Sure, we’re only nearing the end of August. But if you’re like the marketing team at Alexa, you’re already looking ahead to marketing strategy, budgets, and plans for 2017. As we prepare for a new year, our success depends on how well we apply what we’ve leaed in 2016, to what’s to come. We know that content was still really important in 2016: But what else should you takeaway from 2016, to help shape your success in 2017? 11 experts share what they’re taking away from this year—and so should you. Marketing Quotes 2016: What 11 Experts Want You to Know If you could write a newspaper headline for the marketing industry in 2016, what would it be? Why? Andy CrestodinaCo-Founder & Strategic Director, Orbit MediaEntrepreneur Magazine Top 50 Marketing Influencer in 2016@crestodina “Google Saves Twitter” This is a headline I’d like to read. Someone needs to do it. Twitter is an important tool for marketers. It’s also a force for good around the world. Sadlادامه مطلب

If you’d like to know how to rank on Google, the short answer is… Create SEO content that people love, and search engines can crawl and understand. If you dissect that short answer above, ranking content on Google boils down to three ingredients: Content People loving it Google knowing that I’ll admit it. Those three factors are overly simplified concepts to concisely communicate what it takes to rank on Google. This post is the conclusion to a 3-part series on SEO content. So far we’ve covered: Part 1 – How to Plan SEO ContentPart 2 – SEO Copywriting Tips to Please Google and Humans And now… Part 3 – How to Rank on Google: 3 Ingredients for Reaching #1 SEO Ingredient #1 For Ranking on Google: Content This is self-explanatory—content, after all, is what shows up on search engine results pages (SERPs). I won’t get into detail here since part 1 and part 2 already covereادامه مطلب

Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, consultant, analyst, or even a salesperson, you have probably found yourself wanting to find similar sites that compete against a particular site. Why would I want to find similar websites? Why is this useful? As a business owner or marketer, it’s important to know which sites are competing with your company online. Which sites are attracting the same or similar visitors? Which sites are using similar keywords or marketing to your target customers? In addition, you may want to develop a list of websites similar to a target site for new guest posting or advertising opportunities. As a consultant or analyst, it’s important to understand your client’s competitors. Who’s getting the most traffic and the most engagement? What are the competitors talking about online? In addition, you may want to build a list of industry sites to track and eادامه مطلب

Do you want your SEO content to rank on the first page of Google? It’s easy to get stuck on the many SEO best practices and lose track of who you are ultimately trying to reach… Real people. Google has specific SEO factors it looks for when ranking pages in search results. Their priority is their users’ experience. So the more you serve the reader, the more Google serves you. If I were to share only one SEO copywriting tip, it would be this… Please your readers. That sounds too simple, right? The biggest challenge behind that is in knowing your audience and what they want. In this post, I’ll share ideas to help you make your readers love you, so Google will too. SEO Copywriting Tip #1: Plan Ahead It might seem like a time-consuming step that you can skip. But I encourage you not to. Plaing your SEO content writing ahead can help you determine: The best word choice The readers’ search intent What gaps your competition is leaving The most efficient way to do this is throughادامه مطلب

One of the top goals in digital marketing is to have strong SEO. Strong SEO means that your content ranks in search, drives organic traffic, and ultimately converts visitors into customers.

But there are many parts of SEO that must work in tandem to reach this goal. It’s a multi-part practice that takes time and resources to execute.

One surefire way to make sure your site always follows white hat SEO best practices and performs its best in search is a complete website SEO test.

In this post we’ll review 2 tools that test website SEO in 2 crucial ways.

2 Tools for a Comprehensive Website SEO Test

Generally, SEO includes 2 categories:

• Technical – refers to the back end elements of your site that allow search engine crawlers to easily access, understand, and index your content for ranking
• Content – refers to the creative content (text, images, video) developed for your site and how well it is optimized for relevant keywords and good user experience. Also known as “on-page SEO”.

Note: Off-page SEO (i.e. link building) is also a part of successful SEO, but requires time and outreach to achieve. The two categories discussed here are absolutely essential to strong SEO, and should be the primary focus for SEO begiers just starting SEO.

When creating SEO content it’s important to make sure you tackle both the technical and the content (or on-page) side of things with SEO best practices in mind. However, it’s easy to miss things when you’re pushing tons of content out the door.

An SEO scan tool can help make sure you’re optimized – even after the fact. Here are 2 tools to help you do just that.

Tool #1 – Technical SEO Test

SEO Audit

Regular site audits help ensure sound SEO health, as well as elevate search performance.

Alexa’s SEO Audit tool makes sure that no technical issue on your site goes uoticed. It’s an easy (and automated!) website SEO test to find and fix problems that keep you from ranking your best in search.

How it works:

Our comprehensive Audit report is made up of 5 industry-standard categories and covers 30 important action items (technical + non-technical). That way you’ll never miss an opportunity to improve your rank and drive more organic traffic.

To start your website SEO test with the Audit tool, you should be signed up for Alexa’s Advanced plan.

Note: Advanced subscribers receive SEO Audit reports every 2 weeks. Insight subscribers receive reports once a month.

Once you’ve added a site to your subscription, our crawler automatically goes over it in depth, analyzing its structure, meta data, and links.

It’s a comprehensive crawl, but is “polite”, which means it spreads out requests over a number of hours so it doesn’t affect your site’s performance.

The report is delivered to you with an updated look at your SEO performance. Within each of the 5 categories we color code items that need attention. Red – take a look. Green – you’re good to go! The list of action items is sortable too, so you can access the most important things quickly.

Each action item includes actionable recommendations for what needs to be fixed, plus a note about why it’s important to your SEO.

Recommendations are made even easier with step-by-step instructions on where to start.

Finally, you can customize a downloadable version of your report with any or all of the action items you need to address so you can share with teammates.

Why it works:

The SEO Audit tool is an asset for any comprehensive website SEO test. It helps uncover technical issues, bringing them to your attention automatically twice a month. And it helps ensure your site always follows SEO best practices.

As a result, you can feel confident that nothing (technical) stands in the way of you and optimal organic traffic.

Added bonus? Recurring reports help you track your progress and prove your SEO efforts are paying off!

Tool #2 – Content SEO Test

On-Page SEO Checker

When you check on-page SEO regularly, you can feel confident your content is optimized for search the best it can be.

Alexa’s On-Page SEO Checker is an easy way to make sure you’re maximizing your results from each piece of content you create.

Here’s how it works:

1. In the tool, enter a published landing page + target keyword

Remember, it’s important to only target one keyword per piece of content so search engine crawlers can easily disce what your page is about. You can use like-keywords to support your target keyword, but make sure your target keyword is found in all the right places.

If you don’t have a target keyword for your content then start with our Keyword Difficulty tool. It’ll help you find the best keywords for your site, at the appropriate competition level. That way you have the best chance of ranking.

2. Analyze your content for on-page SEO

When you click Analyze, the tool will perform a full on-page SEO check for your content. Then you’ll receive a comprehensive report with recommendations for specific ways to improve. The report covers 4 important categories:

• Relevance – will search engines recognize your content is relevant to the target keyword you’ve chosen?
• SERP Appearance – will your landing page be visible and appealing in search?
• Visitor Experience – is your landing page user-friendly? Is it accessible?
• Target Keyword – does your landing page focus on a single keyword? Is that keyword found in all the right places to send a clear signal to search engine crawlers?

Each category in the report includes the number of optimization opportunities we found, and detailed instructions on how to improve. HTML snippets are provided so you know exactly where your optimizations show up in your page’s code.

3. Delegate and optimize

At this point, you can delegate optimization tasks as needed and update your page. Any time you make an update you can analyze your page again in the On-Page SEO Checker. We’ll run as many reports as you’d like until your page is as optimized as it can be.

Why it works:

The best thing about the On-Page SEO Checker is that it’s the most straightforward way to make sure you’re getting the most out of your content efforts. It takes a lot of time to create quality content, and the last thing you want is to get snubbed in search because your on-page SEO isn’t on point.

But what’s even better – the tool provides a comprehensive SEO check for your target keyword usage. Because that’s really the most important part – do search engine crawlers believe your content is a quality piece about your target keyword?

It checks the essentials like meta descriptions, image alt tags, and the URL, to make sure you’ve included your target keyword there.

And it also checks to make sure your target keyword is within your site’s Competitive Power. If your keyword is too competitive for you, then your chances of ranking are greatly diminished. If that’s the case, your best bet for SEO success is to find low competition keywords that are more suited for your site’s authority.

But no matter the size of your site or your level of keyword competition, Alexa’s SEO Audit Tool and On-Page SEO Checker cover it all. The result? One massively comprehensive website SEO test.

Ready for a full website SEO test?

Try the SEO Audit Tool + On-Page SEO Checker in Alexa’s Advanced Plan. Your first 7 days are completely free.

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. And at some point, your businesses is likely to experience a lull in organic traffic performance that requires you to mix up your strategy to get back on track. One way to do this is through dynamite keyword discovery.

The search landscape is always changing. This includes what people search for, how they search, and what syntax – or combination of words and phrases – they use to search for things.

Efficient and resourceful keyword discovery, done on a regular basis, is key to a strong content strategy and rewarding SEO over the long term.

So whether you’re in an SEO slump, or just trying to start SEO, use these 2 keyword discovery techniques to quickly identify promising terms.

1. Competitor Keyword Analysis

Most of us are pretty aware of who our customers are. But the likelihood of you and your competitors reaching exactly the same customers is pretty low. So, that means that digging into their audiences and how they’re communicating with them will probably reveal some great new opportunities.

All that to say, doing a competitive analysis + researching your competitors’ keywords is a great way to uncover:

1. How they’re reaching audiences similar to yours
2. What type of content they’re using, and
3. What type of messaging they’re focused on

As a result, tapping your competitors for keyword discovery helps you:

1. Expand your target audience(s)
2. Refine your messaging with more specific phrases (i.e. long-tail keywords)
3. Discover new messaging (i.e. keywords) you hadn’t thought of

You can do a competitor keyword analysis with Alexa for fast keyword discovery. Here’s how.

Enter the Competitor Keyword Matrix

In Alexa’s new Competitor Keyword Matrix, you can compare up to 10 sites at the same time.

The heat-map style view will let you quickly find competitors’ keywords that are different from your own.

You can filter the Matrix results by Sites in Common, Competition, or Popularity.

And you can use the purple shaded Traffic Scores to identify just the type of keyword opportunity you’re looking for.

For instance, you might want to target keywords your competitors get a lot of traffic from. These keywords are shown as dark purple boxes in the Matrix. One reason to target these terms is because they have proven interest. If you choose to focus on this type of keyword opportunity, your next step would probably be to research what kind of content your competitors are creating around these terms. Then, you could develop your own SEO content that’s better in some way. Maybe you elaborate on the subject. Or maybe you fill in missing pieces and include new research or recommendations.

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✪ Read this blog if you’re interested in leaing other ways to approach competitor keyword analysis using the Matrix.

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Regardless of what approach you take, or what type of analysis you do, the Competitor Keyword Matrix is a great way to identify high-opportunity keywords based on gaps with your closest competitors.

Need to find sites for your competitor keyword analysis? Start with our Audience Overlap tool. This will give you a list of other sites that share visitors with the site you entered.

Researching your competitors’ keywords is a dependable path to quick keyword discovery. And with the Matrix, you can separate the wheat from the chaff quickly, honing in on only the best keywords for your site.

2. Long Tail Keyword Research

Many people try to go after broad, higher competition keywords. In his article on Marketing Profs, Alexander Kesler puts this group of keywords in the “Fat Head” of the Search Demand Curve.

Source: What Are Long Tail Keywords? via ausweb.com.au

But there are several challenges with targeting broad, high competition keywords.

1. These major keywords make up only a small portion of total search volume.

2. The terms usually aren’t very specific and don’t accurately capture search intent.

3. They’re very popular, which makes them very competitive.

These “Fat Head” terms are bloated with competition, and they’re bloated in meaning.

Take, for example, a search for the broad term: marketing automation.

A person searching for this term may actually intend to find information on any of the below:

• Marketing automation software (tools)
• Marketing automation specialists (jobs/hiring)
• Marketing automation tutorials (education)
• Marketing automation certification (training)

By targeting these “Fat Head” terms, you’re more likely to blindly create content without really knowing what the user is searching for. Thus, you waste time on content that’s going to be thrown into a sea of search, crowded with others competing for the same 10 SERP spots. And in the end, you aren’t totally sure what the user was searching for in the first place!

But you’re in luck. Kesler’s Search Demand Curve points out that there’s a huge portion (70%) of search volume available for tapping. This 70% is comprised of long tail keywords.

Unlike “Fat Head” keywords, long tail keywords are usually a bit longer (in length). However, this makes them much more targeted – more intent specific. And you’ll have a much better idea of what people are looking for when they search.

Just think of marketing automation vs. marketing automation certification study guide.

It’s MUCH clearer what the searcher intended to find with the second, long tail phrase.

And because long tail keywords are more specific, your content will be more targeted. More targeted content more accurately satisfies search intent. And if search intent is satisfied, conversion is more likely.

In short, there’s a large slice of search volume made up of high-opportunity long tail keywords that may be very specific to your business. And these keywords have a high reward potential.

The goal: Strive for lean. Strive for long tail. Don’t get lost in the “Fat Head”.

How?

Leverage Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty Tool for low competition, long tail keyword discovery.

Start with Competitive Power

Knowing your Competitive Power is the basis for any smart keyword research strategy. It basically tells you what level of keyword competition you can target that will result in the most rewarding SEO.

Alexa’s Competitive Power is the measurement of your site’s ability to rank for competitive keywords, based on your past performance driving organic traffic. The higher the Competitive Power, the more easily your site can rank for competitive keywords.

In the Keyword Difficulty tool, focus your keyword research on terms that are flagged with a lightning bolt. These are keywords that are at or below your Competitive Power – and those you’ll have the greatest chance of ranking for.

As a result, you’ll choose SEO keywords with more confidence that you’ll rank.

Find Highly Relevant, Long Tail Keywords

Using the Keyword Difficulty Tool, enter a seed word or phrase. We’ll retu a list of results that you can filter to meet your specific criteria.

Filter the list by Competition score, Popularity, or by specific phrase. Continue narrowing the list until you have a collection of relevant keyword opportunities that you could create content around.

To integrate keyword research into your workflow, save the keywords that spark great ideas so you’ll have them handy later when you are ready to create content.

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✪ Read this blog for other ways to use the Keyword Difficulty Tool to find the best keywords for your website.

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Long tail keywords may be lower in popularity than broad keywords, but they’re also lower in competition and are highly targeted to users’ search intent.

Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool can help make your keyword discovery easier, but also more focused. That way you waste no time because you develop the best content that will result in the most rewarding SEO.

Want faster keyword discovery and better results from SEO? Sign up for Alexa’s Advanced plan today. Your first 7 days are completely free.

What if you could find the best keywords for your website and spy on competitors’ keywords at the same time?

Now you can with Alexa’s Competitor Keyword Matrix tool.

The brand new tool allows users to run a complete competitor keyword analysis, and identify high opportunity keywords based on gaps with their closest competitors.

Using the Competitor Keyword Matrix

In the tool you can compare up to 10 sites at once (including your own) to see competitors’ keywords that are different from yours.

You can sort the matrix list by a variety of criteria like:

• Sites in Common – how many sites are getting some traffic from the same keyword
• Competition – an estimate of how hard it is to rank highly for a keyword
• Popularity – how frequently users search for a keyword (higher popularity = higher traffic)

Using the purple shaded Traffic Scores you can expose the top keywords driving traffic to your competitors. And since the Matrix interface is set up like a heat map, you can quickly hone in on the type of keyword opportunity you’re looking for (more on that below).

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✪ Traffic Scores are based on a site’s relative position in search engine results for that keyword, plus the popularity of that keyword (site rank for keyword + keyword popularity). This allows you to compare one site to another when both receive traffic from a single keyword.

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Save the keyword opportunities you find in the Matrix during your competitor keyword research and add them to your marketing plans or incorporate them into your SEO content.

Want to analyze a keyword from the Matrix further? Enter it into the Keyword Difficulty tool to find similar keywords and analyze its keyword competition.

Each set of sites you enter into the Competitor Keyword Matrix can be saved and edited later. Just give it a name and we’ll tuck it away until you need it again.

When you want to work on one of your saved lists, you can access them easily at the top of the tool.

How to do a Competitor Keyword Analysis with the Matrix

There are a few ways to use Alexa’s Matrix tool for competitor keyword analysis. And each company may choose a different analysis depending on its strategy.

Let’s look at each angle:

1. Bandwagon – Target keywords with many sites in common

One way to approach competitor keyword research with the Matrix tool is to focus on how many sites a keyword has in common. In other words, how many sites are already targeting that keyword and getting traffic for it?

If only 1 or 2 sites in your set are targeting a keyword, this could indicate a good opportunity for you to fill a gap. Take a look at the Popularity of that keyword. Is it reasonably high? If so, this says many people are searching for it and it’s probably a good opportunity. If the popularity is low, this could indicate there isn’t enough interest for the term in search – and maybe one reason your competitors aren’t targeting it. However, if the term is highly relevant to your product or service then the low popularity could make for a great long tail opportunity for you.

If many sites are targeting a keyword, you could assume that there is enough interest in that topic and it’s a viable opportunity. However, check the Competition score. This will help you determine how difficult it would be to rank your content for the term. You can also compare the Competition Score to your Competitive Power to decide if a keyword is a good opportunity for you.

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✪ Click to lea how your Competitive Power can help you choose SEO keywords with confidence.

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If you determine a keyword is a good opportunity for you, take a look at which competitor(s) in the set are commanding the most traffic for the term. That is, who has the highest traffic score? Then do a search for the term to see what type of content is eaing them so much traffic. This will help you understand the true intent behind users’ searches and help you craft the most relevant content that has the best chance of ranking.

2. Borrow – Target keywords your competitors get a lot of traffic from

Another approach is to focus on your competitors’ top keywords – those they are getting a lot of traffic from. To identify these keywords, look for the dark purple boxes in the Matrix with a high Traffic Score.

The great thing about focusing on these keywords is you know there is proven interest in the subject (assuming the Popularity is reasonable), and the audience is relevant. You can use the Keyword Difficulty tool to make sure the Competition score is within your Competitive Power, and if it is…

Search for these keywords to see what type of content your competitor(s) built around them. Then develop your own content that takes their content a step further. This will help boost your competitiveness and increase your chances of ranking above them for the same term. There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Improve the depth of their content by elaborating on the topic they discuss.
2. Fill in gaps where they’ve missed important pieces of information. For example, add to their recommendations or provide new resources.

If a keyword you like has a Competition score that is greater than your Competitive Power, try searching for that keyword in the Keyword Difficulty tool to find similar keywords that may be more niche. These keywords often have lower Popularity scores (i.e. are long-tail), but the search intent is much more specific and the Competition is usually lower. Your chances of ranking will be higher and you won’t waste time writing content that won’t get seen.

3. Pioneer – Target keywords your competitors get no traffic, or very little traffic from

A final approach you could take when doing a competitor keyword analysis is to target keywords that your competitors get little to no traffic from.

In this approach, keywords with light purple or gray boxes and lower Traffic scores represent a new opportunity.

If a site is targeting a keyword but getting little traffic from it (light purple box), you should investigate why they’re failing to get more traffic than they are.

If it’s the content, then produce something better. Should it be more specific? Does it fail to answer the searcher’s intent? Is the content spammy?

If it’s the keyword, consider why. Is the keyword too long tail? Is there not enough search volume? Or, is the keyword actually too competitive? Maybe it’s too broad. In either case, enter the keyword into the Keyword Difficulty tool to find like-keywords that might be better opportunities.

Alexa’s new competitor keyword research tool allows you to quickly find “keyword gaps” with your competitors. No matter the approach you take, you’ll be able to quickly identify new keyword opportunities that can give you a competitive edge in search.

Finding Sites for the Competitor Keyword Analysis

Finally, if you’re not sure who your competitors are, or want to discover similar sites to one you’re interested in, start with our Audience Overlap tool instead.

By inputting your URL (or another), you’ll get a list of other sites that share visitors with that one. The list is sorted by most audience overlap to least.

From there, you can select up to 10 sites and run a competitor keyword analysis in the Matrix to see which keywords the sites rank for in SERPs.

When you find keywords of competitors, you uncover highly relevant keyword opportunities for yourself that you might not have thought of. You can also rule out keywords that aren’t driving much traffic, instead of wasting time creating content around them.

Want to check competitor keywords? Try Alexa Advanced free for 7 days!

More content. More content. More content.

Marketers hear it all the time. Most of us probably wake up in cold sweats at night thinking about it too.

“We need to publish new content”.

“We need to drive more traffic”.

A steady stream of new content on your website or blog goes hand-in-hand with quality backlinks, great SEO, and strong site traffic.

However, it can be a struggle to constantly generate new topics to blog about.

In this post, we review 4 excellent places to discover topics to write about.

The best part? They’re right under your nose.

1. Competitors

Researching competitor keywords is a tactful way to discover new content opportunities for your own website.

The benefits:

• It gives you a glimpse into what’s been successful for others with audiences like yours
• It reveals new keywords you might not have thought of
• It improves your search rankings by having fresh topics to blog about

Here’s how to find new topics to write about using competitor keywords and Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool:

In the tool, enter your competitor’s website into the search bar. Click find opportunities to get a list of keywords that are driving organic traffic for them.

The list of keyword opportunities retued is filterable by Popularity and Competition so you can discover only the best opportunities for your site as quickly as possible.

Scan through this list and decide what keywords might make great blog ideas for you.

You can favorite the keywords you want to save for later, or start a new search to discover even more ideas.

Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool allows you to search by keyword or by site, and lets you filter by the criteria that are most important to you. That way you only find the best keywords for your website.

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✪ Pro Tip: When you choose SEO keywords to blog about, focus on your Competitive Power — a measure of your site’s ability to rank for a keyword, based on your past performance driving organic traffic. The higher your Competitive Power, the easier it will be for your site to rank for more competitive keywords.

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Because these keyword opportunities are based on actual search pattes, they are highly relevant to your target audience. And because your competitors already use these keywords for their own blog topics, you know there’s proven interest.

2. Seasonal Content

Leveraging seasonal content is a great way to stay ahead of your content creation and always have things to blog about.

Popular seasonal events are very relevant and, provided you can put an interesting spin on the topic, will keep you top of mind with audiences.

And since seasonal events are guaranteed to occur the same time every year (wait, really?), you can adapt your blogging ideas based on past performance.

Maybe you try a different type of content – a video instead of a how-to article. Or, maybe you publish a little earlier to get picked up by more publishers.

In any case, the key to success with seasonal content is timing. If you publish too early, your content is irrelevant and becomes stale. If you publish too late, the peak of the conversation has passed.

In our 2016 Content Calendar, we’ve pinpointed the optimal times to produce, publish, and promote seasonal content based on popular events in 2015.

You can use it to uncover what types of content have been successful in the past, and use it to find new topics to blog about throughout the year.

We’ve even included a downloadable editorial calendar, including seasonal marketing ideas to make your content plaing easier.

3. Existing Content

There are tons of articles written about using existing content to inspire new blog topic ideas. That’s because it’s a great idea!

There are so many ways to optimize or repurpose existing content into fresh ideas. Buffer’s Ultimate Guide to Repurposing Content is a fantastic resource for this.

But one of our go-to’s is auditing existing content for spin-off opportunities.

Good content tells a focused story, and targets a single keyword. However, several ideas can come out of a single blog topic.

Read through your existing content to find new blog ideas about a related topic.

• Find places where you could (and should) provide more detailed information on a topic.
• Identify keyword phrases that could be the root of a new article.

For example, our first recommendation in this list talks about using competitor keywords to inspire new blog topic ideas. But we don’t go into detail about how to choose the right SEO keywords for your site based on what you find. Now that would make a good post!

We might do some keyword research around the keyword phrase “choose SEO keywords” to see if it’s a good opportunity. If it is, we might write a new article about it titled: How to Choose SEO Keywords With Confidence. Hey, look at that!

Now we can link from this article to that article in a relevant way, providing our audiences more detailed information on a related topic.

Not only did we get a new blog topic idea from existing content, but we also have a new inteal link to help our SEO.

And as we know, good on-page SEO includes: 1) linking pages elsewhere on your site, and 2) having the appropriate number of outbound links.

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✪ Ensure your content follows all the best practices for on-page optimization with Alexa’s On-Page SEO Checker.

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4. Customer Support Representatives

Customer Support representatives are at the front lines of customer interaction; constantly fielding questions and conces about your product or service.

Working with your CS folks is a golden opportunity to directly address real customers and real questions via marketing content.

The benefits of developing blog ideas around customer support tickets are several:

1. Your CS and Sales teams get valuable, illustrative content they can share when speaking with customers and prospects.

2. If the question you’re answering hasn’t been addressed by before, including your competitors, you may become the go-to authority for the answer. In other words, if you’re the only one with an answer, then you’re the one people listen to. And hopefully, you get more traffic to your website as a result.

One of the most successful, and widely quoted, examples of this is River Pools and Spas. Hit hard by the recession in 2008, Marcus Sheridan started a content marketing program that saved his company and grew his traffic by 300%. The strategy: Answer his customer’s most pressing questions – those his competitors were afraid to talk about.

3. You can build links inteally and exteally by linking to your product, linking to related content, and getting other sites to link to your content too.

At the end of the day, chances are – if your customers are asking these questions, then your prospects and leads are too. It’s a win-win to provide answers.

Once you’ve collaborated with your CS or Sales folks to collect frequently asked questions or conces, do some keyword research to understand how people phrase these questions. In other words, figure out the syntax.

Figuring out the way people ask the questions they want answers to helps you find the right keywords to target in your new content.

Look up some of these potential keywords in Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool to find best keyword opportunity for your site. Once you’ve picked a great keyword, then get to writing!

Wrap up your new content by making sure it follows all the best practices for on-page SEO.

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✪ Maximize your content efforts with Alexa’s On-Page SEO Checker. Get an easy-to-follow list of action items to improve your SEO and your ranking for target keywords.

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Anytime you find yourself asking, “…but what can I blog about?” — Start here.

With 4 solid places to discover unique blog post ideas, you’re sure to have a steady stream of quality content that’s relevant to your business and your audience.

Want to get the most out of your content? Try Alexa’s Advanced plan free for 7 days!

You’ll get our full marketing stack of SEO related tools to help you choose the best keywords for your site, maximize your results from SEO, and grow your business.

As a fellow marketer, I fully understand what a lengthy effort content marketing can be.

It takes a healthy amount of research, brainstorming, and careful crafting to produce a single piece of content. Then there’s the SEO, social scheduling, influencer outreach…

When you’re finally done, you’re really ready to be done.

But checking your on-page SEO (even after the fact) is important to make sure you’re ranking highly and driving the most search traffic to your content possible.

Alexa’s new on-page SEO checker can help you analyze your content to make sure it’s optimized for search the best it can be.

Here’s how to check on-page SEO with Alexa.

Enter a landing page + target keyword pair

From your Alexa dashboard, navigate to Check On-Page SEO. Once in the tool, enter a published landing page URL and the keyword or phrase you’re targeting.

PRO TIP: It’s important to target a single keyword or phrase (supplementing with related terms) so you send a crystal clear signal to search engine crawlers what your content is about. Remember, a search in Google can be considered a question and your content the answer. The content that answers the question in the clearest, most focused way will rank highly.

If you don’t have a target keyword or phrase, you can use Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool to help you to choose the best fit for your content at the right competition level.

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✪ Read how to find the best keywords for your website

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Analyze your SEO content

Once you’ve added your landing page + target keyword, click Analyze. We’ll run an SEO check up to make sure you’re meeting important best practices.

You’ll get a full on-page SEO report with recommendations for specific ways to optimize your page even more.

The report is organized into 4 categories:

• Relevance – These optimizations help make sure search engines recognize your content is relevant to the target keyword you’ve chosen.

• SERP Appearance –How your landing page will appear in search results. The more descriptive the content is, and how much of it is visible, make a difference in how appealing your content is to click on.

• Visitor Experience (UX) – Search engines consistently report that good user experience (UX) is an important part of ranking well in SERPs. A page that puts a user’s experience first will rank higher. These optimizations look for things like accessibility, linking, and responsiveness to determine a page’s UX.

• Target Keyword – Targeting a single keyword is the best way to send a clear signal to search engine crawlers that your content is about a particular topic. And making sure the keyword or phrase you choose is within your site’s Competitive Power makes it more likely you will rank for that term.

Spend time reviewing your report. Expand sections where optimizations were found. You can even export your results to a CSV to work offline.

Each recommendation in your on-page SEO analysis gives detailed directions for how to improve. We even include snippets of HTML so you can see where each change is reflected in your code.

After we check on-page SEO for your landing page + keyword pair, your report will be added to the tool’s main page.

Make important updates to your page and then analyze it again. We’ll scan your page as many times as you would like. And each time we’ll give you an updated report that reflects your changes.

If everything looks good in a category – you’ll see a green checkmark!

As you create and publish more content, analyze each of your landing pages to be sure you’re doing everything you can to stay competitive in search.

On-page optimization is a must if you want to maximize your hard work and your site’s organic traffic performance. And Alexa’s on-page SEO checker makes it easy.

Give it a try today with a free 7-day trial of our Advanced plan.

Keyword research for SEO is non-negotiable.

Your SEO performance and your website traffic depend on it.

And the growth of your business is increasingly tied to it.

But, choosing the right SEO keywords for your website content is exceedingly difficult. Particularly for small to mid-sized businesses whose domain authority is a far cry from the Inc.’s and CNN’s of the world.

So how should you approach keyword research for SEO, given your site’s unique ability to rank?

Know your Competitive Power

In combat sports like boxing, and wrestling, weight classes are used to fairly distribute and match competitors. The idea is, for example, that pitting an athlete against an opponent 75 pounds heavier would give the latter an unfair advantage.

Essentially, “punching your weight” is the fairest way to compete, as it ensures both athletes an equal chance at success.

One might apply this philosophy to the art of keyword research for SEO. Competing for broad keywords targeted by huge brands with strong domain authority is a lost battle for most from the start.

One way to confidently choose SEO keywords you have the best chance of ranking for is to focus on your Competitive Power.

Your Competitive Power is your benchmark for “punching your weight”. It’s the measurement of your site’s ability to rank for competitive keywords, based on your past performance driving organic traffic. The higher this number, the more easily your site can rank for more competitive keywords.

Your Competitive Power will help you confidently choose keywords that your site has a good chance of ranking for.

You can locate your Competitive Power in Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool. Keywords that are at or below your Competitive Power are in your weight class. You’ll find them flagged with a lightning bolt for quick identification.

Focus on Highly Relevant, Low Competition Keywords

Once you know your Competitive Power, your SEO keyword research will be much more focused.

Next, you should concentrate your search on highly relevant, low competition (or long-tail) keywords.

Besides being less competitive, there are other valuable reasons to find low competition keywords:

1. Low competition keywords are usually more specific in nature
2. More specific keyword searches make it easier to craft tailored content that is laser focused on search intent
3. A well-crafted, tailored piece of content that answers search intent is usually rewarded with more organic traffic and referrals

Using Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool, you can find low competition keywords that are highly relevant to the services, products, or values of your brand. Simply enter a seed word or phrase, and then filter your results to meet your specific criteria.

Along the way, you can also identify semantically similar or like-phrases that you can incorporate into your content. Doing so will help reinforce what your content is about, and send clear signals to search engine crawlers of your valuable message.

Low competition SEO keywords may be less popular, but they can be highly specific to your brand and a great starting point for small to mid-sized business focused on growth.

Utilize Keywords Already Driving Traffic to Your Site

In doing keyword research for SEO, don’t forget to take advantage of keywords already driving traffic to your site.

In the Keyword Difficulty tool, you can enter your own site in Step 2 and we’ll generate a list of untapped opportunities related to keywords that already send traffic to your site.

You can choose to filter out those keywords that already drive traffic to your site to get the clearest list of SEO keywords you have to work with.

Develop content around these keywords to maximize your SEO benefits and leverage your already proven search success.

Start Searching for Your Best SEO Keywords

Keyword research is a must for successful SEO. But it doesn’t have to be a guessing game.

Alexa’s Keyword Difficulty tool will help you find the best, most relevant keywords for your site based on your ability to rank – like your own personal SEO keyword generator!

Try it out today as part of our Advanced plan, and choose keywords with more confidence!

Would you like to get started with SEO? But you aren’t sure if it’s worth all the effort?

Many start-ups neglect SEO in their early days. And it makes sense. They have limited time and resources. So it’s hard to commit to such a time-consuming pursuit.

But later, when they need to find scalable growth strategies, they shift their focus and find that getting SEO results is easier than they thought. And they regret not starting sooner. I’ve been there, done that, wasted a year and $60,000 cranking out content with no regard for SEO, and wished I had started SEO sooner.

So I want to help you discover that success before you make the same mistake.

Take the Groove blog as an example. They’ve had great success with their content marketing. Founder Alex Tubull says their blog is the biggest driver of revenue growth. Even with that success, they regret ignoring SEO for a long time. They dismissed it, thinking it was scammy. That is until they discovered that white hat SEO techniques make SEO simple, and easy to get results.

In this post, we’ll show you how to start SEO. The great news is–there are a few easy things you can do to get a couple of quick wins under your belt.

How to Start SEO Without Betting the Farm

No one wants to spin their wheels doing SEO only to find out it’s not working. The best way to start SEO is to run a few small tests, measure the outcome, and then increase your investment as your confidence improves.

Follow these three simple steps for a quick way to prove to yourself (and maybe your boss) that the results are worth the effort.

1. Pick a piece of content from your site that you’d like to drive more traffic to (30 minutes)
2. Choose the best keyword to target (30 minutes)
3. Tweak the content to optimize for that keyword (30 minutes)

With just a 1-1/2 hour investment, you’ll get some answer as to whether SEO can work for you.

STEP 1 — Pick a piece of content to optimize

This should be quick.

Think about these things. What posts on your site:

• are already popular
• have proven to be valuable to your readers or customers
• drive the most conversions

Those questions can be answered by looking at Google Analytics and any direct feedback you’ve gotten from readers, including Idea, social shares, and emails.

The key is to pick a page that does these things:

• Solves a problem of your target customer with educational content
• Subtly ties the education it provides to the solution your company offers

If you didn’t think about optimizing for SEO when you created that content, it’s a prime opportunity to make a few tweaks that’ll win some organic traffic.

STEP 2 — Choose a target keyword

This will take a little bit of keyword research, using the keyword difficulty tool. Long story, short–you’ll look for a keyword that is:

1. Highly relevant to the content and topic of the post you picked
2. Has a competition score that is within your site’s Competitive Power
3. Has a decent popularity among the shortlist of options that meet the requirements of 1 and 2

Think about what question your content answers. What might someone who needs to read your post enter into the search box when researching the topic? Start with your best guess as the seed phrase to kick off your keyword research.

Use Alexa’s keyword difficulty tool to find low competition keywords so you can uncover the most optimal option. Often, the seed keyword you think of is too highly competitive for your site. And sometimes it’s just too broad. Taking this step to do keyword research will help you find long tail keyword ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.

Look for relevance

As you sift through the ideas, think about how accurately the keyword ideas describe the content you plan to optimize. You want to avoid broad topics because those don’t drive the type of relevant traffic that has a very specific pain point they are trying to solve.

As you find highly relevant keyword ideas, add them to a shortlist so you can weigh them against each other to make a final selection.

Pro tip: Even if you find keywords that are relevant to your business but aren’t right for this piece of content, save them for later. This will speed up your future content creation process because you’ll have a list of ideas that are ripe for the taking.

Focus on low competition

Next, concentrate on the competition score of the keywords in your shortlist. The most important thing to consider is whether your site has a chance to rank for that keyword. Use your site’s Competitive Power score as a benchmark for knowing what level of competition you can take on. And use that to find keyword options that are at or below. The lower the score, the easier it will be to rank, and the more confidently you will be able to choose SEO keywords.

Read also: How to find the best keywords for your site

OK, now it’s time to focus on popularity

By now you should have a shortlist of probably around ten keyword ideas that are all fairly similar. So how do you choose which one to go with? Given the narrowed list of options that are both relevant and at a competition score your site can handle, look for the most popular option.

Keep requirements #1 and #2 as a top priority, and select the most suitable keyword that balances competition with popularity, so you have an easy time ranking for a keyword that has reasonable volume.

Pro tip: While you need to pick one primary target keyword, you can use the other keywords on your shortlist as related phrases to help you reinforce the topic without having to repeat the target phrase too often and risk keyword stuffing.

STEP 3 — Optimize the content for SEO

You have content — check

You have a target keyword — check

Now it’s time to include the keyword in the content–in all the right places.

You’ll do that by following on-page best practices (15 minutes) and by building inteal links (15 minutes)

Follow on-page SEO best practices

This is pretty straight-forward. You’ll want to include your target keyword in the following places:

• URL
• Page title
• Meta description
• H1 tag
• H2 tag
• Image alt tags
• Image file names
• Body content

Bonus: Also include keywords that are related and to your target phrase. This reinforces the topic of your post.

Build inteal links to the content

You need to do everything you can to tell Google what the page is about. You have a good start with the on-page SEO essentials above.

Now, you can reinforce the topic by linking to the page from other pages on your site.

Find pages that are somewhat related to the topic of your newly optimized post. Add links wherever it makes sense in the context of the page. Try to use the exact target keyword phrase in the anchor text of the link. You’ll often need to make a minor tweak to the wording to make this happen.

Here are some ways to find great places to add an inteal link:

• Search Google for “site:yoursite.com keyword phrase”

You’ll see a list of pages on your site that Google considers relevant to the search term. Choose pages you think will be suitable for incorporating a link to the page.

• Look in Google Search Console for pages receiving traffic for that keyword

Often, you’ll receive traffic from a keyword for which you didn’t intentionally optimize. Even if you only get a trickle of traffic to it, it tells you that Google sees it as somewhat relevant to the keyword. That’s a great page to add a link using the keyword as anchor text. It directs readers and Google to the page that was truly optimized for that term.

Here’s how to find inteal link opportunities in Google Search Console.

Go to Search Traffic > Search Analytics.

Enter your search term into the Queries filter.

Click on the Pages toggle.

In this example, I’ve filtered Queries that contain “keyword research.” And I’m looking at Pages that show up in SERPs.

The list of pages will be ones that receive impressions and perhaps even traffic for that keyword.

Since Google is displaying these pages for the keyword you are targeting, that means they see it as someone relevant–even if the position is really high or the clicks are low.

It’s a telling sign that Google sees these pages as related.

• Looking through a list of your blog posts

One way to jog your memory of related posts is to simply scroll through all your blog posts. As you see content that has some relationship to your newly optimized post, click through and scan for opportunities to squeeze in a link to the page.

Do it again

Chances are that you did that in less than 1-1/2 hours. And you probably found other great keyword ideas during step 2. Take those keywords, find content that you already have that is relevant to those other ideas and follow steps 3 and 4.

Repeat this for a handful of posts.

Did it work?

Come back in a couple of weeks. Take a peek at Google Search Console. Filter Queries by the target keyword.

Does the page you tweaked show up in the list of pages receiving traffic for that keyword?

If so, that’s your sign that a larger investment in SEO could work.

What should you expect from this SEO experiment?

Keep your expectations in line with the effort you invested. The goal of this experiment is to prove that SEO can work for you with a small win. It won’t be a runaway success that skyrockets your organic traffic. That’s unrealistic when you are just starting SEO. What you should see is a moderate increase in organic traffic to that one page of content you optimized. Now, imagine every piece of content on your site having that moderate increase. You’ll see how quickly those small wins can snowball into large increases in your site-wide organic traffic.

You might not be ranked in the top 10 positions. And you might not be getting a crazy amount of traffic. But the fact that Google is now seeing your content as being relevant to that search term is a big step in the right direction.

What to do next?

Now that you know how to start SEO with a small test, how do you scale up the results?

As you create new SEO content, start with keyword research. That is the foundation of a great SEO strategy. The more content you create that is optimized for search, the more Google will start seeing you as the authority on that subject.

It’ll create a snowball effect where each piece gets easier to rank. And the additional traffic you drive to each piece of content will add more and more to your overall volume of traffic.

Keep leaing about SEO with these great resources:

SEO Starter Guide by Google

QuickSprout’s Guide to Getting Found With SEO

Kissmetric’s Step-by-Step Guide to SEO

Ready to start SEO?

Alexa’s Marketing Stack makes it easy to:

• Discover easy-to-rank keyword ideas
• Improve your on-page SEO
• Follow technical SEO best practices

Sign up for a free trial of an Advanced plan, and take the first step toward starting SEO.

Let’s be honest. There’s no silver bullet with SEO. In fact, the complexity of SEO is in the overwhelming number of things you “must” do.

But who has time to check all the boxes on the SEO best practices checklist?

If there is one thing you caot skip, it is keyword research.

The key to wiing in the SERPs is to “punch your weight,” as Kristin, our Sr. Product Manager says.

In other words, find low competition keywords that your website has a chance of ranking for.

Finding the best keywords for your website is the foundation of a strong SEO strategy.

Without a solid keyword strategy as a strong base, everything you do to optimize for search is built on unstable ground.

What it means to find low competition keywords

Note the emphasis above on “for your website.”

Here’s the reality. Your website is not going to beat the big dogs in the SERPs if you are just getting started with SEO. By the way, SERPs is SEO lingo for Search Engine Results Pages.

You must start by finding keywords with low competition. Once you are wiing in that arena, you can slowly move up to higher competition keywords. Often those are also high search volume keywords.

SEO experts often advise finding high volume low competition keywords. But…I’d recommend not focusing at all on high search volume keywords. At least not at first. The temptation can lead you to make bad decisions when choosing keywords.

Instead, focus on two things:

1. Finding keywords that are relevant to your subject matter and your business
2. Finding keywords with low competition

The first priority, finding relevant keywords, requires knowing your audience and your business. Usually a quick gut check works fine.

The second priority, finding low competition keywords, requires knowing your site’s Competitive Power. All websites do not have an equal chance of ranking on the first page of Google. After all, there are only 10(ish) spots.

So focusing on low competition keywords is the secret ingredient to SEO success. Aim too high and you will not stand a chance of ranking. Regardless of how great your content is the odds will not be in your favor for ranking and driving organic traffic.

So how low competition must you go?

It is different for each site. Your site’s Competitive Power is the benchmark for the amount of keyword competition that your site has the potential to rank for.

Finding low competition keywords means choosing keywords with a score at or below your Competitive Power.

In Kristen’s words, punch your weight.

How to find low competition keywords

This is the easy part. At least it is when using Alexa’s keyword difficulty tool.

Our keyword suggestion tool helps you find long tail keywords, based on:

• Relevance to the seed word or phrase you input
• Keyword competitiveness in relation to your site’s Competitive Power

As you browse the list of keyword ideas, you’ll find similar keywords that you would not have thought of, that are low competition and prime opportunities.

The emphasis on relevance means the signal to noise ratio is high. Other keyword research tools spit out results that aren’t that similar to your seed query–leaving you to sift out a bunch of irrelevant options. So you’ll save time by focusing only on keyword ideas that are truly in line with what you are looking for.

As you find the most suitable keyword opportunities, you can check keyword difficulty compared to your site’s ability to compete–it’s Competitive Power. Just look for the lightning bolt. That means the competition score is at or below your site’s Competitive Power. Add those to your Favorites as you pull together a shortlist of the best keyword opportunities.

Don’t you love when the most important thing is also the easy thing?

Get started! Find low competition keywords today

Alexa’s keyword difficulty tool makes it easy to discover keywords with low competition.

Sign up for a free trial of an Advanced plan, and take the first step toward SEO success.

It’s near impossible to know what type of content will be popular week to week. Trends fade in and fade out, and current events change daily. But if done right, you can leverage seasonal events to catch the wave of predictable trends.

Here’s how to plan your aual content calendar to take advantage of seasonal events.

The key to success with seasonal content is timing. Being top of mind, at the right time, is crucial to eaing the greatest views and driving the most traffic to your site.

We’ve pinpointed the ideal times to plan, publish, and promote content around seasonal events.

Not only will this help you organize your aual content calendar, it will help you craft the most relevant content for your readers at exactly the right time. As a result, you’re more likely to see a boost in site traffic, SEO, and general brand awareness.

Here are 6 key takeaways to help you organize your aual content calendar for 2016:

• More than 6 MILLION pieces of content were published around 20 aual events in 2015
• That content received more than 534 MILLION social shares
• The majority of publishing around an aual event happens during a 26-day range
• Typically, ¾ of those 26 publishing days are before an event and ¼ of the days are after the event
• Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s make up 57% of all the event-related content for 20 aual events in 2015
• Video was the most-shared content format for 40% of all aual events

View the full infographic below.

Download Your Free 2016 Content Calendar

Optimize your content plaing and promotion all year long by downloading your free 2016 Aual Content Calendar + Plaer. You’ll receive:

• 2016 Calendar with major aual events
• Optimal publication and promotion timelines
• Most successful content types by month, with examples
• Monthly plaing documents for January through December

We’re pleased to aounce that once again, the size of Alexa’s global traffic panel is significantly increasing.

Because it’s impossible to directly track all traffic across the web, one of the ways we calculate our metrics is by using a data panel — a sample of global Inteet traffic, made up of millions of people worldwide. The bigger the sample, the better the estimate.

So by incorporating many new data points, we’ll be improving the accuracy of our estimated metrics, which we use to calculate Alexa Ranks.

So what does this mean for you?

• More accurate rankings
• More accurate estimated traffic metrics
• More actionable SEO recommendations
• Better competitive intelligence

A more robust panel with greater global coverage means we can offer you more accurate rankings, estimated traffic metrics, and actionable recommendations. We can provide deeper insights into your own site but, more importantly, we’ll give you better inside information about your competition.

By giving you a way to peek into someone else’s traffic pattes, we enable you to:

• Benchmark your performance
• Find promising new partners, and
• Size up new markets

With the larger panel, there will also be sites for which we didn’t have metrics before — and now we do.

Another result of the additional data is that you might see changes in your traffic rank. This is especially true for sites ranked greater than 100,000, which are always subject to fluctuation.

A little more about how Alexa measures web traffic

Our estimates draw on data derived from our global traffic panel, but we also use data from direct sources, such as Alexa Certified sites. We combine all this data and filter it though advanced statistical models to determine ranks and traffic estimates.

Few companies can match Alexa’s history of measuring and estimating traffic data. In fact, we’re celebrating our 20th birthday next month. Our data scientists have been working for years to keep our methodologies up to date, and to provide the most accurate metrics possible. Alexa’s data team will continue to grow the panel and improve our models. This most recent increase is notable, but it’s just the latest example of our ongoing commitment to raising the bar for competitive intelligence in web analytics.

In a future post, we’ll talk about how we’re doing the same for another critical component of your marketing stack: SEO.

I’ll admit it. I fully subscribe to the ethos of growth hacking. It’s a no-stone-left-untued, data and measurement-driven approach to maximizing audience engagement, conversion and loyalty. What’s not to like?

Well, the one thing that never quite sat right with me is the word hacking. There are a number of things implied by that word that don’t align with the intended growth hacking definition. I argue that we must replace the word hacking with something more appropriate. My rationale is as follows.

1. Hacking implies shortcuts and quick fixes.
Anyone obsessed with business growth knows that sustained growth is only achieved through a dedication to understanding and maintaining maximum relevance and appeal to a target audience. Doing so requires the disciplined and relentless application of specific methodologies to drive engagement, conversion and loyalty. Furthermore, additional methodologies must be deployed to detect and adapt to changes in the needs and orientations of that audience.

Great copywriting is not a quick fix. Disciplined A/B testing is not a quick fix. White hat SEO is not a quick fix. Focusing on the customer to optimize engagement and drive down is not a quick fix. And, this applies to all companies, not just startups.

This is a deep process. A long(er) term strategy. This is not hacking.

2. Hacking implies nefarious methods.
Being highly relevant and accessible to your target audience doesn’t come from gaming the system. Black hat SEO techniques to artificially boost page rank are dying off fast as viable means to drive sustainable growth. Real growth hacking strategies not only create better, more relevant content and offerings for customers, they make the web better as a whole. And as more companies engage in a process of continuous optimization (improvement), the entire web improves.

Growth hacking techniques are not shady, deceitful, or ill meaning. They require creativity, analytical thinking, and social prowess to achieve a singular goal.

This is not hacking.

3. The term hacking causes confusion and adoption of false principles.
The term is misunderstood, which means the benefits of growth hacking becoming widespread, or even universally adopted, is slowed uecessarily.

If the perception among company leaders and marketing generalists is that growth hacking involves quick-fix and black hat methodologies, then the adoption of real techniques to drive customer-oriented optimization stalls. If growth hacking makes for a better web as a whole – as I argued previously – then slowing the adoption of its true methods is bad for the web.

This is the point where I confess that I don’t know if I have anything better in mind. I have no quarrels with growth engineering as a term of art. Growth marketing is also somewhat apt, though less complete in terms of what it encompasses.

In the end, growth hacking may stick. I can probably live with that. Do you know a growth hacker who would prefer to be called a growth engineer? You’re at a party. You introduce yourself to someone. You tell your new companion that you’re a growth hacker. What you do is witchcraft, unknowable to ordinary mortals. You are the James Bond of the deep web. You are mysterious, and important.

Or, you say that you’re a growth engineer. You’re the nerd in the marketing department.

See the difference?

The point is to continuously make the web a better place. This happens when companies focus on being more relevant, more accessible and more frictionless. If this is the true collective ethos of growth hacking, then perhaps it’s time to redefine the word hacking, rather than rebrand our discipline.