitCoinSEO “People don't normally associate PR with SEO, but I think most of SEO is PR! After the technical audits, the only thing that's left is the content creation and link building. And the best way to do link building is through PR.”43. Optimizing “Google My Business”Lewis Peters, Marketing Specialist at Online Rock Salt “During the past year we have found a huge lift in our local SEO rankings by optimizing our Google My Business (GMB) account, by increased rankings in the map pack and increased ranking in localized organic searches. GMB can easily fall under the radar for many businesses; many have theirs left untouched for many years and not paid any attention to it. A new SEO specialist may not think to optimise GMB especially if the contact details have not changed.”44. Out-of-business competitor sitesSimon Rogers, Digital Marketing Executive at Website Pulse“One of the overlooked link building practices is to check (and keep checking) your out-of-business competitors' websites and try to get their backlinks. You can do that by outreaching the linking sites and letting them know their link is broken and suggest they link to your content/service/product.”45. Review outbound linksNatalie Athanasiadis, Founder of Ormi Media“When it comes to SEO, everyone talks about inbound link-building but too often outbound linking is overlooked. You want your site to be linking to authoritative and relevant content. Pages can be deleted on other websites and not redirected resulting in your site displaying dead links. So it’s really important to review outbound links periodically.”   SEO Tool Tips 46. Google search performance reportRyan MacKellar, SEO Specialist at 9thCo"One of the most overlooked SEO methods is using the performance report in Google Search Console. Specifically, the keyword impression data can provide a ton of insights. For example, you can find new keywords that you didn't know your website was ranking for and ensure you are fully optimized for them. It can also provide a treasure trove of long-tail keywords that make for ideal blog posts."47. Learn HTMLJensen Hendriks, Owner at Candor Digital Media“Many new SEO specialists avoid learning basic HTML code. They rely on Wordpress and the SEO plugins to get them by. All goes well until they acquire a client, or have the opportunity to, but it's a custom site. Simple courses on HTML markup would be beneficial to anyone in the SEO world. Key things to be capable of editing in HTML would be the meta info, title tags, heading tags, links/anchor text, lists, and paragraph copy. There are courses all over the web on these topics. It's worth learning and will help SEO specialists with longevity in the industry.”