How Ahrefs Makes High-Quality Content: An Inside Look
Chapters9
Intro and goals of the session, highlighting how Hrefs aims to reveal their process for high quality content.
Ahrefs shows how to craft high-quality content by climbing a five-level quality ladder, choosing strong angles, doing real-world experiments, and investing effort where it pays off.
Summary
Renowned for its data-driven approach, Ahrefs Tutorials takes us inside how Ahrefs builds high-quality content. SQ walks through a practical framework: five levels of quality (listicles, advanced listicles, deep dives, experiments/surveys, and original research) and why most teams should diversify their portfolio across these levels. He emphasizes the importance of taste and two rounds of feedback to ensure precision in every piece. The talk then lays out a repeatable workflow: topic discovery with Keywords Explorer, intent and angle selection, outlining with AI tools, and finally writing with a hands-on, non-AI-dominant process. Central to the method are real-world data efforts—state-of-the-industry surveys, replication of successful studies, and even quirky experiments—that boost credibility and distribution. SQ also covers how to decide how much to invest using the BREW framework (Business potential, Reach, Effort, Who can do it) and how to apply it to topics like real estate or e-commerce. The session closes with practical Q&A on intros, framing vs. angle, when to chase business potential, and tips for converting readers into buyers. It’s a candid blueprint for teams aiming to publish content that actually moves the needle in SEO and brand building.
Key Takeaways
- Five levels of content quality: listicles; advanced lists with curated details; deep dives with architecture; experiments/surveys; and original research as thought leadership with high ROI.
- Taste and structured feedback matter: two rounds of critique (outline and first draft) help sharpen specificity and resonance in every piece.
- Use Keywords Explorer to surface topics with search intent and align them with distribution plans, then refine with AI content helper for subtopics.
- Frame topics with a deliberate angle and choose a distribution frame (e.g., LinkedIn carousels) to maximize reach beyond SEO traffic.
- The BREW framework guides investment decisions: assess Business potential, Reach, Effort, and the capable team to decide what to publish and how much resource to allocate.
- Real-world data and experiments (e.g., AI impacts on SERPs, replication of studies) boost credibility and earned media.
- A portfolio approach (levels 1–5) is smarter than chasing only level-5 content; balance builds brand, traffic, and expertise over time.
Who Is This For?
Content marketers and SEO professionals who want a battle-tested playbook for creating credible, high-ROI content. Ideal for teams balancing resources while aiming to publish standout, data-driven articles that earn links, traffic, and trust.
Notable Quotes
""Our secret sauce source has twofold. Taste and feedback.""
—He highlights taste as a critical differentiator and the role of structured feedback in improving outputs.
""If you need help identifying important subtopics you can use AI content helper.""
—Introduces a practical tool to scaffold outlines and ensure comprehensive coverage.
""At the end of the day you want to be more specific... the angle is what makes your content stand out.""
—Emphasizes the importance of specificity and framing to differentiate content.
""BREW scores help us decide how much to invest in a topic: Business potential, Reach, Effort, Who""
—Outlines the decision framework for resource allocation.
""Think of the topic as a canvas and the angle as the frame.""
—Describes how to conceptually approach topics with a guiding lens.
Questions This Video Answers
- How does Ahrefs decide which content to invest in using the BREW framework?
- What are the five levels of quality content and when should you publish at each level?
- How can I apply Ahrefs' approach to a non-SEO topic (e.g., real estate or e-commerce)?
- What is the difference between an angle and a frame in content creation?
- How do you use data and experiments to drive content strategy and distribution?
Ahrefs content processFive levels of content qualityTaste and feedback in editingBrewing framework (BREW)Keywords ExplorerAI content helperContent experimentation and surveysOriginal research and thought leadershipAngle vs. frame in contentDistribution-focused content strategy
Full Transcript
And let's go and let's go. Hello everyone who's joining in. Welcome to today's webinar. Just show hands. Uh who here type in in the chat where you guys are joining dialing in from. I already see a number of attendees raising their hands. Welcome. So I will just make sure everything's all ready to go here. Yes. Hello. Hello uh from France, London, India, Brazil. Wow, that is must be very very early for you. Thank you for taking the time out to join today's webinar. Uh so if you guys have questions during today's webinar, please use the Q&A function.
Uh we will not be attending raising hands just yet until the end of today uh end of today's uh content. So we are at time so I'll go ahead and start again. Welcome to today's webinar on how we at HRES create highquality content. Uh today's speaker needs no introduction if you've been following HRS for a while. SQ is our senior content marketer who has been publishing over 150 blogs uh for hrefs over the last seven years and he'll be sharing his experience, his learnings and best practices of what it takes to create this high quality content you've come to see and expect here at Hrefs as well as a peak behind the curtain sometimes uh as he goes through the different steps he takes to make this uh amazing content that you've all been reading.
uh all this time. So if you have a question while SQ is presenting um as mentioned please use the Q&A function to write your question if you because if you type your question in the chat with the number of attendees we have here we might miss it. So it's best to keep them uh in track with the Q&A function below. Uh please for those who see the questions in Q&A, if you see a question that you definitely want to get uh answered first, please upvote it and we will prioritize those answers uh those questions. This webinar is also being live streamed on YouTube.
So if you'd like to rewatch uh some parts of the webinar or go back to it or share with your friends, um you'll be able to watch a replay after today. It will be sent out to you in a follow-up email. So without further ado, I will hand it over to SQ. Take it away SQ. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining the webinar and wow we have people from all over the world and uh I see one person from London. Hi. Speaking from London as well, right? So I'm going to start. Can everyone see my screen if it's all good?
Yep. All right. So, welcome to the webinar. This is a webinar on how we HRS uh the content team makes high quality content. So, just an inside look at how we do it. So, uh if you're joining this webinar, you pro probably already know that we are quite well known in the SEO and digital marketing industry for making high quality content. So, our content ranks high on Google. Uh a lot of people talk about our content on social media. You can see a lot of people mention our authors and our marketers on LinkedIn, on Twitter, sorry, X uh and other places.
uh our articles are constantly uh mentioned in newsletters like Ela's newsletters and our research studies especially uh gets referenced uh everywhere in other articles in presentations in annual reports even in mainstream news. So I believe uh the way we do content marketing is intentional because right from the get-go uh when I joined Hrefs Tim who was the uh who is the CMO and who was managing content back then he already told me that at HRS we believe and invest in making high quality content because great content builds brand. So uh also back in those days when I first joined there wasn't that many people in the marketing team.
So it was kind of a necessary thing that we had to do because we were smaller. We did not had uh as many resources as our major competitors. Uh if you didn't know HS did not receive uh any investment money. We are completely bootstrapped. So back then our thinking was if we had to make content it had to be high quality build brands and we had to make each piece count. So and that was really the philosophy of how our content marketing works. So right now I'm going to show you how we consistently make high quality content that people talk about uh in the SEO industry.
So let's begin. What is highquality content? So everyone says you need to make high quality content, right? like you already knew that like if you talk to any marketer from when I started in marketing in 2016 until today everyone has been constantly telling you you need to make high quality content, you need to uh make great content and so on and so forth. But my problem with that was always okay yes it is an easy thing to say right everyone can say that I can tell anybody to make high quality content but what does it mean to make high quality content?
What does quality even mean? You know what? As the uh proverb says, one man's meat in is another man's poison, right? So, what is high quality to me might not be high quality to you and what is high quality to you might not be high quality to me. So, what we did uh one year ago was to analyze our own content and we actually discovered five levels of what we see as quality So, the first level is uh just simple listicers. You probably seen this everywhere. So uh for you can see the example right there is 10 best job bots for marketers.
It's a very simple listical basically aggregates basic information that's widely available on internet or even using AI you can find this information. So you don't really require deep knowledge of the subject. It can be created quickly by anyone uh junior marketers, interns, even AI. And uh back then back then uh before LLMs was in a scene, it generated huge search traffic because it was the easy it uh it usually targeted beginner terms. Uh which is why you had a lot of search traffic potential and it was easy to put together and this was the bread and butter of a lot of SEO teams and a lot of content marketing teams, right?
People are pumping out simple list stickers over and over again and today people are doing the same but with AI. So uh this is level one of quality content. Anyone can do this. So if you want to make this stand out amongst everyone else that's doing this. Uh my pro tip is to add your personal experience. Right? So uh this is an our example of a simple listical is 10 best job bots for marketers. But it could be easy to make something with personal experience like 10 best job bots I applied to and got a job or 10 best job bots uh that my marketing friends applied to and got a job or something like that or 10 best job bots that I found easy to navigate.
Something like that like personal experience will make this better and different from what other people are making especially with AI. Level two is advanced version of the simple listical. So it is no longer just listing out things, right? You are listing out things and going step by step into what those things means. For example, you can see we have 17 proven says marketing strategies. So we're not listic full list of marketing strategies that just say okay strategy one, two, three, four. We are doing strategy one. This is how you execute strategy one, strategy two, this is how you ex execute strategy two and so on and so forth.
So there's a much much deeper dive with way more details and uh this information is curated. So you are not for a simple listical we often see a lot of uh massive list like which is why it can be easily created by anyone because anyone can just go online go to Google or use AI to make a huge list of everything. But to be honest, in my opinion, that is not very helpful because let's say you're a beginner reading a list on uh how to cook and then somebody gave you 100 cooking tips. Sure, I can have a 100 cooking tips, but it's my first day cooking what is useful and what is not.
Like I have absolutely no idea and it's impossible for me to apply like one to 100 out of those tips. So a much more advanced version of listical is to come from like personal experience and expertise where somebody's telling you that you know what those 100 tips are pointless. You only need these five tips and these five tips come from my hard-earned experience come from my expertise. I've been doing this for 10 years 20 years blah blah blah and these are the only things you need trust me. So I think this is an advanced version.
You need personal experience you need expertise. Uh you need an intentionally small list. you you're not trying to spam people with as many things as possible. Okay. So, my pro tip for making uh something like this is if you lack the personal expertise or you lack uh experience, go interview someone, right? Like look at the list that look at the example I'm giving here 11 CMOs and founders, right? We're not just giving sales marketing tips from our perspective, but we're also giving sales marketing tips and strategies from other chief marketing officers and founders who are working in SAS who may have a different business model and do different things from us.
So level three is a deep dive, right? So a deep dive is like an advanced guide or a beginner's guide even. So you are going really really really deep into a topic and covering almost every single thing that is required to know about this uh topic uh at all. So to in order to do this, you require a lot of research and subject matter expertise because you want to make some kind of complete guide. And even if you're making a beginner's guide, you need to know what not to include, which is very important. And we'll talk about this way way way later in in the presentation about taste.
But you uh making an advanced guy which is the mistake I saw back then when I was starting out in content marketing when people were doing skyscraper content. They got maybe a junior marketer or an intern and they just literally included every single thing which in my opinion is wrong because again ultimately content marketing is to benefit your customers your readers you know and if you are trying to spam your reader with every single piece of information that is not really helpful because uh as I say if I'm a beginner I'm going to be extremely confused after reading this this guide if you include everything without curation.
So a real good guide beginners for example you have to be intentionally deep and comprehensive yet know what not to include and in order to do that you need to have subject matter expertise because you know at this point this is too much information for the beginner you need to exclude this and ask them to go to the next uh guide for example to get more information. So to to do a deep dive you need good information architecture. So you need to a lot of the work in making a guide like this is sit down and understand uh what H2 leads to the next H2 and list to the next H2.
You're not trying to like just create random H2s. You need to help the basically guide the beginner or whoever is reading from step one to two to three to four and so on and so forth in a smooth way. Okay. And of course if you need help identifying important subtopics you can use AI content helper which I'll talk about more later. Level four is experiments and surveys. So as you see as this level go up in the quality content is getting harder and harder to do requires more effort and more resources which is why it is getting higher in uh quality.
Right? So experiments and surveys easy to understand it's content based on data and original research. You know you you're kind of like a scientist you're trying to find out what's going on. You are you are running data analysis. You're going out to to do the actual thing to see what's going on. So in order to do this you need significant domain knowledge. You need actual resources because some experiments are expensive and you need time investment. But if you do it correctly, you can actually get a lot of mentions, a lot of industry attention. And uh this is one reason why you probably know us from content because we do a lot of experiments and surveys as well.
And my pro tip if you're trying to make level four content is uh to interview your colleagues if they have any done any experiments that you can possibly write about. Level five, the highest level is research studies and original ideas. Uh this is the hardest and most difficult thing to do because you have to be a true expert. You need to have thoughts, innovative thoughts that help reframe or reshape things in your industry that people might not have thought of or might not have thought of this in this manner. So you need really need to have that time and experience in the industry doing the thing going out there and doing real things understanding real things so that you can tell people whatever they're doing is wrong or different or stuff like this.
Okay, this is basically what we call thought leadership content. Uh not anyone can do it. You really need good taste makers. You need experts to do it. uh but it has the highest potential ROI because you could be leading the charge for your industry right we have seen this a lot of times HubSpot led a charge for inbound marketing right now we have clay with GTM engineer and then we have uh Aerops trying to make content engineer a thing you know things like that you know you can create entire industries if you do this correctly okay so my pro tip uh if you're starting out doing a research study for example you don't have to do a new thing from scratch.
You can replicate existing successful studies in your field which is in line with how scientific uh studies are done. So of course every scientist and every academic wants to be that person trying to come up with new things but there are a lot of uh work done behind the scenes as well to replicate those studies and making sure that uh those popular ideas actually stand the test of time and it's not due to certain variables that were intentionally or subconsciously omitted. So you can do those things as well replicate existing studies in your view. So at this point you are wondering like uh do you aim for level five content all the time?
I don't think so. Uh the right thing to do is to have a portfolio of level one, two, three, four and five because as I said uh you you can't come out of the gate and do level five right away. You you need experts to do this, right? You not anyone is going to appear first year in the industry and make something like this. Like me in my first year, I would never be able to do anything like this because I didn't know anything. If you didn't know anything, you can't make an original idea. You can't uh do research at all.
So, you need to start from level one, level two, level three, moving up the ladder. And even when you're at level five, you still need to build a portfolio because level five has an IRS ROI potential, but it could also fail. You could do a study that no one wants. You could have innovative idea that no one cares about. But level one typically is uh has a lot of search traffic potential. So you can still get distribution uh to your you can get traffic to your website get distribution for your content be uh while you are building up those ideas and building up those levels.
Okay. So now we talk about quality content we want to talk about how we do it personally hrefs. So honestly if you are looking at our content process those five steps not that different from uh what most people are doing right. So, but uh you might find something different uh hopefully. So, let's move on. Step one, find a topic. Uh I think everyone knows this. If you are going to be targeting SEO topics, meaning topics that people are searching for, topics with uh search traffic potential, you want to use a keyword research tool, right? So, of course, at Hrefs, I recommend using keywords explorer.
You go to keywords explorer in our tool. Uh enter your seat keywords which are the keywords uh important in your industry and then go to the matching terms report or some related terms report or uh and then look for those keywords that uh matter to you. Right? This is easy. If you know any SEO, you have done keyword research before. This is straightforward. I will not talk more about it. So other ways of finding topics if you're finding non SEO topics for example I mean this is I believe this is belabored uh advice but really is one of the most important things you can do right to find nonio topics you really need to put in the work that a lot of work that marketers are not willing to do but you have to do it like for example talk to customers right you look at the the example I'm giving right here right at HRES we do closed door events with our enterprise sales customers, you know, we get them into one room, uh have dinner, uh ask them what they're struggling with, what they need help with and along those conversations come with a lot of uh content ideas that we need to write about because uh we find out there is a gap between uh what they are struggling with, what they need, their pain points versus what we have uh published thus far, right?
Of course, if you are trying to do this, you don't mean you don't have to do it like us. You don't have to do closed door events, right? Is as easy as look going to your customer base and just emailing uh what a lot of them and asking how can I help you? Uh what are you struggling with? Uh what content do you think we should be writing about? Uh what content can we be writing about? And I think in evolve this year uh the uh head of social of uh Chris he was saying that even today he still talks to at least one customer a week on zoom.
Okay. So so it is not beyond anyone's pay grade. You have to talk to your customers to know what problem you have to be solving what content you have to be creating. Okay. And another way to do it is to talk to your sales teams and customer support teams because who else are in contact with your customers every single day? Sales teams, customer support teams, right? So for example, Haley is uh one of our enterprise sales uh team, part of our enterprise sales team. So she every time she gets an important question from one of our enterprise sales customers, she she post it on our Slack, right?
For example, here like uh do we have any content resources and studies on globalization efforts? You know, this is uh we have not we don't have anything like that on a blog yet. So right now so we know okay we are missing out on something like this something that enterprise customers care about something more advanced way more advanced. So now we need to put effort into making content like this right and this we only know this because the sales teams come to us and ask us for such content. If not, we wouldn't have known this.
Next, you need to participate in conversations online, right? For example, our chief marketing officer, Tim, he goes to r/big SEO every two years asking for feedback, right? You can see like he he did it this year. Uh it's been 10 years. He did it every two years since 2015 until today. and from the and all of us including our CEO monitor this threat and we find a lot of important ideas that we need to tackle not just in regards to product but also with content like what we are missing out what we have not been publishing what we need to talk about and uh as a marketer you're probably using social media you need to see what's trending in industry all the time uh luckily for us we are marketers marketing a marketing product fortunately so we can go to LinkedIn for example like all of us every single one of us on a marketing team we all LinkedIn and Twitter every day we are looking at what's trending what people are talking about uh one example is uh I think last month or two months ago sorry uh somebody went viral on LinkedIn saying that you can replace every single SEO tool with just AI with chat GPT alone and obviously that was wrong it's not possible because uh AI can only uh hallucinate such information because they have no access to data.
Uh but you can make this work with uh what we call model context protocol. So I found a way to uh I saw this that was trending so I decided to write about it and I saw that it was also a way to promote uh what we already had our MCP our model context protocol. So if you can connect MCP to chat GPT then AI can replace SEO2 sort of right. So it was a great way I saw it trending. Uh it had like 2,000 likes on LinkedIn. So I knew I had to write about it.
So yeah, next you have to figure out search intent. Step two. So search intent is only really needed if you're targeting SEO topic because uh I mean given the word itself, search intent, right? This the why behind the search. So if you're targeting a nonSEO topic, you don't really have to do this because there is no searching involved. Uh but you do need to know your distribution intent. So uh the question that Ryan, our uh director of content marketing, always ask us if you're writing a piece of content that is not uh an SEO topic is how are you going to distribute this piece of content?
And a lot of times uh and you have to figure this out before you write anything. So a lot of times our answer is okay we got we have to publish this on LinkedIn on X uh and then maybe do some spin-offs on other articles uh maybe get other newsletters to include us or stuff like that right so if we are intending to build distrib LinkedIn distribution into that nono topic we usually make a LinkedIn carousel so we know that it's side done side by side but if you're targeting as your topic then it's quite straightforward you need to figure out search intent you need to figure out why people are searching for that topic.
You need to figure out uh what Google is ranking because the SLS itself is kind of a reflection of what Google thinks that people are want to search for. So you can either do this manually uh go to Google itself, type your keyword or your topic and see what kind of uh pages come up or you can go to keywords explorer under S overview simply click identify intents and we tell you right away like what a search intent is. straightforward, easy. Okay. Third, chooser an angle. And in my opinion, uh this is the most important thing you can do uh right now for any article in I think uh this is the most important thing you can do for any piece of content like like every topic is big right there infinite ways to approach any topic, right?
So ultimately what is the angle you want to choose to talk about this topic and you can see this in books as well. You go to a bookstore you see like under this for example the self-help section there's so many ways to talk about how to improve yourself right uh there is a social uh communic there's a communications angle the networking angle the body language angle the the your mindset angle you know the how not to care about what other people are saying angle. There's so many ways to talk about one single topic. So you want to think of your topic as a canvas and the angle as the frame, the specific frame they're using to look at this canvas, right?
So you want to choose the exact thing you want to write about and you want to know how that angle that you have chosen differs from already existing content that people read, click or share. Right. So at HFS there are three frames that we default to. Uh of course is there are infinite way to do it but these are the three ways that we kind of look at a topic and decide how we want to uh that we default to if we are kind of stuck. So frame one is experimentation. You know you will find that a lot of angles I talk about in the next few slides are related to the five levels of quality content because it re this entire thing revolves around our content strategy.
Right. So frame one is experimentation. You want to go into the real world, test ideas and collect information that has never existed before. Okay. So example one industry surveys, right? So uh for example, last year or earlier this year if I recall correctly, we did a state of AI in content marketing. So uh basically Orion who is the author of this report he ran a survey uh on 879 uh content marketers and then we we obviously did a lot of promotion to get people to uh respond to the survey. We p published on LinkedIn. We posted on ads.
We got uh we did co-eing to marketers. We got the marketing team's friends and colleagues to participate as much as possible. and it eventually produced this report which we spun off into three blog posts if I remember correctly. Yeah. So again this is a lot of effort to do but if you can find an angle to do a state of something in your anal report that can uh determine like the future of your industry or determine the direction of your industry it could be something you want to do. You could even do something smaller like a simple uh survey that doesn't have to be so massive.
a small poll on uh social media could could be a nice way to start building up your muscle in building service. Uh if your company or your product generates uh any kind of data, you want to use that to your advantage and start analyzing them and making research studies. So uh fortunately at HRES, we have a whole bunch of data regarding AI and SEO. So we have been making research studies since the beginning and especially with AI right now uh with all the changes to search to SEO regards to AI AI overviews AI mode perlexity blah blah blah we have the opportunity to publish a lot of data using the data that we have already collected publishing research studies to help guide the industry to understanding what is going on right so an example that I I'm showing here we analyze 146 million SERs to help our customers and of course the wider industry to understand what triggers AI overviews.
Next, you do real world tests. go out there actually run an experiment like Matayosh what Matayosh did there you know he took a month to to do this you know he as as you can see right here he actually invented an actual uh fake company he created a website got hosting uh made blog post about it and then started testing what whether AI repeated those lies and they did so and just to let you know even though there was a significant amount of effort uh Matish did for post it. It kind of went viral on on LinkedIn.
A lot of people are posting about it, talking about it because like a lot of people say like AI repeats misinformation. AI repeats misinformation, right? And that platitude gets spread around everyone, right? But nobody kind of like fact checks it in some way. So Matias took it on his mantle and he decided to, you know what, let me see this in action. Let me see if this is actually true. And it is, which is crazy, right? I mean the results are crazy and you should read this blog post and uh this is one way that you should be doing it.
You should never really take a platitude at heart. You should go out there and see if it's really true. And the next one is the exact same thing. You know, go out there and collect data either from your company or other or collaborate with another company or another blog or another website to do this. You want to collect data to prove or disprove any well-known ideas or any platitude that you've been hearing over and over again. Right? So back then earlier this year everyone was like AI overviews reduce clicks. AI overviews reduce clicks. But then Google was like no they don't.
No they don't. No they don't. So Ryan so everyone was struggling you know like how can this be like I obviously see this change in my Google search console. I don't see any more clicks. But Google's like, "No, no, no, no, no. It increases clicks." So, okay, we we were like, "We need to prove this to prove whether the wider industry is correct or Google is correct." We ran our research and we saw that Google is wrong. Google is kind of lying. So, we published the results and today this post still gets tons of traffic, tons of links, tons of mentions and is in almost every presentation that I've seen so far.
Frame two, experience. So it is kind of similar to experimentation and uh slightly different. So experience is where you prove to your readers to your customers that you have dirted your hands and actually experience the thing that you're writing about. Okay. So you think about like review review articles where the like wire cutter or like serious eats where they publish at length about how they do those experiments to test the walk you know to test the frying pan the vacuum cleaner the headphones stuff like that you you want to reach the level of effort where you are every single sentence is proof that you you have done the thing that you're writing about because a lot of times as content marketers We are kind of like armchair theories, right?
We write about a lot of things that we think is correct but we do not actually have the necessary experience or expertise to say that it is truly correct. So uh so with experience if you can do it with experience you can go out there and actually do the thing that you want to write about then you can uh be different from other people who have been writing content. So the easiest way of course is to write about topics where you have firstand experience. So my ex-colague Chris uh before joining Hrefs he was working in agency side SEO for almost 10 years for more than 10 years.
So he has a wealth of experience. So a lot of topics that he was writing about uh on the HS blog is about his experience working agency site right. So etho reporting uh how to uh how to deal with stakeholders you know how to talk to customers and stuff like that. So he's been writing that a lot and if you don't have any experience then interview others for example I wanted to write about Tik Tok SEO because uh there was a period uh as we all know a lot of people a lot of Gen Z's especially and the future generation they turn directly to Tik Tok to get a lot of their information rather than go to Google or even use uh AI even right because uh Tik Tok maybe be before the spam of uh AI videos a lot times were actually real real world things that people have gone to.
For example, if you're looking for a restaurant, people have gone to the restaurant to actually eat and then they do a short video about those restaurants. So, you can actually get real world things compared to like Google where uh a food review could be fake like you could use stock images or images stolen from other people. You could write all sorts of pretend uh play pretend things about a food that you had never eaten. So, Tik Tok was real. So, I was interested in looking at Tik Tok SEO and writing about it. But I obviously have no experience with Tik Tok because it's not that I'm old is uh it's just that I I I've never released Tik Tok.
So, of course, I had to go directly to the one person that I know uh has the most Tik Tok SEO experience because she literally built a brand of Tik Tok and she was a speaker evolve 2024 and uh yeah, so I went straight to her, hop on a one and a half hour call with her, got every bit of information about how to do Tik Tok SEO from her and then I wrote about it. Next, if you are writing about topics with firstand experience or even if you're writing about experience uh about topics when you don't have first experience but you have interviewed someone, you want to prove that you have done the thing.
So, uh it's not in this example. So, I when I wrote about event marketing, I interviewed uh our events team and I even use a screenshot of me being on a zoom call with the events team to show that yes, this interview exists. we did it and uh this is the post resulting from an interview. So you want to pro provide actual concrete evidence of your experience. In this example I'm giving right here, I wrote about how to get over the fear of creating thought leadership content. So I do indeed have experience experiencing this fear of publishing to content because the last time I did it when I published uh kind of like a pseudo research post I got so much hate and it kind of I have to admit kind of scared me off making like opinionated statements for a pretty long time.
So I you can call it therapy or you can call it like a every bit of your life is content. You you know you want to I use that that that angst and that anger and that that kind of the pain to write about to make a post and I showed all the hate comments in that post like proof that I re I did something and I received hate comments and this is how I got over it. And you want to share again similar to provide concrete evidence. You want to share anecdotes and stories that only you have.
Uh otherwise uh again you are just armchair person. You can say anything you want but there's uh no way to actually know that you have done the thing that you are saying that you you have. So if you have a specific story that no one else have then uh it's kind of like proof that you know you you are doing you have done the thing and this is like the most surprising thing that you have discovered. Uh again in the events marketing post when I was talking to our events team and uh Sherman our events manager back then she she told me the story about how our venue wanted to impose some kind of overnight whole charge on us because they saw it as lost potential income which is uh which is a highly specific story that you will only know if you have actually like talked to a venue in Singapore to know.
So yeah, so I included a story into the post, a very specific story just to show that you know this is a real thing that happened to us or end of the day get skin in the game. actually do the thing if you have not done the thing. If you're not going to interview someone, you don't have yet f firstand experience, go and do the thing. When Ryan first joined us last year, one of the first topics he tackled was SEO newsletters. So instead of curating a whole bunch of random SEO newsletters that you can get either by asking chat GBT or getting from Google, he actually subscribed, he actually got recommendations for every single SEO newsletter on the planet, at least in English.
He subscribed to all of them for a couple of weeks and then he used his own personal judgment to say these are the ones that I like and that's it. Skin in the game and then he even show you showed proof that he subscribed to all 72 newsletter with his spreadsheet. Frame three is effort. So you know like most marketers that I know want to save money and they are more than happy to sacrifice quality for speed. No, like especially with AI right now, anyone can go online, build a very complicated and sophisticated system using NNN, chat, GPT, Gemini, blah blah blah and publish like programmatic blog post over and over again.
But what is at the end of day you got to ask yourself at the end of what who is content serving? Content is serving your customers. And yes, you can make a lot of blog post, but if your customers are not reading it, your customers are not discovering it, then what is the point? So, uh, if you want to stand out from all of these things that people are doing right now, you can make better things, you know, invest more money, uh, put in more effort and then make things that not just words. And an example right here, Postmark did a web comic about email delivery vability, right?
You can see this is a lot of effort, right? Like who who is who has a comic artist in their team? But you know you if you do something like this know people will take notice because you're trying to stand out. People remember your brand. a video series paddle instead of making YouTube videos they actually made like a Netflix style documentary about uh acquisition about their SAS acquisition right so it's like it's like media it's like media right you're trying to go above and beyond like okay everyone is making simple tutorial based YouTube videos how can we make something that's more exciting more entertaining and people still remember our brand at the end of the day and one of them is a Netflix style video serious uh even for us we make books we have an SEO book for beginners and now we have a children's book that uh we distribute at every time we sponsor an event or host our own event to uh our attendees for parents to read as a children's book to their kids about kind of what they do in their daily life SEO digital marketing right and it's kind of innovative because like a lot of companies uh at some point they publish they do publish books or ebooks but then We went ahead and we did something completely different.
Children's book, hard covered uh a real book and you can't buy it. You can only get it. So like all the things we use to stand out a lot of effort into designing this book, writing the story, publishing it, shipping it, distributing it. Yeah. But we get so much comments on it. People remember us. Ah, HRES. Yes. I remember your children's book. Of course free tools is the easiest uh today you can easily v code out of free tool. So I would say of all the examples this must be the easiest today to do it.
lovable uh even just using the pure AI uh interface like chat GPT or clot you can make a simple free SEO tool uh I mean free tool uh in your industry and then publish it and I mean you can make so many of them today right you you want to go to keywords explorer uh type in uh a seat keyword related to your industry and then you want to filter for keywords like tools trackers calculators software, so on and so forth. You want to make a free version that can get you links, get you traffic, rank on Google, uh surface in LLM generator responses with somebody else like for free tools to do certain things and it's so easy.
So this is a very easy way to get into it. Although I name it after effort, but today a lot of I would say it's not even that much effort anymore. Right? So I will show you an example of how this can work. So let's take the topic of customer support. Uh so I've given you some examples of the different ways you can write something very unique for this topic customer support because uh if somebody were to be targeting this keyword most SEOs and marketers will do something very simple. A beginner's guide to customer support.
The ultimate guide to customer support you know uh everything you need to know about customer support. And this is why like people turn off today when they go to Google or they read your blog post because everything is the same. But customer support there's so many ways to write about it. So you don't have to go to the uh the proven tactics that SEOs always use. So experimentation for example you can we analyze 10,000 customer support tickets to find the most common cases of churn. So interesting. I will read that. We ran a test to see how respond times affect customer satisfaction scores.
We surveyed 100 customer support leaders on their top productivity metrics. Experience, you want to talk about, you can talk about experience handling a thousand angry customers or you want to interview your customer support team on how they handle angry customers. Uh maybe you are the person that build the knowledge base so you can talk about it or you want to talk to that person in the team that build the customer support knowledge base. Uh and so on and so forth, right? Effort. You can make a playbook, an actual published book if you want to. Uh you can make an interactive resource, you can make a guide, you can make a game based on customer support.
So many things to do and you don't even have to wreck your brain so hard because like the way I got all of these ideas is I actually use AI. So if you're wondering how to use AI, this is one of the best ways like I gave AI three angles, experimentation, uh experience and effort as AI to give me ideas for each one of them. And these are the ideas that I came up that he gave me and I thought it was great ideas. So you don't really have to like wreck your brain so hard to do a lot of these things, right?
So finally we the most important thing is done our angle. So now we want to put together an outline. So uh an outline is simply an MVP version of your draft. It helps you avoid blank page syndrome allows people to give feedback and helps figure out in the information architecture of your post. Okay. So uh there is no like real way correct way to put together outline. So it really depends on what you are trying to do. But if for example if you're targeting as your topic uh very easy way to put together an outline is to use uh AI content helper.
So if you enter your keyword into AI content helper you can it will actually give you all sort of important subtopics uh that you need to include. So that could be a quick way to put an outline that uh if you include all the subtopics, right? And the last step is just to write your draft. And for me, I don't really have uh any strong opinions or tips on how to do it. Uh a lot of times for me is just uh either I'm trying to prompt uh AI to give me some semblance of a draft and I try to work from there.
Uh but I never use uh any fully AI drafts just to let you know. Uh it's just a kind of like a helping hand to help me with my work. Otherwise, I also go the tried and true method of actually just sitting down and typing on the computer. Yeah. So nothing uh really outstanding there. Just actually doing the work. Right. So I want to talk about our secret source. What is our secret source? In my opinion, our secret sauce source has twofold. Taste. Our team is made of content marketers who don't want to just publish.
We want to do and publish the best possible things. And uh another thing that we do really well is feedback. So we every time we try to write something, we have two rounds of feedback. We have an outline with a first draft. So taste, what is taste? So uh this is a quote from Brian Heligan the founder of HubSpot. He says overrated is marketers with good analytical skills. Underrated is marketers with good taste. And this will only get more and more important with AI because I mean AI can now do anything that you want it to do.
But do you have the taste? Do you know what is good? Do you know what your customers want? Do you want do you know what your readers want to read? And this is the most important like skill you need to discern and figure out what you need to do in the future. So well how to develop taste. Uh anyone I think like a lot of people think like oh taste is something that is like gatekeeping like kind of elitist statement kind of thing. I don't necessarily think it's true. I just think taste is something that uh I understand it as compressed experience.
is because you have seen a lot, you have done a lot and therefore you know what is good, what is bad, uh what should be done and then you have a personal preference for certain things as well because of what you have experienced have done in your career in your life. So uh using that taste you can kind of like uh help your content team or help your own content to decide what is good, what is bad, what to include, what to exclude, stuff like that. So to do that, you need to develop taste. And if you're new to content or if you're just starting out, to develop taste, you simply just need to have all sorts of information.
You just need to be open-minded, collect all sorts of information, books, articles, videos, podcast, blah blah blah. And then start critiquing them. Why does this work? What do you like about it? Do you recognize any specific techniques, devices like alliteration like one, two, three? Like is it using a certain framework like miss? Is it using a certain framework like problem agitate solve stuff like that and then you got to ask yourself like personally how would you improve upon it and what will the version look like if you were the one creating that content and then after that you want to copy and as uh I mean not copy literally but you want to kind of like imitate what you have seen like what does the me version of you look like you want to try replicating it in your own style and you So you and a person can never fully replicate another person's work because that person has their own style as well.
So you want to try to make your own version kind of like replicate what the person has been doing at your own style or whatever you think your current style is and see like and then keep doing it over and over again so you can develop taste right. Feedback is very important. As I say we have two rounds of feedback. one during outline phase for Ryan to tell us if uh the direction is correct and then for the first draft to see if we have communicated our ideas correctly and uh feedback as Ryan writes here the most important feedback he gives to every single writer 99.5% of the time is just to be more specific which is why angles which is why I believe that the angle is so important because the angle is being specific about a certain topic so you want to be super super specific in your angle in your idea in your opinion opinion even in the title the examples you're giving which is again back to anecdotes you have a specific anecdote specific story that you can tell uh is specific yeah you want to be so so specific about every single thing and that's how you stand out from everyone because if you're a beginner or if you're using AI you you can't go drill down to the specific because you have no knowledge or experience so being specific tells is a telltale sign that you are truly writing about what you know at what you have done and this is just an example of all the comments that Ryan has given me feedback as you can see a lot of times is again well he he doesn't really use the words to be more specific but you can see like the general threat of the kind of comments that he gives me is about asking me to be more specific okay so the most important question is next how do we decide how much to invest right a lot of the things I'm talk talking about is a lot of uh money, effort and time, right?
So, you want to decide, okay, you know, like how when do we do level one, when do we do level five, blah blah blah. So, how do we decide how much to invest? And this is how we do it. At HR, we have a brew framework, you know, is a simple acronym BW. B for business potential, how well can you pitch a product reach, how many people can you reach, effort, how much time and resources does it require and who is it a capable team or person to do it? Right? So let me give an example.
Uh there is a keyword blog post ideas that I used I wanted to target a couple of years ago and this is the brew score that we gave uh for that keyword. So business potential is only a one. Uh yeah uh yes you can use keywords explorer to kind of get blog post ideas. It's not 100% necessary. So there's not really a lot of business potential to promoting our product. Reach is decent. Saw that there was a traffic potential of 2,300 which is pretty good. But the search volume is declining because no one else is searching for blog posters anymore with AI available every single day.
So and also it's an extremely beginner keyword. So basically it's newbies like unlikely to buy our product right now or even in the near future or in the next five years. So you know should we target this? Yeah reach kind of good but not really. Effort is low. You know I can do this really quickly uh just by generating some ideas even using AI. Boo. Yeah, I'm the guy. So eventually we decided to publish this because it was solo effort. Even though there was no business potential, I could do this literally in a couple of hours with the help of AI and keywords explorer.
So we went ahead. So this is how we think about things, right? Brew. The next idea, programmatic SEO for top websites. Again, let me score this for you. Uh business potential is two. You know, it doesn't really show while it doesn't show our product in action. It does heavily features our product, our data and advertises how you need at to see search traffic for all the websites. The reach is very high because we can rank for keywords that most popular websites most website which gets like thousands and tens of thousands of searches and we can also rank for every single website's brand.
It unfortunately the product traffic may not be of the highest quality but you know it can be done. So effort is medium. uh we need developers but uh so just uh interesting fun fact this idea was already in the pipeline five years ago but we only managed to do it uh recent in the past two years because LLMs made it way easier to generate copy and code because uh back then if you wanted to do it we needed developers and our developer resources were limited they were mainly used for the product base so this was kind of since at a fringe project so another way to see brew score is you can see that things can change over time as technology improves and your resources improve.
Who our product manager and also along the way we invited uh we hired a product manager who can now take charge of this entire project and get see it from start to end right and that's it for everything. Thanks for watching. Hopefully that was useful for everyone. Okay. And so now we will go on to the the Q&A section of today's presentation. Once again, thank you SQ for uh sharing about what it takes to create high quality content, but also basically how to manage content in general. Sometimes you have um the opportunity to create very high quality content, but what is the effort required and like how do you balance that with what resources you have in mind?
I thought it was like really useful because not everyone has the same level of resources or experience to create content even though we want to. That was really cool. Let's start with the first question here in the Q&A section. BB Raven asks, "Hey, SQ, do you have tips for the intro?" And I assume that is like an intro to a uh content piece like a hook or something like maybe you can confirm if I'm if I'm correct. Any thoughts on that? Like a good hook, I guess, beginning of an article. Well, it I think the intro is the most important thing you can do.
The the correct answer is there is actually no correct way to write an intro. But if you're looking for a quick tip to get started if you are just starting out writing uh content, I would typically default to copywriting formulas like for example uh I mentioned earlier problem agitate solve the PAS formula. That is an easy way to uh start start a hook because uh so let me just briefly explain PS. So basically how it works is that you first mention the problem problem then you try to agitate the problem by making it sound like serious uh you you try to like drill in down the pain point for the reader.
So that's the agitate and then you you uh S is for solution. So you tell them that you have a solution and you have to read on more to find out what the solution is. So I think it's pretty quick way to get started with a hook because you're just telling the reader that they have a problem and this is why the problem is really serious and then you know finish this blog post or finish this video to to find out why uh you need this solution. Yeah. Yep. Thank you, baby. Good to know that was helpful.
So, should I answer the next question? Oh, sorry. I was talking muted. Apologies. Pin um is asking the next question which is you are saying angle and frame in the same context. Um but both are different terms in his opinion. Anglego means perspective or a lens through a topic and framing is more what I do before I talk about a topic to give a like a context example rich and poor good or bad etc. So it would be helpful if you can be clear with both terms and uh why you personally may choose to use them for the same thing.
Well, thank you for the comment. Uh I I'll be honest. I don't really have a strong opinion on this like in regards to the specific definitions of both angle and frame because from my perspective I do see an angle as framing the topic around a specific thing that I want to talk about. So I mean maybe this means different things in maybe like a film or certain things but at least from how I see it I just think of my angle as how I'm going to frame what I'm going to talk about. Yeah. So is I like the example you gave in the presentation where you said like there's a lot of self-help books and they're all coming from like different there's so many ways to help yourself and people basically pick an angle and they probably have come from different frames.
Uh but ultimately it becomes like a way in which people can help themselves. So they sort of help each other in the in your context of what you're saying quake like you know they like different perspectives add to the conversation in different ways. It can be helpful in different ways. So yeah I can see it being both different uh for you but also used interchangeably for others. Yeah I think at the end of the day uh I mean I I don't think I disagree with uh I'm hope I'm not pronouncing the name wrongly. F Kim uh I don't disagree what whatever you are saying I just think this I guess it's not the way I think about it but if you think about it in this way and you find it useful on how you are creating a content then I think go ahead like personally I just use the idea of angle to kind of think about I use them interchangeably to think about how I'm writing something yep um thanks uh next person asks, "How do you decide the business potential of a topic?" I guess you maybe you can go back to the earlier slides where you gave some examples of how you went about deciding the business potential of something.
Maybe go over it quickly again might be helpful. Yeah. So uh we have a chart for this which I unfortunately did not include here but you can probably find it or I can send it to everyone uh after this. So how we think about it at hrefs is that we simply score it from zero to three where three is the highest where you for example like at hrefs three is where you cannot solve the problem uh without our product at all. So in terms of SEO uh you need href for example to do the keyword research right because you need a keyword research tool to do keyword research.
So every time we talk about every time we write about a topic related to keyword research or finding keywords stuff like that then that topic will be a business potential of three. Uh business potential of two will be like you you need a product but it's not like urgent it's not important like you can use alternatives you can use uh something similar but you don't really need a product. So that would be like a two. So I can think about something like uh SEO tactics, SEO strategies could be a a topic that would score a two in my opinion because like we can talk about SEO strategies, but it's still slightly broader than a very specific topic like keyword research or link building.
So uh so you can kind of use HERS to execute your SEO strategies but you can also use a whole bunch of other tools like screaming frog for example. So it's like kind of kind of like yes you need us and also no you may not need us. So it's a two one will be uh we can be useful the product can be useful but it is not necessary. So like blog post ideas, right? Like uh the example I'm giving here on the screen. Uh you can use h you can use keywords explorer you can use keyword research and keywords explorer to generate blog post ideas.
But you can also use your brain you can use AI you can use uh a whole bunch of other blog post lists. You can go to Reddit and ask a question or something like that. So like yes you can use us uh but you won't die without using apps. All right. And S0 is quite straightforward. It's like completely no way to talk about our product as at all. I hope that was helpful, Helmet. And yeah, I guess you can look forward to um the resources that SQend. I I remember specifically we have some blogs that really walk through different examples like 0123 which hopefully will help you decide how to how to uh grade the business potential of a of an idea.
Uh Richard asks, can you walk through an example of how you would approach high quality content writing for a website targeting real estate agents? Uh so yeah, I guess he's just asking for especially for certain industries that will be not so straightforward like uh uh like HFS maybe. Yeah. So so this is a website. Okay. So So okay, targeting real estate agents. So the real estate agents are coming to your website learning basically learning marketing, right? These are they want to learn how to get more leads. Am I Am I correct? Is Richard here? Richard, if you're here, you can reach out in the chat.
Let us know if we got your question correct. Anyway, I mean, I honestly I I don't think the process would be very different from what I just said. Like firstly if you know these are the people you are targeting and if you are then you will have to talk to them right if you are in contact with those real estate agents they they probably have questions they they asking you like how do I market myself how do I get more leads how blah blah blah and those questions can be turned into topics that you write about maybe like how they currently go about getting leads and maybe if everyone is doing the same thing there might be other ways is like a good starting point but like yeah first can ask them exactly what they do.
I think step one is the same. You have to talk to them to find out like what pain points they have and then after that those pain points if they have search traffic potential which you can check in keywords explorer then you want to uh try you you want to follow the process that I I I listed out. So a a simple way is to let's say it's a let's say it's a topic with search traffic potential. So you can take uh put a keyword in the keyword explorer, see the search intent, uh scroll down to sub overview, click identify intents, see what a search intent is, and that will kind of help you identify the uh the thing that searchers want to see.
And then you can also take that keyword and put it into AI content helper to see what subtopics that you you likely need to include to rank well. And from there you kind of have like the building blocks of uh what you need to do. So let's say it's like uh let's say it's just a simple topic like lead generation for real estate agents and then maybe the search intent. I'm I'm not uh not looked at keywords explorer for this but let's say the intent is that uh it's just all the newish real estate agents who have no idea how to get leads.
Okay. So, so, so from there you kind of get you have the search intent. So, you are like, "Okay, so I likely need to write a guide uh to teach all of these real estate agents how to get leads." And then you have then from there you kind of have like all the uh subtopics that you need to include as well which I assume is uh again I have not checked yeah content helper but I can what I can think of is something like it might ask you to include like uh maybe you need to include topics like have a buyer persona you need to include topics like social media you need to include topics like SEO email marketing thing, I don't know, giving out flyers if that's a thing and so on and so forth.
So, you you you kind of have like the the structure building up in the background, you know, like you have to you have to write a guide for newbie real estate agents. You have all of these topics that you need to write about and then now we have to find an angle that can help you come and make you stand out, right? So, if you were to just make something like a beginner's guide for real estate, beginner's guide to lead generation for real estate agents, yeah, it can work. It's a nice it's a decent angle, but it's kind of like a angle that everyone defaults to.
So it's kind of like boring. It won't stand out. So you can add a spice of like effort, experience or uh experimentation. You could if you are a real estate agent yourself and you have a lot of experience, you can write like uh beginner's guide to lead generation for real estate agents from a guy that has done it for 20 years or something like that. And boom. And then you can start adding like your your anecdotes uh and your stories that nobody else have. And that will completely be different from like all the beginner's guide to lead generation estic agents that everyone wrote off chat GPT, right?
And I mean so many ideas I can I can kind of think of like a lead generation beginners guide to lead generation for real estate agents. I interviewed 10 successful real estate agencies to find out how they do it. You know, you know, things like that. Like I don't know if this is helpful, but this what I can think of right now. I hope this is Yeah. Um like I would definitely recommend checking out our tools that help you at least benchmark against the current competition that are writing about uh lead generation for real estate.
for example like if you search these keywords now there will be websites that are ranking for it and then you can see what your competition looks like as well. Uh next question sorry go ahead. Yeah, I mean I just want to I think a simp the simplest way like if you take the three angles that I talked about just now like for example like lead generation for real estate agents there's so many things that you can write about. Of course maybe you won't go directly to effort stage yet because you want to uh see if it resonates.
So let's say a web comic like I wouldn't for example like start right from the get- go and like make a web comic about like lead generation unless you are pretty sure that this topic has so much high business value for your company that you are willing to invest certain amount of resources to to putting that much effort. For example, for us, right back then before that, uh, link building was a really important topic for us at HRES because obviously we are a link building tool as well. So, we were more than happy to invest a ton of resources into making the highest quality stuff for link building because it is a core topic for our business.
We solve that problem 100%. So, that's one way you can think about it. Like for us, business value for link building was super high. will will spare uh any amount to invest in that topic. Whereas like me like so lead generate otherwise if you are worried you can always start with a MVP a minimal via product if you are going the effort route or that could be simpler things if you're already in the industry you might have friends talk to them you know get their stories write about their experience write about your experience I'm sure you can come up with a lot of different angles for that yeah okay I hope that's helpful uh next we'll move on to Thomas's question which is uh I suppose like it's somewhat similar what they want to ask if it's it if this topic area makes sense to write about if it's not exactly related to their business.
So should I write blogs about traveling topics? Uh if I have a car rental website for example I mean it's hard to say yes or no. Uh I would use a brew framework again to to question myself. So I mean traveling topics is quite broad right? There's so many different I mean traveling is such a broad category like like should you write about a traveling topic like uh a 5day road trip around California of course you should write about it because if you have a car rental website but if it's like how to get tickets to Alumbra okay you know maybe not you know like so again I would default to using the brew framework to decide like what is the business value to you if you have a car rental website like How likely is that person reading the topic uh or vising for the topic or if discovering the topic, how likely are they going to eventually uh rent a car?
So, in terms of priority, you want to target every single one of them that scores a three for you, like super high value. If somebody reads this blog post, they will book a car right away. I mean maybe not right away but you know it will be top of their mind like a five a road like a road trip road trip around the world road trip in California road trip in I don't know uh in in England road trip to Scotland how to drive from from London to Edinburgh you know things like that then yes you should write about it because for a car rental company they are likely a three right again how to get tickets to Alumbra how to visit Alcaza stuff like that you know maybe that would be a one for a car rental website.
So you want to dep prioritize that until you are sure that you have covered all topics that you have scored a three. Yeah. I would also like I would think about it. Sorry. Yeah. I would also like to ask if like for example as a car rental company, a WhatsApp provider if this is the main demographic that you best cater to as opposed to other demographics that maybe rent a car for business trips or something like that which is slightly different, right? like presumably like different uh if if the strength of your uh of your website or your car is that you cater to a specific like use case a lot more and yeah like your brew basically score will be a three for that area versus some other use case for renting a car.
Yeah. Uh so uh Hussein asked a question the next question which is HS is known for datadriven content for a niche business like online bookstore. How can we identify content topics that don't just attract uh traffic but actually convert visitors into buyers? Uh think is so I think ask you maybe you uh go ahead and give a try to answer this one. It feels a bit similar to what we've answered earlier, but I guess like it's the main thing is to ask how how will our like content convince people that you know you should convert into sales sort of thing.
I mean I guess the question is is it asking about copyrightiting or is it asking about like uh content strategy because if you are trying to get I mean let's let's be honest like I think at the end of the day like the the topic you choose and the angle you choose is the most important. For example, if you are targeting a very top or the final topic uh I I don't think there is any way you can get anyone to buy right away because it's is it is just the case. It like for example like somebody who's new into marketing, they're not going to sign up for HS overnight.
So you you have to understand like uh the the journey that the reader is on you're not going to be able to convince everyone overnight and that is just part of marketing. So I think if you are trying to get people to convert more then you got to be targeting more like bottom of funnel topics which we uh again go back goes back to brew. If you are targeting topics that score a business potential of three then I would say it is quite likely that they are going to buy. And if you want to get more sales, then you should be targeting more of those topics first before you move to other topics that score a two, a one, or even a zero.
Yeah, I hope that was helpful, Hussein. Yep. Uh, next question is, uh, Hussein, if you did not find that answer helpful, maybe you can clarify what your your question is a bit more. Uh but for now we will uh answer question which is there any tips for uh educational content that is very technical. So for example they sell like courses on Excel, PowerBI, AI, Python because their content is quite technical. Um, how can we improve our reach to more people and stand out specific to educational content? How do you how do you write highquality content about content that you're selling?
Fundamentally is what's happening. I think there was some time ago that we actually had some courses as well that we that we were selling right man way back early in the days HF's days I think we had like a blogging for business course was like paid for initially I I would say your problem is exactly our problem because at the end of the day using HS is not easy it's still a highly sophisticated tool So, I mean, I there's there's so many ways to answer this question in my head that I'm trying to figure out what to say exactly that is helpful.
But I would say like the most direct tip that I can give right now based on this is to go to our YouTube channel and see what Samo is doing because in the early days we were just like you a lot of our YouTube videos we were doing educational stuff tutorials how to do this how to do that how to use HS for keyword research blah blah blah boring stuff like you'll be hardressed to find anyone one that sits through that if they do not have a pressing problem, you know, they're they're not going to eat that while having their their dinner.
But I think if you look at what Sam is doing today, it's completely different and uh it's more entertaining. yeah, I would say go to our YouTube channel and see what Sam is doing. From what I know, what Sam did was really like he sat down because he was doing a YouTube course. He sat down and wrote down a hundred potential video ideas. And of course, not every single one of them will work out and become a real video. But I think that at least when I talked to Sam, that little exercise of having to really write down a hundred ideas really got those gears uh working.
And if you are I guess if you are not uh patient enough, you can of course again use AI to help you with that. So that's one way to do it. Get a 100 ideas, write it down and see how it can work. Otherwise otherwise my other answer to this question is that I don't it again it depends on the topic right like I mean for every single topic there is a limit to who you can reach. So if for example you are targeting very bofu stuff link building for example like for us link building right there is a limit to the number of people that we can eventually reach because ultimately if you think about a market itself the number of people who are actively reading about link building and eventually buying a link building too it is not that many people.
So no matter how entertaining you want to be uh or funny there is still a limit to there is a ceiling to number of people you can reach. So if you want the direct answer to how can you reach more people then you have to start targeting broader topics. That's number one for sure because there is a there is always a gap in the market. There is always more beginners uh than active than people down the niche. So you want to start targeting broader topics if you want to get more reach for sure. And then you want to use any of those end goals that I propose uh experimentation uh experience and effort to see if you can do something more entertaining or to reach more people that might want to read about it.
And I was also suggest looking at what Samo is doing on our YouTube channel to see how he's make doing more storytelling instead of tutorial based stuff. Yep. Yeah. So we hope that answers qu uh uh answer was helpful and good question actually like it's a interesting space. Uh next question is what about for how can this knowledge be used for e-commerce? e-commerce uh websites that typically have a lot of sales related pages, product related pages. um he likes some ideas about I guess he's he's asking for like ideas for his uh website which is dealing with different car brands that he does not own.
He's not he's not the car brand but he sells multiple car brands. Well, I think the general principles are exactly the same. If you are going to use content to get more traffic, then you can use whatever I just said to get more traffic which you can then direct to your sales pages or you can direct to your affiliate pages. Yeah, I mean I I I see a lot of e-commerce websites typically uh create like helpful guides about specific products like products for specific functions or like like I mean even starting from the beginning of the level one effort of listicles like best uh uh products for so and so purpose or gifts for people and things like that.
they are like they like the content formats do not necessarily have to be different even though it's an e-commerce website. I'm not sure if you agree. No, I agree. Yeah. I I mean online car dealership for example I mean I can imagine for example there is a very popular real estate agency in Singapore that does a lot of uh videos about the homes they're going to sell like they walk through they walk through the home and then they introduce the home they walk to the nearby metro station and then they are showing like what's around the area I can even imagine like let's say if I run online dealership with car brands.
I can think of interesting topics like today I uh I reviewed the I mean sorry I'm I'm not that knowledgeable about about cars so pardon my lack of knowledge but uh I can I today I reviewed the latest Lexus car model something like that and this is what I think blah blah blah blah blah and of and if I can imagine if you're honest about what is good and what is bad and if you can frame it in a way that maybe the bad doesn't sound that bad. Uh you can sell the car, right? Like like I still remember like the very famous case where Aies the car rental company they were losing to her for many many years.
So they decided to come out with a campaign that acknowledged their market position by saying yes we are thacken but that means we'll try harder to care more or something like that. And so I mean what I'm trying to say is that honesty is not necessarily a bad thing. Honesty can get you more car sales and I have bought a luggage recently uh because the the sales teams was pretty honest about what I should buy, what I should not buy. So I think like even simple topics like today reviewing all the cars that you have in your dealership in your showroom or whatever that could be a series of articles.
Uh you you know what I'm not sure if that's uh useful. Yeah. Okay. Uh yeah. So I hope that is useful. Sergey um B asked a question of what is your best HF's content explorer tip? So like um what would be a a good use of content explorer in your opinion that people may not know about that will be useful especially when it comes to content creation? Well, my favorite content explorer tip is still the same one today, which is that if you go to content explorer and type in your topic and if you filter for topics that get a more than a certain amount of search traffic and uh very few links, then that means those topics are actually getting are like kind of ranking high and getting so much search traffic even though they don't have a lot of mentions or links or citations.
And this is like a huge opportunity for you to come in and try to replicate those topics. Yeah. So again, go to content explorer, type a topic filter for high search traffic and low number of links. Yeah. Uh underrated use of content explorer. Um Akash asked the question of um how much an anchor text could be add in thousand or okay so how often should you add links I suppose in in based on like the content length is fundamentally I believe that is the question Akash I'm going to give you a terrible answer because at HF you don't really care about those kind of things I think it's like a very minute in the grand scheme of SEO and marketing and even and today like yeah, we don't really think about it.
Let's just put it this way. So, it's a it's a horrible answer. It's a terrible answer, but it's the truth. We we don't really think that much about it, I guess. Don't annoy your audience. Yeah. If there are if there are so many blue links that people like distract them from like reading your content, then you are doing yourself a disservice. I think if you do it in an intuitive way that you're not trying to spam and you are always trying to link to useful resources, I don't think you will go wrong. Unless like if you write a blog post and every single word is a blue link, then obviously you're doing something wrong.
Yeah. But I don't think that you can go really wrong if you're doing it in a honestly my honest opinion is that I think when it comes to SEO and content marketing all of us already have a certain correct under correct intuitive understanding of certain things that we will do a certain way because of our experience with the internet. So then all of us get confused because we go online and read some random SEO blog or see some random SEO influencer say something that sounds very complex and then you real then you think that oh I need to be doing that and I'm then you start to overconfuse yourself but actually a lot of us already know what we should be doing.
We just need to follow those thoughts correctly because you have experience with the internet and SEO and content marketing is part of the internet. So yeah actually a lot of these kind of things I don't necessarily think you need need to overthink that hard and optimize to the nth degree. If you do it intuitively I don't think you'll do anything wrong again unless you are making every word a blue link. Yeah I I give you permission to trust yourself guys. If it looks like too many probably is. Yeah. If if it looks like you think you're spamming then you are spamming.
Okay. Uh Thomas, uh I think this is the last question unless Michael you've raised your hand. So if you have a question you like to ask, you can type it in the Q&A ideally. But we'll go to Thomas's question here, which is does Google's Google rank in top three? Does Google rank blogs where you share your experience in the top three? Specifically, if I don't have any experience to share, what type of blog should I make? related to what you presented earlier but yeah go ahead I don't have any experience right I think is what he's saying so what should I do if I have authority well this is the core of the webinar so I'm not sure if you attended the webinar before that or you just came in at the end so if you don't have an experience interview someone or go get an experience yourself and…
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