Ryan Nead

SEO isn’t yet dead. Neither is link building. But artificial intelligence is shaking up the search world more than those 10 blue links ever did nearly three decades ago. SEOs and webmasters alike are concerned with the prospects of what the next incantation of the internet will look like and how it will impact both business and the bottom-line. Rightfully so. Here’s a glimpse of how AI is changing search and what you can do to stay relevant. The Longtail in SEO is Dead The longtail has always been the SEO’s secret weapon: Use keyword research to find low-competition, low-volume keywords where you can quickly and easily dominate competitors for niche-related queries. In fact, the common phrase digital marketers have used for websites looking to get more exposure has always been, “Focus on the longtail!” It’s been the age-old Art of War imperative to “go where the enemy isn’t.” AI is changing that game. The importance of certain ranking factors will continue to shift. For example, content quality, relevance, and uniqueness may become even more important than they already are, since Bard will be able to generate high-quality content that meets these criteria, without ever having to click, which has been a purposeful search engine algo trend for some time. In addition, those top-of-the-funnel informational queries can more easily be answered by AI than ever before. Searches like: “How does ….?” “How many….?” “How to…?” “When did….?” “Why does….?” “Who is ….?” etc. Unfortunately, these types of searches are dominant in overall queries in search. They also make up the majority of the long tail, which is now more likely to be dominated by machines. But that doesn’t mean you can’t fight against it. Here are just a few other ways artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing how we use search engines. Content Creation As Bard and ChatGPT become more advanced, it’s possible that content creation may shift towards using machine-generated content, which will change how websites create and optimize content for search engines. Keyword Research With language models like Bard and ChatGPT, keyword research may become less important, since these models are able to understand the meaning behind user queries and generate relevant content without relying on specific keywords. User Engagement With the use of ChatGPT to create conversational interfaces, website owners may be able to improve user engagement and potentially increase rankings by providing helpful information to users through chatbots or other interfaces. Quality Over Quantity With the ability of language models like Bard to generate high-quality content, there may be an increased emphasis on content quality, relevance, and uniqueness as ranking factors. Web Design With the emergence of conversational interfaces powered by ChatGPT, website owners may need to consider new design elements that facilitate these types of interactions, such as chatbots or messaging interfaces in a low-code, no-code environment. How to combat AI’s eventual dominance in search engine results The increasing dominance of AI in search engine results is a significant challenge for website owners and marketers. How the format and display in search will fully shake out remains to be seen. However, there are several strategies that can be used to combat this dominance and maintain or improve search engine rankings. Unique, Quality Research (notice I didn’t say content) Quality, unique content that provides value to users has always been a staple, but web creators can’t just pump out generic content any longer. Here is our mantra for combating AI/ML issues with unique copy: Your content should add value to the world, not just include regurgitated fluff from other websites. That means you need to include things that are original and answer questions before they are asked. Your researched content needs to be new. Most AI language models are only relevant to a certain point in time (as of this writing, ChatGPT’s source material is at least a year old). Newly researched material is not going to be available to machine learning models yet. Be the first-to-market with new concepts and you’re more likely to be linked to as the original source — and potentially referenced in future AI searches around the topic. Display your content textually, but it’s more important to be visual. Use charts, graphs and detailed walk-throughs explaining why your research matters. Localize Your SEO Local SEO remains easier for many terms, particularly for mid-market cities and locales. Local SEO searches are also more transactional in nature. Local searches are farther down the funnel, which means someone searching for local keywords are more likely to convert. In this same vein, it will be critical to make sure your local presence is dominated by positivity. That is, your business should include 5-star ratings from the likes of Google, Yelp and local review sites, creating an even greater layer of trust from your potential new clients, customers and patients. Focus on the Medium Tail The short tail will become even more valuable and difficult to rank for. For example, “______ service,” searched nationally will become tougher because there will be fewer click-throughs from organic thanks to AI’s dominance above the fold. However, if someone is looking for “best ________ service in ______,” that’s something that search will likely rank blue links for, but less likely to be dominated. It’s farther down the sales funnel than generic “What is…” or “How to….” long tail phrases, but it’s also more transactional in nature, meaning you’re more likely to find clients through this strategy. Use More Schema Markup Schema markup is a way to provide additional information about your website’s content to search engines. In a world dominated by generic content, schema markup will provide structured information that search engines can parse, better understand and interpret. It means you will be more likely to show in the knowledge graph, AI references and other above-the-fold content. Leverage Video & Other Channels Video channels, including Youtube and TikTok, are massive channels for traffic. Diversify your marketing mix away from the standard blue links. If you lose your top-of-the-funnel

Depending on which industry report you believe, the size of the SEO market is roughly $80 billion. It’s never been easier to start your own digital marketing agency, but that doesn’t mean you should. The very fact that the even the white label agency market has such low barriers to entry should have you questioning how you might come into a very saturated space and carve out an effective niche such that you could make ample revenue to scale. Low barriers to entry and high competition were listed as industry “weaknesses” in the SWOT analysis provided in our recent digital marketing industry report. But, for the savvy salesperson and experienced marketer there are always opportunities, particularly where poor execution has soured the taste for businesses who may have hired fly-by-night service providers in the past. If you have a unique edge, a story, a competitive advantage or a network of connections in a lucrative niche, then there may be a justifiable entry into the digital marketing fray. And, if you’re looking to scale your digital marketing business processes immediately and quickly, so you can focus ON your business, rather than working IN your business in the early days, it may make sense to outsource SEO functions of client service execution and management. That’s where white label SEO and white label digital marketing come in. In this post, we discuss the eight best digital marketing services you can outsource via white/private label via an experienced SEO reseller. White Label Custom Writing Services Anyone who has spent time in content marketing knows that it’s very tough to find a good blog writing service, especially if you want to do it right and do it well. This is one of the reasons it can be expensive. But, the understanding that new, fresh and engaging content is critical for SEO & digital marketing should make you–the marketer–the chief evangelist of writing custom content for blog posts, landing pages and case studies. However, if you’re the chief evangelist, when are you going to have time to devote several hours a day to plunking your keyboard? That’s where custom private label content writing services come in. Outsourcing your blogging and other content writing is a great way to get the content you need while still managing and growing your business. You may find yourself asking, What should I be paying my blog writers? Numerous platforms exist for finding outsourced content (e.g. Upwork, Freelancer, etc.). However the range in the price of content can range widely, especially if you’re paying a per-word content rate. You’ll see ranges from $0.02 per word to $1.00 (not kidding) per word and everything in between. And while the mantra, “you get what you pay for” applies here, don’t forget that when hiring from freelancer websites, you’ll need to spend time vetting and filtering for things like quality, timeliness, responsiveness and overall contractor fit. Sometimes agencies can be the faster route as they have done this already. However, don’t forget, they also take their cut, so a premium will be baked-in. However, they will also likely be more able to scale when client demand, processing complex project requirements with an entire partner team, rather than a one man band. White Label Link Building Services Like its more legitimate sister content writing, quality link building also requires quality content writing, but its so much more than that. So, as a digital agency owner, once you’ve fully mastered the art of hiring the best content writers, if you don’t work through a private label provider, you will need to implement even more internal processes to scale up your link building, including: Implementing SEO best practices and standard operating procedures for the articles themselves, including keyword frequency, anchor text variability, content length, meta descriptions, internal image insertion and Copyscape scans. Manual backlink service via publisher pitching and awareness, keeping in mind you’ll want to maintain relationships with quality publishers, focusing on high authority, but also niche relevance for a given client. Executing on project management best practices on the above including the need to hire a project manager to process orders, especially as you get to scale and are managing dozens (if not hundreds) of articles/month. Not to worry, we discuss this process in greater detail in our Ultimate Link Building Guide for SEO. Perhaps the biggest issue with quality link building is finding quality publishers without spam issues and whose sites don’t sit on some massive private blog network (PBN). The solution for the would-be digital marketing startup: hire a white label link building provider and resell SEO. White Label Paid Search Engine Marketing Services When we first started in this business (even before social media marketing and certainly before mobile marketing), there were only a couple of true market leading pay-per-click providers in the industry that truly added value. Paid digital media is more than just Google and Yahoo these days. Today’s media landscape is far more complex. Knowing where to put your client ad dollars will require a detailed understanding of both your clients’ ideal customer persona, including where they are spending their time and how to target them. Furthermore, you’ll be required to not only know everything about the client so you can target them with paid media on the platforms they are using, but also be able to report back to your client the ROI and other KPIs of the campaigns you are running on various platforms and mediums. And, did we mention today’s paid ad mediums could include: Google, including Google Ads, Google Display, Google Retargeting, etc. Facebook, including its vast expanse of other properties like Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. Twitter Linkedin Bing Each platform will require its own expertise for things like retargeting and persona matching, making it impossible for a single operator to be a true expert in any one platform. This is where hiring a paid digital media management firm will be essential to meet your client needs while still scaling your digital marketing agency. Shameless self

Link building is one of the most important strategies in any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, but the straightforward, basic tactics of link building often aren’t enough to get you the results you want—or keep you safe from the threat of penalties. Second tier link building, the practice of building “second tier” links that feed your campaign by pointing to “first tier” links (a.k.a. primary links), is a powerful way to improve your results. But what exactly are secondary backlinks? What is the value in second tier link building? And, how can you structure your SEO campaign to include both first tier and second tier links? First Tier Links vs. Second Tier Links Let’s start with some basic definitions, and an explanation of link building from a high level. In case you aren’t familiar, link building is a set of strategies designed to help you earn and place links that point back to your website. While it’s possible to try and manage an SEO strategy without link building, most practitioners find link building to be indispensable. How Impactful are Secondary Links? When Google “decides” how to rank search results, it considers both the relevance and the authority of potential results. Relevance refers to the context of the page, and whether it matches the user’s query. Authority refers to how trustworthy the page is. This trustworthiness is measured in terms of “domain authority” and “page authority,” which exist at the domain and page levels, respectively. These metrics are calculated in large part based on the number and quality of links pointing to a domain or page. In other words, the more links you have pointing to your site, and the “better” those links are, the higher your pages are going to rank. This is a very basic overview of a complex and nuanced topic; for your link building campaign to be successful, you’ll need to consider your external content, the placement of your links, your link sources, and many more variables. So how do primary and secondary links play into this strategy? Primary links are links you build on an external source that point to one of your web pages. You can think of these as “standard” SEO links. They pass authority directly from one source to your website, and are incredibly valuable for increasing your domain- and page-level authority. Most modern link builders create primary backlinks by writing high-quality content on external publisher sites; these pieces of content cite your onsite content as a source, providing a statistic or further reading. Second Tier Backlink Definition Secondary backlinks, by contrast, are links built on an external source that point to a piece of content containing a primary link. These links are designed to pass authority and traffic to the piece of content responsible for generating value with the first tier link. For example, let’s consider your website “A,” an external publisher “B,” and a separate external publisher “C.” A first tier link may exist in a piece of content on site B, pointing to site A. Once a primary link exists, a secondary link could be a link built on site C, pointing to site B. The Two Types of Second Tier Links Even within this definition, there are two main types of second tier links. Linking to a page with a primary link Straightforward secondary link point directly to a page that contains a primary backlink, with no alterations or other functions. Calling up our previous example, C points to B, and B points to A. Combining primary & secondary links You can also build second tier links that are used in conjunction with primary links. In this case, your content on site C would contain both a second tier link to site B (which contains a first tier link of its own) and a first tier link that points to A. In other words, C points to both B and A, and B points to A. This approach is arguably more powerful, since it capitalizes on both primary and secondary link value simultaneously. However, it may also be riskier. The Power of Tiered Link Building Why would you use second tier link building? Wouldn’t it be better to focus exclusively on primary backlinks? Second tier backlinks with several advantages: Increase link equity First, you can increase your “link equity,” or the potential for your links to pass authority back to your site. If you build a second tier link from C to B, and a first tier link from B to A, your link to B will increase the page authority of B. If you do this frequently, you can greatly increase the authority of site B, and make every primary link on that site more inherently valuable. This is an especially powerful strategy if you’re utilizing a private blog network (PBN), or if you’re trying to grow a number of different sites. It’s also a valuable strategy if you’re link building with lower-authority publishers that could benefit from an external boost. Multiply referral traffic Secondary backlinks are also an easy way to multiply the referral traffic generated by your direct, primary backlinks. Remember, even though link building primarily gets attention as a way to increase domain authority and rise in search engine rankings, it’s also valuable for attracting more referral traffic. If you build a first tier link from site B to site A, it may generate 500 monthly visitors for you. So what happens when you build a new link from site C to site B? Let’s say that link generates 1,000 visitors to site B, and 500 of those visitors eventually click through to your site; you’ve effectively doubled your referral traffic from this source. Expand visibility Brand visibility is powerful, even if you aren’t immediately generating traffic or onsite conversions. If you have a strong brand mention as a first tier link, building second tier links is a convenient way to get more eyes on that link. This is especially useful if your first

If you’re like most of us with a website, you’ve got all the content optimized to be relevant and rank well in the search engines, except, the last thing you probably think about is your website’s footer. After all, it’s just the same text, navigation links, and other basic information that appears on every page of your website. Your website footer can’t possibly be as important as your homepage, right? Think again. It’s easy not to think about the footer since it’s usually just links to other parts of the site or information about your business. However, like everything else on the page, the website footer counts towards your SEO too. If you optimize this website footer, not only will you provide information and links that your customers will find useful, you’ll also help improve your overall ranking in search engines. Here are some tips to help you optimize your website footer so that it helps your overall ranking and sales. Remember: A Fat Footer is a Bad Footer Even though you’re trying to optimize your footer for search engines, it’s important not to cram it with so much information and so many keywords that it becomes a big block of text that isn’t useful to users. Website footers are typically fairly light on long sentences. Instead, they are mostly short, easy to read, and understand links and other information. This is one area where too much is worse than too little. Your footer Should not Stand Out Another thing to consider before getting into specific elements of your footer is its color and overall look. You want it to blend in with the rest of your page—no one should scroll down to find a footer that’s a shockingly different color from the rest of the page or uses an obnoxious font. Let’s be real here, aesthetics matter even in business, and the design of your website footer is no exception. If you’re going for calm and respectable colors and then your footer is bright orange or hot pink, users are likely to be put off by this footer design choice. Imagine scrolling to the bottom of a page for the “contact us” button and having your senses assaulted by something down right ugly. That said, many web designers do use a simple line to split the website footer from the rest of the page. Another option is to invert your footer’s color scheme. If your page uses black text on a cream-colored background, the website footer would be black with cream-colored text. This helps set it apart from the page, but by using the same colors, it still feels cohesive. Include Quick Navigation Links Your footer does not necessarily need to include a link to every page of your website, but it should link to the major sites. This gives users a quick shortcut to your main pages. For example, you might link to your main products/services page, your blog, your about us page, and a few others, but there’s no need to link to specific product pages unless you really want to drive traffic to them. One way of determining what pages to link to here is to look at your site statistics. What pages do users tend to visit? Those are the pages that you may want to consider including as footer links. You do not need to include every page unless your website is small. One of the tricks you can use to simplify things in your footer is to group together page links in columns. Contact information, services, and other relevant pages can be grouped so that users can scroll through and click what they need. It’s a good idea to avoid sitewide external links though, as they tend to mess with the Google search algorithm and if ranking your site is important you don’t want this. Include Your Contact Information Yes, you likely have a page on your website that is dedicated to your contact information. It probably includes your address, phone number, email information, an online submission form, and maybe even a map with directions to your location. There are two major reasons to include your contact information in the footer though. Firstly, it helps your website rank for relevant searches if the information is included on every page. Secondly, users typically don’t want to navigate off the page they are on to find your contact information. Having it readily accessible from anywhere on the site is a big convenience to users. Here are the key pieces of information to include: Company name Address Phone Number General email address (one that is monitored but is not directed to a specific person). Your phone number and email address should open the appropriate app when clicked, so users do not have to copy your email address over into a new email. You may also include a small Google Maps image if you expect many of your customers will come to your business in person. Social Media Links Social media has become a vital part of online marketing, so you want to make certain that you provide visitors a way of getting to your profiles. You do not need to do any more than include the easily recognizable social media site icons and link them to the appropriate profile. For example, most people recognize the Facebook F icon, so you do not even need to mention the site name. Just visit Facebook’s online image library (the icons are all there for you to use, and they are free), add it to the footer, and link it. Do the same for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and whatever other social media icons you use. One other note about linking to social media is to keep relevant information for your business on these pages. If someone decides to check you out on Facebook, you at least want to have up to date info for your business on the page, even if you don’t maintain much of a presence.

If you’re the unfortunate beneficiary of a Google algorithmic update that doesn’t go your way, you’re likely to see significant Google ranking drops and traffic declines. In the case of traffic declines, you may very well see many, if not all of your most coveted keywords remain in top positions while your traffic takes a dive off a cliff. This is not an irregular occurrence. It happens all the time. Here’s why. Money Keywords vs. Total Keywords Whenever we this question from clients, it is most often due to a myopic view of their overall SEO rankings. Many site owners are often fixated and only a handful of “money” keywords for which they wish to rank. In our case, that might be SEO company or SEO agency or the coveted general term of SEO. For a client it might be Los Angeles law firm, injury attorney or law firm. The myopia comes into play when a webmaster becomes solely focused on head terms and ignores the real source of website traffic, the SEO long tail. This is where a great tool like Ahrefs can come into play: If you’re myopically looking at only a few short money terms, you may miss the overall picture related to your website. The chart above is an Ahrefs keyword and traffic graph from a recent lead that reached out to us with this very question: I’m still ranking very well for [company’s main keyword], but my traffic has fallen off a cliff. What is happening? Please help. This new client was not actively tracking their keyword rankings in Ahrefs, Spyfu or Moz like they ought. Instead, the totality of their keyword analysis included Google Analytics and incognito searches for [company’s main keyword] (which incidentally only has an estimated 1,000 monthly searches and a medium keyword difficulty). Their fall-off was in the long tail, which caused the crater in their traffic in a short period. They were also myopically ignoring other keywords with higher commercial value that were likely even driving more sales than their own self-assumed “top key phrase.” How to Fix Long Tail Traffic Drops A drop in your long tail traffic could be the result of any one of the following factors, including: An algorithmic re-assessment of a site’s poor or unnatural backlink profile. A competitive shift within your industry or an algorithmic reassessment for the value of your content. Perhaps your competitors are increasing the quality and quantity of their content at a rate that massively outstrips your efforts. The Google dance, which typically occurs with sites whose traffic links and content are <3 years old. The newer your site, the more likely you are to experience a steady surge in keyword rankings over six months, only to be hit by the next Google update. Lack of content updates on your blog (long tail most often comes from regular, quality content posting and blog writing). Shift in the algorithm’s weight of one of many factors that may be plaguing your site (e.g. future algorithm updates focused on site speed may immediately impact the rankings and traffic of pages with poor loading speed). Maybe you’re missing something else? Something may have changed on your site that may not be readily evident on the surface (e.g. HTTPS issues, malware, massive spike in spammy backlinks, etc.) that could have altered the quality in which Google sees your website. In cases like this, we always suggest a comprehensive SEO audit service, including a full content audit. So many factors can contribute to drops in rankings that a full assessment is the best way to gauge what course correcting on and off-site SEO initiatives will be most effective.    

The multiple domain name strategy is actually the “big secret” many brands use to improve their SEO and dominate the search engines without being obvious. We do it: SEO.co DEV.co PPC.co Link.Build Website.Design Marketer.co When you search for real estate listings, you probably get results from Zillow and Trulia. These two websites are owned by the same corporation. When pages from both websites turn up in search results, it doubles the parent corporation’s chances of getting clicks. This strategy is one of the best SEO secret weapons you could possibly employ. However, it won’t provide instant gratification and requires planning. Using multiple domains for SEO is a long-term strategy that requires a serious long-term commitment. If you have the resources, time, and drive to follow through with a multiple domain SEO strategy, this article will help you get started. How to use a multiple domain names strategy for SEO? The multiple domain strategy is when a person or organization owns multiple websites hosted on different domain names all within the same competing niche. For example, a company that sells wood stoves might own five websites selling the same products, but each same site has a unique design, unique content, and might even have a unique primary focus. Regardless, in the above example, all five websites would be competitors in the same wood stove market, and all web pages would be competing for the same keywords and phrases in the search engines. With good SEO, that company has a good chance at getting more of their pages ranked in the search engines. For example, the first page of results for a given search phrase might return a page from single website #1, website #3, and main website #4. Owning 3 search results on the first page of any search phrase is a big deal. The best reason to use multiple domains? Keyword domination Multiple domains for SEO is the best long-term strategy when you want to dominate the SERPs for a specific keyword. If a large corporation hasn’t already dominated the SERPs, you still have a chance. However, you probably won’t dominate for the top competitive keywords like ‘cars’ or ‘real estate’ or ‘weight loss.’ You can, however, dominate the SERPs for more long tail keywords in those industries. In other words, using all the multiple domains isn’t a magic solution. You still need to play by the rules of SEO, and huge brands with enormous marketing budgets will always dominate generic keywords in their industry. Why bother with multiple domains? Why not rank content on one domain? Using buy multiple domain names for SEO exponentially increases your power to become visible in the search engines. Having multiple ranking domains increases the likelihood that a user will click on a search result from one of your one website. It’s even better than having high-ranking web pages from one domain. But, a multi-domain strategy will take years to come to fruition unless you already have the duplicate content and authority to provide the fuel. The perfect example of a transition from a one website or single domain to multi-domain strategy is About.com. About.com transitioned into DotDash a number of years ago, splitting it’s existing trove of quality content into multiple websites, including brands you might be familiar with: Investopedia, Lifewire and TheBalance. The company’s bet on it’s content and a multi-domain strategy has been a huge success after the company rebranded into a multiple domain strategy in 2017. Multiple domain names can also act as a diversification mechanism in preparing for the next Google update. The SERPs don’t regularly display two results from the same domain? There’s something interesting about search results that many people don’t notice. When you search for a keyword or phrase, you’re unlikely to be given multiple results from the same domain name. With few exceptions, search engine algorithms are programmed not to display two or more results from the same domain name when other options are available. Sometimes it happens, but only when a domain name has two web pages that are equally strong and there are no other high-ranked competing web pages from a different domain. Most of the time, Google filters out additional pages from the same more than one domain because the algorithm tends to favor domain diversity. And that’s exactly why you need to use multiple domains for SEO. For example, if you go to Google or other search engines and search for ‘buy a new car’ you’ll probably get two results from several big websites like autotrader.com, cars.usnews.com, and carsdirect.com. However, those websites are big brands that pull some serious weight in the search engines. Although it’s possible, you probably won’t see more than one of your webpages in the SERPs – at least not in succession. You might have web pages from a single domain name that rank #3, #14, and #22, but you’ll probably never get multiple webpages from the same domain name to rank #1, #2, #3, and #4. However, when using multiple domain names as an SEO strategy, it’s easier to own the #1, #2 and possibly even the #3 and #4 spots in the SERPs for a given search phrase. Who benefits from using multiple domain names for SEO? Everyone will benefit from using to buy multiple domain names for SEO. You don’t need to be a large corporation or even a business. You could be an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, a startup, or even a freelancer. If you have a web presence, you’ll benefit from using a multiple domain name strategy. You’ll also benefit from this strategy if you do business internationally. You can buy multiple domain names with specific country code extensions to rank in those countries specifically in addition to using global TLDs like .com and .net. How to start using the multiple domain strategy right now You can get your multiple-domain strategy up and running in a short period of time. However, it will take time to get results. For each new domain