# Organic Growth SEO
> Link Exchange Community
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## Pages
- [Glossary](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/): Glossary of SEO, Content Marketing, and Digital PR, and SEO terms This is a table of contents type post to...
- [Write for Us](https://organicgrowth.biz/write-for-us/): Why would you want to write for us when we’re a nobody venture with a website whose Moz Domain Authority...
- [Platform Legend](https://organicgrowth.biz/platform-legend/): As this digital PR link-building platform is unlike other platforms, it need to be learned and this cheat sheet exists for that purpose. So start here.
- [Tutorials](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/): The tutorial videos show how to use the features and capabilities of this Build Topically Relevant Links platform and community.
- [About](https://organicgrowth.biz/about/): SaaS platform community of writers, content marketers, brand journalists, who link to each others high-quality content.
- [Contact Us](https://organicgrowth.biz/contact-us/): Option 1: Use this form Option 2: Use this email address info@organicgrowth. biz Option 3: Use this USPS mailing address...
- [Blog](https://organicgrowth.biz/blog/): Here you find a collection of blog posts and articles about marketing, SEO, and link building, which can help you kick start your search rankings.
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## Posts
- [You do NOT want backlinks to your landing pages!](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/you-do-not-want-backlinks-to-your-landing-pages/): I argue you do NOT want external links to landing pages. Why? Because Google is pushing E-E-A-T (experience, extertise, authority, and trust).
- [Link bait content: what, why, and how](https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/link-bait-content-what-why-and-how/): Abstract In this article I describe how link bait content differs from other types of content, explain why you need...
- [Are domain authority and authority score the same?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/are-domain-authority-and-authority-score-the-same/): This link is part of a test. It will be deleted once the test is complete. This link too is...
- [The Big List of Content Marketing Tools](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/the-big-list-of-content-marketing-tools/): This post started as a simple rant about how most Content Marketing tools are too expensive and too complicated for...
- [Link Building Tools for Better SEO](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/link-building-tools-for-better-seo/): What types of link building tools are there? What do they do? What do they cost? Where can I learn more? By clicking here, so do so right now.
- [Having you considered hiring a writing coach?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/having-you-considered-hiring-a-writing-coach/): This link is part of a test, as is this one. They will be removed once the test is complete....
- [Community link building: topical relevance made easy](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/community-link-building-topical-relevance-made-easy/): Effective link building takes effort, such that some companies devote full time staff to the effort. The most common tactic...
- [The Headline Tactic That's Worked for 85+ Years](https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/the-headline-tactic-thats-worked-for-85-years/): The basic formula for how to write headlines that capture people's attention has not changed in at least 85 years, as is shown by ads from 1939.
- [Why Your SEO is Affected by How Google Makes Money](https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/why-your-seo-is-affected-by-how-google-makes-money/): When you understand how Google makes money, what their actual business model is, their SEO algorithm changes make A LOT more sense.
- [Why topically relevant links are better than other links](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-topically-relevant-links-are-better-than-other-links/): Topically relevant links from the main content of a website are the most valuable links. Why? Click here to learn more.
- [Topical Authority: What does this mean?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/topical-authority-what-does-this-mean/): Image credit: The Power of Unconventional Thinking, David McWilliams Topical authority has become a very popular topic in the world...
- [Does Google use domain authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/does-google-use-domain-authority/): If Google doesn't use domain authority as a direct ranking signal, why does everyone treat it as if it's a really important SEO metric?
- [Is Page Authority important for SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-page-authority-important-for-seo/): Page authority is sometimes really important, but generally not very. When a specific page ranks at the top of page 2, page authority is important.
- [What Domain Authority is good?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-domain-authority-is-good/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. If you’re reading...
- [How do I find my Domain Authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-i-find-my-domain-authority/): To find the Moz Domain Authority of your site, or any site for that matter, follow these simple instructions.
- [What are the 4 pillars of SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-are-the-4-pillars-of-seo/): The 4 pillars of SEO are content, technical SEO, on page SEO, and off page SEO.
- [What is a good SEO Authority score?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-good-seo-authority-score/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. For the record,...
- [What does SEO authority mean?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-does-seo-authority-mean/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. SEO authority is...
- [How do you determine content authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-determine-content-authority/): You can assess content authority by applying the Google E-E-A-T framework. Use it to create content AND use it to asses content.
- [How do you create a topical cluster?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-create-a-topical-cluster/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction: Topical clusters...
- [How do you build authority with content?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-build-authority-with-content/): The you build authority with content is to demonstrate that authority by publishing comprehensive in-depth well researched content.
- [How do I make myself an authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-i-make-myself-an-authority/): I suspect the motivation behind this question is not how to BECOME an authority, but how to be seen as having topical authority. Click here.
- [How does topical authority work?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-does-topical-authority-work/): The question implies topical authority is something you USE. It's not. It's something you DO. It's a framework for publishing quality content.
- [How do you increase topical authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-increase-topical-authority/): Obtaining topical authority, for your website and yourself, is a matter of publishing. Persistently, frequently, and regularly. It's all about publishing.
- [Is domain authority important?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-domain-authority-important/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Why yes, it...
- [Domain Authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/domain-authority/): Domain authority is a numerical score, between 1 and 100, that is assigned to websites as a measure of how...
- [Is Page authority more important than Domain Authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-page-authority-more-important-than-domain-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Page authority vs...
- [Topic cluster](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/topic-cluster/): What is a topic cluster? A topic cluster is a set of posts on various aspects or nuances of a...
- [What is another name for Domain Authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-another-name-for-domain-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Domain Authority alternatives:...
- [What is the highest domain authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-highest-domain-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction I wish...
- [What is a topical website?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-topical-website/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction: Topical website?...
- [What should my domain authority be?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-should-my-domain-authority-be/): The domain authority of your site should be higher than it was in the past. What matters is continuous improvement, not a specific numerical score.
- [What is an example of a domain authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-an-example-of-a-domain-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. For reasons stated...
- [What is the difference between domain authority and topical authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-difference-between-domain-authority-and-topical-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Domain authority vs...
- [What is a topical map for SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-topical-map-for-seo/): A topical map is a content planning tool that has become essential as topic clustering and topical authority have become important to SEO.
- [Why is it important to build topical authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-is-it-important-to-build-topical-authority/): These days, topical authority, thought leadership, SEO, and the reputation of your business and brand are all mixed together.
- [What is the topical authority ratio?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-topical-authority-ratio/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The topical authority...
- [How do you create topical authority in SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-create-topical-authority-in-seo/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority requires...
- [As regards SEO, what is topical relevance?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/as-regards-seo-what-is-topical-relevance/): Due to Google pushing hard on "topical authority", topical relevance is something you need to think about when linking out, or building backlinks.
- [What is the difference between backlinks and topical authority?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-difference-between-backlinks-and-topical-authority/): Backlinks matter. Topical authority matters. How do they go together? Affect each other? Interact?
- [Final thoughts on the significance of mastering topical authority for SEO success](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/final-thoughts-on-the-significance-of-mastering-topical-authority-for-seo-success/): This post summarizes my thoughts on the topic of the importance of topical authority to SEO and is the last post is a series on that topic.
- [Recap of the key points covered in the guide](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/recap-of-the-key-points-covered-in-the-guide/): This post is a terse summary of this entire series on topical authority. You can in theory read this one post and get the main points, but no nuance.
- [Analysis of the impact of topical authority on search rankings](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/analysis-of-the-impact-of-topical-authority-on-search-rankings/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. No evidence based research?...
- [Examples of successful implementation of topical authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/examples-of-successful-implementation-of-topical-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. I wish I...
- [Best practices for integrating topical authority into your SEO strategy](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/best-practices-for-integrating-topical-authority-into-your-seo-strategy/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority strategy:...
- [How to leverage topical authority to improve search rankings](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-to-leverage-topical-authority-to-improve-search-rankings/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Leveraging topical authority...
- [Why topical authority is crucial for ranking on specific topics](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-topical-authority-is-crucial-for-ranking-on-specific-topics/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. What topical authority...
- [Explanation of the difference between topical authority and domain authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/explanation-of-the-difference-between-topical-authority-and-domain-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority and...
- [The role of attribution links as external validation](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/the-role-of-links-and-external-validation/): External validation in the form of links, brand mentions, etc, matter greatly in the pursuit of topical authority. We are known by those who know us.
- [Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/google-search-quality-evaluator-guidelines/): The Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are instructions used by the around 16,000 humans who rate quality of SERPs and webpages.
- [Topical authority requires comprehensive and in-depth content](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/topical-authority-requires-comprehensive-and-in-depth-content/): This post gives a solid view of HOW, in pursuit of topical authority, writers generate a steady stream of in-depth high quality comprehensive content.
- [Strategies for building topical authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/strategies-for-building-topical-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. These are test...
- [How Google uses topical authority to determine expertise](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-google-uses-topical-authority-to-determine-expertise/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. At it’s core,...
- [Importance of topical authority in search engine rankings](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/importance-of-topical-authority-in-search-engine-rankings/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority has...
- [Definition of topical authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/definition-of-topical-authority/): The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The phrase “topical...
- [Why is topical authority important for SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-is-topical-authority-important-for-seo/): In short, because Google says so. This post gives an overview of why this concept matters, and how you and your website obtain topical authority.
- [Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO](https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/mastering-topical-authority-a-comprehensive-guide-to-boost-your-seo/): This post is the lead post in a series on the topic of topical authority. What it is, why it...
- [Verifying site ownership via Google Search Console](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/verifying-site-ownership-via-google-search-console/): We're implementing the ability for users to demonstrate site ownership by virtue of having access to the Google Search Console property.
- [Google Search Generative Experience and Links](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/google-search-generative-experience-and-links/): This blog post contains a video that demonstrates the degree to which Google's Search Generative Experience relies on backlinks.
- [SEO for startup businesses](https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/seo-for-startup-businesses/): Yes SEO is a long game. And yes limited marketing resources makes it harder. But once it kicks in there are no cheaper leads. So start now.
- [Content Marketing is older than Search Engine Optimization](https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/content-marketing-is-older-than-search-engine-optimization/): The world’s first known content marketing effort was a quarterly print magazine that was started by John Deere in 1895....
- [SEO: Link building, digital PR, and the Google origin story](https://organicgrowth.biz/digital-pr/seo-link-building-digital-pr-and-the-google-origin-story/): As at it's core, SEO is all about links and content, and not all links are good for SEO, digital PR link building matters. Click here to learn more.
- [Finding unique content marketing perspectives](https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/finding-unique-content-marketing-perspectives/): Finding unique content marketing perspectives is made easier by following, in a structured way, the "writing rule" of how good writers read.
- [Software update: Link Earning Community](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/software-update-link-earning-community/): This blog post details the software upgrades made as a result of some early adopter users, and myself, finding errors...
- [Google's helpful content update and E-E-A-T?](https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/googles-helpful-content-update-and-e-a-t/): Google has been pushing “content quality” for years While some people have expressed concern about Google’s “helpful content update”, we’ve...
- [Start Here: Overview of the Link Earning Community](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/digital-pr-network/): This Link Earning Community helps you build links by making it easy to promote your best content with SEO pros who need, and give, links.
- [As regards SEO, is everything link building?](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/as-regards-seo-is-everything-link-building/): The phrase "In SEO everything is link building" is not literally true, but click here to learn how THIS perspective helps you focus your efforts.
- [When it comes to link building, what matters most?](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/when-it-comes-to-link-building-what-matters-most/): You hear A LOT of conflicting information (and many false promises) regarding link building. But, what matters most? Click here to learn more.
- [Why Your Blog on Your Website is the Hub of Your Online Marketing](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/why-your-blog-on-your-website-is-the-hub-of-your-online-marketing/): Why is your blog the hub of your online marketing? What other internet real estate do you control that no one can take away? Click here learn more.
- [Digital PR vs Link Building](https://organicgrowth.biz/brand-journalism/digital-pr-vs-link-building/): Per Google, link building is bad, but digital PR is good. How are they different and how are they the same? Click here to learn more.
- [Public Relations and SEO](https://organicgrowth.biz/brand-journalism/public-relations-and-seo/): What do public relations and SEO pros think about the integration of the two? Does one support the other? Click here to learn what they think.
- [How to write link building pitches that get noticed](https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/writing-link-building-pitches-that-get-noticed/): The key is to think about how you react when you receive link building pitches. What gets your attention? What do you immediately delete?
- [Creating and using the Gmail aliases feature ("Send mail as")](https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/creating-and-using-the-gmail-aliases-feature/): Using the Gmail aliases feature allows you to receive and send "branded" email (from your domain) from a free Gmail account. Click here to learn.
- [Which WordPress Plugins Should You Use and Why](https://organicgrowth.biz/misc/which-wordpress-plugins-should-you-use-and-why/): Every WordPress site need some Wordpress plugins, but each one adds code and slows things down. So which ones matter and which ones don't?
- [In Closing: Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/in-closing-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/): Getting your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) right is not quick and is not easy, but when you get it dialed...
- [How to Communicate Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-communicate-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/): Effectively communicating your Unique Selling Proposition starts while you're testing it. This is how you learn if your product solves a real problem.
- [How to Test Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-test-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/): Once you've developed what seems to be a strong Unique Selling Proposition, how do you test it? Compare it to other options? Click here....
- [How to Craft a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-craft-a-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/): Once you've got background information on the whole Unique Selling Proposition thing, how do you craft YOURS? Click here to learn more.
- [How to Figure Out a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-figure-out-a-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/): So... . How do you create a great USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? The short answer is... . . Slowly, through...
- [Examples of Fantastic and Terrible Unique Selling Propositions](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/examples-of-fantastic-and-terrible-unique-selling-propositions/): How do you communicate why your brand matters? Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a critical piece of this puzzle. You want to get this right.
- [Very Important Ideas About High Growth Unique Selling Propositions](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/very-important-ideas-about-high-growth-unique-selling-propositions/): Good Unique Selling Propositions don't just appear. They're the result of trial and error involving planning and structure. Learn more, click here.
- [How The Customer Factory Helps You Achieve Massive Growth](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-the-customer-factory-helps-you-achieve-massive-growth/): The Customer Factory is an interesting concept which when implemented well will fuel your brand to massive growth. How? Click here to learn...
- [How Your Unique Selling Proposition Fuels Massive Growth](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-your-unique-selling-proposition-fuels-massive-growth/): How does your Unique Selling Proposition related to positioning your product or service in the marketplace? Click here to learn more.
- [Why a Great Unique Selling Proposition Creates Massive Growth](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/why-a-great-unique-selling-proposition-creates-massive-growth/): You want to see some truly inspirational Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) that created massive growth? Click here to learn more.
- [Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (Brand Strategy)](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/creating-your-unique-selling-proposition-brand-strategy/): A great Unique Selling Proposition (USP) can truly make a brand. How do you create one, test it, communicate it, etc? Click here, learn more.
- [How to generate high quality leads with contextual marketing](https://organicgrowth.biz/misc/how-to-generate-high-quality-leads-with-contextual-marketing/): What Contextual Marketing is Not Contextual marketing is neither Outbound Marketing nor Inbound Marketing, both of which provide a lower...
- [How to increase blog traffic with controversial topics](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-increase-blog-traffic-with-controversial-topics/): Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics The topic of using controversial topics to grow blog traffic and generate leads is, in...
- [How to increase leads and revenue with Pipeline Marketing](https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-increase-leads-and-revenue-with-pipeline-marketing/): What is Pipeline Marketing? At its core, Pipeline Marketing is nothing more than the attribution of “credit” for generating revenue,...
- [What is semantic search? How to do SEO like a professional](https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/what-is-semantic-search-how-to-do-seo-like-a-professional/): The commonly cited definition of semantic search and SEO is cryptic, so what IS it about? Click here to learn more...
- [How to Sell More Easily and Naturally with Presuppositions](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-sell-more-easily-and-naturally-with-presuppositions/): Presuppositions are the language of advertising and political campaigns. They DO influence how we think about what we think about. Learn more...
- [What Is Internal Linking and Why Is It Important for SEO?](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/what-is-internal-linking-and-why-is-it-important-for-seo/): What is internal linking? Why does it matter? Is there a right way and a wrong way to do it? Yes, there is. Click here to learn more.
- [How to continuously improve your content with Deming lessons](https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-continuously-improve-your-content-with-deming-lessons/): The ideas taught by W. Edwards Deming can help you improve your content. The key is continuous improvement. What the Japanese call Kaizen.
- [Find better citation links with mozbar domain authority](https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/find-better-citation-links-with-mozbar-domain-authority/): Links to other sites and pages are citations. How does the Moz Domain Authority metric help you find better links for your citations? Learn more...
- [Google E-E-A-T: What it is and why it matters](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/google-eeat-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/): What is Google E-E-A-T and how does it affect your search rankings and organic traffic? In short, Google makes the rules of search, and they say.....
- [Customer Journey / Buyers Journey](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/customer-journey/): The buyers or customer journey is the set of decisions / steps people take from knowing you exist to buying what you sell and telling others.
- [Snippet Post](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/snippet-post/): Snippet posts are fairly short posts and either answer one question or convey one main idea. Why do they matter? How do you use them?
- [SERP (Search Engine Result Page)](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/serp-search-engine-result-page/): A SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is the page Google (and the other search engines) return to you in response to a search query. What's in it?
- [Private Blog Network](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/private-blog-network/): A Private Blog Network is a network of sites which obtained high domain authority, generally via Black Hat SEO, on which links are sold.
- [Outbound Links](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/outbound-links/): Outbound links are links from pages on your website to web pages on other websites. Why are they important for your SEO? Click here, learn more.
- [Brand Publishing/Journalism](https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/brand-publishing/): Brand publishing: Where content marketing learns from journalism. Constantly pursuing stories and meeting deadlines is now part of marketing.
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# Detailed Content
## Pages
### Glossary
- Published: 2023-10-06
- Modified: 2024-03-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/
Glossary of SEO, Content Marketing, and Digital PR, and SEO termsThis is a table of contents type post to a collection of "glossary posts" each one of which discusses either a topic category (the headings below) or a specific topic. There are links up and down on all these posts. So returning to this table of contents, or to a topic category page, is always only one click away. Content MarketingContent StrategyBlogging Content Calendar Content Promotion Content Optimization Content Curation Evergreen Content User-Generated Content Content Syndication Content Analytics CTAs (Call to Actions) Content Engagement Content Persona Guest Posting Content SEO Pillar Post Snippet Post Topical Authority Topic ClusterOutbound LinkDiscovery LinkDigital PR (Public Relations)Media Pitch Press Release Media Outreach Influencer Marketing Online Reputation Management (ORM) Brand PublishingCrisis Communication Social Media PR Thought Leadership Earned Media vs. Owned Media PR Metrics (e. g. Impressions, Reach) PR Strategy Press Kit PR Campaign Brand AdvocacyInbound MarketingAttraction Marketing Lead Generation Lead NurturingMarketing Automation Sales Funnel Buyer's JourneyConversion OptimizationConversionA/B Testing Landing Page Landing Page Optimization CTAs (Call to Actions) Conversion FunnelContent QualityE-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) Google Search Quality Evaluator GuidelinesThin Content Duplicate ContentContent DistributionContent Syndication Social Media Sharing Email Newsletter Paid PromotionContent FormatsInfographics VideoPodcasts eBooks Whitepapers Case Studies Webinars Interactive ContentKeywords and PhrasesTarget Keywords Search Intent LSI Keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keyword Density Keyword Stuffing Head Keywords Keyword Ranking Conversion Keywords Competitor Keywords Keyword Research Tools (e. g. SEMrush, Ahrefs) Link Building Link Juice Link Farm NoFollow vs. DoFollow Links Link Building Outreach Broken Link Building Guest Posting for Links Linkbait Link Earning Internal LinksInternal Link StructureLink ProfileSEO (Search Engine Optimization)On-Page SEOOff-Page SEOKeyword ResearchSERP (Search Engine Results Page) Domain AuthorityBacklinks Anchor Text Meta Tags (Title, Description) Crawling and Indexing Page Speed Optimization Mobile Optimization Canonical URLs SEO Audit Long-Tail Keywords Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO Algorithm Updates (e. g. Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird)Google Sandbox EffectPage RankTechnical SEOSchema Markup XML Sitemaps Robots. txt HTTPS 301 Redirects 404 ErrorsPluginsEntity SEOEntity SEO Entity Entity Recognition Schema Markup Knowledge Graph Entity Authority Entity-Based Content Entity Optimization Entity Relationship Entity-Centric Search Entity Clustering Semantic...
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### Write for Us
- Published: 2023-09-24
- Modified: 2024-11-08
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/write-for-us/
Why would you want to write for us when we're a nobody venture with a website whose Moz Domain Authority is only 12 and whose current traffic levels are low? For starters, it's easier to get approved on our site than it is on moz. com or other high profile website. And you will get a backlink out of it. But mostly, we believe: The Link Building Community we're building will become much more popular in the future. And our Moz Domain Authority and traffic levels will rise over time. Which means you can get an easy guest post link today, that becomes more valuable as time goes by. But none of the above means we skimp on quality. We're happy to accept your application to write a guest post, but it will be a collaborative effort, where we brainstorm topic ideas and I (Kevin) act as your editor. But we do have author's biographies enabled on our site, so a guest post or two here will enhance your portfolio of articles, and we can be a stepping stone on your way to bigger and better guest posting opportunities.
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### Platform Legend
> As this digital PR link-building platform is unlike other platforms, it need to be learned and this cheat sheet exists for that purpose. So start here.
- Published: 2023-07-21
- Modified: 2025-05-30
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/platform-legend/
Platform legendWhy do we need a platform? It's possible we don't, but just in case, here it is. This legend consists of three main partsAn overview of How To Use the PlatformThe actions legendThe important conceptsThe overview of How To Use the PlatformThe main idea is that your content becomes more visible the more link credits (described in detail below) you earn, and you earn link credits by linking to the content of other members. Below you can see what you do and where you do it. Adding a URL to your content inventory is done on the Content and Inbox/Messages pages. Archiving a URL is done on the Content page. Searching for link targets is done on the Sources pageSending messages to another user is done on the Sources, LinkTargets, OurLinks, and Inbox/Messages pages. Adding a link target to LinkTargets is done on the Sources page. Recording that you've provided a link is done on the LinkTargets and on the Inbox/Messages pages. Action legendOccasionally, an action phrase will be in a blue font. This means the action has already been done, at least Content pageShow archived webpages and show active webpagesAdd a webpage Archive and unarchive webpages Sources pageUpvote (webpage for quality and/or uniqueness)Downvote (your prior upvote) Send Message Make Link TargetA visual indicator of a black lightly bolt shows the last page opened in a new browser tab Profile pageChange your screennameChange your Muckrack profile URLChange your team's subscription levelAssign a new team leadMake a team member inactiveMake an inactive team member active againAdd a...
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### Tutorials
> The tutorial videos show how to use the features and capabilities of this Build Topically Relevant Links platform and community.
- Published: 2022-07-04
- Modified: 2025-06-01
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/
Link exchange community tutorialsThis post describes some of the general concepts that are important and shows how you use the platform, . But start here: With these blog posts about SEO and link buildingGoogle dominates search to such an extent that for all practical purposes, they make the rules we follow. The blog posts below provide what I believe to be important background information to help understand why Google does what they do they way they do it, and how their rules for building links creates link profiles that won't later cause your site to be de-ranking as a result of an algorithm update. To understand why we promote certain practices in this community, I recommend you read these four blog posts. #1: Why Your SEO is Affected by How Google Makes Money#2: The role of attribution links as external validation#3: Content marketing is older than Search Engine Optimization#4: Why you do NOT want backlinks to your landing pagesAdd webpages as an applicantThis video shows how to add webpages as an applicant, which is done on the content screen. Add webpages as an approved user, on the content pageThis video shows how to add webpages as an approved user from the content page. Webpages can also be added at the bottom of every message thread, and icon and process is identical. Archive and unarchive URLs from your content inventoryThis video shows how to archive and unarchive webpages in your content inventory. How to search for potential link targetsThis video shows how...
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### About
> SaaS platform community of writers, content marketers, brand journalists, who link to each others high-quality content.
- Published: 2019-09-17
- Modified: 2024-08-15
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/about/
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### Contact Us
- Published: 2019-09-17
- Modified: 2024-11-16
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/contact-us/
Option 1: Use this form Option 2: Use this email address info@organicgrowth. biz Option 3: Use this USPS mailing address Organic Growth PO Box 5002 Texarkana, TX 75505-5002 USA
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### Blog
> Here you find a collection of blog posts and articles about marketing, SEO, and link building, which can help you kick start your search rankings.
- Published: 2014-03-23
- Modified: 2021-10-01
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/blog/
---
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## Posts
### You do NOT want backlinks to your landing pages!
> I argue you do NOT want external links to landing pages. Why? Because Google is pushing E-E-A-T (experience, extertise, authority, and trust).
- Published: 2025-05-21
- Modified: 2025-05-21
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/you-do-not-want-backlinks-to-your-landing-pages/
- Categories: Link Building
Abstract You want backlinks to your information rich link-bait pages, which in turn link to your landing pages from visually obvious calls to action (CTAs). Different types of content serve different purposes. Link-bait is for attracting links. Landing pages are for converting website visitors into leads. People sometimes talk about Google "punishing" websites. I consider this framing to not be useful. Google has stated for years how we should and should not build links. So when a Google algorithm update reduces the ranking and visibility of a website whose link building practices were done in ways that Google tell us NOT to do, I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. At its core, Google is a pattern recognition engine, and link profiles have patterns. Introduction Google defines content quality in A LOT of detail. They do so in their Search Quality Rater Guidelines, and in the E-E-A-T framework. In those descriptions, Google distinguishes between different types of webpages, as referred to above. There is more on this further in this post. Landing pages (and home pages are a form of landing pages) are not link-bait. They serve another purpose. Google's views on this matter When I google for the title of this blog post, I find numerous articles on why your landing pages should have no OUTBOUND links, but I see nothing on whether you want external backlinks INBOUND to your landing pages. In this post, I explain that per Google, you do not, and I show what Google says...
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### Link bait content: what, why, and how
- Published: 2025-05-09
- Modified: 2025-05-18
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/link-bait-content-what-why-and-how/
- Categories: Content Marketing
Abstract In this article I describe how link bait content differs from other types of content, explain why you need it, and describe how you (or at least I) create it. Introduction While everyone talks about the importance of content in general, different types of content serve different purposes. As an extreme example, a well researched article about why and how the United States transitioned from a purely private banking system to one anchored by a "European style" central bank after the 1907 financial crisis is a drastically different type of article from one that reports the scores of last night basketball games. While both provide information some find interesting and useful, they're fundamentally different. Why does link bait content matter? Backlinks have mattered in the world of SEO since the introduction of and almost immediate dominance of Google. They still matter in today's world of AI overviews and summaries. And while the core idea that backlinks matter has not changed, the specifics about how backlinks increase search rankings (and now increase the odds of your webpages being referenced within AI overviews) has changed. An idea that is promoted, but should be promoted A LOT more, is the idea of a "natural backlink" profile. Google is, at it's core, a pattern recognition engine. Backlink profiles show or contain detectable patterns. Some look natural and organic. Others look engineered. In summary, to earn backlinks that create a natural backlink profile, you need some content that is worth linking to. And to...
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### Are domain authority and authority score the same?
- Published: 2025-03-29
- Modified: 2025-05-27
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/are-domain-authority-and-authority-score-the-same/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
This link is part of a test. It will be deleted once the test is complete. This link too is part of a test. The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction The short answer is no, they're not, but they're related, sort of. But for that answer to be meaningful, it's necessary to review the concepts, similarities, and differences, for both domain authority and authority score. Domain authority This is a proprietary metric created by Moz in the early days of SEO and is reported by their SEO reporting tool Link Explorer. Authority score This is also a proprietary metric. This one was created by SEMrush and is reported by their SEO reporting tool which is also named Link Explorer. Similarities Both metrics are are intended to predict how likely pages from a target site are likely to appear in search metrics, and how valuable a backlink from the site is likely to be. Differences Domain authority is calculated primarily from number of unique linking root domains (. com, . gov, . edu, . uk, etc), and the total number of links. Authority score is based on a sites backlink profile as well as the estimated monthly traffic levels, and a site's "spam factor" which is a measure of how much of that is the result of "manipulation". In closing They're not the same, but they are used in similar ways, and many people do in fact consider them to...
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### The Big List of Content Marketing Tools
- Published: 2025-03-17
- Modified: 2025-05-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/the-big-list-of-content-marketing-tools/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
This post started as a simple rant about how most Content Marketing tools are too expensive and too complicated for small businesses to make effective use of them, and somehow morphed into a Big List of Content Marketing Tools, with a special emphasis on tools that are less expensive, perhaps even in the range that a small business can afford. The Problem with Content Marketing Tools There are two primary problems with some content marketing tools. They’re expensive and hard to use. Some are so expensive they are only available to businesses with really large budgets. Some are so difficult to use that entire consulting and implementation industries have arisen around getting these tools implemented and in day to day use. The Tools are Also Specialized The phrase “Content Marketing Tools” at a MINIMUM includes the very long list of the following Categories and Subcategories of tools listed in the next section. The List of Tools While at the end of this post there is an extensive list of tools (The Big List), it’s just a list and provides no details about what the tools do and why you might need them. So between here and the Big List at the end of the article, is a description of what these various Categories and Subcategories of tools do for you. Within these summaries, I provide specific information about some of the tools. Because of the focus on tools for SMALL business, some tools (the expensie ones) are listed only in...
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### Link Building Tools for Better SEO
> What types of link building tools are there? What do they do? What do they cost? Where can I learn more? By clicking here, so do so right now.
- Published: 2024-12-24
- Modified: 2025-03-29
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/link-building-tools-for-better-seo/
- Categories: Link Building
This post contains a comprehensive list of link building tools, after providing an overview what links are, why they matter, and how they work. Jump ahead to: Toggle What are links? Attributes of linksPageRankAre all links equal? What Is link building? Why do people search online (per Google)? What should you publish? Knowing your current link profileProcess of backlink prospectingDisclaimersTool descriptions What are links? The word "link" is an abbreviation of hyperlink, and hyper means "jump". A hyperlink is a jump from one web page to another. Parts of a link Links have two parts. Attributes of links Links have a number of possible attributes, one of which matters for SEO, another of which matters for the User Experience. Link attribute affecting SEO This is mentioned here and will be discussed more fully later in this article. The default attribute is “dofollow”. Link attribute affecting user experience It’s called target and it determines “where” the link is opened. The most common “places” are 1) In the existing browser tab, or 2) In a new browser tab. This attribute does not affect the SEO benefits of the link and is listed here for information purposes only. When you create links on your site, you want links to other sites (external links) to open in new browser tabs so as not to “take people away” from your website. The value of citations The idea that links could be used as the basis for Internet search started as a research project at Stanford...
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### Having you considered hiring a writing coach?
- Published: 2024-11-20
- Modified: 2025-05-22
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/having-you-considered-hiring-a-writing-coach/
- Categories: Topical Authority
This link is part of a test, as is this one. They will be removed once the test is complete. Background I'm someone who believes writing well is an important life skill, and learning to write better pays off later. Today, knowing things is not enough. We need to communicate them well. Consider that scientists who communicate well become celebrities. Writing well help us achieve what we call topical authority, aka being recognized for our expertiese. I even once required my children to write a page a day when they were on summer vacation from school. Remarkably, one of them even thanked me later. But, that there are people who help you learn to write better outside of a school environment was missed by me, until one day when I noticed "Writing Coach" in someone's LinkedIn headline. How this passed my notice I'll never know, but once I saw it I became curious about "writing coaches". What types of writers do they coach? How do they help them? How did they become a writing coach? Etc. That curiosity led to this post. Methodology I created a survey using a Google Form, and asked a number of people I found on LinkedIn who had "writing coach" somewhere in their profile if they would please take it. Twenty seven people did. The first question is easy to quantify as I asked the respondents to select from a list, with an "other" option where they could, and did, add options I missed. Every...
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### Community link building: topical relevance made easy
- Published: 2024-11-19
- Modified: 2025-05-17
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/community-link-building-topical-relevance-made-easy/
- Categories: Link Building
Effective link building takes effort, such that some companies devote full time staff to the effort. The most common tactic is email outreach, which works, but its a numbers game. And outreach is time consuming. I saw a post on LinkedIn where someone claimed for their link building efforts, they average 10,000 outbound emails every month. That's over 330 a day, every day. Community link building is a "low hanging fruit" link building tactic we are creating. It does not replace other tactics, but rather augments them. And due to how it works, obtaining topically relevant links becomes almost effortless. Your posts need outbound links Research shows that pages with well-placed outbound links often rank higher. The SaaS platform and community this post describes has been built to capitalize on that reality. The core idea is that you first look for link targets within the community. The community is a mini search engine where you submit the URLs of your desired link targets, then search for link targets within the community as you're writing posts. As you link to the URLs of others, your URLs become more visible within the community. Which leads to others linking to them. How do we ensure content quality? Manual inspection of every URL. Seriously. People don't join the community, they apply. With their application, they submit/promote three URLs. Those URLs are reviewed by a person for compliance to Google EEAT. Applicants are instructed to NOT submit URLs of landing pages or home pages. The...
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### The Headline Tactic That's Worked for 85+ Years
> The basic formula for how to write headlines that capture people's attention has not changed in at least 85 years, as is shown by ads from 1939.
- Published: 2024-11-09
- Modified: 2024-11-09
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/the-headline-tactic-thats-worked-for-85-years/
- Categories: Content Marketing
In the spirit of full disclosure, this post about a headline tactic is "recycled" (it's not plagiarism when I credit the original author) from an email I received from Kaleigh Moore whose newsletter I subscribe to. Had she published this as a blog post, I would have merely shared her blog post on LinkedIn, but since I could not find a post on her site on this topic, I "borrowed" her headline, word for word, as well as the images she used. The first two images show ads in a newspaper from 1939. The third image shows a modern headline from a story on some website. Her point, which I think is unmistakably true, is our basic "formula" for creating headlines has not changed in the past 85 years. From 1939 From present time The formula The basic formula is 1) tease, 2) FOMO (fear of missing out), and 3) read more. What they were going for in 1939, and what people are going for today, is what psychologists call a pattern interrupt. For copywriting, the pattern being interrupted is our habit of skimming rather than reading. What makes a pattern interrupt work is when the readers idea about something is disrupted such that they stop, even momentarily, to ponder, which happens without conscious awareness. Linguistically they're similar to comedic redirections, where the comedian creates anticipation for one outcome then the punch line goes somewhere else. The two part structure Both use a two-part structure: Pattern interrupts: Initial interruption followed...
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### Why Your SEO is Affected by How Google Makes Money
> When you understand how Google makes money, what their actual business model is, their SEO algorithm changes make A LOT more sense.
- Published: 2024-09-09
- Modified: 2025-03-20
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/why-your-seo-is-affected-by-how-google-makes-money/
- Categories: SEO
Believe it or not, what you do and don't know about how Google makes money affects your SEO. What is the Point of this Article? If you’ve paid any attention to SEO over recent years, you probably know that: People figure out tricks to game the system to rank their websites. Google updates the algorithm periodically to undo ways of gaming the system that become really popular, and occasionally de-ranks huge numbers of sites overnight. And you’ve probably heard from some: There are tricks that work reliably if only you know them (generally for a fee you can learn them). Google penalizes/punishes websites that (in their eyes) game the system. Google unfairly prioritizes its own products and services in its rankings. And more... . However, when you understand what the business model of Google is, which is to say how they make money, you realize that while there might be grains of truth in the negative things people say about Google’s search algorithm, most of it is off target. Please read on, and take your time, as I start at the 50,000-foot level, at a time before Google even existed. This is because Google’s business model is not new. What’s new is the scale at which they do it. Advertising as a Business Model Many people, when they consume some form of advertising-supported content (TV, radio, whatever), like to think of themselves as “the customer” as they think of themselves as “consuming” the programming. But think for a minute...
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### Why topically relevant links are better than other links
> Topically relevant links from the main content of a website are the most valuable links. Why? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2024-08-06
- Modified: 2024-08-06
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-topically-relevant-links-are-better-than-other-links/
- Categories: Topical Authority
Background In this post, I explain why topically relevant links within the main content of a webpage are the most valuable links. Once upon a time, Google was all about links, and nothing else. Of course that was a few years ago and things have changed, but to understand why links matter to search rankings, it helps to understand how Google started with links, and nothing else. The importance of links to Google's search results In the beginning, there was "backrub" In this post I provide a terse summary of Google's origin story. If you want more detail, read SEO: Link building, digital PR, and the Google origin story Google started as a research project named Backrub. A nerd (Larry Page) wanted to mathematically model how academic papers and citations (attributions) between academic papers are valued. As the math was hard, even for a hard core nerd like him, he asked a nerd buddy of his (Sergey Brin) to help work out the math. To test the model and the math, they needed sample data. They needed a collection of documents that cited each other. As the world wide web was nothing but a collection of documents that cited each others, one of them (or maybe both) wrote software to crawl the web and build a database of links. And the rest as they say, is history. Getting lost in language Google started by mathematically modeling citations between papers. What are sometimes also called attributions. On the world wide web,...
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### Topical Authority: What does this mean?
- Published: 2024-07-24
- Modified: 2025-04-28
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/topical-authority-what-does-this-mean/
- Categories: Topical Authority
Image credit: The Power of Unconventional Thinking, David McWilliams Topical authority has become a very popular topic in the world of SEO, but it seems there isn’t a common meaning to everyone using the phrase. Since it seems to mean different things to different people, I became curious how this vaguely defined term, that has become important to SEO success, is thought about. What do people think it means. For that reason, I created a survey. Methodology I created the survey using SurveyPlanet. I searched on LinkedIn to find profiles that match for “topical authority”. I sent a short LinkedIn invitation explaining I was doing research for an article and asked if they would please take my survey. 71 people did. The selection Some self selection was involved as while I searched for LinkedIn profiles that matched for “topical authority” I sent far more invitations out than 71. So the people who took the survey self selected to do so presumably because the question also interested them. The questions There were four questions where I asked for answers that could be charted and those charts are below. The other questions were open ended where the person provided a response in their own words. For those questions I provided the responses below that I thought were the most interesting. Willing to leave their email address? I didn’t want the requirement of submitting an email address to prevent anyone from taking my survey, so I made it optional. While I expected everyone...
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### Does Google use domain authority?
> If Google doesn't use domain authority as a direct ranking signal, why does everyone treat it as if it's a really important SEO metric?
- Published: 2024-04-02
- Modified: 2024-04-10
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/does-google-use-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Google does not use domain authority as a direct ranking signal, no. So why does everyone treat it as if it's an important metric? Because it's considered to be a GENERAL indication of how likely the webpages on the site are likely to rank in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). And based on my personal experience of publishing content to websites over time, that is true. It IS a an excellent general indication. Why did I write such a ridiculously short blog post that doesn't say anything you haven't read elsewhere? Because the topical mapping tool AlsoAsked informed me this is something people search for, so I included it in my topical cluster about topical authority for the sake of completeness. But now I'm done with the series. I hope you found it useful.
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### Is Page Authority important for SEO?
> Page authority is sometimes really important, but generally not very. When a specific page ranks at the top of page 2, page authority is important.
- Published: 2024-04-01
- Modified: 2024-04-01
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-page-authority-important-for-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. At the risk of giving a vague answer, page authority is kind of important to SEO, in some circumstances. I say that because while it is considered to be an important metric, it's one of many. Since I'm not aware of any specific experiments that show how important it is relative to other metrics such as domain authority, I relegate it to "it depends". More on that below. In case the difference between domain authority and page authority is not at the front of your mind right now, domain authority is an indication of how well pages on the site are likely to rank, and page authority is an indication of how well a specific page is likely to rank. But, if you focus excessively on page authority, that may cause you to focus too little on other important aspects of SEO, such as external validation (links and brand mentions). So yes, it's important, but the consensus in the SEO community is that's it's not important enough to devote too much time to, with one notable exception. If you have a specific page that ranks at the top of page 2 for a specific search query, then page authority for that page becomes VERY important. Because if you can push that page onto the bottom of page 1, that's a win!
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### What Domain Authority is good?
- Published: 2024-03-29
- Modified: 2024-03-29
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-domain-authority-is-good/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. If you're reading the posts in this series sequentially, I again apologize for being a bit repetitive. This post is included in the series because the topical mapping tool AlsoAsked informed me that people enter the question in the blog post title into search engines. And if people are searching for it, I should provide an answer. Domain authority is a comparison The problem, if that's the right word, is the question demonstrates a lack of understanding that domain authority is a comparison more than an absolute measure. Which means a good domain authority is... More. More than what? More than before, and more than websites you're competing against. For a new website Your domain authority is low. Maybe as low as 1. If 3 months later the domain authority score is 12, you're doing well, you're moving things in the right direction. For a competitive niche On the other hand, if you're competing with a website that has a domain authority of 57, you need to keep going. So... "more"? In a word, yes. As far as the domain authority score of your website goes, the only true answer to "What domain authority is good? " is "more".
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### How do I find my Domain Authority?
> To find the Moz Domain Authority of your site, or any site for that matter, follow these simple instructions.
- Published: 2024-03-28
- Modified: 2024-03-28
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-i-find-my-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. In this blog post, I'm doing to document two ways you can find your domain authority for free, without having to pay subscription fees for a SaaS based software tool. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Domain Rating Ahrefs provides a free scaled down version of their platform. It's called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, or AWT. I won't provide a step by step procedure for getting setup, as it was really straight forward. The text description below should suffice: Go to ahrefs. com/webmaster-tools. Click on the button "Sign up for free" and follow the instructions. You can sign up with a Google ID or using your email address. Once you've created your account, you enter your domains. Find the button "+ Create" to "create a project" which really means to enter a domain. You then need to verify ownership of that domain. For that purpose you'll see a link labeled "Verify ownership of your website". Click it to proceed. The tool provides four methods of verifying website ownership. You can demonstrate you have access to the Google Search Console property for the site. This is the most straight forward and quickest, but of course only works if you've previously verified the domain within Google Search Console. You can add a DNS TXT record for the domain. You can upload an HTML file to the root directory of the website. You can add an HTML tag to the...
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### What are the 4 pillars of SEO?
> The 4 pillars of SEO are content, technical SEO, on page SEO, and off page SEO.
- Published: 2024-03-25
- Modified: 2024-03-25
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-are-the-4-pillars-of-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. How did a post about the 4 pillars of SEO wind up in a series of posts about topical authority? Because the topical mapping tool AlsoAsked identified the question of blog post title as being related to the idea of topical authority. But since this topic, and each of the four subtopics below, is discussed extensively on thousands of other websites, this post gives a fairly short description of each. As you can easily find details elsewhere, the purpose of this post is to give a concise overview. Content This is both the tie in to the idea of topical authority (a little more on that below), and the main pillar of SEO, as without good content the others are meaningless. In a very real sense, the other pillars hold this one up. Topical authority is best thought of as a framework to help you generate better quality content. Content that answers questions people ask. Technical SEO Technical SEO is all the things needed for a website to be easy to for search engine spiders to crawl and index. It includes: Site architecture Site/page speed Mobile optimization The robots. txt file XML sitemaps Schema markup To learn more about all of the above, click the link above to read an excellent article on technical SEO on the ahrefs website. On site/page SEO The focus here is to optimize individual pages. On page SEO is...
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### What is a good SEO Authority score?
- Published: 2024-03-24
- Modified: 2024-03-24
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-good-seo-authority-score/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. For the record, there is no SEO authority score. For some reason, that statement reminds me of this "There is no tape. " clip from the TV show Derry Girls. https://youtu. be/yEqi-RT3YoU? si=9kBuPWwi0N-eYRf4 There is no tape! But anyway, I digress. There is no SEO authority metric While SEO authority is a phrase people use, there is no SEO authority score or metric. So what are people talking about? Other metrics. Such as: Domain authority Page authority Link authority (related to or perhaps derived from Google's Page Rank) And maybe topical authority (which is also not a metric) Rather than repeat in this post what I said in an earlier post, click the link above for an understanding of what each of those terms mean.
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### What does SEO authority mean?
- Published: 2024-03-23
- Modified: 2024-03-23
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-does-seo-authority-mean/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. SEO authority is an aggregate idea Within the world of SEO (search engine optimization) the idea of "authority" is widespread. You need it, you work to obtain it, you work to keep it and grow it. But there are many ideas of authority within the world of SEO, all of which have similarities to each other as well as differences. SEO Authority The phrase SEO authority is generally used to mean the relative authority of a website relative to other websites. I personally like the following definition from the Ahrefs website: "Website authority is an SEO concept that refers to the overall “strength” of a particular domain. Strength, in this case, is the ability (or likelihood) of a given domain to rank high in the SERPs and pass its backlink strength (“link juice”) to other websites. ". https://ahrefs. com/seo/glossary/website-authority I like it because it ties together the ideas of "SEO authority", "domain" or (site), "SERP rankings", and the importance of links and the value of links. Having said all that, the idea of SEO authority encompasses (sort of) the various ideas of authority listed below. Domain authority Domain authority is a metric that was created by Moz several years ago and has a fairly rigid definition. After all, since Moz created the metric, they get to define it. "Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how...
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### How do you determine content authority?
> You can assess content authority by applying the Google E-E-A-T framework. Use it to create content AND use it to asses content.
- Published: 2024-03-22
- Modified: 2024-03-22
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-determine-content-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. What does "content authority" even mean? It means whoever created the content did a good job in establishing themselves and the website as demonstrating content authority. While that feels like I'm defining a term in terms of itself, in this instance I'm not sure how to avoid doing so. You determine content authority by seeing if the content, website, brand, etc, has authority. What makes content authoritative? The key concepts here are Google E-E-A-T and Topical Authority. Neither of which are ranking signals per se, but both of which are frameworks for guiding your content development and generation efforts. These frameworks help you create content that more directly answers questions and provides useful information. For the most part, what follows below is a description of E-E-A-T, but without a section for "authority", since determining if content is authoritative is the focus of this post. Experience Did the writer personally have experience with whatever the topic is? Or is the experience from the perspective of someone else? If so is the person with the experience identified? Quoted? Expertise Simply put, do the answers seem right? Are they also direct and succinct? Are clarifying examples provided where needed. Trust Is it true? Is the writer, website, brand, etc, known to make statements that can be verified? If/when they do make a mistake, do they own up to it and correct it? Relevance This one is...
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### How do you create a topical cluster?
- Published: 2024-03-21
- Modified: 2024-03-21
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-create-a-topical-cluster/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction: Topical clusters A topical cluster is a collection of blog posts about various aspects or nuances of a topic. They often consist of one main or pillar post, and several "subsidiary" or snippet posts. A topical cluster can however contain more than one pillar post. That is not a hard and fast rule. The broad topic There is always one, and only one, broad topic. For example, this post is part of a topical cluster on the topic of "topical authority". The narrower sub-topics For every broad or main topic, there are some number of sub-topics, each of which becomes one snippet post. Each subtopic (snippet post) answers one question and only one question. More on that below. Finding sub-topics I'm a fan of the topical mapping tool AlsoAsked, as it generates a list of questions relative to some main topic that people "also asked" or more accurately entered as search queries. AlsoAsked has a free level which should be sufficient for most people. Pillar posts Pillar posts tend to be longer in-depth articles that cover more than one aspect of a topic. Snippet posts are then "subsidiary" to them. Snippet posts Each sub-topic mentioned above becomes one snippet post in which an answer is provided to one question. This blog post is a snippet post within it's topical cluster. What makes it a topical cluster is internal links However, a collection...
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### How do you build authority with content?
> The you build authority with content is to demonstrate that authority by publishing comprehensive in-depth well researched content.
- Published: 2024-03-20
- Modified: 2024-03-20
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-build-authority-with-content/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. If you're reading the posts in this series sequentially, I apologize (again) for the repetition you're seeing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I used the Topical Mapping tool AlsoAsked to create a list of questions people search for, and I'm creating a topic cluster by answering each one in a blog post. However, some of the questions are similar to others, which is resulting in some posts being similar to others. You build authority with content through publishing Research Research includes both selecting good topics, by which I mean topics that people go to search engines to ask about, as well as researching the topics and subtopics themselves. One of the mantras I live by in this era of Content Marketing and Topical Authority is that writers need to be good learners. If you're not already an authority for the topics you're publishing on, you need to have access to one (or more), or you need to become one. Writing, videoing, etc These days, content is not just the written word, so what I say below applies to all formats. However, if you use video, in addition to where the video is hosted (YouTube for example) publish the videos to your website as blog posts, one post per video, and beneath the video put the full text transcript of the video. Search engine spiders are getting better at turning audio (such as...
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### How do I make myself an authority?
> I suspect the motivation behind this question is not how to BECOME an authority, but how to be seen as having topical authority. Click here.
- Published: 2024-03-19
- Modified: 2024-03-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-i-make-myself-an-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction The short answer is learn your topic. Become an authority. If you already are, great. If not, you've got some learning to do. But I suspect the motivation behind this question is less how to BE an authority and more how to BE RECOGIZED AS an authority. How to be recognized as an authority Within the context of SEO, content marketing, topical authority, etc, the short answer is "publish". The longer answer includes the proactive seeking of external validation. More on that later. Publishing Of course there is more to it, but at it's core, the answer is that you become recognized as an authority by demonstrating that you are in fact an authority. To do this, you publish. Obviously you've got to publish good stuff, quality content, answers to questions people ask, etc. And that is where the concepts of "topical authority" and "Google E-E-A-T" come into play. Some people incorrectly think they're ranking signals. They're not. They are both frameworks for generating high-quality content that answers questions people ask. To learn more about them, click the links above. External validation To a certain extent, search engines, especially Google, base their ideas on "high-quality" on external validation. Specifically links and brand mentions. But, not all links are the same. Someone once told me "Links show you're known by the right people" and that's a very concise way to demonstrate the importance...
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### How does topical authority work?
> The question implies topical authority is something you USE. It's not. It's something you DO. It's a framework for publishing quality content.
- Published: 2024-03-18
- Modified: 2024-03-18
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-does-topical-authority-work/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. If you're reading these posts sequentially, I apologize for some of them sounding repetitive. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm building a topic cluster on the topic of "topical authority", I used a topical mapping tool named AlsoAsked to generate a list of questions people have entered as search queries, and I'm writing a blog post for each one. Hence this title. Introduction Weirdly, the question itself seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of what topical authority is. Asking how it works seems to imply it's something you USE rather than something you DO. But it's something you DO. Topical authority is a framework to help you publish better quality content. So you want to be a recognized topic authority? I'm guessing that if you're reading this, you already know WHY this matters. And in terms of HOW, there are two perspectives: How do you increase topical authority? How does it work? As the title of this blog post states, this post is about the latter. Topical authority is a framework Which I guess kind of makes it something you use, which seemingly contradicts a statement I made earlier, but... you use it to guide your content development efforts and to publish better content. So you use the framework to help you do something better, and the something is publishing. Expertise is hard to fake Many try. Many fail. One of...
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### How do you increase topical authority?
> Obtaining topical authority, for your website and yourself, is a matter of publishing. Persistently, frequently, and regularly. It's all about publishing.
- Published: 2024-03-17
- Modified: 2024-03-17
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-increase-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction While some may feel that what I specify as step one goes without saying, not everyone says it, and I think it's worth saying. Step 1: Topical authority requires a good topic Everyone talks about Keyword Research, but I'm saying step one is to choose a good topic. Do some "topic research". During this step, use tools such as Google Trends and AlsoAsked to give you an idea as to the popularity of the topic as well as the quantity and diversity of subtopics people search for. Steps 2 through forever: Publish Have you noticed how larger sites that are frequently updated tend to rank higher? This is strong evidence that Google prioritizes content on large sites that are frequently updated. While you may not have budget to be such a site, you need to come as close as you reasonable can. Maybe a post every other day, maybe a post every day, but create a regular and consistent publishing schedule and meet it. And, yes that is easier said than done, but it's very important. Step 3: Follow E-E-A-T and Topical Authority frameworks It's important to bear in mind that neither E-E-A-T nor Topical Authority are ranking factors per se, but rather are frameworks to follow to help you publish quality people-first content. And they're good frameworks. When you follow them, you publish better content. Step 4: Promote your content A...
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### Is domain authority important?
- Published: 2024-03-11
- Modified: 2024-03-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-domain-authority-important/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Why yes, it is Perhaps a better question is "How is domain authority important? ". Domain authority is such a commonly used metric it seems to weird to even question IF it's important. If it wasn't, would it be used to extensively? How is domain authority important? First, I freely admit that everything mentioned below is a correlation. The things mentioned below do not necessarily cause domain authority. But having said that, these correlations have been observed and commented upon by a lot of people who seem to know what they're talking about. So a causative relationship probably does exist. And as Moz created this metric, it feels appropriate to link to their article where they describe how the domain authority metric is calculated. Correlation to search rankings For the most part, for any given search query in Google, the pages that show at the top of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) have high domain authority scores. Correlation to Google E-E-A-T It is important to realize that E-E-A-T is not a ranking signal per se, but rather a framework for producing high quality people first content. Again, pages that appear to have high levels of E-E-A-T tend to show up higher in SERPs. Correlation to topical authority Topical authority, like Google E-E-A-T, is also not a ranking signal per se, but rather another framework for producing quality content. And gain, as with...
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### Domain Authority
- Published: 2024-03-11
- Modified: 2024-03-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/domain-authority/
- Categories: Glossary
Domain authority is a numerical score, between 1 and 100, that is assigned to websites as a measure of how authoritative they are. This metric was created by Moz, back when they were SEO Moz, when search engine optimization was in it's infancy. The metric is assigned to an entire website, independent of the topic or topics the website is about. The metric is calculated from a series of inputs, which includes: The number and quality of links to the website from others websites. The number of unique domains those links originate from. The number of unique top level domains (. com, . org, . uk, etc) those links originate from. A key feature of domain authority is that it is a comparison of websites against each other, which is to say it's a relative measurement, not an absolute one. It's important to note that domain authority is not THE metric which determines where in a search engine result page (SERP) webpages from the website appear, but rather is one of many factors. Featured image credit: What is Domain Authority and Why is it Important?
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### Is Page authority more important than Domain Authority?
- Published: 2024-03-10
- Modified: 2024-03-10
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/is-page-authority-more-important-than-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Page authority vs domain authority: Introduction While these two key SEO metrics are similar, they focus on different things. They're both numeric scores, from 1 to 100, and they both measure a level of "authority", but of different things. Inputs They both use as inputs things like the total number and quality of inbound links, the authority and credibility of the sites the links come from, the number of unique domains the links come from, and the number of unique root domains (. com, . gov, . uk, etc) the links come from. What do they measure? Domain authority Domain authority measures those things for the entire website, the entire domain. Page authority Page authority measures those things for individual pages on a website, and additionally includes some on page factors such as the page formatting, the use of H2, H3, etc headers to break the page up onto sections, etc. Where did these metrics come from? Many years ago, Moz, back when they were SEO Moz, made them up. SEO was in its infancy, such metrics were useful, and they had what we generally call the "first mover advantage". In short, they obtained the "right" to create and define these metrics because they were the first to do so and provide a software tool that measured them. How do you use them? In my opinion, the right way to use them is...
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### Topic cluster
- Published: 2024-03-10
- Modified: 2024-04-08
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/topic-cluster/
- Categories: Glossary
What is a topic cluster? A topic cluster is a set of posts on various aspects or nuances of a topic, where the more nuanced posts are subtopics of the main topic. A general structure for a topic cluster is for there to exist one or more pillar posts, several snippet posts per pillar posts, and a set of internal links between the posts in the cluster. The image above shows an example topic cluster. In reality, in addition to links that are "up" and "down" there are links from post to post where appropriate to help readers easily move from idea to idea, but those "lateral" links are hard to show in such an image. When did topic clusters become popular? The idea seems to have caught on around 2017 to 2019. Where did the idea for topic clusters come from? Interlinked pillar posts and snippet posts were once called a "hub and spoke" model. While the ideas of "hub and spoke" and "topic clusters" are similar, I personally consider "topic clusters" to be a more accurate and useful term. The focus is not on posts linking up and down to each other per se, but rather on posts that are topically relevant linking up and down to each other. How do you create them? First, you create a topical map, which is nothing more than a main topic, some sub-topics, and possibly some sub-sub-topics, which will be the titles of future blog posts. Then you start publishing posts,...
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### What is another name for Domain Authority?
- Published: 2024-03-09
- Modified: 2024-03-09
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-another-name-for-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Domain Authority alternatives: Introduction This is going to be another short article within this series. As with the other short ones, I wrote this post because the topical mapping tool AlsoAsked claims this is a question people search for. But, the answer is pretty short. Alternative metrics The metrics listed below are not identical, but they're all related enough for me to lump them together. Domain Authority (Moz) While the post is about what OTHER THAN domain authority acts like domain authority, for the sake of having a frame of reference, I'm starting with actual domain authority. It's a numerical score, created by Moz, that is assigned to the entire website. The lowest score is 1 and the highest is 100. It is calculated from a series of measurable inputs, such as the number and quality of backlinks to the site, the number of unique domains those links originate from, etc. Domain Rating (Ahrefs) The domain rating metric was started by Ahrefs, and is reported by their software tool. It's a numerical score from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more "robust" is the online presence. It is calculated from measurable inputs such as the quality and quantity of backlinks to the site, traffic levels, and engagement with the site. By the way, if you're just starting out and don't want to spend money for an Ahrefs subscription, they have a...
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### What is the highest domain authority?
- Published: 2024-03-07
- Modified: 2024-03-07
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-highest-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction I wish to be clear that again I'm writing a blog post based on a title I got from AlsoAsked which informs me this is phrase people have searched for. However, a direct answer to that question is (will be) very short. The highest domain authority is... 100 But only the largest and most visited websites have a domain authority of 100. Sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. If you want to learn more about what domain authority is, I wish to suggest the article linked to below, which includes not only a description of domain authority, but also a description of topical authority, which while a different concept, is also meaningful in pursuit of higher website rankings. Explanation of the difference between topical authority and domain authority
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### What is a topical website?
- Published: 2024-03-06
- Modified: 2024-03-06
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-topical-website/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction: Topical website? In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm writing this post, with this title, because a topical mapping tool (AlsoAsked) claims this is something that people search for. And while I'm a firm believer that there are no bad questions, that people ask this question indicates to me there is a misunderstanding of what "topical authority" is. Topical website = topical authority? The way the title question is worded implies that "a topical website" is a thing, but isn't every website a topical website? Isn't every website about something? About one or more topics? Is the question really "what is topical authority? " I think so, and since I've already written a post on that topic, rather than repeat myself here, below is a link to that post. Definition of topical authority
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### What should my domain authority be?
> The domain authority of your site should be higher than it was in the past. What matters is continuous improvement, not a specific numerical score.
- Published: 2024-03-05
- Modified: 2024-03-05
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-should-my-domain-authority-be/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Introduction Once again, I'm writing a post about domain authority based on AlsoAsked identifying that I'm directly answering a question people search for. I guess if over time people find this post via organic search it was a worthwhile post to write. The title is a flawed question The question presupposes the question has an answer other than "higher than in the past". It doesn't. What matters most is domain authority growth While domain authority is a metric that is calculated from various measurable inputs, the absolute value of domain authority for your site is not what matters most. What matters most is continuous improvement. Kaizen your content? Definitely! An American management consultant named W. Edwards Deming transformed Japanese manufacturing after WW2 via a process that came to be known as "kaizen". Why Japan? Because Americans thought his ideas were too weird. Kaizen means "continuous improvement" and is as relevant to the domain authority of your website as it was for Toyota's manufacturing. Be a little better every day, every week, every month. And over time... As you publish more and better content, as it gets more noticed, it will be linked to more, and your sites domain authority will rise, over time. While that is easier said than done, in concept, it really is that simple. So your focus needs to be... Publishing. Publish high quality in-depth content that answers questions people...
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### What is an example of a domain authority?
- Published: 2024-03-04
- Modified: 2024-03-04
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-an-example-of-a-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. For reasons stated below, this post became a "What is domain authority? " post almost immediately when I started writing it. Introduction In the spirit of full disclosure, I used a topical mapping tool (specifically AlsoAsked) to generate a list of possible blog topics and titles based on search queries people have submitted. While this one caught me by surprise as domain authority is a pretty simple and straight forward concept, I decided to write this post, as best I can, based on it being a search phrase that has some search volume. As mentioned above, this post immediately "What is domain authority" followed by a few specific examples, and information on how to easily determine the domain authority of any site. Domain authority is... A metric, created many years ago by Moz, back when they were SEO Moz. It is a numeric value from 1 to 100. Only the biggest and busiest sites have a domain authority of 100. Sites such as Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Domain authority is an overall metric of how authoritative your site is, independent of what the site is about and independent of how many things the site is about. The metric is calculated from a variety of measuring attributes, such as how many links there are to the site, from how many different domains, and from how many different top level domains (. com, . gov,...
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### What is the difference between domain authority and topical authority?
- Published: 2024-03-03
- Modified: 2024-03-03
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-difference-between-domain-authority-and-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Domain authority vs topical authority While both are important to the SEO rankings of websites, they're drastically different. Domain authority (DA or MozDA) is a numerical score assigned to websites. Topical authority is a framework for helping to ensure you publish high quality content. Understanding domain authority The domain authority metric was created by Moz (back when they were SEO Moz), is a numerical score from 1 and 100, and is considered to be a measure of how authoritative a website is overall. It is calculated from a set of measurable inputs, such as the number of domains that link to the target domain, the number and distribution of inbound links to the domain (the backlink profile), and the number of unique root domains linking to the website (. com, . org, . biz, . co. uk, etc). Exploring topical authority Topical authority is NOT a metric of any kind, but rather is a "content quality framework" that is related to the Google concept of EEAT. It's all about how to ensure you publish high quality in-depth informative useful trustworthy, etc, content that helps people. Key differences between domain authority and topical authority The wording of this section heading seems simultaneously both reasonable and odd. Reasonable because it's not uncommon for people to conflate the two. Odd because they're completely different, and the heading above implies if there are differences, there must also...
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### What is a topical map for SEO?
> A topical map is a content planning tool that has become essential as topic clustering and topical authority have become important to SEO.
- Published: 2024-03-02
- Modified: 2024-03-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-a-topical-map-for-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The very terse answer is that topical maps are content planning tools. They are visual representations of a topic cluster or topic network. What formats do topical maps take? Often they're represented as hierarchies with topics, subtopics, sub-subtopics, etc. However this leaves out "cross connections" which make sense to help readers jump or link from concept to concept. So it's important to not create links between blog posts that EXACTLY mirror the connections in your topical maps. But rather to create links that best help your readers. Some examples of topical maps I think the best way to understand is to generate one. I like AlsoAsked. com as it builds topical maps of search queries (things people "also asked" for), and generates an easy to read format. Below is a topical map I generated at AlsoAsked. com to help me with this series of blog posts. What are the key elements of a topical map? Main topic, subtopics, maybe sub-subtopics, keyword phrases, interconnections (linkages that will becomes actual links between blog posts), and what are sometimes called "content assets", which means articles, blog posts, infographics (if they're good), etc. How do you use a topical map? It's a content planning tool. A topical map is a list of topics and subtopics grouped in ways that you think make sense. Sometimes it helps you see that an existing blog post should be rewritten as...
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### Why is it important to build topical authority?
> These days, topical authority, thought leadership, SEO, and the reputation of your business and brand are all mixed together.
- Published: 2024-02-29
- Modified: 2024-02-29
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-is-it-important-to-build-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The short answer: building topical authority increases the search rankings of your website. But there's more to it than that. Much more. First, let's talk about who can acquire topical authority The website? The company? The brand? The writer? Someone the writer frequently refers to and quotes? The short answer to all the questions above is "yes". Which is why there is much more to topical authority than "website rankings". Every person and entity mentioned above can be seen as authoritative, and the means of being seen so is similar. Demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness. Say stuff that is meaningful and helpful. Show your work. In regards to "someone the writer frequently refers to and quotes", sometimes topic experts don't write much, perhaps because they're not great writers or perhaps because they're too busy with other work. But since what they know helps the business and website acquire topical authority, writers who are not topic experts write for them. In these situations the writer can ghost-write under the name of the topic expert, or they can "share the work" and the writer can write under their own name and quote the topic expert often. I do not know which of those methods is "better", but I personally believe that identifying the writer and the topic expert separately is the right thing to do. It feels more honest. Now, let's talk about why it matters...
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### What is the topical authority ratio?
- Published: 2024-02-28
- Modified: 2024-02-28
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-topical-authority-ratio/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The topical authority ratio is a suspect metric, at least in my humble opinion. For a given website, it is the number of webpages about a specific topic relative to the total number of webpages on the site, that are in Google's index. "That are in Google's index" is an important part of this metric. The idea is that sites with a higher topical authority ratio for a given topic are more likely to rank higher for that topic. If your website has 187 pages in total, and 103 of them are about some specific topic, relative to that topic the topical authority ratio of your site would be 103 divided by 187, which is 0. 55. But it seems to me the evidence this is not a meaningful metric is easy to find. I've seen claims made online that having a strong topical authority ratio is good for your sites search rankings, but very large websites that are updated frequently generally tend to outrank smaller websites that are less frequently updated. A news website with 10,000 total pages of which 12 are about your specific topic and which is updated multiple times each day would have a topical authority ratio of 0. 012 and yet is very likely to outrank your site with a topical authority ratio of 0. 55 (from above), because the news site is to much larger and is...
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### How do you create topical authority in SEO?
- Published: 2024-02-27
- Modified: 2024-02-27
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-do-you-create-topical-authority-in-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority requires publishing, A LOT of publishing It can feel like obtaining and growing topical authority requires a never ending stream of publishing. And that's because it does. But while quantity and consistency matter, they're just the beginning. The stuff you publish must also be very good. In-depth People have questions. You need to provide answers, and those answers need to be to an appropriate level of detail, which varies depending on who you're talking to. But, somewhat related to "various nuances and perspectives" below, different people want and can absorb different levels of detail. So you've got to write for various levels of expertise. Have you seen any of those "So and so describes something to 5 levels of difficulty" videos? If not, check out Harvard Professor Explains Algorithms in 5 Levels of Difficulty. To the best of your ability, you need to do that, with different levels of difficulty being in different blog posts. Comprehensive This is related to in-depth, but refers to covering all relevant parts of some topic. A comprehensive article or series of articles covers every significant aspect of a topic. Various nuances and perspectives This includes not only the who, how, why, where, and when perspectives, but "the history of", "the future of", "common misconceptions of", "beliefs about", etc. Any aspect of a topic that is not immediately apparent but matters, is a different nuance or...
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### As regards SEO, what is topical relevance?
> Due to Google pushing hard on "topical authority", topical relevance is something you need to think about when linking out, or building backlinks.
- Published: 2024-02-26
- Modified: 2025-02-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/as-regards-seo-what-is-topical-relevance/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. As topical authority is an increasingly important aspect of obtaining high SEO rankings for your website, and topical authority requires external validation in the form of "topically relevant" links from trustworthy websites with good reputations, I'm thinking it makes sense to define what "topical relevance" is. So, what is topical relevance? Simply put, it means the blog post, article, or paragraph the link appears in, and the blog post or article the link is so, are about related/relevant topics. The key idea here is to link out to webpages that are topically relevant, and to avoid linking to pages that are not. And there are many ways to do so. Specific examples are below. What are different types of topically relevant links? While there are some similarities between the various types of topically relevant links listed below, the differences are sufficiently large to justify (in my opinion) classifying them as different types of links that carry topical relevance. Attribution links In the world of SEO, this refers to a link that provides topically relevant support for some claim that is made. Here is an example (that sadly is not well known). Commercial banks create money every time they fund a loan for a customer. The link above is to Bank of England Working Paper No. 529, which describes how commercial banks create money every time they fund a loan. Resource page links These links...
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### What is the difference between backlinks and topical authority?
> Backlinks matter. Topical authority matters. How do they go together? Affect each other? Interact?
- Published: 2024-02-25
- Modified: 2024-02-25
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/what-is-the-difference-between-backlinks-and-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Considering how the use of and the significance of backlinks has changed in this era of topical authority and EEAT, the very question is flawed, as it implies similarities, rather than a relationship between the two ideas. Why is the very question flawed? The question asked in this blog post title is a true apples to oranges comparison. By asking "How are these things different? " I implied they serve similar purposes, but differently. But the don't serve different purposes. Topical authority is a framework for creating quality content, whereas backlinks are about external validation, which is to say they're part of that overall framework. Topical authority: Backlinks vs "external validation" Prior to topical authority and EEAT being heavily pushed by Google, then forced upon us through Google algorithm updates, what mattered most in the world of external validation was backlinks from high DA (domain authority) sites. Now we must think in terms of a broader concept of external validation, which includes backlinks, but is not exclusively focused on backlinks. We also need to acquire good backlinks, and we need to NOT acquire bad backlinks. Today, you work to boost your brand, not "just" your website And while boosting your brand includes links, it doesn't include links from any and all sites. Some links will actually harm your brand's reputation and your site's ranking. Backlinks show you're known by the right people, but...
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### Final thoughts on the significance of mastering topical authority for SEO success
> This post summarizes my thoughts on the topic of the importance of topical authority to SEO and is the last post is a series on that topic.
- Published: 2024-02-24
- Modified: 2024-02-24
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/final-thoughts-on-the-significance-of-mastering-topical-authority-for-seo-success/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority is now a cornerstone of SEO and brand marketing Considering the Google algorithm updates are forcing us to take this idea seriously, if we want our websites to rank, we need to take this idea seriously. Having said that, there are two aspects of topical authority I think are really important. First, that Google is pushing content quality is good. And that they've created two frameworks, "topical authority" and "EEAT" is helpful. And second, SEO very much now includes "building your brand" whether that brand is focused on commercial sales or not. The perceived reputation, trustworthiness, and authority of the organization matters, as it should. People want answers And while it feels no one should ever have to state or emphasize this, one of the big reasons people go online to search is to get answers. In a world of SERPs In the world of SERPs (that will take a while to fully move out of) good high quality in depth comprehensive answers should, and will, over time, raise the position of your webpages in SERPs. In a world of generative AI For the world of generative AI we've moving into, where "keyword phrases" are replaced with "prompts" and we receive answers instead of SERPs, those answers are increasingly accompanied with links to where the answers were found (check out Perplexity AI to see how all AI engines SHOULD, and likely...
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### Recap of the key points covered in the guide
> This post is a terse summary of this entire series on topical authority. You can in theory read this one post and get the main points, but no nuance.
- Published: 2024-02-22
- Modified: 2024-02-22
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/recap-of-the-key-points-covered-in-the-guide/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. This post is a terse summary of the main concepts from every prior post in this series. You can in theory read this one post and get the main points, but the other posts do show greater depth and nuance. Not only is this a terse recap, I expect there will be nothing here you haven't seen elsewhere. But sometimes restated what everyone SHOULD already know helps. I hope this is one of those times. What is topical authority? It's a framework for guiding content quality. It's related to Google EEAT. And it's all about quality. Write good stuff, in-depth, comprehensive, with appropriate visual aids (graphics, videos, etc) to help PEOPLE. Why does topical authority matter for SEO? Because Google makes the rules, and they say so. It's really that simple. What is the definition of topical authority? Part of the problem here is that while Google pushes this concept aggressively, they've never defined it. So people try to "read between the lines" and "know what they mean" based on what they say. But in summary, focus on publishing good stuff. Answer questions people ask. How does Google "use" topical authority? It's all about quality It's not so much that THEY use it, but rather that they enforce it's use on US. Topical authority is not a ranking signal. There is no topical authority score for websites. It's a framework for guiding the...
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### Analysis of the impact of topical authority on search rankings
- Published: 2024-02-21
- Modified: 2024-02-21
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/analysis-of-the-impact-of-topical-authority-on-search-rankings/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. No evidence based research? I use AI engines for research and for the generation of ideas about what to write about and what perspectives might be interesting. For this post I went to my preferred AI tool, Perplexity AI, and entered the following prompt: "Has anyone done any evidence based analysis on the impact of topical authority on search rankings? ". Five such examples were provided, with links, so I read all five. Impact of Topical Authority & Search Rankings: Matters in 2024 How to Build Topical Authority (and Why it Matters) What Is Topical Authority & How Does It Work Building Topical Authority: The Key to SEO Dominance WHAT IS TOPICAL AUTHORITY? THE BEST STRATEGY TO BUILD IT! They contained nothing resembling evidence based research. They were all "What is? Why should you care? How do you do it? " posts. I conclude that "topical authority" is a definition, rather than a set of ranking signals or a measurable outcome of any kind. We define topical authority is that being the thing that high ranking sites have. Does this mean "topical authority" is a framework? Yes, I think. And it's a very useful one. As this post is part of a series about topical authority (What it is, why you should care, how you do it, etc), rather than repeat any of the framework here, I link instead to a different post in...
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### Examples of successful implementation of topical authority
- Published: 2024-02-20
- Modified: 2024-02-20
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/examples-of-successful-implementation-of-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. I wish I could loudly proclaim that we're a topical authority success story, but we're still working on it. And of course everyone knows the big sites that have obtained topical authority. Sites like HubSpot, Forbes, WebMD. But when you're starting out, such examples have too large a head start to be meaningful. Smaller businesses with enviable topical authority Since you're probably a smaller business, I'm highlighting small businesses here. Backlinko If you've read anything about SEO at all, you've heard of backlinko. Backlinko was started in in 2012 by Brian Dean. He had found success with a site about personal finance, and started backlinko to teach others what he learned during that process. Backlinko was acquired by Semrush in 2022. Not only are his posts deep dives into what he learned, they're formatted really well, with appropriate screen shots, videos, etc. The Financial Diet The site is devoted to discussions about money focused on women. The site and company were founded in 2014 by Chelsea Fagan. She addresses topics such as spending, saving, and making money. She publishes content in a diversity of formats: blog posts, newsletter, social media, podcast, and a YouTube channel. The site makes money through ad sales, affiliate marketing, editorial product sales, licensing, and consulting. Nomadic Matt Nomadic Matt is a travel site, started by Matt Kepnes in 2008. The goal was/is to help people travel better for...
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### Best practices for integrating topical authority into your SEO strategy
- Published: 2024-02-19
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/best-practices-for-integrating-topical-authority-into-your-seo-strategy/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority strategy: Step 1 is mindset You have to turn not just the generation of content, but the capturing of ideas for content, into daily habits. Ideas are all around you and you can train your unconscious to "bring them to your attention" by committing to the task. Which leads me to a story I think is very relevant. Inspiration and perspiration An aspiring writer visited an established successful writer he greatly admired to ask for advise on how he too might become a successful writer. The successful writer spoke of the importance of commitment and habits. He explains how he writes every day from 9 am until 1 pm, 6 days a week. No matter what. Some days the writing is mediocre, some days the writing is fantastic. But the successful writer emphasized the secret to his success is that he writes for four hours every day. The aspiring writer protested that being inspired is necessary for him and he asked the established writer if the same was not true of ALL writers. To which the successful writer responded that inspiration is critically important, and for that reason he gets inspired every morning at 9 am. This commitment and mindset tells your unconscious to bring that steady steam of content ideas to your attention. Capturing content ideas And when they bubble up, you've got to capture them. I live in a...
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### How to leverage topical authority to improve search rankings
- Published: 2024-02-18
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-to-leverage-topical-authority-to-improve-search-rankings/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Leveraging topical authority to improve search rankings mostly comes down to three things; research, publishing and engagement. Topical authority requires ENDLESS research The most important skill in the worlds of SEO, content marketing, digital PR, etc is the ability to continuously learn new things. Which means "the only constant is change". "Research" has no end. Literally. Research is important to both publishing and engagement. Publishing Publishing means regularly and consistently publishing in-depth and comprehensive content that answers questions people ask. No more "fluff" or "thin" content The days of "fluff" or "thin content" ranking are over. Ten years ago you could rank by publishing a high volume of thin content, but no more. We are having a brief resurgence right now (Feb 2024) of AI generated content on large sites ranking well, but I suspect Google will eventually determine what the "digital fingerprint" of such content is and it will be deprioritized. Comprehensive means... Covering various aspects of a topic. The important point here is to pick a topic you know really well and are willing to learn more about. Then learn more about it and explain it well to others. You will publish a variety of posts each of which covers a different aspect of the topic. For example, who, how, why, where, when can be covered in different posts. Is too in-depth a thing? Since different aspects of your topic are...
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### Why topical authority is crucial for ranking on specific topics
- Published: 2024-02-16
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-topical-authority-is-crucial-for-ranking-on-specific-topics/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. What topical authority is As this post is part of a series on topical authority and this question is answered in depth elsewhere in the series, here I'm providing a very basic definition. What follows is a pretty self referential definition, but it's also true. Topical authority is when Google, other search engines, and generative AI engines perceive a set of pages on your website to be authoritative and trustworthy enough to prioritize in SEPRs and answers. Why topical authority matters The short answer is because Google says so. Their dominant position in search has allowed Google to dictate the rules of search. They created the concepts of Topical Authority and EEAT, told us all to go there, and over time updated their algorithm to force us all to go there. The publishing of in-depth comprehensive content that covers multiple aspects, nuances, and perspectives on a topic in detail, helps establish your website (or at least a portion thereof) as a go-to source for answers about a certain topic. And the umbrella term used to describe this is "topical authority". How topical authority is tied to search rankings Per Google, they prioritize websites that have good reputations, and webpages that have high topical authority. So again, per Google, the connection between topical authority and search rankings is very direct. Additionally, websites considered to be reputable, have strong EEAT, and high topical authority are...
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### Explanation of the difference between topical authority and domain authority
- Published: 2024-02-15
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/explanation-of-the-difference-between-topical-authority-and-domain-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority and domain authority not the same, but they're related. Domain authority is the older concept while topical authority is newer. The idea of topical authority has not replaced the idea of domain authority. They now co-exist. The concept of domain authority Domain authority is an idea created by Moz in the early days of SEO as a (some say rough) measure of how authoritative a specific website (or domain) was for whatever it is that it talks about. It's a numerical score between 1 and 100 and is considered to be a predictor of how likely pages of the website are to appear in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The main strategy people have used to increase the domain authority of their website was/is to build backlinks to their site from other, preferably high DA, websites. Domain authority is NOT a ranking factor used by Google. The concept of topical authority Topical authority is considered to be more narrow, and is an idea (not a numerical score) of the expertise and relevance of a website for specific topics. It was born as an offshoot of Google EAT, which is now EEAT. There is some discussion as to whether topical authority is an attribute of writers, websites, brands, or possibly all three. Neither topical authority nor EEAT are direct ranking factors, but both are considered to be a critical baseline, floor, or...
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### The role of attribution links as external validation
> External validation in the form of links, brand mentions, etc, matter greatly in the pursuit of topical authority. We are known by those who know us.
- Published: 2024-02-14
- Modified: 2024-05-25
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/the-role-of-links-and-external-validation/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The importance of external validation The story about the importance of external validation to topical authority started way back in 1998. At that time some really smart people figured out (accidently as it happens) that using links between webpages as a measure of how important webpages are, allowed them to create what was immediately seen as a better search engine. Yes, the Google origin story is all about links. Which initially was THE form of external validation used by Google to rank webpages in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP). In fact, the research project that later became Google was called "backrub" because that's how Larry Page thought about the project. Since then, external validation has expanded beyond links to include brand signals, which includes branded anchor text for links, branded searches, etc. While links are no longer THE source of external validation, they very much still matter. Topical authority and HIGH-QUALITY backlinks But, not all backlinks are of equal value. Main content vs supplementary content Per the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, the instructions provided to the humans who help Google determine what "better" SERPs and "high-quality" content look like to their software: Main Content is the article or blog post itself with the HTML of the webpage. Supplementary Content is everything else on the webpage. The stuff in the header, the footer, the sidebar, any related posts widget, ads, etc. Links...
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### Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines
> The Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are instructions used by the around 16,000 humans who rate quality of SERPs and webpages.
- Published: 2024-02-14
- Modified: 2024-04-04
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/google-search-quality-evaluator-guidelines/
- Categories: Glossary
The Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines is the instruction document used by the human quality raters who help Google figure out what the "digital fingerprint" of websites and webpages looks like. The most recent copy of which was published on March 6, 2024 , and is 170 pages long. Why does the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines matter for website owners and SEOs? I'm starting with this as unless you are a search quality evaluator, this is what you care about. This is the document in which Google defines what they mean by "quality content". It is literally instructions to the search quality raters on how to distinguish between high quality and low quality. And while there is a noticeable lag between Google saying they are updating the algorithm in a certain way and them actually doing it, they eventually do it. So if you want the rankings of your sites to not degrade after a future algorithm update, you need to follow their rules. Who are the Google Search Quality Evaluators? There are about 16,000 such quality raters around the world, they directly work for third party companies whom Google hires for this function. The two companies mentioned most are Appen in Australia and Lionbridge in the USA. FWIW, I once applied to be a search quality evaluator with Lionbridge and went through a fairly extensive "interview" process. I quote the word interview as I never spoke to a person but rather took a series of online tests. At...
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### Topical authority requires comprehensive and in-depth content
> This post gives a solid view of HOW, in pursuit of topical authority, writers generate a steady stream of in-depth high quality comprehensive content.
- Published: 2024-02-13
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/topical-authority-requires-comprehensive-and-in-depth-content/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. In a world where content is king and where brands publish in pursuit of "topical authority" and organic traffic, information has become abundant and attention spans have gotten shorter. Which places quite a burden on content creators. To capture and keep people's attention, we need to be informative, educational, and entertaining, while establishing topical authority which merely means it's clear we know what we're writing about. So how do successful content marketers do it? Know who you're writing for Everyone says "understand your audience". But... you may discover over time that the people who appreciate your content are not who you initially expected. So you need to pay attention to your demographics. Which means monitoring analytics is an important part of content creation. Perpetual learning vs knowing your topic in depth It often occurs that people who are experts in a certain area are not great writers, and great writers are not topic experts in what they write about. The only way I know of to bridge this "topical authority" gap is for writers to be good learners, and to use topic experts as interview subjects and to proof read. Basically, being good at doing research is a critical skill for content marketers. "Structure your content" We used to call this "create an outline", but weirdly that practice somehow fell out of favor as more and more people started publishing online. But, part...
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### Strategies for building topical authority
- Published: 2024-02-12
- Modified: 2024-04-10
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/strategies-for-building-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. These are test links that will be removed once the testing is done: link1, link2, link3, link4, link5. Building topical authority is not magic, it's work. And in writing this it occurs to me that the word "strategies" in the title being plural is not right. Everyone seems to do this the same way. Know your stuff, explain it well, and structure/format content about it to help search engine spiders find it. Building topical authority requires deep and broad knowledge of the topic in question, consistent publishing of in-depth comprehensive posts and articles on various aspects of the topic, and persistence. It's not the case that persistence is THE most important ingredient, topic knowledge is. But without persistent publishing, the search engines will not pick up that you are in fact a topic expert. Building topical authority requires going deep Another way to say this is to niche down. No site is or can be an authority on everything, unless you have a massive team of writers who individually are experts in different topic areas. Most websites are not like that. So choose your topic based on your actual expertise. Keyword research still matters To help your content be found, you want to answer questions people are actually asking. While we often call this process "keyword research" I prefer the term "market research". What do people actually want to know? There are a...
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### How Google uses topical authority to determine expertise
- Published: 2024-02-11
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/how-google-uses-topical-authority-to-determine-expertise/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. At it's core, the Google search engine is a very sophisticated and complex pattern recognition engine. And to achieve their stated goal of helping us find the most relevant and authoritative answers to our queries, Google has introduced the concept of Topical Authority and is making it into a central theme for their algorithm. It helps determine which webpages and websites are MOST relevant and authoritative for our search queries. EEAT and Topical authority Another concept Google is pushing is EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust. The meaning of this is extensively documented in the Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which the human search quality raters Google hires (through third party vendors) and uses to help Google figure out what high quality authoritative content "looks like" to the pattern recognition software that is their search engine. Simply put, the more of a subject matter expert you and your website are perceived to be, the higher you and your website rank. I say "you" above because with the change from EAT to EEAT (experience was recently added) Google appears to be treating writers as well as websites as relevant and authoritative. Measuring topical authority Google does not disclose a specific methodology for measuring topical authority, but of course people have made attempts to reverse engineer this and have come to some conclusions. Google appears to use qualitative metrics such as the...
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### Importance of topical authority in search engine rankings
- Published: 2024-02-10
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/importance-of-topical-authority-in-search-engine-rankings/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. Topical authority has emerged as a critical factor in SEO rankings, not because it is in and of itself a ranking factor, but because these days, high quality topically relevant content is THE minimum acceptable standard. Topical authority refers to, and perhaps it's best to say is connected to, the Google concept of EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Both the concepts of topical authority and EEAT are increasingly important to search engines, most specifically Google, as they continue to update their algorithm and in doing so push us all to publish higher quality content. Topical authority: Content written for people Topical authority is not just about publishing more content on a topic (although that is partially true), but involves publishing content is that in depth, comprehensive, appropriately nuanced, and perhaps most importantly written for people, not search engine robots. The content should be well researched, reference appropriate authoritative attribution sources, and be interesting enough that people with an interest in the topic will read it, share it, and link to it. Again, it's content written for PEOPLE, not search engine robots, and which presents ideas clearly and references appropriate supporting sources. Why you need to think this way In short, because like it or not, Google makes the rules of search, they're telling us to go there, and their algorithm updates are pushing us there. How we may feel...
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### Definition of topical authority
- Published: 2024-02-09
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/definition-of-topical-authority/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. The phrase "topical authority" has kind of an overarching meaning as it is used in SEO and content marketing, but there are interesting and nuanced differences in how some authoritative sources define it. The reason there are nuances seems to be that despite it being a concept Google pushes as important, they've never actually defined what it means, so others fill in the blanks, and different people do so a bit differently. At it's core, the phrase refers to a demonstration of expertise, trust, and authority, and it is related to the Google concept of EEAT, which is experience, expertise, authority, and trust. However, here are some nuances from various sources. Neil Patel's Blog Topical authority is "commonly referred to as a measure of your site’s expertise on a given subject. The more high-quality content you have on a topic, the better your topical authority. ". "If you have strong topical authority, Google will rank your content on that topic higher than a website with weaker topical authority. " Clearscope "Topical authority is a measure of your website’s credibility, and you build it by consistently creating high-quality content about a given subject. The more informative and comprehensive articles you write about a topic, the more search engines, and readers will see you as a subject matter expert. " Authority Hacker "The concept of topical authority is pretty straightforward: the better you cover a...
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### Why is topical authority important for SEO?
> In short, because Google says so. This post gives an overview of why this concept matters, and how you and your website obtain topical authority.
- Published: 2024-02-08
- Modified: 2024-02-19
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/why-is-topical-authority-important-for-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO. In short, topical authority is important for SEO because Google is taking us there, and they still make the rules for Internet search. The phrase refers to the measure of the expertise and depth of knowledge on a specific topic, for a writer, for a website, and for a brand. And as Google focuses more on brands that last one is particularly important. When Google decides that a website has become known for authoritative content, it starts to rank higher. The significance of topical authority As a content creator, it helps shift your focus to creating content for readers, not for search engine robots. As mentioned above, improved ranking Once Google perceives that a certain website is authoritative for a certain topic, it starts to rank higher. Of course, "authoritative" is a relative concept and topical authority is not in and of itself a ranking factor, so as someone who is trying to improve the ranking of a website, you need to keep an eye on the sites that outrank you. They may be more authoritative, or they may have SEO advantages of being a larger site, an older site, or a site that is updated more frequently. So authoritative content is not enough, but it's where everyone now has to start. Expertise and trust Google has been pushing EAT (expertise, authority, and trust) for years, and they recently expanded it to EEAT...
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### Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO
- Published: 2024-02-07
- Modified: 2024-07-24
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/topical-authority/mastering-topical-authority-a-comprehensive-guide-to-boost-your-seo/
- Categories: Topical Authority
- Series: Topical Authority
This post is the lead post in a series on the topic of topical authority. What it is, why it matters, how you establish it, and how you grow it. Each of the section titles below takes you to a sub post devoted to that topic (or sub-topic) and these posts are linked together into a topic cluster. The purpose of this structure is to allow you to absorb the information one bit at a time, and to easily proceed to the next, or to review the previous, section. Overview of what the guide will cover Topical authority is sometimes referred to as "depth of expertise," and has become an important concept in the always changing never static dynamics of search engine optimization (SEO). Unlike the more traditional focus on link building, topical authority is obtained by consistent creation of original, high-quality, and comprehensive content covering a topic in great detail. Having said that, there IS a relationship between topical authority and link building, or more correctly, link earning, in order to earn links, you must first produce link worthy content. In the realm of SEO, authority has been thought of as being related to the acquisition of backlinks. This led to proactive link building being a thing people did, and a thing people outsourced to link building agencies. However, this type of link building has gotten harder, as webmasters all over the Internet are now somewhat inundated with backlink request pitches. It's not the case that this more traditional...
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### Verifying site ownership via Google Search Console
> We're implementing the ability for users to demonstrate site ownership by virtue of having access to the Google Search Console property.
- Published: 2023-08-17
- Modified: 2023-09-24
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/verifying-site-ownership-via-google-search-console/
- Categories: Tutorials
This feature is no longer something that is in the future. After the development was completed, we had to apply to Google for them to verify our API setup (specifically the Consent Screen you see during the Oauth2 authentication process). When they approved it on 19 Sep 2023, this capability started working for everyone. How to use this feature is shown in a video tutorial on our tutorials page titled GSC site ownership verification. https://youtu. be/QIH-ZNVyBl0 Transcript I just want to give you an update on something I'm doing relative to verifying ownership of sites within the platform. The way I've done it is somewhat controversial because you need to be able to apply an html tag to a page so that the software can go to the page find the tag and verify the site. So two changes are happening relatively soon. In a LinkedIn exchange with a new member of the community I came to question a designdecision I had made previously which is while the authentication code and the html authentication tags were applied to a site, so therefore every page on a given sitehad the same html tag, you were still verifying ownership of pages one at a time. Aand it finally occurred to me... why does that even make sense. You're not verifying the page you're verifying the site. So very soon, maybe even as early as tonight, I'm going to be pushing into production an update where if you verify ownership of a page...
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### Google Search Generative Experience and Links
> This blog post contains a video that demonstrates the degree to which Google's Search Generative Experience relies on backlinks.
- Published: 2023-08-17
- Modified: 2023-08-17
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/google-search-generative-experience-and-links/
- Categories: Tutorials
https://youtu. be/H_7iFlk-t8Y Transcript Hi I want to show you guys something that I stumbled across the other day that I think is is relevant to the whole concept of link building in general and... Tanya, I don't mean to be picking on you but I know your website is new and therefore you don't have a lot of backlinks and therefore it's a good example to illustrate this thing Istumbled across. So, Tanya is a new member of our community, well I guess since the community is new we're all new members, but Tanya is a newer new member of the community and this is her website. So, this is the Google search generative experience in the browser tab. It's available in Google Labs. If you don't have access to Google Labs currently just go to the Google Labs website and put yourself on the waiting list and at some point you'll get an email saying okay, you have access now. And then you have access to the stuff that Google is working on but haven't yet released tothe entire world. So the part that I stumbled across that I thought was really interesting is this... About the source. Google can't find much info on other sites to help you learn more about this site and it's the emphasis “of other sites”... the reputation of a website is established by what other websitessay about it. And I think that's very relevant and it speaks to the importance of quality backlinks....
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### SEO for startup businesses
> Yes SEO is a long game. And yes limited marketing resources makes it harder. But once it kicks in there are no cheaper leads. So start now.
- Published: 2023-07-23
- Modified: 2024-07-20
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/seo-for-startup-businesses/
- Categories: Content Marketing
To be clear, the issue is not startup businesses per se, but businesses whose marketing activities are constrained by limited resources. Startup businesses tend to be short of time and money And most early-stage ventures (aka startup businesses) fit this profile. Again, to be clear, if you're in a very well-funded startup and you have the budget for a 6 person content marketing and SEO team, then by all means, go for it. But most startup businesses do NOT fit this profile. Yet cheap and easy SEO is no longer a thing Back in 2010-ish, SEO was much cheaper and much easier. A sophisticated keyword research tool (my personal favorite was Market Samurai) could find "golden nugget" keywords that had a high degree of relevancy, a reasonably high search volume, reasonably low SEO competition, and a reasonably high commercial value. Back then a business could quite literally find SEO success with an SEO team of one person. Now that the Internet is much more crowded, there are no more 2010-era golden nugget keywords. And the days of cheap and easy (relative to today) are long gone. And as regards SEO, there is A LOT to do I found a really good article titled SEO For Startups - Complete Guide that describes what is involved in SEO today. It describes what, why, and how. When you get to the section titled The Three Pillars of SEO, you can see that there is a lot to know and a lot to do....
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### Content Marketing is older than Search Engine Optimization
- Published: 2023-07-11
- Modified: 2023-08-15
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/content-marketing-is-older-than-search-engine-optimization/
- Categories: Content Marketing
The world's first known content marketing effort was a quarterly print magazine that was started by John Deere in 1895. Here is an image of the front cover of the spring 1897 edition. How did it work? How it worked is really quite simple. John Deere published the magazine and gave it to farmers for free by distributing it through farming supply stores. When farmers came in to buy whatever, the latest edition of the magazine was on the counter for anyone to take. The magazine contained articles that were of interest to farmers. Articles about developments in fertilizers, crop rotation, equipment maintenance, water conservation, etc. Farmers kept the magazines as the articles were useful to them. And the magazines were full of ads for John Deere products and services. The magazine still exists, but today it's a subfolder on the John Deer website. Why does this matter? Because to successfully attract visitors and convert some to leads and customers, THIS is what you need to do with your website. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people try to earn backlinks to home pages and landing pages. Per Google, you do NOT want to do this. This blog post explains why, and what you DO want to do instead. You do NOT want backlinks to your landing pages! A very terse summary of that blog post is: Turn your website into an online magazine. Publish articles and posts that inform, educate, and entertain. And on THOSE pages...
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### SEO: Link building, digital PR, and the Google origin story
> As at it's core, SEO is all about links and content, and not all links are good for SEO, digital PR link building matters. Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2023-05-22
- Modified: 2023-09-04
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/digital-pr/seo-link-building-digital-pr-and-the-google-origin-story/
- Categories: Digital PR
Introduction At its core, SEO is about content and links, with an overlay of something Google calls E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trust). In this post, I argue that once you understand the Google origin story, you understand why links matter, what makes some links high-quality and others not, and why digital PR is your best method of building high-quality links. My premise is that when you understand what it was about Google’s approach that caused Google to stand above all the other search engines which existed back in the late 1980s, you’ll understand why this is true. Link building and digital PR This blog post assumes you know what links and anchor text are, but in case you don't, a short side quest is warranted. Please read this post on the Yoast blog and return here: What is anchor text and how to improve your link text? Links matter because they “carry” authority (or the lack thereof) from other sites to yours. And the “lack thereof” speaks to how not all links are good for your site's SEO. Link building is being proactive about obtaining links back to content on your website. Digital PR is doing so through public relations strategies and tactics. The Google origin story is all about links Since it happened in Palo Alto, CA, or more precisely on the campus of Stanford University in unincorporated Santa Clara County adjacent to Palo Alto, it was probably not a dark and stormy night. A Computer Science Ph....
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### Finding unique content marketing perspectives
> Finding unique content marketing perspectives is made easier by following, in a structured way, the "writing rule" of how good writers read.
- Published: 2022-09-26
- Modified: 2025-03-17
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/content-marketing/finding-unique-content-marketing-perspectives/
- Categories: Content Marketing
How do you write on a topic without saying what thousands, if not millions, have already said? How can your content marketing stand out against an entire Internet of content, also talking about what you're talking about? By narrowing your perspective. By "chunking down" into a sub-topic that is of interest to a more limited audience. By making use of what in SEO is called the long-tail keyword phrase. The idea behind "Positioning" I am a huge fan of the book Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I personally consider it to be one of the best marketing books ever written. Since this book was first published in 1980, some of its specific recommendations are outdated, but its main point is still valid. They talk about how when you're entering an existing marketplace already dominated by others, where there is no way for you to be first, how you need to create a position in that marketplace where you CAN be the first. The human mind seems to like firsts. We remember them. To illustrate this point, they use the following example: Who was the third person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean? Who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean? Only the most die-hard fans of aviation history know the answer to the first question, while almost everyone knows Amelia Earhart is the answer to the second. That she is the answer to both questions illustrates their point. I have no doubt that...
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### Software update: Link Earning Community
- Published: 2022-09-22
- Modified: 2023-08-17
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/software-update-link-earning-community/
- Categories: Tutorials
This blog post details the software upgrades made as a result of some early adopter users, and myself, finding errors and making enhancement requests. Enhancements Enhancements are divided into two categories, functional and cosmetic. Functional Multiple pages We implemented a screen name limit of 16 characters. Users had selected screen names longer than we anticipated, and this was causing text fields to wrap. There are now red question marks scattered on various pages. When you click one, a display widget pops up with information relevant to that page and to that part of the page. Things that a User CAN click on, that are not buttons, are now red. Sites page Buttons that you SHOULD click on (and in one case MUST) are now red. They turn blue after you've done whatever that button provides for you to do. Search page If you had previously entered only one Site and entered at least one URL to promote for that Site, the system selects that Site for you. After all, when you have only one possible selection you can make, why not let the system make it for you? Link Requests page When a Link Request was initially sent, the on-screen message about waiting three days before you can send a reminder was worded as if a reminder had already been sent. This was confusing and is now fixed. When a User rejects a link request, they can now enter a reason as to why they did so. A User can...
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### Google's helpful content update and E-E-A-T?
- Published: 2022-08-24
- Modified: 2023-07-22
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/googles-helpful-content-update-and-e-a-t/
- Categories: SEO
Google has been pushing “content quality” for years While some people have expressed concern about Google’s “helpful content update”, we’ve been repeatedly warned about it for years. We all knew it was coming, and no one should be surprised. Not only is it not new, but if you’ve really thought about how Google makes money, you’ve been focusing on creating content for people (adequately formatted for search engines of course but FOR people) and you should have no reason for concern. Your people-focused content may even get a boost as other search engine-focused content gets “demoted”. Google has been pushing E-A-T for years E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. While millions of words on this topic have been published, does it really require an explanation? Give people answers. If you’re not an expert in a topic, get answers from people who are before you publish. Credit those experts. Explain how they (or you) became an expert. Tell the truth. Etc, etc. And now it's E-E-A-T Where the newest E stands for Experience. Is this update going to shake the SEO world? Like Penguin did in 2012? Probably. But if it results in better search results, we would want that, right? What makes content “people-focused”? The simple litmus test is, if search engines were not a thing, would the content still be relevant? Interesting? Useful? Worth publishing? If the answer is anything other than an unequivocal yes, that content was, to some extent, written for search engines, not people. To...
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### Start Here: Overview of the Link Earning Community
> This Link Earning Community helps you build links by making it easy to promote your best content with SEO pros who need, and give, links.
- Published: 2022-07-06
- Modified: 2023-08-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/digital-pr-network/
- Categories: Tutorials
IMPORTANT: While the post contains the registration URL at the end, please read this post before you register, as the concepts described in this tutorial are important to understand. The Link Earning Community is a portal in which SEO, Digital PR, and Link Building professionals promote their best content to each other. These tutorials provide an overview of how you use the community and contains links to other tutorial documents and videos that contain specific detail for various functions. General concepts Privacy Within the community, you establish and are known by a screen name. It is a name you simply make up. There are two restrictions: 1) Screennames are limited to 16 characters, 2) You can not use a name someone else is already using. Your email address is not revealed to other users of the system, nor do you see theirs (with the exception of you can in some instances see the email addresses of other members of your team). Teams When an individual registers, they become a Team Lead. They can add other members to their team up to the limit of their subscription level. Team members can later be inactivated and reactivated. Additionally, it is possible for the Team Lead to pass that responsibility onto any other active team member. Subscription levels The subscription levels are: Platinum Gold Silver Free (silver level - but free for early adopter initial users) Bronze Subscription levels determine your limits within the platform. There are limits on the number of active...
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### As regards SEO, is everything link building?
> The phrase "In SEO everything is link building" is not literally true, but click here to learn how THIS perspective helps you focus your efforts.
- Published: 2021-08-04
- Modified: 2023-10-29
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/as-regards-seo-is-everything-link-building/
- Categories: Link Building
This phrase has been stuck in my mind for about a year now, after I interviewed a few dozen people for an article I wrote for Search Engine Watch and one of the people I interviewed said this phrase: “Everything is link building”. In the spirit of full disclosure, the full quote was “Everything is link building, and links indicate the right people know about you”, but only the first clause stuck in my head. To be clear, he did not believe “everything is link building” was to be taken literally, but rather it was a guiding principle around which they organized their SEO activities. They neither ignored nor neglected keyword research, quality content, technical SEO, etc, but they applied a “link building” litmus test to their content development. Whatever they published had to, in their experience, have an excellent chance to earn links through promotion and after some promotion attracts links organically. The phrase stuck in my head so strongly that I became curious about how other SEOs felt about it. Surveying SEOs about “Everything is link building” So I created a survey and asked for input with which to write this article. I received 47 survey submissions. There were four questions: How do you feel about the idea that “As regards SEO, everything is link building”? This was a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is “strongly disagree” and 10 is “strongly agree”. What does the phrase mean to you? This was a freeform text field. Beyond...
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### When it comes to link building, what matters most?
> You hear A LOT of conflicting information (and many false promises) regarding link building. But, what matters most? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2021-07-06
- Modified: 2022-10-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/when-it-comes-to-link-building-what-matters-most/
- Categories: Link Building
The headline implies there is one thing that matters most, and for what it’s worth, that title occurred to me after I wrote this article, as I decided that in fact there is. How I gathered information This article is based on interviews (conducted via an exchange of emails) with eight link builders, some of whom represent one brand, and some of whom represent multiple. I was looking for similarities and differences in how link builders approach link building, both strategy and tactics. Similarities and differences The first similarity that jumps out at me is that tactical stuff (the day-to-day doing of it) dominated almost all the responses. Perhaps that is due to the way I worded my questions, but in reviewing responses very few people identified an overarching strategy that shaped their day-to-day efforts, and the two who did mention “relationship building” as their strategy. Everyone else jumped straight into the nuts and bolts of doing it. The day-by-day tactics, practices, and activities. Again, this may be due to the way I worded my questions. I’m not sure. One interesting difference that jumped out at me is this group does not agree on what tools to use. This was all over the map. HARO, OnePitch, SEMRush, SimilarWeb, and Ahrefs were all mentioned by a single person. Buzzstream was mentioned by three of the eight, and only one tool was mentioned by almost everyone, and that tool is the email address lookup tool Hunter, which was mentioned by seven people....
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### Why Your Blog on Your Website is the Hub of Your Online Marketing
> Why is your blog the hub of your online marketing? What other internet real estate do you control that no one can take away? Click here learn more.
- Published: 2021-06-14
- Modified: 2025-04-18
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/why-your-blog-on-your-website-is-the-hub-of-your-online-marketing/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
The primary reasons are... It’s real estate on the Internet that you own. You can not control the rules at Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, and the people who do sometimes change them drastically without notice. This has hurt businesses who have put a lot of effort into being visible on those platforms. Your blog on your website can never be turned off by anyone other than you. Blogging allows you to talk directly to your audience, without any platform applying a filter. Improving your search ranking involves two things: 1) Content and 2) Links. And it all starts with content. Being found by users doing Internet searches results in the highest quality visitors and leads you’ll ever find, because after all, they found you. Attracting visitors to your website via organic search is not as hard as most people think. It definitely takes work and it takes time to work, but anyone can do it. Email and social media marketing have their place in your online marketing, but they are add-ons to your blogging activity, not instead of it. Why Are Visitors from Organic Search so Important? When we’re presented with a Search Engine Result Page (such as the one below), 94% of the time we choose something within the organic search results area. A recent study by Growth Badger in which they analyzed traffic sources for 3. 25 billion website visits shows that about half of all website traffic originates from an Internet search and that Google brings in eight...
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### Digital PR vs Link Building
> Per Google, link building is bad, but digital PR is good. How are they different and how are they the same? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2021-02-15
- Modified: 2025-04-10
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/brand-journalism/digital-pr-vs-link-building/
- Categories: Brand Journalism
Featured image attribution: The Castle Group, image URL, and image license. What is Digital PR, and why does it matter? Backlinks, link building, and domain authority are not terms traditional public relations people use or necessarily understand. But, in our modern world where Google has disrupted advertising, those terms are now part of public relations. First, Google disrupted advertising, not just search Google has not just disrupted Internet search, Google has disrupted advertising. Google is the largest advertising platform ever developed, by a mind-bogglingly large margin. In 2019, the total global advertising spend was $586 billion. Of that, $135 billion went to Google. That’s 23%. In 2019, slightly more than one advertising dollar out of five went to Google, in the entire world. Take a minute and let that sink in. Traditional PR Public relations has revolved around getting favorable press mentions for brands by maintaining relationships with journalists. By helping journalists, and by helping them do their jobs, public relations people were able to influence the reputation of their brands, through working relationships with journalists. Digital PR Digital PR is essentially the same, but in a world where becoming a publisher is so cheap almost anyone can do it. So in addition to journalists, public relations people need to work with influential bloggers and social media influencers. Additionally, brand mentions come with links to your content, thereby influencing your search ranking, so treating public relations as separate from SEO hurts both. While some businesses do still treat SEO, social...
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### Public Relations and SEO
> What do public relations and SEO pros think about the integration of the two? Does one support the other? Click here to learn what they think.
- Published: 2020-12-04
- Modified: 2023-07-23
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/brand-journalism/public-relations-and-seo/
- Categories: Brand Journalism
Testing: link test Image credit: geminos creative This article starts with a very brief summary of the top ranking articles for the search phrase "public relations and SEO". They're presented and summarized in three groupings: SEO supports PR PR supports SEO PR and SEO go together like peanut butter and jelly SEO supports Public Relations Per matternow. com, SEO is the practice of increasing website content visibility, and as a public relations agency, they seem to assume you know what PR is. Their framing is that SEO supports PR. Per TopRank Marketing, PR and Communications pros need to know SEO, as a result of Internet search being such a dominant force in the lives or everyone, which includes both consumers and journalists. Their framing implies, but does not directly state, that SEO supports PR. Public Relations supports SEO Per Search Engine Journal, PR is crucial to SEO. As an SEO focused publication, they take the opposite framing from mattersnow. com. They describe SEO and PR as separate (as does mattersnow. com), but they flip the roles. Here SEO is primary, and PR supports SEO. Public Relations and SEO go together Per Tarakeet, they are separate things which can be integrated. SEO is the technical side while PR acts as the source of relationship building, and you need both. Per SEMrush, they state that "Modern link building relies on a traditional public relations approach" which I agree with 100%. Per Victorious (an SEO agency), getting information in front of the right...
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### How to write link building pitches that get noticed
> The key is to think about how you react when you receive link building pitches. What gets your attention? What do you immediately delete?
- Published: 2020-11-30
- Modified: 2023-12-31
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/link-building/writing-link-building-pitches-that-get-noticed/
- Categories: Link Building
About this article In the spirit of full disclosure, this article about writing link building pitches is based on, and is a bit of a rewrite of an article written by Surena Chande and was previously published on Buzzstream, but has since been removed. Why, you might ask, would I rewrite an article I not only can link to, but once did within this very article? The answer is because I have in the past linked to very useful articles, only to have them later disappear from the Internet, leaving me with both a broken link, which is easily fixed, and the loss of the article, which is not. Which happened here. For that reason, when I now find a really useful article whose content I want to ensure I never lose, I'll rewrite it to publish on our website, of course giving credit and links to the original article and author. The article Surena wrote is based on her experience both as a link builder pitching technology journalists, and as a technology journalist who received too many pitches to give them more than a second or two of consideration before deciding to delete them or not. As a journalist, if a subject line got her attention, the opening paragraph had to next. While her article is focused on pitching story ideas to journalists, these concepts apply to pitching people who publish on corporate websites as well. Whether you're promoting content on your website, or pitching to write a guest...
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### Creating and using the Gmail aliases feature ("Send mail as")
> Using the Gmail aliases feature allows you to receive and send "branded" email (from your domain) from a free Gmail account. Click here to learn.
- Published: 2020-11-07
- Modified: 2024-07-21
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/tutorials/creating-and-using-the-gmail-aliases-feature/
- Categories: Tutorials
Using the Gmail aliases feature ("Send mail as")? Why not just use Google G Suite? Which makes it easy to have email addresses that are within your domain:? Because when compared to the cost of G Suite, it's really cheap to do so. G Suite costs $6 per month per user, and while you get a lot more with G Suite than just email addresses that are within your domain, if you need 6 such email addresses, it costs $36 per month. For a solution using the Gmail alias feature, there is $3 a month, for an unlimited number of email addresses within your domain. How do you set this up? Which services might cost? First, let's talk about what you have to pay for. You'll need to subscribe to a mail forwarding service so that email inbound to your domain is properly delivered to your Gmail accounts. For this tutorial we are recommending the email forwarding service of Forward Email. Why? Because it works reliably, is fairly easy to setup, and costs only $3 a month. For Forward Email, they have a free version, but I could not get it to work, so I subscribe to their lowest cost plan at $3 per month which allows for unlimited domains and unlimited email addresses within each domain. Additionally, if you want a "catchall" email address for your domain, which I strongly recommend, it looks like you MUST subscribe to a paid plan. Getting setup requires various steps, which are identified...
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### Which WordPress Plugins Should You Use and Why
> Every WordPress site need some Wordpress plugins, but each one adds code and slows things down. So which ones matter and which ones don't?
- Published: 2019-01-11
- Modified: 2021-10-01
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/misc/which-wordpress-plugins-should-you-use-and-why/
- Categories: Misc
Every WordPress Site Needs Plugins But which ones? And why? Last night I met someone who was confused about this. I told him I would send him a list of which WordPress Plugins I run on my site, with an explanation as to what they do and why they matter. This morning I decided it should be a blog post, which is easily shared with others. Which Plugins Are Used on This Site First, I know I run a lot of plugins and I know each plugin slows down my site a bit. However, these plugins all provide value and I understand the tradeoff. I compensate for the reduced site speed introduced by the plugins by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). In my case, CloudFlare. Of course, this introduces yet another plugin. Below is my list: Akismet Anti-Spam This plugin filters out SPAM comments and per the reporting from the plugin has blocked thousands of SPAM comments over time. Akismet requires a bit of a setup, which I did so long ago I don’t recall the exact steps However I found a tutorial article that shows the process step by step. I use the free version. AMP This plugin translates pages that are not AMP complaint into pages that are. I personally have not yet dug into AMP, but I’ve been told it’s important and installing this plugin was quick and easy. Every once in a while I get a message from Google Search Console with an AMP warning,...
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### In Closing: Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
- Published: 2018-06-08
- Modified: 2021-10-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/in-closing-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Getting your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) right is not quick and is not easy, but when you get it dialed in right, it carries your business. It explains to people in very few seconds what your company is all about. It allows people to know what you can do for them, without requiring them to think. But... . Getting it right takes time, effort, testing, and iteration after iteration after iteration. But going through the effort helps in so many other areas of your business, that you can’t afford not to spend time working out what yours is.
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### How to Communicate Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
> Effectively communicating your Unique Selling Proposition starts while you're testing it. This is how you learn if your product solves a real problem.
- Published: 2018-06-06
- Modified: 2021-10-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-communicate-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Communicating your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) starts while you’re testing it, and continues after you think you’ve got it right. When you come to the realization you’ve got a product that solves a real solution and you’ve dialed in your messaging (via A/B testing) to where people are responding and buying, you get active. You talk to people in the industry, you interact in social media groups on your topic, etc. The Value of the Two or Three Word Slogan This is part of the philosophy of “Don’t make them think”. This can be hard to do, but try to make it so easy for someone to understand your USP that you’re able to express it (or a significant portion of it) in a three-word slogan. In case you’re skeptical about the value of the Three Word Slogan, Donald Trump became President of the United States through effective use of three word (and shorter) slogans: Lock her up, Build the wall, Throw him out, Winning again, Believe me, etc. Trump so gets the value of the three word slogan that he’s already trademarked “Keep American Great” to use in the 2020 election. Condensing your USP into a three word slogan requires some thought, discussion with others, and testing. And it works. Test Your USP Again I know I keep saying “test, test, test”, but it’s very important so I’m saying it again. Try your slogans out on people (in person, via social media, and via paid ads) and see if...
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### How to Test Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
> Once you've developed what seems to be a strong Unique Selling Proposition, how do you test it? Compare it to other options? Click here....
- Published: 2018-06-04
- Modified: 2022-01-07
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-test-your-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Once you’ve developed what you think is a good Unique Selling Proposition (USP), how do you test it? There are two ways that make sense. Of course, if you think of more, let me know... . . Talk to People Which people? With the people you previously interviewed. How do you test it? Setup another interview and this time tell them what you’re thinking and ask for feedback. Ads, Landing Pages, and Waiting Lists You believe that product X will solve problems for people in your industry and those people will pay for the product. Test it by creating a mailing list which will be a waiting list, a landing page that describes the benefits to someone using product X, and brings people to that landing page with paid ads (Adwords, Facebook, etc). Make it all as real as possible. Think of the conversion process someone would go through if the product was real. Ad > Landing Page? Landing Page > Demo? Demo > Capture Email? You will at some point have to fess up that you’re running an experiment to see if the product is viable, but for the conversion process, pretend the product exists and run as real a conversion process as you can. This is because a CTA that says “Learn More” will not convert as many people as one that says “See Demo”. More people click the CTA button when they have a better idea of what they’ll find on the other side. You’ll also want...
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### How to Craft a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
> Once you've got background information on the whole Unique Selling Proposition thing, how do you craft YOURS? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2018-06-01
- Modified: 2022-10-30
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-craft-a-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Once you’ve got background information on the whole USP thing, how do you craft YOURS? I found a great method described in a blog post titled 5 Ways to Develop a Unique Selling Proposition. The title is, however, a bit misleading. In two ways: 1) It’s not that you pick the one you like best. You do all five and 2) They also only list four ways. But they’re good. I added a 5th way, which is the one that appears first. I’ll summarize that blog below. To read the full post, click the link . in the prior paragraph. Talk to Prospects and Potential Customers Interview customers, prospects, and people in your industry to find out what they complain about. There is a great format for how to conduct these interviews in Running Lean. Through these interviews, you’ll learn what problems they need solved (or more accurately are willing to pay to be solved). Unabashedly Appeal to an Ideal Customer No business serves everybody. No business serves anybody. So don’t try. Instead, figure out whose money you’re best interested to attract, and talk to those people. And below is a quote from a Seth Godin blog post, it helps illustrate the importance of owning whatever is different between you and anyone else. His point is to not pay heed to people who are skeptical of what you’re doing. Instead, cater to people who get it. Those people are your people. “Instead of working so hard to prove the skeptics...
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### How to Figure Out a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition
- Published: 2018-05-27
- Modified: 2021-10-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-figure-out-a-high-growth-unique-selling-proposition/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
So... . How do you create a great USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? The short answer is... . . Slowly, through iterations. But... . And this is critical... . . If you don’t have data to back up your USP, you don’t actually have a USP. If you’re declaring your USP and you don’t have data to back up with you’re saying, you’re just making it up. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. Everyone guesses right on occasion. What it DOES mean is you don’t really know. Where do you get data with which to design and test your USP? From prospects and customers. By talking to them. There is a GREAT section on how to do this in the book Running Lean. The title of the section is Systematically Test Your Plan. First, Organize the Work into Problems and Solutions I think this idea is one of the many gems in the book Running Lean. While you’re working to figure out what the market wants, from which you’ll create your USP, it’s helpful to think in terms of Problems and Solutions and to organize your work accordingly. Problems are what people out there in the marketplace have, that you’re going to solve. Solutions is how you solve them. Of course, this includes you being paid for products and/or services. This exercise in figuring out what the market needs require flexibility and an ability to declare when you’ve run into a dead end and need to try something else. For this reason,...
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### Examples of Fantastic and Terrible Unique Selling Propositions
> How do you communicate why your brand matters? Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a critical piece of this puzzle. You want to get this right.
- Published: 2018-05-26
- Modified: 2022-10-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/examples-of-fantastic-and-terrible-unique-selling-propositions/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Some brands have experienced impressive growth during periods where they used a really effective Unique Selling Proposition (USP), then lost market share later when they stopped. This has occurred often enough that there seems to be a clear pattern. Having said that, the people who changed the USP later thought for whatever reasons, they were doing the right things. Examples of Great and Terrible USPs Great Ones Some of these are no longer used, and I’m not sure why. They’re great. M&Ms Melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Facebook Easily connect with friends. Domino's Pizza Fresh, hot pizza to your door in 30 minutes or less, or it’s free. Avis We’re number two. We try harder. FedEx When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. Saddleback Leather They’ll fight over it when you’re dead. DeBeers A diamond is forever. Evernote Remember everything. Terrible Ones These are real, I kid you not. Invoice Dude Invoice Dude is an online billing software speciality designed for small and medium businesses. NovaMind Visualize your information to get things done. Now let’s compare them each to a competitor who has ones that are MUCH better. BillFaster Professional invoices in 7 seconds The Brain Your digital brain: organize and find everything.
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### Very Important Ideas About High Growth Unique Selling Propositions
> Good Unique Selling Propositions don't just appear. They're the result of trial and error involving planning and structure. Learn more, click here.
- Published: 2018-05-23
- Modified: 2023-11-03
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/very-important-ideas-about-high-growth-unique-selling-propositions/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
Sometimes, for your message to get through, it’s necessary to (metaphorically speaking) hit someone over the head with a message that effectively says “What you know is wrong”. Solid unique selling propositions can help do this. Dispelling Myths A YouTube science educator named Derek Muller has a Ph. D. in teaching physics through video. His Ph. D. thesis is titled Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education. In the course of running what we might call social or educational experiments for his Ph. D. research, he discovered that in order to get people to learn anything, you first need to tell them “What you know is wrong” in an effective way. It appears this is a trigger that causes us to pay attention. When we’re hearing something we think we already know, we appear to not pay attention well. And why should we, since we already know about it? If you’ve read the prior articles in this series, you’ve seen these two examples of effective myth-dispelling in marketing. They are repeating (briefly) as they’re both EXCELLENT examples of successfully marketing “against the prevailing market”. 7-Up How do you sell a clear soda against colas? By defining the “UnCola” as refreshing, thereby creating a new product category. And of course, the ever popular... . https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=AXmc7DG4uu8 Volkswagen How do you sell a small car (the Beetle) against a culture of big luxury cars and powerful muscle cars? By positioning the small and functional Volkswagen Beetle as cool. As cool to...
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### How The Customer Factory Helps You Achieve Massive Growth
> The Customer Factory is an interesting concept which when implemented well will fuel your brand to massive growth. How? Click here to learn...
- Published: 2018-05-20
- Modified: 2023-12-09
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-the-customer-factory-helps-you-achieve-massive-growth/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
When you get your USP right, EVERY “flow” of The Customer Factory is better. Monitoring The Customer Factory for your business tells you if your USP is working. The Customer Factory I learned this idea from Ada Ryland here in Austin, TX who provides consulting services to early-stage startups. She did mention who she learned it from, but I’m forgetting. Please refer to the diagram of “The Customer Factory” below to help make sense of the following description. In short, the revenues for every business come from three main sources: New Customers Repeat Customers Referral Customers (yes, they’re “new”, but it’s a better new) The USP you present (knowingly or otherwise) to those three groups may differ slightly. For example: A new customer may be initially attracted by functionality. A new customer may activate with a focus on ease of use. A returning customer may expand their needs to include visibility to activity and ability to measure productivity. A customer making a referral may be nudged to action by the potential for residual income from an affiliate program. You know your USP is good when EVERY flow within The Customer Factory has a high and quick conversion rate. Customer Factory Purpose The main purpose of The Customer Factory is to tell you where to focus on your short-term efforts. If your conversion rate on Acquisition rate is low, working to improve your Activation rate is wasted effort. Conversely, if your Acquisition rate is good, but your Activation rate is low...
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### How Your Unique Selling Proposition Fuels Massive Growth
> How does your Unique Selling Proposition related to positioning your product or service in the marketplace? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2018-05-15
- Modified: 2023-10-05
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-your-unique-selling-proposition-fuels-massive-growth/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
How are your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and your UVP(Unique Value Proposition) different? It depends on who you ask. When you Google USP vs UVP, you get various answers. Some people say they’re different. Others say they’re the same thing. My personal favorite is from the website of Jill Konrath, a Sales Strategist. Her definitions are: UVP: A clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. USP: A statement about what makes you and your company different from others vendors. However, most websites that provide definitions of these terms consider them to mean the same thing. Whether you consider them to be the same or to be different, it’s important to note that those concepts relate to other important business and marketing concepts. Relationship to Product-Market Fit Marc Andreessen of the Venture Capital firm of Andreessen Horowitz coined the phrase Product-Market Fit. He coined this phrase after being in the VC industry for a while. He saw that some of their investment companies were founded and led by incredibly smart people, who shared a common great and grand vision, worked well together, and failed. On the other hand, other investment companies, led by less smart people, who disagreed on the Who, What, and Why of the companies, and suffered from some level of poor interpersonal relationships, were wildly successful. After examining many of these successes and failures, Marc Andreessen said that what matters most to the success of a Startup is Product-Market Fit....
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### Why a Great Unique Selling Proposition Creates Massive Growth
> You want to see some truly inspirational Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) that created massive growth? Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2018-05-01
- Modified: 2024-12-03
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/why-a-great-unique-selling-proposition-creates-massive-growth/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
This article provides examples of how a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that IS MEANINGFUL, has created massive growth for companies. These are real examples taken from real companies (some old, some new), whose USPs helped them achieve dominance in their markets. In the spirit of full disclosure, we at Organic Growth are in the process of defining (or refining) our USP. We are using ideas and concepts that are described very well in two books, which deserve mention. Every entrepreneur should read them. Those two books are: Running Lean, by Ash Maurya Positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout We also talk about concepts that came from elsewhere, but since we’re not sure where we picked them up, those ideas are presented without citation to the original source. NOTE: When you click either of the links above, you notice they do not go to Amazon. com, but rather go to HalfPriceBooks. com. Why? Half Price Books has a fantastic USP, that is represented by a pithy three word slogan that also happens to be their name: Half Price Books. I buy all my books at Half Price Books unless they don’t have it, in which case I begrudgingly buy it somewhere else. Now, back to why your USP matters. In short, when you get your USP right, the market pulls you along. You achieve what is called Product-Market Fit and you may find yourself having trouble keeping up with demand. When you get this wrong, you’re just like every other company...
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### Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (Brand Strategy)
> A great Unique Selling Proposition (USP) can truly make a brand. How do you create one, test it, communicate it, etc? Click here, learn more.
- Published: 2018-03-19
- Modified: 2021-10-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/creating-your-unique-selling-proposition-brand-strategy/
- Categories: Marketing
- Series: Unique Selling Proposition
A great Unique Selling Proposition (USP) will cause the market to pull your business along. You'll have trouble keeping up. A mediocre one makes you just like everyone else. Your USP, is the simple idea that explains to someone in very few words what your business does for them that they won't get from someone else. A well crafted USP can have an incredible impact on a company's success. When you really get your USP down (which is more than JUST marketing), the market pulls you. A well crafted USP will even boost your SEO efforts, and you can (and should) run experiments online as you hone in on right USP for your business. The philosophy behind well crafted USPs seem to be: Keep it short Keep it simple Explain your difference Don’t make people think The USP ties into other important marketing concepts. I completed more research on this topic this article got longer and longer. I realized it would be necessary to break it up into a series of shorter articles to have any hope of keeping your attention. I hope I’ve succeeded. It feels the need to confess that I did create sub-post titles that are, to some extent, clickbait. Having said that, none are misleading. I simply choose words that the headline analyzer tool I use indicated people are more likely to search for. Below is a list of the sub-posts with a very brief description of the topic of each sub-post. Why a Great Unique Selling Proposition...
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### How to generate high quality leads with contextual marketing
- Published: 2018-02-26
- Modified: 2024-10-25
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/misc/how-to-generate-high-quality-leads-with-contextual-marketing/
- Categories: Misc
What Contextual Marketing is Not Contextual marketing is neither Outbound Marketing nor Inbound Marketing, both of which provide a lower ROI today. To better understand Contextual Marketing, it’s important to first understand the other forms of marketing. Outbound Marketing Outbound Marketing is composed of “traditional” forms of mass media marketing, such as TV/radio/yellow pages/newspaper ads and billboards. The defining characteristic of outbound marketing is your message is seen (or heard) by anybody and everybody, most of whom likely have no interest in your product or service. Mass marketing of this type makes sense for companies that sell things that almost everyone uses, such as laundry soap, toothpaste, and blue jeans. Inbound Marketing On the other hand, with Inbound Marketing, you post useful information to the internet and hope your target audience sees it and considers your product/service better than your competitors (or better than not having it at all). Today, most of us start our buying process by going online and searching for something we’re interested in. Inbound marketing is where someone performs a search and finds their way onto your website, where they see what you have to offer. Inbound marketing is built upon SEO (Search Engine Optimization), content, and methods of website conversion. Google paid ads are also considered inbound, as they show up in search results, even though they’re sponsored. Inbound marketing provides a better ROI than outbound marketing, but for organic search results (which is what is chosen 94% of the time), it takes time (usually...
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### How to increase blog traffic with controversial topics
- Published: 2018-01-18
- Modified: 2023-06-02
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-increase-blog-traffic-with-controversial-topics/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics The topic of using controversial topics to grow blog traffic and generate leads is, in and of itself, controversial. I’ve read articles online that talk about how well it works. I’ve read others about how well it backfires. I’ve seen opinions that you should DEFINITELY do it, and I’ve seen other opinions that you should definitely NOT. However... . . per an article published in Forbes in May 2015... . . Americans are 8. 1% more likely to buy from a company that shares their opinions about social and political issues. Americans are 8. 4% less likely to buy from a company that doesn’t. 56% of Americans believe corporations SHOULD talk about controversial social and political issues. 26 to 35-year-olds are 20% more likely to buy from companies whose social and political values mirror their own. People over 56 years of age are 16. 2% less likely to buy from companies whose social and political values are inconsistent with their own. People aged 36 to 55 do care about the social and political values of companies, but much less so than people who are either younger or older. So... a Good idea? Bad idea? Be aware, at this point, I am (somewhat) leaving the realm of facts and statistics, and expressing opinions. Some I found in doing research are not mine. Others are mine. A Few Case Studies Below, a few case studies are summarized, to give you an idea of how others have had...
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### How to increase leads and revenue with Pipeline Marketing
- Published: 2017-12-27
- Modified: 2022-10-30
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/marketing/how-to-increase-leads-and-revenue-with-pipeline-marketing/
- Categories: Marketing
What is Pipeline Marketing? At its core, Pipeline Marketing is nothing more than the attribution of “credit” for generating revenue, across various activities that are required to capture a lead, nurture a lead, close a sale, and even later resell or upsell the customer. How Does it Differ from Lead Generation? With Lead Generation, the full “credit” for the revenue goes to the source of the lead, which is to say, to the marketing channel by which the lead came in. Let’s say you have 4 means of generating leads, 4 marketing channels: SEO Google Paid Ads Facebook Paid Ads Social Media For every lead generated, you identify the marketing channel from which the lead emerged, then allocate all the revenue for the sale to that lead source. Why is Pipeline Marketing Important? There is a major deficiency in “merely” allocating revenue to lead sources, and that is almost no one who becomes a customer becomes a customer right away. There are often several “conversations” (some person to person, some person to website, some email to person to website) that occur as the prospective buyer goes through the process of assessing a need they have, identifying who might fulfill that need, comparing options, and (ideally) selecting you. Lead Generation is Not Enough: Sales Funnels “Leak” The diagram below shows a standard sales funnel. Pipeline Marketing diagram courtesy of Bizible Lead generation is concerned with dropping leads into the top of the funnel. However, not every lead becomes a sale. On...
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### What is semantic search? How to do SEO like a professional
> The commonly cited definition of semantic search and SEO is cryptic, so what IS it about? Click here to learn more...
- Published: 2017-09-24
- Modified: 2022-12-27
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/what-is-semantic-search-how-to-do-seo-like-a-professional/
- Categories: SEO
What is Semantic SEO? The commonly cited concise definition of semantic SEO is a bit cryptic. “Semantic search is a search or a question or an action that produces meaningful results, even when the retrieved items contain none of the query terms, or the search involves no query text at all. ” Tamas Doszkocs But I prefer a longer and less cryptic definition. “Semantic Search is defined as search for information based on the intent of the searcher and contextual meaning of the search terms, instead of depending on the dictionary meaning of the individual words in the search query. ” Tony John Semantic SEO (or semantic search) are the initial steps Google has taken (and is taking) to get us to a world similar to how people query computers on Star Trek. Which is to say by asking questions that way you would of another person, without having to focus on using “the right words”. One day with semantic search, we will be able to ask a series of questions with the computer realizing the questions are related, and taking the context in which the questions are asked into account when generating an answer. This is the power of semantic search. An Example of Semantic Search If you first ask: “How many MetroPCS stores are there near me? ” And get a list. You can then ask: “Which ones have a service center? ” And get a shorter list. In order to answer the first question, the search engine...
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### How to Sell More Easily and Naturally with Presuppositions
> Presuppositions are the language of advertising and political campaigns. They DO influence how we think about what we think about. Learn more...
- Published: 2017-08-30
- Modified: 2023-10-29
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-sell-more-easily-and-naturally-with-presuppositions/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
Presuppositional Phrases are the Language of Advertising The following all contain presuppositions. “Nothing whitens better than Crest” “Why suffer another summer? ” “This year, I’ll stop asking ‘Do I look fat’? ” Notice the first statement does NOT state that Crest whitens better, yet it is implied. On a marketing and advertising podcast I listened to months ago, the guy who created that slogan said he was particularly proud of it. The second statement presupposes that summer suffering is a thing. The third statement presupposes you have in fact been asking “Do I look fat”? These types of phrases help shape the way we think because they contain things we must assume to be true in order for the sentences to make sense. In order to make sense of the sentences, our minds simply accept the assumptions as true. For a very academic discussion of how presuppositional phrases are used in advertising, download the PDF below. NOTE: When you click the link below it IMMEDIATELY assumes you are downloading the document. In other words, in order to read it, you must download it first. Pragmatic Functions of Presupposition in Advertising English An Illustration of the Power of a Presupposition I saw the image below in a Google Plus post and it’s perfect to illustrate the power of a good presupposition. What is most interesting about that image is, there are no people in that picture. You’re looking at empty chairs. So why do the overwhelming majority of people think they...
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### What Is Internal Linking and Why Is It Important for SEO?
> What is internal linking? Why does it matter? Is there a right way and a wrong way to do it? Yes, there is. Click here to learn more.
- Published: 2017-08-27
- Modified: 2022-06-22
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/what-is-internal-linking-and-why-is-it-important-for-seo/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
Internal linking matters. The internal link structure of your website has a HUGE effect on your SEO. Ideally your internal link structure should be a hierarchy, not a web. The diagram below shows a nice hierarchy of internal links. Snippet posts link to pillar posts which in turn link to landing pages, which in this example link up one more level (perhaps to the home page). I could not find a good diagram of a web, but image that instead of the nice hierarchy seen above what you see is a mess of links with no apparent structure. That would be a web and for reasons explained below it’s undesirable. Why Links Matter Links are the currency of Google search and Google dominates search. What made Google into such an effective search engine is an algorithm called PageRank (it’s named after Larry Page who created it). PageRank is modeled on the way academic papers cite each other. When an academic paper is cited by other academic papers, the authority of the cited paper (and the scholar) increases. Citations from “high value” papers have more value than citations from lower value papers. PageRank does the same. The “value” of a page is determined by the values of the links pointing to that page, and the value of links is determined by the value of the page they originate on. In its day, it was a revolutionary idea and it produced MUCH better search results. It’s not an overstatement to say that...
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### How to continuously improve your content with Deming lessons
> The ideas taught by W. Edwards Deming can help you improve your content. The key is continuous improvement. What the Japanese call Kaizen.
- Published: 2017-08-02
- Modified: 2024-07-24
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/inbound-marketing/how-to-continuously-improve-your-content-with-deming-lessons/
- Categories: Inbound Marketing
The ideas taught by W. Edwards Deming can help you improve your content. Who was Deming? W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, and a management consultant. He transformed Japanese manufacturing after World War II after American manufacturers thought his ideas were a little weird. Too weird to take seriously. Having said that, I’m old enough to remember when Japanese manufactured products were a joke. When I was 7 or 8 years old (1966 or 1967) my mother owned a small Japanese car. One night while going up a somewhat steep hill, the clutch gave out. My step father was driving at the time and joked it was the Japanese getting back at us for winning the war. I didn’t get the joke at the time, but I remember my mother thought it was funny. Just 7 or 8 years later (1972 or 1973) my father was very impressed with these new little cars made by a Japanese company named Honda. They were very small, had 4 cylinder engines, and for a variety of reasons (one being their low cost) REALLY impressed him. Then 4 years later when I bought my first car, I put very little thought into it and bought a 4 cylinder Honda Civic. It was so reliable and so dependable, I bought Honda’s (and later Accords) for the next 25 years. How did Japan go from their manufacturing being a joke, to their manufacturing being the envy of the world in less than...
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### Find better citation links with mozbar domain authority
> Links to other sites and pages are citations. How does the Moz Domain Authority metric help you find better links for your citations? Learn more...
- Published: 2017-06-26
- Modified: 2022-08-07
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/seo/find-better-citation-links-with-mozbar-domain-authority/
- Categories: SEO
What is Domain Authority? It is an integer, between 1 and 100, that was created by Moz (an SEO tool vendor located in Seattle, WA) that provides an indication of the authority of the domain in question. Higher numbers indicate domains with more authority. Few sites have a domain authority (DA) of 100, and to give an example of how difficult that is, some of the websites with a domain authority of 100 are Google, YouTube, and Facebook. Why Does This Matter? Every blog post you publish needs at least one outbound link. Google treats outbound links as citations. In fact, the Google PageRank algorithm is modeled on the way academic papers cite each other and: 1) the authority of an academic paper increase as the number of citations to it increases, 2) the authority of a citation is higher when the academic paper it’s in has a high level of authority. When you look for web pages to link to for purposes of your external reference citations (your outbound links), you want high authority websites. The Moz DA score is another piece of information to help inform these decisions. How to Easily Know Domain Authority This involves using the Chrome browser, installing the MozBar extension, and creating an account at the Moz website (which is done through the extension). Use Chrome MozBar is a chrome extension, therefore you need to use the Chrome browser. Install MozBar To do so, select the 3 dots at the top right of the...
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### Google E-E-A-T: What it is and why it matters
> What is Google E-E-A-T and how does it affect your search rankings and organic traffic? In short, Google makes the rules of search, and they say.....
- Published: 2017-05-24
- Modified: 2023-10-08
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/google-eeat-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/
- Categories: Glossary
Google E-A-T recently became Google E-E-A-T, and this is important. Google has been pushing E-A-T as their main set of quality metrics for years now. This has become especially relevant with Google's announcement of their helpful content update on 18 Aug 2022, which was probably the biggest step towards enforcing E-A-T that Google take taken until then. Then in Dec of 2022, E-A-T became E-E-A-T. This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. So what is E-E-A-T? E-E-A-T stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. ” Let’s break it down... Experience This is the addition in Dec of 2022. The writer has personal experience with the topic in question. Expertise When creating content for your website, how much expertise goes into the process? Does your content demonstrate a high level of expertise, or was it "flung together" quickly? Demonstrating expertise means showing you, or the experts you spoke to, have appropriate credentials backing up the claim to expertise. To illustrate the important difference between experience and expertise, I'll use the example of cancer. If you're an oncologist, you're an expert. If you have or had cancer, you have experience. Authority You need to show that you, or the person you spoke to, to get information, are an authority in the topic area. How do you achieve this? By knowing what you're talking about. By providing answers that work. When it comes to showing authority, experience matters. Trust Trust is above and...
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### Customer Journey / Buyers Journey
> The buyers or customer journey is the set of decisions / steps people take from knowing you exist to buying what you sell and telling others.
- Published: 2017-04-09
- Modified: 2023-10-08
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/customer-journey/
- Categories: Glossary
The customer journey or the buyers journey is the steps taken and decisions made by a prospect in the course of deciding to buy whatever it is that you sell. The main purpose of understanding your customer journey is to guide your sales and marketing team in generating and nurturing leads. Customer Journey or Buyers Journey For both big and small businesses, the customer experience is important and starts when the customer is not yet a customer. Rather, when they're learning about the product, service, and company. This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Start: Define your target audience Quite simply, who are you selling to? Why will they buy, at all? Why will they buy, from you? This exercise helps you know who you want to attract and the messages and content needed to get to their attention. What problem do they need to solve? What messages catch their attention? What are they searching for online? Step by Step The next "step" is kind of a big deal as it's you understanding and documenting the steps someone goes through in deciding to buy from you. The best way to know this is to interview customers and ask them both why they bought whatever the product or service is, as well as why they bought from YOU. Then map out their answers into a sequence of decisions. You may need to interview 10 customers (or more) to get a good...
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### Snippet Post
> Snippet posts are fairly short posts and either answer one question or convey one main idea. Why do they matter? How do you use them?
- Published: 2017-03-29
- Modified: 2023-10-09
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/snippet-post/
- Categories: Glossary
Snippet posts are fairly short posts and either answer one question or convey one main idea. They are contrasted with Pillar Posts which are longer, better researched, and convey more information. Both of which are part of Topic Clusters. Snippet posts are generally 500 to 600 words long, and are for SEO purposes are published frequently. Snippet Posts answer one question or make one point This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Snippet Posts are not Featured Snippets Snippet posts are not to be confused with the Google featured snippet. A Featured Snippet is a block of text that shows on the top of a SERP (search engine) results page that contains a summary of an answer and a link to the webpage from which it was obtained. Featured snippets are provided for the top ranking page for a given search query. This article is NOT about featured snippets, this article is about snippet posts. What are the benefits of snippet posts? They make your site larger and busier While Google does not share the details of their search algorithm, it is easy to figure some things out by looking at search results. And one very important idea is that within a defined niche or topic, Google tends to rank large busy websites higher than websites that are smaller and less busy. Snippet posts are a way to generate more content, more frequently, so that your website becomes both larger and busier....
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### SERP (Search Engine Result Page)
> A SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is the page Google (and the other search engines) return to you in response to a search query. What's in it?
- Published: 2017-03-17
- Modified: 2023-10-12
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/serp-search-engine-result-page/
- Categories: Glossary
Introduction A SERP (Search Engine Result Page) is the page Google (and the other search engines) return to you in response to a search query. This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Elements of a Search Engine Result Page As Google is the dominant search engine, I'll use the Google SERP for this section. Search Generative Experience (SGE) This is new, currently (12 Oct 2023) in beta, and available through Google labs. If you don't have access to SGE, you can request access through the link, in the prior sentence. Once you do, you see a beaker icon in the top right corner of chrome. And this is what it looks like. It is the OpenAI ChatGPT output provided for the search request just made, so essentially, the Google search input field becomes a place where AI engine prompts can be entered. SGE works with various AI engines: ChatGPT (version 3) from OpenAI is free ChatGPT4 from Open AI requires a paid plan Claude2 from Anthropic requires a paid plan Bard from Golgle has both free and paid levels, but for some reason I can't get Bard to work right now. I'm getting the generic "Something went wrong" message and am being told to try again later. Paid ads Paid ads are identified by the label "Sponsored", shown below outlined in red. The rules for how many ads show in your SERP when are not clear to some. I have seen four...
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### Private Blog Network
> A Private Blog Network is a network of sites which obtained high domain authority, generally via Black Hat SEO, on which links are sold.
- Published: 2017-03-12
- Modified: 2023-10-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/private-blog-network/
- Categories: Glossary
Introduction A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a privately owned network of servers that have obtained high domain authority via some means (generally via what where called Black Hat SEO techniques) and from which links to other websites are sold. Private blog network This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Joining a Private Blog Network In a word, don't. Private Blog Networks were, for the most part, rendered ineffective in 2013 or 2014 via one of the Google algorithm updates, yet you still occasionally find people trying to sell links from their Private Blog Networks. Risks and consequences The reality is, some private blog networks are still providing their customers with SEO boosts, but as Google rolls out more and more algorithm updates, the SEO boost some sites see from being part of a PBN disappears. And when it does it disappears overnight. Alternatives to a Private Blog Network Simply put, publish and promote content that is deemed to be high quality per the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, a link to which can be found here. Consider joining a link earning community of some sort, whether it be a slack channel, a LinkedIn group, or ours. Should you join a PBN? No! As much as there are people who promote the pros of private blog networks like control, instant authority, etc. , the following are three reasons why you should NOT join a PBN. Risk As Google updates their...
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### Outbound Links
> Outbound links are links from pages on your website to web pages on other websites. Why are they important for your SEO? Click here, learn more.
- Published: 2017-03-08
- Modified: 2023-10-11
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/outbound-links/
- Categories: Glossary
Introduction Outbound links are links from pages on your website to web pages on other websites. A study of the effect of outbound links was conducted and demonstrates the positive impact of outbound links. All things being equal (which of course they never really are) pages with an outbound link or two rank higher than pages without outbound links. Other studies have shown outbound links provide people a greater sense of credibility when the other sites are being referenced are topically relevant. This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Best practices: Discovery links A discovery link is a link in a webpage that provides the reader with either a citation to support a claim or statement being made, or that provides further information on the topic. I'm not sure what you'll discover here. This is just a picture of a few links. Discovery links are quite literally THE Google origin story. Please note that in this post I do not tell the Google origin story, but in the sentence above I link to a post that does. That is a discovery link, although in this instance it's an internal link as it links to another webpage on this website. SEO Impact As stated above, a study of the effect of outbound links demonstrated that posts with outbound links tended to rank higher than posts without. Strategies Since discovery links are deemed "good" by Google, go with it. We all perform various levels of...
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### Brand Publishing/Journalism
> Brand publishing: Where content marketing learns from journalism. Constantly pursuing stories and meeting deadlines is now part of marketing.
- Published: 2017-02-13
- Modified: 2023-10-09
- URL: https://organicgrowth.biz/glossary/brand-publishing/
- Categories: Glossary
Introduction Brand publishing or brand journalism is simply the strategy of practicing journalism, but for marketing. Brand publishing describes how brands (businesses) directly publish content for their customers, their prospects, and to the world at large. Brand journalism or publishing is storytelling, for marketing This post is part of a series and here is the link to the main glossary page. Why brand publishing matters A brief history of Believe it or not, brand publishing predates the Internet by about 80 years. Magazines The Furrow was a quarterly magazine published by John Deer from at least 1897. It came out every quarter, was distributed for free at farmer supply stories, and was filled with articles of interest to farmers. Crop rotations, water conservation, fertilizer use, etc. And it was full of ads for John Deere products and services. Blogs Internet publishing became practically free with the advent of software platforms like WordPress, and at first people published things that were of interest to them. Such as housewives in Iraq telling stories of the US occupation, and bicycle enthusiasts publishing stories about long distance cycling, etc. Content marketing And at some point, the people in marketing realized that blogs could be used to publish what are in effect online magazines, and content marketing was born. But content marketing is more than "just" blogs It's als0 social media posts, content promotion public relations campaigns, landing pages, sales funnels, etc. Brand publishing/journalism is the basis of what we call Content Marketing or Inbound Marketing and...
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