Spott Review - Yet another graphic design... NOPE!

Spott is very similar to Vistag that we reviewed by in 2018, which has been shut down. Spott is already ahead offering video tagging (as opposed to Vistag, that only allowed to tag photos) and shows a lot of promise in future roadmap development.

I originally posted this review of Spott on AppSumo, and if you're interested in purchasing Spott, I would encourage you to read more reviews there after you finish our take on it.

What is Spott?

Spott is a unique tool that can change your entire e-commerce, sales landing page as well as your social media marketing strategy - to name just a few. Picture tagging and tooltips are underutilised in digital marketing, and the available tools (WP plugins) are either buggy or limited. That is why Spott stands out even harder, as there is nothing quite like it that I know of.

Spott in action

Spott Pros

• video tagging - wow, that opens a lot of possibilities in gamification and making your videos and ads actually producing a sale,
• the tags are responsive and consistent across the board - this is a massive issue for the majority of the other "tagging" tools I've tried in the past,
• tags are very flexible and allow for plenty of different info to be input in the popups or tooltips - different types of URLs and additional CSS in styles help in nailing the design - again that amount of (somewhat common-sense) flexibility has never been the case with Vistag or other similar tools I've tried,
• "Asset Feed" - looks to be an extremely interesting feature I will have to dig into - for now, extra tacos for attempting to automate some of the copy-paste tasks - such an approach always strikes confidence in the founders' vision for the SaaS,
• intuitive interface and enough documentation to get you up to speed in less than an hour,
• reporting will help in gauging the engagement and updating clients.

Spott Cons

• I don't see any workarounds for the lost SEO due to hosting pictures on Spott servers... Alt tags, picture title and description - would be nice to see input fields for those in your embed code at least,
• more trigger options: currently only static or hover, but it would be nice to have an option for a timed trigger, e.g. "wait for 10s and open a popup", or on exit intent, etc..

The future of Spott

I was waiting for something like it since Vistag literally pulled DOA on all of us in the SEO industry. This time the team behind the tool is set on the development and looks much more established. Contrary to what I see in some of the startup SaaS that never invested in SEO, Spott Team brand is ranking very nice and is targeting keywords that point to their long-term commitment and outside-of-LTD growth.

There is one more thing that needs to be said here - our graphic designer will have to change her processes. And our agency will have to incorporate Spott to our entire design/video/CRO strategy moving forward. And this is a lot of work and changing things around.

So, if you have an established way of making images, videos and ad-clips using some tools, your process will need to encompass Spott somehow - an extra step to do for your designer, so be mindful of that.

But we feel this is going to be worth it.

Best Freelance Platforms to Grow Your Business - From Online Banking to Content Marketing

Somedays, freelancing can be a struggle between trying to find new clients and getting actual work done. Using the right platforms and a standardized approach to pitching can help streamline those efforts.

If you're a freelancer with goals of expanding your business in 2020, here are some expert tips and fantastic platforms to guide the process.

Important Considerations for Freelancers

Before you start scaling your business, there are a few key areas of your business to tend to. First, plan to have your banking streamlined for your business needs. Processing payments through Amaiz and taking advantage of the freelance-oriented set-up is one option for getting your financial ducks in a row.

Another consideration is your approach to pitching potential clients. Ensuring you have consistent profiles crafted and your best work highlighted is a must.
Create a standard pitch template and tracking sheet to record:

• who you pitched,
• when you reached out,
• what platform you used, and
• when you should follow up.

With those core business issues in mind, here are the five best freelance platforms for growing your business in 2020.

5 best freelance platforms for growing your business in 2020

CloudPeeps

CloudPeeps launched in 2015, as a response to the shift toward more remote work and freelance opportunities. The goal of CloudPeeps is to connect determined, goal-oriented freelancers with reputable businesses to form a productive working community.

CloudPeeps offers a variety of freelance opportunities, ranging from content writing and social media management to SEO and keyword research. This broad approach allows businesses to put together a team of freelancers in one centralized platform.

CloudPeeps offers a tiered subscription plus commission membership option. The free version takes a 15% commission while the top-end option costs $29 per month and takes a 5% commission.

Toptal

Toptal is the cream of the crop when it comes to freelancing platforms. If you manage to secure a spot on Toptal, you'll open your business to exciting and profitable new opportunities. The platform pairs freelancers with big corporations and world-renowned startups, like Airbnb and Shopify.

To become a freelancer on Toptal, you'll need to go through a rigorous screening process. The platform is currently open to developers, project managers, and financial freelancers. The screening process includes everything from skills tests to interviews. If you think you've got what it takes, it's well worth applying as you can earn thousands of dollars a week on certain projects.

Aquent

A common challenge freelancers face when using a platform for finding clients, is tagging relevant experience. The incorrect use of tags can result in mismatches or missed opportunities. Aquent aims to solve that problem using an organic AI-driven approach that takes a deep dive into your portfolio and does the tagging for you.

Aquent is for freelancers in the marketing and creative sectors and allows members to set their rates and negotiate accordingly. If you're unsure how to charge a competitive rate, they provide a guide to help you ensure you're getting what you're worth.

PubLoft

PubLoft is a platform that focuses specifically on content marketing and freelancers who work within the B2B market. This robust platform helps you find clients, and it also helps you manage client relations in one centralized location. Additionally, PubLoft offers financial snapshots that can help you plan ahead.

PubLoft handles invoicing and payments, paying freelancers biweekly. In return, freelancers pay a monthly subscription price.

SolidGigs

SolidGigs takes a multifaceted approach to support freelance business growth. Their weekly roundup sends the best new freelance jobs of the week directly to your inbox for review. On the other side of things, SolidGigs offers a rotating collection of courses and templates to help you build your business. These tools cover everything from setting your rates to spreadsheet templates for tracking your progress.

SolidGigs offers a flat rate subscription of $19 per month. You can get a free trial for $2 for the first month to give it a shot.

Use these platforms and expert tips to help you grow your freelance business in 2020 and beyond.

This article was originally posted on Colorpeak: Best Freelance Platforms to Grow Your Business - From Online Banking to Content Marketing

SEO Content Optimization – CognitiveSEO vs SimilarContent

WE’VE OPTIMIZED THIS ARTICLE WITH SIMILARCONTENT SEARCH ENGINE CONTENT OPTIMIZATION TOOL

MARKETING AUTOMATION - The “marketing automation” keyword and the optimized content I’m referring to throughout the article is here: Marketing Automation Tools – The DIY for Beginners

NON-AFFILIATE REVIEW - This review is my honest feedback as a dedicated SEO enthusiast in constant pursue of optimisation tools that provide the best results.

SPOILER ALERT! COGNITIVESEO CONTENT OPTIMIZATION SOFTWARE WINS (WITH A BIG CAVEAT WORKING IN FAVOUR OF SIMILARCONTENT OPTIMIZER, BUT MORE ON THAT BELOW). IF YOU’RE AFTER SEO CONTENT OPTIMIZATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, BOTH TOOLS WILL GIVE YOU VERY CLOSE RESULTS. AND THE RESULTS BEING HIGHER RANKINGS ON GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE FOR YOUR OPTIMIZED ARTICLES.

SO, HERE’S HOW BOTH OF THE TOOLS GO ABOUT DOING CONTENT OPTIMIZATION.

How To Do Content Optimization Correctly? – Seed Keyword Analysis

First, both CognitiveSEO and SimilarContent analyse the top searches to find who gets the Google engine ranking right and who doesn’t. After the tools combine the findings, an equation is run to assess the outcome. The idea is to get you information that is easy to interpret and provide you with a general direction in which to take your raw, unoptimized article.
As an example, I decided to drop a hard keyword: “marketing automation”.

CognitiveSEO Keyword Analysis

The tool does an excellent job of showing you the entire picture at first sight. Without clicking away, I see:

🠮 CONTENT DIFFICULTY

The “gist” of the keyword analysis step and the number from 0-100 that tells you how sharp your content optimization needs to be if you want to enter the content marketing competition at the top of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). “Marketing automation” scored 77, marking it as a “very hard” keyword.

🠮 LINKS DIFFICULTY

CognitiveSEO goes an extra step here and also lets you know that the content optimization alone ain’t going to cut it. The same scale as before – from 0-100 – and “marketing automation” is marked at 72 (“very hard”). Underneath the Links difficulty score, I see an extra piece of information about how many referring domains do “Score 72” actually mean (“~49 sites” backlinking to my “marketing automation” article to enter the top SERP online competition).

🠮 MONTHLY SEARCHES

It shows a popularity trend (Google Trends) of a given keyword in the selected country. For “marketing automation” keyword in Google.co.uk the Monthly Searches feature did not work (the result was “N/A”). Surprisingly it did work for Poland or the USA but not for the UK.

But it doesn’t end there. Still, in the same birds-eye view, CognitiveSEO goes even deeper with the Keyword Analysis. And if there was ever any doubt if you should spend the next several hours working on your SEO content optimization, Keyword Explorer and Rank Analysis features should swiftly dispell any uncertainty.

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for SEO content optimization

🠮 KEYWORD EXPLORER

The software breaks it down on a table with primary filters such as Search Suggestions, Focus Keywords and Questions. These I believe, are self-explanatory keyword categorisations that provide a full panoramic view of your seed keyword landscape.

There is also “Filter” option for a more refined inspection and an excellent feature “Group by Topic” that in one click reveals the central themes around your chosen keyword. Here you can educate yourself on the search intent behind the chosen keyword. A handy feature and possibly a game-changer if the topic you attempt to target is new to you.

Keyword Explorer also shows a set number of keywords they called “opportunities”. For “marketing automation” I was given 916 keyword ideas, that CognitiveSEO artificially limits on my “Starter Plan” ($129.99/mo). Apparently, I could enable the hidden data and “up to triple” the number of keyword opportunities listed if I was to upgrade to the “Business Plan” with “custom pricing”.

🠮 RANKING ANALYSIS

The tool shows you the other performing websites and their optimized content ranked at the top of the Search Engine grid. It lists the main ingredients of your digital content optimization and marketing strategy you need in order to compete with the top contenders, such as:

• Content Performance (from 0-100),
• Focus Keywords (the number of topically related keywords),
• No. Of Words (of the entire article)
• Domains To Url/Site (backlinks needed)
• Date Published (how old is the original piece)

I was able to review the Top 20 Pages on the Google Search, again with an option to expand it up to the Top 100 on a “Business Plan”.

Finally, the Content Assistance tool is where the rubber hits the road. I’ll break it down right after I visit…

SimilarContent Keyword Analysis

The software splits it down to three separate tools. Suddenly I wasn’t getting the useful “birds-eye” overview that CognitiveSEO provides in one spot. I think the analysis and content strategy tips are much more partitioned and hard to follow when compared to the other software.

🠮 TOPIC DIFFICULTY (TD)

The gist of your keyword investigation will happen under Topic Difficulty tool. SC runs their formula against the top 20 articles on Google Search and presents you with the 0-100 scale of keyword difficulty at the top of the side panel. “Marketing automation” scored 79.9, which is similar to CognitiveSEO. There is no backlink analysis letting you know the number of referring domains needed for your optimized content, but rather a vague statement “Hard & Need High Authority Site”.

Next to the Topic Difficulty score, SC presents you with a bar chart of the top 10 articles and their current SEO content Performance Score (from 0-100). I have to note that the Bar Chart was confusing to me at first, and I had to watch the instructional video to confirm what it actually shows (the Article Performance for each page ranked).

A little bit below, I’m happy to see a summary of Google Entities (or Snippets) for my “marketing automation” keyword:

1. Ads: 3
2. Video: 2
3. Questions: 0
4. AMP: 20 (and why 20 suddenly? Shouldn’t it be the top 10… ?)

It is a nice feature and… utterly inaccurate in my case.
I’m not sure if this is desktop or mobile SERP or both? The entities I see on “my Google” are (desktop/mobile version):

1. Ads: 4/4
2. Video: 0/6
3. Questions: 4/4
4. AMP: 0/2

Also missing from the tool are: Featured Snippet, People Also Search For, BoP (Bottom of the Page) Ads. I’d like to see those search engine services to be counted in the KD’s SERP guide.

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for seo content optimization

META Title/Description Optimization

For some strange reason, SimilarContent thought to place “To Optimize Title/Description” suggestions and take 30% of the screen’s real-estate for that information. There, in fine-grain detail, SC tells you where you should put your focus/LSI/variable keywords to compete on organic searches. But why do I need to see these recommendations here?

In any regular SEO content optimization workflow or blog creating practices, the META Title/description content optimization is the very last part that you sort out AFTER the entire article is thoroughly developed, optimized and implemented on your website or blog.

Therefore at the early stages of the Topic Difficulty checks, the Title/Description content suggestion is an entirely unnecessary technical trivia. A one that you usually sort out at the end of the journey with different page optimization tools for your convenience (like Yoast or PageOptimizerPro). However, if SimilarContent insists on informing me of how the top 20 strategised their Titles/Descriptions and existing content, I’d rather had that info located somewhere on the main table grid. And use the saved space for something more useful, like Keyword Brainstorming or MicroNiche Finder that are separate tools but could easily fit in that view (and be much more relevant to what I intend to do at the Topic Difficulty search phase).

Keyword “Synonym(s)”

Then there is the “Synonym” feature that I can only describe as some kind of digital content creation helper or a keyword ideas/opportunities tool in its early-stage zygote form. For “marketing automation”, it revealed “About 5 results” (SIC!), and, I suspect, there are some issues with pulling in the data like search volume and frequency of appearance. Currently, it offers less than Google Suggestions but, hopefully, something better will come out of it. Although I can’t say if it’s a “boy” or a “girl” (or something else) yet…

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for seo content optimization

Topic Difficulty Competitive Breakdown and Content Optimization Strategy

Finally, we have the Topic Difficulty table breakdown, and similarly to CognitiveSEO, they go about exploring the chosen topic and its digital landscape.

But rather than listing keywords ideas or content “opportunities”, they focus your attention on the Top Sites that rank for the keyword in two different types of views: an existing page content data breakdown and a Search Engine list.

In my opinion, both SimilarContent Data and SERP breakdown views show almost the same information (Rank, Domain, Score, Score Chart and Facebook Shares all repeat). Both views could easily be put together under one tab and have another tab(s) revealing something different and aiding your marketing research.

In any case, the Keywords Difficulty keyword breakdown is more akin to what CognitiveSEO shows under Ranking Analysis tab. Although the table goes in-depth in some areas, I’m not sure about the practical use of what SC analyses:

• The table lists only the top 10 SERP results with no possibility to expand (CognitiveSEO shows 20 or more on a higher tier plan) – this is strange because SimilarContent claims they run analysis against the top 20 domains – so, why would they “hide” half of their data findings from us…?
• for “marketing automation” the top 10 SERP are somewhat similar, but I find CognitiveSEO to be a bit closer to what I see when Googling “marketing automation” keyword in my (UK) browser – it is not a big difference though
• both tools show the SEO content optimization performance/score for each ranked domain and, although the approach is different, the conclusions are very similar
• KD displays the entire SERP snippet with META Title and Description (CognitiveSEO shows only the URL path) – I like that and find it useful to see there, but I’m missing the addition of Google Entities and Snippets (CognitiveSEO has it)
• KD also shows the number of times the targeted keyword appeared in the description (it doesn’t count the title and the slug for some reason, so I find it half-done or not that useful)
• Finally, KD goes into great detail to analyse how many times each focused/recommended/similar word is used in the competitive articles – but I’m struggling to understand the usefulness of that information at that particular stage of the keyword research. I mean, I’ll go and keep working on the article under a different tool/view – SC’s Content Optimization. There I’m expecting to find all the fine-grain keyword suggestions and where to put them. I find the Topic Difficulty detailed analysis – “who-used-how-many-keywords” examination – completely inconsequential at the point of reviewing target keywords and searching for opportunities. The “who-used-how-many-keywords” information has no weight whatsoever on whether I chose to pursue the keyword or not.

The Topic Difficulty Tool is the weakest point of SimilarContent and a one that requires almost complete revamp to be able to compete with CognitiveSEO Keyword Explorer tool.

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for seo content optimization

KEYWORD BRAINSTORMING/MICRONICHE FINDER (SEPARATE TOOLS/VIEWS)

Once again, SimilarContent thought to split the Keyword Research onto separate tools/views. I don’t quite understand that. If you’ve done your Topic Difficulty due diligence already, surely Brainstorming and MicroNiche Finder are a step back at that point, no? Why are these tools/views “a next step” on the interface grid? Their placement makes no sense for any keyword search workflow I can think of.

Keyword Brainstorming

is just a list of keyword ideas that contain all of the terms of a target keyword in them, e.g. “marketing automation tools”. It also shows the frequency of their appearance in the top 10 search engine results. For my “marketing automation” I was presented with “About 15 results” under “Similar and top 1 words” (meaning a Target KW + 1 additional keyword) and “About 5 results” under “Similar and top 2 words” (TKW+2).

The results were disappointing and knowing what other search engine optimization companies provide in the “keyword brainstorming” department; the tool is completely unreliable. For example, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer “Having the same terms” tab for “marketing automation” suggested 2001 keywords for the UK alone and 8064 keyword suggestions for the USA (+ 500 “Questions” and 1641 “Also rank for”). Now THAT is what I call a “Brainstorming”. But even CognitiveSEO with its 916 “keyword opportunities” comes out much better. I use Google Suggestions or Answer the Public with much better outcomes than SC keyword ideas.

Keyword Brainstorming gets F- and Gryffindor loses 150 points.

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for seo content optimization

MICRONICHE FINDER

this, on the other hand, is a very interesting idea that can aid your SEO content. Especially useful if you want to nail an accurate tag(s) or a category to your article. MicroNiche Finder is just a category path or a breadcrumb of the topical relevance of your targeted keyword. It listed seven different paths for my “marketing automation” keyword, and I found it uniquely missing from other tools, including CognitiveSEO or even Ahrefs.

Ahrefs “Parent Topic” or CognitiveSEO’s “Group by Topic” could be considered a similar option. Still, it’s not entirely the same, and SimilarContent seems to define the “root path” or the theme’s origin of the keyword more in-depth.

I can also see myself using the paths for topical interlinking within my website content. Or at least as an optimized content tiering and content creation strategy.

I think if applied correctly across a website or blog, MicroNiche Finder feature could make a positive difference for your search engine optimization ranking.

SimilarContent Topic Difficulty screenshot - establishing keyword difficulty for seo content optimization

CONTENT REWRITER

Like the name suggests it is an article spinner. I use other tools for that already and don’t find it particularly beneficial. SC claims to use “advanced AI” in the text spinning and suggests to use it only in “chunks” of no more than 100 words for the best results. I tried a couple of short eCommerce product content descriptions I’m working on at the moment. The results were mediocre, not terrible and better than some “mainstream” content spinners. Although it is a nice addition and SC says they’ll keep improving it, I won’t hold my breath, because this isn’t something I’m after when I’m logging in to SimilarContent dashboard.

TODAY’S FRESH KEYWORDS

This is just a Google Trends with the most popular search terms for a given day. This feature is cute, but not particularly useful in my opinion (unless you’re working on a gossip/news niche – but even then would “Today’s Fresh Keywords” feature be a real “game-changer” for you? … ).

Content Optimization vs Content Optimisation

We arrived at the heart of the matter. The point of all those previous searches and crafting strategy was to figure out the subject and write what I call a “raw version of an article”. I’ll take a step back and introduce my 7-step workflow for an optimized content creation that looks roughly like this:

1. An idea pops in my head, or I’m ranking client’s website/blog.
2. I do keyword research.
3. I create a raw version of an article.
4. I drop it to the content optimization tool and edit it.
5. I launch it on the website.
6. I further optimize page content and run the URL through SEO on-page optimization tool.
7. The fully optimized page or blog gets officially launched and spreads on my IFTTT and social media network.

I use multiple SEO, content optimization and marketing strategy tools to wrap it all up. CognitiveSEO or SimilarContent can only play a partial role in all that, but an important one. Here’s how each plays it.

CognitiveSEO’s Content Optimization

You drop an article to the editor, and a list of suggestions appear on the right-hand sidebar. CognitiveSEO groups the suggestions into five “dropdowns” or lists where numerous “focus keywords” are given:

1. Keywords already used
2. Keywords you should use
3. Keywords you should use more often
4. Keywords stuffing (so the ones you’ve used too many times)
5. Content Ideas via Questions People Ask

The sidebar also provides you with current Performance Score of your article (0-100), a number of focus keywords used, Flesch-Kincaid readability score (0-100) and the overall number of words you used in the article.
Further, underneath the article Performance Score, the tool tells you whether your optimized content “can rank in the top 3 Google results”, and what the possible Searchers Intent is for the targeted keyword. 

CognitiveSEO Keyword Highlighter (FTW)

However, the real highlight of the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization editor is the “Highlight Keywords” feature. I love that feature. It highlights all the keywords in your article with colours matching the keyword suggestion dropdowns. That way, you can really see the spread of keywords in your article, strategise the placement and have your material, literally, coming to light right in front of your eyes. CognitiveSEO Keyword Highlighter is a simple feature aiding your content strategy, and it’s an unbelievably fun one. It motivates me to pursue the content optimization further and max-out the performance score of my articles. Well done, CognitiveSEO!

The keyword suggestions given are spot on as CognitiveSEO uses a complex Search Engines LSI with multiple other indicators and formulas to lay them down for you and transform your text into a search engine friendly content. In fact, all the articles that I’ve treated with CognitiveSEO content optimization immediately ranked in top 20 without any backlinks, while the “marketing automation” – which is a tough keyword – picks up in the top 50 (without backlinks).

The overall interface is clean, sharp and extremely well-thought-out. CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool is an A++ product and a true highlight of their search engine optimization software package.

If you want an excellent content optimization software and can afford it, this is it, folks!

CognitiveSEO content optimization tool screenshot - how to position your article using LSI, keyword highlighter and keyword research

SimilarContent’s Content Optimization

Similarly to CognitiveSEO, SimilarContent uses a sidebar to list keyword suggestions grouped in three distinct tabs:

1. One word (meaning single-word suggestions)
2. Multi-word
3. Questions

SC computes each tab’s keyword suggestions under four distinct indicators:

1. Not found
2. Low
3. Good
4. Extremely (poor choice of words, should be “overused”, “excessive” or something…)

The content strategy implications are similar to that of CogniticeSEO list dropdown, but I see a potential to fine-grain the keyword placement. I am starting to like the idea of “one-word” and “multi-word” suggestions, and I’m beginning to see how it could work to my advantage. CognitiveSEO is much more rigid in that, and the suggestions are fixed – which has its own pros, like keeping it simple, and making it easy to implement.
The main thing is the SimilarContent keyword suggestions overlap with CognitiveSEO ones, and I suspect they use similar formulas to pull them out.

Worth noting is that SimilarContent uses “AI text analysis” that is available only in English. I believe that feature makes all the difference in the quality of the keywords scoring and suggestions. That makes the optimization in other languages inferior.

SimilarContent also gives you a Relevancy Score, which is the same as Performance Score on CognitiveSEO but works a bit different. While the first tool gets you to score from 0 to 100, SC makes you land somewhere between 55-75 points for the best results. More would be over-optimized, which is a strong (negative) signal for Search Engines. CognitiveSEO has its Keyword Stuffing list of course, but SC might be more risk-aware in not letting you go overboard. “Marketing automation” example on CognitivSEO has nothing listed under Keywords Stuffing, while the same article on SimilarContent lists 36 keywords under “Extremely”. These are all suggestions only, but important ones and SC does a great job at letting you know whenever you’re trying too hard.

Finally, there is a current article data breakdown, and SC’s Content Optimization tool informs you what language you use (duh!) and the number of words in your article; but also, the tool computes the number of letters, phrases, and even sentences. These are great additions to the overall excellent content optimization SaaS for SEO.

The main thing that I miss is the Keyword Highlighter, which makes working on SimilarContent dull. But once the content strategy highlighter is implemented, and they get the interface cleaned up a bit, SimilarContent Content Optimization offer is going to be hard to dismiss. And all those $100+ ticket SEO tools may struggle to make a case against it.

Overall, SimilarContent Content Optimization for SEO is extremely well priced and well done for a product in just under a year of development.

Multi-Language Content Optimization

I primarily work in the realm of the English language, but I always felt that the part reason for my reluctance to work in my native language is the lack of focus and effective tools that support search engine optimization in non-English (hence, lack of awareness). And I don’t blame anyone. I can’t expect an SEO SaaS companies “from California” to focus on some small country with an obscure language no-one else is using. Traffic and users behaviour will dictate what we bet all our chips on. However, the fact is that the non-English language countries are left behind, only catching-up to the SEO cutting edge. This ultimately can mean only one thing: the audience from these countries hold keys to uncharted Gold Mines. Some of these digital markets are like Lost Cities of Z waiting to be explored by Westerners looking for treasures and fame.

My point is that there is a massive discrepancy in the way SEO works in the UK when compared to the USA. There is an even bigger difference when I compare the UK to other European countries. Some premium tools already support general Keyword Research in multiple languages, but we need more focus on niche languages.

At the beginning of October 2019, CognitiveSEO added all Google supported languages in their Content Optimization Tool. I checked the Polish language option, and I can see that I could use the tool right away.

I think this is a sign of maturity in the industry when such advanced tools start including other languages than just English. Although I find CognitiveSEO Content Optimization for Polish slightly miscalculated in difficulty scoring, it is extremely helpful to have that in my SEO tool kit.

SimilarContent already supports 15 languages and claims to add more. Unfortunately, my language (Polish) is not one of the supported (yet) and the fact I didn’t pay attention to my German teacher in school; I just couldn’t test the multi-language options. Hopefully, when they update the software to include the Polish language, I check it out and submit my findings in this article.
In any case, kudos to both for a great attempt to include more languages and open more countries to an advanced SEO.

How much SEO content optimization tools cost

Content optimization tools follow a “pay-per-click” pricing model we know from Google, Facebook Ads. In that, certain operations cost you “a credit/query balance”. This means that you will have to work on optimizing all your clicks to get the most out of each tool. The prices range wildly and I’ll try to explain the value you get out of each SEO package below.

CognitiveSEO starts at $129 per month and has its balance calculation simplified. They give you one pile of credits/points (“queries” they call it), 250 points per month on the Starter Plan, and every “Submit” costs one point. If you’re not careful, you can nuke the entire balance at the beginning of the month. And with the way CognitiveSEO approaches the thing, it is easy to do. For example, I found that when I click the “back” button on my browser, points disappear. When I do a repetitive search, something I searched a second ago without an update, points disappear. Or I merely open previously edited article, again, points disappear.
I also find it vial that clicking to analyse the entire existing content carries the same point value as peeking at some obscure long-tail keyword in their keyword database. Because I don’t use their Keyword Search or Site Explorer tools much, I was lucky enough to have never run out of my credit balance, but I hate that aggressive approach to quota, anyway, and I see it as the weakest point of CognitiveSEO package.

SimilarContent range from $19 to $79 per month and handles the balance computation much better than CognitiveSEO. SC splits the clicks into four different segments and count each separately: Keyword Ranking, Analyze Article, Keyword Research, Niche Discovery. The best thing is that the quota resets every day rather than every month. So there is some freedom in that, and if you go overboard one afternoon, you only need to wait till the next day to have a blast again. Also, SimilarContent gives you plenty of options to scale your use as different pricing tiers are available – starting from only $19/m is a tremendous value.
CognitiveSEO shoves you at one fixed tier ($129/m) and then offers a “business plan with custom pricing”, which I guess means higher costs.
SimilarContent is a clear winner here.

What about CognitiveSEO Campaign Tools and the Site Explorer?

I deliberately skipped the more fundamental SEO tools that CognitiveSEO offers, because I don’t think they hold any relevance to the subject of this comparison (SimilarContent doesn’t offer anything like it). Ahrefs or Semrush would be more suitable to line up against CognitiveSEO, and that is a subject for another article.

Summary and which content optimization tool should you choose

While I find the Content Optimizers a head-to-head competition, CognitiveSEO wins with SimilarContent in the Keyword Analysis department by a long shot. But here’s the thing: both are sore losers to Ahrefs.
I find it especially saddening information for CognitiveSEO that put a lot of effort to provide as much information as Ahrefs Keyword Explorer does. And for a price of $129 – CognitiveSEO is not even close, I’m afraid.
I can have Ahrefs with all their bells and whistles for a not-far-off price of $179/m and completely smash whatever I can find on CognitiveSEO’s Keyword Explorer and all other tools they provide. Which is precisely what I do: I use Ahrefs for all the keywords, backlinks, content/site explorers and web-audit analysis. Then I use CognitiveSEO/SimilarContent for LSI Content Analysis and Content Optimization. And even further, I use PageOptimizationPro for a technical onPage SEO. That way, I can enjoy the best of all worlds without taking half-measures.

In that sense, I find SimilarContent a much better option than CognitiveSEO somewhat steep entry point package. If you use Ahrefs/Semrush for keyword research/backlink analysis already, you really should consider checking out SimilarContent offer. If you work in English, for a price of $19/m you get enough to put your articles next to whatever comes out of CognitiveSEO’s Content Optimization soft. Just make sure you’ve done your due diligence on Ahref/Semrush keyword explorer tools first.

Otherwise, if you like to keep all your essential SEO tools in one place and looking for an accurate, extremely well thought-out and fricktionless Content Optimization tool, CognitiveSEO should be the one. A high ticket price but no comprimises on the optimizations either.

Epilogue

SimilarContent is a startup, and an exciting roadmap is in place. They have a long journey ahead of them. Still, if they stay the course and keep themselves out of depth (e.g. not trying to be second Ahrefs), they may be one of the top contenders in their particular “multi-language diverse and multi-national inclusive content optimization niche”.

I truly wish them well and not just because I had the opportunity to get my spot at the front seat but, because, SEO is so much more than “Yoast and backlinks”.
Better content optimization tools = better content = better Internet.

Things I’d like to see SimilarContent focusing on:

1. Keyword Highlighter – I love that feature on CognitiveSEO. I think many people do. CognitiveSEO gives you a visual overview of your entire keyword placement strategy right inside your text. It is also a strange psychological trick that motivates me to keep filling-in the text with “more colours” (missing LSI keywords). Looking at the block of boring text on SC takes all the fun away.
2. Article History – this obvious feature is a must… I wasn’t happy when I discovered that I could not reaccess the past articles I worked on… Or still working on – the optimization takes time and often cannot be done in one sitting! Now I need to go through the entire process back again, copy-paste (fortunately I’ve made an external copy!) and waste additional credit. Really?!
3. Default Settings – I’d like to have my default country and language saved in my profile. Majority of my searches go against the UK market and are in English. I don’t want to set it all up every time I log in to commit another search.
4. Topic Difficulty (TD) – the Bar Chart with the Article Performance Score has the same purple colour as the Topic Difficulty Score placed next to it. It is, therefore, confusing on what score the bar chart shows as there is no tooltip explanation. There are multiple places on the dashboard where I’d like to see tooltips and different colours used to make it more clear. Also, some of the descriptions are inaccurate or confusing (e.g. “Extreme”… ?).
5. The option “To Optimize Title/Description” in Topic Difficulty is unnecessary. Keyword Brainstorming/MicroNiche Finder tools are unnecessarily separate and in the wrong place on the dashboard. SC needs to rethink the whole KD and other supportive tools from scratch.
   
6. Google Entities / Snippets summary in KD are inaccurate and they could be upgraded with additional Snippets that are missing (Bottom of the Page Ads, People also ask/Related Questions.

Check out YouTube Channel for more SimilarContent and Cognitive SEO info

• Cognitive SEO YouTube Channel
• SimilarContent YouTube Channel

This article was originally posted on Colorpeak Blog - SEO Content Optimization – CognitiveSEO vs SimilarContent.

How to Get Facebook & Google Pixel Ad Tracking using PixelMe

It's important that you understand, how people move around your website. The business intelligence you gather, compile and make sense of provides a big picture of your company direction. Online tracking or pixel ad tracking is a fundamental instrument in your marketing automation tool-kit.

Whether you like it or not, savvy-marketeers and modern businesses use pixel ad tracking to tailor their products and services to sell more, serve better and grow faster. It is then not surprising that several companies built entire businesses to serve just this single purpose – tracking you. Web analytics are a must these days and tracking user behaviour cannot be guesswork if you want to optimise your ads.

Remarketing

Marketing Analytics – the Key to Your Company Success

Nowadays, you can find many tracking and marketing automation tools to provide an almost infinite amount of data to track users and user behaviour. Most heard of (or used) is Google Analytics and their pixel tracking– a staple among online marketing communities. And Google’s Secret Weapon used to dominate the Digital World (ever asked yourself why such a sophisticated marketing tool is… free?). Some even go as far as to say it ruined the marketing.

Whatever your opinion is, Analytics is a powerful piece of marketing software for conversion tracking that you shouldn’t underestimate. But does it end there? Certainly not!

Google Analytics dashboard

Google Analytics – The Easiest Most Difficult Marketing Tool to Implement

One of the Analytics problems is its interface and complexity. Or its ‘sandboxiness’. Google indeed puts all the effort to make it super-easy for virtually everyone to plaster their tool on their websites. But once it’s there and you enter Analytics, it kind of leaves you hanging. It takes a lot of time and knowledge to understand the jargon, the mechanics of the tool, and how to set things up like tracking pixel or conversion tracking for yourself – not only on your website but also on the overview dashboard. We’ve seen many business owners withdraw to just tracking… traffic instead of tracking user behaviour. Or whatever the default GA dashboard shows. With many not even understanding what “Bounce Rate” is.

I once had someone ask me why their website "got only 43% of the "bouncy score" – thinking it's Google's "coolness" metric of some sort… indeed, the "bouncy score" should be the next big (bouncy) thing in internet marketing.

PixelMe – Going Beyond Google Analytics

No wonder many marketers took their expertise in data analysis to and decided to build a tool that gave their own spin around Pixel Ad tracking and business intelligence. One of those tools is PixelMe.

Folks at PixelMe looked at all that GA-sandbox confusion and decided to just cut to the chase. "What do marketers and website owners need to really know from people visiting their websites?". They created a tool that is 100x easier to understand, navigate around, and implement than Google Analytics ever has been. And it’s great!

PixelMe Dasboard

How does a pixel tracker work?

To better understand Pixel ad tracking, first, you need to understand what a tracking pixel is. In a majority of cases, it is a code snippet that is triggered when a visitor lands on your website, clicks on a link or opens an email. The pixel script communicates with the source server, which registers a user-triggered action. Meanwhile, the user is “tagged” with a unique ID, and the entire website session gets recorded in “a browser cookie” file.

It is worth noting that the Internet browsers refer back to cookie files every time users come back to websites. And, as you already suspect, the pixel server is then getting informed as well.

For example, every click made by the user can be captured and tracked so you can adjust your conversion actions. In other words, tracking pixel allows you to gather data to improve your digital ad and marketing strategy. All that is based on the user behaviour tracking data that is provided by a pixel code. By collecting all that data about user behaviour, you can optimise your ads, content and improve retargeting.

Here are Top 5 Benefits that make PixelMe worth giving a shot and what you should expect from their Pixel ad tracking tool:

1. Retargeting (re-marketing) via Short-Links – you can develop super-effective retargeting audience groups from any link you share. PixelMe starts as a web-link shortener but then allows you to incorporate them with advertisement retargeting pixels, attributions and various marketing automation hacks.
2. Assign Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) – with the ability to include UTM tags to all your web links you will know where every website conversion comes from. When used in your marketing campaigns, you can further evaluate and also enhance your financial investments through the first touch, multi-touch, or last touch attribution versions.
3. Serve as your All-in-One Marketing Platform – PixelMe automatically combines data from multiple platforms in one convenient dashboard. Within few minutes, you can plug most of your ads’ systems (Facebook, Google, etc.), many CRM platforms, as well as various analytics platforms (like Segment or Google Tag Manager).
4. Test and decide what works for you – test and see which of your marketing channel brings the highest ROI and which should you abandon. Because PixelMe allows you to measure the influence of any kind of paid or natural network, you no longer have to guess if a given investment is worth throwing money at it.
5. Map your customer journeys – all that data means nothing if you can’t test your assumed touchpoints and paths to conversion. PixelMe allows you to look at each customer touchpoint and help you to understand its contribution in making or breaking the sale.

Business Analysis, Marketing Attribution And Tracking – Making It All Count

The one thing shared among many business marketers (and especially social media influencers) is the obsession with data hoarding. Everyone seems to obsess around clicks, likes, followers, subscribers… But not many take it to the next level and ask a question – “what it all really means to my business?!“. Because so many of those “stats” are just completely arbitrary. We call them the “Vanity Metrics” for a reason. But thanks to marketing tools like PixelMe, we can look at the pixel ad tracking data and the real-world examples that it provides. And then take an information-based action. If you dig deep enough, you may even find your own “Bouncy Score”.

Using Divi Theme with PixelMe together

See here how you can track every click via the Event Tracker on your website!

Check our YouTube Channel for more Divi Tips & Trick and Marketing Tutorials:

• Colorpeak YouTube Channel

Tracking (onclick) CTA’s via PixelMe in DIVI Theme

PixelMe set up in DIVI

We make it easy for you! Follow this step-by-step process on our Fleeq page to implement PixelMe in Divi.

If you work with Divi Theme and PixelMe, you quickly realise that adding a simple 'onclick event' to their Call-To-Action buttons isn't straightforward (Divi's buttons are styled anchor tags rather than regular HTML wrappers).

How to implement Event Tracker of PixelMe in Divi

Here's how to implement Event Tracker of PixelMe in Divi Theme by Elegant Themes in 5 easy steps:

1. Pick a button you want to track - either for a single CTA button or all buttons at once.
2. For ALL CTA's, identify the default CSS Class of your DIVI Theme buttons (e.g. ".et_pb_button"). Use your browser's default inspector to confirm the right Class name for your button. Or to narrow down to a single CTA - input a custom CSS Class name in DIVI CTA Module Settings - Advance Setting - Custom CSS field (e.g. "callus")
3. Next, log in to your PixelMe Dashboard and go to Smart Attribution - Settings - Tracking code
4. Select "Tracked events" from the dropdown. You should choose whatever is closest to your CTAs event you are trying to record. Copy the generated event script.
5. Log in to your WP Dash and go to Divi - Integration - Header. Insert the following jQuery script with the button's Class and your copied script from PixelMe:

PixelMe in Divi event tracker example

Now every time someone clicks on the CTA(s) the event gets recorded on your PixelMe Dashboard.

This article was originally posted on Colorpeak.co.uk: Tracking (onclick) CTA’s via PixelMe in DIVI Theme

Marketing Automation - Use These Tools To Improve Your Business Immediately

I have yet to meet a business owner who has never been in need of automation. Today startups, SMBs and large companies have one thing in common - they're all thrown in the game of pursuing the holy grail of business and marketing automation (The Automation Singularity).

As you’re reading this, I wouldn't be surprised if you've got your feet wet trying a marketing automation software at some point. MailChimp for example or even chatbots...?

Marketing Automation

But maybe you have been doing all your marketing the "old school" way, and you want to get some of the piling work volumes off your shoulders, and you don't want to hire, train, pay and manage additional employee(s). Well, I share your viewpoint, because running a business means innovation. So, you either work on out-innovating your competition or your practices get inefficient and your business becomes outdated pretty quickly.

I will try my best in this article to help you get started with choosing the lowest hanging fruit of marketing autopilot platforms. You should finish the piece having a grasp on what is marketing automation, why marketing automation is the next big thing in coming years, and how to use the power of automation platforms and tools to their fullest potential.

Remember, you can't turn your eyes away and pretend the business innovations don't affect you. I will argue here that 2018/19 is a perfect time to jump on board and benefit from at least some of the cheap and accessible business automation out there. As you read on pick one or two solutions and over the next few weeks try to integrate them for the betterment of your business and your life.

Why do businesses need marketing automation?

The traditional marketing as a scientific field goes back to early 1900s or even earlier with the development of modern capitalism and consumerism. In a nutshell, business owners and (modern) marketers discovered that by studying consumer behaviour they can predict and influence sales profits. Businesses then went on developing step-by-step processes to anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers so they could satisfy them more effectively in comparison to its competitors. Several decades later we use complex data and scientific methods to measure and design specific procedures to sell more to more people.

Marketing and sales funnels evolved and it's no longer just printed ads in papers and magazines or lump mail ads. With the technological revolution, especially the Internet and social media's worldwide blitz, we've opened several channels enabling us to communicate more effectively and build relevant relationships with our customers. What it means for marketers like you is that a need for a more sophisticated and technologically enhanced approach with complex, multivariate sales funnels is required. Hence, marketing automation.

Marketing Automation Sales Funnels

What Marketing Automation meant up until 2018

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs

Despite the overblown claims and inflated marketing slogans, marketing automation is NOT an artificial intelligence (AI). The real AI doesn't exist (yet) and we're likely far away from it. Some moderate that and use "semi-AI" but it's misleading because the "semi-" isn't clearly defined and means anything. I just call it for what it is for now. Marketing automation is a set of logical rules, processes and tactics that run on autopilot, making some tasks or even segments of your business autonomous and independent from human input. Besides the obvious profits like time, money and energy saving, such marketing practices bring a real and quantifiable added value to your business.

Although the philosophy of business management and marketing orientation remains intact and pretty solid, the tools and methodology seem to evolve and set new milestones almost every week.

Today, marketing automation software has never been more accessible. And in such high demand. Entrepreneurs keep coming up with creative ideas and cutting-edge technology to help businesses design their perfect strategies to predict the needs and personalise the copywriting.

So new marketing software is springing up like mushrooms.

But let's step back to something basic, like MailChimp which is an email auto-responding system. Their automated software is free (to the extent) and allows for:

• Easy integration on your website so you can quickly start building your email list
• Getting your prospects details in an engaging form (MailChimp Lead Magnet)
• Designing an auto-responder with a drag-and-drop visual builder
• ... and Sending automated and targeted emails to your recipient's list

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Here're a few triggers you can use:

• Email your tagged contacts - Send a targeted message when you add a tag to a contact.
• Welcome new subscribers - Introduce yourself to people when they sign up for your list.
• Say 'happy birthday' - Celebrate with an exclusive offer or cheerful message that will be sent out based on the birthday field in your list.
• Share blog updates - Help contacts keep up with your blog by sending new posts straight to their inboxes.
• Now you can essentially build "set and forget" email sequences.

(did I mention it's free? ;)

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Check this video on how to set one up with this step-by-step tutorial:

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The top 5 essential gains of automation

To summarise, here are the top 5 essential gains of automation in the area specific to marketing:

• Automated marketing tools build complex customer journeys and sales funnels (e.g. MailChimp)
• Marketing artificial intelligence software learns your customers' behaviour or who they are and tries to make your product and services highly personalised (e.g. UNLESS)
• Marketing bots aim to leave your customer informed, happy and engaged (e.g. Quriobot)
• Marketing analytics enables you to quickly test and change the direction of your marketing strategy (e.g. CustomerLabs)
• Automated sales software makes your marketing efforts more efficient, faster to adapt and scale (e.g. DataGran)

What Automation means for the future of business

"In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace." - Sun Tzu.

The future of automation in 2019 and beyond looks bright. And it isn't just Tesla and their self-driving autonomous cars. Interestingly enough, I find those same principles that drive Musk and his robo-vehicles towards automation apply to any aspect of the business. Here's what we all are after:

• multiplied productivity (ROI)
• exponential growth
• multitasking (that actually works)
• large data processing power
• and, yes - if used correctly, a much better life

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See Marquees driving Yandex self-driving car around California

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Sales and marketing automation software - who's on the frontend?

Let's bring it down to a business application and see what benefits businesses can expect from automated systems in 2019 moving forward.

The most common use of marketing automation software appears to be in sales, but this limited utility expands very quickly.

eMarketer reports that only 5% of companies have never benefited from marketing automation (I couldn't dig their source though, so take it with a grain of salt). But that makes sense, given the power of computing and how technology penetrated the entire world of economy. It is clear that customer journey maps are extensively used by Googles, Amazons and eBays of this world to accurately map out how customer behave in relation to businesses. And the same applies to Social Media giants like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Their optimisation is so granular, and it developed so fast, that <a some people stood to consider its ethics and what we want as a civilisation.

Nevertheless, the value in sales is so obvious and tempting that it only makes sense to continue using it. Providing your primary incentive is to quickly "help" your prospects who are travelling the distance from being a bystander to a raving fan. And the distance, no matter the length, is measurable and categorisable. Therefore, prone to endless optimisations (and exploitation).

Is marketing automation software difficult to access?

As of today, experts agree that by learning different ways how customers interact with businesses, pretty much guarantees big profits. For this reason, social scientist and marketers flock to use all sorts of automation tools that help with just that. Meanwhile, Marketing SaaS companies try to meet their prospects midway offering easy to understand but potentially vastly scalable in its application software. In fact, lowering entry level is now the name of the game with most marketing automation software.

One such software is FullStory. The software works based on simple principles but the results, which it draws through different modes of user interpretation, provide comprehensive and quite elaborate customer journey maps.

"See your site through your users' eyes. More than the sum of its clicks, FullStory replays your customer's journey – like a DVR for your website – so you can search, see, and understand your user experience."

There is certainly a learning curve associated with implementing any new system or technology. However, with much lowered entry-level bars the fruit has never hung so low.

Large Data Set Calculations - how to optimise your website running costs and business spending for free?

Data analysis in marketing automation

Back in the days, gathering and calculating any large data sets was done by businesses who could afford full-time data analyst and a "numbers person". So it was reserved usually for enterprise-level companies and agencies, or outsourced and never looked at closely again. Today, with tools like Google Analytics, you have quick and easy access to software that with a click of a button displays almost complete picture of your company's money flow.

It's free and offers a tremendous amount of actionable data that is automatically gathered and calculated from your website, ads and email campaigns, to mention just a few sources.

It's also worth mentioning that Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn Ads platforms use sophisticated dashboards where data is calculated and presented to you in any way you want. It takes time to figure it all out, though. I'd suggest to start with finding answers to simple questions like:

• What is my website's monthly traffic?
• Which of my ads increased traffic the most?
• How long an average visitor spends on my homepage?
• Is my traffic local or international?
• Using what device (mobile/tablet/desktop) people are visiting my website?
• Which of my web pages are most popular?
• Where is my traffic coming from?

The Rise of The Marketing Bots

One of the most significant aspects of marketing automation is the sudden spread of bots and various auto-messengers. Apart from built-in Facebook Messenger Bots, platforms like Quriobot and MobileMonkey are rapidly developing and are more and more sophisticated in methods of visitor engagement on your website. The key to a great visitors engagement appears to be:

• the speed of response
• 24/7 availability
• useful and relevant bot responses based on the keyword and intelligent intent recognition
• and so-called "triggers"

Speaking of "triggers". These can be heavily customised to adhere to the customers' behaviour on your site and provide visual and heavily targeted responses. For example, imagine you have someone checking on your "Home Page" then going to "Pricing" where they spend two minutes and decide to leave. Normally this particular visitor could be classified as a prospective customer, that you may want to engage further. Therefore, at each individual stage, your bot can enhance your visitors' experience by way of targeted messages, additional content and offers. Even at the point of departure, a bot can be configured to throw an "exit intent" trigger and, hopefully, stop the visitor from leaving the website.

AI bots - chat automation

The "AI" in bots gets also increasingly sophisticated. For example, tools like ActiveChat try to mimic human-like responses and with it infinite visual building blocks you can make it up as complicated as Lego's Star Wars Millennium Falcon set. It can also integrate with e-commerce systems so you can have an actual "digital counter" right on your website.

No wonder bots are the next big thing and we will hear about them more and more.

"I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better, and questioning yourself." - Elon Musk

Conclusion

It may be hard to start learning all these platforms today. However, in the long run, it will pay back immensely. Also, know that 99% of your competitors aren't doing it.

So, it’s better to start giving marketing automation some attention before it is too late. Whatever industry you're in, it will be driven by the same principles as any other, whoever puts in the hours to innovate will increase the odds of success over the business owners that procrastinated and neglected to do the homework.

You may not have enough resources to go all in with learning the marketing tools, but there is no harm in trying. I have probably been guilty of procrastination more than anyone in the business. But eventually I have learned to take little steps from early on, and over time I realised that I made a quantum leap in growing my business and developing myself. So, if you are reading this article right at this moment, stop wasting your time and jump right in.

These are obviously just a few tips and the ocean of automated tools is filling in with more and more fish. There are few more things that I have learned over the years, so pop back in and check this article for updates. But most importantly start with making your first marketing automation funnel, no matter how big your goals are. From my experience, the right actions will pay off. I wish you good luck with your marketing automation journey.

How has SEO evolved throughout the years?

The early beginning before SEO became a thing.

1991 Before SEO there was the beginning of world wide web. In on March 6th, 1991 the first ever website - info.cern.ch - was launched by Tim Berners-Lee.

1994 Stanford University students Jerry Wang and David Filo start Yahoo, the first Search Engine to be used by masses followed by AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos.

1996 Backrub search engine is created that ranks sites based on inbound link relevancy and popularity. Backrub would ultimately become Google.

1998 The King is born. Google launches in September, and so the story of SEO really begins. Before it, search engines positioned results based on on-page content, domain names, directories and breadcrumbs. Google introduced PageRank algorithm that also took into account the quantity and quality of links pointing to a website and anchor text.

The Google SEO revolution

2003 First Google algorithm update named Florida takes down a lot of websites in their ranking, especially those that would stuff keywords. Repeating keywords would be hidden at the bottom of a page in a font colour that matches the background. That way reader would not see them, but the bots would feed off them and rank websites position higher. Actions like that became to be known as Blackhat SEO tactics. Around this time a new tactic of link building is born. A race to build as many backlinks as possible begins as the savvy marketers quickly learn how to abuse the system.

2005 Google makes its first attempt to fight back linking exploitation and launches its "rel=nofollow" attribute preventing the authority of websites to be passed on. Following this update, Google launches the Jagger and Big Daddy algorithms just before the end of 2015 to prevent link farming and other suspicious SEO tactics.

Google YouTube revolution

2006 YouTube gets acquired by Google for the whopping amount of $1.65 billion. Eventually, it would become the second most used search engine in the world. In the same year, Google also launches Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools giving developers profoundly deep insight on how Google sees their websites.

2008 Suggestion Box is finally launched after four years of development and testing. Continuing its path of improving the user experience, Google focuses on understanding better how we surf the web and interact with content. It may seem like the most obvious Google feature these days, but back then showing related searches to automatically appear below, after you start typing in the search box, was a major hit.

2009 Bing goes online or rather Microsoft gives a new name to its Live Search tool. By then Google has nearly 70% of the search engine market in the USA.

2010 Google announces that site speed is a ranking factor following "Caffeine" update, dubbed a next-generation search architecture that is faster, more precise and provides more relevant results. All that thanks to fast "spider-bots" that can quickly crawl website and cover larger parts of the internet.

Google Panda

Google Penguin

Google Hummingbird

Google Pigeon

‹

›

Algorithms releases

2011 "Panda" update causes a notable impact on SEO which resulted in affecting optimisation field to this day. In an attempt to clean up search results, 12% of them were impacted. Websites with low quality and irrelevant content (better known as "content farms") drop down in the rankings. A similar thing happens to websites with unoriginal, static and auto-generated content.

2012 The following "Penguin" update doubles-down on eliminating aggressive, black-hat SEO spam tactics. Gone are the sites that violated Google's Webmaster Guidelines such us buying links, keyword stuffing and keyword matching anchor text to the dot. Eventually, Penguin and previously mentioned Panda release become part of Google’s real-time search architecture.

2013 "Hummingbird" release centres around the growing market of mobile users. It is the biggest update to Google’s algorithm since 2001 and deals better with natural language questions, conversational search, and it lays the foundations of Voice Search. Original content becomes a major factor in ranking along with blogs. Google starts to reward websites that provide useful, unique and lengthy answers to visitor’s queries. "Long-tail keywords" or, in other words, detailed and specific search queries become a thing.

2014 The release of "Pigeon" is all about better local search results. Google improves location and distance ranking parameters to provide relevant results to users based on proximity. Local businesses with strong organic presence showed higher in traditional search within the area of the searching person’s location. The "Local SEO" finally gets its own genre, now distinct from the general SEO.

AI & Machine Learning algorithms

2015 Some would say a breakthrough year in which Google reported more mobile searches in comparison to desktop search. "RankBrain" - a self-learning search architecture is introduced as part of the Hummingbird algorithm. It determines the most relevant results to search engine queries. At first, it runs only on 15% of searches that the system had never encountered before, but eventually, it applies to all of them.

2016 Google confirms that the search engine's top three ranking factors are: links, content, and RankBrain.

Fred - catchall name for multiple Google algorithm updates

2017 Google "Fred" update hits mostly websites with poor content. In general, Google tries to deal with aggressive monetisation, misleading and deceptive ads, poor mobile compatibility and poor content. Fred is not a stand-alone algorithm update, rather a catchall name for every quality tweak to Google system intended to improve it and get rid of the content that violates the Webmaster Guidelines. It's been a known fact for a while that Google does quality updates on a regular basis and most go unnoticed and are unannounced.

2018 A year of Webmaster Tools modernisation. Google Search Console, Google My Business and, most notably for SEO, Google’s PageSpeed Insights tools receive their updates. There are of course multiple changes to Google's ranking algorithm done almost every day, but there were three Broad Core Algorithm Updates that were actually announced. PageSpeed Insights update becomes a significant player in ranking and slow sites with low optimisation score on mobiles are affected. Google announces nine factors that influence Optimization Score.

And so, the story continues. What will 2019 bring? Most likely further updates toward mobile-friendly AMP enabled websites that load fast on slow 3G networks. A lot has changed since the first Google SEO revolution. An easily abused system based on keywords evolved into sophisticated learning machine that thinks like a human. Content became a king, and mobile device accessibility will further shape the ranking.

Sources:

• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Journal
• SMA Marketing

This text was originally published on: Colorpeak Blog - How has SEO evolved throughout the years?